Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And a book everyone is going to want to read
and probably won't be able to put down. Welcome to
the fifty five carse Morning Show. Author Michael Kanal, and
you probably have read his other books, The author of
a Brotherhood Betrayed, The Man Behind The Rise and Fall
of Murder, Inc. As well as three other works in nonfiction.
Former editor of New York Times and contributed to The
New Yorker, among other publications, he has written a new
(00:21):
amazing book, Blood and the Badge, The Mafia, Two killer
cops and a scandal that shocked the nation. Welcome to
the fifty five Cars Morning Show, Michael Canal.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good morning, Brian, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So the subject matters of this book, and my understanding
is there have been other books written about Lewis Epplito
and Stephen Kara Koppa, the two New York cops that
are the subject matter of the book, but yours is
by far the definitive account of what they did and
the crimes that they were engaged in while they were
officers with the New York Police Department, so says even
(00:55):
the former chief of the Rackets Division, a guy who
wrote a book about the same two guys. Said, man,
you uncovered stuff that I had no idea about. Tell
us a little bit about these two police officers.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Kara Kappa were high ranking,
decorated New York City detectives. They were not just cops,
but really elite detectives, and in the late eighties and
early nineties they were on the mafia payroll. They were
paid a stipend of four thousand dollars a month to
(01:33):
pass sensitive police information to the Lucse crime family. Who
was whose phones were being tapped, who was under surveillance,
who was about to be arrested, and most importantly, they
used the police intelligence to identify who in the mafia
(01:56):
ranks was a betrayer, who was a rat scol who
was secretly cooperating with the government. And what's more, once
those rats were identified, these two detectives helped to facilitate
their murders and in at least one case, they pulled
the trigger themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
WHOA, that's writing stuff and the idea that they have
all this inside information, Given how high up they were
in the New York Police Department, how much damage did
they do and how long did this this last that
they were they were getting away with it.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
They got away with it for more than a decade.
I mean, it was set an outrageous, brazen act. And
I mean I think people, you know, people knew that
these were that Louis Eppolito was what they call a
dirty cop, and you know, some low level of corruption
was was pretty common in the NYPD at that time.
(02:53):
But nobody, nobody could have conceived of them working or
the mafia and actually committing murders for the mafia.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, that's really unfathomable. I mean, I can understand, you know,
the payoff, because we're all kind of used to that's
a subject matter of so many Hollywood movies. You know,
you kind of lose count. But that they were actively
engaged in work for the Lukezy crime family is amazing.
Now they were ultimately brought to justice, I understand, how
(03:25):
do they get caught ultimately and how they ultimately get prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The amazing thing is that they weren't caught for so long.
I mean, Louis Eplito was caught red handed passing a
police file to a Gambino crime family heroin smuggler. The
police rated this this man's home and found his own
police file there. He had his own police file in
(03:54):
his possession, and they found Louis ep Alito's fingerprints on
the file. Amazingly, Internal Affairs Division dismissed the case. They
acquitted him. The FEDS, the FBI and federal prosecutors began
to understand what these men were up to, but did
(04:16):
amazingly did not prosecute them because it would have corrupted
other cases they were working on. And so it appeared
that these two men were going to get off. They retired,
they collected their police pensions, They moved to Las Vegas,
and Louis Epolito used his retirement years to launch a
movie career. He had small parts in a dozen films.
