Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation

2026 Edgar Award Finalist!

For the first time in forty years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell unearths the full story behind two ruthless New York cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia.

No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn.

For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball: Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once.

Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow up by Tommy Dades, a cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly thirty years after their crimes took place.

Cannell’s Blood and the Badge is based on entirely new research and never-before-released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy ＂the Bull＂ Gravano. Eppolito and Caracappa’s story is more relevant than ever as police conduct comes under ever-increasing scrutiny.

MICHAEL CANNELL is the author of A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc, and three other works of non-fiction. He has worked as an editor at The New York Times and contributed to The New Yorker and many other publications. He lives in New York City.