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Speaker 4: You are now listening to true Murder The most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 3: Good Evening. Nearly one hundred years ago, two wealthy and
Speaker 3: privileged teenagers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loewe, were charged and
Speaker 3: convicted in a gruesome crime that would lead to the
Speaker 3: original trial of the century, even in jazz age Chicago.
Speaker 3: The murder was uniquely shocking for the motive of the killers.
Speaker 3: Well to do Jewish scions full of promise, had killed
Speaker 3: fourteen year old Robbie Franks for the thrill of it.
Speaker 3: The trial was made even more sensational by the revelation
Speaker 3: of a love affair between the defendants and by defense
Speaker 3: attorney Clarence Darrow, who delivered one of the most famous
Speaker 3: defense summations of all time to save the boys from
Speaker 3: the death penalty. The story of their mad folli adeaux,
Speaker 3: with Loeb portrayed as the psychopathic mastermind and Leopold as
Speaker 3: his infatuated disciple has been endlessly repeated and accepted by
Speaker 3: history as fact, and none of it is true. Using
Speaker 3: twenty first century investigative tools, forensics, and a modern understanding
Speaker 3: of the psychology of these infamous killers, Nothing but the
Speaker 3: Knight turns history on its head. While Lobe has long
Speaker 3: been viewed as the architect behind the murders, King and
Speaker 3: Wilson's new research points to Leopold as the dominant partner
Speaker 3: in the deadly relationship, uncovering a dark obsession with violence
Speaker 3: and sex. Nothing but the Night pulls readers into the
Speaker 3: troubled world of Leopold and loebe revealing a more horrifying
Speaker 3: tale of passion, obsession, and betrayal than history ever imagined.
Speaker 3: The book that we're featuring this evening is Nothing but
Speaker 3: the Night, Leopold and Lobe and the Truth behind the
Speaker 3: murder Trial that rock nineteen twenties America, with my special guests,
Speaker 3: historians and authors Penny Wilson and Greg King. Welcome to
Speaker 3: the program, and thank you so much for this interview.
Speaker 3: Penny Wilson and Greg King.
Speaker 5: All Right, thanks Dan, thanks for having us.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Let's start off as you do
Speaker 3: in the book, May twenty first nineteen twenty four, Chicago
Speaker 3: and the Harvard School for Boys and the children were
Speaker 3: just let out of classes and one of the instructors, JT. Sas,
Speaker 3: was ready to play a baseball game with some of
Speaker 3: the boys. Tell us what happens on May twenty first,
Speaker 3: and what is observed? What happens that afternoon?
Speaker 6: Well, it was a pleasant afternoon. The weather had not
Speaker 6: been particularly good for a while, so taking advantage of
Speaker 6: the spring weather, the teachers decided to organize some pickup
Speaker 6: baseball games. And I believe there were three of them,
Speaker 6: scattered throughout the schoolyard and local parks and a field.
Speaker 6: And one of the boys playing that afternoon was fourteen
Speaker 6: year old Bobby Franks. He was a big baseball fan
Speaker 6: on this particular day. Though he wasn't playing, he was
Speaker 6: umpiring one of the games. You know. He's a relatively
Speaker 6: normal fourteen year old boy, popular among his schoolmates, talented
Speaker 6: at public speaking, the son of a very wealthy real
Speaker 6: estate developer, the youngest in his family of three. He
Speaker 6: had a brother who was just a year older and
Speaker 6: a sister who was two or three years older than that.
Speaker 6: So he went out with his friends. He's playing baseball.
Speaker 6: The game wraps up and he starts to walk home.
Speaker 6: One of his schoolmates is walking behind him and is
Speaker 6: momentarily distracted by some flowers on the side of the
Speaker 6: road that one of his teachers had asked him to
Speaker 6: pay attention to, and when he looked back, Bobby was gone.
Speaker 3: Tell us about Bobby and some of his You talk
Speaker 3: about a debating team that he was on in just
Speaker 3: weeks earlier, he had debated a particularly interesting subject matter.
Speaker 3: Tell us about that.
Speaker 5: Right well, Bobby had a reputation for actually being quite
Speaker 5: thoughtful about things, and a few weeks before May twenty first,
Speaker 5: he had been on a debate team and the subject
Speaker 5: had been the death penalty, and Bobby had argued that
Speaker 5: the death penalty served no purpose, that someone who committed
Speaker 5: a crime should be studied, not punished, in the hope
Speaker 5: that somehow society could learn from that and prevent it.
Speaker 5: So it was somewhat ironic that he was opposed to
Speaker 5: the death penalty quite strongly.
Speaker 3: Tell us about the Lobe family, Richard Loeb and his
Speaker 3: father Albert. Tell him about the family and the proximity
Speaker 3: of Bobby Frank's home to the Lobe family and their relationship.
Speaker 5: Albert Loeb was the former vice president of Sears Roebuck.
Speaker 5: He was immensely wealthy at the time. He had had
Speaker 5: to retire a few years earlier given poor heart that
Speaker 5: he was suffering from, but he had built in the
Speaker 5: Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago in immense Elizabethan style mansion that
Speaker 5: reflected his wealth and pretension, and ironically, just across the street,
Speaker 5: Bobby Frank's father had built his own mansion. It wasn't
Speaker 5: quite so odd because Bobby's mother and Albert Loeb's wife,
Speaker 5: Anna were actually first cousins, so there was a family
Speaker 5: connection that was involved there. Although the two families didn't
Speaker 5: tend to socialize very much.
Speaker 3: What was their religious backgrounds both families, the Lobes, were.
Speaker 5: Jewish and the Franks were Jewish. However, the situation was
Speaker 5: never quite as clear cut as the press of the
Speaker 5: day made it out to be. Anna Lobe, Albert's wife
Speaker 5: retained her Catholicism on marrying her husband, so she never converted,
Speaker 5: and the Franks, who were both Jewish, had actually converted
Speaker 5: to Christian Science about nineteen oh five, and so while
Speaker 5: the press tended to lump them all together as being Jewish,
Speaker 5: They really weren't practicing jewsuph time.
Speaker 3: Richard Loeb was popular young man, but he was a
Speaker 3: from a healthy family. But also he had a prestigious
Speaker 3: reputation himself. What was that reputation for.
Speaker 6: Well, his reputation was well for being quite brilliant despite
Speaker 6: his young age. It's really difficult to tell at this
Speaker 6: sort of distance of time what his brilliance actually was.
Speaker 6: But with relatively little else to do because his governess
Speaker 6: wouldn't permit him to do anything else except study, he
Speaker 6: did exceedingly well in his classes, graduated number one several times,
Speaker 6: skipped grades, ended up at high school at a very
Speaker 6: young age, graduated high school at fifteen. At fifteen, and
Speaker 6: then he was off to the University of Chicago, where
Speaker 6: he was to meet another young man very much like himself.
Speaker 3: Let's get back to May twenty first, nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 3: There's kids pouring out of school and up and down
Speaker 3: these streets and include Ellis Avenue where Bobby Franks and
Speaker 3: the Lowe family live. But tell us what happens to you.
