Leopold and Loeb | The Prodigies | 1

It's the evening of May 21st, 1924 in Kenwood, Chicago. Inside a large yellow brick house at 5052 Ellis Avenue, the Franks family is waiting to sit down to dinner.

But Flora Franks doesn't want to begin the meal until her youngest son, 14-year-old Bobby, gets home. He usually meets with friends to play baseball after school, so they weren't expecting him as soon as classes let out for the day.

But it's been hours since then and there's still no sign of him. Flora is in the sitting room at the front of their home, perched on a chair facing the street. In the hallway, she can hear her husband, Jacob, pacing.

Part of her wishes that he tell her there's nothing to worry about, that she's being silly staring out the window like this. But Flora knows he's just as frightened as she is. By 6.30, the quiet tension in the house has given way to outright panic.

It's not like Bobby to stay out without at least phoning to let them know he'll be late. His older brother, Jack, suggests that maybe Bobby's been playing tennis across the road and simply lost track of time. He does love tennis after all.

That's as good a lead as any. So Jacob heads out to check the backyard of their neighbors, the Loebs. Bobby sometimes hits the ball around with them.

When Jacob comes back to report that there was no one in the Loeb's backyard, Flora's already at the telephone. A list of names on a piece of paper in her lap.

She's calling the homes of Bobby's classmates, asking the boys if any of them have seen her son. All she learns is that Bobby was umpire at today's baseball game and that he left before the game was done.

That news sends a fresh chill down Flora's spine. If he left so long ago, there's no reasonable explanation for why her son isn't home already. A little after 7 o'clock, the family finally sits down to dinner, but Flora can hardly eat a thing.

The few bites she manages all taste like sawdust. The rest of the Franks get through the meal, but it's quiet.

Once the maid clears the plates away, Jacob leaves the table to call a friend of the family who's a prominent attorney and former state senator. Samuel Edelson arrives at the home soon after to offer whatever support he can.

When someone suggests that maybe Bobby went back to school for some reason and got locked in, Flora feels hope flicker inside her chest. That must be it. She turns to her husband's eyes shining.

She doesn't have to say anything to him. He's already putting on his hat and coat halfway out the door with Samuel. When the men are gone, Flora returns to her chair in the sitting room to watch and wait.

It's only been about 15 minutes when the phone rings. Flora turns to stare at the telephone on its table in the foyer. Part of her mind is screaming at her to answer, to hear whatever the caller has to say.

But another part of her is paralyzed with fear. What if it's not good news? What if it's the worst?

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal. By late May 1924, Chicago had seen almost as many murders as it had days that year.

But even in a town practically run by violent gangsters, the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Franks stood out. For starters, Bobby was just 14 years old.

Plus, he was a bright student at a Southside prep school, and he came from a wealthy white family. In the public's mind, boys like that just shouldn't be murdered.

So even before his killers were unmasked, Bobby's shocking fate had been seized on and picked over by the local press. Here was a story people could sink their teeth into.

When the truth about the crime was revealed, it only served to ratchet up interest in the boy's case. That's because the culprits were also young men from wealthy families.

Boys who had graduated high school early and completed college years before others their age. Everyone could see that Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb had bright futures ahead of them. Or they did.

But instead of making the most of all the advantages life had handed them, these two unlikely friends had set out to commit what they called the perfect crime. Only despite their intellects, almost nothing had gone the way they planned it.

And once they were cornered, all of Chicago was screaming for their blood. This is episode one in our four-part series on Leopold and Loeb, The Prodigies. It's an April evening in 1905, in a large family home on the south side of Chicago.

The house is full of all the tasteful trappings of wealth, fine furniture, enviable artwork, and hired help. 35-year-old Florence Leopold is in the nursery, singing her son a lullaby when it happens. Little Nathan speaks.

At least that's what it sounds like to Florence. Her son is just four months and three weeks old, but she's sure she just heard him say his first words. To her, it sounded like he said, no, no, mama, in German.

The German part makes sense. Both sides of the Leopold family are German by descent. A baby speaking at four months old though, that's incredible.

Of course, Florence already thinks her son is the most special child in the world. Every mother does. But this is astonishing.

