by Simon Baatz
26
Nathan leaned over the parapet. He had thrown the typewriter as far as possible--he guessed that it had landed about fifteen feet from the bridge. He pointed to the spot. The diver disappeared into the water, and the crowd waited, but the thick mud at the bottom of the harbor was impenetrable.
Michael Hughes signaled to Walter Sullivan, a reporter for the
Chicago Herald and Examiner, and to Morrow Krum of the Chicago Daily Tr ibune. The police cars would leave shortly for the drive to Hessville; would they like to ride in the cars with the two prisoners?
The relationship between the police and journalists in Chicago during the 1920s was one of mutual dependence. The reporters would write favorably of the police department in its war against crime, and in return the police would grant access to criminals, supply the newspapers with valuable information, and leak important tidbits about sensational trials. Hughes had known Sullivan and Krum, both veteran journalists, for many years. They were reliable allies who could be trusted to write well of his men.
Michael Hughes knew also that in allowing the reporters access to Nathan and Richard, he might help the two prisoners convict themselves in the court of public opinion. Nathan and Richard had confessed, but those confessions might yet be repudiated. However, if they were to talk of the murder to the reporters, and if their remarks were to be printed in the newspapers, how could their guilt be denied? Nathan and Richard had not yet expressed any remorse for the murder or any regret for the pain they had caused the Franks family. They seemed, rather, to have adopted a cynical, callous attitude toward the killing, as though it were morally inconsequential; all the better, therefore, if their comments about the murder were reported in the newspapers for public consumption.
On the ride to Hessville, a journey of approximately forty minutes, Walter Sullivan sat with Nathan in one car while Morrow Krum traveled with Richard in the other car. It was not long before both prisoners were gossiping about the crime, revealing details about themselves that blackened them irretrievably when Chicagoans opened their newspapers the following day.
As the car made its way out of the park, the bell clanging to clear a path through the crowd of onlookers trying to peer into the car window, Walter Sullivan asked Nathan about the murder. Whose idea had it been? And who had wielded the chisel to strike the deathblows? Had Nathan initiated the plan, or had it been Richard's idea?
The mere mention of Richard Loeb was sufficient to send Nathan into a tantrum of anger and indignation. He was still furious that Richard had blamed him for the murder--Richard's treason had been a cruel blow to Nathan's love. "It was all Loeb's idea," Nathan replied, bitterly, "he planned the kidnaping."
The car had now left Jackson Park and was threading its way through the streets of the South Side, out toward the Michigan City road.
"It was Loeb . . . who enticed the boy into the car and it was Loeb who struck him on the head the next instant." Nathan played nervously with the unlit cigarette in his hand, turning it through his fingers. "I could not--it would have been physically impossible for me to have struck the blow that killed Robert Franks. Loeb knows this too. . . . My repugnance to violence is such that I could not have killed Robert. . . . He thinks that by proving me the actual slayer he will eventually go free."
Nathan paused; he leaned his elbow against the car window and stared at the houses as they passed. It had been a bitter blow, he acknowledged, knowing that Richard was willing to sacrifice him to preserve his own skin.
But his mood lasted only a minute. They passed the South Shore Country Club and then a golf course--what a ridiculous game, Nathan remarked!--and Nathan was soon his old self again, joking and bantering with the reporter. He leaned over and touched Sullivan lightly on the knee and sat back in his seat with a grin on his face,
"Now you're contaminated," he joked. "You've been touched by a murderer."
Sullivan smiled politely. He wondered how Nathan felt about the killing. Granted that Richard had struck Bobby with the chisel, nevertheless, he asked, how had Nathan felt about the boy's death?
It didn't concern him, Nathan replied. He had no moral beliefs and religion meant nothing to him: he was an atheist. Whatever served an individual's purpose--that was the best guide to conduct. In his case, well, he was an intellectual: his participation in the killing had been akin to the desire of the scientist to experiment. They had killed Bobby Franks as an experiment; Nathan had wanted to experience the sensation of murdering another human being. It was that simple.
