Leopold & Loeb: Crime of the Century
Welcome to Ivy League Murders, where we deep dive on cases related to academia. My name is Sarah Elkhorn. I'm a Harvard graduate and a private investigator.
Speaker 2:My name is Laura Rodriguez McDonnell. I'm a graduate of University of Miami, a stylist, and a crime
Speaker 1:diva. We discuss cases where the best of the best make the worst decisions. We look at people who seemingly have
Speaker 2:it all and throw it all away.
Speaker 1:Today on Ivy League Murders, we are covering the Leopold and Loeb case, which was known at the time as the crime of the century. A word of caution. This is a true crime podcast. We discuss subjects such as violent murder and disturbing scenarios. Listener caution is advised.
Speaker 1:It was the evening of 05/21/1924. Flora Franks was getting worried. It was going on 06:00 and her son Bobby wasn't home yet. It was a gorgeous spring evening, lilacs blooming in the tree lined streets of Kenwood, an upper class Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. Flora would give Bobby a talking to when he came home.
Speaker 1:He was such a rascal. He was secretly her favorite child and always made her laugh. Bobby went to the prestigious Harvard School for Boys, which was mere blocks from the Franks. She was sure Bobby was fine. She was just being silly.
Speaker 1:He'd be home covered in dirt with some excuse about baseball. Flora checked the drawing room window again, hoping to see Bobby's little form walking down the street. Why did she have such a gut feeling that something wasn't right? Where was Bobby? By 08:00, Jacob, Bobby's father, was concerned enough that he went to the Harvard school to see if Bobby was there.
Speaker 1:Nothing. No Bobby. By 10:30, and in a panic by now, the Franks received a call from a kidnapper assuring them that Bobby was fine and would stay that way if they fulfilled a $10,000 ransom demand. Shaken, but relieved to know that Bobby was okay, the Franks scrambled to get the money together. The next morning, they also received a letter from the kidnapper and it followed the ransom note trope.
Speaker 1:Do what I say, pay up, and Bobby will be fine. The Franks were elated that Bobby was okay. All hopes were dashed, however, when the naked body of a young boy was found stuffed in a culvert. The boy had been bludgeoned. The killer had tried to mask the body's identity by pouring acid on the face and genitals.
Speaker 1:Fearing the worst, the Franks could not bear to go see whether it was their son, so they sent his uncle instead to identify the body. It was Bobby. Bobby Franks was well liked by teachers and peers alike. We'll post his picture on Facebook. He was a handsome kid with a mischievous intelligence.
Speaker 1:Chicago had seen its fair share of gang violence and bootlegging territory wars. But the brutal murder of Bobby Franks outraged Chicago and the nation at large. If this kid could be kidnapped from his cloistered wealthy neighborhood, then whose kid was safe? The public wanted answers and the police were under pressure to provide them. Enter Robert Crowe.
Speaker 1:Crowe was a hard nosed DA with big political aspirations. He was on a mission for justice for Bobby Franks. People were scared, and he wanted to catch the murderer as soon as possible. The police started investigating two teachers at the Harvard School for Boys. These were teachers who were known to be a little too friendly to the boys.
Speaker 1:The police old schooled the teachers, trying to beat confessions out of them. One of the teachers happened to have a $10,000 mortgage due. The police thought that this was suspicious, as it matched the ransom amount. Both teachers had alibis and were eventually cleared. The police had found a pair of distinctive tortoiseshell glasses near Bobby Franks' body.
Speaker 1:Assuming the glasses were Bobby's, the police gave the funeral home the glasses that were placed on Bobby's face. When the family went to view the body, they were not only grief stricken, but confused. The glasses didn't belong to Bobby. The glasses were a clue. The police then traced the distinctive frames to a company that made them in New York.
Speaker 1:There were only three pairs that were sold in Chicago. One of the owners had an alibi, the second owner was a woman who was wearing the glasses when the police knocked on her door, and the third owner was Nathan Leopold.
