Burt Kaplan: From Lucchese Crime Family to Government Witness

Burt Kaplan was the Brooklyn businessman and Lucchese crime family associate who served as the middleman in the “Mafia Cops” case, carrying money and murder assignments between Lucchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso and two corrupt NYPD detectives, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa. After decades of silence, Kaplan flipped in 2004 and delivered the testimony that convicted the detectives in 2006 of eight murders and racketeering. He died in federal witness protection in 2009.

Who Burt Kaplan Was

Kaplan grew up in Sheepshead Bay, attended Brooklyn Technical High School, and served in the Navy studying Russian radio codes in Japan. He reportedly turned down an offer from the National Security Agency and went into his family’s Bensonhurst appliance business instead.¹ From that ordinary starting point, he built a second life in crime that ran for more than forty years.

His record began with a 1967 federal fraud conviction that drew probation. In 1972 he was caught with a truckload of stolen clothing while working as a garment dealer.² In 1980 he was convicted of masterminding a plot to manufacture a million dollars’ worth of Quaaludes after a chemist he had hired to make hair products in Africa suggested the same facility could produce methaqualone. The chemist testified against him, and Kaplan served three years at the federal prison camp in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.³

Kaplan could never become a made member of the Mafia because he was Jewish. Asked at trial whether he was in the Mafia, he said, “No, I can’t be. I’m Jewish.”⁴ Even so, Lucchese leaders trusted him. Associates compared him to Meyer Lansky, and inside the family he was known as “The Old Man.”² By the mid-1980s he was running a discount clothing store in Bensonhurst and a garment factory in Antigua while orchestrating schemes involving stolen Treasury bills, African diamonds, stolen checks, and large-scale drug distribution.⁵

How He Became the Middleman to the NYPD Detectives

The prison stint at Allenwood put Kaplan next to Frank Santoro Jr., a Gambino associate and cousin of NYPD detective Louis Eppolito. Santoro told Kaplan that Eppolito and his partner Stephen Caracappa were willing to sell confidential law enforcement information for cash.⁶ Kaplan brought the proposition to Casso, who funded it.

The relationship worked for both men. Casso had stolen Treasury bills to move and needed a fence with contacts in the diamond trade. He also needed a civilian buffer between himself and the two detectives. Kaplan filled both roles, and in return he had the protection of one of the most powerful figures in the Lucchese family.

Santoro was killed in September 1987 while in the company of a man Casso had marked for death. Within days, Eppolito sent Santoro’s widow to one of Kaplan’s stores to arrange a meeting. At Santoro’s house, Kaplan and Eppolito worked out a formal retainer: $4,000 a month for “everything that we get on every family,” including the identities of cooperating witnesses, wiretap details, and warnings about imminent arrests. Casso agreed on the condition that the detectives work exclusively for the Lucchese family.⁷ From that point Kaplan dealt with the detectives directly.

What the Arrangement Delivered

From 1986 into the early 1990s, Eppolito and Caracappa operated as what Casso called his “crystal ball,” using NYPD databases and police intelligence to identify informants, track targets, and compromise state and federal investigations.⁸ Over the course of the partnership, the detectives collected roughly $375,000 in total payments.⁶

Individual murder contracts carried their own fees on top of the monthly retainer. The kidnapping of Jimmy Hydell paid $40,000. The murder of Gambino captain Eddie Lino brought $70,000, delivered by Kaplan in a box of hundred-dollar bills. Kaplan personally paid $30,000 for the killing of diamond dealer Israel Greenwald.⁷

The Killings Kaplan’s Role Enabled

Federal prosecutors ultimately charged Eppolito and Caracappa with eight murders, two attempted murders, and one murder conspiracy.⁹

Israel Greenwald

In February 1986, Kaplan ordered the killing of Israel Greenwald, a diamond dealer who had helped him move stolen Treasury bills that originated with Casso. After the FBI questioned Greenwald about the bills, Kaplan feared he would cooperate. He asked Santoro to arrange the hit. Eppolito and Caracappa, working with Santoro, staged a fake traffic stop, told Greenwald he was a suspect in a hit-and-run, and drove him to a Brooklyn auto repair shop, where Santoro shot him. His body was buried under the concrete floor of the garage and stayed there for nearly two decades until Kaplan’s cooperation led investigators to the site.⁷ Greenwald had no criminal record. He was 34 and left a wife and two children.¹⁰

Jimmy Hydell

In September 1986, Gambino associate James “Jimmy” Hydell took part in a failed attempt on Casso’s life. The detectives used crime-scene reports and photographs to identify him. In October, Eppolito and Caracappa rigged a car with a flashing light, stopped Hydell, forced him into the trunk at gunpoint, and delivered him to Santoro in a Toys ‘R’ Us parking lot in Brooklyn.¹¹ Casso tortured Hydell, according to testimony shooting him roughly a dozen times in non-lethal areas before killing him. His body has never been found.⁶

Nicholas Guido

Eppolito used police databases to locate a man named Nicholas Guido, whom Casso believed had helped in the attempt on his life. The detectives identified the wrong Nicholas Guido. On Christmas Day 1986, hitmen killed the innocent man outside his home.¹²

Eddie Lino and Others

In 1992, Caracappa shot and killed Gambino captain Edward “Eddie” Lino during a staged traffic stop on the Belt Parkway. The detectives also leaked intelligence that helped Casso’s hitmen track and murder Lucchese associate John “Otto” Heidel, Lucchese soldier Anthony DiLapi, and Lucchese associate Bruno Facciola, all suspected informants.⁶

Why Kaplan Finally Cooperated

The government’s first plan for taking down the detectives had relied on Casso himself, who cut a cooperation deal in 1994. It fell apart. Casso bribed prison guards for food and liquor and lied about other mob defectors, and prosecutors moved to rescind his plea agreement.¹³ Judge Frederic Block authorized the revocation in 1998. Without a corroborating witness, a grand jury declined to indict Eppolito and Caracappa, and the case sat dormant.

