Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone

by John Kobler

  Whatever kept Lingle out so late, it was not dissipation. He was a faithful husband, and he limited his drinking to a glass or two of beer. He had a stomach ulcer. His one vice was gambling. He frequently risked $1,000 or more on a horse race.

  Such extravagance for a $65-a-week legman puzzled Lingle's colleagues until he told them that his father had bequeathed him $50,000. Also, he said, the value of some stocks he bought during the 1928 bull market had almost tripled.

  Since he worked for a morning newspaper, Lingle seldom bestirred himself before noon. On June 9 at that hour he left the Stevens Hotel and strolled a mile and a half north to the Tribune Tower. He talked briefly with the city editor about rumors of another gang upheaval that he was trying to verify, then continued on his way. It was race day at the Washington Park track in Homewood, a day of cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine. Having decided to dispense with his car and chauffeur, Lingle walked south across Wacker Drive toward the suburban station of the Illinois Central Railroad, two blocks distant at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue. He had almost an hour to spare before the one thirty racetrack special left, and he took a slight detour for a bite of lunch in the coffee shop of the Hotel Sherman, two blocks west of the avenue. Upon entering the lobby, he ran into Police Sergeant Tom Alcock, to whom he made a strange remark. "I'm being tailed," he said without further explanation. He did not appear troubled.

  Retracing his steps to Randolph Street, he stopped at the newsstand in front of the Public Library to buy the Daily Racing Form. A man he knew called to him from a car parked at the curb: "Play Hy Schneider in the third, Jake." "I've got him," Lingle called back. Lighting a cigar, he hurried down the stairs into the pedestrian tunnel running under Michigan Avenue to the station. He was too absorbed in his paper to notice the old friend walking ahead of him, Dr. Joseph Springer, a former medical examiner. Nor did he pay any attention to the commotion behind him caused by the tall blond young man who, in his haste, was elbowing people aside. As Lingle reached the east ramp, the young man fetched up within a few inches of him, took a gun out of his pocket, and leveled it at his head. The bullet plowed through Lingle's brain, and he fell forward, the Racing Form clutched in his hands, the still-burning cigar in his mouth.

  At least fourteen people saw the killer in the course of his flight. Dropping his gun, he ran back to the stairway at the opposite end of the tunnel and took the steps two or three at a bound, colliding with a man coming down. He paused at the top, then zigzagged through the traffic across Michigan Avenue. In the tunnel a woman shouted: "Isn't somebody going to stop him!" and her husband dashed up. the steps in pursuit. But the killer outdistanced him. From Randolph Street he dashed through a maze of alleys to Wabash and lost himself in the crowd.

  Dr. Springer, the first to reach Lingle's body, felt his pulse. He was dead.

  It was Chicago's eleventh murder in ten days.

  The meaning of this murder is plain [thus spoke the mighty Tribune]. It was committed in reprisal and in an attempt at intimidation. Mr. Lingle was a police reporter and an exceptionally well informed one. His personal friendships included the highest police officials and the contacts of his work made him familiar to most of the big and little fellows of gangland. What made him valuable to his newspaper marked him as dangerous to the killers.

  It was very foolish to think that assassination would be confined to the gangs which have fought each other for the profits of crime in Chicago. The immunity from punishment after gang murders would be assumed to cover the committing of others. Citizens who interfered with the criminals were no better protected than the gangmen who fought each other for the revenue from liquor selling, coercion of labor and trade, brothel house keeping and gambling... .

  [Murder] has become the accepted course of crime in its natural stride, but to the list of Colosimo, O'Banion, the Gennas, Murphy, Weiss, Lombardo, Esposito, the seven who were killed in the St. Valentine's clay massacre, the name is added of a man whose business was to expose the work of the killers.

  The Tribune accepts this challenge. It is war. There will be casualties, but that is to be expected, it being war. . ..,The challenge of crime to the community must be accepted. It has been given with bravado. It is accepted. Justice will make a fight of it or will abdicate.