Speaker 3: We last left off when somebody a classmate, had seen Bobby,
Speaker 3: and then when they looked again, they didn't see him,
Speaker 3: and then they saw a touring car speed by him,
Speaker 3: and another witness had also said that they had seen
Speaker 3: a touring car and seeing Richard driving. What happens with
Speaker 3: Bobby Franks in terms of this disappearance.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, there were several witnesses who saw a peculiar
Speaker 5: car sort of cruising up and down Ellison around the
Speaker 5: area of the Harvard School for Boys. Richard Loeb had
Speaker 5: been out that day as the school got out, several
Speaker 5: people saw him. He followed several of the students around,
Speaker 5: asked them what they were doing. That wasn't particularly strange
Speaker 5: because his younger brother Tommy attended Harvard and he spoke
Speaker 5: to him that afternoon too. But several people who scattered
Speaker 5: as the afternoon went on saw this sort of car
Speaker 5: that they thought was a Winton model. And at the
Speaker 5: time the cars had something called side curtains, which were
Speaker 5: sort of canvas panels in the back that could be
Speaker 5: pulled up, and they had sort of plasticcene window. And
Speaker 5: on that day the car attracted a lot of attention
Speaker 5: that was cruising up and down the avenue because it
Speaker 5: was a warm day and yet someone had pulled up
Speaker 5: the side curtains, and people noticed this car going back
Speaker 5: and forth. And the boy who was walking directly behind
Speaker 5: Bobby Franks on his way home saw this car. Another
Speaker 5: person saw Richard driving what they thought was the same
Speaker 5: car a few minutes before Bobby disappeared. And then this
Speaker 5: boy stopped and looked at the flowers and he picked
Speaker 5: up his head. Suddenly the car was gone and Bobby
Speaker 5: was gone.
Speaker 3: Now he doesn't show up for supper, so the family
Speaker 3: gets worried. The father, Jacob, calls a friend, which is
Speaker 3: a state Senator, Samuel Errolson, and then they concoct a
Speaker 3: plan to go search in various places. But while they're gone,
Speaker 3: at ten thirty, his wife, Flora gets a call. Bobby's
Speaker 3: mother gets a call. What's said in that phone call?
Speaker 3: Who calls? Well?
Speaker 6: A man identifying himself as George Johnson. George Johnson was
Speaker 6: on the telephone and he told Flora that they had
Speaker 6: Bobby and that she was to expect a letter with
Speaker 6: instructions on how they were to pay a ransom and
Speaker 6: recover Bobby safely. When she heard that on the phone,
Speaker 6: Flora fainted, and her daughter and her maid you know,
Speaker 6: helped her get it together. Helped her get back up,
Speaker 6: and at that point they just took a seat and
Speaker 6: waited until Jacob and the Senator returned.
Speaker 3: That night, a watchman named Bernard Hunt is doing his
Speaker 3: duty and he hears something, a metal object dropped from
Speaker 3: a vehicle, and he inspects, investigates. What does he find
Speaker 3: on the ground and what does he do with that.
Speaker 5: He walks over to where he hears this clink at
Speaker 5: about one am in the morning as he's on his rounds,
Speaker 5: and he looks down and there's chisel laying in the
Speaker 5: side of the street, and he picks it up and
Speaker 5: he looks at it and he notices that it's covered
Speaker 5: with something that looks like dried blood, and so he's
Speaker 5: a bit concerned about that, but not concerned enough to
Speaker 5: act directly. He waits until he gets off in another hour,
Speaker 5: and then he takes it to the police station and
Speaker 5: says he thinks this was thrown out of a passing
Speaker 5: car at about one point thirty in the morning, and
Speaker 5: since it looks like it has blood on it, he
Speaker 5: thinks the police should.
Speaker 3: Have it now. In the next day while they have
Speaker 3: a super uncomfortable evening. No doubt, there's a letter that
Speaker 3: arrives with special printed on the envelope. What's the contents
Speaker 3: of this this letter?
Speaker 5: That was the actual ransom letter that the kidnappers had
Speaker 5: sent to Bobby Frank's family. In it, they were quite specific.
Speaker 5: They asked for ten thousand dollars. They gave instructions not
Speaker 5: to contact the police, which by this time the Frank's
Speaker 5: family had actually already done. But the letter outlined a
Speaker 5: number of things that were supposed to be done. They
Speaker 5: assured the family that Bobby was safe and that he
Speaker 5: would be returned. All they wanted was the money, and
Speaker 5: they said that they would make contact with the family
Speaker 5: a little bit later.
Speaker 3: Now they the family with the advice of Senator Errolson.
Speaker 3: They wanted to cooperate with these kidnappers, and so they
Speaker 3: wanted to keep this thing secret. But rather than keep
Speaker 3: it secret, somehow the press found out, didn't he.
Speaker 6: Yes, they did. I think the press operated a little
Speaker 6: bit differently then than they do now maybe, And at
Speaker 6: this particular time, a couple of stringers for the big
Speaker 6: Chicago newspapers were also students at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 6: and two of them happened to run into Richard Loebe
Speaker 6: in a common room or a common area on campus,
Speaker 6: and one of them knew that Richard lived very close
Speaker 6: to the boy who had been kidnapped, and so they
Speaker 6: started a conversation, and that's kind of how the first
Speaker 6: members of the press got looped in.
Speaker 3: We have to go back just before that, because earlier
Speaker 3: in the day a man out near this area discovered
Speaker 3: something in this culvert, and so we went to investigate
Speaker 3: what's found in that culvert and what's the response.
Speaker 5: Well man got off work, he worked night shift, and
Speaker 5: he was walking home early in the morning out in
Speaker 5: an area sort of southeast of Chicago, a fairly deserted,
Speaker 5: kind of marshy area, and he was walking along the
Speaker 5: set of railroad tracks and there was a drainage ditch
Speaker 5: to the side, and he happened to look down as
Speaker 5: he passed near the railroad tracks which ran over this ditch,
Speaker 5: and there was a culvert beneath the tracks, and looking down,
Speaker 5: he saw a pair of feet sticking out of the culvert,
Speaker 5: and he raced down and looked and saw that there
Speaker 5: was a body inside. He managed to flag down some
Speaker 5: passing railway workers at the time, and they managed to
Speaker 5: get the body out of the culvert and dragged it up,
Speaker 5: and it turned out to be naked body of a
Speaker 5: young boy.
Speaker 3: What else was found at the scene and what was
Speaker 3: the more so, what was the condition of the body?
Speaker 6: Well, what else was found at the scene was some eyeglasses,
Speaker 6: which become very pivotal in the case later on. Also
Speaker 6: some pieces of clothing that to the three men thought
Speaker 6: it possibly belonged to the boy, including a sock. And
Speaker 6: the state of the body itself wasn't looked like he
Speaker 6: had had some corrosive material poured on his face.
Speaker 5: And down alongside his abdomen and his genitals as well,
Speaker 5: so he was sort of disfigured at that point, but
Speaker 5: it was.
Speaker 6: Still fairly easy to tell that he was quite a
Speaker 6: young adolescent boy.
Speaker 3: Now, Greg explain how Jacob Love is looking along with
Speaker 3: Arrolson and waiting, looking and waiting for something to happen
Speaker 3: with and instructions for these for people that took his son.
Speaker 3: But at the same time there are reports leaked through
Speaker 3: this James Mulroy and again this intimate association with police
Speaker 3: and even in the families and the media. And what
Speaker 3: happened is that they were privy to information and Jacob
Speaker 3: Frank's at that time, or at least thought that his
Speaker 3: son was already dead. Can you explain that.
