Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on deep Cover.
Speaker 2: Bob Cooley's mission had a name. The FBI called it
Speaker 2: Operation Gambat, short for Gambling Attorney. Bob's objective was to
Speaker 2: take down Pat Marcy and his corrupt political machine in
Speaker 2: the first ward, and Bob was making great progress. He
Speaker 2: had gotten Pat Marcy on tape. But would that be enough?
Speaker 3: Every day that you continue to do this, it's a
Speaker 3: scarier day.
Speaker 4: When should you stop.
Speaker 2: To make matters more complicated? An investigative TV journalist had
Speaker 2: begun to expose what the FBI was up to. Pat
Speaker 2: Marcy and his guys now knew without a doubt the
Speaker 2: FBI was coming for them, which made Bob's work even
Speaker 2: more dangerous.
Speaker 3: Now you're scared, and he's scared, and everybody's scared.
Speaker 4: Anything could happen.
Speaker 3: We were going to do everything in our power not
Speaker 3: to make a mistake, because this guy could get killed
Speaker 3: just like that.
Speaker 2: You might recall it was Pat Marcy who asked Bob
Speaker 2: to help fix an infamous murder case back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. Bob had agreed to do Marcy's bidding, and
Speaker 2: he convinced an otherwise clean judge named Frank Wilson to
Speaker 2: take a bribe. As a result, a reputed hitman, Harry Elaman,
Speaker 2: walked free. Afterwards, the judge took a beating in the press.
Speaker 2: Rumors spread that he'd been bribed, and according to Bob,
Speaker 2: the judge told him angrily, you destroyed me. All of
Speaker 2: this old history was now suddenly relevant again. If the
Speaker 2: FEDS could prove that this case had in fact been fixed,
Speaker 2: and that Pat Marcy had orchestrated it, it'd be damning,
Speaker 2: and Bob hoped this might lead to a retrial of
Speaker 2: Harry Alamann for the murder of William Logan, which would
Speaker 2: be a big deal. It would give Bob a chance
Speaker 2: to write an old wrong. If fixing the Harry Alamann
Speaker 2: case was Bob's original sin, well here was a chance
Speaker 2: to make up for it. But how would the FEDS
Speaker 2: prove that this bribe had taken place? Sure, they had
Speaker 2: Bob's account, but in theory, what would really help was
Speaker 2: corroboration from the judge himself, Frank Wilson. He was now
Speaker 2: retired and living out in Arizona. According to Bob's handlers
Speaker 2: at the FBI, Steve and Marie, they wanted Bob to
Speaker 2: wear a wire and get the judge on tape. They
Speaker 2: say Bob was very reluctant.
Speaker 3: Because he cared about Frank. He really did care about
Speaker 3: Frank Wilson. They were old, but because Frank was, in
Speaker 3: Bob's words, a good guy. He had been lured into
Speaker 3: the mafia's hornets nest by fixing a case of a mobster.
Speaker 4: So Bob was trying.
Speaker 3: To clean that up, I think a bit with Judge Wilson,
Speaker 3: but also get him to acknowledge that he had participated
Speaker 3: in a fix.
Speaker 4: It killed him to have to do Frank Wilson. He
Speaker 4: did not want to do Frank Wilson. He really liked
Speaker 4: Frank Wilson.
Speaker 2: Bob was in a real pickle. He wanted to help
Speaker 2: the Feds build their case, and in a way it
Speaker 2: was his case too, because Bob was deeply invested in
Speaker 2: making Operation Gambat a success. Yeah, Bob says he also
Speaker 2: wanted to give the judge a heads up about what
Speaker 2: was coming, that their backroom deal might soon be exposed. Bob,
Speaker 2: I believe there were things the judge could do to
Speaker 2: protect himself. As far as I could tell, Bob seems
Speaker 2: to have convinced himself with some magical thinking that he
Speaker 2: could both expose his friend and protect him at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 5: There's no way I'm going to be the one cause
Speaker 5: of my friend the problem. I'm trying to help him.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to keep him from getting into trouble.
