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

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.

About the Author :
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, winner of numerous Earphones and Audie Awards, was named a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013 and he has been named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine.

Review :
"Cooley engagingly recounts his role in sparking Operation Gambat, a sweeping federal corruption probe into Chicago's political and judicial arenas...Cooley does a nice job of taking the reader inside an undercover investigation...Cooley's achievements deserve the wide acclaim this book should garner." -- "Publishers Weekly" "Fans of insider Mob books should thrill to this account of a guy who wore a wire against the Chicago Outfit and lived to tell the tale...The book also offers a revealing analysis of how the Mob was able to gain a stranglehold over Chicago's government, court system, and police...And it's a thriller, as readers accompany Cooley on sweat-raising stings and meets...A mesmerizing treatise on organized crime." -- "Booklist"