For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (43 page)

Walter Bachrach sought to lead his witness to the conclusion toward which he had been heading. That Nathan suffered from glandular disease, there was no doubt; but how was this relevant to the murder of Bobby Franks?

“What relation,” Bachrach asked, “is there between the abnormal functioning of his endocrine glands and his mental condition?”

“The effect of the endocrine glands on the mental condition is definitely established in the minds of medical men in certain points and is still a matter of dispute in others…. I would say that his endocrine disorder is responsible for the following mental findings. His precocious mental development, his rapid advance through school, his ease of learning, are of endocrine origins…. The early development and strength of his sex urge is obviously of endocrine origin. His shallow mood and his good bearing are of endocrine origin and particularly his mental activity and early mental development are of endocrine origin….”

“What would be the effect of that upon him, where there was not a corresponding maturity of his emotional life and judgment?”

“The effect of the intellectual drive of endocrine origin…and [his] emotional shallowness is that he now has mentally a decided degree of discrepancy, a diseased discrepancy, between his judgment and emotions on the one hand and his intellect on the other hand….”
⁵⁷

“What, if any, effect,” Bachrach asked, “did the diseased mental condition of Leopold on May 21st, 1924, have in connection with the Franks kidnaping and homicide?”

“A very great deal…. His mental condition or disease at that time would not primarily have caused him alone to have carried out any such kidnaping or homicide. It caused him to ignore the ordinary restraint which individuals impose upon themselves because of their consciousness of their duties they owe to society; it caused him to react in the non-emotional way he did at that time and subsequently; caused him to justify his own actions to himself, so that he is uncritical of them; and his mental condition at that time is one of the predominating factors in this homicide and kidnaping.”

24.
A JOKE IN COURT.
Testimony on the witness stand gives the defendants cause to smile. From left: Nathan Leopold, Richard Loeb, and Nathan Leopold Sr.

“Would Leopold on May 21st, 1924, have been able to commit the Franks kidnaping and homicide but for the presence of such mental disease?”

“He could not have done it.”

“State whether the diseased mental condition of Richard Loeb on May 21st, 1924, entered into the Franks homicide and kidnaping?”

“It did.”

“Will you tell us how?”

“The mental condition of Richard Loeb on that date was a direct factor…. He was impelled by motives which had been nourished in his subconscious mind, his judgment was childish and uncritical and did not restrain him…. His emotions are definitely immature and childish, and he had only an academic realization of what he owed to society, his feeling on the matter being too slight to bind him or modify his conduct and his mentally diseased condition at that time based on his experiences and based on his constitution was a definite factor in this kidnaping and homicide.”

“Could Richard Loeb but for the existence of the mental disease existing in him on the 21st of May, 1924, and which you have described in your testimony, had committed the Franks kidnaping and homicide?”

“He could not.”
⁵⁸

J
UST AS, ONE WEEK EARLIER,
it would have been foolish for Robert Crowe to have challenged William White on his knowledge of psychoanalysis, so it would now be reckless for the state’s attorney to confront Harold Hulbert on his knowledge of endocrinology. Crowe had no scientific training or expertise, and he knew nothing about endocrinology. Perhaps an abnormally low metabolism did indicate glandular disorder; perhaps a calcified pineal gland was a sign of mental illness; perhaps a diminutive
sella turcica
was a cause of hyperpituitarism—who, apart from the experts, could say? No, Crowe decided, there was nothing to be gained from disputing endocrinological theory with the witness.

Clarence Darrow, at least, could not see how the state could easily overthrow Hulbert’s testimony. It relied on scientific evidence—tangible evidence in the case of the X-rays—that could not be disputed. The scientists had found that Richard had an abnormally low metabolism; that finding was consistent with mental disorder. And the X-rays of Nathan Leopold’s pineal gland showed that it had prematurely calcified; that also was a sign of mental disease. The defense had proved its point: neither Richard nor Nathan was insane, but both clearly suffered from mental illness. Surely the evidence of their mental illness would be sufficient to save them from the gallows?

