The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
Speech of Joseph P. Savage
May it Please the Court and Counsel for the
Defense :
YOU
have before you, your Honor, one of the
most cold-blooded, cruel, and cowardly crimes
ever committed in history.
The evidence shows that some time during the
month of November, 1923, Richard Loeb and
Nathan Leopold went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to
attend a football game, Loeb and Leopold both hav-
ing been former students of Michigan University,
and Loeb being one of its youngest graduates.
From the house of Loeb's fraternity they stole
some gold pins, a few watches, a little money, and
a typewriter. These conspirators and intellectual
murderers knew that if they were to purchase a type-
writer here in Chicago, it would be possible to trace
that typewriter to the owner, and they were taking
no chance.
After returning to Chicago, they began to look
around, and to consider who their likely prospects
might be for this dastardly crime.
Among those they considered was young Billie
Deutsch, the grandson of Julius Rosenwald, but,
upon second consideration, Loeb, this boy who has
no emotion, as they tried to argue to the court,
thought that as his father was the vice president of
Sears, Roebuck & Company and Julius Rosenwald,
the president, it might be best to pick another boy.
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