January 24, 2022 • 46 mins
September 1972. A teamster named William Logan is gunned down outside his home, in what’s widely thought to be a mob hit. The Logan family is determined to get justice, but it may not be so easy.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Jake Alpern here before we get started, I wanted
you to know that deep Cover Season two will be
dropping weekly on Mondays, but the full season is available
right now ad free for Pushkin Plus subscribers. That's all
(00:36):
ten episodes right away. Fine Pushkin Plus on the deep
Cover show page in Apple Podcasts, or at Pushkin dot Fm.
Previously on deep Cover. Ever since the days of al Capone,
(00:58):
the Outfit had been an almost unstoppable force in the
city of Chicago. The mob had corrupted many of the
city's judges and politicians, and it's hitmen killed with impunity.
Then in the spring of nineteen eighty six, something unexpected happened.
A mob lawyer named Bob Cooley walked into the offices
(01:20):
of federal prosecutors and offered to switch sides. The prosecutor
he spoke with was stunned. You know, why have the
gods delivered this gift to me? There's got to be
something wrong with this. I had profound questions about his motivation.
I think everybody did. In the eyes of federal prosecutors,
(01:42):
Bob's story and his offer seemed almost too good to
be true, So the Feds couldn't help, But wonder what
was Bob Cooley really after. Bob didn't just start out
as a lawyer for the mob. He had to work
his way up. He started out real small potatoes in
(02:05):
traffic court, and that's where he got his first of
how things were really done in Chicago. Bob goes to
traffic court to try his very first case. His client
had been caught drinking and driving and got a DUI.
The trial doesn't take long. The judge just throws the
ticket right out. Bob's like, thank you very much. I mean,
(02:28):
a win is a win. Right afterwards, in the hallway,
Bob bumps into this guy he knows, a cop named Jimmy,
tall skinny guy. People called him dog Breath behind his
back anyway, Jimmy. He was the judge's cousin. And Jimmy
said to me, the first one was on the house.
From here on out, you come and see me before
(02:51):
you have any case. And I understood what exactly what
that meant. What he meant was that going forward, Bob
would have to pay if he expected to win. Old
dog Breath he was the judge's bag man, the guy
who collected the bribes in cash and in the coming
days and weeks. As he learned the ropes, Bob discovered
(03:11):
that every desired outcome had a price. Duy's one hundred
and fifty bucks to fix hit someone with a car
five hundred and traffic court. That was like the minor leagues,
(03:33):
Bob says. After a few months, he quickly graduated to
the big leagues, to another courtroom Bob calls gambling and
gun court, where the real action was taking place. And there,
like in traffic court, money was flowing straight into the
judge's pocket. Literally, Bob says, he just sauntered back to
(03:54):
the judge's chambers, opened the closet door, and I would
just put, you know, put the money. I would go
and I would put one hundred dollars for each case
I had in his pocket. Bob says that before long
he had three cases a day in this courtroom. Usually
made motions to dismiss the charges against his clients so
we could avoid going to trial. This tactic, combined with
(04:17):
the payoffs, worked very well. Did you ever lose any
of those cases? I'm never how can I lose? You know? Wait,
did you did you hold on? Did you like go
through the motions of like making like a good argument.
Oh yeah, well, certainly that's why these the judges loved me,
in particular, because I gave him plenty of reasons, as
(04:37):
I would say, to hang your hat on. So so
the bribe is almost just like your insurance. No, it
was because I'm a nice guy, Jake. I a vast
majority of those cases. You know, I'm the Legit had
to be thrown out because you know, the motions were legitimate.
But I did it because you know, that was my nature.
(04:59):
His nature. Bob prided himself as a big tipper, a
generous guy. The way he described it, he was almost
like the Santa Claus of the court system, just doling
out gifts as he regaled me with stories. It all
sounded so grand until I actually stopped and thought about
what he was saying. Wait, but Bob, are you trying
(05:21):
to tell me that you really believe that these weren't
bribes they were just tips. No, No, you're misunderstanding what
I'm saying. Okay, I am not saying I didn't pay
a lot of bribes. Yes, I paid a lot of
bribes on cases. Yes they were bribes. Maybe not in
the eyes of the law. If you look at the
(05:41):
definition of a bribe, that you're paying somebody to do
something that they normally wouldn't do. And because the judges
were going to rule in his favor anyway, because he'd
made such a strong case, well then it wasn't technically
a bribe, was it. It was more like a sweetener
or an act of larges. That's how Bob told it anyway.
(06:07):
Over the next few years, Bob earned himself a reputation
as a flashy criminal defense lawyer. No tie, gold chain Bob.
He drove a convertible and had vanity plates. Of course,
r j C his initials. He seemed to play by
his own rules. He'd park his car in the mayor's
spot in front of city Hall to show off, to
(06:29):
prove to his clients that he could get away with it.
His lifestyle was an advertisement of sorts to attract a
certain type of client, criminal defendants with deep pockets, often
guys with mob ties. This is who Bob wanted to impress,
and they did come calling. In nineteen seventy seven, the
(06:50):
mob asked him to fix a case, a murder case
involving a hitman. Bob had a hunch that if he
said yes, it could change everything for him. I'm Jake
(07:26):
Halpern and this is deep Cover Bob Bland Episode two,
The Murder. One day in February of nineteen seventy seven,
(07:58):
Bob learned that a guy named Pat Marcy wanted to
meet with him. Marcy was one of the city's most
powerful men. Bob had never met him before, but he
knew who he was. Everybody knew Pat Marcy was the
one that controlled the entire political system. Marcy kept a
low profile, and even to this day, much of his
(08:18):
story is still shrouded in mystery. Legend has it his
career with the mob started back in the days of
Al Capone. Even his name as a kind of shape
shifting quality to it. He starts off Pasqualino Marcone on
his birth certificate, and it keeps changing again and again
on public records until he finally becomes Pat Marcy in
(08:39):
nineteen fifty three. Everybody knew Pant Marcy was a former
Capone mobster, a gunman. Eventually, Marcy went into politics, became
an official for the First Ward, one of the city's
most powerful political districts. First Ward picked every basically every judge,
every prosecutor, every police commander in whatever they controlled the
(09:05):
entire system. But really Marcy was like the mobs politicals
are It's head of government affairs, if you will. A
guy who used the mob, its wealth and its muscle
to influence a network of corrupt officials. Had an air
about him that was really scary. He was a nasty,
(09:26):
vicious human being. You could tell it. If you met
the man, you would know that he's pure evil, but
unbelievably powerful in every sense. For Bob, what this meant
was pretty simple. When Pat Marcy asked for a meeting,
you took it. On the day of the meeting, Bob
(09:49):
went to a restaurant in downtown Chicago and waited for
Pat Marcy to show up. This wasn't just any restaurant,
by the way. It was a legendary place called Counselor's
Row where Chicago's trial lawyers and old time politicians went
to grab a drink and shoot the ship after work.
There was a corner table known as Booth Number one
(10:10):
or the first Ward Table, where Pat Marcy held court.
The table even had its own landline telephone. Anyway, this
is where Bob waited when Marcy finally showed up that day,
he didn't actually enter the restaurant. Instead, he waited behind
a glass door that led to an adjoining lobby and
(10:30):
just stood there waiting for Bob. The mob's politicals are
was wearing a three piece suit and a pair of
tinted glasses that obscured his eyes. Bob stood up, exited
the restaurant and joined Marcy in the lobby. And right
there Marcy made his request. He said, Look, he said,
(10:52):
I've got a case here, can you handle it? And
I knew exactly what he meant. You know, that was
our term, you know, for fixing the case speaking the
language that we spoke. You know, I basically spoke a
different language, probably than most lawyers. This, of course, is
part of the reason that Pat asked to meet with.
Bob knew how to talk about fixing a case without
(11:12):
ever really talking about it. This was all part of
Bob's professionalism, if you will. But what Marcy wanted to
help with was no ordinary request. It was a murder case.
He asked if Bob knew a judge who could handle it.
Standing there in the lobby, Bob was at a crossroads.
If he could come through on this, prove his worth
(11:35):
to Marcy. It'd be a big deal. No telling what
Marcy could do for him. On the other hand, this
was uncharted territory for Bob. He'd fix cases before, placed
all kinds of bribes or tips as he called them,
but never in a murder trial. Bob knew he had
to proceed carefully. If there was one thing he didn't
(11:56):
want to do, it was promised something that he couldn't deliver.
