by Tommy Dades
D. B. Lewis was one of those rare New York lawyers who actually answered his own telephone. He picked it up on the second ring. Mike Vecchione introduced himself and explained briefly the purpose of his call: He was Casso’s last hope.
“We’re looking at prosecuting Louis Eppolito and Steve Caracappa,” Vecchione said simply. “And we could use your client’s help.” Secrecy certainly didn’t matter here. Besides, who was Gaspipe going to tell? “I’m going to get these guys,” Vecchione continued firmly, “and your guy potentially has a lot to gain by helping me. Let me tell you, I’ve read his 302s and I believe him. I think he was telling the truth back then. I just don’t see how he’s got anything to lose by helping us and if he does I’ll make sure his cooperation gets in front of a judge.”
Lewis was noncommittal but open to the possibility that his client would cooperate with Vecchione. For Lewis, this was probably a little like seeing a tiny light suddenly and unexpectedly go on at the distant end of a collapsed tunnel. It was a sign of life. He told Vecchione he would speak with Casso and get back to him.
Lewis returned the call a few days later. His client would be interested in working with the Brooklyn DA’s office, he said, and he was very happy to know that they believed him. Then he added—Vecchione would never forget his exact words—“And he wanted me to tell you you’ve got the right guys.”
Vecchione knew that—he didn’t have even a wisp of a doubt—but still, when Lewis said that, he couldn’t help smiling. Casso wants to talk about it, he thought. We’re gonna get them.
The two lawyers began negotiating the ground rules, working out exactly what Casso would get in return for his testimony. Vecchione had spent years making similar deals. Generally it was pretty straightforward: Here’s what I want in return for here’s what I can guarantee to deliver, and here’s what else I can try to do. Usually he promised as little as possible and never anything that he couldn’t produce. He had been doing lawyer business for a long time.
Mike Vecchione had graduated with the first class of Hofstra University’s law school still believing in the majesty of the law. He liked to tell people that everything he knew about the law he’d learned on TV, that he was a graduate of Perry Mason University. But that wasn’t true; in fact he learned from reading about the great men who shaped American jurisprudence—Cardozo and Brandeis and Learned Hand, Oliver Holmes and Charles Hughes—and studying the great cases that formed the spine of our democracy. He continued to believe all of it right up to his very first day in criminal court as a member of the bar. “I’ll never forget that day. I was so proud, standing right in front of the bench, wearing my brand-new suit. I was officially part of the great American tradition of jurisprudence. And then the judge, wearing the solemn robes of his office, cleared his throat, opened a top drawer in his desk, and spit right into it. And then closed the drawer.
“Well, so much for majesty.”
In the years since then Vecchione had learned that while the law was a lot more than spit in a drawer, most of the time it was less than the noble words of the great justices. In real life most lawyering—even in criminal law—took place in somebody’s office, reading voluminous files, conducting endless interviews, and making deals. It was a lot of negotiation—much of it aimed at staying out of the courtroom. Vecchione figured he would offer Casso some form of letter affirming that his cooperation had played a significant role in a very important case. Casso was in federal detention, so there wasn’t too much Vecchione could do for him. But he was surprised at Lewis’s first condition.
“Here’s what we need,” Lewis began. “The bottom line is you have to get the Feds to give him immunity for anything connected to the Hydell murder.”
“You’re kidding me,” Mike responded. That was an odd request. “That’s got to be covered by the pleas that he took.” Casso had pled guilty to fifteen killings when he made his agreement. His admissions didn’t disappear when the deal fell apart, and it was those crimes for which he had been sentenced to spend the next several hundred years in prison.
Lewis was agreeable. “Yeah, I think it is too. But do me a favor, go ahead and check to confirm that it is.”
Even if it wasn’t covered in his plea agreement, Vecchione continued, it didn’t seem like it would be much of a roadblock. “We can probably get that for you from Feldman. He’s with us on this.”
Vecchione could almost hear the laughter in Lewis’s response. “Boy, I got to tell you, Mike, I think you’re underestimating how tough they’re going to be. Even if they tell you they’re going to do it, they have to put it on paper, because I just don’t believe anything any of them say. Believe me, they have no interest in helping my guy.”