Speaker 2:Nathan Leopold was the heir to a freight fortune. He was a brilliant child with an active fantasy life. He didn't have a lot of friends and lived in his mind. His parents were largely absent and he was raised by an overbearing nanny Matilda who was rumored to have sexually abused him when he was 12. He spoke at least 12 languages.
Speaker 2:He was a suvant who blazed through school skipping several grades. He graduated high school at 14. Leopold was a renowned ornithologist. He discovered a new species of bird and had already published a book. He was 19.
Speaker 2:To the police he was no murder suspect and he had an alibi, Richard Loeb.
Speaker 1:Like Leopold, Richard Loeb was also the son of fortune and also a savant. Loeb's father was the VP of Sears, then the biggest catalog company in The US. Loeb's mother was a socialite in the Chicago largely absent from Loeb's life. Loeb distinguished himself academically at a young age. Absent a mother, his overbearing governess, Emily, pushed young Loeb, some say too hard.
Speaker 1:Under Emily's draconian academic lash, Loeb graduated high school at the age of 14. He also developed a knack for lying and petty crimes. Loeb's offhand manner and his natural charm. When the police went to speak to Loeb, he breezily confirmed Leopold's alibi, just two boys driving around picking up girls and drinking. When the police searched Leopold's house, they didn't find the glasses, but they did find Leopold's letters written to Loeb.
Speaker 1:It was clear from the letters that they were romantically entangled. How likely was it then that the boys were picking up girls? The police started to have their suspicions.
Speaker 2:Okay, Sarah, so these two young men who initially looked above suspicion were starting to look more and more culpable as the evidence was starting to come in.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you think about the Chicago police, they were probably looking for hard nosed criminals or pedophiles, or as you said, people who have just gotten out of jail. These two well dressed, well appointed, well educated young men didn't fit the typical sort of criminal profile that I'm sure the police were looking for.
Speaker 2:No, and I mean, as we were talking about earlier, profilers, but if you were to have a criminal profiler, I mean, this is kind of not at all what you would profile, but you would expect. That's right. I mean, no criminal record, no history of any, you know, no, they don't have any history of abusing children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's right. It just sort of probably felt like it came out of left field, but also they couldn't, they still had the glasses that belonged to Nathan. And so I think when they go back and confront him about the glasses, he claims that he dropped them during a birding expedition in the area. But those glasses are right next to Bobby Frank's body. I mean, what is the likelihood?
Speaker 1:And it seemed like such a strange reason, but he could actually show them, Nathan Leopold could actually show them, hey, yes, I have birded in the area. He could kind of prove it. But I think in finding the letter, the sort of romantic letter between them and the glasses, I think they really started to have their questions. And I
Speaker 2:think it's important to note that talking about homosexuality in 1924, I mean, this would have been a huge taboo. Right. This was not, it was not acceptable to be gay in 1924. Not at all. And so the minute the police found letters, you know, talking about a sexual relationship, that really casts them suspect, made them a little bit more suspect.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. Because that would have made them deviant. That would have cast them, I think, those days as being deviant.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, but I still kind of
Speaker 2:think if they had not found the glasses, they would not have, they would not have I agree with you. Caught these two
Speaker 1:so then what happens when they start to really focus in on Leopold and Loeb? Well, I
Speaker 2:mean, we see right away that the, you know, the perfect criminals, these boys who were, you know, really felt that they were more clever than any text, any criminal out there, fold right away. Yeah. Confess. They confess right away. And it is, it's Loeb that confesses first.
Speaker 2:He breaks first. He breaks first and then they go to Leopold with Loeb's confession. The minute he knows that Loeb has confessed, he confesses too and they they each blame the other one.
