For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (39 page)

But the Illinois supreme court had already deliberated on the admissibility of such evidence—in a case decided three years earlier—and had ruled such evidence to be inadmissible.

It was Friday, 4 April
1919, a bright, sunny spring day, when John Bachman strolled down the main street of the town of Carmi, Illinois, and met an old friend, Frank Lowhone, walking toward him. Lowhone was doing well: he told Bachman that he was no longer a farm laborer; he had found better pay as a coal miner near Benton in Franklin County. A third friend, Mack Nottingham, passed by, and the three men gossiped for fifteen minutes on the sidewalk. Nottingham had not much to do that day, and after Lowhone left, he and Bachman walked on together, talking. Soon Bachman also departed and Nottingham drifted over to the front of Hubele’s Store. There was a bench facing the store; Nottingham hoped to meet friends, to catch some town gossip, and to while away the afternoon chatting.

Suddenly a shot broke the stillness. Nottingham looked up—the report had seemed very close. To his right he could see Frank Lowhone running along the sidewalk toward him. Lowhone had a gun in his hand, and as he approached, a second shot rang out. Both shots had missed their intended target but now Lowhone was almost on him, taking aim to fire a third shot in his direction. Nottingham rose up off the bench and darted around the side of the store, but his assailant was close behind. As Lowhone turned the corner in pursuit, he fired a third shot. The bullet tore through Nottingham’s chest. As blood spurted out onto the ground, Lowhone emptied his revolver into Nottingham; two more bullets hit their target.

The town sheriff, Charles Gibbs, and another man, Frank Martin, had been in the courthouse when they heard the gunfire. They both ran out to the street. Lowhone was walking toward them, his head down, intent on reloading the gun. They cautiously approached him and reached him as he placed the final bullet in the chamber. Lowhone glanced up and relaxed; as he handed over his weapon, he addressed the sheriff.

“Here it is; I meant to give myself up.”

Why had he fired his gun? asked Martin.

“Oh, they have been running over me around here; trying to run me out of town and one thing and another.”

“Did you kill him?”

“I hope I did, the damn son of a bitch.”
⁴⁰

Was Lowhone insane when he killed Mack Nottingham? Or was the killing a rational act, the decision of someone able to distinguish right from wrong? There was no obvious motive for the killing; there had never been any animosity between Lowhone and Mack Nottingham. On the contrary, the two men had known each other for many years and had become close friends. At Lowhone’s trial, relatives and workmates testified to his eccentric behavior and his antipathy toward some residents of Carmi, but up until the moment of the shooting, there had been little to suggest that Lowhone was insane.

Was the fact of the murder itself evidence that Lowhone was insane? It had been a bizarre killing, no doubt, one that defied explanation. Yet on appeal, the Illinois supreme court ruled that neither the lack of a motive nor the suddenness of the attack nor the satisfaction expressed by Lowhone after the shooting could be the basis for a judgment that Lowhone was insane. Lowhone was an alcoholic who had had previous brushes with the law, but this fact too was insufficient evidence to conclude that he was insane. The court’s decision left no room for doubt—“depravity of character and abandoned habits are not in themselves evidence of insanity. Neither is the commission of an unnatural crime”—and it affirmed the lower court’s decision that Lowhone was guilty of murder. Frank Lowhone was hanged on Friday, 15 April 1921.
⁴¹

Just as Frank Lowhone
was unable to claim insanity on the basis of the unnatural character of his crime, so, Crowe argued, it was not possible for Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb to argue mental illness as mitigation when evidence of their mental illness arose solely from the commission of the crime.

Clarence Darrow had listened attentively to Crowe’s exegesis, but now even he had lost the thread of Crowe’s logic. Darrow was losing patience. The defense had listened to Crowe for three days. Crowe’s arguments had become repetitive and flat and increasingly threadbare. If he were now saying that the defense could not introduce psychiatric testimony because it was the wrong kind of evidence, then just what would he allow?

“The State’s Attorney,” Darrow called out, sarcastically, “ought to tell us what we could offer in mitigation. What kind of evidence would be in mitigation?…”

“I don’t think you have any evidence here,” Crowe replied, calling back across the aisle.