He needed more intel, so he asked Marcy to get
a hold of the police reports, because Bob knew at
some point all of this would go before judge and
he had to make sure there was justification for a
not guilty verdict, enough evidence for the judge to hang
his hat on. As Bob liked to say, you know,
(12:18):
so it wouldn't look like the judge had been bribed.
As if all of this weren't enough pressure. Afterwards, one
of Pat Marcy's minions pulled Bob aside and warned him.
He said, you know, if you say you're going to
take it, I don't want to. You know a problem afterwards,
and I said, look, I said, if I tell you
(12:38):
I'll take it, I'll take it. The next day, Pat
Marcy gave the police reports to Bob and told him
get back to me. Before Bob would agree to fix
(13:04):
this murder case, he wanted more details. He wanted to
understand what exactly had happened, who'd gotten killed, were there
any witnesses, what was the motive? So let's start with
who got killed. The victim was William Logan. People called
him Billy. He was just thirty five years old. He
was like a big teddy bear. He was tall, Yeah,
(13:27):
I remember, he had big hands, always smiling, just a
happy yike. That's Johanna Santonello, Billy's niece. I visited her
not long ago at her home in the suburbs of Chicago.
To this day, within the family, Johanna is kind of
like the keeper of uncle Billy's memory. She has all
kinds of memorabilia related to him, photos, newspaper clippings, and
(13:51):
journal entries, also volumes of court papers related to his murder.
I mean boxes and boxes of all this stuff. When
I visited Johanna, she had it all laid out on
the dining room table for me, like the archives of
some enormous unwritten biography. So it's been a little overwhelming too,
(14:12):
because there's just so much, and it's like I wanted
to get organized and for you when have everything, And
then I started digging into it and I'm like, oh god,
yeah I get it. It's like I had chairs filled
it stuff. Yeah. I feel like we're in the scene
in the movie where they're like trying to they're getting
ready to go to trial and going over to bo Yeah.
(14:34):
That's just like, oh my god, there's so much stuff
on this table. Yeah, it's crazy, But you're meant to
be here. The story is meant to be told. He
was a big, strapping guy, played football, not someone you'd
want to mess with. This is where Uncle Billy was
(14:54):
in the Army and they won the championship. Those are
all as Army buddies. Before serving in the military, Billy
joined the Teamsters at seventeen years old. That's the famous
truck drivers union that Jimmy Hoffa wants ran. Uncle Billy
also drove a cab on the side. At the time
of his death, Billy was divorced and living with his
(15:16):
two sisters. One of them was recently widowed and had
four kids. Those kids, by the way, were Johanna and
her three brothers. Uncle Billy was helping raise them. He
became like a kindly father to them. Not everyone saw
uncle Billy this way. According to his ex wife, Billy
had a darker side. She said he was physically abusive,
(15:40):
But Johanna says she never saw this side of him.
As she recalls it, uncle Billy was a gentle giant.
As we continued sorting through the boxes on her dining
room table, eventually Johannah pulled out this one picture and
just stared at it. It was a grainy, black and
white photo of a two story house. This is the
(16:02):
house where it happened. That's your house. Yes, this is
the house that he was killed. See this light pole? Yeah, okay,
His body was right behind the white pole. Johannah remembers
vividly the night that uncle Billy was murdered September twenty seventh,
nineteen seventy two, almost fifty years ago. She was thirteen
(16:24):
years old at the time, but the whole thing is
still crisp in her memory. As she recalls it, she
was lying in bed, uncle Billy was preparing to leave
for the night shift, and all of a sudden, you
heard bang, bang, bang, and we didn't know what it was.
We were in bed. I was wide awake, I remember,
(16:45):
and my mom ran to the front door, and I
heard her yell, Billy, Billy, and my uncle was laying
out in front, and my mom said to my aunt,
Billie's hurt really bad. And my aunt went out there
(17:06):
and she took my uncle's head and she placed it
on her toward her lap, and my brothers ran to
get blankets and came out and they covered my uncle.
And you could just hear a moan. The aunt that
(17:30):
Johanna mentions here, the one holding Uncle Billy in her
lap as he lay dying. That's her Aunt Betty. She's
no longer alive. But before she passed, Aunt Betty actually
made recordings of herself in which she recounted all her
memories of that fateful night. And these recordings they were
part of this massive collection of memorabilia that Aunt Betty
(17:51):
had bequeathed to Johanna. Johanna had the audio cassettes laid
out on the dining room table, front and center, just
waiting to be played. She loaded one of them into
a little tape recorder and hit play. Our story starts
on September twenty seventh, nineteen seventy two, the night Billy
(18:15):
was killed. Speed that's my Aunt Betty. We listened together
as Aunt Betty described holding uncle Billy. Billy was on
the lawn herd fan. I proceeded to the lawn. He
was near his car on the parkway. I kept calling
(18:37):
his name. He turned, looked at me. He raised his
hand in the case fell out of his hand. As
I knelt down, he turned and his back was rusting
on my knees. And I kept saying, Billy, Billy, what happened?
What happened? It was unclear how bad the uncle Billy
(18:58):
was hurt, but there was blood everywhere. A family member
rushed back inside and called the police. By then many
of the neighbors had also come outside, seeing what happened,
and they too were calling for help. Nobody responded. There
was nobody almost for half an hour, and by this
time people had gathered neighbors. Everybody was out, The police maintained.
(19:24):
I told him my brother had type of blood. But
here is from the classes FREDI had come across. She
felt this pulse that was still a pulse, and as
far as I was concerned, he was still alive. The
squad car took Aunt Betty to the hospital. There, she
met up with her other brother, Richard. Richard arrived and
(19:45):
Richard went right into the emergency room. A priest came
and he asked if we wanted to lay us rights,
and I said yes, And then Richard came out a
little while later and I I said, he said they killed him,
he said. After we listened to Aunt Betty's tapes, Johanna
(20:12):
looked spent. She glanced wearily around her living room, and
I began to appreciate how all this stuff, all this memorabilia, was,
in some ways a burden for her. The boxes gave
heft and shape and immovability to these memories. Johanna had
to physically navigate around them. As far as I could
(20:36):
tell her, Aunt Betty had been kind of obsessed with
Billy's death, and this obsession was fueled by Betty's complete
bafflement as to why anyone would want to kill her
brother in the first place. This couldn't he happened to
was it couldn't happen to our family. We didn't, we
never bothered nobody. What was this? What could have happened?
(20:59):
Why Billy? Why Billy? What did he ever do? But
it turns out Aunt Betty did have one clue something
somebody said to her on the night of the murder.
Before I get into describe her, somebody approached me and
said to me, I saw it all. I saw it.
(21:22):
Someone told her, I saw it all. In the chaos
of the moment, Aunt Betty couldn't really focus on who
had said this to her. She just remembered his voice,
his words, but not his face or his name. And
kind of amazingly, it was a long time, several years
in fact, before Aunt Betty even learned who this man
was or what exactly he'd seen. Turns out, this man
(21:49):
was a neighbor, just a regular guy, and he was
destined to become the most important witness in the murder
of Billy Logan. In order to fix this murder case
(22:20):
for the mob, Bob needed to know who the victim was,
but the real key was knowing who the witnesses were.
That was going to be crucial because it would tell
him just how weak or strong the prosecution's case was,
and then he'd know how big an ask it would
be when he approached a judge with a bribe. So
Bob soon found out more about the witness He worked
(22:42):
at gas stations and also drove a milk truck. His
name was Robert Lowe. The night of the murder, Robert
Lowe had been out walking his dog, Ginger, when he
noticed a car idling just down the street from the
Logan's house. Then he heard a shout followed by a
loud bang. He saw Logan's body fall backwards. Moments later,
(23:05):
someone got out of the idling car and shot Logan again.
A street light illuminated the man's face for just a
few seconds. Robert Lowe got a glimpse of the killer.
Later that night, he gave a brief statement to the police.
(23:25):
Sometime later, two detectives followed up and visited Robert at work.
