Leopold and Loeb

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Nathan Leopold

Nathan Leopold ca. 1924
Born November 19, 1904
Chicago, Illinois
Died August 30, 1971 (aged 66)
Puerto Rico
Richard Loeb

Richard Loeb ca. 1924
Born June 11, 1905
Chicago, Illinois
Died January 28, 1936 (aged 30
Joliet, Illinois

Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. (November 19, 1904 – August 29, 1971) and Richard A. Loeb (June 11, 1905 – January 28, 1936), more commonly known as Leopold and Loeb, were two wealthy University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, and were sentenced to life in prison.[1]

The duo was motivated to murder Franks by their desire to commit a perfect crime. Once apprehended, Leopold and Loeb retained Clarence Darrow as counsel for the defense; Darrow’s summation in their trial is noted for its influential criticisms of the capital punishment and retributive, as opposed to rehabilitative, penal systems.

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[edit] Motive

Leopold, age 19 at the time of the murder, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be Nietzschean supermen who could commit a "perfect crime" (in this case a kidnapping and murder).[2]

The friends were exceptionally intelligent: Leopold had already completed college and was attending law school at the University of Chicago.[2] He studied fifteen languages and spoke five[3] and was an expert ornithologist, while Loeb was the youngest graduate in the history of the University of Michigan.[2] Leopold planned to transfer to Harvard Law School in September, after taking a trip to Europe. Loeb planned to enter the University of Chicago Law School after taking some post-graduate courses.[2]

Both Leopold and Loeb lived in Kenwood, a wealthy Jewish neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Loeb's father, Albert, began his career as a lawyer and became the Vice President of Sears and Roebuck. Besides owning an impressive mansion in Kenwood, two blocks away from the Leopold home, the Loeb family also had a summer estate in Charlevoix, Michigan. Franks' family, originally Jewish, had renounced their Jewish faith to convert to Christianity.[4] Richard Loeb was born to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father.

Leopold and Loeb met at the University of Chicago as teenagers. Leopold agreed to act as Loeb's accomplice as long as Loeb had passionate sex with him.[5] Beginning with petty theft, the pair committed a series of more and more serious crimes; the series culminated in murder.[2]

[edit] Timeline

Ransom Note
Ransom Note

Leopold and Loeb spent a few months planning the murder, working out a way to get ransom money with little risk of being caught.[6] On Wednesday, May 21, 1924, they put their plot in motion. The pair lured Franks, a neighbor and distant relative of Loeb's, into a rented car. Either Loeb or Leopold first struck Franks with a chisel.[7] Leopold or Loeb then stuffed a sock into Franks' mouth. Franks died soon thereafter.

The killers covered the body of the boy and drove to a remote area near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana. They removed Franks' clothing and left them by the side of the road. Leopold and Loeb poured hydrochloric acid[8] on the body to make identification more difficult. Leopold and Loeb then had dinner at a Hammond, Indiana, hot dog stand. After finishing their meal, they concealed the body in a culvert at the Pennsylvania RR tracks near 118th street, Chicago, IL, north of Wolf Lake. After returning to Chicago, they then called Franks' mother and told her that her son had been kidnapped. They mailed the ransom note to the Franks. The killers burned items of their own clothing that had been spotted with blood. They also attempted to clean the blood stains off of the upholstery of their rented automobile. The two then spent the rest of the evening playing cards.

Before the family could pay the ransom, though, Tony Minke, a Polish immigrant, discovered the body.[6][7] When Leopold and Loeb learned that the body had been found, they destroyed the typewriter used to write the ransom note and burned the robe used to move the body.[6][7]

A pair of eyeglasses were found near the body. The glasses were ordinary, except that they had a special hinge mechanism. In Chicago, only three people had purchased glasses with such a hinge mechanism, and one of those people was Nathan Leopold.[9]

Leopold told police that he had lost the glasses that were in his pocket while bird watching.[10] Loeb told the police that Leopold was with him the night of the murder. Leopold and Loeb's story was that they had picked up two women in Leopold's car. They dropped them off near a golf course and never learned the women's last names. Unfortunately for Leopold and Loeb, Leopold's car was being repaired by Leopold's chauffeur that same night. The chauffeur's wife also said the car was in the Leopold garage that night.

