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In 1924, two young men from wealthy Chicago families believed they were intellectually superior to everyone around them.
Both were exceptionally intelligent, highly educated, and seemingly destined for successful careers.
But they also shared a disturbing fascination with crime and an obsession with proving that they were above the rules that governed ordinary people.
What followed became one of the most sensational criminal cases in American history.
Learn more about Leopold and Loeb and their attempt to commit the perfect crime on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Nathan Leopold was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 19, 1904, into a wealthy German-Jewish immigrant family. He was the youngest of three children to his parents, Florence and Nathan.
Leopold was considered to be a child prodigy. He was said to have spoken his first words at just four months and three weeks old. However, despite his intelligence, he was considered frail and often spent time alone.
Based on many accounts, Leopold was sensitive about his appearance. He was said to have bulging eyes and was smaller in stature. This did not stop the young Nathan from pursuing his interests. He studied 15 languages, five of which he spoke fluently. His primary interest was natural history, especially birds.
His interest in birds earned him national recognition as an ornithologist. He, along with other scientists, found nesting sites for Kirtland’s warblers and observed parasitic nesting behavior by other species that threatened them.
Leopold attended the University of Michigan at the age of 15 before transferring to the University of Chicago. He graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and he planned to continue his studies at Harvard Law School after a trip to Europe.
Richard Loeb was born on June 11, 1905. Also from Chicago, Loeb was the third of four children to his parents Anna and Albert. His father was a wealthy, Jewish lawyer and his mother was Catholic.
Like his counterpart, Loeb was extremely intelligent. We also know that he had a passion for history and was an avid reader, especially of crime stories. However, unlike Leopold, he was less self-conscious. He was considered to be handsome and had some athletic prowess.
Despite his advantages in intelligence and wealth, Loeb picked up criminal skills early on. He had a history of stealing small items from stores, friends, and family.
Loeb attended the University of Chicago High School at age 12. He completed his education in just two years. In high school, he used his pickpocketing skills to impress people and make friends.
After high school, Loeb attended the University of Michigan, where he graduated at 17, which made him the University’s youngest graduate at the time. After graduating, Loeb returned home and enrolled in a few classes at the University of Chicago.
Although both boys grew up in affluent households in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood and casually knew each other, they didn’t become friends until they were both 15 in college.
The two quickly hit it off as they were both in the same mutual friend group. However, the relationship turned sexual in February 1921, which continued throughout the following years.
The duo committed numerous smaller-scale crimes, including theft and arson. While Loeb reportedly committed these crimes for fun, Leopold felt he needed a philosophical justification for his actions.
A self-described hedonist, Leopold evaluated every action by balancing potential pleasure against pain, seeking maximum gratification in all areas of his life.
Alongside this worldview, he was deeply intrigued by Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the “superman.” An ideal future individual who transcends conventional morality and religion to define their own purpose and values, thereby unlocking full human potential.
Leopold interpreted these “supermen” as exceptional individuals whose intellect placed them above ordinary social constraints and legal standards. Convinced that he and Loeb embodied this elite status, he believed that executing a “perfect crime” would demonstrate their intellect to the world and prove their superiority.
They decided the best way to do this was to kidnap and murder a younger child, and at 19 and 18, the duo set out to do just that.
The crime took seven months of intense plotting. This included how they were going to abduct their target, dispose of their body, and hide their involvement.
The victim of their quote-unquote “superiority” was a 14-year-old boy named Robert “Bobby” Franks.
Franks was the son of a wealthy Chicago watchmaker and was from the Kenwood area. He actually lived across the street from Loeb and had played tennis at his house on a few separate occasions.
On May 21, 1924, Leopold rented a car under the name Morton D. Ballard and offered Franks a ride home from school. Franks initially refused because he lived only two blocks away, but Loeb convinced him to get into the car to discuss a tennis racket.
What exactly occurred after Franks got in the car remains disputed. However, the common belief was that Leopold sat at the wheel with Franks in the passenger seat. Loeb sat behind the boy in the back of the vehicle.
Loeb then struck Franks several times in the back of the head with a tape-wrapped chisel. Franks was then dragged into the back seat and gagged until he died.
Franks’ body was then moved to the floor of the back seat, preventing anyone from the outside from seeing it. They then drove the vehicle to Wolf Lake, in the southernmost part of Chicago.
When it became nightfall, Leopold and Loeb stripped Franks’ body and hid it inside a culvert on the Northern part of the lake. To help obscure the body, they poured hydrochloric acid on it.
After disposing of Franks’ body, Leopold and Loeb returned to Chicago. By this point, Franks’ family had already realized he was missing.
Leopold ended up calling Frans’ mother under the alias of “George Johnson.” He told the woman that her son had been kidnapped and that if they wanted him returned, they would need to pay a ransom and that directions about how to pay it would soon follow. They then sent a typed ransom note demanding money.
