Speaker 1: Pushkin Jake Alpern here before we get started, I wanted
Speaker 1: you to know that deep Cover Season two will be
Speaker 1: dropping weekly on Mondays, but the full season is available
Speaker 1: right now ad free for Pushkin Plus subscribers. That's all
Speaker 1: ten episodes right away. Fine Pushkin Plus on the deep
Speaker 1: Cover show page in Apple Podcasts, or at Pushkin dot Fm.
Speaker 1: Previously on deep Cover. Ever since the days of al Capone,
Speaker 1: the Outfit had been an almost unstoppable force in the
Speaker 1: city of Chicago. The mob had corrupted many of the
Speaker 1: city's judges and politicians, and it's hitmen killed with impunity.
Speaker 1: Then in the spring of nineteen eighty six, something unexpected happened.
Speaker 1: A mob lawyer named Bob Cooley walked into the offices
Speaker 1: of federal prosecutors and offered to switch sides. The prosecutor
Speaker 1: he spoke with was stunned. You know, why have the
Speaker 1: gods delivered this gift to me? There's got to be
Speaker 1: something wrong with this. I had profound questions about his motivation.
Speaker 1: I think everybody did. In the eyes of federal prosecutors,
Speaker 1: Bob's story and his offer seemed almost too good to
Speaker 1: be true, So the Feds couldn't help, But wonder what
Speaker 1: was Bob Cooley really after. Bob didn't just start out
Speaker 1: as a lawyer for the mob. He had to work
Speaker 1: his way up. He started out real small potatoes in
Speaker 1: traffic court, and that's where he got his first of
Speaker 1: how things were really done in Chicago. Bob goes to
Speaker 1: traffic court to try his very first case. His client
Speaker 1: had been caught drinking and driving and got a DUI.
Speaker 1: The trial doesn't take long. The judge just throws the
Speaker 1: ticket right out. Bob's like, thank you very much. I mean,
Speaker 1: a win is a win. Right afterwards, in the hallway,
Speaker 1: Bob bumps into this guy he knows, a cop named Jimmy,
Speaker 1: tall skinny guy. People called him dog Breath behind his
Speaker 1: back anyway, Jimmy. He was the judge's cousin. And Jimmy
Speaker 1: said to me, the first one was on the house.
Speaker 1: From here on out, you come and see me before
Speaker 1: you have any case. And I understood what exactly what
Speaker 1: that meant. What he meant was that going forward, Bob
Speaker 1: would have to pay if he expected to win. Old
Speaker 1: dog Breath he was the judge's bag man, the guy
Speaker 1: who collected the bribes in cash and in the coming
Speaker 1: days and weeks. As he learned the ropes, Bob discovered
Speaker 1: that every desired outcome had a price. Duy's one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks to fix hit someone with a car
Speaker 1: five hundred and traffic court. That was like the minor leagues,
Speaker 1: Bob says. After a few months, he quickly graduated to
Speaker 1: the big leagues, to another courtroom Bob calls gambling and
Speaker 1: gun court, where the real action was taking place. And there,
Speaker 1: like in traffic court, money was flowing straight into the
Speaker 1: judge's pocket. Literally, Bob says, he just sauntered back to
Speaker 1: the judge's chambers, opened the closet door, and I would
Speaker 1: just put, you know, put the money. I would go
Speaker 1: and I would put one hundred dollars for each case
Speaker 1: I had in his pocket. Bob says that before long
Speaker 1: he had three cases a day in this courtroom. Usually
Speaker 1: made motions to dismiss the charges against his clients so
Speaker 1: we could avoid going to trial. This tactic, combined with
Speaker 1: the payoffs, worked very well. Did you ever lose any
Speaker 1: of those cases? I'm never how can I lose? You know? Wait,
Speaker 1: did you did you hold on? Did you like go
Speaker 1: through the motions of like making like a good argument.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, certainly that's why these the judges loved me,
Speaker 1: in particular, because I gave him plenty of reasons, as
Speaker 1: I would say, to hang your hat on. So so
Speaker 1: the bribe is almost just like your insurance. No, it
Speaker 1: was because I'm a nice guy, Jake. I a vast
Speaker 1: majority of those cases. You know, I'm the Legit had
Speaker 1: to be thrown out because you know, the motions were legitimate.
Speaker 1: But I did it because you know, that was my nature.
Speaker 1: His nature. Bob prided himself as a big tipper, a
Speaker 1: generous guy. The way he described it, he was almost
Speaker 1: like the Santa Claus of the court system, just doling
Speaker 1: out gifts as he regaled me with stories. It all
Speaker 1: sounded so grand until I actually stopped and thought about
Speaker 1: what he was saying. Wait, but Bob, are you trying
Speaker 1: to tell me that you really believe that these weren't
Speaker 1: bribes they were just tips. No, No, you're misunderstanding what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Okay, I am not saying I didn't pay
Speaker 1: a lot of bribes. Yes, I paid a lot of
Speaker 1: bribes on cases. Yes they were bribes. Maybe not in
Speaker 1: the eyes of the law. If you look at the
Speaker 1: definition of a bribe, that you're paying somebody to do
Speaker 1: something that they normally wouldn't do. And because the judges
Speaker 1: were going to rule in his favor anyway, because he'd
Speaker 1: made such a strong case, well then it wasn't technically
Speaker 1: a bribe, was it. It was more like a sweetener
Speaker 1: or an act of larges. That's how Bob told it anyway.
