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You are now listening to true Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. Nearly one hundred years ago, two wealthy and privileged teenagers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loewe, were charged and convicted in a gruesome crime that would lead to the original trial of the century, even in jazz age Chicago. The murder was uniquely shocking for the motive of the killers. Well to do Jewish scions full of promise, had killed fourteen year old Robbie Franks for the thrill of it.
The trial was made even more sensational by the revelation of a love affair between the defendants and by defense attorney Clarence Darrow, who delivered one of the most famous defense summations of all time to save the boys from the death penalty. The story of their mad folli adeaux, with Loeb portrayed as the psychopathic mastermind and Leopold as his infatuated disciple has been endlessly repeated and accepted by
history as fact, and none of it is true. Using twenty first century investigative tools, forensics, and a modern understanding of the psychology of these infamous killers, Nothing but the Knight turns history on its head. While Lobe has long been viewed as the architect behind the murders, King and Wilson's new research points to Leopold as the dominant partner in the deadly relationship, uncovering a dark obsession with violence
and sex. Nothing but the Night pulls readers into the troubled world of Leopold and loebe revealing a more horrifying tale of passion, obsession, and betrayal than history ever imagined. The book that we're featuring this evening is Nothing but the Night, Leopold and Lobe and the Truth behind the murder Trial that rock nineteen twenties America, with my special guests, historians and authors Penny Wilson and Greg King. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview.
Penny Wilson and Greg King.
All Right, thanks Dan, thanks for having us.
Thank you very much. Let's start off as you do in the book, May twenty first nineteen twenty four, Chicago and the Harvard School for Boys and the children were just let out of classes and one of the instructors, JT. Sas, was ready to play a baseball game with some of the boys. Tell us what happens on May twenty first, and what is observed? What happens that afternoon?
Well, it was a pleasant afternoon. The weather had not been particularly good for a while, so taking advantage of the spring weather, the teachers decided to organize some pickup baseball games. And I believe there were three of them, scattered throughout the schoolyard and local parks and a field. And one of the boys playing that afternoon was fourteen year old Bobby Franks. He was a big baseball fan on this particular day. Though he wasn't playing, he was
umpiring one of the games. You know. He's a relatively normal fourteen year old boy, popular among his schoolmates, talented at public speaking, the son of a very wealthy real estate developer, the youngest in his family of three. He had a brother who was just a year older and a sister who was two or three years older than that. So he went out with his friends. He's playing baseball. The game wraps up and he starts to walk home.
One of his schoolmates is walking behind him and is momentarily distracted by some flowers on the side of the road that one of his teachers had asked him to pay attention to, and when he looked back, Bobby was gone.
Tell us about Bobby and some of his You talk about a debating team that he was on in just weeks earlier, he had debated a particularly interesting subject matter. Tell us about that.
Right well, Bobby had a reputation for actually being quite thoughtful about things, and a few weeks before May twenty first, he had been on a debate team and the subject had been the death penalty, and Bobby had argued that the death penalty served no purpose, that someone who committed a crime should be studied, not punished, in the hope that somehow society could learn from that and prevent it. So it was somewhat ironic that he was opposed to the death penalty quite strongly.
Tell us about the Lobe family, Richard Loeb and his father Albert. Tell him about the family and the proximity of Bobby Frank's home to the Lobe family and their relationship.
Albert Loeb was the former vice president of Sears Roebuck. He was immensely wealthy at the time. He had had to retire a few years earlier given poor heart that he was suffering from, but he had built in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago in immense Elizabethan style mansion that reflected his wealth and pretension, and ironically, just across the street,
Bobby Frank's father had built his own mansion. It wasn't quite so odd because Bobby's mother and Albert Loeb's wife, Anna were actually first cousins, so there was a family connection that was involved there. Although the two families didn't tend to socialize very much.
What was their religious backgrounds both families, the Lobes, were.
Jewish and the Franks were Jewish. However, the situation was never quite as clear cut as the press of the day made it out to be. Anna Lobe, Albert's wife retained her Catholicism on marrying her husband, so she never converted, and the Franks, who were both Jewish, had actually converted to Christian Science about nineteen oh five, and so while the press tended to lump them all together as being Jewish, They really weren't practicing jewsuph time.
Richard Loeb was popular young man, but he was a from a healthy family. But also he had a prestigious reputation himself. What was that reputation for.
Well, his reputation was well for being quite brilliant despite his young age. It's really difficult to tell at this sort of distance of time what his brilliance actually was. But with relatively little else to do because his governess wouldn't permit him to do anything else except study, he did exceedingly well in his classes, graduated number one several times, skipped grades, ended up at high school at a very
young age, graduated high school at fifteen. At fifteen, and then he was off to the University of Chicago, where he was to meet another young man very much like himself.
Let's get back to May twenty first, nineteen twenty four. There's kids pouring out of school and up and down these streets and include Ellis Avenue where Bobby Franks and the Lowe family live. But tell us what happens to you. We last left off when somebody a classmate, had seen Bobby, and then when they looked again, they didn't see him, and then they saw a touring car speed by him, and another witness had also said that they had seen
a touring car and seeing Richard driving. What happens with Bobby Franks in terms of this disappearance.
