Golden (62 page)

In just hours, the news of Kelly's death broke on a bright Saturday morning. Kelly's comments to reporters at the Dirksen courthouse just days earlier had been prophetic.

Some bloggers instantly began speculating that maybe Kelly was murdered, comparing the death to that of Vince Foster. The mindless conjecture wasn't helped by a press conference held that weekend by the Country Club Hills Mayor Dwight Welch, who flashed Flores-Buhelos's ID on TV and said she had “lawyered up” and wasn't talking to investigators. Flores-Buhelos's attorney, Terry Gillespie, fired back, “The mayor's a jackass. The girl's best friend in life just died hours before.” The mayor also described Allen as a “mystery man” who was trying to take the Escalade away from the scene of an ongoing criminal investigation. Allen's decision to hide evidence didn't help matters either.

But in a matter of days, Flores-Buhelos talked to police and Allen came forward and handed over the Wal-Mart bag full of pills. The medical examiner's office later determined Kelly overdosed on salicylate, an ingredient found in aspirin, and acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient. He also had Benadryl in his body.

The day after Kelly died, Rod Blagojevich was on the radio, hosting a weekly program on WLS. He all but blamed Kelly's death on the stress prosecutors placed on him to testify against the former governor. In New York to promote his new book,
The Governor,
about his view of his life and the criminal case against him, Blagojevich still took to the airwaves in Chicago, saying, “Chris Kelly took his life because of the pressure he was under.”

“He refused to make it easier on himself to lie about someone else,” Blagojevich said. “My friend Chris Kelly's death will not be in vain.”

Without directly discussing Kelly's problems with addiction, Blagojevich said, “Chris was a person with big appetites. He had some vices, but he also had virtues … and so, now for my friend Chris, all his trials are now over.”

Four days after his death, on a warm morning in the middle of September, about two hundred gathered at St. John of the Cross Catholic Church in Western Springs. News cameras and reporters gathered on the sidewalks around the modest structure in the upper-middle-class suburb west of the city. Quinlan was there, as were Chicago Alderman Ed Burke and all four members of the Blagojevich family. The Blagojeviches sat noticeably right behind Kelly's family and wiped away tears throughout the ceremony, Rod hugging Amy when she appeared upset.

The eulogy was given by Kelly's brother, Charles, who confided that when he spoke to Chris about his funeral plans he wanted to make sure they were brief and simple. A former federal prosecutor and attorney working in Las Vegas, Charles Kelly never mentioned Blagojevich in the eulogy.

“Christopher Kelly is at peace,” he said. “Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Blagojevich's second national publicity tour was similar to his first, a whirlwind of appearances on shows to tout his innocence. On
Jimmy Kimmel Live
he autographed the chair he sat in, and Kimmel then “sold the seat” on
the Internet. It was TV host and native Chicagoan Bonnie Hunt that probably gave Blagojevich the toughest time.

“At some point, even for your own children, don't you want to be accountable?” she asked. “Sometimes you make bad choices.”

For once, Blagojevich seemed rattled and raised his voice.

“These are false accusations, and there are taped conversations that will set the record straight,” he said. “That's the truth. I'm the one that wants you all to hear them. My accusers don't. Now what does that tell you?”

“You went to law school. I didn't,” Hunt answered. “I'm only a nurse, but I might inject you with something just to get you to quiet down.”

On Howard Stern's radio show, Blagojevich was a little more in his element.

The shock jock said he was pulling for the former governor. In New York, Eliot Spitzer had resigned as the state's governor months before Blagojevich's arrest, and Stern wanted to know if Blagojevich felt any empathy for him. Sure, said Blagojevich, but he mostly felt bad for Spitzer's wife, because Spitzer had been embroiled in scandal as the client of a call girl. As for the two former governors, there wasn't much of a comparison in Blagojevich's mind. Spitzer had done what he was accused of, while Blagojevich was innocent.

“He got a blow job, and I got fucked,” Blagojevich said.

Stern's sidekick, Artie Lange, couldn't hold his tongue.

“I thought he got fucked, too,” he said.

