Homicide (from 58 inflicted wounds from a razor attack)
Criminal charge
Murder, kidnapping
Penalty
Life + 99 years' imprisonment
Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. (November 19, 1904 – August 29, 1971)[1] and Richard Albert Loeb (/ˈloʊb/; June 11, 1905 – January 28, 1936), usually referred to collectively as Leopold and Loeb, were two American students at the University of Chicago who kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago, Illinois, United States, on May 21, 1924. They committed the murder – characterized at the time as "the crime of the century"[2] – hoping to demonstrate superior intellect,[3] which they believed enabled and entitled them to carry out a "perfect crime" without consequences.
After the two men were arrested, Loeb's family retained Clarence Darrow as lead counsel for their defense. Darrow's twelve-hour summation at their sentencing hearing is noted for its influential criticism of capital punishment as retributive rather than transformative justice. Both young men were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years. Loeb was murdered by a fellow prisoner in 1936. Leopold was released on parole in 1958. The case has since served as the inspiration for several dramatic works.
Early lives
Nathan Leopold
Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. was born on November 19, 1904, in Chicago, Illinois, the third son of Florence (née Foreman) and Nathan Leopold Sr., a wealthy German-Jewish immigrant family.[4][5] A child prodigy, Leopold was recorded in his baby book as having spoken his first words at the age of four months and three weeks old.[4] Leopold began his college studies at the University of Michigan, but later returned home to study at the University of Chicago.[6] At the time of the murder, he had completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago with Phi Beta Kappa honors and planned to begin studies at Harvard Law School after a trip to Europe.[7]
By many accounts, Leopold was sensitive about his appearance.[8] He threw himself into intellectual pursuits where he met with remarkable success. Leopold had studied fifteen languages and claimed to speak five fluently.[9] He had achieved a measure of national recognition as an ornithologist.[7] Leopold and several other ornithologists identified nesting sites of Kirtland's warblers and made astute observations about the parasitic nesting behavior of brown-headed cowbirds, which threatened the warblers.[10] He maintained his interest in birds after his crime, raising birds in prison and working to help with the struggling Puerto Rican Parrot population after his release on parole.[11]
Richard Loeb
Richard Albert Loeb was born on June 11, 1905, in Chicago, the third of four sons of Anna Henrietta (née Bohnen) and Albert Henry Loeb, a wealthy lawyer and retired vice president of Sears, Roebuck & Company.[12] His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic.[13] Like Leopold, Loeb was exceptionally intelligent. He was an avid reader, with a passion for history and crime stories. At age 12, he entered the innovative University High School. With the encouragement of his governess, he completed his high school education in two years. In 1923,[14] at the age of 17,[15] he would become the University of Michigan's youngest graduate. Following graduation from Michigan, Loeb enrolled in a few history classes at the University of Chicago.[16]
Loeb was not as strictly intellectual as Leopold. He often socialized, played tennis, and read detective novels.[7][17]
Adolescence and early crimes
The two young men grew up with their families in the affluent Kenwood neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. The Loebs owned a summer estate (the farm part of which is now called Castle Farms and is a popular wedding venue) in Charlevoix, Michigan, as well as a mansion in Kenwood, two blocks from the Leopold home.
Though Leopold and Loeb knew each other casually while growing up, they began to see more of each other in mid-1920s,[17] and their relationship flourished at the University of Chicago, as part of a mutual friend group. Their sexual relationship began in February of 1921 and continued until the pair were arrested.[18] Leopold was particularly fascinated by Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of "supermen" (Übermenschen), interpreting them as transcendent individuals possessing extraordinary and unusual capabilities, whose superior intellects allowed them to rise above the laws and rules that bound the unimportant, average populace.[7]
Leopold believed it was possible that he and Loeb could become such individuals, and as such, by his interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrines, they were not bound by any of society's normal ethics or rules.[7] In a letter to Loeb, he wrote, "A superman ... is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do."[19]
The pair began asserting their perceived immunity from normal restrictions with acts of petty theft and vandalism.[17][20] Breaking into a fraternity house at the University of Michigan, they stole penknives, a camera, and a typewriter that they later used to type the ransom note for their murder victim, Bobby Franks. Emboldened, they progressed to a series of more serious crimes, including arson,[21] but no one seemed to notice. Disappointed with the absence of media coverage of their crimes, they decided to plan and execute a sensational "perfect crime" that would garner public attention and confirm their self-perceived status as "supermen".[22]
Murder of Bobby Franks
Bobby Franks
Leopold and Loeb, who were 19 and 18, respectively, at the time, settled on kidnapping and murdering a younger adolescent as their perfect crime. They spent seven months planning everything, from the method of abduction to disposal of the body. To obfuscate the actual nature of their crime and motive, they decided to make a ransom demand, and devised an intricate plan for collecting it involving a long series of complex instructions to be communicated, one set at a time, by phone. They typed the final set of instructions involving the actual money drop in the form of a ransom note, using the typewriter stolen from the fraternity house. A chisel was purchased to knock their victim unconscious.[23] They also purchased a length of rope; to make sure each of them was equally culpable in the murder, they planned to wrap it around their victim's neck and each pull on one end, strangling him to death.
