Anthony Casso

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Anthony 'Gaspipe' Casso.

Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (b. May 21, 1940) was a New York mobster and a member in the Lucchese crime family.

With a reputation as one of the most violent enforcers of the Lucchese crime family, Casso rose to become one of the criminal organizations leading Capo's. During his days as a safecracker and enforcer along Brooklyn's Red Hook waterfront, Casso's became known in the area for his violent temper and a piece of gas pipe he used regularly to threaten loanshark victims and suspected informers.

Due to his close association with then Lucchese leader Vic Amuso, Casso became the family Underboss. During this time, Casso had been gaining attention for his glamorous lifestyle wearing expensive clothes and jewelry (including a diamond ring worth $500,000); running restaurant tabs up to thousands of dollars and owning a mansion in an exclusive upscale Brooklyn neighborhood.

Following the imprisonment of Amuso in 1991, Casso became acting boss of the family. However, under murder and racketeering charges, Casso fled the state. While evading authorities for over three years, Casso maintained control over the Lucchese family reportedly ordering 11 deaths as well as conspiring with Genovese leader Vincent "Chin" Gigante in a possible retaliation against Gambino leader John Gotti (who had murdered former leader Paul Castellano in order to gain leadership of the crime family, defying the National Commission's edict for prior approval of a crime family leader's murder). Eventually arrested at a safehouse in Mount Olivet, New Jersey in 1994, he agreed to become a government informant in exchange for dropping a life imprisonment sentence against him and entered the Witness Protection Program. Casso disclosed information about countless murders and other mafia related information, such as releasing the fact that he had two NYPD detectives on his payroll. These detectives were later determined to be Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito. However the government determined that Casso was an unqualified witness. He was dropped from the Witness Protection Program and is now serving life imprisonment in Supermax ADX Florence.