The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
doctors say, on page 139: " There is nothing about
the patient's condition to show any evidence of a
hereditary nature, and there is not the slightest
reason to suppose that a condition of this kind will
be transmitted to future generations by any of his
relatives. This condition is acquired within the life
history of the individual, and dies out when he dies.
There is nothing elicited from a most careful and
painstaking history from all possible sources, to sug-
gest that the family, either by omission or commis-
sion, contributed toward his delinquencies in the
way they trained this boy."
Continuing with the Bowman-Hulbert report on
page 100 — and here the person talking is Leopold,
and not Loeb: " The reason why they agreed to
strangle the victim with a rope, to their mind, was
that that would make them equally guilty of the
crime. It was not with any idea of close friendship
or brotherhood; it was, rather, the opposite. The
patient did not like the idea of strangling the victim,
and suggested chloroforming him; but his compan-
ion would not agree to this."
In other words, all this king-and-slave fantasy is
a pure figment of the imagination of the defense.
The real tie that binds in this case is that one was a
criminal and the other had something on him. He
was afraid of exposure; he contemplated murder-
ing him; and the other one blackmailed him, in the
manner that I have already indicated.
Loeb wanted to shut the mouth of Leopold, and
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