After a lengthy search for a suitable victim, mostly on the grounds of the Harvard School for Boys in the Kenwood area,[24] where Leopold had been educated, the pair decided upon Robert "Bobby" Franks, the 14-year-old son of wealthy Chicago watch manufacturer Jacob Franks. Bobby Franks was an across-the-street neighbor of Loeb's who had played tennis at the Loeb residence several times.[25]
Leopold and Loeb put their plan in motion on the afternoon of May 21, 1924. Using an automobile that Leopold rented under the name Morton D. Ballard, they offered Franks a ride as he walked home from school. The boy initially refused, because his destination was less than two blocks away,[26] but Loeb persuaded him to enter the car to discuss a tennis racket that he had been using. The precise sequence of the events that followed remains in dispute, but a preponderance of opinion placed Leopold behind the wheel of the car while Loeb sat in the back seat with the chisel. Loeb struck Franks, who was sitting in front of him in the passenger seat, several times in the head with the chisel, then dragged him into the back seat and gagged him, where he died.[27]
With the body on the floor of the back seat, out of view, the men drove to their predetermined dumping spot near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana, 25 miles (40 km) south of Chicago. After nightfall, they removed and discarded Franks' clothes, then concealed the body in a culvert along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks north of the lake. To obscure the body's identity, they poured hydrochloric acid on the face and genitals to disguise the fact that he had been circumcised,[28] as circumcision was unusual among non-Jews in the United States at the time.
The ransom note
By the time the two men returned to Chicago, word had already spread that Franks was missing. Leopold called Franks' mother, identifying himself as "George Johnson", and told her that Franks had been kidnapped; instructions for delivering the ransom would follow. After mailing the typed ransom note and burning their blood-stained clothing, then cleaning the blood stains from the rented vehicle's upholstery, they spent the remainder of the evening playing cards.[29]
Once the Franks family received the ransom note on the following morning, Leopold called a second time and dictated the first set of instructions for the ransom payment. The intricate plan stalled almost immediately when a nervous family member forgot the address of the store where he was supposed to receive the next set of directions, and it was abandoned entirely when word came that Franks' body had been found. Leopold and Loeb destroyed the typewriter and burned a car robe (lap blanket) they had used to move the body.[23][27] They then went about their lives as usual.[30]
Chicago police launched an intensive investigation; rewards were offered for information. Both Leopold and Loeb enjoyed chatting with friends and family members about the murder. Leopold discussed the case with his professor and a girl friend, joking that he would confess and give her the reward money.[31] Loeb helped a couple of reporter friends of his find the drug store he and Leopold had tried to send Jacob Franks to, and when asked to describe Bobby he replied: "If I were to murder anybody, it would be just such a cocky little son of a bitch as Bobby Franks."[32]
Police found a pair of eyeglasses near Franks' body. Although common in prescription and frame, they were fitted with an unusual hinge purchased by only three customers in Chicago, one of whom was Leopold.[17][33] When questioned, Leopold offered the possibility that his glasses might have dropped out of his pocket during a bird-watching trip the previous weekend.[34]
Leopold and Loeb were summoned for formal questioning on May 29.[35] They asserted that on the night of the murder, they had picked up two women in Chicago using Leopold's car, then dropped them off some time later near a golf course without learning their last names. Their alibi was exposed as a fabrication when Leopold's chauffeur told police that he was repairing Leopold's car while the men claimed to be using it. The chauffeur's wife confirmed that the car was parked in the Leopold garage on the afternoon of the murder.[17][36] The destroyed typewriter was recovered from the Jackson Park Lagoon on June 7.[37][38]
Confession
Loeb was the first to confess.[17] He asserted that Leopold had planned everything and had killed Franks in the back seat of the car while he (Loeb) drove. Leopold's confession followed swiftly thereafter.[39] He insisted that he was the driver and Loeb the murderer. Their confessions otherwise corroborated most of the evidence in the case.[23][27] Both confessions were announced by the state's attorney on May 31.[40]
Leopold later claimed, long after Loeb was dead, that he pleaded in vain with Loeb to admit to killing Franks. "Mompsie feels less terrible than she might, thinking you did it," he quotes Loeb as saying, "and I'm not going to take that shred of comfort away from her."[41] Most observers believed that Loeb did strike the fatal blows.[20] Some circumstantial evidence – including testimony from eyewitness Carl Ulvigh, who claimed that he saw Loeb driving and Leopold in the back seat minutes before the kidnapping – suggested that Leopold could have been the killer.[42]