  In a message condoling with the Tribune, the president of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association, Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, eulogized the slain reporter as a "first line soldier" in their campaign against outlawry, and his fellow press lords the country over joined him in demanding that Lingle's martyrdom be swiftly avenged.

  For information leading to the murderer's conviction Colonel McCormick posted a $25,000 reward. Hearst's Chicago Herald and Examiner matched it, the Evening Post added $5,000, and various civic groups brought the total to $55,725. Convening the Chicago Newspaper Publishers' Association, of which he was president, immediately following Lingle's funeral on June 12, McCormick proposed to set up a special investigative committee under the joint command of Charles F. Rathbun, a Tribune lawyer, and Patrick T. Roche, chief investigator for the State's Attorney's office, the Tribune to pay all expenses beyond what the county could spend. The publishers concurred, and State's Attorney Swanson raised no objections.

  The meeting had barely adjourned before the image of Lingle as martyr began to crumble. One of the earliest intimations of the truth was received by Frank Wilson. Talking to Frankie Pope the morning after the murder, he mentioned the conference that was to have taken place. Pope sneered. "Jake was a fixer," he said, and the facts he recited convinced Wilson. Later that day a reporter whom Wil son once did a good turn phoned to chat about the Lingle case. This was John T. Rogers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Wilson had once put him in the way of exposing a corrupt federal judge. The story won a 1927 Pulitzer Prize. Without betraying his informer, Wilson now passed along Pope's disclosures. After making his own investigation, Rogers called McCormick, told him what he had discovered, and announced that the Post-Dispatch would shortly print it. The colonel exploded.

  The first findings of Rathbun and Roche afforded McCormick no comfort. Street rumors concerning Lingle's extra-journalistic activities had prompted them to look into his financial status. Probate Court records showed that the senior Lingle had left his son not $50,000, but less than $500. As for the reporter's vaunted stock market killing, it was true, the investigators learned from the four brokerage houses in which he kept trading accounts, that had he liquidated his securities at the peak of the bull market in September, 1929, he would have turned a profit of $85,000, but he held them, and on October 24-the Black Thursday that heralded the Depression-the paper profit, plus $75,000 more, evaporated. His friend Russell suffered with him, for in one of the brokerage firms they had opened a joint account.

  Yet Lingle did not lower his standard of living; he raised it, if anything. Moreover, between the end of 1928 and the spring of 1930 he deposited in-the Lake Shore Savings and Trust Bank a total of $63,900. Where did he get the money? Rathbun established $12,800 of it as "loans" by politicians, police officers and gamblers-loans not repaid-but the question was never fully answered.

  The dark rumors multiplied: They pictured Lingle as the liaison between the Capone organization and City Hall, as the protector of bootleggers and gamblers, using his influence with the Police Department in their behalf. While Mayor Thompson was debating whether to dismiss his police commissioner, Russell relieved Deputy Commissioner Stege from his command of the detective bureau, then resigned himself.

  The rumors dealt a severe blow to journalistic pride. The corrupting force of gangsterism in league with politicians, spreading like an oil slick, had stained the community in almost every strand of its fabric. But the press held itself to be inviolable. The press accused, the press judged, and the press took for granted the integrity of its reporters and writers. Now, through the dereliction of one of the Tribune's most valued reporters, it, too, fell under obloquy. How many other newspapermen, the publ
ic was asking, did politicians or gangsters control?

  McCormick swallowed the bitter pill, and on June 18 the Tribune ran its second major editorial about the Lingle case.

  When Alfred Lingle was murdered the motive seemed to be apparent ... his newspaper saw no other explanation than that his killers either thought he was close to information dangerous to them or intended the murder as notice given the newspapers that crime was ruler in Chicago. .. .

  Alfred Lingle now takes a different character, one in which he was unknown to the management of the Tribune when he was alive. He is dead and cannot defend himself, but many facts now revealed must be accepted as eloquent against him. . . . The reasonable appearance against Lingle now is that he was accepted in the world of politics and crime for something undreamed of in his office and that he used this in undertakings which made him money and brought him to his death. . . .

