Murder Among Friends, page 4
* * *
• • •
A few weeks after the pair returned from Charlevoix, Richard decided to change colleges. Going to the University of Chicago, he declared, was like going to a neighborhood high school. What fun was that? He wanted to get out from under his parents’ watchful eyes, live on his own, and really experience life. He chose the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Not only did it have an undefeated football team, but it also had a reputation as a “party school.” Richard looked forward to boozy bonfire parties and Big Ten games. Additionally, and perhaps just as importantly, the school had a less restrictive admissions policy for Jews than many other universities. And so, at the end of the 1921 spring quarter and with his parents’ blessing, he applied. He easily got in.
Nathan, too, applied and was accepted. It hadn’t taken much to convince his father to let him go. In truth, Nathan had been content in Chicago, but he hadn’t wanted to be separated from Richard. In Ann Arbor, they would be sharing an apartment. The idea of living day to day with his lover must have thrilled him.
That summer the pair once again traveled to Charlevoix. They quickly established a relaxing routine. While Richard slept late, Nathan slipped out into the woods to collect birds. In the afternoon, they biked or boated, played golf or tennis. Richard taught Nathan how to shadow groundskeepers and livestock tenders, and they spent long hours at it. Nathan thought it a silly game for sixteen-year-olds, but he went along for his friend’s sake. At night they played bridge with the Loeb family and won hand after hand. To Richard’s delight, no one suspected them of cheating. Afterward, they visited the nearby dance halls and speakeasies. They shot dice at the illegal crap games behind the Charlevoix Inn and drove drunk through the dark and twisting country roads. After returning to the room they shared, they had sex.
One night, as Richard slid into Nathan’s bed, the door opened. There stood Hamlin Buchman, a University of Chicago law student who was working for the Loebs that summer. Even in the dim light, Buchman could see that the two were naked. He quickly backed out of the room.
The teenagers were frantic. What if Buchman told someone? They’d be ruined, “despised by humanity,” declared Nathan.
Years later, Nathan would admit that over the next few days the pair contemplated killing Buchman. They even put together the necessary supplies—chisel, rope, guns. But they never went through with it, although Nathan did confess to having daydreams about torturing the law student.
Buchman, however, believed they did try to kill him. Just days after he’d walked in on them, they asked him to go sailing. As the three swept across Pine Lake, Richard turned to Buchman. “Do you swim?”
“No,” replied Buchman.
The teenagers smirked at each other. Then they tipped over the boat and, without a backward glance, swam away. They probably planned to report the tragic accident once they reached shore. What a shock it must have been when a dripping and furious Buchman appeared moments later.
Wait! Hadn’t the law student said he couldn’t swim?
Buchman clarified. He knew how to swim, he told them. He just didn’t like to swim.
The teens burst into effusive apologies. Such a terrible mishap. Wasn’t it lucky they all knew how to swim?
Convinced they had tried to kill him, Buchman went to see Richard’s brother Allan. Eight years older than Richard, he often stepped in for their father. He listened to the law student’s story.
Homosexual behavior and attempted murder? These were serious accusations. Allan called the teenagers into the study. Was there any truth to it?
Nathan and Richard denied everything. They accused Buchman of making things up. Probably, suggested Richard, to blackmail the family.
Allan believed the pair. As the teenagers smugly looked on, he fired Buchman on the spot and threw him out of the room.
An angry Buchman returned to campus. He told his classmates everything that had happened. Those boys, he said, “are not right.”
Rumors spread. They soon found their way back to Nathan and Richard. The young men seethed. They longed for revenge. But since neither would be on campus that fall, they let it go.
Richard left for the University of Michigan first.
Unfortunately, a case of scarlet fever delayed Nathan’s arrival in Ann Arbor for several weeks. When he finally got there, Richard treated him coldly. He barely spoke to him in public and was rarely home.
Nathan confronted him. What was going on?
Buchman’s rumors about their relationship had found their way to Ann Arbor, Richard explained. To stop further spread, he suggested they quit being seen so often together. When they did go out together, they should treat each other politely but distantly. No longer could they act like best friends.
Nathan agreed. Any whiff of homosexuality, he knew, could ruin his future. But what about when they were alone together in the apartment?
Richard acted cold there, too. Later, he would tell people he’d gone along with this side of their relationship because he was curious, but that sex with Nathan had become abhorrent. Could part of this have been because they’d been caught? As rumors swirled, Richard might have realized that any pleasure derived from sex with Nathan was not worth the risk. Unlike Nathan, he didn’t have any intense feelings about their relationship.
And Nathan’s emotions were intense. He was, he admitted, even “jealous of the food and drink [Richard] took, because they came into closer intimacy with [him] than I could ever hope to reach.”
His first semester, Richard rushed the Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau (at that time, the traditional Greek system was closed to Jews, as well as African Americans, Asians, and Roman Catholics). Being a member of the fraternity was an indicator of social class and served to “filter out” those considered undesirable. Loeb certainly fit the Zeta Beta Tau mold. He came from a prominent family, was charming and wealthy. But he also had baggage, namely Nathan Leopold. “Nobody liked Leopold,” recalled one frat brother. “Most people couldn’t understand why Loeb hung around with him.” Nathan was patronizing and conceited. Sometimes he even spoke of himself in the third person. And then there were those whispers about his being a homosexual. Did Loeb really want to associate with the fellow? They made a deal with Richard. They would accept him if he dumped Nathan.