Darrow had supposed that the endocrinological data were impervious to attack; but Crowe soon forced him to reconsider. Crowe went straight to the heart of the matter—he questioned both the metabolic reading for Richard and the X-rays of Nathan’s skull.

The science, Crowe asserted, was not at all as objective as the defense liked to pretend. The scientific results were not identical with reality but stood as a representation of it, a representation mediated through the scientific apparatus. The scientists had obtained a reading for the metabolism of Richard Loeb—minus seventeen percent—that, they claimed, indicated mental disease; but this reading was accurate only insofar as the apparatus was reliable. And, Crowe might have added, the reading, of course, possessed only the meaning conferred on it by the scientists; Crowe could also challenge that assigned meaning.

Crowe began his cross-examination—on Monday, 11 August—with a question about the tests for metabolism, “Who made the basal metabolism test?”

“Dr. Moore, Dr. Bowman and myself,” Hulbert replied. “On Leopold we repeated the test three times, and took the average of the three, and on Loeb we took the test twice, and took the average of the two. Those tests were continued one right after the other.”

“Don’t you know,” Crowe asserted, “you have no machine in Chicago that can accurately make this test?”

“I was quite satisfied with the machine we used.”

“What kind was it?”

“A Jones,” Hulbert answered.
⁵⁹

Hulbert had too much confidence in his knowledge of the test to allow Crowe’s assertion to rattle him. And, in any case, Crowe was wrong. In 1924 there were several types of apparatus for measuring metabolism, and most of them were in use in hospitals and laboratories in Chicago. Hulbert had used the Jones metabolimeter, a machine designed by Horry Jones, a medical professor at the University of Illinois, and he knew it as a reliable and trustworthy apparatus that would give accurate results.
⁶⁰

“Is it not a fact,” Crowe demanded, “that there is no machine that can accurately take this test, but they take a great many and average them in order to arrive at some conclusion?”

“I don’t know whether there is a perfect machine or not. Now, this machine was good enough.”

“If it was not perfect, then the result would not be perfect?”

“It might or might not….”

“If it is not a good reliable test, it is not of any use, is it?”

“I would not use an unreliable test,” Hulbert replied, confidently.
⁶¹

Crowe had chosen the wrong angle of attack. He was no expert on the measurement of metabolism, and whatever gleanings on the subject he had picked up in the previous month were no match for Hulbert’s expertise. Perhaps he would have better luck asking Hulbert about the X-ray examinations.

“Describe the X-ray apparatus,” Crowe asked, “and the techniques by which these x-ray pictures were taken….”

“The apparatus we used was a portable machine furnished by the Victor X-ray people, one of the largest X-ray manufacturers in America, brought to the jail by Dr. Blaine, of the National Pathologic Laboratory, former radiologist at Cook County Hospital for a number of years, and by Dr. Darnell, research pathologist of the Victor Company…. Triplicate films were taken in all cases. The parts of the body pictures were studied by me through the fluoroscope for the purpose of identification, and the films were identified with my Veterans of Foreign Wars insignia, which I wear, so that there would be no doubt as to their identity. The pictures were carried to the laboratory by the technicians in the same taxi with me; they were never out of my sight. I went into the dark room at the time they were developed, and stayed there talking with Dr. Blaine while they were being developed.”
⁶²

There was enough detail in this account, surely, to satisfy even the most skeptical inquisitor! But Crowe was relentless. Hulbert had relied on others to take the X-rays, so how much did he know of the process? His training and education had fitted him to be a psychiatrist—who was he to testify on the reliability of the X-rays?

“Do you know,” Crowe asked, “the name of the machine you used?”

“A Victor portable.”

“What kind of a current, direct or alternating?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of a tube?”

“All I know is, it was a new tube suitable for the portable machine, a Victor tube.”

“What transformer was used?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where was the transformer located on the machine?…”

“I don’t know.”
⁶³

Previously, under direct examination, Hulbert had made much of his observation, through a fluoroscope, of the bones of the skull as the technicians had taken the X-ray photographs. But once again, Crowe attacked Hulbert’s testimony as flawed. How much had he seen through the fluoroscope, and what was the value of his observations?