Speaker 5: Well, Jacob had been waiting for the instructions. When the
Speaker 5: ransom note arrived, he went downtown and got the ransom
Speaker 5: money and was waiting for information. When he returned back
Speaker 5: to his house, he found reporter waiting outside on the sidewalk,
Speaker 5: and because he wanted to keep Bobby's kidnapping quiet, he
Speaker 5: actually asked the reporter to come inside and wait, so
Speaker 5: he wasn't standing around attracting attention. And the reporter happened
Speaker 5: to be in touch with another reporter, and that's how
Speaker 5: he learned that the body of a young boy had
Speaker 5: been found. And as I sat there waiting to hear
Speaker 5: something else from the kidnappers, they got to talking and
Speaker 5: it was suggested, well, what if this body that was
Speaker 5: found is actually Bobby Franks. And so what Jacob did
Speaker 5: was he arranged for his brother in law to go
Speaker 5: with the reporter to the morgue where the body had
Speaker 5: been taken. And his brother in law walked into the
Speaker 5: room and saw the body and saw without doubt that
Speaker 5: it was indeed Bobby Franks. And so he telephoned to
Speaker 5: Frank's house and let Jacob know that his son was dead.
Speaker 5: And at that point they were still waiting to hear
Speaker 5: back from the kidnappers with instructions on how to deliver
Speaker 5: the money.
Speaker 3: When they did get that call, what did they do
Speaker 3: despite knowing that most likely his son was dead.
Speaker 5: Well, Jacob went ahead and there a sort of an
Speaker 5: elaborate set of instructions that he was supposed to follow.
Speaker 5: A cab was going to be sent to his house.
Speaker 5: He was supposed to get in. He was supposed to
Speaker 5: go to a drug store several miles away and wait
Speaker 5: by a payphone which would ring, and then the call
Speaker 5: would direct him to go to a nearby railway station,
Speaker 5: where he was to board a train, take the box
Speaker 5: of money that he had. He was to travel a
Speaker 5: certain distance, look for a factory, row the box off
Speaker 5: of the train into the bushes as they passed. So
Speaker 5: Jacob planned to do all of this even though he
Speaker 5: knew his son was dead, because he thought that there
Speaker 5: was a chance they could go ahead and find the
Speaker 5: kidnappers along the route. But the cab driver didn't know
Speaker 5: where to take him, and someone had forgotten to write
Speaker 5: down the exact address of the drug store to which
Speaker 5: Jacob was supposed to go, so he ended up not
Speaker 5: knowing where to go and simply returned home without having
Speaker 5: embarked on the sort of circuitous route to deliver the
Speaker 5: ransom money.
Speaker 3: Right now, you say, you write by May twenty second,
Speaker 3: by the evening, neighbors, reporters, and a curious gather outside
Speaker 3: Bobby Frank's home, and Bobby's second cousin, Richard Lowe, wanders
Speaker 3: across the street from the mansion to join the crowd,
Speaker 3: and reporter Alvin Goldstein was there and knew Richard from
Speaker 3: the University of Chicago. And that's what you had mentioned, Penny, Yes,
Speaker 3: and they had both attended the University of Chicago. And
Speaker 3: Richard was quoted as saying it was a terrible crime
Speaker 3: and a perpetrator deserved punishment. He deserved to be strung up.
Speaker 3: And you also write that immediately headlines such as kidnapper
Speaker 3: slay millionaire son as ten thousand dollar reward weights This
Speaker 3: is a Chicago Herald and Examiner. May twenty third, you
Speaker 3: say that this kidnapping was rare at that time, and
Speaker 3: the story exploded in the city's papers. How was it
Speaker 3: depicted in the city's papers.
Speaker 5: Well, kidnapping was rare, but to have the kidnapping of
Speaker 5: a prominent local citizen millionaire, that was extraordinary. Kenwood was
Speaker 5: sort of seen as a safe enclave for the privileged,
Speaker 5: and crime had struck right in the heart of that community.
Speaker 5: No one knew who was responsible for Bobby's death. No
Speaker 5: one could figure out what had happened. Had he been kidnapped,
Speaker 5: something gone wrong and then they had abandoned the ransom attempt,
Speaker 5: or had the ransom note simply been a cover story
Speaker 5: because somebody had grabbed him and molested him and tried
Speaker 5: to cover it up. So there was a lot of
Speaker 5: speculation in the press. The story from the very beginning
Speaker 5: seemed so bizarre, and no one really had any idea
Speaker 5: what was happening, so speculation replaced facts.
Speaker 3: Yes, you write that. On May twenty third, a reporter
Speaker 3: for the Chicago Evening American Howard Meyer, dropped by the
Speaker 3: Zeta Beta how fraternity at the University of Chicago, and
Speaker 3: Loeb interestingly shared his theories about the murder. What did
Speaker 3: he have to say to this reporter?
Speaker 5: Amazingly, Well, he was convinced that because part of the
Speaker 5: story of the ransom and what Jacob Franks had supposedly
Speaker 5: been supposed to do to get the rand some to
Speaker 5: the kidnappers had been printed in the papers. Richard suggested
Speaker 5: to his reporter friends, Hey, let's go out in the
Speaker 5: car and see if we can find the drug store
Speaker 5: that Jacob was supposed to have been sent to and
Speaker 5: have awaited the call. And so Richard led them out
Speaker 5: and they tried several drug stores and finally they ended
Speaker 5: up at one of the drug stores, and it turned out,
Speaker 5: after they asked if there had been any calls for
Speaker 5: mister Franks there the previous day, that they hit the
Speaker 5: right drug store, And Richard seemed absolutely delighted to point
Speaker 5: this out to his journalist friends and claimed that this
Speaker 5: was because he read a lot of detective stories, so
Speaker 5: he knew how to solve things.
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Speaker 3: Now, the police do their investigation and do their due diligence,
Speaker 3: and there's a Chicago police captain named Wolf. Interestingly, he's
Speaker 3: questioning residents near Wolf Lake where the body was found,
Speaker 3: and he visits a man named Oscar staff In, the
Speaker 3: deputy game warden for the area, and he had asked
Speaker 3: them if there was any frequent visitors to the area
Speaker 3: that he noted, and one of them was Nathan Leopold
Speaker 3: bird watching apparently, yes, what does the investigation in terms
Speaker 3: of Now Richard is making some comments. There is a
Speaker 3: funeral of Bobby Franks that none of the Lobe family attends.
Speaker 3: How do police proceed with this Nathan Leopold lead.
Speaker 6: Well, they went on over to the Leopold house and
Speaker 6: asked to speak with Nathan with the intention of asking
Speaker 6: him there had he seen anything untoward or anything that
Speaker 6: had caught his attention when he was last out there?
Speaker 6: Bird watching. He went bird watching quite a lot. He
Speaker 6: also taught classes on bird watching, and he was actually considered,
Speaker 6: even at the age of eighteen or nineteen, an extreme
Speaker 6: expert on one particular bird, and had written some articles
Speaker 6: for the Audubon Society. So all of this of course
Speaker 6: fed Nathan's ego. And when the police showed up at
Speaker 6: the door, you know, he attempted to dodge that he
Speaker 6: had stuff on. He was, you know, not willing to
Speaker 6: get up, YadA YadA. But he did eventually come downstairs
Speaker 6: and face to face with the police officers. He did
Speaker 6: tell them that he hadn't seen anything, but the demeanor
Speaker 6: and the conversation obviously piqued police officer's interest, and they
Speaker 6: asked him, have you lost a pair of I got?
Speaker 6: Do you wear eyeglasses? And Nathan said yes, that he
Speaker 6: did wear eyeglasses, but he hadn't worn them for a while,
Speaker 6: wasn't sure where there were, but he would try and
Speaker 6: get a hold of them and turn them over to
Speaker 6: the police.