Then they had him come down to the station. We
know what happens next because Robert recounted all of this
to a journalist named Maurice Posley, who ended up writing
a book about the murder. Down at the police station,
the detectives hauled out four photo albums. They were collections
of mugshots organized thematically. Each album had its own label homicide, rape, burglary, robbery,
(23:52):
auto theft. Take your time and go through him, The
detectives told Robert, see if you can id the shooter.
It seemed improbable, like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Robert was halfway through the last binder when he saw him.
Narrow face, aquiline nose, dark eyes, got him, said Robert,
(24:14):
you sure, asked one of the detectives. Yeah, I'm sure,
said Robert. The detectives didn't tell Robert the name of
the guy, he just ideed. They just told him he
could go. Now. Turns out the guy, Robert pointed out
(24:35):
he was Harry Alamann, a reputed hitman for the mob.
Seems like this would be a tantalizing lead for the police,
but remarkably, nothing happened with this investigation for several years.
Then a second witness materialized, named Louie Almida. Louie claimed
(24:56):
to be a friend of Harry's, an accomplice to the murder,
the guy who drove the getaway car. He was now
in trouble with the law himself on a separate matter
and was looking to talk, so he served up his
old pale Harry on a silver platter, said yep, he's
the guy that killed Billy Logan, and then boom. The
(25:19):
prosecutors had what they needed. In December of nineteen seventy six,
a grand jury indicted Harry Alaman. It was big news.
The Chicago Daily News reported that the mob had assassinated
over one thousand people since the nineteen twenties, and this
was one of the only times a hitman had ever
been indicted. Robert Lowe, the neighbor, agreed to testify, as
(25:43):
did the accomplice. The getaway driver. Aunt Betty, said she'd
testified two she'd talked about her brother and the night
that he'd been killed. But Betty's niece Johanna says her
whole family was spooked. Everybody knew what the mob was
capable of, and for us, we were We had playing
(26:06):
clothes men sitting in front of our house that were
taking now blason plate numbers of people that were coming
to our house. They were trying to make sure who
was who. We even had him following us to school
to make sure we were okay. The police. The police. Yeah,
it sounds pretty scary. It was very scary. Yeah. And
the guy who supposedly killed her uncle, Harry Aliman, he
(26:27):
seemed pretty scary too. In a bizarre twist, Harry was
actually a distant relative of Billy, the victim. Billy had
married Harry's second cousin, which didn't raise too many eyebrows
in this case, because well back then, in many Chicago neighborhoods,
everyone seemed to be related somehow. In any case, Harry's
(26:49):
story was now all over the papers. One headline heralded
him as a modern day al Capone. In another article,
a prosecutor warned that Aliman quote kills with the professional
efficiency of an expert assassin. This was the guy the
mob wanted Bob Cooley to save, the guy who's trial
(27:10):
Bob was going to fix it. Turns out there were
many facets to the so called expert assassin and the
people I talked to, people who knew Harry from back
in the day, they all seem to remember a different man.
(27:31):
If you ever watched the movie Scarface, kind of reminds
you of the guy walks up behind Scarface with shotgun
at the end. He's like a Bantam rooster. He's slender,
he's got thick wavy hair, sunglasses, a ladies man, a
good looker, dashing kind of character, and was also the
(27:51):
kind of guy who could make them. Aron R. Sauce
on Sundays. He looks like somebody who if you rubbed
up against him, you sort of believe, because he's the
razor's edge. But perhaps the most interesting take that I
heard on Harry came from this next person. Okay, my
(28:12):
name is Frankie for Leano. My father was Harry Alaman,
and basically he was involved. How do I say that?
A part? This always gets me? Jake, Yeah, how do
I say it? He was involved in the organized crime.
Frankie's now in her sixties and all her life she's
(28:35):
been trying to explain who her father was. She actually
wrote a memoir about her dad called They Can't Hurt
Him Anymore. And as you can see, it's still not
easy for her to explain who he was, especially because
there were so many stories out there about him. When
you read about your dad and the papers, you know,
there's all kinds of stuff in there. Though sometimes will say,
(28:57):
you know, Harry Alaman the hitman, and it's what they say.
What was that like for you to hear people talk
about your dad that way? It was horrible, It was scary,
It is horrible. It was you just can't even picture it.
You're like it's not true, my dear, not my dear,
No way, no way. Frankie says that she grew up
(29:21):
thinking that her dad was just well, a great dad,
and by all accounts he was a good father. And
this is exactly what I'm talking about. Harry had so
many sides to him. For example, he was a painter,
and I don't mean a house painter, I mean an artiste.
He went to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. But
(29:41):
if you're thinking of some guy wearing a turtleneck and
a beret, think again. Harry liked to wear suits. Now.
He was on the shorter side, around five foot seven,
but tough as nails. People said he had a wicked
left hook that you never saw coming, hence his nickname
Harry the Hook. He was a Mexican Italian guy with
a Spanish last name that literally meant German. As you'll hear,
(30:06):
no one can even agree on how exactly to pronounce
his last name. So yeah, Harry was a riddle. The
Chicago Crime Commission estimates Harry killed eighteen people between nineteen
seventy one and nineteen seventy seven alone. But to Frankie
(30:26):
for Leano, Harry was a savior. You see, Frankie's biological
father died when she was very little. As a result,
Frankie's mom, Ruth, was suddenly a widow with four young
kids to feed, including Frankie. That's when Harry showed up.
Now he might think Harry would be scared off by
the widow with the whole brood of kids. Nope, Harry
(30:47):
began courting not just Ruth the mom, but the whole family.
It was almost like Harry wanted every one of them
to fall in love with him. He spent time with
the kids one on one, playing games, asking them questions,
taking them shopping. Yeah, he definitely want us over. He
knew what he was doing. He's really of Love's kids,
(31:11):
and he's got a lot of compassion, and he's got patience.
Oh my god, he has the best patience. When it
came time to propose, Harry asked Frankie for her permission,
even though she was like seven years old at the time.
He just basically said, you know, how would you feel
if I married mommy and we could all live together
(31:33):
in the same house, and I would be there all
the time, and we'd be a family, and we'd beat together.
We could do all these fun things and all my god,
I was so happy up until this moment. Frankie remembers
Harry intended to move to New York and become a
commercial artist. Now he shelved all that. Instead, he took
(31:56):
a job distributing a horse racing newsletter known as a
scratch sheet, and he took care of Frankie and her siblings,
provided for them, doated on them. There were moments when
Frankie got the sense that there was another side to
her dad. It became clearer to her the older she got.
(32:16):
Would be boyfriends would ask her, is your dad going
to come outside and blow my head off? His reputation
couldn't have made dating easy. By the time that she
was a teenager, Frankie did understand that her dad wasn't
just selling scratch sheets at the racetrack. Harry admitted to
her that he collected on something called juice loans. He said,
(32:38):
you know, there's people in this world that need help.
Some people might need it because family member sick, they
need money for a hospital bill, they can't pay their
own runts, they can't afford to take care of their kids.
There's people like that, and if they need something, You
help them out and they pay you back a little
bit more. And then there's people that want to take
(33:00):
your money, and after they take your money, they don't
want to pay you back. So there's those that will,
and there's those the adults. What did he say, those
that don't you get it? You get you got to
collect the money. I didn't say anything about killing him.
They beat him up or whatever. So yeah, maybe Dad
(33:20):
had to knock people around occasionally, but these were people
who had it coming. And on the whole, Frankie still
believed he was a good guy. He was a family man.
He didn't care a rating, go out drinking, not a
d answer. He was a family man. So I don't
know where he came here at the time to go
out killing people. I just don't know that. I don't
(33:44):
know this beast of a man that they described, you know,
this other side of her father, this beast of a man.
Frankie didn't really hear about this until nineteen seventy six,
the year he was indicted. It was that year that
Harry called the whole family together for a meeting to
prepare them for what was to come. He set us
(34:05):
down at the table. My brothers, my sister, my mom,
and when he stayed us down as a family, and
he said, you're going to hear a lot of bad
things about me. And we're like, what are you talking about?
And he's like, they're coming after me for something I
didn't do. We're like, who's coming in after you? What's
going on? Harry began to explain that he was about
(34:28):
to be indicted for the murder of Billy Logan, and
he told them what to expect at trial. They're going
to stay on private organized crime and you're going to
hear things about me that you will be scared or
you will be afraid. And I want you to understand
what's going on, And like, what do you mean outfit
(34:48):
and murder? What are you talking about? You know? And
then he explained the story of what they were actually
going to come after him for, and he just said
it's for something I didn't do, and that wasn't all.
