For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (10 page)

Two blocks away, Richard Loeb entered a lunchroom at 1352 Wabash Avenue. He bought a telephone slug from the counter clerk, David Barish. Richard was hungry: he paid for a box of raisins, and as he slid his finger across the top of the box to open it, he asked Barish for the nearest phone. Barish indicated the booth against the wall at the rear of the store.

“Can I wait here for a phone call?” Richard asked. “I expect to be called.”

“Yes, sir.”
²³

Richard sat and waited. He listened absentmindedly to a conversation between the clerk and some customers at the front of the store. A large man with a mustache was telling the others, in a loud, boisterous voice, about a stag party the previous evening with some fellow Masons at the Auditorium Hotel.
²⁴

Richard wondered how long he would have to wait. Nathan was at the Rent-A-Car Company now; perhaps, he speculated, the rental agency would let Nathan have a car without asking for references.

The phone rang. Richard jumped up from his stool, almost, in his haste, knocking it over.

“Is this,” a man’s voice demanded, “Mr. Louis Mason talking?”

“Yes,” Richard replied.

The anonymous voice explained that a salesman, Morton Ballard, was in his office wanting to take out a car; would he provide a reference?

“Do you know Morton D. Ballard of Peoria?”

“Yes.”

“Is he dependable?”

“Absolutely dependable.”
²⁵

Their conversation was brief, almost perfunctory. The rental agency provided Morton Ballard with a car for the day. Ballard mentioned that he would return to Chicago in a few weeks and would need a car then. In that case, the clerk replied, the company would mail an identification card to his address—the Morrison Hotel? Yes, of course…that would be no trouble at all.
²⁶

They had now worked out a plan to obtain the ransom without risking capture and had created false identities in order to obtain a rental car. Richard had thrown a package from the Boston train; it had landed near the anticipated spot at 74th Street. And Nathan had taken out a car from the Rent-A-Car Company on Michigan Avenue, establishing himself as a reliable customer.

They did not yet know the identity of their victim—he might be any one of a dozen boys. But the date of the kidnapping was set: Wednesday, 21 May, in the afternoon, when the pupils at the Harvard School were walking home after the end of classes.

Nathan spent the weekend before the kidnapping at Wolf Lake, close to the marshlands in the Forest Preserve. On Saturday, 17 May, he spent the afternoon at the lake with a school friend, George Lewis. They noticed some birds resembling sandpipers. Nathan, determined to obtain one for his collection, fired three shots at the birds as they flew across the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks that separated Hyde Lake from its neighbor, Wolf Lake, to the west. He missed and ran across the tracks in pursuit, stumbling in rubber boots that were slightly too large.
²⁷

The birds had disappeared in the reeds lining the edges of Hyde Lake. The two boys searched for them along the shoreline, spotted them a second time, and fired at them but missed: Nathan’s gun jammed and the birds made good their escape.
²⁸

He returned the following day, accompanied again by Lewis and a second friend, Sidney Stein. They parked Nathan’s car by the railroad tracks, not far from a drainpipe culvert, and climbed up the incline to look out over Wolf Lake. There was no sign of the birds they had seen the previous day. The sun had already begun to dip low over the lake, casting an intense crimson glow across the horizon; soon it would be dark and time for them to start on the journey back to Chicago.
²⁹

O
N
T
UESDAY,
20 M
AY—
the day before the kidnapping—Nathan and Richard purchased the equipment for the murder. Nathan bought writing paper and envelopes for the ransom note at a stationery store at 1054 East 47th Street. Nathan had a sweet tooth; as he waited for the clerk, H. C. Stranberg, to fetch the writing pad, he bought a box of chocolate creams from Stranberg’s assistant.
³⁰

Later that day, Nathan entered a drugstore at 4558 Cottage Grove Avenue. The owner, Aaron Adler, was curious that the customer—a young man with a dark, sallow complexion, wearing an expensive gray topcoat and a slouch hat—was making such an unusual purchase.

“Give me a pint of hydrochloric acid,” Nathan requested, “and let me have a half pint of ether, also.”

Why did he need the acid? Adler asked.