Speaker 3: They asked him about where he was May twenty first,
Speaker 3: what was his first response?
Speaker 5: He told the police that he and well, at first
Speaker 5: he said that he couldn't remember, and then that it
Speaker 5: was just a normal day. When the police started to
Speaker 5: press him further, he said that he had spent the
Speaker 5: afternoon with his good friend Richard Lobe. They had been
Speaker 5: parked out near a local park and had spent the
Speaker 5: afternoon drinking. This was the ara of prohibition, and so
Speaker 5: they had to sort of secretly smuggle their flasks of
Speaker 5: gin away from the house and sit there. And they
Speaker 5: had spent the afternoon drinking, and then later on they
Speaker 5: had gone out to eat and they had picked up
Speaker 5: a couple of girls to have sex with them. The
Speaker 5: girls wouldn't come across, Nathan said, and so they ended
Speaker 5: up finally going home at around eleven or twelve that night.
Speaker 3: Because Leopold Nathan had implicated Richard Loeb in his alibi,
Speaker 3: they go to speak to Richard Lob, don't they, Yes,
Speaker 3: they do.
Speaker 5: They pulled Richard in, they took him downtown for questioning
Speaker 5: at the same time that they already had Nathan Leopold
Speaker 5: in for questioning. So they were trying to interrogate both
Speaker 5: of them. Neither one was really considered a serious suspect
Speaker 5: at that point, but there were outstanding questions.
Speaker 3: Now we skip ahead a bit because they get to
Speaker 3: the point where they're able to do a search of
Speaker 3: Nathan's home. What did they find and what did they seize?
Speaker 5: In Nathan's house, they found several interesting things. There were
Speaker 5: a number of poisons that he apparently used, he liked
Speaker 5: to kill and stuffed birds for his collection. They found
Speaker 5: a lot of sharp knives. They found two unregistered loaded handguns,
Speaker 5: and they also found several letters copies of several letters
Speaker 5: that Nathan had written to Richard that seemed to strongly
Speaker 5: hint that the pair were lovers. And this sort of
Speaker 5: astonished the police because if Richard and Nathan were gay,
Speaker 5: why would they say they were out picking up girls
Speaker 5: at the same time Bobby Franks had disappeared.
Speaker 3: They're also told that a portable typewriter. Nathan has been
Speaker 3: seen using a portable typewriter in the last few weeks
Speaker 3: previous to this crime. Isn't that correct?
Speaker 6: They were looking for the portable typewriter. It wasn't found
Speaker 6: in the house. They couldn't find it anywhere. They went
Speaker 6: upstairs to Nathan's third floor sort of office and workroom,
Speaker 6: couldn't find it up there. Nathan must have thought he
Speaker 6: was escaping from the questioning, but one of the maids
Speaker 6: helpfully offered that she had seen that typewriter sitting right
Speaker 6: there on Nathan's desk just a few days ago. You know,
Speaker 6: that didn't remove the crosshairs from Nathan's back, and you know,
Speaker 6: sort of put him into a little bit more focus.
Speaker 6: With the police.
Speaker 3: You say, they were taken into custody, and now the
Speaker 3: state District Attorney cro wants to speak to them and
Speaker 3: question them, doesn't he.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he has several deputies. They're separated, so they're not together.
Speaker 5: He doesn't want to contaminate their stories in that way,
Speaker 5: but they are questioned about this alibi. Richard at first
Speaker 5: denied that he had been with Nathan Leopold on May
Speaker 5: twenty first, and then finally he admits, yes, they were
Speaker 5: out drinking and trying to pick up girls, but the
Speaker 5: police continued to press about the typewriter the glasses. Nathan
Speaker 5: finally admitted that yes, were his glasses that were found
Speaker 5: near Bobby's body, but he insisted, oh, I must have
Speaker 5: lost them because I had been out there the week
Speaker 5: before bird watching. The only problem was that the glasses
Speaker 5: hadn't been there for a week. They were unmarked by
Speaker 5: dust or rain or anything. And it had been quite
Speaker 5: stormy for a few days, and so the police really
Speaker 5: pressed them on these details separately, and Richard started to
Speaker 5: crumble under questioning, but Nathan simply became more arrogant, and
Speaker 5: the further police pressed, the more detail he offered, and
Speaker 5: he seemed completely unconcerned about the situation that he found
Speaker 5: himself in.
Speaker 3: The police are looking very interestingly at the letters and
Speaker 3: the contents, and we'll talk about that in a second,
Speaker 3: but also the show first. Then England thinks he's doing
Speaker 3: a favor to the boys by helping him, saying that
Speaker 3: there's no way they could have been doing this crime
Speaker 3: on that day because his car was disabled, and in fact,
Speaker 3: he saw the boys cleaning up another car tell us
Speaker 3: about this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they hadn't wanted to use one of their own,
Speaker 6: probably recognizable in the neighborhood, their own automobiles, so they
Speaker 6: had rented this Winton and while his car was off
Speaker 6: the road, Nathan had taken the opportunity to have Sven,
Speaker 6: you know, do some maintenance work on it, and Swenn
Speaker 6: was doing that when Nathan and Richard returned to the
Speaker 6: auto yard at the Leopold home and were cleaning it up.
Speaker 6: Then sort of walked over to see what they were doing,
Speaker 6: because it was very, very unlike Nathan to do any cleaning,
Speaker 6: so they came. He came over to have a look
Speaker 6: what they were doing, and he noticed that they were
Speaker 6: cleaning some red marks off of the back seat and
Speaker 6: or the front seat, the back seat the floor, and
Speaker 6: they claimed, Oh, don't worry about it, we got it.
Speaker 6: We just spilled some red wine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that didn't fly right. That May thirty first, nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty four, it has announced a news conference the Franks
Speaker 3: murder mystery has been solved, and that the perpetrators are
Speaker 3: in custody and they have voluntarily confessed, and the news
Speaker 3: broke over Chicago. You right, like the sudden storm, Right.
Speaker 5: It was sort of shocking to find out that these
Speaker 5: two sons of millionaires, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, they
Speaker 5: had actually confessed to kidnapping and killing Bobby Franks. Richard Lobe,
Speaker 5: being the weaker of the two, was the first to confess,
Speaker 5: and when Nathan was confronted with the fact that he
Speaker 5: had already filled police in on what had happened, then
Speaker 5: Nathan chimed in and added his version of the tale.
Speaker 5: But neither one seemed to have had any real motive
Speaker 5: that they could offer, So the story that appeared in
Speaker 5: the press was these two millionaire sons killed this fourteen
Speaker 5: year old kid just to see if they could get
Speaker 5: away with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's use it up and as an opportunity to
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Speaker 3: and talkspace dot com. Now, Penny and Greg, we were
Speaker 3: talking about that. Now this hits the papers. This story
Speaker 3: is dubbed the Crime of the Century, and Jacob Lobe
Speaker 3: is desperate to be able to have his son not
Speaker 3: receive the death penalty, so he goes and visits the
Speaker 3: infamous or famous Clarence Darrow. Tell us sue Clarence Darrow
Speaker 3: is at this time and what Jacob and his family
Speaker 3: opposed to him.
Speaker 5: Darrow was probably the most famous and prominent criminal attorney
Speaker 5: in the US at that point. His position probably is
Speaker 5: roughly a kid at that time, to say Alan Dershowitz right.
