Compulsion

We all found ourselves crowding into Wilk’s office. Wilk looked harrowed, his voice was hoarse. He gestured to the newspapers on his desk. On top was the American, with its scarehead: THEY’LL HANG, HORN VOWS.

“Now, fellows,” Wilk said, “if you want to know why we had to change the plea, there’s the answer. You’re all part of it. How can we hope to find even one unprejudiced citizen for this jury?” He would plead evidence in mitigation, merely that their lives might be spared.

What mitigating evidence? we all demanded.

If they had been boys from impoverished homes, Wilk pointed out, we would all agree there were mitigating conditions. But wasn’t there something beyond the social condition, a lower common denominator, something that forced the boys to kill? That was what the psychiatrists were trying to find.

A dozen voices demanded, Was it true that the psychiatrists had reported there was nothing wrong with the boys? The report of Dr. Allwin and Dr. Storrs was a private one, Edgar Feldscher put in sharply.

“Why?” demanded Mike. “What are you trying to hide?”

There might be some private family matters that had nothing to do with the crime, Feldscher said calmly.

Mike retorted, “There’s nothing private about murder.”

Wilk addressed Mike directly. “Now why do you want to go printing stuff you don’t know is true?” He slapped his hand down on the newspaper. “What do you want to make up stuff like this for?”

If anything was made up, Mike taunted, then let Wilk release the facts to disprove it.

“The facts will come out in court,” Wilk said, “and all of you will get them at the same time.”

“I’ll get them before that, if I can!” Mike snapped. “And I’ll get my own facts, not the facts you want us to have.”

There was a murmur, something like “Aw, play ball.” But Mike marched out.

On the secretary’s desk was a pile of documents, just delivered from a typing service. The secretary was in the main office with the rest of us. Mike’s eye took in the doctors’ names, on the top sheet. He picked up a copy of the Storrs-Allwin report and simply walked out of the office with it.

Mike’s paper was on the street in two hours, with a full page of sensational quotes from the confidential report. Instantly, we were called to come back to Wilk’s office. Even as I dodged across the Loop streets, I was skimming Mike’s scoop. Under “Sex Pact” there appeared for the first time the story of their curious agreement, after the A

In Wilk’s office there was an atmosphere of outrage. Edgar Feldscher handed out all the available copies of the report, with one last attempt to caution us. “This should never have got out,” he said. “Not that we want to hide anything from the public, but because these studies are still incomplete. We’re pleading mitigation, mercy, because these studies show that the boys were not entirely responsible – indeed they were far from responsible – for what they were doing, in the sense that they were not in mental and moral health.”

It may be that he said it as well, then, to our circle of reporters, as it was ever said in court. As we hurried out with our copies, we talked angrily of Mike and his scoop. Only Da

And it must be asked, had Mike never stolen that report, would all that we know have become known? Would even that slight mention, “He admits to four other episodes” – characterized as A, B, C, D, and not further examined – ever have come to public knowledge?

The report had one stu

For the alienists showed in detail how Artie had been the instigator, the leader, and Judd his “gang”. Judd had been tied to him in passion. While Tom rushed out the excerpts, I phoned Horn. He was in high spirits, alternating between ridicule of all that flimflam and indignant demands that the obscure parts be illuminated. “A, B, C, D – that’s all crime means to Mr. Wilk and his friends!” Horn shouted. “Just a couple of little boys that can say A, B, C, D, with a murder for each!” And that gland stuff – the boys were known in jail to be in perfect health. As for all those daydreams, kings and slaves, was Wilk actually going to come into court with that nonsense? No wonder he wouldn’t dare face a jury!

The terrible pressure of catching up with the American was over. Going home, I took the report along. I had really only skimmed it. After supper, I passed by Wilk’s apartment, and ran into Willie Weiss. He started at once on the report. What did I think? The material on Judd – his tremendous conflicts: Was he a boy or a girl? Was he a Jew or a Christian? Willie had never himself realized how completely Judd was torn.

From what he said, I had completely missed the important meanings of the material. We went to an ice-cream parlour on 61st Street, and Willie, with that feverish argumentative way he had, started to show me what I had missed.

Why had I paid so little attention to the family history? “Look at this-” There had been three unsuccessful pregnancies before Judd was born, and his mother had been sick throughout her pregnancy with him. Judd had always blamed himself for her illness, even for her death.

“He must have blamed his father, too,” Willie added. “Don’t forget he’s precocious. Kids get a strange idea, when they first begin to catch on – they imagine that fathers do something terrible to mothers. And this child feels his birth killed his mother, but his father killed her first. It’s the classic complex, the Oedipus-”

The term was not so popular then, but passionately Willie explained to me how well the Oedipal situation fitted the case, the boy in love with his mother, hating his father.

“His Baby Book records his first step at three months, his first word at four months.”

From the very earliest impressions, Judd was made to feel he was someone utterly extraordinary. And with this he had to keep up.

A small and sickly child, “until he was nine he had gastrointestinal disorders, complicated by fever, headaches, vomiting.” Anxiety, said Willie. He had been rather effeminate up to that age – that was the period of the girls’ school. “How could this child know what he really was?” Willie demanded. “He’s small, delicate like a girl; he hates girls because he knows he should be more of a boy, yet he is always thrust among girls. His father tries to send him to public school, but his mother still insists her darling is too frail, too special, too different. The father overrides the mother. Judd tries the public school.” Of this, the report said, “He realized his superiority over the other boys in wealthy parents, in the fact that his nurse accompanied him to and from school, and that he couldn’t attend the toilet in the school.”

“Poor bastard, holding himself in!” was Willie’s comment on this point. “Imagine this kid, feeling he is so special he can’t even use the can! No wonder he got a god complex!”

We turned back to the report. It went on to tell of his cataloguing all the churches, of his Mado

This Willie seized upon. It fitted perfectly. “You see, by the Mado