Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: They were to the point where they had to do
Speaker 2: it or not do it, so do I did do
Speaker 2: it or die and the person died.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unblush details behind their stories. One of the most famous
Speaker 1: crimes in American history was the murder of fourteen year
Speaker 1: old Bobby Frank. Two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb,
Speaker 1: wanted to plan the perfect murder, but they didn't. Author
Speaker 1: Hal Higden wrote the book on this case called Leopold
Speaker 1: and Loeb, The Crime of the Century. Now tell me
Speaker 1: how you even got started with this story? What intrigued
Speaker 1: you about it? First? Before we unravel the story a
Speaker 1: little bit like a mystery, is how I like to
Speaker 1: do it?
Speaker 2: Well, actually the story was handed to me. Another author
Speaker 2: had begun work on a book on Leopold and Law,
Speaker 2: but then he blocked and couldn't finish the assignment. So
Speaker 2: pauler Menton, who was then the president of DV Putdams
Speaker 2: and also Norman Miler's editor, went out looking for another author.
Speaker 2: And I had written a book about the Civil War
Speaker 2: and had done a couple of books for but them,
Speaker 2: so I was out there waiting. My agent asked me
Speaker 2: if I would like to do the book, and I
Speaker 2: said sure, and put a lot of work into it.
Speaker 2: And the book somehow has had legs as hung around
Speaker 2: all these years.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's thanks to both your writing and
Speaker 1: the story, which I still find fascinating. When we get
Speaker 1: into it, people will find out more about it. But
Speaker 1: it's still such a mystery about how these two young men,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize how young they were, how these
Speaker 1: two young men came together to come up with this
Speaker 1: idea that to me is so disturbing. So what are
Speaker 1: the themes that you think you explore when you tell
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 2: Well, the problem is we got a couple of very
Speaker 2: right individuals who were sort of almost like gamers. They
Speaker 2: were looking for something to exploit their intelligence. They had
Speaker 2: gotten together in each other on a trip to charl Boyd,
Speaker 2: a summer residence the log family, and started out by
Speaker 2: believe it or not, cheating at Bridge. The one thing
Speaker 2: wasn't led to another miner's burglary of Love's fraternity house
Speaker 2: at the University of Michigan, and then literally almost a
Speaker 2: dare to see if they commit the perfect crime. Their
Speaker 2: detective fans just like a lot of people, and they're
Speaker 2: watching now. But they just sort of took it out
Speaker 2: the wrong way, and by the end of the story
Speaker 2: a young boy lay dead.
Speaker 1: Do you know enough about their individual backgrounds for us
Speaker 1: to separate them? And we start with, you know Nathan Leopold,
Speaker 1: and you tell me what you know about him up
Speaker 1: until this happens where he makes this agreement to murder
Speaker 1: a young boy. What do we know about Leopold?
Speaker 2: Here's a bright young boy I chose supposedly of two
Speaker 2: hundred twenty almost out of the ballpark, were also a burder.
Speaker 2: He was actually a creative birdwatcher and had written papers
Speaker 2: about the Kirtland warbler, a bird that he apparently discovered
Speaker 2: after a lot of people thought it was extinct. And
Speaker 2: he went to the part of School for Boys, which
Speaker 2: is a school of a private school on the south
Speaker 2: side of Chicago and everybody I knew very well myself
Speaker 2: and went on to the University of Michigan with Loeb,
Speaker 2: but Lobe was sort of rushed him off, so Leopold returned,
Speaker 2: went to the University of Chicago, graduated with a degree
Speaker 2: when I believe he was like eighteen years old, and
Speaker 2: enrolled in law school. Basically, I was a student at
Speaker 2: the university where I attended briefly, both in high school
Speaker 2: and in graduate school. Loban got together, and that's crime
Speaker 2: to one from there.
Speaker 1: Now, tell me about Richard Loeb, who I don't know
Speaker 1: very much about. What did you find out in your
Speaker 1: reporting about his life before he encounters Nathan Leopold.
Speaker 2: Well, but again was bright, not quite as bright, but
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty one hundred and sixty, I believe,
Speaker 2: I to you, which is I can't even begin to imagine.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me my ito. He was going in high school,
Speaker 2: he went to the Laboratory School of Chicago what we
Speaker 2: called you High back when, and the same school that
Speaker 2: I had gone to and graduated from. So there have
Speaker 2: been a lot of comparisons. Why it made it very
Speaker 2: easy meat for write about the boy in the neighborhood
Speaker 2: and again very very bright, but pretty much so Briat,
Speaker 2: who was a super social Well there I get sob
Speaker 2: i ate to use the real word for what he was,
Speaker 2: went on to the Unis Michigan. They had actually known
Speaker 2: Leopold when they were both about fifteen, but it didn't
Speaker 2: pay much attend to Leopold that Michigan, which caused Leopold
Speaker 2: to head back to Chicago.
Speaker 1: So they know each other. What do you think drew
Speaker 1: them to each other? Was it this extreme intelligence? Did
Speaker 1: they did you feel like they had very similar personalities
Speaker 1: and they sort of fed off each other. Because I
Speaker 1: often wonder about killers who work in pairs and what
Speaker 1: connects them, what drives them to stay together, and if
Speaker 1: they would even have done this if they were just
Speaker 1: working as individuals.
Speaker 2: Well, they were geniuses, they were lovers. Their families were wealthy,
Speaker 2: which led to trying to collect a ransom for a
Speaker 2: kidnapping part of the plot that they did and more
Speaker 2: or less was can I do this? Can you do that?
