CRIME OF THE CENTURY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19261, 27 August 1924, Page 5

CRIME OF THE CENTURY.

THE CHICAGO TRIAL, CALLOUS YOUNG CRIMINALS BOYS STILL POSING, Despite the unusual request for seats at the sensational trial of Nathan Leopold, junior, and Richard Loeb, murderers of the Franks boy in Chicago, the worst case in the annals of crime (writes the San Francisco correspondent of the Auckland Star), fewer than 200 persons were admitted to the criminal courtroom where it was held. Seven weeks of gaol life left no depressing effects upon the murderers who had indulged in an “intellectual experiment.’ Both youths wore in the best of spirits and displayed much bravado during the coarse of the proceedings in court while their incarceration in the gaol chd. not seem to develop any despondency with them, for they joked, laughed, and entered into all the activities of the gaol life. A great surprise was sprung upon the court when, brazen as ever, apparently serene in the belief that they would n eve j r feel the clutch of the hangman’s noose. Doeb and Leopold pleaded guilty to the abduction and slaying oi the 14-year-old Robert Franks. In one bold stroke, engm eered aTI “ supervised by Clarence S. Darrow, cuiei defence counsel, the two nineteen-year-old intellectual slayers, sons of multimillionaires, simultaneously threw themselves on the mercy of Chief Justice John R. Cavcilv, of the Criminal Court, and opened the way for their long-heralded insanity defence in a manner that even the prosecution had failed to anticipate. The judge decided to hear all the evidence in the case, and several score witnesses were called. Mrs Jacob Franks, mother of young Robert, victim of Leopold and Loch, took the witness stand as the State continued its efforts to send the two college youth slayers to the gallows. Clad in modish attire of black, with simple white trimmings, white gloves and small black turban hat, the grieved mother fold in a broken voice of her son’s last day at home, the circumstances of his disappearance, and of the feverish, almost distracted efforts of herself and husband to regain tho custody of their boy. MOTHER SOBS OUT STORY'. She sobbed, her voice quivered and hei eyes filled with tears as she was handed the pieces of the lad’s clothing for idcutificaton. Fingering the articles with tremulous hands, and obviously choking back her grief, the mother nodded her affirmation of the identity of the articles. Calmly, but with eyes moistened with tears, Jacob Franks, father of the deceased, had previously recited the story of his boy’s disappearance. The father controlled his emotions well as he described the last time he had scon his son leave home for school. He gulped a bit as he told of recognising in a body at an undertaker’s the corpse of his own son. The morning session of the third day was occupied principally by the opening statement of Crowe, whose denunciation of the kidnappers and murderers of young Franks drew sharp objections from Darrow, chief counsel for the defence. "It was the most cruel, cowardly, dastardly murder ever committed in the history of American jurisprudence,” exclaimed Crowe. “That is a ricidulous exaggeration,” rejoined Darrow.

Several times when witnesses of foreign mien and speech struggled through accounts of how the body of Bobbie Franks was found with skull crushed, tho youthful prisoners, unable to restrain themselves, tittered audibly. But Jacob Franks, father of tho murdered boy. smiled only once. It was a smile that lit every lineament of his worm and grieflined visage; his first smile since the start of the historic case, and it swept across the court room with an electric force that boded ill for the defence. With him it was a smile of victory, and with it he echoed a sentiment harking back to his remote forbears in the ago of the Old Testament, when "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was the. law unto the children of Israel. It was the noon recess in the musty court-room, and the crowd, curious to the last second, was lingering with eyes on the faultlessly dressed, debonaire prisoners. Jacob Franks, the sorrow-bowed old man, had risep to his feet. Ho seemed inches taller as he strode across the court-room and stretched out his hand to Prosecutor Crowe. There was a smile on his face, a flashing white smile. He clasped Crowe’s hands in both of his.

“They’ll never get away from you now,” he said. This was the (first "utterance publicly of the pent-up desire to see his despoilefs pay with their lives for. the life of his boy. It was brought on and burst forth by reason of the ever-increasing accumulation of gruesome exhibits, that told ever more graphically than Crowe’s impassioned speech tho story of that crime of crimes.

Trouser,s, boots, a rectangular ribbon, a bundle of boards—these were the mute but eloquent witnesses for the prosecution. Each was introduced to add a strand to the noese suspended above the heads of the prisoners The cold chisel with which young Franks was stunned, the rope which the murderers had used to bind Franks, the acid fluid that marred his features, and the wrecked, watersoaked typewriter on which was written the ransom letter to the lad’s father—all were taken into the court-room, held up to view and fitted into the red circle of evidence upon which the prosecution’s case was laid. Experts, examining each article critically, had found telltale stains of hlood on every one, they told Judge Cavcrly. The trousers and hip boots were held up to the court, and then same those specially designed tortoiseshell spectacles, Leopold's spectacles, which he had carelessly dropped that dark May night, and which, found later near the body, were the link that connected the two wealthy college boys with the then mysterious murder. The trial has not yet ended, and both of the accused boys arc in the meantime detained in a lunatic asylum.