The Postcard
A Comique Series postcard that was published by the Inter-Art Co. of Florence House, Barnes, London SW. The artwork was by Donald McGill.
The card was posted on Friday the 22nd. August 1924 to:
Mr. A. Smale,
c/o Mrs. Land,
3, Marine Terrace,
Margate.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Bert,
So glad you are
enjoying yourself,
but I wish you had
better weather.
Had a card from
Dolly and Addy on
Monday.
Love from Mother."
Clarence Darrow
So what else happened on the day that Bert's mother posted the card?
Well, on the 22nd. August 1924, Clarence Darrow presented his closing argument in the Leopold and Loeb case.
Leopold and Loeb, were two wealthy students at the University of Chicago who kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago, Illinois in May 1924.
They committed the murder – characterized at the time as "the crime of the century" – hoping to demonstrate superior intellect, which they believed enabled and entitled them to carry out a "perfect crime" without consequences.
After the two men were arrested, Loeb's family retained Clarence Darrow as lead counsel for their defense. Darrow's twelve-hour summation at their sentencing hearing is noted for its influential criticism of capital punishment as retributive rather than transformative justice.
Both young men were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years. Loeb was murdered by a fellow prisoner in 1936. Leopold was released on parole in 1958. The case has since served as the inspiration for several dramatic works.
Leopold and Loeb's Murder of Bobby Franks
Leopold and Loeb, who were 19 and 18 respectively at the time, settled on kidnapping and murdering a younger adolescent as their perfect crime.
They spent seven months planning everything, from the method of abduction to disposal of the body. To obfuscate the actual nature of their crime and motive, they decided to make a ransom demand, and devised an intricate plan for collecting it involving a long series of complex instructions to be communicated, one set at a time, by phone.
They typed the final set of instructions involving the actual money drop in the form of a ransom note, using the typewriter stolen from the fraternity house. A chisel was selected as the murder weapon and purchased.
After a lengthy search for a suitable victim, mostly on the grounds of the Harvard School for Boys in the Kenwood area, where Leopold had been educated, the pair decided upon Robert "Bobby" Franks, the 14-year-old son of wealthy Chicago watch manufacturer Jacob Franks.
Bobby Franks was Loeb's second cousin and an across-the-street neighbor who had played tennis at the Loeb residence several times.
Leopold and Loeb put their plan in motion on the afternoon of the 21st. May 1924. Using an automobile that Leopold rented under the name Morton D. Ballard, they offered Franks a ride as he walked home from school.
The boy initially refused, because his destination was less than two blocks away, but Loeb persuaded him to enter the car to discuss a tennis racket that he had been using.
The precise sequence of events that followed remains in dispute, but a preponderance of opinion placed Leopold behind the wheel of the car while Loeb sat in the back seat with the chisel.
Loeb struck Franks, who was sitting in front of him in the passenger seat, several times in the head with the chisel, then dragged him into the back seat and gagged him, where he died.
With the body on the floor of the back seat, the men drove to their predetermined dumping spot near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana, 25 miles (40 km) south of Chicago.
After nightfall, they removed and discarded Franks' clothes, then concealed the body in a culvert along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks north of the lake.
In order to obscure the body's identity, they poured hydrochloric acid on Franks' face and genitals to disguise the fact that he had been circumcised, as circumcision was unusual among non-Jews in the United States at the time.
The Ransom Note
By the time the two men returned to Chicago, word had already spread that Franks was missing. Leopold called Franks' mother, identifying himself as "George Johnson", and told her that Franks had been kidnapped; instructions for delivering the ransom would follow.
After mailing the typed ransom note and burning their blood-stained clothing, then cleaning the blood stains from the rented vehicle's upholstery, they spent the remainder of the evening playing cards.
Once the Franks family received the ransom note on the following morning, Leopold called a second time and dictated the first set of instructions for the ransom payment.
The intricate plan stalled almost immediately when a nervous family member forgot the address of the store where he was supposed to receive the next set of directions, and it was abandoned entirely when word came that Franks' body had been found.