Speaker 2: And dary each other over a period of two three
Speaker 2: four months coming up with the plot, which itself was
Speaker 2: was the fun that they found out the fund where
Speaker 2: they decided they were going to kidnap a young boy,
Speaker 2: kill him, try to collect a ransom money from the parents,
Speaker 2: and it was just sort of the evil act.
Speaker 1: Well, let's start with the boy who turns out to
Speaker 1: be our victim, who is a boy named Bobby Franks.
Speaker 1: He's fourteen years old. Before we talk about what happens
Speaker 1: to him, tell me what we know about Bobby Franks
Speaker 1: and his family and what kind of kid he is.
Speaker 2: Well, like the Leopold and the Lot families, the family
Speaker 2: was wealthy kind of wood back at that time. Who's
Speaker 2: the resident leader would be Barack Obama was a very
Speaker 2: wealthy neighborhood. It's where the wealthy people landed once they
Speaker 2: had left the areas further north downtown and before they
Speaker 2: migrated to the suburb Island Park, So that brought them together.
Speaker 2: And again to me, it was a very very familiar
Speaker 2: neighborhood too, because I didn't live in the Kenwood area.
Speaker 2: I lived in another area on the south Stude of
Speaker 2: Chicago South Shore, but I was very familiar with the
Speaker 2: neighborhood because I went to school there for several years.
Speaker 2: So that threw them together, and they both started there
Speaker 2: each other before you knew it, the time of the
Speaker 2: century had begun.
Speaker 1: What do you think their dynamic was. I mean, you
Speaker 1: said that they were lovers. I'm assuming number one, this
Speaker 1: is secret. This is nineteen twenty four, so they're not
Speaker 1: exposing this, Am I assuming correctly that this was secret
Speaker 1: or relationship between them?
Speaker 2: You are assuming very very correctly. This was something that
Speaker 2: would not today, you know, would not be thought much
Speaker 2: off the fact that there might be to high school
Speaker 2: college a students who were almo sexual back then, who
Speaker 2: was unheard of, and so it was not something they
Speaker 2: bragged about.
Speaker 1: So they are making plans and they want to commit
Speaker 1: essentially the perfect crime. Is the money important to them,
Speaker 1: the ransom money, or is it just literally the challenge
Speaker 1: can we get away with it? And the excitement of
Speaker 1: all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, the money was totally inconsequential. I mean, if
Speaker 2: either of them had wanted the twenty thousand dollars to
Speaker 2: maybe buy a new car or do something else prediculous.
Speaker 2: The parents would have made that money available to them,
Speaker 2: so it certainly was not money. Money was started the
Speaker 2: score that would have proved that they had succeeded in
Speaker 2: their crime. And they've been able to make it the
Speaker 2: perfect crime and make fools of everybody in the city
Speaker 2: of Chicago or the policeman, the state's attorneys, and the
Speaker 2: achieve of fame that only the two of them knew about.
Speaker 2: It would be their little secret.
Speaker 1: Tell me about what happens, step by step with as
Speaker 1: much detail as you can think of. How does this start?
Speaker 1: They've planned for several months, How do they decide when
Speaker 1: this is going to happen? And then what happens?
Speaker 2: Well, the two of us got together and had all
Speaker 2: of their plans going. They had discovered how one could
Speaker 2: run a car. They had a secret location in one
Speaker 2: of the Chicago hotels, so they could check into the
Speaker 2: hotel and establish an identity so if they went into
Speaker 2: a rental tar place, they could use that identity to
Speaker 2: rent a car, so they wouldn't have to use either
Speaker 2: of their car. This is again the devising things like this.
Speaker 2: Going into a hardware store around Fortieth Street in Chicago
Speaker 2: and buying a shizzle that they would wrap and turn
Speaker 2: into a budge and so they could strike of the victim.
Speaker 2: These were all the games that they were playing, identifying
Speaker 2: another drug store on sixty third Street in Chicago where
Speaker 2: there was a couple of telephone they had telephone booths
Speaker 2: back in that era, and they could call the victim
Speaker 2: mister Franks, actually the victim father who hadn't even an
Speaker 2: identified it not and get him through a game literally
Speaker 2: where they would guide him to taking the money ransom
Speaker 2: money and getting it to them where nobody would be
Speaker 2: able to follow his movements. So again, these game was
Speaker 2: a game. It was a game that's sort of like
Speaker 2: the game that the kids doing now. And so eventually
Speaker 2: the plot went and they were to the point where
Speaker 2: they had to do it or not do it. They
Speaker 2: were realterally the point where if they hadn't found the
Speaker 2: boy within the next thirty minutes, they would have stopped
Speaker 2: and Leopold would go off to Europe on vacation, which
Speaker 2: was part of his plan. So sort of they didn't
Speaker 2: do it or die, and the person died in.
Speaker 1: The age, how did they find Bobby Franks. They didn't
Speaker 1: know him beforehand, right.