It took Richard fifteen minutes to move out of the apartment and into the Zeta Beta Tau chapter house.
His actions devastated Nathan. The only reason he’d come to Michigan was to be with Richard. Now his best friend had abandoned him.
It wasn’t the only loss he suffered that school year. In October, Nathan’s mother, Florence, finally succumbed to the illness that had left her an invalid for so many years. Nathan returned to Chicago. As he stood at her graveside in the chilly autumn air, he gave no outward sign of emotion. His expression carried no hint of his thoughts. But he felt angry and further abandoned. And he blamed God.
God had taken away his mother when he needed her most. How then, he reasoned, could there be a God? Wasn’t God supposed to help his children? Nathan had long suspected God was a myth. His philosophical studies had already forced him to question the existence of an immortal soul. Florence Leopold’s death merely hardened the cynicism and mistrust he’d been developing about religious faith. There was no all-powerful entity to smite one for one’s sins, or reward one for good behavior, he determined. God was nothing but a construct, meant to coerce ordinary people into conforming to society’s rules.
“I realized that if I could kid myself into believing that there was a life hereafter, I would be happier,” he later recalled, “but I felt I must be intellectually honest.” He vowed to “cut out the emotional.” He would become a “cold-blooded intellect.”
Once back in Michigan, Nathan lost himself in his studies. He earned good grades. But he lived a solitary life, spending most of his free time alone. He salved his loneliness by reminding himself that the universe was nothing more than a mass of electrons, and the mind just a highly complicated reflex center. He could control his emotions because everything was mechanical. He saw no difference between right and wrong. “The only wrong I can do is make a mistake,” he said, “and my happiness is the only thing in life that matters at all to me.”
At the end of the spring semester of 1922, he transferred back to the University of Chicago.
APART AND TOGETHER
For the next school year—fall 1922 through spring 1923—Nathan and Richard saw little of each other. Sometimes when Richard came home for a holiday, the two would sneak out and get drunk. But they weren’t close anymore. They didn’t share secrets. They didn’t share each other’s beds.
Nathan—who’d made it his goal to graduate from college early—was now a senior at Chicago. He’d always been an exceptional student, but that school year he applied himself with more vigor than ever. Was he trying to forget Richard? Or was he coming into his own, finally discovering himself, outside of his friend’s dark influence? Whatever the reason, Nathan flourished academically. He was especially talented in languages, taking Latin, Greek, Russian, Sanskrit, and a course in Romance languages. He also took classes in philosophy (his major), sociology, and literature. He earned straight As.
He flourished socially, too. He joined a handful of clubs, including a literary society that sponsored dinners and lively book discussions. Because he could speak and write Latin and Greek, Nathan also joined the Classical Club. Through these groups, he made a circle of friends, both men and women, who admired his intelligence and achievements. He went to parties and dances. He even asked a few girls on dates because, as he later put it, “I knew I should.”
He also took part in a Sunday-evening study group. In his bedroom, Nathan gathered with a handful of classmates to debate philosophical ideas, especially Nietzsche’s.
Richard Loeb, Nathan told his study group one night, was a superman.
The others expressed doubt. What was Nathan’s proof?
He cited Richard’s handsomeness, as well as his brilliant mind.
Nathan’s friends disagreed.
One of them, Arnold Maremont, snorted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Don’t think brilliant, think glib. [Loeb] doesn’t really know anything.”
“You don’t understand him,” argued Nathan.
But Maremont insisted he did. He’d known Richard for years. Didn’t Nathan see that the fellow was a liar and a cheat?
Nathan refused to listen.
At that moment, Maremont realized Nathan was “totally gullible as far as Loeb went.” Nothing would ever change his mind.
Nathan stayed busy with birds, too. On Saturday mornings, he headed over to Wooded Island in nearby Jackson Park in hopes of adding new species to his collection. If he had an entire day free, he drove out to the forest preserves south of Chicago and the marshlands around Wolf Lake. He even began teaching a birding class and taking small groups of women or schoolchildren around the area. As if that weren’t enough, he wrote papers about his hundreds of hours of field observations. These were published in some of the leading ornithological journals of the day, including the prestigious Auk. Nathan was making a name for himself in scientific circles.
That May, at the age of eighteen, he graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors, just as he’d once imagined.
* * *
• • •
Anyone who knew Richard Loeb during his senior year remembered him being drunk, often before noon. His frat brothers were forever carrying him home from football games and parties and the late-night poker games he liked so much. They began to see the cruel streak beneath his personable exterior. He was especially feared during the fraternity’s initiation for freshman pledges. Each member had a wooden paddle with which they struck the new members on the buttocks. Everyone went easy on the pledges—everybody, that is, except Richard. After winding up, he’d hit them so hard he’d send them clear across the room. “What a miserable son of a bitch he was,” recalled one of those pledges, Abel Brown.
