The Crime of the Century

In 1924, the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks horrified the country, especially when the killers were revealed to be two wealthy teenagers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Everyone expected Leopold & Loeb to hang. But would the arrival of one of America's most famous defense lawyers, Clarence Darrow, change the outcome?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to History on Trial, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Listener Discretion advised. Jacob and Flora Franks didn't start to
worry until Bobby missed dinner. Their youngest son was a
responsible boy who usually called home if he was going

(00:24):
to be late. May twenty first, nineteen twenty four, had
been a beautiful spring day, the kind of day where
you can lose track of time, especially if you're a
fourteen year old boy playing baseball with your friends. That's
what the Franks figured Bobby was doing. He and his
classmates liked to get a game going after school. Bobby

(00:47):
was small for his age, but he was a sports
fanatic and always found a way to join in. He
would be home soon, the Franks thought, But when the
dinner plates were cleared with still no sign of Bobby,
the couple became concerned. They called around to Bobby's friends,
who confirmed that, yes, they had played baseball after school.

(01:09):
Bobby had served as umpire, but the game had ended
at five hours earlier. After Bobby had headed towards home,
a journey of only a few blocks. No one had
seen him since. Increasingly fearful, Jacob Franks enlisted a friend
to help him search for Bobby. The men went to

(01:32):
check if the boy had somehow gotten locked in his
school building. Flora Franks stayed home. At about ten thirty PM,
as Flora waited for news, the phone rang. The caller
asked for her husband. When Flora said he was not
at home, but that she was missus Franks, the caller said,

(01:54):
your son has been kidnapped. He is all right. Further
news in the morning. Who is it, Flora asked, horrified.
George Johnson, the caller said, and hung up. When Jacob
Franks got back, he was shocked by Flora's news. After
several tense hours, he decided to report the kidnapping to

(02:15):
the police, who agreed to investigate the matter quietly so
as not to alert the kidnappers. At nine am the
next day, the ransom note arrived in the morning mail.
Dear sir, it began, as you no doubt know by
this time your son has been kidnapped. Allow us to
assure you that he is at present, well and safe.

(02:38):
It continued on in this same formal, stilted language, commanding
Jacob Franks to withdraw ten thousand dollars and then await
further instructions. It warned Jacob that if he disobeyed the
instructions in any way, Bobby's death will be the penalty.
Jacob hurried to the bank to make the withdrawal, then

(03:00):
came home to wait by the telephone. The kidnappers did
not call until after three pm. Jacob Franks answered the phone,
and a voice on the other end, once again calling himself,
George Johnson, described how Jacob would take a taxi to
a drug store where he would receive further directions. Jacob listened,

(03:23):
but inside his heart was breaking because only minutes before
he had received another phone call, one that changed everything.
From it, he had learned that Bobby's body had been
found earlier that morning. The body of a boy was

(03:46):
found in a concrete culvert in the nature preserve surrounding
Wolf Lake, some twenty miles southeast of the Franks house
in Chicago. A pair of glasses had been found near
the body, and the officer who arrived at the scene
assumed they were the boys and placed them on his face.
The Frank's family heard about the discovery but believed the

(04:07):
boy couldn't be Bobby. Bobby didn't wear glasses, but as
the day wore on. They thought it would be good
to know for sure, and so Bobby's uncle traveled to
view the body. When the uncle walked in, he removed
the glasses from the boy's still cold face and gazed
down at it. Then he looked at the boy's teeth.

(04:31):
Bobby had marks on his teeth from a childhood illness,
so did this boy. Bobby's uncle did not have to
look any longer. He knew this was his nephew. He
called home and told the Franks the news only minutes
before the kidnapper called to give Jacob Franks his instructions.
So Jacob had had to sit at the phone and

(04:53):
listen as the kidnapper spoke of his son as if
he was still alive. Jacob's plan now was to follow
the ransom instructions and hope they led to the killer.
But in his shock, Jacob did not retain the name
of the drug store he was supposed to go to.
The trail went cold for more than a week. The

(05:14):
appalled public wondered who could have committed such a crime.
Bobby had been beaten and suffocated, and then had acid
poured on his face after death. It was a senseless
awful killing. People could only speculate as to what kind
of monster the killer must be. But when the police

(05:36):
announced that they had obtained confessions for the crime, the
culprits were not at all what the public had expected.
The killers, for there were two of them, were the
clean cut, brilliant teenage scions of prominent families. Their names

(05:56):
were Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Leopold and Loebe's names
are infamous. The killing of Bobby Franks was called the
crime of the century. As the twisted tale of the
crime unfolded, people struggled to make sense of how the
two young men could do what they had done. Everyone

(06:20):
awaited the trial certain that the pair would be sentenced
to death, But the killer's family had hired one of
the most famous attorneys in American history, Clarence Darrow, and
what happened in the courtroom in that hot summer of
nineteen twenty four has to be heard to be believed,

(06:41):
because the Leopold and Loeb trial, one of the most
well known trials of all time, was not really a
trial at all. Welcome to History on Trial. I'm your
host Mira Hayward. This week, Illinois v. Naan Leopold and
Richard Loeb. Leopold and Lobes lives ran like trains on

(07:09):
parallel tracks until fatefully their paths converged. Both boys were
born to wealthy families, Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Junior on November nineteenth,
nineteen oh four, to Florence and Nathan Leopold, and Richard
Albert lob On June eleventh, nineteen oh five, to Albert

(07:30):
and Anna Loeb. Both boys had nicknames. Everyone called Nathan Babe,
everyone called Richard Dickie. Both boys grew up in Kenwood,
an affluent, predominantly Jewish neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Both
boys were precocious, skipping multiple grades and racing through their
school years in record time, and both boys were impacted

(07:54):
by disturbed nannies. Nathan was allegedly sexually abused by any
while Richard was allegedly emotionally abused by his domineering and
obsessive nanny. But the boys had differences too. They attended
different schools, had different interests, and very different personalities. Nathan

(08:16):
was aloof and egotistical. He had trouble connecting to his
peers his classmates at the Harvard School for Boys, nicknamed
him Flea because he was small and annoying. He was
obsessed with birds. He shot and taxidermied thousands of the animals,
placing them around the Leopold Home until it looked like

(08:38):
a natural history museum. Richard, on the other hand, was
popular and outgoing. He could easily fit into any social situation,
charming classmates and adults alike, but he sometimes seemed to
be playing a role, and when people tried to get
close to him, he would not let them in. He

