Crook CountyLike the old saying goes, “Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in!”, Ken achieves his goal of becoming a firefighter and paramedic and negotiates his way out of the outfit, but he soon realizes that life as a civilian isn’t as clean as he hoped it would be. Ken and Holly restart their relationship and settle down in the quiet suburbs to try and start a new life.
Krook County is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free, but if you want to hear the whole season right now, it's available ad free on Tenderfoot Plus. For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
You're listening to Krook County. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast. This episode also contains subject matter, including graphic depictions of violence, which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Previously on Cook County, they're.
Reporting this afternoon on the worst commercial air disaster in the United States history.
A tragic plane crash gave Ken a new direction.
That's when I decided wanted to be a paramedic firefighter. I figured that's my career. Now, I'm going to do this.
And Ken fell for a club girl named Honey.
I'd see that big smile on her. Everything went away, all the bad stuff went away.
Ter force broke out across the city.
There was a couple of times to take over the clubs. Yeah. Yeah, it was a fucking gun battle that broke out.
In amidst all the chaos, Kenny made his exit.
So I knew that was my cue, and I took it and I was gone. I was gone.
My name is Kyle Tequila. Welcome to Crook County.
Yeah, yeah, Crook County.
Yeah, there's no doubt about that. It's a den of thieves. The administration is a den of thieves.
Technically, I'm out of the mob, but I'm still doing shaving ship with the fire department, cover up fucking rugs, and I raised my family doing.
That episode seven. The devil won't leave me alone.
I really wanted to get back in the civilian life. I was ready for it. I was ready for it. Man, I wanted to get back into civilian life. You have to understand that. No, it's like anything. It was just like, thank God it's here. I got a job and I'm in a fire department.
I got a job. I got a W two. You know, I gotta pay taxes on the grid. Yeah, I'm on the grid, baby. You know. I was all excited.
I was so I just because I didn't want to expose you guys, said any of that shit man to anywhere near that ship. So no, there was no nothing. I just fell right into it. It was natural. Got back together with your mom, lived together, got married. I said, listen, I I just finally decided, I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna spend the rest of my.
Life with this girl. I know she wants to have kids, so let's just get this over with.
I'm getting older. I'm with the departments now. Now, now I'm with the departments. Now I'm with fire department. And I said, let's start having a life, start having a normal life.
You know.
He had a Friday night wedding, big celebration because people are off of work. You know, it's Friday night. It was a good night to have a wedding. I think everybody's in the party mood. And Kathy was there. She was one of my bridesmaids. And we were having fun, fun, fun. And finally after we were married, and Ken went to Minnesota for his paramedic you know training. He was there night once and then he came back. And when he came back, he says, let's start a family. And that night you were conceived. He was like king bang boom, yeah, and Kyle, my son, Kyle, was conceived. And nine months later, on January twenty ninth, nineteen eighty five, I gave birth to a beautiful baby.
Boy, had you life went on for eighteen years or nineteen years, twenty years?
And life did go on and it was good. A few years after I was born, we welcomed baby Corey into the family. Mom retired from work to focus on raising the kids, and Dad was full time at the firehouse. It couldn't have been more different from the nightmare Ken was living only a few years prior. Just a regular boring suburban family doing regular boring family shit, exactly how wanted it.
I will always say that my childhood was fucking fantastic.
You remember my brother Corey, our hockey days.
I mean they would travel fucking hundreds of miles, you know, on weekends, get us hotel rooms and you know, we just we at the time, it was bliss.
It was perfect, Well, maybe not exactly perfect.
Do you remember him beating.
The shit out of another dad, an opponent's dad.
You know, I couldn't, I couldn't find the specifics though on it.
Yeah, he got pissed at one of like the kids on the other team, right right, because he was being like a little shit.
Sure.
Yeah, and the dad was the dad of that kid, was not happy that Ken because he Ken was coach. Coach Ken, he was the courts of your hockey team. So the dad on this other team was not happy that Ken was calling out his son. So he comes sauntering over to the bench to have borders of Ken, and he tries to dive over the bench. He tries to jump pull himself up over in to the bench like the other guy. Yeah, the dad tried to like jump into the box to go after Ken, and Ken just lay the motherfucker.
