Simon Baatz

Most people are probably familiar with the infamous Leopold and Loeb case: two teenagers in 1924 Chicago kill a 14-year-old boy, Robert Franks, for no reason other than the thrill of it (Ladies and gentlemen, we have a title!). They're quickly caught and jailed; their wealthy families hire lawyer extraordinaire Clarence Darrow to save them from the gallows, where pretty much every convicted murderer was sent in those days.

Even if you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's Rope around 542 times, as I show more have, Simon Baatz's account is worth reading, if only to correct the misconceptions that you probably have about the case. (Oddly, Baatz, a professor of history who appears to be in his 40s, says in an author's note that he'd never heard of the case until a year or two before he began writing the book. Go figure.) For example: Leopold and Loeb were teenagers when the committed the crime (18 and 17, respectively), and didn't come from simply privileged backgrounds, but extremely wealthy ones. And Darrow actually didn't manage to spare the two from the death penalty through any particularly cunning wiles. Instead, much to the consternation of newspaper editorial writers, the trial judge basically ignored both Darrow and prosecutor Robert Crowe and declined to impose the death penalty because of the murderers' youth.

People who are looking for a thrilling true crime page-turner should probably stick to watching Rope or Compulsion, as this is a more scholarly account of the crime. If scholarly histories are your thing, though, this well-researched and generally well-written account is worth picking up.

(Just one note to the author: serious writers have a lifetime quota of three exclamation points, and you exceeded yours by about five. Really, save the exclamation points for e-mails or Twitter posts.) show less

In Chicago during the summer of 1924, two teenage sons from wealthy families stood trial for an almost inconceivable murder. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb had confessed to the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. The State's Attorney was working to see them hanged for their crime. Famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow led the team that worked against this. The case became a nationwide sensation, another of the famous "crimes of the century" that rivet attention. Newspapers show more detailed the investigation and provided heavy coverage of the trial.

In the years that followed, though, few historians revisited the case, and the full-length books that were published tended to be fictionalized accounts, most famously Ira Levin's best-selling "Compulsion." Not until the 1970s was a non-fiction history of the case published. Instead, loose accounts appeared on the stage and screen numerous times, including a film version of "Compulsion," starring Orson Welles. In the span of a few months, though, two serious histories were published recently, including "For the Thrill of It" by Simon Baatz, a historian who teaches in New York.

Through a careful examination of the numerous primary sources -- including stenographic accounts of numerous interviews with both Leopold and Loeb during the pretrial investigations, the medical evidence presented by both prosecution and defense, and the trial/sentencing transcript -- Baatz carefully reconstructs the planning and commission of the crime, the investigation, and the courtroom drama. The result is an easy to read and balanced presentation of the awful story.

In particular, it is important to note that Baatz is not enamored of Darrow or his courtroom theatrics, which immediately offers a different approach to all of the material. Where many presentations of the case see Darrow's three-day closing argument as the climax of the story, Baatz believes that Darrow's argument was meandering and largely unhelpful to the case. Instead, Baatz demonstrates that the State's Attorney, Robert Crowe, and Darrow were both skilled adversaries in the case, and he presents the trial in terms where both men made calculating decisions in their approach that were sometimes successful, other times not.

As such, Baatz consistently presents the efforts of both Crowe and Darrow in preparing for the courtroom, largely overlooking the theatrics outside of the courtroom, including the portrayal of the defendants in the press -- owing to the consistent access reporters had to Leopold and Loeb while they were in prison awaiting their trial and sentencing. This focus is explicit in Baatz's decision to give lengthy chapter biographies to both Darrow and Crowe, minimizing other key players in the case.

Also, Baatz gives a thorough chapter-length account of the defense medical and psychological examinations of Leopold and Loeb, sorting through the assessments of the various experts. Given the prominence of this evidence in the trial, it is surprising that other authors have made little specific use of it. Baatz's attention, though, suggests that all of the assessments are ultimately rather inconclusive.

This focus on the crime and confession, the medical evidence, and the lion-size personalities in the courtroom, lead to a fantastic presentation of the courtroom events, including some of the political and legal ramifications of the case -- Crowe aspired to use the case as a means for running for mayor of Chicago; Darrow hoped to use the case to advance his particular notions of the causes of crime. Unfortunately Baatz plays less attention to other contexts for the case; while he frequently mentions Chicago's reputation as a crime-ridden city, he sees this mostly in terms of Crowe's ambitions instead of popular reaction to the crime as a particularly bad example of the underbelly of the Roaring 20s. This, along with the occasional cheeky judgments Baatz sprinkles in the text, are the only significant shortcomings in an otherwise solid monograph.

Baatz is to be applauded for his attention to the primary sources and his balanced view of the trial. Any student of the strange case of Leopold and Loeb will find the account helpful, if not fascinating. Any seeking explanation of the terrible crime, though, will be disappointed -- like those before him, Baatz offers no clear view of why young Franks was murdered. show less

This book is very well-done historical writing. The author did a great job of making clear the perception of things like psychiatry, biology, and causation of the time period, which necessarily must inform our understanding of what happened and the outcome of the trials. For instance, I found it very disconcerting to read the testimony of the psychiatrists describing the defendants who then them diagnosed with "paranoid psychosis" when they are so clearly, nearly word-for-word, describing show more what we today would call "anti-social personality disorder" - but the concept wasn't even around yet. It's also interesting to see how differently (on both ends - the prosecution's and the defense's) culpability regarding mental illness was understood. Not to mention the interesting descriptions of the endocrine system!

I was interested in this as a piece of Chicago history (and as a fan of the movie Rope) but it was much better than I expected, especially after my last true-crime-history disappointment. show less

I first learned about this case from the musical Ragtime, so when I saw this book on Overdrive I thought it would be interesting to learn the whole story. It WAS interesting, and it's a timely read that deals with sexual assault, public opinion, and wealthy, powerful men. It's also kind of a bummer. But the writing style worked really well, making something that happened so long ago into a page turner.

I had a few frustrations with the author's note where it feels like the author was trying show more to defend Nesbit but still managed to imply that her account of her assault was questionable because she couldn't remember the exact day it happened and because she continued to see her rapist by choice afterwards. It felt victim blame-y and unnecessary. show less