Editor’s note: For the second trial of accused mob hit man Harry Aleman, Bob Lowe prepared to take the witness stand again — almost 25 years to the day that he saw his neighbor, Billy Logan, cut down by shotgun blasts on his front lawn on Chicago’s West Side. In the days that led up to his dramatic testimony, Lowe was assigned a bodyguard as protection.
Jim Green had been a Chicago police officer for thirty years, most of it as a detective. After retiring from the force, this solidly built native of Detroit followed a path well worn by other retired police officers. He became an investigator for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office; his work primarily involving serving subpoenas, tracking down recalcitrant witnesses, and helping prosecutors prepare cases for trial.
His duties were expanded on August 30, 1997, when he was assigned to provide security for Bob Lowe after Harry Aleman’s private detective tracked him down on the loading dock.
“I am your shadow,” Green told Lowe when they first met. “I will be with you first thing in the morning until you get home at night.”
Lowe eyed Green and pointed toward his truck parked in the driveway. “I hope you like driving,” he said, “because I spend most of my day on the front seat of that truck.”
Green smiled. “My second job while I was a police officer was driving a truck,” he said. “I think I can handle it.”
But the routine, he soon discovered, was exhausting. Green had to leave his home at 4 a.m. in order to meet Lowe by 5 a.m. After a stop for coffee, they drove to the loading dock where Lowe inspected loads waiting to be delivered. On the floor, under the glove compartment, Green kept a small leather tote bag containing a cell phone and a two-way radio to communicate with the agents who were always following them in a tail car. His nine-millimeter semiautomatic was tucked under his shirttail, which hung over his belt. The team of agents in the tail car was replaced at midday, but Green stayed on the truck, helping Lowe load and unload. Not until Lowe went home, which was usually after 7 p.m., did Green make his way back home and to bed.
Almost from the start, they enjoyed each other’s company. Lowe found Green to be a man who liked the outdoors and long rides on his motorcycle. He was a man who didn’t treat him gently, but like a man. He was blunt, but honest. And in Lowe, Green found a man who seemed to want nothing more than to put in a hard day’s work, to get paid for it, and to be able to provide for his family.
As they sped from pickup to dropoff, Green always tried to keep the conversation away from the approaching trial. But as it neared he could see Lowe get increasingly tense.
“Bob was real shook up,” Green would later say. “He was thinking that Harry [Aleman’s] people would arrange to talk to him and nobody would ever see him again.”
Just before the trial, Lowe came back to Walton Street. He was brought there by prosecutors to re-enact the events on the night Billy Logan was killed. The sun was setting as the car pulled to the curb at 5903 West Walton Street. Prosecutor Scott Cassidy asked Lowe to start on the top step of the stairs of his former home and it was there that he began to talk, saying, “I was just coming out of the door and [my dog] Ginger ran out between my legs and down the stairs. I noticed the car sitting by the curb over there. The engine was running. I didn’t take much notice of it, except for the fact that the engine was on.”
He turned left through the gate in the chain-link fence and began walking west. “I seen Billy come out of his house and I started to cross the street,” he said, stepping off the curb, shocked to discover that Billy’s house was no longer standing. It was gone and in its place was a vacant lot. “The car came past me and stopped. Billy was walking toward his car, which was parked right there. And then I heard this voice say, `Hey, Billy,’ and then there was a shot. It was loud.”
Lowe stopped, as if he were visualizing the scene. “I was right behind the car. There were two shots. Billy flew back. I seen a man come out of the car. He had an object in his left hand. He was making a bending motion toward Billy. He turned and looked at me. We stared at each other. I was frozen — in shock, I guess. It was a few seconds. And then I ran.”
“Where was Billy Logan?” Cassidy asked.
Lowe stepped onto the curb and walked toward the sidewalk. He pointed. “Right over here,” he said. “He was –“
His voice caught. For several seconds, Lowe stood still, his arm extended toward the grass, as he struggled to regain his composure. He shook his head as if to dismiss the images blooming so vividly there.