In court, both Monk and Harris pleaded guilty, and Blagojevich repeatedly made the playing of as many tapes as possible his top priority when a jury heard his case. Like seemingly everything else that pertained to Blagojevich, it was an upside-down scenario. Most defendants fight to keep as many secret recordings as they can out of their trial, while Blagojevich wanted just the opposite. If a jury heard every tape in context, the governor said repeatedly, it would see his point that he was just bouncing ideas around and looking to come up with the best options, not plotting to do something illegal. It was a message Blagojevich trumpeted when he finally got his own slot on a national reality show,
Celebrity Apprentice,
before he was “fired” by Donald Trump. He worked hard to paint himself as innocent, even as viewers across the country got to see that the former Illinois governor could
barely operate a computer. And that wasn't the first time his message to the world was blurred by distractions. In its February 2010 issue,
Esquire
magazine carried a long, mostly positive, feature about him where an out-of-town author questioned Fitzgerald's prosecution and Blagojevich contended he had been stolen from the people. He had the truth on his side, and unlike most politicians, he told the magazine, he was a real person.

“I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment,” he was quoted as saying, a sentiment that required him to issue an apology.

In the spring of 2010, his push reached a fever pitch just weeks before his trial was to begin. Nothing had worked to publicly shame prosecutors into allowing all of the tapes into the case. To them, many of the recordings were off-point. And all told, there were hundreds of them. It was the prosecutors' burden to prove Blagojevich guilty, and they got to pick and choose the tapes they thought were relevant to that end. Blagojevich's defense could argue to have more tapes played, but it was clear to most observers that Judge James Zagel, who was overseeing the case, wasn't simply going to open the flood gates to any tape at any time. The trial would have taken months to complete.

But Blagojevich wasn't going to give up. He called a press conference on the street outside the Adams' law office on the South Side and all but challenged Fitzgerald to a duel. He summoned the media just in time for the evening Chicago newscasts to take his tirade live. There was a court hearing the next day, fittingly set for high noon, and Blagojevich wanted a commitment to be able to play the tapes he wanted to prove his innocence.

Fitzgerald had lied to the public when he accused Blagojevich of engaging in a crime spree, Blagojevich said, and now Fitzgerald was keeping tapes out of the case that would show the ex-governor hadn't done things the way prosecutors said he had. His anger was apparent even under several layers of pancake TV makeup.

“I challenge Mr. Fitzgerald. Why don't you show up in court tomorrow and explain to everybody, say to the whole world why you don't want those tapes that you made played in court?” Blagojevich spat. “I'll be in court tomorrow. I hope you're man enough to be there tomorrow too.”

Well, Fitzgerald wasn't, and Zagel didn't take kindly to the ploy. Instead of starting a serious hearing on the former governor's plea to let a jury hear everything, the judge scolded him like a child. You don't get to have whatever you want, was the message from the bench. Knowing Blagojevich's
personal history, Zagel explained that it was just like boxing. There are rules that everyone has to follow. Blagojevich was left to nod along as the judge sounded like a parent explaining something for the one millionth time.

“Those rules are enforced by the referee, not by the boxers. I am that referee, no one else,” the judge said. “I will not permit the legal equivalent of head butts.”

And no punching below the belt, probably, but it didn't seem like the defense got the message. Unable to have the jury hear what they wanted it to hear, a major defense motion appeared on the public docket, asking to be able to call President Obama as a witness. Obama could discuss what role certain messengers to Blagojevich played in the situation and possibly rebut the testimony of witnesses like Rezko, who might take the stand and slam both the president and Blagojevich over his past dealings with them. Many of the motions filed by both sides to that point included redacted sections that were blacked out if they covered sensitive topics, but this one had come in without its key sections censored. Defense lawyers would swear they didn't do it on purpose, and that one among them had simply made a mistake when filing the document electronically in court records. But nonetheless, the damage was done, and the information was out in the jury pool.

The defense motion showed that in a closed session with a judge, prosecutors had revealed some of what Rezko told them. The information included that Rezko had sought to influence the man who became president with illegal campaign money and that he used a lobbyist to hold a fundraiser for Obama in exchange for favorable governmental action.

Obama always denied Rezko ever asked him to do anything illegal and said he had never done anything in that category. But in the end, that didn't matter, Judge Zagel would later rule. The defense fell “very short” of showing Obama's testimony was needed. Nothing Zagel saw, including notes from an FBI interview of Obama, showed that the president was aware of the specifics of Blagojevich's attempts to illegally bargain with him. Obama had maintained enough distance from the governor to keep himself removed from what was going to play out in court. And Obama's role didn't really matter anyway, Zagel said; it was Blagojevich's belief about what was happening—his perception of events—that really counted.