Both Leopold and Loeb admitted that they were driven by their thrill-seeking, Übermenschen (supermen) delusions, and their aspiration to commit a "perfect crime".[7] Neither claimed to have looked forward to the killing, but Leopold admitted interest in learning what it would feel like to be a murderer. He was disappointed to note that he felt the same as ever.[43]
The trial of Leopold and Loeb at Chicago's Cook County Criminal Court became a media spectacle and the third – after those of Harry Thaw and Sacco and Vanzetti – to be labeled "the trial of the century."[44] The Leopold and Loeb families hired the renowned criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow to lead the defense team. It was rumored that Darrow was paid $1 million[45] for his services, but he was actually paid $65,000[46] (equivalent to $1,200,000 in 2023). Darrow took the case because he was a staunch opponent of capital punishment.
While it was generally assumed that the men's defense would be based on a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, Darrow concluded that a jury trial would almost certainly end in conviction and the death penalty.[45] Thus, he elected to enter a plea of guilty, hoping to convince Cook County Circuit Court Judge John R. Caverly to impose sentences of life imprisonment.[47]
The trial, technically an extended sentencing hearing, as their guilty pleas had already been accepted, ran for thirty-two days. The state's attorney, Robert E. Crowe, presented over 100 witnesses, documenting details of the crime. The defense presented extensive psychiatric testimony in an effort to establish mitigating circumstances, including childhood neglect in the form of absent parenting, and in Leopold's case, sexual abuse by a governess.[7][17]
One piece of evidence was a letter written by Leopold claiming that he and Loeb were having a homosexual affair. Both the prosecution and the defense interpreted this information as supportive of their own position.[48] Darrow called a series of expert witnesses, who offered a catalog of Leopold's and Loeb's abnormalities. One witness testified to their dysfunctional endocrine glands, another to the delusions that had led to their crime.[17]
Darrow's speech
Darrow's impassioned, eight-hour-long "masterful plea"[49] at the conclusion of the hearing has been called the finest speech of his career.[50] Its principal arguments were that the methods and punishments of the American justice system were inhumane, and the youth and immaturity of the accused:[17][51][52]
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.
We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day [during World War I]. We read about it and we rejoiced in it – if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it.
It will take fifty years to wipe it out of the human heart, if ever. I know this, that after the Civil War in 1865, crimes of this sort increased, marvelously. No one needs to tell me that crime has no cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease, and I know that out of the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War crime increased as America had never seen before. I know that Europe is going through the same experience today; I know it has followed every war; and I know it has influenced these boys so that life was not the same to them as it would have been if the world had not made red with blood.
Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing out of the war. Not necessarily by those who fought but by those that learned that blood was cheap, and human life was cheap, and if the State could take it lightly why not the boy?
Has the court any right to consider anything but these two boys? The State says that your Honor has a right to consider the welfare of the community, as you have. If the welfare of the community would be benefited by taking these lives, well and good. I think it would work evil that no one could measure. Has your Honor a right to consider the families of these defendants? I have been sorry, and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Franks, for those broken ties that cannot be healed. All I can hope and wish is that some good may come from it all. But as compared with the families of Leopold and Loeb, the Franks are to be envied – and everyone knows it.
Here is Leopold's father – and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him and he cared for him, he worked for him; the boy was brilliant and accomplished. He educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life's hopes crumble into dust.
And Loeb's the same. Here are the faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day, while Dickie's father and his mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, and shall be waiting for a message which means more to them than it can mean to you or me. Shall these be taken into account in this general bereavement?
The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own – these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients.
These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows. In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that sometime may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.
