Episode 6: The Breaking Point

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, 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 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. 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 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 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 deep Cover mob Land episode six, the breaking Point. So 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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? And it's bad enough, as you can imagine. The guy 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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? 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 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 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.

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. 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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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, 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, 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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? 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 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 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 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. 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, 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.

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 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 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, 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

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. 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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. 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 the end, there is only one way to find out.

Strapper recorded to his leg and hit record next time 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 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, 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 binge the rest of the season right now adds free. Find Pushkin Plus on the deep Cover show page in

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