In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins welcomes former Cook County prosecutor Greg Owen, author of Convergence, for an insider’s look at one of the most corrupt periods in Chicago’s criminal justice history. Times when gangsters like Harry Aleman or Tony Spilotro evaded justice and even beat murder cases, aided by a system of corrupt lawyers like Bob Cooley and several corrupt judges. Gregg tells about these cases and another interesting case about the murder of Gio Messina and Delphine Moore and how Chicago corruption can fix any case.
Before entering the courtroom, Greg Owen enjoyed a successful career as a professional musician. He shares the unlikely path that led him from touring with a band to prosecuting violent criminals in Chicago’s busiest courthouse, where he quickly discovered that corruption reached far beyond organized crime and into the very courtrooms entrusted with delivering justice.
Gary and Greg explore Operation Greylord, the landmark FBI investigation that exposed widespread judicial corruption in Cook County. Greg explains how traffic ticket schemes evolved into fixing serious felony and murder cases, revealing how judges, attorneys, court personnel, and organized crime figures manipulated the justice system for profit. The discussion also revisits attorney Bob Cooley, whose cooperation with federal authorities helped expose corruption at the highest levels of Chicago’s political and judicial establishment. Greg offers his firsthand perspective on Cooley, the infamous Harry Aleman murder case, the influence of the Chicago Outfit, and the FBI’s unprecedented undercover operation involving prosecutor Terry Hake, who spent years secretly recording corrupt judges and lawyers.
Greg also recounts remarkable behind-the-scenes stories from his own prosecution career, including jury tampering concerns, courtroom manipulation, and the extraordinary lengths honest prosecutors had to go to ensure justice prevailed in Chicago during the Outfit’s most powerful era. If you’re fascinated by the Chicago Outfit, judicial corruption, FBI undercover investigations, and the real history behind Operation Greylord, this episode provides a rare firsthand account from someone who lived it.
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Transcript
[9:16] Hey guys, welcome back to Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. We’re going to go up north to Chicago. I have a really interesting guy. You’ll find out more about him in a minute, from a musician to a Cook County prosecutor, a professional musician to a Cook County prosecutor. Now that’s quite a jump in careers, wouldn’t you say? uh uh greg owen and he has a book called convergence and he talks a lot about his career and and one particular, famous case he had but he also what we’re going to talk about today guys is operation gray lord a little bit about our friend bob cooley who i know if you’re a regular listener you listen to that two-part episode i had with bob cooley here recently he was the mob’s man on the inside of the cook county uh court system and it was it was corrupt as hell back in the day. So, Greg, welcome. I really appreciate you coming on the show.
[10:14] It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m looking forward to this. You got the Kansas City intelligence background. That’s great. I work with a lot of intelligence officials throughout my career. Yeah, and Chicago, they had a pretty good little intelligence unit up there. A lot of corruption in Chicago, PD, but it was kind of across the board, and it looks to me like that their intelligence unit was pretty squared away. Especially the core group of them.
[10:41] Yeah, yeah, it was. But, you know, it ended up when it came right down to it, they had to rely on the feds. Yeah, yeah, we did too. People who went to Chicago, you know, raised and born and all that stuff. But it was a Chicago guy who was the most important element of that entire Operation Greylord case.
[11:03] Oh really yeah that’s true now before greg owen became a prosecutor he was a working musician so greg tell us a little bit about your musician career, well we had mentioned before we got on the air here that my mother made me take piano lessons about nine to twelve i disliked it, but i didn’t know how to play piano so i see the beatles on tv a couple years later i’m like hey i’m gonna get in a band i’m gonna i want to make music and meet girls and have a party.
[11:29] So uh so we did i mean and the band got pretty big it got pretty big i was in high school then i was in college and you had to say in college if you didn’t you drafted so i played all and toured all through college, and then when i got done with college i had a high lottery number in the draft that year and so i wasn’t going to be uh, inducted or selected so my friend of the band says you know we’ve been screwed so many times by our managers who have lawyers i mean know we had i mean big time he said why don’t you take some law classes i’m like, what are you nuts i got hair on my shoulders braids, the whole bit and i thought it was crazy a couple weeks later something just came over me and i said well i don’t know if i let me in but i’m gonna try well i did and the four schools let me in, before you know it i showed up in law school i was a january morning in 1971.
[12:24] And um, I walked into the dean’s office. I said, listen, I’ve got a little bit of a question. And I said, I’m in a band. He looked at me. He goes, pretty obvious. Most guys were wearing sport coats and tie. You know, here’s me with the hair on my shoulder. So he said to me, I said, I want to go over either semester because I tour. For some reason, the guy let me do it. So it took me four and a half years, but I never stopped playing all through law school. And then toward my last semester, I had a lot of, you know, emotional problems with a girl. And, you know, we were in a bar one night with my friends from the band. And there was a guy in the piano bar, an older guy, playing by himself. And the guitar player said to me, you know, Greg, someday that’s going to be you. I’m thinking, man, that is not going to be me. I’m not going to be sitting back there in a little dusty, smoky bar playing piano. So I was in school, and I wasn’t even in my mind. I saw a note on the bulletin board. There were a lot of job offers, and it was a little 4×6 index card. And it said the Cook County State’s Attorney’s House will be in room 204 on Thursday, February 27th, whatever it was. Now, it just so happened as I’m looking at it, it’s a date. This is Wednesdays.
[13:38] And something inside me, I got to tell you, Gary, I mean, it was overwhelming. And it said, you better do that. You better do that. You better do that. I’m like, I stopped for a second, you know, and I’m looking around. Is there somebody talking to me? And I had never had this happen in my life. Never did the drugs. I mean, it wasn’t like some flashback. But it said it again. And it was so deep inside me, I got a little afraid. I went over to the paypal and called my mother and said, could you have somebody cut my hair? I need to get a suit and I need to show up for this interview. And my mother thought I was crazy. She thought I’d lost my mind. But I did. I cut my hair, showed up. I said, oh, we need interns. Three days later, I’m in Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. And it just so happened, I got a sign that would later become known as the most corrupt courtroom in the entire Chicago courses. That’s how I started. I’m a kid from the suburbs. When I walked into that courtroom, it’s like I fell out of a spaceship from Mars and dropped on Earth. I’d never been there before. It was like a new world. After a couple of weeks, I really liked it. I spent six months in the interim. That’s the courthouse at 26 in California? Well, that’s where I ended up. But the first place is called Branch 46. It was in the traffic court building. And the majority of the corruption, there was big corruption, but there was a lot of misdemeanor corruption.
[15:07] They had a whole scheme, a whole system, how they did this. And so I’d see it go down every day, and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, it was obvious. But yeah, then I really learned how deep it was sometime later. Once I became, I was in a law intern, took the bar exam. Two months later, I’m sent to a courthouse by myself in a pretty bad neighborhood. And then I spent four or five months in the different misdemeanor courts as a regular lawyer, went to felony review. And after that, I got transferred to 26th in California. And that’s where I spent the rest of my career, which was one of the busiest court buildings in America at the time as far as crime was taken place.