(08:59):
moved on from friend ships quickly. No one quite had
a grasp on who the real Richard was. His defining
adolescent interest was not birds, but books, detective fiction to
be specific, which he consumed voraciously. Since the two boys
had grown up so close together and in such similar circles,

(09:20):
they likely met once or twice in their childhood, but
it would not be until nineteen twenty that they would
truly connect. With deadly consequences that fall, Nathan enrolled at
the University of Chicago, where Richard was beginning his sophomore year.
Both boys were only fifteen years old. They each had

(09:41):
different approaches to college. Richard went a little wild, drinking, gambling,
and losing his virginity at a brothel. Nathan, by contrast,
maintained his standoffish, superior attitude. Richard was stylish and handsome,
Nathan gawky and awkward. Over the course of the winter,

(10:02):
though the two began to get closer. They played cards
and stayed up late drinking and talking. In February nineteen
twenty one, Richard took Nathan on a trip to his
family's estate in Charlevoi, Michigan. Albert Loebe had built an
enormous working farm there, and the Lobes loved to escape

(10:23):
Chicago for the peace of the lakeside retreat. Now, Richard
invited his new friend to visit. The train trip from
Chicago took twelve hours, and the pair shared a private
train car. Over the course of the long journey, Richard
and Nathan opened up to each other, sharing their feelings
of loneliness their desire to fit in. They also shared secrets.

(10:48):
Richard told Nathan about the thefts he'd committed inspired by
his love of crime fiction. In return, Nathan told Richard
that he was gay. Nathan had known he was gay
since childhood. Richard's sexuality is more ambiguous. He had sex
with women and like to maintain a playboy image. However,

(11:09):
he would later tell psychiatrists quote, the actual sex act
is rather unimportant to me, and I could get along
easily without it. On that train ride, though, perhaps fueled
by an intoxicating sense of closeness and shared vulnerability, Richard
and Nathan began a sexual relationship. In many ways, this

(11:31):
was a normal teenage fling. However, it had to be
conducted in strict secrecy. Homosexuality was deeply stigmatized at the time.
The secret nature of their relationship seems to have brought
the pair even closer, as did their second secret. In
the spring, shortly after their trip to Charlevoi, Richard and

(11:53):
Nathan began committing crimes together. They stole cars and went
for joy rides, tossed bricks through the windshields of parked cars,
and vandalized businesses. The relationship seems to have fulfilled both
Richard and Nathan's childhood fantasies. For Nathan, the handsome, suave
Richard provided him social cachet and sexual gratification. For Richard,

(12:19):
the brilliant, fearless Nathan was the perfect partner in crime.
Both struggled to make genuine connections with others. With each other,
it seemed they could finally be themselves and be accepted,
but that summer things nearly fell apart. A fellow University
of Chicago student, Hamlin Bouchman, was working at the Lobe

(12:41):
farm at Charlevoi when Richard and Nathan came for a visit.
The three spent the evening drinking together and then fell asleep.
During the night, Buchman saw Richard go into Nathan's bed.
Richard and Nathan, realizing that their secret was out, decided
to take jurrass stick action. They attempted to kill Buchman.

(13:05):
They took Buuchman out on a boat, and, believing that
he could not swim, tipped the boat over. Buchman managed
to make it out of the lake in shock. He
immediately ran to Richard's brother, Allan and told him about
Richard and Nathan's relationship. The Low family did not believe
Buchman and fired him from the farm. Buchman traveled back

(13:25):
to Chicago and immediately told classmates what he'd seen. When
Richard and Nathan returned to campus, gossip about them raged
like wildfire. That fall in part due to the rumors
and in part due to a sense of restlessness. Richard
decided to transfer to the University of Michigan. Nathan decided

(13:46):
to transfer with him, but soon after the school year started,
Nathan learned that his mother, Florence, was dying. He managed
to make it home in time to be with her
when she died on October seventeenth, nineteen twenty one. It
was a devastating loss. When Nathan returned to Michigan, he
found that Richard had made new friends. These friends, along

(14:09):
with many other Michigan students, did not like Nathan. They
thought he was cold and pretentious. Rumors about the two
boys sexual relationship had also reached campus. Nathan and Richard
decided to quash the rumors by spending less time together.
At the end of the year, Nathan transferred back to
the University of Chicago. Richard stayed on at Michigan, where

(14:31):
he pledged a fraternity, drank, heavily, worked minimally, and read
detective novels. At Chicago, Nathan favored the intellectual life, studying
comparative language and becoming obsessed with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nathan loved Nietzsche's conception of the Ubermensch, which he interpreted

(14:52):
to be quote a superman who, on account of certain
superior qualities inherent in him, is exempted for from the
ordinary laws which govern ordinary men. He is not liable
for anything he may do. Philosophers might disagree with Nathan's
definition of this concept, but it is an interpretation that

(15:13):
reveals Nathan's desire to transcend conventional definitions of morality. Over
the next year, Richard and Nathan did not keep in
close touch. In the summer of nineteen twenty three, however,
they found themselves reunited in Chicago. Both had graduated that
spring at age eighteen, the youngest graduates in the history

(15:36):
of their respective colleges. At loose ends, they reconnected and
resumed their life of crime. They cheated at cards, planned
break ins, and set fires. Nathan even managed to acquire guns,
which they carried with them on their nighttime expeditions. However,

(15:57):
the friendship was a fraught one. The pair argued constantly.
Nathan was jealous of the time Richard spent with other friends.
Richard was tired of Nathan's constant bragging about his intelligence.
In October, they had a falling out and almost ended
their relationship. Nathan confessed in a letter to Richard that

(16:17):
he had thought about killing him. He also threatened to
expose Richard, either for their sexual relationship or for their crimes.
For some reason, even after all of this, the friendship continued.
In November, while Richard and Nathan were both enrolled in
graduate classes at the University of Chicago, they decided to

(16:39):
commit their most daring crime yet. On Saturday the tenth,
they drove up to Ann Arbor to rob Richard's old
fraternity house. They brought guns, masks, flashlights, and a chisel
with them. It wasn't a very complicated crime. Upon arrival,
they walked through the unlocked front door and stole items

(17:00):
they found lying around, loose change, a pen and pencil,
a knife, and notably, a portable underwood typewriter. They had
agreed earlier in the night to break into two fraternities,
but after pulling off the first tist, Richard wanted to
go home. Nathan demanded that they follow through on the plan.

