Page:Summary Report of Al Capone for the Bureau of Internal Revenue.djvu/54

SI-7085-F instill greater fear in the minds of all our witnesses and make them purposely forget about their dealings with him or cause them to give perjured testimony for fear they would be murdered by the Capone organization if they assisted the government. On April 21, 1931, we were surprised to read in the Chicago Daily Tribune a complete report of the facts regarding the Capone murder plot which had been given to that paper by a representative of the Cook County States Attorney. A copy of that article is attached as Exhibit No..

In that article reference is made to the murder of Jake Lingle, a reporter on the Chicago Tribune who had been for many years a personal friend of Al Capone and who knew a great deal about his illegal activities. Shortly after my arrival in Chicago on this assignment I was informed that Lingle and Capone were no longer on friendly terms. On June 1, 1930, a few days before the murder of Lingle, I had arranged through an attorney representing the Chicago Tribune who had given me valuable cooperation on another case and through the Editor of the paper, to interview Lingle at their office in order to attempt to secure his confidential cooperation in this investigation. The representatives of the Tribune advised me they knew that Al Capone confided with Lingle; that they believed Lingle knew a great deal more than any other reporter in the country regarding Capone's activities; that they would be pleased to have him confidentially cooperate with me and they assured me they would encourage him to do so but he was murdered before they were able to fix the date of the interview for me. The motive for the murder of Lingle has never been established. The Chicago Tribune offered a reward of $50,000.00 for the arrest and conviction of the guilty persons and spent nearly that amount in their efforts to solve the mystery, especially to establish a motive for the murder. A gangster from St. Louis, Missouri, named Brothers was convicted of this murder but at the trial no motive was proven and it was strongly suspected that he had been hired to do the killing by some of the Chicago associates of Lingle. Al Capone was one of the persons most mentioned in reference to the Lingle murder and many persons alleged that the death of Lingle was caused by the Capone organization. In October of 1930, P. F. Roche as Chief Investigator for the Cook County States Attorney in Charge of the investigation to locate the murderer of Lingle, approached Al Capone and Louis Greenberg, a member of the Capone gang, in an effort to secure Capone's assistance in finding the guilty person. At a secrete conference which Mr. Roche had with Capone, he professed ignorance regarding the identity of the murderer and agreed to assist Roche in locating him. Later during the negotiations Capone intimated that he had found the guilty man and early in November 1930, Capone offered to turn the dead body of the murderer of Lingle - 53 -