Harry also told them that he would be hiring protection
for them, guards, So we had bodyguards in the house.
(35:12):
Like these big, big guys sit sitting in or gets
standing up over us and I'm like, yeah, what is this.
Don't be afraid. Their bodyguards are here to protect us.
I said, what do we need protection from? He said,
from the government. They are trying to frame me. This
is a setup. That's how Harry explained it. The problem
(35:34):
for Harry was there were two eyewitnesses, the accomplice who
claimed he'd helped Harry do it, and Robert Lowe, who'd
stumbled upon the murderer while out walking his dog. In theory,
their testimony would be heard in a courtroom and decided
upon fair and square, but the entire Logan family was
nervous and even a bit skeptical that justice would be served. Johanna,
(35:58):
the niece of the victim, remembers the whole family talking
about this, and my grandpa had called my uncle and said,
you know how this works in Chicago. Don't be surprised
if he's found not guilty. You know how this works
in Chicago, meaning someone might try to fix the case,
someone like Bob Cooley. And in fact, in early nineteen
(36:21):
seventy seven, as both sides prepared for this murder trial,
Bob was making preparations of his own. Remember, before he
agreed to fix this case, Bob wanted to review the facts.
What struck him immediately was the lack of physical evidence
tying Harry to the crime. But Bob also paid special
attention to the two eyewitnesses. He wasn't overly impressed with
(36:45):
either of them. Robert the neighbor had talked to the
police a few times, and there'd been a few small
inconsistencies in what he'd told them. And as for Louis
the getaway driver, well, he was serving a ten year
federal sentence and had struck a deal with prosecutors, so
arguably he had his own agenda. As Bob saw it,
(37:06):
there was plenty of room for reasonable doubt, plenty for
a judge to hang his hat on the judge will
hear in the evidence, and the judge will say not guilty,
as any judge Wood, But did you have any doubt
in your mind that Harry Alliman pulled the trigger? Oh?
I know, I know he did. I was certain he did.
He had no doubt in his mind that Harry had
(37:28):
done it. But the case was weak enough that he
felt he could fix it and he could tell a
judge not to worry. And there was a final factor
that Bob says weighed into his decision about whether or
not to fix this case, and it involved the question
of motive and what type of murder this was. There
was no perfectly clear explanation as to why Harry would
(37:50):
have murdered Billy Logan. The local papers were reporting that
Billy was murdered because he stood up to the mob.
If you remember, Billy was a teamster. Supposedly, the mob
had asked him to cooperate in a robbery scheme and
Billy had said no. All of this, Bob says, led
him to believe that this was a routine mob murder,
(38:10):
which seems to have eased his conscience, and apparently this
was the final deciding factor, convincing him that yes, he
could and should fix this case. I thought it was
just a mob killing mob guys killing mob guys, and
this one on all the time back there. In fact,
I knew like fifty people that we're hitmen in Chicago.
(38:31):
I agreed to fix the case because I thought it
was again, it was just one mob guy killing another
mob guy. What's the big deal, because that's part of
your code. Two mob guys killing each other doesn't bother you,
but an innocent guy dying does. Yes, Absolutely, it was
just it was the way I live. I mean this
is my life. When you set code, I mean using
that word like it's some kind of a magical thing.
(38:53):
This was my nature. Bob says he would never, for example,
represent a pedophile. He also prided himself as someone who
stood up to bullies, but when it came to mob murders,
he was inclined to look the other way. I didn't
really get his logic here, to be honest, it seems
so callous, but it did help me to get some
(39:14):
more context. I spoke to a federal prosecutor who specialized
in the mob back in the seventies in Chicago, and
he told me, back then, it seemed like there was
a mob killing almost every single week. These murders were
just part of the rhythm of life in Chicago back then,
kind of like wake up, eat breakfast, go to work,
(39:34):
catch the score on the Cubs game, read about who
got whacked, go to sleep, repeat, you know, like a
dark mafioso version of Groundhog Day. And typically no one
was ever convicted. Witnesses either vanished or refused to cooperate,
But there also seemed to be an implicit understanding that
(39:55):
mob guys just killed each other always had always would,
and there was no point in referring any of it.
Kind of crazy, perhaps, but this was a prevailing sentiment
at the time, and when I forced myself to consider
this mindset, I guess I began to understand how Bob
could get so callous about it all. But even if
(40:16):
you buy into the morality of this logic, the problem
was there was no evidence that Billy Logan was a mobster.
Sure he worked for the Teamsters, and yes, the Teamsters
were known to do business with the mob but it
was a big stretch to classify Billy Logan himself as
a mobster. Apparently, however, it was a stretch that Bob
(40:38):
was comfortable making when justifying his actions. Bob could be
quite agile. In fact, as I came to know him better,
I began to see him as a kind of ethical
acrobat who could bend over backwards and contort himself until
his worldview made perfect sense. What struck me above all
(40:59):
else was how important it was for Bob to see
himself as a fundamentally good person. The Lord himself knows
what I've done and what I haven't done. There's no
question in my mind he's protecting me I should have
been killed at half a dozen times. I did what
I did, and the big guy upstairs knows what I did.
I don't think he's going to put me in hell
(41:20):
for it. I don't think so. Part of this certainty
came from, of all things, a charm that he wore
around his neck. I noticed it a few times when
we chatted on zoom. It was a scapular, a religious ornament,
little gold cross that his mother had given him. He
never took it off. She told him it would keep
him safe, That's what she said. But I don't push
(41:42):
it as I say, I don't push it by That's
why I've never murdered anybody. I've been tempted to a
couple of times when people were going to kill me,
but that's the only reason I never did that. I'm
curious what else, like in the line that you drawn
the things you would never do murdering someone. What else
I would never get involved in cases where I'm cheating
(42:03):
people or stealing their business or destroying lives. I just
wouldn't do it. Do you consider bribes you've placed, You
put that in the tallly of sins you've committed. When
you look at your life on a whole, to be
very honest, No, I mean, that's not a sin. That's
not in the book written as a sin. It was.
It's something that's wrong in the eyes of the law,
(42:23):
no question about that. And there's no question that's wrong.
I've done things that the law says are illegal. But
you know, but that's you know, that's man's law, a
violation of man's law, not a sin against God. That's
how Bob thought about it, how he rationalized placing a bribe,
even a bribe in a murder case, a very big
(42:45):
murder case. The real trick, now, says Bob, was finding
the right judge, not an easy task. This would be
a big trial, all over the headlines, and so it
was crucial to find someone whose credentials were unimpeachable, someone
who no one whatever think of is being corrupt. But
(43:08):
it was just a matter of optics. Bob needed a
judge who would come through for him. He couldn't risk
having a judge that took the bribe and then changed
his mind, because in the end, Bob was responsible. Bob
was the one on the hook. Pat Marcy, the Mob's
political czar, had made it very clear to Bob that
he'd better come through for them. But if Bob pulled
(43:31):
this off, he would be the man, the guy who
could do anything. All of this meant right now, Bob
needed to find the exact right judge, and he had
the perfect person in mind. Next time on deep Cover,
(43:58):
I said, you know, yes, I said I would handle
the case. And that's when he said, well, you realize,
if there's a problem, you're going to have a problem problem.
I know what that means. You get an extra hole
in your head. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith
(44:37):
and Amy Gaines and edited by Karen Shakurge. Our senior
editor is Jan Guera. Original music and our theme was
composed by Luis Gara and Fawn Williams is our engineer.
Our art this season was drawn by Cheryl Cook and
designed by Sean Karney. Mia Lobell is our executive producer.
Special thanks to Heather Fain, John Schnars, Carlie mcgliori, Maya Kanig,
(45:00):
Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Mary Beth Smith, Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano,
Megan Larson, Royston Beserve, Lucy Sullivan, Edith ru Solo, Riley Sullivan,
Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Jake Halpert.
(46:00):
If you want to read more about this murder trial
and the life of Robert Lowe, check out Everybody Pays
by Maurice Posley and Rick Cogan. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus
and you can binge the rest of the season right
now adds free. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover
show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm.