Well, yeah, there were several witnesses who saw a peculiar car sort of cruising up and down Ellison around the area of the Harvard School for Boys. Richard Loeb had been out that day as the school got out, several people saw him. He followed several of the students around, asked them what they were doing. That wasn't particularly strange because his younger brother Tommy attended Harvard and he spoke
to him that afternoon too. But several people who scattered as the afternoon went on saw this sort of car that they thought was a Winton model. And at the time the cars had something called side curtains, which were sort of canvas panels in the back that could be
pulled up, and they had sort of plasticcene window. And on that day the car attracted a lot of attention that was cruising up and down the avenue because it was a warm day and yet someone had pulled up the side curtains, and people noticed this car going back and forth. And the boy who was walking directly behind Bobby Franks on his way home saw this car. Another person saw Richard driving what they thought was the same
car a few minutes before Bobby disappeared. And then this boy stopped and looked at the flowers and he picked up his head. Suddenly the car was gone and Bobby was gone.
Now he doesn't show up for supper, so the family gets worried. The father, Jacob, calls a friend, which is a state Senator, Samuel Errolson, and then they concoct a plan to go search in various places. But while they're gone, at ten thirty, his wife, Flora gets a call. Bobby's mother gets a call. What's said in that phone call? Who calls? Well?
A man identifying himself as George Johnson. George Johnson was on the telephone and he told Flora that they had Bobby and that she was to expect a letter with instructions on how they were to pay a ransom and recover Bobby safely. When she heard that on the phone, Flora fainted, and her daughter and her maid you know, helped her get it together. Helped her get back up, and at that point they just took a seat and waited until Jacob and the Senator returned.
That night, a watchman named Bernard Hunt is doing his duty and he hears something, a metal object dropped from a vehicle, and he inspects, investigates. What does he find on the ground and what does he do with that.
He walks over to where he hears this clink at about one am in the morning as he's on his rounds, and he looks down and there's chisel laying in the side of the street, and he picks it up and he looks at it and he notices that it's covered with something that looks like dried blood, and so he's a bit concerned about that, but not concerned enough to
act directly. He waits until he gets off in another hour, and then he takes it to the police station and says he thinks this was thrown out of a passing car at about one point thirty in the morning, and since it looks like it has blood on it, he thinks the police should.
Have it now. In the next day while they have a super uncomfortable evening. No doubt, there's a letter that arrives with special printed on the envelope. What's the contents of this this letter?
That was the actual ransom letter that the kidnappers had sent to Bobby Frank's family. In it, they were quite specific. They asked for ten thousand dollars. They gave instructions not to contact the police, which by this time the Frank's family had actually already done. But the letter outlined a number of things that were supposed to be done. They assured the family that Bobby was safe and that he
would be returned. All they wanted was the money, and they said that they would make contact with the family a little bit later.
Now they the family with the advice of Senator Errolson. They wanted to cooperate with these kidnappers, and so they wanted to keep this thing secret. But rather than keep it secret, somehow the press found out, didn't he.
Yes, they did. I think the press operated a little bit differently then than they do now maybe, And at this particular time, a couple of stringers for the big Chicago newspapers were also students at the University of Chicago, and two of them happened to run into Richard Loebe in a common room or a common area on campus, and one of them knew that Richard lived very close to the boy who had been kidnapped, and so they started a conversation, and that's kind of how the first
members of the press got looped in.
We have to go back just before that, because earlier in the day a man out near this area discovered something in this culvert, and so we went to investigate what's found in that culvert and what's the response.
Well man got off work, he worked night shift, and he was walking home early in the morning out in an area sort of southeast of Chicago, a fairly deserted, kind of marshy area, and he was walking along the set of railroad tracks and there was a drainage ditch to the side, and he happened to look down as he passed near the railroad tracks which ran over this ditch, and there was a culvert beneath the tracks, and looking down, he saw a pair of feet sticking out of the culvert,
and he raced down and looked and saw that there was a body inside. He managed to flag down some passing railway workers at the time, and they managed to get the body out of the culvert and dragged it up, and it turned out to be naked body of a young boy.
What else was found at the scene and what was the more so, what was the condition of the body?
Well, what else was found at the scene was some eyeglasses, which become very pivotal in the case later on. Also some pieces of clothing that to the three men thought it possibly belonged to the boy, including a sock. And the state of the body itself wasn't looked like he had had some corrosive material poured on his face.
And down alongside his abdomen and his genitals as well, so he was sort of disfigured at that point, but it was.
Still fairly easy to tell that he was quite a young adolescent boy.
Now, Greg explain how Jacob Love is looking along with Arrolson and waiting, looking and waiting for something to happen with and instructions for these for people that took his son. But at the same time there are reports leaked through this James Mulroy and again this intimate association with police and even in the families and the media. And what happened is that they were privy to information and Jacob Frank's at that time, or at least thought that his
son was already dead. Can you explain that.
