Month: May 2021

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were two teen killers who were raised in households full of love and money however the two would attempt to pull off the perfect murder. In this article we are going to take a closer look at Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and the murder of Bobby Franks.

Nathan Leopold Early Life

Nathan Leopold was born in Chicago on November 19, 1904 to Florence and Nathan Leopold. His parents believed that their son was a prodigy as he allegedly spoke his first word at just four months old. Nathan Leopold would study a number of languages and claimed to be fluent in five of them. Nathan Leopold was also well versed in Ornithology, the study of birds,

Richard Loeb Early Years

Richard Loeb was born on June 11, 1905 to Anna Henrietta and Albert Loeb who was a lawyer and a former vice president of a bank. Richard Loeb who would become the youngest person to graduate University of Michigan at seventeen years old. Loeb also enjoyed to socialize, play tennis and read detective novels.

Nathan Leopold And Richard Loeb Beginnings

Even though Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb met at a young age as they both grew up in the same wealthy neighborhood they did not real become acquainted until years later when the began to interact at the University of Chicago. Turns out they both had a deep interest in crime and soon they would begin their experimenting in the criminal lifestyle.

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would start out small with incidents of vandalism and theft. The two would break into a frat house at the University of Chicago where they would steal a penknife and a typewriter. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would move on to arson but when they did not get noticed for their crime they decided to plan and pull off the perfect murder

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb – Bobby Franks Murder

Bobby Franks was a fourteen year old boy who attended the Harvard School For Boys and was from the same neighborhood as Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb as well was a second cousin to Richard and had been over to the Loeb household on a number of occasions.

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would pick up Bobby Franks as he was walking home from school. The two teen killers began to pull off their plan. Bobby Franks was sitting in the front passenger seat when he was struck several times by Richard Loeb with a chisel. Nathan Leopold would drive to a prearranged destination near Wolf Lake in Hammond Indiana.

Once it was dark Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would take Bobby Franks body and throw it in a culvert before dousing it with hydrocloric acid which they believed would make his identity that much harder to figure out. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would drive back to Chicago

Nathan Leopold would call Bobby Franks mother and would tell her that her son was kidnapped and to follow a number of instructions if she wanted to see her son alive. The instructions which were typed on the typewriter they had stolen earlier and sent to the Franks residence. However before the instructions could be completed the body of Bobby Franks was found.

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would destroy the typewriter and other pieces of evidence that tied them to the crime however a pair of glasses belonging to Nathan was found at the crime scene. Turns out only three people in the Chicago area had that particular pair of glasses with a unique hinge. Soon police were questioning Nathan Leopold about the murder of Bobby Franks. Nathan would tell police that he and Richard Loeb were driving around Chicago and picked up two women however their chauffeur denied this and the two were arrested.

Richard Loeb would confess first and attempted to blame the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Franks on Nathan Leopold. Nathan Leopold would later write a book in which he blamed the murder on Loeb. It has never been clear who struck the fatal wound that would kill Bobby Franks

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb Trial

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would go on trial in Chicago and their lawyer would be famed attorney Clarence Darrow who was reportedly paid $70,000 (equivalent to a million dollars now) to defend the teen killers. Even Clarence Darrow was not able to get Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb off however he did save them from the death penalty. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would be sentenced to life in prison plus ninety nine years in prison for the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Franks

Clarence Darrow Speech At The Nathan Leopold And Richard Loeb Trial

This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor. Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.

Now your Honor I have spoken about the war, I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined in the general cry of madness and despair. I urged men to fight, I was safe because I was too old to go. I was like the rest. What did they do? Right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable – which I need not discuss today; it changed the world. For four long years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian, barbarian uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in every school, aye in the Sunday schools. The little children played at war. The toddling children on the street. Do you suppose this world has ever been the same since? How long your Honor, will it take for the world to get back the humane emotions that were slowly growing before the war? How long will it take the callused hearts of men before the scars of hatred and cruelty shall be removed?

We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day. We read about it and we rejoiced in it—if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was a part of the common frenzy – what was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys were trained to this cruelty.

It will take fifty years to wipe it out of the human heart, if ever. I know this, that after the Civil War in 1865, crimes of this sort increased, marvelously. No one needs to tell me that crime has no cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease, and I know that out of the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War crime increased as America had never seen before. I know that Europe is going through the same experience today; I know it has followed every war; and I know it has influenced these boys so that life was not the same to them as it would have been if the world had not made red with blood. I protest against the crimes and mistakes of society being visited upon them. All of us have a share in it. I have mine. I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in place of love and kindness and charity.

Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing out of the war. Not necessarily by those who fought but by those that learned that blood was cheap, and human life was cheap, and if the State could take it lightly why not the boy? There are causes for this terrible crime. There are causes as I have said for everything that happens in the world. War is a part of it; education is a part of it; birth is a part of it; money is a part of it—all these conspired to compass the destruction of these two poor boys.

Has the court any right to consider anything but these two boys? The State says that your Honor has a right to consider the welfare of the community, as you have. If the welfare of the community would be benefited by taking these lives, well and good. I think it would work evil that no one could measure. Has your Honor a right to consider the families of these defendants? I have been sorry, and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Franks, for those broken ties that cannot be healed. All I can hope and wish is that some good may come from it all. But as compared with the families of Leopold and Loeb, the Franks are to be envied—and everyone knows it.

I do not know how much salvage there is in these two boys. I hate to say it in their presence, but what is there to look forward to? I do not know but what your Honor would be merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and not merciful if you tied a rope around their necks and let them die; merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and not merciful to those who would be left behind. To spend the balance of their days in prison is mighty little to look forward to, if anything. Is it anything? They may have the hope that as the years roll around they might be released. I do not know. I do not know. I will be honest with this court as I have tried to be from the beginning. I know that these boys are not fit to be at large. I believe they will not be until they pass through the next stage of life, at forty-five or fifty. Whether they will then, I cannot tell. I am sure of this, that I will not be here to help them. So far as I am concerned, it is over.

I would not tell this court that I do not hope that some time, when life and age have changed their bodies, as they do, and have changed their emotions, as they do—that they may once more return to life. I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. But what have they to look forward to? Nothing. And I think here of the stanza of Housman:

Now hollow fires burn out to black, / And lights are fluttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack / And leave your friends and go.
O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread, / Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread / There’s nothing but the night.

I care not your Honor, whether the march begins at the gallows or when the gates of Joliet close upon them, there is nothing but the night, and that is little for any human being to expect.

But there are others to consider. Here are these two families who have led honest lives, who will bear the name that they bear, and future generations must carry it on.

Here is Leopold’s father – and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him and he cared for him, he worked for him; the boy was brilliant and accomplished. He educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life’s hopes crumble into dust.

Should he be considered? Should his brothers be considered? Will it do society any good or make your life safer, or any human being’s life safer, if it should be handed down from generation to generation that this boy, their kin died upon the scaffold?

And Loeb’s the same. Here are the faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day, while Dickie’s father and his mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, and shall be waiting for a message which means more to them than it can mean to you or me. Shall these be taken into account in this general bereavement?

Have they any rights? Is there any reason, your Honor, why their proud names and all the future generations that bear them shall have this bar sinister written across them? How many boys and girls, how many unborn children will feel it? It is bad enough as it is, God knows. It is bad enough, however it is. But it’s not yet death on the scaffold. It’s not that. And I ask your Honor, in addition to all that I have said to save two honorable families from a disgrace that never ends, and which could be of no avail to help any human being that lives.

Now, I must say a word more and then I will leave this with you where I should have left it long ago. None of us are unmindful of the public; courts are not, and juries are not. We placed our fate in the hands of a trained court, thinking that he would be more mindful and considerate than a jury. I cannot say how people feel. I have stood here for three months as one might stand at the ocean trying to sweep back the tide. I hope the seas are subsiding and the wind is falling, and I believe they are, but I wish to make no false pretense to this court. The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own – these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients.

These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. And as the days and the months and the years go on, they will ask it more and more. But, your Honor, what they shall ask may not count. I know the easy way. I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows. In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that sometime may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.

I feel that I should apologize for the length of time I have taken. This case may not be as important as I think it is, and I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friends that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich. If I should succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that for the countless unfortunates who must tread the same road in blind childhood that these poor boys have trod—that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.

I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyam. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:

So I be written in the Book of Love,
I do not care about that Book above.
Erase my name or write it as you will,
So I be written in the Book of Love.

Richard Loeb Death

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold would be reconnected at Statesville Prison in Illinois and the two would improve the school curriculum by adding both a high school and junior college aspect to the program. In 1936 Richard Loeb would be murdered in prison with a straight razor by James Day who would claim that Loeb had propositioned him. Later James Day was deemed to have acted in self defense in the murder of Richard Loeb and was acquitted.

Nathan Leopold Death

Nathan Leopold would serve over thirty years in prison before he was released in 1958. Leopold who had written a book entitled Life Plus Ninety Nine Years would eventually move to Puerto Rico where he would marry and would eventually die in 1971 from a heart attack.

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