MURDER AS A PASTIME.

Shannon News, 29 July 1924, Page 4

MURDER AS A PASTIME.

THE “URGE” OF SENSATIONSEEKERS. PSYCHOLOGISTS DISCUSS CHICAGO CRIME. ' Murder for sport! That is tho ne-vv-est motive American criminologists are called upon to weigh. The whole of the United States has been horrified by the revelations brought forward by the Chicago police in charges ngainst Nathan Leopold, jun., and Richard iLoeb, youthful sons of millionaire merchants, of murdering a boy named Franks, 14-year-old son of a milhonaire manufacturer. Both the accused are extremely brilliant young men with unusually distinguished scholastic records. Both had a psychological “urge” for new scnsatio'ns, Leopold, discussing murder "as a sporty and. science,” recently remarked. . It L an experiment, and as easy to justify as it ,is to justify an entomologist’s killing a •beetle on a pin. A thirst, for knowledge is commendable,' no matter what pain or injury it may inflict on others.” Nathan E, Leopold, junior, and Richard Leo'b, emotional investigators, made the mistake of acting out the book they have written.. Intellectually, the. flight into the fourth dimension that teased along the pair of adolescent, prodigies to the murder of young Robert Franks, was to be their ultimate experiment in their laboratory of human reactions. Actually (writes Genevieve Forbes, in an American evchange) it was the most stupid murder of them all. Like, the cultured Dorian Gray, of whom Oscar Wilde wrote so autobiographically. these university lads, surfeited with every psychic and phy- ‘ sical satisfaction they wished, sought to 'squeeze still dryer the sponge of life. They had all the material for a sixteenth century Benvenuto Cellini manuscript, shot through with black shadows, and blacker passions, with erotic whimsies, strange, perfumes, grotesque murder, fantastic death/ all interlarded with the modern Freudian sex complex. Acted Own Experiment.

But .they .acted out their experiment instead of charting it with pen and ink. v , '

So they took a boy’s life. And they let their hero leave his eyeglasses in the culvert where the victim’s body was half hidden. As a result of the error in the manuscript, two 19 year-old superintellectuals have confessed to a superlative crime that fascinates as it repels. “But, let’s not .classify all precocity as incipient crime or lack of balance,” warns Dr. Herman Adler, state crimlnoligist and director of the Institute' for Juvenile Research. But speaking on the subject of genius and behaviour, the psychiatrist calls attention to the “double group” in the upper stratum of intellect, classified as “super-normal.” The Normal Person.

First, there is the normal person with a symmetrical enlargement ,of faculties and mental equipment. He is much larger, mentally than the so-called normal person, but he is drawn to scale, and he has judgment and balance, in proportion to his intellect.

Second, there is the "lop-sided” person with an over-emphasis on / one phase of his personality. There is no corresponding growth to balance this “virtual deformity” in the way of highly developed intellectuality. Such a person, the alienist declares, does not always have his feet on the ground. His personality is ripe for psychopathic or sociopathic manifestations. *

That’s the general theory of genius, Fitting Leopold to Pattern.

How does young Leopold suave poised scholar fit into the general pattern ? ‘ ~ i

The youngest. student' ever to receive a degree from the liberal arts college of the University of Chicago [the degree of Ph.B., June, 1923, when he was only 18], absorbed books and facts, and theorems with a facility that became, almqst a “mental deformity.”

In March, 1923, the brilliant senior received the gold Beta Kappa key, the national badge of the honorary scholarship fraternity. And it swung from his watch-chain, pridel’ully, even as he scorned the comrades who had to “grind to get tho marks.” Foreign Language Easy.

It was the same with that voluntary education which, they say, goes to make up culture. The hurdles of foreign languages were not in his course of study He took them as a matter of course. The quaint and direful customs of bygone civilisations. He understood them with more sympathy than many a contemporary of that period. Things came so easy. Still he couldn’t crowd out the leisure. So he took up mediaeval Italian. Then he delved, in the name of study, into those sixteenth century manuscripts of Benvenuto Cellini and the rest; into unexpurgated cross sections of a decadent group. All this super-nor-mal supply of talent more down upon a study of the abnormal The Brilliant l/oeb. Richard Loeb was also the youngest graduate from his college, the University of Michigan. Erotic literature, historical customs, bits of Oscar Wilde, they all contributed in their effort to make Loeb a well rounded man.

