February 14, 2022 • 32 mins
February 1986. Bob Cooley represents a bodybuilder who brutally assaulted a female police officer. Then Bob makes a decision that will change his life forever.
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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. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep
Cover show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm.
Previously on deep Cover. In the early nineteen eighties, some
(00:57):
reformers tried to clean up Chicago to rid the city's
courts of corruption. One effort, known as Operation Gray Lord,
involved hundreds of FBI agents and produced over ninety indictments.
But in one significant way, Gray Lord came up short.
It did not expose or take down the first Ward,
(01:18):
the mob's political stronghold, and so the Chicago outfit was
still at it, fixing cases and placing bribes. Gray Lord
indicted a whole number of people, but all that happened
was only a few of us could still fix major cases,
and the price just went up. That's right, Bob Cooley's
(01:41):
services were now more valuable than ever. Ironically, it was
at this very moment the Bob says he was trying
to get some distance from the Mob. In recent years,
a bunch of guys he knew mobsters mainly had been murdered.
Another gangster he knew had fled in fear of his life.
(02:02):
And while Bob wasn't a mobster per se, he'd gotten
caught up in many of their schemes and it seemed possible,
if not likely, that eventually he might end up on
the wrong side of a gun. So by the mid
nineteen eighties, Bob he's tiptoeing away from the mob's grasp,
or trying to anyhow. He claims he focused on winning
(02:23):
cases fair and square. He even moved out to the
suburbs to get away from the first ward guys. I'm
not socialized, saying with him, I'm not gambling with him anymore.
I'm basically having nothing to do with him. But it
wouldn't be that easy, not by a long shot. Because
just as Bob is trying to make a fresh start
(02:43):
of it, thinking that maybe, just maybe he's gotten away,
a highly sensitive case falls in his lap. And this
case would present a turning point for Bob, arguably the
turning point in his life, the one that led him
to betray the mob. I'm Jake Halbern, and this is
(03:27):
deep Cover mob Land episode six, the breaking Point. So
(03:55):
let's talk about the case that fell into Bob's lap.
It involves the assault of a female police officer named
Cathy Tooey, and Bob would soon find himself defending the
man accused of attacking her. But before we get into
all of that, I want to tell you more about
Kathy and who she was. Kathy had joined the force
just a few years earlier. She was in her thirties,
(04:17):
She was a mom, had three kids at home, all
of whom were teenagers. And Kathy she loved being a cop,
not behind a desk, but out in the streets. In fact,
this is what she wanted from the very start. When
I saw in Chicago that they were allowing the women
to get into a squad car and go out and
(04:40):
make traffic stops and respond to calls, I thought, Wow,
that's what I want to do. I should add that
it was not easy to find Kathy or convince her
to talk with me. We talked for months by phone
before she agreed to an on the record interview, and
when that finally happened, there were some things she was
eager to discuss, like how she loved her job, and
(05:02):
now she didn't mind being one of the few women
doing what she did. Didn't bother her. She got police culture.
Her husband was a cop, as were her brothers in law,
her aunt, and her cousin. I did experience some prejudice
from some of the officers, and I just figured I'm
not going to argue with you. I'm just going to
do my job. And gradually some of them came around
(05:27):
and they would tell me, you know, I didn't think
you could cut it when you first came, but I'll
work with you. And Kathy says, back in the eighties
in Chicago, this is a pretty good compliment and one
that she worked hard to earn. She said. The knock
against female cops was that they weren't tough enough, and
(05:47):
some male officers doubted that she could really be counted
on if the situation got out of hand. For her
part on the streets, Kathy held her own. I didn't
back down when I had to be firm. I was
if somebody needed help, I pitched in, just doing my job.
And for the most part, it wasn't like she was
(06:09):
out there alone. I mean, there was a whole buddy system.
You know. It's like you see on TV. Every cop
had a partner to ride with them in the squad car,
but there were sometimes when officers did ride solo, like
around the holidays, when people took vacations and the force
was stretched thin. At times like that, they'd send officers
(06:29):
out on their own. And Kathy says, no one complained
about this. You just did it so your colleagues could
take their vacation and get some time with their families.
And that's how it came to be that on one
December night, just before New Year's Kathy was in a
patrol car all by herself. I seem to recall that
(06:50):
it was probably just after midnight, somewhere about one o'clock
in the morning. It was late and everything had settled down,
and I was riding parking tickets for people parked on
the hydrants or parked on the crosswalks. Those were easy
parking tickets. And while I'm writing my parking tickets, a
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young man came up to the car and he said,
this dude just tried to get me in his car.
I said, oh yeah, and I said why would he
do that? He says, I don't know. I said, well,
what do you want me to do and stuff, and
he's as well. He says, I don't know. But there
he goes the wrong way on a one way street,
(07:37):
and I said, all right, I'll go have a talk
with him. I went ahead. I went after the car
which was going the wrong way on a one way street.
He pulled over and and he stepped out of the car.
Can cut stocky Italian guy. He came out. He was
(07:58):
in a camel hair coat three quarter length. I told
him put his hands on the hood of the car,
and he did. But when he of his hands out
of the pocket, he put a piece of cold rolled
steel down on the hood of the car. It looked
(08:19):
like a roll of porters and it's about as white
as a man's fist. I started to reach around him
to grab the cold roll steel, and I keep my radio.
