For The Thrill Of It: Leopold, Loeb, And The Murder That Shocked Chicago

by Simon Baatz

  Lundin--the son of Swedish immigrants--had started modestly; he had begun by selling juniperade, a beverage of his own invention, from a cart and horse, and within a few years, he had amassed a fortune. He entered politics in 1892 as a party worker in the Twenty-Eighth Ward; he served as a state senator from 1895 to 1897; and twelve years later, he won election to the United States House of Representatives. Lundin served only one term in Washington, returning to Chicago in 1911 and establishing himself as the undisputed Republican party boss of the West Side.

  Lundin had fixed on William Thompson as his candidate for mayor. Lundin knew the inner workings of the municipal administration better than anyone else in Chicago; and he had no compunction about manipulating City Hall for his own benefit. Lundin was the puppet master who pulled the strings, and Thompson soon fell in with Lundin's scheme to rob the city treasury.

  Thompson's election in 1915 ended any hope of reform of the city government, but it served Robert Crowe well. The mayor immediately appointed Crowe to an interim position--attorney to the Police Trial Board (where Crowe was responsible for defending police officers brought before the board on charges of malfeasance)--while he waited for some more lucrative position for his young protege.

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  The Republican Party had been the dominant force in Chicago politics for as long as anyone could remember, and its grip on power endured in the 1910s despite the emergence of three powerful factions within the party. Charles Deneen, a lawyer and former governor of Illinois, was the party boss for the South Side; Edward Brundage, who would be elected attorney general in 1916, commanded the Republican battalions on the North Side; Fred Lundin was the boss of the West Side. Each faction depended for its cohesion on the charisma of its leader and owed its continued existence to his ability to win jobs and patronage for the members. Neither ideology nor policy counted for very much in Republican politics in Chicago during the 1910s; each faction promised good government, an honest administration, and an end to corruption but relied more on the ability of party workers to get out the vote.

  In the 1915 elections, the Lundin faction had won overwhelmingly--Thompson's plurality was the largest ever won for the mayor's office by a Republican in Chicago--but factionalism within the Republican Party continued unabated. Too many sources of power and patronage lay outside the control of the mayor's office for Fred Lundin to be able to ever entirely silence the rival factions within the Republican Party.

  The disbursement of political power throughout numerous municipal and county agencies foiled Lundin's repeated attempts to crush dissident Republicans who had burrowed deep within the administrative bureaucracy. Warfare within the Republican Party continued unabated as rival politicians ceaselessly battled for the spoils of office. Factional leaders were forever searching for competitive advantage, forming new coalitions and breaking old alliances. Chicago politics was endlessly labile; it offered ample opportunities for a bright, ambitious young politician to fight his way to the top.

  In 1916 Robert Crowe--with t he backing of Fred Lundin--secured the Republican nomination for a judgeship on the Circuit Court. In the election later that year, Crowe defeated his Democratic opponent handily. He served as a judge with distinction, becoming chief justice of the Criminal Court in 1919.

  In November 1920, voters in Illinois would choose a United States senator, the governor and lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, the auditor, the treasurer, the attorney general, and the clerk of the state supreme court. At the county level, the voters would elect the county judge, state's attorney, recorder, clerk of the Circuit Court, clerk of the Superior Court, three trustees of the Sanitary District of Chicago, ten judges of the Municipal Court, county surveyor, and coroner.

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  Robert Crowe's reputation as a no-nonsense judge and his effectiveness as an administrator, combined with his fealty to Fred Lundin, made him the obvious choice as the Republican candidate for state's attorney for Cook County. Crowe's decision the previous year to send Thomas Fitzgerald to the gallows for the murder of Janet Wilkinson had been a popular one. Crowe, moreover, could claim that measures adopted during his tenure as chief justice of the Criminal Court had significantly reduced crime in Chicago. He had served as chief justice for only one year, yet during that year, he boasted to a reporter from the