Speaker 2: But Bob wasn't being fully transparent because Bob would be
Speaker 2: wearing a wire secretly recording their conversation, and as it
Speaker 2: turns out, this visit would set off a chain of
Speaker 2: events that would have profound consequences for both men. At
Speaker 2: this point, Operation Gambat would be coming to a close soon. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Bob knew it, and so did his handlers at the
Speaker 2: FBI and so on. Top of everything else, Bob also
Speaker 2: had to start planning his exit because the man known
Speaker 2: as Bob Cooley would not exist for much longer. I'm
Speaker 2: Jake Halburn and this is Deep Cover Mobland, Episode nine.
Speaker 2: The Vanishing Bob didn't go out to Arizona alone. He
Speaker 2: invited his old secretariat lover, Katherine Fleming. He hoped her
Speaker 2: presence might lighten the mood. So Bob settles in at
Speaker 2: a resort and arranges to have dinner with the Wilsons.
Speaker 2: Before dinner, Bob wires up. Then he and Catherine go
Speaker 2: down to the restaurant to find the judge and his wife.
Speaker 5: We met, Hi, Frank, how are you? You know what's
Speaker 5: going on? And you know, hey, how you been just
Speaker 5: small talking? And we walked into the restaurant. We get
Speaker 5: our table.
Speaker 2: They have an uneventful dinner together. Afterwards, they take a
Speaker 2: little stroll out to the parking lot, and we know
Speaker 2: exactly what's said next because we actually got a hold
Speaker 2: of the transcript from Bob's secret recording. The conversation among
Speaker 2: the couples seems friendly. They chat about the weather, what
Speaker 2: type of suntown lotion is best, and if Bob should
Speaker 2: visit the Grand Canyon. The judge tells Catherine politely, good
Speaker 2: seeing you again. Then Bob manages to pull the judge
Speaker 2: aside for a private conversation, and ever so casually, he
Speaker 2: brings up the Harry Alamann trial. He insinuates that the
Speaker 2: authorities are looking into it, re examining it. Bob says, quote,
Speaker 2: there's probably about half a dozen people that know the
Speaker 2: whole story on that, and the trouble is a couple
Speaker 2: of them are going to cooperate. Bob is bullshitting here,
Speaker 2: making up a story about some other guys who are
Speaker 2: supposedly cooperating. In other words, he's not telling the judge
Speaker 2: I myself went to the FEDS. I'm the source of
Speaker 2: all this. Bob goes on to say, quote, if I
Speaker 2: ever get called in to testify, I'm going to testify.
Speaker 2: The only way I can get in trouble is by
Speaker 2: perjuring myself. He then adds, don't worry about me, but
Speaker 2: don't put yourself in a bad spot by perjuring or something.
Speaker 2: It's not worth it, and this is his warning to
Speaker 2: the judge. Bob also reminds him that the statute of
Speaker 2: limitations is expired on any bribery charges, meaning the judge
Speaker 2: would in theory be safe to tell the truth. Bob
Speaker 2: then asks the judge, quote, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: The judge replies, don't worry about me. As Bob rambles on,
Speaker 2: the judge keeps saying I don't know anything about anything.
Speaker 2: He says this four times. It's almost like he knows
Speaker 2: he's being recorded. At one point, Bob tells him bluntly,
Speaker 2: I don't want you to get mad at me, but
Speaker 2: you know, if it comes right down to it. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to take the fall. Finally, Bob and the
Speaker 2: judge walk back to where the ladies are standing. The
Speaker 2: judge's wife says, well, thank you very much. It was
Speaker 2: just a delight. Bob banters a bit more. He even says,
Speaker 2: if I come back, we'll do dinner together. We'll try
Speaker 2: the same place next time. As far as the FBI
Speaker 2: was concerned, this was hardly a home run. The judge
Speaker 2: did not admit taking a bribe. For his part, Bob
Speaker 2: felt that he had warned his old friend about what
Speaker 2: was coming. Though I suppose this was like warning your
Speaker 2: friend that you just set fire to his house. But
Speaker 2: maybe the fire was inevitable. For years, Chicago had been
Speaker 2: a dark hole of corruption. So many cases had been fixed,
Speaker 2: so many people were complicit, so many lies had been told.
Speaker 2: All of it just stacked up like deadwood in the shadows.
