Since this diary has gone to the second page, I am making a new one.  First off, I know nothing about racketeering and am only going off what I am reading in the judges order.  The gist is basically, the government did not charge them with murder, rather, the government charged them with racketeering.  It was the government's claim that the murders happened in furtherence of the conspiracy and that even once they retired from the NYPD and moved to Las Vegas, the conspiracy continued in their other enterprises.  Now, I don't know why the government took this route.  The statute of limitation tolls at the time the conspiracy ends.  The government contended that the conspiracy ended in 2005.  The court concluded otherwise and said that the conspiracy could have ended as late as 1996 and thus, the SOL had tolled for the racketeering charge.  Even though there is no SOL for murder, since they weren't charged with murder, that is irrelevant.

http://howappealing.law.com/USAvsEppolito.pdf

Read pages 7-8, and 61-77