Now could imagine.
And and of course, like the whole place is going like bananas at this point, like it's pure chaos. And then the cops come, when the fire apartment comes and of course walks away.
He knows there's witnesses.
He's like, he tried to come in my box and protecting my kids, and they let him go and they arrested the other guy assault. It's just so amazing.
He's like fucking just out there, man, holy.
Shit, a total wild man.
There were, of course, those occasional flashes of violence we experienced growing up that were shocking and confusing to us, but other signs, more subtle, yet even more dangerous, remained unknown to us at the time. Even though they were right under our noses.
You wanted to keep this away from us?
Oh god, yes, that was my primary. Yeah, and so I guess just talk talk about that you wanted to keep this away from us?
Where were times where it got close? Because I remember once where you came home and you had a scar on your shoulder, like a fresh scar on.
Your shoulder, and.
It was very noticeable because you used to just wear Dago t's.
All the time. And I was a gunshot.
I think I told you I got something removed, like a mole or mole something removed, but I never had a mole there.
But it was a gun shot.
There was a gun shot. Roight, Yeah, it was a small caliber gunshot.
What happened?
I got shot?
I can't remember what that incident was. I fuck, what was that? I'm gonna have to really think back on this. So I got shot twice, got shot in or left eroe, I got shot on the right shoulder and I got I get him both mixed up.
But let me think about this for a minute. That got there, yeah right there, Yeah, came out wow out somewhere over here.
They were both small calibers just on all the way through that one because it was buried. One of my shoulders buried had to be dug out.
I don't know how you can forget the details of a gunshot wound, let alone two of them. But I guess when you've lived the life that he's lived, a couple shots to the arm don't really mean much. The troubling thing is these bullet wounds happened after I was born, after he had supposedly left the outfit.
Well, I kept I was kept.
I kept it very much away from my boys, and when I got on the fire department, finally I was bound and determined to get out of it completely. Of course, that never happened. That never really happened.
I asked my mom about these gunshot wounds, and here's what she had to say.
I just had no idea, And I'm shocked to this day that he let this double life for so long and without us really knowing about it.
I just think it's so interesting that his job as a firefighter, you know, the hours are twenty four on and forty eight off, So it's the perfect excuse for him if he had to go do something for the outfit, to say, hey, I'm taking an extra shift and be gone for a day or two and go handle that, and you wouldn't even think twice.
About it exactly.
Yeah, who knows what he was doing. I have no idea. I mean, it makes me sick to my stomach, especially when you have children. I mean, my god, I mean, you're just you're making it so unsafe for your family being in a world like that and doing things like that and jeopardizing your family and our safety. And because I didn't know this was going on, you know, if I would have known this was going on, I definitely would have said bye bye and got out of there years ago. But this is pretty new to me within the last few years, so I can't take back those years. But I mean, just thank god that nothing ever happened to me and my family because of his responsibilities and his horrible ways of life.
So what the hell was happening all that time? Why is my dad getting shot at if he supposedly left the mob.
So I'm working as a paramedic firefighter. And just when you think you're away from all this shit, all right, You're done, You're done with all this fucking, this shady lifestyle. I'm covering up fucking murders that these cops are doing. Just why I think I'm getting.
Out of his ship. I'm right fucking packing it.
Yeah, I just like it.
It's it's it's a double it's fucking it's foul me.
We're over the fuck I go.
I can't shake this out of a bitch. You won't fucking leave me alone.
My name's Mike, and I was a partner with your dad at a private ambulance company and at two different fire departments that we worked together at, probably over the course of eighteen years, so it was quite a long time together. Your Dad's the one person I really felt comfortable with, you know that feeling, because you know, sometimes you have a shitty partner and you're on the ambulance and you're thinking, well, I hope, I hope nothing really bad happens today because I'm with this guy, you know. But when I was with your dad on the ambulance, whether it was at the private ambulance company or at the firehouse, I was like, doesn't matter what happens, because we can handle anything that comes down in the post.
