TELECOM Digest Editor Noted in response to Regular Reader:
Just for the sake of accuracy: Nineteen year old Leopold and eighteen year old Loeb did not molest Robert Franks. Franks was killed almost immediately when he got in the car. This myth about molestation came about because the killers tried to disguise the body by pouring acid on the face and genitals (Franks, like his killers, was Jewish).
The Sears-Roebuck connection is with Richard Loeb; his father was a Vice-President of that company.
There was no million dollar ransom. A million dollars was the reported fee Clarence Darrow asked for to defend them in court. Leopold and Loeb's ransom note, to Robert's father Jacob Franks, demanded $50,000.
Richard Loeb was killed in January 1936, slashed 58 times by an ex-cellmate who claimed he was defending himself against Loeb's advances. Not bloody likely. Loeb's throat was cut ear to ear and his hands and arms were slashed to ribbons in an effort to defend himself. The cellmate didn't have even a scratch on him.
The "homosexual advances" story was considered ridiculous by everyone who had any knowledge of the two men, including the warden (who was not allowed to testify); a homophobic jury nonetheless acquitted Loeb's killer. James Day killed Loeb because Day was convinced Loeb had access to unlimited money from his family and he demanded that Loeb support him. The two had been arguing for weeks over Day's demands for money.
James Day was a known predator. He was later caught sodomizing another prisoner and was punished for it. That's part of the record, too.
Anyone interested in the case should read the Hal Higdon book.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Another book of interest on this case was written about 1956 called 'Compulsion' if you recall it. I think what you refer to as the 'myth about the molestation' came about because the men chose to strip the boy's body naked and attempt to deface the boy's genitals; this is not a 'normal act' in a 'heterosexual murder' at least. Bobbie Franks knew the killers quite well; he went with them willingly when they offered him a ride home from Chicago Normal School, where he was a teenage student. He had known them for years.They had worked up quite an elaborate scheme regards the ransom money, including a telephone call to the Walgreen's Drug Store pay phone on
63rd Street and Drexel where Mr. Franks had been told to wait for their call; the call was timed in such a way that Mr. Franks would have only a few minutes to take the sack of money and race to the Illinois Central station at 63rd Street and board the South Shore train to Michigan City which was due to come through five or ten minutes after the phone call was received. On boarding the South Shore train he was to look for a note hidden in the box of (blank) telegraph forms for a note which instructed him to toss the bag of money off the train into a wooded area near the Champion Tire Company from where the guys would retreive it a few minutes later. The whole scheme fell apart when Nathan Leopold lost his eye-glasses at the scene of the crime; the body was found in the sewer by workmen trying to otherwise repair it. The eye-glasses were traced back to him by the optician who had originally built them for him.Clarence Darrow based his appeal for their lives partly on his claim that both guys were insane. Apparently after killing the boy, they left his body in the back seat of their 'Model T' automobile and drove around looking for a place to eat lunch; they finally agreed on some restaurant on Indianapolis Boulevard in Whiting; stopped, got out to get food then got back in and argued about where they should dump the body. Darrow noted that "at that time of day, the evening rush hour, hundreds of machines on the roadway at the same time; accidents are very common; had there been an accident with their machine the police would have been involved, it would have all been over for them; yet they wanted to stop right there and eat their meal before they took the body on for disposal. I defy you to tell me they are not insane for acting like that." PAT]