Speaker 1:They point the finger at each other. I think it probably didn't help too that Leopold, I think Leopold was extremely arrogant and I think that probably didn't help his case initially with the police either. I think they, you know, he wasn't a very likable person, put it to you that way. I could see Loeb kind of like charming his way through the interview, but I think Leopold was kind
Speaker 2:of creepy. Kind of creepy and kind of, yeah, just not very likable. No, he wasn't. But what's kind of fascinating is you don't get the impression that once they're caught that there's like a level of dread and doom that their lives are over it. It almost turns into kind of an exhilaration with the notoriety.
Speaker 2:That's right. Once
Speaker 1:they confess, they really kind of, I think they really groove right on the notoriety and they kind of revel in it. Right.
Speaker 2:They revel in it and they become, I mean, this case is the biggest thing in the nation. I mean, it was big when Bobby Franks was murdered and then once Leopold and Loeb are caught, the unlikeliness of the suspects, it just becomes enormous. I mean, it's the crime of the century.
Speaker 1:Crow, the prosecutor was ecstatic because Leopold and Loeb, in their thirst for notoriety and attention, led the police and press to each stop they made in preparation for the murder. They literally drew a map for them. This level of premeditation and planning ensured that the boy's defense attorney would not be able to claim insanity for their client. As the evidence unfolded, the odd dynamic between Leopold and Loeb began to emerge. So I think what people were really wondering is how could these sort of two perfect seeming boys from great families, well educated, nice looking, what led them to commit this senseless crime?
Speaker 1:And there is, I think everybody was just sort of baffled by this. So as people started kind of putting together their dynamic, Leopold and Loeb's dynamic, I think they both actually had a lot of similarities in some ways.
Speaker 2:And I think it's a dynamic between them that really fascinates us because I think that, and we often see this with people who commit crimes together, that without one, we would not see the crime, you know, without the two of them egging each other on. And that certainly is the case here. We see that Leopold Leopold is somewhat of an outcast. He has a very, very high IQ and he's, I mean, they're both prodigies. They both go to university as adolescents and a way they're kind of kindred spirits, but that relationship very quickly becomes toxic.
Speaker 2:And what begins to happen is they develop a sexual relationship. And for Loeb, sex isn't really the most important thing for him. But Loeb is starting to experiment with more and more petty crimes. And Loeb really needs an audience. He needs a wingman.
Speaker 2:He needs somebody to commit these crimes with him. And really what develops is them trading sexual favors for Leopold going along with him on his crimes.
Speaker 1:In other words, Leopold wanted sex from Loeb. He was in love with Loeb.
Speaker 2:He was in love with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they, I think they were both avid readers. And I always, it struck me, in researching this case that Loeb, from a very young age, loved, crime novels. You know, he loved, and his nanny, if you remember, governess, Emily, super strict, wouldn't let him ever read any crime related stuff. So, I mean, I think we feel his pain as someone who's interested in crime and not being able to really read about it, you know, and Right, mean, hopefully we wouldn't be pushed into such a deviant lifestyle if
Speaker 2:we weren't allowed to read Helter Skelter one summer,
Speaker 1:Yeah, but but I mean, look at Laura, if someone said you could never read another true crime book, you'd be a mess.
Speaker 2:A mess, But not a criminal mess.
Speaker 1:But back to Leopold and Loeb, they were highly intelligent and they were, but I think just emotionally still very young, young immature men in some ways. And they found each other And I think in finding each other, and one thing that I was thinking about too, is that it's the absence of kind of women in their lives. The women who are in their lives are both these incredibly sort of, well, one very domineering governess in the case of Loeb, and in the case of Leopold, you know, it was said that his governess actually sexually abused him. So their kind of relationship to women
Speaker 2:is very odd as well. Right, and they've developed, you know, their own set of morality where, you know, they're atheists and they really believe that they can do anything they like as long as it feels good.
