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Even without the confessions the case against Leopold and Loeb was now solid. They’d thought their plan would put them beyond suspicion; instead all it had done was create dozens of chances for the police to confirm pieces of the jigsaw. The list of people who recognized them was growing by the day. The state had no shortage of witnesses to choose from:
After the trial Leopold and Loeb were incarcerated at Joliet Prison. In 1930 Loeb was transferred to the new prison at Statesville, and Leopold - who’d already been there for a spell in 1925 - managed a permanent transfer the next year. Prison staff initially tried to keep them separate but eventually relented and let them associate freely. They got involved in the prison school, where they taught classes to fellow inmates. When they arrived at Statesville the school only taught classes up to eighth grade, which was a big step up for many of the almost illiterate inmates but fell short of what the intellectual killers thought possible.
There was a problem, though, thanks to the prison system. Inmates had jobs within the prison, and could earn extra privileges from them. To attend the school they had to give up their jobs and associated perks, and few were willing to do that. The promise of a high school certificate and better employability outside wasn’t enough to lure them away from longer yard periods. Leopold and Loeb found a solution. Both had taken correspondence courses, so now they approached the Bureau of Correspondence Studies at Iowa State University and asked for help. They got it, and Statesville gained an in-house correspondence school for its inmates.
Despite his crimes Loeb’s family did not entirely abandon him in prison. Every month he received an allowance of $50 and in the closed small-scale economy of a prison that went a long way. Loeb distributed much of the money among his fellow inmates, buying them tobacco and snacks and Loeb influence. Early in 1936, though, a new warden took over at Stateville and set out to tighten things up. Among the changes he made was to reduce the maximum allowance for convicts to $3 a week, a quarter of what Loeb had been getting. There was nothing he could do about it but violent criminals are not always the most rational of people, and one of them blamed Loeb. James E. Day, Loeb’s cellmate, resented the loss of income and lashed out furiously. On January 28, 1936 he ducked out of the lunch line and into the showers, and attacked Loeb with a straight razor.[35] Fifty wounds were delivered in a frenzied assault and Loeb was left bleeding copiously on the floor. Prison doctors fought a losing battle against shock and massive blood loss, and within hours of the attack the killer of Bobby Franks was himself dead. Day claimed that Loeb had made an aggressive proposition to him, and despite the fact that Loeb’s throat had been cut from behind his version of events was accepted. Day was found not guilty of murder and served out his sentence.
Leopold, not so extrovert as his partner, attracted less attention inside Stateville. He escaped the violence that ended Loeb’s life, but afterwards helped wash his body. Then he went on with his sentence. While in prison he took every opportunity to learn, and added another twelve languages to the 15 he already spoke.[1] He also studied mathematics and kept on working in the prison school. He raised canaries. In 1944 he volunteered for the Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study, in which 441 inmate volunteers were deliberately infected with malaria then used to test new antimalarial drugs.[36]
Leopold was getting by in prison, but he never accepted that he’d spend his whole life there. The press was still interested in him and carefully he began working to rehabilitate his image. In 1953 he earned a parole hearing. His application had some support, but also plenty of opposition. The State’s Attorney, John Gutknecht, was furious and threw his whole weight against Leopold. The application was turned down and the parole board ruled that he couldn’t apply again for twelve years.[37] They relented in 1958, though, and Leopold was finally released. He had been in prison for 33 years.
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