Speaker 1: Over the next few years, Bob earned himself a reputation
Speaker 1: as a flashy criminal defense lawyer. No tie, gold chain Bob.
Speaker 1: He drove a convertible and had vanity plates. Of course,
Speaker 1: r j C his initials. He seemed to play by
Speaker 1: his own rules. He'd park his car in the mayor's
Speaker 1: spot in front of city Hall to show off, to
Speaker 1: prove to his clients that he could get away with it.
Speaker 1: His lifestyle was an advertisement of sorts to attract a
Speaker 1: certain type of client, criminal defendants with deep pockets, often
Speaker 1: guys with mob ties. This is who Bob wanted to impress,
Speaker 1: and they did come calling. In nineteen seventy seven, the
Speaker 1: mob asked him to fix a case, a murder case
Speaker 1: involving a hitman. Bob had a hunch that if he
Speaker 1: said yes, it could change everything for him. I'm Jake
Speaker 1: Halpern and this is deep Cover Bob Bland Episode two,
Speaker 1: The Murder. One day in February of nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: Bob learned that a guy named Pat Marcy wanted to
Speaker 1: meet with him. Marcy was one of the city's most
Speaker 1: powerful men. Bob had never met him before, but he
Speaker 1: knew who he was. Everybody knew Pat Marcy was the
Speaker 1: one that controlled the entire political system. Marcy kept a
Speaker 1: low profile, and even to this day, much of his
Speaker 1: story is still shrouded in mystery. Legend has it his
Speaker 1: career with the mob started back in the days of
Speaker 1: Al Capone. Even his name as a kind of shape
Speaker 1: shifting quality to it. He starts off Pasqualino Marcone on
Speaker 1: his birth certificate, and it keeps changing again and again
Speaker 1: on public records until he finally becomes Pat Marcy in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. Everybody knew Pant Marcy was a former
Speaker 1: Capone mobster, a gunman. Eventually, Marcy went into politics, became
Speaker 1: an official for the First Ward, one of the city's
Speaker 1: most powerful political districts. First Ward picked every basically every judge,
Speaker 1: every prosecutor, every police commander in whatever they controlled the
Speaker 1: entire system. But really Marcy was like the mobs politicals
Speaker 1: are It's head of government affairs, if you will. A
Speaker 1: guy who used the mob, its wealth and its muscle
Speaker 1: to influence a network of corrupt officials. Had an air
Speaker 1: about him that was really scary. He was a nasty,
Speaker 1: vicious human being. You could tell it. If you met
Speaker 1: the man, you would know that he's pure evil, but
Speaker 1: unbelievably powerful in every sense. For Bob, what this meant
Speaker 1: was pretty simple. When Pat Marcy asked for a meeting,
Speaker 1: you took it. On the day of the meeting, Bob
Speaker 1: went to a restaurant in downtown Chicago and waited for
Speaker 1: Pat Marcy to show up. This wasn't just any restaurant,
Speaker 1: by the way. It was a legendary place called Counselor's
Speaker 1: Row where Chicago's trial lawyers and old time politicians went
Speaker 1: to grab a drink and shoot the ship after work.
Speaker 1: There was a corner table known as Booth Number one
Speaker 1: or the first Ward Table, where Pat Marcy held court.
Speaker 1: The table even had its own landline telephone. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: is where Bob waited when Marcy finally showed up that day,
Speaker 1: he didn't actually enter the restaurant. Instead, he waited behind
Speaker 1: a glass door that led to an adjoining lobby and
Speaker 1: just stood there waiting for Bob. The mob's politicals are
Speaker 1: was wearing a three piece suit and a pair of
Speaker 1: tinted glasses that obscured his eyes. Bob stood up, exited
Speaker 1: the restaurant and joined Marcy in the lobby. And right
Speaker 1: there Marcy made his request. He said, Look, he said,
Speaker 1: I've got a case here, can you handle it? And
Speaker 1: I knew exactly what he meant. You know, that was
Speaker 1: our term, you know, for fixing the case speaking the
Speaker 1: language that we spoke. You know, I basically spoke a
Speaker 1: different language, probably than most lawyers. This, of course, is
Speaker 1: part of the reason that Pat asked to meet with.
Speaker 1: Bob knew how to talk about fixing a case without
Speaker 1: ever really talking about it. This was all part of
Speaker 1: Bob's professionalism, if you will. But what Marcy wanted to
Speaker 1: help with was no ordinary request. It was a murder case.
Speaker 1: He asked if Bob knew a judge who could handle it.
Speaker 1: Standing there in the lobby, Bob was at a crossroads.
Speaker 1: If he could come through on this, prove his worth
Speaker 1: to Marcy. It'd be a big deal. No telling what
Speaker 1: Marcy could do for him. On the other hand, this
Speaker 1: was uncharted territory for Bob. He'd fix cases before, placed
Speaker 1: all kinds of bribes or tips as he called them,
Speaker 1: but never in a murder trial. Bob knew he had
Speaker 1: to proceed carefully. If there was one thing he didn't
Speaker 1: want to do, it was promised something that he couldn't deliver.