I remember seeing Mike along when I was a kid. Of all my dad's friends, he was my favorite. Sure, he was big and loud in the perfect picture of an eighties era Chicago firefighter. But I think it's because I've never seen my dad laugh as hard as when he was around his buddy Mike. Plus he rocked the best mustache I've probably ever seen.
My earliest memory of you, you were small, like three.
You were talking to me.
I don't remember what we were talking about, and your dad was being an ass that day.
You said something to me and I said.
Yeah, that's because daddy's a dick. And you said, Daddy's a dick, and Ken and I could not quit laughing. You kept repeating, Daddy's a dick, Daddy's a dick. Your mom was so mad at us for teaching.
He's at Ken had only been a firefighter for a year or so before Mike was hired at the same station, but even that early in his career, he had already made a name for himself.
I was brand new EMT they hired me. He wasn't there at the time. He was on a vacation in Arizona, and all these guys were like, Ken is this great guy, and he's a legend, and all of this shit they're telling me. And I was like, Okay, this guy must practically walk.
On water, you know.
And he came back from Arizona, and he was like telling everybody what to do, and I was just watching, you know.
And then one day they paired me up with him.
We were working on the ambulance together, and before we went into a place to take care of a patient, he tells me, I do all the talking. I call the hospital, I take care of everything. I'll tell you what to do. You just listen to me and do what I tell you. And I told him, fuck you, man, I know what I'm doing. I'm not one of these mopes that you work with here. I said, I know what's going on. Don't talk to me like that. And we were friends ever since then. Sound was the first person that stood up to him.
There. He tells me a story about Ken's first partner before he and Mike became partners.
He had a partner who was a very strange person, and he was trying to tell Ken what to do, and Ken was yelling at him, and the guy started screaming at him.
I know.
The guy like lost his mind and started screaming at Ken, and Ken grabbed him by the neck and start choking and the guy's head turned purple and he passed out on the backstep of the ambulance.
This was the guy that you worked with.
Yeah, he was a paramedics that we worked with, and he just kind of turned his head turned purple and he was kind of slumped over on the ambulance bumper and then he wakes up. You know, your dad like go of his neck, and the guy like woke up right away and he goes you guys saw that. You guys saw that he assaulted me. I was like, I don't see nothing. I'm going home. And all the firemen were like, I didn't see nothing.
What happened? We didn't see anything. He was the little mob boss.
Huh.
Yeah.
You know the old saying, you can take the boy out of the mafia, but you can't take the mafia out of the boy.
You know. Taking it down a notch is not his specialty either.
Once he gets cranked up, he pretty much doesn't care who's there.
He's gonna say his piece.
With Ken and Mike now partnered up, they quickly acquired a reputation as bossy and confrontational and probably a little psychotic.
They wouldn't let us work together anymore, and the firemen were crying. They went to the chief, and the chief made the no more Mike and Ken rule because we weren't allowed to work together on the ambulance anymore.
Rule or not, Mike and Ken are gonna do what Mike and Ken are gonna do.
We would watch Doctor Who together on Sunday nights, and then it started getting busy on Sunday nights. We were having a hard time watching Doctor Who because we would have to do ambulance calls.
So we both decided we weren't going to work.
Sunday nights anymore because we want to be able to watch Doctor Who uninterrupted.
So they were mad because we told.
Them now, we can't do any more Sunday nights because we're missing Doctor Who and it's not right. So we made our own Mic and Ken rule for that one.
It's about time.
As fun as it is to hear these old stories, and it really is. It's been an absolute joy catching up with Mike. I now know that missing Doctor Who on a Sunday night was the least of the problems. And though Ken was no longer in a day to day relationship with the outfit, the crime and corruption of police, and a fish shows in Cook County would inevitably make its way back into his life.
So a cop would fucking kill somebody, whether by accident or out of anger, I don't know. Anyway you kill a civilian. But and here's the sick twist here, Man Ken's got to come in as a paramedic, listen to the story that the cops are sticking to, and then I have to take I have to look at the injuries of the dead guy and tailor their story to fit the fucking injuries.