Well, Jacob had been waiting for the instructions. When the ransom note arrived, he went downtown and got the ransom money and was waiting for information. When he returned back to his house, he found reporter waiting outside on the sidewalk, and because he wanted to keep Bobby's kidnapping quiet, he actually asked the reporter to come inside and wait, so
he wasn't standing around attracting attention. And the reporter happened to be in touch with another reporter, and that's how he learned that the body of a young boy had been found. And as I sat there waiting to hear something else from the kidnappers, they got to talking and it was suggested, well, what if this body that was found is actually Bobby Franks. And so what Jacob did was he arranged for his brother in law to go with the reporter to the morgue where the body had
been taken. And his brother in law walked into the room and saw the body and saw without doubt that it was indeed Bobby Franks. And so he telephoned to Frank's house and let Jacob know that his son was dead. And at that point they were still waiting to hear back from the kidnappers with instructions on how to deliver the money.
When they did get that call, what did they do despite knowing that most likely his son was dead.
Well, Jacob went ahead and there a sort of an elaborate set of instructions that he was supposed to follow. A cab was going to be sent to his house. He was supposed to get in. He was supposed to go to a drug store several miles away and wait by a payphone which would ring, and then the call would direct him to go to a nearby railway station, where he was to board a train, take the box of money that he had. He was to travel a certain distance, look for a factory, row the box off
of the train into the bushes as they passed. So Jacob planned to do all of this even though he knew his son was dead, because he thought that there was a chance they could go ahead and find the
kidnappers along the route. But the cab driver didn't know where to take him, and someone had forgotten to write down the exact address of the drug store to which Jacob was supposed to go, so he ended up not knowing where to go and simply returned home without having embarked on the sort of circuitous route to deliver the ransom money.
Right now, you say, you write by May twenty second, by the evening, neighbors, reporters, and a curious gather outside Bobby Frank's home, and Bobby's second cousin, Richard Lowe, wanders across the street from the mansion to join the crowd, and reporter Alvin Goldstein was there and knew Richard from the University of Chicago. And that's what you had mentioned, Penny, Yes, and they had both attended the University of Chicago. And Richard was quoted as saying it was a terrible crime
and a perpetrator deserved punishment. He deserved to be strung up. And you also write that immediately headlines such as kidnapper slay millionaire son as ten thousand dollar reward weights This is a Chicago Herald and Examiner. May twenty third, you say that this kidnapping was rare at that time, and the story exploded in the city's papers. How was it depicted in the city's papers.
Well, kidnapping was rare, but to have the kidnapping of a prominent local citizen millionaire, that was extraordinary. Kenwood was sort of seen as a safe enclave for the privileged, and crime had struck right in the heart of that community. No one knew who was responsible for Bobby's death. No
one could figure out what had happened. Had he been kidnapped, something gone wrong and then they had abandoned the ransom attempt, or had the ransom note simply been a cover story because somebody had grabbed him and molested him and tried to cover it up. So there was a lot of speculation in the press. The story from the very beginning seemed so bizarre, and no one really had any idea what was happening, so speculation replaced facts.
Yes, you write that. On May twenty third, a reporter for the Chicago Evening American Howard Meyer, dropped by the Zeta Beta how fraternity at the University of Chicago, and Loeb interestingly shared his theories about the murder. What did he have to say to this reporter?
Amazingly, Well, he was convinced that because part of the story of the ransom and what Jacob Franks had supposedly been supposed to do to get the rand some to the kidnappers had been printed in the papers. Richard suggested to his reporter friends, Hey, let's go out in the car and see if we can find the drug store that Jacob was supposed to have been sent to and
have awaited the call. And so Richard led them out and they tried several drug stores and finally they ended up at one of the drug stores, and it turned out, after they asked if there had been any calls for mister Franks there the previous day, that they hit the right drug store, And Richard seemed absolutely delighted to point this out to his journalist friends and claimed that this was because he read a lot of detective stories, so he knew how to solve things.
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Now, the police do their investigation and do their due diligence, and there's a Chicago police captain named Wolf. Interestingly, he's questioning residents near Wolf Lake where the body was found, and he visits a man named Oscar staff In, the deputy game warden for the area, and he had asked them if there was any frequent visitors to the area that he noted, and one of them was Nathan Leopold bird watching apparently, yes, what does the investigation in terms
of Now Richard is making some comments. There is a funeral of Bobby Franks that none of the Lobe family attends. How do police proceed with this Nathan Leopold lead.
Well, they went on over to the Leopold house and asked to speak with Nathan with the intention of asking him there had he seen anything untoward or anything that had caught his attention when he was last out there? Bird watching. He went bird watching quite a lot. He also taught classes on bird watching, and he was actually considered, even at the age of eighteen or nineteen, an extreme expert on one particular bird, and had written some articles for the Audubon Society. So all of this of course
fed Nathan's ego. And when the police showed up at the door, you know, he attempted to dodge that he had stuff on. He was, you know, not willing to get up, YadA YadA. But he did eventually come downstairs and face to face with the police officers. He did tell them that he hadn't seen anything, but the demeanor and the conversation obviously piqued police officer's interest, and they asked him, have you lost a pair of I got?
Do you wear eyeglasses? And Nathan said yes, that he did wear eyeglasses, but he hadn't worn them for a while, wasn't sure where there were, but he would try and get a hold of them and turn them over to the police.
They asked him about where he was May twenty first, what was his first response?
