The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
kidnaping for ransom, it was necessary to write
some letters. These two little boys, wandering
around in dreamland, knew what very few boys
and very few men know, that it is possible to take
a typewritten document and tell what kind of a
machine it is written on. So they go to Ann Arbor
and they steal a typewriter, a portable typewriter,
for the purpose of writing these letters on it, and
they go along working out the details of this crime.
Mr. Darrow says that there is no motive; that
this is a senseless crime; that the $10,000 had
nothing to do with it. I will undertake to prove,
not by argument, but by sworn testimony, that the
$10,000 had much to do with it. I will show that
this was not the crime of diseased emotion, but a
crime planned in all its minuteness by more than
ordinary intellect.
Dr. Healy, on his cross-examination, testified as
follows
:
Q. Do you regard this as a crime of passion?
A. No, sir.
Q. It is a cold-blooded proposition, premeditated and
planned? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, Doctor, if in the inception of this crime it
is admitted in evidence that the first thing the defendants
did was to steal a typewriter so it would be
difficult for the authorities to trace the letters written,
would you consider that a form of childish fantasy, or
would you consider that a result of their intellectual
attainments? A. It is the result of their intellectual
attainments, in my opinion.
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