“Is it possible to see a calcified pineal gland through a fluoroscope?”

“It may be.”

“Did you see it?”

“I did not.”

“Did you ever see one through a fluoroscope?”

“I don’t think so….”

“Can you see the sella turcica through the fluoroscope?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you?”

“I did.”

“Did you use cassettes in taking these films?”

“I beg pardon?”

“Did you use cassettes in taking these films?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“If you don’t know what I mean, then you would not know who furnished them, would you?”

“If I don’t know what you mean, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“What screens were used, do you know?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Was the Bucky diaphragm used?”

“I am not a radiologist.”
⁶⁴

It was a devastating attack. In vain, Hulbert protested that Crowe’s questions were irrelevant. He might not know the physical characteristics of the X-ray machine, admittedly, but that, Hulbert retorted, did not invalidate his claim that the X-rays showed indications of glandular disorder.

Crowe, by exposing Hulbert’s ignorance of technical detail, had called the witness’s authority into question. If he did not know whether a Bucky diaphragm had been used, then what value were his explanations of the X-rays?

Crowe kept Hulbert on the witness stand the entire day and into the next, not allowing him to leave until midday on Tuesday, 12 August.

H
E HAD REASON TO BE
pleased with his performance. None of the defense experts had emerged unscathed from his cross-examination, and on various occasions, Crowe had compelled the witnesses either to admit ignorance or to contradict themselves. The scientific evidence had been Darrow’s strongest suit and now it lay in a state of disrepair. Soon Crowe would put his own expert witnesses on the stand, but his witnesses needed only to claim that Nathan and Richard were normal. Crowe had ridiculed his opponent’s evidence; would Darrow be able to do the same?

14 PSYCHIATRISTS FOR THE STATE

T
UESDAY,
12 A
UGUST
1924–T
UESDAY,
19 A
UGUST
1924

There was no evidence of any mental disease.
¹

Hugh Patrick, emeritus professor of
nervous and mental diseases, Northwestern University,
12 August 1924

There was no mental disease of any character.
²

Archibald Church, president of the Chicago
Medical Society, 13 August 1924

There is nothing…that would indicate mental disease.
³

Harold Singer, professor of psychiatry,
University of Illinois, 15 August 1924

They are not suffering from any mental disease.
⁴

William Krohn, psychologist, author of
Insanity and Law, 18 August 1924

N
ATHAN
L
EOPOLD HAD COMMITTED SUICIDE!

No one could say for sure how or where the rumor had begun, but by mid-afternoon on Sunday, 17 August, it had taken hold of the city. Huge crowds began to gather outside the Cook County jail, thronging the sidewalks, spilling into the street, and peering expectantly at the cell windows on the sixth floor of the grimy, gray building on Dearborn Street. The strain had finally taken its toll on Nathan, the rumor went, and now that the hearing was in its final stage and he was facing either life in prison or the scaffold, he had hanged himself in his cell.
⁵

Nathan, oblivious of the commotion in the streets outside, spent that afternoon playing the piano in the jail’s recreation room. As a child, he had attended symphony concerts with his mother and had learned the piano with her encouragement. He knew the notes and could read the music but he was not a musician, he insisted to the visiting journalists. “I get intellectual pleasure out of playing,” he remarked, “and particularly in my sense of mastery over the instrument…. The thing that determines my taste is chiefly the interest which the composer arouses in me from a scientific or mathematical view. I am interested in the problem which the composer sets for himself.” He was fond of the works of Bach and Beethoven, less interested in the compositions of Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy, and almost entirely ignorant of such contemporary composers as Igor Stravinsky and Darius Milhaud. Who was his favorite composer? the reporters inquired. Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Nathan replied—his favorite composition was Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite
Scheherazade
. “I like him for his precision and finish,” Nathan explained, “rather than for his emotional qualities.”
⁶

Wesley Westbrook, the warden of the county jail, issued denials of Nathan’s suicide, but to no effect. The rumor seemed appropriate, after all; the crowd outside might well imagine Nathan sitting alone in a gloomy prison cell, depressed and melancholy, brooding despondently over his fate and deciding to end his life. Westbrook, anxious to protect his career against the effects of a prison suicide, no matter how improbable, announced that he was doubling the guard on the sixth and seventh floors that evening. A guard would check both Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb every ten minutes and report their condition to the warden’s office.
⁷

Eventually the crowd dispersed, filtering through the streets in the twilight, cheated by Nathan’s selfish refusal to provide the spectators with the sensational news of his suicide. But the court hearing would end soon, perhaps within the week, and the adventure that had held Chicago in its grip for three months would end dramatically enough.

