MAFIA COPS CASE: Life sentences reinstated, time to ‘roll the credits’

  Louie Eppolito wanted to be a movie star. Steve Caracappa wanted an off-the-record life.

  In the end, Eppolito starred in a courtroom drama that resulted in typecasting to the tune of life plus 100 years. Caracappa’s off-the-record dream became life plus 80 years.

  The Mafia Cops case, which played out in New York but was developed in part in Las Vegas, at last appears to be coming to a close. Eppolito and Caracappa, who moved to Las Vegas after retiring from the NYPD, saw their sentences reinstated by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who reversed U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein’s decision to set aside their 2006 racketeering convictions after determining the statute of limitations had run.

  If anyone expected the two former cops, convicted of taking cash and pulling hits for the Lucchese crime family, would be contrite, they were dreaming.

  Caracappa: “You will never take away my will to show how innocent I am.”

  Eppolito: “I’ve been suffering for four years in jail. I can take it. I’m a man. … But I never did any of this.”