(17:22):
They went into another house and stole a camera, but
when Richard heard someone snoring, he panicked and ran. On
the drive home, Nathan was furious, he called Richard a
coward and questioned their connection. The argument built and built,
and the two nearly ended things right there, but ultimately

(17:42):
they didn't. Instead, deciding to once again double down on
their toxic bond, the pair created a pact. The terms
of the pact, which they determined would last until Nathan
left for Europe the following summer. Were this agreed to
participate in any crime that Richard asked him to, unless

(18:04):
he thought it would put him or his family in danger.
In exchange, Richard agreed to have sex with Nathan three
times every two months. Lastly, the two agreed to embark
on a new project, one that they believed would strengthen
their relationship. Leopold and Lobe decided to kidnap someone. Progress

(18:30):
was slow on the kidnapping plan. In March nineteen twenty four,
Nathan and Richard had another fight and renegotiated the pact.
Now Richard agreed to have sex with Nathan every time
they committed a crime. They also began planning the kidnapping
in earnest. Richard had long been obsessed with committing the

(18:50):
perfect crime. Nathan had long been obsessed. Without smarting others,
their obsessions combined with tragic consequences. That spring, they were
determined to execute a flawless kidnapping. They plotted out an
elaborate ransom plan, which involved multiple stops, phone calls, and

(19:12):
a money drop off of a moving train. They even
rehearsed the money drop, throwing a bundle of newspapers from
the train to see where it landed. The pair also
decided that they would have to kill their victim to
avoid being identified. They discussed different methods of murder and
settled on either strangulation or drugging with ether. They chose

(19:34):
a location to dump the body. Nathan suggested the area
around Wolf Lake, where he often led birding trips. The
only thing that the two could not decide on was
a victim. They eventually decided that it would be best
to take a young boy from a wealthy family who
would pay the ransom. There were many such boys at
the Harvard School for Boys, Nathan's alma mater. Richard and

(19:59):
Nate and spent the month of May getting the final
details in place. They constructed a fake identity, Morton Ballard,
which they used to open a bank account and rent
a car. They bought a chisel rope and hydrochloric acid.
They typed up a ransom letter and scripts to use
for their calls by May twenty first they were ready.

(20:23):
That morning, they rented a dark blue car, ate lunch,
and drove to the Harvard School. They lurked around the area,
using a pair of Nathan's birding binoculars to spy on
the boys for several hours. A little after five PM,
they spotted Bobby Franks walking down Ellis Avenue. Bobby Franks

(20:45):
was Richard Loebe's second cousin. Their families lived across the
street from each other. Bobby had played tennis with Richard
the day before. He had no reason to be suspicious
when Nathan and Richard pulled up alongside him and offered
him a ride home. Bobby declined, though his home was

(21:06):
only two blocks away. Richard tried again, saying he wanted
to ask Bobby about his tennis racket. Bobby agreed and
hopped in the car. Within minutes, the attack began. Richard
and Nathan never agreed on who had done the actual killing,
each blaming the other. One of them, though, began to

(21:28):
beat Bobby with the chisel, then shoved an ether soaked
rag down his throat. Unconscious, Bobby lay bleeding on the
floor of the car As it sped out of Chicago.
Around six, Richard and Nathan stopped for dinner. They ate
hot dogs and drank root beer at a picnic table
while Bobby suffocated to death in the car. Once it

(21:51):
got dark, they drove to wolf Lake and dumped Bobby's
body in a culvert, first pouring acid on his face, genitals,
and on a skin on his abdomen in an effort
to prevent identification. On the drive home, Nathan stopped and
called the Franks and told Flora that her son had
been kidnapped. Nathan and Richard's so called perfect crime fell

(22:16):
apart quickly. Bobby's body was discovered sooner than they had expected,
and Jacob Franks could not remember the complicated ransom instructions. However,
no one had any idea who had committed the crime.
It was the talk of Chicago, and Richard himself couldn't
help but bring up the subject. He even involved himself

(22:39):
in the investigation, taking reporters on an expedition to discover
which drug store Jacob Franks was supposed to have gone to.
On this trip, the reporter asked Richard about Bobby, hoping
to get family details for their story. Richard, to their horror,
told them quote, if I were going to murder anyone,
I would murder just such a cocky little son of

(23:01):
a bitch as Bobby Frank's. On May twenty fifth, the
Frank's family held Bobby's funeral at their home. A distraught
Flora Franks, who refused to believe that her son was dead,
ran her hands tenderly over the faces of his classmates.
Jacob Franks told the Chicago Tribune, I'd try to put

(23:21):
things out of my mind, but they come back. My
wife keeps showing me pictures of him, and I lay
awake until dawn thinking about it all, thinking about that baby. Meanwhile,
Richard and Nathan continued their normal lives, attending dinners, taking
girls out on dates, drinking and dancing the nights away,

(23:44):
but unbeknownst to them, the police were circling. Ultimately, it
was a pair of glasses that proved to be the killers.
Undoing the glasses had been found by Bobby's body. The
first officer on the scene had assumed they were the boys,
but after learning they were not, investigators wondered if the

(24:04):
killer had dropped them. They spent all week tracing the
glasses and caught a huge break. The frames had a
distinctive hinge, only manufactured by one company in Brooklyn and
only sold by one optometrist in Chicago, Almer and Co.
The company searched its records and discovered that it had

(24:26):
sold three pairs of the glasses, one to a man
who was now in Europe, one to a woman who
still had her glasses, and one to Nathan Leopold. Nathan
had in fact been brought in by the police already,
but for unrelated reasons. A game warden at wolf Lake
had identified him to police as someone who frequented the

(24:47):
area for birding trips, and the police had questioned him
on May twenty fifth, the day of Bobby's funeral. Nathan
was not a suspect at this point. The police simply
wanted to know when he was last in the area.
Nathan said he had last been there the weekend before
Bobby's murder, and the police released him. But with the

(25:08):
glass's revelation, everything changed. Now the police focused their energy
on Nathan. On May twenty ninth, States attorney Robert Crowe,
who was leading the investigation and would soon lead the
prosecution sent detectives to question Nathan. When Nathan could not
produce his glasses, the detectives decided to bring him in

(25:30):
for questioning. Under questioning, Nathan claimed that his glasses must
have fallen out of his pocket while bird watching at
Wolf Lake. However, when given his glasses and asked to
recreate the fall, Nathan could not dislodge the glasses from
his jacket pocket. He denied owning a portable typewriter, the
kind of typewriter used to make the ransom note, and

(25:52):
he claimed that on the day of the kidnapping, he
had been out driving, drinking, and picking up girls with
Richard Loeb. The detectives then searched his house again, uncovering
bottles of poisons and drugs, including ether, and two unlicensed handguns.
Detectives arrived at Richard's house the next day, Friday, May thirtieth.

