Thursday, April 06, 2006

Guilty

Retired detectives, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two cops who carried out murders for the mob, have been found guilty in the murder of Israel Greenwald, a Long Island diamond dealer.

From the New York Times: "When Mr. Kaplan [the star witnees] got out of jail, he remembered Mr. Santora [Epollito's cousin] and his ''capable guys'' -- and in 1986, the government contends, he asked the three for help. He hired them to kill Israel Greenwald, Ms. Hormozi said, a diamond dealer who Mr. Kaplan thought might tell the government about his scheme to traffic in treasury bonds. The three men took the contract for $30,000, prosecutors say.

It was assassination by deception, Ms. Hormozi said. The two detectives stopped Mr. Greenwald in Brooklyn while he was driving home from work and told him he was a suspect in a hit-and-run accident. Instead of taking him to the station house, however, they took him to a parking garage, bound his hands, placed a bag on his head, shot him twice and then, Ms. Hormozi said, buried his body underneath the garage's concrete floor. "

From Slate: [Anthony "Gaspipe"] Casso, [a Lucchese under-boss] had obtained some stolen Treasury bills and needed a fence. Kaplan [the star witnees] coordinated the sale with the help of Joe Banda, a Hasidic Jewish diamond dealer with connections to bankers overseas. After some initial success, there was a hiccup, and Kaplan suspected that a jeweler brought in by Banda [ie: Israel Greenwald] might turn on Banda, who would implicate Kaplan. He called on Santora: "I asked him if he had the ability to take a murder contract," Kaplan testified. "Without a doubt," Santora replied, and he said he would enlist his cousin and his cousin's partner to help carry it out. The two cops "arrested" the jeweler, put him in a car and delivered him to Santora, who shot him, said Santora, according to Kaplan. The payment was $30,000.

I don't know what it is, but something about this case just horrifies.

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