"A thirst for knowledge," he explained to Sullivan, providing a helpful analogy to the murder of Bobby Franks, "is highly commendable, no matter what extreme pain or injury it may inf lict upon others. A 6-year-old-boy is justified in pulling the wings from a f ly, if by so doing he learns that without wings the f ly is helpless."27
In the other car, R icha rd Loeb, sitting in the rear seat beside Morrow Krum, talked of his plans after prison; he would serve some time, of course, but eventually he would get out, and then he would make a fresh start. "I'll spend a few years in jail and I'll be released. I'll come out to a new life. I'll go to work and I'll work hard and I'll amount to something--have a career."
"But you have taken a life," one of the detectives interrupted, in surprise. "You've killed a boy. The best you could possibly expect would be a life sentence to an insane asylum."
Richard's hands f luttered nervously; he searched his pockets for his cigarette case. The loss of his liberty was an unpleasant thought, and confinement in an asylum seemed especially grim. Krum asked him a question about Nathan Leopold; Richard answered with a sense of relief at the change of subject.
"Of course he is smart. He is one of the smartest and best educated men I know."
* * *
Had Nathan inf luenced Richard? Had Nathan controlled Richard and led him into the crime?
"Well, I wouldn't say that exactly," Richard paused to ref lect on the question. "Perhaps he did dominate me. . . . Leopold suggested the whole thing. . . . I went along with him. . . . Well it was sort of that way after all. . . . I guess I yessed Babe a lot."
What was their relationship? The reporter pressed Richard, fishing for a headline for tomorrow's paper. How close was Richard to Nathan? Did Richard have many girlfriends at the university?
"Girls? Sure I like girls. I was out with a girl on Friday night after the affair. . . ."
"Was Babe a pervert?" Krum interrupted suddenly, using the family nickname for Nathan Leopold.
Richard shook his head indecisively, suddenly cautious about saying too much. "I don't know anything about that."28
Twenty minutes later, the cars had reached the village of Hessville. It was only another mile before they came to the spot where the police anticipated finding Bobby Franks's belt. Richard eventually found it, buried under some dirt, in the field adjacent to the copse. It still seemed almost new, a blue belt, with thin red and yellow stripes running down the center and a gold-plated buckle.29
That Sunday afternoon, around two-thirty, Nathan Leopold Sr. met with Robert Crowe at the Criminal Court Building. He was concerned, he told the state's attorney, that his son had confessed under duress. He accepted Crowe's assurances that there had been no beatings, but perhaps the detectives had intimidated Nathan in some other way. Nathan had been in custody since Thursday afternon--three full days--without access to a lawyer; how could the family be certain that he had received fair treatment?
Crowe could see the agitation on the old man's face. His visitor seemed nervous and confused, and considerably more deferential than Crowe had anticipated. He observed the old man closely. Nathan Leopold Sr.--with his thick salt-and-pepper mustache, his jowly neck and large ears, his watery eyes behind large rimless eyeglasses--bore little resemblance to his son. There was, Crowe decided, scarcely the faintest similarity between father and son.
"Just sit down, Mr. Leopold; I will have the boy brought in."
Nathan seemed in good health; he entered
the room confidently and shook his father's hand.
"Hello, Dad."
"Hello, my son." The old man turned to the state's attorney. "Could I talk to this boy myself, privately? . . ."
"Just at this particular time I cannot do it."
"Is that true, Mr. Crowe, that a parent may not have the opportunity to talk to his child?"
"I want to give you an opportunity to . . . ease your mind as to the boy's well-being. . . . He is not being abused . . . but at this particular time I do not think it is proper for me to permit [the] two of you to talk together."
"Mr. Crowe, he may tell me things in my presence that he might be diffident about telling when others are present. In other words, if I ask him of the treatment he got, he might hesitate to answer when these people around here have been working on him, and he might tell me things that might be private in that respect. . . . Of course, you realize, I suppose . . . it is the duty of a parent to stand by his child."
