Medford mail tribune., July 19, 1959, Image 36

r
What's Happened
to Leopold
in Puerto Rico?
35 years ago, he was sentenced, with Loeb,
for his vicious crime; today he is in an
isolated, back-country hospital
still seeking to atone
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k 1 I
Leopold began his austere life as lab technician aware of the world's scrutiny.
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II
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H's "free" within the confines of the mission
ary hospital, where he works for mankind,
but Leopold remains a prisoner of his elusive
search for inner peace.
By Arthur Massolo
ON the veranda of a weather-beaten building in the
desolate Puerto Rican hills, natives are accustomed
to seeing a short, balding, middle-aged man staring at the
distant mountains. On his face is a reflective expression of
deep suffering. Here is a man haunted by the memory of a
monstrous act of violence he committed as a teenager.
His name is Nathan Leopold.
It was 35 years ago on July 21 when Leopold and Richard
Loeb, scions of wealthy Chicago families, went on trial for
the brutal thrill-slaying of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, a
crime that aroused the wrath of the nation.
Defense attorney Clarence Darrow, the legendary
champion of lost causes, could hardly question his youthful
clients' guilt in the face of the appalling facts. Instead, in
a classic courtroom maneuver, he put the society which
had produced them on trial.
So effectively did he pursue his case that Judge John R.
Caverly ignored the prosecution's demand that the boys
hang, and doomed them to life imprisonment plus 99 years.
He admonished prison authorities "never to admit these
defendants to parole."
Loeb, who masterminded and executed the "perfect"
murder, was killed by a fellow prisoner in 1936. Leopold
became a legend in the world of shadows and steel. A
model prisoner, he mastered a score of languages, became
an authority in ornithology, developed the prison library
and, served as a human guinea pig in malaria research.
He found time, too, to repent his deed.
On Feb. 20, 1958, after more than a third of a century
behind the walls of Joliet prison, a prediction that Darrow
had made to Leopold was realized. "The day will come
when society will accept the idea that somehow every debt
must be considered paid," the attorney had written to him
when the future seemed bleakest.
Despite outraged protests, Leopold was paroled to serve
out five years as a laboratory technician in the Church of
the Brethren missionary hospital in Castaner, Puerto Rico.
There, deep in the island's rugged, isolated coffee coun
try, he is seeking his redemption in service to mankind.
As yet, redemption has eluded him.
Ramon Perez, the director of the Puerto Rican parole
system, claims that Leopold is "one of my best parole
cases," but admits: "No, Leopold's rehabilitation is not
complete. He still presses too hard. He is too anxious to
impress the parole board with the completeness of his
moral redemption to have .found inner peace."
Leopold's existence as a $10-a-month x-ray and lab
technician is ascetic. One visitor to the hospital com
mented, "I don't see how he's much better off here than
in prison. His living conditions were probably better there.
To Nathan Leopold, however, there is a difference: the
air he breathes is free.
The Church of the Brethren hospital is poor. Luxuries
for personnel are nonexistent. Leopold's almost bare room
in a ramshackle CCC barracks is divided by a curtain. On
the side nearest the door is a desk with two chairs. On
the battered desk is a typewriter. The cramped space on
the other side of the curtain is his sleeping quarters. You
get an overwhelming impression of monastic drabness.
Yet Leopold expresses satisfaction with his Spartan lite
of today. His only complaint he hasn't voiced it, but you
sense it is that the rigid terms of his parole curtail the
intellectual pursuits of a man with an inquisitive mind and
a genius IQ. -
Although he is painfully retiring, Leopold has made
many friends on the island. "Nobody ever called me
Nathan but my mother," he recalls. At prison it was always
"Nate" or "Babe." But now everybody at the hospital
calls him Nathan.
The female employees all much younger than he-u
his
al,iV101 w ay . &ucy ww" r - . 11,
motherly toward him. In th Wr.itl's main building,
casa arande whor cirio. administrative S1
live, there's a snack bar where they relax at night. Sn
times Leopold visits with them. .i
"We nlwavc t j ktai .Mcits." one g"'
says. "He doesn't talk much and he seems embarrassj"
when we ask him about himself, but he's such a j
man! We all fool kv, t u: i .rime, and w
aav. a pcuu iui ilia uuiiivAv
want to help him repent if he feels he must do more.
a vtpb 'si vc.r.t. r ii oiu nware
1 1 " hi prison, Lieopoia is ncuwv - , . jj
ll the wonders of nature he had known only thwugB
books. "Isn't that a nightingale?" he asked excitedly
day, seeing a graceful bird soar in the sky. "I've never w
one before. They're more beautiful than all the
(Continued on P?e
rmUv Weekly. July if, jfjf