Freud, Murder, and Fame: Lessons in Psychology’s Fascinating History

by Todd C. Riniolo

  The Perpetrators and the Victim

  Let me introduce the two perpetrators of the crime, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, and the victim, Robert Franks. Nathan Leopold was 19 at the time of the murder, and was given the nickname “Babe” from early childhood. He would be called “Babe” by the defense lawyers during the trial in an attempt to humanize him. Nathan “Babe” was from a German Jewish family who lived in the extremely affluent Hyde Park area in Chicago. Leopold’s father was a millionaire box manufacturer and head of Large Lake shipping. Nathan Leopold was by all accounts brilliant; with an IQ so high it could not be accurately recorded (his IQ was estimated between 210-220). Nathan obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago at 18. He was attending Law School at the University of Chicago and was going to transfer to Harvard Law School for the upcoming semester. Nathan had a great interest in ornithology as he was an avid bird watcher, and even presented his study of the rare Kirtland Warbler at the American Ornithological Society and published his findings in a professional journal (video footage of Leopold hand-feeding the rare bird exists, and is shown in the History Channel’s “Born Killers”). On a personal level, Leopold was socially awkward. He was perceived by others as being aloof, had trouble making friends, and was viewed as relatively unattractive. While Leopold possessed a superior intellect for his age, he was socially ill at ease.

  Richard Loeb, who was 18 at the time of the murder, was called affectionately “Dickie” by family and friends and also by the defense lawyers during the trial. Richard Loeb was from an even more affluent German Jewish family who also lived in the Hyde Park area in Chicago. Loeb’s father was vice-president of Sears, Roebuck and Company. Loeb, to a lesser degree than Leopold, was also intellectually very gifted (IQ of 160). He had been the youngest to ever graduate from the University of Michigan at age 17. He was in a special program for brilliant students at the University of Chicago in 1924. On a personal level, Richard was extremely charming, had an easy time making friends, was very handsome, and was by all accounts loved by girls. Strangely, after it was known that “Dickie” was one of the murderers, “giddy” schoolgirls flocked to the courthouse in an attempt to see him (McKernan, 1924). (Equally strange, the handsome serial killer Ted Bundy did not meet and marry his wife until he was convicted of brutally murdering many young women; Bundy was ultimately executed. Why these handsome killers are attractive to others is an interesting psychological question to which I will not even attempt to provide an answer, but other examples of this bizarre phenomenon exist.)

  Robert (Bobby) Franks was a 14-year-old boy who also lived in the Hyde Park area and attended the exclusive Harvard School in Chicago. The Franks, Leopold, and Loeb families all lived within walking distance of each other, and were on friendly social terms. In fact, Bobby Franks was a distant cousin of Richard Loeb, and Bobby and Richard had even played tennis together on the Loeb family courts. Bobby’s father, Jacob, created a fortune from his dealings in real-estate and money lending. Jacob Franks, who loaned money to all (e.g., rich, poor, gamblers, beggers) for 95 cents on the dollar, earned the nickname “Honest Jake” for his business practices. The social status of the perpetrators and the victim was important for initially capturing public attention. If this crime had been committed by two individuals with a long history of criminal activity and the victim had been a boy from the poorer side of Chicago, this crime would more than likely have simply been another story that may at best have received a small blurb in the back pages of the local newspapers.

  The Chronology of Events

  On May 21, 1924, Robert Franks had not returned home for dinner, which was very unusual as he typically followed a regular schedule. As it became later in the day, the Franks family became worried and went around the neighborhood to determine if they could locate their son. Family members learned that Bobby had been at the playground of the Harvard School umpiring a baseball game earlier in the day. He was last seen in front of the school walking in the direction of his house. The Franks family was becoming increasingly worried and they even checked inside the Harvard School to ensure that Bobby had not been accidently locked inside (Theodore, 2007). At about 10:30pm Bobby’s mother answered the telephone. A man who identified himself as “George Johnson” told Mrs. Franks that her son had been kidnapped but was safe. The family waited for further instructions, which arrived in a special delivery letter mailed from the Hyde Park post office the next morning. This letter, which was subsequently published in many newspapers a few days later, was as follows (cited in Sellers, 1926, pp. 12-13):

  Dear Sir:

  As you no doubt know by this time your son has been kidnapped. Allow us to assure you that he is at present well and safe. You need not fear any physical harm for him providing you live up carefully to the following instructions and such others as you will receive by future communications. Should you, however, disobey any of our instructions, even slightly, his death will be the penalty.