Speaker 1: He needed more intel, so he asked Marcy to get
Speaker 1: a hold of the police reports, because Bob knew at
Speaker 1: some point all of this would go before judge and
Speaker 1: he had to make sure there was justification for a
Speaker 1: not guilty verdict, enough evidence for the judge to hang
Speaker 1: his hat on. As Bob liked to say, you know,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't look like the judge had been bribed.
Speaker 1: As if all of this weren't enough pressure. Afterwards, one
Speaker 1: of Pat Marcy's minions pulled Bob aside and warned him.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, if you say you're going to
Speaker 1: take it, I don't want to. You know a problem afterwards,
Speaker 1: and I said, look, I said, if I tell you
Speaker 1: I'll take it, I'll take it. The next day, Pat
Speaker 1: Marcy gave the police reports to Bob and told him
Speaker 1: get back to me. Before Bob would agree to fix
Speaker 1: this murder case, he wanted more details. He wanted to
Speaker 1: understand what exactly had happened, who'd gotten killed, were there
Speaker 1: any witnesses, what was the motive? So let's start with
Speaker 1: who got killed. The victim was William Logan. People called
Speaker 1: him Billy. He was just thirty five years old. He
Speaker 1: was like a big teddy bear. He was tall, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, he had big hands, always smiling, just a
Speaker 1: happy yike. That's Johanna Santonello, Billy's niece. I visited her
Speaker 1: not long ago at her home in the suburbs of Chicago.
Speaker 1: To this day, within the family, Johanna is kind of
Speaker 1: like the keeper of uncle Billy's memory. She has all
Speaker 1: kinds of memorabilia related to him, photos, newspaper clippings, and
Speaker 1: journal entries, also volumes of court papers related to his murder.
Speaker 1: I mean boxes and boxes of all this stuff. When
Speaker 1: I visited Johanna, she had it all laid out on
Speaker 1: the dining room table for me, like the archives of
Speaker 1: some enormous unwritten biography. So it's been a little overwhelming too,
Speaker 1: because there's just so much, and it's like I wanted
Speaker 1: to get organized and for you when have everything, And
Speaker 1: then I started digging into it and I'm like, oh god,
Speaker 1: yeah I get it. It's like I had chairs filled
Speaker 1: it stuff. Yeah. I feel like we're in the scene
Speaker 1: in the movie where they're like trying to they're getting
Speaker 1: ready to go to trial and going over to bo Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's just like, oh my god, there's so much stuff
Speaker 1: on this table. Yeah, it's crazy, But you're meant to
Speaker 1: be here. The story is meant to be told. He
Speaker 1: was a big, strapping guy, played football, not someone you'd
Speaker 1: want to mess with. This is where Uncle Billy was
Speaker 1: in the Army and they won the championship. Those are
Speaker 1: all as Army buddies. Before serving in the military, Billy
Speaker 1: joined the Teamsters at seventeen years old. That's the famous
Speaker 1: truck drivers union that Jimmy Hoffa wants ran. Uncle Billy
Speaker 1: also drove a cab on the side. At the time
Speaker 1: of his death, Billy was divorced and living with his
Speaker 1: two sisters. One of them was recently widowed and had
Speaker 1: four kids. Those kids, by the way, were Johanna and
Speaker 1: her three brothers. Uncle Billy was helping raise them. He
Speaker 1: became like a kindly father to them. Not everyone saw
Speaker 1: uncle Billy this way. According to his ex wife, Billy
Speaker 1: had a darker side. She said he was physically abusive,
Speaker 1: But Johanna says she never saw this side of him.
Speaker 1: As she recalls it, uncle Billy was a gentle giant.
Speaker 1: As we continued sorting through the boxes on her dining
Speaker 1: room table, eventually Johannah pulled out this one picture and
Speaker 1: just stared at it. It was a grainy, black and
Speaker 1: white photo of a two story house. This is the
Speaker 1: house where it happened. That's your house. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: the house that he was killed. See this light pole? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: His body was right behind the white pole. Johannah remembers
Speaker 1: vividly the night that uncle Billy was murdered September twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, almost fifty years ago. She was thirteen
Speaker 1: years old at the time, but the whole thing is
Speaker 1: still crisp in her memory. As she recalls it, she
Speaker 1: was lying in bed, uncle Billy was preparing to leave
Speaker 1: for the night shift, and all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: heard bang, bang, bang, and we didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: We were in bed. I was wide awake, I remember,
Speaker 1: and my mom ran to the front door, and I
Speaker 1: heard her yell, Billy, Billy, and my uncle was laying
Speaker 1: out in front, and my mom said to my aunt,
Speaker 1: Billie's hurt really bad. And my aunt went out there
Speaker 1: and she took my uncle's head and she placed it
Speaker 1: on her toward her lap, and my brothers ran to
Speaker 1: get blankets and came out and they covered my uncle.