“I –” he began, but choked again.
Green stepped toward him, but Lowe waved him away and turned toward the sidewalk. “I’ll be OK,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
For most of the forty-five-minute drive home, Lowe and Green rode in silence, Green behind the wheel and Lowe in the passenger seat.
“They don’t need to ever ask me to do this again,” Lowe said abruptly.
“Huh?” Green said.
“If they ever need me again, I’m not getting involved,” Lowe declared. “I’m doing fine now and then this all comes up again. Is this the way it’s gonna be for my whole life?”
He cracked the window farther down and pitched out his cigarette, then promptly lit another. Green just listened.
“I mean, I’m doing all right now, but I wasted a lot of years. And I regret that,” Lowe said, anger rising in his voice. “That judge called me a liar. Harry got away with murder. I got screwed. The system screwed me up so bad. You know” — he paused and then abruptly, as if a thought had just occurred to him though the questions had haunted him for more than two decades, he said, “What if I take the dog out five minutes later? What if I’m not there? None of this happens. What would my life have been like then?”
Green shifted in his seat, but said nothing.
“This is the last time,” Lowe said. “I won’t do this again. I’ve paid too high a price. We’ve all paid too high a price.”
“Bob,” said Green, measuring his words. “Everybody pays.”
Nervously, Lowe stood up, dropping his cigarette into the bottom of a half-filled coffee cup. He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, and walked into the courtroom.
Cassidy wasted no time, directingBob to the moment when the car pulled past him on Walton Street.”Where did that car come to a stop at?” Cassidy asked.
“Just in front of Billy’s car.”
“What happened next?”
“I heard two loud noises.”
“Where from?” Cassidy asked.
“The car,” Lowe replied.
“What did you see Billy Logan do at this time?”
“Fly backwards.”
“What happened next?”
“I seen a man get out of the car,” Lowe said.
Cassidy stepped to the side of the podium. “Mr. Lowe, I would ask if you can look around the courtroom and see if you see that person today that you saw twenty-five years ago.”
The courtroom, with all its seats filled and spectators standing along the walls, went still.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Can you please point to him, sir, and describe to the jury what he’s wearing and where he is sitting?”
Lowe raised his left arm and pointed. “The gentleman right there, wearing a gray shirt,” he said.
“Why don’t you get off the witness stand and walk over so we know exactly who you are pointing to?” Cassidy asked.
Lowe was surprised. Cassidy had only told him he would have to point out Aleman from the witness stand. But he was not afraid. Instead, he found himself immediately seized by anger, at Aleman, at the justice system, at all those lost years, and at himself for losing those years.
“You want me to come down?” he asked.
“Yes, if you would,” Cassidy said.
It was a confrontation twenty years in the making, a confrontation he had not dared to dream would ever occur. No one spoke. No one moved. Jurors’ heads swiveled as Lowe stepped off the stand and angled toward the center of the courtroom. He walked and didn’t stop until he was ten feet from Aleman, who sat stock still, his eyes inscrutable behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
Slowly, Lowe lifted his left arm. With a finger gnarled and stained by years of work, Lowe pointed to Aleman’s face.
“This man right here,” he said, the words firm and clear and carrying just a hint of his southern accent.
Aleman didn’t flinch.
As Lowe returned to the stand, he felt invigorated, cleansed, free. It was as if a great weight had come off his shoulders. He felt lighter, younger, and, as Cassidy continued his questions, he knew he could take whatever they tried in cross-examination.
Under Cassidy’s careful questioning, Lowe detailed how he had identified Aleman in the police mug-shot books in the weeks after the shooting and picked Aleman out of a lineup in the weeks before Aleman was indicted in 1977.
Each time, Cassidy asked Lowe to point to the person he had identified, and each time Lowe raised his arm and pointed to Aleman at the defense table.
In all, Lowe pointed to Aleman seven times.
