John Gotti’s Untouchable Bodyguard… Butchered by the police HT
April 13th, 1991. Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Early evening. Susan Boreella was in her kitchen on Bay 29th Street, feeding her 2-year-old son, Bobby Jr., her 11-year-old Patrick, was at the movies. She was waiting for her husband to come home from the racetrack. Just another Saturday. Then she heard it, yelling outside.
At first, she thought it was Bobby arguing with the neighbor who kept blocking their driveway, but this was different. She stepped to the window and saw a large man jump into the passenger seat of a gold Lincoln Town Car and peel out fast. She walked to the front door. She stepped outside and there was her husband of 17 years, face down on the pavement next to his 1991 Lincoln.
Seven bullets in him, two in the head, five in the chest, dead in the street he had grown up on. Bartholomew Bobby Boreelloo was 47 years old, 6’3, built like a freight car, and one of the most feared men in the Gambino crime family. He was John Gotti’s personal bodyguard, his driver, his confidant, the man who stood between the boss of all bosses and everything that wanted to hurt him.
For years, rumors swirled in the streets and the tabloids that Gotti himself had ordered the hit. A loose end, a liability. That was the story people told. It was wrong. The truth was far worse. This is the story of how Bobby Boreelloo, the most trusted man and the most powerful crime family in America, was set up and murdered by two active duty New York City Police Department detectives who were secretly on a mob payroll.
This is the story of a 14-year secret, a tape recording that signed a death warrant, and the moment a grieving widow saw a face on television and recognized the cop who had come to her front door just weeks before her husband was killed. This is the story of the mafia cops, and it starts, like most things in organized crime, not with a bullet, but with a choice.
Here is what most people get wrong about this case. The betrayal did not happen in some back alley. It happened in full view. A badge, a uniform, a knock on the front door. The most dangerous weapon in this story was not a 38 caliber pistol. It was a New York City police shield. Bobby Boreella was born on March 31st, 1944 in the streets of South Brooklyn, a neighborhood where the lines between regular life and organized crime were never clearly drawn.
His younger brother, Stevie, ran with the neighborhood kids who would become the Gallow Gang, one of the most violent factions the Columbbo family ever produced. When Crazy Joey Gallow was murdered at Ombberto’s clam house in 1972, it was Stevie Boreell who helped secure the crew’s South Brooklyn rackets.
In the aftermath, Bobby was cut from the same cloth. Big, intimidating, and willing to use his hands, or worse, when the situation called for it. Between 1967 and 1972, Bobby Boreello was arrested six times. Weapons, possession, assault, lararseny, gambling. He wasn’t hiding what he was. He was advertising it in a neighborhood where respect was the only currency that mattered.
A rap sheet like that meant something. It meant you could be trusted with the things that required silence. His reputation as muscle eventually pulled him into the orbit of a rising Gambino Kappo who had the same kind of controlled aggression, the same territorial hunger. His name was John Gotti. The two men connected the way men like them always do, not through formal introductions or business meetings.
Through proximity, shared instincts, and a mutual understanding that they could be useful to each other. Bobby became Gotti’s driver, then his bodyguard. then something closer to a shadow. You have to understand what that relationship meant. In the mafia, being a boss’s personal man is not a job. It is an identity.
Bobby didn’t just protect Gotti. He was with him on weekends in Long Island. He sat at his table. He knew his family, his moods, his enemies, his secrets. When Gotti wanted to see a show, Bobby was in the car. When there was trouble, Bobby was the first call. That kind of proximity is power, but it is also exposure because everything that stuck to Gotti eventually stuck to Bobby, too.
By the mid1 1980s, Gotti was plotting the most audacious power grab in modern mob history. Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino family, the man they called Big Paul, had become a liability in Gotti’s eyes. He was facing federal charges. He was keeping too much distance from the street. He was meeting with a boss of another family.