T
HAT
S
UNDAY, THE CITY’S MINISTERS
and other religious leaders, sensing that soon they would no longer have the courtroom revelations as a moral text, thundered from the pulpit on the perils of spiritual delinquency and religious indifference. James Durand, the rector of Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church, in a reference to the atheistic beliefs of Nathan and Richard, warned his congregation that religious skepticism led eventually to self-doubt, confusion, and bewilderment. “The life without God is the limited life,” Durand cautioned. “The individual who places self on the throne of life is certainly not in harmony with God’s plan for him. He has no clue to the mysteries of life. He sees confusion and darkness; history seems to be little more than a fairy tale and life’s battles, convulsions, and revolutions are apparently without aim.”

25.
SUICIDE WATCH.
A guard stands watch outside the cell of Nathan Leopold in the Cook County jail. Leopold occupied cell 604 on the sixth floor, facing onto Clark Street. Richard Loeb occupied cell 717 on the seventh floor, facing east onto Dearborn Street.

Monsignor William O’Brien, of St. John’s Roman Catholic Church, tied religious belief to patriotism, parental discipline, and moral choice in a text that had been repeated endlessly, in one form or another, in press and pulpit over the previous three months. The murder of Bobby Franks, O’Brien suggested, was a consequence of irreligion, parental failures, and malign influences: if Nathan and Richard had received correct guidance, they would never have sought thrills in the abduction and killing of a small boy. “Faith in God and charity in our fellowman must be inculcated in the youth of our land if we are to adhere to the principles that made our country great…. If the laws of our land are being disregarded today by our American youth, the only explanation of it lies in the lack of the exercise of parental authority in the days of childhood. It is indeed to be regretted that the age of the slipper and the hair brush has passed by.”
⁸

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY,
M
ONDAY
, 18 August, William Krohn took the stand as an expert witness for the prosecution. Krohn had testified as an expert witness in many criminal cases, most memorably in the trial of Gene Geary for the murder of Harry Reckas in 1920. His extensive experience as an expert witness was evident to the spectators in the courtroom. Krohn looked relaxed, even nonchalant, as he sat on the witness stand, waiting for the assistant state’s attorney, Joseph Sbarbaro, to begin his questioning. Ten weeks earlier, on Sunday, 1 June, Robert Crowe had called Krohn to the state’s attorney’s office to interrogate Nathan and Richard. Krohn remembered how willingly both boys had talked about the murder and how they had agreed in every particular—except that each boy had accused the other of striking the blows that had ended Bobby’s life. Krohn remembered how assuredly each had accepted responsibility for the crime and had acknowledged his ability to distinguish right from wrong. Neither had shown any symptoms of neurological disease—there had been no signs of mental illness that afternoon.
⁹

Joseph Sbarbaro began by asking Krohn if he had diagnosed any signs of mental disorder in the two boys. What about Richard Loeb, for example—had he shown any symptoms of mental disease?

“In my opinion,” Krohn replied, “as a result of that examination, he was not suffering from any mental disease, either functional or structural, on May 21st, 1924, or on the date I examined him.”

“Will you give your reasons?”

All of Richard Loeb’s faculties, Krohn answered, seemed to be in order. His senses—hearing and eyesight—were unimpaired. His memory was excellent: Loeb had been able to recall every detail of the killing including the origin of the scheme six months before the time of the murder. Loeb’s judgment was balanced and appropriate; there were no instances when Loeb displayed poor judgment.