They started to see through his lies, too. “He lied like hell,” recalled another of Richard’s frat brothers. “About grades…girls…anything.” Said another, “We had the line on him. We did not take him at his word.”
Some even believed Richard was a thief. That year, stuff went missing. Little things. Cuff links. Pens. And Richard was alone in the house in the afternoons; all the others had classes. It seemed “fishy,” recalled Abel Brown. Still, they never accused him. They didn’t have any solid proof.
Meanwhile, Richard obsessed about crimes in the news. He would talk and talk about the latest robbery or murder. He would speculate about the criminals’ motives, pose questions as if he were a detective, read long passages from the newspapers to his less interested frat brothers. Talking about these crimes left him breathless and excited, eyes glittering.
He didn’t join any clubs or participate in extracurricular activities. Academics no longer interested him. Instead, he slid through school with ordinary grades, taking classes that sounded easy or fun. He graduated early—in three and a half years—but just barely. Weeks short of his eighteenth birthday, he became the youngest graduate of the University of Michigan.
Richard didn’t have any plans for his future. He hadn’t chosen or even thought about a career. After receiving his diploma, he hung around Ann Arbor for a few weeks, drinking, cheating at cards, and reading dime detective novels. He knew he had to do something or his father would cut off his allowance. He was mildly interested in history. Perhaps, he thought, he could take a graduate course or two at the University of Chicago. So in September 1923, he returned to his family’s mansion on Ellis Avenue. He enrolled in just one class—American constitutional history.
Nathan was on campus, too. Busy as always, he’d been accepted into the University of Chicago’s law school and was now enrolled in four courses. He planned to transfer to Harvard Law School the following fall.
Then Richard reentered his life.
* * *
• • •
How could Nathan resist? Richard simply smiled in his charming way, and Nathan forgave him everything. Nathan was still deeply in love. He begged to resume their sexual relationship.
Richard acquiesced. “The actual sex,” he later admitted, “is rather unimportant to me.”
What was important was the control it gave him over Nathan. It occurred to him that he really didn’t like his friend that much. Leopold’s superior and condescending attitude annoyed him. So did all that tedious prattling about birds and law and languages. Most grating was Nathan’s constant harping about his philosophical beliefs. Supermen? Richard didn’t give himself permission to break society’s rules because he was some mythical superman. He broke them because he held conventional morality in contempt. He didn’t care about right and wrong. It was as simple as that.
Still, he needed Nathan. What fun was there in breaking the law alone? Someone had to be there to admire his brilliant planning and flawless execution. The master criminal needed a witness. An accomplice.
And Nathan was willing to go along. He was up for anything as long as the master criminal made no mistakes in planning that might get them caught. And as long as they kept sleeping together.
Soon they were back to sneaking out at night, getting drunk and cheating at cards and dice. But now their adventures included other, more exciting activities. Sometimes they went to Jackson Park and, after breaking out Richard’s gin, or the bottle of whiskey Nathan kept in his glove box, slowly drove along the secluded lanes, headlights dimmed. When they spied cars parked with late-night couples inside, Richard would grab one of the bricks he’d brought with him and heave it through their windshield. The act made him chortle.
One night, they picked the wrong victim. Seconds after Richard’s brick smashed into the parked car, a man leaped from the backseat. He started shooting. Nathan sped away while Richard howled with laughter.
Another night, they sent a brick hurtling through the plate-glass window of a neighborhood drugstore. A burglar alarm went off, bringing two beat cops on the run. Richard flung himself into the Willys-Knight’s front seat as Nathan peeled away from the curb, but not before one of the police officers fired. The bullet struck Nathan’s car. How he explained the damage to the Leopolds’ chauffeur is unknown.
Richard loved every second of the episode and began planning their next crime—robbing a family friend’s wine cellar. He spent days devising the scheme, taking pleasure in considering every detail from all angles. He bought a chisel and wrapped its blade with adhesive tape, turning it into a heavyweight club. He bought a rope in case they needed to tie up servants. And he packed a loaded revolver in case the night watchman caught them. Then, on a night when he knew the family was out of town, he and Nathan slipped through the shadows to the mansion’s back door.
Richard turned the knob.
It was locked.
He tried picking the lock.
No success.
Minutes crept by. How long could they stand there before someone noticed and called the police?
Finally, Richard called off the burglary. But he wasn’t disappointed. The nervous tension, the fear, the rush of adrenaline had been exhilarating. He longed to experience that feeling again.
The pair took to stealing cars in the fall of 1923. By accident, they discovered that the key to Anna Loeb’s Milburn fit other cars of that same make. They had a marvelous time riding off with the vehicles, then abandoning them miles from where they were taken. One night, while drunk, they took a car from a downtown garage. A truck began chasing them—obviously, someone knew they were not the car’s rightful owners. Nathan hit the accelerator, careening around corners and roaring down streets. But the truck stuck close. At last, with no other choice, they flung open the doors and leaped while the car was still running. The Milburn smashed into a light pole.
