Most Famous Murder Case You've Never Heard Of by Matt Fuerst
For February 21st, 2003
The Story of the Loeb Leopold Murder Trial, One You Already Know a Lot About and Didn't Even Know You Did
You've most likely seen a movie that has some basis on the facts of the Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold murder case, but I bet you've never heard of Loeb and Leopold. In 1924, Loeb and Leopold were pair of brilliant young men in Chicago, Illinois. Richard Loeb was the son of a retired Vice President of Sears. Along with being, at the time, the youngest person to ever graduate from the highly esteemed University of Michigan, he was an avid reader of crime novels. His friend, and homosexual partner, Nathan Leopold was a student at the University of Chicago and planned on attending Harvard Law School to complete his training to become a lawyer. During their relationship, they often theorized about how easy it would be to randomly kill a person and get away with it. Well, eventually they decided to enact their plan, based solely on the theory that they were the elite of society, had the brains to get away with it, so they were morally allowed to do so. They crafted their plan and selected Bobby Franks, 13, whose parents were prominent members of the well-to-do crowd.
Loeb and Leopold on trial for murder and kidnapping
In the end, their crime wasn't nearly as foolproof as they thought, and both were caught by the Chicago Police. The key evidence was a pair of glasses found near the crime scene. Only four people fit the exact frames and lenses prescription of the set of glasses. One of the four was Nathan Leopold, Jr. The thread was quickly unraveling. Without too much difficulty, the police managed to break through the pairs alibi, and Loeb was the first to confess. Leopold followed when learning Loeb coughed up the goods. The trail went by quickly and both were sentenced to life for the murder of Bobby Franks and the judge threw a 99 year sentence on top for the kidnapping in hopes of ensuring that neither would ever be paroled.
This basic outline has been adapted many times. Initially a playwright named Patrick Hamilton wrote a play called Rope that had a strikingly similar plot to Loeb and Leopold's actions. You may be much more familiar with the movie adaptation of Rope, as filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1948. Rope, the movie, is probably most famous for Hitch's decision to try to maintain the continuity of the play as much as possible by filming the movie in one long, continuous take (actually several takes spliced together due to the maximum length of film they could load into the camera being about 8 minutes worth of shooting). Hitchcock himself was never shy about flirting with sexuality in his movies, and the homoeroticism in Rope can't even be classified as an undertone, since it is so prevalent right on the surface.
Orson Welles in Compulsion
In 1959 Richard Fleischer adapted the Leopold-Loeb case in his film Compulsion. Starring Orson Welles this film treaded into similar areas as Rope. Instead of attempting to show a narrative of the events of the murder, Compulsion instead moved the clock forwarded and played out the events using the trial of the murderers. Another angle of the same story. Fleischer based his movie on the novel of Meyer Levin of the same name. In 1959, Leopold actually filed suit against the producers of the movie Compulsion (from jail) trying to block the production of the movie. His suit was dismissed and the movie continued on.
The Independent film Swoon
1991 brought out Swoon which focused on the relationship between Loeb and Leopold. It is filmed in Black and White and didn't receive a real wide release and is fairly difficult to find out there in the wild. I happened to come across it about 5 minutes into the story one day on the Independent Film Channel. I was unaware of what it was or what the storyline was based upon but after a few moments of watching I began to get the trend and picked up that it was another adaptation of the Loeb-Leopold theme. A good deal of Loeb and Leopolds time in prison is touched upon in Swoon. Definitely worth checking out.
The latest and greatest adaptation was brought to us by an unlikely candidate as Sandra Bullock. Murder By Numbers involves two boys that kill for the thrill of it and flirt with the law after their crime is done.
While the theme of crime for the sake of crime is a fairly broad one and one we could fit many movies into, keep in mind the Loeb-Leopold case next time you sit down at a crime thriller and see if you can pick out some inspiration from a real life crime.
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