Leopold and Loeb destroyed the typewriter and burned a car blanket that they had used to move the body. They then went about their lives as usual.
Chicago police launched an intensive investigation and rewards were offered for information. Both Leopold and Loeb enjoyed chatting with friends and family members about the murder. Leopold discussed the case with his professor and a girl friend, joking that he would confess and give her the reward money.
Loeb helped a couple of reporter friends of his find the drug store he and Leopold had tried to send Jacob Franks to, and when asked to describe Bobby he replied:
"If I were to murder anybody, it would
be just such a cocky little son of a bitch
as Bobby Franks."
Police found a pair of eyeglasses near Franks' body. Although common in prescription and frame, they were fitted with an unusual hinge purchased by only three customers in Chicago, one of whom was Leopold.
When questioned, Leopold offered the possibility that his glasses might have dropped out of his pocket during a bird-watching trip the previous weekend.
Leopold and Loeb were summoned for formal questioning on the 29th. May. They asserted that on the night of the murder, they had picked up two women in Chicago using Leopold's car, then dropped them off some time later near a golf course without learning their last names.
However their alibi was exposed as a fabrication when Leopold's chauffeur told police that he was repairing Leopold's car while the men claimed to be using it.
Also the chauffeur's wife confirmed that the car was parked in the Leopold garage on the night of the murder. The destroyed typewriter was recovered from the Jackson Park Lagoon on the 7th. June.
Confessions
Loeb was the first to confess. He asserted that Leopold had planned everything and had killed Franks in the back seat of the car while he (Loeb) drove. Leopold's confession followed swiftly thereafter. He insisted that he was the driver and Loeb the murderer.
Their confessions otherwise corroborated most of the evidence in the case. Both confessions were announced by the state's attorney on the 31st. May.
Leopold later claimed, long after Loeb was dead, that he pleaded in vain with Loeb to admit to killing Franks. He quoted Loeb as saying:
"Mompsie feels less terrible than
she might, thinking you did it, and
I'm not going to take that shred of
comfort away from her."
Most observers believed that Loeb did strike the fatal blows. Some circumstantial evidence – including testimony from eyewitness Carl Ulvigh, who claimed that he saw Loeb driving and Leopold in the back seat minutes before the kidnapping – suggested that Leopold could have been the killer.
Both Leopold and Loeb admitted that they were driven by their thrill-seeking, Übermenschen (supermen) delusions, and their aspiration to commit a "perfect crime".
Neither claimed to have looked forward to the killing, but Leopold admitted interest in learning what it would feel like to be a murderer. He was disappointed to note that he felt the same as ever.
The Trial of Leopold and Loeb
The trial of Leopold and Loeb at Chicago's Cook County Criminal Court became a media spectacle. The Leopold and Loeb families hired the renowned criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow to lead the defense team.
It was rumored that Darrow was paid $1 million for his services, but he was actually paid $70,000 (equivalent to $1,200,000 in 2022). Darrow took the case because he was a staunch opponent of capital punishment.
While it was generally assumed that the men's defense would be based on a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, Darrow concluded that a jury trial would almost certainly end in conviction and the death penalty.
Thus he elected to enter a plea of guilty, hoping to convince Cook County Circuit Court Judge John R. Caverly to impose sentences of life imprisonment.
The trial, technically an extended sentencing hearing, as their guilty pleas had already been accepted, ran for thirty-two days.
The state's attorney, Robert E. Crowe, presented over 100 witnesses, documenting details of the crime.
The defense presented extensive psychiatric testimony in an effort to establish mitigating circumstances, including childhood neglect in the form of absent parenting, and in Leopold's case, sexual abuse by a governess.
One piece of evidence was a letter written by Leopold claiming that he and Loeb were having a homosexual affair. Both the prosecution and the defense interpreted this information as supportive of their own position.