Hands trembling, she picks Nathan up and carries him downstairs to her husband's study to tell him what's just happened. Their child is a prodigy, she says to Nathan Senior. Their son is a genius.

Just how much truth there is to the story of Nathan Leopold's first words is debatable, but it's clear from an early age that he's precociously smart. Even still, as the youngest child, his family all call him babe.

That family, the Leopold's, is a wealthy one. Nathan Senior and Florence both descend from successful German Jewish immigrants. He's a businessman, she's an affectionate and popular woman who loves doing charity work.

But money and a giving nature can't guarantee them a perfect life. Nathan Junior, though clearly bright, isn't the healthiest child. He has problems with his thyroid and his blood vessels.

And the doctors who examine him tell the Leopold's that he probably won't live to see old age. It's a startling thing to hear for his parents. But they do their best not to focus on how short their son's life might be.

They just feel lucky to be raising such a gifted child. They'll later tell people that at just three years old, Babe composes his first prayer.

Florence is proud of her son's incredible progress, but she's not able to care for him as well as she'd like to. She experienced several miscarriages before getting pregnant with Nathan, so she stayed in bed while she carried him to term.

Ever since then, she's been sick with nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys, and hardly ever leaves her room. So, for most of his childhood, Nathan's in the care of a series of governesses.

Until the age of five, he's looked after by Mimi, a woman who doesn't speak English, hence Nathan's earliest words being in German.

After Mimi leaves, a young Irish Catholic woman lives with the family for six months, and she teaches babe all about the saints.

Growing up in a Jewish household, these stories fascinate him, and he develops an interest in religion and the notion that there are many different conceptions of God. He's also particularly drawn to the story of the crucifixion.

The thought of someone being made to suffer, and especially of a person being nailed to something, greatly appeals to him. As he grows up, he'll sketch crucifixions and notebooks, imagining what it might look like, how it would feel.

Around the same time that he's learning about religion, Nathan takes an interest in birds, not only watching them, but shooting and killing them as well. When he's just six, he takes a gun into the backyard and shoots at a bird on a low branch.

The shot goes wide and nearly hits a woman in the neighboring backyard. Horrified by what her young charge almost did, Nathan's nurse scolds him, telling him that he could have killed someone. Babe simply tells her, I should give a damn.

Frankly, that is a terrifying thing to hear come out of a six-year-old's mouth, especially with the benefit of hindsight. The governess leaves soon after the incident with the gun, and she's replaced by a woman who Nathan calls Sweetie.

Nathan's about seven when Sweetie enters the picture. She's around 30. By this stage, Florence doesn't have the energy to run her own household at all.

So Sweetie gradually assumes more and more responsibility. She also takes liberties with Nathan's older brother, Sam. He's 17 when Sweetie starts taking baths with him.

This soon progresses to sex. By the time Nathan's 11, she's abusing him in the same ways. But abuse or no, Nathan's devoted to his governess.

When he's 12 though, Sweetie crosses a line. It's a school day and Florence has heard that her son is home sick from school. So gathering her strength, she puts on her house coat and pads slowly down the hall to babe's room.

When she's close, she hears raised voices. Thinking that perhaps her son has taken a turn for the worse and that his governess is calling for help, Florence bursts into the room. What she sees shocks her.

Sweetie has Nathan by the arm and is trying to drag him out of bed. She's yelling at him for being lazy, for only pretending to be sick to get out of school. Mortified, Florence stumbles forward to pry Nathan's arm from Sweetie's grip.

She sits down on the bed beside her son and cradles him to her chest, fixing the governess with an icy glare. Firmly, she tells Sweetie to leave the room immediately. Sweetie's fired later that day.

Nathan's devastated. He thought he loves Sweetie and can't imagine who could replace her. The answer is no one.

Nathan's parents decide that he's too old for a governess now. It's time for him to grow up.

Around the same time that Sweetie's fired, the Leopolds moved from their home on Michigan Avenue to a three-story mansion on the corner of 48th and Greenwood.

The Kenwood area is home to plenty of other upper middle class Jewish families, so it's nice for them to be surrounded by their community. The impressively large house is also close to Nathan's new school, the Harvard School for Boys.

