They poured acid over the body, covered it with dirt, and patched the hole in the floor with cement. As mob hits go, it was no big deal. A missing person. An unsolved murder. Pretrial hearings in the case begin today before U.S. District Court Judge Herbert Hutton in Philadelphia.
Jury selection is set to begin next week.
Operating for years in the Newark area, Caprio and Casale trolled the bottom of the underworld, engaging in gambling, bookmaking, and a series of wanton murders that had not been solved until the two men began cooperating. Caprio flipped after he was arrested last March. Only one of their murders, the 1996 hit on mobster Joe Sodano, figures in the Merlino case. They are also expected to testify about the overall mob racketeering enterprise that is at the heart of the case. But their stories, detailed in federal documents that have been turned over by the prosecution to defense attorneys, provide much more.