The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
tors who were trying to build up a defense for them
to save their worthless lives. Oh, no, that is impossible.
Everything they told us was true. They
withheld nothing. They distorted nothing. They
suppressed nothing.
Well, let's see what they say about it in the report
that was intended to be a secret report and was not
to fall into your hands or mine. On page 1 1 5, if your
Honor please, in a friendly psychiatric examination:
" The boy is apparently frank, but is not absolutely
so, sometimes distorting his statements, but without
anything to indicate it, and sometimes suppresses
much data."
I wonder whether it is possible they did fool Old
Doc Yak from Washington, and I wonder whether
it was necessary to fool him.
Back to the motive again, on page ii6: "He had
no hatred toward the boy. As the hate of his first
planned victim disappeared, the excitement of plan-
ning grew, and money developed as an afterthought.
Neither he nor his associate would have done it
without the money. That extra $5,000 would have
been his security." And then the doctor, quoting
the language of Loeb in quotation marks, says:
" And $5,000 is $5,000."
Have they any interest in the money? On page
118, your Honor: "We anticipated especially the
money," in the language of Loeb, and then the doc-
tor adds in parenthesis, " Facial expression of inter-
est." " We thought we had it all so cleverly worked
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