For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (40 page)

Better for the state to demolish the framework than to accept it. There was no advantage for Crowe in discussing the extent or character of the defendants’ mental condition—and, in any case, both Nathan and Richard, he believed, were entirely rational.

But how best to demolish the psychoanalytic framework? White was the leader of his profession, with awards and honors to prove it. His credentials—president of the American Psychiatric Association, author of almost twenty books, editor of a prestigious psychoanalytic journal—gave his pronouncements authority and legitimacy. How could Crowe, an obscure state’s attorney, unknown outside Cook County, hope to vanquish the acknowledged leader of the psychiatric profession?

“Now, how many persons—,” Crowe paused, seeking to rephrase his question. “From how many persons did you get any information in reference to Nathan Leopold, Jr. that you base your opinion on?…”

“I did not,” White replied, “get any information from anybody except Nathan Leopold, Jr…. I beg pardon. I want to supplement that. I had read—There is one other thing I did have. I had read the so-called Bowman and Hulbert report.”
¹⁶

Karl Bowman and Harold Hulbert had based their report on interviews with Nathan—so, in essence, White’s analysis was based in its entirety on conversations with Nathan. But how, Crowe continued, had White known that, in those conversations, Nathan had been telling the truth? And if he had not been telling the truth, did White’s psychoanalysis have any value? Or was it merely a preposterous chimera, fabricated to exculpate the murderers of Bobby Franks?

“Do you think that Nathan Leopold would attempt to mislead you?”

“I don’t think he did….”

“He has not lied to you at all?”

“I don’t remember any particular instance,” White replied, cautiously, “at this moment where I believe Nathan lied to me. I think he was frank, as frank as he could be.”

“You are satisfied that he has been absolutely truthful, that is, Nathan has, with you all the way through?…Don’t you think it is strange that he lies to Loeb and he lies to everybody else except you?…The fact that Nathan Leopold has lied to every other person that he has talked to except you, doesn’t make any impression on your mind at all? Does it?”
¹⁷

What was White to say? It would be impossible to demonstrate the truthfulness of Nathan’s statements. Perhaps, after all, Nathan was incapable of telling the truth—he was a proven liar who lived in a fantasy world, and it was in his own interest to assist the psychiatrists in their diagnosis that he was mentally ill. Why would anyone take Nathan’s statements to be true?

But if Nathan had lied to the psychiatrists, then their reports were worthless, their analysis had no value, and the defense case would be without merit.

Crowe reminded White that in his testimony under direct examination, he had spoken of the defendants’ antisocial behavior as evidence of their mental deterioration. Could he provide examples of such behavior? Crowe inquired. What exactly had Nathan and Richard done? What were those crimes?

“They set fire to several buildings. Three instances I think they gave me of having set fires….”

“Now tell us what Loeb told you about these fires?…”

“Well, this shack was set on fire, this particular one…”

“When and where was it?” Crowe interrupted.

“I don’t know where it was.”

“Didn’t you ask them?”

“It was out in the middle of a lot somewhere.”
¹⁸

“Can you give us any information that will enable me to check up and show whether this actually happened or whether they had just imposed on you?”

“No, I can’t give anything to satisfy you….”

“If you were able to tell me the date on which it happened and the location don’t you think I would be able to obtain proof as to whether or not they were lying to you or telling you the truth?”

“You probably would be able to tell whether such a thing happened in the city,” White answered, grudgingly.