  Chicago Daily Tribune, "more indictments were returned, more tried, more convicted, more hanged, and more sent to penal institutions than in any other year of the Criminal court." For years the court system in Chicago had been notoriously slow and ponderous; criminals had escaped successful prosecution solely because of the length of time it had taken to bring them to court, yet already Crowe had begun to clear up the backlog of cases that had cluttered up the courts. "When I started," Crowe explained, "the Criminal Court was nine years behind in its work and now it is only two years."17

  Crowe faced anemic opposition in the Republican primary--the Deneen-Brundage nominee, David Matchett, a judge on the Appellate Court, talked loudly about corruption in City Hall but had little else to recommend him. Neither Matchett nor a third candidate, Bernard Barasa, running as an independent without the support of any party faction, had a chance of winning the Republican nomination.

  Nevertheless, warfare within the Republican Party reached fever pitch as the September primary approached. The Deneen and Brundage factions had combined forces to present a single ticket in the expectation that a unified campaign would more easily overturn the Lundin group. Whoever won the Republican primary would most probably win the general election, and victory would ensure control of patronage and jobs.

  On the morning of 15 September 1920, small clusters of city police and deputy sheriffs guarded the polls. Campaign workers stood nearby, watching closely as county officers checked the identity of voters. For three hours the election proceeded peacefully, but toward noon, carloads of men, armed with clubs and revolvers, could be seen moving through precincts on the West Side. Violence broke out first in the Fourth Ward--three carloads of men attacked the polling station on South Lowe Avenue and kidnapped a precinct captain--and spread quickly throughout the city. The police department had too few men to guard every polling place in every precinct, and soon open warfare had broken out across Chicago as armed men fought to take control of the primary.

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  It was the most violent primary in the history of Cook County. One man, Mike Fennessy, a campaign worker for Al Gorman, a nominee for state senate, died in a shoot-out between police and party workers in the Fourth District. No one else died that day but, across the city, the police, deputy sheriffs, and party workers fought each other in a series of bloody battles that left men beaten, clubbed, stabbed, and shot. Robert Crowe's men were in the thick of it: in one incident a dozen men, armed with clubs, attacked twenty of Crowe's supporters in the Burton & Ascher saloon on Chicago Avenue, but after fierce fighting with blackjacks and knives, the intruders were eventually beaten back.

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  It was not only the most violent primary in the city's history but also one of the most expensive. The whole affair, wrote the editor of the

  Chicago Daily Journal, was "a disgrace to the republican party, the state of Illinois, and the American people. . . . Close to $2,000,000 was spent by the two republican factions in cutting each other's throats. . . . This money, remember, was not spent to beat the opposing party, but to beat the opposing factions in the same party. Broadly speaking, the principles of the two factions are identical; the really important quarrel between them was over the 'honors,' emoluments and perquisites of office--and does anyone imagine that either side made its outlay without planning to recoup itself in the event of victory? . . . If this be the only fashion in which the people of Illinois can choose candidates for office, the state is in sore straits, indeed."20

  A disgrace? Perhaps--but Lundin's men had emerged victorious. Candidates on the City Hall ticket won almost every nomination at the state and county levels. Robert Crowe did particularly well,
winning the nomination for state's attorney with over 180,000 votes; his closest rival, David Matchett, received 113,000 votes. Crowe's triumph was the more impressive on account of the low turnout. Party registration had fallen since 1916, and even an increase in the vote as a result of women's suffrage had not compensated for the general lack of interest of registered Republicans in a battle between two equally corrupt political factions.

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  Just as soon as the returns had confirmed his victory in the primary, Crowe began the campaign for the November election. His Democratic opponent, Michael Igoe, a graduate of Georgetown University, was an experienced politician who had represented Cook County in the state legislature for four terms. Igoe was the better candidate--he was six years younger than Crowe, yet he had considerably more political experience and was better equipped to serve as state's attorney, having prosecuted several landmark cases while working as an assistant United States attorney for the Chicago district during the 1910s. Two other candidates for state's attorney--William Cunnea of the Socialist Party and John Teevan of the Farmer-Labor Party--were on the ballot, but neither organization now commanded much support within Cook County. The fight for state's attorney would be decided in 1920 in favor of Igoe or Crowe.