For experimental work, Nathan replied, in a science laboratory at the university.

“Yes.” Adler seemed satisfied with the answer. “All right.”

“I have been to several other stores, and I couldn’t get it.”

Nathan paused—Adler was checking his inventory list.

“Do you sell much of it?” Nathan asked.

“Not a great deal,” Adler replied.

Three minutes later, the pharmacist returned from the rear of the store with two glass bottles, each not much larger than a Listerine bottle. Nathan was surprised that the acid was so inexpensive—only seventy-five cents for a pint bottle. Adler indicated the glass stopper sealed with a dark-brown wax lining to prevent spillage.

10.
THE RANSOM LETTER.
Nathan Leopold typed the ransom letter on a portable Underwood typewriter on the evening of Tuesday, 20 May.

“Be sure,” he cautioned Nathan, “and keep it upright, because it might leak out and burn your clothes.”
³¹

That afternoon, Richard Loeb completed their purchases, stopping at a hardware store on Cottage Grove Avenue north of 43rd Street to buy a length of rope and a sharp-edged chisel with a beveled blade and a wooden handle.
³²

T
HERE WAS ONE LAST DETAIL
remaining: the ransom letter. They had not yet, of course, chosen their victim, and the letter could not, therefore, be addressed to any specific person. Better, nevertheless, to compose the letter beforehand—they could then send it as soon as they had kidnapped their victim. That evening, after dinner, in Nathan’s study, they composed the letter asking for $10,000. Earlier that day, Richard had shown Nathan a recent copy of
Detective Story Magazine
. It contained a tale about the kidnapping of a banker’s wife by two ex-convicts. Perhaps, Richard suggested, they could use the ransom letters in the story as the model for their letter. Nathan agreed, and glancing occasionally at the magazine, open at page twenty-six, he began to draft the ransom letter, writing it out in longhand, pausing occasionally to read it back to Richard. Finally Nathan was done. He turned to the typewriter standing on the spinet desk by his side. It was the portable Underwood typewriter that he had stolen six months before from the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at the University of Michigan. He fed the sheets of paper into the machine and, with Richard looking over his shoulder, typed out the demand for the ransom money. Nathan had never learned how to type, and he ponderously tapped out the letters one by one, searching out each key and striking it with his forefinger. But eventually he was done. He looked at the letter with a sense of pride—it was flawless; he could not see a single grammatical error.
³³

Everything was now in place for tomorrow. Nothing could go wrong. They were about to commit the perfect crime, a murder that would never be solved.

4 THE MURDER

W
EDNESDAY,
21 M
AY
1924

There was quite a bit of blood; the blanket…was quite saturated with blood.
¹

Richard Loeb, 31 May 1924

P
RESTON
D
ARGAN HAD TAUGHT
R
OMANCE LITERATURE
at the University of Chicago since 1911. He was a neat and tidy man, somewhat short and small-framed; his ash-blond hair, brushed carefully toward the left, was graying slightly at the temples, but his mustache, cut in a military style, still retained its original auburn tinge.
²

Dargan was forty-four years old. He had found a comfortable niche at the university: his teaching duties were not unduly onerous and he had ample time for research. He had written his first book, a study of Montesquieu, as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, and after receiving his doctorate in 1907, Dargan had taught successively at the University of Virginia and the University of California before landing at Chicago. He had established himself as a productive scholar, publishing a series of reviews and articles on nineteenth-century French writers, and in 1922 Dargan had been the coauthor of a magisterial survey of French literature,
A History of French Literature from the Earliest Times to the Great War
, with the chair of the department, William Nitze.
³

Dargan was looking forward to the end of the school year. His course that quarter, on nineteenth-century French literature, had been successful—he was a popular lecturer—but teaching always consumed too much of his time, and he was keen to get back to his research. Dargan had already published several works on Honoré de Balzac, and he was planning a series of monographs, to be cowritten with his graduate students, on the novelist.
⁴

