To their neighbors, they were two retired detectives and former partners from Brooklyn who lived off their police pensions in side-by-side houses down a cul-de-sac in Las Vegas.

To federal prosecutors who filed charges this week, they are turncoat cops responsible for aiding leaders of New York’s five organized-crime families in committing at least 11 murders, dealing drugs, and thwarting police investigations, in what could be one of the most egregious cases of corruption in the recent history of the New York Police Department.

The former partners, Louis Eppolito, 56, and Stephen Caracappa, 63, were arrested Wednesday evening as a team of federal agents, with guns drawn, stormed an Italian restaurant off the Nevada city’s Strip.

Yesterday, prosecutors outlined the array of sensational crimes, spanning more than a decade, in which they allege the former detectives were involved: falsely arresting mob targets and stuffing them in trunks, fatally revealing the names of confidential informants to alleged mafia captains, obstructing investigations, dealing drugs, laundering money, accepting a contract to find and kill Gambino turncoat Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, and murdering a Gambino captain, Edward “Eddie” Lino, for $65,000 in 1992.

Prosecutors alleged yesterday that the retired police officers followed Lino home from his social club in their squad car, pulled him over for a bogus violation on the Belt Parkway, then shot him.

If convicted on the charges, both former officers face life sentences in prison. A Las Vegas judge postponed a bail hearing until this morning because the indictments submitted by prosecutors were so lengthy and detailed, an attorney for the former detectives, David Chesnoff, said yesterday.

He declined to discuss the specific charges against his clients but said: “I feel privileged to represent such decorated police officers.”

As partners, both Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa spent much of their careers walking the same beat. They both joined the force as rookies in the summer of 1969 and came up through the ranks together.

Mr. Eppolito would serve as a detective in the Organized Crime Homicide Unit – a strategically placed position to feed information on mafia investigations to mobsters, prosecutors said. He also appeared in small acting roles, such as a bit part as a gangster in Woody Allen’s 1994 film “Bullets Over Broadway” and the role of Fat Andy in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 “Goodfellas.”

Mr. Eppolito also wrote a 251-page book published by Simon & Schuster called “Mafia Cop,” in which he documents his family’s connections to mob figures and his efforts to clear his name from the lingering associations. His father was a Gambino soldier, Ralph “Fat the Gangster” Eppolito, prosecutors said, and his uncle was a Gambino captain, James “Jimmy the Clam” Eppolito.

Those relationships to mob figures were never disclosed on Louis Eppolito’s police application form, prosecutors said.

At the time of his arrest, Mr. Eppolito was said to be shopping around “Mafia Cop” screenplay treatments. Prosecutors said he was also peddling drugs.

Upon learning of the detectives’ alleged activities, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said yesterday in a written statement: “This shocking, disgraceful conduct demands prosecution to the full extent of the law.”

The investigation into the former detectives began with a tip that implicated them in an old murder case regarding a Gambino captain, James Hydell. Prosecutors said he was stuffed into the trunk of a car in September 1986, tortured, and shot numerous times outside a Staten Island nightclub. His body has never been found.

Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa were first implicated in that murder more than a decade ago by a former captain of the Lucchese family, Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, who in 1994 was cooperating with federal authorities. Casso is said to have told investigators that Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa were on his payroll for $4,000 a month, and that the then-police officers arrested Hydell by showing him their badges and then delivered him to his killers in the trunk of their squad car.

At the time, Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa denied any involvement. For federal prosecutors, Casso turned out to be an unreliable witness, and no charges were brought against the former detectives.

A professor emeritus of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eli Silverman, said yesterday that the indictment of the former officers was “like a bolt of lightning” that “brings back memories of the ’60s and ’70s,” when police corruption was systematic.

While prosecutors have not implicated other police officers as working for mafia-related figures, Mr. Silverman said: “Who knows what might come out? We could have a real powder keg here.”