(26:15):
Richard claimed not to remember what he had done on
the day of the murder, but later, after receiving a
message from Nathan that he should quote remember what happened,
he told the police the same story about driving around
in Nathan's car. Robert Crowe and the police were convinced
that they had their men, and two events on Friday

(26:36):
solidified their case. First, a typewriter expert matched the type
in Nathan's study group notes to the type in the
ransom note. Though Nathan had denied having a portable typewriter,
Robert Crowe brought in members of his study group, who
all stated that he had once used a portable typewriter.

(26:56):
It would later emerge that the typewriter used was the
Underwood portable typewriter that Nathan and Richard had stolen from
the Michigan fraternity. The final nail in the coffin came
from the Leopold family chauffeur Spen England. England had believed
that his information would help exonerate Nathan. According to his statement,

(27:19):
England had been working on the brakes on Nathan's car
on May twenty first, so Nathan could not have used
his car to kidnap anyone. But England didn't know that
Nathan claimed to have driven around in his car that day. Inadvertently,
England had broken Nathan's alibi. England also told police that
he saw Nathan and Richard cleaning stains out of a

(27:42):
dark colored car on the twenty second, Bobby Franks was
last seen in the vicinity of a dark colored car,
and a dark colored car had been spotted near wolf
Lake around the time the killers had dumped Bobby's body.
With these four pieces of evidence, the broken alibi, the
matching glasses, the matching typewriter, and Leopold and Loebe's possession

(28:06):
of a dark colored car, Robert Crowe believed he had
enough to get a confession. He decided to confront Richard first.
When Crowe told Richard about England's evidence, Richard responded that
the man must be lying or mistaken. But then Assistant
States Attorney Joseph Sparbaro confronted Richard with all the evidence.

(28:32):
My god, my god, Richard cried, this is terrible. He
burst into tears, then he started to talk. He gave
Crow and Sparbarro a detailed confession of the kidnapping and
murder of Bobby Franks. With one confession obtained, Crow turned
his attention to Nathan. Even after hours of questioning, Nathan

(28:57):
was self assured when Crow walked into his room that evening.
Nathan wanted to ask the attorney what he called a
hypothetical question quote supposing John Doe had committed this murder,
and John Doe's family was as wealthy and influential as
mine is, and could hire able lawyers and get a

(29:18):
friendly judge and bribe the jury. Don't you think he
could beat it well, Nathan, said Crow. I will let
you try to find out. What do you mean, asked Nathan,
I'm going to charge you with murder. Nathan was incredulous.
Even when Crow told him that Richard had confessed. Nathan

(29:40):
did not believe it until Crow began to recite details
of the crime that only Richard could have known. For
a moment, Nathan paused. Then he lit a cigarette and
said to Crow, well, if Lobe is talking, I will
tell you the real truth over the ni The next
two days, Crow took Nathan and Richard on an evidence

(30:03):
gathering tour, stopping at the businesses they had used to
prepare for their crime. They visited the car rental agency,
the hardware store where they'd bought the rope, the drug
store where they'd bought the hydrochloric acid. Everywhere they went,
shopkeepers identified them so much for committing a perfect crime. Still,

(30:26):
the peril of their situation seemed not to have sunk in.
Nathan joked with reporters and repeatedly stated that he had
no remorse for the crime. Richard told a reporter that
a few years in jail would be good for him, quote,
I'll be released and come out to a new life.
I'll go to work and I'll work hard, and I'll
amount to something, have a career. A nearby police captain, astonished,

(30:51):
told Richard, you have taken a life. You've killed a boy.
The best you could possibly expect would be a life
sentence to an en inane asylum. Richard was stunned. Robert
Crowe was determined to make sure that Leopold and Loeb
did not go to an insane asylum. He brought in

(31:12):
a number of psychiatrists to examine the pair, all of
whom concluded that they were not legally insane. They had
both understood that their actions were wrong. On June first,
Robert Crowe held a press conference. He had already announced
the identity and confessions of the killers. Now Crow declared

(31:33):
his intentions. I have he told reporters a hanging case.
Most people agreed, but Crow had not reckoned with the
wealth and desperation of the Leopold and Loeb families. They
were about to throw an unexpected factor into the trial.

(31:54):
The most famous defense attorney in America enter Clarence Darrow.
Clarence Darrow made a name for himself as a labor
lawyer representing unions and political activists. Darrow had honed a folksy,
effective style. Journalist Ben Hecht once described to Darrow in court,

(32:18):
quote the great barrister, artfully gotten up in baggy pants,
frayed linen and string tie, and playing dumb for the jury,
as if he were no lawyer at all, but a
cracker barrel philosopher groping for a bit of human truth.
Darrow was sixty seven in nineteen twenty four and was

(32:39):
tired and often unwell when Jacob Lobe, Richard's uncle, came
to his Chicago apartment on the night of May thirty, first,
begging Darrow to take on his nephew's defense. The lawyer hesitated.
Jacob Lobe pleaded with Darrow, quote, save their lives. Get
them a life sentence instead of a death sentence. That's

(33:02):
all we ask of you. Moneis no object, will pay
you anything you ask. Only for God's sake, Don't let
them be hung Jacob Loebes plea resonated with Darrow for
two reasons. The first was one of principle. Darrow was
strongly opposed to the death penalty. The second was more prosaic.

(33:26):
He really needed the money. He told Jacob Loebe he
would take the case. Darrow would be joined in the
defense by two Chicago lawyers, brothers named Benjamin and Walter Backrack,
who the Leopold family hired. The Backracks also happened to
be Richard Loeb's cousins. The defense was certainly facing an

(33:47):
uphill battle. This was before the advent of the Miranda warning,
and both Richard and Nathan had freely confessed to the
police and had even helped them gather evidence. The case
against the pair was watertight. Public sentiment was also against
the killers. People were horrified by their callous attitudes, as

(34:08):
exemplified by Nathan, who described the crime to a reporter
as quote an experiment and an exemplary and commendable thing.
People were also angry at Darrow for taking the case.
Darrow had made his reputation defending the poor and depressed.
Now he was defending the privileged. People worried that the

(34:30):
wealth of the families would allow the killers to escape punishment.
The Leopold and Lobe families responded publicly to this claim,
saying in a statement, quote, in no event will the
families of the accused boys use money in any attempt
to defeat justice. On July eleventh, Richard and Nathan were arraigned.