I said, get me an assist unit. As soon as
I finished with the radio transmission, he turned, came up
(08:42):
with the cold rolled steel in his hand, and he said,
that's it. I'm going to kill you a bitch, and
started the swing. Came around with a roundhouse punch. I
attempted to block it, and I started to fall back,
and that took me off my feet. I fell back
against the squad car door, just fell back, tucked and rolled.
(09:07):
He came down on top of me and we were
fighting on the street. What's going through your head at
that moment. Keep the fight going, don't back down and
don't give up. And I kept telling myself, don't shoot. Eventually,
(09:35):
backup did arrive. Another officer showed up to help her.
Soon more cops got there and jumped into the fray.
They got Kathy into a Patti wagon and then raced
her off to the hospital. So they made sure that
there were no there's no mirrors in the emergency room
and the room they put me in, they made sure
(09:56):
there was no mirror up there, and I wasn't allowed
to get out of bed. Don't look in the mirror,
That's what they told her. In other words, you don't
want to see what your own face looks like. Most
of her injuries were to her head. She had a concussion,
her nose was broken, and her lip was so badly
torn their tooth had gone right through it. Someone told
(10:19):
Kathy that they were going to call her husband, Marty
alert him. Kathy, in her understated way, said basically, no,
don't bother him, don't wake him and the kids up.
I'll tell him about this later when I get home.
Someone said, guess you're not going home. You're going to
be here a while. And I said, is it bad? Bad?
(10:44):
And it's bad enough, as you can imagine. The guy
(11:16):
accused of assaulting Cathy Twoey, he had a very different
version of events that night. The guy's name was Michael Kollela.
He was in his twenties. He was a bodybuilder, a partier,
and a brawler, a violent guy. In the last year
or so, Michael had gotten into several scuffles and was
facing a number of charges. Bob says that initially he
(11:39):
didn't want to represent Michael Kolella because their first client
meeting it was pretty much a disaster. Here's how it
went down. Michael's father had arranged this meeting at Bob's
office in the hopes that Bob might take the case.
Bob took an instant dislike to Michael. He was our
no more than twenty minutes because I basically threw him out.
(12:01):
You know, he was a smart alec, but he was
high at the time, no question in my mind he
was high. And I just told this day, I said, look,
I can't. I can't help you, and I can't help him.
I said, you get him cleaned up and you come back,
and I said, and I will take the case. So
a few weeks pass and the dad comes back with Michael,
(12:22):
who now appears to be clean, not on drugs, and
much more respectful because he was scared stiff, and he
starts with attempted murder, so he's expecting minimum sentence that
he's convicted as six years in the penitentiary. At this point,
Michael tells Bob his version of how it all went
down with Cathy Tooey. He says he was out late
(12:43):
at night looking for a prostitute when Cathy stopped him
and tried to arrest him, and she tried to handcuff him,
and he pulled. He told me he pulled himself away,
and she called and she put in like for a
policemen in trouble, and about ten policemen came to the scene.
And when they came to the scene, he's in a
fight with them, with all of them and he's on
(13:06):
the ground and one of the policemen was hitting him
with a with a nightstick. That's how he got his
face smashed in and that's how she obviously got hit too.
So in Michael's version of events, the cops jumped him
like ten cops. I'm one guy, And somehow this whole
skirmish was so chaotic that Kathy accidentally got her face
(13:31):
smashed in. Bob told me he actually believed this, says
he'd been a cop and knew how cops operated and
found this all credible, so he agreed to represent Michael.
He says he hoped to bring the case before a
jury and win Farren square. But then a few days later,
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out of the blue, Bob says, he gets a call
from none other than Pat Marcy, who wants to meet
down at Counselor's row, and Bob agrees, which I gotta
say kind of puzzled me. You know, given the fact
that Bob was making every effort to break with them. Bob,
why did you even bother good on a meet with him?
(14:13):
I mean, why not? Yeah? Maybe he's calling me to say, Bob,
you know you won the lottery. Here's a million dollars.
I mean, I don't know why he's calling me, but
one of the thoughts that I had, probably the original thought,
would be they must have a problem before a judge,
or even there were some people in certain positions in
the city that were friendly to me that would not
(14:35):
be friendly with them. Or maybe when Pat Marcy calls,
you just can't say no. So Bob goes down to
counsel's row and lo and behold, Marcy wants to talk
to him about Michael Kollela. Turns out Marcy is friendly
with Michael's family, and apparently Marcy has promised the family
that he would take care of Michael's legal troubles. I
(14:58):
remember his exact words, I'll let you handle the case
that we're going to get it assigned to Judge Passarella.
And I said, Pat, there's no need to I said
I can win the case, and he said no, you know,
you just do what you're told. And they had never
talked to me like that before. They knew me better.
(15:21):
Nobody told me what to do, Nobody told me what
they asked me. They asked me to do things, and
if I wanted to do them, I wouldn't. If I didn't,
I wouldn't. Just to be clear here, Pat Marcy was
basically coming in and saying, sure, you can keep representing
your client, but it's going to be a bench trial,
and we're going to make sure it goes to a
judge who's in our pocket. In other words, were taken over.
(15:45):
What did you say to him when he said you'll
do what you're told? I said, well, okay, And as
I left, I'm furious because I don't want to do it.