On paper, it's the perfect place for Nathan. Students from the Harvard School receive individualized attention from their teachers and almost always go on to college. But Nathan's never really had the best time at school and that doesn't change here.

He's a shy and sickly kid, plus he's small. He's not interested in sports like a lot of the other boys and has always been obsessed with birds and bugs. And these are crimes the other kids are merciless about.

They tease him with a new nickname. At home, Nathan's still babe, but at school, he's fleet. Despite his lack of friends, Nathan thrives at the Harvard School, at least academically.

He loves learning and in addition to all the usual classes, he adds electives in German and classical Greek to his schedule. For the rest of his life, he'll pride himself on his ability to master languages.

It's just one of the things that makes him feel superior to everyone around him. That smug attitude doesn't help with this popularity problem.

But by the time he's a junior, Nathan's actually managed to find some boys who share his interest in ornithology. He doesn't make any real friends though, because Nathan doesn't do anything just for the fun of it. That makes being his friend hard.

The other kids like birding as a hobby, but for Nathan, it's serious. Sure, they all go birdwatching and collect specimens of their own, but he has to have the biggest collection of them all.

He might have missed when he shot at the bird when he was six, but by his junior year, he's got around 2,000 specimens.

Even though he's still just a kid, he's got special permission from the city to shoot birds in public parks and own several guns of his own. He takes them out most weekends to hunt for more additions to his collection.

Nathan's mother watches all this with concern. She doesn't like seeing her youngest go through life without many close friends. And as babe gets older, Florence starts thinking about his future.

She knows that having a good network will set him up for success down the road. So when he's around 15, Florence calls Nathan to her bedside. She asks him to make her a promise.

When he goes to college, she wants him to join Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest, most prestigious honor society in the country. With his brain, he'll more than qualify for membership. And it'll connect him to other young men who operate on his wavelength.

Nathan promises his mother to do as she asks. And with his future in the front of his mind, he decides that he's done with high school. By the summer of 1920, 15-year-old Nathan has amassed more than enough credits to graduate.

So he opts to leave the Harvard School behind and go directly to the next phase of his life. That fall, he enrolls at the University of Chicago. It's there that he'll meet and befriend another young man.

Their unlikely friendship will change the course of countless lives. And, will result in one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th century.

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It's the winter of 1914, six years before Nathan Leopold graduates high school. In Kenwood, a middle-class suburb of Chicago, eight-year-old Richard Loeb is at a neighbor's house, playing with another boy around his age.

Ordinarily, Richard would love to be outside instead, but it's snowing, and his governess Emily has forbidden it. She doesn't want him getting a fever.

Emily's downstairs having tea in the kitchen while Richard and this other kid play with toy soldiers, metal ones that have been painted and everything. For a while, Richard was having fun.

Emily's usually pretty strict about how he spends his time, so getting a chance to play is exciting. But the initial burst of enthusiasms faded, and he's starting to get bored.

Looking around the room, Richard spots some cash on top of a dresser in the corner. It looks like a couple of bucks and a few pennies. That's when he gets a sort of tingle.

He's gonna take that money. He thinks about it for a few minutes, coming up with his plan. And when he's got it all figured out, he stands up, a small figure of a soldier on horseback in his hand.

He gallops the toy through the air, bringing it to land on the dresser. He glances at his playmate, and when he's sure he's not looking, then pockets the cash.

A few minutes later, his treasure weighing heavy in his pocket, Richard stands up, says he's not feeling well, and runs from the room. He goes downstairs and finds Emily to tell her he's ready to go home.

So she helps him on with his coat, and they head back out into the snow. As they trudge up the street towards the Loeb's large red brick mansion, Richard thinks about what he's gonna do with the money. He doesn't want to spend it.

He knows his parents will give him whatever he asked for. It was the stealing that was the fun part. Oh, and getting away with it.

By the time they get home, he's decided that as soon as the weather is nice, he's gonna hide the money under the roof of the playhouse in their backyard. That way, he'll know where it is, and no one else will. It'll be his little secret.

Richard Loeb Much like Nathan Leopold, Richard Loeb belongs to a wealthy Chicago family, though the Loebs are perhaps even wealthier and better connected than the Leopolds.