Speaker 2: And so if one guy was going to light a
Speaker 2: match to shed some light on the whole thing, you
Speaker 2: can be damn sure there was going to be a fire.
Speaker 2: Several months later, in November of that year, an FBI
Speaker 2: agent visited Judge Wilson's house and informed him that Bob
Speaker 2: Cooley was now a government informant, and that he had
Speaker 2: secretly taped their conversation. The FBI agent also told the
Speaker 2: judge that the FEDS were currently investigating allegations that he,
Speaker 2: Judge Wilson, had accepted a bribe. Wilson was then subpoenaed
Speaker 2: to appear before a grand jury in Chicago in early
Speaker 2: December over that Thanksgiving Judge Wilson's daughter, Mary Anne Duncan,
Speaker 2: remembers getting a call from her father.
Speaker 6: He said, things are wanted to get really bad. He said,
Speaker 6: they want me to come in and do a trial.
Speaker 6: He said, if I come in and do a trial,
Speaker 6: I'll probably have a stroke. And I got off the
Speaker 6: phone and I had this terrible sense of foreboding. You
Speaker 6: know that feeling you have one You're stomach sort sinks.
Speaker 6: I just knew something really bad was going to happen.
Speaker 2: Back in Chicago, Marie Dyson and her colleagues at the
Speaker 2: FBI were getting increasingly nervous.
Speaker 3: We were constantly assessing what we had on our cases.
Speaker 3: Did we have enough? Did we need to get another conversation?
Speaker 4: Did we with this?
Speaker 3: I think he was getting to a point with everybody thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's start wrapping it.
Speaker 4: Up, folks. Let's Enough's enough.
Speaker 3: We don't need to have overkilled, and we don't need
Speaker 3: to get Bob killed.
Speaker 2: Bob was getting ready to pack his bags. It was time,
Speaker 2: but first he had to talk with his family, say
Speaker 2: goodbye to his mother and his siblings who still lived
Speaker 2: in town. Bob invited them all out to dinner at
Speaker 2: a fish restaurant in a way for the coolies, this
Speaker 2: would be the last supper. As the family members gathered,
Speaker 2: Bob pulled each of his brothers aside and let them
Speaker 2: in on what he'd been up to. That for the
Speaker 2: last three years he'd been working with the Feds, and
Speaker 2: that now he had to leave town. Bob promised his
Speaker 2: brothers that at some point over dinner he'd find a
Speaker 2: way to explain all of this to their mother, tell
Speaker 2: her that he was leaving and why. But he never did.
Speaker 2: Why didn't you like tell them the truth at that point?
Speaker 5: Like, I know, I just didn't say anything, and I
Speaker 5: would assume that you know, the family knowing me when
Speaker 5: they did and whatever would know that you know and
Speaker 5: would find out I did a fantastic thing.
Speaker 2: In other words, his mom and his entire family would
Speaker 2: find out the truth soon enough in the papers and
Speaker 2: in the courts, and then his mom would know what
Speaker 2: he'd done, how he'd taken great risks and essentially giving
Speaker 2: up his life in order to clean up the system.
Speaker 2: Years before, when Bob's father was gravely ill, his had
Speaker 2: beseeched him to straighten out his life, to do something worthwhile.
Speaker 2: Bob hoped to prove that he had done just that
Speaker 2: this would be his redemption story. Bob, the wayward son,
Speaker 2: the one who always caused so much trouble as a kid,
Speaker 2: breaking windows and cheating on tests, had finally made good
Speaker 2: and people would know it, or so Bob hoped so.
Speaker 2: As dinner ended that night, Bob's mother still had no
Speaker 2: idea that her son was leaving town. Bob says his
Speaker 2: brothers were angry at him for not telling his mother
Speaker 2: and not preparing her for what was to come, and
Speaker 2: perhaps they understood better than he did just how bad
Speaker 2: things were about to get. Bob coolly vanished on November
Speaker 2: twenty ninth, nineteen eighty nine, the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, when
Speaker 2: when the big moment came, he felt strangely unprepared.
Speaker 5: I had two suitcases with me. These are my belongings
Speaker 5: and I'm going to be leaving, but I have no
Speaker 5: idea where I'm going. I have no idea what I'm
Speaker 5: going to do next.
