Page:The plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on trial for murder.djvu/40

 moved by money, not moved by passion or hatred, by nothing except the vague wanderings of children, they rented a machine, and about four o'clock in the afternoon started to find somebody to kill. For nothing.

They went over to the Harvard School. Dick's little brother was there, on the playground. Dick went there himself in open daylight, known by all of them, he had been a pupil there himself, the school was near his home, and he looked over the little boys.

Your Honor has been in these courts for a long time; you have listened to murder cases before. Has any such case ever appeared here or in any of the books? Has it ever come to the human experience of any judge, or any lawyer, or any person of affairs'? Never once!

Ordinarily there would be no sort of question of the condition of these boys' minds. The question is raised only because their parents have money.

They first picked out a little boy named Levinson, and Dick trailed him around.

Now, of course, that is a hard story. It is a story that shocks one. A boy bent on killing, not knowing where he would go or who he would get, but seeking some victim.

Here is a little boy, but the circumstances are not opportune, and so he fails to get him.

As I think of that story of Dick trailing this little boy around, there comes to my mind a picture of Dr. Krohn; for sixteen years going in and out of the court rooms in this building and other buildings, trailing victims without regard to the name or sex or age or surroundings. But he had a motive, and his motive was cash, as I will show further. One was the mad act of a child: the other the cold, deliberate act of a man getting his living by dealing in blood.