Leopold & Loeb Audiobook: Coming Soon

Chicago in the 1920s was a city of contrasts; it was the Jazz Age; the steel industry was booming, and skyscrapers towered over the city; below, in a pinstripe suit and tilted fedora, Al Capone ruled the streets, running gambling and prostitution, and mocking Prohibition with bootlegging and speakeasies.

On the Southeast side of the city, Cook County State’s Attorney, Robert ‘Dynamite’ Crowe had come to office on a zero-tolerance ticket. He declared that his office would insist on the only fitting punishment for Dickie Loeb and Babe Leopold – death. 

Clarence Darrow

Their defense was taken up by Clarence Darrow, a lawyer celebrated as ‘The Old Lion’ and ‘The Defender of the Damned’. This would lead to one of the great courtroom battles of the century.  The State expected Darrow to advise his clients to plead ‘not guilty’ by reason of insanity – this would have led to a jury trial to determine whether they were or were not legally responsible for their actions. Instead, Darrow had them plead guilty to the charges of kidnapping and murder – dispensing with the need for a jury. He was gambling that he could save his clients from the hangman’s rope by convincing just one person – the sentencing judge – that they deserved leniency, on account of their ‘diseased’ minds. 

Later, in his autobiography, he explained his logic: ‘In America, if the case is one of public interest, a campaign that reeks with venom is at once launched against the accused; columns of interviews and pictures are printed every day … and the stories grow lurid and appalling. Every prospective juror knows the case and all its details, as presented by the press. It would not have been possible to give the defendants a fair trial.’ 

Media Frenzy

It’s certainly true that few cases in history have attracted such press attention. National and international newspapers descended on the courthouse in Cook County. One local reporter, Maurine Watkins, who would later write the stage play Chicago, on which the musical is based, even crashed the private, family funeral of Bobby Franks to feed the insatiable demand for the slightest scrap of news.