For the primary time in 40 years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell unearths the full story in the back of two ruthless New York cops who acted as double marketers for the Mafia. No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two embellished detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese international of Nineteen Eighties Brooklyn.
For greater than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert machine, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations through sharing info of surveillance, telephone faucets and drawing close arrests. The Lucchese boss referred to as the 2 detectives his crystal ball. Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned.
Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by way of staging 8 mob hits, pulling the cause themselves as a minimum once. Incredibly, whilst proof of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials did not muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and had been best revisited due to relentless follow up via Tommy Dades, a cop decided to interrupt the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa had been finally attempted after which sentenced to life in prison in 2009, almost thirty years after their crimes passed off.
Cannell’s Blood and the Badge is based totally on absolutely new studies and by no means-earlier than-launched interviews with mobsters themselves, inclusive of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. Eppolito and Caracappa’s story is greater relevant than ever as police conduct comes underneath ever-growing scrutiny.