Speaker 1: And you could just hear a moan. The aunt that
Speaker 1: Johanna mentions here, the one holding Uncle Billy in her
Speaker 1: lap as he lay dying. That's her Aunt Betty. She's
Speaker 1: no longer alive. But before she passed, Aunt Betty actually
Speaker 1: made recordings of herself in which she recounted all her
Speaker 1: memories of that fateful night. And these recordings they were
Speaker 1: part of this massive collection of memorabilia that Aunt Betty
Speaker 1: had bequeathed to Johanna. Johanna had the audio cassettes laid
Speaker 1: out on the dining room table, front and center, just
Speaker 1: waiting to be played. She loaded one of them into
Speaker 1: a little tape recorder and hit play. Our story starts
Speaker 1: on September twenty seventh, nineteen seventy two, the night Billy
Speaker 1: was killed. Speed that's my Aunt Betty. We listened together
Speaker 1: as Aunt Betty described holding uncle Billy. Billy was on
Speaker 1: the lawn herd fan. I proceeded to the lawn. He
Speaker 1: was near his car on the parkway. I kept calling
Speaker 1: his name. He turned, looked at me. He raised his
Speaker 1: hand in the case fell out of his hand. As
Speaker 1: I knelt down, he turned and his back was rusting
Speaker 1: on my knees. And I kept saying, Billy, Billy, what happened?
Speaker 1: What happened? It was unclear how bad the uncle Billy
Speaker 1: was hurt, but there was blood everywhere. A family member
Speaker 1: rushed back inside and called the police. By then many
Speaker 1: of the neighbors had also come outside, seeing what happened,
Speaker 1: and they too were calling for help. Nobody responded. There
Speaker 1: was nobody almost for half an hour, and by this
Speaker 1: time people had gathered neighbors. Everybody was out, The police maintained.
Speaker 1: I told him my brother had type of blood. But
Speaker 1: here is from the classes FREDI had come across. She
Speaker 1: felt this pulse that was still a pulse, and as
Speaker 1: far as I was concerned, he was still alive. The
Speaker 1: squad car took Aunt Betty to the hospital. There, she
Speaker 1: met up with her other brother, Richard. Richard arrived and
Speaker 1: Richard went right into the emergency room. A priest came
Speaker 1: and he asked if we wanted to lay us rights,
Speaker 1: and I said yes, And then Richard came out a
Speaker 1: little while later and I I said, he said they killed him,
Speaker 1: he said. After we listened to Aunt Betty's tapes, Johanna
Speaker 1: looked spent. She glanced wearily around her living room, and
Speaker 1: I began to appreciate how all this stuff, all this memorabilia, was,
Speaker 1: in some ways a burden for her. The boxes gave
Speaker 1: heft and shape and immovability to these memories. Johanna had
Speaker 1: to physically navigate around them. As far as I could
Speaker 1: tell her, Aunt Betty had been kind of obsessed with
Speaker 1: Billy's death, and this obsession was fueled by Betty's complete
Speaker 1: bafflement as to why anyone would want to kill her
Speaker 1: brother in the first place. This couldn't he happened to
Speaker 1: was it couldn't happen to our family. We didn't, we
Speaker 1: never bothered nobody. What was this? What could have happened?
Speaker 1: Why Billy? Why Billy? What did he ever do? But
Speaker 1: it turns out Aunt Betty did have one clue something
Speaker 1: somebody said to her on the night of the murder.
Speaker 1: Before I get into describe her, somebody approached me and
Speaker 1: said to me, I saw it all. I saw it.
Speaker 1: Someone told her, I saw it all. In the chaos
Speaker 1: of the moment, Aunt Betty couldn't really focus on who
Speaker 1: had said this to her. She just remembered his voice,
Speaker 1: his words, but not his face or his name. And
Speaker 1: kind of amazingly, it was a long time, several years
Speaker 1: in fact, before Aunt Betty even learned who this man
Speaker 1: was or what exactly he'd seen. Turns out, this man
Speaker 1: was a neighbor, just a regular guy, and he was
Speaker 1: destined to become the most important witness in the murder
Speaker 1: of Billy Logan. In order to fix this murder case
Speaker 1: for the mob, Bob needed to know who the victim was,
Speaker 1: but the real key was knowing who the witnesses were.
Speaker 1: That was going to be crucial because it would tell
Speaker 1: him just how weak or strong the prosecution's case was,
Speaker 1: and then he'd know how big an ask it would
Speaker 1: be when he approached a judge with a bribe. So
Speaker 1: Bob soon found out more about the witness He worked
Speaker 1: at gas stations and also drove a milk truck. His
Speaker 1: name was Robert Lowe. The night of the murder, Robert
Speaker 1: Lowe had been out walking his dog, Ginger, when he
Speaker 1: noticed a car idling just down the street from the
Speaker 1: Logan's house. Then he heard a shout followed by a
Speaker 1: loud bang. He saw Logan's body fall backwards. Moments later,
Speaker 1: someone got out of the idling car and shot Logan again.
Speaker 1: A street light illuminated the man's face for just a
Speaker 1: few seconds. Robert Lowe got a glimpse of the killer.
Speaker 1: Later that night, he gave a brief statement to the police.
Speaker 1: Sometime later, two detectives followed up and visited Robert at work.
Speaker 1: Then they had him come down to the station. We
Speaker 1: know what happens next because Robert recounted all of this
Speaker 1: to a journalist named Maurice Posley, who ended up writing
Speaker 1: a book about the murder. Down at the police station,
Speaker 1: the detectives hauled out four photo albums. They were collections
Speaker 1: of mugshots organized thematically. Each album had its own label homicide, rape, burglary, robbery,
Speaker 1: auto theft. Take your time and go through him, The
Speaker 1: detectives told Robert, see if you can id the shooter.
