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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that unmasks history one day at a time. I'm Gabe Lucier, and today we're grappling with the troubling implications of one of the most unusual murders in Chicago history. As a warning, today's episode includes descriptions of violence which some listeners may find upsetting. The day was May twenty first, nineteen twenty four. Two wealthy college students abducted and killed a fourteen year old boy in an effort to commit a perfect crime. The killers, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, were eighteen and nineteen years old, respectively, at the time of the murder. Both were keenly intelligent and highly privileged, born to well to do families in the Chicago suburbs. Loeb had recently graduated from the University of Michigan and had returned to his hometown with the plan to begin law school in the fall. His neighbor, Leopold, was already a law student at the University of Chicago, where he had developed a growing fascination with criminal psychology. Leopold was also fixated on the philosophy of German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche, especially his conception of the Ubermensch or superman. As Leopold once explained in a letter to Loebe, a superman is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do. Lob for his part, was an avid reader of detective fiction, and was obsessed with the idea of a perfect crime, one so meticulously planned and organized that no detective in the world could solve it. The boy's interests, when paired together, convinced them that the way to become supermen themselves was to commit an unsolvable crime. To that end, they pulled off several burglaries together, as well as a few acts of arson. But to their dismay, none of those crimes were deemed notable enough to warrant a full investigation. In fact, they weren't even reported in the press, and so in the spring of nineteen twenty four, Leopold and Loebe decided to up their game by committing a crime so heinous it would be guaranteed to get the whole city talking. Their plan was to kidnap and murder a child and then send a ransom note to the parents as a way to delay the search for the body. They didn't have a victim in mind, because their crime wasn't motivated by vengeance or personal gain. The act of killing was almost in material. They didn't want a murder so much as they wanted to get away with murder. The pair established fake identities which they used to rent a car, and then began rehearsing how to carry out the crime and where to dispose of the body. On May twenty first, nineteen twenty four, Leopold and Lob went driving in search of a victim. They had nearly given up for the day when they spotted fourteen year old Bobby Franks walking home alone from school. The boy had never met Leopold before, but he was Lob's second cousin. The two of them sometimes played tennis together, and it was because of that familiarity that Franks accepted a ride from them, even though his school was just a few blocks from his home. Franks climbed into the front passenger seat next to Leopold, while Lob sat in the back, plying the boy with questions about tennis. Rackets. Then, once the car was in motion, lob struck Franks on the back of the head with the blunt end of a chisel. Infused and panicked, the boy fought for his life, but was eventually pulled into the back seat and bludgeoned to death by his cousin. The pair drove to a secluded spot near the Indiana border and dumped Franks's body in a culvert. Along the way, they stopped at a restaurant for hot dogs and root beer. The following morning, the killer scrubbed the boy's blood from the rental car and sent his parents a ransom note demanding ten thousand dollars for his safe return. The ruse didn't work as plan, though, because before the family could pay the ransom, a passer by discovered the child's body and reported it to the police. A pair of eyeglasses was also found a short distance away, and the police assumed they belonged to the boy. However, when Franks's parents arrived to identify the body, they said their son had never worn glasses in his life. It turned out that Leopold's glasses had fallen out of his pocket when they were moving the body, and while that wouldn't have been enough to identify him in most cases, especially since his finger prints were not yet on file. His eyeglasses happened to be very distinctive. The expensive horned rim frames included a specially patented spring and could only be obtained from one optometrist in Chicago. The police learned that only three people had purchased the frames, and after interviewing and dismissing the first two, they turned their attention to Nathan Leopold. When called in for questioning, Leopold explained that he must have dropped his glasses while bird hunting in the area a few days before the murder. The story likely would have fooled police, but a few days later, reporters working the case uncovered letters from Leopold that matched the format and style of the ransom note. The police then spoke to the Leopold family's chauffeur, who revealed that he had seen the two boys washing the interior of a rental car after claiming to have spilled red wine in it. When confronted with this evidence ten days after the murder, both boys confessed their guilt and provided a