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Table of Contents
1. Tie forged by blown hit, Eyeing revenge, one mobster's relationship with two city cops leads down a path of killing, prosecutors say,....................................................................................................................................... 1 2. Bibliography...................................................................................................................................................... 5

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Tie forged by blown hit, Eyeing revenge, one mobster's relationship with two city cops leads down a path of killing, prosecutors say,
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Author: SEAN GARDINER. STAFF WRITER.

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Publication info: Newsday [Long Island, N.Y] 03 Apr 2005: A06.

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Abstract: Finally, Bering testified, [James Hydell] contacted [Anthony Casso]'s nephew, Vincent "Fat Vinny" DiPierro, and told him he had some stolen blank corporate checks he wanted to sell to Casso. The nephew had no idea he was setting his uncle up, Bering said. When they spotted Casso's car in front of the restaurant, Bering pulled his Plymouth alongside it, so close that Casso wouldn't be able to open the driver's side door. Through rolled down windows, Guido fired but his gun jammed. Hydell simultaneously started shooting with a shotgun. Now-retired city police detectives 1) Las Vegas Review- Journal Photo-[Louis Eppolito], above, 2) Las Vegas Review-Journal Photo-and [Stephen Caracappa], below, are accused of abducting 3) Ganglandnews.com Photo-James Hydell, right, who allegedly botched a contract killing on Anthony Casso. 4) Photo-Mobster Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso survived a 1986 assassination try
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Full Text: Quotes: 'This is a person you don't let live if you're going to shoot him.'- A wiseguy speaking about Anthony Casso It was Sept. 14, 1986, a beautiful late summer Sunday night, when Anthony Casso pulled his brand new goldcolored Lincoln Town Car into a bus stop in the Bergen Beach section of Brooklyn. The mobster with the unforgettable nickname of "Gaspipe" later told a jury that he had simply stopped to get ice cream at a nearby Carvel's. "I just finished parking the car," Casso testified three years later. "I just shut the engine off. When I seen the car pulling up very close like, too close to [my] car, and then I turned around and then I seen the flash of the gunfire." Though the would-be assassins fired from only feet away, one of them with a shotgun, Casso survived with relatively minor wounds. It was that botched rub-out, prosecutors now charge, that would eventually forge a murderous relationship between Casso and two of New York's finest. Last month, that relationship yanked the cops from their semi-retired life in Las Vegas and landed them in jail. Had the would-be assassins' aim been better, retired Dets. Louis Eppolito, 56, and Stephen Caracappa, 63, might still be living free in Las Vegas. Instead, they're being held in a federal detention facility there, awaiting extradition to New York on charges they were part of a racketeering conspiracy in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. The meat of the case charges the duo with taking part in eight murders while being on Casso's payroll. Future partners meet in jail The chain of events that ultimately led to the case against the retired detectives can be traced to late in 1981, when a mob hitman met an ex-Transit cop-turned-crook in the Brooklyn House of Detention. While awaiting trial on charges that he was running a quaaludes clinic and that he was part of a conspiracy to fix bidding for city school bus contracts, Robert Bering, the ex-cop, met James Hydell, the hitman. The two Staten Islanders became fast friends in jail, and according to authorities, partners-in-crime once released. They even helped each other kill their respective ex-lovers in 1986, authorities charged. But sandwiched between those two slayings, the friends botched the contract killing of a man some said they couldn't afford to miss.

