- There were kind of rumors and whispers
about these two NYPD detectives
who were actually working for the mob.
- Louis, were you ever a bad cop?
- Never in my life.
- These guys were bad cops and no one could prove it?
- Nothing that could stick.
- We don't go around killing people.
- These cops, they were receiving $4,000 a month
actually working for the mob.
They were committing murders for the Lucchese family--
eight homicides spanning from the mid '80s.
[gunfire]
And then just seeing kind of this blatant corruption
and betrayal,
but not enough to make the case.
Not enough evidence.
- We couldn't have done these crimes.
We just couldn't have done them.
- They're, you know, just thinking,
"Wow, we got away from it."
The tensions were very high.
We know we have to stop these two New York City detectives.
So we were just trying to figure out,
how can we get these guys?
We're not gonna another chance.
[dramatic music]
- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
♪
Drug busts,
mob stings,
terrorist takedowns.
- Get down! Get down!
- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze! - FBI.
- FBI! - Action!
- But they don't know the half of it.
[indistinct radio chatter]
What really goes down,
we save that for each other
when we're talking agent to agent.
♪
This is "FBI True."
- Cindy Coppola is a 23-year veteran of the FBI.
She worked on cases that included
organized crime and terrorism
and took part in multinational investigations
into drug trafficking and money laundering.
Coppola finished her career with the Los Angeles division
running two offices, supervising investigations,
and providing undercover security for special events.
- Gerry, it is so awesome to see you!
When's the last time we saw each other?
- It's got to be-- - 20-plus years, right?
- Oh, yeah. Definitely the '90s.
- I can't remember. Where did you process out of?
- So I processed out of New York.
Happy to come back to New York. - Yep, me too.
Raise my hand, yeah. - Absolutely, right.
- Geraldine Hart was an FBI agent for 21 years.
She investigated public corruption,
terrorism, and cybercrimes.
In 2014, Hart was appointed as the supervisory agent
of the Long Island Gang Task Force.
- So tell me about one of your biggest cases.
It's something that's been in the news for a long time.
And it's something you rarely would see, right?
- So there were kind of rumors and whispers
about these two NYPD detectives
who were actually working for the mob.
Lou Eppolito and Steve Caracappa
were working for the Lucchese family in the early '90s.
- So you've got these two NYPD guys.
Worked for the mob, potentially,
but, you know, nobody really talked about it.
- Exactly.
- Tell me about who Eppolito and Caracappa were.
- Very different personalities,
but they both were kind of two sides of the same coin.
Steve Caracappa, they called him the Undertaker, Cindy,
'cause his kind of-- like, his demeanor was very--
he was tall and thin and very gaunt, and very serious.
So he was kind of the polar opposite of Eppolito.
Eppolito just had a big mouth.
Any time there was an impending arrest,
any time there was a big, large-scale investigation,
the Lucchese family knew about it
because of Eppolito and Caracappa.
Don't forget, Caracappa was
in the organized crime-homicide unit,
so he had access to everything.
But, Cindy, the biggest thing was
it had always been rumored that
they were committing murders for the Lucchese family.
[sirens blaring]
They had the perfect backstory.
They pulled people over, you know,
put the siren on, pulled them over.
"Hey, we need to talk to you." - Next thing you know--
[gunfire]
Oh, that's crazy. What do you think about it?
- It was unbelievable.
It's just really hard to imagine
this was even possible.
You know, all the--
all the things that make cops so great,
all the bravery and courage that they have.
And then you have these two guys who are really--
in essence, they were just mobsters
who were able to infiltrate the NYPD.
But it was hard to make the case,
because there was no concrete evidence.
So nothing came of it, in that it was always kind of rumored
that the Lucchese family had somebody in the NYPD
who was not only providing information
but committing homicides on their behalf.
Eight murders, and a lot of attempted murders
and homicides that we didn't know about.
But again, not enough to make the case.
It was very frustrating.
- What happens from there?
How do you get the case?
How did you come in?
- I arrived in '99, on the Lucchese Squad.
They said, "Take a run at this."
It was probably one of the largest
public corruption cases that had been worked...
- Yeah. - In the city
up to that time, yeah. - Absolutely.
If I remember correctly,
I think your dad was NYPD, right?
- Yeah, my dad was a sergeant in the NYPD.
