1973 | 'I always wanted to be rich' -- but series did in Council leader
When Richard J. Daley was driving the machine that ran Chicago, Thomas E. Keane was riding shotgun.
Daley and Ald. Keane, the mayor's City Council floor leader, cut deals that shaped the city. Keane would then instruct the other aldermen how they should vote -- using signals that would make a third-base coach proud.
"I always wanted to be rich, and the mayor always wanted to be powerful," Keane said in a classic Chicago quote. "We both got our wishes."
But Keane's hunger for wealth, and the dogged work of two Sun-Times reporters, ultimately led to his downfall. For six months, reporters Edward T. Pound and Thomas J. Moore and the Better Government Association nosed through business documents of Keane and his associates.
In a three-part series published in 1973, they revealed Keane and his partners had bought tax-delinquent land for as little as $200 a parcel, that Keane used his clout to get the City Council to slash debts on the properties -- and that he then sold the properties for, on average, $2,200 a lot.
In 1974, he was convicted on corruption charges and served 22 months of a five-year sentence. His political career was over.
Keane, who died in 1996, always denied the charges.