Leopold and Loeb: Difference between revisions

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[[Image:Leopold-loeb.jpg|frame|Nathan Leopold (left) and Richard Loeb (center) under arrest]]

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'''Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr.''' ([[November 19]], [[1904]]–[[August 30]], [[1971]]) and '''Richard A. Loeb''' ([[June 11]], [[1905]]–[[January 28]], [[1936]]), more commonly known as '''Leopold and Loeb''', were two [[wealth]]y [[University of Chicago]] students who murdered Bobby Franks and received sentences of life plus 99 years. Their crime was notable in being largely motivated by an apparent need to prove their belief they were capable of committing a [[perfect crime]], and for its role in the history of American thought on [[death penalty|capital punishment]].

Leopold, who was 19 at the time of the murder, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be [[Nietzsche]]an [[Übermensch|supermen]] who could commit a "perfect crime", in this case a [[kidnapping]] and [[murder]], without fear of being apprehended. On Wednesday, [[May 21]], [[1924]], they put their plot in motion. The pair lured 16-year-old [[Bobby Franks]], a distant relative and neighbour of Loeb's, into a rented car. Franks was first bludgeoned with a [[chisel]] by Loeb. Leopold and Loeb then suffocated Franks. After concealing the body in a culvert under a railroad track outside of [[Chicago, Illinois|Chicago]]—the face and genitals burned with [[acid]] to make identification more difficult—they did their best to make it seem that a [[kidnapping]] for [[ransom]] had taken place; the Franks family had enough money that a request for $10,000 in ransom was plausible.

Before the family could pay the ransom, though, Tony Minke, a [[Poland|Polish]] [[immigration|immigrant]], found the body. Investigators saw at once that this could not be a mere kidnapping, since there would have been no reason for a kidnapper to kill Bobby Franks.

A pair of [[eyeglasses]] found with the body was eventually traced back to Nathan Leopold. The ransom note had been typed on a [[typewriter]] that Leopold had used with his [[law school|law student]] study group. During police questioning, Leopold's and Loeb's alibis broke down and each confessed. Although their confessions were in agreement about most major facts in the case, each blamed the other for the actual killing.

They had spent months planning the crime, working out a way to get the ransom money without risking being caught. They had thought that the body would not be discovered until long after the ransom delivery. Regardless, the ransom was not their primary motive; each one's family gave him all the money that he needed. In fact, they admitted that they were driven by the thrill. For that matter, they were still thrilled by the attention even while in [[jail]]; they regaled [[newspaper]] reporters with the lurid details again and again.

The public, driven by the newspapers of the day, was outraged. In the [[Jew]]ish community, no one had imagined that such shining examples of success could have committed such a crime. Both of Leopold and Loeb's families were quite well-off, and each dapper young student at the University of Chicago surely had had a fine future ahead of him; there had been no need to turn to crime. Although [[Meyer Levin]] was quoted as saying that it was "a relief that the victim, too, had been Jewish," neither defendant was a practicing Jew.

The trial proved to be a media spectacle and was one of the first cases to be dubbed "The Crime of the Century." Loeb's family hired 67-year-old [[Clarence Darrow]], who had fought against capital punishment for years, to defend the boys against the capital charges of murder and kidnapping. When everyone expected them to plead not guilty by reason of [[insanity]], Darrow surprised everyone by having them both plead guilty. In this way, he avoided a [[jury]] trial which, due to the strong public sentiment, would certainly have resulted in a pair of hangings. Instead, he was able to argue before a single judge, pleading for the lives of his clients.

Darrow gave a [http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/cdarrowpleaformercy.htm twelve-hour speech] which has justifiably 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.

It may be, in fact, that he took the case in order to be able to make such a speech, since he knew that his strong argument against capital punishment would be reprinted in newspapers around the world. And if he could show that such heinous murderers should not be executed, perhaps he would make other capital punishment cases more difficult to prosecute. In the end, Darrow was successful in avoiding the sentence of execution. Instead, the judge sentenced Leopold and Loeb each to a sentence of life in prison for the murder and 99 years for the kidnapping.

In prison, Leopold and Loeb used their education to good purpose, teaching classes in the prison school. But in January of 1936, at age 30, Loeb was attacked by fellow prisoner James Day with a straight [[razor]] in the prison's shower room, and died from his wounds. (Day claimed afterward that Loeb had attempted a sexual assault upon him; an inquiry accepted Day's testimony, and the prison authorities ruled that Day's attack on Loeb was self-defense.) Early in 1958, after 33 years in prison, Leopold was released on [[parole]]. He moved to [[Puerto Rico]] to avoid attention from the press. He married a widowed [[wiktionary:florist|florist]]. In 1971, at age 66, he died of a [[heart attack]].

In 1956, Meyer Levin revisited the Leopold and Loeb 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 (also called ''[[Compulsion (film)|Compulsion]]'', directed by [[Richard Fleischer]]), in which the leads were played by [[Dean Stockwell]] and [[Bradford Dillman]]. The character based on Darrow was played by [[Orson Welles]], whose speech at the film's end adopting Darrow's closing arguments was one of the longest [[monologue]]s in film history. The crime was also inspiration for [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s film ''[[Alfred Hitchcock's Rope|Rope]]'' (1948, based on the 1929 play by Patrick Hamilton), and [[Tom Kalin]]'s more openly [[gay]]-themed ''[[Swoon]]'' (1992) as well as [[Barbet Schroeder]]'s ''[[Murder by Numbers]]'' (2002) the 1985 play ''[[Never The Sinner]]'' by John Logan, the off-Broadway musical "[[Thrill Me]]" by Stephen Dolginoff (script available at www.dramatists.com; CD available at www.thrillmethemusical.com) and an episode of [[Law and Order SVU]] in season one entitled "Uncivilized". Graphic novelist [[Daniel Clowes]] incorporated the Leopold and Loeb case into his book "Ice Haven," released in 2005. The Leopold and Loeb case is also mentioned in Woody Allen's movie, "Annie Hall," in which Allen's character falsely attributes a humorous quote to the killers.

The Leopold and Loeb case was also mentioned in [[Richard_Wright_(author)|Richard Wright's]] novel [[Native Son]], which also takes place in Chicago.

==External links==

*[http://www.leopoldandloeb.com Leopoldandloeb.com]

* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/loeb/loeb/loebmain.htm Crime Library article]

* [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopold.htm Famous Trials article]

* [http://www.yorktheatre.org/ThrillReview.htm Thrill Me:The Leopold and Loeb Story Currently Playing at York Theatre Company]

* [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/LEO_FRAN.HTM Robert Franks]

* [http://judicial-inc.biz/Leopold_Loeb_supplement.htm Suspected in four other murders]

[[Category:1904 births|Leopold, Nathan]]

[[Category:1905 births|Loeb, Richard]]

[[Category:1936 deaths|Loeb, Richard]]

[[Category:1971 deaths|Leopold, Nathan]]

[[Category:American murderers|Leopold, Nathan]]

[[Category:Chicagoans|Leopold, Nathan]]

[[Category:LGBT history]]

[[Category:Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people]]

[[Category:Multiple people]]

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