  1. For obvious reasons make absolutely no attempt to communicate with either the police authorities or any private agency. Should you already have communicated with the police, allow them to continue their investigations, but do not mention this letter.

  2. Secure before noon today $10,000. This money must be composed entirely of old bills of the following denominations: $2,000 in $20 bills, $8,000 in $50 bills. The money must be old. Any attempt to include new or marked bills will render the entire venture futile. The money should be placed in a large cigar box or, if such is impossible, in a heavy cardboard box securely closed and wrapped in white paper. The wrapping paper should be sealed and all openings with sealing wax.

  3. Have the money thus prepared as directed above and remain home after one o’clock P.M. See that the telephone is not in use. You will receive a future communication instructing you as to your future course. As a final word of warning, this is a strictly commercial proposition, and we are prepared to put our threats into execution should we have reasonable ground to believe that you have committed an infraction of the above instructions. However, should you carefully follow out our instructions to the letter, we can assure you that your son will be safely returned to you within six hours of our receipt of the money.

  Yours Truly,

  George Johnson.

  Bobby’s father did as the letter instructed, as he feared for his son if he disobeyed the kidnapper’s instructions. The call finally came that evening, as Jacob Franks was instructed that a taxi would arrive and take him to a drugstore on 63rd street. A second phone call came, but this time it was the police informing the Franks family that a body of a boy had been found by some workmen just south of Chicago in a marshy area. The body, which was found in the open end of a culvert, was naked and had hydrochloric acid poured over the face and body. The coroner would conclude that death occurred from strangulation and blows to the head from some type of dull instrument. Near the dead child was a pair of glasses, so the Franks family believed this was unlikely Bobby as he did not wear glasses. To check just in case, an uncle went to identify the body. Just before Bobby’s father was to leave to follow George Johnson’s instructions, the uncle called to inform the family of the horrible news.

  If Bobby’s body had not been found, the kidnappers had planned to call Jacob Franks at the drugstore and instruct him to board a specific train. Ultimately, he would have received additional instructions. As Leopold would recall in his statement to authorities, Mr. Franks would have been instructed to go on the rear platform of a specific train. Immediately after he passed a brick factory with a water tower with the word “Champion” on it, Jacob Franks was to count to three or four and throw the package eastward as far as he could. Leopold and Loeb had planned on being nearby the location when the package was thrown from the train. A picture of the George Johnson instructions is available at the at the Chicago History Museum’s website (http://chsmedia.org/media/dn/07/0772/DN-0077257.jpg).

  Initial Public Fascination

  From the very b
eginning of the case, the city of Chicago was enthralled with the mystery of who killed Robert Franks, which quickly spread to the rest of the country. This story was not like previous kidnapping stories in which the paying of the ransom might result in the child being safely returned. Here, the Franks child was murdered prior to the kidnapper(s) receiving the ransom, which made the murder a truly senseless crime. The newspapers, which possessed a tabloid mentality at the time, vigorously and sensationally covered and reported every detail. The crime “was a perfect fit for the tabloid mentality that was Roaring Twenties’ journalism” (Theodore, 2007, p. 52). To keep the story alive, the media attention was not just about one murdered boy, but needed a larger theme to captivate public attention and ultimately sell more newspapers. As historian Paula Fass (1993, p. 921) points out, as the story began to unfold, “the papers invested it with meaning and significance by linking it to widespread concerns about childhood and youth.” The story of Bobby Franks initially had significance for the American public because if a child from such a prominent family living in an exclusive neighborhood could be taken off the street and murdered for no apparent reason, nobody’s child was safe. During this time, virtually everyone “turned detective.” Particularly noteworthy was that Richard Loeb was willing to talk with just about anyone who would listen and offer his insights on the murder of Robert Franks, especially newspaper reporters and the authorities. In contrast, Leopold kept a low profile.