Speaker 2: Well, actually no, they did. It was a small neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Everybody knew everybody else, and so Leopold and low would
Speaker 2: definitely have known Bobby Frank's effect. I think Bobby France
Speaker 2: sometimes even played tennis on the Loew's father's tennis sports
Speaker 2: so it was a familiar person. Although it really didn't
Speaker 2: matter because they had been scouting out various victims. They
Speaker 2: had their rental tower and they were driving around the
Speaker 2: Harvard School where a baseball game was going on, and
Speaker 2: Bobby Franks was serving as the umpire to take part
Speaker 2: of the game, and he started walking home. They looked
Speaker 2: at a couple of other boys in and around the
Speaker 2: neighborhood that they saw who they spotted at first, but
Speaker 2: when they turned the car around to go get him,
Speaker 2: he had disappeared. So there was a matter of total
Speaker 2: chance that Bobby Franks would be walking down the street
Speaker 2: down to his parents' home and Leopold and Loba saw him,
Speaker 2: went past him, turned around, came back. Lob I believe
Speaker 2: it was who rolled down the window and shouted for
Speaker 2: Bobby to ask him, Hey, would you like a ride home?
Speaker 2: And it would have been normal for Bobby to just
Speaker 2: jump in the car, because Lowe was in quotes from
Speaker 2: the neighborhood. So Bobby Franks got into the front seat
Speaker 2: with one of the murderers driving, the other murder in
Speaker 2: the back seat. And I'm not using a name because
Speaker 2: even today we don't know who is the actual person
Speaker 2: who hit Bobby Franks and committed the crime. So by
Speaker 2: that time it was quickly, even almost before they had
Speaker 2: gotten down to the next block, the blow was struck,
Speaker 2: and they drove out to an area that if you've
Speaker 2: ever driven into Chicago on the Skyway, there's a place
Speaker 2: Wolf Lake on both sides of the road. Wasn't there
Speaker 2: back then in nineteen twenty four, but within a quarter
Speaker 2: mile or so the Skyway, the lakes merged and there's
Speaker 2: a railroad tracks back there. So all this had been
Speaker 2: scanned in advance, and there was a matter just dragging
Speaker 2: about the dead body by now and stuffing him into
Speaker 2: a culvert and expecting that maybe the body would never
Speaker 2: be found, or at least not found for days or
Speaker 2: weeks or when it's probably even years.
Speaker 1: For people who don't know, just quickly explain what a
Speaker 1: culvert is and why I have read so many stories
Speaker 1: about bodies being hidden in culverts.
Speaker 2: And so basically it would be a long round two
Speaker 2: the two that would allow the water to move from
Speaker 2: Wolf Lake through the tube and into the next body
Speaker 2: of water, which ironically was about a half life away
Speaker 2: for where one of my cousins lived, and so I
Speaker 2: knew the area very well. Leopald knew the area very
Speaker 2: well because he was a burder and usually once a
Speaker 2: week he would take students from the laboratory school again
Speaker 2: my high school, take them burning out to the lake,
Speaker 2: and that was part of what he did. And he
Speaker 2: knew in the area very very very familiar, and that
Speaker 2: was part of their kidnap plot.
Speaker 1: So did you get the impression. I know that we've
Speaker 1: we've already said that they are really focused on pulling
Speaker 1: off the perfect crime, and we sort of just said
Speaker 1: it was kind of one hit from one of them,
Speaker 1: we don't know who, and that's it. Did you get
Speaker 1: the impression there was any sort of gratification from either
Speaker 1: of them around the actual murder, not the planning or
Speaker 1: the cover up, but the actual Did they get a
Speaker 1: little bit of a thrill out of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think it was the planning. Basically, they were
Speaker 2: all detective stories. You know, this is back in the
Speaker 2: area of Pulp six, and they had all sorts of
Speaker 2: publications basically or into that detective genre, if you might,
Speaker 2: and that was part of their their scheme would be
Speaker 2: to create a crime then would be the equal of
Speaker 2: the crimes that they read about, and in some respects
Speaker 2: they even mimic the crimes of I'm not a mistake.
Speaker 2: In the ransom note was a note that they had
Speaker 2: plagiarized from one of their detective magazine. So there's nothing
Speaker 2: about these two to light.
Speaker 1: So is this broad daylight? He's walking home after refereeing
Speaker 1: this baseball game, right, I mean, is this at dusk
Speaker 1: or what time of day is this? It seems very
Speaker 1: brazen to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it certainly must have been light. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is what five point thirty in the afternoon, it
Speaker 2: is still would have been very much daylight. And as
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, Leopold the
Speaker 2: lobe even claused with the dead body in the tront
Speaker 2: until it got dark so that they could go and
Speaker 2: not be observed while they were about what they were doing. Actually,
Speaker 2: as I said, you know, Leopold was a burner. He
Speaker 2: was very familiar with the area. He probably realized that
Speaker 2: they're could be other birds there. At the same time,
Speaker 2: they didn't want to blow their their crime that way,
Speaker 2: so they waited until it was dark and went in
Speaker 2: there with the body and that we as we dis
Speaker 2: discussed in the culvert and uh, and then they headed
Speaker 2: back home to continue the crime. The following day.