Speaker 2: Now at this point he might be thinking, what there
Speaker 2: must have been a plan. This was the FBI we're
Speaker 2: talking about. They don't just put informants on a plane
Speaker 2: and wish them good luck. I mean, wasn't Bob and
Speaker 2: the Witness Protection Program or something well that would be
Speaker 2: the path for your typical informant, But as you know
Speaker 2: by now, nothing about Bob's typical. Long before his departure,
Speaker 2: the FBI insisted that he meet with a representative from
Speaker 2: the Witness Protection Program. A guy actually came to Bob's
Speaker 2: apartment and gave a whole spiel about what his new
Speaker 2: life would be like.
Speaker 5: At some point I said, look, I'm not interested in
Speaker 5: your program. And he said to me, you don't have
Speaker 5: any choice, and and I said to myself, this is
Speaker 5: Bob Cooley you're talking to. I don't have any choice.
Speaker 5: And that was the end of that.
Speaker 2: This didn't really make sense to me, And to ask
Speaker 2: Bob why he rejected this guy and the protection he was.
Speaker 5: Offering, because then I would be classified in a lot
Speaker 5: of people's minds as a rat or a snake, because
Speaker 5: these are the people that go into witness protection because
Speaker 5: they're in fear of their own safety, and they're doing
Speaker 5: it to save their own skin.
Speaker 2: You're telling me you turned down witness protection program just
Speaker 2: because you didn't want it, you didn't like the branding
Speaker 2: that went with it, that you'd be a rat.
Speaker 5: Well, that was initially my reason, But as I thought
Speaker 5: about it, there's no way I'm going to be living
Speaker 5: like I'm in prison of some sorts. I'm in a
Speaker 5: motel with some strangers. I know how I am. I'm
Speaker 5: going to do what I damn well please, that's me.
Speaker 2: Bob also says that he didn't think the program would
Speaker 2: actually protect him. He worried that Pat Marcy, who apparently
Speaker 2: had eyes everywhere, would pay someone off or somehow figure
Speaker 2: out where they'd stashed Bob. So when it came time
Speaker 2: to flee Chicago, Bob realizes, shit, he has no real plan,
Speaker 2: But the Feds were a little more prepared. An hour
Speaker 2: before his departure, they handed him a plane ticket to
Speaker 2: Fort Myers, Florida.
Speaker 5: All they said was when you land, find yourself a
Speaker 5: hotel and then give us a call and tell us
Speaker 5: where you are.
Speaker 2: So there he was on a plane headed down to Florida,
Speaker 2: winging it. He didn't even have a gun because he
Speaker 2: knew we couldn't take one on the plane, and from
Speaker 2: the moment he lands in Fort Myers he feels exposed.
Speaker 5: I get off the plane, I look over and nurse
Speaker 5: a sign Marco Island to the right.
Speaker 2: Marco Island was a favorite destination for so many of
Speaker 2: the mobsters that he knew back in Chicago. In Bob's mind,
Speaker 2: it was pretty much Gangster Island. A few of these
Speaker 2: guys even own property on the island, and now here
Speaker 2: was Bob essentially on their turf. He couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: He probably should have thought about this the moment he
Speaker 2: saw the plane tickets to Fort Myers, but everything had
Speaker 2: happened so quickly, and now well, here he was. So
Speaker 2: Bob checks into a local motel, calls a number that
Speaker 2: the FBI has given him. Sometime later, an agent shows
Speaker 2: up offers to take Bob out to dinner. They go
Speaker 2: to a nearby restaurant, but first the agent does something
Speaker 2: that unsettles Bob.
Speaker 5: He walks over, opens the trunk, takes off his gun,
Speaker 5: puts his gun on the trunk. What are you doing?
Speaker 5: He says, I never wear my gun when I'm drinking.
Speaker 5: Here's my protection.
Speaker 2: Later that night, Bob's back at his motel.
Speaker 5: I'm in this room by myself with no weapon though
Speaker 5: nothing you know, along with everything else. Yeah, how did
Speaker 5: I sleep? I didn't sleep real well that night. I
Speaker 5: probably slept maybe half an hour if that.