  On Monday, May 26, 1924, the Chicago Herald and Examiner engaged its readership by offering a prize for the best theory about the murder. The Chicago paper received entries from 40 states, and had announced that it received 3,000 entries in the first three days of the contest (Higdon, 1999).

  During the early portion of the case, information led detectives to two teachers from the Harvard School where Robert Franks was a student and had last been seen. The teachers were held and questioned by the authorities for almost a week. The teachers were strongly pressured to confess. The teachers were ultimately released from custody by a judge’s order when the police did not have enough hard evidence to formally charge them with the crime. One of the teachers subsequently won a lawsuit against the city for the treatment he received while in custody.

  Solving the Case

  A break in the case occurred nine days after the murder of Bobby Franks due to some diligent detective work, and a remarkable bit of luck. Remember that a pair of glasses had been found close to where Bobby’s body was found? The horn rimmed glasses had a frame spring that was recently patented. These frames were sold by just one optical store in Chicago, Almer and Coe. Only 3 pair of glasses with those frames had been sold, and the other two pairs were accounted for. The remaining pair belonged to Nathan Leopold, who had purchased the glasses 3 months previously but had stopped wearing them. Leopold was asked to explain if the glasses were his, why they would be in the marsh where the Franks boy’s body was found. Leopold was sure his glasses were at home, but a search of his house failed to locate them. While the authorities would later learn that the glasses fell out of Leopold’s jacket pocket when disposing of the body in the culvert, he gave the State’s Attorney a plausible story that he likely lost the glasses when bird watching, as he had been to that area many times (a picture of the glasses is widely available on the internet).

  When asked where he was during the day of the murder, Leopold gave the authorities a statement which he and Loeb had concocted to provide each other with an alibi just in case they were ever questioned. McKernan (1924, p. 18) writes that Nathan Leopold said that he and Richard Loeb “had spent the afternoon, after luncheon in the loop, studying birds in Lincoln Park and drinking gin—drinking too much gin to go home for dinner. They went to the Cocoanut Grove, on Sixty-third Street, for dinner, and after dinner driving in Nathan’s maroon Willys-Knight car up and down Sixty-third Street, looking for some girls with nothing to do. They found the girls, Nathan said, and took them out to the wooded island in Jackson Park. The girls, however, did not agree with the boys on methods of spending the evening, and so they were told to get out and walk home, so the boys drove home alone. That was their story. Later Richard told it, too. Not a flaw—both told the same plausible story—simply, willingly and smilingly.”

  At this point, the authorities did not believe it likely that such nice young men, from such good families, were involved in such a heinous crime. The treatment that Leopold and Loeb received during questioning, compared with the previously mentioned teachers who were being pressured to confess, was substantially different. Little did the authorities know at the time that Leopold and Loeb had been committing smaller crimes, such as robbing Loeb’s fraternity, prior to the murder of Bobby Franks. Yet the authorities kept digging for evidence, which subsequently resulted in the evidence pointing directly at the two “nice” young men. The letter sent to the Franks family from Mr. Johnson was written on an Underwood typewriter. James Mulroy, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, learned that Leopold had been preparing for examinations with four other students during the previous winter, and outlines had been typed using Leopold’s typewriter. After testing, there was no doubt that the same typewriter that had written the ransom note had also typed the outlines. Leopold denied ever owning an Underwood typewriter.