He told the police that he and well, at first he said that he couldn't remember, and then that it was just a normal day. When the police started to press him further, he said that he had spent the afternoon with his good friend Richard Lobe. They had been parked out near a local park and had spent the afternoon drinking. This was the ara of prohibition, and so they had to sort of secretly smuggle their flasks of
gin away from the house and sit there. And they had spent the afternoon drinking, and then later on they had gone out to eat and they had picked up a couple of girls to have sex with them. The girls wouldn't come across, Nathan said, and so they ended up finally going home at around eleven or twelve that night.
Because Leopold Nathan had implicated Richard Loeb in his alibi, they go to speak to Richard Lob, don't they, Yes, they do.
They pulled Richard in, they took him downtown for questioning at the same time that they already had Nathan Leopold in for questioning. So they were trying to interrogate both of them. Neither one was really considered a serious suspect at that point, but there were outstanding questions.
Now we skip ahead a bit because they get to the point where they're able to do a search of Nathan's home. What did they find and what did they seize?
In Nathan's house, they found several interesting things. There were a number of poisons that he apparently used, he liked to kill and stuffed birds for his collection. They found a lot of sharp knives. They found two unregistered loaded handguns, and they also found several letters copies of several letters that Nathan had written to Richard that seemed to strongly
hint that the pair were lovers. And this sort of astonished the police because if Richard and Nathan were gay, why would they say they were out picking up girls at the same time Bobby Franks had disappeared.
They're also told that a portable typewriter. Nathan has been seen using a portable typewriter in the last few weeks previous to this crime. Isn't that correct?
They were looking for the portable typewriter. It wasn't found in the house. They couldn't find it anywhere. They went upstairs to Nathan's third floor sort of office and workroom, couldn't find it up there. Nathan must have thought he was escaping from the questioning, but one of the maids helpfully offered that she had seen that typewriter sitting right
there on Nathan's desk just a few days ago. You know, that didn't remove the crosshairs from Nathan's back, and you know, sort of put him into a little bit more focus. With the police.
You say, they were taken into custody, and now the state District Attorney cro wants to speak to them and question them, doesn't he.
Yeah, he has several deputies. They're separated, so they're not together. He doesn't want to contaminate their stories in that way, but they are questioned about this alibi. Richard at first denied that he had been with Nathan Leopold on May twenty first, and then finally he admits, yes, they were out drinking and trying to pick up girls, but the
police continued to press about the typewriter the glasses. Nathan finally admitted that yes, were his glasses that were found near Bobby's body, but he insisted, oh, I must have lost them because I had been out there the week before bird watching. The only problem was that the glasses hadn't been there for a week. They were unmarked by
dust or rain or anything. And it had been quite stormy for a few days, and so the police really pressed them on these details separately, and Richard started to crumble under questioning, but Nathan simply became more arrogant, and the further police pressed, the more detail he offered, and he seemed completely unconcerned about the situation that he found himself in.
The police are looking very interestingly at the letters and the contents, and we'll talk about that in a second, but also the show first. Then England thinks he's doing a favor to the boys by helping him, saying that there's no way they could have been doing this crime on that day because his car was disabled, and in fact, he saw the boys cleaning up another car tell us about this.
Yeah, they hadn't wanted to use one of their own, probably recognizable in the neighborhood, their own automobiles, so they had rented this Winton and while his car was off the road, Nathan had taken the opportunity to have Sven, you know, do some maintenance work on it, and Swenn was doing that when Nathan and Richard returned to the auto yard at the Leopold home and were cleaning it up.
Then sort of walked over to see what they were doing, because it was very, very unlike Nathan to do any cleaning, so they came. He came over to have a look what they were doing, and he noticed that they were cleaning some red marks off of the back seat and or the front seat, the back seat the floor, and they claimed, Oh, don't worry about it, we got it. We just spilled some red wine.
Yeah, that didn't fly right. That May thirty first, nineteen twenty four, it has announced a news conference the Franks murder mystery has been solved, and that the perpetrators are in custody and they have voluntarily confessed, and the news broke over Chicago. You right, like the sudden storm, Right.
It was sort of shocking to find out that these two sons of millionaires, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, they had actually confessed to kidnapping and killing Bobby Franks. Richard Lobe, being the weaker of the two, was the first to confess, and when Nathan was confronted with the fact that he had already filled police in on what had happened, then Nathan chimed in and added his version of the tale.
But neither one seemed to have had any real motive that they could offer, So the story that appeared in the press was these two millionaire sons killed this fourteen year old kid just to see if they could get away with it.
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talkspace dot com. Make sure to use the code true Murder to get one hundred dollars off your first month and show your support for the show. That's true Murder and talkspace dot com. Now, Penny and Greg, we were talking about that. Now this hits the papers. This story is dubbed the Crime of the Century, and Jacob Lobe is desperate to be able to have his son not receive the death penalty, so he goes and visits the
infamous or famous Clarence Darrow. Tell us sue Clarence Darrow is at this time and what Jacob and his family opposed to him.