Speaker 5: In the nineteen nineties, Darrow had a reputation as a
Speaker 5: fierce fighter and a compelling orator in court. He was
Speaker 5: an avowed opponent of the death penalty, which is something
Speaker 5: that the family knew, and so when they went to him,
Speaker 5: they simply said, save these boys' lives. We will pay
Speaker 5: you anything that you want. But they were convinced that
Speaker 5: he was the only one who could do it.
Speaker 3: You write that Darrow had written a couple of years
Speaker 3: before about his unique philosophy about the death penalty and
Speaker 3: criminal justice. What were some of the things that he
Speaker 3: espoused in that book.
Speaker 5: Well, he had claimed that there was no such thing
Speaker 5: as criminal responsibility. He thought that society was to blame
Speaker 5: when someone did something illegal. Essentially, there was no right
Speaker 5: or wrong. There was no kind of personal responsibility for anything,
Speaker 5: because if someone committed a crime, they were obviously not
Speaker 5: thinking clearly, and so they were essentially compelled into that
Speaker 5: illegal act. And so that kind of idea there was
Speaker 5: absolutely no point in putting anyone in jail. That didn't
Speaker 5: sit well with a lot of the public, but it
Speaker 5: got Daryl a lot of attention in.
Speaker 3: This investigation, not only yourself, but also these police. They
Speaker 3: investigated and discovered who Nathan Leopold was and some of
Speaker 3: his background. Tell us what you, and they found well.
Speaker 6: Nathan was the third son of his parents. Is dad
Speaker 6: was Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Sr. His older brothers. Nathan's older
Speaker 6: brothers were Mike and Sam. He got along quite well
Speaker 6: with Mike, the oldest one, not so much with Sam,
Speaker 6: the middle one, and that sort of budding of heads
Speaker 6: lasted for the rest of their lives. Sam was three
Speaker 6: or four years older than Nathan, and they essentially grew
Speaker 6: up side by side under the care of a governess
Speaker 6: who went by the name of Sweetie. Her real name
Speaker 6: was Matilda Vent. She was a German immigrant. She was
Speaker 6: particularly jealous of the boys. She tried to set them
Speaker 6: against their mother, more so than their father, but she
Speaker 6: certainly tried to set them against both parents. Probably had
Speaker 6: a little bit more success with I don't know, Nathan
Speaker 6: than Sam. She also, despite their youth, she sexually abused
Speaker 6: both boys, and by the age of twelve Nathan she
Speaker 6: would often crawl into bed with him, and I mean
Speaker 6: clearly that that wasn't good for him, and I mean
Speaker 6: it was his parents had no idea it was going on.
Speaker 6: You know, it was hands off parenting in those days.
Speaker 6: The father was often a way at work, the mother
Speaker 6: was working at her charities and socializing, much as all
Speaker 6: the other mothers in the area were. She herself came
Speaker 6: from a large family and she had several sisters in
Speaker 6: the neighborhood. So I imagine both parents thought that their
Speaker 6: boys were being well taken care of by the governess,
Speaker 6: that they were paying good money to. By all aspects
Speaker 6: looking at it, they did learn quite a bit. Nathan
Speaker 6: obviously was brilliant at school, and through Sweetie he learned
Speaker 6: probably the first of several foreign languages that he spoke.
Speaker 6: He became very fluent in German, which of course was
Speaker 6: also spoken by members of his family. So Nathan had
Speaker 6: gone to school. His first school was, you know, just
Speaker 6: your normal local neighborhood school, and then it turned into
Speaker 6: a girls school. But because he only had a year
Speaker 6: or so left to go before he graduated out of
Speaker 6: that school, he and another one or two boys were
Speaker 6: permitted to stay. And, of course, being kids being kids,
Speaker 6: by the time he got to his next school, he
Speaker 6: had a bit of a reputation as that kid who
Speaker 6: went to a girls school. However, he did flourish at school.
Speaker 6: He was very assiduous at his studies. He was an
Speaker 6: outstanding a birdwatcher, an ornithologist at a very young age.
Speaker 6: As we said before, he simply excelled at everything. And
Speaker 6: although the kids still kind of made fun at him,
Speaker 6: fun of him, sorry, as he went through school, it
Speaker 6: sort of became slightly more affectionate as he went more
Speaker 6: intal teasing. Then you know, the cut and thrust of
Speaker 6: purled insults. But Nathan never did really escape the abuse
Speaker 6: that he'd suffered at Sweety's hands, and he himself turned
Speaker 6: that around and in his turn abused a couple of
Speaker 6: boys who were younger than him. So this is basically
Speaker 6: where he was when he graduated and headed off to
Speaker 6: the University of Chicago where he met Richard Globe.
Speaker 3: Now in this is both of these people, as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: are intellectual prodigies, graduating much earlier, but that affects their
Speaker 3: socialization as well. And you say that Nathan developed no
Speaker 3: close friends, where Richard was popular and had a vibrant
Speaker 3: social life. But the police, getting back to this, what
Speaker 3: the evidence that the police have after they searched Nathan's
Speaker 3: home is that they have these very very interesting letters
Speaker 3: that depict a dynamic that the police are very very
Speaker 3: interested as it pertains to the murder, Greg tell us
Speaker 3: about what's contained in these letters and this bizarre relationship.
Speaker 5: Well, the letters were sort of revelatory in the sense
Speaker 5: that they showed several things. They showed that Nathan was
Speaker 5: sort of in charge of the relationship, dictated the terms.
Speaker 5: They also spoke about arguments that the parent had. It
Speaker 5: was clearly a very fraught emotional relationship. But from a
Speaker 5: line in the letter, it also became quite clear to
Speaker 5: the police and anyone who read it that the pair
Speaker 5: were sexually involved with each other, which, of course, once
Speaker 5: that got out and started leaking into the press, with
Speaker 5: the rumors and everything, became quite another issue in the
Speaker 5: court case and the kidnapping and as it played out
Speaker 5: in all of the media. The relationship between I mean
Speaker 5: Nathan and Richard had turned sexual I think when they
Speaker 5: were both about fifteen and they were on their way
Speaker 5: to Richard's parents' country house up in Michigan, and Richard
Speaker 5: had confessed to Nathan that he had broken into stores
Speaker 5: and stolen things, and in turn, Nathan confessed to Richard
Speaker 5: that he was attracted to men, and somehow that dynamic,
Speaker 5: this this shared secrets that they had between them sort
Speaker 5: of drew them together. And this relationship that formed it
Speaker 5: was intense. It was a typical teenage sexual relationship, so
Speaker 5: lots of uncertainty and angst. No one really knows. Richard
Speaker 5: seems to have been sort of asexual. Nathan was really
Speaker 5: the sexual aggressor. He preferred to dominate and he actually
Speaker 5: linked I think in his mind sex and violence. That
Speaker 5: was what aroused him. But Richard was fine and let
Speaker 5: him go along with whatever he wanted to do because
Speaker 5: Richard sort of got this compliant, worshipful friend out of it.
Speaker 3: Now we have to fast forward a little bit here
Speaker 3: because what's happened in this letter and this relationship is
Speaker 3: pretty clear that they had some compact where they would
Speaker 3: commit crimes and then there would be some sexual reward.
