Loeb, Leopold Tell How They Lured Boy Into Car, Slew Him
Marked Three Sons of Rich Neighbors and Picked Up Robert by Chance; Victim Killed at Once and Driven to Burial Place as Pair Rejoiced.
Julius Rosenwald's Grandson Picked as Another for Abduction and Ransom—Slayers Plotted Six Months to Commit Crime and Hide Tracks.
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Source: Chicago Daily News, 31 May 1924 , pg. 1.
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Two mentally gifted university students, sons of wealthy Hyde Park families, confessed to kidnaping and murder of 14-year-old Robert Franks today to the last detail of plot and execution.
They are Nathan Leopold, Jr., son of the millionaire president of the Fibre Can company, and Richard Loeb, whose father is a vice-president of Sears, Roebuck & Co.
They kidnaped the Franks boy in Ellis avenue, near his home and there, as the first step in what was to have been a series of similar crimes, conceived for money and "in a spirit of adventure."
With Robert in their car, sitting in the front seat, the kidnapers turned east from 49th street and Ellis avenue and a moment later the one in the back seat, supposedly Leopold, grasped the captive with a hand over his mouth and then swung the steel chisel on his head.
Victim Strangled to Death
The boy moaned. To stifle the sound, according to official quotations from the confessions, a hand was kept over his mouth until a rag could be stuffed in and got blows on the head that caused death.
It was then about 5:30 o'clock. Robert was dead five minutes after he leaft his homeward way to get into the automobile.
Leopold and Leob set about their plans of ruining identification by sprinkling acid in the boy's face and undressing him. They drove out south to hide the clothing and then, about 9:30, went to the swamp. Leopold had a pair of rubber boots. He got out and Loeb handed the dead boy to him.
Elated, Wash Blood Off Car
The young murderers went directly home from their gruesome chore, apparently in a fram of mind more elated at the success of their plans than of horror at what they had done. They washed all the blood they could detect from the rented car, as it stood in the Loeb yard, then went to his room and after a game of casino went to sleep.
Next morning they noticed some blood on the car they had overlooked. They went over it carefully and removed every stain except some smears on the robe that resisted their best efforts. When they returned the car they held out the robe and three days later, Saturday, took it out along the lake shore and tried to burn it.
Those details and all others of preparation, murder and concealment were told freely by the kidnapers once their resistance had been overcome. Evidence dug up by two young reporters for The Daily News, college mates of the suspect, hastened the confessions by revealing flaws in the aliby story. Cornered, discredited, beaten, the murderers told the truth.
Began Plot Last Winter
They planned the crime that baffled all Chicago as long ago as last November, they said. They selected as victims the Franks boy, the grandson of Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and the son of Attorney David Levinson, 5201 Ingleside avenue.
Then they began, with a craft scarcely paralleled in criminal history, to set the stage in such a way that they could operate without danger of detection. To begin with they had the advantage of position. Their parents are friends and social equals of the rich men they had in mind as victims. All are Jews. All live in the same exclusive section of Hyde Park.
Set Up Dual Lives
This advantage they supplemented by establishing fictitious identities, through registries at hotels here and in other towns, bank accounts and the like. All steps in the actual commission of the crime were rehearsed and checked with safety in view.
On Wednesday, May 21, they were ready, with a ransom letter so phrased that it could be delivered to the parents of any one of the three victims they had chosen. They rented a car and set out.
Chance threw the 14-year-old Franks boy in their path. They got him into their car by inviting him to play tennis at Loeb's. Then they killed him.
Coldly Await Ransom
The burial over, they mailed their ransom letter to Franks and sat down to await delivery of the $10,000 they had demanded. They were sure Franks would pay. They even took the first steps, next day, toward collecting by the unexpected discovery of the slain boy's body.
Boys Confident of Safety
They were confident they could not be caught. They had been too careful, too wise. Their confidence endured from that day to this morning. It was so strong that Loeb actually figured in the hunt for the slayer at one stage, helping one of the reporters who was instrumental later in bringing him to justice.
As spectators with neighborly interest, they watched every step of the search, without a moment of worry. And why not? They were beyond suspicion. Leopold's father is president of the Fibre Can company, several times a millionaire. Loeb's father is vice-president of Sears, Roebuck & Co.
And the students had positions of their own--fraternity men, good fellows, "sharks" at their studies. Leopold was a Ph.B. at 18 (a year ago) and a brilliant student of law. Surely they were safe.
But their confidence, their astonishing 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.
Loeb's Spirit Cracks
Lately so cocksure, so flip in the face of questioning, the lads had wilted. Loeb sat slumped in a chair in one room, his face yellow with fear, for they had trapped him. In stammering, gasping sentences, the beginnings of the story were coming from him.
In another room was the brilliant Leopold, ashen, haggard, on the rock. He, too, was "cracking."
Presently they were brought face to face, with a table between them, and their half confessions, each throwing the burden on the other fellow, were read to them. They cursed each other, shouted hysterical charges and denails and threats. Then the cold truth of their fix sobered them. They sat shaken and beaten to dictate jointly their real confession.
State's Attorney Crowe seized the stenographers' notes immediately, locked them in a bank vault and hustled the lads out of sight. His motives weren't explained.
Find Confession Detail Exact
The confession complete, the state's attorney and his men, with detectives as an escort, took the two students out to go over the whole course of plot and crime. In every detail they found corroboration. The confession, unique in that respect, had been an exact statement of what happened. Once they had broken, the students poured out the precise truth about their crime.