Gotti decided he had to go. The plan was set. The shooters were chosen. And Bobby Boreelloo, according to federal informant Dominic Loafaro, was one of the men who pulled triggers that night. December 16th, 1985. 5:25 in the evening. Sparks Steakhouse, 210 East 46th Street, Midtown Manhattan. Paul Castellano stepped out of his limousine and was shot dead on the sidewalk.
His driver, Tommy Botti, was killed alongside him. The hit lasted less than 30 seconds. John Gotti, watching from a car nearby, became boss of the Gambino family before the blood dried on 46th Street. And Bobby Borello, if the informant was right, became one of the men who made that possible. But here is the thing the history books tend to skip.
That one night, that one decision started a clock ticking for Bobby Boreelloo, and he had no idea. Now before we go further, let’s remember the name Anthony Casso because everything that follows runs through him. Anthony Salvator Casso, known as Gaspipe, born May 21st, 1942 in South Brooklyn, under boss of the Luces crime family.
A man who confessed to his own involvement in dozens of murders and whose actual body count is a matter of genuine debate among historians of organized crime. Cesso was not just violent. He was methodical. He kept lists. He collected intelligence. He held grudges the way other men hold their breath with absolute discipline until the moment came to release them.
Casso had been closely aligned with Paul Castellano. When Castellano was murdered without commission approval, Casso was furious. This was not just politics. This was an insult to the order of things. And Bobby Boreello, one of the men reportedly standing outside Spark’s steakhouse that night, went on to Casso’s mental ledger.
But Gaspipe was patient. The rage did not translate immediately into action. What eventually moved it from a grudge to a death sentence was a piece of audio tape. At some point, Caso’s people obtained a surveillance recording. On it, Bobby Boreell’s voice could be clearly heard. He was not careful with his words.
He was explicit in threatening Anthony Casso and his family, not vague mob posturing, direct named threats. When Casso heard that tape, the ledger closed. Boreella was not just an enemy. He was a dangerous one who had announced himself, “In that world, you don’t let that stand.” So Casso reached for his most valuable asset, the one that nobody outside a very small circle even knew existed.
Here is where it gets extraordinary. And it is important that you understand exactly how this worked because nothing quite like it had ever happened before. And as federal prosecutors would later put it, nothing like it has happened since. In the early 1980s, a career criminal and mob associate named Burton Kaplan was serving time at the federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
While he was there, he shared time with a man named Frank Santo Jr., A low-level Gambino associate, Santo told Kaplan something that most people would have dismissed as too good to be true. He had a cousin on the outside, a New York City Police Department detective, and that cousin had a partner, and they were both willing to provide services for cash.
Kaplan was skeptical at first. Centur vouched for them. Eventually, Kaplan reached out to Anthony Casso. A deal was struck. Beginning in 1985, the two detectives went on the Lucesi payroll, $4,000 a month, every month for confidential police intelligence, names of informants, details of active investigations, addresses, and when something more specific was needed, considerably more than $4,000.
The two detectives were Louis Epalito and Steven Carakappa. And what made this arrangement so uniquely devastating was who they were and what they could access. Louis Epalito was in a sense born for this. His father was Ralph Epalito known on the street as Fat the Gangster, a Gambino family enforcer. His uncle was Jimmy the Clam Epileto, a Gambino captain.
Other relatives were made members of the family. Epito grew up surrounded by mob life. Then he joined the NYPD in 1969 and by his own estimate became the 11th most decorated cop in the department’s history by the time he retired in 1989. He appeared in mob movies. He was quoted in newspapers. He was loud and visible and confident in a way that was almost a dare.
He published an autobiography in 1992. He called it Mafia Cup. Steven Kakappa was the opposite. quiet, thin enough that his colleagues called him the stick. He favored Italian suits and kept his personal life sealed tight. He had joined the NYPD the same year as Epalito, 1969, but his career took a very different path.
Kakappa ended up in the organized crime homicide unit. He was specifically assigned to track the Lucesi crime family. That means he had full access to the most sensitive intelligence the NYPD possessed about the Lucesi organization. The names of informants buried deep inside the family. The locations of surveillance operations, active federal cases, things that could get people killed.
