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| Nathan Leopold (left) with attorney Clarence Darrow (center) and Richard Loeb |
Chicago wasn't safe.
Ghastly crimes regularly occurred, even in upscale neighborhoods like Hyde Park. The body of a murdered University of Chicago student was dumped at 58th and Kimbark. A young man went out to mail a letter and disappeared, his bloated corpse washing up on the beach at 64th Street a month later. A cab driver stepped from a streetcar at 55th and Dorchester, was jumped, etherized, and castrated — two other men were similarly maimed by "gland pirates" feeding the market for a quack testicle rejuvenation therapy popular at the time.
And then 14-year-old Bobby Franks disappeared, on May 21, 1924 — 100 years ago Tuesday. Coaxed into a car near 49th and Ellis, then bludgeoned with a chisel wrapped in tape, his body doused with acid to hide his identity before being hidden in a culvert.
Why has should that particular crime should echoed for 100 years while the others, equally horrible, faded? Why all the books and movies? The mystery didn't last long — 10 days. Suspicion quickly fell to a pair of teenage University of Chicago graduate students, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Self-described intellectual "supermen," they turned out to be lousy criminals. Leopold dropped his distinctive prescription eyeglasses near the boy's body. The two promptly confessed.
Motivation made the crime stand out. Not the usual jealousy or hate or financial need, but to stave off boredom. Asked what gave them the idea, Leopold replied, "pure love of excitement, or the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different.”
The crime had class overtones — both boys' parents were multi-millionaires. There was sex — Leopold and Loeb had a relationship and might have assaulted Franks.
That both murderers were Jewish fed the attention in a nation rife with antisemitism. "Once again Jewish degeneracy and anti-Christianity have done their work in America,” the Ku Klux Klan's American Standard declared.
That their victim was also Jewish — Loeb's cousin, in fact — provided the American Jewish community with relief; had he been a Christian boy kidnapped and killed, it was thought, the ancient blood libel would have surely flared up again.
Having the effervescent Clarence Darrow as their attorney arguing to spare them from execution certainly helped set the trial in history.
It made a difference that the case unfolded in Chicago, with its six aggressive daily newspapers. Two of them, the morning Herald and Examiner and the Evening American, were sensational sheets owned by William Randolph Hearst.
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The Underwood portable typewriter used to write the ransom note had been stolen by Leopold and Loeb from a frat house in Ann Arbor, where they had been guests months earlier. After the murder, it was smashed and sunk in the Jackson Park Lagoon. Who located it, and how did they know where to look for it? And how was the Daily News , which was always the best paper in town, able to obtain the study notes typed by Leopold and match the keystrokes to the ransom note? I believe they discovered that a certain key was partially broken, or something very similar
ReplyDeleteNewspapers had so much more leeway a century ago, and police procedures were so much different, as was criminal forensics...which was still in its infancy. One of Chicago's most infamous criminal cases ever. My parents were too young to be aware of it when it happened, but even so, I heard about it...and other grisly crimes...quite early in life. And I was pretty much told, by the age of five or six,, to be afraid. Hey, son, it's Chicago. Bad stuff can happen to you.
As for the steep price one can pay for self-infatuation, Mr. S, am I correct in assuming that your last couple of sentences refer to the Orange Guy? I hope he pays, and pays dearly, but I'm starting to doubt that he ever will.
For some reason, I've always been interested in this crime. My first introduction to the crime, was the book and movie "Compulsion" which was an accurate recreation of the crime. There's an excellent book "Leopold and Loeb: Crime of the Century" by Hal Higdon. It's still available. What fascinated me was for two guys who were supposed to be so brilliant, they were galactically inept - the glasses, they said they were using their car when it was being serviced, the ransom instructions, among others - fortunately for law enforcement, really stupid mistakes. Leopold made some substantive contributions to society both while in prison and after he was released.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother attended the U of C in the early 1920's. She had been urged to attend college by her step mother who was a "spinster" before she married at age 42 and told her she would need an education to support herself. She worked hard in high school and was there on a scholarship but ALL of the other girls were from the wealthiest homes in Chicago. ("Who else would send a girl to college. Rich people who wanted their daughters to meet a college boy.") And her friends, like her were Jewish. Which means they all knew Leopold and Loeb and many knew the Frank family who came from that same milieu. The murder and trial was the "talk of the campus," as one might imagine.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know the victim was Loeb's cousin.
ReplyDeleteDistant cousins I believe. The real connection as I understand it was that Franks lived across the street from Loeb and had been to his home to play tennis.
DeleteFrom "Done in a Day: 100 Years of Great Writing from The Chicago Daily News": 'Loeb was killed in prison in 1936 after making a homosexual pass at a fellow prisoner. Fabled Daily News writer Edwin A. Lahey, then a crime reporter, wrote a classic lead for the story: "Richard Loeb, who was a master of the English language, today ended a sentence with a proposition." '
ReplyDeleteFrom 1976 to 1978, I worked in the Sun-Times/ CDN wire room, with its rows of clattering teletype machines (just like you'd see on TV and in the movies), and its primitive fax machines (you stuck a phone receiver into it). I obtained a copy of that same superb book, thanks to Frank DeSanti, my boss.
DeleteA product of Little Italy, Frank ran the wire room for many years, and I think he handled the race results from the horse tracks. His wife, Shirlee, was also an employee of the Sun-Times--for six decades.
Still have that CDN book. And I, too, remember reading about that classic Daily News lede. The CDN was the best paper in town. It lasted for 103 years. My father brought it home, so I grew up reading it, six days a week. But never on Sunday.
my original comment was going to be 'like the famous roscoe village rat frenzy, too many trees have already died a needless death for this story'. until you reminded me of that great lede-made it all worthwhile.
DeleteLike Grizz65’s parents, my father was too young to remember the case and my mother hadn’t been born at the time, but even though we lived in far away East Orange I grew up hearing about it. They told me about the Lindbergh baby, too.
ReplyDeleteWhat Wikipedia has to say about Leopold’s life in prison and afterward is news to me, though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb#Leopold's_prison_life
A digression, but I also heard a good deal about the Holocaust and the Second World War II more generally, not because my parents were scholars but because they’d lived through that time and wanted me to know what they knew. I can’t understand how so many people today know next to nothing about the War – did they not have parents? Grandparents? Was it never mentioned in school? All the history books and films – do they regard them as fiction? Or have they not noticed them at all?
"For the Thrill of It" by Simon Baatz is an excellent summary of the case.
ReplyDeleteI believe that each of the culprits, just like some 2-bit hoodlum, tritely and inelegantly pointed his finger at the other as the actual killer.
ReplyDeletejohn
And I think this was one of those sordid cases where both defendants said:
Delete"I don't mind going, as long as the other guy goes with me."