Blame Game
Princeton University lecturer on neuro-biology, Dr. Stewart Pathon gave his opinion on what caused Leopold and Loeb to murder, including “their home training and one-sided education that American schools and universities are offering students…all teachers are narrow-minded, and cannot help the university student in gaining control of the savage instincts that are present in the human race, handed down from our forefathers.”
“The dizzy rise to wealth and power which is not uncommon to the American people, is largely to blame in this particular case…Wealth is so quickly obtainable in America that the disadvantages are brought without the advantages. The English aristocracy has been a splendid example of the proper use of wealth. The rise to riches in England is gradual, usually taking several generations, and there have been many of England’s greatest men come from the aristocracy.”
A psychiatrist had a different opinion:
I K Friedman posited that Leopold was directionless, “he has no harbor. Everything around him is in flux and transition” and he lacked proper direction and guidance. “Under such a permanent influence Nathan Leopold might have become in the Nietzschean sense a bridge-a majestic structure over which mankind passes to further realities.
Or he might have been as a torch that lights the way to the bridge toward which so many of his generation are now passing through darkness and uncertainty.
But somehow he missed his chance. Somewhere, perhaps pathetically early along the way, the torch was extinguished and he sank to the bottom of the abyss whose bridge-builder he might have been.”
Publicity
One newspaper editor responded to critics saying that newspapers were sensationalizing the Franks murder:
“Press critics sometimes strike at the messenger, rather than the source of evil tidings. The degenerate Chicago murder which has horrified the reading public is an indictment of the social order in what is very properly described as the ‘jazz age.’
Would the critics of the press prefer, in the name of decent living, that such rank growths as Leopold and Loeb should be glossed over, minimized, suppressed? Would they have the newspapers enter into a conspiracy of silence and permit such evil conditions to brew horrors beneath the surface? In such circumstances the public would rightfully draw an indictment against journalism.”
Other
The Herald-Examiner published a confusing article about the poker games Leopold and Loeb played after the Franks murder when they were at the Leopold home. A reporter wondered:
“What were the stakes in the hand of poker Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb played after the murder of Robert Franks?
Investigators for the detective bureau and the state’s attorney’s office believe the loser bet his chances of freedom against death on the gallows and-then reneged.
That would explain the bitter hatred now prevailing between Nathan and Richard.”
…
Who lost, or what were the stakes, they will not tell.
Sergts William Crot, Frank Johnson and William Gortland of the detective bureau, who have worked on the case since the slaying, have tried to make them tell. But there is a set of ethics about poker, and a real player holds no “post mortems.”
The detectives believe the loser was to have borne all the responsibility in the event they were caught.”
This is the only time I’ve ever seen anyone give any importance at all to the card games they played after the murder.
Leopold and Loeb’s publicity was moving from the newspapers and taking physical form in a wax museum. Specifically the Eden Musee, the famous Coney Island museum, which “offers its visitors wax likenesses of famous rulers, martyrs and fame-winning generals as well as of bank robbers and assassins. A few days ago it installed wax figures of Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. The management announces the figures as the greatest attraction since a waxen Harry K. Thaw stared at the patrons.”
Photos
This edited photo was paired with the poker story, described above.
Sources
- Boston Daily Advertiser, June 23, 1924
- Chicago Herald and Examiner, June 23, 1924
- Healdsburg Tribune, June 23, 1924
- Santa Maria Daily Times, June 23, 1924
The Lives and Legends of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold 