For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (20 page)

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.
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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.

R
OBERT
C
ROWE 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?

A
T HALF PAST THREE,
Archibald 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,
Nervous and Mental Diseases
, cowritten with Frederick Peterson of Columbia University.
³⁶

Church nodded a greeting to Hugh Patrick and William Krohn; he sat down with them in the center of the room, a few feet from Robert Crowe’s desk. The office was beginning to fill up as more people arrived. Crowe’s assistants—John Sbarbaro, Joseph Savage, and Milton Smith—talked quietly among themselves in one corner of the room. Michael Hughes and William Shoemacher sat to one side, waiting. The stenographer was there: Elbert Allen was still transcribing the informal conversations between Nathan and the psychiatrists. George Murray, a detective with the Illinois Central Railroad, had found a chair near the door; John Wesner, a physician, sat by his side, reading some notes from his briefcase; and Thomas O’Malley, the chief of staff assigned to Crowe’s office, walked in and out of the room, checking that everything was in order.

Robert Crowe had followed Church into the room. The state’s attorney had brought Richard Loeb with him. Now that the psychiatrists had arrived, Crowe prepared to start the examination.

Robert Crowe turned to Richard Loeb first.

“Go ahead and tell the story in your own way. Begin at the beginning.”

“Well, I don’t remember just exactly when it was.” Richard paused to look at Nathan. “Leopold here says it was in November…that he first talked to me about this; and I don’t remember just how it came about, we had been discussing crimes, and so forth.” Richard hesitated again; he was aware that everyone in the room was watching him closely. “We talked it over, and about the possibilities of it…. The crime, if it was to be committed plausibly…could not be done unless there was some way of getting the money.”
³⁷

Richard began to relax; soon he was speaking more coherently, telling how they had planned the kidnapping, carried out the murder, and disposed of the evidence. Richard claimed that Nathan had struck Bobby Franks; Nathan vehemently denied the accusation, but in all other respects he agreed with Richard’s account.

Crowe waited patiently for Richard to finish speaking.

“Let me,” Crowe began, “first ask one or two questions. Then we will hear from the other boy. The motive of this, you say, was what?”

“I don’t know,” Loeb replied hesitantly.

“You had money in the bank?”

“Yes,” Loeb replied. “It was a seeking of adventure; money entered into it some, in a way, but I think the main thing was the adventure of the thing, and the—” Richard paused and shook his head indecisively.

“Oh, God, I don’t know, when I come to think about it.”

William Krohn broke in: “Had you made arrangements that you were to divide the money, at all?”

“Yes, the money was to be split up.”

“Split even, fifty-fifty?”

“Yes.”

“Had you planned how you were to use the money in any way?”

“We arranged that [the] money was not to be used in the city of Chicago or in this country for a year. Leopold had intended to go to Europe, and it was arranged he could spend the money in Europe if he wanted to.”
³⁸

Richard Loeb admitted that the ransom money was not a sufficient motive for the murder. The ransom had added a element of complexity to the affair, but otherwise it was not important. The murder seemed inexplicable to him now; he had no satisfactory answer as to the motive.

“I feel so sorry. I have asked myself that question a million times. How did I possibly go into that thing?”

Hugh Patrick looked across at Nathan. “You cannot trace the original nucleus of it, can you, Mr. Leopold?”

“Yes, sir, I think I can,” Nathan replied, decisively. “I am sure, as sure as I can be of anything, that is, as sure as you can read any other man’s state of mind, the thing that prompted Dick to want to do this thing and prompted me to want to do this thing was a sort of pure love of excitement, or the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different; possibly…the satisfaction and the ego of putting something over…. The money consideration only came in afterwards, and never was important. The getting of the money was a part of our objective, as was also the commission of the crime; but that was not the exact motive.”
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I
F
R
OBERT
C
ROWE WAS TO
win a hanging verdict, he would have to convince the jury that the murder was a rational act. But what possible motive could there be for such a senseless murder? Neither Leopold nor Loeb had any especial reason to kill Bobby Franks. Richard Loeb had disliked his cousin, certainly, but not to any serious extent; Nathan Leopold had not even previously known Bobby.

In any case, both boys had claimed that they had selected Bobby by chance. He happened to be walking south on Ellis Avenue as they had driven by in the Willys-Knight. The victim might have been any one of a dozen boys in the vicinity of the Harvard School.

Could money be the motive for the killing? This, too, seemed implausible. Both Leopold and Loeb received generous monthly allowances. They did not lack money—why would they commit such a grievous crime for a relatively minor sum?

Could the desire for a thrill be the motive for the killing? Was it, as Nathan had stated to the reporters, akin to a scientific experiment whereby they could experience the sensation of killing another human being? But Crowe knew he could not claim that the murderers were sane and, at the same time, ask a jury to believe that they had killed a fourteen-year-old boy solely for the thrill of the experience.