I wanted no part of fixing a case with a
policewoman or a policeman based on what it happens with
my father and with my father's father and whatever. That
(16:06):
had never left my mind. It could be that the
idea of fixing the case was just way too close
to home. Remember, Bob came from a family of police officers,
not just that his own grandfather was a cop who'd
been killed on the job, or maybe what it really
came down to was not morality or some tortured family history,
(16:29):
or even the particulars of this case, but simply the
fact that Bob didn't want to take orders anymore. He
didn't want to be Pat Marcy's pawn. It's why he'd
run away to the burbs, tried to be his own man,
and kind of succeeded until Pat Marcy had summoned him
like the king that he was and had given Bob
an order. You do what you're told. I don't want
(16:54):
to do it, but I have to do it. I'm afraid.
I'm afraid to say no for a lot of reasons.
I mean, I know how these people are meaning what
I'm talking about. You know, these are killers and mars
and these people are fucking killers. And in the end,
(17:16):
Bob caved. When we come back after the break, the
trial begins. The case may have been fixed, but Michael's
family wasn't taking any chances. According to Kathy Tooey, a
(17:39):
few months after she was attacked, she was approached with
an offer. She says they came through a fellow cop
who happened to know Michael's father. The cop said he
was just passing along a message. The Kalella family felt
bad about what had happened, and they wanted to take
care of her medical bills. Kathy refused. It seemed like
(18:01):
hush money, but she didn't blame the cop for asking.
I'm not interested in any money. All I want is
his son found guilty, and I said, that's it. We'll
take care of it in court. Finally, the day of
trial comes, Bob shows up, in court along with his client,
(18:22):
Michael Kollela. The courtroom was an unusual courtroom, the only
one in the building that's set up like this. There
was about maybe i'd say about twenty five thirty seats
in their front. It's full of uniform policemen. There's probably
twenty of the twenty five seats uniform policeman sitting in there. Well,
(18:45):
that's Bob's version, anyway. Kathy remembers it differently. Wholly claimed
that the courtroom was passed the police officers that day. Maloney,
I could say worse, but I don't want to offend you,
Kathy says. Sometimes cops did turn up in droves to
support a fellow officer. A call would go out, hey,
we need your support. But that didn't happen today, she says,
(19:07):
because everyone believed this was an open and shut case,
almost a formality. Her support that day was her husband,
along with two prosecutors and just a few cops. So
when I appeared in front of these judges, I knew
that I had to have all my ducks in a row.
I had to have my reports clear, concise and truthful.
(19:29):
I had to make certain that my testimony was not
tentative or descriptive or flowery, it was factual. She didn't
think there was anything to worry about, especially considering Michael's
track record. He had a background on him, and I
had no indication that there was going to be any problems.
(19:50):
The hospital reports, his interviews, everything supported this case, so
I had no reason to suspect that it was going
to go any other way. When Cathy took the witness stand,
she recalled how she'd stopped Michael for driving the wrong
way down one way street. She ordered him out of
(20:11):
the car, began a pet down search, Michael resisted, a
fight broke out. Michael had a five inch piece of
cold rolled steel inside his fist as he punched her.
In the end, Cathy was so badly injured that she
later had to undergo reconstructive surgery. None of us looked
especially good for Bob's client. When it came time for
(20:35):
Bob to mount his defense, he offered a bold and
pretty unconventional argument. He called a number of witnesses, including Michael,
and Michael told a kind of crazy story had boiled
down to this. He suggested that a tattooed stranger drugged
him at a bar and this induced a kind of
(20:55):
temporary insanity. According to the Chicago Tribune, which covered the trial,
that was the main thrust of Bob's argument. When I
asked Bob about this, he told me, I don't believe
there was ever any guy, you know, who drugged him.
I don't believe that. Well, that was totally like me.
That's a story. That's a story. He came up with this,
(21:16):
you know, that's that's why he was high. He's telling me.
That's a story. He told me. I don't believe that story,
but that's the story he's telling me. Classic Bob. Yeah, sure,
he lived in the suburbs. Now, maybe he didn't want
to place bribes anymore, but he was noe. B Lincoln
all told the trial didn't last long, just a few hours,
(21:38):
and when it was time for the verdict, the judge
did something very odd. He shot off the microphone first,
and then he whispered so you could barely hear it,
you know, not guilty. At first, no one really reacted,
but then people started to realize what had just happened.
What the judge had said, that the defendant, Michael Kollela,
(21:59):
had just been acquitted of assaulting Kathy Cathy was sitting
there with the two prosecutors. She looked at them and
I went, what just happened? Just then her husband, Marty
came over to where they were sitting. And then Marty
comes in and Marty says, are they taking a break?
(22:22):
I said no, I said, didn't judge just ruled not guilty.
He says, your kidden and I said no. Marty looks
at me. I said yeah. I said they couldn't get
to me to get me to drop it. I said,
so they got to the damn judge. I was so
(22:43):
blind with just rage. Did it take a moment to
register or did the anger come right away? No? Anger
came right away. And thankfulness it was a closed office
where we were sitting. I should because I told Marty
I should have panicked. I should have shot the son
(23:06):
of a bitch. And I said, he's going to do
this to somebody else. After the judge whispered his not
guilty verdict, Bob took his client, Michael and tried to
get him out of the courtroom. Bob remembers some cops
blocking his path and as I'm as I'm going to
(23:27):
walk towards the door, they're grabbing me and screaming at
me and yelling and you trader and stuff like that.
