Guilty

Retired detectives, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two cops who carried out murders for the mob, have been found guilty in the murder of Israel Greenwald, a Long Island diamond dealer.

From the New York Times: "When Mr. Kaplan [the star witnees] got out of jail, he remembered Mr. Santora [Epollito's cousin] and his ''capable guys'' -- and in 1986, the government contends, he asked the three for help. He hired them to kill Israel Greenwald, Ms. Hormozi said, a diamond dealer who Mr. Kaplan thought might tell the government about his scheme to traffic in treasury bonds. The three men took the contract for $30,000, prosecutors say.

It was assassination by deception, Ms. Hormozi said. The two detectives stopped Mr. Greenwald in Brooklyn while he was driving home from work and told him he was a suspect in a hit-and-run accident. Instead of taking him to the station house, however, they took him to a parking garage, bound his hands, placed a bag on his head, shot him twice and then, Ms. Hormozi said, buried his body underneath the garage's concrete floor. "

From Slate: [Anthony "Gaspipe"] Casso, [a Lucchese under-boss] had obtained some stolen Treasury bills and needed a fence. Kaplan [the star witnees] coordinated the sale with the help of Joe Banda, a Hasidic Jewish diamond dealer with connections to bankers overseas. After some initial success, there was a hiccup, and Kaplan suspected that a jeweler brought in by Banda [ie: Israel Greenwald] might turn on Banda, who would implicate Kaplan. He called on Santora: "I asked him if he had the ability to take a murder contract," Kaplan testified. "Without a doubt," Santora replied, and he said he would enlist his cousin and his cousin's partner to help carry it out. The two cops "arrested" the jeweler, put him in a car and delivered him to Santora, who shot him, said Santora, according to Kaplan. The payment was $30,000.

I don't know what it is, but something about this case just horrifies.