Statement to parole board by Nathan F Leopold, Jr.
"It is not possible to compress into a few minutes the thoughts and feelings of thirty-three years, especially if those years have been spent in prison. For here we have long hours to think, to think painfully, to regret bitterly, to repent fervently. A lot of those hours I have spent trying to understand how I could have possibly taken part in the horrible crime of which Richard Loeb and I were guilty. I cannot explain that even to myself. Maybe it cannot be expained satisfactorly, but I can give you a few facts and impressions which come out of my thinking.
I have been trying desperately to fathom this sitiation. I will never quit trying. I admired Richard Loeb extravagantly, beyond all bounds. I literally lived or died on his approval or disapproval. I would have done anything he asked, even when I knew he was wrong, even when I was revolted by what he suggested. And he wanted to do this terrible thing. Why, I cannot be sure. Certainly it was mad, irrational. Maybe there was some kind of juvenile protest, ab overwhelming desire to show that he could do it and get away with it...
I had no desire to do this terrible thing. On the contrary, the idea was repugnant to me. For weeks and weeks, until only a day or two before the crime, I was sure we would never go through with it, that it was only something to talk about and plan but never actually carry out. Loeb made sure thatr we would actually fo it. I could not stop him then, it was too late. I could not back out of the plan without being a quitter, and without forfeiting Loeb's friendship. Hard as it is for me now to understand it, these, at nineteen, seemed more important to me at that time than a young boy's life. True, Loeb did the actual killing, but that does not exonorate me. Where were my moral instincts, my conscience?
The only thing that comes out of my thinking that even bears on it is that at nineteen my growth and developments were unnatural; my thinking was of a grown person; but I had the feelings of an undeveloped infant. I was like an intelligent savage, who knows no law but my own elementary desire...
In school I had no trouble. I learned easily. I was several years ahead of the kids my age. I entered college at fifteen. The result was that I was always in the company if boyss three or four years older than I. What a difference three or four years can make at that age! Wich school studies and the things you learn from books, I had no trouble. But what you learn from people- from your friends- I missed entirely.
You might say I skipped completely the early teens and with that skip I lost the growth of character and the personality rhat normally goes with them. Mt emotions were at least five years behind my thinking. When they did finally catch up. which is not until I had been here in prison five years, I was shocked that I had not been able to feel things more deeply much earlier. Since that day I have been able to live with others as well as myself.
This does not explain much. I wish to God I could explain more; but it is all that has come of my long years of thinking about it...On the one hand, I admired Loeb, was attracted to him with the violence and lopsidedness only extreme youth can know. On the other hand, I missed the growth and development that takes place in the early teens; I did not have the moral strength and understanding to resist.
When my emotions did finally mature, when about twenty five, remorse for what I had done set in and has never left me since; not for a single day. How can I hope to explain to you about that? To understand it, a man would have had to experience it, would have to have done something as horrible as I did, and repent it. You cannot possibly picture it. I canot describe it.
Certainly it is the strongest emotion I have ever had. It is with me constantly, sometimes in the front of my mind so that I can think of nothing else, but even when my mind is occupied with other problems, it is always there in the corner of my mind. It tinges my thinking all day, every day.
If you have stolen something you can return it, or you can work to pay its owner back. Even if you have injured somebody physically, you can try somehow to make it up to him. But to participate in the death of a human life, what is there you can do? You cannot bring the victim back to life.
Gentlemen, it is not easy to live with murder on your conscience. The fact that you know you did not do the actual killing does not help. My punishment has not been light. I have spent over one third of a century in prison. During that time I have lost most of those who were near and dear to me. I never had an opportunity to say a prayer on their graves; I forfeited all home and family; forfeited all the chance of an honorable career. But the worst punishment comes from inside me. It is the torment of my own conscience. I can say that will be true the rest of my days.
The only thing I have found in all these years that helped at all is to try to be useful to others. There are not many opportunities in prison to help other people. What few I have been able to find, I have seized eagerly- the prison correspondence school for exmple, and the malaria project. To them I have given my best effort. For it is when I have been able to be useful in a minor way rhat I have been happiest- or, at least, least unhappy...
One suggestion has been made that horrifies me- that if you order my release, I spend my time lecturing on juvenile delinquency, or the causes of crime. I shudder at the thought. I am not an expert on anything. I will be lucky if I can make myy own way if I am fortunate enough to be paroled. certainly, I am not competent to lecture to others.
If I am fortunate enough to be releasedm all I want is to find some quiet spot with some organization, where I can live quietly and modestly in an attempt to attone for my crime.." -Nathan F. Leopold Jr.