Anthony Casso
Who was Anthony Casso?
What was Anthony Casso’s role in the Lucchese crime family?
Did Anthony Casso cooperate with the government?
What happened to the detectives Casso identified?
What led to Anthony Casso’s death?
Anthony Casso (born May 21, 1942, Bronx, New York City, New York, U.S.—died December 15, 2020, Tucson, Arizona) was an American organized-crime figure who was suspected of complicity in the killing of at least three dozen people and ordering the deaths of many others. Nicknamed “Gaspipe,” he was a Lucchese crime family underboss who at one point was a government informant, though law-enforcement officials later effectively sentenced him to life in prison.
Casso joins the Lucchese crime family
Casso grew up in the southern part of Brooklyn, New York, where he joined a gang called the South Brooklyn Boys and fought other young people in his neighborhood. His father was arrested more than once for burglaries committed in Brooklyn during the 1940s and ’50s.
Later on, Casso joined the brutal Lucchese crime family, and during the 1970s and ’80s he rose through its ranks as a loyal foot soldier, eventually becoming a capo (captain) and consigliere (counselor) and then the family’s underboss (deputy director). Between 1965 and 1977 he was arrested five times on state and federal charges, including heroin trafficking and bank burglary, but each case was dismissed or ended in Casso’s acquittal.
Casso becomes a government informant
In 1990 Casso was charged with racketeering by federal officials. He spent about three years on the lam (in hiding) before his arrest in the township of Mount Olive, New Jersey, and at that point he offered to become a government informant to secure a lenient sentence.
As part of his cooperation agreement, he admitted to culpability in 70 crimes, ranging from extortion to murder. Crucially, he also identified two police detectives, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who he claimed had worked for him. As he recounted to correspondent Ed Bradley for an episode of the television program 60 Minutes, the detectives would kidnap people under the guise of legitimate police work and deliver them to Casso, often to be killed. They would also commit murders themselves at Casso’s request. In the case of the murder of James (Jimmy) Hydell, Casso recounted the youngster’s kidnapping by detectives:
“The kid thought they were taking him to the station house. But they took him to a garage. When they got to the garage, they laid him on the floor. They tied his feet, his hands cuffed, put him in the trunk of the car.”
Casso then killed Hydell.
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In 2009 Eppolito and Caracappa were both sentenced to life in prison. Before his incarceration, Eppolito wrote an autobiography called Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was The Mob (1992). He also acted in several films, including as a mobster, unexpectedly, in GoodFellas (1990).
Casso is sentenced to life in prison
In 1997 Casso was removed from the cooperation program for lying and committing crimes while acting as a government witness. He was then convicted of many of the crimes he had earlier committed—including racketeering, extortion, murder, and conspiracy to murder—and sentenced to 455 years in federal prison without the possibility of parole.
In November 2020 Casso contracted COVID-19, and, after a month on a ventilator, he succumbed in December of that year.