Speaker 3: So there was a relationship that was filled with threats,
Speaker 3: and that their relationship had gone through tests, and Nathan
Speaker 3: is a very insecure and dominant character. It would be
Speaker 3: very evident. And so there is this agreement that they
Speaker 3: have and before they do this kidnapping of Bobby Franks,
Speaker 3: they have this agreement to do these other crimes, and
Speaker 3: so there are other crimes once they are charged with
Speaker 3: these that seemed to come up and seem to fit
Speaker 3: these people perfectly. Now at the same time you write
Speaker 3: about their irresponsible behavior right after this, speaking to reporters,
Speaker 3: once Clarence Darrow enters the picture, he says, at least
Speaker 3: for the time being, not to be speaking about this
Speaker 3: case whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Clarence Darrow has a incredible obstacle and dilemma he has
Speaker 3: with all the confessions that these people have done, all
Speaker 3: the things that they've said to police, he has an
Speaker 3: incredible dilemma. What's that dilemma and what is his solution?
Speaker 6: Well, his dilemma is that his clients have essentially fessed
Speaker 6: up to everything. Both of them gave pretty consistent stories,
Speaker 6: with the exception of which was the one that struck
Speaker 6: the final blows to Bobby, but the essential story was
Speaker 6: the same from both Nathan and Richard. So yeah, Darrow's
Speaker 6: dilemma was that they had spoken to the police and
Speaker 6: that they had told the police. The whole story of
Speaker 6: where he went from there was he had to thread
Speaker 6: a very fine needle because he wants wanted to call
Speaker 6: the boys psychology into question without actually having them labeled insane,
Speaker 6: because if they were labeled legally insane, they would have
Speaker 6: had to have had a jury trial, and Darrow wanted
Speaker 6: to avoid a jury trial, believing that, you know, it's
Speaker 6: easier to convince one man than it is to convince twelve.
Speaker 6: That he ought not to sentence his clients to death,
Speaker 6: so he needed to sort of skate along that line
Speaker 6: where his psychology or psychological experts were giving just enough
Speaker 6: information to make it seem like, well, you know, maybe
Speaker 6: something in the boy's past wasn't quite right along the
Speaker 6: lines of what Darrow's philosophy was that it was society
Speaker 6: itself that compelled people to commit crimes. So you know,
Speaker 6: he tried to dance along that line. And obviously in
Speaker 6: the end.
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Speaker 3: Everybody else now? Both Clarence Darrow and through his instruction,
Speaker 3: Richard and Nathan utilized the press in this trial, don't they?
Speaker 3: And with Clarence Darrow, he has already stated in the
Speaker 3: opening argument in his in his opening statements basically what
Speaker 3: he's going to try to do, and he has a
Speaker 3: judge claverly that he is trying to influence in this
Speaker 3: particular case. Tell us a little bit about the dynamics
Speaker 3: between this judge of Clarence Darrow and the prosecutor Crow.
Speaker 5: It was sort of a no nonsense kind of guy.
Speaker 5: He disliked Darrow intensely, mainly because of his judicial philosophy.
Speaker 5: He you know, quite clearly said several points. You know,
Speaker 5: if we listen to what Clarence Darrow said, we'd just
Speaker 5: throw open the doors of the jails, because nobody should
Speaker 5: be in jail. Darrow had really lucked out. And part
Speaker 5: of his decision to forego the jury trial and simply
Speaker 5: move before a judge and have the hearing before a
Speaker 5: judge was that he knew that Judge Cabally was Catholic,
Speaker 5: and he thought that as a Catholic, he would be
Speaker 5: less inclined you find the pair guilty and pronounce the
Speaker 5: death sentence on them, right, and so in court Darrow
Speaker 5: sort of skirted around everything, but he was very theatrical,
Speaker 5: and at times he simply overwhelmed Cavally, who seemed to
Speaker 5: sort of sit up on the bench and kind of
Speaker 5: cower before the famous Darrow.
Speaker 3: Also, Darrow succeeded in humanizing these people, these two boys,
Speaker 3: but also he referred to them as young boys, so
Speaker 3: he wanted to have that as an issue that they
Speaker 3: were so young. To add to this the guilt that
Speaker 3: he tried to instill in the judge if he were
Speaker 3: to hang these young men.
Speaker 5: Right, well, he had his experts, the psychiatric experts for
Speaker 5: the defense as well, talk about these boys. And these
Speaker 5: are you know, learned doctors who are up there talking about,
Speaker 5: you know, this boy who did this and this boy
Speaker 5: who did that. Well, they're eighteen and nineteen at the time.
Speaker 5: They're not kids, and they knew full well what they
Speaker 5: were doing. The psychiatric testimony was quite interesting, and there
Speaker 5: was a very much a battle between the prosecution and
Speaker 5: the defense over the details and what things meant. But
Speaker 5: Darrow was also playing to public opinion, and in that
Speaker 5: he succeeded. The trial, or the sentencing hearing as it
Speaker 5: actually was, was front page news all across Chicago in
Speaker 5: each of the six daily papers, and gradually Daryl managed
Speaker 5: to portray his clients as so emotionally damaged, so immature,
Speaker 5: that they had no capability of determining right from wrong
Speaker 5: when it came to kidnapping and killing Bobby.
Speaker 3: Well, we didn't mention at the same time as this
Speaker 3: is going on, the reaction from the public. You say,
Speaker 3: the very first day, the crowd rips the hinges off
Speaker 3: the courtroom door and then they have to be beaten
Speaker 3: back with nightsticks.
Speaker 5: Right, I mean, it was a sort of frenzy. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 5: had this case taken place today, you would have live
Speaker 5: gabble to gable coverage on court TV or you know, CNN,
Speaker 5: just because of the spectacular nature and you know, the
Speaker 5: prominence and wealth of the defendants. But the crowd really
Speaker 5: wanted to see some aspect of what was going on.
Speaker 5: Whether it was to see these two young men, to
Speaker 5: see with their own eyes do they really look this evil?
Speaker 5: Could they really have done this? Or to get inside
Speaker 5: and just see Darrow when he delivered his remarks, because
Speaker 5: he was so theatrical and so famous for that. So
Speaker 5: I mean there was a you know, rather than sitting
Speaker 5: around in reading it in the next day's newspaper, they
Speaker 5: wanted to see it firsthand.
Speaker 3: Now, a lot of the things that Darrow made motions
Speaker 3: for and argued in court seemed to be accommodated by
Speaker 3: the judge to the displeasure of Da Crow. Certainly they
Speaker 3: have eighty one witnesses. The prosecution and then the defense
Speaker 3: brought these psychiatric witnesses in front of the jury. And
Speaker 3: you said, at that time there was two schools of thought.
Speaker 3: One was that, you know, the organic of origins of
Speaker 3: mental illness school, and then this other one, the Freudian
Speaker 3: Youngian field, a school of thought where everything came down
Speaker 3: to personality disorders and the background. What happens with this
Speaker 3: verdict is depends on this what's now considered this very
Speaker 3: famous closing argument. Now, despite the depiction of this closing
Speaker 3: argument as brilliant, you write what it really It was long.
Speaker 6: It was meandering. Darrow jumped back and forth between subjects
Speaker 6: and emphasies. He he came out and he insulted Bobby
Speaker 6: Franks and the Franks family by suggesting that perhaps Bobby
Speaker 6: never would have amounted to very much in his life anyway,
Speaker 6: so we can't really say that all that much was lost.
Speaker 3: You know, he.
Speaker 6: Really kind of for us anyway, ripped off the you know,
Speaker 6: the mask of having been this masterful lawyer. He just
Speaker 6: seemed like such an opportunist, willing to say and do
Speaker 6: anything to win, and.