  If a trusted employee of the Tribune had been capable of such iniquity, might not its rival newspapers also be tainted? The colonel chose to believe so, especially as his competitors were gloating over his discomfiture. The editorial writer added sourly: "There are weak men on other newspapers."

  A second St. Louis reporter, Harry T.' Brundige of the Star, took his cue from this and proceeded to investigate the Chicago press. In a series of ten articles he revealed that:

  Julius Rosenheim, a tipster for the Daily News, killed by gangsters the preceding February, had blackmailed bootleggers, gamblers and brothelkeepers with threats of exposure in the News;

  James Murphy, a police reporter, had been discharged by the Times upon his admission that he was the partner of a speakeasy owner;

  Ted Tod, a criminal court reporter for the Herald-Examiner, doubled as press agent for the North Side gang's Fairview Kennel Club dog track;

  Matt Foley, assistant circulation manager of the same newspaper, promoted a lottery that swindled thousands (he was later convicted of fraud but only fined $250) ;

  Harry Read, city editor of the Evening American, had been Capone's guest in Miami half a dozen times and accompanied him on a junket to Havana.

  Brundige alleged improprieties or criminal offenses against employees of nearly every newspaper in Chicago except the Tribune. The omission, combined with the Tribune's publication of his series, gave rise to the suspicion that McCormick had put Brundige up to it. "There's no use beating about the bush," he had told the Star reporter. "If the newspapers of Chicago are to maintain a foremost place in the life of this country, we must clean house. The Tribune has nothing to conceal. It is bigger than any or all of its personnel and I will not only discharge but prosecute any man on our payroll who has used his employment dishonestly . . . I will personally request the grand jury to make a thorough investigation of all facts and rumors having to do with alliances between newspapermen of Chicago and the underworld."

  With no assurance that Capone would talk to him, Brundige stepped off the train in Miami at 8:15 P.M. on July 16, after a twoday trip from St. Louis, and took a taxi to Palm Island. As soon as the bodyguard announced him, Capone appeared, beaming. "This is a surprise," he said. "Come on in." He led him to the sun porch and seated him facing the moon-speckled Biscayne Bay. "You seem to have raised hell in Chicago. What brings you here?"

  "I thought I'd ask you who killed Jake Lingle?" said Brundige.

  "Why ask me?" Then, after a moment's pause: "The Chicago police know who killed him."

  "Was Jake your friend?"

  "Yes, up to the very day he died."

  "Did you have a row with him?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "It is said you fell out with him because he failed to split profits from handbooks."

  "Bunk, bunk. The handbook racket hasn't been really organized in Chicago for more than two years."

  "How many rackets was Lingle engaged in?" Capone shrugged. "What was the matter with Lingle?"

  "The horse races."

  "How many other Lingles are there in Chicago?"

  "In the newspaper racket? Phooey-don't ask."

  "How many reporters do you have on your payroll?"

  "Plenty."

  They talked for almost four hours. "Listen, Harry," Capone said toward the end, throwing an arm around his shoulders, "I like your face. Let me give you a hot tip: Lay off Chicago and the moneyhungry reporters. You're right and because you're right, you're wrong. You can't buck it, not even with the backing of your newspaper, because it's too big a proposition. No one will ever realize just how big it is, so lay off. They'll make a monkey out of you before you get through. No matter what dope you give that grand jury, the boys will prove you're a liar and a faker. You'll get a trimming."

  "I'm going to quote you as saying that," Brundige forewarned him.

  "If you do, I'll deny it."

  Both the Star and the Tribune printed the interview, and as promised, Capone branded it a fabrication.

  In its final report the July grand jury declared itself unable to substantiate any of Brundige's allegations against his fellow newspapermen.