Speaker 1:Right. And that doesn't just come out of nowhere. I mean, they are, Leopold especially is a huge fan of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a German philosopher and Nietzsche's I'll go into Nietzsche a little bit further in the podcast, but Nietzsche's philosophy was about, first of all, you're the master morality and the slave morality, and that played in personally for Leopold and Loeb, where Leopold was the slave, Loeb was the master, and they sort of both, you know, mutually kind of needed each other to fill these niches. But not only that, Nietzsche's philosophy also has to do with the Ubermensch, the superman, the idea that you have sort of regular human beings, you've got animals, regular human beings, and then these sort of supermen, both Leopold and Loeb considered themselves to be supermen.
Speaker 1:And that, you know, the the kind of final, you know, sum result, because they had been committing these petty crimes and getting away with it and kind of getting a rush out of getting away with these petty crimes, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't providing them,
Speaker 2:know, there were some arson. They broke into a fraternity house where they actually acquired the typewriter they later wrote the ransom note on. But each of these crimes was not providing them the thrill that they really were looking for. And this is how they began to decide to create the perfect crime. Right.
Speaker 2:And, you know, they wanted to be in the newspaper. They wanted all of the accolades from the crime. They wanted to fool everybody.
Speaker 1:Oh, they wanted to get away with it, by the way. They wanted to get away with But wanted to plan the perfect crime. Actually, didn't you say that the letter that they wrote to the Franks was completely like grifted from, you know, a crime magazine? Crime magazine.
Speaker 2:They thought they were smarter than everyone and they could pull off the perfect crime and fool the police and the investigators and the lawyers, and, you know, this was their plan. And they felt that they were of, you know, they were the supermen. They could get over on the regular men.
Speaker 1:That's right. And when you, they really did not hold themselves to any kind of morality. Their morality was, hey, if we get a thrill out of it, you know, we're so above regular human beings that that's just fine. Right. You know, and they
Speaker 2:seemingly had no remorse about it either. No remorse, even when they confessed, even when they were in court, they seemed to bask in the attention. And even Frank's, no, not Frank's, even, sorry, even Leopold, when asked by a journalist, whether he had any feelings about this, he said, no, why should I? I mean, this is like a six year old boy pulling the wings off of an insect. I mean, it was so incredibly
Speaker 1:unfeeling and so unattached to any kind of empathy or emotion or it's just anyway.
Speaker 2:And as we know, there are psychopaths and sociopaths who are void of conscience and emotion and I think that we see that here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So Leopold and Loeb lead the police and lead a throng of journalists around.
Speaker 2:Right, they lead them around to recover the typewriter and to show them where they purchased the other equipment for, you know, where they purchased, They purchased stationary in preparation for the crime. They purchased hydrochloric acid so that they could get rid of any identifying features on Bobby. They purchased the rope, the chisel. These were all done the day before the murder. All of these things were done in preparation.
Speaker 2:This was very clearly planned. So they did all of this stuff the day before the murder and then they planned to meet the morning of the murder at 11AM at the University of Chicago. They would go rent the car and then go look for a victim. They had not chosen a victim yet.
Speaker 1:And they rented a car because they basically wanted to alibi Leopold's car by insisting that the brakes be fixed. So in other words, it gives sort of an alibi for the car.
Speaker 2:They also knew that it would be too easily to spot because it was a red sports car. So it was too flashy. So they thought that using his car would make it too easy for a witness to see them.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:they rented a less obvious car. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so they really did pick their victim at random. They waited outside of the Harvard School for Boys and they were just looking for the right opportunity.
Speaker 2:They were walking around for about two hours waiting to find somebody alone and they had several other students in mind but they couldn't get them alone. Finally, they see after several hours waiting, a little after four they see Bobby Franks walking alone.
Speaker 1:Right. And he is actually Loeb's second cousin.
Speaker 2:Right. And he had just played tennis at Loeb's house a few days prior. So Loeb knows that he will trust him and he calls him over to the car talking about tennis and asks if he wants a ride.
Speaker 1:And the tragic thing is Bobby Frank says, oh no thanks guys, I live a couple of blocks down way and they say, oh no, no, no, let us drive you, let us drive you.
Speaker 2:Come on in, we'll talk about the tennis game we played yesterday. And that's, and they attack and kill him immediately. It's an immediate attack.