They're pushing me and shoving me, and yeah, they're saying
you should be ashamed of yourself. And I know why
they're saying it, because I'm an ex policeman and you know,
how could you represent somebody you know who did something
like that? And anyhow, there was all kinds of commotion.
(23:51):
What were you saying when they were saying you should
be ashamed? I don't say anything. What am I going
to say to him? I just want to get out
of there and walk out of there, you know, Bob says.
The police officers kept haranguing him, chanting like a Greek
chorus from some overwrought tragedy. After the verdict in this case,
(24:14):
there was an outcry from the local press. The legendary
columnist Mike Royko summed up the case this way. Quote
A muscular young thug named Mike Kalella, who had mulled
a female police officer, told the judge that a tattooed
stranger in a bar slipped a mysterious drug into his drink.
That yarn made sense to the judge. People were outraged.
(24:37):
There were calls in the press who reforms in the
judicial system, and they wanted the judge to pay his
decision to equip Michael Kollella has touched off a campaign
to vote him down. The twenty seven year old Kollela
from Elmwood Park was charged with beating officer Cathy Tooey
after she stopped him for a license check on New
Year's Eve of nineteen eighty four. Officer Tooey says, when
(24:58):
she heard the judge's decision last week, I can't believe this.
I couldn't believe that any judge, after hearing all the evidence,
could possibly rule in such a manner. Kathy, she may
have been blind with rage, but she didn't let that
stop her from seeking justice. She became a vocal critic
of the judge in the case, and he was subsequently
(25:19):
voted out of office. Kathy went back to work and
eventually was promoted to a captain in the Chicago PD
along with four other female officers. Sarah had never been
a female captain on the Chicago Police Department. Wow, So
what did that feel like, Hot, Doug, I'm mischarged? Wow? Seriously,
(25:45):
it was a great deal of pride as for Michael Kollela.
Turns out Kathy was right about him. He did go
on to commit multiple assaults and eventually would go to prison.
For Bob. The outcome of this trial also had big consequences,
but very different ones. Just hours after the verdict, Bob
(26:08):
says he went to meet with Pat Marcy. Among other things,
Bob still needed to get paid, so Bob says he
shows up a counselor's row and sees Marcy sitting at
his regular table. Marcy stands up, walks down a hallway
towards the building's elevators, and then ducks into a janitor's closet.
(26:28):
Bob follows him. This, by the way, is the same
thing that happened nine years earlier when Pat Marcy paid
Bob for fixing the Hairy Alamann trial. So, according to Bob,
there they are crowded in the little janitor's closet, Bob
and the mob's political tsar standing there face to face
amidst the mops and brooms and buckets. The way the
(26:51):
closet was configured, it had a staircase and Marcy was
standing on it, so he was kind of towering over Bob.
At some point Marcy reached into his pocket and pulled
out some cash and paid Bob what he was owed,
two thousand dollars. Bob then recounted to Marcy what had
happened in the courtroom. I said, the media was there,
(27:12):
you know, and they were going absolutely crazy after it.
I said to Judge for some reason, you know, shut
off the microphone and jumped off the bench, looking guilty
as hell. I said, he's going to be in serious trouble,
and what if he beefs on you? And Pat said
to me, nobody would dare, nobody would dare cooperate against us.
(27:37):
And I thought to myself, you're looking at somebody that
just might do that. And then I thought, for some reason,
I'm afraid this guy can read my mind. Don't ask
me why, but that thought isn't as I'm looking at him.
I'm thinking to myself, I got to change when I'm thinking,
(27:58):
because this guy can This guy can you know, can
read my mind. Such was the power of Pat Marcy
to Bob. He was almost like some kind of super
villain who could see right through him, access his most
closely guarded thoughts, sniff out the faintest whiff of betrayal.
It's understandable really why Bob almost freaked out because the
(28:19):
thought that he had was a very dangerous one and
it was quickly taking hold. Just weeks later, on a
quiet Saturday morning, Bob made his big decision to flip.
He walked into the office of a federal prosecutor and
(28:40):
started talking. In subsequent meetings, Bob said he could deliver
the mob. To do this, however, prosecutors would need to
gather evidence, lots of it, and to get that well,
Bob would have to wear a wire. He'd need to
get Pat Marcy and the first word guys on tape.
That was really the only surefire way to nail them.
(29:02):
But would Bob do it? I mean, it was one
thing to make an impulsive visit to a prosecutor's office
or offer a few randios promises. It was another thing
entirely to go undercover and risk your life. Who is
to say Bob would even be any good as an
undercover agent or that he could be trusted. But in
(29:23):
the end, there is only one way to find out.
Strapper recorded to his leg and hit record next time
(29:46):
on deep cover. M Hello, Hi Jenny, Hi Bro, are
you what's up. What the Bears did? They hunt, got
rid of McMahon, They started playing well. Deep Cover is
(30:25):
produced by Jacob Smith and Amy Gaines and edited by
Karen Schakerji. Our senior editor is Jenquera. Original music in
our theme was composed by Luis Gara and Fawn Williams
as 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 Fame, John Schnarz,
(30:48):
Carl mcgliori, Maya Kaning, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Mary Beth Smith,
Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano, Megan Larson, Royston Baserve, Lucy Sullivan,
Edith Russlo, Riley Sullivan, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg.