Speaker 1: It seemed improbable, like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Speaker 1: Robert was halfway through the last binder when he saw him.
Speaker 1: Narrow face, aquiline nose, dark eyes, got him, said Robert,
Speaker 1: you sure, asked one of the detectives. Yeah, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: said Robert. The detectives didn't tell Robert the name of
Speaker 1: the guy, he just ideed. They just told him he
Speaker 1: could go. Now. Turns out the guy, Robert pointed out
Speaker 1: he was Harry Alamann, a reputed hitman for the mob.
Speaker 1: Seems like this would be a tantalizing lead for the police,
Speaker 1: but remarkably, nothing happened with this investigation for several years.
Speaker 1: Then a second witness materialized, named Louie Almida. Louie claimed
Speaker 1: to be a friend of Harry's, an accomplice to the murder,
Speaker 1: the guy who drove the getaway car. He was now
Speaker 1: in trouble with the law himself on a separate matter
Speaker 1: and was looking to talk, so he served up his
Speaker 1: old pale Harry on a silver platter, said yep, he's
Speaker 1: the guy that killed Billy Logan, and then boom. The
Speaker 1: prosecutors had what they needed. In December of nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: a grand jury indicted Harry Alaman. It was big news.
Speaker 1: The Chicago Daily News reported that the mob had assassinated
Speaker 1: over one thousand people since the nineteen twenties, and this
Speaker 1: was one of the only times a hitman had ever
Speaker 1: been indicted. Robert Lowe, the neighbor, agreed to testify, as
Speaker 1: did the accomplice. The getaway driver. Aunt Betty, said she'd
Speaker 1: testified two she'd talked about her brother and the night
Speaker 1: that he'd been killed. But Betty's niece Johanna says her
Speaker 1: whole family was spooked. Everybody knew what the mob was
Speaker 1: capable of, and for us, we were We had playing
Speaker 1: clothes men sitting in front of our house that were
Speaker 1: taking now blason plate numbers of people that were coming
Speaker 1: to our house. They were trying to make sure who
Speaker 1: was who. We even had him following us to school
Speaker 1: to make sure we were okay. The police. The police. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds pretty scary. It was very scary. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the guy who supposedly killed her uncle, Harry Aliman, he
Speaker 1: seemed pretty scary too. In a bizarre twist, Harry was
Speaker 1: actually a distant relative of Billy, the victim. Billy had
Speaker 1: married Harry's second cousin, which didn't raise too many eyebrows
Speaker 1: in this case, because well back then, in many Chicago neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: everyone seemed to be related somehow. In any case, Harry's
Speaker 1: story was now all over the papers. One headline heralded
Speaker 1: him as a modern day al Capone. In another article,
Speaker 1: a prosecutor warned that Aliman quote kills with the professional
Speaker 1: efficiency of an expert assassin. This was the guy the
Speaker 1: mob wanted Bob Cooley to save, the guy who's trial
Speaker 1: Bob was going to fix it. Turns out there were
Speaker 1: many facets to the so called expert assassin and the
Speaker 1: people I talked to, people who knew Harry from back
Speaker 1: in the day, they all seem to remember a different man.
Speaker 1: If you ever watched the movie Scarface, kind of reminds
Speaker 1: you of the guy walks up behind Scarface with shotgun
Speaker 1: at the end. He's like a Bantam rooster. He's slender,
Speaker 1: he's got thick wavy hair, sunglasses, a ladies man, a
Speaker 1: good looker, dashing kind of character, and was also the
Speaker 1: kind of guy who could make them. Aron R. Sauce
Speaker 1: on Sundays. He looks like somebody who if you rubbed
Speaker 1: up against him, you sort of believe, because he's the
Speaker 1: razor's edge. But perhaps the most interesting take that I
Speaker 1: heard on Harry came from this next person. Okay, my
Speaker 1: name is Frankie for Leano. My father was Harry Alaman,
Speaker 1: and basically he was involved. How do I say that?
Speaker 1: A part? This always gets me? Jake, Yeah, how do
Speaker 1: I say it? He was involved in the organized crime.
Speaker 1: Frankie's now in her sixties and all her life she's
Speaker 1: been trying to explain who her father was. She actually
Speaker 1: wrote a memoir about her dad called They Can't Hurt
Speaker 1: Him Anymore. And as you can see, it's still not
Speaker 1: easy for her to explain who he was, especially because
Speaker 1: there were so many stories out there about him. When
Speaker 1: you read about your dad and the papers, you know,
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of stuff in there. Though sometimes will say,
Speaker 1: you know, Harry Alaman the hitman, and it's what they say.
Speaker 1: What was that like for you to hear people talk
Speaker 1: about your dad that way? It was horrible, It was scary,
Speaker 1: It is horrible. It was you just can't even picture it.
Speaker 1: You're like it's not true, my dear, not my dear,
Speaker 1: No way, no way. Frankie says that she grew up
Speaker 1: thinking that her dad was just well, a great dad,
Speaker 1: and by all accounts he was a good father. And
Speaker 1: this is exactly what I'm talking about. Harry had so
Speaker 1: many sides to him. For example, he was a painter,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean a house painter, I mean an artiste.
