For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (31 page)

Inside the courtroom, hundreds of spectators squeezed into every available space. Some sat, precariously, on the windowsills; others stood in the aisles or leaned against the walls; and others stood on temporary benches at the rear of the room, craning their necks over the heads of the crowd for a glimpse of the accused.
²⁷

John Caverly, chief justice of the Criminal Court, peered down from the bench at the crowd in front of him. The previous day, Caverly had announced that he would be the trial judge. Frederic Robert DeYoung, a judge on the Superior Court, would normally have presided over the trial (since he was first in sequence), but he was to ascend to the Illinois supreme court on 19 June. Since DeYoung might hear the case on appeal, Caverly had decided that he himself would be a better choice.
²⁸

Caverly’s decision had pleased Darrow. Caverly was a liberal judge. During his three years on the Criminal Court, he had sentenced five men to death, but in each case he had merely been giving formal utterance to a decision of the jury. And on the one occasion when Caverly might have sentenced a prisoner to hang—when Sam Rosen pleaded guilty to the brutal murder of his wife, Jennie—he had handed down a life sentence instead.
²⁹

Caverly waited patiently for the crowd to come to order. On his left, just a few feet away, Robert Crowe sat with his assistants—John Sbarbaro, Joseph Savage, and Thomas Marshall—at the prosecution table. Caverly could see Samuel Ettelson, representing the Franks family, sitting immediately behind Crowe; at Ettelson’s side, Caverly noticed the wan figure of Jacob Franks, wearing a coal-black suit, white shirt, and black necktie, his eyeglasses dangling from a black ribbon attached to his waistcoat.

Across the aisle from Crowe, on Caverly’s right, Clarence Darrow sat next to Benjamin Bachrach. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, each accompanied by a guard, sat directly behind their attorneys. Bachrach was a familiar figure in the Criminal Court and a celebrated attorney in his own right. He had graduated from the University of Notre Dame, and, after studying at Columbia University, had returned to Chicago to receive his law degree from the Kent College of Law in 1896. Bachrach had a magical touch in the courtroom, winning acquittals for prominent and wealthy clients charged with murder, embezzlement, conspiracy, and fraud.
³⁰

20.
JOHN CAVERLY.
After studying law at Lake Forest University, Caverly was elected city attorney of Chicago in 1906. In 1910 he won the election for judge of the Municipal Court. He served on the Municipal Court until 1920, when he was elected to the Circuit Court. Caverly served as chief justice of the Cook County Criminal Court in 1923 and 1924.

Bachrach, like Darrow, had made his reputation in a series of sensational trials, most notably in his defense of Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson, a flamboyant extrovert who had outraged public opinion by marrying a white woman, had paid the train fare for a woman friend to visit him from Pittsburgh. Unfortunately for Johnson, his friend also happened to be a prostitute, and federal authorities could thus charge Johnson with violating the White Slave Traffic Act, legislation that banned the promotion of prostitution across state lines. Bachrach doggedly fought Johnson’s case through the courts, and eventually the charges were dismissed in the Circuit Court of Appeals in April 1914. It had been an unpopular cause—Johnson, by far the most prominent black Chicagoan at the time, had become the most visible target for white hostility and racism in the city—yet Bachrach, in his defense of Johnson, had made his reputation as a methodical and persistent lawyer capable of successfully defending a client who had seemed destined for the penitentiary.
³¹

Darrow and Bachrach constituted a formidable defense team and a striking sartorial contrast. Whereas Darrow dressed carelessly, never bothering greatly about his appearance, Bachrach was impeccably dressed in a conservative business suit, white shirt, and expensive necktie. He was almost too meticulous, too careful about his appearance—journalists covering his cases occasionally poked fun at a fastidiousness that bordered on self-absorption.

J
OHN
C
AVERLY BROUGHT THE COURTROOM
to order. The clerk of the court, Ferdinand Scherer, read the indictments and then turned toward the accused: “On June 6 the grand jury returned indictments, charging both of you with murder. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?”

Richard Loeb answered first: “Not guilty, sir.” Leopold, standing slightly behind the other boy, repeated the same phrase.

“On June 6 the grand jury returned indictments charging you two with kidnaping for ransom. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

The photographers maneuvered among the spectators at the front of the court, stepping around the bailiffs to get the best position; a dozen flashbulbs popped and hissed and crackled.

Caverly motioned to Clarence Darrow and Benjamin Bachrach for the defense and Robert Crowe for the state to step forward.

“This case,” Caverly began, “will be assigned to Branch No. 1, my own court. Have you gentlemen any objections?”

Neither the defense nor the prosecution had any reason to protest against Caverly as the trial judge.

“Have you gentlemen agreed upon a date for trial?” Caverly asked.

“No, your honor,” answered Bachrach, “we haven’t had a chance.”

“I would suggest,” Crowe interrupted, “that your honor follow out the procedure you have been adopting in murder cases and set this for an early date. July 15 would give the defense a month and a half for trial.”

“This case is not in the class with other murder cases.” Darrow brushed his hair away from his eyes impatiently. “There isn’t a man in Chicago who would say we could get a fair trial within a month. We are as anxious as anyone to get ready, but we must have a fair trial.”

“That is a very short time in which to prepare the case,” Bachrach added, a trace of anxiety in his voice. “The state must know the defense can not get ready within that time. Your honor must be aware of the public feeling arising from the statements in the newspapers. According to the newspapers, Mr. Crowe has boasted he’ll hang the boys….”

“I’ve made no such statement. I am not responsible,” Crowe snapped back angrily, “for the articles in the press…. It has been the policy of judges to speed up murder trials. I don’t see why this case should be handled any differently.”

“The defense is anxious to get through with the case as soon as possible,” Darrow spoke now, pleading with the judge to allow them more time, “but I believe it will be impossible to obtain a fair trial if the trial is held immediately. It will take a large amount of preparation to get the defense side of the case ready. We need time to prepare the case and time,” he added meaningfully, “for public sentiment to die down.”

Caverly listened patiently to the attorneys. He had a characteristic pose on the bench, seated forward, away from the back of his chair, peering through wire-rimmed glasses, a pen in his right hand, ready to scribble notes on a pad before him.

He turned to look at a calendar on the wall behind him, and as the attorneys waited for his decision, he silently counted out the days and turned back to face the court.

“I will set the case then, for July 21. All motions will be disposed of on that day. I will then set the trial for August 4.”

Darrow relaxed. Perhaps, he suggested to the judge, the defense would require an adjournment, some additional time to prepare; if so, he added, the defense might present a motion for a continuance on 21 July.

Caverly nodded. He would hear the motions then, he repeated, and he would assuredly consider any request from the defense to delay the opening of trial. “Of course,” Caverly replied, “if anything occurs that makes a continuance necessary, the motion can be heard.”
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The judge gathered up his papers, as if to leave the room. The crowd began to drift away, melting back down to the street outside, to the bright sunlight that flooded Austin Avenue as Richard and Nathan, each handcuffed to a guard, exited through a side door to cross the bridge that connected the Criminal Court Building to the Cook County jail.

Robert Crowe bustled about purposefully for a few minutes, conferring with the sheriff, Peter Hoffman, before leaving for his office on the third floor. A small retinue of assistants—five or six, perhaps more—trailed along in his wake, to prepare for a conference later that day in the state’s attorney’s office.

Clarence Darrow also lingered in the courtroom. He murmured some words to Benjamin Bachrach, and then turned to greet Richard Loeb’s brother Allan. Neither Albert Loeb nor Nathan Leopold Sr. had been in court that morning, but Darrow expected to talk with them later that day to discuss his strategy. In five weeks, he reminded Bachrach, they would be back in court to present motions to the judge; there was no time to lose!