  The prime physical clue to Lingle's assassin was the revolver he dropped in his flight. It was a snub-nosed .38-caliber Colt, a detective special, also called a belly gun because triggermen commonly carried one stuck inside their trouser waistband. The manufacturer's serial number had been filed off. The die that stamps the number on a gun leaves two impressions. The second, deep in the metal and invisible to the eye, is known as the tattoo. Colonel Goddard had developed a process for raising the tattoo. He would grind down the surface as far as the second impression, polish it, and treat it with an etching solution of alcohol and acids. Coroner Bundesen telephoned the number thus uncovered to the Colt factory in Hartford, Connecticut, and within the hour the revolver was identified as one of six delivered in June, 1928, a year before the Lingle murder, to-who else?-Peter von Frantzius. Though the gunsmith had committed no crime under the still-lax gun laws, Bundesen, a detective and a young Tribune reporter, John Boettiger, managed between them to terrify him into revealing the purchaser. He named Frank Foster, a Sicilian, born Citro, a veteran O'Banionite and one of the first bootleggers to im port Canadian whiskey. Another North Sider, Ted Newberry, accompanied him when he bought the six revolvers, and it was at Newberry's insistence that Von Frantzius filed off the serial numbers. Both Newberry and Foster had recently defected to the Capone ranks.

  Since none of the witnesses to Lingle's murder recognized Foster from the photographs the police showed them, the investigators concluded that he himself did not pull the trigger, though he probably knew who did and was therefore an accessory to the crime. Failing to find him in his accustomed Chicago haunts, they launched a nationwide search. It ended in Los Angeles, to which Foster had fled two days after the murder. He was extradited and indicted as an accomplice of the murderer, but following his lawyers' fourth demand for trial, State's Attorney Swanson conceded the evidence to be insufficient to warrant further prosecution and entered a nolle prosequi.

  The case against Foster was one of many to collapse.

  A few days before Lingle died, John J. "Boss" McLaughlin, a former state legislator and political fixer for the North Side gang, opened a gambling house at 606 West Madison Street. Commissioner Russell promptly closed it. McLaughlin thereupon telephoned Lingle at the Tribune, asking him to intercede. A reporter, whom Lingle signaled to listen in on an extension, later reconstructed the conversation verbatim from his notes.

  MCLAUGHLIN-Swanson told me it was all right to go ahead and I don't see why Russell is butting in.

  LINGLE-I don't believe Swanson told you any such thing, but if it's true, you get Swanson to write a letter to Russell, notifying him that it's all right for you to go ahead.

  MCLAUGHLIN-DO you think Swanson is crazy? He wouldn't write such a letter.

  LINGLE-Well, Russell can't let you run. That's final.

  MCLAUGHLIN-(cursing) I'll catch up with you and it won't be long either.

  McLaughlin was picked up within hours of
the murder. "Why, I wouldn't hurt a hair of Jake's head," he assured Roche. "I liked Jake. I might have asked him a favor or two, but I certainly never wished him harm." In the absence of any evidence other than a threat uttered in anger, Roche let him go.

  At their zenith, before the St. Valentine's Day massacre, Bugs Moran's North Siders extended their protection to one of Chicago's most elegant gambling houses, the oddly named Sheridan Wave Tournament Club on Waveland Avenue, which Julian "Potatoes" Kaufman operated in partnership with Joey Brooks, alias Josephs. Admission was by invitation only. Liveried attendants served food and drink at no charge to the fashionable clientele, who nightly enriched the owners by tens of thousands of dollars. Twenty-five percent of the gross went to Moran, and Lingle was rumored to receive 10 percent. When, in June, 1928, the police under Commissioner Michael Hughes raided the club, judge Harry Fisher, he who had ruled dog racing to be legal, professed to view it as "an orderly private athletic club," and he enjoined the police "from annoying, molesting or in any manner interfering with the complainant in its lawful conduct of its members."

  A year later, following the decline of Moran's prestige, Hughes' successor, Russell, directed another raid. This time the club stayed dark for a year before Kaufman and Brooks, with Moran's backing, determined to reopen it. Engraved invitations to the first nightJune 9-were sent to the old clientele. Lingle had demanded a 50 percent cut. The partners refused. "If this joint is opened up," Lingle was reported to have said, "you'll see more squad cars in front ready to raid it than you ever saw before in your life."