- Okay. both: So yeah.
- This case was personal, but we had no leads.
The case really went cold.
A few years later, I just remember
being called into the supervisor's office
and saying, "Hey, an associate of the Lucchese family
wants to cooperate."
Burt Kaplan. - What happens?
Do you get someone from the jail
or his attorney call the FBI and say,
"Hey, I've got someone who's worked with the mob for years.
He wants to give youse information"?
- Honestly, when you mention the name,
"Burt Kaplan wants to cooperate,"
everybody knows what that means.
We know what it's about.
He was the one who would bring the information
from the cops to the Lucchese family,
and they would give the order for the hit.
He would bring it to the cops, negotiate a price,
'cause, you know, they would ask
for a certain amount of money.
They would go back and forth,
and then settle on a price.
So he was really the key to the case.
- Why would he want to now cooperate
and bring in some information on this case?
- Kaplan was in jail for trafficking marijuana,
and he got a 27-year hit on a federal charge.
He figures he's got 17 years left on his term.
He's gonna be a grandfather.
He's diagnosed with prostate cancer.
And he's like, "You know what?
"I'm gonna just give all this up.
"I'm gonna cooperate.
I'm gonna give them what they want,"
and that's Eppolito and Caracappa.
- So there was a lot of victims
that these NYPD detectives caused.
- Without a doubt.
The first murder was Israel Greenwald.
He was killed in '86. - Wasn't he the jeweler?
- So he was the jeweler.
He was completely innocent.
Had nothing to do with the mob.
He was approached by Burt Kaplan
to negotiate a bond when he was overseas
on a trip related to his jewelry business.
- A cash bond. - Exactly.
"Hey, listen, when you're over there,
can you just, you know, cash this bond?"
Greenwald had no idea that this was a stolen bond,
a government treasury bond
that can only be cashed by the owner.
He took his trip, tried to cash it,
and it set off all sorts of alarms overseas.
Comes back to JFK.
He's approached by the FBI to cooperate.
He says, "Let me think about it."
He makes the mistake of telling Kaplan
that he was approached by the FBI,
and then that was the end of him.
Because think about it: if Greenwald talks,
everyone--Burt Kaplan and the whole Lucchese family--
could be implicated.
So Eppolito and Caracappa pull him over.
They say they need him
to identify somebody in a hit and run.
Put him in the back of the squad car,
take him over to Nostrand Avenue.
Three people walk in.
[gunshot] Two people walk out.
He's killed and buried in the garage.
Eppolito and Caracappa were paid $25,000
to kill Israel Greenwald, and that's the first murder.
There were eight homicides
spanning from the mid '80s
till the early '90s.
Something you can't even wrap your head around...
- No. - That people would be capable
of this. - Absolutely.
And for such a long period of time.
And got away with it, right? - Right. Right.
- That's what's amazing to me.
- If it were not for Burt Kaplan coming forward,
there would be no case against the mafia cops.
But there was a problem.
We couldn't arrest them for the murders
because it was more than five years
after they allegedly took place.
All of this happened in the mid- to late '80s.
And now we're in 2004, which is past
the statute of limitations for federal prosecutions.
We have to see what these cops are doing.
They retired from the police department.
They moved out to Las Vegas.
Eppolito goes first.
A few years later, Caracappa follows
and buys a house right across the street.
- But even though they moved to Vegas,
they've probably been doing bad things all along.
They're like, "Hey, we're in Vegas.
Anything goes in Vegas," you know.
- I think they thought, "Yeah,
"this thing was a rumor years ago.
We got away from it."
And they were just living the life out there.
So that was a lot of the work, really,
just kind of trying to figure that out,
to really just see what they're doing.
Caracappa was working in a women's prison.
Eppolito, he was, you know, a wannabe actor.
He was in "Goodfellas," believe it or not.
- I remember that. - And then there was
Mo Black's brother, Fat Andy. - How you doing, buddy?
- Always had these visions of grandeur.
- I think there's no such thing as a bad coincidence.
- Eppolito really wanted to write a screenplay
and become famous, connect with Hollywood.
And trying to sell them--
that's what he was really doing.
He wrote a book called "Mafia Cop."
And he goes on "Sally Jessy Raphael,"
a talk show, to promote his book.
- What do you do now, Big Lou?
- Well, I've acted in nine movies.
