For the Thrill of It

For the Thrill of It
Author: Simon Baatz
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 846
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 006182884X

A true crime account of the historic 1920s case from the killers’ point of view, detailing their explosive relationship that culminated in murder. It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals—too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state’s attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows. But the families of the confessed murderers hired Clarence Darrow, entrusting the lives of their sons to the most famous lawyer in America in what would be one of the most sensational criminal trials in the history of American justice. Set against the backdrop of the 1920s—a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess in a lawless city on the brink of anarchy—For the Thrill of It draws the reader into a world of speakeasies and flappers, of gangsters and gin parties, with a spellbinding narrative of Jazz Age murder and mystery. Praise for For the Thrill of It “Baatz’s comprehensive account of the case succeeds in identifying their peculiar personality traits as well as what it was in the nature of their relationship that made them believe in their infallibility in performing the ultimate crime. . . . [An] exhaustively researched and rivetingly presented account. . . . One of the best true-crime books of this or any other season.” —Booklist (starred review)

The Plea of Clarence Darrow

The Plea of Clarence Darrow
Author: Clarence Darrow
Publisher:
Total Pages: 90
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781545442685

This is the memorable plea made by renowned lawyer Clarence Darrow in defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Darrow's clients, known by the press generally as "Leopold and Loeb" were just young men themselves when they committed a heinous act. The pair murdered a young boy named Bobby Franks, and the shocking crime and trial captivated not only Chicago, but the entire country.

Leopold and Loeb

Leopold and Loeb
Author: Hal Higdon
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1975
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9780252068294

Provides an account of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb's killing of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks, their celebrity, and their ultimate emergence as folk heroes.

The Plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in Defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on Trial for Murder

The Plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in Defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on Trial for Murder
Author: Clarence 1857-1938 Darrow
Publisher: Legare Street Press
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781014391643

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow
Author: John A. Farrell
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0767927591

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography The definitive biography of Clarence Darrow, the brilliant, idiosyncratic lawyer who defended John Scopes in the “Monkey Trial” and gave voice to the populist masses at the turn of the twentieth century, thus changing American law forever. Amidst the tumult of the industrial age and the progressive era, Clarence Darrow became America’s greatest defense attorney, successfully championing poor workers, blacks, and social and political outcasts, against big business, fundamentalist religion, Jim Crow, and the US government. His courtroom style—a mixture of passion, improvisation, charm, and tactical genius—won miraculous reprieves for men doomed to hang. In Farrell’s hands, Darrow is a Byronic figure, a renegade whose commitment to liberty led him to heroic courtroom battles and legal trickery alike.

Never the Sinner

Never the Sinner
Author: John Logan
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
Total Pages: 88
Release: 1999
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780573626715

Cast size: medium.

Evil Summer

Evil Summer
Author: John Theodore
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2007-10-04
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9780809387496

In 1924, fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was abducted while walking home from school, killed by a chisel blow to his head, and later found stuffed in a culvert in a marshy wasteland at the Illinois-Indiana state line. Acid had been poured over his naked body. Evil Summer examines the shocking kidnapping and murder of Franks by two University of Chicago students, Nathan “Babe” Leopold and Richard “Dickie” Loeb, both from families of privilege. In this new examination of the crime, author John Theodore takes readers into the minds of the two criminals as he focuses on three months in 1924. Theodore covers the killing, the confessions, the defense, and the sentencing surrounding the horrific murder, placing the killers’ actions and Clarence Darrow’s historic defense into the context of 1920s Chicago. Theodore deftly investigates the psychological dimensions of the crime, revealing the murderers’ fantasies, relationships, sexuality, and motives. The author examines the killers’ past, outlining Loeb’s obsession with detective fiction and crime and his editorial on random killing—written at age nine—and Leopold’s nightly master-slave fantasies and fascination with Nietzsche. Evil Summer, which includes twenty-three illustrations, meticulously traces the murder from inception to confession, including such details as the special-delivery ransom letter sent to Jacob Franks and the discovery of Leopold’s horn-rimmed eyeglasses lying on a railroad embankment near Bobby’s dead body. Theodore re-creates such scenes as the convergence of hundreds of people in front of the Franks home, Bobby’s body lying in a small white casket in the library, and Loeb being voyeuristically drawn to the home while Bobby’s classmates carry the casket to the hearse. Worldwide press coverage reflected the public fascination with the case in what was then called “the trial of the century.” The story became a media circus: Chicago’s six daily newspapers battled vigorously for readers, two Daily News cub reporters became part of the story, and the Chicago Tribune carried a voting ballot asking readers whether radio station WGN should broadcast the courtroom spectacle. The changing drama was delivered to Chicagoans every morning and evening, and the public feasted on every press run. More than a crime story, Evil Summer illuminates the dark side of American life in the 1920s, including the excesses of privileged youth, the troubled childhoods, the random victimization, the anti-Semitism, and the sexuality.

Closing Arguments

Closing Arguments
Author: Clarence Darrow
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0821416324

Closing Arguments: Clarence Darrow on Religion, Law, and Society collects, for the first time, Darrow's thoughts on his three main preoccupations. The effect reveals a carefully conceived philosophy, expressed with delightful pungency and clarity. The provocative content of these writings still challenges us. His thoughts on social issues, especially on the dangers of religious fundamentalism, are uncannily prescient. A dry and even misanthropic humor lightens his essays, and his reflections on himself and his philosophy reveal a quiet dignity at the core of a man better known for provoking Americans during an era of unprecedented tumult. From the wry "Is the Human Race Getting Anywhere," to the scornful "Patriotism," and his elegaic summing up, "At Seventy-Two," Darrow's writing still stimulates and pleases. Darrow, son of a village undertaker and coffinmaker, rose to become one of America's greatest attorneys—and surely its most famous. The Ohio native gained fame for being at the center of momentous trials, including his 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb and his defense of Darwinian principles in the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial." Some have traced Darrow's lifelong campaign against capital punishment to his boyhood terror at seeing a Civil War soldier buried—and no client of Darrow's was ever executed, not even black men who were charged with murder for defending themselves against a white mob. A rebel who always sided intellectually and emotionally with the minority, Darrow remains a figure to contend with sixty-seven years after his death. "Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet," Darrow once said. Closing Arguments demonstrates that, in his case, that statement is true.