Ex-Mob Boss Points A Finger

Anthony Casso Describes Murders He Says He Paid NYPD Detectives To Set Up Or Commit

(CBS)  Eppolito appeared in a 1985 documentary about anger. He had answered a filmmaker's ad in a local newspaper seeking people who were having difficulty controlling their anger.

In the documentary, he recalls what he said to his bosses when, while under investigation, they called him in and made him surrender his badge: "I said, 'If you keep insisting on f---ing with me,' I said, 'I’m gonna give you a beating. And your mother’s gonna throw up when I show her your picture.' I said, 'I’m not b---s----ing you. Don’t try to goad me any more than you’re doing, because the four guys with you, you gotta realize, by the time they get up – I’m gonna break your nose and take your teeth out with one shot.' And the anger started to come."

A year after he gave this interview, prosecutors say Eppolito committed his first murder for Casso, and kept on killing well after he retired in 1990. He later wrote his autobiography called, “Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was The Mob.”

He also built a new career for himself as an actor. In “Goodfellas,” he played, of all things, a mobster. He appeared in more than a dozen films, including one he wrote himself, in which he portrayed a corrupt union boss who crossed the Mafia.

But in real life, prosecutors say it was Eppolito and his former partner, Stephen Caracappa, who were doing the killing. They say that for some extra cash, the detectives actually went so far as to pull the trigger themselves.

Casso told Bradley the two cops brazenly murdered a crime family associate named Eddie Lino after forcing him off a New York City highway.

"I gave them $75,000. They killed him, like cowboy style. They pulled alongside of him. They shot him. They made him crash into the fence alongside the belt parkway on the service road. Right," says Casso. "Then Steve got out of the car, ran across the street and finished shooting him. Finished killing him in the car. Then they got back and they went away."

"Nobody in their right mind would go into any kind of activity with Casso, because he was a raving, screaming lunatic," says Ed Hayes, who insists his client, Stephen Caracappa, never committed a single crime for Casso – much less a murder along a crowded highway.

"I can’t imagine a riskier thing to do. It’s the Belt Parkway. At a time when it's very busy. It's not as if -- there's not gonna be people going by. And very likely police cars," says Hayes. "So it seems like almost a movie version of a crime. It's something that you kind of you can see Casso making up."

"But someone did it," says Bradley. "And they're saying that your guy did it."

"That's right," says Hayes. They're saying that he did it. My guy says he didn't. Nobody would take Casso's word for anything."