And he was handing all of it to Anthony Casso, the man he was supposed to be investigating. Between 1985 and 1990, the two detectives are believed to have provided intelligence leading to multiple mob murders. They pulled over Gambino Captain Edward Leno on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, flashed their badges, got him out of his car, and executed him.
In another case, Kakappa gave Casso an address for a man named Nicholas Guido. The address was wrong. A completely innocent man who happened to share the name was shot and killed outside his home. Wrong. Nicholas Guido dead anyway. In all, the pair participated in or facilitated eight murders. They were paid, according to prosecutors, a total of $375,000.
One single murder contract reportedly brought them $70,000. For this particular job, the Boreello job, Casso went through Kaplan, who went to Epalito and Kakappa with the intelligence package they had already compiled. the tape of Boreello threatening Casso, the need to confirm a new address, and then probably the most chilling detail in this entire story, what happened next.
Weeks before April 13th, 1991, a broad-shouldered man appeared at the door of the Boreella home on Bay 29th Street. He was in street clothes. He showed a badge. He pushed his jacket back to show a gun. He said he was a detective. He did not give his name. He asked one question. Does Bobby Boreello live here? Susan Boreello told him her husband was not home.
He said he’d be back. He never came back. Because he had what he needed. The address was confirmed. That man was Louis Epalito. And then the night of April 13th arrived. Bobby had been at Aqueduct Racetrack. He came home as the sun was going down. He pulled up to Bay 29th Street, stepped out of his car, and Frank, Big Frank Larino, the Lucasi captain ordered to carry out the sentence, was waiting.
Two shots to the head, five to the chest. Bobby Boreelloo collapsed beside his 1991 Lincoln Town car and did not get up. Inside the house, his wife was feeding their 2-year-old. Their 11-year-old was at the movies. John Gotti, sitting in a federal holding cell after his December 1990 indictment, received the news and immediately sent word to the Genevese family to make good on old mob business.
He told Stevie Boreello he had permission to take revenge against whoever he needed to. But Gotti didn’t know who gave the order. The streets didn’t know. Even law enforcement didn’t know for certain. There were rumors, rivals, internal Gambino politics. The Lucesy family didn’t claim it. Nobody talked and the case went cold.
For 14 years, Susan Boreelloo and her sons lived with that silence. She knew mob rumors the way all mob widows do. She had her suspicions, but she didn’t know about a badge, a doorstep, and a question asked weeks before her husband died. Now, we need to talk about what it took to crack this case open. And it starts with Gaspipe Casso himself.
Casso was arrested in 1993 and facing overwhelming evidence and a federal case that was airtight, he decided to cooperate with the government. He was placed in witness protection and one of the most explosive pieces of information he gave prosecutors was the existence of two corrupt NYPD detectives on his payroll.
He called them his crystal ball because they could see everything the police were doing before the police did it. But Casso had a problem prosecutors had encountered before with career criminals. He could not stop lying even while cooperating. He fabricated or exaggerated details to make himself more useful. His credibility collapsed in government evaluations.
The Justice Department ultimately declared him a proper agreement failure and tossed his deal. Casso ended up with a 455ear sentence. He died in federal custody on December 15th, 2020 from complications related to CO 19. The thing is, even with Casso discredited, the information about the two detectives stayed in the files and eventually the government found someone who could actually make the case.
Burton Kaplan, the man in the middle. He had kept quiet for about 8 years while in federal prison, but in 2004, he made a decision. He agreed to testify against Epileto and Kerakappa. Kaplan had the receipts. He knew the exact amounts. He knew the dates. He could describe the meetings, the handoffs, the instructions passed from Casso through him to the two detectives and back.
He was not a cooperator looking to minimize his own guilt. He was a man who had carried this secret long enough and finally put it down. Federal agents moved in March of 2005. Louisie Epalito and Steven Kerakappa were arrested at a popular Italian restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada, where both men had retired. Epalito had a million-doll home in a gated community on the edge of the desert.