Speaker 1: When does Bobby Franks' his family become alarmed when he
Speaker 1: doesn't show up for dinner.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming, yeah, there wereried he's not there, and they
Speaker 2: make a few phone calls to see if they can
Speaker 2: find out where they were, and they discovered that he
Speaker 2: was seen at the baseball game, and everybody suddenly loses
Speaker 2: his track home he so basically Body Franks disappear is
Speaker 2: only to be discovered the following day. And at that time,
Speaker 2: the mister Franks was with his attorney and they were
Speaker 2: wondering what they should do. They didn't know whether they
Speaker 2: should call the police or not. And suddenly they get
Speaker 2: a phone call and a person identifies himself by a
Speaker 2: fictitious name, and he tells mister Frank's attorney it's asked
Speaker 2: to speak to Body Frank's father tells him that they
Speaker 2: had body he is safe, although that was a lie,
Speaker 2: and that they would return him safely if they would
Speaker 2: pay twenty five thousand dollars, I believe, And so the
Speaker 2: crime was continued, and they had this all plotted out
Speaker 2: where they would take mister Frank's almost on a scavenger hunt,
Speaker 2: where they would ask him to go to a drug
Speaker 2: store on the sixty third Street, tell him to go
Speaker 2: down to the only central station at twelfth Street, get
Speaker 2: on a nice sea train I see as we called
Speaker 2: it back then, and get on the back of the train,
Speaker 2: and when the train came past sixty fifth or one
Speaker 2: of the streets near there, to throw the ransom money
Speaker 2: out the window or off the back of the train,
Speaker 2: and if the money were collected that way, then Bobby
Speaker 2: Franks would be returned unarmed. But the pot began to
Speaker 2: unravel because Leopold Or told mister Franks where the drug
Speaker 2: store was that he was supposed to go, and I
Speaker 2: believe the attorney was sitting in on the phone call
Speaker 2: as well, and they suddenly realized they had forgotten the
Speaker 2: name of the drug store or work it was they
Speaker 2: were going. So they were trapped because there was no
Speaker 2: way that they could send Bobby Franks's father on the
Speaker 2: next leg of the scavenger hunt, so the crime was
Speaker 2: really sort of busted at that point, and eventually the
Speaker 2: body was discovered within hours rather not within days or weeks.
Speaker 1: So Bobby Franks goes missing late afternoon, early evening, his
Speaker 1: father is alarmed. Leopold and Loebe are realistically, in your opinion,
Speaker 1: feeling like confident that this body is not going to
Speaker 1: be found anytime soon. Would putting a body in that culvert,
Speaker 1: would that realistically have been out of sight for a while?
Speaker 1: Were they right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, to a certain point, true, But the problem was
Speaker 2: that the colvert wasn't that big, so when they tried
Speaker 2: to stuff the body in, the legs were stating out.
Speaker 2: But you know, they didn't think anybody was going to
Speaker 2: because this is an obscure place, fire from fire from anything.
Speaker 2: You know. Now we have the sky away and the
Speaker 2: cars whizzing by to get tour from Chicago. Back then,
Speaker 2: and it was basically a near wilderness with only the
Speaker 2: burdeners really and the fishermen to populate the area. So
Speaker 2: they were trying to lure mister Franks into going to
Speaker 2: the drug store, taking him to the icy station, having
Speaker 2: him throw the money out and they would obscure them
Speaker 2: with the money, which is their score. You know, that's
Speaker 2: how they kicked the three point field goal, got the money.
Speaker 2: But if money didn't really mean anything to accept the
Speaker 2: score that they were able to achieve.
Speaker 1: Okay, So a couple of things. One just to be clear,
Speaker 1: mister Frank's got this phone call before Bobby's body was discovered.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: I believe that's through.
Speaker 1: Yes, How much are they asking for again?
Speaker 2: I believe it was twenty four thousand dollars that they
Speaker 2: were trying to get, and you know that's so in
Speaker 2: money for somebody as wealthy as the people they are
Speaker 2: dealing with.
Speaker 1: So you know they snatch him in daylight. They are
Speaker 1: picking someone who has it sounds like a family that
Speaker 1: would be very alarmed if he doesn't show up at home,
Speaker 1: and they have not taken the time to figure out
Speaker 1: that this kid's body is not going to fit correctly
Speaker 1: in the culvert that they are hoping is going to
Speaker 1: cover up the body for a long enough time where
Speaker 1: they can achieve getting this ransom money. Does this to
Speaker 1: you prove that you can be incredibly BookSmart or naturally
Speaker 1: intelligent and not be at all streets smart or logical
Speaker 1: when you're pulling off something like this.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And continuing the story, what happens is the sun
Speaker 2: comes up the next morning. One of the workers in
Speaker 2: the ice factory back then people sold chunks of ice
Speaker 2: was wandering home from his job and cutting across the
Speaker 2: area wolf Lake and happens to glance down into the
Speaker 2: connecting canal and goes from one leg to the other
Speaker 2: and sees what it appears to be a footstep out,
Speaker 2: goes down there, yanks the body out of the culvert,
Speaker 2: realizes that the individual is dead. It does not know
Speaker 2: what to do, but it goes up to put the
Speaker 2: culvert where a railroad track is now a bike path
Speaker 2: by the way, goes over the colvert, and at that
Speaker 2: time several railroad workers in a handcart are tunning the
Speaker 2: lawn the track. He finds them down, tells them that
Speaker 2: there's dead boy there. And what they do is they
Speaker 2: put the body of Boddy Franks on the railroad card
Speaker 2: and then they card him to the next intersection and
Speaker 2: take him in I believe, to a funeral parlor nearby
Speaker 2: and call the police. And at that time the Franks
Speaker 2: have been revealed themselves to the police. They were slow
Speaker 2: in doing so because they were afraid that that would
Speaker 2: blow it. Leopold figured, well, there was a full proof scheme,
Speaker 2: so they didn't have any hesitation about getting identified or
Speaker 2: they were wrong.
Speaker 1: Okay, so where are we in the stage of this
Speaker 1: supposed kidnapping. Bobby Frank's father now realizes that he's dead,
Speaker 1: and what do investigators say? We need follow through on
Speaker 1: this because the killers don't know that we know that
Speaker 1: Bobby Franks is dead. They're trying to extort money out
Speaker 1: of you. Is that sort of what happens going forward?