Richard's father Albert is the vice president of Sears Roebuck, a wildly successful mail order company worth millions of dollars. His mom Anna is a society well-to-do who belongs to the influential Chicago Women's Club.

Even his uncle is a big muckety-muck in the city's legal world, and was once president of Chicago's Board of Education.

So from the jump, Dickie, as everyone calls him, was set up for success, and there's no one who feels that more keenly than Dickie.

At the beginning of 1910, when he was four and a half, his parents hired a governess to look after him and teach him basics like reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Emily Struthers was 28 when she came to work for the Loebs, and right away she displayed a fierce determination to mold Dickie into an upstanding, remarkable young man.

Early on, she decided that with her help, Richard Loeb could be a capital G great man. At the very least, he'll be a lawyer or a professor. Though, maybe he'll go into politics.

Maybe he'll even be president. At first, Dickie didn't like Emily all that much, and he locked her out of his room at least once during her first week living there.

But he soon warmed up to her, mostly because she was the only person giving him any attention. His parents didn't have the time, and they trusted that Emily was capable of raising their son without too much of their own input.

Now, even when he's a bit older, she still reads to him most nights. But she doesn't settle for fairy tales. Richard's too advanced for that, she thinks.

Instead, she reads in books like Quo Vadis and The Works of Dickens. Dickie enjoys listening to Emily read, but he never feels a strong passion for the stories she chooses for him. He prefers to stay up late into the night reading detective stories.

Those are what he really likes. Exciting tales of investigators puzzling out gruesome or just plain mysterious crimes. In particular, he loves stories where an ingenious criminal thwarts the authorities.

Those send a tingle up Richard's spine like nothing else. He doesn't share this interest with Emily though. Something tells him that she wouldn't approve.

And besides, he likes having this secret. It makes him feel special. Emily doesn't need to know all dicky secrets to believe that he's special though.

And she knows that kids like him need strict discipline to stay on track. So she pushes him in his studies, making sure he finishes all his homework, insists on him reading extra books, working out different math problems.

She leaves almost no time for him to play or to meet kids his own age. Everything she does is with his illustrious future in mind, and he can thank her when he's an ambassador for the United States.

Emily's efforts to mold dicky into a wunderkind seem to pay off. In 1917, he begins high school at just 12 years old. And unlike Nathan Leopold, dicky is not a shy kid.

Despite being several years younger than his classmates, he makes friends easily and quickly becomes one of the most popular boys at his school. But his social life's not the only thing about Richard that's different from Nathan.

Because while Nathan seems to have a natural love of learning and a high level of intelligence, Richard's got neither of those things.

Sure he does well in his classes and assignments, but that's because he's got Emily pushing him at home every night. As he gets older, Richard starts to find Emily's pressure oppressive.

Now that he's experienced how fun it can be to have friends, and sees just how much other kids like spending time with him, Dickie finds himself even less interested in his studies than before. He wants to be a normal kid.

And although Emily's not cruel or harsh, she's strict and she won't let him take a break. It's no good going to his parents for help either. Albert and Anna lead busy lives, and from their perspective, their son is thriving.

They don't see any need to intervene, so Dickie starts lying to his governess here and there. Finding moments when he can pull one over on her to give himself a bit of time away from his studies. Not that it changes much.

In the summer of 1918, when he's about to start as a sophomore, Emily declares that Richard is capable of graduating at the end of this year.

That would put him two full years ahead of the rest of his cohorts who are already several years older than him. Dickie's parents see no problem with the idea, but his teachers aren't sold on it.

They know exactly what Richard Loeb's capable of, and while he's definitely bright, he's not exceptional. They can't see the sense in pushing him to do more than he already is.

To graduate so soon, he'll need to take on a massive course load at just 13. And for what? But Emily's insistent.

She wants her charge to be the most impressive young man any governess has ever produced. And she presses ahead with her ambitious plan. But Richard tries to find ways to break free of the rigid structure Emily imposes on him.

In the fall of that year, he joins the school's literary society. It's a social club that meets his governess' approval. And it lets him get out of homework for a couple of hours each week.

He even takes part in a few of the society's regular debates. But after a while, even that's too much effort. The lost time means that he starts falling behind, and he has to drop the club.

