Many years before he hooked up with celebrated “Mafia Cop” Louis Eppolito, Stephen Caracappa was already a pretty sophisticated criminal with a rap sheet that originally kept him from being hired by the New York City Police Department, Gang Land has learned. 

On January 5, 1960, nine years before he and Eppolito would join the NYPD, police arrested Caracappa (right) on grand larceny charges for a commercial burglary on Staten Island, where the 18-year-old Caracappa lived at the time, according to court records obtained by Gang Land.

At the time of his arrest, Caracappa, who had dropped out of New Dorp High School at age 16, “was working with his father as a laborer in New Jersey,” according to court papers filed in the murder and racketeering case that is slated to begin later this month. 

Two weeks later, a Staten Island grand jury indicted Caracappa and a cohort on felony grand larceny charges for what one police source described as a “well-planned, well-organized commercial burglary” that included lumber and other construction materials.

Records of the case are sealed, but according to ledgers maintained at Staten Island Supreme Court, Caracappa was declared a “youthful offender” and the felony charges were dropped. On June 17, 1960, he pleaded guilty to

misdemeanor charges and was sentenced to probation by Judge James C. Crane. 

Since the plea bargain called for no jail time, NYPD hiring practices at the time did not preclude Caracappa from becoming a police officer. Even so, sources said, he was rejected on his first go-round because the assigned applicant investigator determined that the crime was neither a penny-ante offense nor the work of amateurs but a sophisticated operation. 

“They rented a truck to pull off the heist and apparently stole building materials for which they had a buyer,” the source added. 

Caracappa’s attorney Edward Hayes (left) downplayed the burglary rap as a “youthful offense, not a sophisticated crime.” Hayes insisted that the old conviction was not an indicator that his client was a criminal who joined the police department to line his own pockets, as authorities asserted when they unveiled the stunning allegations against the ex-detectives. “He stole insulation and wallboard, not machinery,” said Hayes. 

“This is not a case where the defendants have clearly been involved in organized crime since childhood. Steve Caracappa, until the government

raised these allegations was universally regarded as a hero,” he said.

Sources placed the value of the stolen merchandise as “thousands of dollars” but Gang Land could not determine the actual amount or the identity of Caracappa’s accomplice in the 1960 caper. Records for both defendants were sealed in the 1970s, according to Joseph Como, Chief Clerk of the Staten Island Supreme Court. 

At the time of the of the burglary, a second degree grand larceny charge required the total value of the stolen property to be greater than $100, according to NYU Law School Professor Stephen Gillers.

Since the conviction happened 19 years before the alleged racketeering conspiracy began, prosecutors could not even consider introducing evidence of it at the upcoming trial unless Caracappa were to testify in his own defense – an extremely unlikely event. 

Last month, in an appearance that has elicited assessments too numerous and too varied to categorize, Caracappa publicly declared his innocence to CBS Newsman Ed Bradley on “60 Minutes.” The most poignant remark that Gang Land has heard came from a longtime NYPD detective regarding Caracappa’s assertion that he never “disgraced the badge.”

“I never called my shield a badge, and in all my years on the job I never heard a cop use the word badge. It’s a shield,” the detective said. 

Last week, prosecutors alerted Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein that they want to introduce evidence that Caracappa and Eppolito (right) were involved in five uncharged slayings in addition to eight murders the indictment alleges they committed from 1986 to 1990. 

To help prove their case, prosecutors Mitra Hormozi, Robert Henoch and Daniel Wenner also want to introduce testimony that no crime was too small for the Mafia Cops during their 25-year-long racketeering conspiracy. Among other crimes, Eppolito and Caracappa allegedly robbed delis, assaulted prostitutes, bribed a robbery suspect, threatened numerous people, used and sold drugs and evaded taxes on legal and illegal income.

Hayes and Eppolito’s lawyer, Bruce Cutler, will ask Weinstein to severely limit the number of uncharged crimes tomorrow.

Hayes ripped the recent submission, which also alleges that Caracappa ran a shady private detective agency that used retired detectives, saying it “has tarred a number of very talented NYC police officers.” The allegations are a smear against the entire NYPD, said Hayes, because for Caracappa and Eppolito to have committed these crimes, “it would be as if everyone in the NYPD was asleep at the switch.”

“This case has been transformed from an attack on these two detectives into a broad based attack on the entire police department in an attempt to vindicate the Justice Department’s policy of giving hoodlums millions of dollars to spin tales from the witness stand,” said Hayes. For example, said Hayes, the feds have spent $2 million to provide for the expenses related to the years of trial testimony by onetime Luchese acting Luchese boss Alphonse (Little Al) D’Arco, (left)  who began cooperating in 1991. 

Mob lawyer Joseph R. Corozzo, (left) whom the feds describe as “house counsel” for the Gambino family, stuck it to the government last week in a trial that had nothing to do with so-called traditional organized crime.

The beleaguered attorney, whose father and uncle are heavyweight Gambino mobsters, won an acquittal for Kenrick Caesar, a client who was charged with being part of a drug smuggling conspiracy when a half a ton of marijuana was delivered last May to a garage in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn that he owned.

The jury acquitted Caesar, even though he was seen wearing a mechanic’s uniform engaging in an animated discussion with the truck driver minutes before he drove the truck into Caesar’s garage to unload the load of marijuana.

This week, the feds pushed their effort to bounce Corozzo from the racketeering and murder trial of Dominick (Skinny Dom) Pizzonia, (right) not because of his prowess as an attorney, they say, but due to conflicts of interest he has with the crime family and a key witness in the case, turncoat Gambino capo Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo. 

DiLeonardo (left) testified that he hired Corozzo to do work for him in 2001, and that the attorney has been on the crime family’s payroll since he was admitted to the bar in 1992. On one occasion, DiLeonardo said, he saw then-acting boss John A. (Junior) Gotti give the lawyer $4000 out of $10,000 tribute that Mikey Scars had just given Junior while the three men were having dinner at a Queens restaurant.

Corozzo, who was represented at the hearing by Henry Mazurek, denies ever representing DiLeonardo. Corozzo argues that since his client waives any other possible conflicts the lawyer may have, he should be allowed to remain in the case. Judge Weinstein reserved a final decision in the matter.