  Another crack in their alibi occurred when the Loeb family chauffer, Sven Englund, told the authorities that Nathan’s car had not been taken out the day of the murder. He remembered because he had made repairs and cleaned the car that day. As the evidence began to mount, Loeb subsequently crumpled and confessed that he and Leopold had murdered Bobby Franks. Once Leopold heard Loeb was talking, he confessed as well. Both told essentially the same story, with one major difference. Both accused the other of ultimately committing the murder. The confessions indicated that Leopold and Loeb had killed “because they wanted the excitement of committing a perfect, detection-defying crime” (McKernan, 1924, p. 22). The pair had been meticulously planning the “perfect crime” for months. For example, on the day of the murder, they had rented a car, but had previously rented a car as a dry run. Every aspect of the murder was planned, from the George Johnson letter to the hydrochloric acid on the body, with the one exception of who would be the victim, which was a random selection on the day of the murder.

  Prior to the identification of the murderers (the newspapers reported that Leopold and Loeb confessed on May 31, 1924), this case had sparked substantial public interest around the “no child was safe” storyline. Public interest became even more intense because of the nature of the crime which was a random and senseless thrill killing (just for the fun of it), as well as the backgrounds of the killers (two bright, affluent young men from well-respected and prominent families). As Geis and Bienen (1998, p. 16) nicely summarize, “The absence of a sensible motive for the killing of Bobby Franks, the stunning intellectual abilities of the killers, the great wealth and high social standing of their families, and their “different” (that is, Jewish) cultural heritage contributed to the most intense public attention ever to be focused on a murder in the United States.” The presence of the most famous criminal defense lawyer in the history of the United States, Clarence Darrow, also added to the public attention of the case.

  The Legal Figures

  At this point, let me introduce the important legal figures in the case. Let’s start with the defense lawyers, who would be commonly called “the million dollar defense” not only because of their high profiles, but because of the wealth of the defendants’ families. The lead attorney defending Leopold and Loeb was the just mentioned Clarence Darrow. Darrow, who was 67 at the time of the trial, had been connected with many famous trials in his long and distinguished career. Darrow was, at the time of the trial, a “superstar” and is still today widely recognized as the most famous defense attorney of the 20th century.

  Darrow had a mechanistic philosophy of life, which viewed man as having no free will, but that human actions are ultimately determined by genetics, biology, and
the environment. For Darrow, while Leopold and Loeb had committed the crime, the responsibility for the murder of Robert Franks was ultimately beyond their control (Riniolo, 2002). While Darrow fought for many causes over the course of his career, he was a most outspoken critic of the death penalty. As Darrow (1932, p. 232) would write in his autobiography, The Story of My Life, “No client of mine had ever been put to death, and I felt that it would almost, if not quite, kill me if it should ever happen.” The summer after the Leopold and Loeb trial, Darrow would be the lead defense attorney for John Scopes in the famous Scopes Monkey Trials. There is not a defense attorney with as high a public profile today that I could give the reader as a contemporary equivalent.

  The other two important defense attorneys were the Bachrach brothers (Benjamin and Walter), who were cousins of Richard Loeb. Benjamin had a distinguished career as a defense attorney prior to this case, as he had argued and won before the United States Supreme Court. Benjamin Bachrach even defended world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson in 1913. Walter Bachrach was also part of the defense team, and he was one of the intellectuals who had become interested in Freud’s theories over the years. As pointed out by McKernan (1924, p. 212), Walter had for more than ten years been making “an intensive study of modern psychology, including abnormal psychology and psychiatry, and therefore is familiar with the remarkable progress of modern psychiatry. In 1921 Mr. Bachrach, with others, sponsored a visit to Chicago, of some two and a half months’ duration, by Dr. Wilhelm Stekel (the internationally distinguished Viennese psychiatrist and colleague of Dr. Freud), who, by his lectures and treatments in Chicago, endeavored to make known to Americans the extraordinary progress in therapeutic methods and results obtained by renowned German and Austrian psychiatrists.” Walter was undergoing his own personal analysis, and his interest in Freudian psychoanalysis will become important as the story unfolds because he ultimately secures Freudians to testify as expert witnesses for the defense.