(04:40):
And then a detective back in New York, a detective
named Tommy Dade, who was getting set to retire, just
happened to stumble into some evidence and he took that
evidence to the Brooklyn DA's office and they revived this
investigation and had had sat dormant for years.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well did any of the I have to imagine, certainly
correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sort of presuming that
members of the Lukazi crime family at some point or another,
some were prosecuted or caught or you know, submitted to justice,
that they would have advised the authorities that these two
dirty cops were helping out and you know, maybe to
(05:23):
reduce the time that they would have to serve, or
to lessen their sentence or something. But it seems to
me that that was that would be a low hanging
fruit for someone to try to better his situation if
he was arrested.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Well, you're right, that's exactly what happened. The man who
was essentially their patrons in the Lucas crime family, a
man named gas Pipe Kso he flipped. He had spent
most of his adult life killing informants and then he
became the biggest informant of all. And he was all
set to testify against these these two detectives, and then
(05:55):
something unexpected happened. Gas Pipe began to bad mouth the
other the other people who had flipped. He began to
bad mouth in particular Sammy the Bold Ravana, who was
critical to the to the prosecution of John Gottie, and
he called uh Gravano a liar. Now, this panicked the
(06:17):
prosecutors because they did not want that prosecution to be
called into question. So what how did they solve that problem?
They solved it by ripping up, ripping up gas Pipe
Casso's polea agreement and sending him to Supermax prison. So
who was the beneficiary of that? The two detectives, because
(06:38):
all of a sudden there was nobody to testify against them.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh my, it's amazing how that unfolds. Gas Pipe. I
got to ask, where the hell did that name come from?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, his father's nickname was was gas pipe Is. His
father worked down on the docks in Brooklyn and supposedly
used a you know, used an iron pipe to enforce
his rules. And the son, the son inherited the nickname,
but he didn't particularly like the nickname, and so his friends,
(07:08):
his friends didn't use that nickname as presence.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Now?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Did this did these guys, in their capers and their
antics and they're being involved with murder and working with
organized crime resultant caused any reforms to come about in
the New York Police Department? Or was this just another
couple of characters and bad apples in the barrel that
they were trying at least to ferret out. You know,
I'm thinking of like I don't know, like a movie
(07:34):
like Cerproco or something, because this kind of thing was
was was obviously a prevalent thing, shaking people down, taking
money from purpose and being paid off because it's sort
of common in the old days.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't know that it
caused it caused there to be any reforms. I think
I think what happened is that they got away with
a lot of dirty stuff because of all the corruption
in cases that had come before them, Serpaco, the Napp,
the famous Nap Commission, And I think the NYPD, if
(08:08):
they had wanted to, would could have sussed out what
these detectives were doing. But they really didn't want another scandal.
They really didn't have the appetite for any more newspaper headlines,
and so they kind of quietly tried to sweep all
of us under the rug.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Gotcha, Well, you mentioned earlier one of them was sort
of known to be a quote unquote dirty cop, not
to the level of murder, but was there I guess
that culture of not saying anything within the New York
Police Department. You know, you don't brat rat out a
brother officer, even if it's bad for everybody else that
that that culture existed during this period of time one percent.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I mean when when Tommy Dad's the detective that I
mentioned who stumbled into the into that evidence, when he
began to investigate this this case, he got a lot
of heat from other police officers. You know, you don't
you don't go after one of your own, but he persisted. Well.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
One of the reasons Michael Vecchioni, the former chief of
the Rackets Division who did write the other book, gave
you so much credit is because you were able to
actually speak with some of the mobsters that were working
with these two cops, which had never happened before. How
is it that you were able to get access to
those guys.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well, I mean I spoke to Sammy the boll Gravano,
and I spoke to a former Colombo hit man. And
I mean, one of the things that really surprised me
about doing this reporting and research for this book is
that the cops and the gangsters all know each other,
and in many cases they're friends. You know, they grew
(09:42):
up together in the old neighborhoods and went to the
same schools, and they they to this day, they drink
in the same bars, and it's a little bit arbitrary
in some cases as to whether a kid would become
a cop or whether he would join a crime family.
And so it's you know, very they're very tight knit
and they all know each other. So I actually found
(10:06):
those sources through the law enforcement people that I had interviewed.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
How about that? And I suppose, I mean, after the
passage of time, that it wouldn't be as much of
a big deal for them to actually reveal some of
these quote unquote secrets to you for publication because their
careers are over and they're in their retirement. I presume
as well.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think that's exactly right, Brian. I mean, they probably
wouldn't have opened up to me and talked to me
ten years ago or fifteen years ago. But the two
detectives in question went to jail. They died in jail.