[15:48] You know, and from a prosecutor standpoint, for example, this corruption starts with the traffic tickets, the little traffic tickets. And I, you know, I’m a lawyer. I had a lot of traffic tickets. Now, it was always just go up and I’d say, you know, I’ll take care of your ticket for you. And that meant what I did is I pled them guilty to a non-moving and they paid a higher fine. But most people thought, you know, I was putting a fix in something. I wasn’t putting a fix in. That was just a scheme. No, right. But in Chicago, I know, especially with bailiffs that had control of those traffic tickets and a lot of different people in the mix, I think probably the traffic tickets, there was a way that they could actually just disappear. They could pull them out and nobody would ever see them. And you wouldn’t even talk to a prosecutor because you weren’t going to take 50 bucks to, you know, you weren’t going to risk your life or your career for a stupid traffic ticket. So how did that work? Did you see much of that? Just on that lowest level, I think it’s interesting how this stuff works. I saw, Gary, that’s the first day I walked in. Now, I walked into a misdemeanor courtroom. Now, the traffic courtrooms were all around, and this happened to be what was called jury court. So any misdemeanor crime in the city of Chicago, if the defendant asked for a jury trial, it was sent to this courtroom. The funny thing is, Gary, no one ever took a jury trial. Isn’t that amazing?
[17:11] Yeah. When they got there, they didn’t need a jury. And the way it worked, this might be, I think your viewers and listeners will find this interesting. What happened was this. When you get arrested in Chicago for misdemeanor, you know, shoplifting, carrying a gun at the time, battery, gambling, small game, you’d post a $100 bond, of which you’d get $90 back at the conclusion of the case unless you were fined. Yeah.
[17:37] Anybody that posted a bond, their bond slip would be attached to the criminal complaint. And now in certain cases were sent to certain courtrooms. So what would happen in our system, in that system was, in that courtroom, it was called Branch 46. The judge had four or five lawyers who were his favorites, who we called the miracle workers. And the way it worked was this. The court clerk would get all the files in the morning, and he’d go through every file that had.
[18:05] A bond slip, but no lawyer had filed an appearance yet, okay? So he put those off to the side. When he was all done with that, the bailiff put open the door, and these four or five lawyers would walk in, the clerk would just start handing out filers, I mean, the ones that had no lawyers yet. They’d go out in the hallway, and they’d start calling out names, people waiting to get in. And then they’d say, oh, the judge will represent you. You’re in great shape. And what it was was the guy would come in or the woman with a case. The judge would always fight him not guilty. Any of these lawyers, I don’t think they ever, or let’s say a battery case, you know this.
[18:43] There’s a battery case. Well, you don’t have the witness or the victim come the first day because you don’t know what’s going to happen. So in this case, the victims wouldn’t show up and the judge wouldn’t give us a continuance. So we had to dismiss the case. So no, the lawyers got a form, which is pre-printed, to cash by the refund to a lawyer attorney. And the judge would look at the defendant at the end of the case and say, do you want your bond sent to your lawyer? He’d say yes. Now think about it. You got five lawyers probably getting five cases a day. So one lawyer got five cases. There’s going to be a $90 bond refund for each of those cases, which meant $450. That lawyer would take the $450. He would come in and check like a week or 10 days later from the county, made out to the lawyer. He put it in his bank account. he would draw cash on every case for every lawyer. The judge paid $30 and the clerk paid $10. So the lawyer would end up with $50. So think about it. One lawyer, five cases, $38, earned $50. Five lawyers, judges make $750 cash a day, five days a week in that court. Wow. I mean, every day. So do the math. I mean.
[19:55] So 50 times five, think what that would be today. That’s like 37, 3800 bucks. That’d be like 14, $15,000 a week cash. Yeah. And see, so, and I’d be standing right there and the guy’d hand an envelope to the clerk, didn’t say money on it. But what happened so often, we knew. I mean, we would lose cases that for the state were so good that nobody could lose and we still lost. And there was no way around it. I mean, that’s when I got baptized in the whole, system of this unbelievable corruption. I never thought it would rise to the level of fixing murder cases, but it did that, too.
[20:31] But it did. Like I told you when we first started talking that I interviewed Bob Cooley recently, and he talked about the famous Harry Aylman case. And I’m sure everybody in the prosecutor’s office remembers a Harry Aylman case that he handled, and he bought off the judge. And the scheme was, and Spalatro, Tony Spalatro looked like he beat a murder case like that, too. They’d ask for a bench trial, as you said. They’d ask for a bench trial, but then the judge would conveniently find, if there was a good witness, he would conveniently find that, well, you know, I just don’t really believe that guy. I don’t think he quite got beyond the reasonable doubt, you know, not guilty. So that’s, you know, what’s your experience? But for example, with Bob Cooley and that kind of a setup, those murder trials like that.
[21:20] I worked before both of the judges you’re referring to. Judge Frank Wilson and Judge Thomas Maloney. I personally worked in those courtrooms as a prosecutor. Bob Cooley was a guy that spent most of his life at the racetrack gambling. He was… Very fidgety. He was, I mean, he tried almost no cases to when I read his book about all these great cases he wouldn’t, which is a joke. Now, in the beginning, he did not represent Harry Ailman. What he was, he was the person who knew Judge Wilson well enough that after Ailman had been found not guilty, they used Cooley to try to get the judge to confess he had taken a $10,000 bribe. Cooley wasn’t the main attorney on the actual trial. I was in the courtroom when the judge found him not guilty. I mean, we almost had a heart attack. But Cooley was tight with his defense team, and he also was close with that judge. They would go out drinking. He was a big drinker. They’d go drinking together all the time. So.
[22:24] When Cooley got himself in trouble, which he doesn’t talk about in his book, as far as I was told anyway, allegedly, he decided, you know, to Jesus, you know, I’m going to work for the feds. And it was part of, I think it was really part of his deal. So he was asked to go down and visit with Judge Wilson on like a personal, just, hi, how you doing in Arizona? And the feds were ready to, Cooley was wearing a wire and Judge Wilson.
[22:55] I think right after Cooley left, one or the other before, but he shot himself because he knew the feds were going. So that was the first case. Now the second case was Judge Maloney who took money on a Harry A. Oman case. There was Harry A. Oman, I mean Tony Splattro, Tony Splattro. Tony Splattro. And I had worked with one of the other judges, yeah, Yeah, because Judge Maloney had been an outfit lawyer. See.
