Nathan “Babe” Leopold met Richie “Dickie” Loeb as teen prodigies at the University of Chicago. Loeb had an IQ of 160 and Leopold 210, and the latter was an expert on birds. Their original encounters were contentious, but they soon became fast friends.
Both Leopold and Loeb were from rich, privileged families. Loeb’s father was a vice-president of Sears Roebuck while Leopold’s father was a retired manufacturer. The first gave his son an astonishing $250 allowance a month and the other $125.
One wonders how their personalities developed, how they came to believe that they could kidnap someone, murder him or her, and get away with it. That is arrogance with a capital A, and perhaps it fed into their personalities, but there had to be something more, something that all killers share: anger. Leopold and Loeb possessed a white-hot anger that would enable them to take vengeance out on some innocent bystander that stood as a symbol for someone they hated, perhaps a father, mother, or both.
Why were they drawn together? It is an odd combination. While Loeb was handsome and athletic, Leopold was short and ungainly. Fellow students characterized him as “Crazy Nathan” or “The Flea” and constantly criticized him for his profound interest in birds.
They were both gay and had a close relationship, yet argued constantly. Like so many criminals, they went through a developmental period where they committed smaller crimes, such as shoplifting, vandalism, and starting fires, ultimately graduating to felonies and the worst felony of all, murder. And behind all those crimes, it would seem, was rage.
No one knows exactly when their murder plan was hatched, but at some point, Leopold and Loeb devised a plan to kidnap and hold someone for ransom. On the surface, it makes little sense. Why would they ask for a ransom? They hardly needed the money. Writer Meyer Levin, who chronicled the crimes in his novel Compulsion, viewed their plan as a strictly emotional and compulsive decision.
The two did not rush into the plan. First, they established false identities by the names of Mason and Ballard, and opened a bank account where they deposited small amounts of money. Their idea was that when they ultimately received the ransom money, they would be able to deposit it all without it being noticed. Of course, as police record the serial numbers of bills in a ransom, this plan was not very wise.
But Leopard and Loeb had no intention of collecting ransom and returning whoever they kidnapped. It was a murder plot pure and simple, and they spent their time thinking about how the person would be killed (they decided on bludgeoning and strangulation) and where they would dump the body afterwards.
Perhaps no other detail of the case more clearly states the level of their depravity, the degree to which they were sociopaths, as thinking about murdering their own fathers. Leopold and Loeb considered kidnapping their fathers, as well as younger girls. Finally, though they didn’t have a specific victim in mind, they decided on kidnapping a young boy from an affluent area.
They decided to do the crime on May 21, 1924, and they dutifully bought supplies the day before, including a chisel and tape to wrap around the handle for a better grip, rope, and hydrochloric acid to pour on the victim’s face to help obscure his identity.
On the 21st, they obscured the license plate of a dark blue Willys-Knight, climbed into the front seats, and headed out to find a victim and kill him.
Their reconnoitering led them to the Harvard Preparatory School, and at one point they spotted fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks walking along near the school. Thrilled and engorged with blood lust, they drove near Franks and called to him, engaged him in conversation, and lured him into the car with the promise to show him a tennis racket.
Bobby Franks
He got in the back with Loeb, Leopold driving, and within sixty seconds he was dead, smashed on the head with the chisel, a rag stuffed down his throat to asphyxiate him.
Leopold, observing murder up close for the first time, was appalled and screamed. “Oh God! This is terrible. I didn’t know it would be like this!”
But if he had any remorse, it was too late.
Leopold and Loeb drove into the prairie lands of Hammond, Indiana, a tough steel town not far from Chicago, and at one point and for unknown reason they stripped the body of its clothes, then drove around some more waiting until it was dark. Then they drove to the drainage pipe that would serve as Bobby Franks’s crypt and stuffed the body in it. Before doing this, however, they poured hydrochloric acid on his face to disguise it (it only discolored it) as well as his genitalia, to burn his penis so it wouldn’t reveal that he was circumcised and therefore Jewish (in those days very few non-Jews got circumcised). They also poured acid on a possibly identifying surgical scar he had on his belly.
Then they left, but on the way home Leopold made two calls. First he called his father to say he would be late, and then he called the house of Bobby Franks, where his family had been waiting nervously for a missing Bobby to check in.
In fact, the Franks were searching for him, including at the tennis court of the Loebs, who lived across the street.
They called the school, they called everywhere. Bobby was nowhere to be found.
