Chicago mob attorney commits suicide
From top Chicago mobster Joseph “Joey
the Clown” Lombardo to crooked Chicago cops who conspired to rob drug
dealers of cash and drugs, Rick Halprin never took on a case that wasn’t
a challenge, friends say.
The criminal defense attorney of more
than 40 years was aggressive yet charming in court, and always
well-dressed in designer pinstriped suits, fellow attorneys say.
He was a Vietnam War veteran, a father, a sailor and an avid hockey fan.
Halprin, 73, died Tuesday in an apparent suicide at his Hyde Park condominium, authorities said.
“I truly would put him in the category of the giants,” attorney Thomas A. Durkin said. “We lost one of the giants today.”
Durkin met Halprin in 1973, while
clerking for federal Judge James B. Parsons. The judge told him to come
to court for a day because famed trial lawyer Frank Oliver and his
“dashing young protégé” Rick Halprin would be there.
“Him and Frank were a phenomenal pair,
and Rick was certainly dashing,” Durkin said. “He was tremendously
handsome and a fantastic courtroom lawyer. He was smooth. . . . He had
that rare combination of smooth and street smart, and he could
cross-examine as well as anyone I’ve ever seen.”
Durkin and Halprin both trained under Oliver, learning the criminal defense world from one of the best.
“He was a tremendous trial lawyer, and I
think he’d want to be remembered as just that, the tremendous trial
lawyer,” Durkin said.
Joseph “The Shark” Lopez became friends
with Halprin while the two represented clients in the same case, and
later in 2007’s Operation Family Secrets trial as Lopez represented
Chicago mob boss Frank “The Breeze” Calabrese Sr.
“He’s one of the few lawyers I’ve ever
seen who didn’t use notes during cross-examination, which I thought was
an indication that he must have had a photographic memory,” Lopez said.
Even without notes, “he was very savvy, very prepared.”
He once got in front of the jury with a
blank poster board, while representing a big time drug dealer and said,
“‘This is what he owns,’” Lopez said. “It was a poster board with
nothing on it.”
He loved a court challenge, Lopez said. “We took on a lot of impossible cases in the 90s.”
Attorney Bill Murphy met Halprin as he
poured drinks at a Rush Street bar, just before he went off to war as a
U.S. Marine. For more than 45 years, Murphy and Halprin were on-and-off
law partners, most recently sharing office space at a Loop office.
One of Halprin’s favorite federal trials
was the 1991 On Leong gambling enterprise trial, which lasted four
months and ended in mostly deadlocked verdicts. From payoffs to the mob,
a street gang, and Chicago Police, “we had a lot of fun on that case,”
Murphy said. “. . . It was a great group of lawyers.”
Halprin was a devoted hockey fan,
playing the sport until he was nearly 70. Born in Canada, he played
professional minor league hockey “without a helmet,” Murphy said. He was
so proud of those days he kept his jersey framed in his office.
Halprin’s sister, Judith Halprin, also an attorney, said the law was his life.
“For Rick, being a lawyer was not what you do, but what you are,” she said.
Halprin was married twice, first to
Linda Marshall, a former television anchor. The two have a daughter,
Eden. He later married Robyn Douglass, an actress and animal rights
activist.
Friends said Halprin suffered from back
pain, caused by shrapnel from the war. Over the last few years, the pain
became excruciating.
On Tuesday, Cook County Sheriff’s police
were sent to Halprin’s home to serve an eviction notice and found him
inside with a single gunshot wound. Authorities believe he died of an
apparent suicide.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/20543460-761/rick-halprin-mob-attorney-dies-at-73.html
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