by Fergus Mason
The Perfect Crime: The Real Life Crime that Inspired Hitchcock’s Rope
Stranger Than Fiction, Volume 5
Fergus Mason
Published by Absolute Crime, 2020.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
THE PERFECT CRIME: THE REAL LIFE CRIME THAT INSPIRED HITCHCOCK’S ROPE
First edition. July 5, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 Fergus Mason.
ISBN: 978-1393618133
Written by Fergus Mason.
The Perfect Crime
The REAL-LIFE Crime That Inspired Hitchcock’s Rope
Stranger Than Fiction Series #5
Fergus Mason
Absolute Crime Press
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA
Copyright © 2020 by Golgotha Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Contents
About Absolute Crime
Introduction: Death of A Schoolboy
Chicago - May 21, 1924
Early Lives
Nathan Leopold
Richard Loeb
University
Enter the Supermen
The Slippery Slope
The Murder of Robert Franks
Cleaning Up
Errors, Suspicions, and Arrests
Overwhelmed By Evidence
The Trial of the Century
Prison
Later Life
Conclusion
Ready for More?
The True Story Behind Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
The True Story Behind Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds
Exposing Jack the Stripper: A Biography of the Worst Serial Killer You've Probably Never Heard Of
The Sapphire Affair: The True Story Behind Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz
The True Story Behind Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man
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Introduction: Death of A Schoolboy
Chicago - May 21, 1924
It was nearly 5:30 and Bobby Franks, walking briskly down Ellis Avenue, was late. He was supposed to be home by five on a school day, but he had a habit of letting the time run away from him. The 14-year-old had been in Dutch with his parents a few times already this year and didn’t want another talking to from his father. Even more, he didn’t want to have to look at the disappointed look on his mother’s face again. They didn’t exactly watch the clock, though, and usually allowed a bit of slack. Nothing would be said if he was home before dinner, he hoped.
Bobby really hadn’t meant to be late, but like he often did he’d joined a pickup baseball game after class. The Harvard School, a private prep school in Chicago’s up market Kenwood district, was popular with local Jewish families. Bobby’s parents were converts to Christian Science, and not all that popular in the neighborhood, but he’d never had any trouble fitting in. It was a good school and the tutors were happy to supervise games after the last bell rang, even on an unseasonably cool day like this, but that didn’t help Bobby’s timekeeping. Still, he lived on the corner of Ellis and 51st and he was nearly at 49th already. He could make it in five minutes.
Just before he reached the junction of 49th he heard a shout, “Hey, Bob!” Turning, he saw a green Willys-Knight tourer at the curb; in the back seat he recognized Dick Loeb, an acquaintance whose family socialized with his own. “Want a ride home?” Loeb called.
Franks thought for a moment. He’d been taught not to take rides from strangers, and although Loeb wasn’t a stranger - Bobby sometimes played tennis with him on the court at his house - wasn’t there something just a little bit creepy about him? Anyway it was only a block and a half to his home and while cool the weather was dry. He shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d just as soon walk.”
Loeb insisted. “Jump in for a minute anyway. I want to ask you about that tennis racket you’ve been using. I’m thinking of getting one for my brother Tommy.”
Well, that seemed harmless enough. Bobby replied, “Sure, I guess,” and walked over to the car. “You know Babe?” Loeb asked, waving a hand towards the driver. “Bobby, this is Nate Leopold. Nate, my good friend Bobby Franks.” Bobby said hi to Leopold, and then climbed into the front seat; Leopold reached over and closed the door. “We’ll just take a turn round the block while we talk, OK?” In front Leopold eased off the clutch and the Willys-Knight pulled away from the curb.
Bobby waited for Loeb to start talking about the racket, but the young man said nothing. He seemed almost expectant, as if he was waiting for something. Bobby felt sudden unease. These guys were creepy sure enough, and maybe he’d been right first time. He remembered some of the rumors at school about how Loeb and a friend - maybe this Leopold - were queer for each other. It might have been better to stay out of the car. Surely they wouldn’t do anything right here in the street, though. Then, as Leopold turned left down 50th, he realized that the curtains were up on the side windows. He barely had time for that to sink in when Loeb calmly leaned forward and clamped a hand over his mouth.
Bobby Franks, numb with disbelief, sat helplessly as Loeb brought his hand up. He waited for whatever came next.
