November 4, 2024 • 48 mins
One of the most famous crimes in American history was the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Frank. Two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, wanted to plan the perfect murder. And they didn’t. Author Hal Higdon wrote THE book on this case, called Leopold and Loeb: The Crime of the Century.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
They were to the point where they had to do
it or not do it, so do I did do
it or die and the person died.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:48):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unblush details behind their stories. One of the most famous
crimes in American history was the murder of fourteen year
(01:08):
old Bobby Frank. Two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb,
wanted to plan the perfect murder, but they didn't. Author
Hal Higden wrote the book on this case called Leopold
and Loeb, The Crime of the Century. Now tell me
how you even got started with this story? What intrigued
(01:30):
you about it? First? Before we unravel the story a
little bit like a mystery, is how I like to
do it?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, actually the story was handed to me. Another author
had begun work on a book on Leopold and Law,
but then he blocked and couldn't finish the assignment. So
pauler Menton, who was then the president of DV Putdams
and also Norman Miler's editor, went out looking for another author.
(01:55):
And I had written a book about the Civil War
and had done a couple of books for but them,
so I was out there waiting. My agent asked me
if I would like to do the book, and I
said sure, and put a lot of work into it.
And the book somehow has had legs as hung around
(02:15):
all these years.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Well, I think that's thanks to both your writing and
the story, which I still find fascinating. When we get
into it, people will find out more about it. But
it's still such a mystery about how these two young men,
and I didn't realize how young they were, how these
two young men came together to come up with this
idea that to me is so disturbing. So what are
(02:39):
the themes that you think you explore when you tell
the story.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, the problem is we got a couple of very
right individuals who were sort of almost like gamers. They
were looking for something to exploit their intelligence. They had
gotten together in each other on a trip to charl Boyd,
a summer residence the log family, and started out by
(03:03):
believe it or not, cheating at Bridge. The one thing
wasn't led to another miner's burglary of Love's fraternity house
at the University of Michigan, and then literally almost a
dare to see if they commit the perfect crime. Their
(03:24):
detective fans just like a lot of people, and they're
watching now. But they just sort of took it out
the wrong way, and by the end of the story
a young boy lay dead.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Do you know enough about their individual backgrounds for us
to separate them? And we start with, you know Nathan Leopold,
and you tell me what you know about him up
until this happens where he makes this agreement to murder
a young boy. What do we know about Leopold?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Here's a bright young boy I chose supposedly of two
hundred twenty almost out of the ballpark, were also a burder.
He was actually a creative birdwatcher and had written papers
about the Kirtland warbler, a bird that he apparently discovered
after a lot of people thought it was extinct. And
(04:17):
he went to the part of School for Boys, which
is a school of a private school on the south
side of Chicago and everybody I knew very well myself
and went on to the University of Michigan with Loeb,
but Lobe was sort of rushed him off, so Leopold returned,
(04:37):
went to the University of Chicago, graduated with a degree
when I believe he was like eighteen years old, and
enrolled in law school. Basically, I was a student at
the university where I attended briefly, both in high school
and in graduate school. Loban got together, and that's crime
(05:03):
to one from there.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Now, tell me about Richard Loeb, who I don't know
very much about. What did you find out in your
reporting about his life before he encounters Nathan Leopold.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, but again was bright, not quite as bright, but
one hundred and eighty one hundred and sixty, I believe,
I to you, which is I can't even begin to imagine.
Don't ask me my ito. He was going in high school,
he went to the Laboratory School of Chicago what we
(05:37):
called you High back when, and the same school that
I had gone to and graduated from. So there have
been a lot of comparisons. Why it made it very
easy meat for write about the boy in the neighborhood
and again very very bright, but pretty much so Briat,
who was a super social Well there I get sob
(06:01):
i ate to use the real word for what he was,
went on to the Unis Michigan. They had actually known
Leopold when they were both about fifteen, but it didn't
pay much attend to Leopold that Michigan, which caused Leopold
to head back to Chicago.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
So they know each other. What do you think drew
them to each other? Was it this extreme intelligence? Did
they did you feel like they had very similar personalities
and they sort of fed off each other. Because I
often wonder about killers who work in pairs and what
connects them, what drives them to stay together, and if
they would even have done this if they were just
(06:41):
working as individuals.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Well, they were geniuses, they were lovers. Their families were wealthy,
which led to trying to collect a ransom for a
kidnapping part of the plot that they did and more
or less was can I do this? Can you do that?
And dary each other over a period of two three
(07:06):
four months coming up with the plot, which itself was
was the fun that they found out the fund where
they decided they were going to kidnap a young boy,
kill him, try to collect a ransom money from the parents,
and it was just sort of the evil act.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Well, let's start with the boy who turns out to
be our victim, who is a boy named Bobby Franks.
He's fourteen years old. Before we talk about what happens
to him, tell me what we know about Bobby Franks
and his family and what kind of kid he is.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well, like the Leopold and the Lot families, the family
was wealthy kind of wood back at that time. Who's
the resident leader would be Barack Obama was a very
wealthy neighborhood. It's where the wealthy people landed once they
had left the areas further north downtown and before they
(08:07):
migrated to the suburb Island Park, So that brought them together.
And again to me, it was a very very familiar
neighborhood too, because I didn't live in the Kenwood area.
I lived in another area on the south Stude of
Chicago South Shore, but I was very familiar with the
(08:28):
neighborhood because I went to school there for several years.
So that threw them together, and they both started there
each other before you knew it, the time of the
century had begun.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What do you think their dynamic was. I mean, you
said that they were lovers. I'm assuming number one, this
is secret. This is nineteen twenty four, so they're not
exposing this, Am I assuming correctly that this was secret
or relationship between them?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You are assuming very very correctly. This was something that
would not today, you know, would not be thought much
off the fact that there might be to high school
college a students who were almo sexual back then, who
was unheard of, and so it was not something they
bragged about.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So they are making plans and they want to commit
essentially the perfect crime. Is the money important to them,
the ransom money, or is it just literally the challenge
can we get away with it? And the excitement of
all of that.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, No, the money was totally inconsequential. I mean, if
either of them had wanted the twenty thousand dollars to
maybe buy a new car or do something else prediculous.
The parents would have made that money available to them,
so it certainly was not money. Money was started the
(09:52):
score that would have proved that they had succeeded in
their crime. And they've been able to make it the
perfect crime and make fools of everybody in the city
of Chicago or the policeman, the state's attorneys, and the
achieve of fame that only the two of them knew about.
(10:15):
It would be their little secret.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Tell me about what happens, step by step with as
much detail as you can think of. How does this start?
They've planned for several months, How do they decide when
this is going to happen? And then what happens?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Well, the two of us got together and had all
of their plans going. They had discovered how one could
run a car. They had a secret location in one
of the Chicago hotels, so they could check into the
hotel and establish an identity so if they went into
a rental tar place, they could use that identity to
(10:56):
rent a car, so they wouldn't have to use either
of their car. This is again the devising things like this.
Going into a hardware store around Fortieth Street in Chicago
and buying a shizzle that they would wrap and turn
into a budge and so they could strike of the victim.
(11:16):
These were all the games that they were playing, identifying
another drug store on sixty third Street in Chicago where
there was a couple of telephone they had telephone booths
back in that era, and they could call the victim
mister Franks, actually the victim father who hadn't even an
(11:41):
identified it not and get him through a game literally
where they would guide him to taking the money ransom
money and getting it to them where nobody would be
able to follow his movements. So again, these game was
a game. It was a game that's sort of like
the game that the kids doing now. And so eventually
(12:03):
the plot went and they were to the point where
they had to do it or not do it. They
were realterally the point where if they hadn't found the
boy within the next thirty minutes, they would have stopped
and Leopold would go off to Europe on vacation, which
was part of his plan. So sort of they didn't
(12:25):
do it or die, and the person died in.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
The age, how did they find Bobby Franks. They didn't
know him beforehand, right.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Well, actually no, they did. It was a small neighborhood.
