Crime Figure. “Millionaire tax cheat” Carl “Andy” Capasso, the ex-lover of former Miss America Bess Myerson and a key player in one of the most lurid scandals of the New York City “Koch era,” died of cancer at his Upper East Side apartment, one month after being diagnosed. Capasso, a sewer contractor, was at the center of what came to be known as the “NYC Bess Mess” in the mid-1980s. Along with Myerson, who was Mayor Koch’s Cultural Affairs Commissioner. He was indicted in October 1987 by then-U.S.Atty Rudy Giuliani for bribing State Supreme Court Justice Hortense Gabel to cut the alimony and child support payments he owed his ex-wife, Nancy. Myerson, 20 years his senior, hired Gabel’s ccentric daughter, Sukhreet, as her executive assistant in August1983. Within weeks, Gabel, presiding over Capasso’s divorce settlement, chopped his alimony from $1,500 to $500 a week, but by mid-October, The NY Post reported Sukhreet’s hiring and the cozy arrangement began to unravel. A grand jury investigation followed, then the 1987 indictment, and a sordid trial that riveted the city’s attention. It shredded the glamorous Bess Myerson reputation,exposed ugly tidbits about Capasso’s marriage, and featured Sukhreet testifying against her own mother. In the end, a jury found Capasso, Myerson and Gabel not guilty. In the meantime, Capasso was indicted for evading $1.5 million in taxes. He pled guilty to the tax charge, and served about 21 mos.in prison. He left jail in May 1989, but his conviction barred his sewer company from city contracts.  Capasso’s name popped up on police surveillance tapes made in the government’s famous “Commission” investigation of the ruling body of the Mafia’s 5 families. The mob link continued to the end of Capasso’s life when he became close friends with John Gotti’s daughter, Victoria. He was a laborer when he married Nancy Herbert in 1966 and started his sewer business, which quickly began getting lucrative city contracts. (bio by: John T. Chiarella) Cause of death: Cancer