Operation Greylord

by Terrence Hake

  LeFevour was only fifty-three, but by now he looked like he was pulled from a grave. The Greylord depression was upon him and he was suffering from a liver ailment. Instead of presenting himself as an upstanding citizen, as many defendants do, each morning Richard came to his trial with scuffed shoes and unruly gray hair lying like thatch across his rutted forehead. It was as if he were saying how dare we persecute such an unfortunate, ordinary man.

  This was the first major case to come before U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle since being sworn into the federal bench six months before. The trial was such a showcase that among the spectators crowding into the benches for every session were members of the Courtwatchers Club, about thirty retired men and women who found trials more interesting than daytime television. They would issue newsletters analyzing defense and prosecution strategy in major cases.

  I wasn’t allowed to sit in at the trial because of the possibility that I could be called as a witness, so I kept up with developments from what people in the U.S. Attorney’s Office told me and running newspaper accounts. Little by little, testimony showed that LeFevour had been able to set up a secret organization of corruption within a reformed Traffic Court that at the time was being cited as a model for the rest of the country. He had looted the justice system like Long John Silver, installing pirates as crew members on a ship bound for Treasure Island.

  Circuit Court Judge Brian Crowe testified that he was reassigned as soon as LeFevour discovered he was honest. Former policeman Robinson McLain—who had been sentenced to fifteen months on his plea of guilty to tax cheating—told of delivering forty to fifty bribes to LeFevour for dismissing the parking tickets of others. The judge, he added, called the payoffs “just a ripple in the pond.” A parking ticket supervisor told jurors that after a 1981 television disclosure of wide-scale bribery in the building, computer printouts of thousands of tickets initialed by the judge as being “non-suited” (dismissed) disappeared.

  LeFevour’s cousin, Jimmy “Dogbreath” LeFevour, testified that he had delivered hundreds of payments of one hundred dollars each to his cousin and other judges. Jimmy then explained the workings of the hustler’s bribery club, five lawyers who gave Judge LeFevour two thousand dollars a month. Jimmy also told of his cousin’s terrible temper. He claimed that when he had mentioned rumors that bagman Arthur McCauslin was wired, the judge said, “Kill him.”

  So that the jury might understand the magnitude of the bribery, IRS agent Bill Thulen testified that over five years, Richard LeFevour spent or deposited nearly one hundred and forty-four thousand dollars for which the government could find no source.

  Tuite did his best, but the evidence was overwhelming. On Saturday, July 14, 1985, the man who was once one of the most esteemed and powerful judges in the huge Cook County court system sat with a bloodless face as the jury returned from four and a half hours of deliberations. He was convicted on all fifty-nine counts of racketeering, mail fraud, and tax violations. A month later, Judge Norgle sentenced him to serve twelve years in prison.

  Judge LeFevour was the twenty-first person to be convicted or plead guilty as a result of Greylord. Later, Mark Ciavelli and his partner, Frank Cardoni, testified at the trial of retired Judge John Reynolds that they had kicked back a portion of their bond referrals to him. Reynolds’ lawyer mentioned me in arguments as having been a human microphone, arguing that I taped everyone in the world but Judge Reynolds and therefore Reynolds must be innocent. (We had wanted to bug Reynolds’ chambers but he was transferred too soon.) The jury didn’t buy the absurd contention, and Reynolds was sentenced to ten years in prison. Later he also received a two-year term for perjury.

  Among the others convicted or pleading guilty were high-living Judge Reginald Holzer, sentenced to thirteen years; Judge John McCollum, eleven years; former Judge Roger Seaman, four years; and former Judge Michael McNulty, three years.

  LeFevour was sent to the same prison in Wisconsin as Devine. Although the U.S. Appellate Court ruled against his fight for a new trial, Richard’s health improved markedly in confinement to a facility set up like a dormitory. The inmates lived in three-man cubicles, not cells, and took their meals in a cafeteria line. There were so many judges and lawyers serving out their sentences in the facility that they named their softball team “the Bagmen.”

