Simon Baatz > Quotes

“He wondered how Nathan felt about the killing. Granted that Richard had struck Bobby with the chisel, nevertheless, he asked, how had Nathan felt about the boy’s death? It didn’t concern him, Nathan replied. He had no moral beliefs and religion meant nothing to him: he was an atheist. Whatever served an individual’s purpose—that was the best guide to conduct. In”
― Simon Baatz, For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago

“Machinery. His former belief that crime was a matter of choice, a willful act freely taken, was now replaced by its opposite, the conviction that environmental circumstances—poverty, unemployment, illiteracy—determined criminal behavior. Indeed Darrow went farther than Altgeld in his determinism. An individual, Darrow believed, could not choose not to commit crime if circumstances dictated otherwise—free will was an illusion and a chimera,”
― Simon Baatz, For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago