In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with Robert “Bob” Cooley, the Chicago lawyer whose extraordinary journey took him from deep inside the Outfit’s criminal operations to becoming one of the federal government’s most valuable witnesses against organized crime.
Cooley pulls back the curtain on the hidden machinery of Chicago’s underworld, describing how corruption, bribery, and violence shaped the Chicago Outfit’s power in the 1970s and beyond. As a lawyer, gambler, and trusted insider, Cooley saw firsthand how mob influence tilted the scales of justice—often in open daylight. Inside the “Chicago Method” of Courtroom
Cooley explains the notorious system of judicial bribery he once helped facilitate—what he calls the “Chicago Method.” He walks listeners through: How defense attorneys worked directly with Outfit associates to buy favorable rulings. The process of approaching and bribing judges. Why weak forensic standards of the era made witness discrediting the key mob strategy. His personal involvement in the infamous Harry Aleman murder case, where clear guilt was erased by corruption.
Life in the Outfit: Gambling, Debt, and Mob Justice
Cooley recounts his early days gambling with Chicago Outfit associates, including Marco D’Amico, Jackie Cerrone, and John DeFranzo. Notable stories include: The violent implications of unpaid gambling debts in mob circles. Tense interactions with bookmaker Hal Smith and the chaotic fallout of a bounced check involving mobster Eddie Corrado. How D’Amico often stepped in—sometimes with intimidation—to shield Cooley from harm. These stories reflect the daily volatility of life inside the Outfit, where money, fear, and loyalty intersect constantly.
Bob Cooley has a great book titled When Corruption Was King where he goes into even greater detail and has many more stories from his life inside the Chicago Mob.
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0:06 Introduction to Bob Cooley
1:32 Life as an Outfit Gambler
2:00 My Relationship with Marco D’Amico
10:40 The Story of Hal Smith
11:05 A Dangerous Encounter
20:21 Meeting Sally D
22:23 A Contract on My Life
22:37 The Harry Alleman Case
34:47 Inside the Courtroom
51:08 The Verdict
52:26 Warning the Judge
53:49 The Case Against the Policewoman
58:36 Navigating the Legal Maze
1:08:14 The Outcome and Its Consequences
1:11:39 The Decision to Flip
1:24:38 A Father’s Influence
1:33:57 The Corruption Revealed
1:50:12 Political Connections
2:02:07 The Setup for Robbery
2:20:29 Consequences of Loyalty
[0:00] Hey, guys, my guest today is a former Chicago outfit associate named Robert Bob Cooley. He has a book out there titled When Corruption Was King. I highly recommend you get it if you want to look inside the Chicago outfit of the 1970s. Now, Bob’s going to tell us about his life as an outfit gambler, lawyer, and I use payoff to judges to get many, many not guilty verdicts. Now, I always call this the Chicago method. This happened for, I know, for Harry Ailman, a case we’re going to talk about, Tony Spolatro got one of these not-guilties. Now, the outfit member associate who is blessed to get this fix put in for him may be charged with a crime, even up to murder. And he gets a lawyer, a connected lawyer, and they’ll demand a bench trial. That means that only a judge makes the decision. A lawyer, like my guest, who worked with a political fixer named Pat Marcy.
[0:53] They’ll work together and they’ll get a friendly judge assigned to that case and then they’ll bribe the judge. And all that judge needs is some kind of alibi witnesses and any kind of information to discredit any prosecution witnesses. Now, this is back in the olden days before you had all this DNA and all that kind of thing. So physical evidence was not really a part of it. Mainly, it was from witnesses. And they just have to discredit any prosecution witness. Then the judge can say, well, state hadn’t really proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt and issue a not guilty verdict and walk away. Now, our guest, Bob Cooley, is going to take us inside this world.
[1:29] And it’s a world of beatings, murders, bribes, and other kinds of plots. He was a member of the Elmwood Park crew. He was a big gambler. He was a big loan shark. And he worked for a guy named Marco D’Amico, who was their gambling boss and loan shark in that crew. Among other bosses in this powerful crew were Jackie Cerrone, who will go on and become the underboss and eventually the boss for a short
[1:55] period of time. and John no-nose DeFranzo, who will also go on to become the boss eventually. What was your relationship with Marco D’Amico? I talked about when I first came into the 18th district, when I came into work there, and they put me back in uniform, the first person I met was Rick Borelli. Rick Borelli, he was Marco’s cousin.
[2:23] When I started gambling right away with Rick, within a couple of days, I’m being his face, and I’m calling and making bets. There was a restaurant across the street where every Wednesday and sometimes a couple days a week, I would meet with Ricky. And one of the first people he brought in there was Marco. Was Marco. And Marco would usually be with a person or two. And I thought they were just bookmakers.
[2:55] And I started being friendly with him, meeting him there. Then I started having card games Up in my apartment And, Because now I’m making, in the very beginning, I’m making first $100 extra a week. And within a couple of weeks, I’m making $500, $600 extra a week. And within about a month, I’m making $1,000, sometimes more than that. So now I’m having card games, relatively big card games, because I’ve got a bankroll. I’ve got probably about $5,000, $6,000, which seemed like a lot of money to me. Initially uh and after a while that was a daily that was a daily deal but uh so we we started having card games up there and then we started socializing we started now he’d be at these nightclubs all the time when when i’d go to make my payoffs he was part of the main group there he was one of the call he was right he was right under jack right under at that time originally Jackie Cerrone, and then he was right under Johnny DeFranco.
[4:07] But he was… And we became real good friends. We would double date and we spent a lot of time together. And we had these big card games. And that’s when I realized how powerful these people were. Because after one of the card games, there was somebody that was brought in, a guy named Corrado. I’m pretty sure his name was I can’t think of his first name, but Corrado was this person that somebody brought into the game. And after we finished playing cards, and I won all the time. I mean, I was a real good card player, and I wouldn’t drink. I’d supply liquor and food and everything, but I wouldn’t drink. And as the others drank, they were the same as at my office. After we finish up, this guy says, you want to play some? We can play maybe some gin. just human being. And he was there with another friend of his who just sat there and watched. So we played, not gin, but blackjack. We played and passed cards back and forth when you win. Then you’re the dealer and back and forth. And I lost, I think I lost about $4,000 or $13,000 to him.
[5:26] I lost the cash that I had. I had cash about $5,000 or $6,000. And I gave him a check for the rest. You know, but everything I was doing was wrong, you know. Yeah, one of those nights. It’s in there. And it’s funny because you asked about Marco.
[5:47] And I thought, you know, oh, well, and whatever. And I gave him a check. I said, no, it’s a good check. And it was. It was for my office. It was an office check that I gave him. And that next morning, I’m meeting with Ricky and with Marco at this restaurant across from the station before I go in and to work. And I said, son of a B. I said, you know, they had a bad night first ever. Marco wasn’t at that game, at that particular game. And what happened? I said, I blew about 12,000. Okay, but you? Wow. And I said, yeah, I said, one of the guys at the game played some, I played some blackjack with somebody. What was his name? Eddie, Eddie Corrado. Eddie Corrado. He said, that mother, he said, stop payment on the check. He said, stop payment on the check. He said, because it wasn’t nine o’clock. It was only like, you know, seven, you know, seven 30 or whatever. He said, and when he gets ahold of you, arrange to have him come to your house. Tell him you’ll have the money for him at your house. So that’s what I, that’s what I do. So I stopped payment on it probably about five after nine. I get a call from, from Mr. Corrado. You mother fucker.
[7:17] I said, no, no. I said, there wasn’t enough money in the account. I said, I’m sorry. I said, all right, then I’ll be over. I said, no, no, no. I said, I’m in court right now. I said, I’m in court. I said, I’m going to be tied up all day. I’ll meet you at my place. I’ll meet you back there. Well, I’ll be there. You better have that. I want cash and you better have it. Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m at home. Marco comes in. And he was there with Tony and Tony was there and Ricky was there. And Ricky was there. And they come over a little ahead of time and he comes in. I live on the 27th floor. The doorbell rings. Up he comes with some big mustache.
[8:00] I open the door. You better have the fucking money and whatever. And I try to look nervous. I try to look real nervous. and when you walk into my apartment you walk in and you see the kitchen right in front of you and to the left to the left you’ve got an area away and you’ve got the the kitchen wall blocking what’s behind it over there and these three guys are standing marco and you are standing right there alongside of it and and when he walks in behind me, He sees Marco and all but shit in his pants. When he sees Marco, he goes, and Marco, you motherfucker. And, you know, oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was with you. He says, how much money you got me right now? And, you know, he says, pull your pockets out. He had about, he had about three or 4,000 with him.
[9:02] And he says, you give him that. He says, you, he says, you, and he says, you give him that right now. And you apologize to him. Oh, and he says, he says, and I may give you a number. I want you to call. He says, we can put you to work. Apparently this guy had done the same thing to them a few years before and got the beating of his life somebody brought him into one of their card games, did he have a technique a cheating technique or had some marked cards no it was a card mechanic he could play games with cards they call him a mechanic and, in fact the guy was great at it because he had his own plane and everything else. But again, he had moved from Chicago and had just come back in the area. And they mounted. And so anyhow, he leaves. And he leaves then, and Marco took the money. Marco took the money. Marco took the money. Typical Bob guy, man.
[10:19] And I says, what about the cash I lost to him? He says, well, you lost that. He says, you lost that. That’s when I realized how powerful. That’s when I realized how powerful that
[10:35] he was part of the mob, not only a part of it, but one of the operational. Yeah, important part of it. That brings to mind another unbelievable situation that occurred.
[10:49] The, uh, this is probably the, we’ll know the year by when it happened. There was a bookmaker named Hal Smith. Oh yeah. I remember that name. He got, tell us about Hal Smith.
[11:05] Well, Hal Smith was a, he was a big guy too. A real, a real big guy. I met him on Rush street. He knew I was a gambler. He knew that I was a big gambler and I started gambling with him. Thank you. And I was with him probably for about maybe five or six months. And I’d win with him. I’d lose with him. And he would take big places. He would take $5,000 a game for me. And as they say, so the numbers were big. At the end of the week, we were sometimes $60,000, $70,000.
[11:42] They were big numbers back and forth. And he was always good for the money. I was always good for the money. And one particular week, it was about $30,000. And I was waiting for money. Somebody else was supposed to give me even more than that. And the person put me off. And it was a good friend of mine. And I knew the money would be there. But a lot of times, these guys are going to collect it at a certain time. And then they’re expecting to give it to somebody else. Well, he was short. So I said, look, I don’t have it right now, but I’ll have it tomorrow, I said, because I’m meeting somebody. Well, okay, it better be there.
[12:31] And look, it’ll be there, okay? Not a problem. So the next day, the person I’m supposed to get it from says, I’ll have it in a couple of hours. I don’t have it right now, but I’ll have it by late this afternoon. And I’m in my office when Hale Smith calls me and I said, I’ll have it a little bit later. And he slams the phone bell. I’m downstairs in Counselor’s Row. In fact, I’m meeting with Butchie and Harry. We’re in a booth talking about something. They had just sent me some business or whatever, but I’m talking about something. And George, the owner of the restaurant, comes over and he says, somebody is asking who you are and they want to talk to you. And they point out this guy. It was a guy I had seen before, because a lot of times at two in the morning, I would go down on West Street, and they had entertainment upstairs. And there was this big English guy. He was an English guy, as you could tell by his accent, a real loud guy. And when I walk up to talk to him, and he’s talking loud enough so people can hear him, and he says, you better have that. I’m here for it. You better have that. You better have that money.
[13:51] Bob Hellsmith sent me, you get the money and you better have that money or there’s going to be a problem or whatever. And I said, well, the money will be there, but people can hear what this guy, this guy talking that shit. And he leaves. And he leaves. He’s going to call me back. And he leaves. I said, I’m busy right now. I says, give me a call back when I’m in the office and I’ll meet with you. So Butch, he goes, what was that all about? And I said, you know, it’s somebody I owe some money to. Well, who is he? Who is he with? I said, Harold Smith. And he said, who’s Harold Smith? You don’t pay him anything. He said, you don’t pay him anything. And he calls, when he calls back, he says, you will arrange to meet him. And I said, you know, I said, well, where?
