Last June, a pair of investigators working for rival prosecutors in Brooklyn had a short but significant phone call concerning the case that had vexed both men for years – the unresolved corruption probe of NYPD Detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa. 

The call took place shortly after Burton Kaplan, the long-suspected intermediary between the ex-detectives and Luchese underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso, had been transferred from a federal prison in Pennsylvania to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

From his office on Pierrepont Street, William Oldham, an investigator for U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, dialed up Joseph Ponzi, an investigator for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office on Jay Street, a few blocks away. Oldham asked his counterpart what he was up to, law enforcement sources told Gang Land. 

The men were hardly friends. Their respective bosses often competed for juicy cases, but the investigators had been seeing more and more of each other lately. Both were working doggedly, chasing ghosts, trying to put together a case against Eppolito and Caracappa by using a bunch of leads that had led nowhere for a decade.

“What am I doing now?” said Ponzi, according to sources familiar with the conversation. “I’m juggling a million things, supervising a bunch of things, why?”

“Want to take a ride with me? Go over and see that guy?” replied Oldham.

Minutes later, Oldham was driving Ponzi to the Sunset Park lockup to see Kaplan,

the old-school, old fashioned gangster who, since the mid-1990s, had resisted all kinds of pressure from all kinds of federal agents and prosecutors – including Oldham – to cooperate. 

A former NYPD Detective, Oldham had visited Kaplan a few times at the Allenwood facility, where he’d been housed since he was sentenced to 27 years for drug trafficking in 1998. Kaplan didn’t know it, but Oldham, who had been investigating the ex-detectives (left) since then, had quietly arranged his transfer to the MDC, sources said.

Ponzi, Chief Investigator for Brooklyn DA Joe Hynes, had never seen or spoken to Kaplan. But the veteran detective knew that no matter how much evidence his office, and a re-energized multi-agency task force could gather against the ex-detectives, Kaplan was the key to making a case that would stick. He was eager to eyeball him.

Like Oldham, who had worked at the same elite Major Case Squad as Caracappa, Ponzi also had a personal interest in the case. In “Mafia Cop,” Eppolito’s 1992 autobiography, the since-disgraced detective had sent his “respect” to Ponzi’s father Larry, an NYPD Sergeant, for teaching him “how to be a detective.” 

Neither Ponzi (right) nor Oldham would discuss the matter, but sources familiar with the case said that even though no commitments were made during the 90 minute session, both investigators were convinced that Kaplan had decided to cooperate. 

During the meeting, sources said, Kaplan expressed annoyance with Oldham, and spoke primarily to the

newcomer into his life, quickly developing a rapport with the seasoned and polished Ponzi.

“It was like they were the only two people in the room,” is how one law enforcement source put it. 

Oldham, meanwhile, the “bad cop” in the mix, saw how well Ponzi was doing, “and kept his mouth shut,” said the source. 

As the varied partners in the investigation – who include the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI – decided how best to proceed in the wake of this major development, prison officials shipped Kaplan to a federal prison in Glenville, West Virginia. 

A few weeks later, sources said, Ponzi and a contingent from Mauskopf’s office, including organized crime supervisor Mark Feldman and assistant U.S. attorney Robert Henoch, traveled to Glenville and firmed up a tentative agreement that called for Kaplan to testify against Eppolito and Caracappa.

For six years, Kaplan, described by one law enforcement source as “a tough old guy with loyalties that are unheard of in this day and age,” had spurned all efforts to turn him, remaining loyal to his wiseguy collaborators, even after he received a 27 year sentence for selling marijuana, and even after his mob pals plotted to kill him. 

In his follow-up discussions with Ponzi and the feds at the Glenville facility, however, Kaplan finally crossed the line. By August, sources said, he had signed a cooperation agreement. He pleaded guilty to murder and racketeering charges before Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, (left) and a long-derailed investigation into the most stunning corruption case in the history of the NYPD, was on track.

Tenacious police work certainly helped bring Kaplan into the fold last summer, but sources say another factor had a lot to do with his decision to cooperate. 

Several months earlier, Kaplan’s only child, Deborah, adopted a son, making the aging gangster a grandfather for the first time. 

Knowledgeable sources tell Gang Land that Kaplan was “absolutely mortified” at the thought of not seeing his grandson, or having to see him in prison.

“I think he’d still be playing pinochle in prison if it weren’t for that,” said one source.