  In October 1985, the U.S. Attorney’s Office turned over to the state’s Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission thousands of pages of Greylord testimony and documents for possible action against lawyers who evidently were involved in bribery but were not named on criminal charges. As a result, the Illinois Supreme Court issued sanctions against a record one hundred and thirty-two lawyers in single year.

  As another result of Greylord, the Illinois Supreme Court broadened the financial disclosures judges must make and ordered that the documents be readily available to the public.

  With such reforms underway, both attorney James Costello and former judge Wayne Olson came up for sentencing in March 1986 following their failed effort to have the bugging of Olson’s chambers declared unconstitutional. Wayne and Jim were the people I had been closest to in my undercover work and, corrupt as they were, I still had fond memories of them. These men, with their lives interlocked by money, often hated one another and yet in some ways were similar. They were loud and coarse but had teddy-bear moments, both liked to drink, and both had gone through their careers with blinders on about the consequences.

  Assistant prosecutor Chuck Sklarsky told the sentencing judge how Olson had corrupted young attorneys and quoted him as saying on our tapes, “I love people that take dough. You know exactly where they stand.”

  “Time and again we find that if there’s a judge who has a relationship with a hustler like Mr. Costello, clearly sharing money with him, it’s like open season in the courtroom,” Sklarsky said. “The bailiff, the clerk, the policeman, the court sergeant who sits there [say] ‘Where is mine?’”

  Olson’s attorney, Jeffrey Steinback, blamed the system. He said that in the political process of becoming a judge, “even the most stalwart can become warped.” Costello’s lawyer told the judge that his client was a broken man and didn’t even have a final friend to stand in support for him.

  Before passing sentence, Judge Stanley Roszkowski asked if the defendants wished to make any remarks. Costello said little except that he was grateful his new wife, Susan, had stood by him. But Olson, the man who had reminded everyone of Rodney Dangerfield, looked crushed standing before the bench. He told of the “eight hundred sleepless nights” since his indictment and said of his judicial position, “I didn’t know how much I loved it until I lost it.”

  Olson then offered one last thought: “If any other lawyer wants to go through what I’ve gone through in the last two and a half years, then there’s nothing that you can do here today that’s going to change it because he’s got to be nuts.”

  Calling the defendants separately to the bench, Roszkowski sentenced Olson to twelve years in prison and fined him thirty-five thousand dollars. Costello received a term of eight years. Jim, Jim, I thought when I heard the sentence, you should have listened to us.

  The following month I was called to the stand in the trial of Raymond Sodini, the easy-going judge who once had police sergeant Cy Martin sit in for him on the bench while he recovered from a hangover. This case was put together by a new group of Greylord FBI Agents, David Benscoter, Phil Page, Malcolm Bales, and Dan Lee, all of whom worked endless hours to put together the case on Sodini and 21 codefendents. This was the biggest Greylord indictment. As we would learn later, the frantic Sodini persuaded a man who had lent him money in the 1970s to sign papers indicating the loan was made in 1982, which would cover some bribes the judge took that year.

  Being tried with Sodini were defense attorneys Lee Barnett, Neal Birnbaum, Vincent Davino, Harry Jaffe, and Barry Carpenter, and again I was called to the stand and faced tricky defense attorney Patrick Tuite. He smiled as he resurrected my changing the Lau
rie transcript from “we’ll see” to “sure.”

  Tired of being hauled over his by-now lukewarm coals, I assured him that I had been “trying to make my testimony as accurate as possible.” Another round of questioning went nowhere, and I was excused.

  But Tuite’s strategy to keep Laurie’s acquittal in the minds of the Sodini jurors made the entire defense case collapse. During the cross-examination of admitted bagman Patrick Ryan, a former sheriff’s deputy, Tuite asked if he recalled that Judge Laurie had been acquitted. Since Tuite had just violated a pre-trial rule of Judge James Holderman against mentioning the outcome of any previous Greylord trial, the U.S. Attorney’s Office leaped at the opportunity and received permission to call Laurie as a witness.

  A jolt must have gone through the team of lawyers at the defense table. Since Laurie had testified in his own trial that Barnett had tried to bribe him, he would have to do the same if called now. The defense asked for a recess because of the new development, and the court was adjourned for the day.