[1]
Early Lives
Nathan Leopold
On November 19, 1904 Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Junior was born in Chicago to a wealthy family of German immigrants. As was normal among the children of the very rich at the time his parents played a small part in his childhood, and much of his upbringing was left to a series of nurses and governesses. The traditionalist Leopold family favored European girls f
or these positions, and the young Leopold and his brothers Samuel and Foreman were raised in an environment where German was routinely spoken. Leopold’s first words, spoken at the age of only four months, were “Nein, nein. Mama.” His nurse at the time, and for the first five years of his life, was Marie Giessler, known as Mimie.
The Nathan Leopold that Mimie looked after was a small child, but it was already becoming clear that he was an exceptional one. Socially inept and physically awkward, Leopold showed well above average intelligence and quickly began to develop a wide range of interests.
When Leopold was five Mimie left the household and was replaced by Pauline Van den Bosch, a devout Christian who began teaching the boy about the saints. Leopold took to the subject with enthusiasm and used his wealthy background to advantage; he would get the family chauffeur to drive him around the neighborhood’s churches looking for information on saints, and then worked on separating them into categories. Van den Bosch also taught Leopold about Jesus Christ and his crucifixion, which fascinated him. He later said, “The idea of nailing somebody to something was very appealing to me.”[1] Van den Bosch only stayed for six months, but her influence had given Leopold new interests and new influences.
In Van den Bosch’s place the Leopolds hired Mathilda Wantz, an immigrant from Alsace who spoke only German. Very different from her devout predecessor, Wantz - who Leopold nicknamed Sweetie - was manipulative and devious. She formed a complex relationship with the boys, and while it is hard to blame Leopold’s later behavior on her influence she certainly didn’t teach him the virtues of honesty. On one occasion she caught him stealing stamps from a cousin. Instead of punishing him or telling his parents she blackmailed him, using her knowledge to get extra days off which Leopold covered up for. She also bathed nude with the boys and wrestled with them as a reward when they behaved well. Finally, when Leopold was twelve and suffering from an illness, his mother caught Wantz dumping him out of his bed and she was dismissed.
Leopold had a difficult school career. He started off at Miss Spade’s, a small private school that had started out co-ed but by the time Leopold got there was almost all female; only one other boy attended. There was a method in this, although it probably counts as madness too; Leopold’s mother had noticed that he had difficulty making friends with girls, and decided that going to a girls’ school would “cure him.” It didn’t. After two years he moved to the Douglas School. This was a public school and his social class made it tough to fit in. The fact that his mother told him not to touch anything or use the bathrooms there probably didn’t help. Nobody else at Douglas lived on the exclusive Michigan Avenue, and none of them were walked to and from school by a governess every day, either. He was bullied by some of the other boys, who terrorized him when Wantz didn’t arrive to walk him home.[2] He had such a bad time there that he returned to Miss Spade’s for the rest of the year.[3]
When Leopold was eight the family moved from Michigan Avenue to the Kenwood district. Their new address was only a block down from the private Harvard School, and Leopold was enrolled there. This got him away from the bullies, but he still wasn’t very popular. His nicknames included “Flea” and “Crazy Bird” as well as the sarcastic “The Great Nathan.”
When Leopold was 17 his mother died of nephritis. As her health had never recovered after giving birth to him he blamed himself, which only made his feelings about women more complicated.
Leopold had several hobbies, and one of them was ornithology. He had a genuine talent for it. With his intelligence and attention to detail the study of birds suited him well, and like most 1920s ornithologists he enthusiastically collected specimens. Modern bird watchers are happy to watch through binoculars and take photos with a telephoto lens; Leopold preferred a shotgun. He built a collection of over 3,000 specimens in his study at home, including many rare species.
Leopold knew - and shot - many birds, but he had a specialist subject, too. That was the Kirtland’s Warbler. Setophaga Kirtlandii is a small brown bird with a yellow breast, which spends the winter in the Bahamas and the summer in a small area of Michigan, and in the 1920s it was declining fast. In fact by the early 1970s it was almost extinct, although numbers are now recovering. The danger to the Warbler wasn’t Nathan Leopold’s shotgun; it’s now known that it was changing climate, which moved the Jack Pine forests whose seeds it depended on for food north. The surviving population was trapped on the Northern Peninsula and people didn’t understand why they were dying out. If anyone did know it was Leopold; by 1923 he probably knew more about Kirtland’s Warbler than anyone else on earth. In October of that year he travelled to Boston to present a paper on the bird to the American Ornithological Society’s annual meeting.[4] It was an astounding achievement for an 18-year-old. For anyone else the respect and attention it gained would have been more than enough, but Leopold now cared more about impressing his college friend Richard Loeb.
