After a nine-year legal fight, the city agreed Friday to a $5 million settlement with the mother of a Brooklyn man killed because two notorious mob cops confused him with a Mafia target, Brooklyn federal court papers say.
Nicholas Guido, 26, an innocent phone installer, was gunned down in front of his Park Slope family home in 1986 after dirty detectives Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito passed his address to hitmen gunning for a different man with the same name.
His shattered mother, Pauline Pipitone, who held her son’s hand as he died, filed suit in 2006 after the two officers were arrested for carrying out bloody directives for then Lucchese crime boss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso.
‘This tragic matter involves the murder of an innocent man,” said a Law Department spokesman.
“Settling the case was in the city’s best interest.”
Pipitone filed a $50 million wrongful death suit against the city and once personally lobbied formermayor Michael Bloomberg to take action in her case after the years dragged on without a settlement.
The city had long argued that the statute of limitations had run out on the murder and pushed to have separate federal and state suits tossed.
But the Brooklyn federal lawsuit survived the challenges and the city finally agreed to the settlement to compensate the grief-stricken mother.
Eppolito and Caracappa – who still maintain their innocence – were sentenced to life in prison for being involved in a total of eight mob rubouts in 2009.
They remain locked up.
The disgraced officers have cost the city millions before.
It paid out $9.9 million to a former Brooklyn postal worker was framed for a murder by Eppolito to deflect attention from a mob pal.
Barry Gibbs spent 19 years in prison before his conviction was tossed in 2005.