Everybody knew everybody else, and so Leopold and low would
definitely have known Bobby Frank's effect. I think Bobby France
sometimes even played tennis on the Loew's father's tennis sports
so it was a familiar person. Although it really didn't
(12:55):
matter because they had been scouting out various victims. They
had their rental tower and they were driving around the
Harvard School where a baseball game was going on, and
Bobby Franks was serving as the umpire to take part
of the game, and he started walking home. They looked
(13:17):
at a couple of other boys in and around the
neighborhood that they saw who they spotted at first, but
when they turned the car around to go get him,
he had disappeared. So there was a matter of total
chance that Bobby Franks would be walking down the street
down to his parents' home and Leopold and Loba saw him,
(13:40):
went past him, turned around, came back. Lob I believe
it was who rolled down the window and shouted for
Bobby to ask him, Hey, would you like a ride home?
And it would have been normal for Bobby to just
jump in the car, because Lowe was in quotes from
(14:00):
the neighborhood. So Bobby Franks got into the front seat
with one of the murderers driving, the other murder in
the back seat. And I'm not using a name because
even today we don't know who is the actual person
who hit Bobby Franks and committed the crime. So by
(14:21):
that time it was quickly, even almost before they had
gotten down to the next block, the blow was struck,
and they drove out to an area that if you've
ever driven into Chicago on the Skyway, there's a place
Wolf Lake on both sides of the road. Wasn't there
back then in nineteen twenty four, but within a quarter
(14:45):
mile or so the Skyway, the lakes merged and there's
a railroad tracks back there. So all this had been
scanned in advance, and there was a matter just dragging
about the dead body by now and stuffing him into
a culvert and expecting that maybe the body would never
(15:05):
be found, or at least not found for days or
weeks or when it's probably even years.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
For people who don't know, just quickly explain what a
culvert is and why I have read so many stories
about bodies being hidden in culverts.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
And so basically it would be a long round two
the two that would allow the water to move from
Wolf Lake through the tube and into the next body
of water, which ironically was about a half life away
for where one of my cousins lived, and so I
knew the area very well. Leopald knew the area very
(15:44):
well because he was a burder and usually once a
week he would take students from the laboratory school again
my high school, take them burning out to the lake,
and that was part of what he did. And he
knew in the area very very very familiar, and that
(16:05):
was part of their kidnap plot.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
So did you get the impression. I know that we've
we've already said that they are really focused on pulling
off the perfect crime, and we sort of just said
it was kind of one hit from one of them,
we don't know who, and that's it. Did you get
the impression there was any sort of gratification from either
of them around the actual murder, not the planning or
(16:29):
the cover up, but the actual Did they get a
little bit of a thrill out of that?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah? I think it was the planning. Basically, they were
all detective stories. You know, this is back in the
area of Pulp six, and they had all sorts of
publications basically or into that detective genre, if you might,
and that was part of their their scheme would be
(16:54):
to create a crime then would be the equal of
the crimes that they read about, and in some respects
they even mimic the crimes of I'm not a mistake.
In the ransom note was a note that they had
plagiarized from one of their detective magazine. So there's nothing
(17:15):
about these two to light.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So is this broad daylight? He's walking home after refereeing
this baseball game, right, I mean, is this at dusk
or what time of day is this? It seems very
brazen to me.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, I think it certainly must have been light. I mean,
this is what five point thirty in the afternoon, it
is still would have been very much daylight. And as
a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, Leopold the
lobe even claused with the dead body in the tront
until it got dark so that they could go and
(17:49):
not be observed while they were about what they were doing. Actually,
as I said, you know, Leopold was a burner. He
was very familiar with the area. He probably realized that
they're could be other birds there. At the same time,
they didn't want to blow their their crime that way,
so they waited until it was dark and went in
there with the body and that we as we dis
(18:11):
discussed in the culvert and uh, and then they headed
back home to continue the crime. The following day.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
When does Bobby Franks' his family become alarmed when he
doesn't show up for dinner.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I'm assuming, yeah, there wereried he's not there, and they
make a few phone calls to see if they can
find out where they were, and they discovered that he
was seen at the baseball game, and everybody suddenly loses
his track home he so basically Body Franks disappear is
only to be discovered the following day. And at that time,
(18:49):
the mister Franks was with his attorney and they were
wondering what they should do. They didn't know whether they
should call the police or not. And suddenly they get
a phone call and a person identifies himself by a
fictitious name, and he tells mister Frank's attorney it's asked
(19:13):
to speak to Body Frank's father tells him that they
had body he is safe, although that was a lie,
and that they would return him safely if they would
pay twenty five thousand dollars, I believe, And so the
crime was continued, and they had this all plotted out
where they would take mister Frank's almost on a scavenger hunt,
(19:38):
where they would ask him to go to a drug
store on the sixty third Street, tell him to go
down to the only central station at twelfth Street, get
on a nice sea train I see as we called
it back then, and get on the back of the train,
and when the train came past sixty fifth or one
(20:00):
of the streets near there, to throw the ransom money
out the window or off the back of the train,
and if the money were collected that way, then Bobby
Franks would be returned unarmed. But the pot began to
unravel because Leopold Or told mister Franks where the drug
(20:23):
store was that he was supposed to go, and I
believe the attorney was sitting in on the phone call
as well, and they suddenly realized they had forgotten the
name of the drug store or work it was they
were going. So they were trapped because there was no
way that they could send Bobby Franks's father on the
(20:44):
next leg of the scavenger hunt, so the crime was
really sort of busted at that point, and eventually the
body was discovered within hours rather not within days or weeks.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So Bobby Franks goes missing late afternoon, early evening, his
father is alarmed. Leopold and Loebe are realistically, in your opinion,
feeling like confident that this body is not going to
be found anytime soon. Would putting a body in that culvert,
would that realistically have been out of sight for a while?
Were they right?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, to a certain point, true, But the problem was
that the colvert wasn't that big, so when they tried
to stuff the body in, the legs were stating out.
But you know, they didn't think anybody was going to
because this is an obscure place, fire from fire from anything.
You know. Now we have the sky away and the
cars whizzing by to get tour from Chicago. Back then,
(21:44):
and it was basically a near wilderness with only the
burdeners really and the fishermen to populate the area. So
they were trying to lure mister Franks into going to
the drug store, taking him to the icy station, having
him throw the money out and they would obscure them
with the money, which is their score. You know, that's
(22:06):
how they kicked the three point field goal, got the money.
But if money didn't really mean anything to accept the
score that they were able to achieve.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Okay, So a couple of things. One just to be clear,
mister Frank's got this phone call before Bobby's body was discovered.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I believe that's through.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yes, How much are they asking for again?
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I believe it was twenty four thousand dollars that they
were trying to get, and you know that's so in
money for somebody as wealthy as the people they are
dealing with.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
So you know they snatch him in daylight. They are
picking someone who has it sounds like a family that
would be very alarmed if he doesn't show up at home,
and they have not taken the time to figure out
that this kid's body is not going to fit correctly
in the culvert that they are hoping is going to
cover up the body for a long enough time where
(23:00):
they can achieve getting this ransom money. Does this to
you prove that you can be incredibly BookSmart or naturally
intelligent and not be at all streets smart or logical
when you're pulling off something like this.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Exactly, And continuing the story, what happens is the sun
comes up the next morning. One of the workers in
the ice factory back then people sold chunks of ice
was wandering home from his job and cutting across the
area wolf Lake and happens to glance down into the
(23:37):
connecting canal and goes from one leg to the other
and sees what it appears to be a footstep out,
goes down there, yanks the body out of the culvert,
realizes that the individual is dead. It does not know
what to do, but it goes up to put the
culvert where a railroad track is now a bike path
(23:59):
by the way, goes over the colvert, and at that
time several railroad workers in a handcart are tunning the
lawn the track. He finds them down, tells them that
there's dead boy there. And what they do is they
put the body of Boddy Franks on the railroad card
(24:20):
and then they card him to the next intersection and
take him in I believe, to a funeral parlor nearby
and call the police. And at that time the Franks
have been revealed themselves to the police. They were slow
in doing so because they were afraid that that would
blow it. Leopold figured, well, there was a full proof scheme,
(24:44):
so they didn't have any hesitation about getting identified or
they were wrong.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Okay, so where are we in the stage of this
supposed kidnapping. Bobby Frank's father now realizes that he's dead,
and what do investigators say? We need follow through on
this because the killers don't know that we know that
Bobby Franks is dead. They're trying to extort money out
of you. Is that sort of what happens going forward?
