Mob Cops

by Greg B. Smith

Describes how two highly decorated former detectives, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, were convicted of murdering eight people on the orders of a vicious mob boss.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

400 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 5, 2006

About the author

Greg B. Smith, reporter for New York’s Daily News, covers the federal courts in Brooklyn and Manhattan that serve as Ground Zero in the battle to end mafia influence in America. An investigative reporter for nearly twenty years, Smith has written for The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Examiner, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and other newspapers around the country. He’s also a frequent guest on TV and radio discussing everything from racketeering to the Latin Kings street gang to world terrorist organizations. Mr. Smith lives with his wife and two boys in Brooklyn, New York. ~ Penguin Books

Reviews

[Sutherland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is good

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the convoluted story of how two New Yorkers who wanted to be mobsters took a career path in the NYPD and found ways they could act out their Mafia fantasies. Smith's presentation is at times confusing; and he ends the book before the Mafia Cops Story ends, so there is a cliff-hanger. Smith is not too clear as to his sources. The result is that parts of the book appear to be biased and unbalanced.

Lou Eppolito was the son of a mafioso. Nevertheless he pursued a career as a police officer. He was highly decorated and wrote a self-glorifying book. Steven Caracappa was not nearly as gregarious. In fact, they appear to have been very much opposites in appearance. The quiet Caracappa made his way through the NYPD ranks to be join the NYPD Organized Crime Homicide Squad. Together, they did little favors to mobsters and their families. Gradually, these favors grew in seriousness to include kidnapping and murder. Their main contacts in organized crime were jailed in the early 1990s. They retired in the late 1990s. They moved to Las Vegas. Federal prosecutors began building a case against them in the early 2000s by using informants and questionable tactics to support a murder case against them. Convicted on murder charges, a judge threw out the conviction on a technicality; but held them in prison pending the strange charges in Nevada. Smith ends the story at this point.

This is where the issue of Smith's sources comes into play. His acknowledgements thank one of the defense attorneys and the family of one of the murder victims. The result of such sources would be two highly biased accounts with little overlapping stories. However, he obviously uses other sources as the book appears to be based on the experiences of Burt Kaplan, the chief government witness against the mob cops. Kaplan is not listed in the acknowledgements, so it is even more strange that Smith presents him as a sympathetic anti-hero figure who gradually came to the decision to atone for his crimes by cooperating with the government.

Smith also acknowledges two DEA agents for their contribution. This is rather strange given the rather brief mention of both agents in the book and the very vague Las Vegas conspiracy to distribute charges against them. Smith would have helped his book by explaining the need for prosecutors to build a narcotics case against them in order to bring them to trial for murder. The result is that the book presents a story in which federal agents in New York and Nevada coordinate to the extent that an informant wines and dines the ex-cops for four months and then begins asking them to supply him with ecstasy. At first the ex-cops are evasive and gradually direct the informant to a friend of Eppolito's son. That is the nutshell of the drug conspiracy charge. Somehow that conspiracy charge allowed prosecutors in New York to charge them with murder. If that sounds odd, Smith needed to elaborate, especially if two of his sources were the Nevada DEA agents who arrested the ex-cops.

Smith avoids the legal details altogether. Presumably, there was plenty of evidence connecting the mob cops to the murders. The basis for that evidence, according to Smith, is the approximately ten-year gap in cooperation between Anthony Casso and Burt Kaplan. Authorities determined that Casso was an unreliable witness, so he could not be used at trial. Kaplan was a more reliable witness. However, the stories Smith outlines in the book are largely circumstantial. Kaplan's testimony was damning; but there was not much corroboration in connection with 8 murders. Witnesses with knowledge of only small bits of the larger arc could offer only little support. This is goes back to Smith's reliance on Caracappa's defense attorney for the big story.

Smith's writing is crisp and he tells a marvelous tale. Even the minute detail of the DEA informant buttering up the ex-cops for drug conspiracy and equally vague money laundering charges was interesting as it gave insight into the personal lives of the defendants, which was very much the opposite of the rest of the book. Even though I realize that the book is heavily biased and intentionally presents a weak case against the mob cops, I feel angry at how the federal government railroaded their convictions. I want to know more.

Due to the bias in the book, I do not recommend it. In my opinion, Smith is comfortable with the thought that Eppolito and Caracappa did all of those terrible crimes for years and years; but ultimately, they were treated unfairly by the justice system. It is as if he realizes his own weakness in the book. The story is fascinating and draws the reader in. But without the detail to provide balance, the book is really the story from the perspective of a defense attorney.

[Mila Pool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed. Well written and he had access to all the informer recordings. Covered all the major homicides and everything that was important. The only reason I didn’t give it a 5 star was because he does jump back or forth in years a lot.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book.A must read for mafia fans