Narrator:
What would end with
The Murder of Bobby Franks
had begun almost innocently,
with A Scheme Richard devised
to Cheat at Cards.
That small transgression
had bound The Boys together,
put them in league against
The Rest of The World,
but Richard longed to play
more dangerous Games.
John Logan, Playwright :
It was Crime that fascinated Loeb. He read detective novels, pulp periodicals, he devoured the newspapers for stories of Crime.
And I Think to him it's because
There's a certain exceptionality about Crime.
Criminals are not
of the common run of Humanity. And he felt he was not
in the common run of Humanity.
Narrator :
Nathan was more than
Willing to join in, but
he wanted something in return.
So The Boys made A Secret Pact.
Simon Baatz, Historian :
There was an arrangement
that Richard would agree
to have sex with Nathan
if Nathan accompanied Richard
when he did His Crimes.
Richard started out by committing small acts of vandalism --
stealing cars, setting fire to buildings.
It escalated more and more, and then eventually Richard suggested The Idea to Nathan of committing A Murder.
Narrator :
Nathan was not only agreeable,
he urged Richard on
with a concept taken from
the German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche : that of
The Ubermensch, or superman --
A Being so exceptional
that he was bound
by neither Law nor Morality.
John Logan, Playwright :
Unfortunately they invested
in their own sort of Dark and Twisted version of
The Nietzschean Ideal
where they began to self-identify
as The Nietzschean superman.
They wanted to
create a unique act --
Do something that was,
in their view, exalted
and befitting of a
Nietzschean superman,
and they thought This Act
being so clever,
committing The Perfect Murder,
would be a way for them
to demonstrate their
Superiority over Other People.
Paula Fass, Historian :
They were a couple of boys playing a strange
and sadistic Game —
Now, obviously this had
an erotic dimension,
but it also had a kind of
intellectual dimension, and
That, I Think, is key
to understanding what was going on between Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold.
Narrator :
Neither had ever considered The Possibility that they would be caught.
Now, The Two Supermen were behind bars, and if The State's Attorney had his way, they would end on The Gallows.
Hours after news of the confessions broke, the Loeb family sought the counsel of the country's preeminent criminal defense attorney, Clarence Darrow -- soon to be known as
The "Attorney for The Damned."
John A. Farrell, Writer :
Clarence Darrow was,
at this point in His Life, 67 years old. He had just come off an amazing string of Victories defending a bunch of corrupt politicians in Chicago.
Clarence Darrow was thought as a legal miracle worker. Many of his cases -- His Guys or His Gals are found with the guns or bloody knife in their hands. And that's why he was seen as the attorney for the damned.
Narrator:
"Get them a Life sentence instead of Death," Loeb's uncle begged Darrow. "We'll pay you anything, only for God's sake, don't let them hang." It was a request Darrow could not refuse.
John A. Farrell, Writer :
He hated Capital Punishment.
He did probably 60 or more Capital Punishment cases in his career.
He lost the first one to The Hangman, and he never got over it. His philosophy was definitely, "Hate The Sin and Love The Sinner." He Believed people act the way They Act because they're brought up in Poverty or because they themselves have been ill-treated, and that the supreme virtue was Mercy.
Simon Baatz, Historian :
He Believed that everything we do is determined by our upbringing, by Our Childhood, by Our Parents, and therefore there's very little Free Choice. No Free Will. So He Believed accordingly that capital punishment, the death penalty, was something that should not take place.
Narrator: Darrow was by no means alone. The previous quarter century had seen movements to abolish the death penalty in no fewer than 10 states, while the number of executions nationwide had sharply declined. With the issue still being hotly debated all over the country, Darrow sensed an opportunity to Tip The Scales.
John A. Farrell, Writer :
He wants to make A Statement about Capital Punishment. In the Leopold and Loeb case, he knows he has this amazing spotlight. Everybody is Listening around The World, not just in the United States.
Narrator:
"The Actor-Egoist in him sought opportunities to play great parts," one writer said of Darrow. "Hero Parts."
Darrow showed up for his first meeting with his clients in a rumpled seersucker suit and a shirt that bore traces of his breakfast. "My first impression," Nathan Leopold later said, "was Horror."
John Logan, Playwright :
You couldn't imagine three more
different planets in constellation.
There was Loeb, who was sleek and his lapels could cut you like a knife. Leopold who was intense and brooding and his hair was always shining and he was very sort of well put together. And then Clarence Darrow who was a complete shambling mess. It was like a hobbit suddenly walked into a room of tango dancers.
