For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (50 page)

John Caverly had finished. It remained only that he set a date for sentencing, and then the hearing would end. “I am going to take this case under advisement, gentlemen.” Caverly leaned forward slightly, speaking to the attorneys gathered before him. “I think I ought to have ten days or so…. I will fix the day at September 10th, at 9.30 o’clock, and I will say to those people who are here now that there will be nobody admitted in this room on that day, except members of the press and members of the family and sheriffs and the State’s Attorney’s staff.”
⁶³

The bailiffs started moving around the room, quietly persuading the crowd to disperse. The photographers abandoned their vantage points, relinquishing their positions at the front of the court; the reporters gathered together their notebooks and pens, pausing only to gossip briefly among themselves; and the stenographers boxed up their machines for the final time. Robert Crowe, ebullient, smiling broadly, and confident of victory, had lit a large cigar and, surrounded by friends and colleagues, was striding toward the exit. Clarence Darrow spoke briefly with Caverly and, looking somber and subdued, stepped ponderously toward the elevator that would take him down to Austin Avenue. The courtroom was soon silent, empty, abandoned—nothing moved except the hands of the clock on the wall as they counted down the hours that remained before John Caverly would pronounce sentence.
⁶⁴

16 SENTENCING

S
ATURDAY,
30 A
UGUST
1924–T
HURSDAY,
11 S
EPTEMBER
1924

The testimony in this case reveals a crime of singular atrocity. It is, in a sense, inexplicable; but it is not thereby rendered less inhuman or repulsive. It was deliberately planned and prepared for during a considerable period of time. It was executed with every feature of callousness and cruelty…. The court is satisfied that neither in the act itself, nor in its motive or lack of motive, nor in the antecedents of the offenders, can he find any mitigating circumstances.
¹

John Caverly, Chief Justice of the
Criminal Court, 10 September 1924

B
RIGHT SUNLIGHT FLOODED THE LIVING
room. The maid had recently cleaned the apartment, and swirls of dust, launched into the air by her exertions, were caught in the rays of light that filtered through the large windows that faced onto Lake Michigan.

The ringing of the telephone broke the stillness of the afternoon. John Caverly was not there to answer it—he was spending the day at a funeral service for a college friend—but his wife, Charlotte, was in their apartment at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, and now she stepped across the living room to the hallway to pick up the receiver.

Even though the hearing on Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb had almost ended, she was still finding it difficult to relax. So many cranks had bombarded John with their demands and threats—hundreds and hundreds, it seemed, all wanting the judge to send Leopold and Loeb to the gallows and threatening to kill John if he saved them from execution and sent them to the penitentiary.

She answered the phone and heard the click as the operator made the connection. The man’s voice on the other end was deep and authoritative; it boomed the news down the wire with sudden, shocking clarity, “This is Captain Roberts of the police department.” The speaker paused slightly as if he were gathering breath. “Your husband, the judge, was shot to death as he was entering the gate of Calvary cemetery. He is there now! Come quick!”

Charlotte Caverly gave a short, sharp scream. The receiver fell to the floor. It was only a few steps to the door, where, outside the apartment, a police guard was standing watch.

“Quick! Get an automobile,” she shouted at the young constable.

“My husband has been shot.”
²

It was a cruel hoax. John Caverly stood by the cemetery entrance, chatting in a small group of college friends, as the police car screeched to a halt and his wife ran to his side, crying that she had thought he was killed.

I
T WAS A MALICIOUS TRICK THAT RATCHETED
the tension tighter, now only nine days before Wednesday, 10 September, when Caverly would pronounce his decision. Caverly was, for the moment at least, the focus of the cranks; he was receiving hundreds of letters every day urging the death penalty for Leopold and Loeb. Occasionally the threat to his personal safety was more visceral: on 5 September, Harry Rabinowitz, a former patient at the Illinois Northern Hospital for the Insane, was found roaming the corridors of the Criminal Court Building with a razor in his pocket, demanding to speak to Caverly.
³

Caverly’s term as chief justice of the Criminal Court concluded on 31 August, only three days after Robert Crowe’s closing statement had marked the end of the hearing. Caverly would have preferred his valediction to be less controversial, less contentious. As he moved through his rooms in the Criminal Court Building on Friday, 30 August, packing up his law books, he reflected that whatever his decision on 10 September, he was certain to disappoint someone; his career as a judge would end in the most explosive possible manner.
⁴

