Murder Most Foul (Extract)

By MATT NESVISKY
Extract from Issue 16, November 24, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here. It was indeed the "murder that shocked Chicago," and for a while it was also known as "the crime of the century." But that slaying was in 1924, and since then we've witnessed a mind-numbing sequence of sensational homicides, some even accompanied by cannibalism, as well as serial killers, celebrity murder cases and numerous massacres in public schools, on college campuses and in the workplace. Then, there's genocide. And international terrorism. Anyone out there still capable of shock? Yet for a long while the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks by the brilliant and wealthy students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb certainly did stand out. The crime outraged America, including Capone-era Chicago, where countless gangland machine-gunnings had left citizens stepping over bodies practically without a second glance. The subsequent court case featured Clarence Darrow, America's most famous lawyer. The killing would go on to inspire several novels; even Scott Fitzgerald contemplated writing one as a follow up to "The Great Gatsby" before abandoning the idea. Leopold and Loeb also served as the source for a half-dozen films, at least two plays and, yes, in 2003 even an off-Broadway musical called "Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story." Until now, however, says Simon Baatz, an associate professor of history at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, only one full-length study of the case had been published. That work, Baatz adds, appeared some 30 years ago and did not make use of the interview and hearing transcripts and other materials that Baatz unearthed. And while one can hardly argue that a crying need existed for "The Thrill of It," Baatz has written a highly readable account of a crime that still has the power to dismay and to surprise. Many of the central facts of the case remain familiar, not least through Meyer Levin's barely fictionalized 1956 bestseller, "Compulsion," and the subsequent film version that starred Orson Welles as Darrow. Levin was a contemporary of Leopold and Loeb at the University of Chicago, and while Baatz doesn't think much of his book, I recall it as powerful and well-wrought. For the record: it was the summer of 1924. Leopold, 19, and Loeb, 18, were sons of prominent and well-respected Jewish families. The two were sexually involved with each other and adherents to a Nietzschean notion of themselves as superior beings who were above the law. After carrying out a series of robberies and acts of vandalism, they went for the ultimate thrill. Leopold and Loeb decided to kidnap a victim at random from among kids making their way home from school. They apparently managed to lure Bobby Franks into their rented car only because the lad was Loeb's cousin. The two then bludgeoned and strangled the boy and drove to a remote area outside of town. There, in a failed effort to disguise the victim's identity, they poured acid on the child's face and genitals, and stuffed his naked body into a drain pipe. The body was discovered and identified before Leopold and Loeb could carry out their ransom plot; they didn't need the $10,000, the ransom was merely part of the "fun." Within days the two were apprehended, largely because of the eyeglasses that Loeb had inadvertently dropped at the crime scene. Without seeking legal counsel the two youths readily admitted their guilt and described their deeds in detail to both the police and to the press. The prosecutor, along with much of Chicago's incensed citizenry, were determined to see the two hang. The case seemed open and shut. Then Darrow was hired for the defense. Darrow was a longtime opponent of capital punishment in an age when such opposition was extremely unfashionable. He promptly had the boys enter guilty pleas, which meant no arguing culpability before a jury, just pleading for mitigation before a judge. In an equally bold step, Darrow would not argue the classic insanity defense, which would claim the boys could not distinguish right from wrong. Instead, he mounted what was the then-novel argument of mental illness. To this end, Darrow produced numerous expert witnesses, ranging from renowned psychologists to physiologists and endocrinologists - a defense built on notions of a bad governess and bad glands. Prosecutor Robert Crowe, who according to Baatz pressed for the death penalty both because he profoundly believed in hanging murderers and because he felt achieving such a popular ruling from the judge would enhance his ambitions to become mayor of Chicago, paraded an equally impressive array of social scientists to press the public's case. Darrow's summation lasted three days and included a soaring condemnation of capital punishment. In his final statement Crowe gave as good as he got, counterpunching point by point and demanding the public's concept of justice. Extract from Issue 16, November 24, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.