by Simon Baatz
Elmer Gertz, speaking before the parole board on 5 February 1958, reminded his audience that Nathan presented no risk of violating parole. He had four job offers, and more to the point, he had proved himself rehabilitated by his good works in prison. Nathan had helped organize a school for inmates within Stateville; he had been a volunteer for the malaria project in the 1940s; and he had worked steadily and conscientiously as an X-ray technician and as a psychiatric nurse in the prison hospital. What more could the parole board require of Nathan Leopold? Should he remain in Stateville solely on account of his notoriety while other inmates obtained their freedom? In the years since 1950, Gertz continued, the board had paroled almost 200 murderers, yet it had continued to deny Nathan Leopold his freedom. Art Newman, a notorious gangland killer, had murdered seven people; the state's attorney had demanded that he remain behind bars for the remainder of his life; and yet the parole board had released Newman after he had served twenty-six years. Nathan Leopold had now lived in prison for his entire adult life, a total of thirty-three years. Was it just that Nathan be denied his liberty? At Stateville, only one other inmate-- Russell Pethick, the murderer of a young woman and her infant son-- had been imprisoned longer than Nathan Leopold! "Few convicts have ever served as long as Nathan Leopold," Gertz stated, "and some have been convicted of murders more brutal even than his. Some of them, unlike him, have previously been convicted of other heinous offenses or have violated probation or parole. Very few have had as fine prison records as Leopold."57
Unpleasant, ugly rumors had circulated that Nathan was a homosexual, Gertz continued, and that he had sex with other inmates in Stateville. But that was false. Nathan had a brief infatuation with Richard Loeb many years previously, but that relationship had been a juvenile affair. Nothing had occurred within Stateville. Nathan's disciplinary record in the prison contained no mention of homosexuality. "Gentlemen, let me say this openly and without equivocation. Nathan Leopold is not now, and has not been since his imprisonment, a sexual deviate, or, indeed, a sexual problem in any respect. The prison records will bear out, and the public should know it, that there is not the slightest evidence of any sexual impropriety on his part. . . . I hope I have made my meaning clear."58
The gossip about Nathan's sexuality was symptomatic of the myths that now overlay the true story. Even now, thirty years after the murder, the public remained fascinated by the case. The tabloid newspapers eagerly fueled the public's appetite by retailing half-truths and outright lies. The facts had been lost in the making of a legend that now bore little relationship to reality.
It was important, Gertz reminded the parole board, to go back to the original court documents and, in determining whether to grant Leopold parole, to consider which of the two boys had been principally responsible for the murder of Bobby Franks. The transcript of the 1924 courtroom hearing showed that Richard Loeb had initiated the scheme to kidnap and kill a young child, that Loeb had planned the details of the ransom demand, that Loeb had imagined himself the master criminal, and that Loeb had struck the deathblow with the chisel in the back of the automobile. Nathan Leopold had participated in the killing, but only as an accomplice, content to follow the other boy's lead. "We have no desire," Gertz explained, "to labor the point that Loeb's share in the crime was greater than Leopold's, because in a legal and moral sense both were guilty. But it is necessary once and for all to let the truth be known." It was not that Nathan bore no responsibility for the murder--such a suggestion would be a step too far--but that Nathan had been too infatuated with Richard to resist the other boy's criminal intent.59
A succession of character witnesses now appeared to speak on Nathan's behalf. John Bartlow Martin, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post who had interviewed Nathan in prison; Martin Sukov, a prison psychiatrist; Eligius Weir, the prison chaplain at Stateville; and the poet Carl Sandburg, then Chicago's most celebrated literary figure--all testified that Nathan had earned parole through his outstanding rehabilitation.