Darrow was probably the most famous and prominent criminal attorney in the US at that point. His position probably is roughly a kid at that time, to say Alan Dershowitz right. In the nineteen nineties, Darrow had a reputation as a fierce fighter and a compelling orator in court. He was an avowed opponent of the death penalty, which is something that the family knew, and so when they went to him, they simply said, save these boys' lives. We will pay
you anything that you want. But they were convinced that he was the only one who could do it.
You write that Darrow had written a couple of years before about his unique philosophy about the death penalty and criminal justice. What were some of the things that he espoused in that book.
Well, he had claimed that there was no such thing as criminal responsibility. He thought that society was to blame when someone did something illegal. Essentially, there was no right or wrong. There was no kind of personal responsibility for anything, because if someone committed a crime, they were obviously not thinking clearly, and so they were essentially compelled into that illegal act. And so that kind of idea there was
absolutely no point in putting anyone in jail. That didn't sit well with a lot of the public, but it got Daryl a lot of attention in.
This investigation, not only yourself, but also these police. They investigated and discovered who Nathan Leopold was and some of his background. Tell us what you, and they found well.
Nathan was the third son of his parents. Is dad was Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Sr. His older brothers. Nathan's older brothers were Mike and Sam. He got along quite well with Mike, the oldest one, not so much with Sam, the middle one, and that sort of budding of heads lasted for the rest of their lives. Sam was three or four years older than Nathan, and they essentially grew up side by side under the care of a governess who went by the name of Sweetie. Her real name
was Matilda Vent. She was a German immigrant. She was particularly jealous of the boys. She tried to set them against their mother, more so than their father, but she certainly tried to set them against both parents. Probably had a little bit more success with I don't know, Nathan
than Sam. She also, despite their youth, she sexually abused both boys, and by the age of twelve Nathan she would often crawl into bed with him, and I mean clearly that that wasn't good for him, and I mean it was his parents had no idea it was going on. You know, it was hands off parenting in those days. The father was often a way at work, the mother was working at her charities and socializing, much as all
the other mothers in the area were. She herself came from a large family and she had several sisters in the neighborhood. So I imagine both parents thought that their boys were being well taken care of by the governess, that they were paying good money to. By all aspects looking at it, they did learn quite a bit. Nathan obviously was brilliant at school, and through Sweetie he learned probably the first of several foreign languages that he spoke.
He became very fluent in German, which of course was also spoken by members of his family. So Nathan had gone to school. His first school was, you know, just your normal local neighborhood school, and then it turned into a girls school. But because he only had a year or so left to go before he graduated out of that school, he and another one or two boys were
permitted to stay. And, of course, being kids being kids, by the time he got to his next school, he had a bit of a reputation as that kid who went to a girls school. However, he did flourish at school. He was very assiduous at his studies. He was an outstanding a birdwatcher, an ornithologist at a very young age.
As we said before, he simply excelled at everything. And although the kids still kind of made fun at him, fun of him, sorry, as he went through school, it sort of became slightly more affectionate as he went more intal teasing. Then you know, the cut and thrust of purled insults. But Nathan never did really escape the abuse that he'd suffered at Sweety's hands, and he himself turned that around and in his turn abused a couple of
boys who were younger than him. So this is basically where he was when he graduated and headed off to the University of Chicago where he met Richard Globe.
Now in this is both of these people, as you mentioned, are intellectual prodigies, graduating much earlier, but that affects their socialization as well. And you say that Nathan developed no close friends, where Richard was popular and had a vibrant
social life. But the police, getting back to this, what the evidence that the police have after they searched Nathan's home is that they have these very very interesting letters that depict a dynamic that the police are very very interested as it pertains to the murder, Greg tell us about what's contained in these letters and this bizarre relationship.
Well, the letters were sort of revelatory in the sense that they showed several things. They showed that Nathan was sort of in charge of the relationship, dictated the terms. They also spoke about arguments that the parent had. It
was clearly a very fraught emotional relationship. But from a line in the letter, it also became quite clear to the police and anyone who read it that the pair were sexually involved with each other, which, of course, once that got out and started leaking into the press, with the rumors and everything, became quite another issue in the court case and the kidnapping and as it played out
in all of the media. The relationship between I mean Nathan and Richard had turned sexual I think when they were both about fifteen and they were on their way to Richard's parents' country house up in Michigan, and Richard had confessed to Nathan that he had broken into stores and stolen things, and in turn, Nathan confessed to Richard that he was attracted to men, and somehow that dynamic, this this shared secrets that they had between them sort
of drew them together. And this relationship that formed it was intense. It was a typical teenage sexual relationship, so lots of uncertainty and angst. No one really knows. Richard seems to have been sort of asexual. Nathan was really the sexual aggressor. He preferred to dominate and he actually linked I think in his mind sex and violence. That
was what aroused him. But Richard was fine and let him go along with whatever he wanted to do because Richard sort of got this compliant, worshipful friend out of it.
Now we have to fast forward a little bit here because what's happened in this letter and this relationship is pretty clear that they had some compact where they would commit crimes and then there would be some sexual reward. So there was a relationship that was filled with threats, and that their relationship had gone through tests, and Nathan is a very insecure and dominant character. It would be
very evident. And so there is this agreement that they have and before they do this kidnapping of Bobby Franks, they have this agreement to do these other crimes, and so there are other crimes once they are charged with these that seemed to come up and seem to fit
these people perfectly. Now at the same time you write about their irresponsible behavior right after this, speaking to reporters, once Clarence Darrow enters the picture, he says, at least for the time being, not to be speaking about this case whatsoever.
