The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes by Roger Wilkes Read Free Book Online Page A

uneasiness about the character of its martyr. “We do not know why this reporter was killed,” it admitted, “but we are engaged in finding out and we expect to be successful. It may take time; the quicker the better, but this enlistment is for duration. It may require long, patient efforts, but the Tribune is prepared for that, and hopes that some lasting results will be obtained which will stamp justice on the face of the crime.” To endorse its new crusading resolution, two days later the Tribune added to its Platform for Chicagoland on the masthead of its centre page “ END THE REIGN OF GANGDOM ”. Appended was an explanatory editorial: “The killers, the racketeers who exact tribute from businessmen and union labour, the politicians who use and shield the racketeers, the policemen and judges who have been prostituted by politicians, all must go.”
    Ten days elapsed, and there had obviously been some concentrated rethinking by McCormick and his editorial executives. The word-of-mouth buzz about Lingle’s background and liaisons that was meanwhile racing around Chicago, supported by somewhat less reverent stories in other newspapers, evidently induced the Tribune to take a revised, frank, let’s-face-it attitude. On 30 June a column-and-a-half editorial was published. Under the heading “ THE LINGLE MURDER ”, it read: “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. It could be both, a murder to prevent a disclosure and to give warning against attempts at others.
    “It had been expected that in due time the reprisals which have killed gangster after gangster in the city would be attempted against any other persons or agencies which undertook to interfere with the incredibly profitable criminality. No one had been punished for any of these murders. They have been bizarre beyond belief, and, being undetected, have been assumed, not least by their perpetrators, to be undetectable—at least not to be punishable.
    “When, then, Lingle was shot by an assassin the Tribune assumed that the criminals had taken the next logical step and were beginning their attack upon newspaper exposure. The Herald and Examiner and the Chicago Evening Post joined the Tribune in offering rewards for evidence which would lead to conviction of the murderers. The newspaper publishers met and made a common cause against the new tactics of gangland. The preliminary investigation has modified some of the first assumptions, although it has not given the situation a different essence.
    “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. He was not, and he could not have been a great reporter. His ability did not contain these possibilities. He did not write stories, but he could get information in police circles. He was not and he could not be influential in the acts of his newspaper, but he could be useful and honest, and that is what the Tribune management took him to be. His salary was commensurate with his work. 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 his undertakings which made him money and brought him to his death . . .
    “There are weak men on other newspapers and in other professions, in positions of trust and responsibility greater than that of Alfred Lingle. The Tribune , although naturally disturbed by the discovery that this reporter was engaged in practices contrary to the code of its honest reporters and abhorred by the policy of the newspaper, does not find that the main objectives of