Then, Mrs. Franks received a call from Leopold, where he said: “Your son has been kidnapped. He is all right. There will be further news in the morning.”
Mrs. Franks fainted right away. When her husband, Jacob, and a friend, who had been out searching for Bobby, returned, they revived her.
Meanwhile, Leopold and Loeb drove back to Loeb’s house, burned their bloodstained clothes, and cleaned the blood out of the rental vehicle.
It is startling to realize that they were doing this across the street from where Bobby Franks lived, and perhaps their subconscious purpose was to be caught.
On May 22, the day after they murdered Bobby, they sent a special delivery letter to the Franks demanding that they receive a ransom of $10,000 in old bills. They said that Bobby was well and safe now, but if the police were notified, he would be killed.
Ransom Note for Bobby Franks
Dear Sir:
As you no doubt know by this time your son has been kidnapped. Allow me to assure you that he is at present well and safe. You need fear no physical harm for him provided you live up carefully to the following instructions, and to such others as you will receive by future communications. Should you however, disobey any of our instructions even slightly, his death will be the penalty.
1. For obvious reasons, make absolutely no attempt to communicate with either police authorities or any private agency. Should you already have communicated with the police, allow them to continue their investigations, but do not mention this letter.
2. Secure before noon today ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00). This money must be composed entirely of OLD BILLS of the following denominations: $2000.00 in twenty dollar bills, $8000.00 in fifty dollar bills. The money must be old. Any attempt to include new or marked bills will render the entire venture futile.
3. The money should be placed in a large cigar box, or if this is impossible in a heavy cardboard box, SECURELY closed and wrapped in white paper. The wrapping paper should be sealed at all openings with sealing wax.
4. Have the money with you prepared as directed above, and remain at home after one o’clock P.M. See that the telephone is not in use.
You will receive a future communication instruction you as to your future course.
As a final word of warning—this is a strictly commercial proposition, and we are prepared to put our threat into execution should we have reasonable grounds to believe that you committed an infraction of the above instructions. However, should you carefully follow out our instructions to the letter, we can assure you that your son will be safely returned to you within six hours of our receipt of the money.
Yours truly,
George Johnson
But things were about to unravel—for everyone.
A boy’s body was discovered in a culvert by a man who was walking to work near Wolf Lake, and a newspaper reporter with zero heart, who had been tipped off of the discovery of the body, called Franks’s father with a description of the body. Franks did not believe him, and his brother-in-law went to the morgue to try and ID the body.
Meanwhile, Bobby’s father received a call from Leopold who told him to go to a certain drug store via taxicab, but before he could do that, his brother-in-law called from the morgue. The body was that of Bobby Franks.
The next day, Leopold and Loeb, who were still trying to get the money, caught the headline of a paper that said that Bobby Franks’s body had been found.
Chicago exploded with outrage, grief, and anger, and demanded that the killer be tracked down. Chicago was out for blood. Many people volunteered their services—including Richard Loeb.
Among the really many mistakes Leopold had made in devising and concealing their crime was a pair of eyeglasses that Leopold had. When they stuffed the body in the culvert, Leopold dropped a pair of glasses that he wore for astigmatism.
The police found the glasses in the brush, and started to track the owner down.
There was nothing remarkable about the glasses—at first. The frame was made of Xylonite, like thousands of others in Chicago, and the prescription for astigmatism was unremarkable.
But the police discovered something that was remarkable: the hinges on the glasses were unique; only three pairs of glasses in all of Chicago were purchased with this type of hinges.
They tracked down Nathan Leopold, and brought him in for questioning.
Leopold was cool, calm, and collected, and he had a perfectly logical reason for why his glasses were found in the area where Bobby Franks was found. He had dropped them on one of his ornithological forays into the area.
Unknown to Leopold, Loeb was being questioned by cops, and as it turned out he was telling a story that was different from Leopold’s about their actions on the day of Bobby Franks’s death.
Adding to suspicion was the fact that Leopold was part of a law study group and he would occasionally type study sheets for other students. Reporters looking into the case learned that he usually used a Hammond typewriter. When those sheets were compared with the ransom note, some experts felt that they had been done by the same typewriter.
The thing that broke the back of the case was the Leopolds’ chauffeur. Loeb and Leopold had said that they had used the car on the day Bobby Franks was killed, but the chauffeur said that that couldn’t be true because he was working in the car all day. Their alibi fell apart.