Finally it was Nathan's turn to speak. He had learned from his previous experience five years earlier; now he was ready to proclaim his remorse. "Gentlemen," he began, "it is not easy to live with murder on your conscience. The fact that you know you did not do the actual killing does not help. My punishment has not been light. I have spent over one-third of a century in prison. During that time I have lost most of those who were near or dear to me. I never had an opportunity to say a prayer on their graves; I forfeited all home and family; forfeited all the chances of an honorable career. But the worst punishment comes from inside me. It is the torment of my own conscience. I can say that will be true the rest of my days. . . . All I want in this life is a chance to prove to you and the people of Illinois, what I know in my own heart to be true, that I can and will become a decent, self-respecting and law-abiding citizen, to have a chance to find redemption for myself by service to others. It is for that chance that I humbly beg."60
The members of the parole board listened politely as Nathan continued to talk. Soon he had finished. John Bookwalter asked Nathan about his attorney's assertion that Richard Loeb had conceived and planned the murder of Bobby Franks. Was it, Bookwalter inquired, also Nathan's belief "that Loeb had a stronger personality . . . and [that] you were more or less a follower?"
"Yes, sir," Nathan replied.
"Through your adoration for him?"
"That is correct."
"As you sit there today, don't you take a equal share of blame for this?"
"Definitely."
"You are not trying to place it on him?"
"Believe me," Nathan explained, "it is not easy to try to push blame on a man that is dead. . . . I did not want to throw blame on another. It is not an attractive thing to do, but I must answer the question honestly." Bookwalter was still not satisfied. Leopold seemed to want to have it both ways: to express his remorse and yet to deny that he had any meaningful role in the murder. Bookwalter knew the details of the case; he had read the transcripts of the courtroom hearing; and now he probed again.
"You are taking an equal share of responsibility?"
"Very definitely. . . ."
"I understand there were articles used in this crime purchased by you and stored in your house?"
"My share was equal," Nathan replied cautiously. Bookwalter's manner was skeptical. Was Nathan to be denied parole a second time?61
If the board did grant him parole, Bookwalter added, suddenly changing the subject, did Nathan realize that he was to avoid television and radio appearances? Did he understand that he was not to give out statements to the newspapers? Every media outlet in the country would want an interview with him. Already there was a rumor that Ed Murrow, the CBS correspondent, wanted Nathan to appear on his television show See It Now. "I don't want," Nathan replied hastily, "any part of lecturing, television or radio, or trading on the notoriety. That is the last thing. . . . All I want, if I am so lucky as to ever see freedom again, is to try to become a humble little person."62
On 20 February 1958 the news reached Stateville that the board had agreed to parole Nathan Leopold. Three weeks later, on 13 March, on a clear crisp winter morning, Nathan emerged from the prison to confront an immense scrum of newspaper reporters, television cameramen, and photographers. He had left his prison uniform behind; he now wore an ill-fitting blue suit that seemed slightly too large for his diminutive frame. He blinked nervously at the crowd as the reporters shouted questions at him, and suddenly the mob pressed forward, ready to record his first words back in the free world.63
"I appeal as solemnly as I know how," Nathan said in a tremulous voice, speaking into a microphone, "to you and to your editors . . . to agree that the only piece of news about me is that I have ceased to be news. I beg, I beseech you and your editors and publishers to grant me a gift almost as precious as freedom itself--a gift without which freedom ceases to have much va lue --t he gif t of privac y. Give me a cha nce -- a fair chance--to start life anew."64
It was a fut
ile appeal. The crowd pushed forward again. Elmer Gertz gently pulled Nathan away from the microphone and nudged him in the direction of a waiting limousine, its engine running, the driver ready to make a quick exit. The reporters also, suddenly realizing that Nathan was about to leave, began to scramble, pushing and shoving each other as they ran toward their cars, desperate not to be left behind, desperate not to miss the scoop that each imagined was within his grasp.
