‘Second City Sinners’ excerpt on Leopold and Loeb: New book details Chicago’s most notorious murders

It was one of Chicago’s most heinous crimes, the kidnaping and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by two wealthy University of Chicago students, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb — a thrill killing soon labeled “the crime of the century.”

That led to the “trial of the century,” featuring one of the most famous courtroom speeches ever, by renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow, the novel “Compulsion” and movies including Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 “Rope.”

It’s among the city’s most notorious murders, which Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jon Seidel writes about in his new book “Second City Sinners” (Lyons Press, $24.99), excerpted here.

Leopold and Loeb did not believe they could be caught. They had so much confidence that Loeb had joined reporters in the hunt for the killer.

The pair had been too careful, too wise. They watched the investigation without worry. They were above suspicion.

Sun-Times reporter Jon Seidel’s new book “Second City Sinners” (Lyons Press, $24.99). — Sun-Times reporter Jon Seidel’s new book “Second City Sinners.”

Until, that is, the questioning continued. And their alibis finally fell apart early on May 31.

“Their confidence, their astounding aplomb had deserted them at dawn today, when daylight began creeping through the dusty windows of the criminal court building to reveal the climax of the terrible drama,” the Daily News wrote.

That’s when Cook County State’s Attorney Robert Crowe burst from an interrogation room and announced, “We have the murderers in custody.

“Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb killed Robert Franks. They have confessed.”

As stunning as Bobby Franks’s murder had already seemed, the confessions offered that day revealed a crime even more horrible than the city had imagined.

That’s because not only had Leopold and Loeb planned the cold, calculated murder for months, they had left one key aspect to the last minute — their victim. Their selection of Bobby Franks was completely random, a decision made after they wrote the “George Johnson” ransom note addressed to “Dear Sir.”

Bobby Franks, the 14-year-old victim of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb’s “crime of the century.”

That means on another day, in another moment, the body of any child belonging to any mother in Chicago could have wound up in that railroad culvert.

Not only that, but Loeb said the two rich boys came up with the whole thing simply “as a means of having a great deal of excitement, together with getting quite a sum of money.”

In their confessions, the teens largely told the same story, though there were key differences.

Leopold said they had begun to talk about a murder six months earlier, in November 1923. Loeb said it had only been “a month and a half or two months” since they’d begun discussing it.

* * * *

Finally, on May 21, they waited until Harvard school let out before they began to hunt for their victim.

Nathan Leopold (left) and Richard Loeb (right) with their attorney Clarence Darrow at their 1924 arraignment in the thrill killing of Bobby Franks, 14.

“The plan was if we saw any likely looking child we were to get him,” Leopold said. “We watched some children playing through field glasses which I had stopped for at my home.”

They looked around Drexel Boulevard. Then 48th and Greenwood. Then 40th and Lake Park.

While driving north on Ellis, they spotted Bobby Franks. The boy had been walking south on the west side of the street near 48th. Leopold and Loeb turned their car around at 48th and drove up alongside him.

Loeb said he offered Franks a ride. The boy declined. But when Loeb insisted he wanted to talk about a tennis racket, Franks climbed in.

The car turned east on 50th.

And that’s when either Leopold or Loeb wrenched his hand over Franks’s mouth, raised the chisel and swung it into the boy’s head. Franks moaned, but the killer stuffed a rag into the boy’s mouth to stifle the sound, suffocating him.

In their confessions, both Leopold and Loeb would accuse the other of actually killing the boy.

Leopold said that Loeb “beat him on the head several times with the chisel.”

Loeb said, “I am fully convinced that neither the idea nor the act would have occurred to me had it not been for the suggestion and stimulus of Leopold. Furthermore, I don’t believe that I would have been capable of having killed Franks.”

The men covered the boy’s bloody body in a robe and let the car roll south. Killing time until it got dark, they partly undressed the boy by removing his shoes, belt, pants and stockings. They even stopped for sandwiches.

Eventually, they made their way to the drainpipe in the marshland. They said they laid the boy’s body on the grass, removing the rest of his clothing. Then, they poured the acid on his face. Loeb said the idea “originated through Leopold, who evidently has some knowledge of such things and who said that that would be the easiest way of putting him to death and the least messy.

“This, however, we found unnecessary because the body was — because the boy was quite dead when we took him there,” Loeb explained in his confession.

The pair crammed the boy’s naked corpse into the railway culvert. Leopold said he held the boy’s feet while Loeb grabbed the head. At first, Leopold said he wasn’t sure the body would fit. “But, after getting it started, it was not hard,” he said. “And after we got it in, I used my feet to push it further.”

Soon, the pair called the murdered boy’s mother, Flora. They also mailed the letter to his father, Jacob — the letter that said the boy was “well and safe.”

The pen-printed envelope that held the so-called “ransom letter” in the infamous Leopold and Loeb case.

* * * *

When he heard of Leopold and Loeb’s confessions, Robert Franks’s father said simply, “Thank God for that!

“The perpetrators of this fiendish crime are caught at last,” he said.

He thanked the Daily News. Then he hung up the phone, too overcome with emotion to go on.

Still, the signed confessions of Leopold and Loeb confounded mental health experts.

“It’s incredible, simply incredible,” one told the Daily News. “The ‘fun’ motive — that these boys might have committed this crime through a spirit of adventure — is bewildering.”

Another insisted that “insanity would be very nearly impossible to prove in this case.

“The mental experts will have a great tussle over this case,” he went on. “The sturdy independence shown by the boys contrasted with their fiendish ingenuity, their bland and cocky assurance set against undoubted symptoms of sexual perversion, their bright shell of sophistication in opposition to the subtlety of their minds — the case is a paradox of paradoxes.”

More stunned than anyone, perhaps, were the parents of Leopold and Loeb. Fully confident of their innocence, their fathers had insisted they would “take no steps to hamper the police investigation by asserting their legal rights.”

Still, reporters predicted a bitter legal battle. They estimated the combined 1924 fortunes of the two families at around $15 million.

Indeed, it would be a legal battle for the ages.