(25:11):
They want to continue with the ruse so that they
can catch these guys.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, what pretty much happened is that the news has
spread among the police that there's a body been found
out there. So we have a missing person and a
dead body. Pretty easy to put them together. So the
Frank's family sent one of the uncles out to the
funeral home to make an identification of the body. So
(25:37):
he called back and said, yes, it's Bobby. So at
that point the money collection was not going to happen. Now,
what I forgot to tell you for a few minutes
is while all these people were still at wolf Like,
they noticed down on the ground for a pair of glasses,
so didn't think too much about the time. But the
(25:58):
worker picked up pair of glasses put in the pocket
because he thought, well, maybe he might need them at
some time. And when they finally did get the police
did come, he admitted that he had a pair of glasses,
and it was realizing that it might have been the
glasses that belonged to the killer. So this would be
one of the first little little links of evidence that
(26:21):
would bring eventually, about ten days later, the police to
Nathan Leopold's door.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Now let's talk about the glasses, because these were not
your standard present day CBS glasses. These were special glasses,
right right.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
You know, when I go to CBS, I pay fourteen
dollars and ninety five cents for a pair of glasses.
But these are a somewhat unique pair of glasses that
had a unique ends on the glasses. And it turns
out that Olmer Cole, the glass company that was still
around when I was growing up with the saw sat
(26:57):
at Chicago, had records all the glasses must have been
high style glasses that they sold, and there were only
three people in the city of Chicago who apparently had
glasses similar that that had this special little shape that
put this part of the eye to the real glasses.
(27:17):
So they were identify the three people, one of which
was Nathan Leopold. The other two people, I won't don't
want to say they had iron clad alibiz but I
think one of those even off on a trip. But
they really pretty much was down to the fact that
the glasses didn't come from Leopold christ There was no
(27:38):
proof that they disiplicated him as a murderer because he
showed up in that area of the city of Chicago
all the time with his murder. He was able to
say that, oh, he had a pair of glasses, and
he fell down while he was out there in the area,
and the glasses must have filled out of his pocket.
And he didn't realize this. And this was a week ago,
(28:01):
and I had realized that the glasses had been lost,
and so the state's attorney, attorney Crow, I asked them, well, here,
fall down and see if the glasses come out. So
Leopold fell down on the ground and the glasses remained
in the pocket. And then he tried a second time
(28:23):
for the third time, the glasses didn't come out, and
so that seemingly hit it on gim. Ironically, when I
was going out examining the area once, I had a
pair of glasses in my pocket. I stuck them into
the pocket of whatever it was I had on at
that time, and I was out running to go from
(28:44):
the murder area to where I'd parked my car, and
it happened to trip, fell down into the mud, got
muddle all over me, and my glasses fell up. I
had to go back to retrieve them afore as they
were footsteps all over the place. So basically, you know,
they weren't realizing all of the things, the crazy things
(29:04):
that can happen. And about a quarter century or so ago,
the Chicago Historical Society had an exhibit about the Leopold
and Low case with all the pictures and photographs and
other items from the case, and one of the items
that they still had it was in state's evidence, was
the original pair of glasses sitting on all of Historical Society.
(29:28):
I'm not sure if the glasses have survived because theoretically,
mostly exposed to freyer, they might have crumbled. But there
were many, so many things that Leopold and Lowe could
not imagine we're liable to happen, and by that time
the police would come knocking on their door.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Were those glasses the main thing that led them to
at least Nathan Leopold or was there anything else that
pointed directly at at least him to have them show
up at his door.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Well, I think it was mostly the glasses that, yeah,
did bring the police to his door. But as we
pointed out, they were easy to come up with the
alibi he could have been in that area and the
glasses regardless, so they wouldn't fall out at the status
Hurry's office. But what happened later was that they went
(30:18):
to so Fur, who drove Leopold's logo around, and it
turned out that we're talking to the Leopolds. So Fur
and he determined the fact that the boys did not
have their regular car that day, that there was a
strange car that they were driving, the rental car that
they'd gotten, so that the car would not have been identified.
(30:41):
And so that was sort of the next link that
led them to the murderer, and so bit by bit,
their beautiful, beautiful plant started falling apart, so that after
a good several hours of interrogation by the police, by
these state's attorney, the two murderers confessed.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Okay, so we've got these two guys, who I'm assuming
are very surprised. What are their confessions like when they
talked to the police, and do we think they were
coerced at all? Or were they just presented with his
evidence and they just said, okay, we give up.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Pretty much, they gave up. And again, this was before
the Miranda Act, which would have caused Clarence Narrow to
stow up about half a day earlier than he did
and would have told the boys to stop talking. That
may or may not have prevented them from being identified
as the murderers. They eventually confessed, and yeahter one person confessed,
(31:38):
and they walked next door to the separate room where
the other one was being held and revealed the fact
that Loan, I believe, confessed and here's what he said
about al you did this and I did that. And
Leopold then to the similar confess that say, well, there's
one thing that Low told Roan. He tried to say
(31:59):
that I killed Bobby Franks, but actually it was he
who wielded the camera. He was in the back seat.
I was driving the car, and he was the one
who killed Bobby Franks. And of course the other one
will say pretty much the same thing. And to this
day we don't know for sure that Leopold was the
(32:20):
blow or Low was a blow. Of course, it didn't
make any different They were both guilty the under the law.
But that's sort of one of the mysteries of the
case that had remained unsolved and will remain unsolved forever.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
So despite their relationship, their you know, physical relationship, they
ended up ultimately turning on each other. Is that right,
That's true.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
And so basically they were against each other. But of
course they couldn't avoid each other because within a short
time they were going to be brought to the court
and sitting next to each other while all the evidence
was laid out. They couldn't really avoid each other, so
they started having mended of fences. It's so to speak,
(33:04):
you know.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
We just interviewed an author who was telling a much
more contemporary story set in Kentucky, where you have two
people who are tried for murder. We don't know who
the killer is. We just know these are two people
who killed someone else. They are tried separately, and it
sounds like the first one was convicted and so the
second one was able to say, well, you've already convicted
(33:25):
this guy. I'm not the killer. We only know one
person did it. Did they choose to try them together
because of that?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
I suspect the police wanted to try them together in
a single setting. It's a lot easier rather than having
fourteen defendants and trying him in fourteen cases. What's just
happening today, so that they're basically were Roddy leafart together
and they were pretty much like joined at the hips
(33:51):
for all the rest of their life.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
So while they were on trial, they were in the
same jail or the same jail cell.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
I believe they're in the same jail. I don't know
if they were in the same cell, although it wouldn't
surprise me to Whatever they wanted is pretty much they've got.
You know, you're talking about wealthy people who all they
needed to do would be to ask their father for money,
for which they would buy the favors that they could
better get better meals sent to the jail. They could
(34:22):
hand out money to fellow tonics for protect us necessary.
So money was buying everything at this case, including money buying,
the fameals samous attorney who supposedly and underline that supposedly
was going to get a million dollars for the defense.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Well, I want to hear about reactions, and so I
want to start with the reaction of Loban Leopold's families.
Were they shocked? Did they think that this was not possible?
They so obviously supported him, he said.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah, they had to, And basically they didn't want to
turn their backs on and if I'm not mistake in,
Love's mother still didn't want to believe the fact that
her son could have been a killer. Pretty much she
left town, went up to Charldboy and hung out there
during the case, just as frankst although I also was
(35:18):
basically distraught the fact that they had lost the boy,
but distraught possibly also because the story of his murder
was being broadcast day after day after day after day
by the heart of journalists who crammed into the card room.
He was the thing that everybody's totally focused on.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
How were Leopold and loebe framed in the media, good looking,
wealthy gay trying to pull off the perfect murder? Is
that what the combination was that enthrolled the media, Well.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Pretty much. They were trying to be examined as much
as they could, So there are so many strings that
you could attach the story to. Particular when they got
the alienists, the psychiatrists involved, and basically the information was
being fed the trial, but the reporters were taking reporting
(36:11):
it outside the trial. So basically they were pretty much
reported as as evil monsters, and that's what the public
wanted to hear.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Now, you said earlier you talked about red flags with
the alienists who took the stand after examining both of
these young men, tell me what they found. What were
their determination of what was wrong with them? I don't
know if there's any easier way to say it, why
they would do this? What did the alienists say?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, I'm thinking the alienists, I'm not sure any of
them regat the story. Right. Leopold and Love literally the
loved being the center of attention. They loved being interviewed
by the alienists and revealing all their secrets, their evil things.