[23:22] Bob Cooley, from my perspective, was more of a misdemeanor, small time, and he was connected. You know, he’d been a cop at one point in his life. And so he knew the system really well, and he used it to his advantage. I mean, yeah. But, you know, from my perspective, I didn’t see him being the greatest trial lawyer on earth. Not the way he, at least not the way he claims. I don’t know, maybe I can miss some of his better trials. But I never saw one that I thought was, oh, he’s the best. He is a character, I tell you what. That was entertaining as hell talking to him. Oh, no, he’s something else, isn’t he? He’s, like Johnny Cochran. He thinks he’s Johnny Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, and Clarence Darrow all in one. That’s what I get from him.
[24:18] Well, interesting. And that case about the most dangerous man in Chicago that he represented, the karate guy that killed another at a rival dojo, that was a heck of a story, too. I don’t know if you remember that one or not. Well, there’s so many. I’m not even trying to remember what the victim or the defendant’s name was. I can’t remember. That’s usually how I relate to these names of somebody that was the victim or the defendant. And, but yeah, I mean, he, he, I don’t even remember who he tried that case in front of. Do you remember, did he tell you what the case was or who was it or? Oh God, it’s, I think they called him Dante, the most dangerous man alive. And he was a karate expert. I don’t know. Well, I don’t know about that. I think I prosecuted the most dangerous men alive at one time. Really? Yeah, the Royal Family. I prosecuted the game called the Royal Family.
[25:19] Was that a street gang? Well, it graduated. It went from high school, college, and the penitentiary, graduate school. And they were guys that were probably 33 to 45 or so. And they all had served time. They were all members of gangs, lower-level leaders. And they got in a joint, and they met some people from the mob in Chicago. And they came up with this great plan that these guys would do contract killings for them across the country. And the thought being since they were all black if somebody got caught or spotted something they would never link it back to the Chicago mob even though that’s yeah.
[25:58] But they had already killed so many people before this just you know drug, ripping off drug dealers anybody that gave looked at them cross-eyed they just walked right in and shoot people I mean women men didn’t make any difference, so the leader of that gang’s name was Roger Collins he was known as Cochise Cochise that, was that was I think there’s nobody going to argue he was probably the most dangerous person that has ever been in Chicago I mean he, he was smart he was cunning he was he thought things out and he was ruthless he had no mercy none, at all he was the leader now during this time did you know, about Operation Grey Lord when did you learn about that it was going on while you were a prosecutor and did you know Terry Hake who is the undercover prosecutor which is interesting i’d like your comment on this he was actually a lawyer working in the prosecutor’s office that joined the fbi i believe now i i never did understand how that worked to do your job as a lawyer as a and.
[27:04] And yet be working for the fbi in the courtroom, Well, I don’t think there’s, well, the only other person I didn’t know firsthand was me, was my partner who passed away. I knew Terry long before all this Greylord stuff. He was a young, up-and-coming prosecutor. My partner, Mike Goggin, and I, we tried like 35 murder cases together, which was unusual at that time, to keep the same trial team throughout the system. And Terry was a young, like a law intern, and he was working for one of our bosses on a case. Well, Terry would, he’d go, when he knew we were doing an argument or doing something, he’d show up in the courtroom. So he sort of looked at the mic and I like, oh, I wish I could be one of them. So as time went on, he was probably a couple, three years behind me in the office, which was a lot in those days. So he got assigned to a preliminary hearing board where murder and rape cases were heard. Not trials, but preliminary hearings. And he had seen all the corruption in the misdemeanor courtrooms. But when he got to that courtroom, when he saw a judge taking money on murder cases.
[28:17] It was too far. It was way beyond what he could ever imagine. So one day, it was in late November, early December of 79, I got a call from my partner, Mike. He’s the chief of the preliminary hearing courts for murders. He said, great, you need to come over here for a second. And I asked him why. He goes, don’t ask any questions. Okay. I go over by his office and, I walk up, and before I even knock the door, he comes out, and he goes like, you know, I see somebody in his office, and I think it’s Terry Akin. He’s got his hands in his head, you know, like this, and he’s, I mean, he could tell. He said, I don’t know what’s going on with this guy, but I want you to hear this. So I walk in. It was a little two-person couch. Terry was seated to the left, and I used to, there was a spot in the right. And I sat next to him. Actually, I put my hand on his shoulder. I go, Terry. And he’s like, he’s hyperventilating almost. I go, what’s wrong, man? He goes, I just can’t take anymore. I can’t take anymore. I go, take what? He said, the payoffs, the bribes, the slime balls. I go, what are you talking about?
[29:21] What? He goes, yeah, Greg, I just can’t take it. I never wanted to do this anyway. I wanted to be an FBI agent. My dad told me to go to law school, and I did it. Now I just can’t deal with it, you know? And I’m like, Terry, we’ve all been through this. I mean, it’s just you got to work around it. I’m not going, I don’t want to do this anymore. And he was emphatic. And this guy we thought was going to be a superstar in our office. So I look at Mike. Mike looks at me. And Mike says to me, well, maybe we should call our boss, Mike Farrell, because he had worked with Terry when he was an intern. So we call. Mike says, bring him over to my office. So I stay in Mike’s office. Mike takes Terry, walks across the hall, down the elevator, up to another building, and drops him off. Now, that’s the last we heard. I mean, we just thought, well, this guy’s going to retire because he’s having a breakdown. And a couple, three months went by, and all of a sudden he shows up as a prosecutor in drug court. Now, that’s not a vertical move. That’s a lateral or maybe a downward move to go from being a preliminary hearing some murders through a drug court.
[30:32] And we started to notice he was hanging out with all these lawyers, laughing. It seemed like he was having a great time. And I mean we didn’t know what he was doing but what he was doing was this, After he talked to Mike, one of our other bosses, they called up the Attorney General of Illinois and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And they came up with a plan. This guy was so distraught, and they asked him, would you be willing to wear a wire and take conversations with crooked lawyers? We need you to become a crooked lawyer. I mean, now you understand, we didn’t know anything about this. This was totally behind, not behind our back, but nuts.
[31:10] So he agreed to it. So he wore a wire for three and a half years. And he first started out as a, he became a crooked prosecutor in drug court. I saw him one time after about a year coming out of that drug court. And I pushed him against the wall. I go, you know what? You’re a piece of this. I said, you sit in Mike’s office and you’re crying. You can’t take the corruption. Here you are hanging with these people. Are you, you know, I was really angry because, you know, he hit, he made me feel bad when he was upset. And now he makes me feel worse because now he’s turned. And then shortly thereafter, he quit the office and he became a defense attorney. And we would see him associating with the crookedest judges lawyers i mean everyone knew who the crooks were but we didn’t know he was wearing a wire all the time, i mean they got to the point where he had so much stuff they got a federal judicial, approval to put a recording device in a judge’s chambers which had never been done ever in the history of America. And that whole thing that went on resulted in, and then I was still in the office. I was going to be retiring in about two or three months. It was in the summer of 83, and like an expose came out in one of the newspapers saying.
