On the evening of April 13, 1991, Bobby Borello stepped out of his house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and walked toward his Lincoln Town Car. He was 47 years old, a made man in the Gambino crime family, and for years he had been the personal driver and bodyguard for John Gotti.
Borello never heard the shots. Frank Lasterino opened fire with a .380 automatic, hitting him twice in the head and five times in the torso. Borello dropped beside his own car and bled out on his driveway. His wife Susan ran out of the house. His two-year-old son was inside. The paramedics arrived quickly, but there was nothing they could do.
The killing sent shockwaves through the underworld. Borello was Gotti’s closest protector. If you wanted to get to the Dapper Don, you had to get through Bobby first. The question on the street was simple: who had the nerve to touch him?
For years, the rumor was that Gotti himself ordered the hit because Borello wanted out of the life. The real story was more complicated. It involved two active-duty New York City police detectives who were secretly working as hired scouts for the Lucchese crime family. It was a murder arranged with the help of the very people sworn to investigate it.
Borello was born in South Brooklyn in 1944. He grew up in a world where neighborhood boundaries were drawn in blood and organized crime controlled the streets. His younger brother Stevie was close with the Gallo brothers, and Bobby naturally gravitated toward the enforcer’s role.
Between 1967 and 1972, he was arrested six times on charges including weapons possession, assault, and gambling. Police knew who he was, but they could never prove enough to keep him off the street.
After Crazy Joe Gallo was murdered in 1972, the Gallo crew fractured. Bobby drifted toward the Gambino family, the most powerful crime organization in the country. Around the same time, John Gotti was rising through the ranks, running operations out of the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club in Queens.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Borello became Gotti’s driver and bodyguard. In that role, he was trusted completely. He knew everything because he was everywhere. He was permanently linked to the boss’s fate.
The two spent weekends together on Long Island. They gambled together. They attended shows by singer Jay Black. FBI surveillance teams photographed them together dozens of times. Borello wasn’t just an employee. He was a friend.
On December 24, 1988, Borello was formally made a member of the Gambino family. His induction took place in an apartment on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. The ceremony was administered by Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano. It was a sign that Borello had arrived at the center of American organized crime.
His crew ran trucking, construction, and loan sharking operations across Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, and South Brooklyn. He had a stake in strip clubs up and down the East Coast. He was aggressive about protecting his territory. On one occasion, he opened fire on a Genovese associate in broad daylight on a Brooklyn street. The families negotiated a settlement rather than go to war.
Then came October 4, 1990. A Gambino soldier named Louis DiBono had secured a lucrative contract to install fireproofing foam at the World Trade Center. He had been dodging Gotti’s summons. Gotti gave the contract to Borello. DiBono was shot dead in a parking garage at the World Trade Center.
By late 1990, Borello had been elevated to acting capo of Junior Gotti’s crew. He was one of the most powerful men in the Gambino family. In December 1990, Gotti was indicted on federal charges and taken off the street. Borello held real authority in a suddenly leaderless crime family.
But there was a problem. Gotti’s rise to power had come through the murder of Paul Castellano in 1985. That hit was unsanctioned. It had angered other families, particularly the Lucchese family. And the Lucchese underboss, Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, did not forget.
Casso was arguably the most homicidal figure in the New York mob during the 1980s. He ordered murders with the casual frequency of other men ordering lunch. Prosecutors estimated his total body count at close to 100.
And Casso had a weapon no one else had. Two of them. Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa were active-duty NYPD detectives. They were on Casso’s payroll at $4,000 per month. Starting around 1986, they fed him confidential police intelligence. They pulled files. They identified informants. They provided addresses. They facilitated multiple murders.
By early 1991, Casso decided Borello had to go. Eppolito and Caracappa had provided him with a recording in which Borello could be heard threatening Casso and his family. Casso considered it a death sentence.
Before the shooters were dispatched, Eppolito took on a different role. He drove to Bay 29th Street in uniform and knocked on the door. Susan Borello answered. A big detective pushed his jacket back to show his badge and gun and asked if Bobby Borello lived there. She said her husband wasn’t home. He said he’d be back and drove away.
He had what he needed. The address was confirmed. The contract was placed with Lucchese captain Frank Lasterino.
On April 13, 1991, Borello had spent the afternoon at Aqueduct Racetrack. He came home in the evening. Susan was in the kitchen with their two-year-old son. Lasterino stepped out of the shadows and fired seven rounds.
Susan heard yelling and thought it was a neighbor arguing about the driveway. She stepped outside and saw her husband face down. She scooped up her son and called 911. She collapsed when police told her he was dead.
Gotti got the news in jail. He was furious. He sent word that Stevie Borello had permission to avenge his brother’s death. But for 14 years, nobody could tell Susan who pulled the trigger or why.
That changed in March 2005. DEA and FBI agents arrested Eppolito and Caracappa in Las Vegas, where both men had retired. The federal indictment against them was one of the most extraordinary documents in the history of American law enforcement. Eight murders, two attempted murders, murder conspiracy, obstruction of justice, drug distribution, and money laundering.
The two detectives who were supposed to protect New York City had spent years operating as contract killers for the Lucchese family. Borello’s murder was named in the original indictment. Prosecutors described how the detectives accepted the contract to locate Borello and verified his address.
Susan Borello found out in 2005, 14 years after burying her husband. When she saw Eppolito’s picture in the newspaper, she recognized him immediately. The big detective who had knocked on her door and asked if her husband was home.
Her father also recognized Caracappa. He was the cop who had questioned him at the crime scene the night Bobby was killed. The men who came to investigate the murder were the men who had helped arrange it.
Eppolito and Caracappa were convicted on all counts in 2006. A federal judge sentenced both men to life in prison plus 80 years and fined each more than $4 million.
Casso turned federal informant in 1994. He pleaded guilty to 70 crimes, including 15 murders. He was sentenced to 455 years in prison and died in custody on December 15, 2020.
Lasterino, the man who pulled the trigger, eventually pleaded guilty to multiple murders and racketeering charges.
Stevie Borello remained active in the Gambino family for years after his brother’s death.
John Gotti was convicted on April 2, 1992, on charges including five murders, conspiracy, racketeering, tax evasion, illegal gambling, and extortion. He received life in prison without parole. He died on June 10, 2002. He never walked free.