Att'y burns 'Mafia cops'

Backs middleman claim

BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A topnotch defense attorney turned prosecution witness yesterday at the Mafia cops trial, backing up ex-client Burton Kaplan's claim he was the middleman between the mob and two allegedly crooked detectives.
In an unusual move, lawyer Judd Burstein went to prosecutors last year and suggested they ask Kaplan to waive his attorney-client privilege now that he was the government's chief witness in the Mafia cops case.

He agreed, paving the way for Burstein to corroborate Kaplan's testimony linking ex-cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa to numerous gangland killings when they were on the force.

The lawyer said he began representing Kaplan in 1985.

"It never even crossed my mind that he had a propensity toward violence," said Burstein, a noted defender who has handled mob, white-collar and big-money divorce cases.

Then after published reports in 1994 that Luchese crime family capo Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso was spilling his guts about two dirty cops on his payroll, Kaplan revealed a dark secret to his lawyer.

"He said, 'This is a big problem for me,'" Burstein said. "'I was the go-between for Casso and these two cops.'"

Kaplan adamantly refused to cooperate - even after he drew a 27-year sentence for drug trafficking - until 2004, when he thought Eppolito or Caracappa was going to rat him out.

Eppolito lawyer Bruce Cutler suggested Burstein came forward because he had read media reports last summer that the judge might toss the case on a legal technicality.

Another government witness, Steven Corso, testified yesterday how Eppolito was so desperate to raise cash for his screenplay business he was willing to launder drug money and involve his son Anthony in a drug deal.

Corso, a crooked accountant working undercover, wanted to buy designer drugs for some investors he claimed were coming to Las Vegas, where Eppolito and Caracappa had moved after retiring from the NYPD.

"Tony can handle that for you," Eppolito told Corso, who even recorded Eppolito in a hospital where the ex-cop was recovering from heart surgery.

Where the money was coming from was of no issue to Eppolito, according to recordings played yesterday.

"Do you care what [the investor] does for a living?" Corso asks Eppolito on one tape.

"If this is the biggest drug dealer in the United States, I don't give a f--k," Eppolito responds, adding, "If you said to me, 'Lou, I wanna introduce you to Jack Smith, he wants to invest in this film,' [and] he says '$75,000 comes in a f-----g shoebox,' that's fine with me, I don't care."

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