[14:44] And they knew where I lived. They’d been to my place at that time. I’m living in Newberry Plaza and they said, there’s a, there’s a Walgreens drugstore in Chicago Avenue. Tell him you’ll meet him there at Walgreens, and we’ll take it. And he says, and we’ll take it from there. When he does call me, I said, look, I said, I’ll meet you tomorrow morning for sure at Walgreens. I’ll have the cash. I said, I’ll have the cash, and I’ll have all of it. I said, but, you know, I’m tied up on some things. I said, I’ll go to my own bank when I’m finished here and whatever, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning for sure at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. Okay. I sit down with them and they just said, I said, they said, go there and go meet them. And we’ll take care of it. The Walgreens is a store right in the corner of Michigan Avenue and Chicago Avenue, south side of the street. And it’s all windows. Huge windows here. Huge windows here. And a bus stop, a bus stop over here. When I get there, I park in the bus stop and I’m looking to my right and here he is sitting in a booth by himself, right by the window. And I look around and I don’t see anybody. I mean, with a lot of people, I don’t see Butchie.
[16:06] Uh or red or anybody around but i i go in there anyhow and uh sit down and i uh sit down in the booth across from him and he’s eating breakfast he’s got some food in front of him and uh the girl comes by right away the girl comes by and i says you know just get me a coke and and he says have you got the money and i said yes and why i got i got a lot i got a lot of money in my pocket but not the, whatever it was he wanted, not the 27 or 28,000. There’s nobody there. And, uh, so we’re talking for no more than about two or three minutes. They had a telephone on the counter. I hear the phone ring and the waitress, the waitress is on the phone. And then she comes walking over and she says, it’s a call for you. And, and when I go get in the phone, I woke up and there’s a phone booth there. And here’s Butchie in the phone booth. And he’s there with a couple of other people. I hang the phone up. I walk over and I had my appointment booked. And I walk over and I just pick up the book. And as I’m walking out there, walking in, we pass each other. And so now when I get in my car and he’s looking at me in my car and right next to him is Butchie. And across from him was a red old male and Fat Herbie.
[17:34] Herbie Blitzstein? Herbie Blitzstein? No, it wasn’t Herbie. This is another one. That’s one thing of Herbie. We called Herbie Fat. It was Fat Herbie. And the third guy is like sitting facing him. This is like, that weighs about 300 pounds. Oh, Sarno. Make Mike Sarno. Mike Sarno. That was it. And that’s, that’s, that’s who it was. You know, and I, I drive off, go to my office and go about my business. I get a call later that day from, uh, Hale Smith. Where’s my money? Where’s my money? I said, I gave it to your guy. You what? I gave it to him. I met him at nine o’clock this morning and I gave him the money. You did. And I said, yeah. Um, okay. And he hangs, and he hangs up. I don’t hear anything for a while. I never saw him again. I saw Hale a couple of times because he was always in one of the other restaurants. I lived in Newberry right across from there, but he never talked to me. I never talked to him, never said anything. It was about maybe it had to be a good couple of months later, When I read about Hale, Hale’s no longer with us.
[18:52] That’s obviously how they found out about him. I never saw the other guy again. I’m hoping they didn’t kill him, but I’m assuming that’s what probably happened to him. In a public place like that, they probably just scared him off. He probably said, you know, I’m way over my head. I’m out of here.
[19:15] They didn’t kill him in the public place he wouldn’t have been in the newspapers my little thought is like with the three guys they took him for a ride, I don’t know they just told him to leave town and he realized what it was and he did Hal didn’t get a chance to leave town Hal had other problems if I remember right I’d have to look it back up but he had other problems with the outfit what I found out later what they had done, was they had gotten one of their guys connected with him to find out who his customers were. In other words, one of the other people that he didn’t realize, that Hale didn’t realize was with them, they got him connected with them where he’s the one who’s doing his collecting and finding out who the customers were because they wanted to get all his customers as well as his money. It turns out he was He was a huge bookmaker for years. That’s what happened to him. And they just took his book. Yeah, I remember something about that story because I killed him in his house, I believe. Yeah, Sally D.
[20:22] Sally D, yeah. Sally D was one. When I first met Sally D, he was with Marco’s Fruit, too.
[20:30] He owned a pizza place up on the north side, north shore, and I broke him. I was betting with him and beating him week after week. And one of the last times I played with him, he couldn’t come up with the money. It took him an extra couple of weeks to get the cash to pay me. But we were real close friends with him. He’s a bizarre character because he was a totally low level at that time. Yeah. When he then connected up with the Cicero crew, with Rocky and Felice, with Rocky and those people, he became a boss with them. It turns out it was after they killed Al Smith. He was part of all that. That’s Salih De Laurentiis. He’s supposed to be a boss. He moved on up after the Family Secrets trial. He didn’t go down with that, I believe, and he kind of moved on up after that. I don’t know what happened to him. What was so funny about that, when he would come into the club, Marco’s club, Bobby Abinati.
[21:42] Who was strictly a very low-level player, although we indicted him with the Gambia star. He’s the one who set up the robbery. Would that have been great if that would have gone through? He’s the one who set up that robbery in Wisconsin. He’d be making fun of Salihide all the time.
[22:03] When Salihide would come in, he would make fun of him and joke about him and talk about what a loser he was. This is when he’s a boss of that crew. I mean, just a strange, I mean, nobody talked to bosses like that, especially when, when you’re, when you’re what they call Bobby, you know, what was Marco’s nickname for Bobby Knucklehead?
[22:23] That was his nickname, Knucklehead. Pat Marcy, uh, contacted me about, you know, handling me in the only own case.
[22:32] I couldn’t have been happier because that was a short time after they put a contract on me. So now i realized if they’re going to be making money you know they finally stopped because for good six seven months when i when i came back to chicago uh i was checking under my car every day in case there was a bomb i moved i moved from uh from a place that i own in the suburbs into an apartment complex so i wouldn’t be living on the first floor yeah it’d be impossible to somebody to break into my, you know, took them thrashing into my place. I changed my whole life around in that sense.
[23:10] And when I drove everywhere I went, you know, I would go on the highway and then jump over. I would do all, I wanted to make absolutes. Even though nobody came around, I wasn’t taking any chances for a long period of time. And that was too when it cost me a fortune because that’s when I stopped dealing with the bookmakers because I wasn’t going to be in a position where I had to go meet somebody at any time to collect my money and whatever.
[23:39] So what had happened, though, was somebody came to see me. And when I was practicing, there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t do. I set my own rules. I would not get involved. After the Harry Alleman case, I never got involved anymore myself fixing certain cases. But even prior to that, I wouldn’t fix certain cases. I wouldn’t get involved in certain cases, especially involving the police, because my father was such a terrific policeman, and I felt I was too in a lot of sentences. I loved the police. I disliked some of the crooked cops that I knew, but on the surface, I’d be friendly with them, etc. Harry Ailman was a prolific hitman for the Elmwood Park crew. He killed a teamster who wouldn’t help set up trucks for the outfit, a guy named Billy Logan. He was just a regular guy. He’s going to take us right into the meeting with the judge. He’ll take us into a counselor’s row restaurant where these cases were fixed. Now, Bob will give us a seat right at Pat Marcy’s table. Now, Pat Marcy was the first ward fixture, and he’s going to take us into the hallway with Pat Marcy where they made the payoffs.
[24:57] Now, Bob, can you take us inside the famous Harry Aileman murder case? I know you fixed it. And tell us, you know, and I know there was a human toll that this took on that corrupt judge, Frank Wilson. Okay. The Harry Aileman case was, it was not long after I became partners with Johnny DeArco. I get a call from, I’m in Counselor’s Row at the restaurant. Whenever I was in there now, my spot was the first ward table. Nobody was allowed to sit there day or night. That was reserved for first ward connected people and only the top group of people.
[25:40] I’m sitting there at the table and Johnny DeArco Sr. Tells me, you know, Pat wants to talk to you. About something. And I said, you know, sure. Not long afterwards, Pat comes downstairs. We go out. We go out in the hall because we never talk at the table. And he tells me, have you got somebody that can handle the Harry Alleman case? I had seen in the news, he was front page news. He was one of the main mob hitmen. He was partners with Butchie Petrucelli. But it was common knowledge that he was a hitman. He looked like one. He dressed like one. He acted like one. And whatever. And he was one. In fact, he was the one that used to go to New York. And I know he also went to Arizona to do some hits and whatever. He traveled around the country. I said to Pat, they thought the case was a mob hit on a team street. a teamster. I assumed that it was just that. It was people doing what they do. But I said to Pat, I said, well, get me the file. Get me the file. Let me see what the case looks like. Because I would never put a judge in a bad spot. That was my nature.
[27:06] When I had cases, a lot of these judges were personal friends of mine. What I would do, if I wanted to have a case, if I wanted to fix a case to save all the time of having to go to a damn long trial, I would make sure that it was a case that was winnable, easily winnable. When I got the file, when I got the file from Pat, he got me the file the next day. The next morning, when he came in, he gave me the file. I looked at the file. It was a throw-out case. When I say throw-out case, absolutely a nothing case.
[27:46] The records in the file showed that a car drove up down the street. Suddenly somebody with a shotgun blasted a guy named Billy Logan in front of his house and drove away. They were contacted by a neighbor, this guy, Bobby Lowe. Was it Bobby Lowe? Yeah, I’m pretty sure Bobby Lowe. Who indicated that he opened the door and let his dog run out. And when he looked, he saw somebody. He saw a car, and he gave a description of the car. And he saw somebody pull up, and he saw him shoot with a shotgun. And then he saw the person get out of the car and shoot him with a .45, and shoot him with a .45. And then the car sped away. That was pretty much the case. Some other people heard some noise, looked out, and saw a car driving away. A period of time after that, it had to be about a year or so after that, somebody was arrested driving to Pennsylvania to kill somebody. There was a guy who stopped.
[29:16] Louie Almeida was his name. Louie Almeida was stopped in his car. He was on the way to Pennsylvania. And in front of his car, he had shotguns. And he winds up, when he gets arrested, he winds up telling the authorities that he can tell them about a mob murder back in Chicago and winds up cooperating with them. He indicates what happened. He indicated that, you know, he was asked to, you know, or he got involved in it. He got the car and whatever. They did this. They did that. And he pulled up alongside Billy and wound up shooting the victim as he came out of the house.
[30:09] Now, I look at some other reports in there, some reports that were made out, new reports. They talk about the Louis Almeida. They talk about the witness that gave the first statement. and they said that they found, or he’s giving us a new statement now where he says he’s walking his dog. He hears a shotgun. His dog runs towards the car where the shooting was coming from. He saw Harry get out of the car and walk over and shoot him, walk over and shoot the victim, and he was looking at him, And then he jumped in the bushes and the car drove away. A complete new story. Yeah. A complete new story. And. I looked at the reports, and this is an easy winner. And so I told Pat, you know, I’ll take it. You know, I’m sure I can handle it. I said, I’m sure I can handle it, but, you know, I’ll let you know.
[31:21] That’s when I contacted, I met my restaurant, Greco’s, and I had Frank Wilson there a lot. Well, I called Frank Wilson, invited him and his wife to come to the restaurant. I had done that many times before. When he gets there, I tell him, I have the case. You know, I told him I was contacted on this case, I said. And I said, it’s an easy winner, I said. And I explained to him what it was. I told him, you know, it’s the driver of the car who’s doing this to help himself. And this other guy, Bobby Lowe, that gave a complete new story from the original story that he gave. And I indicated, you know, can you handle the case? And he tells me, I can’t handle the case, he said, because I was SOJ’d. In Chicago, Illinois, they have a rule that makes it easy for people to fool around because for no reason at all you can ask to have a judge moved off the case. And you can name a second judge that you don’t want to handle the case.
[32:34] Frank Wilson’s reputation was as such that the lawyer that turned out to be a judge later on, Tom Maloney, who had the case, named him in the SOJ. It was assigned to somebody else, and he indicated he wanted any other judge except Frank Wilson. Frank Wilson on the case. And this was Harry Aileman’s lawyer. Yeah. Okay. And who Tom Maloney, who then ends up being the judge years later. But yeah. Well, because we knew he was going to be a judge. Yeah. We knew ahead of time. I knew at that time. That’s what makes the story so unbelievably interesting. Yeah. Anyhow, he says, I can’t do it because… In Chicago, in Chicago, it’s supposed to keep it honest. I love this. To keep it honest. Yeah. To keep it honest, each judge is supposed to be picked by computer.
