Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso gets revenge on Jimmy Hydell

Excerpt from Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss by Philip Carlo

On September 14, 1986, the now forty-four-year-old Anthony Casso very nearly lost his life.

A hit team led by a Brooklyn killer named James Hydell was given a contract to murder Anthony Casso. Hydell knew this was a particularly dangerous business, and there would only be one shot at killing him. Hydell also knew the contract was coming from the Gambino crime family. Hydell, a psychopathic Mafia wannabe, was chosen for this job because he didn’t have the good sense not to try to kill Gaspipe and he was just ballsy enough to pull it off. He was given the contract by Gambino capo Angelo “Quack Quack” Ruggiero. Ruggiero would later say that he did this without John Gotti’s blessing, that Gaspipe was taking a larger piece of the heroin pie the Gambino and Lucchese families shared, and that he felt Casso was an imminent threat to the well-being of the Gambino family. Ruggiero’s days were numbered.

September 14 was a quiet, lazy Sunday, a balmy day. Anthony had dinner at home with his family—his wife, Lillian; his son, Anthony Junior, age thirteen; and his daughter, Jolene, age sixteen.

James Hydell had been trying to murder Gaspipe for several weeks now. He knew if he didn’t pull it off soon, Gaspipe might very well learn of the contract and strike first. Casso had numerous plants and contacts in all of the families, and the FBI and NYPD as well; time was definitely on his side. Hydell knew he was playing a deadly game here and he was intent upon winning it. This murder, he was sure, would immediately raise his stature in the underworld and would ensure that his earning capacity would increase exponentially. He would be respected; he would be rich; he could walk with his head higher. People would point at him and stare in awe.

Hydell had tried, without luck, to find out where Gaspipe lived. He had, however, learned on Friday, September 12, that Casso would be meeting Fat Vinny, a Gambino thief who had access to stolen bearer bonds he regularly sold to Casso, at the Golden Ox on Sunday, the fourteenth.

The Golden Ox was a restaurant at East Seventy-second Street and Veterans Avenue, a mile as the crow flies from Casso’s home at East Seventy-second Street.

Casso, himself a consummate professional assassin, knew intimately the rhythm of murder—efficiently taking a human life when and where and how the job called for. As a matter of course, he constantly checked the rearview mirror, people’s body English and their eyes, and made sure he knew all that was going on around him. All this he did automatically, unconsciously…

When Anthony got up to leave ten minutes before eight that balmy Sunday evening, Lillian asked him to pick up some Carvel ice cream. He said he would and left, having no idea that four tense men with very bad intentions, guns cocked and ready, were waiting to kill him.

Casso slowly approached the Golden Ox Restaurant. It was in a small triangular shopping center. He passed it and made sure all was clear, his dark eyes automatically reading and analyzing what he saw. He made a U-turn a block away, just in front of Hydell’s car at Seventy-first Street. Hydell knew Casso was driving a tan Lincoln Town Car; he now saw Casso, and he and his cohorts quickly ducked down in time and Casso did not make them. Hydell had a pump shotgun clutched in his hands loaded with double-ought buckshot; it was a weapon that could blow a cantaloupe-sized hole in a man and readily tear off an arm or a leg. Casso made his way west along Veterans Avenue. He eased the Town Car into a bus stop, parked, and turned off the engine. This was an unusually wide two-way street and was virtually abandoned on this mid-September night. Stars glimmered in a cloudless black velvet sky. The weather was balmy and pleasant.

Now Casso made the dark-windowed car slowly creeping up alongside his car, the ominous barrel of a pump-action shotgun suddenly and insidiously protruding from the open window. Before he could reach for his gun under the seat, the car pulled up alongside and a thunderous fusillade tore into Casso’s car.

Luck was with Casso: by his leaning back, the wide window post protected his head. Bullets and buckshot ripped through the doors, shattered windows. Gaspipe was hit. He got low and rolled catlike to the passenger side and opened the door. The driver had come too close to Gaspipe’s car and the shooters could not open the doors. They were boxed in—an error in judgment that no doubt saved Casso’s life. Casso got out of the car and, staying low, swiftly running in a zigzag pattern, took off like a bat out of hell. The shooter’s car moved several feet. Hydell and Nicky Guido jumped from the car, firing recklessly at Gaspipe. He was hit several times more but continued to run with amazing speed.

He ran through the parking lot and ducked into the Golden Ox Restaurant. Bullets and buckshot shattered the glass of the front door. Like a madman, covered in blood, Casso tore through the restaurant, scaring to no end the wide-eyed patrons. He pulled a tablecloth from a table and used it to slow the bleeding. The restaurant had a rear entrance that opened onto Avenue U. Just near this rear door, Casso ducked into a flight of steep stairs that led to the basement. Having no idea of how seriously he was shot, Casso hid in the restaurant’s freezer. He knew the cops would soon be there and wanted nothing to do with them. At this point he had no idea who had tried to kill him but if he lived, if he made it through this, he’d find them and make them pay dearly—profoundly.