Back to Chicago! The caravan of automobiles roared away with Leopold's car in front. They raced pell-mell along the Chicago road at ninety miles an hour, horns blaring, until they reached Oak Park, west of the city. Ralph Newman, one of Nathan's closest friends, had offered his home as a temporary refuge. But, already, as Nathan watched from a downstairs window, he could see dozens of reporters running from their cars toward the house as though to set up a siege. At two o'clock that afternoon the police arrived to escort Nathan to Chicago, where he planned to stay at an apartment on Lake Shore Drive with his college friend Abel Brown.65
It had become impossible for Nathan to stay even a few days in Chicago. He had hoped to visit the graves of his parents. But the journalists had discovered his hiding place and were camped outside, waiting for him to leave the apartment building. They obviously had no intention of respecting his plea for privacy. There was no alternative: he would leave Chicago for Puerto Rico as soon as possible. Only when he had left the United States would he find peace. The next day Nathan boarded a plane at O'Hare Airport for New York for a connecting f light to San Juan. Finally he was a free man.66
The tranquillity of Castaner wa s a welcome change from the bustle of Chicago. High in the mountains, at an altitude of 4,000 feet, with a temperate climate, and surrounded by banana and coffee plantations, the village was an oasis of quiet. Nathan Leopold spent his days peacefully, working as a medical assistant at the village hospital, enrolling as a graduate student in social work at the University of Puerto Rico, and finding friends among the small community of North Americans on the island.
67
It might have been idyllic--except for one nagging irritation. Meyer
Levin, a contemporary of Leopold and Loeb at the University of Chicago, had written a novel,
Compulsion, based on the murder. Levin's writing style was overwrought, exaggerated, and fanciful, and his description of the character based on Nathan Leopold was far from f lattering. Now Nathan learned that Twentieth Century Fox was to make a movie of the novel starring Orson Welles. It was yet one more invasion of his privacy, Nathan decided, and in October 1959 he instructed Elmer Gertz to file suit against Levin and the film production company, Darryl F. Zanuck Productions, for the "appropriation of the name, likeness, and personality of Leopold and conversion of same for their profit and gain."68
To most observers, Leopold's lawsuit seemed risible. One of the most notorious murderers in American history, the brutal killer of a fourteen-year-old boy, was now complaining that a fictionalized account of the crime was an appropriation of his name! Leopold had filed suit for $1.4 million; if he were to collect in the courts, would he not, in fact, profit from his crime? Meyer Levin, who had publicly supported Leopold's parole the previous year, was indignant that his generosity had been rewarded with such base ingratitude. "Leopold was now a victim, a man who had suffered thirty years of imprisonment as if in a death camp," Levin sputtered angrily in an autobiographical account. "He was a kind of culture hero. . . . There had been an astute imagecreation campaign, picturing him as a master of fourteen languages, a savant, and now a hospital volunteer in a remote monastery, a kind of Dr. Schweitzer! . . . In his lawsuit Nathan Leopold was daring the highest feat of all--he would at last collect the kidnap-murder ransom, and many times over! It would be handed to him by a court! What a justification for himself, and his dead friend Dickie Loeb! He and Dickie had done the killing, they were the authors of the action, a sort of natural copyright was claimed, all accounts of the crime must pay royalties to them--or at least to Leopold for his half!"
69
Levin was right to be indignant. The case wound its way endlessly through the courts, eventually reaching the Illinois supreme court in 1970; there, it was finally dismissed. Levin spent tens of thousands of
29 . THE HAPPY COUPLE. This photograph, taken on 26 June 1964, shows Nathan Leopold and his wife, Trudi Feldman, at a press conference in Chicago. Leopold was in Chicago to attend the World Conference of the Church of the Brethren.
dollars in his defense. In the decade of legal wrangling over the case, no publisher would reissue
Compulsion after its initial print run for fear of incurring potential damages if the courts did decide in favor of Leopold.70
While his lawsuit kept the attorneys busy in Chicago, Nathan continued to live peacefully in Puerto Rico. Not long after his arrival in the island, he had met a fifty-three-year-old woman from Baltimore, Trudi Feldman, the widow of a physician; and in October 1961, after obtaining the permission of his parole board, they exchanged vows at a wedding ceremony in Castaner. They lived comfortably--Nathan had inherited $50,000 on his father's death in 1929, and it had been accumulating interest throughout his imprisonment. Trudi, for her part, had an independent income as the owner of a f lower shop in San Juan.
