For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (13 page)

At the Leopold house, everyone was talking about the murder when Nathan arrived home. His father was still downtown, working at the office, but Nathan’s brothers were home, reading the newspapers in the living room, devouring the details of the murder, calling out comments to their aunt in the dining room, and speculating on the identity of the killers.

Nathan felt tense and uncomfortable listening to his brothers gossiping about the murder; he felt a slight nausea in his stomach—perhaps it was the tension that had accumulated throughout the day, or perhaps it was the failure of their plan—and he excused himself; he was going out to the corner store for a soda. He would be back in a few minutes.

As he walked along Ellis Avenue, Nathan spotted a familiar figure walking toward him: a young-looking, rather plump man, with a worried expression on his face, so absorbed in his thoughts that he seemed about to walk past, without acknowledging one of his former pupils at the Harvard School. Nathan had recognized his English teacher immediately. He remembered Mott Kirk Mitchell as a rather fussy teacher, too conscientious and well meaning to deal adequately with a classroom of rowdy fifteen-year-olds.
¹¹

“How do you do, Mr. Mitchell?” Nathan inquired sincerely. “I haven’t seen you for a long time; how are you?”
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Mitchell peered at the young man in front of him—who was he? Yes, he recognized him now. Nathan Leopold had been a student at the Harvard School a few years back. Mitchell remembered him as an obnoxious pupil: clever, certainly, one of the best students in the class, but too arrogant and cynical to be likable.

“Have you heard,” Mitchell asked, “about the Franks boy?”

“No,” Nathan replied.

Everyone at the Harvard School, Mitchell explained, was worried at the disappearance of Bobby Franks. There was a rumor going around that someone had kidnapped Bobby, and now there was news that a boy’s body had been found out by the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks near the Indiana state line.

“Do you know him?” Mitchell asked.

Nathan shook his head, “No.”

“Robert Franks?”

“No.”
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Mitchell stayed a few minutes more on the sidewalk, talking about the murder, as Nathan listened. It was inexplicable, Mitchell proclaimed, that someone would murder Bobby Franks—and what effect would it have on the Harvard School? Bobby had disappeared the previous day on his way home after school, not far from where they stood—was any child safe while the murderer was still at large?

Mitchell soon stopped talking; he was in a hurry, he explained. There was to be a meeting of the school staff that evening with the principal; in all likelihood, the Harvard School would be closed tomorrow.

They shook hands. As he made his way across the road, Nathan realized that his nausea had disappeared. In its place, he felt a sudden sense of exhilaration—they had succeeded in a crime that would be the talk of the town!

S
HORTLY AFTER NOON ON THE
following day, Friday, 23 May—just two days after Bobby’s death—Richard stood in the entrance hall at the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity on Ellis Avenue, smoking a cigarette and chatting with friends; he had already had lunch in the dining hall, and now he was killing time, wondering how to spend the afternoon.

He saw Howard Mayer enter and nodded a greeting. Howard was a senior at the university, and, although he had never rushed for the fraternity, he knew many of its members. Richard had heard that the
Chicago American
had hired Howard as a stringer; he detached himself from his group of friends and stepped across the hallway to ask what Howard knew of the murder.

Everyone knew about the killing; everyone knew all the details; but, Mayer realized, Richard seemed almost to have an insider’s knowledge of the case. Mayer listened attentively as Richard talked about the ransom demand. The newspapers had reported that the kidnappers had telephoned Jacob Franks at his home, directing him to go with the ransom to a drugstore on 63rd Street. Was there some reason for Franks to go to a particular drugstore? And what was Franks expected to do once he arrived at 63rd Street?

Could it be, Richard speculated, that the kidnappers had intended to give Franks a second message, perhaps instructing him to hide the ransom somewhere? After all, Richard said, the kidnappers would hardly wish to meet Jacob Franks face-to-face.

“You know these kidnappers would not meet a man on a busy street,” Richard exclaimed, exhaling cigarette smoke as he spoke, “that is common sense.”

Howard Mayer nodded in agreement; clearly there had been some reason for the kidnappers to direct Franks to the drugstore.

