The 1924 murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb shocked the nation. One hundred years later, the killing and its aftermath still reverberate through popular culture and the history of American crime.
Hal Higdon's true crime classic offers an unprecedented examination of the case. Higdon details Leopold and Loeb's journey from privilege and promise to the planning and execution of their monstrous vision of the perfect crime. Drawing on secret testimony, Higdon follows the police investigation through the pair's confessions of guilt and recreates the sensational hearing where Clarence Darrow, the nation's most famous attorney, saved the pair from the death penalty.
In-depth and definitive, Leopold and Loeb tells the dramatic story of a notorious crime and its long afterlife in the American imagination.
|Preface to the Centenary Edition 7Prologue 9
Part One: THIS CURIOUS COMING TOGETHER 11
1. Burglary 13
2. Chicago 16
3. Wednesday 29
4. Ransom 39
5. Hunt 48
6. Clues 56
7. Leads 64
8. Alibis 76
9. Interrogation 86
10. Confession 95
Part Two: THE MILLION-DOLLAR DEFENSE 113
11. Anguish 115
12. Evidence 125
13. Condemnation 133
14. Examinations 142
15. Plea 160
16. Prosecution 169
17. Mitigation 188
18. Alienists 206
19. Showdown 232
20. ABCD 249
21. Judgment 261
Part Three: NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT 271
22. Joliet 273
23. Life 282
24. Death 289
25. Light 304
26. Compulsion 321
27. Atonement 332
Epilogue 341
Acknowledgments 345
Notes 350
Bibliography 369
Index 371
|"Higdon's book outdoes anything Alfred Hitchcock ever filmed. It is a masterpiece of suspense."—Oakland Tribune
"There have been many spectacular murders in America since 1924, including a presidential assassination, but for the first half of the century, it was the murder of Bobby Franks that most shocked the public. Hal Higdon has superbly re-created the crime, combining painstaking documentation with an absorbing, often suspenseful narrative."—Newsday
|Hal Higdon is a longtime contributing editor to Runner's World. He is the author of thirty-six books, including The Union vs. Dr. Mudd and Boston, a Century of Running.