Speaker 2: Just A day or so later, Bob was on the
Speaker 2: run again, heading west to his next hiding spot. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: back in Chicago, the ship was about to hit the fan.
Speaker 2: Carol Marine, the journalist, was still looking into the first ward.
Speaker 7: I'm sitting in my desk at NBC in the newsroom,
Speaker 7: and a source I hadn't talked to it in about
Speaker 7: five years, said Carol.
Speaker 4: Get a picture of Bob Cooley.
Speaker 7: He is going to break the first ward.
Speaker 2: Carol began to connect the dots, and as she did,
Speaker 2: she got a sense of the scope of operation Gambat.
Speaker 7: So this is like a not just a cascade, It's
Speaker 7: an earthquake on Chicago politics. I mean, this is a
Speaker 7: staggering revelation involving a lawyer. Virtually no one outside of
Speaker 7: a circle of real insiders knew at all.
Speaker 2: Carol scrambled to find as much as she could, and
Speaker 2: she broke the story on the evening news.
Speaker 1: The Cattle High Teams of.
Speaker 8: Ten Tonight exclusive details of a huge federal investigation into
Speaker 8: the heart of organized.
Speaker 1: Crime in Chicago.
Speaker 8: For years, Chicago's First Ward has been openly referred to
Speaker 8: as the Mobs Ward. Tonight, Carol has the exclusive story
Speaker 8: of the man who apparently infiltrated the ward's politics and
Speaker 8: its bosses.
Speaker 9: Ron For approximately five years, a Chicago lawyer has been
Speaker 9: a government informant, secretly recording conversations with some of this
Speaker 9: city's movers and shakers, some of whom have long been
Speaker 9: reputed to have organized crime connections. The identity of this
Speaker 9: informant will come as a shock to some powerful people.
Speaker 9: The man who wore the wire and infiltrated Chicago's First
Speaker 9: Ward is forty seven year old Robert J. Cooley, a
Speaker 9: former policeman the son of a policeman, Cooley became a
Speaker 9: politically well connected Chicago attorney five years ago began to
Speaker 9: go undercover for the government, taping conversations with Chicago Alderman,
Speaker 9: State senators and judges.
Speaker 2: And that was it. Bob was outed the news made
Speaker 2: a seismic impact. One FBI agent went to City Hall
Speaker 2: and witnessed an unforgettable scene involving Johnny Diarco Junior. Johnny
Speaker 2: was the poet and state senator whom Bob had bribed
Speaker 2: on tape. Johnny Junior was standing in a phone booth
Speaker 2: when apparently he got the news. The FBI agent would
Speaker 2: later recount the scene in court, saying Johnny Junior quote
Speaker 2: gasped like he was in pain, almost as if the
Speaker 2: wind had been knocked out of him. He then fell
Speaker 2: to the floor, holding his head in his hands, and
Speaker 2: called out, oh my God, almost right away. A number
Speaker 2: of newspaper articles were written about Bob. One of them began, quote,
Speaker 2: most people know Robert Cooley as a fast talking lawyer,
Speaker 2: an inveterate gambler who bragged of his political prowess and
Speaker 2: said he could fix almost any case. It described Bob
Speaker 2: as a lawyer who quote rarely opened a law book
Speaker 2: and instead relied on his friends to answer the most
Speaker 2: basic questions of law. It quoted a friend of Bob's
Speaker 2: who said his reputation was never that of a scholar,
Speaker 2: but he let it be known that he could occasionally
Speaker 2: use his contacts to move mountains. The article ended by
Speaker 2: noting that Bob, the self proclaimed mover of mountains, liked
Speaker 2: to gamble and quote, built up debts to organize crime,
Speaker 2: and feared for his life. Other journalists wrote articles in
Speaker 2: a similar vein, and soon Bob's life was being condensed
Speaker 2: into a few simple facts and assumptions. He was a
Speaker 2: corrupt lawyer and a braggart, a man unversed in the law,
Speaker 2: an opportunist who flipped to protect himself.
Speaker 5: And I'm a basket case when I see this, and
Speaker 5: I'm envisioning my mother sitting. My mother's in a convalescent
Speaker 5: home over there, a carmel aid home, and I'm envisioning
Speaker 5: her watching this and with all her friends, you know,
Speaker 5: all their friends are seeing all this, making me out
Speaker 5: to be the rat of all time.