[32:26] The federal government was using a former prosecutor, undercover, this and that, and they didn’t say his name. And we’re like, oh, man, are you serious? We didn’t know it was yet, you know. And then I get called maybe a month later from the FBI. This guy says to me, this is Asian so-and-so. I go, yeah, what do you want me for? He goes, oh, no, you got no problem, of course. He says, but we have to report to you that you were two times you were recorded by your undercover agent and Terry Hague. That’s the first time I heard your name. And he goes, but we thought it was pretty funny. I go, why is that? He goes, because both times you encountered him, he threatened to beat him up.
[33:07] Because I thought the guy had gone from a big time, good person prostitute to a crook. So we had a good laugh over that. And Terry and I are pretty close friends to this day. Interesting. Yeah, that was a hell of a thing he did. It’s interesting that the guy can go from almost breaking down to seeing that. Almost. He did break down. He was breaking down to seeing that emotionally. I don’t know what they did to pump him up, but, boy, he.
[33:39] Had his nits. He wasn’t a real. Let’s put it this way. He wasn’t like a Bob Cooley. He was sort of laid back, soft-spoken, really good at what he did, but he wasn’t like some flashy, anything like that. And here he was, you know. And I mean, I’ve heard so many, not stories, but events from him since then. It’s just, I mean, little individual, little pieces of conversations he had and how he was able to get certain people and what they did and how they, what they did is at one point, they created false crimes. In other words, an FBI agent would act like, say, a driver, driving his car. And they’d have him pulled over by a Chicago cop who would give him a, And then that ticket would result in an entire investigation using the FBI driver as one of the participants along with Hague. And they would actually create the crimes and follow the crime. And he would, Jerry would bribe all the judges and they’d put it on the tape. The guy would testify how he was driving and who he gave the money. I mean, it was just beyond, I mean, 16 judges went to federal prison. Yeah, it was huge. huge now interesting thing about that and bob cooley uh giving me his due there wasn’t any real.
[35:08] Pat marcy and and the real fixers and counselors row did not fall now bob cooley would say oh we were so wired in that we knew that was going on so we avoided it the whole time i i doubt that but they didn’t you know that pat marcy and fred rhodi and uh counselors rowan and that real higher Echelon did not fall behind that. They ended up falling because of Bob Cooley. He is right about that.
[35:34] They got a wire planted in a restaurant across from the Daly Center. I think it was Mayor’s Row, And Pat Marcy would have his little weekly little meeting there in this one corner. And Cooley would show up sometimes, but not as under, but just show up. So he gave the FBI the information that if you wire this booth, you’re going to get information. So they put a wire inside, right in the booth in this particular restaurant, which the way it was set up was it was busy. Nobody could use that booth except for Marcy, Fred Rohde, all of them in the first ward, and that whole crew. That’s who would sit there. And so if they weren’t in the restaurant, nobody could sit there. It was still vacant. So it worked out perfectly because they had a wire going. I mean, they were recording paying off Judge Maloney on that murder case, that Spalachio case.
[36:28] I mean, that was all recorded, and many others as well as that one. Interesting. Now, I’m curious, Greg, from your personal standpoint and the reputation of the Chicago outfit and the control they had and the fear that they generated out into the public. What was your opinion as not exactly a civilian, but somebody that was brushing up alongside all this? Was it you just did your business and kept your head down and it didn’t really come into your purview? I mean, what would you think about that?
[37:02] Well, let me give you a real life how we dealt with it. And so my partner, Mike Cagan, and I were getting signed to a case in a different court building that we’d opened in because they said, the case is fixed. They’re going to take a bench trial. And the defendant was a kid who was like 21. He was the son of a police sergeant. And he and his girlfriend on New Year’s Eve, this particular day, got all drunk and high. And they’re driving down Milwaukee Avenue. And they’re shooting gun out the window. And they hit some young girl right in the neck and killed her. Well, Oh, man.
[38:03] Wow. I don’t know if you can. Bob, it froze up right after you said hit some guy in the neck and killed him. It froze. So could you start back from there? It was a girl. It was a young girl. Okay. Betty Quinn was her name. Betty Quinn. So Mike and I ended up with the case, and we knew they were taking a bench trial. So we had two friends who worked in the FBI. We had them show up in court a couple of times when we were there for continuances. And the judge started getting nervous.
[38:37] And Mike and I had go talk to him, but they had nothing to do with this. We just knew maybe if we scare this judge. So Mike on his own one day went in and said, you know, judge, I got to tell you something. You know, my dad, John Goggin, has been telling me there’s people watching this case. And then when the judge realized the FBI, but one had nothing to do with the other. Yeah, yeah. But the judge thought it did. So the judge told the defense attorney to take a bench trial, a jury trial. So they did. So we ended up with a jury trial. We won. That’s what we would have to be creatively do. Here’s another piece. So the piece, I told you, is this. I said to you, the issue was when the guy was driving down the street at that time of night and firing out that window and pointing, would he have been able to see those people in that parking lot? And if he couldn’t see them, then it was like involuntary, you know, because he was shooting. But if he could see them, it’s murder. You know this. Okay, so that’s a big deal.
[39:36] So we were going to, we had decided that we were going to bring the jury to the scene and we were going to have them show up at night. That was a Monday. So on Friday, I get off work and I make a decision. And I go, I’m going to go up there and just check out what it looks like at night. Well, lo and behold, about six street lights right next to that building had been shot out. Isn’t that amazing? Three days before the scheduled tour. So I call Mike. I go, man. So one of our friends, his brother worked for streets and sanitation. He sent the trucks out there and he repaired every one of those lights. Now, Monday, we get on the bus with the jury and the defense attorneys. We pull up to the scene it’s real well lit, Mike Cotton goes to one of the lawyers, he goes, you know, Sherman, he goes, isn’t it amazing how bright it is around here?
[40:30] He goes, the lights are all working so well, and we knew they had somebody shoot out those lights. That’s the kind of stuff we had to deal with to get around and try to win. Yeah. That’s amazing. Those are their every game across the community. Man, how long did you do that? How many years did you do this? Nine years. Nine years, boy. Yep. That had to be a little bit stress-filled once in a while. Normally, when you go to court a lot, that’s stress-filled. Just walking in the courtroom has a certain level of stress. But having to deal with these kinds of things, wow, that’s crazy. We had to worry about jurors being paid off. We’re trying cases.
[41:10] And something’s not working right, and we don’t understand why. We’re thinking a juror would give you the bad eye. And you’re like, what’s he giving me a bad eye for? Then you thought, oh. But, you know, we had to be real cautious. I mean, we had to watch what we were doing because if you just went in there, you know, like, oh, let’s go to trial. No, it wasn’t like that. There was a lot more to it than let’s just go to trial. Interesting. Well, those are some great inside baseball stories about the Chicago court system and how the outfit works with the court system. And a little bit more about our friend Bob Cooley, because Bob Cooley, when it comes to drawing clicks, he’s immensely popular. My views went way up on YouTube and all my stuff went way up because nobody heard from him for a long time. He’s got quite a mob reputation among Chicago outfit fans out there. So this has really been interesting.