Speaker 1:And there's some dispute of who actually is the actual murderer. Like
Speaker 2:who Right, actually is the we don't know who, they're both involved, we don't know who landed the first blow, but they kill him immediately. Well, bludgeon him and
Speaker 1:then they stuff a rag into his mouth that then suffocates. Suffocates.
Speaker 2:Right, because he doesn't die right away. And then they have a dead body in the back of their car and they want to dispose of the body but it's still light out. They have to kill a few hours. So what they do is they drive around a lake called Wolf Lake and they park and they get hot dogs. Yep.
Speaker 2:Root beer and they wait for it to get dark so they can dispose of the body. And that's what they do. They had pre decided on a drainage pipe. Leopold knew this area from when he was out birding and they take the body there, they undress the body, they pour hydrochloric acid on Bobby's face and genitals because they had heard you could identify somebody by their genitals, and then they stuff his body into the drainage pipe. And it's, we should also note that they did have a weapon, a gun with them also.
Speaker 2:You know, they didn't use it, but they did, you know, they were gonna kill somebody that day. This was gonna happen, one way or another. And they dispose of the body, they take the car back and they wash it out, they clean out the blood with soap and water, they have drinks with Leopold's father and they act as if nothing happened.
Speaker 1:And to them, nothing did. Right.
Speaker 2:And to them, nothing did.
Speaker 1:And they really thought we got away
Speaker 2:with it. We got away with it. They were they were actually quite thrilled.
Speaker 1:Crow was not particularly interested in Leopold and Loeb's dynamic. For him, they were evil, full stop. Crow sat back complacently. It must have given him a lot of satisfaction to have the two monsters so squarely in his crosshairs. Crow had come from humble beginnings and had worked his way through Yale and up the political ladder.
Speaker 1:It must have galled him that these boys bound for Ivy League, born with silver spoons, had thrown it all away on a senseless murder. The boys had confessed, they had admitted to premeditating the crime. He had this case in the bag and he wanted blood. Above all, Crowe wanted a hanging case. The parents of Leopold and Loeb were desperate to save their boys from the gallows.
Speaker 1:Enter Clarence Darrow. So, Laura, tell us about Clarence Darrow.
Speaker 2:Well, Clarence Darrow, who is one of the most famous defense attorneys of all time, he's also referred to as the attorney for the damned, often the last hope for the indicted, was a rough and tumble attorney from Ohio. He never actually graduated from law school. He went to law school for a year, and then he went and apprenticed in a law firm because his family couldn't afford it. And just an absolute genius mind who, I mean, he just captivated courtrooms when he spoke. He did, and he was vehemently anti death penalty.
Speaker 2:Really, it was like his life's mission was to end the death penalty. And he took on many, many cases pro bono, for people who were facing, you know, as they said then, the gallows. This was not one of those cases. People speculated at the time he was paid a million dollars, he was not. He was paid $70,000 which would almost be the equivalent to a million dollars today.
Speaker 2:That was a great deal of money. By, you mean by the families of Leopold and Loeb? Right. Loeb's family. And they were actually, when they were introduced to Leopold, when he was introduced to Leopold and Loeb, they were actually shocked and disappointed because they had heard they were getting this famous, famous attorney and he came in and this, he was disheveled and his hair was unkempt and his shirt was hanging out and he was dirty.
Speaker 1:You know, had like egg on his tie.
Speaker 2:Yes, was, but he was, that was Clarence Darrow. He was, you know, he was a genius mind, but he was not the most well kept man. And he is facing this hopeless case. Mean, there's no, can't think about it. He can't argue for the boys.
Speaker 2:He can't argue insanity at this point. He can't, and he's brought in, they've been, they're arrested ten days after the murder and then Clarence Darrow's brought in and they've already confessed, they've led them to all of the evidence. So by the time Clarence Darrow tells them to stop talking, it's really too late. You know, it really is a hopeless, hopeless situation. So he's brought in really, he's not brought in to get them off as many people speculate at the time.