I'm Jake Albert. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can
(31:54):
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. 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. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep
Cover show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm.
Previously on deep Cover. In the early nineteen eighties, some
(00:57):
reformers tried to clean up Chicago to rid the city's
courts of corruption. One effort, known as Operation Gray Lord,
involved hundreds of FBI agents and produced over ninety indictments.
But in one significant way, Gray Lord came up short.
It did not expose or take down the first Ward,
(01:18):
the mob's political stronghold, and so the Chicago outfit was
still at it, fixing cases and placing bribes. Gray Lord
indicted a whole number of people, but all that happened
was only a few of us could still fix major cases,
and the price just went up. That's right, Bob Cooley's
(01:41):
services were now more valuable than ever. Ironically, it was
at this very moment the Bob says he was trying
to get some distance from the Mob. In recent years,
a bunch of guys he knew mobsters mainly had been murdered.
Another gangster he knew had fled in fear of his life.
(02:02):
And while Bob wasn't a mobster per se, he'd gotten
caught up in many of their schemes and it seemed possible,
if not likely, that eventually he might end up on
the wrong side of a gun. So by the mid
nineteen eighties, Bob he's tiptoeing away from the mob's grasp,
or trying to anyhow. He claims he focused on winning
(02:23):
cases fair and square. He even moved out to the
suburbs to get away from the first ward guys. I'm
not socialized, saying with him, I'm not gambling with him anymore.
I'm basically having nothing to do with him. But it
wouldn't be that easy, not by a long shot. Because
just as Bob is trying to make a fresh start
(02:43):
of it, thinking that maybe, just maybe he's gotten away,
a highly sensitive case falls in his lap. And this
case would present a turning point for Bob, arguably the
turning point in his life, the one that led him
to betray the mob. I'm Jake Halbern, and this is
(03:27):
deep Cover mob Land episode six, the breaking Point. So
(03:55):
let's talk about the case that fell into Bob's lap.
It involves the assault of a female police officer named
Cathy Tooey, and Bob would soon find himself defending the
man accused of attacking her. But before we get into
all of that, I want to tell you more about
Kathy and who she was. Kathy had joined the force
just a few years earlier. She was in her thirties,
(04:17):
She was a mom, had three kids at home, all
of whom were teenagers. And Kathy she loved being a cop,
not behind a desk, but out in the streets. In fact,
this is what she wanted from the very start. When
I saw in Chicago that they were allowing the women
to get into a squad car and go out and
(04:40):
make traffic stops and respond to calls, I thought, Wow,
that's what I want to do. I should add that
it was not easy to find Kathy or convince her
to talk with me. We talked for months by phone
before she agreed to an on the record interview, and
when that finally happened, there were some things she was
eager to discuss, like how she loved her job, and
(05:02):
now she didn't mind being one of the few women
doing what she did. Didn't bother her. She got police culture.
Her husband was a cop, as were her brothers in law,
her aunt, and her cousin. I did experience some prejudice
from some of the officers, and I just figured I'm
not going to argue with you. I'm just going to
do my job. And gradually some of them came around
(05:27):
and they would tell me, you know, I didn't think
you could cut it when you first came, but I'll
work with you. And Kathy says, back in the eighties
in Chicago, this is a pretty good compliment and one
that she worked hard to earn. She said. The knock
against female cops was that they weren't tough enough, and
(05:47):
some male officers doubted that she could really be counted
on if the situation got out of hand. For her
part on the streets, Kathy held her own. I didn't
back down when I had to be firm. I was
if somebody needed help, I pitched in, just doing my job.
And for the most part, it wasn't like she was
(06:09):
out there alone. I mean, there was a whole buddy system.
You know. It's like you see on TV. Every cop
had a partner to ride with them in the squad car,
but there were sometimes when officers did ride solo, like
around the holidays, when people took vacations and the force
was stretched thin. At times like that, they'd send officers
(06:29):
out on their own. And Kathy says, no one complained
about this. You just did it so your colleagues could
take their vacation and get some time with their families.
And that's how it came to be that on one
December night, just before New Year's Kathy was in a
patrol car all by herself. I seem to recall that
(06:50):
it was probably just after midnight, somewhere about one o'clock
in the morning. It was late and everything had settled down,
and I was riding parking tickets for people parked on
the hydrants or parked on the crosswalks. Those were easy
parking tickets. And while I'm writing my parking tickets, a
(07:14):
young man came up to the car and he said,
this dude just tried to get me in his car.
I said, oh yeah, and I said why would he
do that? He says, I don't know. I said, well,
what do you want me to do and stuff, and
he's as well. He says, I don't know. But there
he goes the wrong way on a one way street,
(07:37):
and I said, all right, I'll go have a talk
with him. I went ahead. I went after the car
which was going the wrong way on a one way street.
He pulled over and and he stepped out of the car.
Can cut stocky Italian guy. He came out. He was
(07:58):
in a camel hair coat three quarter length. I told
him put his hands on the hood of the car,
and he did. But when he of his hands out
of the pocket, he put a piece of cold rolled
steel down on the hood of the car. It looked
(08:19):
like a roll of porters and it's about as white
as a man's fist. I started to reach around him
to grab the cold roll steel, and I keep my radio.
