The Girls of Murder City (35 page)

The
Tribune
gave over almost its entire front page to Leopold and Loeb, justifying it by stating in an editors’ note that “the solving of the Franks kidnapping and death brings to notice a crime that is unique in Chicago’s annals, and perhaps unprecedented in American criminal history.” The editors added: “The diabolical spirit evinced in the planned kidnapping and murder; the wealth and prominence of the families whose sons are involved; the high mental attainments of the youths; the suggestions of perversion; the strange quirks indicated in the confession that the child was slain for a ransom, for experience, for the satisfaction of a desire for ‘deep plotting,’ combined to set the case in a class by itself.” The wall-to-wall reports marked only the beginning of the newspaper’s obsession with the crime. In the flurry of activity following the confessions, editors directed a team of reporters to track down people who knew Leopold and Loeb. Maurine recalled later that the
Tribune
wasn’t picky about its sources: “Anyone who had ever spoken to either of them was good material.”

Having focused on Leopold on Friday, Maurine now turned her attention to Loeb on Saturday. She canvassed his family and friends, finding shocked disbelief at every turn. Loeb, unlike Leopold, had a sweet disposition. He wanted to be liked by everybody.

“He couldn’t have done it. We know he’s innocent,” said one Loeb ally.

“He is innocent and confessed merely to get sleep. It can be repudiated when he comes to trial,” said another.

Maurine granted that the disbelief was to be expected. “ ‘Loeb’ as the name of a murderer falls strangely on Chicago ears,” she wrote. “For the people of that name are written in the book of Chicago’s history as builders and leaders in philanthropy, charity and educational movements.”

“It’s a damned lie!” said Richard Rubel hysterically. “I’m Dick Loeb’s best friend and he couldn’t have done it! For a ransom—!” he looked about at the magnificent home of his millionaire friend, at the garage stocked with limousine, sedan, coupe touring car; at the tennis court where they so often played.

“Why, those boys could have had all the money in the world! Why should they do that?”

Maurine had some theories for Sunday’s paper: “Were they bored by a life which left them nothing to be desired, no obstacle to overcome, no goal to attain? Were they jaded by the jazz-life of gin and girls, so that they needed so terrible a thing as murder to give them new thrills?”

So it seemed. The next day, Monday, June 2, the day before Belva Gaertner’s trial opened, Leopold would say of the murder of Bobby Franks: “It was just an experiment. It is as easy for us to justify as an entomologist in impaling a beetle on a pin.”

Leopold remained cold, clinical, detached. His friend and partner, meanwhile, had fallen into desperate fantasy. “This thing will be the making of me,” Loeb told a police officer on Sunday. “I’ll spend a few years in jail and I’ll be released. I’ll come out to a new life. I’ll go to work and I’ll work hard and I’ll amount to something, have a career.”

17

Hatproof, Sexproof, and Damp

Belva Gaertner wouldn’t get the endless newspaper space for her trial that Beulah Annan did. The Bobby Franks murder case had suddenly heated to the boiling point and was beating out all other stories in competition for the public’s attention. The famous Clarence Darrow had taken over the defense of Leopold and Loeb. Assistant State’s Attorney Bert Cronson, one of the men who’d helped elicit the Midnight Confession from Beulah in April, had been assigned to the Franks case. He was considered the “ace” of the staff, better than McLaughlin or Woods or Harry Pritzker.

Still, the “double divorcee,” as all of the papers constantly and salaciously called Belva, remained front-page news. Editors knew that the “stylish murderess,” with her gorgeous outfits and regal bearing, would provide pictures that no other story could match. Chicagoans still wanted to see and read about her.

As expected, Belva dressed for court with care, determined to impress potential jurors as a woman of the upper classes, the kind of privileged, well-appointed lady who would naturally awe any ordinary man. Downtown’s priciest shops helped out, sending dresses for her to consider, knowing that the outfits would be rapturously described in the newspapers.