[33:33] Same thing they’re doing to this day. Trump wondered why the same judge kept getting all his cases. Because they’re doing the same thing we did, some of us could do in Chicago. He was the chief judge in the area. he said to me, I don’t think I can get the case. I don’t think I can’t get the case. I said, I’ll get the case to you. I said, I’ll get, because I already, I, in fact, through Pat Marcy, anytime I wanted a case to go anywhere, I would contact Pat and I’d give him a thousand dollars and he would get me any judge I wanted. Uh, I said, well, I think I can. I said, I said, And I gave him $1,000.
[34:16] I said, here, this is yours. And if I can’t get the case to you, you keep it. If I can’t get, I never said to him, will you fix it? Will you this or that? I mean, he understood what it was. I didn’t know how he would react to it. When I asked him, would you handle it? Were the words I used. I had never fixed anything with him before.
[34:43] In case he was, you know, he would want to report it to somebody. I wasn’t worried because Frank had a reputation as being a big drinker. After I got the Harry Elliman file, Pat tells me, I’m going to have somebody come and talk to you. Who comes? And we meet in the first ward office, and then we go downstairs into the special room they had for conversations. It’s Mike Ficarro. He’s the head of the organized crime section. He’s the one who prosecutes all the criminals. He’s one of the many prosecutors in Chicago. That’s why there were over 1,000 mob murders and never a conviction from the time of Al Capone. Not a single conviction with over 1,000 mob murders because they controlled absolutely everything. He’s the boss.
[35:35] I knew him. I didn’t like him. He had an attitude about him. You know, when I would see him at parties and when I’d see him at other places, and I’d walk by and say, hi, he just seemed coldish.
[35:47] I found out later why. He was jealous of the relationship I had with all these people.
[35:54] He says, I’ll help you any way I can, anything you need, whatever. So the prosecutors on the Harry Olliman case were our people. That’s who’s prosecuting the case anyhow. But they couldn’t get one of their judges apparently who would handle the case. So, but anyhow, uh, so, uh, when we, um, when we go, when we, when we go to trial, um.
[36:25] Before to help me out, I told Pat, I’ll get somebody else to handle the case. I’ll have somebody else. I said, I won’t go in there. I won’t go in there because everybody knows I’m close to Frank, very close to Frank. I said, so I won’t go in there. I’ll get somebody. He says, no, no. He said, I’ll get somebody. And so he gets a guy named Frank Whalen, who I didn’t know at the time. He was a retired lawyer from Chicago. He was one of the mob lawyers.
[37:00] He was one of the mob lawyers. And he lived in Florida. He lived in Miami. I think it was, no, Lauderdale. He lived in the Lauderdale area. He was practicing there. So I fly out. I fly out to meet him. I i do all the investigating in the case the i’m using an investigator that harry alleman got from me in fact he was the same investigator that got in trouble in in uh in in hollywood for what for a lot of stuff i can’t think of his name right now but he’s the one who got indicted in hollywood eventually for you know wiretapping people and whatever it was the same one. And he got me information on Bobby on this Bobby Lowe. He found out Bobby Lowe, Bobby Lowe was a drug addict.
[37:59] When the FBI got a hold of him, Bobby Lowe was living out in the street because he had been fired from his first job. He had a job in some kind of an ice cream company where they made ice cream, and he got fired there for stealing. And then he had a job after that in a gas station, and he faked a robbery there. Apparently, what he did was he called the police and said he had been robbed. This is before they had cameras and all the rest of that stuff. He said he had been robbed. And somebody happened to have been in the gas station getting gas. It was a big place, apparently.
[38:45] And when the police talked to him, he said, I didn’t see anything strange. He said, I saw the attendant walk out to the back about 10, 15 minutes ago. I saw him walk out to the back of the place and then come back in. And so they go out, and he had his car parked behind it, and they found the money that was supposed to have been stolen in the car. So not the best witness, in other words. Well, that’s an understatement, because that was why… That was why now he suddenly shows up, and they know all this. The FBI agents that obviously know all this, that’s their witness. That’s their case. To me, it’s an airtight, you know. Yeah. Anyhow, I developed the defense. I went back to see Frank a second time. I flew out to Florida a second time, gave him all this information.
[39:48] I had talked to some other people to a number of people that were going to indicate that Harry played golf with them that day see how they remembered not golf but he was at a driving range with them with about five people they remember what they were three or four years three or four years before that what I also found out now, and I didn’t know and it changed my whole attitude on that this wasn’t a mob killing you, This guy that he killed was married to his, I think it was his cousin or some relation was married. I’m pretty sure it was to his cousin. She had told Harry, I got this from Butchie, Butchie Petrosselli, who had become a close friend of mine after I got involved with Harry’s case, his partner. And that was why he killed them, because apparently the sister, his sister-in-law, whatever she was, had told him, you know, when he was beating her up, she had said, well, my Harry Alameda won’t be happy about this. And he said, supposedly, he said, fuck that, Kenny.
[41:02] And that’s why the shooting took place. Wow. This changed me. You know, I’m in the middle of it. There’s no getting out of it now. Yeah, they’ll turn it back. And by now, I’m running around all the time with Butch and Mary at night. I’m meeting them at dinner. They’re coming to one of my places where I have dinners all the time. You know, I’m becoming like close friends, close friends with both of them. Yeah. So anyhow, but anyhow, the lawyer that he got, Frank Whalen, who was supposed to be sharp, turned out like he was not in his, let’s just say he was not in his prime.
[41:46] Charitable. And when he went in, you know, while the trial was going on, you know, while the trial was going on, I get a call from Frank. From Frank Wilson, because I told him, you don’t come back into the restaurant now. You don’t come back into the restaurant. I used his office as my office all the time, along with a bunch of other judges. I had a phone, but it cost about a dollar a minute to talk on my phone. I had to talk on my phone. So when I’d be at 26th Street in the courthouse, even though no lawyers are allowed back there in the chamber, so I’m back there sitting at his desk using the phone taking care of my own other business. I stopped going in there while the trial was going on.
[42:35] So, anyhow, he calls me, and he wants to meet me at a restaurant over on Western Avenue. And, okay, he called me from one of the pay phones out there in front of the courthouse, and I go to meet him. What did he want? Was he complaining about the lawyer, Waylon? What was he complaining about, Waylon? and I was screwing it up.
[42:59] When I meet him, I said, you know, he’s like, you know, he said, you know, we go into the bathroom and he and he said he’s all shooken up. He says, this is going to cost me my job. He said, he said, you know, they’re burying him. You’re burying him. You know, because I had given this information on the two witnesses. And he says, Frank Whalen, he said, isn’t doing a thing and cross-examining these people and whatever.
[43:32] And he says, and he’s all upset. And I said, Frank, no, I’m shook up one of the few times in my life where it’s something I can’t handle. He had never told me, you know, I’ll fix the case, never. And I said to him, and I said, Frank, I said, if something goes wrong, I said, I’m sure they’re going to kill me, is what I said to him. Yeah. I said, if something goes wrong, I’m sure they’re going to kill me. And I left. I left the bathroom. Now, I have no idea what’s going on in his mind and whatever. Yeah. I see Pat the next day. And by something goes wrong in this case, you mean if he gets found guilty, that’d be what would go wrong and you would get killed. Is that that’s what you mean? Well, no question, because when I met, I didn’t go into that. I met with Harry Alleman. I get a call after I got involved in the case. A couple days later, I get a call from Markle. Meet me at one of the nightclubs where I was all the time at night with these people.
[44:47] Above it, you’ve got a motel, a bunch of hotel rooms. I get a call from Markle. The reason everybody loved me and the mob, I never discussed what I was doing with anybody or any of the other dozens of mobsters I run with that I was involved in Harry’s case. Never said a word to anybody about any of this. That was my nature, and that’s why all these people love me. I never talked about one thing with anybody else or whatever. He says, I want to meet you. When I get over there, he says, let’s go upstairs. Somebody wants to talk to you. And we go upstairs, and there’s Harry Alleman. And Harry, how you doing? How are you?
[45:27] And he says, listen, you’re sure about this? And I said, yeah. I said, I’m sure. And he said, well, if something goes wrong, you’re going to have a problem. Those were his words to me. You’re going to have a problem. And I said, you know, he says, because this judge, he says, this judge is a straight judge. And he said, Tom, you mean Tom Maloney. He says, and Tom wants to handle my case. And he tells me he’s going to be named a judge by the Supreme Court real soon. And he wants to handle and he wants to handle my case before he… Uh, you know, before he becomes a Supreme court, before he becomes a judge, I knew the moment he told me that I knew for sure that was the case because we control everything, including the Supreme court. I said, you know, I said, don’t, you know, don’t worry about it. I lied to him. And I said, uh, I said, yeah, the judge is going to, I said, yeah, he’s going to throw it out. He knows, I said, he knows what’ll happen if he doesn’t. That’s what I told Harry. I want to keep him happy.
[46:34] I’m going to keep him happy probably for a few hours I’m a little nervous and then that’s all behind me like so many other problems I got in the middle of oh my god talking about walking a tightrope so now the lawyer came into Chicago he was in Chicago I met him when he came in he was staying at the Bismarck was at the Bismarck Hotel right around the corner from you know where Counselor’s Row was that’s where he was staying in the in the hotel right there by the first board office and there was a way to go in there without being seen and there was a, You go through another restaurant and you go through the alley and go up there. And I wouldn’t, I didn’t want to be seen walking into there because I know the FBI are probably, are probably watching and whatever. When he comes into town, they handle the case. So I go upstairs to see him. You know, I said, what the hell’s going on in court? He says, I’m going, it’s going great. It’s going great. I said, it’s going great. I just, you know, I just got a call last night. I had to go meet the judge. And he said, you’re not doing any cross-examining. Oh, I’m doing a great job. You know, I’m doing a great job. So after a few minutes of, I leave. Yeah.
[47:52] That’s when I saw Pat Marcy, too. And I said, Pat, I said, the judge is upset about whatever’s going on. I said, maybe we should give him some more because I agreed to give him $10,000. And he said, you know, what a piece of work he is. You know, he said $10,000, and that’s all he’s going to get, not a nickel more or whatever. So now to say I’m nervous again is an ultra statement. The case, I walked over, and I wouldn’t go in the room, but I wanted to just be around that room for some reason. FBI agents all over the place.
[48:30] FBI agents all over the place. And so now I’m at home and I’m packed. I’ve got my bags packed because if he finds it, I don’t know what he’s going to do. I’m worried he might find him guilty because of all that had happened. He, when the trial ended a given night, and the next day he was going to give the result. In fact, I didn’t go out and play that night. I was a little nervous, and I stayed home, and I packed up my bags. I packed up my bags, and about 9 o’clock, I got in the car, and I started driving. And by the time he gave the ruling, I was probably about 100, maybe 150 miles away. And I hear on the radio, you know, found him not guilty, found him not guilty. So I turn around. Hit the next exit, turn around and come back. I turn around. Northbound on I-55.
[49:27] Probably a couple hours later, here I am parked in my parking spot. My parking spot was in front of my office, right across from City Hall. And I parked in the mayor’s spot when she wasn’t there. And drove probably to drive her crazy. But that was where I parked. That was my parking spot. We’d see my big car with the RJC license plates parked in the bus stop. And so here I am. I parked the car and I go in. I go in.
[50:01] And I’m sure Pat told some people, probably not, but I’m sure they told all the mobsters, all the top mobsters, because these guys all wanted to meet me afterwards and get the restaurant. I go in to see them. We walked into the janitor’s closet. You walk out of Counselor’s Row. You go to the left. It goes into the 100 North Building. Now, you’ve got the elevators to the right. And behind that, you’ve got a closet where the janitors keep all their stuff. And you’ve got some stairs leading up to the, there was a, what do you call it? There was an office there where the commodities, big commodity exchange was right there. that there was a stairway leading up to where the offices were with some doors with bars and everything on it. And Pat is standing on those stairs, about two or three stairs. You know, I said, wow. I said, you know, everybody’s going nuts. And he goes, well, you know, you did a good job. And he gives me an envelope. He gives me an envelope. And, you know, I put the money in my pocket.
[51:09] We said we had some more. We said a couple other words about, you know, this and that. And then I just go in there. I go back in the counselor’s.