[42:11] Well, because he painted a picture of himself as being the greatest lawyer in the history of America, and he was doing this, he was following his moral conscience. Yeah. And he knew something. Well, that’s not how we, that’s not how we do it, okay. He had huge, huge, huge gambling debts. I think he was scared the mob was going to take him out. Did he say that, I’ll tell you that part about the gambling debts? Yeah, he did say that he had like $200,000 in gambling debts. Be indicated they somehow magically disappeared because of this. This was before. And then he had an attack of the conscience. So, uh, he did admit he had a huge gambling debt. As far as I’m concerned, and this is just my opinion, he was seriously worried he was going to get hit because of his debt. He went to the feds and told them, listen, I’ve got a change of heart. So what does he need? Protection, right? That’s what he needed. He needed to be protected from these guys because he didn’t have the money. That’s how we felt it really went down. Yeah, yeah. Truth lies somewhere in between more than likely, but that’s the way all these stories are.
[43:21] And they’re stories that work it off of people’s memories. I’ll tell you that your book is titled Convergence. Now, what does that title mean? Tell us a little bit more about the book. Well, you know, most people think Convergence is a true crime story, and it is.
[43:40] But, you know, I think it’s really a story about perseverance. And it centers on a murder case that took place in a nice apartment in Chicago, on March 2nd or 3rd of 1976. The victims were 24 and 22, a young man and a young woman, came from great families, nice apartment, and they were found by the victim’s father stabbed to death, a couple days after he couldn’t find his son. He found them in this apartment. They were both pools of blood.
[44:14] And the way the book comes about, the way the story even comes about is because, lo and behold, my brother had been a friend of the male victim. I didn’t know that. And four years after this guy was—see, the story’s not so much about the who did it. The story’s about, okay, we know who did it. Why was he on bond for four years? And why was the state going to drop the case? And how did all the evidence in the case disappear? and why was the only witness taking the fifth? That’s the story. And what we had to do, my partner Mike and I, to turn that around. You know, I mean, you know, and like I say, people, you know, people believe that, you know, obstacles mean defeat. Well, they truly don’t. They do not mean defeat. They just mean you got to work harder, think differently, and refuse to quit. You know that. I mean, you’ve been in this business. You know.
[45:12] If you allowed a challenge, oh, man, it’s too much, even solving no cases, there’d be nothing that happened. So we were of that ilk. You know, when Mike and I took on the case, like I said, everything that could happen and go wrong already had. Evidence had disappeared. Witness was taken to fifth. The judges on two occasions had made the rulings that almost destroyed the case. And here’s this guy walking around in bond for four years free as a bird. And people said, you guys are crazy. You know, you did this, you know, and I think people walk away. I think, I hope readers walk away realizing obstacles don’t mean defeat, but also that the book is about integrity. You know, like I said, when Mike and I took the case, it would have been very easy for us to compromise our values, but we didn’t. And, you know, character, as you know, isn’t revealed, isn’t really revealed when things are going well. It’s revealed when doing the right thing can cost you something. That’s when it’s revealed. And I think that’s one of those lessons, you know, and the book Converges, why is it called Converges? Well, I hope people, and I’m sure they will, will come to understand that one conversation, one decision, one chance encounter, one seemingly insignificant event can change in the course of an entire life. And that’s what happened to me because of this case. And.
[46:42] You know, justice isn’t automatic, as you know. I mean, it takes good people fighting for it. The institutions we have aren’t perfect. Systems fail. But, you know, people who are determined to fight back, they can make a big difference. And I think that’s what’s woven into this whole story about this case and how.
[47:08] There was a bribe made to me the night before my closing argument. $50,000 was shown to me in a duffel bag, $100 bills in wrappers. And my biggest, what insulted me the most was to think they’d ever think I would take it. You know, I mean, like, what? I mean, I was like, oh, my God. I mean, that’s how bad it was. I mean, and I think when I first was called by my brother and he said, you know, my friend’s case, they’re going to throw it out. And I go, they don’t throw out a double murder case. No way. He says, well, did you find out about it? And I said, okay, I’ll look into it. Then I come to find it’s been assigned, sent to a court building, where they never had murder cases. Why would they do that? And how did a guy, now you think of your own career, double murder, double murder, gets a $250,000 bond, meant he had to post 10%, now he’s rich.
[48:06] Who gets a $25,000 walk out the door on a double murder? I mean, so I’m looking at this like nothing makes sense. And then there was evidence that was taken from this guy’s apartment at the time of the arrest. And a year after that, when it was in this courtroom where it shouldn’t have been, the defense attorneys filed a motion to quash the search warrant and the proceeds. The judge grants the motion and says, oh, yeah, you know, the state didn’t have sufficient information, even though another judge had given the state the search warrant, the ability to do it. And they had to go to the appellate court to get that judge reversed. So, I mean.
[48:48] It was a battle, I mean, and I have to meet with this witness. He says, I’m not testifying.
[48:54] I go, what’s the, he said, man, because you see, it was a sort of a minor drug deal. There were some drugs involved. One of the victims, the male victim, was dealing with a little bit of cocaine, and they were all partying. And this defendant shows up at some point. He wants to buy some cocaine, and there’s some kind of a struggle. And he stabs the one male victim in the throat. And then the eyewitness who’s there, part of the transaction, he runs out the door. He’s got an automatic, and he still doesn’t do anything. And so he’s thinking, if we don’t win this murder case, we’re going to go after him for the drugs. He’s going to be hung out to dry. I had to spend, I don’t know, six, seven, eight weeks convincing this guy that I wouldn’t prosecute him. He wanted immunity. I said, no, we can’t do that. It doesn’t look good if we give you immunity. So finally, finally, one day I say to him, listen, let’s forget the case. I got to know the guy. I didn’t like him, but he had no choice. So I said, why don’t we go out some night and just hang out? So he said, well, I’m a member of this big disco in Chicago. It’s called Faces. He said, want to meet there? I said, sure. It was a Friday night.
[50:01] So I show up, places to pack. He’s got his own little table. He knows everybody in the joint. He’s got his own membership card. You know, he’s a big deal. Drives a new Porsche. The eyewitness is Cedric. So he says to me, you know, Greg, there’s something about you. I don’t understand. I go, what’s that? He goes, you just don’t seem like you’re a prosecutor. I go, what’s that mean? He goes, well, I’ve been around these guys, and you just don’t feel like that.
[50:29] I go, he goes, what made you ever get into this? I said to him, I said, what’s a long story? I mean, he goes, we got all night. I’m like, oh, really? So I tell him, I said, well, here’s the deal. I was in a band. He goes, you’re in a what? I said, I was in a band. I told him the name of the band. He goes, oh, my God, I saw your band a million times.
