By Frank Main
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — An imprisoned Chicago cop claims in an interview with Playboy he’s innocent of a plot to kill a fellow officer - and blames his former partner for being the one who wanted to carry out a hit.
Last year, Jerome Finnigan was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to a murder-for-hire plot.
In court, he admitted he tried to arrange the murder of a cop he suspected was talking to the feds about thefts that he and other cops committed on drug dealers and innocent citizens.
But in the April edition of Playboy, Finnigan changed his story, laying the blame on ex-partner Keith Herrera, who wore a wire on Finnigan to expose the plot.
In 2007, Herrera was “raging” about killing informants, Finnigan told Playboy. “To humor Herrera - and prevent him from acting on his threats - Finnigan says he pretended to contact a professional hit man to do the ‘paint job,’ a term he picked up from reading I Heard You Paint Houses, Charles Brandt’s book about the mobster who claimed to have killed Jimmy Hoffa,” wrote story author Hillel Levin.
“Finnigan then told Herrera he got a quote of $40,000 for the job from the professional - a price he knew Herrera couldn’t afford,” Levin wrote. “But Herrera wouldn’t let the scheme die. He claimed to have found his own contractor at a more reasonable price, and he asked Finnigan for a picture he had of [the target] that Herrera could show his hit man. They met at their local Walgreens and Finnigan handed it over.”
Two days later, on Sept. 26, 2007, Finnigan was arrested based on the information Herrera provided.
But according to prosecutors, Finnigan told Herrera that a relative knew gang members willing to kill a cop for $5,000. Herrera began cooperating with authorities because he was worried Finnigan was serious, Herrera’s attorney, Robert Kuzas, said. Kuzas called Finnigan’s description of the plot “complete fiction.”