Speaker 5: I think the efforts that he went to, he overwhelmed
Speaker 5: the judge with his rhetoric and with his constant motions
Speaker 5: and sort of wore the judge down. But he overtly
Speaker 5: blamed anyone and everyone. He blamed the nannies, he blamed
Speaker 5: the parents, he blamed the schools, he blamed the books
Speaker 5: that Richard and Nathan had read, even blamed the publisher
Speaker 5: who had published the works of Nietzsche that had influenced
Speaker 5: Nathan and said that they were more responsible for Nathan's
Speaker 5: action than Nathan was. So, you know, it was sort
Speaker 5: of really sordid, deep dive into Darrow's philosophy that there
Speaker 5: really was no such thing as personal responsibility.
Speaker 3: He also basically doesn't threaten the judge, but he tries
Speaker 3: to instill guilt in the judge for hanging these boys
Speaker 3: and harps on the death of these boys as again
Speaker 3: insulting that their lives would be more important than Bobby
Speaker 3: Franks and be much more of a tragedy for these
Speaker 3: boys to be executed than Bobby Frank's murder itself.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: He you know, just in his three day closing argument
Speaker 5: really sort of hit home at least our was intended
Speaker 5: to hit home with the judge, and it obviously succeeded. That,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe there's some worth in leopolden Lowe, that
Speaker 5: maybe everything had happened for a reason, and that rather
Speaker 5: than celebrate their execution and their hanging and have that
Speaker 5: media circus, that maybe society would be better off if
Speaker 5: it studied them and tried to determine what had made
Speaker 5: them go wrong.
Speaker 3: The judge makes his decision. He says he will make
Speaker 3: a decision in ten days, after everything is completed, everyone's gathered.
Speaker 3: After that ten days, what is a decision? What does he?
Speaker 3: What's this his statement and reasoning.
Speaker 5: The judge finally delivered his verdict and he found them.
Speaker 5: They had obviously pleaded guilty, so there was nothing to
Speaker 5: that charge that the judge could do. It was up
Speaker 5: to him to determine what the sentence was, whether they
Speaker 5: would receive the death penalty or life in prison, And
Speaker 5: so the judge gave them both sentences of life in prison,
Speaker 5: and each also received an additional sentence of ninety nine
Speaker 5: years tacked onto that for the kidnapping charge. There are
Speaker 5: two different charges of kidnapping in the murder charge and
Speaker 5: the judge, in explaining his decision, said that he thought
Speaker 5: a lot of people in the public would think that
Speaker 5: this was him being soft, But he thought that given
Speaker 5: the defendants wealth and positions, and the fact that they
Speaker 5: were accustomed to luxury, and you know, everything that they
Speaker 5: had ever wanted had been given to them in their life,
Speaker 5: that prison would actually be more of a punishment to
Speaker 5: them than the death penalty would have been.
Speaker 3: And you also write that what he had said was
Speaker 3: that his decision was not part of the past, but
Speaker 3: part of the future trend of all civilized societies. Something
Speaker 3: along those lines of enlightened societies. I think he put
Speaker 3: was the word well.
Speaker 5: Darrow had argued that line of reasoning with Kaberly and
Speaker 5: insisted that the judge could go forward into the past
Speaker 5: where witches were burned at the stake and people were
Speaker 5: stoned to death, or he could move forward into a
Speaker 5: more sympathetic and enlightened age. And that is exactly what
Speaker 5: he argued for, and that's what Caverally gave him.
Speaker 3: Now, this decision rocks Chicago, and so tell us what
Speaker 3: the reaction is from the media and then from the public.
Speaker 3: Before we talk about Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold behind
Speaker 3: bars because the story really takes off.
Speaker 5: Then, well, the reaction was intense. There was an outcry
Speaker 5: in the media against Caberly's decision to spare their lives.
Speaker 5: Everyone had thought that they would probably get the death penalty.
Speaker 5: It had expected that, and so the fact that they
Speaker 5: ended up getting life sentences somehow seemed to suggest us
Speaker 5: that what had happened to Bobby really didn't matter that much,
Speaker 5: that maybe somehow Darrow's fame and money from the Leopold
Speaker 5: and Loeb families had somehow corrupted the justice system. So
Speaker 5: there was a lot of suspicion and a lot of
Speaker 5: outcry at that point.
Speaker 3: Now both the Lob and Leopold are put in prisons,
Speaker 3: but they're separated. Another time they're separated from prisons, but
Speaker 3: then they're reunited. But Lob acts completely differently than Nathan
Speaker 3: Leopold in prison and tell us there was this difference
Speaker 3: between both of their approaches and what happens when they
Speaker 3: both get back together in prison.
Speaker 6: Well, Richard had always been the more social of the two.
Speaker 6: He had always been I think quite superficially, but he
Speaker 6: had been successful in his social life prior to Nathan
Speaker 6: I don't think he necessarily had any deep connections with
Speaker 6: anyone other than Nation Nathan, but he had a lot
Speaker 6: of them, and that translated rather well into prison. For Richard,
Speaker 6: it was just a different group of people he had
Speaker 6: to make friends with in order to get where he
Speaker 6: wanted to be, which was I believe safe because obviously
Speaker 6: they were probably a little scared about going into prison,
Speaker 6: especially once they were separated. But Richard's family was generous
Speaker 6: with his allowance that they were able to put on
Speaker 6: account for him in the prison, so he was able
Speaker 6: to share a lot of that with his cellmates and
Speaker 6: the guys in the cells around him, you know, the cigarettes,
Speaker 6: the candy, the extra food, the little luxuries that they
Speaker 6: were able to buy, and the luxuries they were able
Speaker 6: to convince guards to bring in for him. So yeah,
Speaker 6: he fit in quite well with the petty bribery, the
Speaker 6: petty sort of crime that went on in the prisons
Speaker 6: at that time.
Speaker 5: And I think for Nathan, I mean, Nathan had a
Speaker 5: really hard time adjusting. He was disliked because of his arrogance,
Speaker 5: and he made no attempt to fit in. Ironically, the
Speaker 5: two of them were in separate prisons for a time,
Speaker 5: and then finally in the early nineteen thirties, they ended
Speaker 5: up being transferred both at the same time back to Statesville,
Speaker 5: which was a new prison that the state of Illinois
Speaker 5: had built, and it was there that they came together
Speaker 5: again and really started spending time together for the first
Speaker 5: time since the trial. And I guess the thing that
Speaker 5: they're best known for during that period is that Richard
Speaker 5: founded a correspondent school for inmates that was so successful.
Speaker 5: He and Nathan wrote the curriculum and some of the
Speaker 5: textbooks and todd and graded papers. It soon spread throughout
Speaker 5: the Illinois penal system and actually was an adopted for
Speaker 5: use in other prisons across the country, So it was
Speaker 5: quite successful.
Speaker 3: You write that Nathan realized that role was possible because
Speaker 3: the judge Claverley never specified whether it was concurrent sentence
Speaker 3: in the ninety nine years for kidnapping or was a
Speaker 3: consecutive and so on. In nineteen thirty five, the two
Speaker 3: actually January twenty eighth, nineteen thirty six, Richard had breakfast
Speaker 3: with Nathan. I don't you don't write what was discussed,
Speaker 3: but they had breakfast, but shortly after something happened to
Speaker 3: Richard Lowe tell us what happened.