(46:23):
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Pushkin Jake Alpern here before we get started, I wanted
you to know that deep Cover Season two will be
dropping weekly on Mondays, but the full season is available
right now ad free for Pushkin Plus subscribers. That's all
(00:36):
ten episodes right away. Fine Pushkin Plus on the deep
Cover show page in Apple Podcasts, or at Pushkin dot Fm.
Previously on deep Cover. Ever since the days of al Capone,
(00:58):
the Outfit had been an almost unstoppable force in the
city of Chicago. The mob had corrupted many of the
city's judges and politicians, and it's hitmen killed with impunity.
Then in the spring of nineteen eighty six, something unexpected happened.
A mob lawyer named Bob Cooley walked into the offices
(01:20):
of federal prosecutors and offered to switch sides. The prosecutor
he spoke with was stunned. You know, why have the
gods delivered this gift to me? There's got to be
something wrong with this. I had profound questions about his motivation.
I think everybody did. In the eyes of federal prosecutors,
(01:42):
Bob's story and his offer seemed almost too good to
be true, So the Feds couldn't help, But wonder what
was Bob Cooley really after. Bob didn't just start out
as a lawyer for the mob. He had to work
his way up. He started out real small potatoes in
(02:05):
traffic court, and that's where he got his first of
how things were really done in Chicago. Bob goes to
traffic court to try his very first case. His client
had been caught drinking and driving and got a DUI.
The trial doesn't take long. The judge just throws the
ticket right out. Bob's like, thank you very much. I mean,
(02:28):
a win is a win. Right afterwards, in the hallway,
Bob bumps into this guy he knows, a cop named Jimmy,
tall skinny guy. People called him dog Breath behind his
back anyway, Jimmy. He was the judge's cousin. And Jimmy
said to me, the first one was on the house.
From here on out, you come and see me before
(02:51):
you have any case. And I understood what exactly what
that meant. What he meant was that going forward, Bob
would have to pay if he expected to win. Old
dog Breath he was the judge's bag man, the guy
who collected the bribes in cash and in the coming
days and weeks. As he learned the ropes, Bob discovered
(03:11):
that every desired outcome had a price. Duy's one hundred
and fifty bucks to fix hit someone with a car
five hundred and traffic court. That was like the minor leagues,
(03:33):
Bob says. After a few months, he quickly graduated to
the big leagues, to another courtroom Bob calls gambling and
gun court, where the real action was taking place. And there,
like in traffic court, money was flowing straight into the
judge's pocket. Literally, Bob says, he just sauntered back to
(03:54):
the judge's chambers, opened the closet door, and I would
just put, you know, put the money. I would go
and I would put one hundred dollars for each case
I had in his pocket. Bob says that before long
he had three cases a day in this courtroom. Usually
made motions to dismiss the charges against his clients so
we could avoid going to trial. This tactic, combined with
(04:17):
the payoffs, worked very well. Did you ever lose any
of those cases? I'm never how can I lose? You know? Wait,
did you did you hold on? Did you like go
through the motions of like making like a good argument.
Oh yeah, well, certainly that's why these the judges loved me,
in particular, because I gave him plenty of reasons, as
(04:37):
I would say, to hang your hat on. So so
the bribe is almost just like your insurance. No, it
was because I'm a nice guy, Jake. I a vast
majority of those cases. You know, I'm the Legit had
to be thrown out because you know, the motions were legitimate.
But I did it because you know, that was my nature.
(04:59):
His nature. Bob prided himself as a big tipper, a
generous guy. The way he described it, he was almost
like the Santa Claus of the court system, just doling
out gifts as he regaled me with stories. It all
sounded so grand until I actually stopped and thought about
what he was saying. Wait, but Bob, are you trying
(05:21):
to tell me that you really believe that these weren't
bribes they were just tips. No, No, you're misunderstanding what
I'm saying. Okay, I am not saying I didn't pay
a lot of bribes. Yes, I paid a lot of
bribes on cases. Yes they were bribes. Maybe not in
the eyes of the law. If you look at the
(05:41):
definition of a bribe, that you're paying somebody to do
something that they normally wouldn't do. And because the judges
were going to rule in his favor anyway, because he'd
made such a strong case, well then it wasn't technically
a bribe, was it. It was more like a sweetener
or an act of larges. That's how Bob told it anyway.
(06:07):
Over the next few years, Bob earned himself a reputation
as a flashy criminal defense lawyer. No tie, gold chain Bob.
He drove a convertible and had vanity plates. Of course,
r j C his initials. He seemed to play by
his own rules. He'd park his car in the mayor's
spot in front of city Hall to show off, to
(06:29):
prove to his clients that he could get away with it.
His lifestyle was an advertisement of sorts to attract a
certain type of client, criminal defendants with deep pockets, often
guys with mob ties. This is who Bob wanted to impress,
and they did come calling. In nineteen seventy seven, the
(06:50):
mob asked him to fix a case, a murder case
involving a hitman. Bob had a hunch that if he
said yes, it could change everything for him. I'm Jake
(07:26):
Halpern and this is deep Cover Bob Bland Episode two,
The Murder. One day in February of nineteen seventy seven,
(07:58):
Bob learned that a guy named Pat Marcy wanted to
meet with him. Marcy was one of the city's most
powerful men. Bob had never met him before, but he
knew who he was. Everybody knew Pat Marcy was the
one that controlled the entire political system. Marcy kept a
low profile, and even to this day, much of his
(08:18):
story is still shrouded in mystery. Legend has it his
career with the mob started back in the days of
Al Capone. Even his name as a kind of shape
shifting quality to it. He starts off Pasqualino Marcone on
his birth certificate, and it keeps changing again and again
on public records until he finally becomes Pat Marcy in
(08:39):
nineteen fifty three. Everybody knew Pant Marcy was a former
Capone mobster, a gunman. Eventually, Marcy went into politics, became
an official for the First Ward, one of the city's
most powerful political districts. First Ward picked every basically every judge,
every prosecutor, every police commander in whatever they controlled the
(09:05):
entire system. But really Marcy was like the mobs politicals
are It's head of government affairs, if you will. A
guy who used the mob, its wealth and its muscle
to influence a network of corrupt officials. Had an air
about him that was really scary. He was a nasty,
(09:26):
vicious human being. You could tell it. If you met
the man, you would know that he's pure evil, but
unbelievably powerful in every sense. For Bob, what this meant
was pretty simple. When Pat Marcy asked for a meeting,
you took it. On the day of the meeting, Bob
(09:49):
went to a restaurant in downtown Chicago and waited for
Pat Marcy to show up. This wasn't just any restaurant,
by the way. It was a legendary place called Counselor's
Row where Chicago's trial lawyers and old time politicians went
to grab a drink and shoot the ship after work.
There was a corner table known as Booth Number one
(10:10):
or the first Ward Table, where Pat Marcy held court.
The table even had its own landline telephone. Anyway, this
is where Bob waited when Marcy finally showed up that day,
he didn't actually enter the restaurant. Instead, he waited behind
a glass door that led to an adjoining lobby and
(10:30):
just stood there waiting for Bob. The mob's politicals are
was wearing a three piece suit and a pair of
tinted glasses that obscured his eyes. Bob stood up, exited
the restaurant and joined Marcy in the lobby. And right
there Marcy made his request. He said, Look, he said,
(10:52):
I've got a case here, can you handle it? And
I knew exactly what he meant. You know, that was
our term, you know, for fixing the case speaking the
language that we spoke. You know, I basically spoke a
different language, probably than most lawyers. This, of course, is
part of the reason that Pat asked to meet with.
Bob knew how to talk about fixing a case without
(11:12):
ever really talking about it. This was all part of
Bob's professionalism, if you will. But what Marcy wanted to
help with was no ordinary request. It was a murder case.
He asked if Bob knew a judge who could handle it.
Standing there in the lobby, Bob was at a crossroads.
If he could come through on this, prove his worth
(11:35):
to Marcy. It'd be a big deal. No telling what
Marcy could do for him. On the other hand, this
was uncharted territory for Bob. He'd fix cases before, placed
all kinds of bribes or tips as he called them,
but never in a murder trial. Bob knew he had
to proceed carefully. If there was one thing he didn't
(11:56):
want to do, it was promised something that he couldn't deliver.