11 THE SCIENTISTS ARRIVE

F
RIDAY,
13 J
UNE
1924–S
UNDAY,
20 J
ULY
1924

Science and evolution teach us that man is an animal, a little higher than the other orders of animals; that he is governed by the same natural laws that govern the rest of the universe;…that free moral agency is a myth, a delusion, and a snare.
¹

Clarence Darrow, March 1911

T
HE
T
WENTIETH
C
ENTURY
E
XPRESS
from Boston pulled into LaSalle Street Station at noon on Friday, 13 June. A small-statured, narrow-shouldered middle-aged man, with thin lips, large ears, and tortoiseshell eyeglasses, and wearing a black porkpie hat, opened one of the train windows as the express slid to a halt along the side of the platform. Clarence Darrow had promised to meet him at the station. The man leaned out of the window and scanned the platform anxiously, trying to recognize the attorney, but the sudden maelstrom of passengers—spilling from the train, collecting belongings, greeting friends and relatives—had created a whirlwind that, for the moment at least, rendered Darrow invisible.
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He had read of the murder of Bobby Franks in the Boston newspapers, of course; the entire country seemed to be talking about this sensational killing in Chicago. He knew that two killers—both wealthy teenagers—had confessed to the murder. But he had never anticipated that Clarence Darrow would ask him to join the defense team—what did he know of the law? Nevertheless, once Darrow had explained the defense strategy, he had immediately consented to travel to Chicago.

Karl Bowman, chief medical officer at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, looked up and down the platform. Suddenly Bowman saw Clarence Darrow, walking casually in his direction, looking left and right, pushing his way through the crowds. He recognized Darrow instantly—who could not recognize the most famous lawyer in the country?—and he waved from the window, hoping to catch the attorney’s attention.

Darrow watched expectantly as Bowman descended the steps to the platform. They shook hands enthusiastically, as if they had both been waiting a long time for this encounter, and Darrow turned to introduce Benjamin Bachrach, the lawyer representing the Leopold family in the case.

Bowman was amused at the contrast between the two men. Darrow was dressed in a slovenly manner, in an inexpensive jacket, a slightly grubby shirt, and a frayed necktie. Bachrach was dressed impeccably in a well-cut, expertly tailored, dark business suit—his shoes gleamed, his white shirtfront dazzled, his cuff links sparkled, and his colorful yet tasteful silk necktie bespoke a man with expensive tastes. If he had not known better, Bowman realized, he would have assumed that Bachrach was the lead attorney.

As they drove to the Cook County jail, Clarence Darrow explained that he had hired Harold Hulbert, a neuropsychiatrist in private practice, to assist Bowman in the examination of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Hulbert was still in his thirties, Darrow confided, yet he already had considerable experience in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. After postgraduate work in nervous and mental diseases at the University of Michigan, Hulbert had worked in Tennessee under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, examining mental defectives in the state prisons, before serving in the war as a psychiatrist in the United States Navy. He was a pleasant young man, Darrow mused, tall, good-looking, with an open, honest appearance; Darrow was sure that he would be an asset to the defense team. He continued to talk as Bowman listened in silence and Bachrach, absorbed in his own thoughts, stared out at the lunchtime crowds thronging LaSalle Street. They reached the swing bridge stretching across the Chicago River, continued north on LaSalle, turned right onto Austin Avenue and left onto Dearborn Street, and finally stopped in front of the Cook County jail.
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The warden, Wesley Westbrook, ushered the visitors into the room on the second floor set aside for the examination. Bowman looked around with satisfaction. Everything was as it should be; the room perhaps was a little small, but, importantly, it was isolated within the prison so that there would be no possibility of interference or disturbance from the other prisoners. A table stood in the center of the room with chairs arranged along one side; there was a sink in one corner with faucets for hot and cold water, and a metal frame bed with a mattress ran along one side of the room. It was, Bowman remarked, much better than he had expected, and now that he had reached his destination, he was eager to begin his examination of the two prisoners.
⁴

T
HE KEY TO MENTAL HEALTH,
Bowman believed, lay within endocrinology, the study of the secretions of the endocrine glands: once researchers understood the effect of the hormones on the body, physician-psychiatrists would be able to eliminate mental illness.