Speaker 2:He's brought in to save their lives. I also have to mention too, there's a history with Crow. He had beat Crow on a very high profile case, and Crow was bitter as hell. So it
Speaker 1:was like this rivalry between these two sort of
Speaker 2:giants in many ways, you know, Crow representing the, these boys are evil, send them to the gallows, you know, and Darrow being anti death penalty is he's got to figure out a way to not get these boys off, but what do you do with this hopeless case? Right, to save their lives. I mean, that's all he's doing and that's all the families want is to spare their lives. That's right. And so he, they had entered a plea of not guilty.
Speaker 2:And then Darrow comes in and he absolutely, now Crow was expecting a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and that's really what he's prepared for. And he's prepared for a slam dunk and a big trial and a lot of notoriety that's going to help him politically. And what does Darrow come in and do? He shocks everybody and he comes in and he pleads guilty. And it changes the whole game and it makes a completely, completely throws Crow for a loop and the whole dynamic shifts.
Speaker 2:And now focus is not on Crowe, the focus is on Darrow. And so the reason that this is so clever, what Clarence Darrow does here, is because by pleading guilty, he eliminates a jury trial. And what Clarence Darrow had done prior to this is he had sent some people out in the streets of Chicago and he had polled the public. And what he had found was about 60% of the public was sure they were guilty. So he knew that if he had a jury trial that the odds would firmly be stacked against him.
Speaker 2:And he also looked at his clients who quite frankly were really inappropriate in court.
Speaker 1:They their were own best friends in court. They were snickering, their affect was really off.
Speaker 2:Very inappropriate, they whispered to each other, we'll post pictures, you can even see that even their looks to each other, which are sometimes even a little bit intimate, were very inappropriate. And so by pleading guilty, the case goes right to John Caverly, who's the judge. And so it all becomes, it becomes a bench trial. So now it really becomes, you know, it goes between, you know, it's Crow versus Darrow, and it's all gonna be decided by Judge Cavarley. That's right.
Speaker 2:But Crow still has to put forth all of his witnesses, and there were something like 80 witnesses. Right, even though they've pled guilty, since the defense is putting on mitigating evidence, the prosecution is still responsible to put up the evidence that the crime took place. And he puts up, my understanding is he puts up a slew of some of the top psychiatrists who say basically these boys are sane. You know, they make that argument, right? Right.
Speaker 2:And what is really groundbreaking about this case, which it's interesting now because we're so used to this, but this is the first time that diminished capacity had ever been used as a mitigating circumstance. So he takes their mental weakness and use that as a diminished capacity. So he's not saying they're crazy. So Darrow is using psychological weakness as an argument. It's not necessarily insanity.
Speaker 2:No, it's a mitigating factor. He's saying that they are physically and mentally sick. And in fact, they did a whole battery of tests. I mean,
Speaker 1:systems, they tested them, you know, psychologic, they did every test known
Speaker 2:They did stool samples, they tested their urine. I mean, is, they did everything. And so he, he's saying, you know, they are physically and mentally sick, they're not insane, but this is a diminished capacity. They would consider depression being sick. So these things, they say, they have psychiatrists come in and say, Loeb is an emotional five year old who still talks to his teddy bear.
Speaker 2:They were brought up sheltered, they had overbearing nannies, you know, all of these factors, now this is the first time where we've, you know, generally in the past in the justice system at this time, criminals were looked at as either good or evil. It's But true, but in
Speaker 1:this is probably one of the, or the first case of affluenza as well.
Speaker 2:It is the first case of, this is the original affluenza trial, but it's also the Wait,
Speaker 1:explain affluenza because there is, it's slightly common.
