Nathan Leopold (left) and Richard Loeb
September 10, 1924: Judge John R. Caverly of Cook County, Illinois -- Chicago and some surrounding towns -- sentences Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb to life in prison.
Most people wanted them sentenced to death, but the foremost defense attorney in America, Clarence Darrow, convinced him to spare their lives.
Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. was born on November 19, 1904, in Chicago. A child prodigy, he had graduated from the University of Chicago at the age of 19, and had been admitted to Harvard Law School. He had also already become a respected ornithologist, an expert on birds.
Richard Albert Loeb was born on June 11, 1905, also in Chicago. Also a prodigy, he skipped several grades, and, at the age of 17, became the youngest graduate in the history of the University of Michigan, a record since broken. He had entered law school at the University of Chicago.
Both Jews of German descent, they grew up 2 blocks apart in the wealthy Kenwood neighborhood on the city's South Side. (It has since become an enclave for wealthy black people, including former President Barack Obama.) But it was at UC that they met, and found they had a mutual interest in 2 things: Crime, and the works of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. They began a homosexual affair.
Nietzsche believed that humanity could rise "beyond good and evil," and developed the concept of the Übermensch, which Leopold and Loeb, and many others, have translated as "superman," but is correctly translated as "overman." Unfortunately, like too many others, they came to see themselves as Übermenschen. (Note: Although the Nazis later embraced the concept, as a way to separate themselves, as "Aryans," from Jews, Nietzsche himself ridiculed anti-Semites.)
Leopold, 19 years old, wrote to Loeb, 18, "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." They began testing this theory by committing acts of petty theft. Seeing that they were not stopped or caught, they graduated to vandalism, then to arson. Having gotten away with that, they decided to carry out a "perfect crime."
The crime they chose was the kidnapping and murdering of an adolescent boy, and they planned everything out for months. They chose Bobby Franks, 14, Loeb's 2nd cousin and across-the-street neighbor, and the son of a wealthy watch manufacturer.
On May 21, 1924, on Ellis Avenue at 48th Street, about 6 miles south of the Loop, they offered Franks a ride in a car that Leopold had rented. Franks didn't want it, but Loeb talked him into it. Franks got into the passenger seat, and Loeb, sitting in the back seat, repeatedly struck him in the head with the heavy handle of a chisel. Once Franks was unconscious, Loeb dragged him into the back seat and finished the job.
Leopold drove across the State Line in Whiting, Indiana. They took off Franks' clothes, poured acid on his face to obscure his identity, and put the body in a culvert along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, roughly where the stadium for Whiting High School is now, about 17 miles southeast of the Loop.
Word had already spread that Franks was missing. When they got back, Leopold called Franks' mother, identifying himself as George Johnson, telling her only that Bobby had been kidnapped, and that ransom instructions would follow. They received Leopold's note the next morning, but shortly thereafter, the body was found.
Loeb wisely kept his mouth shut. But Leopold flapped his gums, telling a detective, "If I were to murder anybody, it would be just such a cocky little son of a bitch as Bobby Franks. Who was calling who "cocky"? Even O.J. Simpson waited until after he was acquitted to write a book titled If I Did It.
What's more, a pair of glasses was found near Franks' body, with a hinge that could be traced to only 3 customers in Chicago, 1 being Leopold. He offered the story that he'd been bird-watching nearby. When summoned for questioning by the police, both men said they were together in Leopold's car, and had picked up a pair of women for dates.
This was their big mistake: They said it was Leopold's car. There was a reason that Leopold, using a false name, had rented a car rather than use his own, so it wouldn't be traced back to him. The Leopold family chauffeur told the police he was repairing Leopold's car on the night of the murder, and the chauffeur's wife backed this up.
On May 31, 10 days after the murder, Loeb confessed -- sort of. He said that he was the driver and Leopold planned everything and had killed Franks from the back seat. Leopold confessed later that day, only he told the truth: He was the driver and Loeb the killer, although he wouldn't say who was the planner (which was himself). Leopold later said he was interested in learning what it would feel like to be a murderer, and admitted that he felt the same as ever, which disappointed him. It shouldn't have: Feeling the same seemed to confirm his belief in himself as an Übermensch who was beyond society's definitions of "good" and "evil."
The trial was held at the Cook County Criminal Court Building, downtown at 54 Hubbard Place, where the trials that inspired the Broadway musical Chicago had taken places a few weeks earlier, and the Black Sox trial had been held in 1921.