"Absolutely; and it would not be natural that you did not."
"I want him to get every opportunity that everybody else would get under similar circumstances. If he is entitled to counsel, he should have it. If it is not proper for him to talk without counsel, then my advice to him would be not to talk. Is that correct? That is what you would tell a son, isn't it? . . . In other words, if you have constitutional rights, they should be accorded you."
But the state's attorney would not be moved. There was no legal requirement that he allow father and son to converse in private. He would release Nathan only after a writ of habeas corpus had been filed, and that would not happen until tomorrow morning, when the courts opened.
The interview was over, Crowe announced. The old man would have to leave his office. Nathan Leopold Sr. squeezed his son's hand for a brief moment, retrieved his coat and hat from an adjacent chair, and without a word to Crowe, left the room.30
Crowe was impatient to begin the examination. That morning he had found three psychiatrists willing to join the prosecution. He had asked them to come to the Criminal Court Building to examine Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
Hugh Patrick was the first to arrive at Crowe's office. Patrick was sixty-four years old but seemed younger, no doubt because his manner-- alert, energetic, and attentive--belied his age. His face was nondescript, neither fat nor thin, nor particularly memorable, save for his luminous blue eyes behind gold-rimmed eyeglasses. His snow white hair had receded but still retained a vestigial presence. He seemed the most amiable of men, someone who managed simultaneously to appear both authoritative and approachable.
Patrick had obtained his medical degree at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York; had completed postgraduate studies in Germany, Austria, France, and Britain; and, in 1894, had joined the medical faculty at Northwestern University as an assistant professor of nervous and mental diseases. Within the medical profession, Patrick soon won a national reputation as the founder and first editor of the leading journal for neurology,
Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry. His affable manner and easy sociability gained him many friends and subsequently ensured his election as president of the Chicago Neurological Society, trustee of the Chicago Medical Society, president of the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, section chair of nervous and mental diseases of the American Medical Association, president of the Mississippi Valley Medical Association, and, last but not least, president of the American Neurological Association. In his spare time, Patrick served as a consultant neurologist to the Illinois Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary, Wesley Memorial Hospital, St. Anthony Hospital, and the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane at Kankakee. In 1924 he was a leader of his profession, the author of many articles and books, and an emeritus professor at Northwestern.31
Patrick introduced himself to Nathan. He looked around Crowe's office: it was a large room but sparsely furnished. There was a heavy oak desk in the center of the room, covered with papers and documents. In one corner there was a watercooler, and scattered around the room were about a dozen chairs, some metal, some wood, but neither one of which resembled its neighbor.
Hugh Patrick and Nathan Leopold chatted together while the stenographer, Elbert Allen, sat to one side, scribbling their remarks in shorthand into a notebook. They could hear a bustle in the outside corridor, but inside the office they were alone; even Robert Crowe had left the room, and none of his assistants were to be seen.
32
A second psychiatrist, William Krohn, arrived at the Criminal Court Building at five minutes past three; Thomas O'Malley, chief of staff in the state's attorney's office, ushered Krohn into the room.
33
Krohn was short and stocky, a compact bulldog of a man with a full head of white hair and an aggressive, confident demeanor. He invariably wore a dark bow tie, a crisp white shirt, and a well-cut gray suit. Krohn was fifty-six years old. He had received his PhD in psychology from Yale University in 1889 and, after postgraduate studies in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, he had eventually secured a position as a clinical psychologist at the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane. Krohn had remained at Illinois Eastern Hospital for seven years, establishing a psychological testing laboratory at the asylum for the evaluation of patients. He had taught successively at Clark University and the University of Illinois, and in 1899 he moved to Chicago to set up a private psychiatric clinic. Krohn simultaneously enrolled as a medical student at Northwestern University, where he studied in the department of nervous and mental diseases. After graduating from Northwestern in 1905, Krohn served frequently as a medical juror and as a member of the insanity commissions of the Cook County Criminal Court.