[50:49] He changed. Once he knew I had been a musician, which I never thought in a million years would make any difference to anyone, it was like he trusted me now. He felt like I understood people had done drugs and it wasn’t like a death sentence and that I wasn’t just out to frame somebody. And he testified.
[51:10] I mean, I would have never thought my band career would have ever had any impact on this but it did big time and so, yeah so set the scene uh um of the of the actual crime is geo messina and delphine moore yep so kind of start from the the start of the the crime okay so, what occurs is on march 1st in evening monday.
[51:38] It was about 28, 29 degrees in Chicago. Gio Messino was down, was going to spend a couple nights with his girlfriend who lived in Sheridan Road, the north side of Chicago. She was an aspiring young actress. He was the son of a building contractor, a pretty well-known building contractor. And they were just going to have a party, you know, party, hang out, you know, get high. And so just before that day, that Monday, cedric the eyewitness had loaned geo three thousand dollars and part of the reason was that that money was to be used, to buy cocaine it was going to be cut so to speak if you listeners know what that means you know diluted, and they would take half and keep it for their own personal use in that way they would sell what they had and they would lose would be free for them.
[52:28] So what happened was the weekend just before this happens in the money so the friday saturday Gio decides to have a big party in the suburban hotel. I mean, he’s giving cocaine away. They’re all partying crazy. And then Cedric shows up, and he finds out that this guy is basically blowing the money. So that money, Cedric is searching for Gio, and he finally finds out that he’s at his girlfriend’s apartment. So he drives down there. He lived about 40 miles away, so he was pretty serious. He drove down there because he wanted to say, man, you’ve got to stop. Are you insane? What are you doing? So when he gets there, Gio’s all high, and the girlfriend’s all high, and they’re a small little 800-square-foot apartment right on Sheridan Road, right by the lake in Chicago. So Gio says, listen, man, take it easy. Take it easy. Take it easy. I’ll make up the money. And he takes his book with his phone numbers, and he calls some guy named Mitchell. Cedric doesn’t know this guy. so he calls Mitchell and he.
[53:31] About half hour later, this guy shows up, who Cedric had never seen. He’s wearing a blue parka with fur around the hood. He’s got gloves on and he’s got boots on. And he’s got the parka zipped up. Mustache, wearing a turquoise-style necklace, turquoise stones in it. So he starts doing some of the drugs with them. And then there’s a gun laying on the table because there’s a geo, you know, just in case. It’s a Remington, I think, 13 shot automatic. So I think it was 13. Anyway, so the bad guy, Mitchell, picks up the pistol, and he’s waving it around like he’s pretty high. And Gio says to him, listen, man, let’s get this taken care of. So they go into a bathroom, there’s only one, and he brings some cocaine with them, meaning Gio, to sell to this guy who’s going to pay, instead of $100 a gram, he’ll pay $200. So Gio figured he could make it up with people like this who would pay way beyond what they should. So they’re in the bathroom a short period of time. Gio comes out to get some money to make change. He goes back in, and immediately there’s like a fight. There’s something going on. There’s disturbance. Bam, bam, bam. So the girl and Cedric are just sitting there, and they’re like, what the hell? What’s that? So Cedric gets up, and he goes, what’s going on in there? What’s going on in there? And the guy, the Mitchell guy, says, man, we’re fine, man, everything’s cool, we’re cool.
[54:59] And then there’s still more fighting. So Cedric goes up to the door and he pushes as hard as he can and he can see Gio on the floor with blood gushing out of his neck. I mean, just spraying everywhere.
[55:13] And he can see through the mirror because the door opens, you know, and as he pushes the door, there’s the mirror here and he sees his friend under the sink and through the mirror you can see the guy with the butcher knife with the park on.
[55:26] So he backs out, and he grabs the gun that’s on the copy table, meaning Cedric does. And he tells the guy, you better get out right now. I’ll shoot you right through the door. And this guy, this defendant, Mitchell, had the presence of mind to say this. He goes, you ain’t shooting anybody, MF her. He said, I’m a federal narcotics agent. I’ve just given the signal. Yeah, I’ve just given the signal. And you’ve been pretty well thought out. And my partners will be here in about 30 seconds. So here’s Cedric, the wimpy is, got the gun in his hand. He’s got about eight grams of coke himself. He throws it to the girl. He says, come on, we’re leaving. She sticks it in the waist of her leotard she’s wearing. She’s a dancer, too, you know, a ballet dancer. So Cedric’s going, come on, we’re leaving. And she won’t go with him. She goes out the doorway with the gun and leaves her behind with the killer. And she’s yelling the name of the killer, Mitchell, Mitchell, leave him alone, leave him alone.
[56:24] And Cedric gets in his Porsche and he drives right downtown. His girlfriend’s working at the Ritz-Carlton, 12th floor, the nice bar they have. So he’s frantic. He goes up the elevator. He gets her and he sees her. He goes, oh my God, you won’t believe what just happened. Somebody stabbed G-O-R-A. So they go to the pay phone and she says, we got to call the police. So they do. Now we had the tape of this call and this guy is saying, this Cedric saying, And, man, I want to port a murder, attempt a murder. This guy’s crazy. Some guy had a knife. I don’t know his name. He stabbed my friend. All my blood everywhere. And the guy goes, well, who are you? He goes, don’t worry about who I am. This is the address. He goes, no, no, we can’t do anything. We don’t know who you are. And he goes, I’m telling you, somebody’s going to die. And it goes on and on. And finally, the Cedric guy just hangs up. Okay. Well, the dispatcher for the police department thought it was a prank. Okay.
[57:21] He thought it wasn’t. Yeah. So Cedric and the girlfriend leave the hotel immediately, get in his Porsche, go right back up to the crime scene, expecting to see police cars everywhere. There’s not one car, nothing. It’s calm. He gets out of the Porsche, and he stealthily approaches the building. Now there’s a standalone pipe, you know, fire. For where you stand, you hook up fire department, hook up to. There’s one right coming out of the building, right below the bedroom, the living room of this apartment where the girl lived. He gets up on there, and now he can see through part of the blind, and there he sees her laying on the floor in a big pool of blood. So now he’s really freaked out because when he left, the girl was alive. Now she’s dead, too.
[58:06] So his girlfriend says, well, I have a friend who’s a lawyer. I mean, and the lawyer tells him to do the worst thing. Don’t talk to the police. So they find out pretty quickly after the bodies are discovered by the father, that this Cedric had allegedly been at this apartment where he was. But he tells the police, I got nothing to say. I won’t tell you anything that happened after February 29th or something. And the police know this guy’s dirty. But he does say one thing, this Cedric, when he’s with his lawyer. He says, you know, I’ve been in that apartment a few times, and the walls are really thin. And Chio and Tinker, they’d be there, and they’d be playing music. People would be pounding on the walls and knocking on the door. So it’s, you know, it’s not, the sound is not very contained in that place. So he says to the police, Teddy O’Connor, Pete’s detective, he said, somebody must have heard something if this was what happened.
