O.G. True Crime Non Fiction Novel

Title: Compulsion

Rating: 5 Stars

When I went to hear James Ellroy speak, he mentioned two novels that inspired his true crime writing career. First there was True Confessions, about the Black Dahlia murder. The second was Compulsion, a very thinly fictionalized version of the Leopold and Loeb murder of Bobby Frank. Of the two, Compulsion is the superior novel and is ground breaking in many ways.

I’d never heard of Compulsion. With all of the hoopla regarding Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and how innovative it was, I just assumed that it was the original of its genre. After all, Truman Capote claimed it was a new type, the non-fiction novel. The novel In Cold Blood, which I enjoyed, was written in 1966. Compulsion was written in 1956.

Before I go too much into the novel, let’s first talk about the crime upon which it was based. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were two brilliant young men from wealthy families in Chicago. They were 19 and 18 respectively. By that age, Leopold had already graduated from the University of Chicago.

When they were introduced, they quickly became nearly inseparable. Loeb was obsessed with murder mysteries. Leopold was obsessed with Nietzsche, specifically his philosophy of the Superman, those very few people that are so great that they are beyond social constraints such as law.

Leopold was also obsessed with Loeb. They made a pact. Leopold would plan a murder with Loeb in exchange for Loeb’s sexual favors.

They spent many months planning the perfect murder. In May of 1924, they kidnapped a younger neighborhood child named Bobby Franks. They immediately killed him and stuffed his body into a culvert. They then started their elaborate scheme to collect a ransom. The ransom was for ten thousand dollars, a relative pittance to children of millionaires. Generally it’s believed that the ransom was just part of their weird game.

It all fell apart almost immediately. The body was not well hidden and was discovered while the ransom was still being negotiated. Leopold somehow managed to leave his glasses (which had a very special hinge that nearly uniquely identified him) behind. When brought in for questioning, their alibis fell apart. Loeb confessed first, claiming Leopold actually did the killing. Leopold then confessed and pointed the finger at Loeb. To this day no one really knows who killed Franks, although most people think it was Loeb.

Given the youth and status of both the murderers and the victim as well as the Nietzschean motiveless nature of the murder, the case quickly became one of the first ‘crimes of the century’. There was tremendous nationwide and local coverage. It was generally believed that if anyone deserved the death penalty, it would be those two.

Enter Clarence Darrow, the great lawyer of the time. Usually taking the cause of the downtrodden and the indigent, he took the case due to his passionate hatred of capital punishment.

With Darrow’s presence, the crime of the century became the trial of the century. Pleading the two men guilty, Darrow just tried to save their lives. Bringing in psychiatrists from all over the country to analyze the two, he tried to make the case that even though the young men are guilty and should never be freed again, that there are mitigating circumstances that should spare them the death penalty.

Ultimately he succeeds and both are sentenced to life imprisonment. Loeb is shanked in a shower several years into his sentence and dies. Leopold ultimately spends over thirty years in prison before getting paroled. He moves to Puerto Rico and lives there for some years before dying of natural causes.

The author, Meyer Levin, was a peer to Leopold and Loeb and worked for a Chicago newspaper during the crime and trial. Writing some thirty years later, he brings it all back to life.

He does change names, but only slightly. Instead of Leopold and Loeb, we have Judd Steiner and Artie Strauss. For Clarence Darrow, there is Jonathon Wilk. There’s even Sid Silver, who is Levin’s own caricature.

The novel follows the actual story quite closely. In fact, during Wilk’s summation, he quotes entire paragraphs from Darrow’s summation.

It’s more than just a recitation of facts. Levin gets deep inside the head of Steiner and Strauss and gives them thoughts, emotions, and motivations that are of his own invention. He gives full range to their fantasies and to their troubled psychological states.

Not just Steiner and Strauss but all of the major characters are deeply inspected and exposed to public view.

In fact, thirty years later, when the book was released, Leopold was horrified when he read it. He said that it left him feeling naked and exposed.

Considering that it was written in 1956, the homosexual relationship between Steiner and Strauss was handled relatively explicitly and sensitively. Sure, there are policemen and reporters calling them perverts, but that was the time of 1924. The actual relationship between the two described in the novel seemed well rendered.

In my opinion, In Cold Blood owes much to Compulsion. It’s really obvious in the structure, as the reader gets a birds eye view of the two planning the crime, the police and the reporters trying to solve the crime, the cat and mouse game between the two and the police, as well as the trial. In fact, the respective confession scenes between the two sets of killers struck me as quite similar in nature.

At the end of the novel, there is an extensive discussion of Steiner’s psychological state. Reading this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the final scene in Psycho as Norman Bates sits quietly alone in a room as you listen to a psychiatrist discuss in some details the motivations behind his actions.

One final note about the fact that it was written in 1956. In 1924, the philosophy of Nietzsche seemed exotic but probably theoretical. Writing in 1956, after the rise and fall of Nazism and their exaltation of themselves as some master race, Levin creates a thread between the beliefs that drove Steiner and Strauss to senseless murder to the senseless murder of millions by the Nazis.

If you’re a fan of true crime, if you haven’t read this yet, you should add it to your list. It’s one of the original examples and even now, over sixty years later, it still sits atop the genre.