And I got to document to shit.
In a million fucking years that I ever think that was going to happen. I mean, I mean, who even thinks the shit like that?
Was this just a given part of your new career now, or like were you getting paid?
Like no, no, oh no, no.
This is no this is this is the culture.
It's the culture that this is the part of my job.
That's part that's part of the job.
I asked, Mike, what do you thinks about this?
It's kind of, you know, a hard thing to deal with, but that's how everything worked at that time.
One of the ones that stands.
Out to me was there was a cop and he was wasted, and he crashed into a car and he hurt the people in their car, real bad and usually, you know, that would result in tickets and and arrest and stuff.
And the cops, our cops came over.
And told us, don't mention that you smelled alcohol on this guy's breast or anything. Don't put it in your report, don't mention it to the hospital. We don't want to get this guy in trouble. And I was like, he hurt people, he's wasted and he hurt people. And they were like, don't do it. And you know, you know, they did the wrong thing and no one's going to hold him accountable for it.
He tells me a few other awful stories of police brutality, but this next one was so cruel and vile it truly shocked me.
We had a guy and he was huge.
He was like a four hundred pound guy, you know, like twenty two to twenty three years old who worked in the hospital cafeteria at a hospital in that area. And we knew this guy. He was a nice kid, you know, he didn't never hurt anybody. And he went to the bar one night and these off duty cops were harassing them and force feeding them shots. And then they strapped a feedbag on him and made him eat out of a feedbag and they were forcing food down his throat and they were just torturing a kid.
And then the kid went home.
And passed out, laid on his back in the kitchen and just kept bombiting, so he aspirated and he died. And that was another one where they were like, just put the facts into the thing. Leave out you know, any hearsay, like you know off duty cops were involved or anything.
Don't even mention that.
Your dad was furious that they bullied that kid and basically killed him. And there was no way to prove it. You know, there's nothing we could do to prove it. They killed a kid, They killed a young man. They ended his life. And he never hurt anybody. That's the thing. It's not like he was a terrible person or something. He is a nice kid, you know, that never hurt anyone.
Now I got you know, you know, so Ken's gonna die one day.
So and now Ken's got to talk, you know, sitting in front of the big guy and try to explain his way out of this one. All right, You know where I had every fucking opportunity in the world to do the right thing, but I chose not to.
I mean, it wasn't much of the choice, though it was it.
Oh, I had a family, Kyle, you guys were born I you know, I had a family to fucking raise.
I'm not going to jeopardize my family.
At first, I didn't understand why covering up murders for these cricket cops would be a required part of the job, and even more how not doing it could jeopardize our family. But Jeff Cohne of the Chicago Tribune isn't surprise and shared an interesting perspective on this sad reality.
There was a significant issue in Chicago where the outfit had infiltrated the police department. They had operatives, you know, all the way up to you know, there's a guy who went down in a case who was the chief of detectives who wound up running his own sort of jewel theft ring. I mean, they had major, major corruption problems related to organized crime, and so they could basically operate with impunity more or less. And it got so bad in Cook County that you actually had a criminal court judge who threw a murder case on a guy who was in the outfit.
So it went all the way to.
Sort of cross the threshold that a lot of people never thought that it could get to.
Yeah, Crook County, Yeah, there's no doubt about that. It's a den of thieves. The administration is a den of thieves.
But these abuses aren't just a symptom of the Chicago crime family's clause within law enforcement, because there's another family with their own set of rules that enabled these types of injustices to thrive.
So the brotherhood of the cops, you know, and you're so dependent on them. They saved my life a bunch of times that I wouldn't even be here today if I hadn't stayed on the right side of that, you know, because you don't want to be the guy that they're like, oh, they know you're working on this ambulance and then you're calling for police to come help you and they go slow because that could happen. I don't want to be the guy that they go slow to save their life, you know. So it's really a hard place and it's a tough decision to make, and you got to live with it. For some people, you know, that don't really have them, like a soul or a conscience.