During police questioning, Leopold's and Loeb's alibis broke down. Loeb confessed first, followed by Leopold.[11] Although their confessions were in agreement about most major facts in the case, each blamed the other for the actual killing.[6] Loeb's family hired 67-year-old Clarence Darrow — a well-known opponent of capital punishment — to defend the men against the capital charges of murder and kidnapping.[12] While the media expected Leopold and Loeb to plead not guilty (by reason of insanity), Darrow surprised everyone by having them both plead guilty. In this way, Darrow avoided a jury trial which Darrow believed would most certainly have resulted in a conviction and perhaps even the death penalty.[12] Instead, he was able to make his case for his clients' lives before a single person, Cook County Circuit Court Judge John R. Caverly.

During the 12-hour hearing on the final day, Darrow gave a speech, which has been called the finest of his career. The speech included: "this terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor … Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? … it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university."[13]

In the end, Darrow succeeded. The judge sentenced Leopold and Loeb each to life in prison (for the murder), plus 99 years each (for the kidnapping).[12]

[edit] Prison and later life

At Joliet Prison, Leopold and Loeb used their educations to good purpose, teaching classes in the prison school.[14] In January 1936, Loeb was attacked by fellow prisoner James Day with a straight razor in the prison's shower room, and died from his wounds.[2][14] Day claimed afterwards that Loeb had attempted to sexually assault him; an inquiry accepted Day's testimony, and the prison authorities ruled that Day's attack on Loeb was self-defense.[2][14] That inspired the newsman Ed Lahey to write in the Chicago Daily News, "Richard Loeb, despite his erudition, today ended his sentence with a proposition."[15] Years later, Day's cellmate admitted that the killing had been planned.

In 1944, Leopold participated in the Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study, in which he volunteered to be infected with malaria.[16] Early in 1958, after 33 years in prison, Leopold was released on parole.[2][3] While in prison he mastered an astounding 27 different languages. That year he wrote an autobiography titled Life plus Ninety Nine Years.[2][3] Leopold moved to Puerto Rico to avoid media attention, and married a widowed florist.[2][3] He died of a heart attack on August 30, 1971 at the age of 66.[2][3] He donated his organs.[2] Leopold and Loeb have been referenced several times in popular culture (see below).

[edit] Impact on popular culture

Leopold and Loeb have been the inspiration for many works in film, theater and fiction, such as the 1929 play Rope by Patrick Hamilton, which served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's film of the same name. In 1956, Meyer Levin revisited the case in his novel Compulsion, a fictionalized version of the actual events in which the names of the pair were changed to "Steiner and Strauss." Three years later, the novel was made into a film of the same name, directed by Richard Fleischer.

Other works inspired by the case include the 1985 play Never The Sinner by John Logan, Tom Kalin's more openly gay-themed 1992 film Swoon, Michael Haneke's 1997 Austrian film Funny Games, Barbet Schroeder's Murder by Numbers (2002), and Stephen Dolginoff's 2005 off-Broadway musical Thrill Me - The Leopold and Loeb Story.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Homicide in Chicago 1924 Leopold & Loeb Retrieved 26 March 2008.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l The Leopold and Loeb Trial:A Brief Account by Douglas O. Linder. 1997. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
  3. ^ a b c d e Freedom by Marilyn Bardsley. Crime Library - Courtroom Television Network, LLC. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
  4. ^ Crime Library – Bobby Franks. Retrieved 26 March 2008.
  5. ^ Leopold and Loeb's Perfect Crime by Denise Noe. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
  6. ^ a b c d Statement of Nathan F. Leopold Northwestern University Retrieved 30 October 2007.
  7. ^ a b c Statement of Richard Loeb Northwestern University Retrieved 30 October 2007.
  8. ^ Crime Library – Enter Clarence Darrow. Retrieved 26 March 2008.
  9. ^ The Glasses: The Key Link to Leopold and Loeb UMKC Law. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
  10. ^ Chicago Daily News, 2 June 1924
  11. ^ Chicago Daily News, 10 September 1924, pg. 3
  12. ^ a b c Gilbert Geis and Leigh B. Bienen, Crimes of the Century (Boston, 1998).
  13. ^ John Thomas Scopes, World's greatest court trial. Cincinnati : National Book Co., 1925, pp. 178-179, 182.
  14. ^ a b c Life & Death In Prison by Marilyn Bardsley. Crime Library - Courtroom Television Network, LLC. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
  15. ^ Dr. Ink (August 23, 2002). Ask Dr. Ink. Poynter Online.
  16. ^ Leopold, Nathan F., Jr. Life Plus 99 Years. Lowe and Brydone (Printers) Limited, 1958.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links