I said, get me an assist unit. As soon as
I finished with the radio transmission, he turned, came up
(08:42):
with the cold rolled steel in his hand, and he said,
that's it. I'm going to kill you a bitch, and
started the swing. Came around with a roundhouse punch. I
attempted to block it, and I started to fall back,
and that took me off my feet. I fell back
against the squad car door, just fell back, tucked and rolled.
(09:07):
He came down on top of me and we were
fighting on the street. What's going through your head at
that moment. Keep the fight going, don't back down and
don't give up. And I kept telling myself, don't shoot. Eventually,
(09:35):
backup did arrive. Another officer showed up to help her.
Soon more cops got there and jumped into the fray.
They got Kathy into a Patti wagon and then raced
her off to the hospital. So they made sure that
there were no there's no mirrors in the emergency room
and the room they put me in, they made sure
(09:56):
there was no mirror up there, and I wasn't allowed
to get out of bed. Don't look in the mirror,
That's what they told her. In other words, you don't
want to see what your own face looks like. Most
of her injuries were to her head. She had a concussion,
her nose was broken, and her lip was so badly
torn their tooth had gone right through it. Someone told
(10:19):
Kathy that they were going to call her husband, Marty
alert him. Kathy, in her understated way, said basically, no,
don't bother him, don't wake him and the kids up.
I'll tell him about this later when I get home.
Someone said, guess you're not going home. You're going to
be here a while. And I said, is it bad? Bad?
(10:44):
And it's bad enough, as you can imagine. The guy
(11:16):
accused of assaulting Cathy Twoey, he had a very different
version of events that night. The guy's name was Michael Kollela.
He was in his twenties. He was a bodybuilder, a partier,
and a brawler, a violent guy. In the last year
or so, Michael had gotten into several scuffles and was
facing a number of charges. Bob says that initially he
(11:39):
didn't want to represent Michael Kolella because their first client
meeting it was pretty much a disaster. Here's how it
went down. Michael's father had arranged this meeting at Bob's
office in the hopes that Bob might take the case.
Bob took an instant dislike to Michael. He was our
no more than twenty minutes because I basically threw him out.
(12:01):
You know, he was a smart alec, but he was
high at the time, no question in my mind he
was high. And I just told this day, I said, look,
I can't. I can't help you, and I can't help him.
I said, you get him cleaned up and you come back,
and I said, and I will take the case. So
a few weeks pass and the dad comes back with Michael,
(12:22):
who now appears to be clean, not on drugs, and
much more respectful because he was scared stiff, and he
starts with attempted murder, so he's expecting minimum sentence that
he's convicted as six years in the penitentiary. At this point,
Michael tells Bob his version of how it all went
down with Cathy Tooey. He says he was out late
(12:43):
at night looking for a prostitute when Cathy stopped him
and tried to arrest him, and she tried to handcuff him,
and he pulled. He told me he pulled himself away,
and she called and she put in like for a
policemen in trouble, and about ten policemen came to the scene.
And when they came to the scene, he's in a
fight with them, with all of them and he's on
(13:06):
the ground and one of the policemen was hitting him
with a with a nightstick. That's how he got his
face smashed in and that's how she obviously got hit too.
So in Michael's version of events, the cops jumped him
like ten cops. I'm one guy, And somehow this whole
skirmish was so chaotic that Kathy accidentally got her face
(13:31):
smashed in. Bob told me he actually believed this, says
he'd been a cop and knew how cops operated and
found this all credible, so he agreed to represent Michael.
He says he hoped to bring the case before a
jury and win Farren square. But then a few days later,
(13:53):
out of the blue, Bob says, he gets a call
from none other than Pat Marcy, who wants to meet
down at Counselor's row, and Bob agrees, which I gotta
say kind of puzzled me. You know, given the fact
that Bob was making every effort to break with them. Bob,
why did you even bother good on a meet with him?
(14:13):
I mean, why not? Yeah? Maybe he's calling me to say, Bob,
you know you won the lottery. Here's a million dollars.
I mean, I don't know why he's calling me, but
one of the thoughts that I had, probably the original thought,
would be they must have a problem before a judge,
or even there were some people in certain positions in
the city that were friendly to me that would not
(14:35):
be friendly with them. Or maybe when Pat Marcy calls,
you just can't say no. So Bob goes down to
counsel's row and lo and behold, Marcy wants to talk
to him about Michael Kollela. Turns out Marcy is friendly
with Michael's family, and apparently Marcy has promised the family
that he would take care of Michael's legal troubles. I
(14:58):
remember his exact words, I'll let you handle the case
that we're going to get it assigned to Judge Passarella.
And I said, Pat, there's no need to I said
I can win the case, and he said no, you know,
you just do what you're told. And they had never
talked to me like that before. They knew me better.
(15:21):
Nobody told me what to do, Nobody told me what
they asked me. They asked me to do things, and
if I wanted to do them, I wouldn't. If I didn't,
I wouldn't. Just to be clear here, Pat Marcy was
basically coming in and saying, sure, you can keep representing
your client, but it's going to be a bench trial,
and we're going to make sure it goes to a
judge who's in our pocket. In other words, were taken over.
(15:45):
What did you say to him when he said you'll
do what you're told? I said, well, okay, And as
I left, I'm furious because I don't want to do it.