[51:21] Now, after the feds started getting indictments, did you try and warn the Aleman case judge, Frank Wilson? Why did you do that? And when I went to see Frank Wilson, I went to help him. I said, Frank, I said, look, I said, I was contacted by, I said, I was contacted by the, by the, by the FBI. They were investigating the Harry Aleman case. I said to him, I said, they, they feel the case was fixed. I said, when they come to see me, I said, you know, I said, I’m not going to talk to them. I said, I’m not going to talk to them. I’m going to take the fifth. And in your case, you can do the same thing. When they, if they come to talk to you, you just take the fifth amendment. If they give you immunity, I said, you know, then you, then you testify, but you tell them the truth. I said, don’t worry about me. Tell them the truth. This is how I talk to him. When I’m talking to him like that, it’s almost like he’s trying to run away from me.
[52:27] We’re at a restaurant in a big complex. It was in one of those resorts in Arizona. He’s all but running away from me. I was trying to help him. What I said to him was, Frank, I said, the statute of limitations ran on all this. It’s been more than five years. There’s nothing they can do to you or to me, I said, because the statute ran. I said, so don’t lie to them. What the feds were concerned about, and I don’t know why, that he would deny ever fixing the case when it went through. I don’t know why they’re worried about that, but they were, and I didn’t want to see him get in trouble.
[53:13] That’s why I went there to protect him. Hey, Bob, you were asked to represent an outfit associate or an outfit associate’s son who was accused of breaking the jaw of a Chicago policewoman. And you know, when a cop is injured in a fight with somebody, the cops follow that case. And I do not want to see any shenanigans going on. So, so tell us about how you walked that line. And I bet those cops were, were not happy with you in the end. Some people think this is a reason you flipped. Take us inside that case, will you?
[53:45] And the reason I mentioned that it had a lot to do with what I eventually did. Now we’ll get back to what made me do what I was going to do. When I was practicing law now, and now I have been away from all this for years, I was out of town a lot because I’m representing the Chinese all around the country. I’m their main lawyer right now.
[54:10] And I get a call from Lenny Colella. And he says, my son, he said, my son is in trouble. I want to come in and I want to talk to you about handling his case. This was a heater case, too. This was a front page case because he was charged with aggravated battery and attempted murder. Supposedly, he had beat up a policewoman and it was all over the place. He was a drug addict and whatever, supposedly he did all this. And when he came into the office with his dad, he was high. When I talked to him, he’s got his kid with him. And the kid is a smart aleck. As we’re talking, the kid, and I asked the kid, well, whatever. The kid was a smart aleck. And I just said to him, I said, Len, I can’t help you. I said, get him out of here. I want nothing to do with him. I said, I can’t help you. You didn’t take cases that were involved with cops anyhow, for the most part. No. I didn’t know what had happened in this case. I know what I saw in the paper. I didn’t know what the facts or anything were or whatever. I mean, if it turned out that if I felt when I talked to him that he had done it, whatever, I would not have taken the case anyhow.
[55:26] I mean, I would not have. That’s why I say, too, that may be, too, why I was as quick and as rude as I was when he came in there and was acting and was a little bit high. I just wanted nothing to do with him, period. I said to his dad, his father said, you know, if I get him cleaned up, you know, I said, well, if you get him cleaned up, then we’ll talk again. I said, but I can’t help him, and I can’t help him.
[55:54] And off he goes. the father re-contacted me about a week later. And he said, I had him in rehab and he straightened out and whatever. And he brought him back in and it was a new person. And when he told me the facts of the case, when he told me what happened, because he was a big, tough kid. He was a big, you know, he was a weightlifter, but he was a big, tough looking kid.
[56:19] And it’s a little police woman. When he told me what happened, I believed him. Because I’ve been out in the street and whatever. And he says, you know, he told me what happened, that he had gotten stopped. He was out there talking to her. And when she said, you’re under arrest for DUI, he just walked. He says, I walked. I was going to get in my car and drive away. And she grabbed me and was pulling me or whatever. And I hear all these sirens coming. And within a few minutes, there’s all kinds of police. There’s about half a dozen police there. He says, and then they started jumping on me. He said, she was under me. He was all beaten up. He was all bloody and whatever. And she apparently had her jaw broken. And there’s no doubt in my mind when he’s telling me that, you know, when they were hit with his clubs or with this thing that they claimed he had without his fingerprints, it was a metal bar. Right, a slapper. A chunk of lead covered by leather. Everybody used to carry a slapper. How about you carry a slapper? They claimed, but there was no cloth on this. It was just the metal itself. Yeah, oh really?
[57:45] Anyhow, that makes it interesting during the trial when they flat out lied. No, he had no blood. I got the hospital reports. They wouldn’t take him in the station because he was too badly beaten up. But anyhow, he also had two other charges. He had been involved in a fight in a bar. And he had been involved in another situation with the police. And he was charged with resisting arrest and battery on a policeman out in Cicero. So he had these three cases. So I gave the father a fee on handling, you know, the one, I was going to, I gave him a fee one case at a time. I said, you know, first thing we’ll do, I want to get rid of those other two cases. I’ll take them to juries, I said.
[58:36] I’ll take them to juries because I wasn’t going to put them. I knew both the judges on those cases, but I wasn’t going to put them in a position on a case like that. I take the first case to trial. And I get him a not guilty. That was the fight in the bar.
[58:54] That was out in one of the suburbs. That was out in, I’m not sure which suburb, in the northwest side. After we get that case over with, before that case, I get a call from Pat Marcy. Pat Marcy, I hadn’t seen him probably even for a couple months, but I hadn’t talked to him for quite a long period of time. And he says to me, you got a case that just came in. He said, we’re going to handle it. And I said, there’s no need, Pat. I said, I can win these cases. I said, there’s no need. I can win these cases. And he said, we’re going to handle this. The case is going to go to Judge Passarella, he said, and we’ll take care of it. I said, Pat, there’s no need to. I said, I can win these cases. I said, they’re all jury trials, but I know I can win them all. And he says, you do as you’re told. Pat had never talked to me like that before.
[59:54] Powerful as he was and crazy as I am, And he never, you know, you never demand that I do anything or whatever. We had a different type relationship. And although I hadn’t broken away from them by now, it’s been years. I had broken away from them for about, you know, two, three years. And he says, you know, take the case to trial. I said, well, he’s got some other cases, too, and I’m going to take the one. And she says, I’ll take it to a jury, and I’ll win it. You’ll see how I win it. I take her to trial, and I get her not guilty. The second case was set for trial about a month after that. Not even, yeah, about a month or so after that. And during that time, a couple of times I’m in counselors, and Pat says, when are you going to take the case to trial? I said, well, Pat, you know, I won the one case. I got the other case on trial, and it was before Judge Stillo. He was a judge that we eventually indicted.
[1:00:51] Stillo was very, very well connected to the first ward. He’s one of the old-time judges out in Maywood. And I told him, you know, when I came in there, he assumed I’d take it to trial and he’d throw it out. And I said, no, no, no, there’s no need to. I says, I’m going to take the jury on this one. Number one, I had stopped fixing things long before this. And, but he was, to make money, he was willing that he would have thrown the case out. It was a battery with a Cicero policeman. And I says, no, no, I’ll take it. I’ll take it to, you know, I’ll take the jury. I said, I don’t want to put you in that pursuit. Oh, don’t worry about me. I take that one to trial and I win that one too. Now Pat calls me, when the hell are you going to take the case to trial? And that’s the original case with the police woman. That’s the main one. The main one. Okay, go ahead.
[1:01:44] When are you going to take it to trial? And I don’t want to take it to trial. In fact. I had talked to the prosecutor, and I said, look, I said, because he was charged with, he was charged with, you know, attempted murder and arrest. I said, if you’ll reduce it, the prosecutor was an idiot. He knew me, should have realized that, you know, that I never lose cases. Yeah. You know, but I want to work out something. He was a special prosecutor on it. He said, we’re not going to reduce it. We said, you know, if you want to work out a plea, we went five years, we went five to ten or whatever in the penitentiary. And I said, well, that’s not going to happen. I said, well, then we’ll just have to go to trial. So now, while I’m at Counselor’s Row, on one of my many occasions, because I was still having some card games over there at somebody else’s other lawyer’s office, because I had had big card games going on there for years. I’m sitting at the counselor’s row table, and Judge Passarella comes in. There’s just him and me there, and when he comes in, I say, Oh, you’re here to see Pat?
[1:02:56] And he goes, Pat, who? No more conversation. Who the fuck? No more. The guy’s treating me like I’m some kind of a fool or whatever. And I developed an instant disliking to him. I had never seen him around that much or whatever before that. So now, after the second case, you’re going to go to, you know. So I talked to Lenny. When Lenny came in, Lenny came in with him when we were starting to get prepared for the case. And, oh, this is before this is before I talked to the prosecutor. And I said, Lenny, I said, I says, if I can get it reduced to a misdemeanor, to a misdemeanor. I said, you know, can we work with, you know, and work out a plea, let’s say, for maybe a month or two, you know, a month or two. Is that OK with you? Oh, sure. He says, oh, sure.
[1:03:57] Now, this Lenny, this was the kid’s dad, your client’s dad. This is his dad. Now, explain who he was, who Lenny was. His dad was. What’s his last name? Yeah, Karela. Karela, okay. Lenny Karela, I’m pretty sure was his name. He owned a big bakery out there in Elmwood Park area. Okay. And he was friendly with all the mobsters. Okay, all right. I got you. For all I knew, he may have been a mobster himself, but I mean, he may have been because we had thousands of people that were connected. He was a connected guy. All right, go ahead. I’m sorry. And he said, oh, yeah, sure, no, not a problem because the papers are meant, they’re still, after a year, they’re still mentioning that case will be going to trial soon and every so often.
[1:04:43] What I had also done, I tried to make contact with the policewoman, not with her, but I put the word out and I knew a lot of police and I got a hold of somebody that did know her. And I said, look, I said, no, the case is fixed if I want it. Yeah. But I don’t want it. Even though I know that, you know, that it’s all BS, you know, I said, look, I said, get a hold of her and get a hold of her lawyer and tell them if they want to file a lawsuit, you know, you know, we can, they can get themselves some money on it. Uh, you know, he’ll indicate, you know, he’ll, he’ll, he’ll indicate that, you know, he, he was guilty or whatever, but I wanted to get her some money. The word I get back is tell him that piece of shit, meaning me to drop dead, to drop dead. You know, we’re going to put this guy in prison and that’s where he should be too. When the case now, now when the case goes to trial.
[1:05:48] The coppers lied like hell and talk about stupid. I’ve got the police reports there. When they took him into the police station, they wouldn’t take him. The station said take him to a hospital. He goes to the hospital and the reports, you know, bleeding here, bleeding there, and, you know, marks here, marks there. They beat the hell out of him.
[1:06:10] You know, nobody touched him. You know, nobody touched him. Nobody touched him. Was he bleeding? No, no, he wasn’t. He wasn’t bleeding. Didn’t have any, you know, along with, you know, along with everything else. Flat out lied. How many policemen were there? There were two or three. There were about 10 by the time it’s over. But it’s an absolute throwout. Any fingerprints on that metal? Well, we had some fingerprints, but not his. And on and on it went. It’s a throwout case to start with. The courtroom now where the case was, was very interesting. You walk in there, and when you walk in there, there’s about 20 people that can sit. And then there’s, it’s the only courtroom in the building where you have a wall, a glass wall, all the way up, all the way up. Covering in the door, opens up and goes in there. You go in there. It’s a big courtroom. A bunch of benches now in there. You go to the left, and here’s the judge’s chambers. You come out of the chambers, and you walk up about four steps. And here the desk is on like a podium. And it’s not where all the others are, you know, where you look straight forward. It’s over on the side. It’s over, you know, to the left as you walk out of his chambers.
[1:07:40] When the judge listens to the case he goes in there I’ll come up back with my ruling he comes out about 10 minutes later he walks up the steps, And now he turns off the microphone. Somebody turns off the microphone so the people in the back can’t hear anything. The ones inside there can, you know, can hear. The one back there can’t hear anything because it’s all enclosed.
[1:08:11] That’s why they got the microphone back there. Somebody shut it off. He says, basically, I’m not guilty in a real strange voice. And all but runs off the all but run and don’t ask me why this is what he did all but runs off all but runs off into the into his chambers, you know he’s afraid all those cops out in the audience were going to come and charge the stand I guess and put a whack on him.
