When the country lost Knute Rockne, the world lost an amazing man.

Knute (Ka-noot) Rockne, the Norwegian immigrant and part-time chemistry professor who shaped the game of football as a player and a coach at the University of Notre Dame in the early 20th century.... and, literally, the ball itself.

The football legend known simply to his friends as “Rock” established Notre Dame as a cornerstone of American college football during an epic head coaching career that began at old Cartier Field in 1918 and ended in the iconic stadium that Rockne himself built, Notre Dame Stadium, with a third national championship in 1930.

“As God’s Witness” picks up less than a year before Knute Rockne was killed in a plane crash in a remote Kansas pasture at about 10:45 a.m. on March 31, 1931.

Pieced together from more than 100 time-period newspaper articles through newspaperarchives.com; the U.S. Department of Commerce’s official crash investigation report; books detailing the Chicago mob, the life of Al Capone, and the infamous murder of Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle, “As God’s Witness” is the first historical account to thoroughly explore the circumstances leading up to the fateful plane crash that ended the highly-public life of one of America’s greatest sports icons.

What begins with the hit on Lingle in a downtown Chicago train station on June 9, 1930 expands through the Notre Dame priest who swapped his plane ticket with his friend Rockne the day after he had testified in the trial of a Capone hitman charged in the Lingle murder.

It’s been 90 years since Jake Lingle whispered his dying confession into the ear of Father John Reynolds as he lay on the ground of the Randolph Street Train Station with a bullet in his head. It’s been 34 years since Father Reynolds last spoke about being the only direct eyewitness to the Jake Lingle murder and defying mob intimidation to testify in a trial that only Father Reynolds knew had convicted the wrong man.

It’s as if Father Reynolds is telling his story for the first time “As God’s Witness.”

Jeffrey G. Harrell
South Bend, Indiana
March 31, 2020

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Praise for As God’s Witness:

“All I'm hearing is, this is really well researched, archived information, which was known popularly at the time. This isn't some work of fiction where you're pulling names out of the sky. There were citations from newspapers at the time and other historians were tracking all of these stories...” — Ian Punnnet, Host, Coast to Coast AM



“Obviously dribs and drabs of this story – or theory – or rumor – have been around since Rockne’s plane crashed 88 years ago last month. But I’ve never seen it laid out in full this way, nor with the quotes at the end from the reputed actual target of the bomb. Amazing stuff.” — Keith Olbermann, ESPN