After sending the note, Leopold and Loeb cleaned the rented vehicle and played cards for the rest of the evening.
Frank’s family got the ransom note the next morning. After the note arrived, Leopold called again and gave directions on where to send the payment.
However, from here, the plan went wrong. Frank’s father immediately forgot the address where to bring the ransom, and Frank’s body was found that day.
Changing plans, Leopold and Loeb quickly got rid of the blanket they used to move Frank’s body and the typewriter used to create the ransom note. After disposing of the remaining evidence, they returned to their normal life.
Both Leopold and Loeb then started to chat about the murder with friends and family. Although they did not confess, they joked about it and discussed the case. Loeb even helped some of his reporter friends find the drugstore where the ransom was supposed to be dropped off.
Most suspiciously, when asked to describe Bthe victim, Loeb stated that “If I were to murder anybody, it would be just such a cocky little son of a bitch as Bobby Franks.”
Despite Leopold and Loeb viewing themselves as geniuses who would never get caught, law enforcement quickly suspected the two teenagers.
A pair of eyeglasses was found near Franks’ body, and the hinge was only purchased by three customers in Chicago. Leopold was one of the three customers who had this hinge. When Leopold was questioned, he said the glasses may have fallen out of his pocket while he was watching birds the weekend before.
Authorities formally questioned the teenagers on May 29. Leopold and Loeb claimed to have been picking up women with Leopold’s car in Chicago during the murder. However, Leopold’s chauffeur denied this, saying he was repairing the car that afternoon, and his wife backed up his story.
It was eventually Loeb who broke first. He confessed that he and Leopold had committed the crime, but the murder was planned and carried out by Leopold and that he, Loeb, was just the driver.
Leopold then claimed the opposite, but the confessions corroborated almost all other evidence in the case. Most people do think Loeb was the one actually to commit the murder, but it has never been officially confirmed.
Both Leopold and Loeb admitted that their motive for committing the murder was their Superman delusions and their goal to commit the perfect crime.
After the teenagers were arrested, Leopold and Loeb’s parents hired the best criminal attorney they could find. That attorney was none other than Clarence Darrow.
Darrow knew both boys would be found guilty. So, his primary goal during the trial was to avoid the death penalty. His first step in avoiding it was to plead guilty to the kidnapping and murder charges.
Pleading guilty was a strategic move to avoid putting the two teenagers before a jury and instead before a single judge, John R. Caverly.
When the case went to trial, the press labeled it as the “trial of the century.” Everyday Americans read every detail of the trial, fascinated by the case and disgusted by what they did.
Technically, the “trial” was not a trial at all, but a sentencing hearing, because of the guilty pleas and the fact that there was no jury.
The hearing lasted over thirty days, and the courtroom was packed with media the entire time.
The defense decided that the best way to avoid the death penalty was to build their case around the testimony of psychiatrists. The state presented witnesses to document the grizzly details of the crime.
One piece of evidence both the defense and the state focused on was the homosexual relationship between Leopold and Loeb. Both sides believed the affair supported their case.
The prosecution portrayed the teenagers as “perverts” and argued that the main motivation of their crime was their sexuality.
The defense used their relationship, along with other psychological evidence, to argue that Leopold and Loeb suffered from mental and emotional abnormalities that should mitigate their punishment.
Having pleaded guilty, their attorneys were not pursuing a legal insanity defense but instead argued that their psychological conditions should be considered when deciding whether they deserved the death penalty.
On September 10, 1924, the judge made his decision. He agreed with the defense that the teenagers should not be executed for their crimes. He primarily cited their youth. Instead, they were both sentenced to life in prison for murder, plus 99 years for kidnapping.
Richard Loeb died in prison in 1936, at the age of 30, having been murdered by another inmate. He was cut 58 times by a razor blade in an attack.
Nathan Leopold was paroled in 1958, having served 33 years in prison.
After being freed, the Brethren Service Commission, which was a program associated with the Church of the Brethren, enrolled Leopold in a program to be a medical technician in Puerto Rico.
Leopold spent the majority of the rest of his life in Puerto Rico, where He died of diabetes and heart disease in 1971 at the age of 66.
The Leopold and Loeb case fascinated the nation and inspired many works of film, theatre and fiction, most notably Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope starring Jimmy Stewart.
The Leopold and Loeb case remains one of the most notorious murders in American history, not simply because of the brutality of the crime, but because of the disturbing motivations behind it.
Two young men who had every advantage in life convinced themselves that their intelligence placed them above conventional morality and the law. Yet their elaborate plan to commit the perfect crime quickly unraveled because of a series of remarkably simple mistakes.
Ultimately, Leopold and Loeb demonstrated that intelligence is no substitute for morality, and that believing yourself superior to everyone else can be a dangerous form of stupidity.