He needed more intel, so he asked Marcy to get
a hold of the police reports, because Bob knew at
some point all of this would go before judge and
he had to make sure there was justification for a
not guilty verdict, enough evidence for the judge to hang
his hat on. As Bob liked to say, you know,
(12:18):
so it wouldn't look like the judge had been bribed.
As if all of this weren't enough pressure. Afterwards, one
of Pat Marcy's minions pulled Bob aside and warned him.
He said, you know, if you say you're going to
take it, I don't want to. You know a problem afterwards,
and I said, look, I said, if I tell you
(12:38):
I'll take it, I'll take it. The next day, Pat
Marcy gave the police reports to Bob and told him
get back to me. Before Bob would agree to fix
(13:04):
this murder case, he wanted more details. He wanted to
understand what exactly had happened, who'd gotten killed, were there
any witnesses, what was the motive? So let's start with
who got killed. The victim was William Logan. People called
him Billy. He was just thirty five years old. He
was like a big teddy bear. He was tall, Yeah,
(13:27):
I remember, he had big hands, always smiling, just a
happy yike. That's Johanna Santonello, Billy's niece. I visited her
not long ago at her home in the suburbs of Chicago.
To this day, within the family, Johanna is kind of
like the keeper of uncle Billy's memory. She has all
kinds of memorabilia related to him, photos, newspaper clippings, and
(13:51):
journal entries, also volumes of court papers related to his murder.
I mean boxes and boxes of all this stuff. When
I visited Johanna, she had it all laid out on
the dining room table for me, like the archives of
some enormous unwritten biography. So it's been a little overwhelming too,
(14:12):
because there's just so much, and it's like I wanted
to get organized and for you when have everything, And
then I started digging into it and I'm like, oh god,
yeah I get it. It's like I had chairs filled
it stuff. Yeah. I feel like we're in the scene
in the movie where they're like trying to they're getting
ready to go to trial and going over to bo Yeah.
(14:34):
That's just like, oh my god, there's so much stuff
on this table. Yeah, it's crazy, But you're meant to
be here. The story is meant to be told. He
was a big, strapping guy, played football, not someone you'd
want to mess with. This is where Uncle Billy was
(14:54):
in the Army and they won the championship. Those are
all as Army buddies. Before serving in the military, Billy
joined the Teamsters at seventeen years old. That's the famous
truck drivers union that Jimmy Hoffa wants ran. Uncle Billy
also drove a cab on the side. At the time
of his death, Billy was divorced and living with his
(15:16):
two sisters. One of them was recently widowed and had
four kids. Those kids, by the way, were Johanna and
her three brothers. Uncle Billy was helping raise them. He
became like a kindly father to them. Not everyone saw
uncle Billy this way. According to his ex wife, Billy
had a darker side. She said he was physically abusive,
(15:40):
But Johanna says she never saw this side of him.
As she recalls it, uncle Billy was a gentle giant.
As we continued sorting through the boxes on her dining
room table, eventually Johannah pulled out this one picture and
just stared at it. It was a grainy, black and
white photo of a two story house. This is the
(16:02):
house where it happened. That's your house. Yes, this is
the house that he was killed. See this light pole? Yeah, okay,
His body was right behind the white pole. Johannah remembers
vividly the night that uncle Billy was murdered September twenty seventh,
nineteen seventy two, almost fifty years ago. She was thirteen
(16:24):
years old at the time, but the whole thing is
still crisp in her memory. As she recalls it, she
was lying in bed, uncle Billy was preparing to leave
for the night shift, and all of a sudden, you
heard bang, bang, bang, and we didn't know what it was.
We were in bed. I was wide awake, I remember,
(16:45):
and my mom ran to the front door, and I
heard her yell, Billy, Billy, and my uncle was laying
out in front, and my mom said to my aunt,
Billie's hurt really bad. And my aunt went out there
(17:06):
and she took my uncle's head and she placed it
on her toward her lap, and my brothers ran to
get blankets and came out and they covered my uncle.
And you could just hear a moan. The aunt that
(17:30):
Johanna mentions here, the one holding Uncle Billy in her
lap as he lay dying. That's her Aunt Betty. She's
no longer alive. But before she passed, Aunt Betty actually
made recordings of herself in which she recounted all her
memories of that fateful night. And these recordings they were
part of this massive collection of memorabilia that Aunt Betty
(17:51):
had bequeathed to Johanna. Johanna had the audio cassettes laid
out on the dining room table, front and center, just
waiting to be played. She loaded one of them into
a little tape recorder and hit play. Our story starts
on September twenty seventh, nineteen seventy two, the night Billy
(18:15):
was killed. Speed that's my Aunt Betty. We listened together
as Aunt Betty described holding uncle Billy. Billy was on
the lawn herd fan. I proceeded to the lawn. He
was near his car on the parkway. I kept calling
(18:37):
his name. He turned, looked at me. He raised his
hand in the case fell out of his hand. As
I knelt down, he turned and his back was rusting
on my knees. And I kept saying, Billy, Billy, what happened?
What happened? It was unclear how bad the uncle Billy
(18:58):
was hurt, but there was blood everywhere. A family member
rushed back inside and called the police. By then many
of the neighbors had also come outside, seeing what happened,
and they too were calling for help. Nobody responded. There
was nobody almost for half an hour, and by this
time people had gathered neighbors. Everybody was out, The police maintained.
(19:24):
I told him my brother had type of blood. But
here is from the classes FREDI had come across. She
felt this pulse that was still a pulse, and as
far as I was concerned, he was still alive. The
squad car took Aunt Betty to the hospital. There, she
met up with her other brother, Richard. Richard arrived and
(19:45):
Richard went right into the emergency room. A priest came
and he asked if we wanted to lay us rights,
and I said yes, And then Richard came out a
little while later and I I said, he said they killed him,
he said. After we listened to Aunt Betty's tapes, Johanna
(20:12):
looked spent. She glanced wearily around her living room, and
I began to appreciate how all this stuff, all this memorabilia, was,
in some ways a burden for her. The boxes gave
heft and shape and immovability to these memories. Johanna had
to physically navigate around them. As far as I could
(20:36):
tell her, Aunt Betty had been kind of obsessed with
Billy's death, and this obsession was fueled by Betty's complete
bafflement as to why anyone would want to kill her
brother in the first place. This couldn't he happened to
was it couldn't happen to our family. We didn't, we
never bothered nobody. What was this? What could have happened?
(20:59):
Why Billy? Why Billy? What did he ever do? But
it turns out Aunt Betty did have one clue something
somebody said to her on the night of the murder.
Before I get into describe her, somebody approached me and
said to me, I saw it all. I saw it.
(21:22):
Someone told her, I saw it all. In the chaos
of the moment, Aunt Betty couldn't really focus on who
had said this to her. She just remembered his voice,
his words, but not his face or his name. And
kind of amazingly, it was a long time, several years
in fact, before Aunt Betty even learned who this man
was or what exactly he'd seen. Turns out, this man
(21:49):
was a neighbor, just a regular guy, and he was
destined to become the most important witness in the murder
of Billy Logan. In order to fix this murder case
(22:20):
for the mob, Bob needed to know who the victim was,
but the real key was knowing who the witnesses were.
That was going to be crucial because it would tell
him just how weak or strong the prosecution's case was,
and then he'd know how big an ask it would
be when he approached a judge with a bribe. So
Bob soon found out more about the witness He worked
(22:42):
at gas stations and also drove a milk truck. His
name was Robert Lowe. The night of the murder, Robert
Lowe had been out walking his dog, Ginger, when he
noticed a car idling just down the street from the
Logan's house. Then he heard a shout followed by a
loud bang. He saw Logan's body fall backwards. Moments later,
(23:05):
someone got out of the idling car and shot Logan again.
A street light illuminated the man's face for just a
few seconds. Robert Lowe got a glimpse of the killer.
Later that night, he gave a brief statement to the police.
(23:25):
Sometime later, two detectives followed up and visited Robert at work.