“And your conclusion depends entirely upon the fact that you believe what these boys told you?…If they have fooled you and consistently lied to you then your conclusion isn’t worth anything, is it?”
¹⁹

White, so self-assured a few hours earlier, now seemed flustered. Crowe continued to pepper him with questions delivered staccato at a pace so rapid that even the stenographers had difficulty keeping up with him. White’s eyebrows knitted in a frown. He struggled to find a way out of the trap that Crowe had prepared for him; and as he searched for the answers that would turn back Crowe’s attacks, he seemed confused and uncertain. He hesitated; and to the onlookers it seemed as if his dignity had evaporated under the insistent demands of the state’s attorney.
²⁰

Crowe continued to batter the witness all day, but he had already won his point. White’s testimony was a fake defense with little or no relationship to the facts—a defense manufactured solely to defeat justice. Perhaps the attorneys had instructed Nathan and Richard to deceive the psychiatrists; or perhaps the psychiatrists had willingly colluded in the scheme, Crowe suggested. But such speculation, he stated, was irrelevant. The defense testimony relied on the truthfulness of the defendants and, as such, it was rotten to the core.
²¹

Clarence Darrow listened to Crowe’s cross-examination in silence. Darrow sat in a slouch, his eyes fixed on the floor, one side of his head resting against his right hand. He seemed not to pay any attention to White’s testimony; he appeared sunk in gloom at this unexpected course of events. Benjamin Bachrach, at Darrow’s side, followed the proceedings with a worried, anxious look, his pen in his right hand, his eyes closely monitoring the drama playing out a few steps in front of him.
²²

P
ERHAPS THE NEXT WITNESS WOULD
put on a better show. Crowe was flushed with victory and eager to deal out the same treatment to all the defense witnesses. “I intend,” he announced, with relish, “to submit every defense alienist to the same sort of cross-examination I gave Dr. White.”
²³

William Healy, a tall, thin man with sandy-colored hair and a nervous expression, first took the stand on Monday, 4 August. Healy had brought a clutter of documents—papers that showed a series of graphs and tables—but for the moment they lay unnoticed on the document table in front of the bench.
²⁴

Clarence Darrow took up the questioning of the witness, prompting Healy to tell the court his observations on the relationship between the boys. Healy talked in a quiet, soft voice; spectators at the back of the courtroom had to strain to make out his words.

“As far as I can find out from the account given by the boys themselves and from their relatives,” Healy said, “their association began at fifteen years of age. They just barely knew each other earlier, but that is the time they first came together. It is very clear from the study of the boys separately that each came with peculiarities in their mental life…. Each arrived at these peculiarities by different routes; each supplemented the other’s already constituted abnormal needs in a most unique way. And in regard to the association I think that the crime in its commission and in its background has features that are quite beyond anything in my experience or knowledge of the literature. There seems to have been so little normal motivation, the matter was so long planned, so unfeelingly carried out, that it represents nothing that I have ever seen or heard of before…. In the matter of the association, I have the boys’ story, told separately, about an incredibly absurd childish compact that bound them…. For Loeb, he says, the association gave him the opportunity of getting someone to carry out his criminalistic imaginings and conscious ideas. In the case of Leopold, the direct cause of his entering into criminalistic acts was this particularly childish compact.”

Crowe was suddenly attentive—here was something new!

“You are talking about a compact,” he interrupted, “that you characterize as childish. Kindly tell us what that compact was.”

“I am perfectly willing to tell it in chambers but it is not a matter that I think should be told here.”

“I insist that we know what that compact is,” Crowe replied, “so that we can form some opinion about it…. Tell it in court. The trial must be public, your Honor. I am not insisting that he talk loud enough for everybody to hear, but it ought to be told in the same way that we put the other evidence in.”

John Caverly motioned to the attorneys, from each side, to approach the bench. He called the stenographers to join the small group gathered in front of him. William Healy would testify sotto voce, he directed, so that no one outside the small semicircle could hear. These matters were to remain private, Caverly warned; the attorneys and stenographers were not to break the confidence of the court. The public should never learn the words that Healy was about to divulge.

Healy lowered his voice, almost to a whisper. “This compact,” he murmured, “as was told to me separately by each of the boys…consisted in an agreement between them that Leopold, who has very definite homosexual tendencies…was to have the privilege of—,” Healy paused, and turned, hesitating, toward Caverly: “Do you want me to be very specific?”

