Cold Open

It’s May 21st, 1924, in Kenwood, a neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.

Commuters stream past fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks as he walks home from school. After a long day in the classroom, Bobby daydreams about the supper he hopes his mom will have ready for him.

But Bobby is so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t hear a car slow down alongside him. It isn’t until a voice from inside the vehicle calls out that Bobby stops, turns, and squints against the low sun. It takes him a moment to recognize the passenger in the back of the car. It’s his 18-year-old cousin, Richard Loeb. The driver though, is a young man Bobby doesn’t recognize.

Richard reaches forward and opens the passenger door, telling Bobby to jump in, that they’ll give him a ride home. Bobby shakes his head and says no, his house is practically around the corner. A ride hardly seems worth it.

Bobby starts to walk again, but Richard calls him back, repeating his offer of a ride—and says he wants to ask Bobby about his new tennis racket. Bobby takes one last look up the street. His cousin seems so insistent. So, Bobby shrugs and gets into the car.

But as soon as the car pulls away from the curb, Richard clamps his hand over Bobby’s mouth. Bobby struggles, but Richard has a strong grip. As Bobby panics, he notices the car turn south, away from his house - away from the home that he’ll now never return to.

Within moments of his abduction, Bobby Franks will be dead. The brutal murder case will hit the headlines and shock the entire nation—and not just because one of the killers will be identified as Bobby’s relative. The two murderers will also turn on each other, and the resulting trial will grip the country before Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold are finally brought to justice for the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks on May 21st, 1924.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is May 21st, 1924: The Murder of Bobby Franks.

Act One

It’s the night of November 10th, 1923, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, six months before Bobby Franks is abducted and killed.

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold stare through the windshield of their car at a dark building across the street. It’s the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity house at the University of Michigan, where Richard used to study.

Richard is only eighteen, but he’s a child genius who left Ann Arbor last year as the University of Michigan’s youngest-ever graduate. He then took postgraduate classes at the University of Chicago, and that's where he met another 18-year-old child genius who had also completed his high school studies early: Nathan Leopold. The two young men became friends - and then lovers. But Richard and Nathan share more than just a privileged background and above-average intelligence. They both have a passion for criminology - and their interest goes beyond theory. Tonight, they’re taking their first steps into a life of crime.

Richard and Nathan slip on masks to conceal their identities. And after quietly opening and closing the car doors, they creep toward the fraternity house carrying a rope, a chisel, and a revolver. They’ve come prepared to use force if they have to, but no one hears them break in. Richard uses his knowledge of the house to lead Nathan around its rooms, although there are slim pickings for the two thieves. They return to the car with a meager haul of eighty dollars, a few watches, and a typewriter.

On the six-hour drive back to Chicago, Nathan is in a foul mood. The thrill of the break-in has passed, and now he complains that the trip has been a waste of time for such little reward. But Richard manages to calm Nathan down by directing the conversation onto a more sinister topic.

Rather than breaking an entry and burglary, Richard harbors ambitions of more serious lawbreaking. He confides his desire to carry out what he calls the “perfect crime.” Richard wants to commit a murder—and he wants to get away with it. He knows that revealing his desire to kill is a risk. But Nathan isn’t appalled by Richard’s confession. In fact, Nathan seems intrigued by the idea.

Almost immediately, Richard and Nathan begin planning their murderous project. Initially, they propose killing a former fraternity brother, one who Richard has had a fallen out with. But Richard and Nathan soon realize that a targeted killing would be too risky. Detectives would easily be able to suss out the motive and track the murder back to them. So instead, Richard and Nathan decide they’ll choose a random victim, ideally one who’ll be easy to overpower.

And to throw the police off his scent, they’ll make the murder seem like a kidnapping. So, Richard and Nathan begin to devise a ransom drop that they think is foolproof. They’ll direct the family of their victim to throw a package containing ten thousand dollars in cash from a moving train at a specified point along the track. Nathan and Richard will be waiting nearby to collect it and then make good on their escape. But they have no intention of letting their victim go, they plan to kill him almost immediately.