Tough as rusted barbed wire, Gaspipe stoically sat on a barrel, seething, waiting for the hurly-burly above him to die down. The cold inhibited the bleeding somewhat, but he could feel himself growing weaker; rage and anger and adrenaline—pure hatred—kept him awake and alert.

Who? he wondered. Who would order this? His mind played over the possibilities—John Gotti, Gigante, someone in his own family—who? His mind reeled with questions.

When Casso was sure the police had gone—they had assumed he’d gone out the back door—he hurried from the freezer and made his way to Avenue U. He walked one block, found a pay phone, and called Vic Amuso, the head of the family, who hurried right over.

“Jesus H. Christ, what happened?” Vic asked, shocked at Casso’s condition. He quickly drove him to Kings Hospital.

At the hospital, Casso explained that he’d been shot in a robbery attempt, still not knowing he’d actually been hit six times. The wounds were cleaned and dressed. Casso refused to let the doctors x-ray him or remove the slugs. He didn’t want the slugs to be able to be used as evidence. Casso spent the night there. In the morning he left and went back home, the bullets still lodged in him, to his wife and children. Lillian had been worried sick and was appalled by his wounds, but as always she was helpful and supportive—she did not recriminate or condemn him. She was his helpmate and support no matter what, through thick and thin, till death do them part. The following day, Casso went to his own doctor, who arranged for a surgeon friend of his to come to the office and remove the six slugs.

Now it was Casso’s turn to become the hunter, and everyone in LCN knew it—knew that Gaspipe had been shot numerous times, knew that he had survived, knew that heads would roll…literally. Casso immediately put the word out that he wanted to know who was behind the assassination attempt. The drums of the Mafia jungle resonated with that question.

More than anyone else in organized crime, Casso had law enforcement contacts, stoolies, plants everywhere. He reached out to them.

Greg Scarpa, the fierce, two-fisted war captain on the Persico side of the Colombo crime family (Vic Orena headed the Orena faction), was six feet, two inches and broad-shouldered and had a fierce countenance, dark eyes, and thinning black hair. Little if anything scared this man. He had, from the early 1960s on, unbeknownst to LCN, secretly worked with the FBI when it was convenient. He was a registered FBI informant, though he was very careful about what he told his “handlers.”

More important, Scarpa had up-to-date information from various FBI agents.

As mentioned earlier, Casso and Scarpa were close. It was Scarpa who first told Casso that a Brooklyn tough named James Hydell was responsible for the attempt on Gaspipe’s life. Casso knew Hydell in passing and didn’t like anything about him; he knew, for instance, that Hydell had abducted a young woman, a neighborhood girl, from a bus stop near the 19th Hole when she was on her way to work, raped her, and shot her to death.

Hydell hung out, Casso also knew, at a candy store on Eighty-sixth Street, Josie’s, a stone’s throw away from the 19th Hole.

Why, Casso wondered, would someone with his head on his shoulders give an important contract like his killing to a lowly tough like James Hydell?

It made little sense. The only reason, he decided, was because Hydell was to be killed after he, Casso, was dead, thus ending any connection to the people who ordered the hit. It was them, their identity Casso was after. Hydell, Casso knew, was a mere cog in the wheel that had tried to crush him. He would, he vowed, find out who was behind the hit. Rather than just murder Hydell, Casso planned to abduct him and get him to a safe house, where he could properly exact revenge and, more important, find out who was really behind the contract.

Gaspipe first turned to FBI agent Doug McCane, who had been on the Lucchese payroll for ten years. He met McCane at an out-of-the-way diner in Flatbush and told him what he knew. Agent McCane promised to get back to Casso soon, knowing how important this was, because both he and Casso knew Hydell would more than likely make a second attempt on Casso’s life.

For Hydell, the clock was ticking; it was just a matter of time.

Gaspipe soon found out that James Hydell lived with his mother on Staten Island, that he was always heavily armed, and that he had an uncle, Donny Marino, who was connected to the Gambino family. Hmm…

Gaspipe now turned to one of his secret weapons, the two crooked NYPD detectives he had on his payroll, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa. Casso ordered James Hydell to be picked up and brought to him. “Make sure he’s alive,” he said through clenched teeth.

Stone-faced and deadly serious, playing both sides of the fence, thinking they were invincible, above the law, Detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Carracapa were cruising Brooklyn and Staten Island streets looking for James Hydell. They had staked out his hangouts, his mother’s home. At one point Hydell’s mother actually walked up to them and questioned the two detectives. They were so obvious, bold…and outright arrogant.

Eppolito was a large, heavyset man. He had a huge round head, three double chins, and large, bulbous fish eyes. In his younger days he had been a muscular weight lifter; now he was an aging, overweight NYPD detective. He had written a book, Mafia Cop, and told how he had relatives who were La Cosa Nostra. Stephen Caracappa, tall and thin, was attached to the organized crime unit. He had a gaunt face, a long, straight nose, and dark circles under his eyes. Both of them had a sour sneer about their faces.