Vecchione tried to reassure him. “Feldman’s not going to let two crooked cops walk away over something minor like this. The U.S. Attorney is our partner in this investigation. Feldman’ll go along with it.” He might not like it, Mike thought, but eventually he’ll understand the value of cooperating.
“Maybe you’re right,” Lewis said without conviction. “Maybe because of this case they’ll do it but, Mike, I got to tell you, I don’t have a lot of hope that this is going to work out. You haven’t spoken to Feldman about this yet. I believe everything you say and it’s probably good for my client. But I’m telling you, Feldman isn’t going to let this happen.”
Vecchione called Mark Feldman, who could easily find out precisely what crimes had been included in the agreement, and told him what he was trying to do. Feldman was incredulous. “Are you kidding me?” Feldman responded, his voice rising. “What do you want to use that scumbag for? Casso’s a lying piece of shit.”
Initially Vecchione assumed this was just Feldman letting off steam. There was no chance he hadn’t been aware that eventually the task force was going to need to talk to Casso. “I don’t know, Mark,” he said. “The guy’s right on the money. You know it as well as I do. Eventually we’re gonna need him to make the case.”
“Oh, come on, Mike. Nobody’s gonna believe this guy. Why do you want to use him?”
“He’s got the information we need, Mark,” Vecchione insisted. “And I know he’s telling the truth because we’ve already corroborated some of the things he said in his 302.”
Feldman was insistent. “The guy is a piece of shit and we have no use for him.”
“Bottom line, Mark, is that we do. And since it’s our case, I want to use him.” Vecchione explained that Casso’s lawyer wanted immunity from the Feds for the Jimmy Hydell murder. “We’re prepared to give it to him,” he said, “but he’s still gotta have it from you.”
Feldman sighed. It seemed obvious to Vecchione that he still thought the whole investigation was a waste of time. “All right,” he agreed, “let me see if it’s covered by his plea deal. If it is then you can satisfy his guy and go ahead and do whatever you want to do.”
They spoke again a few days later. “You know what, Mike?” Feldman told him, surprise in his voice. “It isn’t in there. He’s not covered for it.”
That was just a matter of doing the paperwork, Vecchione figured. This was a no-brainer; they had everything to gain and absolutely nothing to lose. He had believed Feldman would be jumping for joy at the opportunity to get these cops. “Well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Let’s be realistic here. Casso’s looking at thirteen life sentences, he’s got four hundred and fifty-five years. Even if he gets some consideration, what difference is it gonna make? He’s not going to walk out tomorrow or next week. The greater good here is to get those two cops. So what difference does it make if you give Casso immunity on Hydell?”
Feldman said evenly, leaving no doubt about his intention, “I wouldn’t give that motherfucker anything. He’s a piece of shit and I’m not giving him anything.”
Mike was stunned. “What are you talking about, Mark? You’re not giving Casso anything and look what you’re getting. How can you not make this deal?”
Feldman was adamant. He wasn’t going to give
Casso one damn thing. Period.
“I don’t get it, Mark; what’s the big deal here?” Vecchione continued. “I don’t understand. How can you guys get hurt by this? Any cases you got that might be jeopardized by Casso have been done almost ten years. How can we let two New York City detectives who have killed people get away with it? This is horrendous.” It was unnecessary for him to add that John Gotti was dead. And no matter what Casso said or did, there was no appeal from the grave.
“Look, Mike, that’s our position. We’re not giving anything to Casso. That’s it.” Feldman’s attitude made no sense to Vecchione. This was the kind of deal any prosecutor would make. Trying to make sense of Feldman’s motives, he took another look at the segment 60 Minutes had done with Casso. And as he watched the piece, he began to speculate on the source of Feldman’s absolute refusal to even consider negotiating.