Next, Richard and Nathan pick a second location: where they’ll dispose of the body. They select a remote culvert near Wolf Lake, Indiana, a half-hour drive south of Chicago.

So, with a plan in place, Richard and Nathan devise fake identities and use them to hire a car. The rental company hands over the keys with only a minimum of checks on the forged documents. And then the young men use the car to go buy a rope, a chisel, and hydrochloric acid, which they plan to pour on the body to make it more difficult to identify. Last but not least, Nathan uses the typewriter stolen from the fraternity house to write out the ransom note.

The following day, on May 21st, 1924, Richard and Nathan cruise the streets of suburban Chicago in their rental car. They are still unsure who their victim might be. It’s pure chance that they spot Richard’s cousin, Bobby Franks, walking home from school. Although Richard and Nathan’s plan was to abduct a random pedestrian, the opportunity to coax Bobby into the car is too good to turn down.

And after Bobby gets into the front seat, he’s quickly subdued and hit repeatedly over the head with a chisel. Richard and Nathan then dump Bobby’s body near Wolf Lake and then return to Chicago confident that everything's gone according to plan.

But despite their self-assurance, Richard and Nathan have not committed the perfect crime. They’ve made mistakes—and thanks to these errors, it won’t be long before the police will come knocking on their door.

Act Two

It’s 9 AM, on May 22nd, 1924, in Wolf Lake, Indiana, around sixteen hours after Bobby Franks was kidnapped and killed.

A laborer whistles as he ambles to work, following the path of a dirt road where it crosses the Pennsylvania Railroad. As he dodges puddles left by last night’s heavy rain, the laborer glances into a culvert by the side of the road. And his jolly whistle dies on his lips. Something is sticking out of the gutter—and it looks like a human foot.

The laborer wonders if someone has fallen into the culvert after drinking too much the night before. So, he carefully climbs down the grassy bank, slipping on the wet mud. But as he gets closer, the laborer’s worst fears are confirmed. It’s a dead body. But not of a man. It’s a boy.

The laborer runs to the nearest telephone and alerts the police. Officers arrive within minutes and they quickly see that this death was no accident. The boy is naked and has what looks like burn marks on his face. But it’s not immediately obvious how the boy died, the only other clues the officers find at the scene are a single stocking and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

The body is taken away for further examination. At the same time, 25 miles north in Kenwood, Chicago, Jacob Franks nervously opens a letter that’s just been delivered by the mailman.

Jacob is Bobby Frank’s father, and he’s not slept a wink. Bobby didn’t return home from school yesterday. And late in evening, Jacob received a telephone call from a man claiming he’d abducted Bobby. The man told Jacob to await instructions to pay a ransom that would arrive in the mail. Now, after an anxious night, the ransom note has just been delivered.

Jacob carefully opens the letter. It says he must pay ten thousand dollars if he wants to see his son again, and that instructions as to when and where he must leave the cash will follow. A few minutes later, Jacob’s telephone rings. It’s one of the abductors. He gives Jacob a convoluted set of instructions he must follow to find the ransom drop location. Jacob sends a family member out to follow the directions, but the instructions are so complicated that the family member soon becomes lost.

Then just before 3 PM, Jacob receives another phone call—but this one makes the ransom demand meaningless. The police have found a body, and they suspect it's Bobby’s. Distraught, Jacob heads for the mortuary to confirm the identification. It’s a harrowing experience for Jacob, but his visit to the mortuary provides the first break in the case. That’s because Jacob reveals that the glasses found at the crime scene did not belong to Bobby.

Detectives immediately set about tracing the owner of the glasses. And in a stroke of luck, it turns out that only three such pairs have been sold in the entire Chicago area. Over the next few days, two of the three owners are easily ruled out. And the remaining buyer then becomes the chief suspect, Nathan Leopold.

Eight days after Bobby’s murder, Nathan is brought in for questioning. But Nathan knows the case against him is circumstantial, and he provides an alibi. On the afternoon that Bobby went missing, Nathan says he was driving around town with his friend Richard Loeb, the two men were on the lookout for girls.

Nathan’s alibi is undermined, though, when officers search his home and find love letters exchanged by the two young men. It’s enough to make the detectives doubt Nathan’s story, and they haul Richard in for questioning the following day. Richard initially corroborates Nathan’s story, but then he slips up and reveals several details only the murderer would know. Under increasing pressure from investigators, Richard cracks and confesses. Shortly after, Nathan also admits his part. But both men claim it was the other who instigated the plot and actually killed Bobby.

As details of the case filter out in the press, the murder dominates the headlines in Chicago. For weeks, readers are gripped by the story of two privileged lovers who killed an innocent boy simply because they thought they were clever enough to get away with it. Neither suspect shows remorse, and prosecutors soon announce they will be seeking the death penalty.

But Nathan and Richard’s parents have other plans. Despite their own shock at their sons’ cold-blooded crime, Richard and Nathan’s families are wealthy enough to hire the best defense money can buy. They will engage the services of a high-profile attorney, and entrust him to use every trick in the book to keep their sons away from the hangman’s noose.

Act Three

It’s August 22nd, 1924, at Cook County Criminal Court in Chicago, three months after the arrest of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

67-year-old Clarence Darrow pushes himself to his feet and addresses the judge. Clarence is a defense attorney with a formidable reputation. But he’s found few cases tougher than the one he’s currently on because sitting beside him are two self-confessed and unrepentant murderers: Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold.

Thirty-three days ago, when the case came to court, Clarence persuaded his clients to enter a guilty plea. It was a choice that surprised most. But Clarence had sound reasoning. The plea removed the need for a trial, where twelve civilians on a jury would have decided Richard and Nathan’s fate. Instead, the case went straight to a sentencing hearing, with the decision on punishment made by a judge alone. Clarence believed he had a greater chance of saving the pair from execution by arguing his case to a single judge rather than to a jury—and now, it’s time for closing remarks.

Clarence begins by tackling a legal point of order. Richard and Nathan have confessed their part in the plot, but only one of them is the actual killer. Both men claim that the other was responsible, and prosecutors have been unable to work out who dealt the fatal blows. Clarence argues that if it’s impossible to identify the actual murderer, then neither man should hang.

Clarence then moves on to mitigating factors. He casts doubt on the state of Richard and Nathan’s mental health. He claims that both men were abused by their governesses. And Clarence draws upon medical experts to suggest that defective endocrine glands contributed to Richard and Nathan’s behavior and state of mind.

All told, Clarence preaches to the judge for almost eight hours. Prosecutors try their best to counter Clarence’s arguments. But three weeks later, when the judge delivers his verdict, Clarence has pulled off what most legal experts believed was impossible. Richard and Nathan are spared the death penalty. Instead, they’re both sentenced to life for the murder, with an additional 99 years for kidnapping.

Clarence Darrow’s victory shocks America. And the validity of his arguments are hotly debated in legal circles, where they will set precedents that impact capital cases for decades to come. But many ordinary people are just angry that Richard and Nathan have avoided execution.

The two killers began their incarceration at Joliet Prison in Illinois. And after serving twelve years, Richard Loeb will be murdered himself by a fellow inmate in 1936. Nathan Leopold will survive his time in prison though, and will serve a total of 34 years before being released on parole. He’ll live out his remaining years in Florida and die in 1971, 47 years after his part in the brutal kidnapping and murder of Bobby Franks on May 21st, 1924.

Outro

Next on History Daily. May 22nd, 1968. The nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion disappears in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with 99 men on board.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Rob Scragg.

Edited by Scott Reeves.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.