Speaker 1: They want to continue with the ruse so that they
Speaker 1: can catch these guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what pretty much happened is that the news has
Speaker 2: spread among the police that there's a body been found
Speaker 2: out there. So we have a missing person and a
Speaker 2: dead body. Pretty easy to put them together. So the
Speaker 2: Frank's family sent one of the uncles out to the
Speaker 2: funeral home to make an identification of the body. So
Speaker 2: he called back and said, yes, it's Bobby. So at
Speaker 2: that point the money collection was not going to happen. Now,
Speaker 2: what I forgot to tell you for a few minutes
Speaker 2: is while all these people were still at wolf Like,
Speaker 2: they noticed down on the ground for a pair of glasses,
Speaker 2: so didn't think too much about the time. But the
Speaker 2: worker picked up pair of glasses put in the pocket
Speaker 2: because he thought, well, maybe he might need them at
Speaker 2: some time. And when they finally did get the police
Speaker 2: did come, he admitted that he had a pair of glasses,
Speaker 2: and it was realizing that it might have been the
Speaker 2: glasses that belonged to the killer. So this would be
Speaker 2: one of the first little little links of evidence that
Speaker 2: would bring eventually, about ten days later, the police to
Speaker 2: Nathan Leopold's door.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about the glasses, because these were not
Speaker 1: your standard present day CBS glasses. These were special glasses,
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 2: You know, when I go to CBS, I pay fourteen
Speaker 2: dollars and ninety five cents for a pair of glasses.
Speaker 2: But these are a somewhat unique pair of glasses that
Speaker 2: had a unique ends on the glasses. And it turns
Speaker 2: out that Olmer Cole, the glass company that was still
Speaker 2: around when I was growing up with the saw sat
Speaker 2: at Chicago, had records all the glasses must have been
Speaker 2: high style glasses that they sold, and there were only
Speaker 2: three people in the city of Chicago who apparently had
Speaker 2: glasses similar that that had this special little shape that
Speaker 2: put this part of the eye to the real glasses.
Speaker 2: So they were identify the three people, one of which
Speaker 2: was Nathan Leopold. The other two people, I won't don't
Speaker 2: want to say they had iron clad alibiz but I
Speaker 2: think one of those even off on a trip. But
Speaker 2: they really pretty much was down to the fact that
Speaker 2: the glasses didn't come from Leopold christ There was no
Speaker 2: proof that they disiplicated him as a murderer because he
Speaker 2: showed up in that area of the city of Chicago
Speaker 2: all the time with his murder. He was able to
Speaker 2: say that, oh, he had a pair of glasses, and
Speaker 2: he fell down while he was out there in the area,
Speaker 2: and the glasses must have filled out of his pocket.
Speaker 2: And he didn't realize this. And this was a week ago,
Speaker 2: and I had realized that the glasses had been lost,
Speaker 2: and so the state's attorney, attorney Crow, I asked them, well, here,
Speaker 2: fall down and see if the glasses come out. So
Speaker 2: Leopold fell down on the ground and the glasses remained
Speaker 2: in the pocket. And then he tried a second time
Speaker 2: for the third time, the glasses didn't come out, and
Speaker 2: so that seemingly hit it on gim. Ironically, when I
Speaker 2: was going out examining the area once, I had a
Speaker 2: pair of glasses in my pocket. I stuck them into
Speaker 2: the pocket of whatever it was I had on at
Speaker 2: that time, and I was out running to go from
Speaker 2: the murder area to where I'd parked my car, and
Speaker 2: it happened to trip, fell down into the mud, got
Speaker 2: muddle all over me, and my glasses fell up. I
Speaker 2: had to go back to retrieve them afore as they
Speaker 2: were footsteps all over the place. So basically, you know,
Speaker 2: they weren't realizing all of the things, the crazy things
Speaker 2: that can happen. And about a quarter century or so ago,
Speaker 2: the Chicago Historical Society had an exhibit about the Leopold
Speaker 2: and Low case with all the pictures and photographs and
Speaker 2: other items from the case, and one of the items
Speaker 2: that they still had it was in state's evidence, was
Speaker 2: the original pair of glasses sitting on all of Historical Society.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if the glasses have survived because theoretically,
Speaker 2: mostly exposed to freyer, they might have crumbled. But there
Speaker 2: were many, so many things that Leopold and Lowe could
Speaker 2: not imagine we're liable to happen, and by that time
Speaker 2: the police would come knocking on their door.
Speaker 1: Were those glasses the main thing that led them to
Speaker 1: at least Nathan Leopold or was there anything else that
Speaker 1: pointed directly at at least him to have them show
Speaker 1: up at his door.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was mostly the glasses that, yeah,
Speaker 2: did bring the police to his door. But as we
Speaker 2: pointed out, they were easy to come up with the
Speaker 2: alibi he could have been in that area and the
Speaker 2: glasses regardless, so they wouldn't fall out at the status
Speaker 2: Hurry's office. But what happened later was that they went
Speaker 2: to so Fur, who drove Leopold's logo around, and it
Speaker 2: turned out that we're talking to the Leopolds. So Fur
Speaker 2: and he determined the fact that the boys did not
Speaker 2: have their regular car that day, that there was a
Speaker 2: strange car that they were driving, the rental car that
Speaker 2: they'd gotten, so that the car would not have been identified.