detailed account of how and why they did it. The subsequent trial made headlines nationwide, not only because of the horrific nature and bizarre motive of the crime, but because the boy's parents had hired Clarence Darrow to lead the defense. Darrow was one of the most famous and expensive criminal attorneys of the era, having made a name for himself by representing railway union leader Eugene Debs during the trial over his role in the Pullman strike of eighteen ninety four. Darrow knew that his clients would be convicted, as they had both already signed full confessions. His goal was to help them avoid the death penalty, something that would have been next to impossible if the case had been decided by a jury. To avoid that outcome, Darrow had his clients plead guilty so that the sentencing would be left up to the judge. With his client's guilt established from the start, Darrow focused his time on building a compelling argument against the death penalty. In a wide ranging eight hour closing speech, he asserted that although his client's actions were their own, their characters had been influenced by forces beyond their control and should therefore be shown leniency. Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Darrow asked, not for money, not for spite, not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man, something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here, hated, despised, outcasts, and the community shouting for their blood. Most of Darrow's speech was directed to the death penalty itself, which he had long decried as a barbaric, vengeful form of punishment. He didn't think the sentence had any place in a modern judicial system, but especially not in a case concerning clients as young as his. I am not pleading so much for these boys, he said. 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. We can't say for certain that Darrow's speech swayed the judge, but in the end he did as the attorney asked and spared Leopold and Loeb from the death penalty. Instead, they were sentenced to life in prison. Richard Lobe served about a decade of his term before being killed by a fellow inmate. Nathan Leopold served thirty three years in prison and was released on parole in nineteen fifty eight. In his youth, he had fancied himself a superman, but at his parole hearing he said that all he wanted now was the chance to be a humble little person. If only he and his accomplice had afforded that same chance to Bobby Franks, all three of them could have been so much more. I'm Gabe blues Gay and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send him my way by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class. The printer Picter Pick, the Bolted
Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that unmasks history one day at a time. I'm Gabe Lucier, and today we're grappling with the troubling implications of one of the most unusual murders in Chicago history. As a warning, today's episode includes descriptions of violence which some listeners may find upsetting. The day was May twenty first, nineteen twenty four. Two wealthy college students abducted and killed a fourteen year old boy in an effort to commit a perfect crime. The killers, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, were eighteen and nineteen years old, respectively, at the time of the murder. Both were keenly intelligent and highly privileged, born to well to do families in the Chicago suburbs. Loeb had recently graduated from the University of Michigan and had returned to his hometown with the plan to begin law school in the fall. His neighbor, Leopold, was already a law student at the University of Chicago, where he had developed a growing fascination with criminal psychology. Leopold was also fixated on the philosophy of German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche, especially his conception of the Ubermensch or superman. As Leopold once explained in a letter to Loebe, a superman is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do. Lob for his part, was an avid reader of detective fiction, and was obsessed with the idea of a perfect crime, one so meticulously planned and organized that no detective in the world could solve it. The boy's interests, when paired together, convinced them that the way to become supermen themselves was to commit an unsolvable crime. To that end, they pulled off several burglaries together, as well as a few acts of arson. But to their dismay, none of those crimes were deemed notable enough to warrant a full investigation. In fact, they weren't even reported in the press, and so in the spring of nineteen twenty four, Leopold and Loebe decided to up their game by committing a crime so heinous it would be guaranteed to get the whole city talking. Their plan was to kidnap and murder a child and then send a ransom note to the parents as a way to delay the search for the body. They didn't have a victim in mind, because their crime wasn't motivated by vengeance or personal gain. The act of killing was almost in material. They didn't want a murder so much as they wanted to get away with murder. The pair established fake identities which they used to rent a car, and then began rehearsing how to carry out the crime and where to dispose of the body. On May twenty first, nineteen twenty four, Leopold and Lob went driving in search of a victim. They