“Well, is there any such evidence in any case in the world?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Evidence,” Crowe responded, “that grows out of the transaction itself. In other words, as I explained yesterday, after a murder has been proved, it is competent, in order to mitigate the punishment, to show, for instance, that the man who was killed had seduced the daughter or the wife, that is mitigating evidence.”

“Why,” Darrow called out, “would that be competent?”

“Because it is in mitigation.”

“Why?”

“Because the law would not hold a man who had a reason in morals…”

“Oh, that is nonsense,” Darrow interrupted.

“…for killing,” Crowe continued, “for the same strict accountability that the law would hold a man who had absolutely no justification in morals.”
⁴²

Mitigation, according to Crowe, was to be found only in the external circumstances of the case, not in the mental condition of the defendants.

But was not mental condition, Walter Bachrach replied, one feature of a case such as this? Crowe himself had claimed, when he had presented his witnesses in aggravation of punishment, that the murder was undertaken in cold blood and that it therefore demanded the extreme penalty. But did not that claim require an assessment of the defendants’ state of mind?

“He says,” Bachrach explained, pointing to the state’s attorney, “he was trying to show that it was a cold-blooded murder. Upon what does a cold-blooded murder depend if it does not depend upon the mental condition of the man who is committing the murder? How are you going to tell whether it was a cold-blooded murder if you don’t know what the mental condition of the person was who committed it?”
⁴³

J
OHN
C
AVERLY SAT TWIRLING
a pencil in his hand, looking first at the defense and then at the state as each side presented its case. To his left, still on the witness stand, William White waited patiently for the judge’s decision. If Caverly agreed with Darrow that the psychiatric testimony was admissible, White would continue with his testimony; if Caverly sided with Crowe and denied the evidence, Darrow’s gamble would have failed. The defense had wagered everything on the psychiatric evidence—withdraw that, and Darrow’s case would collapse.
⁴⁴

Caverly had been very patient—he had listened to arguments on this point for three days—but now, on Friday, 1 August, he seemed ready to draw the debate to a close and announce his decision. It was, everyone realized, a crucial moment—would he decide for the defense or for the state?

13 PSYCHIATRISTS FOR THE DEFENSE

F
RIDAY,
1 A
UGUST
1924–T
UESDAY,
12 A
UGUST
1924

[Richard Loeb] is still a little child emotionally, still talking to his teddy bear…. He is infantile. I should say somewhere around four or five years old, perhaps a little older…. [Nathan Leopold] also is the host of a relatively infantile emotional aspect of his personality but…he has reacted by a defense mechanism, which has produced the final picture of a marked disordered personality makeup in the direction of developing feelings of superiority.
¹

William Alanson White, superintendent of
St. Elizabeths Hospital, 1 August 1924

The development of their ideas of criminality, the planning and carrying out of their deeds, seems to be only possible because each of them had already abnormal characteristics.
²

William Healy, psychiatrist, author of
The Individual Delinquent,
4 August 1924

[Richard Loeb] is suffering from a disordered personality…. The nature of this disorder is primarily in a profound pathological discord between his intellectual and emotional life…. [Nathan] Leopold is…a paranoid personality in which are the elements of a pathological exaggeration of his ego and…a profound judgment disorder.
³

Bernard Glueck, professor of psychiatry, New York
Postgraduate School and Hospital, 5 August 1924

T
HE COURTROOM WAITED EXPECTANTLY.
“U
NDER
that section of the statute,” Caverly announced, speaking in a slow drawl, “which gives the court the right, and says it is his duty to hear evidence in mitigation, as well as evidence in aggravation, the Court is of the opinion that it is his duty to hear any evidence that the defense may present, and it is not for the court to determine in advance what it may be.” Caverly halted briefly. The pause lent his words dignity. “The Court will hear it and give it such weight as he thinks it is entitled to…. The objection to the witness is overruled, and the witness may proceed.”
⁴

N
ATHAN AND
R
ICHARD SMILED AS
they heard Caverly’s decision. Nathan leaned forward slightly; he touched Darrow’s arm in congratulation and then turned in his seat to look in triumph at his relatives. His elder brother, Michael, seated two rows behind him, returned his smile; and, by Michael’s side, his father breathed a heavy sigh and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Richard’s uncle, Jacob, turned to Allan Loeb, seated beside him, and whispered a few words to his nephew before turning his attention once more to the front of the court.
⁵

Jacob Franks had sat impassively, listening to Caverly’s decision. Now he rose from his seat and walked down the aisle, past the defendants and their guards, through the crowd of spectators, retreating to the corridor for a cigarette. The reporter from the
Chicago Daily News
caught up with him outside the courtroom and, as Franks reached for his cigarette case, asked him about Caverly’s decision to allow the psychiatric evidence. Was the judge’s ruling a setback for the prosecution?

“This particular decision,” Franks replied, “makes very little difference to me. I feel sure justice will be done.”

“Do you mean,” the reporter pressed, “that you feel sure the boys will be hanged—is that what you mean by justice?”

“No,” Franks answered enigmatically, pausing to light a cigarette, “I’m not sure hanging would be justice….”

“Do you mean you have faith in Judge Caverly’s making a just decision?”

Franks smiled. “I have faith in the state’s attorney,” he replied.
⁶

I
N THE COURTROOM,
W
ILLIAM
W
HITE,
still on the witness stand, reached into his briefcase. As he glanced through his papers, he settled himself more comfortably in his chair. Walter Bachrach stepped into the well of the court.

“From the result, Doctor, of your examination and observation of the defendant, Richard Loeb, are you able to form and have you formed an opinion as to his mental condition at the present time and on the 21st of May 1924?”

Richard Loeb, White replied, had had the misfortune, as a young child, to have had Emily Struthers as his governess. This virago had hounded young Richard into submission, preventing his association with his peers, gradually separating him—emotionally, at least—from his parents and siblings, and placing such inordinate demands on him that he had no recourse except in lying.
⁷

“She pushed him tremendously,” White explained, “in his school work, was apparently very ambitious with regard to him and stimulated and pushed him ahead, further than he would have gone without that sort of stimulus.”

Emily Struthers had propelled Richard Loeb onto his path of crime. Her demands—her outrageously extravagant demands, White suggested—had forced the young boy into a habit of lying and deceit. It had become pathological. Richard lied on every occasion, even when there was no apparent need to deceive.

“For example, in college he lied about his marks. He lied about all sorts of things. He lied to Babe Leopold, his comrade, about his attendance in college. While his marks were on the whole pretty good he made them a good deal better…. He was continually building up all sorts of artificial situations until he himself says that he found it difficult to distinguish between what was true and what was not true.”
⁸

It was but a short step, according to White, from Loeb’s habitual lying to the creation of a fantasy life that had entrapped and overwhelmed him. He now imagined himself as a master criminal, so brilliant that he could outwit any detective sent to catch him, so clever that he could coordinate the activities of dozens of other criminals, and so cunning that he could eternally elude his enemies.

“He considered himself the master criminal mind of the century, controlling a large band of criminals, whom he directed; even at times he thought of himself as being so sick as to be confined to bed, but so brilliant and capable of mind…[that] the underworld came to him and sought his advice and asked for his direction, and so he directed this whole group of criminal conspirators from his sick bed.”
⁹

Richard was emotionally infantile, White suggested; he remained trapped by fantasies that a five-year-old might entertain. Yet as far as his intellect was concerned, Richard was entirely normal, slightly superior to his peers, but not extravagantly so. The divergence between his emotional experiences on the one hand and his intellectual ability on the other was so pronounced as to seem pathological and, White concluded, boded ill for the future. His infantile emotional makeup, so discordant with his intellectual ability, could lead only to a splitting of his personality and, as a consequence, severe mental deterioration.

“In a well-rounded, well-integrated, well-knit personality, emotion and intelligence go hand-in-hand…. Dickie is in a stage which if it goes on further is capable of developing that kind of very malignant splitting.”
¹⁰

“D
OCTOR
,” W
ALTER
B
ACHRACH ASKED,
“will you now address yourself to Nathan Leopold, Junior, and state what you have obtained as a result of your examination of him?”

Nathan’s pathology, the psychiatrist replied, had begun in early childhood. His classmates at the Douglas School had teased him relentlessly; his estrangement from his peers had begun when he was seven or eight years old and had continued through his time at the Harvard School and into the present. Nathan had always been a lonely, unhappy child, ever the outsider, and to protect himself from further pain and hurt, he had retreated into an inner world where emotion counted for nothing and intellect was all.