Under pressure, Loeb confessed to the crime and Leopold later did as well. Cops tracked down the rental car, which still had bloodstains on it, dredged the lagoon into which the typewriter used to type the ransom note had been tossed, and found the hotel room where the pair had registered under a false name.
The confessions exploded in Chicago media, and the Jewish community was especially aggrieved.
As many killers do, Leopold and Loeb started to back off on who was responsible for what, who was the actual killer of Bobby Franks while the other drove? Ultimately, while being questioned, it is said that Loeb made a mistake that clearly implicated him as the killer. While being questioned by Crowe, Loeb pointed to Leopold and said “He did. Nathan Leopold, Jr. He was sitting up in the front seat. I said he was sitting up in the front seat. I mean I was sitting up in the front seat.”
It soon became obvious that they would be facing the death penalty, with the weight of the case against them—including their confessions—quite overwhelming.
At around two o’clock in the morning, the sleep of Clarence Darrow, arguably one of the greatest lawyers who ever lived, was interrupted by persistent knocking on his door. When he opened it, four members of the Loeb family begged him to take on the case.
Darrow had to think twice before agreeing to take the case. He was a notorious defender of the poor and downtrodden, and to take on a case for a rich client would not be viewed too well by those who respected him. He was also overweight and not in the best of health. He was a warrior, but he had spent his life in the trenches.
The one thing that finally swayed him was that this was a death penalty case and Darrow did not believe in the practice. By defending Leopold and Loeb he would be able to put the death penalty on trial.
He agreed to take the case, and Loeb’s father Jacob made out a check for $10,000. Darrow would be lead defense attorney with the assistance of the Bacharach brothers, nephews to the Loebs. The main question in Darrow’s mind was how he was going to defend Leopold and Loeb. Some people thought he would use an insanity plea, but Darrow didn’t figure that he would have much chance with that.
Against Darrow were the prosecutors, led by Robert Crowe, with two assistant state’s attorneys. The judge was John Caverly, chief justice of the criminal court of Cook County.
Darrow had his clients plead guilty, in order to get the case heard by a judge instead of a jury. He figured that he would have far less a chance with the latter of obtaining a sentence lesser than death, which was all he wanted.
Loeb, left, and Leopold
The trial began on July 21, 1924, when Darrow let loose with a bomb: he pled both men guilty, and then requested that the court allow him to present the mental condition of both men.
Crowe, outraged, said that he couldn’t have his cake and eat it too, that he couldn’t say that he was not mounting an insanity defense and then decide to mount one. But Darrow said that he was just going to talk about mental problems, not problems that proved insanity.
Judge Caverly, against vehement prosecution objections, allowed it.
The prosecution dearly wanted Leopold and Loeb to be sentenced to death, and in trying to convince Judge Caverly of that, they called 102 witnesses, and did a blow-by-blow accounting of as many gruesome details of the murder as they could. They also had psychiatrists testify as to how normal Leopold and Loeb were.
For his part, Darrow also called psychiatric testimony and it seemed to focus on the fact that Leopold and Loeb had both been abandoned by their parents to the care of governesses, some of whom were okay but some of whom were highly neurotic. For example, one governess Leopold had named Sweetie would take baths with the boys and touch their genitalia.
Clarence Darrow, a transcendently brilliant attorney whose summation for why Leopold and Loeb should live left the judge with tears in his eyes
Loeb started being taken care of by a governess when he was four years old. She was very strict and once she saw that he had such acute intelligence, she started concentrating on him growing intellectually rather than playing with boys of his own age.
Though it was not unusual for rich kids to be taken care of by governesses, Darrow painted the picture that both Leopold and Loeb were robbed of their childhoods, and this might well have contributed to the angst they felt.
The great moment in the trial was the summation by Clarence Darrow, where he put the fate of the killers in the hands of Judge Caverly. The summation was long and impassioned and Darrow, sixty-seven years old now, an old war horse with a great heart, made a case for why Judge Caverly should not send Leopold and Loeb to their deaths.
A plea for mercy for Leopold and Loeb, delivered by Clarence Darrow, September 1924
Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined in the general cry of madness and despair. I urged men to fight. I was safe because I was too old to go. I was like the rest. What did they do? Right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable—which I need not discuss today—it changed the world.
For four long years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian, barbarians uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in every school, aye in the Sunday school. The little children played at war. The toddling children on the street.