The two cops finally located Hydell in a Brooklyn Laundromat, washing his clothes. They showed their badges and placed him under arrest. He went along with them quietly, having no idea of the living hell that awaited him. He was cuffed and placed in the back of the unmarked police car…business as usual.

“What’s this about?” Hydell asked. “You’ll find out,” Eppolito menacingly assured him.

The two crooked detectives drove to a desolate Brooklyn garage. There they demanded Hydell get out of the car. Now Hydell knew that something wasn’t right, that he was in serious trouble. His worries were compounded a hundredfold when he was roughly placed in the trunk of the car. “Keep quiet!” Caracappa threatened him in little more than a whispered growl. On the evening of October 18, 1986, the two NYPD detectives pulled into the parking lot of Toys “R” Us in Mill Basin. Casso was sitting in a car there waiting for him, anxious to get his hands on Hydell. While this was about revenge in a big way, this was also about learning all there was to know about who exactly ordered the hit. Hydell, he knew, was a mere triggerman. Casso still was not sure just who had tried to kill him, if it was Gotti, Gigante, someone in his own family…perhaps a relative of one of the many he had personally killed or had put to death, but he would find out, of this he was certain. Gaspipe took the car Hydell was in and drove it to the safe house in Mill Basin.

The quiet streets of Mill Basin were lined with trees filled with bright yellow leaves. As strong winds blew, the leaves took flight. In the garage of the safe house, Gaspipe opened the trunk, his face set in a pockmarked granite mask. Anger turned him red. Adrenaline shot through his system. When Hydell saw Casso sneering at him, reaching for him, his worst nightmare was realized; he was looking at the devil himself, he knew. Casso effortlessly pulled Hydell from the trunk by his thick, long hair, beat him with fists, then dragged him to a finished basement where he had laid out a plastic tarp.

“Who,” Gaspipe demanded, “put you up to it?” Hydell immediately spilled the beans, saying that a capo in the Gambino family, Angelo Quack Quack Ruggiero, had given Michael Paradiso and him the contract. Ruggiero was nicknamed Quack Quack because he had an amazing way of ducking indictments. Hydell also said that Nicky Guido and Robert Bering—a retired cop—were in the car. Bering was driving. There was a fourth man, Sammy Russo, driving a second car that would assist in the getaway.

This confirmed what Casso had suspected all along—that John Gotti was behind the attempt on his life. As Hydell moaned, Gaspipe paced back and forth, thinking this out, looking at it from different perspectives. Contrary to what was commonly believed about Casso—that he was a ruthless psychopath, an out-of-control killing machine—he was in fact a judicious, particularly cunning, pensive man…a wily mafioso who kept his cards close to his thickly muscled chest. He would not run into this headfirst; he would be careful. He decided to send for John Gotti and his new underboss, Sammy the Bull Gravano, to hear what they had to say after they heard Hydell, who didn’t quite look human anymore. Hydell was so beaten and battered, his eyes were swollen shut and he had few teeth left in his mouth…a pitiful sight. Casso would later explain that he even felt sorry for him.

Casso next dispatched Vic D’Arco, a trusted Lucchese soldier, to invite Gotti and Gravano to come hear what Hydell was laying down. Gotti, not surprisingly, flat-out refused to come see Gaspipe and listen to Hydell. However, he was not about to ignore Casso because he knew that could spark a full-scale war among the Gambino, Lucchese, and Genovese families. Gotti was sure he’d win a war with any one family, but not with two families at one time. Instead, he sent two of his most trusted, loyal captains, Joseph “Joe Butch” Corrao and “Good Looking” Jack Giordano. By now nearly forty-eight hours had gone by. Hydell’s head had ballooned to obscene proportions. His face was a mass of black and blues, and the whites of his eyes were filled with crimson blood. Even Corrao and Giordano, two seasoned street guys, genuinely tough men, groaned at the shocking sight of Hydell when they saw him.

“Tell them what you told me,” Casso ordered, still seething with anger, and Hydell dutifully told the two Gambino capos the story he’d told Casso. Wary, on guard, they listened. When Hydell finished, Gaspipe pulled a 9mm Beretta from his waistband and shot Hydell fifteen more times, finally killing him. Both Corrao and Giordano assured Casso that Gotti would immediately learn about this, that John had nothing to do with any of it, and that they’d make certain Ruggiero was dealt with properly—severely. “I want his head,” Gaspipe said in a calm, chilled voice. “It’s yours,” Giardano said. They left.

Gaspipe turned Hydell’s body over to Anthony and Joey Senter. They cut him up and left pieces of him in a Brooklyn landfill. Thus, the stage was set for an epic underworld drama of Shakespearean proportions, the likes of which the world had never seen.