Scene Makes Crime History
No comparable scene ever was enacted inside the dingy walls of the Criminal court building, where men and women of all degrees have confessed crimes of all sorts of have withstood triumphantly the efforts of detectives to lead them into guilty admissions.
Pitted against two sharp-witted youths, college trained and worldly wise, were the state's attorney himself and his keenest assistants, and the best detectives of the police force. For twenty-four hours the advantage was all with the suspects. Then unexpected evidence, much of it turned up by two reporters for The Daily News, who were college mates of Loeb and Leopold, disposed of the carfeful alibis the pair had told.
As thei alibis broke down the suspects' assurance vanished. Presently, trapped in lie after lie, they broke down completely and gave up the whole story to their questioners.
Break Nearly at Same Time
"Strange to say, both boys started talking at almost the same time, although they were in different rooms," Mr. Crowe said. "Mr. Sbarbaro and I were questioning Leopold and across the hall Chief Hughes and Mr. Savage were with Loeb."
Stenographers took down the almost unbelievable tale as it fell from the boys' lips. When it had been completed, Leopold and Loeb, according to Mr. Crowe, signed the shorthand notes. Mr. Crowe locked the notes at once in a loop safety vault, but related from them all account of the kidnaping and murder as composed from the two sets of notes.
So elaborate were the kidnaping plans that they took Leopold and Loeb nearly seven months to perfect in their minute details. Not the slightest preparation, they thought, had been overlooked. It was to be the perfect crime and that expected accomplishment, the boys indicated, was to thrill them as much as $10,000 "easy money."
Set Up False Identities
Conceived last November in this spirit of matiching wits with the law, Leopold and Loeb started at once to lay a groundwork. Even before taking up details of the actual kidnaping, they realized that certain preliminaries were necessary against the time when they might be hunted men. Most important, they decided, would be a well-established set of false identities.
Both boys undertook this by registering under assumed names at hotels in Chicago and other Illinois towns. That was done so long before the kidnaping that they were confident of being able, in an emergency, to pose safely in altogether different characters.
The Morrison was one of the hotels used. There Loeb registered as Mordin D. Ballard of Peoria, on May 7. He checked out next day, leaving an unpaid bill of $8.20, and a grip containing four textbooks. The grip and the books were found to-day. Loeb's university library card was in one of the books. The Trenier hotel, at Oakwood and Grand boulevards, was another of the kidnapers' stopping places.
Money Ready for Flight
Along about the same time Leopold went to Peoria and Loeb to Morris, Ill., both opened checking accounts and registered at hotels. The purpose of those excursions was not only to confuse their identities the further, but to provide "getaway" money in case they were forced to flee from Chicago.
No criminal in fiction was more far-seeing or tireless in his preliminaries. That was part of the thrill that came to the two lads in the employment of brains, social standing and wealth to the execution of their crime. With the first steps covered, they truned to consideration of the crime itself and gave it as much care.
Three sons of wealthy Jewish neighbors, Robert Franks among them, were selected as possible victims. A letter, the now famous ransom note of "George Johnson" was typed, sealed in an envelope and stamped for special delivery. That was done several days, perhaps a fortnight, before the kidnaping.
The youths went over every step of the planned crime, from covering their trail by renting an automobile to selecting the dismal, remote spot for hiding the body. All was ready and a week ago Wednesday they went afield in search of a victim.
In the automobile they had chartered under false names Leopold and Loeb cruised along Ellis avenue. The homes of the three boys they had selected were within a few blocks. Any of them might appear in a situation favorable for a swift, silent kidnaping.
Get Boy Into Auto
Robert Franks at that moment walked from the Harvard school playground, where he had been umpiring a baseball game, and started south in Ellis avenue toward his home, three blocks away. He had gone a block or two when the kidnapers' automobile stopped beside the curb.
According to Mr. Crowe's version of the confessions, Loeb, who frequently played tennis with Robert, invited him to hop in and ride to the tennis court.
Five minutes later or in less time Robert Franks lay dead in the automobile, his head battered with the cold chisel wrapped in surgical tape.
Cruised Around with Body
The death car, with the youthful kidnapers, encouraged by the success of their first awful step, and the little neighbor boy crumpled in a heap at their feet, rolled here and there about the south side until "heavy dusk." Then it was swung southward, to the bleak marshland which Nathan Leopold knew step by step from having studied bird life there.
The dead boy, stripped of every stitch of clothing was pushed out of sight in the railway culvert. A short time later his garments had been hidden and the typewriter, the only possible telltale of the ransom letter writer, flung into the Jackson park lagoon.
How They Were to Get Cash
The students' plans for collecting the ransom from the father of their first victim were no less shrewd than their preparations for the crime itself.
Franks, after getting the letter demanding ransom, was instructed to go to a certain drug store in the East 63rd street. In his excitement he forgot the address and didn't go, and a few minutes later learned that his son was dead.
Had he gone there he would have been told by telephone to look in a certain refuse box on the curb near by. There he would have found a letter telling him to bard a designated Michigan Central railroad train at the 63rd street station. Even the coach and the seat in the coach would have been indicated in the letter.
After passing a certain station farther south he would have watched, by instruction, for a designated signboard. At the sight of it his course would have been to open the window and at the next crossing throw his bundle of money from the window.
Leopold and Loeb had planned to be at the crossing in an automobile.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 6 June 1997
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