Speaker 2:Affluenza is when you've been given too much and therefore you can't handle, you've been given so much that you therefore don't have the capacity to handle all the privilege, And we saw that with Ethan Couch when he got off of, I think he killed four people in a DUI, and he actually plead, that was his defense, was affluenza. He was overprivileged, therefore, and had bad judgment. It's hard to have a lot of sympathy sympathy for for an an affluenza affluenza Right, Right, it it is is hard hard to to have have a lot of sympathy for an affluenza and the cause, but this was a diminished capacity case, and I think it was one of the first times that people saw a criminal, they started to see shades of gray. Maybe people aren't good or bad, maybe the environment shapes people. It's right, but meanwhile, you have got Crow.
Speaker 2:Crow is apoplectic, He is railing against this. I mean, they are yelling at each other in court, Crow and Darrow. And all of this in front of a packed courtroom with every journalist from all over the country and internationally there, taking pictures, writing stories. I mean, this was the case of, you know, the century, the decade. This was a huge, huge case.
Speaker 2:And in some ways, Crow's case seems bulletproof. It does seem I mean, what should not be lost here is that Bobby Franks was a beautiful, intelligent 14
Speaker 1:year old boy who had been killed by these two older boys, completely senseless.
Speaker 2:Senseless, random, exactly. But I do think it's important, I think just, you know, this is a true crime podcast And I think when we look at so many trials, and I think it's important to look at this trial and the groundbreaking nature of looking at diminished capacity and this being the first time we're looking at it. And really what is at stake here, there's no doubt in anybody's mind of the guilt of these two young men.
Speaker 1:It is whether they are going to be sentenced to death. Right.
Speaker 2:That is the bottom line in this case. And so Crowe presents his argument, and he has a very compelling case and a lot of public support. A lot of public support. And then Darrow presents his argument.
Speaker 1:Which is about a two and a half
Speaker 2:day or three day Three, three day It's basically a treatise against the death penalty. It is, it is, and he sees it not just for Leopold and but for any cases that will come after.
Speaker 1:What's striking to me in reading about this case was that this sort of unmovable, you know, I can't remember which of
Speaker 2:the boys, Leopold or Loeb, one of them was crying at one point during Darrow's speech. The judge was also crying.
Speaker 1:The judge was also I
Speaker 2:mean, this was how moving Darrow was and what a captivating speaker he was. And that sounds so taxing to think of listening to somebody for three days, but apparently he was quite captivating and moving. And, you know, he really did start to make people think about shades of gray and how the environment shaped these boys. But then, Cavalry has a big responsibility. A big, and let's not forget, this is the last case before he retires.
Speaker 2:That's right. So this is gonna be what he's remembered for. Right, so does he vote for the gallows or does he vote for the past, as
Speaker 1:it said very, you know, this is what Darrow puts to him. Are voting for the past or are you voting for a more progressive future? In other words, the past is hanging, you know, and the more progressive future is mercy.
Speaker 2:So, Laura, how did Cavalry vote? Well, after days of contemplation, Cavalry voted to spare the boys' lives and give them life plus ninety nine years. And what's very interesting about this case is, even though we saw so many groundbreaking things happen at the trial, and we saw psychological weakness used as a mitigating factor, and we saw medical testimony be used as a mitigating factor. None of that mattered to the judge. The only thing that he took into account in his decision was the age of the accused, and that's why he did not sentence them to death, because they were 18 and 19 at the time of the crime.
Speaker 2:And so after all of that, that was the reason that he made that decision, or so he says, because we do know that he was somewhat of a liberal judge. He was not known as a hanging judge. He was not known as
Speaker 3:a hanging judge. So after so they go to prison actually, they did pretty well prison, did they not? Like, I think they kept them together for a while, Leopold and Loeb.
Speaker 2:They kept them together for a while, and they were eventually separated. And then eventually Loeb was murdered in prison. Well, for supposedly coming on to another inmate, right? Right. So he was stabbed in the shower.
Speaker 2:Right. Leopold got out, right, when, I think he was 58 or something when he got out. Right. So a long after a long, long time, and he
Speaker 1:had Thirty eight years Right.