“Absolutely,” Crowe interrupted, with whispered urgency, “because this is important.”

“—was to have,” Healy continued, “the privilege of inserting his penis between Loeb’s legs at special rates; at one time it was to be three times in two months, if they continued their criminalistic activities together…then they had some of their quarrels, and then it was once for each criminalistic deed.”

Caverly glanced toward the back of the courtroom. The crowd sat still, unable to distinguish the words that Healy was speaking to the attorneys, waiting impatiently for the testimony to be resumed in open court.

“I do not suppose,” Darrow reminded the judge, indicating some reporters who had crept closer in an attempt to overhear the testimony, “this should be taken in the presence of newspapermen, your Honor.”

“Gentlemen,” Caverly shouted, “will you go and sit down, you newspapermen! Take your seats. This should not be published.”

“What other acts, if any,” Crowe asked, “did they tell you about? You say that there are other acts that they did rarely or seldom?”

“Oh, they were just experimenting once or twice with each other,” Healy replied diffidently.

“Tell what it was,” Darrow prompted.

“They experimented with mouth perversions…. Leopold has had for many years a great deal of phantasy life surrounding sex activity…. He has phantasies of being with a man, and usually with Loeb himself…. He says he gets a thrill out of anticipating it…. Loeb would pretend to be drunk, then this fellow would undress him and he would almost rape him and would be furiously passionate…. With women he does not get that same thrill and passion.”

“That is what he tells you?” Crowe asked doubtfully, glancing over his shoulder at Nathan and Richard sitting next to their guards behind the defense table.

“Surely…. That is what he tells me,” Healy replied. “Loeb tells me himself…how he feigns sometimes to be drunk, in order that he should have his aid in carrying out his criminalistic ideas. That is what Leopold gets out of it, and that is what Loeb gets out of it…. When Leopold had this first experience with his penis between Loeb’s legs…he found it gave him more pleasure than anything else he had ever done…. Even in jail here, a look at Loeb’s body or his touch upon his shoulder thrills him so, he says, immeasurably.”

Healy sat back in his chair, relieved that he had broken the taboo in private, trusting that his revelations would never reach the public eye.

Caverly looked at the attorneys, inviting them to ask the witness further questions, but both Crowe and Darrow indicated that they had heard enough.

“I think,” Crowe muttered, “that is all.”

Caverly sent the stenographers to their places, on the far side of the courtroom, but held Crowe and Darrow back, indicating that he had some more words to say to them alone. He spoke rapidly and—it seemed to the crowd, watching the three men whisper together at the front of the courtroom—with urgency. He was perhaps seeking their agreement to some proposal, and requesting their acquiescence, and eventually both Crowe and Darrow—tight-lipped and solemn—returned to their seats.
²⁵

Although Healy remained on the witness stand one more day, there was never anything as controversial in the remainder of his testimony as his revelations about the defendants’ sexual relationship. He took up the charts on the documents table to explain the results of the intelligence tests and explained how they revealed Nathan Leopold’s exceptional ability (“He answered them all very well and correctly”) and Richard Loeb’s competence (“I found him to be a fellow of certainly not more than average intelligence”). The tests also demonstrated, according to Healy, the gulf between the boys’ emotional capacity and their intellectual ability. Both Nathan and Richard were emotionally infantile.
²⁶

T
HE PSYCHIATRISTS HAD REPEATEDLY EMPHASIZED
the significance of the disparity between emotion and intellect, Crowe asked on cross-examination; but just how credible was this claim that Nathan and Richard were emotionally infantile, and what did it have to do with the murder? The defendants had demonstrated remarkable foresight and preparation in the commission of the crime, qualities difficult to reconcile with the claim that they were infantile. They had meticulously planned the killing six months in advance, making elaborate plans to kidnap a victim, to obtain a ransom, and to dispose of the body. The assertion that Nathan and Richard were emotionally infantile was spurious, Crowe asserted, and in any case had little or nothing to do with the killing.