When Corruption Was King
How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down

Bob Cooley was the Chicago Mafias mechanica fixer of court cases. During the 1970s and 80s, Cooley bribed judges, court clerks, and cops to keep his Mob clientshit men, bookies, racketeers, and crooked polsout 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 clappera turbulent youth, a stint on Chicagos police force, law school, and then the inner sanctum of Chicagos leading mobsters and corrupt political officials. With wild abandon he chased crooked acquittals for the likes of Pat Marcy, an Al Capone protg, who had become the Mobs key political operative; ruthless Mafia capo and gambling czar Marco DAmico; 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. Cooleys tapes and testimony would be at the center of nine landmark trials that together exposed and then broke the Mobs unprecedented stranglehold on Chicagos government and court system. With stunning detail and brutal honesty, Cooley now tells the personal story behind the federal governments most successful Mafia investigation.