[59:03] And then he leaves, right, the center. Well, Teddy O’Connor was a genius, thinks to himself, I bet that guy just told us something. So the next morning they go down to the communication section of the police department, and they have them pull all the tapes that came from this particular area from like 10 p.m. to 3 in the morning on the date when they think the crime took place. And there it is. They find this call, the 911, screaming, oh, my God. And the police are freaked out because they now know that their own department didn’t dispatch anybody after a murder was reported. So now they hear the voice of the person that made the call, and they know it’s Cedric. They know it’s him. They can tell by his voice. So they bring it back in, and finally he breaks down.
[59:51] And Cedric doesn’t know the guy. But the only thing he knows is he said the guy’s name is Mitchell because the girlfriend was screaming, Mitchell, Mitchell, get out, when this was all happening. So the police have inventoryed, the victim, Geo’s little phone book, and they find an entry for some guy named Mitchell. So they run the phone number, and they find out where he lives, and they go and they grab him at night, about 1.30 in the morning, and they grab him coming into his building. He lives in a beautiful place, driving a brand-new Cadillac. The guy’s 24, right?
[1:00:29] And they bring him back to the station, and they put him in a lineup, and Cedric IDs him. Then they get a warrant to search the place. They cover all kinds of evidence, but the evidence disappeared. Somebody stole it. So that’s how the crime began. I mean, it was solved pretty efficiently. I mean, remember, we had no DNA, no fingerprints, no blood. I mean, there was blood, but we didn’t have anything to compare it to. No DNA, no closed-circuit TV, no phones, nothing. So it all came down to that one witness because we didn’t have any physical evidence because it was stolen. So that’s what we were faithful. And this guy was on bond for four years. I mean, they were just dragging the thing out. Eventually, they knew that the state was going to dismiss, let the case go because they had no witness. If you only got one witness and he’s taking a fifth and all your physical evidence is gone, you know cases, where are you going with that case? There is no case.
[1:01:30] So that was the state of the case when I saw it, when I was first introduced to it. And you know, when I was sitting there looking at that file for this case that had been under a desk, literally, and I’m seeing this guy, and now, just like Terry Haake, we all wanted to do something about corruption, but we didn’t know, what are you going to do? But it made me so upset to think that this guy with his money was in a buy, a double murder, not guilty because he had money, you know, they had corrupt lawyers. His lawyers were all mob lawyers. And so it made me so upset. I called my partner. I said, this guy is a piece of this and we’re going to take this case. So we got it transferred back to 26th Street and he ended up with a jury trial.
[1:02:21] So you end up making a case mainly on this Cedric’s eyewitness testimony? Well, there was one other piece that was very instrumental. So we get the case, say, early December. I’m on trial. We’re not just, you don’t just have one case. I mean, I’m on trial all the time. So I had to work on other cases, but this thing just wouldn’t leave me. So one day, It was in early March, case went to trial in May. I’m going through that core file again, and I’m taking everything out. I’ve already reorganized it. But somehow, a little sticky note had got stuck to the inside of a folder that I didn’t notice. And I took the note out, and I’m looking at it. And it says, Bill Wright, WRIJD-pilot, TWD Aviation, phone number, Midway Airport. I’m looking at this note in my hand, just like this. And one of my investigators comes walking up from behind me. He happens to see me with a note. He goes, oh, TWD Aviation. I went to high school with that guy. I’m good friends with him. I go, what? I’m looking at him. He goes, yeah. I go, well, I don’t know what this means. He goes, well, let’s take a ride down there. So we get in his squad car, and we go down to this place, and we walk in. It’s a big hand yard. Guy charters planes and does lessons. We go into the guy’s office. but it’s all messy, but there’s a lot of file cabinets.
[1:03:43] So they have their little exchange of, well, how you been, you know, blah, blah. And he goes, my detective, Sergeant Joe Hines, says to him, you know, Greg here’s got a case. He’s just trying to wonder what this has to do with things. So I show him the sticky note. He goes, oh, yeah, Bill Wright used to work for me. Okay. He goes, well, what’s this all about? I tell him the facts. He goes, when did this happen? I tell him. So he goes through his file cabinets. And I don’t know if you know this. whenever you charter or lease a plane or whatever it is, instructions, there’s a manifest that says who was in the plane, how much they weigh, general information about the person. I have to do that. It’s a federal requirement for the FAA. So he goes through the files and he comes up with one dated February 29th. That was a leap year. And he pulls it out and it’s got Bill Wright, Mr. Pilot, and he shows us the itinerary and there in itinerary it says, Bill Wright.
[1:04:39] Tinker Moore and Mitchell Winger. Why was this important? We could not find one person for three months that ever could link the killer with the victims. Even though she’s yelling his name, we couldn’t find one person. I mean, here we got an eyewitness who could be dirty, and he’s telling us about some guy, and they’re like, well, how come nobody’s ever seen him together ever? So this was the first time there was ever even a scintilla of evidence that they were ever together before the murder. So I say to the guy, I say, listen, let me ask you a question. I said, do you know what this guy is? He goes, yeah, but he ain’t got to be much help to you. I’m thinking, okay, now the guy has passed away. Why do you even bother? I go, what is he, dead? He goes, no, no, no, no. He’s in prison down in Tennessee. He’s getting life. Life?
[1:05:31] Yeah, he worked for me for a few years. Then he needed to make more money, so he became a drug smuggler pilot, he was flying a dc6 from guatemala to chicago and when they got over this area of eastern tennessee something went wrong with one of his fuel tanks and he lost fuel we lost.
[1:05:49] Prop stuff two of the engines and so he had to bring thing in for an emergency crash landing and he did and he was flying alone it’s usually it usually a minimum of three people to fly this thing he’s by himself afro-american light-skinned looked like denzel washington, He had been a Vietnam War pilot, won the Distinguished Flying Cross, but when he got out in 72, he couldn’t get a job because they weren’t hiring black guys in the airlines at that point. So that’s what he did. He did charters, flew people around, and then he became a drug smuggler. So.
[1:06:22] I’m like, oh, my God. So my partner, Mike, and I, we get a flight down to Nashville, then we get a charter to this little Johnson City, Tennessee, and we go to this little town early March of 80 22 maybe, March 22nd and we go to this look like Andy at Bay Mary I mean it looked like a little like he made it up and there’s the sheriff sitting at his desk how y’all doing how y’all doing you see that boy we got across the street, I go yeah we sure are he says he says what can I do for you so I run the case by him I tell him what we know he goes well you can go visit him I don’t know how much help he’s going to be for you because we didn’t either you know So we go across the way. The deputy brings us into this old, old jail, really old. And there’s a guy sitting in a cage, no walls, just a cage, reading a book. We see him, and it’s Bill Wright. He approaches the cell. Now, I’m a pilot myself, see. So I know that a DC-6 is one of the most difficult planes to fly, period. And to have one guy flying in is almost suicide. So the first thing I said to him, I said, hey, Bill. He goes, yeah, I’m from Chicago. My partner, I said, I got to ask you one question. How did you fly a DC-6 by yourself? And the guy looks at me and he goes, like, yes, not very well.
