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Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. ( November 19 , 1904 – August 30 , 1971 ) and '''Richard A. Loeb''' ( June 11 , 1905 – January 28 , 1936 ), more commonly known as '''Leopold and Loeb''', were two Wealth y University Of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks and received sentences of Life plus 99 years. Their crime was notable in being largely motivated by an apparent need to prove the duo's belief that their high intellects made them capable of committing a Perfect Crime , and also for its role in the history of American thought on Capital Punishment . Motive Leopold, who was 19 at the time of the murder, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be Nietzsche an Supermen who could commit a "perfect crime" (in this case a Kidnapping and Murder ) without fear of being apprehended. The friends were exceptionally intelligent: Leopold had already completed college and was attending law school. He spoke nine languages fluently and was an expert Ornithologist . Loeb was the youngest graduate in the history of the University Of Chicago . The pair had worked themselves up to committing the crime for months, starting out with petty theft. Timeline On Wednesday, May 21 , 1924 , they put their plot in motion. The pair lured Franks, a neighbour of Loeb's, into a rented car. Loeb first bludgeoned Franks with a chisel. Leopold and Loeb then suffocated Franks. After concealing the body in a culvert under a railroad track outside of Chicago — the body was burned with Acid to make identification more difficult — they did their best to make it seem that a Kidnapping for Ransom had taken place; the Franks family had enough money that a request for $10,000 in ransom was plausible. Before the family could pay the ransom, though, Tony Minke, a Polish Immigrant , found the body. Investigators saw at once that this could not be a mere kidnapping, since there would have been no reason for a kidnapper to kill Franks. A pair of Eyeglasses found with the body was eventually traced back to Nathan Leopold. The ransom note had been typed on a Typewriter that Leopold had used with his Law School study group. During police questioning, Leopold's and Loeb's alibis broke down and each confessed. Although their confessions were in agreement about most major facts in the case, each blamed the other for the actual killing. They had spent months planning the crime, working out a way to get the Ransom money without risking being caught. They had thought that the body would not be discovered until long after the ransom delivery. Regardless, the ransom was not their primary motive; each one's family gave him all the money that he needed. In fact, they admitted that they were driven by the thrill. For that matter, they basked in the public attention they received while in Jail ; they regaled Newspaper reporters with the crime's lurid details again and again. Public reaction The public, driven by the newspapers of the day, was outraged. In the Jew ish community, no one had imagined that such shining examples of ideal success could have committed such a crime. Both of Leopold and Loeb's families were affluent, and each dapper young University of Chicago student surely had a fine future all but guaranteed for him -- there was absolutely no reason to turn to crime. Although Meyer Levin was quoted as saying that it was "a relief that the victim, too, had been Jewish" (reducing the chances of bigots using this crime to justify increased anti-Semitic violence), neither defendant was a practicing Jew. Trial The trial proved to be a media spectacle; it was one of the first cases in the USA to be dubbed The " Trial Of The Century ." Loeb's family hired 67-year-old Clarence Darrow -- who had fought against capital punishment for years -- to defend the boys against the capital charges of murder and kidnapping. While the media expected them to plead not guilty (by reason of Insanity ), Darrow surprised everyone by having them both plead guilty. In this way, Darrow avoided a Jury trial which, due to the strong public sentiment against his clients, would certainly have resulted in an unfair trial. Instead, he was able to make his case for his clients' lives before a single person, the judge. Darrow gave a twelve-hour speech , which has been called the finest of his career. The speech included: "this terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor … Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? … it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university." It may be, in fact, that Darrow accepted the case because it offered a huge public platform for such a speech; he knew that his strong argument against Capital Punishment would be reprinted in newspapers around the world. And if he could successfully reason that such heinous murderers should not be executed, perhaps he would make other capital punishment cases more difficult to prosecute. In the end, Darrow was successful in avoiding the sentence of execution. Instead, the judge sentenced Leopold and Loeb each to life in prison (for the murder), plus 99 years each (for the kidnapping). Prison and later life In prison, Leopold and Loeb used their educations to good purpose, teaching classes in the prison school. But in January of . In 1971 , at age 66, he died of a Heart Attack . Impact on popular culture
The Leopold and Loeb case was also mentioned in Richard Wright's novel '' Native Son '', which also takes place in Chicago. The two were also mentioned on a couple of episodes of Law and Order. External links
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