Carakappa had retired from the force in 1992 and moved in directly across the street. These two men, who had spent years in the shadows of organized crime, were living next door to each other in the Nevada sun. When the arrests made the news, Susan Boreello was watching television. She heard Bobby’s name mentioned in connection with the mafia cop’s case.
She almost turned it off. Then she saw the photograph, a young Louis Apalito. And 14 years of questions collapsed into a single moment of recognition. She called prosecutors immediately. At nearly the same time, her father [clears throat] called her. Nearly hysterical, he had recognized the other detective.
Steven Carakappa was the man who had come to the house the night of the murder, presenting himself as an investigator, interviewing him about what he had seen. The cop sent to investigate the crime was one of the men who had arranged it. Susan Boreello told the New York Post in 2006, he was supposed to protect people.
The trial of Louis Epalito and Steven Kakappa took place in federal court in Brooklyn in 2006. They were convicted on eight counts of murder, rakateeering, obstruction of justice, and multiple other felonies. On March 6th, 2009, Lewis Epalito was sentenced to life in prison plus 100 years and fined more than $4 million.
Steven Kakappa received life plus 80 years and an equal fine. Federal prosecutors described the case as, and these are the actual words used in court, the bloodiest, most violent betrayal of the badge this city has ever seen. Steven Carakappa died in federal custody on April 8th, 2017. Louisie Epalito died in federal custody on November 3rd, 2019.
Frank Big Frank Lesterino, the Lucesy captain who pulled the trigger on Bay 29th Street, died on November 5th, 2022. Burton Kaplan, who flipped after 8 years of silence, had his sentence reduced to 9 years in exchange for his testimony. He was released in 2006 and died in hiding in 2009 at the age of 75. Stevie Boreelloo, Bobby’s brother, remained in Brooklyn.
He stayed involved in the family’s street rackets until the end of his days. Bobby Jr., the 2-year-old in the kitchen that evening, grew up without a father. He was 17 years old when federal agents came to the house, and he nearly turned them away. His mother had to convince him they were real. That detail stays with you.
A teenager in 2005 standing at the door where an NYPD detective once stood in uniform to confirm a kill, refusing to let law enforcement in because he didn’t know if he could trust a badge. Here is what this story actually reveals. Not about Bobby Boreelloo or John Gotti or even Anthony Casso. What it reveals is the specific vulnerability at the heart of any law enforcement effort against organized crime.
The mafia’s greatest weapon in New York during the 1980s was not a gun. It was access. The ability to see inside the machine designed to stop them. Epilito and Kakappa didn’t just commit murders for money. They inverted the entire system. The tools built to investigate crime became instruments of it. The badge became a weapon.
The intelligence network became a hit list. And they were decorated, commended, promoted. Epilito was the 11th most decorated officer in NYPD history. He appeared on a major Hollywood film about the mob. He wrote a book. While he was doing all of this, he was on a $4,000 a month retainer from a man he was supposed to help put in prison.
Organized crime has always recruited judges, lawyers, politicians, port workers, truck drivers. But when you get two active duty detectives inside the organized crime homicide unit with access to the identities of undercover operatives and protected witnesses, you don’t just have corruption. You have a structural failure.
You have the institution turned against itself. Bobby Boreello was a violent man. He was a hitman. He ran extortion and lone sharking rackets. He was not an innocent. But his murder was the product of a corruption so deep that it remained invisible to law enforcement for 14 years. Not because investigators weren’t looking.
Because the people who should have been helping them look were the ones who buried it. That is what makes this case different. Not the violence. Violence is constant in these stories. What makes it different is the architecture of the betrayal. Two men who swore an oath to protect the city used that oath as cover while they helped the city’s most dangerous criminal organization hunt and kill its enemies.
The prosecutor who called it the bloodiest betrayal of the badge in the city’s history was not being dramatic. He was being precise.