“Anyway, I was convicted. The postmaster went to trial and was acquitted because there was insufficient evidence without my brother Paul’s testimony. The appellate court rejected my appeal. I surrendered my license and did nine months in (the federal penitentiary in) Terre Haute.”
In prison, Echeles became a champion of prisoners’ rights, and, not surprisingly, did his time in style. On a wall of photos in his Marina City apartment is a shot of Echeles inside his federal penitentiary cell sitting between two nearly naked women.
“That was taken on my last night in Terre Haute,” he says. “They threw quite a party for me. The warden and the guards stayed away.”
In 1959, after nearly 100 attorneys, prosecutors, federal and state judges testified in his behalf, he was reinstated to the practice of law. He went at it at full pitch. He continued to attract narcotics defendants and just about anyone else who got in trouble. His practice thrived. In 1961 he was part of a battery of defense attorneys in the infamous Summerdale trial of eight Chicago police officers accused of a string of on-duty burglaries. His exchanges with prosecutors, including the late Barnabas Sears, made headlines.
Some of Chicago’s most notorious hoods sought him out. He represented Richard Cain, Jimmy “The Monk” Allegretti and “Mad Sam” DeStefano.
In DeStefano, a notorious extortionist, juice-loan operator and psychopath who was shotgunned to death in 1973, Echeles met his theatrical match and, almost, his doom. The two carried on a tumultuous relationship that spilled over into the courtroom and the newspapers. DeStefano, dressed in double-breasted suits and spats, often defended himself with a circus of tirades and outbursts in court, even though he was not admitted to the bar. When that failed, he hired Echeles with varying results. DeStefano once threatened to cut off Echeles’ ears. On another occasion he sent one of his lethal lackeys, Charles “Chuckie” Crimaldi, to kill Echeles. Crimaldi said he set out to hit Echeles in his office one Saturday morning but changed his mind because Echeles’ secretary was present.
Echeles gives himself credit for saving attorney Pat Tuite from DeStefano. Tuite, presently one of Chicago’s top criminal lawyers, was an assistant state’s attorney who had successfully prosecuted DeStefano. Above his desk, Tuite had mounted a blown-up photo of “Mad Sam” behind bars. DeStefano saw it and went berserk.
“I’m gonna kill that sonuvabitch,” he said to Echeles. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill him.”
Echeles believed him. “Sam was certifiably deranged. If he made a public threat, he sometimes executed it. I said to Tuite, `Pat, take the picture off the wall.’ And he took it off the wall.” Tuite remembers the incident. “Julius is right,” he said. “I was a young, reckless prosecutor, and I enjoyed baiting DeStefano.”
In 1964 Echeles once again faced a federal indictment. He was charged with procuring perjured testimony in a 1963 narcotics case. At the conclusion of an emotional trial, Echeles passionately asked the jury to save his career, “because if convicted it is professional death to me hereafter and forevermore, and nothing else then matters.” His plea was rejected. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. He remained free on appeal, however, and saw the conviction overturned in a new trial in 1968.
“I was framed,” Echeles says tersely of the case. “Of course,” he adds, “every defendant says that.”
Contrary to his own pronouncement, the conviction did not mean professional death for Echeles. He remained a popular and busy figure in criminal courts. He took lavish vacations with his family-he had seven children with two wives-including a cruise on the Queen Mary each Christmas. When his marriages ended, he took up with an unending parade of women while his affair with the craps tables never cooled.
One of his biggest fans and happiest legal cohorts was Jo-Anne Wolfson, a former Chicago defense attorney now living in Tampa.
“I started following Julius around when I was in law school,” Wolfson says. “He was my role model and teacher, one of the bravest, smartest men I know.
“After (serving in the federal penitentiary in) Terre Haute, he came back with a brick on him. There were those who wanted to hold it against him-attorneys and judges. Judge Hoffman was one of those, there’s no secret about that. Yet he did nothing to curry favor with judges or prosecutors if it was in contention with serving his client. He did what he had to do for his client, and that often involved great bravery.”
Wolfson, whom veteran Chicago legal writer Rob Warden called “after Echeles, the most colorful lawyer in town,” also liked Echeles’ style. “He was exciting to watch. He was funny. He was fun, but he always had his eye on the ball,” she says.
Attorney Pat Tuite admired Echeles’ overall ability.
“He was good,” Tuite says. “He would always make sure that if he couldn’t win it below (on trial), he’d win it on appeal. A lot of prosecutors and judges would do something that would get them reversed on appeal, and Julius was ready. He was always able to score a lot of points on appeal.”
He considers himself “95 percent” retired now. He sends cases to other lawyers and happily accepts referral fees. He has been unmarried since 1968. His children are grown and live in other cities. Most of his time is spent in his cluttered office/apartment in Marina City. It is a museum of mementos, the floor a mess of photos, plaques, briefs and books. There are books everywhere. He bought the apartment next door to help store all the stuff.