Richard Loeb
Richard Albert Loeb was born on June 11, 1905. His parents, like Leopold’s, were wealthy; his father Albert had started out as a lawyer but later became vice president of Sears and Roebuck. Albert and Anna Loeb lived in an elegant mansion in Kenwood and also owned a country estate in Charlevoix. Richard was their third son and eventually they had four. To help them bring up their family they decided, when Richard was five years old, to hire a governess.
The Loeb family had German ancestry but, unlike the Leopolds, weren’t first-generation immigrants. Perhaps this influenced their choice of governess. Where Leopold was brought up by a series of European girls the Loebs settled on a Canadian, Emily Struthers. Both intellectual and strict, Struthers seems to have played a major part in shaping - though perhaps “distorting” would be a better word - Loeb’s personality.
Loeb attended the Lab School, but Struthers gave him extra tuition at home. With this extra help and his natural intelligence he made rapid progress, and ended up skipping several grades; he graduated from University High School, a prep school with close ties to the University of Chicago, at the age of 13. This was a remarkable achievement academically but put him in a difficult position socially. He started at the university in the fall of 1919, still only 14 years old; most of his fellow students were 18 or older.
As well as pushing him on academically Struthers also exerted control over Loeb’s private life. Her motive seems to have been to keep him away from distractions that would interfere with his studies, but both Leopold and Clarence Darrow later wondered if she had helped warp him into the killer he became. The young Loeb was discouraged from playing with boys his own age, and severe limits were placed on how he could enjoy himself. Detective novels were forbidden as frivolous, but Loeb developed a passion for them anyway. He read them in secret and began to build a fantasy life that involved crime. With a childhood friend, Jack Mengal, he started to break more serious rules; the two boys stole a vase from a neighbor’s house.[5] They played poker together and sometimes strip poker; at least once this ended with them wrestling naked on a bed. When he was accepted at university and started hanging out with his fellow students he and Mengal drifted apart; the other boy later ended up in Pontiac Reformatory.
The household gradually became the battleground for a contest between Anna Loeb and Emily Struthers, with the prize being the affections of Richard. Loeb felt that his parents neglected him, although he thought they probably didn’t mean to, and Struthers became ever more influential in his life. The relationship wasn’t an easy one, though. Feeling pressured and restricted both by his parents and Struthers, Loeb started to lie about his activities. Sometimes this was about harmless things - saying he’d been studying in the library when really he’d been playing cards. Sometimes it wasn’t.
When Loeb was nine his brother Thomas was born. This increased the tension in the household. Struthers resented the new arrival and intensified her attempts to influence Richard. Part of this involved further pressure on him to do well. Loeb was clever, but he was expected to be brilliant. Luck
ily for him Struthers’ tutoring and his own intelligence let him get through school with high marks despite not working very hard. When he did have any trouble his popularity let him crib from the other boys. All this changed when he got to university, though. Being so young he found it difficult to relate to his fellow students, and Struthers couldn’t help him as she had before. Although Loeb found a group to hang out with the age gap made things difficult. After his first year, though, another young student started at the university. It was the 15 year old Nathan Leopold.
[2]
University
Leopold wasn’t as far ahead of his peer group as Loeb was, but he still started university two months before his sixteenth birthday. He had already started to hang around with the small group that Loeb associated with, and stayed part of it after beginning his studies in the fall of 1920. At first relations between the two had been cool, and even hostile. Their personalities were very different, Loeb sociable and charming while Leopold was reserved and shy. Over time things thawed, though. There were more commonalities than differences. Both were much younger than the other students, and both were Jewish. They came from wealthy families who lived in the same neighborhood. Initial disdain soon thawed on both sides and by the time Leopold was admitted to university they were friends. The relationship was not an equal one though; the quieter Leopold was mesmerized by Loeb and constantly trying to monopolize his attention. It was an unhealthy situation that contributed greatly to what was to come.
As well as being unequal the relationship had also become sexual. As early as summer 1920 there was a physical element to their association, and they weren’t very good at keeping it secret. A scandal that summer had later repercussions.