I've been in "Goodfellas," "State of Grace."
I tried writing a screenplay.
Gene Hackman has been really great with me,
and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
And I did a movie with them called "Company Business."
And I wrote a screenplay,
and it was bought by New Line Cinema.
- Is this better than policing?
- Oh, beats getting shot at any day, yeah.
- It was just pretty shocking to see,
because he just really can't keep his mouth shut.
- He hurts himself, right? - Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So we were just trying to figure out,
who can we get to get into these guys?
Soon I got to pack my bags and go out to Vegas.
I have to spend some significant time out there.
- So how was that for you?
How did you feel, you know, now taking on this big case?
- You know, that was a lot of pressure.
I had a daughter who, at the time of the mafia cop case,
was three.
And then I had a little boy, so--
- Wow, that's tough. - Yeah, so it was a lot.
So we worked together with both the FBI and the DEA
out in Las Vegas.
What we needed to do was to get a criminal act
that was occurring in Las Vegas
within the last five years
to get within the RICO statute.
So we have to prove that the conspiracy is continuing.
- The conspiracy they're working together
and they knew about it, yeah. - Right.
That they're still engaged in a criminal enterprise
that could be linked to the killings.
Then Eppolito and Caracappa could be charged
for the murders.
So we were just trying to figure out,
who can we get to flip?
Who can we wire up, get them in there?
'Cause as you know, that's the best way to make a case.
And then we come across this guy, Steve Corso.
He was an accountant back in Connecticut
who had swindled his clients out of millions of dollars.
Corso was arrested, and then he went out to Vegas
to try to work off his time with the Las Vegas FBI
to find a case that's, you know, gonna help him out.
I knew he wanted to get out from under these charges
that were weighing on him.
So that kind of set off the bells: this could be our guy.
This could be the guy who could meet
with Eppolito and Caracappa
and see what they're really up to.
- When you spoke with him, though,
did you play nice with him?
- So just trying to really, you know, get him on board
and get him to understand how this is gonna work,
and, you know, trying to allay his fears,
'cause Corso was getting very nervous.
- He was almost saying, "Screw you, I'm not doing this."
- Right. Like a lot of the witnesses
that we've talked to and met with, they were terrified,
not only because these guys were mobsters, they were cops.
And I'm supposed to fool them?
Corso was saying exactly that.
"Hey, listen, you got me in with these guys
who are organized crime, and they're detectives."
- And they're cops too. - Yeah.
So you would think that they're gonna be
a little more leery of somebody coming in.
- Yeah. - "What if they're onto me?"
- How did you convince him?
- I knew he had young children,
so just really trying to appeal to that piece of him.
You know, "You can really do this.
"You can do the right thing.
"You can get this done, and this is gonna help you.
Cooperate and get back to your family," basically.
- All right, so how do you get Corso
to meet with Eppolito and Caracappa?
I know when we worked a lot of the organized crime cases,
you know, sometimes they were undercover.
What techniques did you guys use?
What were the next steps that you guys did?
- So Corso now has to become what Eppolito wants,
which is somebody who can help him
connect with Hollywood, right?
"You're that guy who can get the money
"for these screenplays.
"You're the guy who can make the connections.
"You have people coming in from Hollywood
"all the time, meeting with you.
So that's gonna be you now, to him," which wasn't easy.
We're talking about two detectives,
so they're smarter than the average person.
And then he understood what he had to do.
We took, you know, baby steps with these meetings,
just trying to ingratiate himself--
getting him on the phone, getting the introductions.
And then it kind of took off,
because Eppolito just couldn't get enough of it.
He couldn't get enough of just somebody who could help him.
And just could not get enough of the Hollywood lifestyle,
being around people. - He couldn't help himself.
- No, no. - He just wanted to talk, and--
- Yeah, just wanted somebody who can
get him connected to Hollywood.
Corso would get closer and closer to Eppolito--
meet his family, meet his children,
you know, come over for dinner and come to the house.
They were constantly at the casinos,
at the nicer restaurants in the casinos.
Most of the meetings would occur with Eppolito,
and then we would try to get Caracappa into the picture.
- Corso, he's probably scared shitless.
- Yeah. - He's like, "Oh, my God."
- "What am I doing?" - Yeah.
"What have I gotten myself into?
- Right. And I said, "You're almost there."
