Leopold's Father, Stunned, In Court
Sits Silent and Trembling as Curious Throng Swarms About Him.
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Source: Chicago Daily News, 7 June 1924, pg. 3.
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Nathan Leopold, Sr., a man with gray hair, sat in Judge Caverly's court to-day for an hour. He did not move. Beside him sat the uncle of the Loeb boy, in front of him Attorneys Bachrach and Clarence S. Darrow. The other men spoke, even smiled, gestured, disputed Nathan Leopold sat quite still. The corners of his thin, gray eyebrows were pinched together. His hands lay folded across his knees. Only every few minutes a sort of tremor took his legs from the knees down.
Through the half hour of waiting before the judge came in the father of Nathan, Jr., sat silent. When the argument began all the others at the table pressed up to the bench. From the seats in the rear of the room came a swarm of spectators. They squeezed in to the square space in front of the judge. They flowed around the bench where Nathan Leopold sat. They hung over him, stood on the rungs of his chair, let their hot breath go past his face. The man sat there.
Son Is Brought In.
When his son was brought into the room he turned his head. But the boy was surrounded by deputy sherrifs. The father and the son could not even exchange a glance. Yet the boy nodded and smiled to several reporters whom he recognized. The father did not arise from his chair to go to the other side of the room.
There young Leopold stood, calm, self-sufficient, capable. The father sat in the chair, his eyebrows pressed together, trying to understand.
Occasionally he put his hand up to his ear, that he might hear the arguments in the plea to have the boys taken from the custody of State's Attorney Crowe and put in the custody of the sheriff. But not for a moment did the eyebrows relax from their contractions.
Through the entire scene the man ith the yellowing face looking with that slight puzzled manner at the swarm of heads in front of him. He was not angry, he was not weeping, he was merely trying to understand this thing. His son had killed some one. His son. For no reason at all, or for the reason of some philosophy that he could not understand. He had always thought his son was brilliant. His son was brilliant. But this—there must be some explanation. He was trying to find the explanation. But nothing seemed to come.
Son Remembers Father.
His son was standing up there quietly, calmly, easily. And he was sitting squeezed in a chair amid a mass of sweating bodies of strangers: he was suffering. People were staring first at him and then at his son, noticing the same cut in the yellow lips of the father and the firm, red lips of the boy. People were noticing the same build of forehead, the same balance of cheek.
What was that? Mr. Loeb wanted his hat. Mr. Leopold fumbled vaguely with a mass of hats tossed on the table near him. This? This? He asked and handed Mr. Loeb a straw hat. And all the time his eyes were half closed, drawn together, wondering, trying to understand.
The only thing he knew, it seemed, was that he felt a heavy pain all through him. And his boy was standing there as if he felt no pain.
Nathan Leopold spoke one sentence.
When they cam to him with questions: What did he think? How did he feel? Was he suffering? He had only one sentence. His hands shook. His teeth rattled as he tossed out the few words that he had been able to think through.
"What is it? Why do you come to me? I—I have done nothing!"
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 6 June 1997
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