Belva arrived at the Criminal Courts Building for jury selection on Tuesday morning, June 3. Paul T. Gilbert of the
Evening Post,
assisting Ione Quinby with coverage, treated it as if covering an appearance by screen star Mary Pickford.

The case of a negro was continued. A varied assortment of blacks filed out of Judge Lindsay’s courtroom. The defendant shuffled back to the bullpen.

A moment’s silence, then—

“Belva Gaertner.”

A voice from the corridor leading to the county jail re-echoed the call.
“Belva.”

A trim figure entered, clad in navy blue. It was Belva Gaertner, the attractive young divorcee in whose sedan one night last March, after a hectic cabaret tour of the south side, the limp body of Walter R. Law, automobile salesman, was found, a steel-jacketed bullet in his head, an automatic pistol on the floor of the car. . . .

The room, packed from end to end, was ready for her. Spectators vying for sight lines huffed and stomped like spooked show horses. A small din erupted as Belva glided, cool and confident, through the door. “Her color was heightened by rouge,” Gilbert wrote. “Her lashes had a touch of mascara. Cosmetics had been applied also to her lips, but the make-up wasn’t overdone. . . . She might have been in a divorce court instead of at the criminal bar.” Court fans seemed universally impressed.

“Say, she’s got the Annan girl skinned a mile!” enthused an eyewitness.

“Not so pretty, but more class,” came the response.

The exchange stuck with Maurine Watkins, who diligently recorded it. “ ‘Class’—that was Belva,” she wrote for the morning paper. “For she lived up to her reputation as ‘the most stylish’ of murderess’ row: a blue twill suit bound with black braid, and white lacy frill down the front; patent leather slippers with shimmering French heels, chiffon gun metal hose. And a hat—ah, that hat! Helmet shaped, with a silver buckle and cockade of ribbon, with one streamer tied jauntily—coquettishly—bewitchingly—under her chin.”

Belva padded softly down the aisle, no doubt pleased to see the courtroom just as full for her as it had been for Beulah. She bowed to the judge. The
Daily News
wrote, “She looks younger and fresher since her incarceration—hardly like the same woman the police found cowering in her apartment, her clothing covered with the blood of the young married man who had been her companion during the fateful evening.” The paper added that she wore a “smart white blouse” and “white kid gloves, as if for a matinee.” The
Daily Journal
’s reporter decided that the “chin strap of her bonnet and her fresh white frilled blouse gave her an air of distinction, as did also her immaculate white kid gloves with yellow cuffs.” Belva, her white-gloved hands held out before her, played to the crowd while at the same time appearing to be embarrassed by the attention. “Arrived at court, Belva adjusted her skirts modestly, pulled the choker more tightly around her neck and smiled demurely at everybody in general,” Quinby wrote for the
Post.
Maurine described the defendant as a “perfect lady” in court.

Chicagoans across the city would be just as impressed as court spectators when papers started rolling off the presses later in the afternoon. As Belva stood alone before the judge, with the court fans no longer near enough to reach out to her and spoil the frame, news photographers exploded into action. The cameras clicked and flashbulbs popped, momentarily blinding everyone. One of the prosecutors, Samuel Hamilton, took offense at the fawning attention. He requested that the photographers be removed. Judge Lindsay, who’d seen worse when presiding over Beulah’s trial, waved him off. “The cameras are not disturbing me nor the defendant nor the men called for jury service as far as I can see,” he said. Belva smiled at the judge, and then gave Hamilton a quick, triumphant glare. Forgotten in all the hullabaloo was a small, thin figure in the front row. Mrs. Freda Law, dressed in black, sat alone, grim-faced and staring straight ahead.

“Are you ready?” Lindsay asked each set of lawyers.

Belva joined her attorneys at the defendant’s table. Judge Lindsay addressed the potential jurors and then turned to the state. “Proceed,” he said.