The DEA agents, FBI agents and detectives that I spoke
(10:49):
to are pretty much all retired. Some time has passed,
and so they were I think they trusted me and
they were willing to open up and just I mean,
it was really an amazing experience because once they started
to talk to me, these amazing stories came out, you know,
just every time they would tell me a story, I
would think that could be a Netflix series. Yeah, you know,
(11:14):
you know, and they never did. It was sort of
their code to not talk about these things. But when
they did, you know, they really just really revealed a lot.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Well, you know, this is one of those truth is
almost a stranger than fiction kind of things. It's certainly
a template for any corrupt cop kind of movie, and
I imagine probably will end up being a Netflix series.
It's fascinating, fascinating stuff, and I appreciate you spending time
with my listeners to me about the book, Blood and
the Badge, the Mafia, two killer cops, and the scandal
of the shock the Nation. I know my listeners are
going to buy these up because it's just such an
(11:44):
amazing story. Michael Kennelly, author, It's been a pleasure speaking
with you, and thanks for getting this down. I guess
as an author, real quick, I have to know this
given that other books have been written about these guys,
as I mentioned several times, Now, what motivated you as
an author to pursue this particular story and write another book?
How did I mean, did you have a feeling that
there was more out there that people just hadn't touched on,
(12:06):
or did it just fascinate you as a subject matter.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, no, that's it exactly. I mean, this has been
this topic has been written them out before, as you said,
but nobody has really written the big comprehensive book about it.
And I was pretty confident that I could I could
do that, that I that I could get people to
talk to me and really do a deep dive into it.
(12:30):
And happily, I think that's the way it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Turned out, apparently so well received on the reporting sites,
and I'm sure they'll come and knocking on your door
to turn it into some sort of movie or series, sir,
and I wish you the best of walk on that,
Michael Canal, real pleasure to have you on. And your
book is on my blog page fifty about casy dot
com with the links of people can buy a copy
and I'll encourage them to do that.
And a book everyone is going to want to read
and probably won't be able to put down. Welcome to
the fifty five carse Morning Show. Author Michael Kanal, and
you probably have read his other books, The author of
a Brotherhood Betrayed, The Man Behind The Rise and Fall
of Murder, Inc. As well as three other works in nonfiction.
Former editor of New York Times and contributed to The
New Yorker, among other publications, he has written a new
(00:21):
amazing book, Blood and the Badge, The Mafia, Two killer
cops and a scandal that shocked the nation. Welcome to
the fifty five Cars Morning Show, Michael Canal.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good morning, Brian, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So the subject matters of this book, and my understanding
is there have been other books written about Lewis Epplito
and Stephen Kara Koppa, the two New York cops that
are the subject matter of the book, but yours is
by far the definitive account of what they did and
the crimes that they were engaged in while they were
officers with the New York Police Department, so says even
(00:55):
the former chief of the Rackets Division, a guy who
wrote a book about the same two guys. Said, man,
you uncovered stuff that I had no idea about. Tell
us a little bit about these two police officers.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Kara Kappa were high ranking,
decorated New York City detectives. They were not just cops,
but really elite detectives, and in the late eighties and
early nineties they were on the mafia payroll. They were
paid a stipend of four thousand dollars a month to
(01:33):
pass sensitive police information to the Lucse crime family. Who
was whose phones were being tapped, who was under surveillance,
who was about to be arrested, and most importantly, they
used the police intelligence to identify who in the mafia
(01:56):
ranks was a betrayer, who was a rat scol who
was secretly cooperating with the government. And what's more, once
those rats were identified, these two detectives helped to facilitate
their murders and in at least one case, they pulled
the trigger themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
WHOA, that's writing stuff and the idea that they have
all this inside information, Given how high up they were
in the New York Police Department, how much damage did
they do and how long did this this last that
they were they were getting away with it.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
They got away with it for more than a decade.
