Twenty-five-year-old mechanic Bob Lowe was a hard working husband whose biggest concern was providing for his family. All that changed in the fall of 1972, when he became the sole witness to a murder on Chicago's West Side.
The victim was a neighbor, blown away by the blast of a sawed-off shotgun. The accused was Harry Aleman, cultured and charismatic-and one of the most notorious men in mob history. And Lowe could be the one man finally to put Aleman behind bars.
Promised refuge as a protected witness, Lowe agreed to testify. But through a tangled web of politics and payoffs, connections and corruption, Aleman was acquitted, putting Lowe's life in jeopardy. Disillusioned and depressed, Lowe spiraled into a world of alcoholism, drugs, and crime, losing both his family and his self-respect. Finally, after a quarter of a century, he emerged again to confront Aleman, and his own personal demons, in a dramatic, history-making trial.
Frightening, heart-wrenching, and ultimately triumphant, Everybody Pays combines the dark moral twists of James Ellroy with the kinetic jolts of a Martin Scorsese mob tale. Given unlimited access to courtroom transcripts and FBI reports, and with exclusive interviews with the key players, the authors deliver a riveting account of politics and power, of a poisoned legal system, of the revealing truths behind the Witness Protection Program, and of life and death inside and outside the mob.
The victim was a neighbor, blown away by the blast of a sawed-off shotgun. The accused was Harry Aleman, cultured and charismatic-and one of the most notorious men in mob history. And Lowe could be the one man finally to put Aleman behind bars.
Promised refuge as a protected witness, Lowe agreed to testify. But through a tangled web of politics and payoffs, connections and corruption, Aleman was acquitted, putting Lowe's life in jeopardy. Disillusioned and depressed, Lowe spiraled into a world of alcoholism, drugs, and crime, losing both his family and his self-respect. Finally, after a quarter of a century, he emerged again to confront Aleman, and his own personal demons, in a dramatic, history-making trial.
Frightening, heart-wrenching, and ultimately triumphant, Everybody Pays combines the dark moral twists of James Ellroy with the kinetic jolts of a Martin Scorsese mob tale. Given unlimited access to courtroom transcripts and FBI reports, and with exclusive interviews with the key players, the authors deliver a riveting account of politics and power, of a poisoned legal system, of the revealing truths behind the Witness Protection Program, and of life and death inside and outside the mob.