For the rest of the year, Dickie's life is all about graduating early.

Emily sits beside him every night to ensure he gets through his assignments, and schedules regular meetings with his teachers to discuss his progress and make sure everyone is on board with the plan. He's not going to fail. Not on her watch.

In June 1919, just a few days after he turns 14, Richard graduates from high school. His parents and especially his governess are very proud. And while he's allowed to relax a little over the summer, it's only a brief reprieve.

Come that fall, he's enrolled at the University of Chicago, the youngest student in his classes by a good three or four years. And right away, it's clear that Dickie Loeb isn't a true child prodigy.

Sure, he got through his high school classes thanks to Emily's close supervision and help, but this is college. The classes are more rigorous, the concepts more complex, and he just doesn't have the emotional maturity to handle it all.

Pretty quickly, his grades reflect both his waning interest in education and his inability to keep up with a more advanced curriculum. But the classroom isn't the only place where Richard's falling behind.

Emily's always steered him away from any discussions of sex. Including about girls in general. He was 11 before he learned about the physical differences between boys and girls, and he only found out about that from the family show Fur.

It's when he enters the college world that he finally learns that people have sex with each other. He'll later report that his first sexual experience comes at the age of 15 when he hires a sex worker.

Unfortunately for him, he catches gonorrhea and has to undergo treatment for close to a year. After that, Dickie loses interest in sex, or what little interest he ever had in it. He doesn't even explore his own body.

It's just not something he's into. Despite his struggles in the classroom, Richard makes it through his first year at the University of Chicago without any major hiccups. But in the summer of 1920, his family gets an unexpected shakeup.

With Dickie in college, his parents feel that Emily's talents could be better put to use looking after their younger son, Tommy. Perhaps she can work the same magic with him that she did with Richard.

But Emily's not invested in Tommy half as much as she is with Dickie. She'd rather keep her original post. Perhaps even long enough to see her charge all the way through his education.

The Loebs are insistent though, and things come to a head. Emily's let go, and she leaves the household after over a decade of service. All of a sudden, Dickie's world is upending.

Emily's been his constant companion since he was four. She's planned and orchestrated just about every part of his life, and now she's just gone. Sure he's been rebellious the last few years, but it's still strange not to have her around.

He feels alone for the first time, which is freeing and terrifying in equal measure. Getting through his classes might be harder from now on, but he'll certainly have a more robust social life, and he's excited about that.

Emily Struthers' departure from Dickie's life will have another effect that no one could have ever seen coming.

Without her stabilizing influence, and without her rigid schedule to keep him on track, Richard Loeb will begin his steady, seemingly inexorable descent into criminality.

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It's early spring 1921, and 16-year-old Nathan Leopold is walking down a dark street not far from the University of Chicago. It's a few minutes past midnight, and Nathan's got his hands shoved deep in his pockets, keeping them out of the biting wind.

He should be inside, he knows this, yet he's out here in the cold, keeping a lookout for his friend. Richard Loeb's a few feet away from Nathan, swinging a car key back and forth on a short chain.

He's stumbling just a little from the drinks he had earlier tonight. But despite the fact that his buddy's clearly drunk, Nathan's happy to follow Richard's lead, to walk a few steps behind him and watch for trouble. Anything for him.

Dickie's hunched over slightly, peering through the dark at the cars parked on the street. He's looking for a Millburn electric, one like his mother's. A few weeks ago, he realized that his mom's car key will work in any model like hers.

Now, his favorite thing to do is take other people's cars on joy rides in the dead of night. Nathan stops suddenly as Dickie throws up his hands and gives a quiet cry of triumph. He's found another Millburn.

He dashes around to the driver's side door and unlocks it. He slides in, leans over to open the door for Nathan and waves him in. After a quick scan of the street to make sure they're not seen, Nathan ducks into the car to join his friend.

Then, once the engine growls to life, they're off for another night of fun. Nathan Leopold first became friends with Richard Loeb sometime around the summer of 1920.

Nathan was getting ready to start his freshman year at the University of Chicago, and Richard had just finished his.

Having grown up in the same neighborhood for the last few years, the boys had crossed paths a few times here and there, but they didn't know each other all that well. Their reputations preceded them though, and they sized each other up.

