Two former New York police detectives convicted of moonlighting as contract killers in eight mob hits were sentenced on Friday to life in prison after telling a judge they were innocent.
“I was a hard-working cop,” Louis Eppolito told US District Judge Jack Weinstein in federal court in Brooklyn. “I never hurt anybody. I never kidnapped anybody. ... I never did any of this.”
Eppolito was sentenced to life in prison for his conspiracy conviction plus 100 years for various other offenses including money laundering, and fined US$4.7 million. Stephen Caracappa received a life term plus 80 years and a US$4.2 million fine.
Eppolito, 61, and Caracappa, 67, had worked as partners on the police force and logged a combined 44 years on the job. They were found guilty of secretly being on the payroll of Luchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso starting in the 1980s.
Prosecutors said the pair used their police credentials to make traffic stops that ended with the driver killed. They also said the officers kidnapped a man suspected in an attempted mob hit against Casso and turned him over to a mobster responsible for 36 slayings.
The former detectives also were accused of providing bad information that led to the mistaken-identity murder of an innocent man killed as his mother washed the dishes following a Christmas Day family dinner.
Eppolito and Caracappa were arrested during a 2005 drug sting in Las Vegas, where they had retired.
The case had been marked by legal twists, including the judge’s 2006 decision to throw out a conviction after finding that the statute of limitations had expired on the slayings. An appeals court reversed the decision last year, clearing the way for the sentencing.
US Attorney Benton Campbell said in a statement that he hoped the sentences would bring closure “for the families of the victims of these defendants’ unspeakable crimes and for the citizens of the city whose trust they betrayed.”
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to
OUTSPOKEN: Cresenciano Bunduquin, who was killed by motorcycle-riding shooters, hosted a program about ‘hard-hitting’ local issues such as illegal gambling and politics A radio broadcaster was yesterday fatally shot outside his home in the central Philippines, police said, the latest in a long list of journalists killed in the country. Cresenciano Bunduquin, 50, was killed by motorcycle-riding shooters in Calapan City in Oriental Mindoro province, police Colonel Samuel Delorino said. One of the assailants died after Bunduquin’s son hit the shooters with his vehicle as they fled the scene of the pre-dawn attack. “The remaining suspect was able to run off. The hot pursuit operation is still ongoing,” Delorino said. The archipelago nation is one of the most dangerous places in the world for
‘NATURAL CAUSES’: New evidence indicated Kathleen Folbigg’s two daughters died of myocarditis caused by genetics, while a son died of a neurogenetic disorder An Australian woman who spent 20 years in prison was pardoned and released yesterday based on new scientific evidence that her four children died by natural causes as she had insisted. The pardon was seen as the quickest way of getting Kathleen Folbigg out of prison and a final report from the second inquiry into her guilt could recommend that the state Court of Appeals quash her convictions. Folbigg, now 55, was released from a prison in Grafton, New South Wales, following an unconditional pardon by state Governor Margaret Beazley. Australian state governors are figureheads who act on instructions of governments. New South
ADMITTED TO FAILURE: North Korea apparently used a new launch pad, which might accommodate bigger space launch vehicles, a Washington-based expert said Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, said her country would soon put a military spy satellite into orbit and promised Pyongyang would increase its military surveillance capabilities, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported yesterday. “It is certain that [North Korea’s] military reconnaissance satellite will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future and start its mission,” Kim Yo-jong, a powerful government official in her own right, said in an English-language statement carried by the KCNA. Her remarks came after the failure of a North Korean satellite launch on Wednesday. It might take weeks or more to resolve the
RSS