The fact that there was a governess who would take
care of Leopold when he was young, and maybe the
(37:02):
governess was part of the reason that he had turned
out the way he did. So everybody had a theory.
There were drawings that would appear in the paper of
the skulls of the boys, of the circle around the
brain area. I asked whether there was some different type
of brain that would have malfunctionally caused them to do
(37:24):
these evil things. So there was plenty of juicy information
for the ailieness on both sides to explore. Try to explore,
try to understand what the pair were doing.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
So were they going for the nsanity defense in this
case both of them?
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, Attorney Crow wanted them to hang. He was looking
for a hanging jury. Of course, it was a jury
of one because Darrow having pleaded the two of them guilty,
there was no need to have a jury. The question
was was the guilt enough so that they could be
brought to justice?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And on the next Okay, so you've intrigued me a
little bit with this story of the governess. And you said,
this was Richard Loeb's governess, and is the insinuation that
she was abusive in some way?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Well that's the theory. You know, everybody came up with
the coca theory. So they were all sorts of witnesses
or people who were telling their side of the story,
a couple of shady ladies who supposedly wanted to prove
the yellow Richard Lowe and I were out dancing that
day rather than he wasn't off of anything. So there
(38:35):
was sort of a circus going through at the card
room at that time, and the reporters sort of eagerly
trying to come up with new angles to fill their
story out of CNN was not around at that time,
but typically what one might expect to get from the
broadcast networks we have today to the paper networks we
(38:57):
had back in the nineteen twenty four. So some of
the information that it was sort of salacious and not
fit for anybody to hear, particularly if any women were
in the card room at that time. So the judge
would bring the attorneys up to talk to them, and
they would whisper very closely, and the reporters would lean
(39:19):
forward trying to find out what was being said so
they could report it to their riatas the next day.
It was just literally a fascinating story that one could
not invent.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Were either of these young men at all phased by this?
Were they not scared that they were going to end
up either at the gallows or spending the rest of
their lives in prison. Or did they seem sort of
emboldened in a way after they were caught and they confessed.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Well, I think they were probably bold about it. In
otherwise they felt they're guilty and they're famous, and oh boy,
we're going to have Clarence Darrow. So I think there
was sort of a sense of their status that their
parents said them the best lawyer in the world. So
they were sort of into the trials fascinated by it,
probably blanked out on the fact that I just found
(40:09):
guilty that they might just set away either for life
in prison or for death in prison.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
So ultimately they had confessed and their attorney had plugged
guilty on their behalf, and this was a discussion about
whether or not with the judge making a decision about
the penalty phase and what was their best hope that
they were going to spend life in prison or was
there any sense that their attorney had said, I might
be able to get you less than that, maybe twenty
(40:36):
years at the most.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, I doubt if there was any hope. I was saying,
I've been discovery such a anus crime. It sort of
like a crime without a votive as it was. You know,
they were given in life plus ninety nine years.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
How did the public react to that? So they were
not hanged, which, as I bet the media was demanding.
Did the public think that this was a miscarriage of
justice or did this seem like a fair sentence?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah? I suspect the public moved on to the next
penous murder.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Well, I know I believe the way the rest of
this story goes, but a lot of people might not.
So they are both sentenced to life in prison, natural
life in prison, right, and they have very different endings
both of these men.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, Christ life plus ninety nine years meant that they
are never going to get out of prison suppositively. But
they went down to Jelliet and they were good gamers
of the system. So Richard Lull and Nathan Leopold had
access to that same good guy rule where I went
in and saw the two mass murderers. They pretty much
(41:41):
figured out that as he played around and gained the system,
you could have comfort. So Chars Leopold was able to
finance whatever extra better meals that he got in prison
and again also protect him of Chars. What happened? Is that?
Fast forward ten years now Richard Loeb is taking a
(42:02):
sour and another prisoner comes in with a knife and
hats and the pieces. He dies. Leopoldo continues on through
the forties, where he gets involved in a research study
for malaria and mostuitos Curry's favor for the various people
who might give him a parole, and he eventually hissed parole,
(42:25):
goes off to Puerto Rico spends the rest of his
life there.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I mean, how is that even possible? This man who
planned a murder of a stranger, and is it just forgotten?
And because he was so pivotal to this research that
they decided to give him parole. How long was he
in prison for before he was released.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Until about nineteen seventy or so, So he spent several
decades in prison, but every second year or so he
had the right to appear in front of a parole
board and they would hear in the case. At some
point for all board said well, it's time he's suffering
that and he seems to be rehabilitated, and we'll let
(43:09):
him go. And so with the content that he basically
pretty much disappears. So Leopold was able to go down
to Puerto Rico, where he got out that job and
not a hospital, and pretty much and the next half
a dozen or so years even got married down there.
But he'd learned how to live with the system down
(43:30):
there as well as he had all through his life.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Silly questioned, but married to a woman I'm assuming.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Dirty, Yeah, that was their name. I don't think the
fact that he was gay was publicized that much, so
the fact that he would have married a woman was
not that shocking. People would have not given it a
lot of thought. Also, I think that by that time
Leopold and certainly a little bit disappeared off of the
screens of most people living in Chicago. Nathan Leopold, Oh,
(44:01):
wasn't he that guy that murdered that kid? What's he
doing these days? And he's still in Brisidon ninety nine
years that he might make it to age ninety nine,
but nobody was expected to. So he waves goodbye to Juliet,
and to a certain extent, waves away goodbye to whatever
was happening until somebody in mind by the name of
(44:23):
Meyer Levin writes a book titled Compulsion. It's a work
of fiction where they disguise the names of the people
now became a best seller and they pulls back in
the public side for a while. Didn't like and even
tried to sue the author. Didn't succeed on that, but
the crimeula century hadn't met it down.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Now I'm going to circle back to something I asked
you as we're wrapping up this episode. I'm going to
circle back to the question of taken separately Leopold and
Low if they had never met, do you think anything
like this would have happened? Or did it take the
two of them meet and talking about this fantasy for
that to trigger it? Did they have the do you
(45:04):
think ability separately to do this on their own?
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I can answer that question very easily. No. I think
the two of them coming together was basically like the
atonic bomb, was the spark that set off the explosion?
And had they not come together accidentally, I suppose they
both lived in the same neighborhood, but not really close together.
They went to different schools high schools at that time,
(45:29):
so no, they might not have met. And taking that
one step further, ABOUDI Frank is if he hung around
the school a little bit longer at the baseball game.
They might not have spotted him five point thirty six
o'clock getting dark. They probably would have just gone home,
and not having succeeded in their game, they probably would
(45:52):
have moved on for the rest of their lives. So, yeah,
you're exactly right. Yeah, you nailed it right on the head.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
So what is the lesson that we've learned here? Because
the most frustrating stories, to me, the most frustrating killers
to understand, would be the Leopold and Lobe, which I
don't run into very often. It just doesn't make any sense.
I even understand serial killers in their motivations. I understand money,
I understand greed, sex, you know, sexual depravity, the need
(46:21):
for control, But this just seems so randomized. Is that
why we're fascinated with this case?
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, and you also understand somebody walking into a school
with a repeater gun and killing a couple of dozen people,
not just one person. So we live in an evil world.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
So this last question, what is the legacy which is
probably not the right word for Leopold and Lobe, the
memory of the stinch of what they've left behind. What
is that in just a couple of sentences, what do
we learn from it.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, we learned that we're probably never safe. I think
this is a thing that scares there and a lot
of mothers on the South Side of Chicago, the fact
that it could have been there boy walking down the
street and happen to be the victim. I think that's
the thing that we try to do the best we can.