  Outside of court, Barnett’s attorney Alan Blumenthal yelled at Tuite for “scuttling my defense!” Deciding to minimize the damage, Blumenthal notified prosecutors that his client was willing to change his plea to guilty.

  This turnabout emboldened Valukas and Assistant U.S. Attorney James Schweitzer to persuade some of the other co-defendants to plead guilty for reduced sentences rather than keep up a charade of innocence. And so, after weeks of trial, spectators from reporters to courtwatch hobbyists were startled when Birnbaum, Davino, and Judge Sodini separately admitted their guilt.

  The trial continued and Barry Carpenter, the lanky husband of my friend Alice Carpenter, was convicted in the fourteen-week trial along with Harry Jaffe and another fixer who had bribed Judge Sodini, Robert Daniels. Carpenter was sentenced to serve four years. The elderly Jaffe was sentenced to a year in prison but died before he could begin serving his time. Daniels was sentenced to six years for tax evasion and bribery.

  Barnett received six months and bagman Ryan was placed on sixty days’ work release. Judge Sodini was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.

  Now that my involvement in the Greylord prosecutions was winding down, the FBI notified me in 1987 that because of a policy then in effect, I should report to the Philadelphia office.

  This was shattering. More than disappointed, I was angry. If transplanted, all of my contacts and knowledge of Chicago through its underside would be lost. On the other hand, I could see where I was too well known in the city to be useful in some assignments.

  When I requested Seattle, a nice city with a lower cost of living and where Cathy had a friend, I was told that headquarters had decided Philadelphia would be better for me. This was despite the fact that if I was to be transferred, according to policy, it was to be to a medium sized city, such as Seattle. It was almost as if I were being punished. Others involved in Greylord were given what they had requested.

  In Seattle we could have lived on my salary alone. But in Philadelphia Cathy would have to take a bar examination for a position with the prosecutor’s office and wait her turn. And I would be just another FBI agent tracking down forgers and hijackers. That would have been fine a few years ago. But my undercover life had brought me such highs and lows that I didn’t think I could settle down so soon to life in the mainstream.

  Yet I realized that nothing I had done entitled me to special treatment. So we put our nice house up for sale and prepared to move. But some part of me knew I still needed a period of emotional recovery, and that I was not yet strong enough to start another kind of life elsewhere. Having given up my friends, I did not want to give up my sense of self.

  When I had agreed to go undercover—for what I assumed would be a few months rather than the three and a half years—I had expected to make a great difference in the court system. I had no idea that lawyers who I thought were honest would turn on me, and that at times it would seem as if the legal system had more of an effect on me than I did on the corruption. Now even the FBI seemed to be deserting me.

  Having trouble sleeping again, I called the FBI psychiatrist who had helped me while I was working undercover. He told me to seek outside help. This led to a long talk with a private psychiatrist, Jacob Moskovic, in which I mentioned the other periods when I had felt down because of the corruption and the frustrations of my clandestine work.

  Dr. Moskovic told me I was suffering from clinical depression and explained that anyone could get it, like a cold. He mentioned that I should have been receiving psychological help throughout my double life and was amazed that I had not been. The essential cause might not even have been my work as a mole, but guilt over my betrayals. He said I would need a brief period of rest and treatment.

  Even during the two and a half weeks I was hospitalized, I still didn’t realize how much the proposed uprooting was affecting me. I was seeding grass at the house Cathy and I were about to sell when I set the bag down and told myself that I did not have to take this.

  We talked it over, but there wasn’t much to say. Only my leftover dreams wanted me to remain an FBI agent even if it meant moving; my body and mind told me to stay where I was. Sadly, I drove downtown that week and handed in my resignation, effective January 31, 1988. That meant I would still be with the Bureau for other Greylord trials.

  When fixer Bruce Roth was prosecuted in August 1987, I faced attorney Patrick Tuite for the fifth time. He was one of the patron saints of defendants facing long prison terms if convicted. Being Tuite, he naturally had a fresh trick. To use me to his advantage, he put my name down on his list of defense witnesses.