71
In 1963 Nathan won his release from parole. Finally he could drink alcohol, drive an automobile, and stay out at night; best of all, he could now travel outside Puerto Rico. Neither Trudi nor Nathan had seen much of the world, and during the 1960s they made up for lost time, traveling throughout Europe, South America, Asia, and the Middle East. Nathan returned to Chicago often, to see old friends, to tour the South Side neighborhood near the university, and to place f lowers on the graves of his mother and father and two brothers.
72
It had been so long ago--that summer of 1924, in the stuffy courtroom on the sixth f loor of the Cook County Criminal Court--and now he was the sole survivor. William Alanson White had died in 1937, honored as the leader of the American psychiatric profession. Clarence Darrow had died in 1938, exalted as the greatest lawyer of his generation. John Caverly had suffered a fatal stroke while on vacation in Bermuda in 1939. Benjamin Bachrach and his younger brother, Walter, had died within a few months of each other, in December 1950 and March 1951, respectively. Robert Crowe had lived until 1958, spending his final years in a retirement home. Richard Loeb, of course, had expired on the operating table in the Stateville prison.
He had atoned for his crime, Nathan believed. In any case, the murder had passed into legend. It had become a catchphrase--the Leopold and Loeb case--and in the absence of any authoritative account of the murder, newspaper writers had been free to embellish it as they pleased. They recounted the story in detail one more time, on 29 August 1971, when Nathan Leopold died of a heart attack. His body was donated to the University of Puerto Rico for medical research. There was no funeral service.
73
LEOPOLD AND
LOEB IN FICTION
In April 1927, F. Scott Fitzgerald sat down with a reporter for the New York
World over drinks at the Plaza Hotel in New York to reveal that he had been writing a novel based on the Leopold-Loeb case. His new book, Fitzgerald confided, would be darker and more pessimistic than his previous accounts of American youth--it would ref lect his conviction that American culture and society were set inexorably on a path to self-immolation and destruction. What episode in the Jazz Age could better express Fitzgerald's pessimism and despair than the random murder of a fourteen-year-old child by two wealthy hedonistic teenage lovers?1
Fitzgerald never did write his novel, but in 1929, the first fictional account of the murder appeared--not in the United States, but on the London stage. The success of the play
Rope abruptly lifted its author, Patrick Hamilton, from abject poverty to financial independence. "How can I begin to describe to you the uncanniness of my success?" Hamilton wrote to his brother. "For it is not only the money--it is fame. . .
. And all through Rope. It is all too funny." In his play Hamilton moved the action from Chicago to a Mayfair apartment in London. His two killers, Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo, collaborate in the murder of a close friend by each pulling on one end of a rope. They then stuff the corpse into a large chest. They invite other acquaintances, including the father of the victim, to a dinner party with the buffet laid out on the top of the chest. One guest, Rupert Cadell, shares the Nietzschean philosophy of the two murderers but, on opening the chest and discovering the corpse, denounces the murder and calls the police. The first stage production of Rope was at the Strand Theatre in March 1929. Critics alternately praised and condemned the play for its macabre and violent theme, but it continued to earn Hamilton substantial royalties until his death in 1974.2
In 1948 Alfred Hitchcock produced the screen adaptation of Hamilton's play. Hitchcock had conceived of
Rope as an inexpensive movie--the action occurs in a single room, and there are fewer than a dozen characters--but his decision to film it in a series of long takes cost him more time and money than he had anticipated. Rope begins with the murder as a sexual act. The two killers, Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan, then hide the corpse in a chest and host a dinner party in their New York apartment. Some critics regarded the film as one of Hitchcock's least successful, overburdened with suggestive theories and clumsily concluded with a monologue by Rupert Cadell (played by James Stewart). Others have praised its complex portrayal of Brandon as both aggressively self-assured and painfully vulnerable; Brandon has an overwhelming lust for power and control and yet is desperately fearful of his own impotence. The film did poorly at the box office. The production company, Warner Bros., belatedly realized that a homosexual relationship framed the murder and its aftermath; the Anti-Defamation League protested against the movie's depiction of two Jews as homosexual murderers; and the National Review Board decreed that only mature audiences could see the film. Rope was a commercial success in New York but f lopped everywhere else.3
