Mafia cop Louis Eppolito — who along with his partner Stephen Caracappa helped whack several men for the Lucchese crime family — died on Sunday while serving a life sentence in federal prison, law-enforcement sources told the Post. He was 71.
The ex-NYPD detective was serving a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson for the eight contract killings that he and Caracappa helped carry out starting in the 1980s.
“Louis died in a hospital with dignity and caring people around him,” his wife, Frances Ann Eppolito, told The Post.
Israel, an Orthodox Jew, was married with two young daughters living in Far Rockaway, NY. He was a devoted husband and loving father and was known for being charitable and kind. He was also very hard working and built himself a successful diamond business called Blue River Inc. where he had an impeccable reputation.
In 1985 a Hassidic jeweler and friend of Israel named “HT” (name has been changed) asked Israel to deposit a bond for him as a favor on one of his frequent business trips to Europe. Unbeknownst to Israel, the bond was stolen. After depositing it and returning back to the U.S., Israel was questioned by FBI at customs about the bond and where it came from. He told the FBI that he had been given the bond by a friend. The FBI told him that he has to cooperate and tape record his friend telling him where it came from and where the money went. Unaware of how dangerous “HT” really was and who was behind this whole scheme, Israel angrily confronted him and expressed his anger for duping him into doing something illegal and pressed him for the names of who was behind this scheme. He tried to convince him to just come clean and tell the FBI the truth. “HT” refused to divulge that information claiming that he feared for his life and if he would talk he would be killed.(* see below) At some point Israel was forced by the FBI to tape record “HT” admitting to something, but it was unsuccessful and it is unclear from the tape exactly what happened. Did his friend discover the tape? Why did it suddenly stop recording? Only “HT” knows the truth.
What is certain is that Israel did not know that “HT” was working directly under another Hassid named “Banda” who was one of the men behind the T-bond scam. According to testimony during the mafia cops trial, Banda was working with criminal mastermind and later the star witness of the mafia cops trial Burt Kaplan. When his friend told Banda about what had happened, the word got back to Kaplan who feared that everything would go bust now and he would end up in big trouble if Greenwald cooperated with the FEDS. Kaplan, whom never even met Israel Greenwald, decided to get rid of him himself. According to his testimony, he did not tell Banda about his plans to kill Israel, he merely said “Give me his information: Let me talk to him, I’ll convince him to go away on a long vacation”.
Kaplan remembered a guy named Frank Santora who he met back in his prison days. Santora had mentioned to him that he had a cop cousin who would do “work” for money. He called Santora and told him he had a problem that had to be dealt with. Santora contacted his cop cousin Louis Eppolito and partner Stephen Caracappa who said “It’ll be easy without a doubt.” and then, using the police database they got all the information they needed to know about Israel Greenwald (his home address, car make, etc.).
On Monday morning, Feb. 10, 1986 the cops and Santora followed Israel as he was driving to work and pulled him over using their badges. They pretended to arrest him citing that someone fingered him as a hit and run and he has to come to the station to clear it up. Israel willingly went with them, not knowing he was being led to his own execution. It was then that they took him to a Brooklyn garage on Nostrand Avenue, belonging to Pete Franzone (a hard working, non-criminal man who was friendly with Santora) where Greenwald was shot and buried.
His daughter, Andrea Eppolito-Fisher, mourned her father’s death in a Facebook post Sunday.
“My father, Louis John Eppolito, died peacefully in his sleep at 9:03 pm,” she wrote in the message.
“He died like he lived, on his own terms, as a fighter. And I will miss him and love him forever,” she added.
His cause of death was not immediately known. A source said he’d been struggling with health issues for years.
Eppolito and Caracappa were arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in 2005 and convicted for their involvement in the eight murders in 2006.
In a deal struck with Lucchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, the two NYPD detectives agreed to pass intelligence reports about mob rats to the crime family in exchange for a monthly salary.
In two of the slayings they did for the mafia family, Eppolito and Caracappa used NYPD intelligence to track down Lucchese rivals and deliver them to mob executioners.
One of the victims, Israeli diamond dealer Israel Greenwald, was pulled over by the dirty detectives after they tracked his license plate using an NYPD database.
They drove him to a warehouse on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, where Caracappa and another mafia hood killed him, while Eppolito acted as a lookout, it was revealed at their trial.
Greenwald’s remains were buried underneath the warehouse, until they were excavated in 2005.
In another one of the contract-hits, Caracappa and Eppolito shoved a canary into the mouth of a Lucchese associate suspected of informing on the mob outfit.
Caracappa died at a medical detention facility in Butner, North Carolina, in 2017. He was 75.
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