(34:52):
Thousands of people showed up, and so many of them
tried to push into the courtroom that they tore the
doors off their hinges. Richard and Nathan both pled not
guilty to the charges of murder and kidnapping. The trial
date was set for August fourth. The defense team began
to prepare for trial. They had decided to pursue an

(35:14):
insanity defense. Walter Backrach went to the American Psychiatric Association's
annual convention to recruit experts to testify for the defense.
He found four doctors willing to do so. These doctors
all spoke to Nathan and Richard personally, but also relied
on a comprehensive report prepared by two additional doctors, Carl

(35:35):
Bowman and Harold Hulbert. Bowman and Hulbert spent a week
interviewing the defendants. Based on these interviews, Hulbert and Bowman
compiled a large report focusing on all aspects of the
defendant's upbringing, moral views, and mental and physical health. Robert
Crowe heard the rumors about the defense's plan, but was unconcerned.

(35:58):
He had had his own team of psychiatrists examined Richard
and Nathan, and all these experts were prepared to testify
that the defendants were not legally insane. The state of
Illinois used the McNaughton rule to determine insanity. The mcnoton
rule is covered in more detail in our episode on
Charles Guittou, but the basics are this. A defendant can

(36:19):
only be found not guilty by reason of insanity if
they both did not understand the nature of their crime
and also could not distinguish right from wrong at the
time they committed the crime. Crowe was confident he could
beat Darrow in an insanity trial, but Darrow was about
to change the game. On July twenty first, the lawyer's

(36:42):
defendants and hundreds of spectators assembled in Judge John Caverly's
courtroom at the Criminal Courts Building. No one expected anything dramatic.
This was simply the first day that either side could
present motions to the judge. But then Clarence Darrow stood
and began to speak. Quote, after long reflection and thorough discussion,

(37:07):
we have determined to make a motion in this court
to withdraw a plea of not guilty and enter a
plea of guilty. A stunned silence filled the courtroom. Darrow's
change of tactics came as a complete surprise, which was
just how he wanted it. He had made the decision

(37:30):
to plead the defendants guilty weeks earlier, but had kept
his intentions secret from almost everyone, including Richard and Nathan,
who only learned of the plan on the morning of
the twenty first. Darrow believed that a guilty plea was
his only chance to save the defendants' lives. He did
not believe that a jury would buy an insanity plea.

(37:53):
By pleading guilty, the trial would become a sentencing hearing,
and Darrow would only have to convince one man, the judge,
that his clients did not deserve death. He believed that
he could so convince Judge Caverley, who had never before
condemned anyone to death. In his motion to change the plea,

(38:15):
Darrow also asked that the defense be allowed to offer
information to mitigate punishment, in other words, to provide information
that might contextualize the defendant's actions. He specifically asked to
be allowed to introduce evidence on the defendant's mental conditions.
Robert Crowe objected. He argued that allowing the defense to

(38:37):
introduce such evidence was subverting the law. If they wanted
to introduce this evidence, he said, they should have pled
not guilty by reason of insanity. Judge Cavalley wanted time
to decide. He told Darrow that he was shocked by
the guilty plea, saying, you have unloaded a big responsibility
upon me. It was totally unexpected. Then declared that the

(39:01):
sentencing hearing would begin two days, hence on Wednesday, July
twenty third. July twenty third was a hot day. All
of the days of the sentencing hearing would be turning
the courtroom into a steam room. At ten am, the
hearing began. Although this was no longer a trial per se,

(39:22):
both the prosecution and defense intended to present full cases,
including opening statements. Robert Crowe began he did not pull
his punches. The state will show. He said that these
men are guilty of the most cruel, cowardly, dastardly murder

(39:43):
ever committed in the annals of American jurisprudence. The state
will demonstrate their guilt here so conclusively that there is
not an avenue for them to escape. We are going
to demand the death penalty for both of these cold,
blowe udded, cruel and vicious murderers. Darrow pushed back on

(40:05):
Crowe's characterization, saying that this was not the worst crime
ever committed. When Crowe objected to this, Darrow reframed, arguing
instead that quote terrible as this is, terrible as any
killing is, it would be without precedent if two boys
of this age should be hanged by the neck until dead,

(40:27):
and it would in no way bring back Robert Franks
or add to the peace and security of this community.
He emphasized the defendant's youth, describing them as boys, a
term he and the defense lawyers and experts would use
throughout the trial. At the time of the crime, Nathan
had been nineteen and Richard eighteen. Robert Crowe now presented

(40:50):
his case. As Nina Barrett notes in her book The
Leopold and Lobe Files, Judge Cavalley had a quote liberal
attitude toward hearing any and all evidence that might help
him weigh the terms of justice in his own mind,
and Crowe was determined to paint a comprehensive picture of
both the killer's guilt and of their lack of remorse.

(41:14):
Over the course of the next week, he would present
eighty one witnesses. He introduced Bobby's parents, Jacob and Flora,
whose grief seemed to overwhelm them. He brought on coroner
doctor Joseph Springer, who described Bobby's injuries and how he

(41:35):
had slowly suffocated on the ether soaked rag. He brought
on the various shopkeepers who had all identified Nathan and Richard.
At this point, Darrow objected to Crowe's case, saying that
given the guilty plea, such a recitation of evidence was unnecessary.
Crow responded that he wanted to demonstrate that the defendants

(41:56):
had only confessed because of the quote mountain of evidence
against them, not out of any sense of remorse. Judge
Caverly told Crow to proceed. Crow next called the experts
and investigators who had helped gather the evidence against the pair.
The typewriter expert who had matched the ransom note to

(42:17):
Nathan's study notes, the optometrist who had prescribed Nathan's glasses,
the doctor who had found bloodstains on the pair's clothes
and in their rental car. Throughout this presentation, Nathan and
Richard's behavior shocked observers. They whispered to one another, laughed,
made faces, fidgeted in their chairs. They did not seem

(42:41):
to be taking anything seriously, and they certainly showed no
respect for the victim's family nor remorse for their crimes.
When a reporter asked Richard to explain his behavior, he responded,
what do they want me to do? I sit in
the courtroom and watch the play as its On July thirtieth,

(43:02):
after the defendant's police interviews and confessions were read into
the record, Robert Crowe concluded his case. It was now
time for the defense to begin. The first defense witness
was doctor William White, president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Crowe objected to this testimony, using the same argument he'd