Do you suppose this world has ever been the same since? How long, your Honor, will it take for the world to get back in its human emotions to where it stood before the war? How long will it take the calloused heart of man before the scars of hatred and cruelty shall be removed?
We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day; probably exaggerated, but what of it? We read about it and we rejoiced in it; it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell your honor this, because you know; I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was part of the common frenzy—what was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys were trained to this cruelty. It will take fifty years at least to wipe it out of the human heart, if ever. I know this, for I have studied those things, that after the Civil War in 1865, crimes of this sort increased, marvelously increased. No one needs to tell me that crime has no cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease, and I know that out of the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War crime increased as America had never known it before.
I know that growing out of the Napoleonic wars there was an era of crime such as Europe had never seen before. I know that Europe is going through it today; I know it has followed every war; and I know it has influenced these boys so that blood was not the same blood to them that it would have been if the world had not been bathed in blood.
I protest against the crimes and mistakes of society being visited upon them. All of us have our share in it. I have mine. I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have created harshness in place of love and kindness and charity. Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing out of the war. Not necessarily by those who fought, but by those that learned that blood was cheap and human life was cheap, and if the state could take it why not the individual?
There are causes for this terrible crime. There are causes, as I have said, for everything that happens in the world. War is a part of it; education is a part of it; birth is a part of it; money is a part of it: all concentrated to wreak the destruction of these two poor boys.
Now, your Honor, I suppose I would never close if I did not see that I should. Has the court any right to consider anything but these two boys? Yes. The state says that your Honor has a right to consider the welfare of the community, as you have.
If the welfare of the community would be benefited by taking these lives, well and good. I think it would work evil that no one could measure. Has your Honor a right to consider the families of these defendants?
I have been sorry, and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Franks, and the little sister; for those broken ties that cannot be mended. All I can hope and wish is that some good may come from it. But as compared with the families of Leopold and Loeb, the Franks are to be envied. They are to be envied, and everyone knows it.
I do not know how much salvage there is in these two boys. I hate to say it in their presence, but what is there to look forward to? I do not know but what your Honor would be merciful if you tied a rope around their necks and let them die; merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and merciful to those who would be left behind. I do not know; to spend the balance of their days in prison is mighty little to look forward to, if anything. Is it anything?
They may have the hope as the years roll around they might be released. I do not know. I will be honest with this court. I have tried to be from the beginning.
I know that these boys are not fit to be at large. I believe they will not be until they pass through the next stage of life, at forty-five or fifty. Whether they will be then, I cannot know. I am sure of this; that I won’t be here to help them. So, so far as I am concerned, it is over. I would not tell this court that I would not hope that some time when life and age has changed their bodies, as it does, and has changed their emotions, as it does, I would not say that they would not be safe, I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope, to any human being that lived, and least of all to my clients.
But what have they to look forward to? Nothing. And I here think of the stanzas of Housman:
“Now, hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are fluttering low;
Square your shoulders and lift your pack
And leave your friends and go.
Don’t ever fear, lads, naught’s to dread;
Look not to left nor right.
In all the endless road you tread
There is nothing but the night.”
I don’t care, your Honor, whether the march begins at the gallows or when the gates of Joliet close upon them, there is nothing but the night, and that is enough for any human being to expect. But there are others. Here are these two families, who have led an honest life, who will bear the name that they bear, and future generations will bear the name that they bear.
Here is Leopold’s father—and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him, he cared for him, he worked for him, he was brilliant and accomplished, he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life’s hopes crumbling into the dust. Should he be considered? Should his brothers be considered? Is it going to do society any good or make your life safe or any human being’s life safer that it should be handed down from generation to generation that this boy, their kin, died upon the scaffold?
And Loeb’s, the same. The faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day, while his father and his mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, waiting for a message which means more to them than it seems to mean to you or me. Have they got any rights? Is there any reason, your Honor, why their proud name and all the future generations that bear it shall have this bar sinister attached to it? How many boys and girls, how many unborn children will feel it? It is bad enough as it is, God knows. It is bad enough, however it is. But it’s yet death by the scaffold. It’s not that. And I ask, your Honor, in addition to all I have said, to save two honorable families from a disgrace that never ends, and which could be of no avail to any human being that lives.