Speaker 1: He went to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. But
Speaker 1: if you're thinking of some guy wearing a turtleneck and
Speaker 1: a beret, think again. Harry liked to wear suits. Now.
Speaker 1: He was on the shorter side, around five foot seven,
Speaker 1: but tough as nails. People said he had a wicked
Speaker 1: left hook that you never saw coming, hence his nickname
Speaker 1: Harry the Hook. He was a Mexican Italian guy with
Speaker 1: a Spanish last name that literally meant German. As you'll hear,
Speaker 1: no one can even agree on how exactly to pronounce
Speaker 1: his last name. So yeah, Harry was a riddle. The
Speaker 1: Chicago Crime Commission estimates Harry killed eighteen people between nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one and nineteen seventy seven alone. But to Frankie
Speaker 1: for Leano, Harry was a savior. You see, Frankie's biological
Speaker 1: father died when she was very little. As a result,
Speaker 1: Frankie's mom, Ruth, was suddenly a widow with four young
Speaker 1: kids to feed, including Frankie. That's when Harry showed up.
Speaker 1: Now he might think Harry would be scared off by
Speaker 1: the widow with the whole brood of kids. Nope, Harry
Speaker 1: began courting not just Ruth the mom, but the whole family.
Speaker 1: It was almost like Harry wanted every one of them
Speaker 1: to fall in love with him. He spent time with
Speaker 1: the kids one on one, playing games, asking them questions,
Speaker 1: taking them shopping. Yeah, he definitely want us over. He
Speaker 1: knew what he was doing. He's really of Love's kids,
Speaker 1: and he's got a lot of compassion, and he's got patience.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he has the best patience. When it
Speaker 1: came time to propose, Harry asked Frankie for her permission,
Speaker 1: even though she was like seven years old at the time.
Speaker 1: He just basically said, you know, how would you feel
Speaker 1: if I married mommy and we could all live together
Speaker 1: in the same house, and I would be there all
Speaker 1: the time, and we'd be a family, and we'd beat together.
Speaker 1: We could do all these fun things and all my god,
Speaker 1: I was so happy up until this moment. Frankie remembers
Speaker 1: Harry intended to move to New York and become a
Speaker 1: commercial artist. Now he shelved all that. Instead, he took
Speaker 1: a job distributing a horse racing newsletter known as a
Speaker 1: scratch sheet, and he took care of Frankie and her siblings,
Speaker 1: provided for them, doated on them. There were moments when
Speaker 1: Frankie got the sense that there was another side to
Speaker 1: her dad. It became clearer to her the older she got.
Speaker 1: Would be boyfriends would ask her, is your dad going
Speaker 1: to come outside and blow my head off? His reputation
Speaker 1: couldn't have made dating easy. By the time that she
Speaker 1: was a teenager, Frankie did understand that her dad wasn't
Speaker 1: just selling scratch sheets at the racetrack. Harry admitted to
Speaker 1: her that he collected on something called juice loans. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's people in this world that need help.
Speaker 1: Some people might need it because family member sick, they
Speaker 1: need money for a hospital bill, they can't pay their
Speaker 1: own runts, they can't afford to take care of their kids.
Speaker 1: There's people like that, and if they need something, You
Speaker 1: help them out and they pay you back a little
Speaker 1: bit more. And then there's people that want to take
Speaker 1: your money, and after they take your money, they don't
Speaker 1: want to pay you back. So there's those that will,
Speaker 1: and there's those the adults. What did he say, those
Speaker 1: that don't you get it? You get you got to
Speaker 1: collect the money. I didn't say anything about killing him.
Speaker 1: They beat him up or whatever. So yeah, maybe Dad
Speaker 1: had to knock people around occasionally, but these were people
Speaker 1: who had it coming. And on the whole, Frankie still
Speaker 1: believed he was a good guy. He was a family man.
Speaker 1: He didn't care a rating, go out drinking, not a
Speaker 1: d answer. He was a family man. So I don't
Speaker 1: know where he came here at the time to go
Speaker 1: out killing people. I just don't know that. I don't
Speaker 1: know this beast of a man that they described, you know,
Speaker 1: this other side of her father, this beast of a man.
Speaker 1: Frankie didn't really hear about this until nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: the year he was indicted. It was that year that
Speaker 1: Harry called the whole family together for a meeting to
Speaker 1: prepare them for what was to come. He set us
Speaker 1: down at the table. My brothers, my sister, my mom,
Speaker 1: and when he stayed us down as a family, and
Speaker 1: he said, you're going to hear a lot of bad
Speaker 1: things about me. And we're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And he's like, they're coming after me for something I
Speaker 1: didn't do. We're like, who's coming in after you? What's
Speaker 1: going on? Harry began to explain that he was about
Speaker 1: to be indicted for the murder of Billy Logan, and
Speaker 1: he told them what to expect at trial. They're going
Speaker 1: to stay on private organized crime and you're going to
Speaker 1: hear things about me that you will be scared or
Speaker 1: you will be afraid. And I want you to understand
Speaker 1: what's going on, And like, what do you mean outfit
Speaker 1: and murder? What are you talking about? You know? And
Speaker 1: then he explained the story of what they were actually
Speaker 1: going to come after him for, and he just said
Speaker 1: it's for something I didn't do, and that wasn't all.
Speaker 1: Harry also told them that he would be hiring protection
Speaker 1: for them, guards, So we had bodyguards in the house.
Speaker 1: Like these big, big guys sit sitting in or gets
Speaker 1: standing up over us and I'm like, yeah, what is this.
Speaker 1: Don't be afraid. Their bodyguards are here to protect us.
Speaker 1: I said, what do we need protection from? He said,
Speaker 1: from the government. They are trying to frame me. This
Speaker 1: is a setup. That's how Harry explained it. The problem
Speaker 1: for Harry was there were two eyewitnesses, the accomplice who
Speaker 1: claimed he'd helped Harry do it, and Robert Lowe, who'd
Speaker 1: stumbled upon the murderer while out walking his dog. In theory,
Speaker 1: their testimony would be heard in a courtroom and decided
Speaker 1: upon fair and square, but the entire Logan family was
Speaker 1: nervous and even a bit skeptical that justice would be served. Johanna,
Speaker 1: the niece of the victim, remembers the whole family talking
Speaker 1: about this, and my grandpa had called my uncle and said,
Speaker 1: you know how this works in Chicago. Don't be surprised
Speaker 1: if he's found not guilty. You know how this works
Speaker 1: in Chicago, meaning someone might try to fix the case,
Speaker 1: someone like Bob Cooley. And in fact, in early nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, as both sides prepared for this murder trial,
Speaker 1: Bob was making preparations of his own. Remember, before he
Speaker 1: agreed to fix this case, Bob wanted to review the facts.
Speaker 1: What struck him immediately was the lack of physical evidence
Speaker 1: tying Harry to the crime. But Bob also paid special
Speaker 1: attention to the two eyewitnesses. He wasn't overly impressed with
Speaker 1: either of them. Robert the neighbor had talked to the
Speaker 1: police a few times, and there'd been a few small
Speaker 1: inconsistencies in what he'd told them. And as for Louis
Speaker 1: the getaway driver, well, he was serving a ten year
Speaker 1: federal sentence and had struck a deal with prosecutors, so
Speaker 1: arguably he had his own agenda. As Bob saw it,
Speaker 1: there was plenty of room for reasonable doubt, plenty for
Speaker 1: a judge to hang his hat on the judge will
Speaker 1: hear in the evidence, and the judge will say not guilty,
Speaker 1: as any judge Wood, But did you have any doubt
Speaker 1: in your mind that Harry Alliman pulled the trigger? Oh?
Speaker 1: I know, I know he did. I was certain he did.
Speaker 1: He had no doubt in his mind that Harry had
Speaker 1: done it. But the case was weak enough that he
Speaker 1: felt he could fix it and he could tell a
Speaker 1: judge not to worry. And there was a final factor
Speaker 1: that Bob says weighed into his decision about whether or
Speaker 1: not to fix this case, and it involved the question
Speaker 1: of motive and what type of murder this was. There
Speaker 1: was no perfectly clear explanation as to why Harry would
Speaker 1: have murdered Billy Logan. The local papers were reporting that
Speaker 1: Billy was murdered because he stood up to the mob.
Speaker 1: If you remember, Billy was a teamster. Supposedly, the mob
Speaker 1: had asked him to cooperate in a robbery scheme and
Speaker 1: Billy had said no. All of this, Bob says, led
Speaker 1: him to believe that this was a routine mob murder,
Speaker 1: which seems to have eased his conscience, and apparently this
Speaker 1: was the final deciding factor, convincing him that yes, he
Speaker 1: could and should fix this case. I thought it was
Speaker 1: just a mob killing mob guys killing mob guys, and
Speaker 1: this one on all the time back there. In fact,
Speaker 1: I knew like fifty people that we're hitmen in Chicago.
Speaker 1: I agreed to fix the case because I thought it
Speaker 1: was again, it was just one mob guy killing another
Speaker 1: mob guy. What's the big deal, because that's part of
Speaker 1: your code. Two mob guys killing each other doesn't bother you,
Speaker 1: but an innocent guy dying does. Yes, Absolutely, it was
Speaker 1: just it was the way I live. I mean this
Speaker 1: is my life. When you set code, I mean using
Speaker 1: that word like it's some kind of a magical thing.
Speaker 1: This was my nature. Bob says he would never, for example,
Speaker 1: represent a pedophile. He also prided himself as someone who
Speaker 1: stood up to bullies, but when it came to mob murders,
Speaker 1: he was inclined to look the other way. I didn't
Speaker 1: really get his logic here, to be honest, it seems
Speaker 1: so callous, but it did help me to get some
Speaker 1: more context. I spoke to a federal prosecutor who specialized
Speaker 1: in the mob back in the seventies in Chicago, and
Speaker 1: he told me, back then, it seemed like there was
Speaker 1: a mob killing almost every single week. These murders were
Speaker 1: just part of the rhythm of life in Chicago back then,
Speaker 1: kind of like wake up, eat breakfast, go to work,
Speaker 1: catch the score on the Cubs game, read about who
Speaker 1: got whacked, go to sleep, repeat, you know, like a
Speaker 1: dark mafioso version of Groundhog Day. And typically no one
Speaker 1: was ever convicted. Witnesses either vanished or refused to cooperate,
Speaker 1: But there also seemed to be an implicit understanding that
Speaker 1: mob guys just killed each other always had always would,
Speaker 1: and there was no point in referring any of it.