Which brings up a nice question. Did these two “objective analysts” really acquire a “minus personality” by the paradoxical process of thinking they were striving, zestfully, for the deeper “plus personality?” If this is the case then the two boys, more than ever, resemble their hero’s mirrored hero in Oscar Wilde's “Picture of Dorian Gray.” Young Leopold; young Loeb. Nineteen and appetent for a new thrill They went adventuring. Strange old stories of poisoned gloves, and fanciful new stories of a

“God that’s fine for the masses, tfut a bit amusing for an educated man” curious original manuscripts revealing ..grotesque crime; and painstaking courses in modern law. These were a few of the adventures (bat came tumbling in as an attempt at the answer to the question; “What 'next?” . , Each new experience added a cubit or so to the intellectual stature of the men. Each new sensation made it a bit easiel 1 to look down, like a monster Caliban, upon the pigmy brains round and about. Each new association with each old abnormality of the ancient times made it more inevitable that they chart an experiment of their /own. '

And, like an intellectual Burbank, the two internes in a laboratory of human sensations, were teased along by the daring whimsy of crossing one old mediaeval crime with another ancient mystery and seeking what the result would be. Something they felt sure, that would refute the theory of small brains, that “murdet will out.’’ Sought a “Kick.”

It might have been guinea pigs, for the impersonal way they chose a unit of experimentation. It chanced to be human beings. And a human being of wealth, from a family of distinction. Not for any reason as yet revealed, save that the greater the victim the greater the estimated “emotional kick” to be got from his murder.

And it happened, from all present evidence, it just happened, to be Robert Franks, 14 year-old son of a we lthy neighbour, ■lntellectually, 11 • o young college trim committed their murder last November. That, was when they typed the kidnapping letter to a “Dear Sir,” whom a fickle fancy had not yet selected.

It was last November they began to. stick their tongues in their cheeks after they had used the chisel, hidden the body in,the culvert, disfigured the face with acid, and returned to their classes in law. It was last November they began to laugh, with ;imused tolerance, and security, at the whirligig of futile actions indulged in by tho detectives, the neighbours,' and the world. ,

And, here, wo quote from the confession Of these criminal youths:—

“We had planned since last fall—some time in November, I think—to kidnap some rich boy, kill him, and get money from his father for ran-, som. We planned all the details weeks ahead and thought we had everything airtight against discovery. We had several boys in mind. We didn’t even know which one Ave would kidnap when we started out. The Franks boy just happened along, ' and we got him.”

“We planned to pour hydrochorits acid on his face so his features would be unrecognisable. We * bought a a chisel, and wrapped it in tape. We planned to hit him over the head'and stuff a gag in his mouth. If we couldn’t kill him that Avay we were going to use ether. “It was easier than Av e thought. He was Aveak. When he started'to resist we hit him on the head and stuffed the gag into his mouth. We didn’t need to use the ether. He must have been dead Avithin- five minutes after we started.”

In addressing a graduating class on the Franks case, the American Secretary of Labour, James J. Davis, remarked: —“There are two young men charged with the murder of a young boy. Both of are highly educated. One of them is known as a prodigy in intellectual attainments, and has won university degress for his learning.

“But, educated only mentally, developed only through books and theory, they have come to this sad end. They face the gallows on a charge of killing a fellow man..

“Proud of their intellectual accomplishments, vain of their learning, the. mere human things of life passed them by. They know nothing of the spirit of brotherly loye, which, after all, is the most powerful force in the history of humanity. Their education has served one end—to make them eligible to the so-called “intelllgensia,’” “They may be intellectuals, but they wefe out of the world. They had lost all of the respect of honesty and hon'our, Avhich is vital if mankind is to survive and progress. Without these virtues, cmlisation would soon come to an end.” A Judge Adds a Word. In characterising Nathan Leopold, junior, and Richard Loeb as “infants” and the “product of a system of education for which they are not responsible,” Judge Ben. B. Lindsey, famous juvenile jurist, has declared that the murderers of Robert Franks should not be hanged. “These boys,” Judge Lindsey said, "should be treated very much as the insane are treated. Clearly they are cases of wai'ped or lop-sided mental development—the victims of stupidities of our own times.”

Lindsey criticised laws, “which treat all under 21 years of age as children in property matters, presumed to be lacking in judgment, and without the advantage of experience and the control of aaIII power that comes from age and years,” but which “exact the sam e responsibility from a minor as from an adult in his moral behaviour ”

“I do not belieA'e in capital punishment for adults. Certainly there Is no excuse whatever for capital punishment for minors,” Lindsey remarked. “This is far from saying, however, there should not be some punishment and discipline meted out to Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.’’