Then they had him come down to the station. We
know what happens next because Robert recounted all of this
to a journalist named Maurice Posley, who ended up writing
a book about the murder. Down at the police station,
the detectives hauled out four photo albums. They were collections
of mugshots organized thematically. Each album had its own label homicide, rape, burglary, robbery,
(23:52):
auto theft. Take your time and go through him, The
detectives told Robert, see if you can id the shooter.
It seemed improbable, like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Robert was halfway through the last binder when he saw him.
Narrow face, aquiline nose, dark eyes, got him, said Robert,
(24:14):
you sure, asked one of the detectives. Yeah, I'm sure,
said Robert. The detectives didn't tell Robert the name of
the guy, he just ideed. They just told him he
could go. Now. Turns out the guy, Robert pointed out
(24:35):
he was Harry Alamann, a reputed hitman for the mob.
Seems like this would be a tantalizing lead for the police,
but remarkably, nothing happened with this investigation for several years.
Then a second witness materialized, named Louie Almida. Louie claimed
(24:56):
to be a friend of Harry's, an accomplice to the murder,
the guy who drove the getaway car. He was now
in trouble with the law himself on a separate matter
and was looking to talk, so he served up his
old pale Harry on a silver platter, said yep, he's
the guy that killed Billy Logan, and then boom. The
(25:19):
prosecutors had what they needed. In December of nineteen seventy six,
a grand jury indicted Harry Alaman. It was big news.
The Chicago Daily News reported that the mob had assassinated
over one thousand people since the nineteen twenties, and this
was one of the only times a hitman had ever
been indicted. Robert Lowe, the neighbor, agreed to testify, as
(25:43):
did the accomplice. The getaway driver. Aunt Betty, said she'd
testified two she'd talked about her brother and the night
that he'd been killed. But Betty's niece Johanna says her
whole family was spooked. Everybody knew what the mob was
capable of, and for us, we were We had playing
(26:06):
clothes men sitting in front of our house that were
taking now blason plate numbers of people that were coming
to our house. They were trying to make sure who
was who. We even had him following us to school
to make sure we were okay. The police. The police. Yeah,
it sounds pretty scary. It was very scary. Yeah. And
the guy who supposedly killed her uncle, Harry Aliman, he
(26:27):
seemed pretty scary too. In a bizarre twist, Harry was
actually a distant relative of Billy, the victim. Billy had
married Harry's second cousin, which didn't raise too many eyebrows
in this case, because well back then, in many Chicago neighborhoods,
everyone seemed to be related somehow. In any case, Harry's
(26:49):
story was now all over the papers. One headline heralded
him as a modern day al Capone. In another article,
a prosecutor warned that Aliman quote kills with the professional
efficiency of an expert assassin. This was the guy the
mob wanted Bob Cooley to save, the guy who's trial
(27:10):
Bob was going to fix it. Turns out there were
many facets to the so called expert assassin and the
people I talked to, people who knew Harry from back
in the day, they all seem to remember a different man.
(27:31):
If you ever watched the movie Scarface, kind of reminds
you of the guy walks up behind Scarface with shotgun
at the end. He's like a Bantam rooster. He's slender,
he's got thick wavy hair, sunglasses, a ladies man, a
good looker, dashing kind of character, and was also the
(27:51):
kind of guy who could make them. Aron R. Sauce
on Sundays. He looks like somebody who if you rubbed
up against him, you sort of believe, because he's the
razor's edge. But perhaps the most interesting take that I
heard on Harry came from this next person. Okay, my
(28:12):
name is Frankie for Leano. My father was Harry Alaman,
and basically he was involved. How do I say that?
A part? This always gets me? Jake, Yeah, how do
I say it? He was involved in the organized crime.
Frankie's now in her sixties and all her life she's
(28:35):
been trying to explain who her father was. She actually
wrote a memoir about her dad called They Can't Hurt
Him Anymore. And as you can see, it's still not
easy for her to explain who he was, especially because
there were so many stories out there about him. When
you read about your dad and the papers, you know,
there's all kinds of stuff in there. Though sometimes will say,
(28:57):
you know, Harry Alaman the hitman, and it's what they say.
What was that like for you to hear people talk
about your dad that way? It was horrible, It was scary,
It is horrible. It was you just can't even picture it.
You're like it's not true, my dear, not my dear,
No way, no way. Frankie says that she grew up
(29:21):
thinking that her dad was just well, a great dad,
and by all accounts he was a good father. And
this is exactly what I'm talking about. Harry had so
many sides to him. For example, he was a painter,
and I don't mean a house painter, I mean an artiste.
He went to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. But
(29:41):
if you're thinking of some guy wearing a turtleneck and
a beret, think again. Harry liked to wear suits. Now.
He was on the shorter side, around five foot seven,
but tough as nails. People said he had a wicked
left hook that you never saw coming, hence his nickname
Harry the Hook. He was a Mexican Italian guy with
a Spanish last name that literally meant German. As you'll hear,
(30:06):
no one can even agree on how exactly to pronounce
his last name. So yeah, Harry was a riddle. The
Chicago Crime Commission estimates Harry killed eighteen people between nineteen
seventy one and nineteen seventy seven alone. But to Frankie
(30:26):
for Leano, Harry was a savior. You see, Frankie's biological
father died when she was very little. As a result,
Frankie's mom, Ruth, was suddenly a widow with four young
kids to feed, including Frankie. That's when Harry showed up.
Now he might think Harry would be scared off by
the widow with the whole brood of kids. Nope, Harry
(30:47):
began courting not just Ruth the mom, but the whole family.
It was almost like Harry wanted every one of them
to fall in love with him. He spent time with
the kids one on one, playing games, asking them questions,
taking them shopping. Yeah, he definitely want us over. He
knew what he was doing. He's really of Love's kids,
(31:11):
and he's got a lot of compassion, and he's got patience.
Oh my god, he has the best patience. When it
came time to propose, Harry asked Frankie for her permission,
even though she was like seven years old at the time.
He just basically said, you know, how would you feel
if I married mommy and we could all live together
(31:33):
in the same house, and I would be there all
the time, and we'd be a family, and we'd beat together.
We could do all these fun things and all my god,
I was so happy up until this moment. Frankie remembers
Harry intended to move to New York and become a
commercial artist. Now he shelved all that. Instead, he took
(31:56):
a job distributing a horse racing newsletter known as a
scratch sheet, and he took care of Frankie and her siblings,
provided for them, doated on them. There were moments when
Frankie got the sense that there was another side to
her dad. It became clearer to her the older she got.
(32:16):
Would be boyfriends would ask her, is your dad going
to come outside and blow my head off? His reputation
couldn't have made dating easy. By the time that she
was a teenager, Frankie did understand that her dad wasn't
just selling scratch sheets at the racetrack. Harry admitted to
her that he collected on something called juice loans. He said,
(32:38):
you know, there's people in this world that need help.
Some people might need it because family member sick, they
need money for a hospital bill, they can't pay their
own runts, they can't afford to take care of their kids.
There's people like that, and if they need something, You
help them out and they pay you back a little
bit more. And then there's people that want to take
(33:00):
your money, and after they take your money, they don't
want to pay you back. So there's those that will,
and there's those the adults. What did he say, those
that don't you get it? You get you got to
collect the money. I didn't say anything about killing him.
They beat him up or whatever. So yeah, maybe Dad
(33:20):
had to knock people around occasionally, but these were people
who had it coming. And on the whole, Frankie still
believed he was a good guy. He was a family man.
He didn't care a rating, go out drinking, not a
d answer. He was a family man. So I don't
know where he came here at the time to go
out killing people. I just don't know that. I don't
(33:44):
know this beast of a man that they described, you know,
this other side of her father, this beast of a man.
Frankie didn't really hear about this until nineteen seventy six,
the year he was indicted. It was that year that
Harry called the whole family together for a meeting to
prepare them for what was to come. He set us
(34:05):
down at the table. My brothers, my sister, my mom,
and when he stayed us down as a family, and
he said, you're going to hear a lot of bad
things about me. And we're like, what are you talking about?
And he's like, they're coming after me for something I
didn't do. We're like, who's coming in after you? What's
going on? Harry began to explain that he was about
(34:28):
to be indicted for the murder of Billy Logan, and
he told them what to expect at trial. They're going
to stay on private organized crime and you're going to
hear things about me that you will be scared or
you will be afraid. And I want you to understand
what's going on, And like, what do you mean outfit
(34:48):
and murder? What are you talking about? You know? And
then he explained the story of what they were actually
going to come after him for, and he just said
it's for something I didn't do, and that wasn't all.
