Burton Kaplan
PER
Kaplan Burton Kaplan
Speaking concisely with his hands in his lap, the witness, Burton Kaplan, said the two detectives not only shot and killed a Gambino family captain and a jeweler from Long Island, but also passed on secret police intelligence to Anthony Casso, the Luchese underboss, who used it to track down his own murder victims. Mr. Kaplan said that if it had something to do with him and they were informants, Mr. Casso had them killed. Yesterday's testimony was merely the starter course to Mr. Kaplan's critical turn on the witness stand. Today he is expected to lay out a richer version of his ties to Louis J. Eppolito, 57, and Stephen Caracappa, 64, whom he said he met after becoming acquainted with Mr. Eppolito's cousin Frank Santora Jr. in the Allenwood Prison Camp in Pennsylvania in 1982. Burton Kaplan, the witness, said the two detectives shot and killed a Gambino family captain and a jeweler from Long Island and passed on secret police intelligence to Anthony Casso, the Luchese underboss. He lay out a richer version of his ties to Mr. Eppolito, 57, and Mr. Caracappa, 64, whom he said he met after becoming acquainted with Mr. Eppolito's cousin Frank Santora Jr. in the Allenwood Prison Camp. He is serving a 27-year prison term for trafficking in as much as 13,000 pounds of marijuana. It was then, prosecutors say, that he gave them and Mr. Santora a $30,000 contract to kill a Long Island jeweler named Israel Greenwald, whose body was found last year. He said he gave the two men a contract to murder Edward Lino, a dapper and aggressive Gambino family soldier.