He had not yet, Caverly admitted to a reporter from the
Chicago American
, decided on the punishment; he would think it over that week and write his verdict on the following weekend. He regretted only that the decision was his alone—it was a heavy burden for one man to carry. “I wish this case had gone to a jury. If it had gone to a jury I would be the thirteenth man and not the one and only one to render the decision. I think at least three judges should sit in all such cases.” Perhaps, as part of his closing statement, he would suggest “a new law to cover cases of this kind…that hereafter when a plea of guilty is entered or a jury trial waived in a capital case, three judges be required to hear the case and render a decision.”
⁵

W
HILE
J
OHN
C
AVERLY MARKED
the conclusion of the hearing with arrangements for his retirement, Jacob Franks was preparing to sell the family home on Ellis Avenue. The situation had become insufferable: every day, crowds of spectators gathered outside the house, gawking, pointing, staring, waiting expectantly for a member of the family to appear, and ignoring requests from the police guard to move on. Cars passed slowly up and down the street, circling the block, their occupants hoping to glimpse something that would make the journey to Kenwood worthwhile. And each morning, the mailman would deliver hundreds of letters, some in sympathy, but the majority in hatred and anger and avarice, threatening the Franks children; demanding money; scolding the parents for some imaginary reason; or proposing fantastical theories about Bobby’s death.
⁶

It was a bitter daily reminder of their son’s death that Jacob and Flora Franks could see the Loeb family home on the other side of the street; it was an unpleasant coincidence that fifteen years previously, Jacob Franks had purchased from Albert Loeb the lot on which his house stood. And so, on 30 August, Joseph Trinz, owner of the movie theater chain Lubiner & Trinz, bought the house for $60,000. The Franks family then moved to a suite of rooms in the Drake Hotel, far from the street that had given them so much pain.
⁷

Throughout the hearing, Albert and Anna Loeb had stayed at their country estate, Charlevoix. Now it seemed unlikely that they would ever return to their house at 5017 Ellis Avenue; it was more probable that they would sell it as quickly as possible.

Only Nathan Leopold Sr. had any desire to remain in Kenwood; a widower since the death of his wife three years previously, he was reluctant to move away from his many friends in the neighborhood. “I have known happiness here,” he told his sons, “I have found peace in the past in this home, and no matter where I go, I can find no greater peace.”
⁸

W
HILE THE FAMILIES AGONIZED OVER
such decisions, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb spent their days in the Cook County jail greeting visitors, playing baseball in the prison yard, and talking with reporters.

Some of their observations to the journalists seemed calculated to provoke, to provide images of pampered youths now confined to a prison regimen that was, nevertheless, not unduly onerous. The warden, Wesley Westbrook, had arranged for Sunday concerts in the prison; Nathan and Richard attended with the other prisoners and seemed to enjoy themselves, even if there was an occasional reminder of happier days. Richard recalled to a journalist that he had first heard the tune “Hot Lips” at a “dancing party on a yacht on Lake Michigan three years ago. I was dancing with my partner along the deck, close to the rail, the waves rolling, the boat pitching and tossing, to that tune.” And now he was hearing it again, but this time in the prison canteen inside the county jail.

But, Richard said, things could be worse, and he was not at all despondent. Prison life was good for him; he now had “regular meals, regular exercise and regular sleep…. I am feeling fine. Instead of getting in at 3 a.m. and getting up at 7 to play golf or tennis, I now get at least eight hours regular sleep.”
⁹

Richard and Nathan were never bored. There were always visitors: former girlfriends, relatives, and classmates—and many casual visitors, unknown to either of them, who simply dropped by for a chat and a gossip. The murderers had become celebrities; and in the relaxed atmosphere of the county jail, Wesley Westbrook permitted them to see anyone they wished. On one memorable occasion, six players from the Chicago Cubs appeared at the warden’s office with a request “to tour the jail and see the young murderers.” Charles (Gabby) Hartnett, one of the team’s leading sluggers, spent time with Nathan in the prison yard, coaching him on his batting style, advising him on his swinging movements and his stance at the plate.
¹⁰