We fasten our seat belts and do all the good
(47:15):
things that we learned to do on the internet. But
still there is no excuse for what happens, and no
excuse for Leopold and Low Committee the utterly de pray
crime that they did commit.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked and American Sherlok and Don't Forget There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis
(48:02):
a Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode
was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer,
artwork by Nick Toga, Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at
tenfold More Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
They were to the point where they had to do
it or not do it, so do I did do
it or die and the person died.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:48):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unblush details behind their stories. One of the most famous
crimes in American history was the murder of fourteen year
(01:08):
old Bobby Frank. Two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb,
wanted to plan the perfect murder, but they didn't. Author
Hal Higden wrote the book on this case called Leopold
and Loeb, The Crime of the Century. Now tell me
how you even got started with this story? What intrigued
(01:30):
you about it? First? Before we unravel the story a
little bit like a mystery, is how I like to
do it?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, actually the story was handed to me. Another author
had begun work on a book on Leopold and Law,
but then he blocked and couldn't finish the assignment. So
pauler Menton, who was then the president of DV Putdams
and also Norman Miler's editor, went out looking for another author.
(01:55):
And I had written a book about the Civil War
and had done a couple of books for but them,
so I was out there waiting. My agent asked me
if I would like to do the book, and I
said sure, and put a lot of work into it.
And the book somehow has had legs as hung around
(02:15):
all these years.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Well, I think that's thanks to both your writing and
the story, which I still find fascinating. When we get
into it, people will find out more about it. But
it's still such a mystery about how these two young men,
and I didn't realize how young they were, how these
two young men came together to come up with this
idea that to me is so disturbing. So what are
(02:39):
the themes that you think you explore when you tell
the story.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, the problem is we got a couple of very
right individuals who were sort of almost like gamers. They
were looking for something to exploit their intelligence. They had
gotten together in each other on a trip to charl Boyd,
a summer residence the log family, and started out by
(03:03):
believe it or not, cheating at Bridge. The one thing
wasn't led to another miner's burglary of Love's fraternity house
at the University of Michigan, and then literally almost a
dare to see if they commit the perfect crime. Their
(03:24):
detective fans just like a lot of people, and they're
watching now. But they just sort of took it out
the wrong way, and by the end of the story
a young boy lay dead.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Do you know enough about their individual backgrounds for us
to separate them? And we start with, you know Nathan Leopold,
and you tell me what you know about him up
until this happens where he makes this agreement to murder
a young boy. What do we know about Leopold?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Here's a bright young boy I chose supposedly of two
hundred twenty almost out of the ballpark, were also a burder.
He was actually a creative birdwatcher and had written papers
about the Kirtland warbler, a bird that he apparently discovered
after a lot of people thought it was extinct. And
(04:17):
he went to the part of School for Boys, which
is a school of a private school on the south
side of Chicago and everybody I knew very well myself
and went on to the University of Michigan with Loeb,
but Lobe was sort of rushed him off, so Leopold returned,
(04:37):
went to the University of Chicago, graduated with a degree
when I believe he was like eighteen years old, and
enrolled in law school. Basically, I was a student at
the university where I attended briefly, both in high school
and in graduate school. Loban got together, and that's crime
(05:03):
to one from there.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Now, tell me about Richard Loeb, who I don't know
very much about. What did you find out in your
reporting about his life before he encounters Nathan Leopold.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, but again was bright, not quite as bright, but
one hundred and eighty one hundred and sixty, I believe,
I to you, which is I can't even begin to imagine.
Don't ask me my ito. He was going in high school,
he went to the Laboratory School of Chicago what we
(05:37):
called you High back when, and the same school that
I had gone to and graduated from. So there have
been a lot of comparisons. Why it made it very
easy meat for write about the boy in the neighborhood
and again very very bright, but pretty much so Briat,
who was a super social Well there I get sob
(06:01):
i ate to use the real word for what he was,
went on to the Unis Michigan. They had actually known
Leopold when they were both about fifteen, but it didn't
pay much attend to Leopold that Michigan, which caused Leopold
to head back to Chicago.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
So they know each other. What do you think drew
them to each other? Was it this extreme intelligence? Did
they did you feel like they had very similar personalities
and they sort of fed off each other. Because I
often wonder about killers who work in pairs and what
connects them, what drives them to stay together, and if
they would even have done this if they were just
(06:41):
working as individuals.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Well, they were geniuses, they were lovers. Their families were wealthy,
which led to trying to collect a ransom for a
kidnapping part of the plot that they did and more
or less was can I do this? Can you do that?
And dary each other over a period of two three
(07:06):
four months coming up with the plot, which itself was
was the fun that they found out the fund where
they decided they were going to kidnap a young boy,
kill him, try to collect a ransom money from the parents,
and it was just sort of the evil act.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Well, let's start with the boy who turns out to
be our victim, who is a boy named Bobby Franks.
He's fourteen years old. Before we talk about what happens
to him, tell me what we know about Bobby Franks
and his family and what kind of kid he is.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well, like the Leopold and the Lot families, the family
was wealthy kind of wood back at that time. Who's
the resident leader would be Barack Obama was a very
wealthy neighborhood. It's where the wealthy people landed once they
had left the areas further north downtown and before they
(08:07):
migrated to the suburb Island Park, So that brought them together.
And again to me, it was a very very familiar
neighborhood too, because I didn't live in the Kenwood area.
I lived in another area on the south Stude of
Chicago South Shore, but I was very familiar with the
(08:28):
neighborhood because I went to school there for several years.
So that threw them together, and they both started there
each other before you knew it, the time of the
century had begun.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What do you think their dynamic was. I mean, you
said that they were lovers. I'm assuming number one, this
is secret. This is nineteen twenty four, so they're not
exposing this, Am I assuming correctly that this was secret
or relationship between them?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You are assuming very very correctly. This was something that
would not today, you know, would not be thought much
off the fact that there might be to high school
college a students who were almo sexual back then, who
was unheard of, and so it was not something they
bragged about.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So they are making plans and they want to commit
essentially the perfect crime. Is the money important to them,
the ransom money, or is it just literally the challenge
can we get away with it? And the excitement of
all of that.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, No, the money was totally inconsequential. I mean, if
either of them had wanted the twenty thousand dollars to
maybe buy a new car or do something else prediculous.
The parents would have made that money available to them,
so it certainly was not money. Money was started the
(09:52):
score that would have proved that they had succeeded in
their crime. And they've been able to make it the
perfect crime and make fools of everybody in the city
of Chicago or the policeman, the state's attorneys, and the
achieve of fame that only the two of them knew about.
(10:15):
It would be their little secret.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Tell me about what happens, step by step with as
much detail as you can think of. How does this start?
They've planned for several months, How do they decide when
this is going to happen? And then what happens?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Well, the two of us got together and had all
of their plans going. They had discovered how one could
run a car. They had a secret location in one
of the Chicago hotels, so they could check into the
hotel and establish an identity so if they went into
a rental tar place, they could use that identity to
(10:56):
rent a car, so they wouldn't have to use either
of their car. This is again the devising things like this.
Going into a hardware store around Fortieth Street in Chicago
and buying a shizzle that they would wrap and turn
into a budge and so they could strike of the victim.
(11:16):
These were all the games that they were playing, identifying
another drug store on sixty third Street in Chicago where
there was a couple of telephone they had telephone booths
back in that era, and they could call the victim
mister Franks, actually the victim father who hadn't even an
(11:41):
identified it not and get him through a game literally
where they would guide him to taking the money ransom
money and getting it to them where nobody would be
able to follow his movements. So again, these game was
a game. It was a game that's sort of like
the game that the kids doing now. And so eventually
(12:03):
the plot went and they were to the point where
they had to do it or not do it. They
were realterally the point where if they hadn't found the
boy within the next thirty minutes, they would have stopped
and Leopold would go off to Europe on vacation, which
was part of his plan. So sort of they didn't
(12:25):
do it or die, and the person died in.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
The age, how did they find Bobby Franks. They didn't
know him beforehand, right.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Well, actually no, they did. It was a small neighborhood.