[1:08:43] But think about it this is Chicago he’s with the bad guys but I’m just saying I don’t know why he did all that, but that’s what he did. And so now, as I come walking out with Mike, and they’re all in uniform, and most of them are in uniform, and then you’ve got the press and all kinds of cameras and whatever there. And as I come walking out along with him, some of these guys I know, and these jerk-offs are like calling me names and whatever. I go, I go see Pat.
[1:09:23] And when I go back into Counselor’s Row now, he’s there at the table. And when I come in, it’s a repeat of the Harry Allerman thing. He walks out. He walks directly. And I’m following him, and he walks in. He goes back into the same janitor’s closet and stands on the same steps just above me, you know, talking to me. And I said to him I said this judge is going to have a problem, I said, he’s going to have a problem. I said, what if he says something? And he said to me, nobody would dare. He said, nobody would dare cooperate against us. They know what would happen. Or words to that effect. And don’t ask me why. So many other things had happened before this. But now I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, you know, somebody’s got to stop this craziness. All this stuff. I’m thinking that at the moment, but then I’m worried for some reason, I think he can read my mind.
[1:10:34] Stupid as all of this seems, I’m afraid to think that anymore. I’m almost, you know, cause Pat’s such a powerful person and every sense I know, I know his power, but anyhow, so I leave. And like I say, 10, 15 minutes later, that’s all forgotten about. He paid me the rest of the money I was supposed to get from them.
[1:10:56] Obviously, he wanted to do it because he was probably charging a lot of money. That’s why he didn’t want me to take things. He wanted to collect the money because while the case was going on too, he puts me in touch with the head of the probation department because he was able to help in some way. He knew some of the, you know, some of the, some of the policemen involved in the thing had been contacted too. Yeah. But they were contacted and they messed up by, you know, they messed up by lying about all that. Yeah. When there’s police reports saying, oh, no, but anyhow, that was that particular case. Tell us why you decided to flip.
[1:11:38] These had been your friends. You knew you had explosive information. You knew as a lawyer, you knew what you had to say would send these people to prison for many, many years. if not life. It had to be hard. As other things happened, why did I commit the, Probably two or three other times things happened. But the most important thing was to think when my dad was dying, and I was very close to my dad. When my dad was dying, he was in the Olympia Fields Hospital.
[1:12:13] He had what they called it something else, but it was Alzheimer’s is what it was. Because my dad was a very easygoing person. A big guy. He was a real big guy, but he was not the tough guy. He was just a real easygoing person. He started getting mean with my mother, which he had never been.
[1:12:40] One time she comes home from church, and he had been going to Mass and communion every day of his adult life because he was almost a priest. That was my parents. Every morning went to church, went to mass and communion every morning. He had stopped going because, you know, he was acting up and giving her a hard time and didn’t recognize her, started not even recognizing her. She comes home one day and he’s out in the street naked. This is in the wintertime. He’s walking. He came out of the house and he’s naked, I guess maybe in his underpants or whatever. But, you know, when she calls and tells me that, you know, he’s got to go into the hospital.
[1:13:23] We want to get him into a nursing home, but they wouldn’t take him until he was in the hospital for, you know, to get some other attacks and whatever. When he’s in the hospital, when I go to see him the very first time, he’s all strapped in there. They’ve got him all strapped in a bed and his bed is all wet. He’s laying in his own urine he’s laying in his urine and whatever and and i kind of exploded you know what the hell is going on here and whatever and, The nurse comes in, she said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she said, nobody could control him, she said. Went to ask the nurse something and when she bent down to ask what they want, he punched her in the face. Uh, you know, so we, so we, we strapped him in now when I walked in, son, you know, look what they’re doing to me. And that’s what he always called me. Son. He didn’t call me Robert all my adult life. Son, son, son.
[1:14:25] And he recognized, obviously he recognized me. He hadn’t recognized anybody else for weeks. Didn’t know who anybody else was.
[1:14:34] So anyhow, I get him. I get him. cleaned up. I take him into the bathroom, get him cleaned up and whatever. And when we come back and when he’s laying in bed and he said to me, he said, you know, son, he said, you know, I, what, why are you, why are you, what were his words? Why are you wasting your God-given talents with these people? He said, they’re the ones who killed your grandfather. And then they fixed his case, and I had never known anything about that before. I knew he was killed and whatever in the line of duty. As I mentioned before, I was delivering groceries to his mother, who lived over on South Park, which became Martin Luther King Drive when I was younger. So I was bringing her groceries every two or three days when she ordered them from Verimus, a grocery store where when I was about 14, 13, 14 years old. I never knew that before. These are the same people that fixed your father’s case or your grandfather’s case or whatever. And it wasn’t long after that when he died. That part stuck with me. There were a couple of times, there were a number of times when I saw certain things. And like I mentioned before, all these people that had been killed around me.
[1:15:57] These people had destroyed. The one other thing that really got me angry with these people was always wanting to make more money and destroying people doing it. What they were doing in the civil courts. Really got me angry because they would go in there and they would just steal people’s businesses and cheat them out of everything and smile and laugh when they’re doing it. Not that they needed the money, but just so many things about the system had to be cleaned up.
[1:16:29] And I thought about doing something, but then I thought, no, that’s crazy. You know, I give up the life that I have because I’m living an unbelievable life. It just so happened, I’m playing cards upstairs, I’m playing gin with Alan Ackerman and a couple of others on a Saturday. I’d been doing that, driving back down, because I had moved out to the suburbs, too. And I want to go get a corned beef sandwich. I think it was called the Dill Pickle or something. There was a place under the L tracks, not far from there. And you walk by the federal building to go there. As I’m walking by the building, I have no idea. I just got the urge. It happened to be, it was either a Saturday or a holiday because I got the urge. When I thought about doing it too, I would not go to the, I would not go to the U.S. Attorney because I knew they were crooked. We were paying the U.S. Ah, yeah. The regular U.S. attorney. There’s, there’s, and the U.S. Attorney’s office, they’ll be the strike force or the organized crime division or whatever. than the regular U.S. attorney, just so guys will. Go ahead, Bob.
[1:17:39] I’m talking about when I was with Pat, there was a period of time when I’d go on the limousine rides with these people. After I fixed Harry Alleman’s case, we would go on these limousine rides. It would be on a Thursday night. The limousine, it was Ben Stein, who was the head of the janitor’s union. It was his limousine that would come.
[1:18:04] When I first got involved, initially, they would have dinners. They would have dinners there at counselors. They’d cook all kinds of special stuff for the group. And the group would consist of different major people, like the head of the Teamsters, a bunch of other people, a bunch of other mobsters from out of town, celebrities. They would go with us on these different rides, and we would go to different restaurants each week, different famous restaurants around the city. This went on for about three years when I was with them. During one of the rides, the U.S. attorney at the time, Pat was, no, Tom, Tom Sullivan, Tom Sullivan was the U.S. attorney in Chicago. One of the mobsters had a friend who, I don’t know who the, if it was somebody from Detroit or somebody from Cleveland, but one of the bosses came in and one of his good friends had been sentenced in Chicago. He had been convicted and sentenced to a number of years. I think it was like 20 years. He had been sentenced to like 20 years in prison. And Pat Marcy told him, not a problem. He said, what we can do, he said, we can have him ask for a new trial.
[1:19:27] We can hope that we can get the sentence reduced. There’s no way. And now the U.S. Attorney during this time when I came in is Anton Veloukis. Anton Veloukis had come from Jenner and Black.
[1:19:44] Uh, so I knew he was, he was corrupt. General and Block was getting millions of dollars from the mob. And the mob had control of all the money in the city, uh, and, and everything else. The, the, the mob and General and Block were the ones that they were paying. General and Block represented them. Uh, the U.S. Attorneys that were working on these, on these cases, including mine, the U.S. Attorneys that were working on these cases would retire and they either either with their own firm or otherwise would be representing these people and a lot of them would never get indicted that’s what happened in my stuff too there were nine people main people that never got indicted including johnny de franzo the head of the mob the head of the mob street crews there’s no way i was going to go to him, Gary Shapiro was the head of the organized crime section. So when I went upstairs that day, it was just, I didn’t, I got up that morning. I wasn’t planning on doing this. Really? An hour before I was not planning on doing this. Something as I’m walking by made me go up there. And the reason I did too much because the place was always full of people.
[1:21:06] Before there’d be all kinds of people around there you know i walked in there because at the time.
[1:21:14] There’s nobody in the building other than a couple of security people and i’ll check and see if anybody’s up in the organized crime section i thought it was a separate section, so when i go upstairs when i go upstairs i there was a woman back there in the office.
[1:21:33] There’s a window there you look in. And I come in and I said, you know, I’d like to see, I looked it up, I’d like to see Gary Shapiro. And, you know, what’s this about? And I said, you know, it’s something personal. You know, what’s your name? You know, Robert Foley. And she goes back to wherever. He comes walking back out of your office and, you know, what can I do for you? And I said, I’d like to talk to you. I’d like to talk to you. and he said you know okay so I go into the office and I said I’d like to help you put an end to the corruption the corruption in the court system I said, I said and he said he he was like shocked and you know said well why he said why do you have a problem, I said, no, I don’t have any problems. I said, I would like to help you. I said, I can help you clean up the whole system. I was talking not just about the court system too, about the whole state. And I told him, I said, I was involved in some things a while back in the statute, maybe to run on my stuff, because I hadn’t been doing anything wrong for a long time. And in Grey Lord, nobody cooperated against me. I knew nobody would dare. Nobody would dare cooperate against me or other people in the upper echelon.
[1:22:58] And nobody did. With all the people invited, I dealt with most of them, and none of them gave my name up as being involved. And so anyhow, he said, well, what do you want in return? I said, all I want is use immunity. I said, I don’t even need an immunity. I said, just use immunity where you can’t use my words against me. I said, then I can help you. And I said, but before I do that, I want you to check and make sure I don’t have any investigations or problems.
[1:23:29] And he said, what do you mean? If there are any investigations, I can’t help you. I said, because a lot of things I tell you, the statute is run and whatever, and it’s strictly me saying it, it wouldn’t help you and it could possibly get me in trouble. I said, I want to do what I want to do. I want to make sure I’m successful if I do it because I’m giving up a fantastic life. Should I put to Chicago, too? Should I put to Chicago authorities and make sure there’s no cases pending? And if they’re not? If they’re not? And he said, okay. And then he said to me, but I’m going to have to talk to Anton Veloukis. And as soon as he said that, and I said, to Veloukis, why? He said, well, he’s my boss. And I thought to myself, what the hell have I done? I thought I just committed suicide. Okay. That’s what I thought as I’m sitting there looking at him. Now, I want out. I couldn’t tell him he’s a crook or I think he’s a crook or whatever. So I just said, well, check on everything and then let me know if I don’t have anything.
[1:24:38] And now I said, I’ll decide if I want to do something. But I have to think about it. As I left that building, I’m a nervous wreck because I had no idea that, you know, that he would, I thought this was something out of Washington. So now it’s about a good week later. I had one of the worst probably gambling days of my life that week. Everything I did was wrong.
[1:25:08] Now the people I’m betting with too, none of them are the main bookmakers there. In Chicago. I had stopped dealing with all them. I had developed some other people myself, including somebody from out of town, including a major bookmaker in New Orleans. And there were a couple of people that I have known for years now in Las Vegas. And these are the people I’m dealing with. Now, this is a sports book. You’re betting on games. You’ve started betting big on a bunch of games that were going on at the time. Oh, yeah. I’m still probably close to the biggest veteran town. Yeah. You know, then that’s why they knew it too ahead of time because they named an Operation Gambit for gambling attorney. Gambling attorney, yeah. I mean, they knew this. Everybody knew this. About a week later, it’s about a week later, when I come into my office on our trip, another secretary now, it wasn’t Kathy anymore, it was Judy. And when I came into the office, Judy said to me, there’s some people here to see you, and they think they’re FBI agents.
[1:26:14] I have no idea how she got that idea they didn’t say we’re agents you know and because she had them sitting in my office nobody sat in my office they sat in the outer offices and whatever yeah when i come in there to see them there’s these three agents and one of them says to me you know are you sick have you got any maybe you got some problems you know they think i’m nobody can believe when i come in nobody can believe that i’m from i’m legit and i’m coming in for the right reasons, They thought maybe I was sick and I’m dying and whatever. Because he said, are you sick? Are you okay? And I said, no. And I said, we agreed to have me meet with the U.S. Attorneys and some other people in the motel a couple days later. When I go to meet with these people, prior to going in there, what I did, I owed something like about $260,000, $270,000. In cash, I had more than that. I had more than that in cash in my boxes. But I wanted to get everything cleaned up, cleaned up as best I could. So before I did, because I was worried, too, that they might tell me I got to stop gambling. I’m making a lot of money in my practice, but I’m making a lot of money gambling.
