Leopold deposition, Elmer Gertz papers, Library of Congress; New York Times, Sept. 7, 1924; Leopold testimony to Illinois parole board, 1958, quoted in Gertz, A Handful of Clients (Chicago: Follett, 1965). In keeping with his cracker-barrel persona in court, Darrow used “skizzyphratic” and other nonsense words for “schizophrenic.”
12. Transcript, Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Tribune, July 31, Aug. 1, 1924; Chicago Herald Examiner, July 31, 1924. Pethick was the twenty-two-year-old delivery boy who had murdered Ella Coppersmith and her two-year-old son in 1915, then sexually abused her body. His name was also spelled, in the press, official records, and medical journals, as “Pethrick.”
13. Transcript, Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Leopold, Life Plus Ninety-nine Years; New Statesman commentary, published in Living Age, Nov. 1, 1924; William White to Darrow, July 24, 1924, Ruby to White, undated, William White papers, National Archives; New York Times, Jan, 13, 2008. In light of recent research into the causes of psychopathy, it should also be noted that Loeb had suffered a serious head injury in an automobile accident at the age of fifteen. The talk about sex had its limits. When it came time to discuss the defendants’ sexual practices, Judge Caverly told the compliant newspapermen of the era: “This should not be published.” And prosecutor Crowe displayed his naïveté (or perhaps it was his calculation) when, after one witness testified that gay sex was a not-so-unusual practice, he asked the psychiatrist: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, doctor, to testify in that manner?”
“No. I should say not,” the psychiatrist replied. “I have known of very nice children of very nice families who have gotten through with things of that sort.”
14. Transcript, Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Herald Examiner, Aug. 23, 1924. The text of Darrow’s closing address has been pieced together from the surviving court transcripts. The first day’s transcript can be found at the University of Minnesota Law Library Web site; the second and third days’ in the Elmer Gertz collection at the Library of Congress. In his published version of the address, Darrow adjusted the number of guilty pleas from 350 to 450.
15. Transcript, Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Loeb to Darrow, “Friday nite,” CD-LOC; Chicago Tribune, Aug. 23, 1924; Chicago Herald Examiner, Aug. 23, 1924; Chicago Daily News, Aug. 23, 1924; New York Times, Aug. 23, 1924.
16. Transcript, Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Tribune, Aug. 26, 27, 28, 1924; Chicago Daily News, Aug. 26, 28, 1924.
17. Transcript, Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Tribune, Aug. 28, 29, 1924; Chicago Daily News, Aug. 28, 1924; Washington Post, Aug. 29, 1924; New York Times, Aug. 29, 1924.
18. Chicago Daily News, Sept. 10, 1924; Chicago Tribune, Sept. 11, 12, 1924; New York Times, Oct. 4, 1924; Los Angeles Times, Sept. 11, 1924; unnamed Omaha newspaper clipping, Jan. 5, 1925, CD-LOC; University Review, summer 1938; Leopold to Darrow, Sept. 10 or 11 (undated), Loeb to Darrow, Apr. 15, 1926, and Darrow to Leopold, Sept. 20, 1924, CD-LOC. A month later, from the hospital bed where he was treated for exhaustion, Caverly explained his reasoning. It was obvious that Darrow’s arguments had an impact. The defense had left it on him. They had no grounds for appeal and “burned their bridges behind them,” the judge told a reporter. “Why, Clarence Darrow … said himself: ‘If you say those two boys must die, they will die.’ ” Burdened by that responsibility, “I think I did right,” Caverly said. “There has never been a minor hanged on a plea of guilty … If I had hanged them, I would have been a great big fellow. I would have been praised on all sides. It would have been the path of least resistance. But my conscience told me what to do.”
19. Charles Yale Harrison, Clarence Darrow (New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1931); Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense; Ruby letters to Irving Stone, CD-LOC; Chicago Tribune, Jan. 9, 1925. Ruby was sore, and her anti-Semitism flared. “That these two happened to be Jewish families proves nothing whatever against their race,” she told Stone, who was Jewish. But the episode had, she said, “added to the hateful stigma upon Jews as sharp dealers and dishonest people.” There was a sad footnote to the case. When claiming that the wealth of the killers’ families was distorting justice, Crowe taunted Darrow and asked why no tears were being shed for Bernard Grant, nineteen, who had been