[1:07:42] That’s his humor. I mean, in that position, he said, not very well. So I said, well, here’s why we’re here. And as I’m telling him why we’re there, the guy starts getting real quiet. He starts bowing his head a little bit. He’s like this.
[1:07:59] And i go what’s up man he goes you know i felt bad about this for four years i go we were like what’s he talking about he goes yeah i remember flying them, he goes the reason i remember it is because, i knew that geo was flying up to lake genita wisconsin which about an hour and a half flight from on a private four engine single engine plane he said to pick up some drugs, he said and he He was in the front seat next to me because he always wanted to be like, kind of like he was a pilot. And his girlfriend and this guy Mitchell were in the back seat. When Gio got out of the airplane to go to the black car to make his deal, once he got out, those two started making out in the back seat. And I’m thinking to myself, Let me turn this off. I’m thinking of myself. Can I just give me a little edit this? Yeah. Bill, I’m in the middle of a podcast, so I’ll have to get back to you, okay? I’m online right now. Right now. Okay. I’m just out. No, no, no, no. I know, but I’m on television right now, so I got to go. I’m sorry. It’s not live.
[1:09:12] Be careful what you’re saying, dude. dude, yeah so it’s like my my guy to take i’m in arizona right now my house out here so i’m just had some check some things out he helps me out here so anyway so again, uh he’s all sad and he’s telling me we’re like oh man this guy can testify and literally between the paperwork and him we can link these two and they were she was kissing on maybe that’s a motor because we had no motive Zero motive. So we go back down to talk to the sheriff, and he says to us, you’ll like this now. He says to us, so that boy helped you out? I go, oh, man, he can help us out a lot. He goes, are you telling me that boy in there, he can help you? That’s what he kept calling him, boy. That boy, he can help you out with a double murder? I go, sheriff, you have no idea. He could make the difference between winning and losing the case. He goes, well, y’all, hold on a second. So he takes his phone, punches in some buttons, and he’s sitting back in his chair, and he’s just like this.
[1:10:09] And he goes, hey, hello there, Mabel. How you doing? Oh, I’m doing fine, somebody said. He goes, yeah, is he busy? Oh, I know, he says. He stopped me. We’re just hearing his side. He goes, he says to the phone, I know he’s always busy. We get him on the phone. It’s important. I got these two boys from Chicago. What’s your name? Greg and Mike. Okay, I got Greg and Mike here from Chicago, a couple of young prosecutors. So we’re standing there. We don’t know what he’s doing. We’re just standing up looking at him. And all of a sudden, somebody picks up the phone. He goes, hey, cuz, I got a bone to pick with you. I know, but just listen here. He said, you missed a family reunion last year, and you know my wife made your favorite dish, and you didn’t so much as call and say you’re sorry. You didn’t say nothing, man. And that was very hurtful. Okay, okay, okay, here’s what I got. I got these two boys called Greg and Mike. He goes, here, let me have them tell you. So he goes to hand the phone to my partner. My partner goes, I’m not picking that phone up. I don’t even know who this guy is. Well, I was standing right next to the guy. He’s all right, what am I going to do? So I pick up the phone, and I’m like, hello, this is Greg Owen. I’m an assistant state attorney from Chicago, Cliff County. He says, Greg, this is the governor of the great state of Tennessee. His cousin was the governor of Tennessee.
[1:11:22] Literally, the real governor of Tennessee. This is documented. And he says, well, tell me what you got here. So I run it by him, and when I get done talking, he goes, hand that phone back to that rascal. He called his cousin rascal. That was that rascal. So, what happens next is they talk for a while and he hands the phone back to me. He goes, okay, Greg, here’s, I think, what we can do. Because that’s pretty important, right? I go, yeah, it’s very important. He goes, what we can do is this. We can dismiss, we can drop those charges down. Because he has seven tons of pot and 100-pound cocaine in this plant. Oh, wow. I mean, that’s life in Tennessee in 1980. Yeah. 81. 80, especially, you know, whatever. So he says, we’re going to drop those charges down to less than five grams.
[1:12:12] We’ll give him a two-year sentence. He’s already served like nine, 10 months. That means just about, you know, we give day for day down there. He says, so he’ll just about be free after he’s done testifying. He goes, so all he’s got to do is go up there and testify the way you want him to. I go, oh, no, no, no, no, Governor. No, all he’s got to do is tell the truth. And the governor says, oh, I get you. I get you. You just got to tell the truth, not tell what I want him to say. And lo and behold, two months later, the trial started. They flew him up from Tennessee. He got on a witness stand, testified, and buried the guy. And they let him go. Wow. How about that? Greg, that’s a hell of a story. What a hell of a story. That is in the book. I mean, that’s proven. I mean, we have evidence. When we were there, I got articles of when the guy crashed the plane with all the pot. We got transcripts when he testified. I mean, that’s part of why it’s called convergence. I mean, like I said, one conversation, one decision, one encounter. I mean, when they all come together, I mean, it just, it’s just unbelievable. That’s a hell of a story. Well, guys, the convergence, there’ll be links to that book down in the show notes. You got to get that because there’s many more stories in there like that. Greg, Greg is a heck of a storyteller. Guys, you got to get that book. Well, it’s easy when you’re telling the truth. Yeah. You don’t have to think what you’re going to say next. I’m right there living it.
[1:13:40] All right. I think I can do this, Greg. I really appreciate you coming on the show. And here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll cut this up. I think I’ve got enough for two shows. I’ll have to mix and match because I want my guys in the Bob podcast to hear that story. But then I want to create kind of a crime, a horror crime kind of story for the other podcast. So I can do this. I can deal with this. I really appreciate you coming on. Is there any other stories like that? Man, there’s something. I got four more books in the works. The next one is about Pursuing Kings, and that’s about this royal family case that I prosecuted, which was, I mean, it was really bad. I mean, I’m 30 years old on dealing with this. You know what it is. You know what it’s like. I mean, you don’t really, you see people today, 30, and you think, could they really have been doing things like this? Yeah.
[1:14:41] You know, you look at our military, you see these young guys flying those planes and doing what they’re doing, and they’re, what, 24, 25, 26 years old. It’s amazing what people who are determined to do the right thing can accomplish. It really is. Yeah, that’s true. That is true. All right, Greg Owens, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Well, Gary, I appreciate you having me. Okay. All right, Greg. When I get this all together, it’ll probably be, I don’t know, three or four weeks, and I’ll send you an email and let you know that it’s going up. And I’ll send you a bunch of those little shorts, and you could probably use them somehow. Okay? All right, Greg. Thank you so much. You have a good day. Appreciate your time. All right. Thank you. You too. Thank you. Bye.