Synopses & Reviews
Anthony Gaspipe Casso is currently serving thirteen consecutive life sentences plus 455 years at a federal prison in Colorado. Now, for the first time, the head of a mob family has granted complete and total access to a journalist. Casso has given New York Times bestselling author Philip Carlo the most intimate, personal look into the world of La Cosa Nostra ever seen. This is his shocking story.
From birth, Anthony Casso's mob life was preordained. Michael Casso introduced his young son around South Brooklyn's social clubs, where men of honor did business by shaking pinkie-ringed hands--hands equally at home pilfering stolen goods from the Brooklyn docks or gripping the cold steel of a silenced pistol. Young Anthony watched and listened and decided that he would devote his life to crime.
Casso would prove his talent for earning, concocting ingenious schemes to hijack trucks, rob banks, and bring into New York vast quantities of cocaine, marijuana, and heroin. Casso also had an uncanny ability to work with the other Mafia families, and he forged unusually strong ties with the Russian mob. By the time Casso took the reins of the Lucchese family, he was a seasoned boss, a very dangerous man.
It was a great life--Casso and his beautiful wife, Lillian, had money to burn; Casso and his crew brought in so much cash that he had dozens of large safe-deposit boxes filled with bricks of hundred-dollar bills. But the law finally caught up with him in his New Jersey safe house in 1994. Rather than stoically face the music like the old-time mafiosi he revered, Casso became the thing he most hated--a rat. It broke his family's heart and made the once feared and revered mobsteran object of scorn and disgust among his former friends. For it turned out that a lifetime of street smarts completely failed him in dealing with a group even more cunning and ruthless than the Mafia--the U.S. government.
Detailing Casso's feud with John Gotti and their attempts to kill each other, the Windows Case that led to the beginning of the end for the mob in New York, and Casso's dealings with decorated NYPD officers Lou Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa--the Mafia cops--Gaspipe is the inside story of one man's rise and fall, mirroring the rise and fall of a way of life, a roller-coaster ride into a netherworld few outsiders have ever dared to enter.
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“Carlos book is filled with never-known-before details. He did his homework and wrote a very compelling true crime tale.” CNN
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“This powerful story is required reading for anyone with a yen for the Mafia, the criminal underworld and a law enforcement system struggling to keep up.” Publishers Weekly
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“And if your Sopranos addiction shows no signs of abating, check out Philip Carlos GASPIPE.” Los Angeles Times
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“An exceptionally well-told true crime tale.” Publishers Weekly
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PRAISE FOR THE NIGHT STALKER“Carlo has given us an astonishing portrait of a killer not seen since In Cold Blood.” Denis Hamill, New York Daily News
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“…This book will provide true crime readers chilling inside perspective of a serial killer.” Library Journal
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“A fine entry in the burgeoning field of works tracing the decline of the traditional organized crime families and their once impenetrable structures.” Booklist
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“Weve all read novelists and true crime writers who try to put you inside-the-mind-of-the-serial-killer, but I cant remember one that succeeded with the physical and psychological intimacy of this collaboration between the writer and the killer himself.” New York Press
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“I couldnt put the book down. The details are amazing, told from many points of view; very scary indeed.” Los Angeles Times
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“Absorbing…detailed, Phil Carlo allows the killers grotesque acts to be squarely view.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
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“Carlos book is a chilling, painstakingly researched account of the summer that kept residents of the San Gabriel Valley and later the entire state, captive behind closed doors and windows in fear. I read the book twice I was so taken by it.” Northridge Chronicle
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“... the inside information about the lifestyle, rituals, killings and betrayals is priceless.An authoritative look at a once-rampant predator now at bay.” Kirkus Reviews
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“I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. because I couldnt put the book down. Quite a compelling read. The amount of details is truly amazing.” San Jose Mercury News
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“Carlo tells this amazing story like a novel, with its dramatic ending when a hard-working, lowly police detective eventually got on Kuklinskis trail and hunted the hunter like a real-life version of The Fugitive. A chilling look at the creation of a psychopath.” Toronto Sun
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“Phil Carlo paints a disturbing portrait of cold-blooded killer, Richard Ramirez. In the true crime tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executioners Song, Carlo compellingly tells the ghastly story from numerous points of view, including those of Ramirez and two ingenious sheriffs detectives who finally cracked the case.” People
Synopsis
The boss of New York's infamous Lucchese crime family, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso's life in the Mafia was preordained from birth. His rare talent for "earning"—concocting ingenious schemes to hijack trucks, rob banks, and bring vast quantities of drugs into New York—fueled his unstoppable rise up the ladder of organized crime. A mafioso responsible for at least fifty murders, Casso lived large, with a beautiful wife and money to burn. When the law finally caught up with him in 1994, Casso became the thing he hated most—an informer.
From his blood feud with John Gotti to his dealings with the "Mafia cops," decorated NYPD officers Lou Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, to the Windows case, which marked the beginning of the end for the New York Mob, Gaspipe is Anthony Casso's shocking story—a roller-coaster ride into an exclusive netherworld that reveals the true inner workings of the Mafia, from its inception to the present time.
About the Author
Philip Carlo was born and raised on the mean streets of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn—the same streets Tommy Pitera hailed from. There, Carlo earned a Ph.D. in street smarts, and he escaped a life of crime by writing about it with unusual insight. He is the author of the bestsellers The Night Stalker, about notorious serial killer Richard Ramirez, and The Ice Man, about infamous Mafia contract killer Richard Kuklinski. Carlo lives with his wife, Laura, in New York City.