On Wednesday, 21 May, Dargan’s morning lecture was on the Parnassians, that group of late-nineteenth-century French poets that included René Sully-Prudhomme and Paul Verlaine. It was a literary movement, Dargan explained to the students sitting before him, that shared many characteristics with contemporary French culture and society; it had arisen in reaction to romanticism and emphasized exactitude, precision, and emotional detachment. The Parnassians had, the professor continued, initially grouped themselves around their journal,
Parnasse contemporain
, a literary magazine published in Paris from 1866 to 1876. José Maria de Heredia, whose reputation rested on his poem of 1893,
Les Trophées
, exemplified those qualities that distinguished the Parnassians:
Les Trophées
had attempted to reproduce the sensory effects of painting, music, and sculpture in poetic terms.
⁵

The students seemed absorbed in his talk; most were taking notes on the lecture. Perhaps, Dargan reflected, it was the thought of the final exams that had concentrated their minds.

But one student, seated to his left, toward the corner of the lecture theater, on a bench several rows above him, seemed to pay no attention to his words. Dargan recognized Nathan Leopold, a sallow, dark-haired boy with a pale, unhealthy complexion. Leopold had taken a course with him the previous year. Dargan remembered him as an exceptional student, diligent and hardworking, one of the best students he had taught in his thirteen years at the university.

But Leopold now seemed distracted. Dargan noticed the boy fidgeting absentmindedly with his pencil, doodling on a notebook in front of him. From time to time, Nathan would look around the room, glancing, somewhat furtively, Dargan thought, at the other students. At other times, Nathan would stare directly ahead for several minutes, with an intense, fixed look, utterly absorbed in his own thoughts. What was the matter with the boy? Why was he so preoccupied?

T
HE PROFESSOR’S WORDS DRIFTED IN
and out of Nathan’s mind; he caught occasional phrases, but he had difficulty concentrating. He looked around the room: he could see Helen Robbins and Adelia Alschuler sitting two rows directly in front of him and, over on the other side of the room, Susan Lurie was scribbling Dargan’s words into a sketchbook.

Nathan had attended Dargan’s class on an impulse. Ernst Puttkammer had lectured on commercial law at eight o’clock, finishing at five minutes to nine. Nathan had had an hour to kill before the ten o’clock lecture on agency and torts—and instead of stepping outside for a cigarette, he had attended Dargan’s lecture on the Parnassians.
⁶

But Nathan found it impossible to concentrate. He thought again of Richard Loeb; he turned their scheme over in his mind, asking himself if they had missed anything. They had arranged the murder for that afternoon; could anything go wrong?

He knew the plan; they had rehearsed it together many times. They were to pick up the car from the rental agency on Michigan Avenue, return Nathan’s automobile to his house, drive to Kramer’s Restaurant in the rental car for lunch, and then continue on to Jackson Park. At two-thirty that afternoon the pupils would begin leaving the Harvard School; any one of the children walking by himself would be a suitable target—any boy would do, so long as his parents were able to pay the ransom.

Nathan and Richard had planned to kill their victim jointly. Each would pull on one end of a rope around the boy’s neck. Nathan flinched involuntarily as he pictured himself pulling on the rope—it was an unpleasant image—but Richard had insisted that they both assume responsibility for the murder.

The clanging of the bell broke Nathan’s reverie. It was ten o’clock, the end of class already! The other students were picking up their books and papers. Nathan had one more lecture to attend that morning. But first he would remind Susan Lurie about their date that weekend—she was going to a dance with him.

R
ICHARD
L
OEB STOOD IN THE
sunlight, at the entrance to the law school. He watched absentmindedly a small group of students on the other side of Harper Court, directly opposite, talking animatedly among themselves outside the entrance to Haskell Hall.

Richard looked at his watch. Ten minutes before eleven. He had arranged to meet Nathan here, at eleven o’clock, at the conclusion of the law lecture.
⁷

Richard lit another cigarette and stepped forward a few paces to look up at the law school. It was an impressive building, in the Gothic style, with large bay windows on the third floor indicating the law library. The heavy buttresses on the exterior gave the building a solemn grandeur and dignity. Richard noticed the four gargoyles above the entrance—a whimsical touch by the architect. There were two kings in the center, flanked on either side by a medieval scribe clutching a book.