The judge was persuaded, but he explained in his ruling that his decision was based primarily on precedent and the youth of the accused. On September 10, 1924, he sentenced both Leopold and Loeb to life imprisonment for the murder, and an additional 99 years for the kidnapping.[17][45] A little over a month later, Loeb's father died of heart failure.[53]
Darrow's handling of the law as defense counsel has been criticized for hiding psychiatric expert testimony that conflicted with his polemical goals and for relying on an absolute denial of free will, one of the principles legitimizing all criminal punishment.[54]
Prison
Leopold (top) and Loeb (bottom), 1924
Leopold and Loeb initially were held at Joliet Prison. Although they were kept apart as much as possible, the two managed to maintain their friendship. Leopold was transferred to Stateville Penitentiary in 1925 for an appendectomy, and Loeb was transferred there in 1930. Once reunited, the two expanded the prison school system, adding a high school and junior college curriculum.[55]
Loeb's death
On January 28, 1936, Loeb was attacked by fellow inmate James Day with a straight razor in a shower room; he died soon after in the prison hospital. Day claimed that Loeb had attempted to sexually assault him, but he was unharmed while Loeb sustained more than fifty wounds, including defensive wounds on his arms and hands. His throat had been slashed from behind. News accounts suggested Loeb had propositioned Day, and though several prison officials including the Warden believed Loeb had been murdered, Day was found not guilty by a jury after a short trial in June, 1936.[7][55]
A sexual motive for the killing was suggested. While some sources state that newsman Ed Lahey began his story in the Chicago Daily News with the lead, "Richard Loeb, despite his erudition, today ended his sentence with a proposition"[56][57] – no evidence has been found that this lead was ever published, and actual copy from that date reads otherwise.[58]
On February 19, 1936, in a column printed in the Syracuse Journal, Mark Hellinger wrote, "I must tell you of the line that came to me from an unknown correspondent in Chicago. This anonymous contributor said he had the absolute low-down on the recent slaying of Dickie Loeb. Seems that Loeb made a slight mistake in grammar. He ended a sentence in a proposition..." Other newspapers at the time appeared to praise Day, who was later tried and acquitted of Loeb's murder.[59]
There is no evidence that Loeb was a sexual predator while in prison, but Day was later caught at least once in a sexual act with a fellow inmate.[60] In his autobiography, Life Plus 99 Years, Leopold ridiculed Day's claim that Loeb had attempted to sexually assault him. This was echoed by the prison's Catholic chaplain, a confidant of Loeb's, who said that it was more likely that Day attacked Loeb after Loeb rebuffed his advances.[61]
Leopold continued with his work after Loeb's death. Despite suffering from depression, he became a model prisoner and made many significant contributions to improving conditions at Stateville Penitentiary. These included reorganizing the prison library, revamping the schooling system and teaching its students, and volunteer work in the prison hospital. In 1944, Leopold volunteered for the Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study. He was deliberately inoculated with malaria pathogens and then subjected to several experimental malaria treatments.[62] He later wrote that all his good work in prison and after his release was an effort to compensate for his crime.[55]
In the early 1950s, author Meyer Levin, a classmate at the University of Chicago, requested Leopold's cooperation in writing a novel based on the Franks murder. Leopold responded that he did not wish his story told in fictionalized form, but offered Levin a chance to contribute to his own memoir, which was in progress. Levin, unhappy with that suggestion, went ahead with his book alone, despite Leopold's express objections. The novel, titled Compulsion,[63] was published in 1956.