Speaker 2: And so that was sort of the next link that
Speaker 2: led them to the murderer, and so bit by bit,
Speaker 2: their beautiful, beautiful plant started falling apart, so that after
Speaker 2: a good several hours of interrogation by the police, by
Speaker 2: these state's attorney, the two murderers confessed.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got these two guys, who I'm assuming
Speaker 1: are very surprised. What are their confessions like when they
Speaker 1: talked to the police, and do we think they were
Speaker 1: coerced at all? Or were they just presented with his
Speaker 1: evidence and they just said, okay, we give up.
Speaker 2: Pretty much, they gave up. And again, this was before
Speaker 2: the Miranda Act, which would have caused Clarence Narrow to
Speaker 2: stow up about half a day earlier than he did
Speaker 2: and would have told the boys to stop talking. That
Speaker 2: may or may not have prevented them from being identified
Speaker 2: as the murderers. They eventually confessed, and yeahter one person confessed,
Speaker 2: and they walked next door to the separate room where
Speaker 2: the other one was being held and revealed the fact
Speaker 2: that Loan, I believe, confessed and here's what he said
Speaker 2: about al you did this and I did that. And
Speaker 2: Leopold then to the similar confess that say, well, there's
Speaker 2: one thing that Low told Roan. He tried to say
Speaker 2: that I killed Bobby Franks, but actually it was he
Speaker 2: who wielded the camera. He was in the back seat.
Speaker 2: I was driving the car, and he was the one
Speaker 2: who killed Bobby Franks. And of course the other one
Speaker 2: will say pretty much the same thing. And to this
Speaker 2: day we don't know for sure that Leopold was the
Speaker 2: blow or Low was a blow. Of course, it didn't
Speaker 2: make any different They were both guilty the under the law.
Speaker 2: But that's sort of one of the mysteries of the
Speaker 2: case that had remained unsolved and will remain unsolved forever.
Speaker 1: So despite their relationship, their you know, physical relationship, they
Speaker 1: ended up ultimately turning on each other. Is that right,
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: And so basically they were against each other. But of
Speaker 2: course they couldn't avoid each other because within a short
Speaker 2: time they were going to be brought to the court
Speaker 2: and sitting next to each other while all the evidence
Speaker 2: was laid out. They couldn't really avoid each other, so
Speaker 2: they started having mended of fences. It's so to speak,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: We just interviewed an author who was telling a much
Speaker 1: more contemporary story set in Kentucky, where you have two
Speaker 1: people who are tried for murder. We don't know who
Speaker 1: the killer is. We just know these are two people
Speaker 1: who killed someone else. They are tried separately, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like the first one was convicted and so the
Speaker 1: second one was able to say, well, you've already convicted
Speaker 1: this guy. I'm not the killer. We only know one
Speaker 1: person did it. Did they choose to try them together
Speaker 1: because of that?
Speaker 2: I suspect the police wanted to try them together in
Speaker 2: a single setting. It's a lot easier rather than having
Speaker 2: fourteen defendants and trying him in fourteen cases. What's just
Speaker 2: happening today, so that they're basically were Roddy leafart together
Speaker 2: and they were pretty much like joined at the hips
Speaker 2: for all the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: So while they were on trial, they were in the
Speaker 1: same jail or the same jail cell.
Speaker 2: I believe they're in the same jail. I don't know
Speaker 2: if they were in the same cell, although it wouldn't
Speaker 2: surprise me to Whatever they wanted is pretty much they've got.
Speaker 2: You know, you're talking about wealthy people who all they
Speaker 2: needed to do would be to ask their father for money,
Speaker 2: for which they would buy the favors that they could
Speaker 2: better get better meals sent to the jail. They could
Speaker 2: hand out money to fellow tonics for protect us necessary.
Speaker 2: So money was buying everything at this case, including money buying,
Speaker 2: the fameals samous attorney who supposedly and underline that supposedly
Speaker 2: was going to get a million dollars for the defense.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to hear about reactions, and so I
Speaker 1: want to start with the reaction of Loban Leopold's families.
Speaker 1: Were they shocked? Did they think that this was not possible?
Speaker 1: They so obviously supported him, he said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had to, And basically they didn't want to
Speaker 2: turn their backs on and if I'm not mistake in,
Speaker 2: Love's mother still didn't want to believe the fact that
Speaker 2: her son could have been a killer. Pretty much she
Speaker 2: left town, went up to Charldboy and hung out there
Speaker 2: during the case, just as frankst although I also was
Speaker 2: basically distraught the fact that they had lost the boy,
Speaker 2: but distraught possibly also because the story of his murder
Speaker 2: was being broadcast day after day after day after day
Speaker 2: by the heart of journalists who crammed into the card room.
Speaker 2: He was the thing that everybody's totally focused on.
Speaker 1: How were Leopold and loebe framed in the media, good looking,
Speaker 1: wealthy gay trying to pull off the perfect murder? Is
Speaker 1: that what the combination was that enthrolled the media, Well.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. They were trying to be examined as much
Speaker 2: as they could, So there are so many strings that
Speaker 2: you could attach the story to. Particular when they got
Speaker 2: the alienists, the psychiatrists involved, and basically the information was
Speaker 2: being fed the trial, but the reporters were taking reporting
Speaker 2: it outside the trial. So basically they were pretty much
Speaker 2: reported as as evil monsters, and that's what the public
Speaker 2: wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: Now, you said earlier you talked about red flags with
Speaker 1: the alienists who took the stand after examining both of
Speaker 1: these young men, tell me what they found. What were
Speaker 1: their determination of what was wrong with them? I don't
Speaker 1: know if there's any easier way to say it, why
Speaker 1: they would do this? What did the alienists say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking the alienists, I'm not sure any of
Speaker 2: them regat the story. Right. Leopold and Love literally the
Speaker 2: loved being the center of attention. They loved being interviewed
Speaker 2: by the alienists and revealing all their secrets, their evil things.
