 | Stephen Caracappa, one of the notorious NYPD "Mafia Cops" who moonlighted as a hitman for the Luchese crime family, died in federal prison last year. Caracappa, who was serving out his sentence at a federal detention center in Butner, N.C., died on April 8, 2017. Caracappa and his partner, Louis Eppolito, 69, were sentenced to life behind bars in 2009 for committing eight mob-ordered executions between 1986 and 1990. |  |
 | The city shelled out $18.4 million to settle seven lawsuits with the families of their victims, who included a diamond dealer the pair kidnapped and murdered, two Gambino made men, two Luchese mobsters and a mob-connected painters' union leader. Eppolito remains locked away in a high-security penitentiary in Tucson where he too is expected to die behind bars. |  |
 Stephen Caracappa (left) and Louis Eppolito. | Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito were two former New York Police Department (NYPD) police detectives who worked on behalf of the New York Mafia, principally the Lucchese crime family. In 2006, they were convicted of labor racketeering, extortion, narcotics, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, eight counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Both were sentenced to life in federal prison. |  |
 | In the history of the NYPD there have been many corrupt cops. Lt. Charles Becker, electrocuted at Sing Sing in 1915 for killing a snitch; Murder Inc. canary Abe “Kid Twist” Reles who went flying out of a Coney Island hotel window, while being guarded by cops (“Canary Could Sing But Couldn’t Fly”, the tabloids screamed); Frank Serpico and the drug scandals of the 1960s; Officer Michael Dowd who ran a dope empire out of a Brooklyn precinct. Caracappa and Eppolito, though, were something altogether different. At $4,000 a month each, they were on permanent retainer for the Lucchese crime family. |  Cops by day, hitmen by night they used police data bases to find turncoats, impeded investigations, and at $65,000 a pop, were killers. |
 | The duo were given the contract to whack diamond dealer Israel Greenwald. He’d been cooperating with the FBI on an investigation and the mob was unhappy. Very unhappy. Caracappa and Eppolito got his address then snatched him off the street and blew his brains out in a Brooklyn warehouse. The body was buried in a garage where it stayed for 20 years until the dirty cops were ratted out. Dope dealer and career criminal Burton Kramer dropped the pair in 2005. In court, he laid out a sickening buffet of murder, corruption and betrayal of public trust. Caracappa and Eppolito were both convicted of murder. Eppolito was sentenced to life plus 100 years. Caracappa received life plus 80 years. In April, at a prison hospital in North Carolina, Caracappa died at age 75 after a long fight with cancer. As he was dying he begged to be let out of prison. He was denied. |  |