“Why don’t you,” Richard continued, without waiting for an answer, “make the rounds of some of these drugstores on East 63rd Street, and see if you can’t find the one at which some word was left for Mr. Franks?”

Despite Richard’s enthusiasm, Mayer hesitated; it seemed a quixotic mission to hazard an afternoon searching out such a faint target; and, anyway, he was already behind on his schoolwork and he had hoped to spend that afternoon studying.

While Mayer hesitated, two others approached them. James Mulroy and Alvin Goldstein were alumni, contemporaries of Richard Loeb during his time at the university; now both were reporters for the
Chicago Daily News
.

As they approached, Richard addressed Mayer a final time, nodding in the direction of Mulroy and Goldstein, “If you won’t take my proposition, why I will put it up to them.”
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What proposition, Mulroy asked? What scheme was Richard cooking up now?

He had the idea, Richard replied, to find the drugstore to which the kidnappers had directed Jacob Franks. There had to have been some reason, he guessed, for Franks to go to 63rd Street.

Would Mulroy and Goldstein care to go down to 63rd Street? It wouldn’t take long to search out the drugstores, Richard pleaded, perhaps only an hour if they went by car.

It was raining outside; they could see a steady drizzle coming down and no sign that the weather would change for the better. But Mulroy and Goldstein were eager, and Mayer, anxious that he might be scooped, abandoned his schoolwork for another day.
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By the time they had reached Blackstone Avenue, the rain was pouring down. They had already scouted out several drugstores along 63rd Street, having worked their way west from Stony Island Avenue, but there was nothing, no clue, to indicate that they had found the kidnappers’ drugstore. Mulroy was discouraged and at Blackstone Avenue he announced that he would wait in the car; if the others wished to continue looking, that was their business, but he was ready to return to the university.
¹⁶

While Alvin Goldstein checked out the cigar store on the other side of the street, Richard and Howard Mayer went together to the Ross drugstore on the corner.

Richard interrogated the porter, James Kemp. Had he received any phone calls yesterday afternoon from someone asking for Mr. Franks?
¹⁷

Yes, Kemp replied; it had been around two-thirty. He had answered the phone himself, while he had been at the back of the store, cleaning up. A man’s voice had been on the other end of the line. “The man asked for Mr. Franks,” Kemp explained to Richard. “I told him I didn’t know Mr. Franks and then he asked me to look around the store. He gave me a very detailed description of Mr. Franks, even to saying that probably he would be smoking a cigarette.” But no one answering the description had been in the store, and the caller had hung up.
¹⁸

Richard turned to Mayer in triumph; his guess had worked out. “You see, I told you we could find it. Now you have got a scoop.”

He stood at the door of the pharmacy; the rain had eased off. Alvin Goldstein stood by the car talking to James Mulroy through the open window. Richard waved at the two reporters excitedly; he shouted for them to come over, “This is the place!”
¹⁹

As they drove back to the university, Mulroy and Richard talked together in the rear of the car. Mulroy had not realized before that Richard Loeb and Bobby Franks had been second cousins. Mulroy was surprised also at Richard’s knowledge of the murder; he seemed to know more about the killing than anyone else Mulroy had met. Mulroy was curious to learn more about Bobby Franks. The principal of the Harvard School had said that Bobby was one of the best students in the school and an excellent athlete—had Bobby been as good as everyone claimed?

Richard replied caustically that he had never had much regard for his fourteen-year-old cousin; he remembered Bobby as an arrogant boy, accustomed to having his own way, spoiled and selfish. “If I was going to murder anybody,” Richard remarked, “he was just the kind of cocky little son-of-a-bitch that I would pick.”
²⁰

