When Corruption Was King: How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down
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Bob Cooley was the Chicago Mafia’s “mechanic”—a fixer of court cases. During the 1970s and ’80s, Cooley bribed judges, court clerks, and cops to keep his Mob clients—hit men, bookies, racketeers, and crooked pols—out of jail. Paid handsomely for his services, he lived fast and enjoyed the protection of the men he served.
He had enough money to blow on all the vices the Windy City could offer, and enough standing among mobsters to know he would never be caught. Yet, through the ’90s, Cooley became the star witness in a series of trials that took down the Chicago outfit, arguably the most powerful Mafia family in the history of organized crime.
This is the story of a Mob lawyer turned mole with a million-dollar contract on his head, a man who has clanged back and forth between sin and sainthood like a church bell clapper—a turbulent youth, a stint on Chicago’s police force, law school, and then the inner sanctum of Chicago’s leading mobsters and corrupt political officials. With wild abandon he chased crooked acquittals for the likes of Pat Marcy, an Al Capone protégé, who had become the Mob’s key political operative; ruthless Mafia capo and gambling czar Marco D’Amico; and notorious hit man Harry Aleman. He dined with Mob bosses and shared “last suppers” with friends before their gangland executions. Cooley watched as Marcy and the Mob controlled the courts, the cops, and the politicians. Then, in a startling act of conscience, he walked into the office of the US Organized Crime Strike Force and, without a pending conviction or a hit man on his tail, agreed to wear a wire on the same Mafia overlords who had made him a player.
Cooley’s tapes and testimony would be at the center of nine landmark trials that together exposed and then broke the Mob’s unprecedented stranglehold on Chicago’s government and court system. With stunning detail and brutal honesty, Cooley now tells the personal story behind the federal government’s most successful Mafia investigation.
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Robert Cooley receives grudging assistance from the feds to maintain his new identity. While not in the Witness Protection Program, he remains constantly on the run. He grew up in Chicago and has recently lived in several cities around the country.
Hillel Levin has been a contributing writer for the Nation, a staff writer for New York, and editor for Chicago magazine. He is the author of Grand Delusions: The Cosmic Career of John DeLorean and the coauthor of When Corruption Was King. He lives near Chicago.
Johnny Heller is an award-winning narrator and one of the most sought-after voiceover coaches in the nation. An ALA Odyssey Award winner, AudioFile Golden Voice, and a Grammy nominee, he has narrated over 1,000 titles in almost every genre. A multiple recipient of Booklist and Publishers Weekly Starred Reviews, Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, and AudioFile Magazine Best Voice of the Year recognitions, he is regularly nominated for Earphones and Audies and is a multi-award winner of both.