"We're getting there. You're doing good work.
"It's gonna come to an end soon.
Just trust me. Stick with me."
And yeah, it was a lot.
So in 2005, we get to the point where, you know,
I feel that Corso has gained Eppolito's confidence.
And the decision was made that Corso would ask Eppolito
for drugs for Hollywood people that were coming in,
and that they wanted to party. - Wow, OK.
- And, "Can you get me drugs?"
But Caracappa had to be at that meeting too.
That's really the only way it would work to build a case,
to build a significant case.
- How does the meet even start?
- Using the surveillance teams out in Vegas,
we have to get Steve Corso to wire up and meet with them.
The tensions were very high.
- It was a meeting in a hotel in Las Vegas.
They're sitting at a table,
Steve Corso with two NYPD detectives,
asking them for drugs.
And he says, "I have friends that want to come in.
"They want to party. I need some meth and ecstasy.
Can you do that for me?"
Kind of the pause in between that seems forever.
If they said no, then that would have been the end of it.
They could have told him, "Go pound sand.
What are you talking about?" - Yeah.
- And Eppolito says, "Yeah, my son can do that for you."
So he offers up his son to do it.
- That's shitty. That's shitty. - It's pretty shitty.
- So here you've got a bad cop for years,
and now he's gonna put his son in the mix.
- So Corso pushes it.
He's saying, "So you can do it? You can get the meth?"
And then Caracappa chimes in and says,
"Yeah, we can get that done for you."
So they take the bait.
- How long did they say it was gonna take them?
- That occurs within about,
like, a week, a week and a half.
Eppolito's son, Anthony, and his friend, Guido,
show up at Steve Corso's office.
They deliver the drugs.
And I knew we had it. - Yes.
- We could bring it within the statute now,
because we could show the conspiracy
is continuing out in Vegas.
Now we know we can make this case.
It's go-time.
It's time to prepare for the arrest.
- How did you guys do the arrest, the takedown?
- Again, it's Corso having
Eppolito and Caracappa come to dinner and meet him.
- To arrest the same time, Caracappa and Eppolito?
- They both show up with Corso at the restaurant.
- Yeah. - And they're sitting down
to dinner with Corso, like they have
dozens of times before. - Sure.
- And the takedown happens inside the restaurant.
And I can tell you from working cases involving the mob,
that could be a scary proposition.
Everybody was ratcheted up at the time.
You know, really very tense investigators
from the Brooklyn DA's office, the FBI Vegas, DEA Vegas,
take them out in handcuffs.
And, you know, it was a long time coming.
- The government has arrested two alleged mafia hitmen
who once served as New York City police detectives.
- Caracappa and Eppolito were paid handsomely
for selling out the files of the NYPD.
- Both men are being held without bail,
accused of being killers for the mob.
- The news coverage, Cindy, I cannot even explain
how broad it was.
- No, that's awesome. - Yeah.
- So next steps.
They're arrested, and you guys go out to Eppolito's house.
- Yeah, so we execute a search warrant on the house.
His wife is home. His kids are home.
They're shocked, and they're emotional,
as you can imagine.
They're freaking out, basically.
- What do you find? - I think he had
an excess of 300 guns, if I remember.
- What the heck? - Yeah, locked up in safes.
So, you know, taking those out.
And then, you know, Cindy, what we found in the garage,
which was so strange, was an original case file
of a homicide investigation.
- Yeah, so he took a file from NYPD when he retired.
- Takes a file with him, right.
He had access to the Lucchese files
in the police department.
And Eppolito took that case out
so that nobody would ever know what happened.
- These guys were bad cops.
- Yeah, they were bad guys.
Caracappa, he was very much of the mindset that--
"I cannot go to jail" was what he kept saying.
They were both bailed out, which is pretty shocking.
[indistinct chatter] - It's ludicrous.
Anybody that knows me knows I love the police department.
I couldn't kill anybody.
All I know is that I am here now,
and I'm fighting for my life.
I'm fighting for my reputation.
I want to be vindicated of this.
And I'm mad, and I'm angry.
But we'll put up the evidence
to show that we couldn't have done these crimes.
We just couldn't have done them.
- It was always just kind of, "No, we didn't do this."
- I was a very highly-decorated cop.
I worked very hard my whole life.
And, um, I just want the people to know
that I'm not the person that they're portraying me.