Richard’s adventure in leading the journalists to the drugstore had seemed innocuous, inconsequential, at the time. Richard knew, nevertheless, how dangerously he had flirted with the possibility of discovery—one slip, one revelation that he knew too much about Bobby’s death, and he might become a suspect. But, like the killing itself, his flirtation with the reporters excited and aroused him. He could not openly boast, of course, that he was the architect of one of the most sensational crimes in Chicago’s history. But his secret knowledge of the murder was congruent with his self-image as a master criminal. While Mayer and the rest blundered about in confusion and ignorance, he, Richard Loeb, had been able to unveil an important detail. Richard knew how close to the flame he hovered, but it was irresistible; it thrilled him to lead his friends along a dangerous path.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
N
ATHAN WAITED
in his car at the corner of 51st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. The rain had stopped, but the night was cold and chill and a strong wind blew in from Lake Michigan.
²¹

Nathan sat in the dark, waiting for Richard—they planned to dispose of the remaining evidence that night.

He was worried that the police had discovered the corpse so soon. Nathan had expected the hydrochloric acid to have burned away Bobby’s face, but apparently it had not worked—the newspaper reports said only that the face was discolored—and the police had identified Bobby as the victim almost immediately.

And the detectives had also found a pair of eyeglasses near the body! No doubt they had fallen out of his jacket. How could he have been so careless? He should have checked the jacket pockets before going out on Wednesday. If the police were to question him about the eyeglasses, he had an explanation for their discovery near the corpse—he would claim he had dropped them the previous weekend while bird-watching near Hyde Lake—but it was unsettling, nevertheless, to realize that the police now had a clue that could link him to the murder.

Richard finally arrived. He was in a good mood. That afternoon, he recounted to Nathan, he had gone with three journalists—Howard Mayer of the
Chicago American
and Alvin Goldstein and James Mulroy of the
Chicago Daily News
—along 63rd Street, pretending to look for the drugstore and finding it at the last moment, just when they were about to abandon the search!

It was exasperating, Nathan replied, that Richard would behave so foolishly; did he not understand the risk? Their perfect crime, Nathan warned, was already beginning to unravel. Why would Richard behave in such a provocative way? Nathan hit the steering wheel with his open palm for emphasis as he admonished Richard; Nathan reminded him that the police had discovered the eyeglasses near the corpse—had Richard thought how he could explain their presence by the culvert?

Perhaps, Nathan wondered, they should prepare for the worst; perhaps they should create an alibi in case the police did question them in connection with the murder.

Richard agreed—better to be on the safe side. They would say that they had gone out to Lincoln Park on Wednesday in Nathan’s car; that they had been drinking that afternoon; and that, in the evening, they had had dinner before meeting a couple of girls.

This alibi would stick if each vouched for the other. So long as they both held fast to this alibi, they would be safe—but if either one buckled under police pressure, then the other also was doomed. In any case, they would need to use the alibi only if the police apprehended them within a week of the crime. No one could reasonably be expected to remember what he had done on a given day if one week had since gone by.
²²

They had talked for almost an hour; it was already three o’clock in the morning. Nathan lifted the Underwood typewriter—the typewriter used to print the ransom letter—from the backseat of the car and, with a pair of pliers, began twisting and pulling apart the keys. Now, even if the detectives found the typewriter, they could never match it with the ransom letter they had sent to Jacob Franks.

They drove south, down Cottage Grove Avenue, and east along the Midway, out to Jackson Park. On their left, across the North Pond, the Palace of Fine Arts—the sole structure remaining from the Columbian Exposition of 1893—gleamed white in the moonlight; its silent presence was the only witness as Nathan, clutching the typewriter keys in his hand, stepped from the car onto the bridge, and allowed the keys to fall into the water of the lagoon.

At the outer harbor, on the stone bridge, Nathan stopped a second time to dispose of the typewriter; it fell into the harbor with a splash that echoed into the silence of the night.
²³

The automobile blanket—stained brownish red with Bobby’s congealed blood—lay crumpled on the floor of the car. It had been too risky to burn the blanket along with Bobby’s clothes in the basement furnace in Richard’s house; they had to burn it in open air so that the acrid odor of the blood would not attract attention. Nathan knew a spot on South Shore Drive, close by a small copse, far from any buildings, where they could safely burn it. It took only a few minutes to burn and once it had been consumed by the flames, the last piece of evidence had disappeared.
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