34
He was a familiar sight at the Criminal Court, frequently testifying in high-profile cases on the sanity of the defendants. His 1924 textbook
Insanity and the Law: A Treatise on Forensic Psychiatry, cowritten with H. Douglas Singer, had made his reputation as an expert on the legal aspects of psychiatry. As a consequence, Krohn was in great demand in the Chicago courts as an expert witness.
Robert Crowe had asked the psychiatrists to the Criminal Court Building to evaluate Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. Crowe anticipated that the defense in the coming trial would most probably be a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity; he therefore aimed to counter the defense through an evaluation by the state's psychiatrists that Leopold and Loeb were sane.
So far, everything had worked brilliantly for Crowe; he had used his custody of Leopold and Loeb, first, to extract a confession from both boys; second, to link them irrevocably to the evidence; and third, to enable his psychiatrists to evaluate Leopold and Loeb while both boys were still cooperating with the police.
It would be futile, Crowe believed, for Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb to deny their guilt on evidentiary grounds. Even if they claimed to have confessed under duress, Crowe had the physical evidence linking them to the murder: the rental car, the rope, the chisel, and, perhaps very soon, the typewriter. Neither Loeb nor Leopold had a credible alibi for the afternoon and evening of Wednesday, 21 May. It seemed impossible for the boys to deny that they had killed Bobby Franks.
A plea of not guilty by reason of insanity also seemed improbable-- neither Leopold nor Loeb displayed any sign of mental derangement-- but what alternative was there?
It would be difficult even for Leopold and Loeb to claim to have acted under temporary insanity. They had meticulously planned the murder for six months, paying close attention to detail, arranging to collect the ransom while avoiding capture, establishing false identities, and purchasing the necessary items. And after the deed had been done, they had carefully hidden the corpse, disposed of Bobby's clothing, and cleaned the rental car. Clearly the murder was neither an impulsive act nor a crime of passion.
Illinois law followed the British legal system in the determination of insanity. According to the McNaughten rule, adopted in Britain in 1843, an individual was considered insane if he or she had committed the act while not
knowing its nature and quality or not knowing that it was wrong. Blame does not attach to the act, and punishment is inappropriate, because insanity deprives the individual of the free will to choose between right and wrong.
But how could one determine that a defendant was incapable of distinguishing right from wrong? Insanity was often not self-evident or obvious; only a psychiatrist with specialized medical knowledge could make that determination satisfactorily.
The defense attorneys would, no doubt, bring psychiatrists into court to testify that the defendants were insane. Crowe, therefore, needed to rebut the defense testimony through expert witnesses who would demonstrate that the defendants could distinguish right from wrong.
All the better, of course, if Nathan and Richard would confess their legal responsibility for the murder in the presence of the state's psychiatrists and the other witnesses. The psychiatrists' task would be facilitated if Nathan and Richard admitted that they were able to distinguish right from wrong and hence that they were legally sane. How could the defense lawyers enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity if Leopold and Loeb admitted their legal responsibility?
* * *
At half past three, A rch iba ld Church, the third psychiatrist, finally arrived.35
Church, fifty-three years old, cut an impressive figure. He took great pride in his appearance and was always meticulously dressed. He habitually had a rather melancholy expression; his large green eyes gazed out from a slightly bulbous face. He was courteous to a fault; indeed, his colleagues at Northwestern University Medical School found Church slightly pompous and aloof.
Church had received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago in 1884, and after four years' service as the assistant superintendent at the Illinois Northern Hospital for the Insane at Elgin, he had joined the medical faculty at Northwestern. He remained at Northwestern throughout his career as a professor of mental diseases and medical jurisprudence and held joint appointments as professor of neurology at the Chicago Policlinic and consulting neurologist at Michael Reese Hospital. Church was a leader of his profession, with a national reputation for his research in neurology. He had served as vice president of the American Neurological Association and as the section chair on mental and nervous diseases for the American Medical Association. He was the author of many articles and books, most notably the standard textbook in the field,