Now.
Clarence Darrow has a incredible obstacle and dilemma he has with all the confessions that these people have done, all the things that they've said to police, he has an incredible dilemma. What's that dilemma and what is his solution?
Well, his dilemma is that his clients have essentially fessed up to everything. Both of them gave pretty consistent stories, with the exception of which was the one that struck the final blows to Bobby, but the essential story was the same from both Nathan and Richard. So yeah, Darrow's dilemma was that they had spoken to the police and
that they had told the police. The whole story of where he went from there was he had to thread a very fine needle because he wants wanted to call the boys psychology into question without actually having them labeled insane, because if they were labeled legally insane, they would have had to have had a jury trial, and Darrow wanted to avoid a jury trial, believing that, you know, it's easier to convince one man than it is to convince twelve.
That he ought not to sentence his clients to death, so he needed to sort of skate along that line where his psychology or psychological experts were giving just enough information to make it seem like, well, you know, maybe something in the boy's past wasn't quite right along the lines of what Darrow's philosophy was that it was society itself that compelled people to commit crimes. So you know, he tried to dance along that line. And obviously in the end.
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Everybody else now? Both Clarence Darrow and through his instruction, Richard and Nathan utilized the press in this trial, don't they? And with Clarence Darrow, he has already stated in the opening argument in his in his opening statements basically what he's going to try to do, and he has a judge claverly that he is trying to influence in this particular case. Tell us a little bit about the dynamics between this judge of Clarence Darrow and the prosecutor Crow.
It was sort of a no nonsense kind of guy. He disliked Darrow intensely, mainly because of his judicial philosophy. He you know, quite clearly said several points. You know, if we listen to what Clarence Darrow said, we'd just throw open the doors of the jails, because nobody should
be in jail. Darrow had really lucked out. And part of his decision to forego the jury trial and simply move before a judge and have the hearing before a judge was that he knew that Judge Cabally was Catholic, and he thought that as a Catholic, he would be less inclined you find the pair guilty and pronounce the death sentence on them, right, and so in court Darrow sort of skirted around everything, but he was very theatrical, and at times he simply overwhelmed Cavally, who seemed to
sort of sit up on the bench and kind of cower before the famous Darrow.
Also, Darrow succeeded in humanizing these people, these two boys, but also he referred to them as young boys, so he wanted to have that as an issue that they were so young. To add to this the guilt that he tried to instill in the judge if he were to hang these young men.
Right, well, he had his experts, the psychiatric experts for the defense as well, talk about these boys. And these are you know, learned doctors who are up there talking about, you know, this boy who did this and this boy who did that. Well, they're eighteen and nineteen at the time. They're not kids, and they knew full well what they were doing. The psychiatric testimony was quite interesting, and there was a very much a battle between the prosecution and
the defense over the details and what things meant. But Darrow was also playing to public opinion, and in that he succeeded. The trial, or the sentencing hearing as it actually was, was front page news all across Chicago in each of the six daily papers, and gradually Daryl managed to portray his clients as so emotionally damaged, so immature, that they had no capability of determining right from wrong when it came to kidnapping and killing Bobby.
Well, we didn't mention at the same time as this is going on, the reaction from the public. You say, the very first day, the crowd rips the hinges off the courtroom door and then they have to be beaten back with nightsticks.
Right, I mean, it was a sort of frenzy. I mean, obviously, had this case taken place today, you would have live gabble to gable coverage on court TV or you know, CNN, just because of the spectacular nature and you know, the prominence and wealth of the defendants. But the crowd really wanted to see some aspect of what was going on. Whether it was to see these two young men, to see with their own eyes do they really look this evil?
Could they really have done this? Or to get inside and just see Darrow when he delivered his remarks, because he was so theatrical and so famous for that. So I mean there was a you know, rather than sitting around in reading it in the next day's newspaper, they wanted to see it firsthand.
Now, a lot of the things that Darrow made motions for and argued in court seemed to be accommodated by the judge to the displeasure of Da Crow. Certainly they have eighty one witnesses. The prosecution and then the defense brought these psychiatric witnesses in front of the jury. And you said, at that time there was two schools of thought.
One was that, you know, the organic of origins of mental illness school, and then this other one, the Freudian Youngian field, a school of thought where everything came down to personality disorders and the background. What happens with this verdict is depends on this what's now considered this very famous closing argument. Now, despite the depiction of this closing argument as brilliant, you write what it really It was long.
It was meandering. Darrow jumped back and forth between subjects and emphasies. He he came out and he insulted Bobby Franks and the Franks family by suggesting that perhaps Bobby never would have amounted to very much in his life anyway, so we can't really say that all that much was lost.
You know, he.
Really kind of for us anyway, ripped off the you know, the mask of having been this masterful lawyer. He just seemed like such an opportunist, willing to say and do anything to win, and.