Everybody knew everybody else, and so Leopold and low would
definitely have known Bobby Frank's effect. I think Bobby France
sometimes even played tennis on the Loew's father's tennis sports
so it was a familiar person. Although it really didn't
(12:55):
matter because they had been scouting out various victims. They
had their rental tower and they were driving around the
Harvard School where a baseball game was going on, and
Bobby Franks was serving as the umpire to take part
of the game, and he started walking home. They looked
(13:17):
at a couple of other boys in and around the
neighborhood that they saw who they spotted at first, but
when they turned the car around to go get him,
he had disappeared. So there was a matter of total
chance that Bobby Franks would be walking down the street
down to his parents' home and Leopold and Loba saw him,
(13:40):
went past him, turned around, came back. Lob I believe
it was who rolled down the window and shouted for
Bobby to ask him, Hey, would you like a ride home?
And it would have been normal for Bobby to just
jump in the car, because Lowe was in quotes from
(14:00):
the neighborhood. So Bobby Franks got into the front seat
with one of the murderers driving, the other murder in
the back seat. And I'm not using a name because
even today we don't know who is the actual person
who hit Bobby Franks and committed the crime. So by
(14:21):
that time it was quickly, even almost before they had
gotten down to the next block, the blow was struck,
and they drove out to an area that if you've
ever driven into Chicago on the Skyway, there's a place
Wolf Lake on both sides of the road. Wasn't there
back then in nineteen twenty four, but within a quarter
(14:45):
mile or so the Skyway, the lakes merged and there's
a railroad tracks back there. So all this had been
scanned in advance, and there was a matter just dragging
about the dead body by now and stuffing him into
a culvert and expecting that maybe the body would never
(15:05):
be found, or at least not found for days or
weeks or when it's probably even years.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
For people who don't know, just quickly explain what a
culvert is and why I have read so many stories
about bodies being hidden in culverts.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
And so basically it would be a long round two
the two that would allow the water to move from
Wolf Lake through the tube and into the next body
of water, which ironically was about a half life away
for where one of my cousins lived, and so I
knew the area very well. Leopald knew the area very
(15:44):
well because he was a burder and usually once a
week he would take students from the laboratory school again
my high school, take them burning out to the lake,
and that was part of what he did. And he
knew in the area very very very familiar, and that
(16:05):
was part of their kidnap plot.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
So did you get the impression. I know that we've
we've already said that they are really focused on pulling
off the perfect crime, and we sort of just said
it was kind of one hit from one of them,
we don't know who, and that's it. Did you get
the impression there was any sort of gratification from either
of them around the actual murder, not the planning or
(16:29):
the cover up, but the actual Did they get a
little bit of a thrill out of that?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah? I think it was the planning. Basically, they were
all detective stories. You know, this is back in the
area of Pulp six, and they had all sorts of
publications basically or into that detective genre, if you might,
and that was part of their their scheme would be
(16:54):
to create a crime then would be the equal of
the crimes that they read about, and in some respects
they even mimic the crimes of I'm not a mistake.
In the ransom note was a note that they had
plagiarized from one of their detective magazine. So there's nothing
(17:15):
about these two to light.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So is this broad daylight? He's walking home after refereeing
this baseball game, right, I mean, is this at dusk
or what time of day is this? It seems very
brazen to me.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, I think it certainly must have been light. I mean,
this is what five point thirty in the afternoon, it
is still would have been very much daylight. And as
a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, Leopold the
lobe even claused with the dead body in the tront
until it got dark so that they could go and
(17:49):
not be observed while they were about what they were doing. Actually,
as I said, you know, Leopold was a burner. He
was very familiar with the area. He probably realized that
they're could be other birds there. At the same time,
they didn't want to blow their their crime that way,
so they waited until it was dark and went in
there with the body and that we as we dis
(18:11):
discussed in the culvert and uh, and then they headed
back home to continue the crime. The following day.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
When does Bobby Franks' his family become alarmed when he
doesn't show up for dinner.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I'm assuming, yeah, there wereried he's not there, and they
make a few phone calls to see if they can
find out where they were, and they discovered that he
was seen at the baseball game, and everybody suddenly loses
his track home he so basically Body Franks disappear is
only to be discovered the following day. And at that time,
(18:49):
the mister Franks was with his attorney and they were
wondering what they should do. They didn't know whether they
should call the police or not. And suddenly they get
a phone call and a person identifies himself by a
fictitious name, and he tells mister Frank's attorney it's asked
(19:13):
to speak to Body Frank's father tells him that they
had body he is safe, although that was a lie,
and that they would return him safely if they would
pay twenty five thousand dollars, I believe, And so the
crime was continued, and they had this all plotted out
where they would take mister Frank's almost on a scavenger hunt,
(19:38):
where they would ask him to go to a drug
store on the sixty third Street, tell him to go
down to the only central station at twelfth Street, get
on a nice sea train I see as we called
it back then, and get on the back of the train,
and when the train came past sixty fifth or one
(20:00):
of the streets near there, to throw the ransom money
out the window or off the back of the train,
and if the money were collected that way, then Bobby
Franks would be returned unarmed. But the pot began to
unravel because Leopold Or told mister Franks where the drug
(20:23):
store was that he was supposed to go, and I
believe the attorney was sitting in on the phone call
as well, and they suddenly realized they had forgotten the
name of the drug store or work it was they
were going. So they were trapped because there was no
way that they could send Bobby Franks's father on the
(20:44):
next leg of the scavenger hunt, so the crime was
really sort of busted at that point, and eventually the
body was discovered within hours rather not within days or weeks.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So Bobby Franks goes missing late afternoon, early evening, his
father is alarmed. Leopold and Loebe are realistically, in your opinion,
feeling like confident that this body is not going to
be found anytime soon. Would putting a body in that culvert,
would that realistically have been out of sight for a while?
Were they right?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, to a certain point, true, But the problem was
that the colvert wasn't that big, so when they tried
to stuff the body in, the legs were stating out.
But you know, they didn't think anybody was going to
because this is an obscure place, fire from fire from anything.
You know. Now we have the sky away and the
cars whizzing by to get tour from Chicago. Back then,
(21:44):
and it was basically a near wilderness with only the
burdeners really and the fishermen to populate the area. So
they were trying to lure mister Franks into going to
the drug store, taking him to the icy station, having
him throw the money out and they would obscure them
with the money, which is their score. You know, that's
(22:06):
how they kicked the three point field goal, got the money.
But if money didn't really mean anything to accept the
score that they were able to achieve.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Okay, So a couple of things. One just to be clear,
mister Frank's got this phone call before Bobby's body was discovered.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I believe that's through.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yes, How much are they asking for again?
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I believe it was twenty four thousand dollars that they
were trying to get, and you know that's so in
money for somebody as wealthy as the people they are
dealing with.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
So you know they snatch him in daylight. They are
picking someone who has it sounds like a family that
would be very alarmed if he doesn't show up at home,
and they have not taken the time to figure out
that this kid's body is not going to fit correctly
in the culvert that they are hoping is going to
cover up the body for a long enough time where
(23:00):
they can achieve getting this ransom money. Does this to
you prove that you can be incredibly BookSmart or naturally
intelligent and not be at all streets smart or logical
when you're pulling off something like this.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Exactly, And continuing the story, what happens is the sun
comes up the next morning. One of the workers in
the ice factory back then people sold chunks of ice
was wandering home from his job and cutting across the
area wolf Lake and happens to glance down into the
(23:37):
connecting canal and goes from one leg to the other
and sees what it appears to be a footstep out,
goes down there, yanks the body out of the culvert,
realizes that the individual is dead. It does not know
what to do, but it goes up to put the
culvert where a railroad track is now a bike path
(23:59):
by the way, goes over the colvert, and at that
time several railroad workers in a handcart are tunning the
lawn the track. He finds them down, tells them that
there's dead boy there. And what they do is they
put the body of Boddy Franks on the railroad card
(24:20):
and then they card him to the next intersection and
take him in I believe, to a funeral parlor nearby
and call the police. And at that time the Franks
have been revealed themselves to the police. They were slow
in doing so because they were afraid that that would
blow it. Leopold figured, well, there was a full proof scheme,
(24:44):
so they didn't have any hesitation about getting identified or
they were wrong.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Okay, so where are we in the stage of this
supposed kidnapping. Bobby Frank's father now realizes that he's dead,
and what do investigators say? We need follow through on
this because the killers don't know that we know that
Bobby Franks is dead. They're trying to extort money out
of you. Is that sort of what happens going forward?
