Rick Halprin, a prominent criminal defense attorney whose clients included the infamous mobster Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, died Tuesday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Hyde Park condominium, authorities said.
Mr. Halprin, 73, was pronounced dead at 10 a.m. Tuesday in his home in the 1000 block of East 53rd Street, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. The office listed a preliminary cause of death as a suicide, but an autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday.
Authorities were serving an eviction notice at his condominium when his body was found, said police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli.
William Murphy, Mr. Halprin's law partner "on and off for years," remembered Mr. Halprin as a "great advocate" and a "fighter." The two men met nearly 50 years ago when Mr. Halprin was working as a bartender on Rush Street, Murphy said.
"He made you laugh all the time. I think that's why we got along so well," Murphy said. "He was a character. There was no one like him."
A busy lawyer and avid hockey player, Mr. Halprin suffered from severe back pain that in recent years had forced him to give up both activities, Murphy said.
"He played hockey until he was 70. That was one of his biggest disappointments — that he couldn't play hockey," said Murphy.
Halprin grew up on Chicago's North Side, according to attorney and friend Tom Durkin. His father ran a cleaning business at Oak and Wells streets.
Jerome Feldman, a law partner of Mr. Halprin's in the 1970s and the best man at two of his three weddings, said Mr. Halprin studied at John Marshall Law School and passed the Massachusetts bar exam before standing for the Illinois bar.
One of Mr. Halprin's ex-wives, Robyn Douglass, described him as a "die-hard" Marine who once told her he wanted "Semper Fi" written on his tombstone.
"He was bona fide all the way. He served in Vietnam, and his back got shattered in Vietnam,'' she said.
Douglass, an actress who starred in movies including "Breaking Away," said she met Mr. Halprin in the late 1980s when she was working with an animal rights group and hired him to defend demonstrators in Lake County.
"He loved the courtroom," she said. When she wanted him to retire, he declined, so she moved to California, where she now runs a bed-and-breakfast.
"The thing about Rick was he was so well-respected. He was a guy who was committed to the Constitution. He was good at it and he knew he was good at it," she said. "They knew it was going to be a professional fight with no shenanigans.
"Everything was Marine-like perfection. That's him. There were no backroom games."
Durkin, who tried many cases with Mr. Halprin, called him "the consummate trial lawyer."
"He was professional in every sense of the word and he was always the best-dressed lawyer in the courtroom,'' Durkin said.
"He had that rare combination of being smart, smooth and street-smart, which not a lot of trial lawyers have," Durkin said.
Mr. Halprin, who played professional hockey in a minor league, was even missing teeth from the sport, according to Durkin.
"He loved to tell the story about being hit by a Bobby Hull slap shot on the ice at the old Chicago Stadium while scrimmaging,'' Durkin said.
Mr. Halprin is survived by a daughter.
Information on services was not available.
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