Free Friends of the Family by Tommy Dades

was all the old files. They contained every bit of evidence that had been gathered against the cops. This included Casso’s 302s and all the supporting documents, the reports of any independent attempts to verify Casso’s claims, transcriptions of interviews, the cops’ personnel folders, maybe some newspaper clippings, and all the official reports and notes on the investigation of the murder of Jimmy Hydell. The Feds had a lot of the material. The Brooklyn DA’s office had some of it in its archives; Tommy had his own files, consisting of his own notes and newspaper clippings collected throughout his career, and Ponzi had his clippings. But the Feds would have the most complete files; as far as anybody knew they hadn’t been touched in a decade and they were probably stuffed into the back of a cabinet, maybe like a Sleeping Beauty, just waiting for the right prince to come along.
    To begin, Ponzi, Dades, or Vecchione would have to make an official request for the files to the United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District, specifically to federal prosecutor Mark Feldman. For Vecchione that was a slight problem.
    Mark Feldman was another kid from Brooklyn who went way back withall the big players in this case—including Eppolito. Years earlier he had run the Rackets Bureau in the Brooklyn DA’s office. And just as Vecchione had gotten to know Detective Tommy Dades, Feldman had gotten friendly with Detective Louis Eppolito. “One of the reasons we all knew Louis so well,” Feldman was quoted as saying in Mafia Cop, “was because his relatives kept turning up dead.”
    In his book, Eppolito describes Feldman as “a tough Jew if I ever met one.” Their relationship, apparently, was cordial, respectful, and strictly professional. When Eppolito needed legal advice, just as Dades turned to Vecchione, Eppolito turned to Mark Feldman.
    Dades agreed with Eppolito’s assessment of Feldman, believing, he says, “Mark was probably the best prosecutor of organized crime cases in New York. Bar none. We got to know each other in the 1990s, while I was part of a unique organized-crime task force in the early 1990s. Everybody hears the stories about the battles between the Feds and the state, but this was an unbelievably productive team, consisting of FBI agents and DEA agents and NYPD detectives. It was run by a U.S. Attorney named Jim Walden and Chris Blank, who was cross-designated from the Brooklyn DA’s office.
    “We probably created the biggest marriage between the state and the Feds that they’ve had in years. It was one big happy family. We were taking down cases left and right with no arguments, no problems, because it was a complete team effort. We knew all the players in organized crime. We had lists of old homicides. We’d decide, let’s solve this one—and we did. It was an amazing group and it worked because nobody was fighting for glory. Eventually we indicted forty Luccheses.
    “Mark Feldman was a big part of that team.”
    While Dades and Feldman were friends, Mike Vecchione’s relationship with Feldman was strained. At best. The two men had started their careers in the Brooklyn DA’s office at roughly the same time. For several years both Vecchione and Feldman had worked in the Homicide Bureau. Vecchione remembers very well how supportive Mark Feldman had been on the toughest day of his legal career. “I was trying a paroled criminal for the cold-blooded murders of two police officers. I had reliable witnesses and I had substantial forensic evidence—but I also had a racially mixed jury at a time when Brooklyn was on the edge of exploding.
    “The trial lasted five weeks and the jury reached its verdict on a Saturday morning. Not guilty. I couldn’t believe it. Not guilty? I was stunned. This scumbag had killed two police officers and he was going to walk out of that courtroom. I was just overwhelmed with emotion; it was my responsibility to speak for those two cops and I’d failed. For