He is supposed to be recuperating from a minor heart attack he suffered last October. He has emphysema. Three years ago his legs were operated on for circulatory problems. An infection in his left toe means he must walk with a cane, and then not for very long. His maladies, he complains, keep him away from women and the casino. His aim is to travel and “gamble in all the places in the world that have gambling.” He has made great progress.
Yet he remains a student of the law and of lawyers. “Lawyers are better prepared today,” he says, “because of the process of discovery (the exchange between prosecution and defense of all material and witness names pertaining to a case). Before, it was rough to even get police reports. We got them-how should I put it delicately-by circuitous routes. So the rules have changed.”
Only when pressed will he name his list of the city’s top-echelon defense lawyers.
“There’s no one best attorney. There are many I would rank at the top.” he says. “Pat Tuite, Sam Adam, John Crowley, Ed Genson, Tom Sullivan, Lou Garippo, Tom Royce, Tom Green, Jo-Anne Wolfson, Nan Nolan, Cynthia Giacchetti, Mike Monico, Jeffrey Urdangen, Jed Stone. . . . I would mention others, it’s just that I don’t know all of them.”
Then he offers a paean to them.
“I admire defense-lawyer practitioners. They are the ones that give life to the Constitution of the United States. The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Sometimes the Eighth Amendment. Civil lawyers don’t do it. Oh, they do it rarely-sometimes when property is taken without due process. But criminal lawyers do it day in and day out. `Oh, you got him off on a technicality!’ We used the Fourth or the Fifth Amendment. Police use them all the time when they get into trouble-as they should! The country would be totally different if the police were given a free hand to do what they wanted to the citizenry.”
With that he gets off the soapbox. He would rather tell stories of old lovers, or relive the crowning event of his 60th birthday party, or pull out the portfolio of gag nude photos he once presented to mob gambler August “Gus” Liebe or talk about the time he appeared in front of the United States Supreme Court and tried to coax a laugh out of Sandra Day O’Connor. It is endless; Echeles can go till Christmas.
The biggest show in town is in Judge Paul Plunkett’s federal courtroom on the 17th Floor of the Dirksen Building. Crouched in the witness chair is Lenny Patrick, a little weasel of a guy, a lifetime mobster-“From the time I was 16, I was a louse,” Patrick says-turned government rat. Ailing, age 78, facing federal prison time as well as possible state prosecutions for a half dozen murders he has admitted to, Patrick is spilling his guts.
A few months ago, Patrick’s testimony helped convict North Side mob boss Gus Alex. Now he’s up against Sam Carlisi, allegedly the outfit’s current gambling czar, and five of his underlings, all of whom face charges of racketeering and conspiracy. Gambling and extortion have always been the Chicago mob’s cash cow, so this trial is an important one.
Flanking Carlisi and the boys are a phalanx of defense attorneys, some federally appointed, and others, including former U.S. Atty. Thomas Sullivan and former federal judge George Leighton, who command substantial retainers.
Across the way is the battery of federal prosecutors. Parked everywhere are shopping carts full of legal documents. The gallery is packed with reporters, relatives, spectators and plenty of no-nonsense federal marshals.
Just before an afternoon session is to begin, Echeles waddles in, his cane and plaid slippers slapping the government floor. This is his bailiwick, his former garden, and people turn and acknowledge him as if he were Minnie Minoso returning to Comiskey Park. In return, he chirps and catcalls and offers unsolicited opinions and appellations.
His voice carries like a kazoo. “There’s Art Nasser,” he quips, “the most sartorially splendid of criminal attorneys. . . . There’s Tom Sullivan, Bones (Bob) Bailey, George Leighton, all men who have operated on both sides of the criminal bar. Isn’t that a remarkable happenstance. . . .”
One by one, they come over to shake Echeles’ mottled hand, joust a bit, even ask him for a loan. A young lawyer to whom Echeles occasionally refers a case huddles briefly with him. Not so many years earlier he would have been in the middle of the fray, a player, just as he was in the 1975 trial of the Purolator robbery gang or in the Summerdale trial before that. He was the best money could buy.
When the trial resumes, Echeles is merely a knowledgeable spectator. He kibitzes about Sullivan-“A superb lawyer; meticulously prepared”-and draws glances from the marshals. Soon, however, the proceedings lapse into legal quibbling. Sullivan’s cross-examination is plodding, and Lenny Patrick is monosyllabic. Echeles fidgets and tires of the fray. With a loud exhalation, he announces that he must get back to his apartment, and he pads out of the courtroom.
The trial, bland as it is, goes on without him. He seems not to mind. “They don’t seem to have as much fun as I did, I don’t think so,” he says. “I took more chances than others. I kibitzed. I did a closing argument once on my knees.
“I always say a laugh in court is better than a fee. But I did collect fees, don’t let me kid you.”