That's easy. You know, those are hard decisions to live.
With, you know.
The other side of this is.
And I don't know if you know any of this stuff.
You know, he was a very private guy.
But did you know of any of his involvement in organized crime?
I know that he was in Cook County jail prior to when I met him, because he left his wallet on laying on the dresser. He threw his wallet on a dresser at the private ambulance company in the room where we would sleep, and he had a inmate card, you know, for when he was out on parole after getting out of jail. And I was like, okay, so that's one of the things I asked him about, and he gave me very little detail on it. I think he said like two sentences and then that story was done. He had said something about pimpin for the outfit and he wasn't going to do that stuff anymore, and that was it. That was the end of the conversation. He didn't want to say another word about it, and I already knew him well enough to not ask another question about it, because I wasn't going to get anything anyway.
Yeah, that was a charge for keeper of a house of prostitution, right.
I actually read about it in the paper, you know, when it went down, when they busted the place. But you know, and then he told me about it, and it didn't click in my mind till like a year later. You know that that was probably the same thing, you.
Know, Mike tells me. There were other hints too that Ken was probably connected. One incident in particular took place at my parents' wedding, which was right around the time Mike and my dad became partners, and a year before I was born.
I actually went to their wedding and the I was a little drunk and got in a confrontation with some very Italian people there. Oh boy, yeah, And there was a guy with the I remember this guy. He was a smaller guy, you know, but he had a shiny suit. He had a very shiny, silvery suit. And I was laughing about it, and I was telling the people at my table how he's a thought of Gotti. That's a word that my sister and I use for real. Italian people would call him fot of Gottis, you know, And huh means no. I think it's just a made up word. He's a fought of Gotti, you know, so that's what we call him. And he heard me say it, and he thought I was making fun of him, so he came over and got confrontational with me. So I was off my chair in a hot second and got confrontational right back with him. Then his friends started coming over, and the people I was sitting with were getting off their chairs. And remember your dad coming over and diffusing the whole thing, Yeah, because that was about to get ugly. And that's not the thing to do with a wedding reception. It happens. It happens more than you would possibly think. I've been on that call a bunch of times where a wedding reception turned into a brawl or a stabbing.
And uh, he didn't.
I don't think he wanted his wedding reception to be that. So he came over and intervened. And I don't know if he thought he was saving my life or what, but you know.
Those are probably some pretty serious people.
Yeah, But I was young and strong and good for the scrap back in those days, and I was willing to get in it too.
Whether Mike was good for the scrub or not. From what I've learned about my father's past, I think Mike was right. Ken probably did save his life that day, and as close as Mike and Ken were, I'm certain that my father did whatever he could to keep that dark world away from his friend, just like he kept it away from us, even though it was circling right overhead.
I was working full time as a firefighter, paramedic and raising my family, but I was still connected, and I always had that pendulum swinging over my fucking head that I could be called in at any time. And I was called in a couple of times, but I always had.
To keep that on the do I mean no, it could work. Couldn't know, family, couldn't know, nobody could know.
I can remember heading off to work with the fire department still and I'm on the Eisenhower Expressway.
I see him, that fucking guinea fuck, and I know who he is.
He's a soldier, but he's a higher end soldier.
I've had experience with them in the past, and I never liked him, never appreciated him, never even wanted to recognize him as a human fucking being, and that was my mission to snuff the fucking light out of this guy.
Next week on Crook County.
He saw me, he spun out of control and the race was on. That's how simple it can be to murder somebody.
I'm just saying.
Crook County is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV in association with Common Enemy. All episodes are written, produced, and hosted by Me Kyle Tequila. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Main title song is called Crush by the band Stary Eyes. End credit song is called Aloha, also by the band Starry Eyes. Sound mix by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Orn Rosenbaum and the excellent team at UTA for their support, and to my fearless attorney, Wendy Bench for her guidance. To stay updated on all things Crook County, follow us on all socials at Crook County Podcast, or leave us a voicemail by visiting crookcountypodcast dot com. For more podcasts like Crook County, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit Tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening the story continues next week,