- Louis, were you ever a bad cop?
- Never in my life.
- Never coming off that position.
It was just pretty shocking to see.
- Wow. - And I guess that's
how you live with yourself in the end, right?
And just to think about, you know,
all the information that they gave up,
all the sources who came in and trusted law enforcement
and tried to provide information.
And they were killed as a result of it,
because of the information that these cops gave.
All the good cops that I worked with on the task force
throughout the years-- and I'm sure you have too--
all the investigations that agents and detectives
put years in of their career,
and they were just blown up because these guys
were on the payroll for the Lucchese family.
They wanted them taken down as much as anybody, you know?
- No, 'cause it's a scar against the agency.
Did you guys find any of the bodies?
- So we did.
We knew what happened to them,
and we knew where the body of Israel Greenwald was buried.
This is really compelling evidence that
we can use against Eppolito and Caracappa in court.
So now, it's time to prepare for the trial.
So they were charged with eight murders,
two attempted murders, a murder conspiracy,
obstruction of justice, drug distribution,
and money laundering.
I think it was 35 witnesses.
It took over two weeks.
Burt Kaplan was the star witness.
Yeah, he was an amazing witness.
The jury was out for a very short time--a day and a half.
And, you know, just kind of that solemn moment
when they're reading the verdict,
and how quiet it is in the courtroom.
I'm sitting at the table with the prosecutor.
And the forewoman in this case stands up,
and she's reading just count after count.
Guilty, guilty, guilty.
Guilty on all counts. - All counts.
- Yeah, yeah. - Phenomenal.
- You could hear a pin drop.
The courtroom was packed
with media, family, everybody.
But you couldn't hear a sound. - Right.
- And I just remember they were about halfway
through reading the verdict, and I remember the marshals
moving over towards Eppolito and Caracappa,
telling them to stand up.
And then you hear, "Take off your belt.
Take off your shoelaces." - You knew.
- That's it. They're going.
And they're never coming back. And that was it.
They took them. They brought them away.
Eppolito and Caracappa were sentenced to life in prison.
- I still felt the pain.
And I wish that all of that never happened.
- Leah Greenwald never knew what happened to him.
He went to work one day and never came back.
I just remember so vividly, Cindy,
going out to Manhattan to tell her in 2005
that we had found her husband, Israel Greenwald,
buried in that garage.
I remember walking into her apartment
and just seeing this big family portrait
of her and her husband
and these two beautiful young girls,
who were about my children's age...
- Shame. - And just thinking, wow.
This whole life has turned upside down,
this whole family.
And, you know, telling her the news.
And obviously, it wasn't news that she had hoped for,
but just the kind of sense of closure
that I could tell she was experiencing.
And then just meeting her daughters,
who were, you know, young ladies now
and just wonderful people.
And just seeing her kind of sense of relief
and able then to release the remains to her.
And that was so meaningful for the family.
Never admitted anything, never expressed remorse.
Nothing.
- They never admit.
to the day they died. - To the day they died.
- They're gonna take it to the grave.
- Right. Right.
- Wow. - Yeah.
- Corso, do you know where he is today?
Did he get in trouble again, or is he clean guy now?
- [chuckles] You don't want to know.
- So did you get an award for this?
Because this type of case is one in a million.
- So the team did. The team got
the Attorney General's Award
for Excellence in Law Enforcement.
We all traveled down to D.C.
We got the award, you know, went out to dinner together,
and kind of just, uh--
it was a nice closure for all of us together, yeah.
- Congratulations. You know, it's well-deserved.
- Oh, thank you. - Well-deserved, yeah.
- It was a definite team effort, for sure.
- You know, your dad was NYPD.
And you couldn't tell him about the case at the time.
- Right. - But when the case was over,
did you say, "Dad, that was my case"?
What was it like, telling your dad about this investigation?
- Yeah, so after everything was finished in the verdict,
I was able to kind of have that conversation with him.
You know, "This is the case that I worked.
This is why I was away so much."
- He had to be proud. He had to be proud.
"This was my daughter that did this case."
- Yeah, you know how it is.
They don't talk much about that.
The Irish don't talk much about that.
[laughter] But I knew he was.
I knew he was, yeah. - Yeah, that's awesome.
- He was always great. - That's great.
[tense music]
♪