Speaker 2: And the facts being reported weren't entirely wrong. Before he flipped,
Speaker 2: Bob did owe money to some bookies, but remember he
Speaker 2: was mostly off the hook for those debts, and at
Speaker 2: the time, as far as I can tell, Bob was
Speaker 2: in no immediate danger. In any case, Bob was absolutely
Speaker 2: pummeled in the press. He had hoped, perhaps naively, that
Speaker 2: he would emerge as a hero in the papers, that
Speaker 2: his dirty past and other shortcomings would be eclipsed by
Speaker 2: the good he'd done, that his mother would finally see
Speaker 2: him as righteous. Instead, he came across in print as
Speaker 2: the rat of all time. Bob wasn't the only one
Speaker 2: navigating this mess. His brother, Joe Cooley, was a police
Speaker 2: officer at the time. He told me he had a
Speaker 2: falling out with some of his fellow officers when they
Speaker 2: called Bob a snitch. Joe says he didn't care. He
Speaker 2: was proud of what his brother did. Bob's other brother, Dennis,
Speaker 2: the former prosecutor, says he also got an ear full.
Speaker 10: For one thing. Now, I went from mister straight, narrow,
Speaker 10: mister nice guy, to mister your brother's a fucking snitch.
Speaker 2: Dennis says his bigger concern was now that Bob had vanished,
Speaker 2: that the mob might ex act retribution on him and
Speaker 2: his family.
Speaker 10: I was afraid for my safety, and I was afraid
Speaker 10: for my wife's safety, and I was afraid for other
Speaker 10: relatives out there. You know, you didn't know, You didn't
Speaker 10: know how they were going to react. You didn't know
Speaker 10: if someone was going to come looking for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 10: I was concerned. Sure, I have been a full na
Speaker 10: to me.
Speaker 2: Bob says that before he ever left Chicago, he told
Speaker 2: the FBI how important it was to him that no
Speaker 2: harm come to his family. Apparently, the FED seemed confident
Speaker 2: that the Coolies would be okay, as one prosecutor told
Speaker 2: me rather surprisingly, they'd never seen a situation in Chicago
Speaker 2: where the mob had taken retribution against family members. But
Speaker 2: the FEDS could make no such promises for Bob. After all,
Speaker 2: Bob would be the prosecution's star witness and the trials
Speaker 2: against the mob, which meant for the foreseeable future, Bob
Speaker 2: he had a big, fat target on his back and
Speaker 2: would be on the run for quite some time. Before
Speaker 2: we get back to the story, I want to mention
Speaker 2: in this last segment we talk about a suicide. Just
Speaker 2: a heads up, Bob's role in Operation Gambat was far
Speaker 2: from over. After all, courts moved slowly. It would take
Speaker 2: years to prosecute Pat Marcy and other first Word targets,
Speaker 2: but the process was underway. Prosecutors began issuing subpoenas. They
Speaker 2: would end up charging at least two dozen men, politicians, lawyers, judges,
Speaker 2: and cops. In fact, just a week after Bob vanished,
Speaker 2: on December sixth, nineteen eighty nine, the wheels of justice
Speaker 2: were already turning. A grand jury was convened in Chicago.
Speaker 2: It was looking into, among other things, whether Judge Frank
Speaker 2: Wilson had been bribed in that infamous murder case. He
Speaker 2: had been subpoened on that day. However, Wilson failed to
Speaker 2: show up in court. If you recall, the judge's daughter,
Speaker 2: mary Anne, had been worried about her father when he
Speaker 2: had called her a few months back told her that
Speaker 2: things are going to get really bad. Then in February,
Speaker 2: Marianne got a call from her mother telling her, your
Speaker 2: father has died.
Speaker 6: And so I said how, I said, he was okay.
Speaker 6: He had some problems with his carate artery, but I said, yeah,
Speaker 6: he's all right, And she said yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, as in yeah, well these things happened. He was
Speaker 2: seventy four years old and hardly in perfect health, so
Speaker 2: it wasn't totally surprising that he passed away, at least
Speaker 2: not initially. But when she got out to Arizona, it
Speaker 2: was a different story. When Marianne arrived at her parents' house,
Speaker 2: she got to talking with a neighbor and he filled
Speaker 2: her in on what really happened.
