Everybody Pays - A True Story of a Mob Hit Man

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Everybody Pays

byMaurice Possley and Rick Kogan

Two men, one murder and the price of truth.

This book is an astonishing true story of shocking corruption and an ordinary citizen who had the courage to challenge a mob hit man.

On the warm early-fall night of September 27, 1972, on a quiet tree-lined street, one man was about to die. And two others, strangers before this evening, would become locked in a reluctant but inevitable relationship that would span more than a quarter-century and transform their lives. Though both were products of Chicago's West Side, the two men couldn't have been more different. One was cultured and charismatic, a dark and complex prince of organized crime, an assassin who enjoyed his work. The other was a modest man of modest means, an auto mechanic who wanted little more than a steady paycheck.

Bob Lowe was the sole witness to a brutal murder. The victim was a neighbor, blown away by the blast of a sawed-off shotgun. The killer was Harry Aleman, one of the most notorious men in mob history. And Lowe could be the person to finally put Aleman behind bars. Promised refuge as a protected witness, Lowe agreed to testify. But through a tangled web of politics and payoffs, Aleman was acquited, and Lowe feared for his life. Disillusioned and depressed, he spiriled into alcoholism, drugs, and crime, losing his family and his self-respect. Finally, after twenty-five years, he emerged to confront Aleman, and his own personal demons.

Aleman was reindicted for the murder of Logan while in prison and eventually retried in September 1997. In 1998, a federal court ruled (Harry Aleman v. Judges of the Criminal Division, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, et al., 183 F.3d 302 (1998)) that an acquittal by a bribed judge in a bench trial is invalid because the defendant in such a case was never in jeopardy in the first place, and that the legal concept of double jeopardy is therefore inapplicable. This meant Aleman could be retried, and thus he became the first person in U.S. history to be retried by the same government for a crime which he had previously been acquitted. Aleman was convicted at his retrial.