Now, I must say a word more and then I will leave this with you where I should have left it long ago. None of us are unmindful of the public; courts are not; and juries are not. We placed this in the hands of a trained court, thinking that he would be less mindful than a jury. I cannot say how people feel. I have stood here for three months as somebody might stand at the seacoast trying to sweep back the tide. I hope the seas are subsiding and the wind is falling and I believe they are, but I wish to make no false pretense to this court.
The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and the thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today, but in Chicago and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land more and more are the fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding, are asking questions not only about these boys, but about their own. These will join in no acclaim at the death of these boys. These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. And as the days and the months and the years go on, they will ask it more and more. But, your Honor, what they ask cannot count. I know the easy way.
I know your Honor stands between the future and the past. I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity and kindness, and the infinite mercy that forgives all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck till they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy. In doing it you are make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and it makes it easier for every child that some time may sit where these boys sit. It makes it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate.
I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.
I feel that I ought to apologize for the length of time I have taken. This may not be as important as I think it is, and I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friend Mr. Crowe, that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich.
If I should succeed in saving these boys’ lives and do nothing for the progress of the law, I should feel sad, indeed. If I can succeed, my greatest award and my greatest hope and my greatest compensation will be that I have done something for the tens of thousands of other boys, for the other unfortunates who must tread the same way that these poor youths have trod, that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.
I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyam. It appealed to me as the highest that I can envision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all, and I can end no better than to quote what he said:
So I be written in the Book of Love,
I do not care about that Book above.
Erase my name or write it as you will,
So I be written in the Book of Love.
When he was finished, he had tears in his eyes, as did some others in the court and the judge himself.
The judge did not pass a sentence until September 24. He started by thanking everyone for the mountain of medical evidence presented, but said that it did not enter into his deliberations, which seemed to imply that the sentence was to be death.
But it wasn’t. In a stunning display of courage, Judge Caverly sentenced Leopold and Loeb to life imprisonment.
Darrow’s summation had some impact on the judge, but he simply said that the sentence he meted out was based on their young age and that the state of Illinois was not sentencing people to death that young.
For saving their lives, Darrow got a slap in the face from the Loebs.
Seven months after the trial, Darrow, whose office had gone into debt based on the really measly $10,000 that was first paid to him when Jacob was desperate, got a visit from Jacob in response to a letter that Darrow had been forced to send him. Jacob said, “You know, Clarence, the world is full of eminent lawyers who would have paid a fortune to distinguish themselves in this case. A hundred thousand dollars is all we can pay in this case, Clarence. From that I’ll have to deduct the ten thousand dollars I already paid you.” Then he handed Darrow a check for $30,000 and showed two checks, both for $30,000, for the Bacharach brothers, the two other lawyers on the case.
Such arrogant behavior gives more than a hint about the character of a parent who had dropped down on his knees to ask Darrow to save his child and now treated him like garbage.
In prison, both men seemed to do fairly well. Leopold started a school for inmates while Loeb researched a book he was going to write on the Civil War.
All was well until 1936, when a man named James Day attacked Loeb with a straight razor, cutting him some fifty times. Loeb used to receive money from his father and would divvy it up among inmates, but when his father stopped sending the money, Day suspected that Loeb was holding onto it himself.
Prison officials allowed Leopold to visit Loeb in the hospital, and Loeb felt sure that he was going to survive, but did not despite the best efforts of doctors.
Leopold was affected by the loss, but he went on to better things himself. In 1958, after serving thirty-three years, he was released on parole. He eventually moved to Puerto Rico where he married a Hispanic woman and got involved in helping poor people. He died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-six.
If Leopold and Loeb Were Electrocuted
If Clarence Darrow hadn’t succeeded in beating the death penalty, Leopold and Loeb would have been electrocuted. Following is a description of how that is done today, which wouldn’t have been very far from what would have happened back in the 1920s and 1930s.
After the person sentenced to the “chair” is seated, electrodes moistened with salt water, gel, or brine, to enhance conductivity, are placed on shaved areas on the legs and head. A leather or cloth mask is placed over the condemned face and the executioner hits a button that sends 1,700 to 2,400 volts of electricity into the person, cooking the brain and central nervous system. The current is kept under six amps—amps measure the amount of electricity—so that the body doesn’t catch fire, though smoke usually can be seen rising from the legs or head. The shock usually causes all systems to become paralyzed, and breathing is impossible.
The first shock may last 30 seconds to a minute, and then another shock is delivered to make sure the heart cannot beat.