  I wasn’t asked much on the stand, just about the few weak spots in the government’s case, such as every prosecution is bound to have. The federal case was so strong that the well-groomed, money-oriented Roth was convicted and given a ten-year sentence for racketeering, bribery, and conspiracy.

  Lee Barnett, Peter Kessler, and I returned as government witnesses in the trial of former judge Martin Hogan. At his sentencing, Hogan said he was guilty not of greed but of stupidity. Claiming he had been corrupted by Judge LeFevour, the trim former Marine said, “I did not know the depths of his personality would lead me to hell.” Not exactly hell, but to a ten-year prison term.

  A month after Hogan’s trial, I was back on the stand in the trial of Judge Daniel Glecier. I never had much contact with the white-haired jurist. But the prosecution’s star witness against him was Jim Costello—whose term was recently reduced to six years in a Texas federal prison because of his decision to cooperate.

  While I was in the witness room waiting to be called, I peeked into the courtroom to see Jim sitting in the witness chair. He looked like his old, defiant self. His bushy brown hair was showing a little gray but was as beyond a comb as ever, and he was in a prison uniform instead an expensive Capper and Capper business suit.

  Costello rattled off cases in which he had bribed Glecier. Then under cross-examination, he admitted selling his badge as a policeman and told the jury that once when he and I were drinking together, he toasted: “Here’s to money.”

  A witness against one of Glecier’s co-defendants was former judge Roger Seaman, the first judge ever to be called as a government witness in northern Illinois. Seaman said he had refused to take bribes when he worked as a prosecutor and in the city law office. But soon after he was elected to the bench, a judge now dead told him that the “regular attorneys” would show their appreciation if he gave them defendants who came in without a lawyer. Now Seaman was serving four years for his mistakes. When questioned about why he had taken bribes, he answered, “Greed, ego; I wanted to be accepted by the lawyers.”

  Judge Glecier was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. He also was fined sixty thousand dollars.

  Next on trial was Judge “P.J.” McCormick who, despite his silver hair, still looked like a football player. One reason he had not been tried earlier was that the IRS team had to be meticulous in tracing his paper trai
l through hundreds of money orders purchased with bribe cash. A prosecutor said that every time McCormick opened his desk drawer, there should have been a cash register bell ringing. After a jury convicted him of income tax evasion, P.J. secretly pleaded guilty to extortion. In 1989, McCormick was ordered to serve six years in prison.

  The year before, sheriff’s deputy Lucius Robinson had pleaded guilty to accepting a thirteen-hundred-dollar bribe from me and was sentenced to three years. That would seem to be the end of it. But in late 1991, the bagman who had once been Muhammad Ali’s bodyguard was put on trial again on charges of lying to a special grand jury to protect five judges and nine lawyers who were never charged. Lucius claimed in the grand jury I was the only one who ever gave him bribes and that he had never handed the money over to Judge Maurice Pompey.

  Since we never had enough evidence to charge the other jurists we were sure Lucius had passed money to, they were identified in court as Judges A, B, C, D, and E. I described for Judge Norgle in the bench trial—conducted without a jury—how I gave the money to Robinson and he checked off the names of three Judges that he told me were crooked. I left the stand with a mixture of sorrow for the system and relief that I had got my revenge on the man who early in my career helped set rapists free.

  Judge Norgle found Robinson guilty of two counts of perjury. The judge held that the taped conversations and evidence showed that he indeed had bribed all five of the judges who were identified only by code, including Pompey and Thomas Maloney.

  Pompey had retired, and the government could not prosecute him because the statute of limitations had run out. But the former judge’s name would come up in court again, along with a case that prosecutors never let die.

  March 1993

  A light snow was swirling on the day in March 1993 when opening arguments began in the trial of retired judge Thomas Maloney, the only jurist in America ever charged with taking bribes in murder cases. Like Pompey, Maloney had been one of the sternest and most respected judges in the system. For thirteen years the rectangular-faced, curly-haired judge sat under a portrait of U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall and presided over a court with strict rules against whispering and gum-chewing. Only one other judge in the Criminal Courts Building may have sent more defendants to death row.