I mean, it was set an outrageous, brazen act. And
I mean I think people, you know, people knew that
these were that Louis Eppolito was what they call a
dirty cop, and you know, some low level of corruption
was was pretty common in the NYPD at that time.
(02:53):
But nobody, nobody could have conceived of them working or
the mafia and actually committing murders for the mafia.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, that's really unfathomable. I mean, I can understand, you know,
the payoff, because we're all kind of used to that's
a subject matter of so many Hollywood movies. You know,
you kind of lose count. But that they were actively
engaged in work for the Lukezy crime family is amazing.
Now they were ultimately brought to justice, I understand, how
(03:25):
do they get caught ultimately and how they ultimately get prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The amazing thing is that they weren't caught for so long.
I mean, Louis Eplito was caught red handed passing a
police file to a Gambino crime family heroin smuggler. The
police rated this this man's home and found his own
police file there. He had his own police file in
(03:54):
his possession, and they found Louis ep Alito's fingerprints on
the file. Amazingly, Internal Affairs Division dismissed the case. They
acquitted him. The FEDS, the FBI and federal prosecutors began
to understand what these men were up to, but did
(04:16):
amazingly did not prosecute them because it would have corrupted
other cases they were working on. And so it appeared
that these two men were going to get off. They retired,
they collected their police pensions, They moved to Las Vegas,
and Louis Epolito used his retirement years to launch a
movie career. He had small parts in a dozen films.
(04:40):
And then a detective back in New York, a detective
named Tommy Dade, who was getting set to retire, just
happened to stumble into some evidence and he took that
evidence to the Brooklyn DA's office and they revived this
investigation and had had sat dormant for years.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well did any of the I have to imagine, certainly
correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sort of presuming that
members of the Lukazi crime family at some point or another,
some were prosecuted or caught or you know, submitted to justice,
that they would have advised the authorities that these two
dirty cops were helping out and you know, maybe to
(05:23):
reduce the time that they would have to serve, or
to lessen their sentence or something. But it seems to
me that that was that would be a low hanging
fruit for someone to try to better his situation if
he was arrested.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Well, you're right, that's exactly what happened. The man who
was essentially their patrons in the Lucas crime family, a
man named gas Pipe Kso he flipped. He had spent
most of his adult life killing informants and then he
became the biggest informant of all. And he was all
set to testify against these these two detectives, and then
(05:55):
something unexpected happened. Gas Pipe began to bad mouth the
other the other people who had flipped. He began to
bad mouth in particular Sammy the Bold Ravana, who was
critical to the to the prosecution of John Gottie, and
he called uh Gravano a liar. Now, this panicked the
(06:17):
prosecutors because they did not want that prosecution to be
called into question. So what how did they solve that problem?
They solved it by ripping up, ripping up gas Pipe
Casso's polea agreement and sending him to Supermax prison. So
who was the beneficiary of that? The two detectives, because
(06:38):
all of a sudden there was nobody to testify against them.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh my, it's amazing how that unfolds. Gas Pipe. I
got to ask, where the hell did that name come from?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, his father's nickname was was gas pipe Is. His
father worked down on the docks in Brooklyn and supposedly
used a you know, used an iron pipe to enforce
his rules. And the son, the son inherited the nickname,
but he didn't particularly like the nickname, and so his friends,
(07:08):
his friends didn't use that nickname as presence.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Now?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Did this did these guys, in their capers and their
antics and they're being involved with murder and working with
organized crime resultant caused any reforms to come about in
the New York Police Department? Or was this just another
couple of characters and bad apples in the barrel that
they were trying at least to ferret out. You know,
I'm thinking of like I don't know, like a movie
(07:34):
like Cerproco or something, because this kind of thing was
was was obviously a prevalent thing, shaking people down, taking
money from purpose and being paid off because it's sort
of common in the old days.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't know that it
caused it caused there to be any reforms. I think
I think what happened is that they got away with
a lot of dirty stuff because of all the corruption
in cases that had come before them, Serpaco, the Napp,
the famous Nap Commission, And I think the NYPD, if
(08:08):
they had wanted to, would could have sussed out what
these detectives were doing. But they really didn't want another scandal.