(25:11):
They want to continue with the ruse so that they
can catch these guys.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, what pretty much happened is that the news has
spread among the police that there's a body been found
out there. So we have a missing person and a
dead body. Pretty easy to put them together. So the
Frank's family sent one of the uncles out to the
funeral home to make an identification of the body. So
(25:37):
he called back and said, yes, it's Bobby. So at
that point the money collection was not going to happen. Now,
what I forgot to tell you for a few minutes
is while all these people were still at wolf Like,
they noticed down on the ground for a pair of glasses,
so didn't think too much about the time. But the
(25:58):
worker picked up pair of glasses put in the pocket
because he thought, well, maybe he might need them at
some time. And when they finally did get the police
did come, he admitted that he had a pair of glasses,
and it was realizing that it might have been the
glasses that belonged to the killer. So this would be
one of the first little little links of evidence that
(26:21):
would bring eventually, about ten days later, the police to
Nathan Leopold's door.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Now let's talk about the glasses, because these were not
your standard present day CBS glasses. These were special glasses,
right right.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
You know, when I go to CBS, I pay fourteen
dollars and ninety five cents for a pair of glasses.
But these are a somewhat unique pair of glasses that
had a unique ends on the glasses. And it turns
out that Olmer Cole, the glass company that was still
around when I was growing up with the saw sat
(26:57):
at Chicago, had records all the glasses must have been
high style glasses that they sold, and there were only
three people in the city of Chicago who apparently had
glasses similar that that had this special little shape that
put this part of the eye to the real glasses.
(27:17):
So they were identify the three people, one of which
was Nathan Leopold. The other two people, I won't don't
want to say they had iron clad alibiz but I
think one of those even off on a trip. But
they really pretty much was down to the fact that
the glasses didn't come from Leopold christ There was no
(27:38):
proof that they disiplicated him as a murderer because he
showed up in that area of the city of Chicago
all the time with his murder. He was able to
say that, oh, he had a pair of glasses, and
he fell down while he was out there in the area,
and the glasses must have filled out of his pocket.
And he didn't realize this. And this was a week ago,
(28:01):
and I had realized that the glasses had been lost,
and so the state's attorney, attorney Crow, I asked them, well, here,
fall down and see if the glasses come out. So
Leopold fell down on the ground and the glasses remained
in the pocket. And then he tried a second time
(28:23):
for the third time, the glasses didn't come out, and
so that seemingly hit it on gim. Ironically, when I
was going out examining the area once, I had a
pair of glasses in my pocket. I stuck them into
the pocket of whatever it was I had on at
that time, and I was out running to go from
(28:44):
the murder area to where I'd parked my car, and
it happened to trip, fell down into the mud, got
muddle all over me, and my glasses fell up. I
had to go back to retrieve them afore as they
were footsteps all over the place. So basically, you know,
they weren't realizing all of the things, the crazy things
(29:04):
that can happen. And about a quarter century or so ago,
the Chicago Historical Society had an exhibit about the Leopold
and Low case with all the pictures and photographs and
other items from the case, and one of the items
that they still had it was in state's evidence, was
the original pair of glasses sitting on all of Historical Society.
(29:28):
I'm not sure if the glasses have survived because theoretically,
mostly exposed to freyer, they might have crumbled. But there
were many, so many things that Leopold and Lowe could
not imagine we're liable to happen, and by that time
the police would come knocking on their door.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Were those glasses the main thing that led them to
at least Nathan Leopold or was there anything else that
pointed directly at at least him to have them show
up at his door.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Well, I think it was mostly the glasses that, yeah,
did bring the police to his door. But as we
pointed out, they were easy to come up with the
alibi he could have been in that area and the
glasses regardless, so they wouldn't fall out at the status
Hurry's office. But what happened later was that they went
(30:18):
to so Fur, who drove Leopold's logo around, and it
turned out that we're talking to the Leopolds. So Fur
and he determined the fact that the boys did not
have their regular car that day, that there was a
strange car that they were driving, the rental car that
they'd gotten, so that the car would not have been identified.
(30:41):
And so that was sort of the next link that
led them to the murderer, and so bit by bit,
their beautiful, beautiful plant started falling apart, so that after
a good several hours of interrogation by the police, by
these state's attorney, the two murderers confessed.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Okay, so we've got these two guys, who I'm assuming
are very surprised. What are their confessions like when they
talked to the police, and do we think they were
coerced at all? Or were they just presented with his
evidence and they just said, okay, we give up.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Pretty much, they gave up. And again, this was before
the Miranda Act, which would have caused Clarence Narrow to
stow up about half a day earlier than he did
and would have told the boys to stop talking. That
may or may not have prevented them from being identified
as the murderers. They eventually confessed, and yeahter one person confessed,
(31:38):
and they walked next door to the separate room where
the other one was being held and revealed the fact
that Loan, I believe, confessed and here's what he said
about al you did this and I did that. And
Leopold then to the similar confess that say, well, there's
one thing that Low told Roan. He tried to say
(31:59):
that I killed Bobby Franks, but actually it was he
who wielded the camera. He was in the back seat.
I was driving the car, and he was the one
who killed Bobby Franks. And of course the other one
will say pretty much the same thing. And to this
day we don't know for sure that Leopold was the
(32:20):
blow or Low was a blow. Of course, it didn't
make any different They were both guilty the under the law.
But that's sort of one of the mysteries of the
case that had remained unsolved and will remain unsolved forever.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
So despite their relationship, their you know, physical relationship, they
ended up ultimately turning on each other. Is that right,
That's true.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
And so basically they were against each other. But of
course they couldn't avoid each other because within a short
time they were going to be brought to the court
and sitting next to each other while all the evidence
was laid out. They couldn't really avoid each other, so
they started having mended of fences. It's so to speak,
(33:04):
you know.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
We just interviewed an author who was telling a much
more contemporary story set in Kentucky, where you have two
people who are tried for murder. We don't know who
the killer is. We just know these are two people
who killed someone else. They are tried separately, and it
sounds like the first one was convicted and so the
second one was able to say, well, you've already convicted
(33:25):
this guy. I'm not the killer. We only know one
person did it. Did they choose to try them together
because of that?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
I suspect the police wanted to try them together in
a single setting. It's a lot easier rather than having
fourteen defendants and trying him in fourteen cases. What's just
happening today, so that they're basically were Roddy leafart together
and they were pretty much like joined at the hips
(33:51):
for all the rest of their life.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
So while they were on trial, they were in the
same jail or the same jail cell.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
I believe they're in the same jail. I don't know
if they were in the same cell, although it wouldn't
surprise me to Whatever they wanted is pretty much they've got.
You know, you're talking about wealthy people who all they
needed to do would be to ask their father for money,
for which they would buy the favors that they could
better get better meals sent to the jail. They could
(34:22):
hand out money to fellow tonics for protect us necessary.
So money was buying everything at this case, including money buying,
the fameals samous attorney who supposedly and underline that supposedly
was going to get a million dollars for the defense.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Well, I want to hear about reactions, and so I
want to start with the reaction of Loban Leopold's families.
Were they shocked? Did they think that this was not possible?
They so obviously supported him, he said.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah, they had to, And basically they didn't want to
turn their backs on and if I'm not mistake in,
Love's mother still didn't want to believe the fact that
her son could have been a killer. Pretty much she
left town, went up to Charldboy and hung out there
during the case, just as frankst although I also was
(35:18):
basically distraught the fact that they had lost the boy,
but distraught possibly also because the story of his murder
was being broadcast day after day after day after day
by the heart of journalists who crammed into the card room.
He was the thing that everybody's totally focused on.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
How were Leopold and loebe framed in the media, good looking,
wealthy gay trying to pull off the perfect murder? Is
that what the combination was that enthrolled the media, Well.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Pretty much. They were trying to be examined as much
as they could, So there are so many strings that
you could attach the story to. Particular when they got
the alienists, the psychiatrists involved, and basically the information was
being fed the trial, but the reporters were taking reporting
(36:11):
it outside the trial. So basically they were pretty much
reported as as evil monsters, and that's what the public
wanted to hear.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Now, you said earlier you talked about red flags with
the alienists who took the stand after examining both of
these young men, tell me what they found. What were
their determination of what was wrong with them? I don't
know if there's any easier way to say it, why
they would do this? What did the alienists say?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, I'm thinking the alienists, I'm not sure any of
them regat the story. Right. Leopold and Love literally the
loved being the center of attention. They loved being interviewed
by the alienists and revealing all their secrets, their evil things.