Darrow called a series of expert witnesses, who offered a catalog of Leopold's and Loeb's abnormalities. One witness testified to their dysfunctional endocrine glands, another to the delusions that had led to their crime.
Darrow's Speech
Darrow's impassioned, eight-hour-long "masterful plea" at the conclusion of the hearing has been called the finest speech of his career. Its principal arguments were that the methods and punishments of the American justice system were inhumane, and the youth and immaturity of the accused:
"This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor. Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.
We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day [during World War I]. We read about it and we rejoiced in it – if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood.
Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it.
It will take fifty years to wipe it out of the human heart, if ever. I know this, that after the Civil War in 1865, crimes of this sort increased, marvelously. No one needs to tell me that crime has no cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease, and I know that out of the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War crime increased as America had never seen before.
I know that Europe is going through the same experience today; I know it has followed every war; and I know it has influenced these boys so that life was not the same to them as it would have been if the world had not made red with blood.
Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing out of the war. Not necessarily by those who fought but by those that learned that blood was cheap, and human life was cheap, and if the State could take it lightly why not the boy?
Has the court any right to consider anything but these two boys? The State says that your Honor has a right to consider the welfare of the community, as you have. If the welfare of the community would be benefited by taking these lives, well and good. I think it would work evil that no one could measure.
Has your Honor a right to consider the families of these defendants? I have been sorry, and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Franks, for those broken ties that cannot be healed. All I can hope and wish is that some good may come from it all. But as compared with the families of Leopold and Loeb, the Franks are to be envied – and everyone knows it.
Here is Leopold's father – and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him and he cared for him, he worked for him; the boy was brilliant and accomplished. He educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life's hopes crumble into dust.
And Loeb's the same. Here are the faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day, while Dickie's father and his mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, and shall be waiting for a message which means more to them than it can mean to you or me. Shall these be taken into account in this general bereavement?
The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own – these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients.
These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows.
In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that sometime may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate.
I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man."
The judge was persuaded, but he explained in his ruling that his decision was based primarily on precedent and the youth of the accused. On the 10th. September 1924, he sentenced both Leopold and Loeb to life imprisonment for the murder, and an additional 99 years for the kidnapping. A little over a month later, Loeb's father died of heart failure.
Darrow's handling of the law as defense counsel has been criticized for hiding psychiatric expert testimony that conflicted with his polemical goals and for relying on an absolute denial of free will, one of the principles legitimizing all criminal punishment.
Prison and Loeb's Murder
Leopold and Loeb initially were held at Joliet Prison. Although they were kept apart as much as possible, the two managed to maintain their friendship.
Leopold was transferred to Stateville Penitentiary in 1925, and Loeb was later transferred there as well. Once reunited, the two expanded the prison school system, adding a high school and junior college curriculum.
On the 28th. January 1936, Loeb was attacked by fellow inmate James Day with a straight razor in a shower room; he died soon after in the prison hospital.
Day claimed that Loeb had attempted to sexually assault him, but he was unharmed, while Loeb sustained more than fifty wounds, including defensive wounds on his arms and hands. His throat had been slashed from behind.
News accounts suggested Loeb had propositioned Day, and though several prison officials including the Warden believed Loeb had been murdered, Day was found not guilty by a jury after a short trial in June, 1936.
The Ku Klux Klan
Also on that day, U.S. presidential candidate John W. Davis condemned the Ku Klux Klan by name in a speech in Sea Girt, New Jersey, reviving an issue that had badly split the Democratic Party at the National Convention.
Davis called on President Coolidge to do the same.
Agatha Christie
Also on the 22nd. August 1924, the Agatha Christie novel 'The Man in the Brown Suit' was published.
A Disturbance in the Reichstag
Also on that day, Communists in the Reichstag filibustered Chancellor Wilhelm Marx. They caused a loud disturbance of hoots and jeers when he tried to speak on the London conference ahead of a vote on the matter.
The session was suspended and police were called in, but no clause could be found by which to arrest those who were causing the disturbance, and the Reichstag adjourned for the day.