They really didn't have the appetite for any more newspaper headlines,
and so they kind of quietly tried to sweep all
of us under the rug.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Gotcha, Well, you mentioned earlier one of them was sort
of known to be a quote unquote dirty cop, not
to the level of murder, but was there I guess
that culture of not saying anything within the New York
Police Department. You know, you don't brat rat out a
brother officer, even if it's bad for everybody else that
that that culture existed during this period of time one percent.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I mean when when Tommy Dad's the detective that I
mentioned who stumbled into the into that evidence, when he
began to investigate this this case, he got a lot
of heat from other police officers. You know, you don't
you don't go after one of your own, but he persisted. Well.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
One of the reasons Michael Vecchioni, the former chief of
the Rackets Division who did write the other book, gave
you so much credit is because you were able to
actually speak with some of the mobsters that were working
with these two cops, which had never happened before. How
is it that you were able to get access to
those guys.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well, I mean I spoke to Sammy the boll Gravano,
and I spoke to a former Colombo hit man. And
I mean, one of the things that really surprised me
about doing this reporting and research for this book is
that the cops and the gangsters all know each other,
and in many cases they're friends. You know, they grew
(09:42):
up together in the old neighborhoods and went to the
same schools, and they they to this day, they drink
in the same bars, and it's a little bit arbitrary
in some cases as to whether a kid would become
a cop or whether he would join a crime family.
And so it's you know, very they're very tight knit
and they all know each other. So I actually found
(10:06):
those sources through the law enforcement people that I had interviewed.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
How about that? And I suppose, I mean, after the
passage of time, that it wouldn't be as much of
a big deal for them to actually reveal some of
these quote unquote secrets to you for publication because their
careers are over and they're in their retirement. I presume
as well.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think that's exactly right, Brian. I mean, they probably
wouldn't have opened up to me and talked to me
ten years ago or fifteen years ago. But the two
detectives in question went to jail. They died in jail.
The DEA agents, FBI agents and detectives that I spoke
(10:49):
to are pretty much all retired. Some time has passed,
and so they were I think they trusted me and
they were willing to open up and just I mean,
it was really an amazing experience because once they started
to talk to me, these amazing stories came out, you know,
just every time they would tell me a story, I
would think that could be a Netflix series. Yeah, you know,
(11:14):
you know, and they never did. It was sort of
their code to not talk about these things. But when
they did, you know, they really just really revealed a lot.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Well, you know, this is one of those truth is
almost a stranger than fiction kind of things. It's certainly
a template for any corrupt cop kind of movie, and
I imagine probably will end up being a Netflix series.
It's fascinating, fascinating stuff, and I appreciate you spending time
with my listeners to me about the book, Blood and
the Badge, the Mafia, two killer cops, and the scandal
of the shock the Nation. I know my listeners are
going to buy these up because it's just such an
(11:44):
amazing story. Michael Kennelly, author, It's been a pleasure speaking
with you, and thanks for getting this down. I guess
as an author, real quick, I have to know this
given that other books have been written about these guys,
as I mentioned several times, Now, what motivated you as
an author to pursue this particular story and write another book?
How did I mean, did you have a feeling that
there was more out there that people just hadn't touched on,
(12:06):
or did it just fascinate you as a subject matter.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, no, that's it exactly. I mean, this has been
this topic has been written them out before, as you said,
but nobody has really written the big comprehensive book about it.
And I was pretty confident that I could I could
do that, that I that I could get people to
talk to me and really do a deep dive into it.
(12:30):
And happily, I think that's the way it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Turned out, apparently so well received on the reporting sites,
and I'm sure they'll come and knocking on your door
to turn it into some sort of movie or series, sir,
and I wish you the best of walk on that,
Michael Canal, real pleasure to have you on. And your
book is on my blog page fifty about casy dot
com with the links of people can buy a copy
and I'll encourage them to do that.
Brian Thomas News
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