had nearly given up for the day when they spotted fourteen year old Bobby Franks walking home alone from school. The boy had never met Leopold before, but he was Lob's second cousin. The two of them sometimes played tennis together, and it was because of that familiarity that Franks accepted a ride from them, even though his school was just a few blocks from his home. Franks climbed into the front passenger seat next to Leopold, while Lob sat in the back, plying the boy with questions about tennis. Rackets. Then, once the car was in motion, lob struck Franks on the back of the head with the blunt end of a chisel. Infused and panicked, the boy fought for his life, but was eventually pulled into the back seat and bludgeoned to death by his cousin. The pair drove to a secluded spot near the Indiana border and dumped Franks's body in a culvert. Along the way, they stopped at a restaurant for hot dogs and root beer. The following morning, the killer scrubbed the boy's blood from the rental car and sent his parents a ransom note demanding ten thousand dollars for his safe return. The ruse didn't work as plan, though, because before the family could pay the ransom, a passer by discovered the child's body and reported it to the police. A pair of eyeglasses was also found a short distance away, and the police assumed they belonged to the boy. However, when Franks's parents arrived to identify the body, they said their son had never worn glasses in his life. It turned out that Leopold's glasses had fallen out of his pocket when they were moving the body, and while that wouldn't have been enough to identify him in most cases, especially since his finger prints were not yet on file. His eyeglasses happened to be very distinctive. The expensive horned rim frames included a specially patented spring and could only be obtained from one optometrist in Chicago. The police learned that only three people had purchased the frames, and after interviewing and dismissing the first two, they turned their attention to Nathan Leopold. When called in for questioning, Leopold explained that he must have dropped his glasses while bird hunting in the area a few days before the murder. The story likely would have fooled police, but a few days later, reporters working the case uncovered letters from Leopold that matched the format and style of the ransom note. The police then spoke to the Leopold family's chauffeur, who revealed that he had seen the two boys washing the interior of a rental car after claiming to have spilled red wine in it. When confronted with this evidence ten days after the murder, both boys confessed their guilt and provided a detailed account of how and why they did it. The subsequent trial made headlines nationwide, not only because of the horrific nature and bizarre motive of the crime, but because the boy's parents had hired Clarence Darrow to lead the defense. Darrow was one of the most famous and expensive criminal attorneys of the era, having made a name for himself by representing railway union leader Eugene Debs during the trial over his role in the Pullman strike of eighteen ninety four. Darrow knew that his clients would be convicted, as they had both already signed full confessions. His goal was to help them avoid the death penalty, something that would have been next to impossible if the case had been decided by a jury. To avoid that outcome, Darrow had his clients plead guilty so that the sentencing would be left up to the judge. With his client's guilt established from the start, Darrow focused his time on building a compelling argument against the death penalty. In a wide ranging eight hour closing speech, he asserted that although his client's actions were their own, their characters had been influenced by forces beyond their control and should therefore be shown leniency. Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Darrow asked, not for money, not for spite, not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man, something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here, hated, despised, outcasts, and the community shouting for their blood. Most of Darrow's speech was directed to the death penalty itself, which he had long decried as a barbaric, vengeful form of punishment. He didn't think the sentence had any place in a modern judicial system, but especially not in a case concerning clients as young as his. I am not pleading so much for these boys, he said. 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. We can't say for certain that Darrow's speech swayed the judge, but in the end he did as the attorney asked and spared Leopold and Loeb from the death penalty. Instead, they were sentenced to life in prison. Richard Lobe served about a decade of his term before being killed by a fellow inmate. Nathan Leopold served thirty three years in prison and was released on parole in nineteen fifty eight. In his youth, he had fancied himself a superman, but at his parole hearing he said that all he wanted now was the chance to be a humble little person. If only he and his accomplice had afforded that same chance to Bobby Franks, all three of them could have been so much more. I'm Gabe blues Gay and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send him my way by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class. The printer Picter Pick, the Bolted