[1:27:38] So I go to see Marco D’Amico. There was one of the people that I owed the money to, a guy named Bob Johnson, a big, he was a big Xbox or whatever. I wasn’t afraid of him physically. He was giving me a hard time that week. I didn’t want to make those payments to those people, use up my money right now until I saw where exactly I could go and make sure I could keep gambling or whatever. I had put him up. I was supposed to give him, I think it was only like $30,000 or whatever. I was supposed to give him some money, and I called up, and I said, look, I’m tied up right now. I’ll see you in a day or two. He called back, and he was screaming and yelling. The next day, somebody shot a bullet through my window at the office. I come in, and there’s a bullet hole through the office window, a big play class window, right on the street there where I was with Lemke. So I go to see Marco.
[1:28:38] And I said, Marco, I said, he was playing cards. And I said, Marco, you know, can I talk to you? I hadn’t been there probably in two years, three years into the office. And he says, I’m kind of busy right now, you know. And so I just left and I went to see the boss. Johnny DeFranco was the guy in charge of everything. He’s the street guy. He was right on to Jackie Sharon. I passed away. He was the boss. He’s the one who set up the Tony’s Black Show killing and didn’t get arrested, because he was on the payroll with the U.S. attorneys. No, because he was paying big, big money to the Jenner and Black. That’s why he never got… He set the whole thing up. They knew it. I told him… In fact, I told him years ago that he was the one who did it. I knew the whole story on that. I went to see Johnny. Johnny owned a car dealership, a Chrysler dealership.
[1:29:35] And, uh, I went in to see him and I said, and I said, hi, John, how are you? And, uh, what’s up? You know? And I said, John, look, I said, I got a problem with some people. Uh, who’s that? And I said, you know, I owe some money. I said, I’ll get it together in a little bit. I said, but I need a little time. And he said, well, who are these people you owe money to? He says, get me a list of the people you owe money to, and you don’t have to pay anybody.
[1:30:06] Okay, he said, Bob, he said, look, he says, don’t get yourself in trouble. He said, you know, meaning like that. He said, don’t get yourself in trouble. You know, ease up. You know, ease up. He says, you’re a super sharp guy and this and that. He said, you don’t have to pay anybody. Give me a list of the names of the people in the world. The only names I gave him were a couple of local people. And I gave him Bob Johnson and a couple of the others. And he said to me, oh, he said, who’s Bob Johnson with? And I said, you know, I don’t know if he’s with anybody. He said, oh, okay. And I left. Now, when I went and met with the FBI agents in the motel, there were about five people there, U.S. Attorney.
[1:30:56] I’m pretty sure it was Tom Durkin, who’s the judge now. So anyhow, when I went to see them, well, I said, all I want is use, immunity, and the rest of it. And I told them about a couple of the things I was involved in, a couple of the cases I was involved in from a while back, just a few of them. I said, you’ve got a guy right now who’s your liaison, who’s with us, meaning with the mob, who’s with us. And he said, who’s that? And he said, Amanda. Oh, the cop, the, uh, uh, the high school, William Hanhart, you, you told him that William Hanhart was, uh, was with you guys. So go ahead, start over a couple of days ago.
[1:31:43] Anyhow, I said, I said, Hanhart is your liaison and he’s been with us for years. In fact, I said, he’s the one who had some of the people that he’s the one that helped kill some of the people. And the agent looks at me and the agent said, you don’t like him, do you? And I said, no, I don’t like him. Is that why you’re making up these things about him? And I had a few choice words with him. How bad. That agent didn’t realize that William Hanhart was running the biggest jewelry theft ring going to Chicago at the time and had done tons of things for the outfit, tons of things, helped set people up and all kinds of stuff. It came out eventually. They got all that information from me. He was the liaison between the FBI and Chicago. Whenever they were going to do anything, he’s the one that they contact and they, quote, unquote, work together with. And was obviously a good friend of this FBI agent. Obviously. He said, who I never saw again. They never brought him around me again. Anyhow, and that’s how the whole jury thing got. That’s how the whole investigation with him got started. Because I told them also.
[1:32:58] But he was the one, there were a couple of those burglars that robbed, was it? I was at Iubo’s house. Oh, Icarus. Tony Icarus. Joe Batters. The ones that robbed him that were killed, he’s the one who had people go pick him up and deliver him to these people. Yeah. Butchie told me that. I met with Butchie on something else one time when somebody else got killed. And I thought, how could these guys be so stupid? But, you know, when those two guys that tried to kill Ido, the gambler, and he said, well, what do you do if the police come in? If the police come in and say you’re under arrest, what can you do? He said, Hanhart took care of that. And I used to see Hanhart all the time there with Pat Marcy. He’d openly meet with Pat Marcy at Council’s Road Table. He’d have the car sitting out in front. He’d have the car sitting out in front. He’d be in an openly meeting with them.
[1:33:58] Just obviously blatant and he’s the FBI’s liaison and they didn’t know it yeah right they were all corrupt at that time, that was why too only very few people knew what I was doing for the first period of time very few because they knew a lot of the others there were corrupt because they were getting millions of dollars, With all the city business that would go, and I was there when these guys are cutting all the money up, the way they’re splitting it all up, and that’s going on to the present day. Well, you’ve got to quit gambling and this and that. And I said, look, I said, I don’t have to pay any of these people. They’ll say, how much do you owe? And I said, I don’t have to pay anybody. Why not? I was told not to pay them. By who? By Johnny DeFranco. It wasn’t the one I had words with. It was another FBI agent. You can’t talk to. You can’t talk to Johnny DeFranco. Johnny DeFranco was one of my closer friends for years. And I said, in fact, I went to see him and he told me not to, oh, you want me to go see him again and get that on tape?
[1:35:10] And that’s what I did. And the next day, I got the okay to go to wear a tape. I went to see Johnny. We played the tape in court. And I went to see him. Hey, Bob, how are you? Everything okay? You got everything straightened out? And I said, I said, yeah, thanks. I said, yeah. I said, thanks. I said, John, I said, I want to pay this. I want to pay this one guy. Who’s that? I want to pay Bob Johnson.
[1:35:41] And he said, why? He said, you’re not afraid of him, are you? These are his words on the tape. Because they know I wasn’t afraid of anybody. He says, you’re not afraid of him, are you? And I said, Johnny, I said, somebody put a bullet.
[1:35:57] Somebody shot a bullet hole. I said, the guy’s a lunatic. Can somebody shot a bullet hole through my window and so forth? And he said, well, if you want to, if you want to, so be it. This leads to an even better story. I called Barbro. That’s his name. I called Barbro. He was a bookmaker in the Western suburbs. He had been on TV a couple months before when he got arrested. He was a major bookmaker, but he was out in one of the Western suburbs. I called him and I said, I want to give you some of the money.
[1:36:30] I owed him about, I think about, it was only about maybe 20,000, 25,000. I said, I want to, meet you and get you some of the money. And he said, you don’t have to. That’s okay. You don’t have to. And I said, look, I said, you know, you’re a nice guy. I want to. And I could have gotten myself really in trouble by insisting on paying people if they realized what the hell, why would somebody was told they didn’t have to. They want to make cases on these people. That’s why they want me to pay them. They want me to make cases on them. So I meet them at my office when i’m gonna meet him when i meet him at my office and this is all on tape i said i got a couple thousand here for you he says look he said i didn’t threaten you did i they’re gonna kill bob johnson he said because they’re gonna kill bob johnson this is all on tape because he’s not paying anybody.
[1:37:30] And he said, and I want to make it real clear, I’m not threatening you with anything. I said, no, no, no, you’re a good guy and you’re a good guy and whatever. And so now they notify Bob Johnson. They said, well, we have to let him know that they’re going to kill him and whatever. Bob Johnson, no more than a couple months after that, gets indicted by the feds when he was a major bookmaker. He got caught coming off the plane from Vegas with a couple hundred thousand in cash or whatever, and they put him in the MCC. I didn’t know this until later. He’s in the MCC and they put him in the same, on the same floor with Rocky and police and a number of the Cicero people. This is all information I gave them led to their arrest. Like I say, all those people involved in that family secrets, they were arrested based on my information and my introductions to those people, the agents that I brought into the racetrack to meet with, to meet with Joe Nagal.
[1:38:52] A short time later, he’s found dead. They claim he committed suicide holding a bag over his head. No question. These people put him in the MCC on the same floor when they knew that these people were going to kill him. And he was the second one. another good friend of mine about a year before that was cooperating and I met him in an interesting way he was a hit man but I had met him in an interesting way and he had become a good friend all these guys loved hanging with me after they met me but uh he wound up he wound up supposedly on the same floor with the same people killing himself with a bag over the head, And the end of case, that’s how corrupt the system was, even when I was there. But let’s get back now. Was that Jerry Scarpelli by any chance? A guy named Jerry Scarpelli. I’m pretty sure it was. He was the one that. Was going to inform him and then he came, then he decided not to. Yeah. Okay. I’m pretty sure it was Jerry because he was also a good friend. I’m pretty sure he was the one that was in there.
[1:40:13] And they put him on the same floor when you had about half a dozen of the other top mobsters, the most vicious ones in there. But frank swiss did you ever run into frank swiss the german he was a bad dude, yeah he was he was up there in fact he was with the north side yeah i knew him real well yeah uh along with uh he was up there his area was the old town area right yeah he was he was he was a porn store owners and that guy redwood met was uh was uh running the red o’malley wire was a guy named Redwood Met that had his office bugged and he was taping Frank for a couple of years, really. It was a hell of a case. Well, I wasn’t real close to him, but I knew him. I saw him a lot because I lived right there in Newbury Plaza, and I spent a lot of time. A couple of the girls I was fooling around with were there and were waitresses there in Old Town. Old Town, yeah. He was connected with DeVarco, with Caesar. He was with Caesar’s crew.
[1:41:22] It’s funny how I met, jump in real quick to that. And the way I met Cesar, I was dealing with a new bookmaker who I went to collect. I was supposed to go collect money from the first time, and he wanted to meet me at a restaurant up on the north side, up on the north shore. And when I went to meet him, I go in there, and I go into a small— it’s a small little restaurant, a little restaurant with a couple tables and with a little bar in the corner. And when I come in there and I sit down, there’s only one person there at the bar. And I sat a couple seats down from him. And there were about three or four other people at one of the tables close by that look like mobsters. They just had that look about them. And I’m looking for my bookmaker. I don’t see him. And this person, this old timer, moves his chair over a little bit. And he looks at me and he says, do you know me? Do I know you? I don’t think so.
[1:42:28] You don’t know me? No. Then why are you saying you’re connected with me? I said, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? And he said, and then Woody O’Clock comes out of the back room, the bookmaker comes out of the back room. And he said, you told him that you were connected with me. I said, I told him I was connected with Johnny Diarco. And I meant this, and I was talking about this. When I had met with him at the restaurant or whatever, where people are talking about me being partners with Johnny DeArco. And he’s thinking Johnny DeArco, the mobster. And I said, no. I said, you know, I’m an attorney. I said, I’m a blog partners with Johnny DeArco Jr. His name was DeVarco. No, DeVarco. Yeah, Cesar DeVarco. I got you.
[1:43:22] He says, it was a short time after I had become partners. It was probably only maybe a couple weeks or whatever afterwards. He became a great source of business after that. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. In fact, I’ve seen the counselors once in a while when they come in there. And by now, I’m meeting all these other people. But see, the way I got to be so familiar with everybody, I bought Postals, the health club. That’s where the mobsters were all going. I bought that place. What was the name of that? Post TLS, Postals Health Club. Postals Health Club. Where was that? Downtown? We’ll read about that in the books. They talk about Postals Health Club. Charlie Postal was a world-renowned wrestler, not like we wrestled, but from the old times. But when I was a policeman in 18…
[1:44:20] One day at roll call, they tell us, don’t anybody go to Mama DeLuca’s anymore. It’s a mob joint, and nobody’s supposed to go in there.