No science was more fashionable in the 1920s than endocrinology. It was one of the youngest scientific disciplines, yet already it promised to deliver new therapies for disease. Scientists could now explain the workings of the body, and soon, perhaps, they would be able to control and determine the body through manipulation of the glands. Endocrinology, some scientists speculated, might even join with eugenics to transform American society. Endocrinology, in concert with such novel sciences as psychoanalysis and behaviorism, would allow the scientist to go beyond surface appearances to a discovery of the interior self, which was otherwise hidden. Science would thus arrive at a new level of understanding of human action.
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In 1916, endocrinologists meeting at the annual convention of the American Medical Association had established a professional organization, the Society for the Study of Internal Secretions, and in January 1917 the journal
Endocrinology
made its first appearance. Scientists had already mapped the positions of the endocrine glands in the body and had begun to understand the action on the body of the hormones that poured from each gland into the bloodstream. Each hormone acted as a chemical messenger that, in ways yet unknown, regulated physiological action and helped maintain health.

The thyroid gland—consisting of two lobes, one on each side of the larynx—secreted a substance, thyroxin, that regulated the body’s metabolism. An excess of thyroxin in the bloodstream—a condition known as hyperthyroidism—correlated with an abnormal enlargement of the thyroid, visible as a swelling of the neck, and resulted in excessive metabolism, an irregular pulse, anxiety, restlessness, and an abnormally rapid heartbeat. A decrease in thyroxin (hypothyroidism) had equally dramatic consequences: the patient became dull and lethargic, gained excessive weight, suffered from hair loss, and had thick dry skin. In extreme cases, the condition resulted in cretinism in children and myxedema in adults.
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The pituitary gland, located in a bony cradle-shaped cavity, the
sella turcica
, at the base of the brain, secreted pitruitin, a hormone that regulated growth and development. A deficiency of pitruitin might result in dwarfism; other symptoms included obesity, lethargy, and sexual dysfunction. The skin of a patient suffering from hypopituitarism was often fine, smooth, and hairless; his or her behavior was often capricious, childish, and uninhibited. An excessive amount of pitruitin, on the other hand, might result in, inter alia, exaggerated growth, leading to acromegaly and gigantism.
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Other glands also were linked to physical and mental symptoms of ill-health. Disease of the pineal gland manifested itself as excessive sexual activity, the premature development of secondary sex characteristics, and an abnormal mental precociousness. Disturbances in the adrenal glands were linked to symptoms of listlessness and nervous disability, discoloration of the skin, and abnormal secondary sex characteristics. The removal of the interstitial sex glands led to decreased sexual virility and the failure of secondary sex characteristics to appear. The malfunction of the thymus gland resulted in the persistence of a child-like, irresponsible personality into adulthood.
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The endocrine glands were no doubt significant in understanding health and disease, but how significant? Had physicians in the 1920s sufficient knowledge of the glands to treat physical and mental ailments? Or were the therapeutic effects of glandular extracts and surgical operations on the glands merely a chimera, more a hope than a reality?