I think the efforts that he went to, he overwhelmed the judge with his rhetoric and with his constant motions and sort of wore the judge down. But he overtly blamed anyone and everyone. He blamed the nannies, he blamed the parents, he blamed the schools, he blamed the books that Richard and Nathan had read, even blamed the publisher who had published the works of Nietzsche that had influenced Nathan and said that they were more responsible for Nathan's
action than Nathan was. So, you know, it was sort of really sordid, deep dive into Darrow's philosophy that there really was no such thing as personal responsibility.
He also basically doesn't threaten the judge, but he tries to instill guilt in the judge for hanging these boys and harps on the death of these boys as again insulting that their lives would be more important than Bobby Franks and be much more of a tragedy for these boys to be executed than Bobby Frank's murder itself.
Right.
He you know, just in his three day closing argument really sort of hit home at least our was intended to hit home with the judge, and it obviously succeeded. That, you know, maybe there's some worth in leopolden Lowe, that maybe everything had happened for a reason, and that rather than celebrate their execution and their hanging and have that media circus, that maybe society would be better off if it studied them and tried to determine what had made them go wrong.
The judge makes his decision. He says he will make a decision in ten days, after everything is completed, everyone's gathered. After that ten days, what is a decision? What does he? What's this his statement and reasoning.
The judge finally delivered his verdict and he found them. They had obviously pleaded guilty, so there was nothing to that charge that the judge could do. It was up to him to determine what the sentence was, whether they would receive the death penalty or life in prison, And so the judge gave them both sentences of life in prison, and each also received an additional sentence of ninety nine
years tacked onto that for the kidnapping charge. There are two different charges of kidnapping in the murder charge and the judge, in explaining his decision, said that he thought a lot of people in the public would think that this was him being soft, But he thought that given the defendants wealth and positions, and the fact that they were accustomed to luxury, and you know, everything that they had ever wanted had been given to them in their life,
that prison would actually be more of a punishment to them than the death penalty would have been.
And you also write that what he had said was that his decision was not part of the past, but part of the future trend of all civilized societies. Something along those lines of enlightened societies. I think he put was the word well.
Darrow had argued that line of reasoning with Kaberly and insisted that the judge could go forward into the past where witches were burned at the stake and people were stoned to death, or he could move forward into a more sympathetic and enlightened age. And that is exactly what he argued for, and that's what Caverally gave him.
Now, this decision rocks Chicago, and so tell us what the reaction is from the media and then from the public. Before we talk about Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold behind bars because the story really takes off.
Then, well, the reaction was intense. There was an outcry in the media against Caberly's decision to spare their lives. Everyone had thought that they would probably get the death penalty. It had expected that, and so the fact that they ended up getting life sentences somehow seemed to suggest us that what had happened to Bobby really didn't matter that much, that maybe somehow Darrow's fame and money from the Leopold
and Loeb families had somehow corrupted the justice system. So there was a lot of suspicion and a lot of outcry at that point.
Now both the Lob and Leopold are put in prisons, but they're separated. Another time they're separated from prisons, but then they're reunited. But Lob acts completely differently than Nathan Leopold in prison and tell us there was this difference between both of their approaches and what happens when they both get back together in prison.
Well, Richard had always been the more social of the two. He had always been I think quite superficially, but he had been successful in his social life prior to Nathan I don't think he necessarily had any deep connections with anyone other than Nation Nathan, but he had a lot
of them, and that translated rather well into prison. For Richard, it was just a different group of people he had to make friends with in order to get where he wanted to be, which was I believe safe because obviously they were probably a little scared about going into prison,
especially once they were separated. But Richard's family was generous with his allowance that they were able to put on account for him in the prison, so he was able to share a lot of that with his cellmates and the guys in the cells around him, you know, the cigarettes, the candy, the extra food, the little luxuries that they were able to buy, and the luxuries they were able
to convince guards to bring in for him. So yeah, he fit in quite well with the petty bribery, the petty sort of crime that went on in the prisons at that time.
And I think for Nathan, I mean, Nathan had a really hard time adjusting. He was disliked because of his arrogance,
and he made no attempt to fit in. Ironically, the two of them were in separate prisons for a time, and then finally in the early nineteen thirties, they ended up being transferred both at the same time back to Statesville, which was a new prison that the state of Illinois had built, and it was there that they came together again and really started spending time together for the first
time since the trial. And I guess the thing that they're best known for during that period is that Richard founded a correspondent school for inmates that was so successful. He and Nathan wrote the curriculum and some of the textbooks and todd and graded papers. It soon spread throughout the Illinois penal system and actually was an adopted for use in other prisons across the country, So it was quite successful.
You write that Nathan realized that role was possible because the judge Claverley never specified whether it was concurrent sentence in the ninety nine years for kidnapping or was a consecutive and so on. In nineteen thirty five, the two actually January twenty eighth, nineteen thirty six, Richard had breakfast with Nathan. I don't you don't write what was discussed, but they had breakfast, but shortly after something happened to Richard Lowe tell us what happened.
Without an hour after that Richard had disappeared. There were a series of shower rooms that were attached to the offices used for the school, and Richard had gone to take a shower. About an hour later he came stumbling out naked, his body covered in razor cuts. He was bleeding profusely, and he collapsed on the floor. He had been attacked by another inmate while he was in the shower, and he was rushed to the infirmary. Nathan learned about this and also was allowed to rush to the infirmary
and was with him for the next hour. But Lobe had suffered numerous numerous wounds. His throat had been slit almost all the way back to this spinal column. It was a gigantic, gaping wound. So there was really no hope for him, and he died about an hour after the attack.
