The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
a liberal education in mental diseases, and particu-
larly what certain doctors did not know about them.
Three wise men from the East came to tell your
Honor about these little babes, and, being three
wise men brought on from the East, they want to
make the picture a little more perfect. One of them
was sacrilegious enough to say that Leopold, this
pervert, this murderer, this kidnaper, thought that
he was the Christ child and his mother the Madonna
— and without a syllable of evidence to support the
blasphemous statement.
Who said that this young pervert ever thought he
was the Christ child? He has proclaimed since he
was eleven years of age that there is no God. " The
fool in his heart hath said there is no God." I
wonder now, Nathan, whether you think there is a
God or not. I wonder whether you think it was
pure accident that this disciple of Nietzschian
philosophy dropped his glasses or whether it was an
act of Divine Providence to visit upon your miser-
able carcasses the wrath of God in the enforcement
of the laws of the State of Illinois.
After the Bachrachs had completed my education
in the psychopathic laboratories, then my good
friend Clarence Darrow took me on a Chautauqua
trip, visiting various towns. We would go to social
settlements, such as the Hull House, and Clarence
would expound his peculiar philosophy of life; and
we would meet with communists and anarchists, and
Clarence would regale them with his philosophy of
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