Speaker 6: He said, well, your father took his own life. And
Speaker 6: I said, oh, no he didn't, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 6: he did. He goes I was out now I saw
Speaker 6: him afterwards.
Speaker 2: Days before, the neighborhood heard a gunshot near Judge Wilson's house.
Speaker 2: He came over and found him. He had shot himself.
Speaker 2: Mary Anne says her mother was in denial about what
Speaker 2: had happened. That she kept on insisting that her father
Speaker 2: didn't mean to do it, that it was an accident.
Speaker 5: And then.
Speaker 6: The second night I was out there at two o'clock
Speaker 6: in the morning, I see her and she's in the
Speaker 6: garage where he had done it, and she is on
Speaker 6: the floor trying to clean up the blood with a toothbrush,
Speaker 6: and I said what do you do and she said, well,
Speaker 6: I just want to clean it up so no one
Speaker 6: sees it.
Speaker 2: Judge Wilson left two notes, one for Marianne and one
Speaker 2: for her mother. She told me that the two notes
Speaker 2: couldn't have been more different.
Speaker 6: My note was helping me do all these things, to
Speaker 6: take care of all these matters. Hers was basically, I'm
Speaker 6: really sorry. I just kind of like, I can't take
Speaker 6: it anymore. I don't want you to lose a pension. Basically,
Speaker 6: that was kind of it. I think he said I
Speaker 6: love you or something, which she said to me too,
Speaker 6: which she didn't say often.
Speaker 2: Marianne did the things that she had to do to
Speaker 2: care for her mother and to tell the members of
Speaker 2: her extended family.
Speaker 6: He was always like the rock of the family. If
Speaker 6: anyone had a problem, they would go to him. So
Speaker 6: it's like, you don't expect someone like that and to
Speaker 6: commit suicide.
Speaker 2: After her father's death, mary Anne was in an incredibly
Speaker 2: difficult situation for so many reasons. She was devastated and
Speaker 2: grieving and depressed. There were all the things that she
Speaker 2: had to do for her family, and on top of that,
Speaker 2: eventually the judge's death made the news, along with allegations
Speaker 2: of corruption, which made it all the harder.
Speaker 6: I just wish he had not done that and he
Speaker 6: had fought, you know, because that's like another thing when
Speaker 6: someone does that, that makes him look really guilty.
Speaker 2: And in a way she was left to answer for him,
Speaker 2: which was an impossible task.
Speaker 6: I feel like if there's two sides of the story,
Speaker 6: people can make up their mind. I mean, I just
Speaker 6: feel like he never got his side of the story
Speaker 6: to this.
Speaker 2: Mary Anne strongly believes that her father is innocent, that
Speaker 2: he never took the bribe, and I should reiterate aside
Speaker 2: from the allegations in this one case, he appears to
Speaker 2: have been an honest judge. Mary Anne sent me a
Speaker 2: newspaper article from the nineteen sixties. The article praised her
Speaker 2: father's integrity. It even began with the words Frank J.
Speaker 2: Wilson is a man to be admired. It's hard telling
Speaker 2: a story like this because the judge can't defend himself,
Speaker 2: can't push back against Bob's narrative, can't offer a new
Speaker 2: evidence or extenuating circumstances. There's just a notorious trial, a death,
Speaker 2: two suicide notes, and a daughter who's doing her very
Speaker 2: best to make sense of it all.
Speaker 6: My dad's dad and pas. I don't know where he is,
Speaker 6: but it just doesn't seem fair.
Speaker 2: Bob doesn't remember exactly when he heard the news about
Speaker 2: Judge Wilson's death, but it was probably a few days
Speaker 2: after the fact.
Speaker 5: And I got a call. I don't remember who called me.
Speaker 5: Somebody called me. I mean, I broke down I broke down.
Speaker 5: I just I cried for hours because I felt maybe
Speaker 5: it's because of me. I felt that way. Maybe it is,
Speaker 5: and I'm hoping and praying to myself it's because of
Speaker 5: his own other problems. But no, that was a that
Speaker 5: was a real rough rough go for me. That was
Speaker 5: a rough go. Cam It's springing back, springing back, springing
Speaker 5: back some bad memories.