The fact that there was a governess who would take
care of Leopold when he was young, and maybe the
(37:02):
governess was part of the reason that he had turned
out the way he did. So everybody had a theory.
There were drawings that would appear in the paper of
the skulls of the boys, of the circle around the
brain area. I asked whether there was some different type
of brain that would have malfunctionally caused them to do
(37:24):
these evil things. So there was plenty of juicy information
for the ailieness on both sides to explore. Try to explore,
try to understand what the pair were doing.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
So were they going for the nsanity defense in this
case both of them?
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, Attorney Crow wanted them to hang. He was looking
for a hanging jury. Of course, it was a jury
of one because Darrow having pleaded the two of them guilty,
there was no need to have a jury. The question
was was the guilt enough so that they could be
brought to justice?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And on the next Okay, so you've intrigued me a
little bit with this story of the governess. And you said,
this was Richard Loeb's governess, and is the insinuation that
she was abusive in some way?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Well that's the theory. You know, everybody came up with
the coca theory. So they were all sorts of witnesses
or people who were telling their side of the story,
a couple of shady ladies who supposedly wanted to prove
the yellow Richard Lowe and I were out dancing that
day rather than he wasn't off of anything. So there
(38:35):
was sort of a circus going through at the card
room at that time, and the reporters sort of eagerly
trying to come up with new angles to fill their
story out of CNN was not around at that time,
but typically what one might expect to get from the
broadcast networks we have today to the paper networks we
(38:57):
had back in the nineteen twenty four. So some of
the information that it was sort of salacious and not
fit for anybody to hear, particularly if any women were
in the card room at that time. So the judge
would bring the attorneys up to talk to them, and
they would whisper very closely, and the reporters would lean
(39:19):
forward trying to find out what was being said so
they could report it to their riatas the next day.
It was just literally a fascinating story that one could
not invent.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Were either of these young men at all phased by this?
Were they not scared that they were going to end
up either at the gallows or spending the rest of
their lives in prison. Or did they seem sort of
emboldened in a way after they were caught and they confessed.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Well, I think they were probably bold about it. In
otherwise they felt they're guilty and they're famous, and oh boy,
we're going to have Clarence Darrow. So I think there
was sort of a sense of their status that their
parents said them the best lawyer in the world. So
they were sort of into the trials fascinated by it,
probably blanked out on the fact that I just found
(40:09):
guilty that they might just set away either for life
in prison or for death in prison.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
So ultimately they had confessed and their attorney had plugged
guilty on their behalf, and this was a discussion about
whether or not with the judge making a decision about
the penalty phase and what was their best hope that
they were going to spend life in prison or was
there any sense that their attorney had said, I might
be able to get you less than that, maybe twenty
(40:36):
years at the most.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, I doubt if there was any hope. I was saying,
I've been discovery such a anus crime. It sort of
like a crime without a votive as it was. You know,
they were given in life plus ninety nine years.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
How did the public react to that? So they were
not hanged, which, as I bet the media was demanding.
Did the public think that this was a miscarriage of
justice or did this seem like a fair sentence?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah? I suspect the public moved on to the next
penous murder.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Well, I know I believe the way the rest of
this story goes, but a lot of people might not.
So they are both sentenced to life in prison, natural
life in prison, right, and they have very different endings
both of these men.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, Christ life plus ninety nine years meant that they
are never going to get out of prison suppositively. But
they went down to Jelliet and they were good gamers
of the system. So Richard Lull and Nathan Leopold had
access to that same good guy rule where I went
in and saw the two mass murderers. They pretty much
(41:41):
figured out that as he played around and gained the system,
you could have comfort. So Chars Leopold was able to
finance whatever extra better meals that he got in prison
and again also protect him of Chars. What happened? Is that?
Fast forward ten years now Richard Loeb is taking a
(42:02):
sour and another prisoner comes in with a knife and
hats and the pieces. He dies. Leopoldo continues on through
the forties, where he gets involved in a research study
for malaria and mostuitos Curry's favor for the various people
who might give him a parole, and he eventually hissed parole,
(42:25):
goes off to Puerto Rico spends the rest of his
life there.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I mean, how is that even possible? This man who
planned a murder of a stranger, and is it just forgotten?
And because he was so pivotal to this research that
they decided to give him parole. How long was he
in prison for before he was released.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Until about nineteen seventy or so, So he spent several
decades in prison, but every second year or so he
had the right to appear in front of a parole
board and they would hear in the case. At some
point for all board said well, it's time he's suffering
that and he seems to be rehabilitated, and we'll let
(43:09):
him go. And so with the content that he basically
pretty much disappears. So Leopold was able to go down
to Puerto Rico, where he got out that job and
not a hospital, and pretty much and the next half
a dozen or so years even got married down there.
But he'd learned how to live with the system down
(43:30):
there as well as he had all through his life.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Silly questioned, but married to a woman I'm assuming.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Dirty, Yeah, that was their name. I don't think the
fact that he was gay was publicized that much, so
the fact that he would have married a woman was
not that shocking. People would have not given it a
lot of thought. Also, I think that by that time
Leopold and certainly a little bit disappeared off of the
screens of most people living in Chicago. Nathan Leopold, Oh,
(44:01):
wasn't he that guy that murdered that kid? What's he
doing these days? And he's still in Brisidon ninety nine
years that he might make it to age ninety nine,
but nobody was expected to. So he waves goodbye to Juliet,
and to a certain extent, waves away goodbye to whatever
was happening until somebody in mind by the name of
(44:23):
Meyer Levin writes a book titled Compulsion. It's a work
of fiction where they disguise the names of the people
now became a best seller and they pulls back in
the public side for a while. Didn't like and even
tried to sue the author. Didn't succeed on that, but
the crimeula century hadn't met it down.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Now I'm going to circle back to something I asked
you as we're wrapping up this episode. I'm going to
circle back to the question of taken separately Leopold and
Low if they had never met, do you think anything
like this would have happened? Or did it take the
two of them meet and talking about this fantasy for
that to trigger it? Did they have the do you
(45:04):
think ability separately to do this on their own?
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I can answer that question very easily. No. I think
the two of them coming together was basically like the
atonic bomb, was the spark that set off the explosion?
And had they not come together accidentally, I suppose they
both lived in the same neighborhood, but not really close together.
They went to different schools high schools at that time,
(45:29):
so no, they might not have met. And taking that
one step further, ABOUDI Frank is if he hung around
the school a little bit longer at the baseball game.
They might not have spotted him five point thirty six
o'clock getting dark. They probably would have just gone home,
and not having succeeded in their game, they probably would
(45:52):
have moved on for the rest of their lives. So, yeah,
you're exactly right. Yeah, you nailed it right on the head.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
So what is the lesson that we've learned here? Because
the most frustrating stories, to me, the most frustrating killers
to understand, would be the Leopold and Lobe, which I
don't run into very often. It just doesn't make any sense.
I even understand serial killers in their motivations. I understand money,
I understand greed, sex, you know, sexual depravity, the need
(46:21):
for control, But this just seems so randomized. Is that
why we're fascinated with this case?
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, and you also understand somebody walking into a school
with a repeater gun and killing a couple of dozen people,
not just one person. So we live in an evil world.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
So this last question, what is the legacy which is
probably not the right word for Leopold and Lobe, the
memory of the stinch of what they've left behind. What
is that in just a couple of sentences, what do
we learn from it.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, we learned that we're probably never safe. I think
this is a thing that scares there and a lot
of mothers on the South Side of Chicago, the fact
that it could have been there boy walking down the
street and happen to be the victim. I think that's
the thing that we try to do the best we can.
We fasten our seat belts and do all the good
(47:15):
things that we learned to do on the internet. But
still there is no excuse for what happens, and no
excuse for Leopold and Low Committee the utterly de pray
crime that they did commit.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked and American Sherlok and Don't Forget There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis
(48:02):
a Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode
was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer,
artwork by Nick Toga, Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at
tenfold More Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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