Harry also told them that he would be hiring protection
for them, guards, So we had bodyguards in the house.
(35:12):
Like these big, big guys sit sitting in or gets
standing up over us and I'm like, yeah, what is this.
Don't be afraid. Their bodyguards are here to protect us.
I said, what do we need protection from? He said,
from the government. They are trying to frame me. This
is a setup. That's how Harry explained it. The problem
(35:34):
for Harry was there were two eyewitnesses, the accomplice who
claimed he'd helped Harry do it, and Robert Lowe, who'd
stumbled upon the murderer while out walking his dog. In theory,
their testimony would be heard in a courtroom and decided
upon fair and square, but the entire Logan family was
nervous and even a bit skeptical that justice would be served. Johanna,
(35:58):
the niece of the victim, remembers the whole family talking
about this, and my grandpa had called my uncle and said,
you know how this works in Chicago. Don't be surprised
if he's found not guilty. You know how this works
in Chicago, meaning someone might try to fix the case,
someone like Bob Cooley. And in fact, in early nineteen
(36:21):
seventy seven, as both sides prepared for this murder trial,
Bob was making preparations of his own. Remember, before he
agreed to fix this case, Bob wanted to review the facts.
What struck him immediately was the lack of physical evidence
tying Harry to the crime. But Bob also paid special
attention to the two eyewitnesses. He wasn't overly impressed with
(36:45):
either of them. Robert the neighbor had talked to the
police a few times, and there'd been a few small
inconsistencies in what he'd told them. And as for Louis
the getaway driver, well, he was serving a ten year
federal sentence and had struck a deal with prosecutors, so
arguably he had his own agenda. As Bob saw it,
(37:06):
there was plenty of room for reasonable doubt, plenty for
a judge to hang his hat on the judge will
hear in the evidence, and the judge will say not guilty,
as any judge Wood, But did you have any doubt
in your mind that Harry Alliman pulled the trigger? Oh?
I know, I know he did. I was certain he did.
He had no doubt in his mind that Harry had
(37:28):
done it. But the case was weak enough that he
felt he could fix it and he could tell a
judge not to worry. And there was a final factor
that Bob says weighed into his decision about whether or
not to fix this case, and it involved the question
of motive and what type of murder this was. There
was no perfectly clear explanation as to why Harry would
(37:50):
have murdered Billy Logan. The local papers were reporting that
Billy was murdered because he stood up to the mob.
If you remember, Billy was a teamster. Supposedly, the mob
had asked him to cooperate in a robbery scheme and
Billy had said no. All of this, Bob says, led
him to believe that this was a routine mob murder,
(38:10):
which seems to have eased his conscience, and apparently this
was the final deciding factor, convincing him that yes, he
could and should fix this case. I thought it was
just a mob killing mob guys killing mob guys, and
this one on all the time back there. In fact,
I knew like fifty people that we're hitmen in Chicago.
(38:31):
I agreed to fix the case because I thought it
was again, it was just one mob guy killing another
mob guy. What's the big deal, because that's part of
your code. Two mob guys killing each other doesn't bother you,
but an innocent guy dying does. Yes, Absolutely, it was
just it was the way I live. I mean this
is my life. When you set code, I mean using
that word like it's some kind of a magical thing.
(38:53):
This was my nature. Bob says he would never, for example,
represent a pedophile. He also prided himself as someone who
stood up to bullies, but when it came to mob murders,
he was inclined to look the other way. I didn't
really get his logic here, to be honest, it seems
so callous, but it did help me to get some
(39:14):
more context. I spoke to a federal prosecutor who specialized
in the mob back in the seventies in Chicago, and
he told me, back then, it seemed like there was
a mob killing almost every single week. These murders were
just part of the rhythm of life in Chicago back then,
kind of like wake up, eat breakfast, go to work,
(39:34):
catch the score on the Cubs game, read about who
got whacked, go to sleep, repeat, you know, like a
dark mafioso version of Groundhog Day. And typically no one
was ever convicted. Witnesses either vanished or refused to cooperate,
But there also seemed to be an implicit understanding that
(39:55):
mob guys just killed each other always had always would,
and there was no point in referring any of it.
Kind of crazy, perhaps, but this was a prevailing sentiment
at the time, and when I forced myself to consider
this mindset, I guess I began to understand how Bob
could get so callous about it all. But even if
(40:16):
you buy into the morality of this logic, the problem
was there was no evidence that Billy Logan was a mobster.
Sure he worked for the Teamsters, and yes, the Teamsters
were known to do business with the mob but it
was a big stretch to classify Billy Logan himself as
a mobster. Apparently, however, it was a stretch that Bob
(40:38):
was comfortable making when justifying his actions. Bob could be
quite agile. In fact, as I came to know him better,
I began to see him as a kind of ethical
acrobat who could bend over backwards and contort himself until
his worldview made perfect sense. What struck me above all
(40:59):
else was how important it was for Bob to see
himself as a fundamentally good person. The Lord himself knows
what I've done and what I haven't done. There's no
question in my mind he's protecting me I should have
been killed at half a dozen times. I did what
I did, and the big guy upstairs knows what I did.
I don't think he's going to put me in hell
(41:20):
for it. I don't think so. Part of this certainty
came from, of all things, a charm that he wore
around his neck. I noticed it a few times when
we chatted on zoom. It was a scapular, a religious ornament,
little gold cross that his mother had given him. He
never took it off. She told him it would keep
him safe, That's what she said. But I don't push
(41:42):
it as I say, I don't push it by That's
why I've never murdered anybody. I've been tempted to a
couple of times when people were going to kill me,
but that's the only reason I never did that. I'm
curious what else, like in the line that you drawn
the things you would never do murdering someone. What else
I would never get involved in cases where I'm cheating
(42:03):
people or stealing their business or destroying lives. I just
wouldn't do it. Do you consider bribes you've placed, You
put that in the tallly of sins you've committed. When
you look at your life on a whole, to be
very honest, No, I mean, that's not a sin. That's
not in the book written as a sin. It was.
It's something that's wrong in the eyes of the law,
(42:23):
no question about that. And there's no question that's wrong.
I've done things that the law says are illegal. But
you know, but that's you know, that's man's law, a
violation of man's law, not a sin against God. That's
how Bob thought about it, how he rationalized placing a bribe,
even a bribe in a murder case, a very big
(42:45):
murder case. The real trick, now, says Bob, was finding
the right judge, not an easy task. This would be
a big trial, all over the headlines, and so it
was crucial to find someone whose credentials were unimpeachable, someone
who no one whatever think of is being corrupt. But
(43:08):
it was just a matter of optics. Bob needed a
judge who would come through for him. He couldn't risk
having a judge that took the bribe and then changed
his mind, because in the end, Bob was responsible. Bob
was the one on the hook. Pat Marcy, the Mob's
political czar, had made it very clear to Bob that
he'd better come through for them. But if Bob pulled
(43:31):
this off, he would be the man, the guy who
could do anything. All of this meant right now, Bob
needed to find the exact right judge, and he had
the perfect person in mind. Next time on deep Cover,
(43:58):
I said, you know, yes, I said I would handle
the case. And that's when he said, well, you realize,
if there's a problem, you're going to have a problem problem.
I know what that means. You get an extra hole
in your head. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith
(44:37):
and Amy Gaines and edited by Karen Shakurge. Our senior
editor is Jan Guera. Original music and our theme was
composed by Luis Gara and Fawn Williams is our engineer.
Our art this season was drawn by Cheryl Cook and
designed by Sean Karney. Mia Lobell is our executive producer.
Special thanks to Heather Fain, John Schnars, Carlie mcgliori, Maya Kanig,
(45:00):
Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Mary Beth Smith, Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano,
Megan Larson, Royston Beserve, Lucy Sullivan, Edith ru Solo, Riley Sullivan,
Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Jake Halpert.
(46:00):
If you want to read more about this murder trial
and the life of Robert Lowe, check out Everybody Pays
by Maurice Posley and Rick Cogan. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus
and you can binge the rest of the season right
now adds free. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover
show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm.
(46:23):
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host
Jake Halpern
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