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  Michael Igoe may have been the more qualified candidate, but Crowe was the candidate of City Hall. And factionalism among the Republicans had now subsided--the Deneen-Brundage faction had temporarily given up its attacks on Thompson and Lundin and waited to see how the City Hall ticket would fare in the November elections. Michael Igoe was not so fortunate--he had beaten the incumbent state's attorney, Maclay Hoyne, in the Democratic primary; and Hoyne, furious at having lost the nomination to an upstart, was attacking Igoe in the press as a "fool . . . entirely ignorant of criminal law."

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  Robert Crowe also attacked Igoe, painting him as a pawn in the hands of unscrupulous enemies of democracy. How, Crowe asked, could Igoe explain his connections to that small clique of corrupt politicians-- James (Bull) Dailey, Michael (Hinky Dink) Kenna, and Bernard (Barney) Grogan--desperate to see Crowe defeated? And why were the corporations, the transportation companies, and the utilities so eager to support Igoe? Why were the criminal gangs, pimps, brothel owners, bootleggers, and saloon keepers all working for Igoe's election? Was it because they knew that Igoe, as state's attorney, would never prosecute their misdeeds and would, in fact, conspire with them to rob the people? "My Democratic opponent," Crowe announced, in a statement released on 16 October, "seems to be imbued with the idea that a candidate for state's attorney can accept political and financial support from the vice lords, the traction barons and the criminal profiteers without the ugly fact coming to the attention of the good men and women of Cook county. I have challenged him to deny his connection with the vice lords and his acceptance of financial support from the interests that bleed the people. He has failed to refute my charges. The real reason for his failure is that he is guilty and he knows it."

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  Igoe fought back valiantly, accusing Crowe of aligning himself with the most corrupt administration ever to rule the city--"The city hall gang has ruthlessly plundered Chicago. They have invented new schemes of graft and extortion, and that is the reason crime is rampant and criminals more brazen and unafraid than ever before"--but the momentum of victory had already shifted in Crowe's direction.

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  In his statements to the press, Crowe repeatedly emphasized his record on the bench as a law-and-order judge, reminding the voters that he had sent Thomas Fitzgerald to the gallows and promising to crack down on criminals once he was elected state's attorney. But more significantly, important civic associations and professional organizations--representing realtors, lawyers, insurance brokers, bankers, businessmen, and jurists--endorsed Crowe.

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  Warren Harding's landslide victory in the 1920 presidential election contributed, no doubt, to the Republican victory in Cook County; but few candidates anywhere did as well as Robert Crowe that November. Crowe's margin of victory--more than 210,000 votes over his Democratic rival--was unprecedented; moreover, it marked him as a man with a bright future. Already there were rumors that Bill Thompson would try for the United States Senate at the next election, and with Thompson gone, why should Crowe not aim for the mayor's office in his place? Crowe was still a young man with ambition and energy to spare. His election as state's attorney might well be a stepping-stone to the mayoralty, and then perhaps he could try for the governor's mansion.

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  But before he could think about running for mayor, Crowe would first have to demonstrate his commitment to fighting crime. Chicago was one of the most lawless cities in the nation, and few agencies were more important in the war against the criminals than the office of the state's attorney. It was now Robert Crowe's responsibility not only to put the bootleggers and racketeers out of business but also to reduce the numbers of murders, burglaries, and assaults that plagued the city. In this regard, Crowe, as always, was fortunate, for just a few days after assuming office, he would make a decision that would ensure the conviction of an infamous murderer and raise his personal popularity to new heights.

  On the evening of Monday, 21 June 1920, Carl and Ruth Wanderer strolled home after seeing the movie

  The Sea Wolf. They had been childhood sweethearts: Ruth Johnson had been only sixteen when she had first met Carl in 1915 at a Sunday service at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. During World War I, Carl had served as a first lieutenant in the Seventeenth Machine Gun Battalion in the Allied Expeditionary Force in France. After Carl's return to Chicago at the war's end, he and Ruth were married on 1 October 1919.