I wanted no part of fixing a case with a
policewoman or a policeman based on what it happens with
my father and with my father's father and whatever. That
(16:06):
had never left my mind. It could be that the
idea of fixing the case was just way too close
to home. Remember, Bob came from a family of police officers,
not just that his own grandfather was a cop who'd
been killed on the job, or maybe what it really
came down to was not morality or some tortured family history,
(16:29):
or even the particulars of this case, but simply the
fact that Bob didn't want to take orders anymore. He
didn't want to be Pat Marcy's pawn. It's why he'd
run away to the burbs, tried to be his own man,
and kind of succeeded until Pat Marcy had summoned him
like the king that he was and had given Bob
an order. You do what you're told. I don't want
(16:54):
to do it, but I have to do it. I'm afraid.
I'm afraid to say no for a lot of reasons.
I mean, I know how these people are meaning what
I'm talking about. You know, these are killers and mars
and these people are fucking killers. And in the end,
(17:16):
Bob caved. When we come back after the break, the
trial begins. The case may have been fixed, but Michael's
family wasn't taking any chances. According to Kathy Tooey, a
(17:39):
few months after she was attacked, she was approached with
an offer. She says they came through a fellow cop
who happened to know Michael's father. The cop said he
was just passing along a message. The Kalella family felt
bad about what had happened, and they wanted to take
care of her medical bills. Kathy refused. It seemed like
(18:01):
hush money, but she didn't blame the cop for asking.
I'm not interested in any money. All I want is
his son found guilty, and I said, that's it. We'll
take care of it in court. Finally, the day of
trial comes, Bob shows up, in court along with his client,
(18:22):
Michael Kollela. The courtroom was an unusual courtroom, the only
one in the building that's set up like this. There
was about maybe i'd say about twenty five thirty seats
in their front. It's full of uniform policemen. There's probably
twenty of the twenty five seats uniform policeman sitting in there. Well,
(18:45):
that's Bob's version, anyway. Kathy remembers it differently. Wholly claimed
that the courtroom was passed the police officers that day. Maloney,
I could say worse, but I don't want to offend you,
Kathy says. Sometimes cops did turn up in droves to
support a fellow officer. A call would go out, hey,
we need your support. But that didn't happen today, she says,
(19:07):
because everyone believed this was an open and shut case,
almost a formality. Her support that day was her husband,
along with two prosecutors and just a few cops. So
when I appeared in front of these judges, I knew
that I had to have all my ducks in a row.
I had to have my reports clear, concise and truthful.
(19:29):
I had to make certain that my testimony was not
tentative or descriptive or flowery, it was factual. She didn't
think there was anything to worry about, especially considering Michael's
track record. He had a background on him, and I
had no indication that there was going to be any problems.
(19:50):
The hospital reports, his interviews, everything supported this case, so
I had no reason to suspect that it was going
to go any other way. When Cathy took the witness stand,
she recalled how she'd stopped Michael for driving the wrong
way down one way street. She ordered him out of
(20:11):
the car, began a pet down search, Michael resisted, a
fight broke out. Michael had a five inch piece of
cold rolled steel inside his fist as he punched her.
In the end, Cathy was so badly injured that she
later had to undergo reconstructive surgery. None of us looked
especially good for Bob's client. When it came time for
(20:35):
Bob to mount his defense, he offered a bold and
pretty unconventional argument. He called a number of witnesses, including Michael,
and Michael told a kind of crazy story had boiled
down to this. He suggested that a tattooed stranger drugged
him at a bar and this induced a kind of
(20:55):
temporary insanity. According to the Chicago Tribune, which covered the trial,
that was the main thrust of Bob's argument. When I
asked Bob about this, he told me, I don't believe
there was ever any guy, you know, who drugged him.
I don't believe that. Well, that was totally like me.
That's a story. That's a story. He came up with this,
(21:16):
you know, that's that's why he was high. He's telling me.
That's a story. He told me. I don't believe that story,
but that's the story he's telling me. Classic Bob. Yeah, sure,
he lived in the suburbs. Now, maybe he didn't want
to place bribes anymore, but he was noe. B Lincoln
all told the trial didn't last long, just a few hours,
(21:38):
and when it was time for the verdict, the judge
did something very odd. He shot off the microphone first,
and then he whispered so you could barely hear it,
you know, not guilty. At first, no one really reacted,
but then people started to realize what had just happened.
What the judge had said, that the defendant, Michael Kollela,
(21:59):
had just been acquitted of assaulting Kathy Cathy was sitting
there with the two prosecutors. She looked at them and
I went, what just happened? Just then her husband, Marty
came over to where they were sitting. And then Marty
comes in and Marty says, are they taking a break?
(22:22):
I said no, I said, didn't judge just ruled not guilty.
He says, your kidden and I said no. Marty looks
at me. I said yeah. I said they couldn't get
to me to get me to drop it. I said,
so they got to the damn judge. I was so
(22:43):
blind with just rage. Did it take a moment to
register or did the anger come right away? No? Anger
came right away. And thankfulness it was a closed office
where we were sitting. I should because I told Marty
I should have panicked. I should have shot the son
(23:06):
of a bitch. And I said, he's going to do
this to somebody else. After the judge whispered his not
guilty verdict, Bob took his client, Michael and tried to
get him out of the courtroom. Bob remembers some cops
blocking his path and as I'm as I'm going to
(23:27):
walk towards the door, they're grabbing me and screaming at
me and yelling and you trader and stuff like that.
