The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-09-11
YOUNG SLAYERS
GET AWAY With
MURDER CHARGE
Millions Weigh Heavily
on Scale of Justice

Nathan F. Leopold, Jr., and
Richard Loeb, the millionaire
sIayers of fourteen-year-old
Robert Franks, have been SEN
fenced to a term of life inn
prisonment in the state peni-
Tertiary at Joliet.
No emotion was visible on
the faces of the slayers when
Chief Justice Caverly rendered
his decision. Nothing of the
suspense, the tense excitement
which might have been ex-
'pected in the court room on the
final day of the trial which has
aroused the entire country,
could be felt during the short
half-hour Of orderly, methodic-
al, legal procedure.
None Surprised.
Neither in the court nor among the
crowds which thronged the streets
nearby was there any surprise when
the verdict became known.
No one had expected Richard Loeb
and Nathan F. Leopold to hang. No
one had supposed that the millions
which the families of the slayers have
for five months lavished on attorneys
and on alienists had been spent in
vain.
Grove Eats Crow.
States Attorney Robert E. Grove,
alone, flushed holly when he found
that he had lost the case on which he
had founded all his hopes of re-elec-
ton. To send two perverted million
aires to the gallows for the Staying Of :
another millionaire's child, might, he
hoped, wipe from the minds Of the
workers of Illinois the record of
which he had often boasted-of hav-
ing secured forty-two convictions of
laborers. That hope has been lost to
Bob Grove.
Interest now centers in the posi-
bility of parole which the department
of public welfare is free to grant at
its discretion, and in the length of
time which will pass before Richard
Loeb and Nathan f. Leopold, Jr.. are
again free. In spite of Chief Justice
Cayerly's strong recommendation that
the term of life Imprisonment be ad-
hered to, no one really expects the
two millionaires to remain in the
company of the the men of empty
purse who, between Monday and Sat
urday of the same week, are sentenc-
ed to Joliet for a term of life, and for
whom thought of parole is far, far re-
mote. Even the minimum" sentence
Of fourteen years which the law of H.
linois provides for the crime of muir
der, may be shortened by the "discre-
ton" Of the authorities.
viii Have Full Time.
That the two slayers, even during
their stay at Joliet will lead the sort
of prison life which has wracked the
bodies of the hundreds of labor mill
tants in the United States, is not even
considered as a remote possibility. Al
ready they are planning to act as in
structors, to read and to write during
the years they spend in Jail. Every
comfort and every assistance which
wealthy families outside can give,
Leopold and Loeb will have.
The house of Sears, Roebuck and
Co., of which Richard Loeb's father is
vice-president, still hires its girl
slaves at the pittance of SIT week,
and puts them on the streets when
they are no longer needed. The box
factories of Nathan Leopold's father.
at Morris, Illinois, are still wearing
down the bodies of boys of twelve
who have been forced to lie in order
that their families might not starve,
are catching them in monster ma
chimes when they are too tired TO be
alert, are mangling them and tortur-
ing them. Profits are still being
ground out for the Leopolds, for the
Loebs, and for the Franks family.
And Chief Justice Caverly is satisfied
that "justice" has been done.