Their celebrity was exhilarating. Their every remark found its way into the newspapers: only Edward, prince of Wales, then on a weeklong visit to the United States, received more attention in the media. Nathan announced plans to write his biography, which, he promised, he would offer to the newspapers for serialization before publishing it as a book. “I want to write my memoirs,” he told the reporters, “including an absolutely frank and clear record of my life in jail and of the reactions experienced by a prisoner…. Perhaps I will sell it to the highest bidder; perhaps the reporter who has given me the best breaks will get it. I don’t know just yet.”
¹¹

And if he were to be executed? Nathan had already drawn up his will; he would leave his bird collection to the Field Museum of Natural History, and no doubt his specimens would take pride of place among the museum’s collections.
¹²

Nathan had read in the newspapers that bookies were offering odds as high as three to one against a death sentence. Thousands of dollars had been wagered on the result in Chicago’s betting shops. Perhaps, Nathan suggested to the reporters, they should have a wager among themselves. “You fellows ought to get up a parlay on it,” he joked. He would like to bet on the result himself, he added, but the regulations in the county jail forbade the prisoners from gambling.
¹³

Nathan was an intellectual, of course—they had not forgotten, had they?—and, if he was hanged, he informed the journalists, he would communicate with them from beyond the grave, answering their questions on such topics as the nature of happiness, the relationship between spiritual and physical existence, the rewards and penalties of the afterlife, and the ability to experience sensations after death.

Perhaps, Nathan continued, he would make a speech from the gallows, a speech that would command everyone’s attention! “I will say something,” he predicted to the reporter from the New York
Sun
, “that will make the world listen.”
¹⁴

His brother Michael visited Nathan in jail to warn him of the distress his comments were causing his father, but Nathan was reluctant to leave the stage—it was impossible to force him away from the spotlight, no matter how much grief he caused his relatives.

C
LARENCE
D
ARROW HAD LONG AGO
abandoned all hope of getting Nathan to desist from making foolish statements to the press. In any case, the defense attorneys were preoccupied with possible appeals if Caverly imposed the death penalty.

For example, could the defense appeal to the Illinois supreme court for a second trial on a writ of error? Because of the guilty plea, Darrow believed, that possibility would be the least likely option available to the defense. “I’m of the opinion that the court has final jurisdiction because of the plea,” Darrow told a reporter from the
Chicago American
; “I doubt if a writ of error could be prayed for.”
¹⁵

On the other hand, the trial of Gene Geary in 1921 had provided a precedent for an appeal based on the claim that Nathan and Richard had become insane since sentencing. It had worked for Gene Geary; why would it not work for them? True, a jury must decide the sanity of Nathan and Richard, but perhaps, Darrow believed, enough time would have elapsed between the murder and a second trial for some of the public indignation to fade away.

That was their best chance, and so, even before Caverly had given his verdict, statements began to appear in the newspapers—planted by the defense attorneys, of course—that both Nathan and Richard were rapidly deteriorating. Nathan Leopold’s mental condition was already cause for concern, one anonymous source claimed; despite his apparent buoyancy in prison, Nathan showed “very definite traces of dementia praecox.”
¹⁶

If the Illinois supreme court allowed an appeal on the claim that Nathan and Richard had become insane since sentencing, the jury in a second trial would decide on the sanity of the defendants. If they were sane, they would be immediately executed; if, however, they had become insane, then the court would send them to the Illinois Asylum for Insane Criminals at Chester and the death sentences would be carried out only if they regained their sanity.
¹⁷

Other possibilities existed but seemed remote. The judge might, on his own initiative, decide that the defendants’ sanity was in question; if so, he would, instead of passing sentence, convene a jury to decide the question of their sanity.

Alternatively, Clarence Darrow could present a motion to the judge asking permission to withdraw the guilty plea and change the plea to not guilty. The recent trial of Russell Scott, a street hoodlum who had killed a store clerk during a robbery at the City Hall pharmacy, gave Darrow a legal precedent. Scott’s lawyer, Walter Stanton, had insisted that the court had not formally notified his client that the judge could send him to the gallows. But this too seemed an improbable course of action for Darrow. John Caverly had been punctilious in advising Nathan and Richard that he had the power to sentence them to death if they pleaded guilty.
¹⁸