The relationship between the endocrine glands and mental health was especially intriguing. Researchers at the Michigan Institution for the Feeble-Minded had found that twenty percent of the inmates suffered from glandular disorders, most commonly either hypothyroidism or hypopituitarism. Physicians at the Massachusetts State Psychiatric Institute had found from postmortem examinations that seventy-four percent of patients had suffered from diseases of the glands. Nolan Lewis and Gertrude Davies, two researchers at the Government Hospital for the Insane at Washington, D.C., had discovered that in more than 200 patients mental illness went hand in hand with glandular dysfunction. Therapeutic intervention, they concluded, was most effective when it combined psychotherapy and the administration of glandular extracts to the patient.
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The association of mental disease with endocrine pathology promised a means of determining the presence and character of mental illness. Glandular disturbances in the body manifested themselves through measurable effects on the urine, blood, pulse, blood pressure, and metabolism. Thus the thyroid gland controlled metabolism—the rate at which the body oxidizes food. Any deviation of the metabolic rate from the norm was evidence of a diseased thyroid—too much thyroxin from the thyroid elevated the body’s metabolism; too little thyroxin caused a lowering of the metabolic rate. Similarly, the pancreatic glands regulated the amount of sugar in the blood—an excess of sugar in the bloodstream was a sure sign of the failure of the pancreas.

Any correlation between glandular dysfunction and mental illness might pinpoint a particular gland as the cause of a specific psychiatric disorder. Yet Karl Bowman’s own research had been inconclusive. In 1921 Bowman had examined 229 patients at the Bloomingdale Hospital—a group that included patients with manic-depressive psychoses, dementia praecox, melancholia, paranoia, senile dementia, and psychoneurosis. A blood analysis of each patient—including readings of nonprotein nitrogen, dextrose, uric acid, and chlorides—had revealed nothing abnormal.
¹⁰

A more detailed study that same year on ten patients suffering from dementia praecox was equally inconclusive. Bowman measured the blood count, conducted a urine analysis, estimated the metabolism, and determined the quantity of sugar in the blood but found nothing unusual—the metabolism of some patients was low, but not consistently so. There was, Bowman concluded, “nothing to confirm a simple dysfunction of a single endocrine gland and a constant condition in dementia praecox.”
¹¹

A third study, in 1923, of fifty mental patients at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital revealed that twenty-seven had a metabolism well below the normal range, indicating a lack of thyroid activity. Was a disease of the thyroid gland a cause of mental illness? Bowman was pleased that he had found the correlation—“a low basal metabolism in cases of mental disease is of importance and merits consideration in formulating our theories as to etiology and treatment”—yet he remained reluctant to make any grand claim that might subsequently be disproved: “we do not feel that any conclusions are justifiable as yet.”
¹²

Little evidence existed to link the dysfunction of a specific gland with an identifiable psychiatric illness. Perhaps in the future, endocrinologists might establish such a relationship, but for the moment at least, the connections between psychiatry and endocrinology remained vague and uncertain. Yet for Clarence Darrow, the idea that glandular disease could cause mental illness was irresistible. Each individual was akin to a machine, Darrow believed; consciousness had a strictly materialist basis, and human action was entirely a consequence of external stimuli acting on the organism to produce predictable results. Endocrinology provided the somatic content for Darrow’s philosophy of behavior—nothing could be better suited to Darrow’s worldview than the idea that the action of the glands regulated human behavior.

The murder of Bobby Franks was inexplicable, according to Darrow, unless one assumed that Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were mentally ill. Each boy’s psychiatric disorder was hidden from view—indeed, on casual acquaintance both Richard and Nathan seemed entirely normal—but an analysis of their endocrine glands would surely, Darrow believed, reveal the somatic basis of their mental disorders and lay the groundwork for an explanation of the killing of Bobby Franks.

O
N
S
ATURDAY,
14 J
UNE,
at nine o’clock in the morning, Karl Bowman, accompanied by Harold Hulbert, arrived back at the Cook County jail. Two physicians, J. J. Moore and Paul Dick, walked with them into the jail; Moore carried a portable oxygen tank and Dick held a metabolimeter.
¹³

Richard Loeb, still limping after hurting his leg in a baseball game two days previously, appeared in the examination room to greet Bowman and Hulbert. He had followed their instructions not to eat breakfast that morning; now he listened attentively as they outlined the procedure. He noticed a machine—it was a Jones metabolimeter, an apparatus for calculating metabolic rate—on one side of the room, and as he lay on the bed, the doctors clamped the mouthpiece to his face and attached the tube to the apparatus.
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