Speaker 2: The fact that there was a governess who would take
Speaker 2: care of Leopold when he was young, and maybe the
Speaker 2: governess was part of the reason that he had turned
Speaker 2: out the way he did. So everybody had a theory.
Speaker 2: There were drawings that would appear in the paper of
Speaker 2: the skulls of the boys, of the circle around the
Speaker 2: brain area. I asked whether there was some different type
Speaker 2: of brain that would have malfunctionally caused them to do
Speaker 2: these evil things. So there was plenty of juicy information
Speaker 2: for the ailieness on both sides to explore. Try to explore,
Speaker 2: try to understand what the pair were doing.
Speaker 1: So were they going for the nsanity defense in this
Speaker 1: case both of them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Attorney Crow wanted them to hang. He was looking
Speaker 2: for a hanging jury. Of course, it was a jury
Speaker 2: of one because Darrow having pleaded the two of them guilty,
Speaker 2: there was no need to have a jury. The question
Speaker 2: was was the guilt enough so that they could be
Speaker 2: brought to justice?
Speaker 1: And on the next Okay, so you've intrigued me a
Speaker 1: little bit with this story of the governess. And you said,
Speaker 1: this was Richard Loeb's governess, and is the insinuation that
Speaker 1: she was abusive in some way?
Speaker 2: Well that's the theory. You know, everybody came up with
Speaker 2: the coca theory. So they were all sorts of witnesses
Speaker 2: or people who were telling their side of the story,
Speaker 2: a couple of shady ladies who supposedly wanted to prove
Speaker 2: the yellow Richard Lowe and I were out dancing that
Speaker 2: day rather than he wasn't off of anything. So there
Speaker 2: was sort of a circus going through at the card
Speaker 2: room at that time, and the reporters sort of eagerly
Speaker 2: trying to come up with new angles to fill their
Speaker 2: story out of CNN was not around at that time,
Speaker 2: but typically what one might expect to get from the
Speaker 2: broadcast networks we have today to the paper networks we
Speaker 2: had back in the nineteen twenty four. So some of
Speaker 2: the information that it was sort of salacious and not
Speaker 2: fit for anybody to hear, particularly if any women were
Speaker 2: in the card room at that time. So the judge
Speaker 2: would bring the attorneys up to talk to them, and
Speaker 2: they would whisper very closely, and the reporters would lean
Speaker 2: forward trying to find out what was being said so
Speaker 2: they could report it to their riatas the next day.
Speaker 2: It was just literally a fascinating story that one could
Speaker 2: not invent.
Speaker 1: Were either of these young men at all phased by this?
Speaker 1: Were they not scared that they were going to end
Speaker 1: up either at the gallows or spending the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives in prison. Or did they seem sort of
Speaker 1: emboldened in a way after they were caught and they confessed.
Speaker 2: Well, I think they were probably bold about it. In
Speaker 2: otherwise they felt they're guilty and they're famous, and oh boy,
Speaker 2: we're going to have Clarence Darrow. So I think there
Speaker 2: was sort of a sense of their status that their
Speaker 2: parents said them the best lawyer in the world. So
Speaker 2: they were sort of into the trials fascinated by it,
Speaker 2: probably blanked out on the fact that I just found
Speaker 2: guilty that they might just set away either for life
Speaker 2: in prison or for death in prison.
Speaker 1: So ultimately they had confessed and their attorney had plugged
Speaker 1: guilty on their behalf, and this was a discussion about
Speaker 1: whether or not with the judge making a decision about
Speaker 1: the penalty phase and what was their best hope that
Speaker 1: they were going to spend life in prison or was
Speaker 1: there any sense that their attorney had said, I might
Speaker 1: be able to get you less than that, maybe twenty
Speaker 1: years at the most.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I doubt if there was any hope. I was saying,
Speaker 2: I've been discovery such a anus crime. It sort of
Speaker 2: like a crime without a votive as it was. You know,
Speaker 2: they were given in life plus ninety nine years.
Speaker 1: How did the public react to that? So they were
Speaker 1: not hanged, which, as I bet the media was demanding.
Speaker 1: Did the public think that this was a miscarriage of
Speaker 1: justice or did this seem like a fair sentence?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I suspect the public moved on to the next
Speaker 2: penous murder.
Speaker 1: Well, I know I believe the way the rest of
Speaker 1: this story goes, but a lot of people might not.
Speaker 1: So they are both sentenced to life in prison, natural
Speaker 1: life in prison, right, and they have very different endings
Speaker 1: both of these men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Christ life plus ninety nine years meant that they
Speaker 2: are never going to get out of prison suppositively. But
Speaker 2: they went down to Jelliet and they were good gamers
Speaker 2: of the system. So Richard Lull and Nathan Leopold had
Speaker 2: access to that same good guy rule where I went
Speaker 2: in and saw the two mass murderers. They pretty much
Speaker 2: figured out that as he played around and gained the system,
Speaker 2: you could have comfort. So Chars Leopold was able to
Speaker 2: finance whatever extra better meals that he got in prison
Speaker 2: and again also protect him of Chars. What happened? Is that?