The first shock is supposed to render the person unconscious in about 1/240th of a second, but a third and even a fourth shock may be necessary. It is said that Ethel Rosenberg, the atomic spy, had to be given five shocks before she died.
Watching someone get electrocuted is not pleasant. The room is filled with a sweet smell, and while the juice courses through the body, there is a sound that someone described as “bacon frying.”
Indeed, the body may not be touched for a while because it becomes very hot and must cool down.
Some condemned, despite all the precautions taken against it, catch on fire. One, for example, was John Spenkelink, who was executed in Florida in 1979. His head caught fire.
Just how much the condemned suffers is debatable. The problem in verifying anything, of course, is that almost no one survives the experience to make insightful comments on it.
Q. In murder trials, how often is the insanity defense invoked?
A. Less than 1 percent of all cases.
Q. How many Americans support the death penalty?
A. An overwhelming majority of people according to the Gallup Poll—69 percent—are for the death penalty, while only 27 percent are against it and 4 percent have no opinion. This despite the unalterable fact that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder. Indeed, statistics have shown that over and over again. “Feeling is everything,” says Dr. Grace Somer. “Feelings of rage that a person is experiencing at the time they become homicidal have nothing to do with cold, deliberate logic. Murder has everything to do with compulsion.”
1. I was born in 1969. I was an altar boy and a good student with a high IQ. I was openly gay and considered eccentric. In my high school yearbook, I was voted “Most likely not to be forgotten.” This would prove to be uncannily accurate.
2. In social situations, I was like a chameleon. I could change my personality and appearance to fit in with whatever group I was around at the time. I was a likable person but prone to flamboyance and attention-seeking behavior.
3. I had my first homosexual experience in my early teens. I would later become a male escort. My clientele were mostly the older and richer gentlemen who could lavish me with money and expensive gifts. My mother described me as “a high-class homosexual prostitute.”
4. Moving to San Francisco, I frequented all the gay clubs. I descended into a world of sadomasochistic sexual excess and drugs. I developed a notorious reputation. I was up for anything if the money was right. It was during this time I first met fashion designer Gianni Versace.
5. At age twenty-seven, I was no longer an in-demand sex toy and was deserted by my rich patrons. I was broke. I grew despondent and became self-destructive. It was also at this time that I began having symptoms of HIV infection. I had a test but never returned for the results.
6. I grew enraged when I found out that two of my lovers were seeing each other behind my back. This incident would trigger my downward spiral into violence and murder. I bludgeoned one to death and shot the other with a .40-caliber pistol.
7. My mental condition deteriorated and the killing spree continued. I abducted a seventy-two-year-old real estate developer who I tortured to death. I beat and stabbed him and finally ran him over with a car.
8. I made the FBI’s top ten most-wanted list and an APB was issued for my arrest. My fourth victim was an innocent cemetery caretaker. Even though he complied with my demands when I wanted to steal his truck, I shot him anyway.
9. The world would remember me for my next murder. I had eluded the manhunt and made my way to Miami, where I lived undetected for two months among the gay community. For my own reasons, my next victim would be Gianni Versace. I followed him home from a club one morning and as he stood in front of his mansion, I put two bullets into the back of his head.
10. After the murder, I sought refuge by breaking into a houseboat. Authorities discovered my whereabouts and there was a four-hour standoff with four hundred police and FBI agents surrounding the houseboat. The police demanded that I come out with my hands up, but what they didn’t know was that I was already dead inside from a self-inflicted gunshot, a suicide at age twenty-seven.
Answer: I am Andrew Cunanan.
Q. Do stalkers turn to murder?
A. Surely. Andrew Cunanan was a prime example. He actually followed Gianni Versace more than once. Forensic psychologists divide stalkers into two general categories. About 25 percent of stalkers fall into the “love obsession” group. People who stalk celebrities, such as Mark David Chapman (who shot John Lennon), fall into this category. They are also the people who become fixated with a coworker, acquaintance, teacher, etc. They live in a delusional fantasy world complete with their own script of how this object of their fixation loves them and is already in a relationship with them. Those in this category suffer from some form of mental illness, like paranoia or schizophrenia. The other 75 percent or so of stalkers are in the “simple obsession” group. These people have previously been in some form of relationship with the victim, either romantic or personal. When the relationship ends, the stalker feels lost and powerless. He cannot bear the thought of the victim being out of his life, so the patterns of stalking behavior begin. Unfortunately, this category produces the majority of domestic violence, the worst of which ends in murder-suicide.