Now on paper, these two didn't make sense as friends. Nathan, the shy, nerdy, arrogant loner who spends weekends hunting birds to add to his collection.

Richard, a charismatic, popular kid who never really cared for school and who's more interested in drinking with friends than in cracking a book. But despite their night and day personalities, the two of them were drawn to each other right away.

To begin with, they were both a good deal younger than the rest of their cohorts. There was a natural kinship there. But it was more than that.

There was a kind of symbiosis between them thanks to their separate, secret fantasy lives. Let's start with Nathan's. For years, he's nursed a very specific fantasy that he's a favorite slave to an almighty king.

The king is beloved by his subjects, but he isn't without enemies who want to assassinate him. In his imagination, Nathan is physically mighty and acts heroically to save his king's life from one of these assassins.

This wins him the king's gratitude and a special place of honor in his household. As his dream world has grown and evolved over the years, Nathan's alter ego has become powerful, even acquiring slaves of his own. But he's always owned by the king.

That's key. As for Richard, his daydream is slightly less fantastical and layered but no less specific or revealing. See, Richard likes to imagine himself as a criminal mastermind.

Inspired by his favorite detective stories, he casts himself as a man so clever that he never gets caught. His schemes are always so complex that they leave investigators puzzled and impressed at his utter genius.

But eventually, Richard's criminal self does somehow get caught, and he's thrown in prison.

Locked in a cage, Richard pictures himself naked and being whipped by his jailers, while civilians look on feeling sorry for this man being treated unjustly despite his crimes.

Like I said, these are very specific fantasies from both of these guys, and knowing about them tells us a lot about how their relationship will unfold.

On the one side, you've got Nathan, an arrogant young man who wants to feel special in the presence of someone who he recognizes as his superior.

On the other side, you got Richard, a gregarious and well-liked guy looking for people to see and admire his criminal genius, but who also seems to have a masochistic side.

Over his first few months at the University of Chicago, Nathan secretly came to see his new friend Richard, handsome, popular and athletic as the king he served.

And sure, Richard enjoyed Nathan's fawning attention, but mostly he liked the other boys' encouragement of his criminal tendencies.

At first, it was drink, because prohibition banned the sale of alcohol throughout the country, that meant hitting speakeasies. And once he got drunk on illegal alcohol, Richard felt even bolder. That was when he wanted Nathan by his side.

And bit by bit, night by night, he pushed the boundaries. Now, six months after they started hanging out, Richard smashing up cars with bricks and dabbling in arson.

Thankfully, the blazes never cause any injuries, at least not that the guys know about. But they also don't make enough of an impact for Dickie. After his nights of crime, he's always excited to check the morning's papers for write-ups.

There's never anything about them, though. This is so frustrating for Richard not to be recognized for his criminal genius. Sure, he's got one person's undivided attention and unwavering devotion, but that's not enough for him.

Nathan, on the other hand, is a different story. He doesn't say as much, but by now, he's in love with Dickie. Unfortunately for him, his world's about to shift.

Towards the end of the school year in 1921, Richard announces that he's sick of Chicago, that he's ready for a change. So he's going to transfer to the University of Michigan, which is some 300 miles away in Ann Arbor. Nathan's devastated.

He thought he'd found a kindred spirit in Richard Loeb, but he's abandoning it. Now, if there were a moment in this story when a single choice could change everything, could prevent catastrophe, this would be it.

Nathan could let his friend go and give all his attention to his studies. He could graduate early and go on to have a normal, relatively unremarkable life. But he can't do that.

He's not unremarkable. And he's not going back to the way things were before. Instead, he declares that he's going to transfer to Michigan too.

He won't let Richard Loeb go without a fight. From Airship, this is episode one in our series on Leopold and Loeb. On the next episode, Nathan and Richard's friendship is put to the test, and they start planning the perfect run.

We used many sources while preparing this episode. A couple we can particularly recommend are Leopold and Loeb, The Crime of the Century by Hal Higdon, and For the Thrill of It by Simon Botts.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details. And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz. Audio editing by Mohammed Shazi. Sound design by Matthew Phillip.

Music by Thrum. This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer, Emily Burke. Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham.