A reporter for the Chicago Tribune, he covered the city's organized crime beat during the bloody reign of Al Capone. He was not a writer but a "leg man", someone who gathered information and phoned it in to the editor's desk. On June 9, 1930, he was shot dead at close range in a crowded pedestrian tunnel beneath the Illinois Central train station. The murder shocked the nation because it appeared to violate the mob's traditional "hands off" policy towards journalists. Lingle was hailed as a martyr of his profession and over 25,000 people attended his hero's funeral.