[1:44:32] That’s why I went for lunch that day. And I meet Pat Marcy for the first time in his schmock and the rest of it. And he says, oh, you’ll see a lot of your friends here? And I says, no, I won’t. And he said, what do you mean you won’t? We were all told not to come in here. Oh, really? And why are you here? Because I was told not to come in here. I became unbelievably close friends with him. He was an old-time mobster who had connections. He had connections in traffic court and a lot of places. And I started having, when I was a policeman, I started having dinners there all the time. And inviting all these mobsters. And when I would have a dinner, we would take up just about the whole restaurant. He’d have a leg of veal. He’d make a leg of veal. He’d send his kid out to Lake Michigan to catch lake perch and make all kinds of dishes. And we would take just about most of the restaurant. All these different mobsters wanted to come with me to these dinners. Butchie and Tony and all kinds of others. This is when I’m still a placement. And I’m meeting some of these people because I’m involved in the gambling and I’m over in those places all the time. And when I first started going, that’s when everybody challenged me. Oh, you’re a copper. They hated coppers. And after all my activities, everybody wants to be my friend.
[1:46:00] But now when I became partners with Johnny, Johnny flew me down to Springfield. The state plane went from Meigsfield down to Springfield. And it was just for the senators and the congressmen and, you know, and the political people. I would go, I went with Johnny the first day, you know, the next day when he’s going, when he’s going down there. He’s telling everybody that this is my partner. This is my partner now. And all these people are coming into his office, you know, tell your dad I said hi and the rest of it. That’s how I initially met with these people.
[1:46:45] And now when we had the elections back in Chicago, all these people would come there at the first ward office. Just about everybody was anybody. Anybody running for office, anybody wanting to be a judge. You had judges, you had all the politicians. and there were no Republicans. They were just rivals. Everybody there, in fact, as I got to know and meet with these people, all these people were, initially they were Democrats, and they would call themselves Republicans when they were running in a Republican area. All of them, including the governor, including Thompson, and I wrote about him in my book, and he never denied it.
[1:47:31] He’s the one that was meeting with Johnny in the steam room that one day and as I said before when Harry when Harry Alleman’s case was going on Tom Tom Maloney, Knew he was going to be named a judge, even though he had a reputation, even though he had been under investigation for killing a couple of people. And I found out later about that from Butchie. That was the reason he wanted to represent Harry was because Harry had killed a few people for him years before. He was involved with all kinds of narcotics people. Uh he was his hangout was a restaurant over there on west 26th street uh his girlfriend who became his wife was a dope dealer who came to me who came to me for representation at one time uh and uh when i’m wearing a wire i build up my own reputation and my own business by doing that a lot of these mobsters.
[1:48:36] Whenever they got in trouble, I would help them out. A lot of them were gamblers themselves. And when I would go to these dice games and these other games with girls I’d pick up to impress them. There’s a casino right down the hill, a casino. And when I would walk in there, everybody could see I was the star when I’d walk in. Everybody wants to shake my hand. But a lot of these guys, Bob, have you got 100 or two? They never gave it back to me. I didn’t mind doing it. I didn’t mind doing it for a lot of reasons. They were out getting me business. In fact, the one who warned me about was one of these people. He was somebody I had loaned money to a couple of times and done things for. But the senators, too, they would call me when their family got in trouble, when their kids got arrested. That’s why I’m Leroy.
[1:49:30] Frank Savickas was one of the uttermost powerful senators. I was with Frank probably two, three times a week for a couple of years. In my restaurant, I would meet all these people. They all wanted to be my friend for a lot of reasons. They could talk to me. A lot of them that couldn’t talk to Pat Marcy would have to go through me. Even Marco, Marco couldn’t talk to Pat Marcy. If he needed something or wanted to get a message, I’m the one who carried it because I could see Pat five days a week. That we’re talking about not just the senators, the congressmen, judges, these other people.
[1:50:09] I’m talking after being with them for a few years. What I would do, too, when we had every election… They were run out of the office. They were run out of the first ward office. And what I would do was I would sit in Johnny’s office, you know, behind his desk when he’s not there. So when these people come in, you know, come in to say hello and whatever, who do they see there but yours truly? And people began to realize this is the person that can get a lot of things done. So now tell us about the robbery he set up in Wisconsin. That was a story all on its own. Now remind us who this guy is, Bobby. Tell us a little bit about him. Bobby Abinati.
[1:50:58] He had a no-show job as a tow truck driver for the streets of sand. That was his job. And he used it as, and I mentioned in the book, that was where he did his booking from. That was his office. Okay. But I knew dozens of people that had no-show jobs. They got a paycheck. And they had a job with Streets and Sand or with the city or with the county or whatever. They never went to work. And what they did, the deal was with them, they gave half the money they got after taxes to the mob. They gave half of it. That’s why they got all these people, these different jobs, the no-show jobs. The ones who got other jobs paid 10%. That’s what it costs you if you want to go in there and get a job. And we’re talking with everything in the city and the county. They had control of all of that. Crazy. So what was this robbery set up up in Wisconsin? What must have gone wrong? When it’s time for me to go, these are the people who are going to kill me. I want to make sure I get them. What I did was I had been told, well, Veloukis, when Veloukis was the U.S. Attorney running everything, he would not give me the okay to wear a wire on a number of people, any of the mobsters.
[1:52:21] I was told I couldn’t wear a wire on them because he said it was too dangerous for me. He was trying to, I knew why, he was trying to protect them because they’re making millions of dollars off them. He told me I couldn’t represent any of these people, so I had to try to find a way to do it. Uh, so what I did, uh, Johnny DeFranco, the boss, you state, we used to go to Maywood racetrack every Friday and he’d sit there with being sheriff. With Dvorak, who was the sheriff. They’d sit there at the table every Wednesday night. And I’d be going there a lot with Jimmy Andreacci, Joe Andreacci, one of the top bosses, a younger brother. Oh, yeah, Joe the trucker, I think they called him. Yeah, but his brother, he had a brother, Jimmy Andreacci. And Jimmy was a real close friend of mine.
[1:53:26] And Jimmy would have the table. He was the one who gave all the juice loans out to all the people involved in the racetracks. He was the one that handled the juice for the drivers, for the owners, for the trainers. They all went through Jimmy. And he had a table right by the window in the clubhouse.
[1:53:48] And Johnny and Dvorak would be about five rows up at a table, always the same one every Friday. And Tony Doty would be there and different mobsters would be there, but I would be there every, I’d be there four or five nights a week. I had nothing else to do. And that’s where I would take a lot of girls I’d be meeting. I’d be on, I’d be to the newspaper. I’d be meeting all kinds of girls because I no longer went to Guacolos or those places. I had stopped going, you know, for quite a while. By this time, I’m collecting at the window, and as I’m coming down, Tony Doty stops me. Hey, Bob, what’s up? I said, and he says, gee, you haven’t been with us for a long, you haven’t been betting with us for a long, long time. And I says, I got my own operation going. Oh you do and he said uh i said yeah i said it’s not real big i said i’ve only got about half a dozen people i won’t i won’t let them bet more than a thousand which was big big money at that time and i went back and i sat down when i went when i went to when i went to the office on monday i get a call from marco and he says you know can you stop by the can you stop by the club.
[1:55:04] And uh yeah sure i knew why i knew by telling don’t telling dodie this that i’d get whistled in.
[1:55:13] So i called tom and i said you got to get the okay for me to wear a wire i said i just got a call from marco and i told him what i did he said what he said what are you crazy you know what are you nuts i says look you gotta get the okay because i told him i’m going over there and i’m going over there so i got the okay to wear wire uh i had been told clearly i couldn’t against pat marcy and i could not against eddie burke and i could not against certain other people and so i get the wire and i go to see him and and he said what’s this about about whatever and about you having an operation yeah yeah mark i said that it’s not a real big he said look he says bobby this is all on a wire now. He says, Bobby, you got to pay.
[1:56:03] Even you, I can’t help you. You’ve got to pay. You’ve got to be with somebody. And if you’re not and you get caught, something’s going to happen. You can’t mention any names unless you’re already lined up. Now, I was with them when all this, this whole thing began right about the time I got with these people.
[1:56:25] They were meeting over at the club, at the club. There was a separate little room for Mirko in the club when you went in there. And that’s where, at the time, initially, it was Jackie Cerrone. It was Johnny DeFranco. It was other top mob bosses. People from all around were coming in there. That’s when they were setting up the whole scam with everybody has to pay. And that’s when everybody now had to pay street tax. If anybody messes with you, you give them by name, say you’re with me, and that’ll be the end of it. You’ll have no problems. They won’t mess with you. That was the deal. In fact, it became like a business in the courts. The clerks, The police working in there, you know, the policemen all around the city, other people, anybody who found out somebody was doing anything, not just gambling. We’re talking about with the bookmaking, with chop shops, with stealing cars, with even being involved in insurance scams, anybody, burglars, burglars had to use mob.
[1:57:52] And all of them paid a street tax. In other words, if you were a major burglar, you had to use one of their offenses. So you paid a portion. They got a portion of what it was. Everybody, even the one you dealt with, would all pay. We’re talking millions of dollars a month, not just in Chicago, but in all the suburban areas out there, all the way into Indiana and Wisconsin. Listen, this was the new thing now. They would come in there all the time and they would exchange. In other words, I’ve got this customer, I’ve got that customer, I’ve got another customer.
[1:58:31] And the person doing it would get a piece of the action. With bookmakers, it was 25,000 in front. I know this because one of them that got caught came to me for help, a jeweler upstairs. He got grabbed and knew that I knew these people and came to me terrified, wanting to pay. He wanted out of the business, but he was still going to pay them. And he wanted to make sure he wasn’t killed when he went to go pay them. I had to go with him. That’s another story. But anyhow, Marco tells me the whole thing. and you’ve got to pay. It depends on how much you’re doing and how many plays. So we arranged where I would pay, I forget the exact, I don’t know if it was $5,000 or $10,000. I was getting a discount because, you know, I had known those people. But where I would pay, and he told me, if you get more customers too, or if we find out you’re lying, you know, you’ll be paying more, but you can’t be lying to us because then something might happen to you. This is all on tape. But they did give you the friends and family discount. Yeah.
[1:59:42] Then what I do, I was able to make a new law in Springfield. I talked about that in the book. I’m paying John $50,000. In Diarco, I’m paying him $50,000, and we’re going to pass a law in Springfield. It’s all set to be done. I tell Marco, and I’m paying Johnny $5,000 at a time, But I tell John, I tell Marco, after I made a couple payments, I tell Marco, I tell him, I need $50,000. I got to pay Johnny $50,000 because, you know, we’re fixing a matter. We’re fixing something and we’re getting a law passed at Springfield. I don’t want to go into my box and take a lot of money. You know, can I get $50,000? Yeah, sure. And what will that cost? I got a discount, too, because I’m family. Even though they were going to kill me a few years before.
[2:00:37] But, and this is all on tape. And he gave me the 50,000. And now, and I made a few payments on that. So we got all that information. And we got all that information on the street tax that goes on to this day. None of the U.S. attorneys ever indicted anybody on any of that. So, yeah, we’re going to get the robbery. We’re going to get the robbery set up. I mean, they wouldn’t let me gamble to the last two weeks when I was there. And when I was, and when I was finally allowed to gamble, I only had like four or five bookmakers. and I won close to $200,000. I won close to $200,000.
[2:01:18] No, I’m sorry. It was actually three weeks, only two weeks and a couple of days. But I told these people, I’m going to be betting and I’ve got other places I’m playing. I said, so this week, no matter what, we’ll carry it over until next week. We’ll carry it over until next week. We won’t be, there’ll be no straightening out for this week. It’ll be, it’ll start next week where we straighten it out, but I want to play with you guys. Okay, no problem. So, uh, I lost about four or 5,000 in those two days. It was a Saturday and Sunday. So we start playing the next week. It’s going to be straightened out, you know, on the following Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever. So the next week I went a little over 200,000.
[2:02:08] And I’m betting with Bobby, which kind of brings up, begs the question and have to bring this up is there’s going to be people that say, well, the only reason he came in was because he had huge gambling debts and this was a way to get out of paying them. What would you say to those guys? Well, because the facts of the case, I’ll get into this. The facts of the case are in terms of that, I had given him big money in the past and never got paid back. He never did. He didn’t have the money.
