Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [25]
But I found myself in a terribly uncomfortable situation after one murder a decade ago – in the middle of a gang faction’s efforts to convince the world that the facts of their case were not quite as they appeared. South Side policy king, Theodore Roe, had been asked to turn over his territory to the syndicate, but he refused. Moreover, he allegedly had tried to pin the murder of a police lieutenant, William Drury, on Marshall Caifano and three colleagues. So Leonard Caifano, Marshall’s elder brother, went calling, allegedly to kidnap Roe. But Leonard ended up dead. His colleagues held Roe responsible for the slaying. The next body to fall was Roe’s.
The police sought Marshall for questioning. Early one morning underworld chums of the late Leonard stopped me in the street on the Near North Side. “Leonard and his pals never intended to kidnap Roe when they curbed his car,” they explained. “They just wanted to rough him up – break some bones, you know – for turning stool pigeon. You don’t jerk a guy by the lapels if you’re going to kidnap him.” In other words, they claimed it was all a mistake.
Even in a situation like that, a reporter always has questions to ask. I asked. The key ones they ignored. (And I wasn’t pressing them!) When one of them said, “We done enough talking,” the “interview” was over.
The next day I wrote a column about the incident and the case. That’s the last I ever heard of it – including the question of convicting anybody for the killings.
But over the years not all encounters with hoodlums have ended as uneventfully as this for newspapermen. As Chicagoans well know, one of the city’s most publicized killings involved a reporter. It was June 9, 1930. Alfred (“Jake”) Lingle, a Tribune reporter who had covered some of the biggest stories on the police beat, was strolling through the Illinois Central Railroad subway at Michigan Avenue and Randolph en route to a train bound for the Washington Park Race Track. Suddenly a gunman sidled up and fired a single shot at his head. Lingle was killed instantly.
A civic uproar ensued. The Tribune posted a $25,000 reward. Two other papers also offered sums, totaling $30,000, for the capture of the killer. Then not long afterward it was discovered that Lingle had been doing something more than covering his beat and pounding out stories on the typewriter. Al Capone had given him a diamond-studded belt. Lingle owned a summer home and a chauffeur-driven limousine. He thought nothing of betting – and losing – a thousand dollars on a horse race.
All this, it developed, resulted from a sinister “secret life” being lived by Jake Lingle as high lieutenant and go-between for the Capone Syndicate. He might have continued his dodge indefinitely. But apparently he became greedy. He demanded too large a cut of several gambling operations. Also he accepted $50,000 “to arrange” a permit for opening a dog track – a promise on which he couldn’t deliver. Early death was his reward.
Corruption among Chicago newspapermen, I’m happy to say, is rare. But a kind of “junior Jake Lingle” case did occur in Chicago last winter. Ironically, this involved another Tribune reporter, William Doherty of a famous family of Chicago reporters.
One day he went to the home of minor hoodlum Sam DeStefano, ostensibly to check a report that DeStefano had been killed. But the hoodlum was very much alive. So robust in health was he, according to Doherty, that he even threatened the reporter with a gun. Choosing discretion over valor, Doherty fled. He called the police. He called his newspaper. He also called a lawyer and pressed charges against DeStefano.
What happened next came as a shock not only to the Tribune but to the entire Chicago press corps. Upon investigation it was found that Doherty had more in common with Lingle than his Tribune