In the middle of the piece Ed Bradley interviewed a bulldog prosecutor named Valerie Caproni, who at that time was the head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern Division. Vecchione knew Caproni well. After the Brooklyn DA’s office had failed to convict Lemrick Nelson Jr. for the stabbing death of an Orthodox Jew named Yankel Rosenbaum during riots in Crown Heights, he and Hynes had gone to Washington and met with Attorney General Janet Reno to request a federal prosecution of Nelson. Caproni’s office had successfully prosecuted Nelson for violating Rosenbaum’s civil rights and he was sentenced to ten years in prison. The thing Vecchione remembered most about Caproni was how much she hated to lose—she didn’t yield an inch without a fierce battle. She appeared in the 60 Minutes segment on Casso, telling Ed Bradley, “He [Casso] was involved in a conspiracy to murder a federal judge. He was involved in a conspiracy to murder a federal prosecutor. He murdered and authorized the murder of witnesses. These sorts of crimes are beyond the pale.”
Vecchione was astonished that the piece had gotten made. He guessed that the Attorney General’s office and the Bureau of Prisons hadn’t conferred about it, because there was no way the Feds could have benefited from it. The segment revealed no new information. Apparently Casso had mentioned the two cops in his interview but it had been edited out—at the time it was done Eppolito and Caracappa were not being investigated and any accusation of criminal conduct could have resulted in a huge slander suit against CBS. But the segment was still a strong accusation of malfeasance against the government.
What attracted his attention wasn’t so much what Caproni said as the way she said it. Firm. Unyielding. A roadblock of granite. It became obvious to Vecchione as he watched Caproni over and over how much the Feds had to lose if they gave Casso’s testimony any countenance. Only a few months earlier Caproni had become the FBI’s general counsel, the head lawyer. It would not do her, or Feldman, or Henoch, or any of them a bit of good if it turned out the Feds had failed to prosecute two of the dirtiest cops in history to protect their case against John Gotti. The best thing that could happen for all of them was that this prosecution disappear. And as long as the Feds controlled Casso and Kaplan, they had the ability to make that magic.
Vecchione sat at his desk long into the evening, wondering if that might actually be true. Had the Feds really buried the case against the cops? Was that possible? He no longer held many illusions about the law, as at that moment he was deeply involved in the prosecution of a judge for taking kickbacks in return for assigning a lawyer to profitable cases, but this? This was very hard to accept.
He called D. B. Lewis once again. Maybe there was some way around this dilemma. “You were right,” he admitted. “I’ve really gotten a lot of resistance.”
“I told you that was going to happen,” Lewis said. “They hate my client.”
Vecchione didn’t want Lewis to know about his suspicions. So he told him simply that he wasn’t convinced Casso’s plea agreement had been terminated for the announced reasons and that he was doing some more checking.
He tried to treat this as if it was simply a difficult negotiation, believing that it made too much sense for everybody not to work it out eventually, but his frustration level rose with each conversation. He had always taken great pride in his ability to move juries with stirring summations. He’d made courtrooms cry with emotional appeals. But Feldman wouldn’t be moved. Vecchione spoke with him once again, by this time fighting to maintain his composure. “Let’s talk about this, Mark,” he said as impassively as possible. He laid out for him the whole strategy, reminding him how much work had already been put into this case and how close they were to making a major breakthrough. “I just don’t understand this. Why would we let this case go by the boards when I can take Casso to the grand jury, get an indictment, then God knows what’ll happen? Maybe the world’ll open up for us. Maybe one of them, maybe Caracappa, will flip. Who knows? C’mon, Mark, let’s take the first step. Let’s get the murder indictment and go from there.”
Feldman just wouldn’t budge. “I won’t give Casso anything,” he responded as calmly as any poker player holding all the cards in the deck. “We will give him nothing.” He paused and then finally allowed the first ray of hope to shine through. “I’ll tell you what though, here’s the best I can do for you. You can tell D. B. Lewis that we’re not interested in his client.”
Vecchione took a deep, calming breath. A guarantee not to prosecute Casso would have the same effect as official immunity, but with fewer potential political implications. Nobody’s butt would be on the line. “That’s terrific, Mark,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could manage. “If that’s your position, how about putting it down on paper or at least talking to Lewis and telling him that? Maybe that’ll be enough for him.”
