George J. Cotsirilos, defense lawyer respected on both sides of the aisle

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

If you get in a serious legal jam in Chicago — and can hire anyone you like — there’s a short list of lawyers people call for help.

For decades, George J. Cotsirilos was somewhere near the top of that list.

As a young prosecutor in the 1940s, Mr. Cotsirilos interviewed the young woman who stalked and shot Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus in the shocking case that inspired the Bernard Malamud book The Natural, which became a Robert Redford movie.

More than 60 years after the shooting, Mr. Cotsirilos was still going to his law office every day, right up until he suffered a stroke last week. He died Sunday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital at age 90. The legal lion did criminal defense work on some of the biggest court cases in Chicago history, but managed to remain respected and admired by lawyers on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. Cotsirilos was a fledgling assistant state’s attorney in 1949, when 19-year-old Ruth Steinhagen — a “6-foot typist brunette” in that era’s hardboiled newspaper parlance — stalked Waitkus and shot the former Cub at the old Edgewater Beach Hotel. Waitkus survived despite being hit in the chest with a bullet from a .22-caliber rifle.

Mr. Cotsirilos helped question Steinhagen, who reportedly told investigators: “I just wanted something exciting in my life. . . . I didn’t want to go back to typing.”

“He was very young, a new state’s attorney, and he was sent to interview this woman,” said Mr. Cotsirilos’ wife, Joan M. Hall. “And he said, ‘Why did you do that?’ And she said, ‘You have no idea what he did to me.’ Of course, she had never met [Waitkus] before.”

Steinhagen ended up getting sent to a mental institution instead of jail.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Cotsirilos represented an officer accused of being a member of the Summerdale Police District burglary ring. Eight officers were convicted; six were sent to jail, but two were only fined $500. One of those was a client of Mr. Cotsirilos.

Mr. Cotsirilos was at the defense table again in 1964, when the federal government charged Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa and others with defrauding union pension funds.

And he defended prosecutors linked to the infamous 1969 Black Panther raid, when law-enforcement officers descended on an apartment at 2337 W. Monroe. The raid ended with two Black Panthers shot dead. The office of State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan showed photos that were said to prove the Panthers fired first. A Sun-Times investigation showed the “bullet holes” were actually nailheads.

Later, a federal grand jury found that between 82 and 99 shots were fired by the police and that just one came from inside the apartment.

Former Richton Park Mayor Kenneth J. Clark probably spoke for a lot of people when he hired Mr. Cotsirilos after a 1972 accusation of malfeasance.

“I tried to get the best lawyer,” he told the Chicago Daily News.

Mr. Cotsirilos grew up on the West Side, the son of immigrants John and Katherine Cotsirilos, who were from near Tripoli, Greece. He worked at South Water Market with his father, a banana importer and distributor. There was a creepy-crawly side to getting the bananas off the trains that carried them to Chicago, according to Mr. Cotsirilos’ son George Cotsirilos, Jr.

“He would talk about how you had to watch out for and dodge the tarantulas that were coming off the bananas as you were unloading them,” he said.

Mr. Cotsirilos excelled at Marshall High School on the West Side and began studying in 1939 at the University of Chicago. He caught a ride to Hyde Park with a friend, Bernie Sahlins, who was studying math at the school. He would go on to co-found the Second City improv group.

Sahlins had high praise for his old friend’s courtroom performances. “He was as good an actor as anyone we had at Second City,” he said. “He was magnificent.”

Mr. Cotsirilos enlisted in the Navy in World War II. He met Theresa Latto at a dance in Charleston, S.C., while his ship was in dry dock. They were married from 1945 until her death from cancer in 1977.

Mr. Cotsirilos’ ship carried troops and cargo to battles in Sicily, Okinawa, the Philippines, Tarawa and Peleliu. He was transfixed at the terrible beauty of his first firefight. “He was standing on the bridge and looking, and he said it was beautiful, like the Fourth of July,’’ his son said. Someone grabbed him and said, “‘Ensign Cotsirilos, you know those are real bullets?’ Then he crouched down with this guy and took cover.”

He met with attorney Joan M. Hall in 1988 to discuss business involving the American College of Trial Lawyers. She was a member; he was a regent. They married four months later.

“He was famous for telling people he’d had two wonderful wives,” she said. He was easy to be around, she added. “He got up with a smile on his face every morning.”

Friends said they will miss his courtly nature as much as his expertise.

“George was a giant, imaginative, charming and absolutely committed to his clients, as skilled as a negotiator as a trial lawyer,” Scott Turow said in an e-mail. “He literally changed the nature of the criminal practice, especially in the federal courts, by proving that the words ‘gentleman’ and ‘great defense lawyer’ were not mutually exclusive.”

He mentored three generations of lawyers, said U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly, who once worked for him. “He was an amazing orator, and he was the most even-tempered lawyer I have ever met.”

“Chicago is blessed with many great lawyers, but prior to his retirement, George was the best of all,” said U.S. District Judge Charles P. Kocoras. “His greatest virtue, however, was not as a professional person, but as a human being. George was the epitome of class, civility, and possessed with the joy of life.”

Mr. Cotsirilos was proud of his Greek heritage. He celebrated his 90th birthday last October at Spiaggia by performing with some Greek dancers, his wife said.

He is also survived by his sister Betty Angelos; his daughter Stephanie Cotsirilos; his son John; his stepchildren Colin Hall, Christina Hall, Lynn Hall and Justin Hall, and eight grandchildren.

His wake will be from 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Donnellan Funeral Home, 10045 N. Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Mr. Cotsirilos’ funeral will be at 11 a.m. Thursday at Sts. Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church, 1401 Wagner, Glenview.