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Even by mob standards, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso was considered violent and volatile in the extreme. Following his arrest in 1993, Casso would admit to taking part in 36 murders. He is serving life in prison. In fall 1986, Casso, then 46 and at the height of power, was enmeshed in a mob war. Prosecutors say Frank DeCicco, John Gotti's first underboss, was a victim of that war, killed in April 1986 by a car bomb outside a Bensonhurst social club. Gotti and the other bosses blamed Casso, among others, and four months later Hydell told Bering he had been given the contract to kill Casso. Hydell, 27, and Bering, then 42, recruited a drug dealer named Nick Guido, then 26, and another hood named Dominic "Richie" LaTorre for the plan. As in the other hits, they started with surveillance but soon learned that Casso acted, especially when he was driving, like a man who thought he was constantly being followed. "The three of us had different opportunities of clocking him and following him and trying to find out where he lived," Bering said while testifying against Guido in the 1989 trial. "But Mr. Casso was careful. He [sur]passed being paranoid." Finally, Bering testified, Hydell contacted Casso's nephew, Vincent "Fat Vinny" DiPierro, and told him he had some stolen blank corporate checks he wanted to sell to Casso. The nephew had no idea he was setting his uncle up, Bering said. On Sept. 14, 1986, Hydell arrived at Bering's home with the news that DiPierro was planning to meet Casso in front of the Golden Ox restaurant in Brooklyn that night. The men sprang into action. Bering grabbed two shotguns, a 9-mm semi-automatic handgun and a .38-caliber revolver he was hiding, while Hydell affixed what he thought was a set of stolen license plates on Bering's blue 1980 Plymouth Fury, which was equipped with a siren and a "teardrop" red light, placed on the dashboard, to make it look like an unmarked police car. When they spotted Casso's car in front of the restaurant, Bering pulled his Plymouth alongside it, so close that Casso wouldn't be able to open the driver's side door. Through rolled down windows, Guido fired but his gun jammed. Hydell simultaneously started shooting with a shotgun. But Casso was able to duck for cover under the dashboard. As Hydell continued to fire as many as five shotgun blasts into Casso's car, Guido unjammed his handgun and also began shooting. Through a shower of glass, Casso scrambled across the front seat and out the passenger's side door. Bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, he sprinted into the Golden Ox, ran out the restaurant's back entrance and flagged down two men who gave him a ride to the hospital. The hit now a complete bust, Bering sped off the wrong way down a one-way street, swerving to avoid oncoming traffic. An officer nearby, having heard the shots, arrived to see the Plymouth careening away and got the license plate number. The hitmen went into hiding over the next month. During that time Guido described the failed hit on Casso to a wise guy friend who was incredulous that they would go after such a dangerous man. "I would have drove the car through the restaurant," the friend later testified at the trial. "This is a person you don't let live if you're going to shoot him." Mobster gets revenge On Oct. 18, 1986, Casso's revenge began in earnest and so did the criminal misdeeds of Eppolito and Caracappa, law enforcement officials charge. On that day, Hydell told Bering he was going to meet with his Gambino bosses in Dyker Beach Park in Brooklyn. Hydell was never seen again. Nineteen years after his disappearance, law enforcement officials now charge that "at the request of Casso, Eppolito and Caracappa abducted James Hydell, stuck him in the trunk of an automobile, and delivered him to one of Casso's intermediaries so that he could ultimately be delivered to Casso and be killed." Casso allegedly had Hydell tortured with non-fatal gunshots until he gave up the names of his cohorts. On Christmas Day 1986, Casso thought he got even with another of his would-be assassins. Nicholas Guido 21 May 2012 Page 2 of 5 ProQuest

was gunned down while sitting in his uncle's sports car outside his family's Windsor Terrace home. Caracappa is alleged to have provided Casso and his crew the address for this hit. But the Nicholas Guido who was killed that day was the wrong man, a telephone installer by the same name with no mob ties. The Nick Guido who participated in the killing plot got the message and went on the run to Florida. Over the next five years, Eppolito and Caracappa are alleged to have provided information to Casso that led to the slaying of seven other rivals, disloyal soldiers or informants, including one Gambino capo who they are accused of killing themselves. Attorneys for Eppolito and Caracappa have denied that the retired detectives were involved in any of the 71 crimes outlined in the federal indictment unsealed last month, and say the government's case is based on the unreliable word of criminals. Shortly after the hit on the wrong Nick Guido, Bering began cooperating with law enforcement, authorities said. Meanwhile, the Nick Guido whose gun jammed when he had the best shot at Casso back in 1986 was arrested the following year on federal cocaine trafficking charges and subsequently convicted. He was also charged in the attempted murder of Casso. While with the Brooklyn district attorney's office in 1989, Mark Feldman, now an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn investigating organized crime, prosecuted the case that ended with Guido being convicted not of attempted murder but of the lesser account of assault. The biggest obstacle in prosecuting the case, those at the district attorney's office at the time said, was that the victim, Casso, wasn't exactly a sympathetic character. Between the two convictions, Guido served the next 16 years in prison before being released in 2003. After providing information on several mob cases, Bering died in 1995 of a heart attack while still in the witness protection program. And DiPierro, who had been duped into setting up his uncle, was gunned down on a Brooklyn street corner. Illustration Caption: Now-retired city police detectives 1) Las Vegas Review- Journal Photo-Louis Eppolito, above, 2) Las Vegas Review-Journal Photo-and Stephen Caracappa, below, are accused of abducting 3) Ganglandnews.com Photo-James Hydell, right, who allegedly botched a contract killing on Anthony Casso. 4) Photo-Mobster Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso survived a 1986 assassination try
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People: Casso, Anthony, Eppolito, Louis, Caracappa, Stephen, Hydell, James, Guido, Nick
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Publication title: Newsday

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Pages: A06
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Number of pages: 0
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Publication year: 2005

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Publication date: Apr 3, 2005

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Year: 2005
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Section: NEWS
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Publisher: Newsday Inc.

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Place of publication: Long Island, N.Y.

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Country of publication: United States

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Journal subject: General Interest Periodicals--United States

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Source type: Newspapers

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Language of publication: English

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Document type: NEWSPAPER

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ProQuest document ID: 279931776

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Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/279931776?accountid=15533

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Copyright: (Copyright Newsday Inc., 2005)

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Last updated: 2010-06-15

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Database: ProQuest Central

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Bibliography
Citation style: APA 6th - American Psychological Association, 6th Edition SEAN GARDINER, S. W. (2005, Apr 03). Tie forged by blown hit, eyeing revenge, one mobster's relationship with two city cops leads down a path of killing, prosecutors say, Newsday, pp. A.06-A06. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/279931776?accountid=15533

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