The clouds of reality obliterated that small ray of hope. “I’m not going to talk to anybody about Casso,” he insisted. “I don’t want to talk about him at all. I don’t care about Casso and we’re not giving him anything.”
Mike Vecchione hung up the phone and gathered himself. Then he picked it up again to take another shot with Lewis. There are times when persistence wins out. “Just look at this for a minute,” he told Lewis. “We’re going to convict these guys. We have the evidence. If your guy goes along with us he’s going to get credit for it. Let me make your guy look good. We’re an agency with credibility who believes your guy. We’ve corroborated enough of his story to make me understand he was truthful in what he said. I’m willing to put that in papers afterward. I’m willing to outline for you in motion papers what his cooperation was, why we believed him. It’s like I told you, I’m going to convict these guys and he’s going to be the center of our case. That’ll give you not only the papers, but you’ll have a conviction based on his testimony. He can go back and say to a judge, ‘See what I did? I’m not a liar.’ If the state comes along and says we believe him, it’s got to help your guy.”
Lewis sighed. “I think that’s terrific. But you have to understand our position…”
Mike just sat there, shaking his head. Casso was doing thirteen life sentences. Did it really make a difference if the government gave him immunity on the Hydell murder? So what if he got convicted of that crime; how much more time could he do?
That’s when Vecchione made up his mind that he was going to indict Casso for his role in the Jimmy Hydell murder. He was going to put him with Eppolito and Caracappa. “I had Gaspipe’s confession on 60 Minutes,” he says. “I had the ability to corroborate the crime; we got that from Betty Hydell. And we were starting to put together several other pieces to make the case.”
Meanwhile, Tommy Dades was making his own effort to get to Casso. His situation was considerably different than Vecchione’s. Mike needed him to testify in a courtroom; all Dades wanted from him was information. He figured Casso, or his attorney, would recognize the benefits that might accrue from cooperating with him. If Casso could convince Dades that he was essential to making the case against Eppolito and Caracappa, he might be able to negotiate a substantially better deal with the lawyers—and maybe even get
Feldman to compromise.
Two different mornings Dades went to work believing he’d be meeting with Casso later that day. The first time, he discovered that Feldman had placed a block on Casso. Gaspipe had been brought to New York as a potential witness in a federal case, so no one could speak with him without Feldman’s permission.
Dades called Feldman, who agreed to let him speak to Casso—but only after the current trial was done. This was simple for Feldman, who told Dades, “You want to go talk to him, go talk to him.” As Feldman had promised, when the trial ended—Casso didn’t testify—he lifted the block. Again Tommy planned to go see Casso, but this time it was D. B. Lewis who wouldn’t let his client speak to anyone.
At about this same time the two Suffolk County detectives were meeting with Casso to talk about the trash-hauling murders. These detectives conferred with Dades, who suggested questions they might ask. The problem, Dades discovered, was that Casso was lying to those detectives. In several instances he completely contradicted statements in his own 302. He never even mentioned Burt Kaplan’s name—until Dades told the detectives to ask him directly about Kaplan’s role. Only then did he remember his good friend Kaplan. As Dades told the Suffolk cops, “He admitted the truth was the truth.”
As far as Dades was concerned, that was it for Casso. The guy was no good and wasn’t smart enough to change, even when he had a last long shot at walking out one day. Gaspipe was still trying to play more angles than a billiards champion. Maybe he wasn’t lying; maybe he’d been lying so long he no longer remembered what was truth. And maybe Pam Anderson was born with that body. It didn’t matter anymore; Dades wasn’t going to waste his time trying to chase Casso’s lies.
This was just another incredibly frustrating dead end for Dades, who was struggling through a rough time both professionally and privately. He felt like his life was spinning and he couldn’t right himself. He was losing everything that mattered. Terrorism was the new hot thing in law enforcement and no one—particularly his new boss—was paying too much attention to organized crime. And OC was what he knew; in that world he was an expert. He’d already put in his retirement papers, so basically he was marking time until he had completed his full twenty. He’d become a dinosaur.