Speaker 2: Bob says, after hearing about the judges suicide, he got
Speaker 2: in his car and just started driving. He was staying
Speaker 2: in Colorado at the time, and he headed into the mountains.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I was going to drive off
Speaker 5: the cliff for what I was probably doing about Who
Speaker 5: knows how fast. I was going as fast as I could. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and I got pulled over by This is silly I got.
Speaker 5: I got pulled over by a trooper and he was
Speaker 5: really angry. When he came up to the carpet. He
Speaker 5: probably saw me looking like I look right now and
Speaker 5: as you told him about to your friend of mine
Speaker 5: just committed suicide. I have no idea why he obviously
Speaker 5: believed me, because he tried to see he tried to
Speaker 5: consult me, and he just sat there with me, probably
Speaker 5: for maybe half an hour and convincing me to go
Speaker 5: back home.
Speaker 2: When he was done telling me this story, we took
Speaker 2: a break. I had never seen Bob so broken up.
Speaker 2: It was like he just bottled all of this up.
Speaker 2: After he had a moment, we started back up again.
Speaker 2: Have you ever talked to anyone about this about like?
Speaker 5: No, I would to me, it's something I have to
Speaker 5: handle myself. And it took a while to you know,
Speaker 5: to get over it. But you know, but then it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, like I would tell people, that's the last
Speaker 5: week's news. You know, that's the mindset you have to have.
Speaker 5: I mean, things I have to live with.
Speaker 2: And I kind of got it. There was no looking
Speaker 2: back for Bob, no dwelling on what had happened, the
Speaker 2: death of his friend, all the bad press that he'd gotten,
Speaker 2: the life he'd once had in Chicago, the very man
Speaker 2: that he'd once been. All of it was last week's news.
Speaker 2: What mattered now was finishing what he'd begun. What mattered
Speaker 2: was staying alive to testify in the trials against Pat
Speaker 2: Marcy and the other targets. What mattered was fixing his
Speaker 2: original sin and ensuring that Harry Alamann was retried. There
Speaker 2: was still a chance that some good might come from this,
Speaker 2: something to justify all that had been lost For Bob,
Speaker 2: that's all that mattered. Now. Next time on deep Cover,
Speaker 2: our final episode.
Speaker 9: They have nothing but this memory of how they last
Speaker 9: seen their family member, laying on a street full of
Speaker 9: bullet holes, moaning.
Speaker 11: I thought that it's very wrong for judges to get
Speaker 11: paid off so that hitman can continue to murder people.
Speaker 11: Nobody wants to testify because their mothers scream at them
Speaker 11: that you're going to get murdered.
Speaker 5: And they said, you can't go back home, and I supplied.
Speaker 5: They said, supposedly somebody was on the way out there
Speaker 5: to kill me.
Speaker 7: They're surrounded by agents, they're in bulletproof vests, they've got
Speaker 7: automatic weapons everywhere. Yes, you are the center of the universe.
Speaker 2: Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith and Amy Gaines
Speaker 2: and edited by Karen Chakerji. Our senior editor is Jenuera.
Speaker 2: Original music in our theme was composed by Luis Garra
Speaker 2: and Vaughan Williams as our engineer. Our art this season
Speaker 2: was drawn by Cheryl Cook and designed by Sean Karney.
Speaker 2: Nea Lobell as our executive producer. Special thanks to Heather Fame,
Speaker 2: John Schnarz, Carl mcgliori, Maya Kning, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 2: Mary Beth Smith, Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Nicolmarano, Magan Larson,
Speaker 2: Royston Bserve, Lucy Sullivan, Edith Russlow, Riley Sullivant, Jason Gambrell,
Speaker 2: Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Jake Halpern. Suicide is
Speaker 2: a difficult topic. It can be hard for people to
Speaker 2: talk about suicide or get help if they're in danger,
Speaker 2: but there are resources available. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline
Speaker 2: is an excellent resource. It's free, confidential, and available twenty
Speaker 2: four hours a day. The number in the US is
Speaker 2: one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
Speaker 2: That's one eight hundred two seven three talk