Nathan, like Richard, was trapped inside a world of fantasy. Nathan imagined himself as a slave, subservient yet physically powerful, who had saved the life of his king and had thereby earned the king’s gratitude. It was an elaborate fantasy, played out in innumerable ways, yet it always allowed Nathan to imagine himself as superior.

“Babe fancies himself as being a slave,” White explained, looking at Walter Bachrach, turning occasionally to his right to glance at the judge, “in which case he has saved the king’s life, and the king is very grateful, and the king wants to recompense him by giving him his liberty, which he refuses. However, he is a very unusual slave. He is not an ordinary every-day slave. He belongs to the social grade of slaves, to be sure, but he is very powerful, physically powerful. The various kings, when they are in dispute with one another, if they want to settle their differences, each pick out one of their slaves to fight in single-handed combat. He is always the one that is picked out. He always wins. Some times, he says, he has found himself fighting many, many men in his phantasies, to save the king. At times it was getting where he was fighting a thousand men, single-handed; and then the thing would get so utterly ridiculous that he would shake himself out of the phantasy and perhaps begin over again.”

White paused; he looked down at the notes in his lap; there was silence in the courtroom as White shuffled through his papers.

“Now,” Bachrach prompted, helpfully, “what findings did you arrive at…with reference to each of the defendants in combination with the other?”

Nathan and Richard complemented each other, White replied. Richard needed Nathan’s applause and admiration in order to confirm his sense of his own self.

But Nathan also needed Richard to play a role; Richard took the role of a king who was simultaneously superior and inferior. Richard had suggested the murder and had taken the initiative in its planning—in that sense, White suggested, he had been the king. But at crucial moments, when Richard had appeared to falter, Nathan had assumed command. For example, on the day following the murder, Thursday, 22 May, Richard had wanted to abandon the ransom attempt as soon as they had learned of the discovery of the body—“Dickie would have let it gone by”—but Nathan had insisted that they call Jacob Franks one more time in order to secure the ransom: “Babe…insisted upon sending the last telephone message and taking such chances to bring the whole thing to a successful combination.”
¹¹

It was a peculiarly bizarre confluence of two personalities, each of which satisfied the needs of the other. Nathan would never on his own initiative have murdered Bobby Franks. Nathan had confessed feeling a degree of pleasure from planning the murder and in undressing the boy—to have someone in his power, he had admitted, was sexually arousing—but there was no indication that without Richard’s suggestion, he would have committed murder.
¹²

As for Richard—his suggestion would never have been carried into effect without the encouragement provided by Nathan’s participation.

“I can not see how Babe would have entered into it at all alone because he had no criminalistic tendencies in any sense as Dickie did, and I don’t believe Dickie would have ever functioned to this extent all by himself, so these two boys with their peculiarly interdigitated personalities come into this emotional compact with the Franks homicide as a result.”
¹³

“As a result,” Bachrach asked, “of your examination and observation of the defendant Richard Loeb have you formed an opinion as to his mental condition on the 21st of May, 1924?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is that opinion?”

“He was the host of anti-social tendencies along the lines that I have described; he was the host of an infantile make-up which was a long way from the possibility of functioning harmoniously with his developed intelligence…. The main outstanding feature was his infantilism. I mean by that these infantile emotional characteristics. That is the outstanding feature of his mental condition. He is still a little child emotionally, still talking to his teddy bear….”

“Now, have you an opinion as to the mental condition of Nathan Leopold, Jr., on the 21st of May, 1924?”

“Yes.”

“What is your opinion?”

“Well, he also is the host of a relatively infantile emotional aspect of his personality but…he has reacted by a defense mechanism, which has produced the final picture of a marked disordered personality make-up in the direction of developing feelings of superiority, which places him very largely out of contact with any adequate appreciation of his relations to others.”
¹⁴

Walter Bachrach turned, away from the witness, to address the prosecution: “You may cross-examine.”
¹⁵

I
T WAS FUTILE,
C
ROWE REALIZED,
to debate psychoanalytic theory with the witness. To dispute White’s analysis of Richard and Nathan—Were they emotionally retarded? Did their fantasies indicate mental illness?—would be to play into the hands of the defense. Crowe had little or no understanding of psychiatry, and he could not expect to defeat White in a debate over Freudian theory. The defense had placed the murder within a psychoanalytic framework, using psychoanalytic concepts and theories, and if Crowe accepted that framework, he would surely lose the debate.