For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (6 page)

It was, for Richard, an unbearable situation and, increasingly, he chafed at his governess’s supervision. His resentment grew and, more and more, he slipped into the habit of lying to Emily in order to avoid her watchfulness. “To myself,” Richard remembered, “I would think certain things were not as they should be. I would brood some. To ‘get by’ her I formed the habit of lying.”
²⁸

Richard entered the sophomore class at University High in September 1918. He was just thirteen years old, but Emily had already decided that he should graduate from high school the following summer, two years ahead of his class.

It seemed, to Richard’s teachers at University High, a nonsensical decision. It served no purpose. It might even be harmful to force him to carry such an accelerated course load; Richard was a bright boy but not as exceptional as his governess seemed to believe.

But Emily was not to be dissuaded. She had always felt her own lack of education as a disadvantage; she resented her inferior status as a governess and blamed it on her failure to progress beyond high school. Richard would be different, of course. He would be a great lawyer or perhaps a professor, she believed. But that would come only through constant effort; and, so, during his sophomore year, Richard took those courses that would enable him to graduate in 1919.
²⁹

During the autumn term, Richard gamely attended gatherings of the Sophomore Literary Society, occasionally speaking in the debates. But he was taking too many courses—he had too much schoolwork—and Emily’s demands were too insistent; it was a struggle merely to complete his homework each week. He could no longer afford the time to participate in extracurricular activities.
³⁰

Throughout his sophomore year, Emily coached Richard in his studies, sitting with him each evening over his schoolwork, discussing his progress with his teachers each week, and ensuring that he completed his assignments. Her persistence paid off. Richard graduated from University High in June 1919, just a few days past his fourteenth birthday.
³¹

Emily was exuberant. It had been a singular accomplishment. Richard had earned all the necessary credits and would be able to enter the freshman class at the University of Chicago that fall.

But Richard’s success had come at a heavy price. He resented Emily’s insistence that he take so many courses; he was embittered that his parents paid no heed to his complaints that he was overworked; and he envied his classmates their freedom. And it quickly became apparent that Richard, despite his high school diploma, was ill prepared for college. He was fourteen years old when he first attended classes at the University of Chicago in October 1919. Many of his new classmates were three, four, even five years older than himself, and Richard struggled to keep pace with the demands of the college curriculum. He worked hard during that first year at Chicago, and Emily continued to supervise his course work, but Richard was a mediocre student and his grades were disappointing. Even in history, his favorite subject, Richard performed dismally, earning B-minus in the winter quarter and B in the spring quarter for courses in European history. Other courses were equally disappointing: C in English literature; C in geography; B-minus in mathematics; C in French literature; and B in rhetoric and composition.
³²

It was an inauspicious start to his college career. And Emily, who had played such an important role in Richard’s life, from his early childhood to his adolescence, left the Loeb household in summer 1920 after his parents had decided that Richard, now fifteen, no longer needed a governess. Emily had made some ill-advised decisions—it was her ambition for Richard that had caused him to enroll at the university at fourteen—but she had been a constant source of emotional support, and without her steadying presence, Richard, by his own admission, went off the rails: “When she left, I sort of broke loose.”
³³

T
HAT SUMMER HE HAD BECOME
friends with a student at the Harvard School, an awkward, self-conscious, diffident boy, six months older than himself. Nathan Leopold would begin at the university that fall. Richard had the advantage over the other boy—he had already spent one year at Chicago—and he took the trouble to explain the demands that Nathan would confront at the university.

Could there have been a greater contrast among the students at Chicago than that presented by Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold? Richard was gregarious and sociable; Nathan misanthropic and aloof. Richard impressed everyone with his easy open charm, his pleasant affability, and his humorous mannerisms; Nathan, who projected a disdainful, supercilious, arrogant attitude, appeared exactly opposite in character and temperament.

They seemed, to all appearances, to have little in common. Richard, absent Emily’s steadying influence in his life, now had no reason to devote much time to his studies. He had hoped to join a fraternity, perhaps Phi Sigma Delta or Kappa Nu, but none of the Jewish fraternities on the campus had taken his pledge, perhaps because he was still so young. Early in his sophomore year, Richard had joined the Campus Club, a social organization for those students who had yet to pledge a fraternity. Members of the Campus Club gamely copied the rituals and rites of a fraternity organization, sponsoring frequent dances and smokers in Hutchinson Commons, but the club was a poor imitation of the real thing. And, in any case, the Campus Club was far too sedate, too stolid. Richard preferred to spend his evenings drinking and gossiping with friends at one of the many speakeasies south of the Midway—the Granada Cafe on 65th Street was a popular spot among the college students—or looking to pick up a girl at the Trianon Ballroom, a dance hall on the corner of 62nd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.
³⁴

Richard’s friendship with Nathan was a puzzle. What did each see in the other that made them such close companions? They had no shared interests, nothing that could provide a basis for their friendship. Nathan had no desire to accompany Richard on his drinking sprees or to join him in his quest to pick up girls. He, too, had joined the Campus Club and occasionally appeared at one of the smokers in Hutchinson Commons. But Nathan had set himself the task of graduating from the university as quickly as possible, and to that end he spent much of his free time studying. He earned good grades: he did so well in his freshman year, earning A or A-minus in Latin, introductory psychology, political economy, European history, and experimental psychology, that the university awarded him advanced standing. Nathan was neither the best nor the most brilliant student in his class—he earned B or B-minus in several other courses—but he was tenacious, hardworking, and determined to make his mark.
³⁵