Hamilton got right to it. He strode up to the nearest juror candidate. “You understand the penalty is death or life imprisonment? Do you think that’s too severe?” he demanded. The man paused, and then answered that he understood the penalty for murder. “If this were to be proved a cold-blooded murder, could you inflict the death penalty?” Hamilton asked.

The man swallowed. “I could.”

With that answer, Freda Law quivered to life. “Mrs. Law, who up to this time had shown little emotion, leaned forward eagerly,” wrote the
Post.
“Her eyes shone. She trembled slightly.”

Hamilton moved down the line, taking turns with the case’s lead prosecutor, Harry Pritzker. “Would you be willing to mete out the same punishment to a woman that you would to a man?” they asked each potential juryman.

Faced with this hard-hearted questioning of jurors, and with the comfort most of the men expressed with putting a woman to death, Belva finally showed some anxiety. “She clasped and unclasped the fastener of her fur choker nervously” and stared straight ahead, wrote the
Journal.
Her lead attorney, Thomas D. Nash, whispered something to her, soothing words.

The lawyer had a knack for calming down clients. For one thing, he looked the part of the quintessential defense attorney. Though just thirty-eight years old, his hair was a forbidding gray, and he had a voice and manner that instinctively provoked confidence. Nash had made a name for himself quickly in Chicago, winning election to the city council in 1911 when he was just twenty-five. In 1920 he was defeated in a run for judge of the municipal court, but the setback hardly dented his political influence. He remained the Nineteenth Ward’s Democratic committeeman, a powerful position, and turned his attention to his thriving criminal law practice. “The list of Tom Nash’s clients reads like a page from the who’s who of vicious criminals,” his opponent for the county board of review would charge in 1928. “Murderers, gun toters, robbers, gangsters and their political tools are included among the crew which pays retainers to Tom Nash.” That was true. Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, among other prominent gangsters, were Nash clients. They came to him because he was good: smart, clever, personable. He could put any man, no matter what charge he faced, at ease.

Nash was just as conscientious about seating a jury as the prosecutors. He took seriously his client’s preference for “worldly” jurors—“the kind of men,” as Belva put it to reporters, “who realize that after a woman has had as many sweethearts as I have had, she can’t love any one enough to shoot him.” Because Belva had been so open about her preferences, the jury selection process sparked an unusual public debate in the newspapers. “She’s wrong,” one policeman told a reporter outside of court. “The kind she should get on a jury is the inexperienced, home man who is used to gentle women. A worldly man knows that the woman who has been on the primrose path is more likely to shoot than any other.” But an automobile salesman said he “could certainly give a woman an impartial break on the story Mrs. Gaertner tells.” Seconded a hotel clerk: “I believe that to a woman of a rosy past, a man is just a man. What they want is a good time and they don’t care who pays for it. She wouldn’t shoot for love.” A coffee-shop owner, on the other hand, opined that “women who have a succession of sweethearts usually display violent attachment for the man who holds their interest for the moment. That’s my observation, and I think Mrs. Gaertner’s argument is all wrong.”

Captain Patrick Kelliher of the Chicago Police expressed the fears of every prosecutor: “A jury of family men probably would not convict her,” he said. “A jury of bachelors would never convict her. The average unmarried man about town has liberal views and is very tolerant of erring women.”

That must have sounded good to Nash and his team, but the commonness of the view also guaranteed that they wouldn’t be able to finagle a jury solely of single men on the make, as Belva hoped. Pritzker and his seconds, Hamilton and H. M. Sharpe, were able prosecutors. Men who seemed vulnerable to irrelevant explanations for a woman’s violent behavior were sent home. The defense, meanwhile, sought to jettison those from the other extreme. One man after another was dismissed after expressing prejudice against any woman who drank liquor or went to clubs. “Would you be prejudiced if it should develop that the lady had been drinking that evening?” Nash asked the jurors, an important question considering Belva’s official statement that she was too drunk on the night of the murder to remember what happened.