Kaplan had gone on the run when he learned in 1994 that Casso was cooperating, living at various times in Mexico, Portland, and Las Vegas.¹ In 1996, federal agents raided a Staten Island warehouse he operated and seized large quantities of marijuana. He was convicted of conspiracy to sell marijuana and sentenced in 1998 to 27 years in federal prison. At 64, the sentence was effectively a life term.¹⁴

For seven years he held to omerta. His wife and his daughter, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Deborah Kaplan, urged him for about a decade to reconsider.¹⁵ By late 2004, Kaplan was in his early seventies, had prostate cancer, and believed he would die in prison. He also felt betrayed by Casso and by the mob world he had served. He “didn’t want to die on the inside,” as one account put it.² He cut a deal with prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York and began cooperating with the DEA.

The Trial and the Convictions

The prosecution of Eppolito and Caracappa opened in March 2006 in the Eastern District of New York before Judge Jack B. Weinstein. Kaplan was the government’s star witness. He spent four days on the stand describing the monthly payments, the individual murder contracts, the coded language and avoidance of home phones, and the specific role each participant played in each killing. The defense hammered his criminal record and his obvious motive to trade testimony for freedom. Neither side called Casso, whose credibility problems both prosecutors and defense lawyers considered disqualifying.¹⁶

On April 6, 2006, the jury convicted both detectives on all counts: racketeering conspiracy, eight murders, two attempted murders, one murder conspiracy, obstruction of justice, drug distribution, and money laundering.⁹

Judge Weinstein then granted the defendants a judgment of acquittal on the racketeering conspiracy count, ruling that the five-year statute of limitations barred the prosecution. The Second Circuit reversed on September 17, 2008, and reinstated the verdicts, citing evidence that the conspiracy had continued into 2004 and 2005 through Eppolito’s money-laundering offers to organized crime figures in Las Vegas.⁸ On March 6, 2009, Weinstein sentenced both men to life without parole, calling the case “probably the most heinous series of crimes ever tried in this courthouse.”¹² Caracappa died in federal custody in 2017. Eppolito died in prison in 2019. Casso died while incarcerated in 2020.

What Happened to Kaplan After

In recognition of his cooperation, a federal judge cut Kaplan’s 27-year sentence to nine years. He was released in 2006 and entered the federal witness protection program, relocating outside New York State.¹⁷ He died of prostate cancer on July 11, 2009, at age 75, after three years in hiding.¹⁸

Civil Aftermath for the Victims’ Families

The victims’ families sued New York City, and Federal Judge Raymond Dearie ruled that the cases should go to trial based on evidence that the killings would not have happened had then-NYPD Commissioner Benjamin Ward fired Eppolito in 1984, after he was caught leaking confidential information to a mobster.¹⁹ The city settled all seven lawsuits for a combined $18.4 million. The two largest settlements, $5 million each, went to the family of Israel Greenwald and the mother of Nicholas Guido, the two victims without mob ties. Settlements for victims with organized crime connections ranged from $1.5 million to $1.85 million.²⁰

1
The New Yorker. Kiss City
2
The Forward. Old Man of Jewish Mafia Key Informant in Killer Cop Case
3
Slate. Dispatches From Mob Trial
4
New York Magazine. Kiss City
5
New York Times. An Unassuming Witness Steeped in the Underworld
6
The Mob Museum. Mob Cops Saga Still Reverberates 10 Years After Their Life Sentences
7
FindLaw. United States v. Eppolito
8
CBS News. Conviction of Mafia Cops Stands
9
U.S. Department of Justice. Eppolito and Caracappa Sentenced to Life Imprisonment
10
New York Times. Family of Man Killed by Rogue Detectives Settles Suit
11
New York Post. Rat Squeals Mafia Cops Delivered Wiseguy to Executioner
12
The Mob Museum. New York’s Mafia Cops Faked Arrests, Leaked Information to Aid Mob Killings
13
New York Times. Plea Deal Rescinded; Informer May Face Life
14
New York Times. Clothier Who Retired to Prison May Sway Fate of 2 Detectives
15
New York Daily News. All in the Family: A Career Criminal and His Daughter the Judge
16
CBS News. NYC Mafia Cops Convicted of Murder
17
New York Daily News. Gangster Who Ratted Out Mafia Cops Dies
18
New York Post. Canary Who Nailed Mob Cops Is Dead
19
New York Daily News. Last of NYPD Mafia Cops Lawsuits Finally Settled
20
Newsday. NYC Settles Last of Lawsuits in Mafia Cops Case