May 21: On This Day in World History … briefly

1924:  Wealthy teenagers kill ‘for fun’

Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr and Richard Albert Loeb (usually referred to collectively as Leopold and Loeb) were two wealthy students at the University of Chicago, who in May 1924 kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago. They committed the murder – characterised at the time as ‘the crime of the century’ as a demonstration of their perceived intellectual superiority, which, they thought, rendered them capable of carrying out a ‘perfect crime’ and absolved them of responsibility for their actions.

After a lengthy search for a suitable victim, mostly on the grounds of Harvard School for Boys in the Kenwood area, where Loeb had been educated, they decided upon Robert ‘Bobby’ Franks, the 14-year-old son of wealthy Chicago watch manufacturer Jacob Franks. Loeb knew Bobby Franks well; he was his second cousin, an across-the-street neighbour and played tennis at the Loeb residence often.

The pair put their carefully crafted plan in motion on the afternoon of May 21, 1924. Using an automobile that Leopold rented under the name ‘Morton D Ballard’, they offered Franks a ride as he walked home from school. The boy refused initially since his destination was less than two blocks away, but Loeb persuaded him to enter the car to discuss a tennis racket that he had been using.

The precise sequence of the events that followed remains in dispute, but a preponderance of opinion placed Leopold behind the wheel of the car, while Loeb sat in the back seat with the chisel. Loeb struck Franks, sitting in front of him in the passenger seat, several times in the head with the chisel, then dragged him into the back seat where he was gagged and soon died.

With the body on the floorboard out of view, they drove to their predetermined dumping spot near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana, 25 miles (40km) south of Chicago. After nightfall they removed and discarded Franks’ clothes, then concealed the body in a culvert along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks north of the lake. To obscure the body’s identification they poured hydrochloric acid on the face and on a distinctive abdominal scar, as well as the genitals to conceal the fact that he was circumcised).

After the two men were arrested, Loeb’s family retained Clarence Darrow as counsel for their defence. Darrow’s 12-hour-long summation at their sentencing hearing is noted for its influential criticism of capital punishment as retributive rather than transformative justice. Both young men were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years. Loeb was murdered by a fellow prisoner in 1936 and Leopold was released on parole in 1958.

The Franks murder has been the inspiration for several dramatic works, including Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play ‘Rope’ and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film of the same name. Later movies, such as ‘Compulsion’, adapted from Meyer Levin’s 1957 novel, ‘Swoon’ and ‘Murder by Numbers’ were also based on the crime.

Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.

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