Speaker 1: Kind of crazy, perhaps, but this was a prevailing sentiment
Speaker 1: at the time, and when I forced myself to consider
Speaker 1: this mindset, I guess I began to understand how Bob
Speaker 1: could get so callous about it all. But even if
Speaker 1: you buy into the morality of this logic, the problem
Speaker 1: was there was no evidence that Billy Logan was a mobster.
Speaker 1: Sure he worked for the Teamsters, and yes, the Teamsters
Speaker 1: were known to do business with the mob but it
Speaker 1: was a big stretch to classify Billy Logan himself as
Speaker 1: a mobster. Apparently, however, it was a stretch that Bob
Speaker 1: was comfortable making when justifying his actions. Bob could be
Speaker 1: quite agile. In fact, as I came to know him better,
Speaker 1: I began to see him as a kind of ethical
Speaker 1: acrobat who could bend over backwards and contort himself until
Speaker 1: his worldview made perfect sense. What struck me above all
Speaker 1: else was how important it was for Bob to see
Speaker 1: himself as a fundamentally good person. The Lord himself knows
Speaker 1: what I've done and what I haven't done. There's no
Speaker 1: question in my mind he's protecting me I should have
Speaker 1: been killed at half a dozen times. I did what
Speaker 1: I did, and the big guy upstairs knows what I did.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's going to put me in hell
Speaker 1: for it. I don't think so. Part of this certainty
Speaker 1: came from, of all things, a charm that he wore
Speaker 1: around his neck. I noticed it a few times when
Speaker 1: we chatted on zoom. It was a scapular, a religious ornament,
Speaker 1: little gold cross that his mother had given him. He
Speaker 1: never took it off. She told him it would keep
Speaker 1: him safe, That's what she said. But I don't push
Speaker 1: it as I say, I don't push it by That's
Speaker 1: why I've never murdered anybody. I've been tempted to a
Speaker 1: couple of times when people were going to kill me,
Speaker 1: but that's the only reason I never did that. I'm
Speaker 1: curious what else, like in the line that you drawn
Speaker 1: the things you would never do murdering someone. What else
Speaker 1: I would never get involved in cases where I'm cheating
Speaker 1: people or stealing their business or destroying lives. I just
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it. Do you consider bribes you've placed, You
Speaker 1: put that in the tallly of sins you've committed. When
Speaker 1: you look at your life on a whole, to be
Speaker 1: very honest, No, I mean, that's not a sin. That's
Speaker 1: not in the book written as a sin. It was.
Speaker 1: It's something that's wrong in the eyes of the law,
Speaker 1: no question about that. And there's no question that's wrong.
Speaker 1: I've done things that the law says are illegal. But
Speaker 1: you know, but that's you know, that's man's law, a
Speaker 1: violation of man's law, not a sin against God. That's
Speaker 1: how Bob thought about it, how he rationalized placing a bribe,
Speaker 1: even a bribe in a murder case, a very big
Speaker 1: murder case. The real trick, now, says Bob, was finding
Speaker 1: the right judge, not an easy task. This would be
Speaker 1: a big trial, all over the headlines, and so it
Speaker 1: was crucial to find someone whose credentials were unimpeachable, someone
Speaker 1: who no one whatever think of is being corrupt. But
Speaker 1: it was just a matter of optics. Bob needed a
Speaker 1: judge who would come through for him. He couldn't risk
Speaker 1: having a judge that took the bribe and then changed
Speaker 1: his mind, because in the end, Bob was responsible. Bob
Speaker 1: was the one on the hook. Pat Marcy, the Mob's
Speaker 1: political czar, had made it very clear to Bob that
Speaker 1: he'd better come through for them. But if Bob pulled
Speaker 1: this off, he would be the man, the guy who
Speaker 1: could do anything. All of this meant right now, Bob
Speaker 1: needed to find the exact right judge, and he had
Speaker 1: the perfect person in mind. Next time on deep Cover,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, yes, I said I would handle
Speaker 1: the case. And that's when he said, well, you realize,
Speaker 1: if there's a problem, you're going to have a problem problem.
Speaker 1: I know what that means. You get an extra hole
Speaker 1: in your head. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith
Speaker 1: and Amy Gaines and edited by Karen Shakurge. Our senior
Speaker 1: editor is Jan Guera. Original music and our theme was
Speaker 1: composed by Luis Gara and Fawn Williams is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Our art this season was drawn by Cheryl Cook and
Speaker 1: designed by Sean Karney. Mia Lobell is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Heather Fain, John Schnars, Carlie mcgliori, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Mary Beth Smith, Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano,
Speaker 1: Megan Larson, Royston Beserve, Lucy Sullivan, Edith ru Solo, Riley Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Jake Halpert.
Speaker 1: If you want to read more about this murder trial
Speaker 1: and the life of Robert Lowe, check out Everybody Pays
Speaker 1: by Maurice Posley and Rick Cogan. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: and you can binge the rest of the season right
Speaker 1: now adds free. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover
Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.