At eleven o’clock, Nathan appeared. As they walked together across the campus through the main quadrangle, Richard reminded his companion that they must first drive to Nathan’s home to pick up everything they needed: the chisel, adhesive tape, the bottle of ether, some pieces of cloth to gag the victim, a searchlight, the bottle of hydrochloric acid, hip boots, and the automobile blanket.
⁸

They passed the botany pond on their right. Richard could see Nathan’s car ahead of them, the red four-cylinder Willys-Knight sports model, parked on 57th Street, directly across from the football stadium. It was a beautiful car, resplendent in the sunlight, its nickel bumpers catching the light, but, Richard thought again, far too distinctive for their purpose. To kidnap a child using Nathan’s car would surely invite detection and capture.

11.
THE LAW SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the University of Chicago law school in 1903. Built of Bedford stone with funds donated by John D. Rockefeller, the law school building was modeled on King’s College Chapel at the University of Cambridge.

They arrived at the Leopold house at eleven-thirty. Nathan had prepared the equipment earlier that morning before leaving for the university; it was the work of a moment to load everything, wrapped securely in the automobile blanket, onto the backseat of Nathan’s car. And if anyone interfered with the kidnapping, they would be prepared: each boy carried a loaded revolver.
⁹

Thirty minutes later, at the Rent-A-Car agency on Michigan Avenue, Nathan presented his identification as Morton Ballard. The clerk gave it a cursory glance; would Mr. Ballard like to take out a Ford or a Willys-Knight? There was, he said, a green Willys-Knight, a five-passenger touring car, in the garage; it was, the clerk continued, a very solid, reliable car, easy to drive and furnished with the standard accoutrements. The Willys-Knight was slightly more expensive than a Ford but well worth the extra cost.
¹⁰

S
VEN
E
NGLUND, THE
L
EOPOLD FAMILY
chauffeur, had spent most of that morning in the garage working on the engine of the Packard Twin Six; it was a luxury automobile, one of the most sophisticated on the market. Englund wanted to get the work finished as soon as possible. His employer, Nathan Leopold Sr., had asked him to get the car ready by the weekend, but Englund was finding the task more difficult than he had imagined.

He looked up to see the youngest Leopold boy coming up the driveway in his red Willys-Knight; directly behind, there was a second boy driving a dark green touring car.
¹¹

Nathan stopped his car and stepped out to greet Englund. He had been having problems with his brakes and he would like to leave his car in the garage that afternoon to allow Englund to fix the problem.

“The brakes squeak so much here.” Nathan spoke with an air of exasperation. He was annoyed that so trivial a problem had disrupted his routine. “I want you to fix them.”

Englund looked thoughtfully at the sports car; he had hoped to have the afternoon free to continue working on the Packard.

“I can put some oil on them and you can use the emergency,” he replied hopefully. “If you are careful you will not run into anybody.”

12.
THE WILLYS-KNIGHT AUTOMOBILE.
In the 1920s advertisements for the Willys-Knight touring car emphasized its reliability and economy. On Wednesday, 21 May 1924, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold searched for their victim while driving a dark green Willys-Knight automobile.

Nathan shook his head impatiently; the noise of the brakes had irritated him for several days already. He wanted Englund to dismantle the brakes and check that it was not a serious problem.

Englund watched silently as Nathan carried a large bundle, wrapped in an automobile blanket, from his Willys-Knight to the second car. Both boys drove off in the touring car, leaving Englund standing in the driveway.
¹²

I
T WAS STILL NOT YET
one o’clock. Since afternoon classes did not finish at the Harvard School on Wednesdays until two-thirty, there was little point in driving across to Ellis Avenue to wait by the school. Richard turned the car south, toward the Midway, and out east to Jackson Park.
¹³

It was a perfect day—there was not a cloud in the sky. In the far distance, by the edge of the lagoon, they could see a small group of schoolchildren sitting on the grass, listening to their teacher read from a book. On the other side, moorhens were darting in and out of the rushes, ruffling the water with their sudden movements, and in the center of the lagoon, a mute swan glided majestically over the surface, breaking the reflected patterns of the sun’s rays on the water.