I
T HAD NEVER BEEN EASY
for Nathan to make friends, and he was delighted to have won Richard’s companionship. Richard was six months younger than himself but, nevertheless, there was so much to admire about him! His good looks, his gregarious attitude, his apparent sophistication, his worldly knowledge—Richard seemed to lead a charmed life. And as Nathan grew to know Richard better during the winter quarter, he began slowly to realize that Richard led a secret life. Perhaps, had Nathan not been so enamored with his companion and so anxious to retain his friendship, he might have dismissed Richard’s purposeless, destructive behavior for what it was, but by spring 1921, Nathan had fallen in love with Richard. There was nothing he would not now do for Richard, and so, when Richard devised a plan to cheat at cards, he fell in with the scheme readily. It was not for the sake of the money—the boys received generous allowances from their fathers—but more for the thrill of the experience. There was pleasure in the anticipation of their success in fooling their friends, in pulling it off successfully, in evading detection.
³⁶

And when Richard suggested other adventures, Nathan acquiesced, even if he could not fully share Richard’s pleasure in them. Some evenings Richard would have had too much to drink and he would insist that they find some deserted street close to campus—Kimbark, Greenwood, or Dorchester, perhaps. Then, as Nathan waited in the car, the engine running, ready to make good their escape, Richard would smash the windshields of parked cars with a half brick.
³⁷

Each such adventure seemed only to whet Richard’s appetite for something more daring. Richard had discovered that the ignition key to his mother’s car, a Milburn electric automobile, would fit any Milburn electric. It was inevitable that Richard would get his hands on a spare key and equally inevitable that he would use this key to steal Milburn electrics parked on the street. They had some narrow escapes. On one occasion an owner spotted Nathan and Richard sitting in his car and gave chase; on another occasion, the police questioned them about a stolen car—but they were never caught in the act.
³⁸

Richard loved to play a dangerous game—the more dangerous the better—and he always sought to raise the stakes. It was difficult to explain, even to himself, the pleasure that his vandalism provided; he knew only that he experienced a thrill—a more rapid heartbeat, a pulse of exhilaration and well-being—whenever he planned such adventures. Perhaps the knowledge that he was breaching a prohibition gave him the thrill; or perhaps it was his seeming ability to evade detection, the assuredness that came from the careful planning of his misdeeds, which provided him with a sense of his own potency.
³⁹

Richard’s fascination with crime stories and pulp mysteries fueled his imagination. He was, at least in his own mind, a master criminal who, no matter how complex the crime, could always escape detection. There was no deed so difficult that he could not accomplish it, and in his fantasy, his ingenuity and cleverness commanded respect and admiration from other members of the criminal underworld. There was no detective—not even Sherlock Holmes—capable of catching him, nor was there any police force that could solve the crimes he had committed.
⁴⁰

Richard’s narcissism could be completely fulfilled only in front of an audience that expressed its admiration for his ingenuity and guile; his fantasy that he was a master criminal was complete only if he could commit his crimes in front of one, two, or several associates. And such was his notoriety that if he were to be caught and placed in prison, he would attract a crowd of spectators who would simultaneously admire and pity him. The prison guards had whipped and beaten him, he imagined, and as he stood in his cell, bruised and bloody, dressed in old, ragged clothes, a group of onlookers, mostly young girls, regarded him through the prison bars with a mixture of fascination, awe, pity, and admiration. “I was abused, but it was a very pleasant thought,” Richard said; “the punishment inflicted on me in jail was pleasant; I enjoyed being looked at through the bars, because I was a famous criminal.”
⁴¹

It was a powerful fantasy that provided Richard with endless pleasure. The drama began with a scheme—expertly planned—to commit an ingenious crime, carried out to perfection in front of respectful and admiring associates. It was never clear why Richard, if he was a master criminal, able to evade capture, should ever end up inside a prison cell; nevertheless his imagined imprisonment provided Richard with masochistic and narcissistic sensations that heightened his fantasy.

Just as each detail provided Richard with pleasure that, as he experienced it, resembled sexual ecstasy, so in real life the planning of his actual misdeeds thrilled and excited him. In his sophomore year at the University of Chicago, Richard, always accompanied by Nathan, would carefully plan his acts of vandalism in advance. On several occasions he set fires, none of which, however, resulted in any loss of life. Less seriously, Richard would leave his house in the dead of night to smash storefront windows in Hyde Park and Kenwood. The preparation of such episodes was as pleasurable as their execution. It was almost as though the anticipation of the act, foreshadowing the violation of legal and moral imperatives, stood as the justification for the actual event.
⁴²

Nathan was a willing participant in Richard’s adventures. He experienced neither enthusiasm nor regret over their vandalism; in truth, he was largely indifferent to the mayhem they inflicted. But his affection for Richard and his desire to be in Richard’s company were now so strong that there was nothing he would not do to hold on to the friendship. It meant everything to him to have Richard as a companion. Richard needed him as an accomplice; if that was the requirement for gaining Richard’s friendship, then of course he would willingly agree.
⁴³

Nathan also had a vivid fantasy life. He imagined himself as a slave, handsome, intelligent, and strong, the strongest man in the world, who had earned the gratitude of the king by saving his life. The king had offered Nathan his freedom, but Nathan preferred to remain in servitude, protecting the king and saving him from his enemies. When the king chose a slave to fight on his behalf, Nathan was always his choice, and in his battles Nathan was the victor, effortlessly vanquishing hundreds of fighters determined to kill him.
⁴⁴

It was a powerful fantasy; Nathan would be absorbed in his reverie for hours, imagining the admiration bestowed on him by the king, listing the opponents that he had defeated in battle, counting the times he had saved his king’s life. This fantasy had first possessed him when he was eight years old, and it had persisted through puberty and into adolescence; it remained as potent and as pleasurable as ever.
⁴⁵