Narrator:
By the time Darrow arrived, Leopold and Loeb had been in Crowe's custody for three days, talking all the while. The state's attorney had even arranged for Leopold and Loeb to be examined by Chicago's leading Alienists -- as psychiatrists were known -- in an effort to block what he assumed would be Darrow's only possible line of Defence : Not Guilty by reason of Insanity.
Carol Steiker, Professor of Law : Crowe's Alienists all said that The Defendants were perfectly sane and there was nothing wrong with them other than that they simply failed to appreciate the enormity of what they'd done. But that was hardly Insanity, that was, in the state's view, you know, Evil, not Madness.
Narrator:
On June 11th, Darrow appeared with his clients before Judge John Caverly. As expected, he entered a Not Guilty plea, which gave him several weeks to prepare his defense.
Next, he gathered A Team of ‘Experts’
from all over The Country to evaluate Leopold and Loeb, including a physician, an adolescent criminologist, and a Psychiatrist
versed in the new analytic techniques of Sigmund Freud.
Over the next five weeks, Leopold and Loeb would be subject to rigorous examinations derived from the cutting edge of modern science. Their bodily functions were measured, intelligence tested, family histories probed. Meanwhile, the boys' unfathomable crime prompted a rash of national hand-wringing over the perils of modern life.
John Logan, Playwright :
It did say something about the 20s.
You know, The Music is Wild,
the skirts were short, there was gin,
it was a fast-living Society.
So the madcap fun was suddenly
a very dark implication of unchecked emotion,
unchecked youth, unchecked wildness can lead to things.
Paula Fass, Historian : So there was a lot of uneasiness about Who we Were and Where We were Going.
You had some ministers saying it was because Americans were over-educating their children. There was too much prosperity, too much Modernism, too much indulgence of American children taking place at the time.
All of these things rained down
on the Leopold and Loeb case.
Narrator :
Concerned for His Clients' image,
Darrow sent men into the streets of Chicago
to gauge public opinion. Sixty percent
of those queried thought
Leopold and Loeb should hang.
John A. Farrell, Writer :
Darrow's early letters to His Son
and to His ex-Wife from early June
are very bleak and they say, 'I doubt
that I'll be able to save these boys.'
And this is a man who has pulled the trick off dozens of times throughout his career, but he says, you know, "The Newspapers are just too bad."
Narrator:
On July 21st, two months after Bobby Franks' murder, Darrow and his clients joined Prosecutor Crowe in the Criminal Court Building, to present motions before Judge John Caverly.
It was 10am, and though the already sweltering courtroom was filled to capacity, the crowd was mostly silent.
Darrow, disheveled as ever, his thumbs hooked under his trademark suspenders, spoke first, and turned the entire case on its head by entering a plea of Guilty.
John A. Farrell, Writer :
He stood up and told The Judge that
‘We're going to change The Plea to Guilty.’
Reporters jumped and ran to the rooms
and all the afternoon newspapers was
that Leopold and Loeb are pleading Guilty.
Hal Higdon, Writer :
And when you plead somebody Guilty,
it Changes The Game entirely because
now you're not going to impanel a jury.
So then it became The Judge's decision
to decide whether they would hang or whether
they would be just sent to prison for Life.
Narrator :
Crowe, who moments earlier had
confidently swaggered into the courtroom
chomping on a cigar, was apoplectic.
Simon Baatz, Historian:
Crowe thought he had everything sewn up,
that he was all ready for A Plea by The Defence
of Not Guilty on account of Insanity.
Carol Steiker, Professor of Law :
Darrow has this radical idea that
he's going to introduce evidence about
his clients' backgrounds, and about
their mental states to argue for
a sentence less than Death.
Darrow's strategy to introduce this evidence was absolutely ground breaking. It was so groundbreaking that no one had ever heard of it.
The State's Attorney thought
it was completely ridiculous and
he shouldn't be allowed to do this.
John Logan, Playwright :
Darrow wanted to present
psychological weakness
as a mitigating factor for sentencing.
So essentially what he was saying to Judge Caverly was, 'We admit that we committed the crime, but I'd like to show you why we committed the crime.'
Narrator : When the sentencing hearing got underway on the morning of July 23rd, 1924, the stifling courtroom was so thronged with spectators that reporters commandeered the empty jury box.
Crowe presented The State's evidence first -- armed with a lengthy list of witnesses who would provide testimony on every ghastly detail of Leopold and Loeb's crime.
