For the Thrill of It

by Simon Baatz

  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

  NATHAN LEOPOLD 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.

  THAT SUNDAY, 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

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, MONDAY, 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

  OTHER WITNESSES AGREED WITH KROHN’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

  The Bowman-Hulbert report, Patrick claimed, was full of statements that, on closer examination, were so vague as to be meaningless. Nathan, it was claimed, responded to pain by sweating, weakness, and fainting; but to what degree of pain had he been subjected? A sufficiently high degree of pain might cause anyone to faint—by itself, the statement proved nothing; and, in any case, Nathan’s alleged reaction was not evidence of mental disease.14

  Nor was there was anything exceptional, Patrick claimed, in the fantasies of Nathan and Richard, and certainly there was nothing that would have compelled them to murder. The defense had represented personality quirks as psychoneuroses. Nathan’s imagination was slightly outré, perhaps, but fantasies of power and domination were not uncommon or extraordinary—everyone fantasized to an extent. And Richard’s desire to be a master criminal? It showed merely that he possessed a criminal mind and that he was ambitious. There was no evidence for the defense claim that Nathan was on the verge of dementia praecox or that Richard suffered from a split between his intellect and his emotions. Patrick had carefully read the Bowman-Hulbert report and had found no symptoms of pathological behavior in either boy.15

  Only the crime itself might be evidence of mental illness, and even that was not certain. There was no basis for asserting that the defendants were mentally diseased “unless,” Patrick concluded, “we assume that every man who commits a deliberate, cold-blooded, planned murder, must, by that fact, be mentally diseased. There was no evidence of any mental disease…in any of the statements the boys made regarding it…. There was nothing in the examination; there were no mental obliquities or peculiarities shown, except their lack of appreciation of the enormity of the deed which they had committed.”16

  ARCHIBALD CHURCH, CHAIR OF THE department of nervous and mental diseases at Northwestern, agreed with his colleagues’ diagnosis. Church—tall, broad-shouldered, and meticulously dressed, with a military bearing—was an authoritative presence on the witness stand. He, too, remembered both Nathan and Richard as free from mental disease when he had interviewed them in the state’s attorney’s office on 1 June.

  “Have you an opinion, doctor,” Sbarbaro asked, “from your observation and examination, as to whether the defendant, Richard Loeb, was suffering from any mental disease on that day, at that time?…”

  “The young man,” Church replied, “was entirely oriented. He knew who he was and where he was, and the time of day and everything about it. His memory was extraordinarily good; his logical powers as manifested during the interview were normal, and I saw no evidence of any mental disease.”

  “Now, doctor, have you an opinion from your observation and examination of Nathan Leopold, Jr., as to whether he was suffering from any mental disease at that same time?”

  “I have.”

  “What is that opinion?”

  “There was no evidence of any mental disease.”

  “Will you state your reasons again, please?”

  “Because he was perfectly oriented, of good memory, of extreme intellectual reasoning capacity, and apparently of good judgment within the range of the subject matter.”17

  Nor, Church continued, did the scientific findings presented by the defense have any significance. Clarence Darrow had claimed that the fantasy life of each boy had contributed to creating a symbiosis between Leopold and Loeb, but the defense experts had failed to demonstrate how the fantasies—either separately or conjoined—had compelled the killing of Bobby Franks. The supposition that each defendant fantasized was interesting, perhaps, but trivial in its relationship to the murder. The psychoanalytic evidence was not sufficient ground for any mitigation of punishment.

  “Phantasies,” Church stated, “are day dreams. Everybody has them. Everybody knows they are dreams. They have an interest in relation to character and conduct, but they do not compel conduct nor excuse it.”18

  The witnesses for the state were unanimous in their verdict: the defendants displayed no signs of mental illness.

  IT WAS REGRETTABLE, OF COURSE, that each set of psychiatrists—one for the state, the other for the defense—had contradicted the other. Few observers noticed that each side spoke for a different branch of psychiatry and was, therefore, separately justified in reaching its verdict. The neurologists, witnesses for the state—Krohn, Patrick, Church, and a fourth expert, Harold Douglas Singer—had found no evidence that any organic trauma or infection might have damaged either the cerebral cortex or the central nervous system of either Na
than or Richard. Neurologists assumed the somatic origins of psychiatric illness, and there were no symptoms of organic disease in either defendant. The conclusion reached by the neurologists was, therefore, a correct one—there was no mental disease.

  The psychoanalytic psychiatrists—White, Glueck, and Healy—could assert, with equal justification, that according to their understanding of psychiatry, an understanding informed by psychoanalysis, the defendants had suffered mental trauma during childhood that had damaged each boy’s ability to function competently. Nathan and Richard had each experienced abuse at the hands of a governess: in Richard’s case, Emily Struthers had imposed a set of demands that had distorted his perception of reality; in Nathan’s case, Mathilda Wantz had seduced him when he was still a child. The damage inflicted on each boy at an early age had resulted in compensatory fantasies that led directly to the murder.

  Most commentators, however, were unaware of the epistemological gulf that separated neurology from psychoanalytic psychiatry. The expert witnesses all claimed to be psychiatrists, after all; and it was, everyone agreed, a dark day for psychiatry when leading representatives of the profession could stand up in court and contradict each other. If men of national reputation and eminence could not agree on a common diagnosis, then could any value be attached to a psychiatric judgment? Or perhaps the experts in each group were saying only what the lawyers required them to say—for a fee, of course. But if psychiatrists, leaders of the profession, no less, were so avaricious as to hire themselves out as mercenaries for a few hundred dollars, then of what value was the psychiatric profession?

  It was an evil that contaminated the entire profession, thundered the New York Times, in an editorial similar to dozens of others that appeared at the same time. The experts in the Leopold-Loeb hearing were “of equal authority as alienists and psychiatrists,” apparently in possession of the same set of facts, who, nevertheless, gave out “opinions exactly opposite and contradictory as to the past and present condition of the two prisoners…. Instead of seeking truth for its own sake and with no preference as to what it turns out to be, they are supporting, and are expected to support, a predetermined purpose…. That the presiding Judge,” the Times concluded sorrowfully, “is getting any help from those men toward the forming of his decision hardly is to be believed.”19