They're pushing me and shoving me, and yeah, they're saying
you should be ashamed of yourself. And I know why
they're saying it, because I'm an ex policeman and you know,
how could you represent somebody you know who did something
like that? And anyhow, there was all kinds of commotion.
(23:51):
What were you saying when they were saying you should
be ashamed? I don't say anything. What am I going
to say to him? I just want to get out
of there and walk out of there, you know, Bob says.
The police officers kept haranguing him, chanting like a Greek
chorus from some overwrought tragedy. After the verdict in this case,
(24:14):
there was an outcry from the local press. The legendary
columnist Mike Royko summed up the case this way. Quote
A muscular young thug named Mike Kalella, who had mulled
a female police officer, told the judge that a tattooed
stranger in a bar slipped a mysterious drug into his drink.
That yarn made sense to the judge. People were outraged.
(24:37):
There were calls in the press who reforms in the
judicial system, and they wanted the judge to pay his
decision to equip Michael Kollella has touched off a campaign
to vote him down. The twenty seven year old Kollela
from Elmwood Park was charged with beating officer Cathy Tooey
after she stopped him for a license check on New
Year's Eve of nineteen eighty four. Officer Tooey says, when
(24:58):
she heard the judge's decision last week, I can't believe this.
I couldn't believe that any judge, after hearing all the evidence,
could possibly rule in such a manner. Kathy, she may
have been blind with rage, but she didn't let that
stop her from seeking justice. She became a vocal critic
of the judge in the case, and he was subsequently
(25:19):
voted out of office. Kathy went back to work and
eventually was promoted to a captain in the Chicago PD
along with four other female officers. Sarah had never been
a female captain on the Chicago Police Department. Wow, So
what did that feel like, Hot, Doug, I'm mischarged? Wow? Seriously,
(25:45):
it was a great deal of pride as for Michael Kollela.
Turns out Kathy was right about him. He did go
on to commit multiple assaults and eventually would go to prison.
For Bob. The outcome of this trial also had big consequences,
but very different ones. Just hours after the verdict, Bob
(26:08):
says he went to meet with Pat Marcy. Among other things,
Bob still needed to get paid, so Bob says he
shows up a counselor's row and sees Marcy sitting at
his regular table. Marcy stands up, walks down a hallway
towards the building's elevators, and then ducks into a janitor's closet.
(26:28):
Bob follows him. This, by the way, is the same
thing that happened nine years earlier when Pat Marcy paid
Bob for fixing the Hairy Alamann trial. So, according to Bob,
there they are crowded in the little janitor's closet, Bob
and the mob's political tsar standing there face to face
amidst the mops and brooms and buckets. The way the
(26:51):
closet was configured, it had a staircase and Marcy was
standing on it, so he was kind of towering over Bob.
At some point Marcy reached into his pocket and pulled
out some cash and paid Bob what he was owed,
two thousand dollars. Bob then recounted to Marcy what had
happened in the courtroom. I said, the media was there,
(27:12):
you know, and they were going absolutely crazy after it.
I said to Judge for some reason, you know, shut
off the microphone and jumped off the bench, looking guilty
as hell. I said, he's going to be in serious trouble,
and what if he beefs on you? And Pat said
to me, nobody would dare, nobody would dare cooperate against us.
(27:37):
And I thought to myself, you're looking at somebody that
just might do that. And then I thought, for some reason,
I'm afraid this guy can read my mind. Don't ask
me why, but that thought isn't as I'm looking at him.
I'm thinking to myself, I got to change when I'm thinking,
(27:58):
because this guy can This guy can you know, can
read my mind. Such was the power of Pat Marcy
to Bob. He was almost like some kind of super
villain who could see right through him, access his most
closely guarded thoughts, sniff out the faintest whiff of betrayal.
It's understandable really why Bob almost freaked out because the
(28:19):
thought that he had was a very dangerous one and
it was quickly taking hold. Just weeks later, on a
quiet Saturday morning, Bob made his big decision to flip.
He walked into the office of a federal prosecutor and
(28:40):
started talking. In subsequent meetings, Bob said he could deliver
the mob. To do this, however, prosecutors would need to
gather evidence, lots of it, and to get that well,
Bob would have to wear a wire. He'd need to
get Pat Marcy and the first word guys on tape.
That was really the only surefire way to nail them.
(29:02):
But would Bob do it? I mean, it was one
thing to make an impulsive visit to a prosecutor's office
or offer a few randios promises. It was another thing
entirely to go undercover and risk your life. Who is
to say Bob would even be any good as an
undercover agent or that he could be trusted. But in
(29:23):
the end, there is only one way to find out.
Strapper recorded to his leg and hit record next time
(29:46):
on deep cover. M Hello, Hi Jenny, Hi Bro, are
you what's up. What the Bears did? They hunt, got
rid of McMahon, They started playing well. Deep Cover is
(30:25):
produced by Jacob Smith and Amy Gaines and edited by
Karen Schakerji. Our senior editor is Jenquera. Original music in
our theme was composed by Luis Gara and Fawn Williams
as 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 Fame, John Schnarz,
(30:48):
Carl mcgliori, Maya Kaning, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Mary Beth Smith,
Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano, Megan Larson, Royston Baserve, Lucy Sullivan,
Edith Russlo, Riley Sullivan, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg.
I'm Jake Albert. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can
(31:54):
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. 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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