For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (48 page)

26.
CLARENCE DARROW IN COURT.

Hanging Nathan and Richard would be a futile act of revenge, only a gesture, an appeasement of the mob; in all other respects, it would accomplish nothing. It would not bring Bobby Franks back to life. It would not deter crime, as the state had claimed; but it would be a savage act, certainly, an act that would add its measure of violence to society and diminish man’s capacity for understanding, love, and charity. “I know the future is with me and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity and kindness, and the infinite mercy that forgives all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck till they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past…. I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgement and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”

Perhaps two-thirds of the spectators were women; Darrow’s seductive voice caught at their emotions, and as he spoke of the hanging that might await Nathan and Richard, some women quietly began to cry. There was a oppressive mood in the courtroom; Darrow’s reflective, somber words spoke of the tragedy of two wasted lives. Neither Richard nor Nathan had a future—even if each boy escaped the scaffold, he would spend many years shut up between the walls of a harsh and unforgiving prison cell.

The crowd sat still. There was a breathless silence in the courtroom, broken only by the sound of Darrow’s voice, and from Dearborn Street, six stories below, the faint screech of trolleys grinding along their metal tracks. Darrow was both solemn and mournful; he no longer waved his arms at the judge or brandished his eyeglasses or strummed his galluses; his posture seemed more erect and his demeanor more dignified. He seemed to be speaking as much to the spectators behind him as to the judge before him as he ended his speech in a resolute voice that appealed for understanding and compassion, not so much for Nathan and Richard as for those many other boys, less privileged, who would be judged in years to come. “If I can succeed, my greatest award and my greatest hope and my greatest compensation will be that I have done something for the tens of thousand of other boys, for the other unfortunates who must tread the same way that these poor youths have trod, that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.”
³⁸

There was a momentary silence in the courtroom as Darrow finished speaking, just a few minutes before four o’clock. The silence lasted a minute, relieved only by the sound of Darrow shuffling together the papers that lay before him.

“If your honor please,” Benjamin Bachrach broke the silence, glancing at his watch to check the time, “will you adjourn at this time?”

“We will suspend now,” Caverly replied, “until tomorrow morning at 10.30 o’clock.”
³⁹

H
OW
, R
OBERT
C
ROWE WONDERED
as he listened to Darrow’s final words, had the old man managed to fool so many people? Darrow was a mendacious windbag, a charlatan, who lulled his audience with empty sentiments and meaningless phrases. He had replaced the progressive principles of his youth with an eagerness to represent anyone, no matter how corrupt or vicious, for the right price. It was a puzzle, Crowe admitted to himself, that the American public continued to regard Darrow as a secular saint whose eccentric philosophy only added to his charm. For many Americans, Darrow could do no wrong; he was the most visible reminder of the heyday of Progressivism; he seemed, with his humanitarian pronouncements, just as utopian and radical as the young lawyer who, thirty years earlier, had championed Eugene Debs in his fight against the railroads.

But Crowe knew better. Darrow was irreligious and irresponsible, an attorney whose deterministic and atheistic philosophy justified and excused crime; Darrow’s beliefs had no consequences for himself, of course, but they encouraged murder, violence, and depravity. Darrow seemed a kindly old man, with his calls for mercy and understanding, but he espoused a dangerous philosophy, a philosophy that would remove legal and judicial restraints and leave society vulnerable to the forces of mayhem and chaos.
⁴⁰

The next morning Crowe rose to his feet to address the court. It was now his turn to speak. He had changed his shirt shortly before entering the courtroom, but already there were faint patches of perspiration on his shirtfront; in his futile protest against the intolerable heat, Crowe mopped the perspiration from his face with his white handkerchief.

It was ridiculous, Crowe began, for Darrow to say that the notoriety of the killing was on account of the wealth of the families; and it was false to claim that he, Crowe, refused to treat this murder like other murders and agree to a plea bargain because of the wealth and reputation of the families. The kidnapping of a child was the source of the notoriety; it was a crime that had touched the heart of everyone in the city; and it had been the topic of every conversation in Chicago throughout the week after the murder, before anyone had known the identity of the killers.

“There is something,” Crowe shouted, angrily, pounding his right fist into his left palm in emphasis, “in the nature of the crime itself that arrests the attention of every person in the land. A child is stolen. The heart of every father, the heart of every mother, the heart of every man who has a heart, goes out to the parents of the child.” Crowe turned in the direction of Nathan and Richard sitting behind the defense attorneys. “Their wealth in my judgment has not anything to do with this except it permits a defense here seldom given to men in the criminal court. Take away the millions of the Loebs and the Leopolds, and Clarence Darrow’s tongue is as silent as the tomb of Julius Caesar…. Clarence Darrow once said that a poor man on trial here was disposed of in fifteen minutes, but if he was rich and committed the same crime and he got a good lawyer, his trial would last twenty-one days. Well, they got three lawyers and it has lasted just a little bit longer.”
⁴¹

And Darrow’s assertion that there was no motive for the killing? That also was false, Crowe continued. There was the ransom, of course; he would talk about that later. But one motive, certainly, was Nathan’s desire to rape a young child. Why had the killers removed Bobby’s trousers three hours before disposing of the body in the culvert by the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks? Bobby’s shirt and jacket had remained on his body until they had arrived at Wolf Lake. Only then had Nathan removed the boy’s remaining clothing before pouring acid on Bobby’s face and genitals.