(43:24):
made on July twenty first. The defense he believed should
not be allowed to introduce evidence of insanity since they
had pled guilty. The arguments over this issue continued for
three days. Finally, Judge Caverley decided to allow the evidence,
but added that if any of the defense witnesses made
a claim about insanity as opposed to providing context for

(43:46):
the defendant's mental health, he would call a jury and
begin a jury trial. With this matter resolved, doctor White
began his testimony. He delved into the psychology of the defendants.
That Richard, who he and all the other defense experts
referred to by his nickname of Dickie, had a fantasy

(44:07):
of being a master criminal, a fantasy so compelling that
it prevented him from understanding the real world. About Nathan,
who he again using his nickname, called Babe, Doctor White
said that he had developed a hardened shell of superiority
and coldness as a way of protecting himself. He discussed

(44:27):
the troubled childhoods of both defendants, the abuses of their nannies,
and the unexpected costs of privilege. He described the defendants
as emotionally disturbed young men, who, while say, did not
have the same capacity for understanding right and wrong that
a normal person would. On cross examination, Crowe tried to

(44:50):
trigger a jury trial. He asked White to show his
initial psychiatric report to crow. It seemed suspicious that White
would diagnose the defendants with so many psychological issues without
also labeling them insane. Under discovery rules, Crowe was entitled
to see White's original report, but the defense objected. After

(45:13):
some back and forth, Judge Caverlely asked White to produce
his report. White responded that he had given his report
to defense lawyer Walter Backrack and no longer had it. Backrack,
in turn refused to produce it. Crow pushed, saying, if
I can prove that this man has changed his conclusions,
that at one time he was willing to swear for

(45:35):
pay to one thing, and on another occasion he is
willing to swear to a different set of facts for pay,
I think I have destroyed the value of his testimony.
But then, for some reason he gave up, saying that
if the defense would not produce the report, he would
let the issue rest. Crow had come very near to

(45:57):
exploding Clarence Darrow's plan. In July twenty seventeen, Northwestern University
managed to obtain the initial psychiatric reports made by the
defense experts and found that three of them, including that
of doctor White, had indeed initially declared the defendants insane,
they had changed their testimony. When the defendants changed their plea,

(46:22):
Darrow suppressed these reports in order to ensure that the
doctor's testimony would not trigger a jury trial. This had
long been rumored, but the discovery of the reports confirmed
it and revealed the extremely ethically dubious actions of Darrow
and these experts. But back in nineteen twenty one, the

(46:44):
defense proceeded with its case. The next witness, doctor William Healey,
also discussed the defendant's mental instability. The most important part
of his testimony was his discussion of the pact between
Nathan and Richard, including the fact that the terms included sex.
Nathan and Richard's homosexual relationship had been rumored and hinted at,

(47:06):
but Healey's testimony confirmed it. After Healey, the defense called
two more psychiatrists, doctor Bernard Gluck and doctor Harold Hulbert.
Then they presented a series of character witnesses, classmates and friends,
who discussed Richard's immaturity and Nathan's obsession with Nietzsche. With that,

(47:26):
the defense concluded their case. For his rebuttal case, Robert
Crowe presented his own series of psychiatrists, all of whom
believed that Nathan and Richard were not mentally ill. None
of the psychological evidence on either side was particularly compelling,
but the defense experts did provide the public with a

(47:47):
new picture of the defendants. Instead of being monstrous murderers,
they were traumatized children lashing out at a world that
had hurt them. After the testimony concluded, the closing arguments began,
Assistant States Attorney Thomas Marshall kicked things off, saying that
the precedent in cases like this was to give the

(48:08):
murderers the death penalty. ASA Joseph Savage continued the prosecution's
argument in a moving, powerful speech. Savage detailed the crime
and pushed back on how Darrow had constantly described Richard
and Nathan as boys, saying, Darrow asks your honor for mercy,
and he tells your honor that they are both youths. Boys.

(48:32):
What mercy did they show that boy? Savage's closing brought
the courtroom to tears. Even Nathan was affected in his
own way, asking his brother, my God, do you think
we'll swing? After that, it was now the defense's turn.
Walter Backrach gave a brief speech. He recapped the testimony

(48:55):
of their psychiatric experts, and returned to the theme of
the defendant's youth, saying, quote, your honor stands in relationship
of a father to these defendants. Once Backrack concluded on
the afternoon of August twenty second, Clarence Darrow rose he
would deliver a defense for the Ages, an eight hour

(49:17):
tour de force that is one of the most famous
closing arguments in legal history. He discussed the lack of
legal precedent for a death sentence in such a case,
noting that only three people had ever been hanged after
pleading guilty. He described the evolution of the application of
the death penalty, stating that it had been used more

(49:38):
and more selectively over the years, and called for judicial progressiveness.
He also focused on moral objections to the death penalty,
saying do you think you can cure the hatreds and
the maladjustments of the world by hanging them? You may,
here and there cure hatred with love and understanding, but

(50:00):
you can only add fuel to the flames by hating.
In return, he made the stakes of Judge Caverley's decisions stark,
saying of the concept of justice, quote, who knows what
it is does Crow know, Do I know? Does your
honor know? Is there any human machinery for finding it?

(50:23):
Can your honor appraise these two young men and say
what they deserve? It means that you must appraise every
influence that moves them, the civilization where they live, they're living,
their society, all society which enters into the making of
a child. If your honor can do it, If you

(50:44):
can do it, you are wise. And with wisdom goes
mercy for all its eloquence and humanity. Darrow's closing could
also be callous and inaccurate. He said that quote poor
little Bobby Franks suffered very little and died quickly, which
was not true. He said that perhaps it was Bobby's

(51:07):
fate to die young, and replied that he might not
have done anything with his life. Quote perhaps the boy
who died at fourteen did as much as if he
had died at seventy. He said of Richard and Nathan,
these two are the victims. But Darrow ended on a
powerful note, saying, I am pleading for life, understanding, charity

(51:33):
and kindness and the infinite mercy that forgives all. I
am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred
with love. I am pleading for the future. I am
pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not
control the hearts of men. At the end of his closing,

(51:56):
as at the end of Savages, many in the courtroom
wherein tears, defense attorney Benjamin Backrack now gave a brief
statement in which he again outlied the evidence of the
defendant's mental instability. Robert Crowe would have the final word
in the trial. Crow was angry, frustrated by Darrow's characterization