[2:02:40] And like there were a few others like him, I had loaned him like maybe the first time $1,500. Then I loaned him like $4,000, a couple times $5,000 when he had to pay off money that he owed and whatever. And the last time I did it was, I got him a $10,000 Judas loan. I did it with a friend of mine who had the parking lot over there in Halsted with George. And I said, George, I said, you know, I’m going to bring in Bobby Ebenati. He’s one of Marco’s guys. I said, because he’ll maybe pay, I’m sure he’ll pay you back. I’m sure he’ll pay you back. I said, because I keep loaning him big money. I never get it back. And he’s a good friend. But, uh, so I figured I’ll get the money back that way. And, uh, so, okay. So I set up a juice loan with, uh, with George, Bobby made one payment and then stopped and then just stopped. He figured he could because he’s with, with whatever. And so I paid George the rest of the money. I mean, it sounds bizarre, but I began that at that time I was making unbelievable money, you know, because of the way I was able to gamble with all those people. So anyhow, when I win the $200,000, when I win that, I tell Bobby, I want to set up this bullshit card game.
[2:04:05] Hey, Bob, tell us about your last operation working with the feds. I know you wanted to lock something in where they’d go to jail for a long time because you didn’t want them out there. You didn’t want to have a bunch of not-guilties. And you know anything can happen when you go to trial. But when you catch somebody in the act, it’s a different story. So tell us about that. It’s a pretty exciting case, guys. And I said, oh, Bobby, I said, Bobby, I said, when I collect this money, I’ll give you 25% of it.
[2:04:35] His was like 40-some thousand. I said, when I collect it, I’ll give you 25%. I’m having a real good thing. I’m never going to. I know now the robbery’s going to take place probably in the next week or so where you get it lined up. Beforehand, I had seen Marco, and I told him, you know, I got a card game. When I made one of my payoffs, I think I made my second payment on the juice loan. And I said, you know, I play cards with these people. And I told them, I says, I play cards up in the, what was that building there? It’s a hundred stories on Michigan Avenue. Dave, John Hancock. I said, the person who has the game, we play up in the Hancock. We play up there. I said, it’s a big game. What kind of money? I said, oh, there’s probably a hundred, 200,000 in the money. I said, we’ve got some dope dealers coming in. He said, okay, we can hit the game. And if we do, he said, you get 25%. And I’m wearing a wire at this time. And he said, don’t worry about it. We’ve done it there before. We got somebody over there and we’ve done it there before. We can do it. And then when I talked to my people, Steve Bowen. Steve Bowen was the agent I worked with from day one.
[2:05:58] Steve said they said it would have been too dangerous to to go when they’re, you know, with people, other people being around, obviously hundreds of people being around, they, they decide to arrange to set it up in Wisconsin and they set it up right there, in Lake Geneva where people are not there in the winter time. This is in November where there’s not a lot of people. So it’s set up to go there in Lake Geneva. I’m talking with, talking with, I talked with Marco and Bobby gets a hold of me. You’re going to, you’re going to have a card game that they’re going to rob. Yeah. He says, well, he says, tell Marco that I want to do it, that they’re going to have somebody that’s not my group. That’s not my, that’s not everybody’s. They’ve got crews to do certain things. Certain crews that go out to do the killings, certain crews that go out for robberies, certain crews that go out for burglaries. He’s with the burglary crew. He says, I’m with the, I’m with the, uh, the burglary guys and whatever. He says, tell Marco. So, you know, I meet Marco and I said, Bobby wants to fuck him. The knucklehead. No, he’s not going to, he’s not going to do it. We got somebody else. And so now I’m hanging around those people again. Now, now that I’m paying, obviously something won’t happen to me. I got their money. You’re paying street tax. You got some of their money.
[2:07:26] Now I’m back in the clubs all the time. And setting up other people uh you know the bad guys i mean the real bad guys a lot of the bad guys a lot of the guys we’re friends about and i never turned in any of them i’m telling now as i’m talking to bobby they were talking about there’s another game i said i want to get into, this game up there in lake geneva he says that’s my area he said he says i got you know i got a place up there. And Marco has a place up there. They’ve got places up there. They’re up there all the time, you know, and whatever. So it’s going to be in Lake Geneva. Oh, that’d be great. And I’m telling Bobby now that, you know, there may be close to a million dollars in the game because we got some other major dope dealers that play and whatever. I says, and whatever, he’s pressuring me, pressuring me, pressuring me. And Marco keeps saying knucklehead. No, not the knucklehead.
[2:08:26] Then a couple of days before it’s set to go, it’s all lined up to go on a certain day. Marco calls me. He says, we’re going to let Bobby do it. We’re going to let his crew do it. The other guy, the one who was supposed to do it, and the one that was supposed to do it is one of my closest friends i just saw him a couple days ago he the one who would the one who they wanted to do it didn’t want to do it it turns out he didn’t want to do a cowboy thing like that yeah i don’t uh and that’s that’s why bob that’s how bobby got involved in it on the day it was supposed to happen i was supposed to collect that 40 some thousand from bobby because that was it was like that was collection day. Bobby only gave me, or maybe it was even like 60. Bobby only gave me about half of the money he owed me and said, I’ll give you the rest of the money later. I’ll give you the rest of the money later. I obviously told these people that he had delivered the money to me when he did that. Because it turns out they were going to kill me. I found out from Lantini, from Rick, they were going to kill me at the card game. Rather than give me my percentage and whatever, Rick told me, yeah, he said, I was supposed to do it. He said, but I turned them down and they kept pressing and I kept saying no. That’s when they gave it to knucklehead, to knucklehead.
[2:09:56] So now when we get it all lined up, it was around maybe three o’clock when I met Bobby. He gave me the money and he told me everything is all set to go. We’ll see you later on. What they’re supposed to do, it’s a house that they’ve got. And it’s probably about a good distance away from where the dirt road is. There’s a circular dark road, or a semi-circle. It goes from the street here and goes around in those houses. There’s houses around there, big houses, and comes out back a little distance away on the other side. And what they had done was they had set up flash grenades in there. So when the guys come in, they have to come this big distance, and that’s when they announce that you’re under arrest or whatever because these guys were trying to fence. Tactically, they could, like, trap them in with something blocking the street on both sides on that circular driveway and then set off the flashbangs.
[2:11:03] Trying to think tactically, and then have agents hiding in the woods and then come in on them. So, yeah, that was pretty good. They had them all over the place. They had them all set up. It was a long distance down there, and across the way they had some bushes, issues and but but again you know getting well getting into that uh itself bobby you know bobby paid me only a portion of the money uh a portion of the money and uh and i talked with him and he said yeah he said you know we’ll be there we’ll see you and the deal was i was supposed to call them uh i was going to be staying in the lodge there and i was supposed to call them uh call him after I got in there and I’m ready to go to the game. And so when I get there, there had to be, in that room, there had to be 30, 40 people. It turns out they had two whole SWAT teams. The Wisconsin SWAT team and Chicago SWAT team. And the Wisconsin guy was in charge of it. When we finally get to the hotel room, I call Bobby.
[2:12:14] Uh, and I said, I said, he said, I said, yeah, I’m here now and I’ll be going over to the, oh yeah. He said, we saw the place. It’s going to be perfect. He said, you know, I can see, I can, you know, I can see the, I can see the, uh, smoke coming out of the windows and whatever. Uh, it’s going to be ideal. It’s a secluded place. Uh, he says, and he says, and he says to me, and I’m here, we got the shotguns, we got the shotguns and whatever. cover and we’re all the time he’s setting you up to kill be killed.
[2:12:49] He said and and and uh and he says and uh you know we’re ready to go i said okay i said uh, so when i hang up i said the gym jim wagner was there with me from chicago he was the head of the strike force there in chicago uh and i said to jimmy okay let’s go and he and and now the Wisconsin guy running the show says, you’re not going in there. No, you’re not going. I said, I got to go. No, no, no. It’s too dangerous. He said, he said, you’re not, you’re not going. And I said, I have to go or it’s not going to happen. I said, you know, and, and, uh, Jimmy says, I’ll put on your coat. And that’s Jimmy. Yeah. Yeah.
[2:13:32] You’re not. If I don’t walk in there, nothing happens. I have to go. So the other guy gives in and agrees to let me go. They were worried I might get killed. It turns out they were right.
[2:13:46] But I was going anyhow. I mean, my life is, I knew my life is over at this stage. Anyhow, we go in there, And, uh, when I get in there, there had to be 30, 40 people in there. And when I get in there, they tell me, you got to go upstairs and it’s a two level and you got to go in the bathroom and you got to go stay in the bathroom. No, they’ve got it. They’ve got it wired and they’ve got a plane up above. They’ve got a plane, a silent plane up above. And I’m listening to all this. It’s all being, you know, it’s all loud as hell in there. All these guys are with shotguns and with vests. And they’ve got, I don’t know how many people outside, outside, across the way and whatever. And in about maybe half an hour, not even that, half an hour later, I hear, here they come. Here they come, that must be them, because there’s no traffic at all around there and in there. And yeah, oh, the car stopped. The car stopped in front. It stopped in front. and somebody got out. Somebody got out and they went in the bushes across the way. Oh, fuck, we got some guys over in that area. We got some guys in that area.
[2:15:07] Okay, and then the car moves around and I never saw the area. It goes all the way around and comes back to the street and the car goes around and the car comes back, it comes back about maybe, About 10, 15 minutes later, here it comes again. It’s slowed down. It’s moving now. They’re still driving. They’re driving around. They disappeared. Nothing for a little bit. And then after a while, here it comes again. This time, Gorbos in the bushes comes out and talks to them And then goes back into the bushes, and the car leaves. Oh, man. Cautious, cautious. And the car leaves. And it’s gone. It’s gone for a while. This time, probably maybe like a half an hour. Here it comes again, and the guy gets into the car, and the car leaves. in nothing. We’re in there for an hour, hour and a half, and nothing. That said something must have happened. We leave. Now, I’m leaving town the next morning. I don’t know where I’m going.
[2:16:37] But I made it clear I was not going to witness protection. I told them there’s no way. I said we own protection. We own that. That’s a death sentence in there. And as we’re going, we drive in and we go to the north side FBI station. Let me call Bobby and let me see what happened. Maybe we can still do something. Maybe we can do this another time, but let me talk to Bobby. So I call Bobby. I call this house and his wife tells me he’s not home yet. So I know where he’ll be at this particular bar, nightclub that’s owned by Rick Lantini, my buddy, the guy that I’m dealing with to this day.
[2:17:27] Rick Lantini owns the club, and he’s one of his top guys. This guy’s got a 30-piece crew of his own.
[2:17:37] And he answers the phone. What’s up? Is Bobby there? Oh, yeah. He says, Bobby’s here. He says, what the fuck is going on? I says, what do you mean? He said, he’s here, and so many people are here, and they’re yelling about something happened. And he says, what the fuck? He said, did something go wrong on that robbery? Or words to that effect. Rick was the one they wanted to have do it, and he wouldn’t do it. But they come back, and they’re there. holy shit, what happened was, When they went around, there was a copper undercover police were there.
[2:18:19] When they called the local police department and they told them there’s going to be something happening. They wouldn’t tell them where. Don’t go at all excited if you hear some noise and commotion or whatever. So this is some goofy copper who wants to be around the action. And that’s the place he picked the park. yeah and these guys come by and they see him and they figure to top or screwing somebody, and that’s why when they went by the first time they saw him when they went by when they went by the the uh when they went by the second time and they saw him they figured you know he’s sleeping that son of a bitch must be sleeping there yeah and they’re in but and they’re going to do it But anyhow, because it’s like a block away on the other side, air holes or something breaks in the car.
[2:19:14] When they leave there to go, The car, the car, but it’s their work car. They never, it’s a stolen car. Yeah. They never, you know, they never, so they’ve got another car that they came down there in and all. So they, they went over to, in town to see if they could find somebody in town. Apparently some people sometimes, you know, we’re late in those places. They couldn’t get the car fixed. So the guy running the show called it off. He says we’re not gonna we’re not gonna do it oh man he says he says we’re not gonna do it we indicted them and convicted him anyhow because i’ve got i’ve got bobby on tape saying when i was there i’m here i’ve got the shotguns yeah uh they’ve got they’ve got all it off because they wanted to. They called it off because they couldn’t do it. We wound up convicting all of them. But Bobby wouldn’t give up his crewmates. He wouldn’t give them up. Bobby did 10 years rather than do that. Wow.
[2:20:30] Crazy, crazy, crazy. God. Bob Cooley. Guys, there’s many more stories like this in When Corruption Was King. I’ll have links in under the show notes.
