In the 1920’s the American public was fascinated with fads. Having gone from working 60 to 70 hours a week to 40 hours, most people had more time for leisure. They had more time to listen to the radio and read newspapers. They now could follow the lives of famous people or follow strange and unusual trials. That is why these trials were so popular with the American public.

William Desmond Taylor was an actor/director who was found dead in his house on February 2, 1922. Witnesses reported hearing gunshots and some witness also saw a young, dark haired man leave the house. No one was ever arrested.

Fatty Arbuckle was one of the most highly paid actor/directors in the motion picture business by 1921. On September 17, 1921 he was arraigned in San Francisco and charged with the rape and murder of Virginia Rappe. The prosecutor was District Attorney Matthew Brady who was a friend of William Randolph Hearst, the coveted champion of yellow journalism. Hearst was very excited about this scandal because, as he said, it sold more newspapers then any other since the sinking of the Lusitanian. Arbuckle, however, was acquitted after three trials.

Reverend W. Hall and his lover Eleanor Mills were found dead on an abandoned farmland on September 14, 1922. The main suspects were the spouses of the two, Mrs. Halls brother Willie and their cousin Henry Carpenter. Mrs. Gibson, the Pig woman, lived nearby where the murders took place. In 1922 She reported seeing the murders. She saw two women and two men on the farmland. Then in 1926 she said there were six people, the two victims, Mrs. Hall, her two brothers, and Henry Carpenter. The jury didn’t believe Mrs. Gibson and let the suspects go. This case went down in history as being the most scandalous and complicated murder case in the history of the State of New Jersey.

Leopold-Loeb was another weird trial in the 1920's. Nineteen year old Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, two very bright students of the University of Chicago, conspired together to commit the perfect crime. They kidnapped and murdered a child of another wealthy family, Bobby Franks. They soon were arrested and later confessed to the crime. Their families hired defense attorneys Clarence Darrow and Benjamin Bachrach. Darrow soon took charged and changed the boy’s not guilty plea to guilty. This ensured that a judge would sentence them and not a jury. Darrow then brought in many psychologists to prove that the two boys weren’t in their right minds. Darrow was the first to do this and have it work. Leopold and Loeb were sentence to life in prison instead of the death penalty, which was the usually the case with crimes like this.