Speaker 3:In prison. And he actually, like, did some good things after he got out and actually did some good things in prison too. He became kinda like this model of prison reform, basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He set up a library in the prison. I mean, he was a very intelligent man. He was a model prisoner. He got out.
Speaker 2:He moved to Puerto Rico. He continued to be an intellectual and write about birds. He remarried, and ten years later, he died of a heart attack.
Speaker 3:That's right. He begged, when he got out, he begged the public, the press, just to leave him alone and let him just live his life, basically. But so that's Leopold Mo. That's him. You know, I do I still think, though, had they continued along the path that they were going down and had gotten away with the murder of Bobby Franks, I think they would have re offended.
Speaker 3:They would have kept. Don't who knows? If they had not been caught, I think that group think, that sort of dynamic, toxic dynamic that they had, they would have kept going. I think they would have become serial murderers. I really do.
Speaker 2:I think we may have seen a rash
Speaker 3:of murders at Harvard Law the following fall. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Because Leopold was on his way to Harvard Law.
Speaker 2:Was on his way to Harvard Law. Which is pretty scary.
Speaker 1:Nietzsche and the Power of Words. Leopold was obsessed with the Nietzschean idea of a superman, or an Ubermensch. Both he and Loeb adopted this idea as a way of expressing their superiority. They considered themselves above and beyond the average moral code and that they could commit a murder as long as they got a thrill out of it. A mere few years later, the Nazis would also embrace this idea of ubermensch, the superior man, and Untermensch, the underling or inferior man.
Speaker 1:Of course, for the Nazis, Germans were the ubermensch and everyone else was inferior. According to Nazi racist theory, Leopold and Loeb being Jewish would have been considered inferior. By the way, Nietzsche is pronounced Nietzsche in American English pronunciation and Nietzsche in the German. Nietzsche himself was not an anti Semite. In fact, he was an anti anti Semite, positing his admiration for what he called the moral genius of the Jews.
Speaker 1:It was his rabid Nazi sympathizer sister Elizabeth who co opted her ailing brother's works and twisted them to become the cornerstone philosophy of the Third Reich. What does this have to do with Leopold and Loeb? Clearly there's something in Nietzsche's philosophy that appeals to psychopaths. I believe it's the narcotic of the ubermensch's superiority that allows the shedding of traditional morals. Don't forget that eugenics was a very popular movement in America at the time.
Speaker 1:Eugenics was the twisted idea of purifying the gene pool, that one could breed out feeble mindedness and disease in an attempt to create better humans, quote unquote. At its height, the eugenics movement conducted sterilization of what it determined to be unfit humans, mostly poor minorities. It's a dark chapter of American history, but I can't help thinking that if this is the prevailing thoughts about fellow human beings at the time, that it didn't have an effect on Leopold and Loeb. I look at Leopold and Loeb as some horrifying recipe. Two highly intelligent, privileged boys who were voracious readers of Nietzsche crime novels and Oscar Wilde.
Speaker 1:Wilde was a late nineteenth century Irish novelist. He was an esteem, meaning that for Wilde, beauty and pleasure always trumped morality. Sounding a bit familiar? And what was the logical and penultimate conclusion for Leopold and Loeb, the supermen above all morality? It was a thrill murder.
Speaker 1:In this podcast, Laura and I are interested in the why of murder. I think you have to look at societal influences, what someone was reading or watching, their familial situation. Both Leopold and Loeb had bright Ivy League futures ahead of them. They probably would have been CEOs or high level in academia. Maybe Bobby Franks would have gone out to Hollywood and made movies or become a tennis or baseball legend.
Speaker 1:Leopold and Loeb in carrying out quote unquote the perfect murder robbed the world of three bright futures. This is Ivy League Murders. We'll see you next week. We are Ivy League Murders. Our music is composed by Russell Jarvis.
Speaker 1:You can find us on Facebook and Instagram. Please follow us, and if you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend and give us five stars. See you next time. Until then, stay safe and stay curious.