Speaker 2: Fast forward ten years now Richard Loeb is taking a
Speaker 2: sour and another prisoner comes in with a knife and
Speaker 2: hats and the pieces. He dies. Leopoldo continues on through
Speaker 2: the forties, where he gets involved in a research study
Speaker 2: for malaria and mostuitos Curry's favor for the various people
Speaker 2: who might give him a parole, and he eventually hissed parole,
Speaker 2: goes off to Puerto Rico spends the rest of his
Speaker 2: life there.
Speaker 1: I mean, how is that even possible? This man who
Speaker 1: planned a murder of a stranger, and is it just forgotten?
Speaker 1: And because he was so pivotal to this research that
Speaker 1: they decided to give him parole. How long was he
Speaker 1: in prison for before he was released.
Speaker 2: Until about nineteen seventy or so, So he spent several
Speaker 2: decades in prison, but every second year or so he
Speaker 2: had the right to appear in front of a parole
Speaker 2: board and they would hear in the case. At some
Speaker 2: point for all board said well, it's time he's suffering
Speaker 2: that and he seems to be rehabilitated, and we'll let
Speaker 2: him go. And so with the content that he basically
Speaker 2: pretty much disappears. So Leopold was able to go down
Speaker 2: to Puerto Rico, where he got out that job and
Speaker 2: not a hospital, and pretty much and the next half
Speaker 2: a dozen or so years even got married down there.
Speaker 2: But he'd learned how to live with the system down
Speaker 2: there as well as he had all through his life.
Speaker 1: Silly questioned, but married to a woman I'm assuming.
Speaker 2: Dirty, Yeah, that was their name. I don't think the
Speaker 2: fact that he was gay was publicized that much, so
Speaker 2: the fact that he would have married a woman was
Speaker 2: not that shocking. People would have not given it a
Speaker 2: lot of thought. Also, I think that by that time
Speaker 2: Leopold and certainly a little bit disappeared off of the
Speaker 2: screens of most people living in Chicago. Nathan Leopold, Oh,
Speaker 2: wasn't he that guy that murdered that kid? What's he
Speaker 2: doing these days? And he's still in Brisidon ninety nine
Speaker 2: years that he might make it to age ninety nine,
Speaker 2: but nobody was expected to. So he waves goodbye to Juliet,
Speaker 2: and to a certain extent, waves away goodbye to whatever
Speaker 2: was happening until somebody in mind by the name of
Speaker 2: Meyer Levin writes a book titled Compulsion. It's a work
Speaker 2: of fiction where they disguise the names of the people
Speaker 2: now became a best seller and they pulls back in
Speaker 2: the public side for a while. Didn't like and even
Speaker 2: tried to sue the author. Didn't succeed on that, but
Speaker 2: the crimeula century hadn't met it down.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to circle back to something I asked
Speaker 1: you as we're wrapping up this episode. I'm going to
Speaker 1: circle back to the question of taken separately Leopold and
Speaker 1: Low if they had never met, do you think anything
Speaker 1: like this would have happened? Or did it take the
Speaker 1: two of them meet and talking about this fantasy for
Speaker 1: that to trigger it? Did they have the do you
Speaker 1: think ability separately to do this on their own?
Speaker 2: I can answer that question very easily. No. I think
Speaker 2: the two of them coming together was basically like the
Speaker 2: atonic bomb, was the spark that set off the explosion?
Speaker 2: And had they not come together accidentally, I suppose they
Speaker 2: both lived in the same neighborhood, but not really close together.
Speaker 2: They went to different schools high schools at that time,
Speaker 2: so no, they might not have met. And taking that
Speaker 2: one step further, ABOUDI Frank is if he hung around
Speaker 2: the school a little bit longer at the baseball game.
Speaker 2: They might not have spotted him five point thirty six
Speaker 2: o'clock getting dark. They probably would have just gone home,
Speaker 2: and not having succeeded in their game, they probably would
Speaker 2: have moved on for the rest of their lives. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're exactly right. Yeah, you nailed it right on the head.
Speaker 1: So what is the lesson that we've learned here? Because
Speaker 1: the most frustrating stories, to me, the most frustrating killers
Speaker 1: to understand, would be the Leopold and Lobe, which I
Speaker 1: don't run into very often. It just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I even understand serial killers in their motivations. I understand money,
Speaker 1: I understand greed, sex, you know, sexual depravity, the need
Speaker 1: for control, But this just seems so randomized. Is that
Speaker 1: why we're fascinated with this case?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you also understand somebody walking into a school
Speaker 2: with a repeater gun and killing a couple of dozen people,
Speaker 2: not just one person. So we live in an evil world.
Speaker 1: So this last question, what is the legacy which is
Speaker 1: probably not the right word for Leopold and Lobe, the
Speaker 1: memory of the stinch of what they've left behind. What
Speaker 1: is that in just a couple of sentences, what do
Speaker 1: we learn from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we learned that we're probably never safe. I think
Speaker 2: this is a thing that scares there and a lot
Speaker 2: of mothers on the South Side of Chicago, the fact
Speaker 2: that it could have been there boy walking down the
Speaker 2: street and happen to be the victim. I think that's
Speaker 2: the thing that we try to do the best we can.
Speaker 2: We fasten our seat belts and do all the good
Speaker 2: things that we learned to do on the internet. But
Speaker 2: still there is no excuse for what happens, and no
Speaker 2: excuse for Leopold and Low Committee the utterly de pray
Speaker 2: crime that they did commit.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked and American Sherlok and Don't Forget There are
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Speaker 1: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis
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Speaker 1: was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer,
Speaker 1: artwork by Nick Toga, Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
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