“How,” Crowe demanded, staring directly at Nathan as he spoke, “do you undress a child? First the little coat, the collar, the tie, the shirt, and the last thing is their trousers. Yet, immediately after killing this poor little boy, his trousers alone came off, and for three hours that dead little boy, without his trousers but with all his other clothes on him, remained in that car, and they did not take the balance of the clothes off until after they pushed the body into the culvert. You have before you”—Crowe indicated it to the judge—“the coroner’s report, and the coroner’s physician says that when little Robert Franks was examined, his rectum was distended that much,” Crowe held his thumb and forefinger one inch apart, “indicating almost the size of a half-dollar.”

“If the court please.” Benjamin Bachrach was suddenly on his feet, signaling for the judge’s attention. “I take exception to that statement. The coroner’s report said there was no sign of recent dilation.”

“Your honor has the report,” Crowe shouted in reply. “I want to call Your honor’s attention to the fact that this little naked body lay in the water all night long with running water going over it, and that is why there wasn’t any other evidence.” The coroner had found no traces of semen—it had been taken away by the water passing through the culvert—but the rectum was distended beyond its normal size. One of the killers—most probably Nathan—had raped Bobby.

“This is the first time,” Bachrach protested, “it has been charged in this case that the committing of a sexual act was the purpose of this crime upon the boy….”

“I think I know,” Crowe sneered, with heavy sarcasm, “what the evidence was in this case and I think all my arguments are based on facts and not on dreams or phantasies…. The Coroner’s report says that he had a distended rectum, and from that fact, and the fact that the pants were taken off, and the fact that they are perverts, I have a right to argue that they committed an act of perversion. That is the extent of my argument. I do not contend that the coroner’s report states that an act of perversion was committed. It merely says that the rectum was distended. There was no evidence of semen, but it was washed away, I contend.”
⁴²

There was only one way to settle the dispute. Had there been an enlarged rectum or not? What did the coroner’s report say?

“Let the coroner’s report be read,” Caverly ordered. He looked out across the courtroom. The audience, mesmerized by Crowe’s sudden revelations, stared back at him expectantly, waiting for the reading of the report. “The women will leave the courtroom,” Caverly commanded, “and we will put the report into the record.”
⁴³

A few dozen women rose reluctantly to depart, but the majority—at least 100, perhaps more—remained seated, silently defying the judge’s order. Amused laughter from the men murmured its way around the room. No one among the bailiffs could recall another time when so many spectators had so brazenly challenged a judge’s authority.
⁴⁴

“I have asked the ladies to leave the room,” Caverly repeated angrily. “Now I want you to leave. If you do not, I will have the bailiffs escort you to the hallway. There is nothing left here now but a lot of stuff that is not fit for you to hear.” Caverly rapped his gavel on the bench as four bailiffs moved among the crowd, encouraging the women to leave the courtroom. “Step out into the hallway!” he ordered.
⁴⁵

An elderly reporter, a woman from one of the city’s newspapers, approached the bench. “Does that mean that even us—?”

“It means that all of you ought to go!” interrupted Caverly, waving his arm imperiously at the cluster of female reporters standing before him.
⁴⁶

A reading of the report was inconclusive—perhaps. On the one hand, the coroner’s physician had concluded that his postmortem had shown “no evidence of a recent forcible dilation.” Yet on the other hand, he had written that “the rectum was dilated, [and] would easily admit one finger.” Crowe would not back down—after all, the physician had examined the corpse more than twenty-four hours after the murder, and, in the interim, Crowe claimed, other evidence, traces of semen, for example, would have disappeared.
⁴⁷

But did Crowe have corroborative evidence of sexual assault? The physician’s report, argued Walter Bachrach, favored the defense, and if Crowe wanted to prove rape, he had to provide more substantial evidence that such an attack had indeed occurred. And, if Crowe could not show that either Nathan or Richard had raped the boy, then where was the motive for the crime?

“Before the State’s Attorney would be entitled,” Bachrach argued, “to draw any inference that there was any evidence of mistreatment of the body in the sexual way, there would have to be some evidence upon which he could base such an argument or from which he could draw such an inference….”

“Oh, no,” Crowe interrupted, “there is other evidence.”

“Pardon me—?”

“The evidence is that these two defendants are perverts, and when they took the body of the boy in, the first thing they took off was his trousers.”
⁴⁸

Neither defense nor prosecution, Caverly chided, was able to prove its case. Crowe had made the claim and he had provided his evidence—he had the right, in his closing speech, to summarize his case without interruption from the other side.

“May we have a recess now,” Crowe appealed to the judge, “until tomorrow morning?”

“There is nothing further,” Caverly asked, “you have now that you want…?”

“I am through with that argument now anyway,” Crowe replied.
⁴⁹

Robert Crowe returned to court the following day, Wednesday, 27 August, with more revelations. He had caught the defense by surprise the previous day with his accusation that the defendants had sexually assaulted Bobby Franks; now, on the second day of his summation, Crowe once again had come to court prepared to reveal new secrets about the murder.