Speaker 5: Without an hour after that Richard had disappeared. There were
Speaker 5: a series of shower rooms that were attached to the
Speaker 5: offices used for the school, and Richard had gone to
Speaker 5: take a shower. About an hour later he came stumbling
Speaker 5: out naked, his body covered in razor cuts. He was
Speaker 5: bleeding profusely, and he collapsed on the floor. He had
Speaker 5: been attacked by another inmate while he was in the shower,
Speaker 5: and he was rushed to the infirmary. Nathan learned about
Speaker 5: this and also was allowed to rush to the infirmary
Speaker 5: and was with him for the next hour. But Lobe
Speaker 5: had suffered numerous numerous wounds. His throat had been slit
Speaker 5: almost all the way back to this spinal column. It
Speaker 5: was a gigantic, gaping wound. So there was really no
Speaker 5: hope for him, and he died about an hour after
Speaker 5: the attack.
Speaker 3: That person was prosecuted, a man named James Day. But
Speaker 3: you write more importantly. In the coming years, Nathan seized
Speaker 3: the opportunity to remake himself and revise his history, fear
Speaker 3: from fear, free from the fear that Richard would contradict him.
Speaker 3: Now in this quest to revise his history. What does
Speaker 3: he revise, Well, he has.
Speaker 6: The opportunity to put his version of events to the
Speaker 6: four and insist that Richard had indeed been the one
Speaker 6: to strike the fatal blow on Bobby Franks. There was
Speaker 6: no Richard anymore to offer any evidence or any words
Speaker 6: in counter to that. So Nathan at that point going forward,
Speaker 6: was able to steadily build a case for his parole.
Speaker 3: You're right that he adjusts his approach the very first
Speaker 3: parole hearing he has. He after believe it's thirty three years.
Speaker 3: He talks about his attitude changing, but when they ask
Speaker 3: him about a motive, he can't come up with one,
Speaker 3: so he adjusts. He's denied. He's denied again. You talk
Speaker 3: about that that he gets a lawyer and in his
Speaker 3: fight for clemency and finally he is successful.
Speaker 5: Right, he managed to finally give the answers that the
Speaker 5: parole board wanted to hear. They had challenged him on
Speaker 5: several occasions. When asked about the motive, he simply say,
Speaker 5: I can't give you a reason. I don't have a motive.
Speaker 5: It was just a foolish, childish thing, some damn stunt
Speaker 5: that we did. And so that didn't get him free,
Speaker 5: but finally he was able to offer a modicum of
Speaker 5: remorse and said that he had a plan in place
Speaker 5: if he was paroled. He was going to leave the
Speaker 5: country and go work for a church in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 5: And so finally the parole board agreed to let him go.
Speaker 3: And the story would end right there, but due to
Speaker 3: his seemingly psychopathic nature and narcissistic nature. There is a
Speaker 3: book about the case, a fictionalized version called Compulsion I
Speaker 3: believe in nineteen fifty six. It is very successful, and
Speaker 3: Nathan then gets the idea that maybe his autobiography might
Speaker 3: be of interest and be very successful. What happens with
Speaker 3: this whole incident.
Speaker 6: Well, he he had very, very slightly known Meyer Levin
Speaker 6: when they were at school together, and Levin used this
Speaker 6: tenuous connection to write Compulsion, which was an extremely successful
Speaker 6: book and indeed went on to be made into a movie,
Speaker 6: and Nathan took offense. He felt someone was speaking for
Speaker 6: him and he wanted to tell his own story. So
Speaker 6: he embarked on a year's long civil suit against Levin
Speaker 6: and his publisher's over Compulsion, and in the meantime, he
Speaker 6: was writing his own autobiography called Life Plus ninety nine years. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and that book, unfortunately, was not well received, and indeed
Speaker 6: he was seen, as you know, trying to profit off
Speaker 6: of his crime, trying to twist things so that he
Speaker 6: looked better than he actually had been. One thing about
Speaker 6: Nathan was that he always underestimated other people's intelligence, and
Speaker 6: I think in that way, he under estimated the intelligence
Speaker 6: of the reading public, who you know, plainly saw through
Speaker 6: it and saw who he was.
Speaker 5: And I think one of the big problems that he
Speaker 5: faced with the reading public and the media, Nathan absolutely
Speaker 5: refused to discuss the crime. And if you have one
Speaker 5: of the world's most famous criminals who's just been paroled
Speaker 5: and has written his memoirs, you would expect that he
Speaker 5: is at least going to expend some time in the
Speaker 5: book talking about what got him into prison. But Nathan
Speaker 5: was pretty clear from the first page that he found
Speaker 5: the whole subject so distasteful that he didn't want to
Speaker 5: describe it, and so that didn't do wonders for his
Speaker 5: book sales.
Speaker 3: He talked about his wife and that he was in
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico soon after this, but he returned interestingly in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, and he visited Chicago. Where did he
Speaker 3: go visit? Fascinatingly, he went to.
Speaker 6: The cemetery to visit his parents' grace, particularly his mother's grave,
Speaker 6: and that brought him within feet of the Franks tomb.
Speaker 6: He didn't go there, obviously. He also had his friends
Speaker 6: drive him around the old neighborhood and also out to
Speaker 6: where wolf Lake had been to. Of course, it was
Speaker 6: all built up by that time, and he did mention
Speaker 6: to his friends. You know, basically, you'd never know, You
Speaker 6: would never be able to tell where any of this happened.
Speaker 3: I want to when you talk about this book at
Speaker 3: the very beginning, you talk about the origins, the the
Speaker 3: oranges of this story. And editor at Saint Martin's Press
Speaker 3: named Charles Spicer, can you tell us about this event
Speaker 3: that brought you both to the writing of this book.
Speaker 5: When we had finished our last book, sort of the
Speaker 5: processes that you're always discussing ideas for your next book,
Speaker 5: and which is exactly what we're doing right now. Ironically,
Speaker 5: at this time period, we're discussing what the next book
Speaker 5: should be and you always have several options. And when
Speaker 5: we had finished our last book, we talked to Charlie,
Speaker 5: our editor at Saint Martin's and we presented him with
Speaker 5: several ideas, a couple of which he was interested in,
Speaker 5: but happened to mention that the one that we really
Speaker 5: wanted to write was a reassessment of Leopold and Low,
Speaker 5: but that we were kind of holding off on that
Speaker 5: because we thought that it should probably come a little
Speaker 5: bit later to coincide with the one hundredth anniversary of the crime.
Speaker 5: And he suggested, well, that's true, but it's better to
Speaker 5: get your book out. It's better to do it now
Speaker 5: and then you'll be situated and in place and be
Speaker 5: able to talk about it when the anniversary comes, rather
Speaker 5: than hitting at the time of the anniversary.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's a great idea. I want to thank you
Speaker 3: very much for coming on. Penny Wilson and Greg King.
Speaker 3: Nothing but the Night Leopold and Loeb and the Truth
Speaker 3: behind the Murder That Rock nineteen twenties America. Can you
Speaker 3: tell us all this release date and if there is
Speaker 3: a Facebook page, website, social media that you use for
Speaker 3: people that might want to know more about the story.
Speaker 6: Well, the release date is actually today, September twentieth, and
Speaker 6: it is poignantly it's the day after Bobby's birthday. He
Speaker 6: was born on September nineteenth. And as for social media presence,
Speaker 6: it's very light. We are on Facebook, we have King
Speaker 6: and Wilson books on Facebook. But you know, we do
Speaker 6: plan on expanding our social media fairly shortly.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Great King, Penny Wilson. Nothing but
Speaker 3: the Night Leopold and Loeb and the Truth behind the
Speaker 3: Murder that Rock nineteen twenties America. Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for this interview and you have a great evening.
Speaker 6: Good night you too, Dan, Thanks a lot.
Speaker 5: Thanks Dan,