“Furthermore,” Krohn continued, “the stream of thought flowed without any interruption or any break from within. There was not a single remark made that was beside the point. The answer to every question was responsive. There was no irresponsive answer to any question. There was abundant evidence that the man…was perfectly oriented as to time, as to place, and as to his social relations.” Loeb’s ability to reason was also entirely normal; he was able to group together instances and to argue inductively to a logical conclusion. “Not only that, there was excellence of attention…. There was not a single evidence of any defect, any disorder, any lack of development, or any disease, and by disease I mean functional as well as structural.”

The other boy, Nathan Leopold, also appeared to be perfectly healthy. There were no signs of neurological disease. An impairment of the nervous system might manifest itself as a jerking of the limbs, as an awkward unsteady gait, or as tremors of the body, but neither Nathan nor Richard had displayed such symptoms.

“There was no defect of vision, no defect of hearing, no evidence of any defect of any of the sense paths or sense activities. There was no defect of the nerves leading from the brain as evidenced by gait or station or tremors.”

The Argyll-Robertson pupil, Krohn explained, was a sure sign of neurological dysfunction. The pupil of the eye was capable of focusing on objects placed at either a short or a long distance, but in patients afflicted with neurological disease, the pupil failed to react to light. In this condition, the Argyll-Robertson pupil indicated a lesion of the dorsal nerve fibers that subserved the pupil’s response to light; the ventral nerve fibers, by contrast, remained unaffected and functioned normally. Neither Nathan Leopold nor Richard Loeb displayed the characteristic symptoms associated with the Argyll-Robertson pupil; in this respect, also, they were normal.

“There was no evidence of any organic disease of the brain,” Krohn testified, expanding on his analysis of Nathan’s mental health, “as would have been revealed by the Argyll-Robertson pupil…. There was no evidence of any toxic mental condition resulting from any toxicity of the body, because the pulse and the tremors that would have been incidental thereto were absent at this examination.”

Nathan Leopold had a remarkable memory; he too had been able to recall innumerable details of the murder. His reasoning was intact, and Nathan had been able to argue logically and coherently during the examination in the state’s attorney’s office. And finally, Krohn concluded, “he showed remarkably close attention, detailed attention; he showed that he was perfectly oriented socially as well as with reference to time and space.”
¹⁰

There was nothing about the behavior or appearance of Leopold and Loeb in the courtroom, Krohn added, to indicate mental disease. There were “none of the modifications of movement that come with certain mental disorders.” Neither defendant displayed those “slowly resisting movements…that come in certain conditions that are known as mental disorders;…the gait and the station showed form and ease;…in the attitude, sitting, there was no staring, no gazing fixedly, none of the positions that are characteristic of certain mental diseases.”
¹¹

O
THER WITNESSES AGREED WITH
K
ROHN’S
conclusion that both Richard and Nathan were free of mental disease. Hugh Patrick, emeritus professor of nervous and mental diseases at Northwestern University, testified that he too had found no signs of psychiatric illness in the defendants. Patrick also had extensive experience on the witness stand as a psychiatric expert and he had cultivated a relaxed, easygoing manner that commanded respect and admiration. On his first day as a witness for the prosecution he wore a light blue homespun suit and a high starched white collar; his unruffled amiable presence, the twinkle in his eyes, and his inoffensive manner made even the arcane scientific minutiae that he presented somehow seem more palatable.
¹²

Patrick stated, in response to Joseph Sbarbaro’s inquiries, that there was nothing significant in the testimony presented by the defense witnesses. The Bowman-Hulbert report, Patrick asserted, was full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Evidence supporting the defense claims was either faulty or nonexistent. Consider, for example, the defense statement that the small size of the
sella turcica
at the base of Nathan’s skull had affected his pituitary gland and was, therefore, an indication of mental illness. It sounded plausible, perhaps, but Patrick had read the X-ray report submitted separately—and there had been no mention in that report of a diminutive
sella turcica
! And in any case, would the size of the
sella turcica
necessarily have a relationship to mental health? Not at all, Patrick asserted; “a small sella turcica…does not mean there is any abnormality necessarily in the pituitary at all.”
¹³