(52:18):
of the defendants as boys who could not control their actions,
upset by the defense's attempt to make the crime seem
less brutal than it had been, and his fury showed
in his closing arguments. He spoke loudly and shook his
fists and stamped his feet for emphasis. He also introduced
a new theory, the idea that Bobby Franks was molested

(52:41):
before he was murdered. The defense objected, but cavally allowed
the evidence, although he ordered all women to leave the
courtroom first. There was not conclusive evidence one way or
another about this claim. The medical evidence was ambiguous. The
next day, Crow continued his argument. He attacked the defense psychiatrists,

(53:02):
the defense attorneys, and the defendants. We ought to treat
them with kindness and consideration, he asked, incredulously, why from
the evidence in this case, they are as much entitled
to the sympathy and mercy of this court as a
couple of rattlesnakes. They are a disgrace to their honored families,

(53:25):
and they are a menace to this community. The only
useful thing that remains for them now in life is
to go out of life, and go out of it
as quickly as possible under the law. Crow's forceful words
seem to be effective in undermining Darrow's arguments, but then

(53:45):
the prosecutor made a misstep. He brought up Nathan Leopold's
statement during interrogation that quote, a friendly judge would let
them off. Crow had meant to illustrate the defendants smugness
and lack of remorse, but Judge Caverley interpreted this as
an attack on his integrity, Believing that Crow was implying

(54:06):
that he had been bribed. He rebuked Crow and ordered
that the words be stricken from the record, as they
were a quote cowardly and dastardly assault upon the integrity
of this court uncomfortable. Crow tried to explain that that
had not been his intent, but Caverlely was furious on

(54:30):
this awkward note. On the afternoon of August twenty eighth,
the sentencing hearing ended after thirty two days. Judge Cavalley
stated that he would announce his decision on September tenth,
and said that anyone who bothered him during his deliberations
would be quote sent to jail instantly. Despite this, morning,

(54:50):
Judge Caverley and his wife received multiple death threats, and
someone threatened to bomb the courthouse if he did not
sentence Nathan and Richard to death. At nine thirty a m.
On Wednesday, September tenth, Judge Cavalley called the court to order.
He said that given the interest the country had in

(55:11):
the case, he wished to explain his decision. He said
that the psychiatric testimony did not impact his decision because
he believed that quote similar analyzes made of other persons
accused of crime will probably reveal similar or different abnormalities
and thus were not necessarily mitigating factors. He described the

(55:32):
crime as having been premeditated and planned and executed with
quote callousness and cruelty, but he said he could not
ignore the youth of the defendants given their age and quote.
In accordance with the progress of criminal law, with the
dictates of enlightened humanity, and the precedents hitherto observed in

(55:56):
this state, he would be sentencing Nathan Leepold and Richard
Lob to life in prison. The decision to sentence Leopold
and Lobe to prison, specifically a life sentence for the
murder plus a ninety nine year sentence for the kidnapping,
came as a surprise to many, but people also seemed

(56:19):
to understand and accept the sentence. This public reaction to
the sentence reflected evolving perceptions of the crime itself. When
the identities of the killers had first been announced, and
when Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb gave shocking interviews in
which they could not explain their motives and expressed no remorse,
the crime had seemed beyond understanding to many people, but

(56:43):
the trial, or more specifically, the press coverage of the trial,
had changed that view. As the historian PAULA Fast says
in her article Making and Remaking an Event, the Leopold
and Lobe case in American culture. Quote, the killers became
anything the Nietzschean superman whom they claimed to be and

(57:03):
whose self sufficiency initially alarmed the public. Instead, they became children,
precocious and wounded, certainly, but children who could provide lessons
about how to normalize childhood. This last point was an
especially important one. People wanted to find a lesson from

(57:23):
the crime, and they found several lessons about how society
should change. For example, what had initially been understood as
an unfathomable thrill killing was now seen as a representation
of the era's troubles. People saw Leopold and Lobe as
the culmination of all of the trends of the twenties.

(57:45):
Were they jaded by the jazz life of ginnin girls
so that they needed so terrible a thing as murder
to give them new thrills? Asked the Chicago Daily Tribune.
The same article asked, quote, were they bored by life
which left them nothing to be desired, no obstacles to overcome,
no goal to attain? The idea that the pair's wealth

(58:09):
had negatively influenced them had been a key part of
the defense's case. There were echoes in this defense and
in the public discussion of the trial of the twenty
sixteen case of Ethan Couch, a sixteen year old who
killed four people while drunk driving. Like Leopold and Lobe,
Couch pleaded guilty. At his sentencing hearing, defense psychologist Gary

(58:32):
Miller stated quote, he never learned that sometimes you don't
get your way. He had the cars, and he had
the money. He had freedoms that no young man would
be able to handle. Though prosecutors had asked for a
twenty year prison sentence, Couch was instead handed ten years
of probation. Speaking about the sentence, Eric Boyles, whose wife

(58:53):
and daughter had been killed by Couch, said, had he
not had money to have the defense there, to also
have the experts testify, and also offered to pay for
the treatment, I think the results would have been different.
Whether or not you buy the so called affluenza defense.
It's hard to deny the influence on both Couch and
Leopold and Loeb's case. The Leopold and Loeb family's wealth

(59:17):
allowed them to pay a top defense lawyer, and Darrow's
shrewd work on the case, particularly his closing argument, certainly
influenced the verdict, as the Chicago Daily Tribune recorded, quote,
it was the opinion in legal circles that mister Crow's
mountain high evidence had been displaced by Clarence S. Darrow's

(59:38):
sage philosophizing. Had Leopold and Lob not been able to
afford talented defense attorneys, their outcome would likely have been different.
The Frank's family responded to the verdict with grace. Flora
Franks told newspapers that she had not wanted the death penalty,
in large part because of Bobby's view on the subject.

(01:00:00):
In a school debate several weeks before his murder, Bobby
had spoken against the death penalty, saying punishment should be reformative,
never vindictive. Jacob Frank said he was just happy that
it was over. Quote. There can be no more torture
of seeing this thing spread over the front pages of newspapers.

