Further reading for Leopold and Loeb
For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago by Simon Baatz
Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, were a pair of insufferable teenage murderers who, in 1924, abducted and murdered 14 year old Bobby Franks for the sheer thrill of it. The pair were both exceptionally intelligent young men, which worked toward their undoing.
Leopold was a fan of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietszche, and embraced his concept of the superman to an obnoxious degree, believing himself and Loeb to be two such individuals who were therefore above the law. To test this theory, they began committing petty crimes before moving up to arson but were both disappointed when the crimes went largely ignored by the broader culture. To gain the public’s attention, the pair began working toward a plan that they believed would constitute the perfect crime. They would commit murder and walk free of it. To do this, they planned for months, down to the last detail and ended up choosing 14 year old Bobby Franks as their victim, a neighborhood acquaintance of the boys. The initial plan was to make it look like a random kidnapping but for all of their planning, the conspiracy came apart quickly when a pair of Nathan Leopold’s very particular glasses were found at the scene of the crime.
The pair were arrested, questioned, and turned on one another almost immediately. What followed was one of the first high-profile national criminal trials in America. It captivated the nation in a way that few criminal trials had before. Both were convicted and sentenced to life, plus 99 years. Nathan Leopold was paroled after 33 years in prison. Richard Loeb, however, was murdered by an inmate in 1936.
Episodes: 495-497
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