Loeb's family hired Clarence Darrow to represent the defendants. In 1894, he unsuccessfully tried an insanity defense in the trial of Patrick Prendergast, who had assassinated Mayor Carter Harrison Sr. of Chicago. Prendergast was the 1st client of Darrow's to receive the death penalty. He would turn out to be the last.
Later that year, Darrow defended Eugene Debs for his role in the Pullman Strike, gaining an acquittal in one trial but failing to do so in another, and Debs went to federal prison. Darrow became the labor movement's leading lawyer, often gaining acquittals, other times getting sentences reduced for those he couldn't save from a guilty verdict.
Darrow had convinced both men to plead guilty, so it wasn't so much a trial as it was an extended sentencing hearing: Death, or life. For 32 days, arguments were made. For 12 hours, Darrow spoke about the sanctity of life, and how even these two young men, who had committed a crime so heinous, did not deserve to be put to death by the State of Illinois for what they did. He closed by telling Judge Caverly:
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.
On September 10, 1924, Caverly issued his ruling: Life, plus 99 years. In other words, if either man was paroled for his life sentence, he would still have to serve 99 years in State Prison, and then the possibility of parole would start on that.
On January 28, 1936, at Stateville Correctional Facility in Crest Hill, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago, Richard Loeb had his throat slashed by a fellow inmate. He died in the prison hospital, at the age of 30.
Leopold became a model prisoner at Stateville. In 1944, he volunteered to be inoculated for a malaria study. And, like Robert Stroud, the psychopathic killer known as the Birdman of Alcatraz (though he had only kept birds in a previous prison, as Alcatraz didn't allow it), he continued his study of ornithology, and published a book on the subject, though he could not profit from it as a prisoner.
He was paroled in 1958, having served 34 years. He was 53 years old. Loeb would have been the same age. Bobby Franks would have been 48.
Leopold was accepted as a hospital technician in Puerto Rico, and published a memoir, Life Plus 99 Years. He married a widowed florist, got a masters degree at the University of Puerto Rico, and taught there. On August 29, 1971, diabetes caught up with him, and he died of a heart attack, at 66. Bobby Franks would have been 61.
*
September 10, 1924 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 10-7 at Yankee Stadium. Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel hit home runs. Herb Pennock had to leave the game after 2 innings, and Walter Beall went the rest of the way and was named the winning pitcher.
* A doubleheader was split at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, and it was a wild one. The Philadelphia Phillies beat the New York Giants in the opener, 8-7. The Phillies led 5-1 going into the 9th inning, but the Giants tied it, and sent it to extra innings. The Giants scored 2 runs in the top of the 10th, on a home run by George "High Pockets" Kelly. But in the bottom of the 10th, the Phillies scored 3, the winning run coming on a double by Joe Schultz -- father of the Joe Schultz who would manage the 1969 Seattle Pilots. Apparently, Joe Sr. zitzed 'em, and then went and pounded some obscure brew once produced in Philadelphia. At that point, few people outside St. Louis had heard of Budweiser.
The Giants won the nightcap, 16-14. The Phils scored 6 in the bottom of the 1st, but the Jints got 4 int he 2nd, 3 in the 3rd, and 9 in the 6th. Over the 2 games, Kelly and Travis Jackson each had 5 hits and 5 RBIs for the Giants, while George Harper had 7 hits and 5 RBIs for the Phillies.
* A doubleheader was split at Braves Field in Boston. The Brooklyn Robins (as the Dodgers were known from 1914 to 1931, due to their manager, Wilbert Robinson) won the 1st game, 1-0. Bill Doak pitched a 2-hit shutout. The only run of the game came on a Tommy Griffith triple in the 7th, but Griffith was out trying to stretch it to an inside-the-park home run.
The Boston Braves won the 2nd game, 5-4. A sacrifice fly by Mickey O'Neill won it in the bottom of the 10th.
* The Washington Senators beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-2 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Cardinals at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, 5-2 and 12-5.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-6 at Redland Field in Cincinnati. (That ballpark would eventually become Crosley Field.)
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-4 at Navin Field in Detroit. (That ballpark would eventually become Tiger Stadium.) Ty Cobb, the Tigers' player-manager, went 1-for-4. Tris Speaker, the Indians' player-manager, went 1-for-3 with an RBI in defeat.
* The St. Louis Browns swept a doubleheader from the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park, winning each game by a score of 6-2. George Sisler went 5-for-8 with an RBI over the 2 games.