(01:00:23):
It will be easier for missus Franks and for me
to be relieved of the terrible strain of all this publicity.
The publicity had indeed been relentless for the Frank's family
during the trial. Thousands of curious people had flocked the
Frank's home in Kenwood, looking through their windows and invading
their privacy. In late September, Jacob Franks decided to sell

(01:00:46):
the family home and move to a different part of Chicago.
They auctioned off everything in their home, and twelve hundred
people showed up just to see Bobby Franks's room. Jacob
Frank died in nineteen twenty eight. A newspaper article announcing
his death said he was quote never able to recover

(01:01:08):
from his grief. Flora died in nineteen thirty seven. Within
five years of the trial, Richard's father, Albert, and Nathan's father,
Nathan Senior, were also dead, and then on January twenty eighth,
nineteen thirty six, Richard Loeb was stabbed to death in
prison by another inmate. That left only Nathan Leopold, and

(01:01:33):
he was determined that he would not spend the rest
of his life in prison. Though his first years in
prison had been defined by rule breaking and trouble making,
he began to settle down and volunteered around the jail.
In nineteen fifty three, he had his first parole hearing.
When asked about the motives for his crime, Nathan refused
to answer, saying only I don't know why I did it.

(01:01:56):
I'm a different man now. I was a smart Alec kid.
Being a smart Alec kid did not impress the parole
board as justification for murder. Nathan's lack of remorse also
troubled the board, they denied his parole request. Over the
next five years, Nathan promoted his reformed image, heavily participating

(01:02:17):
in interviews that promoted his volunteer work and distanced him
from the crime. In a Saturday Evening Post profile, Nathan
described the murder as something he'd only quote been present at.
He also insisted that he was no longer gay. In
nineteen fifty seven, he published a memoir called Life plus
ninety nine Years, in which Nathan portrayed himself as deeply remorseful,

(01:02:42):
while also claiming that he only did the crime because
Richard Loeb forced him to. In February nineteen fifty eight,
Nathan had another parole Board hearing. He continued his denial
of responsibility, repeating the claim that he was forced into
the crime by Richard Loeb and said I had no
wish to do this dreadful thing. However, he also said

(01:03:05):
he was overwhelmed by remorse and said it is not
easy to live with murder on your conscience, The fact
that you didn't do the actual killing yourself does not
make it any easier. Despite this shifting of blame, the
parole board was more receptive to Nathan this time around,
and granted him parole on February twentieth. He moved to

(01:03:25):
Puerto Rico, where he took a job in a hospital
and married a woman. In nineteen seventy one, he visited
Chicago and went on a trip to the area around
Wolf Lake where he had dumped Bobby Franks's body nearly
fifty years earlier. The area, once a wild land, had
been built over. In a letter to his attorney, Nathan

(01:03:47):
described the area only as quote where I used to
go birding. Soon after this trip, Nathan, already in poor health,
fell ill. On August twenty ninth, nineteen seventy one, Nathan
Leopold died. The Leopold and Loeb case has achieved mythical

(01:04:09):
status in the annals of true crime. It seems to
have all the elements of a fictional story. The remorseless,
eccentric killers, the impassioned defense attorney, the debates over society
and morals and justice. It can be hard to remember
that at the heart of this story is a fourteen
year old boy who thought he was stepping into a

(01:04:30):
relative's car to talk about tennis rackets and then was
brutally killed. There is a human reality to this case.
For all its drama. It is a sad, sordid tale.
But as one of Nathan's parole board members said, quote,
the story is already a legend. That's the story of

(01:04:53):
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Stay with me
after the break to learn about the presses prizing role
in the case. Like many so called crimes of the century,
the press were all over the Leopold and Loeb case,
but the press played an unusual role in this story.

(01:05:15):
Two reporters, James Mulroy and Alvin Goldstein, were instrumental to
solving the crime. On May twenty second, Mulroy, a reporter
for the Chicago Daily News, received a tip that Bobby
Franks had been kidnapped. He got in touch with the
Frank's family friend, Samuel Edelson, who confirmed the story in

(01:05:35):
exchange for Mulroy promising not to publish anything yet. Mulroy
agreed and traveled over to the Frank's house to see
what more he could learn. Meanwhile, Mulroy's colleague Alvin Goldstein
had been sent to write up the discovery of a
boy's body in Indiana. When Mulroy's editor told him about
the body, Mulroy connected the dots and suggested that it

(01:05:57):
might be Bobby Franks. Infrom was the reason the Frank
sent Bobby's uncle to look at the body and ultimately
identify it. On May twenty third, Mulroy and Goldstein stopped
for lunch at the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity house at
the University of Chicago. Richard Loebe happened to be there
chatting with another reporter named Howard Mayer about the Franks case.

(01:06:20):
Loebe suggested to the reporters that they could find out
which drug store Jacob Franks was supposed to have gone
to for the ransom. The four men traveled to sixty
third Street and were able to discover the drug store,
which the journalists then reported to the police. Mulroy and
Goldstein had their biggest break on May thirty. First. They
had been talking to Nathan's classmates and discovered that Nathan

(01:06:43):
was the note taker for his study group. One student
told the reporters that while Nathan usually used a Hammond typewriter,
he had once seen Nathan use a portable typewriter instead.
The student gave mulroy and Goldstein copies of the group notes,
which they took to the typewriter expert who had examined
the ransom note for the police. Upon examining the study notes,

(01:07:05):
the expert was sure that one set of them, the
set that differed from all the rest, was typed by
the same typewriter that had produced the ransom note. Mulroy
and Goldstein took this information to Robert Crowe, who proceeded
to call in the study group members and question them.
This would be one of the final pieces of evidence
that sealed the case against Leopold and Loeb for their

(01:07:28):
dogged reporting and four quote their service towards the solution
of the murder of Robert Franks in Chicago on May
twenty first, nineteen twenty four, and the bringing to justice
of Nathan F. Leopold and Richard Loeb. James Mulroy and
Alvin Goldstein were awarded the nineteen twenty five Pulitzer Prize

(01:07:49):
in Reporting. Thank you for listening to History on Trial.
My main sources for this episode were Nina Barrett's book
The Leopold and Low Files, An intimate look at one
of America's most infamous crimes, Eric Rabaine's website Lobe and
Leopold dot Com, Greg King and Penny Wilson's book Nothing

(01:08:11):
But the Night Leopold and Loeb and The Truth Behind
the Murder that rocked nineteen twenties America, and Paula Fass's
article Making and Remaking an event, the Leopold and Loeb
Case in American Culture. For a full bibliography, as well
as a transcript of this episode with citations, please visit

(01:08:31):
our website History on Trial podcast dot com. History on
Trial is written and hosted by me Mira Hayward. The
show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising
producer Trevor Jung and executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams,
Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward. Learn more about the show

(01:08:54):
at History on Trial podcast dot com and follow us
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