  They made a perfect match. Ruth was an attractive woman--men always tried to f lirt with her, but she remained faithful to Carl while he was in Europe. For his part, Carl seemed to be the man every mother would want as a son-in-law. He never smoked, or drank, or swore; he attended church regularly; and he, too, ignored opportunities to f lirt, claiming that Ruth "was the only girl I ever kissed."

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  Ruth was in a happy mood that night. She was expecting her first child in two months. She glanced at her husband fondly as they walked home together--Ruth was glad that Carl had settled down after returning to Chicago. He had found work as a butcher in his father's shop, and he, too, seemed content.

  As they approached the two-story apartment building at 4732 North Campbell Avenue, Ruth suddenly sensed a man walking behind them. She glanced backward--he seemed very close, just three yards away. He was a young, good-looking man, but dressed in old, dirty clothes, untidy and unkempt, as though he had been sleeping rough, and now he was walking up the path toward their building. Ruth glanced at her husband, but Carl seemed unconcerned. She hurried to open the front door of the building and step inside the darkened foyer.

  The first bullet caught Ruth in the thigh as she stepped across the vestibule--she felt the burning sensation as it hit her. The second bullet passed through her body on the left side. Ruth remained conscious . . . more shots came from someone's gun . . . now her husband was kneeling beside her on the blue tiles of the vestibule f loor . . . Carl was holding her hand. Her life was leaving her body but she could still see her husband kneeling above her, looking into her eyes.

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  "Carl, I'm shot." Ruth knew already that the second bullet had passed through her child. ". . . The baby . . . Carl, my baby is dead."

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  Her husband had shot and killed the tramp. Now, as he tenderly stroked her hair, Carl murmured words of consolation to his dying wife: "I've got him, sweetheart . . . I got him. He won't hurt you anymore."31

  Ruth's mother, Eugenia, lived in their apartment; Ruth whispered to her husband to call Eugenia.

  It was too late. Ruth's eyes closed. Her blood spread slowly out across the f loor, forming a dark-red pool around her body.

  By the time John Nape, the first policeman on the scene, arrived, a small crowd of neighbors
had gathered outside the hallway. The sergeant pushed his way forward into the vestibule. A woman's body lay close to the second doorway--Nape assumed she was the young wife. A few feet away, a tramp lay dead, his shabby brown jacket and cheap cotton trousers stained with blood. Two revolvers lay side by side in the center of the vestibule.32

  Carl Wanderer explained how the tramp had tried to rob them. His wife had been on the point of opening the inner door when the man had fired two bullets into her, killing her almost instantly. Carl had pulled out his own gun, a forty-five-caliber army revolver, and had gunned down the assailant.

  It seemed a straightforward killing, one of many such murders in Chicago that year.

  But the police were puzzled that the tramp would have killed Ruth Wanderer without waiting to rob her. Ruth had not resisted or fought back, according to her husband. It was remarkable also, the detectives realized, that although ten shots had been fired in the narrow hallway, Carl Wanderer had emerged unscathed--he had gunned down his assailant but had walked away from the gunfight without a scratch.

  The case soon became even more mysterious.

  Ruth Wanderer had withdrawn $1,500 from her savings account a few days before she died. And when the police examined the provenance of the revolver supposedly used by the tramp to shoot Ruth, they discovered that they could trace it back to . . . Carl Wanderer!33

  On Friday, 9 July 1920, Carl Wanderer confessed. He had grown bored with his wife, he explained, and he had a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Julia Schmitt. It had seemed easy enough to get rid of his wife. He had met the tramp on the corner of Halsted and Madison streets and had promised him a job if he would follow him and his wife home that evening. When they reached the apartment building, Carl first killed his wife and then shot the tramp.

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  But on the opening day of Wanderer's trial--4 October 1920--for the murder of his wife and the unborn child, Wanderer repudiated his confession. His attorney, George Guenther, protested that the police had beaten his client in a basement dungeon until he confessed. Carl Wanderer, Guenther explained to the jury, was not guilty, by reason of insanity. Guenther presented a brilliant defense: he put several of Wanderer's acquaintances and friends on the stand to describe Wanderer's eccentric behavior.