Lost And Downed
LOST & DOWNED
The only question left hanging 90 years after the plane crash that killed Knute Rockne and seven others: Who received $55,000 in reward money paid out by three Chicago newspapers in lieu of the arrest and conviction of the killer of Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle, and what happened to the $55,000 in cash reportedly possessed by one of the crash victims?
The following is an excerpt from “Rockne of Ages” and “As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne.”
The Chicago Tribune paid out $25,000 to an undisclosed source in total confidentiality through the Illinois State Attorney General's Office. The Chicago Herald-Examiner added $25,000 to the reward pot, and the Chicago Evening Post kicked in another $5,000, for a total of $55,000.
Within two days of the Rockne crash, newspapers splashed reports that one of the victims, H.J. Christen, an interior designer in Chicago who earned a modest living setting up floor fixtures for downtown department and sporting goods stores, had cashed a check for $55,000 the day before boarding the plane. Crash responders found only $400 in Christen's clothes when his body was recovered.
The post-crash spotlight fell on a bigger inquisition: How did newspaper editors know immediately to report in first-day accounts that a modest interior designer named H.J. Christen, a virtual nobody in the world of fame and fortune occupied by Knute Rockne, had cashed a check for $55,000 one day before the plane went down? Was it coincidence that $55,000 was the same combined amount paid out by their own employers?
And for whom was the money earmarked? Christen? Could Christen have been a bag carrier flying under the radar of vengeful mobsters to deliver the reward money to its rightful benefactor in a place far away from Chicago where the transaction could be conducted out of sight and mind?
It was unlikely that the reward money was for Rockne. But Rockne had been traveling with John Happer, comptroller for Great Western Sporting Goods, another victim of the crash. Did Christen have a business relationship setting up floor fixtures for Happer's sporting goods store in Chicago? Could the two have been flying to Los Angeles with Rockne to set up a new Great Western Sporting Goods Store? Or was there other, more covert business planned? Christen and Happer were the only two actual residents of Chicago flying on that plane.
How Christen obtained $55,000 was a question that died in the crash with him.
(From “Rockne Of Ages” and “As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne” by Jeffrey G. Harrell - Boulevard Books, Copyright 2021)