Leopold and Shinner

Abstract

76 PEGGY SHINNER LEOPOLD AND SHINNER 1 J une 2, 1957: “Should Leopold Be Paroled?” The Chicago Sunday Tribune wanted your opinion. So did Nathan Leopold. Leopold, who, along with Richard Loeb, murdered Bobby Franks in 1924. It was dubbed a “thrill kill,” murder for kicks, “the crime of the century.” Leopold and Loeb: young, smart, wealthy, educated, Jewish, homosexual. At the time of the murder, they were nineteen and eighteen years old, respectively, students at the University of Chicago, and lovers . Loeb was killed in prison in 1936. Now, after thirty-three years, Nathan Leopold would soon be up for parole. “Expiation ? Atonement? Whether I have paid my debt to society? . . . Other people will have to decide.” Other people did. Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of the Perry Mason detective series, and author of the introduction to Leopold’s prison memoir, Life Plus 99 Years, wrote, “Here is a man who [is trying to] live down the tragic mistake of his youth. . . . Will society meet him halfway?” Carl Sandburg invited him to his home. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet (Kup) expressed confidence that he would make an “exemplary parolee.” And, noting that his support was not limited to people of influence, Leopold said, “Little John Smith and Mrs. Mary Jones . . . are writing me every day.” My mother was one of the Mrs. Mary Joneses. Harriet Shinner , née Alter. She wrote a letter in support of Leopold’s parole. She was thirty-three, married with two children, ages six and two. Paying monthly mortgage payments on a two-bedroom brick ranch in Peterson Park on the northwest side of Chicago. She wore housecoats, monitored her weight, smoked Marlboros, played mah-jongg. Worried about money. Read popular novels (Peyton Place made the New York Times best seller list for fiftynine weeks in 1956–57). She had fair skin, a sharp nose, melancholy eyes. She was easily hurt. Born in 1924, the same year 77 Shinner as the murder; Jewish, like both the victim and the perpetrators (although Loeb’s mother was Catholic; thus, according to some, Loeb was not Jewish); and her husband’s name, my father’s, was also Nathan. As far as I know, she wasn’t particularly civicminded ; she wasn’t a member of the League of Women Voters or a volunteer at a soup kitchen, nor did she write letters to the editor about local ordinances, like some women did. She wasn’t that kind of woman. Nor was she, as far as I know, the kind of woman who would watch the House Un-American Activities Committee (huac) hearings during the spring of 1951, while she was pregnant with me, but, as she later told me, she did. I know that my mother wrote to Nathan Leopold because I have the letter that Leopold wrote to her. It’s addressed to Mrs. Nathan Shinner, a common erasure of self my mother subscribed to, I suspect, without hesitation. When I was at Stateville , making every effort to win my release, I promised myself that, once freed, I would send personal replies to all who wrote me. In prison I was restricted in ways that made general correspondence impossible, and I longed for the time when I might show my gratitude to all who were friendly enough to write a stranger. It has taken a long time, I fear, to get around to this letter, but finally the day has come. Finally the day has come. Did she await his letter with as much anticipation as he apparently felt before he wrote it? The letter is postmarked Puerto Rico—where Leopold went to work as a medical technician— and stamped with a soaring airplane, whose skyward trajectory seems to highlight the eager flight toward its destination. Postage was seven cents; the name of the return addressee simply n l. The raised punch of the typewritten letters, pounded, it appears, with steady force, comes through to the back of the envelope. I found the letter in a drawer in the hutch in our dining room when I was snooping around for secrets. It was an idle kind of snooping, a listless looking around, propelled by a subterranean, undirected...