Levin portrayed Leopold, under the pseudonym Judd Steiner, as a brilliant but deeply disturbed teenager, psychologically driven to kill because of his troubled childhood and an obsession with Loeb. Leopold later wrote that reading Levin's book made him "physically sick... More than once I had to lay the book down and wait for the nausea to subside. I felt as I suppose a man would feel if he were exposed stark-naked under a strong spotlight before a large audience."[64]
Leopold's autobiography, Life Plus 99 Years, was published in 1958[65] as part of his campaign to win parole.[19] His book was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 14 weeks,[66] and received mostly positive reviews, though some accused him of writing the book solely as a means of rehabilitating his public image by ignoring the dark side of his past.[67]
Leopold's post-prison years
Nathan Leopold in 1958
After 33 years and numerous unsuccessful petitions, Leopold was released on parole on March 13, 1958.[68][7][9] The Brethren Service Commission, a Church of the Brethren-affiliated program, accepted him as a medical technician at its hospital in Puerto Rico. He expressed his appreciation in an article: "To me the Brethren Service Commission offered the job, the home, and the sponsorship without which a man cannot be paroled. But it gave me so much more than that – the companionship, the acceptance, the love which would have rendered a violation of parole almost impossible."[69] He was known as "Nate" to neighbors and to co-workers at Castañer General Hospital in Adjuntas, where he worked as a laboratory and X-ray assistant.[70]
Later in 1958, Leopold attempted to set up the Leopold Foundation, to be funded by royalties from Life Plus 99 Years, "to aid emotionally disturbed, retarded, or delinquent youths."[7][9][71] The State of Illinois voided his charter on grounds that it violated the terms of his parole.[72]
In 1959, Leopold sought to block production of the film version of Compulsion on the grounds that Levin's book had invaded his privacy, defamed him, profited from his life story and "intermingled fact and fiction to such an extent that they were indistinguishable."[70][73] Eventually, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled against him,[74] holding that Leopold, as the confessed perpetrator of the "crime of the century", could not reasonably argue that any book had injured his reputation.[67][70]
Leopold moved to Santurce and married a widowed florist, Gertrude (Feldman) Leopold on 5 Feb 1961, Judge Angel M. Umpierre presiding, at Bretheren Service Project, Castañar, Puerto Rico.[7][9] He earned a master's degree at the University of Puerto Rico, then taught classes there. He became a researcher in the Social Service Program of Puerto Rico's Department of Health, worked for an urban renewal and housing agency, and carried out studies on leprosy at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine.[75]
Leopold was active in the Natural History Society of Puerto Rico, traveling throughout the island to observe its birdlife. In 1963, he published Checklist of Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.[76] While he spoke of his intention to write a book titled Reach for a Halo about his life following prison, he never completed it.[77]
Leopold died of a diabetes-related heart attack on August 29, 1971, at the age of 66.[7][9]
In popular culture
The Franks murder has inspired works of film, theatre and fiction, including the 1929 play Rope by Patrick Hamilton, performed on BBC television in 1939,[78] and Alfred Hitchcock's film of the same name in 1948.[79] A fictionalized version of the events formed the basis of Meyer Levin's 1956 novel Compulsion and its 1959 film adaptation.[79] In 1957, two more fictionalized novels were released: Nothing but the Night by James Yaffe and Little Brother Fate by Mary-Carter Roberts.[19]Never the Sinner, John Logan's 1985 play,[80] was based on contemporary newspaper accounts of the case, and included an explicit portrayal of Leopold and Loeb's sexual relationship.[81] In 2019, the story was fictionally retold again in the third season of The Sinner.[82]
The case is referenced in the play Inherit the Wind, in which one major character is a fictionalized version of Darrow.
In his book Murder Most Queer (2014), theater scholar Jordan Schildcrout examines changing attitudes toward homosexuality in various theatrical and cinematic representations of the Leopold and Loeb case.[83]
In the 2nd season of Mad Men in the episode titled "The Benefactor", Don Draper calls Ken Cosgrove and Fred Rumsen Leopold and Loeb for allowing a major client be ridiculed for her weight while they stood around and did nothing.
In the 4th season of Seinfeld in the episode titled "The Junior Mint", while watching Elaine's friend undergo a splenectomy from the gallery with other medical students, Kramer insists that Jerry eats one of his Junior Mints that are in his hand. Jerry refuses and pushes his hand away, the mint flies out of Kramer's hand, and falls into the patient as they look on in disbelief. Unknown to the doctors, they complete the operation. Later, at Jerry's apartment with Kramer and George, Elaine walks in mentions that her friend's health is not getting any better and the doctors do not understand why. Scared, Jerry tells Kramer that they need to confess but Kramer refuses because he believes that they can be tried for murder if the patient dies. Jerry then tells Kramer, "I can't have this on my conscience. We're like Leopold and Loeb!"
^Rapai, William (2012). The Kirtland's warbler : the story of a bird's fight against extinction and the people who saved it. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. p. 18. ISBN978-0472118038.
^Snyder, Noel (1987). The Parrots of Luquillo: Natural History and Conservation of the Puerto Rican Parrot. United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
^Scopes, John Thomas (1925). World's greatest court trial. Cincinnati, Ohio: National Book Co. pp. 178–179, 182.
^Daily Illini, University of Illinois, October 28, 1924
^Greg King and Penny Wilson, Nothing but the Night: Leopold and Loeb and the truth behind the murder that rocked 1920s America, St. Martin's Press, 2022
^Leopold, Nathan Jr. (1963). Checklist of Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. University of Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station. ASINB006D31YB2.
Leopold and Loeb Trial Home Page by Douglas Linder. Famous American Trials – Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. University of Missouri at Kansas City Law School. 1997. Retrieved September 14, 2008.