That person was prosecuted, a man named James Day. But you write more importantly. In the coming years, Nathan seized the opportunity to remake himself and revise his history, fear from fear, free from the fear that Richard would contradict him. Now in this quest to revise his history. What does he revise, Well, he has.
The opportunity to put his version of events to the four and insist that Richard had indeed been the one to strike the fatal blow on Bobby Franks. There was no Richard anymore to offer any evidence or any words in counter to that. So Nathan at that point going forward, was able to steadily build a case for his parole.
You're right that he adjusts his approach the very first parole hearing he has. He after believe it's thirty three years. He talks about his attitude changing, but when they ask him about a motive, he can't come up with one, so he adjusts. He's denied. He's denied again. You talk about that that he gets a lawyer and in his fight for clemency and finally he is successful.
Right, he managed to finally give the answers that the parole board wanted to hear. They had challenged him on several occasions. When asked about the motive, he simply say, I can't give you a reason. I don't have a motive. It was just a foolish, childish thing, some damn stunt that we did. And so that didn't get him free, but finally he was able to offer a modicum of remorse and said that he had a plan in place
if he was paroled. He was going to leave the country and go work for a church in Puerto Rico. And so finally the parole board agreed to let him go.
And the story would end right there, but due to his seemingly psychopathic nature and narcissistic nature. There is a book about the case, a fictionalized version called Compulsion I believe in nineteen fifty six. It is very successful, and Nathan then gets the idea that maybe his autobiography might be of interest and be very successful. What happens with this whole incident.
Well, he he had very, very slightly known Meyer Levin when they were at school together, and Levin used this tenuous connection to write Compulsion, which was an extremely successful book and indeed went on to be made into a movie, and Nathan took offense. He felt someone was speaking for him and he wanted to tell his own story. So he embarked on a year's long civil suit against Levin and his publisher's over Compulsion, and in the meantime, he
was writing his own autobiography called Life Plus ninety nine years. Yeah, and that book, unfortunately, was not well received, and indeed he was seen, as you know, trying to profit off of his crime, trying to twist things so that he
looked better than he actually had been. One thing about Nathan was that he always underestimated other people's intelligence, and I think in that way, he under estimated the intelligence of the reading public, who you know, plainly saw through it and saw who he was.
And I think one of the big problems that he faced with the reading public and the media, Nathan absolutely refused to discuss the crime. And if you have one of the world's most famous criminals who's just been paroled and has written his memoirs, you would expect that he is at least going to expend some time in the
book talking about what got him into prison. But Nathan was pretty clear from the first page that he found the whole subject so distasteful that he didn't want to describe it, and so that didn't do wonders for his book sales.
He talked about his wife and that he was in Puerto Rico soon after this, but he returned interestingly in nineteen seventy one, and he visited Chicago. Where did he go visit? Fascinatingly, he went to.
The cemetery to visit his parents' grace, particularly his mother's grave, and that brought him within feet of the Franks tomb. He didn't go there, obviously. He also had his friends drive him around the old neighborhood and also out to where wolf Lake had been to. Of course, it was all built up by that time, and he did mention to his friends. You know, basically, you'd never know, You would never be able to tell where any of this happened.
I want to when you talk about this book at the very beginning, you talk about the origins, the the oranges of this story. And editor at Saint Martin's Press named Charles Spicer, can you tell us about this event that brought you both to the writing of this book.
When we had finished our last book, sort of the processes that you're always discussing ideas for your next book, and which is exactly what we're doing right now. Ironically, at this time period, we're discussing what the next book
should be and you always have several options. And when we had finished our last book, we talked to Charlie, our editor at Saint Martin's and we presented him with several ideas, a couple of which he was interested in, but happened to mention that the one that we really wanted to write was a reassessment of Leopold and Low, but that we were kind of holding off on that because we thought that it should probably come a little bit later to coincide with the one hundredth anniversary of the crime.
And he suggested, well, that's true, but it's better to get your book out. It's better to do it now and then you'll be situated and in place and be able to talk about it when the anniversary comes, rather than hitting at the time of the anniversary.
Wow, it's a great idea. I want to thank you very much for coming on. Penny Wilson and Greg King. Nothing but the Night Leopold and Loeb and the Truth behind the Murder That Rock nineteen twenties America. Can you tell us all this release date and if there is a Facebook page, website, social media that you use for people that might want to know more about the story.
Well, the release date is actually today, September twentieth, and it is poignantly it's the day after Bobby's birthday. He was born on September nineteenth. And as for social media presence, it's very light. We are on Facebook, we have King and Wilson books on Facebook. But you know, we do plan on expanding our social media fairly shortly.
Thank you very much, Great King, Penny Wilson. Nothing but the Night Leopold and Loeb and the Truth behind the Murder that Rock nineteen twenties America. Thank you so much for this interview and you have a great evening.
Good night you too, Dan, Thanks a lot.
Thanks Dan,