Evening Post TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1931. TWO GREAT CRIMES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 8

Evening Post TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1931. TWO GREAT CRIMES

Two of the most extraordinary crimes in the history of Chicago have been once more filling ihcfront pages of the American newspapers during the last fortnight. On the 14th February, 1929, some of Capone's men disguised as policemen arrested seven members of a rival gang, lined them up against a wall for the ostensible purposes of search, and mowed,.lhem down with machine-gun fire—a crime which for ihc audacity of its conception, the faultless ingenuity of its execution, and its decisive effect upon the control of one of the greatest industries of a great city can have few, if any, parallels in Chicago or anywhere else. Though far behind this crime in all the respects mentioned, the murder of Alfred Lingle, a reporter of the "Chicago Tribune," on the 9th June last, stirred the public opinion of that normally callous city far more profoundly, instituted a great drive against crime of unexampled intensity, and under the slogan "Chicago's war is the nation's war" had its effect all over the Union. Consecutive weeks have now brought both these great crimes into the limelight again. On the 261h March Fred Burke .was arrested for his share in the Valentine's Day massacre. And on Saturday last a Chicago jury actually found Leo Brothers guilty of the murder of Lingle, and sentence of fourteen years' imprisonment was passed upon him. Burke is described by the Chicago police as "the most dangerous man alive," to which Mr. Fred. D. Pasley adds in his "Al Capone" that he is also "the most wanted man" in America. If Capone himself might possibly dispute the first of these titles, the second is certainly beyond his reach, for the fact that the most powerful of Chicago's criminals is far 100 powerful to be wanted by a police force under the control" of "Big Bill" Thompson is notoriously at the rool of the city's troubles. According to our cabled report, a large number of crimes are charged to Burke, including half a dozen murders, besides tho St. Valentine's Day affair, and robberies of amounts totalling 1,000,000 dollars. Mr. Pasley supplies some interesting particulars. Fred. Burke, he writes, America's most wanted man, and its most danaerous criminal; for whose apprehension rewards totalling 75,000 dollars havo been posted in Kentucky, Indiana, and Wisconsin for bank robberies, and by the United States Government for a National Bank ~ robbery. Wanted ill Ohio for the murder of a policeman; in Michigan for the same crime. In St. Joe, of the latter State, December 14, 1929, he shot down Patrolman Charles Skelly in cold blood, when Skelly sought to adjust a traffic argument with him. Burke, formerly- of Egan s Rats, St. Louis, is a professional killer whose services are for hire to the highest bidder. Notorious for his disguises, in the Moran gang massacre he yore a policeman's uniform; in the Lingle lulling he posed as a priest, it is believed. The last of these items shows that Burke can claim the unique distinction of association with the two most sensational of Chicago's crimes. With the second, however, his connection, if established, may seem to be unworthy of his great talents, for the priest who was close by in the railway subway when Lingle was killed had no part in the shooting. But it is, of course, quite possible that he was acting not merely as emergency man but as director of the whole gang. Neither in the planning nor in the carrying out of this murder, however, was' there anything above the commonplace. The reason for the unique impression which it made upon public opinion, and which won for an obscure newspaper reporter a funeral unequalled even by the honours of war paid to a fallen gangster chief, was that he, too, was believed to have fallen on the field of battle but in an honourable warfare. Lingle's paper, the "Chicago Tribune," had been playing a conspicuous part in the newspaper campaign against crime, and two days after his death it wrote as follows in a leading article entitled "The Challenge":— There have been eleven gang murders in ten days. That has become the accepted course of crime in its natural stride, but '0 tho list of Colosimo, O'Banion, the Gennas, Murphy, "Weiss, Lombardo, Esposito, and the seven who were killed in the St. Valentine's Day massacre the name is added of a man whose business was to cxposo the work of the killers. The "Tribune" accepts this challenge. It is war. The funeral of Lingle passed, and the great moral drive which was to wipe out profiteering in crime and free the city from the domination of gangsters and their accomplices and dupes was begun, under the impression represented by/the "Tribune's" article. Lingle had fallen at the post of duty, fighting the battle not merely of the newspaper which employed him but of everybody concerned for the decency and efficiency of the city's public life. And so all decent citizens were roused to do honour to his memory and to help the cause for which he had worked and died. But the sympathy and admiration did not last long, and what remained of the enthusiasm was given a different basis. The man who had served the "Tribune" (or eighteen years and was on such familiar terms with the police that he was the Commissioner's bosom friend, and "knew all the coppers by their first nnnirs," had acquired an inlinialr know Ink-

lof the city's crime and become an invaluable police reporter. But it was not because he knew more about crime than was good for the criminals that Lingle was murdered. For tlic greater part of his professional life he had been leading a double life. Instead of spying upon llie gangsters he had become their ac-

complice, and the salary of about £650 a year which he was paid as a reporter was a trifle in comparison with the £12,000 which the criminal associations based upon that position had enabled him lo draw. The Jckyll in this astonishing man had had a unique public funeral, but the mourners did not then know the value of The Hyde estate or the means by which it had been acquired! Mr. Pasley derived unique qualifications for telling ihe story of Lingle and Capone from the fact that whereas Lingle, who was his senior on the "Tribune" slaff by six years, was merely a "leg man"—a reporter who docs, not write—it was part of Mr. Paslcy's duly as a "rewrite man" to write him up . Mr. Pasley sums up the paradox of his colleague's career in a graphic paragraph:—

Who was Ijiuglc? A prize specimen of the era. A 65-dollar, a week man, posthumously revealed as having had an income of (50,000 dollars a year; who admitted he had "fixed the price of beer" in Chicago; who was labelled the "Unofficial Chief of Police"; who drove a Lincoln car, with a chauffeur; plunged on the stock market and on the races; lived at tho best hotels; owned, or was buying, an 18,000-dollaj.1 summer home in the Michigan Riviera, at Longßeaeh, Indiana; hobnobbed ■with millionaires; with tho Governor of Illinois, the Attorney-General of the State; with Judges and County and City officials; golfed and vacationed with the Commissioner of Police, and speculated with him—and wore, even as Esposito and Vale, what has come to be regarded as the gangster emblem, a diamondstudded belt-buckle given to him by Capone. "A Christmas" present," said Al. "Jake was a dear friend of mine." He was "some" reporter —this JekyllHyde, accomplice of Capone's, upon whom in June last all that was best in Chicago conferred the halo of martyrdom!