For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (12 page)

14.
DISPOSAL OF THE BODY.
After kidnapping Bobby Franks, Leopold and Loeb drove south to Wolf Lake, near the Forest Preserve, to dispose of the corpse.

They could see, across the fields, the evening sun begin to dip below the horizon. Eventually Nathan started the car and headed back on the road. Wolf Lake lay several miles southeast of the city. By the time they arrived at the lake, it would be dark enough to get rid of the corpse.

T
HEY PARKED THE
W
ILLYS
-K
NIGHT TWENTY
yards from the culvert. As he pulled the body from the car and placed it on the blanket, Richard wondered if Bobby might still be alive. But the corpse lay stiff and rigid on the ground; Bobby’s glassy eyes stared up at them, unblinking.

Nathan held the blanket at the bottom, close to the boy’s feet, while Richard took up the other end. The ground was damp and muddy from the recent rains; they could hear a faint squishing sound as they walked through the mud toward the culvert, holding the blanket between them as though it were a stretcher.
³¹

The drainage ditch appeared before them in the darkness, the planks of wood framing its sides jutting out a few inches above the ground. The Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, elevated on a slight rise behind the culvert, gleamed in the moonlight.

Richard held the searchlight in his right hand; the beam of light flickered over the culvert as Nathan knelt beside the corpse to remove Bobby’s jacket and shirt. It was a warm night and already Nathan was perspiring. His own jacket—an old jacket, one that he had not worn for several months—felt tight and uncomfortable. He would do better to work in his shirtsleeves—he dropped his jacket by the side of the ditch as Richard handed him the pint bottle of hydrochloric acid.

Bobby Franks, his arms by his sides, his legs slightly apart, lay naked on the ground. Nathan pulled on the glass stopper and held the hydrochloric acid high above the corpse, allowing the liquid to fall on Bobby’s face. The acid would burn away the skin; now, even if someone discovered the body, the police would never be able to identify it. Nathan had learned somewhere—perhaps his brother had told him—that it was possible to identify an individual from the shape of his genitals; accordingly, he poured the remainder of the acid over Bobby’s penis and testicles.
³²

There was a slight splash as Nathan lowered himself into the culvert—the water at the bottom of the ditch reached as high as his shins. Richard lowered the corpse into the ditch, Nathan seized hold of the legs, and the upper part of the body hit the water with a second splash.

Nathan shoved the corpse into the drainage pipe. It would not go in—the pipe was too narrow. He pushed the corpse insistently with his hands, trying to avoid getting the water in his mouth as it splashed backward toward him. He pushed again, trying to force the shoulders into the pipe—there! He had done it. Nathan kicked impatiently at the boy’s legs, trying to force the rest of the body into the pipe. It was not easy—the water kept defeating him—but eventually he was satisfied.

He scrambled back out of the ditch and up onto the railroad tracks to remove his hip boots. But his shoes and jacket were still by the ditch—could Richard bring them up the embankment?

As Richard walked up the slope, he thought he heard a slight noise, a clink on the gravel, as though something metallic had fallen from the jacket. Richard paused; he held the flashlight in one hand and the hem of the jacket in the other, and, looking to see if anything had fallen, he slowly passed the beam of light over the ground. He could see tufts of grass and patches of dandelion poking above the gravel, but otherwise nothing. He must have been mistaken.

O
N THE RIDE BACK TO
the city, Nathan pulled the ransom letter from his pocket. He held the envelope by one of its edges; it flapped back and forth in his hand as he talked. They were back in Hyde Park already, close to the university.

Richard pulled up at a drugstore on 57th Street. It was almost ten o’clock; some students were passing them, talking and laughing in loud voices, walking back toward Hutchinson Commons. Inside the store, the clerk directed them to the phone booth at the rear; they would find a phone book there. Richard’s finger ran down the page as he searched for the Franks address, and as he read it off, Nathan wrote it, in careful, almost precise, handwriting, on the front of the envelope. The clerk sold them the postage for their letter—six two-cent stamps—and, to ensure that it would reach its destination the next morning, they also purchased a special delivery stamp, which Nathan attached to the upper right-hand corner of the envelope.
³³

The nearest mailbox was two blocks away, across the street from the Hyde Park post office on 55th Street. Nathan lifted the latch of the box and slipped the letter inside the narrow gap; it would arrive at the Franks house at eight o’clock the next morning.
³⁴

Although it was still not yet ten o’clock, the Loeb house seemed almost deserted when they parked the car on 50th Street. A single light shone from a front window facing Ellis Avenue, but on the side looking south, by the side entrance facing the garden, all the windows were dark. Richard gathered together Bobby’s clothes—trousers, shirt, underpants, jacket—and wrapped them in the blanket. He led the way, through the vegetable garden, into the side entrance of the house, along a corridor to the right, and down a short flight of stairs to the basement. The furnace was still alight: Richard could see the flames flickering behind the grate.
³⁵

As they unwrapped the blanket and fed Bobby’s clothes to the fire, Nathan stopped in alarm. There was one of Bobby’s socks, with its distinctive black-and-white checkered pattern, but where was its companion? They must have dropped one of the socks somewhere along the way—perhaps by the culvert!
³⁶

But a single sock, Richard laughed, was not going to send them to the gallows! Even if someone found it, there was little likelihood that it would be identified as Bobby’s. And, in any case, there was nothing about that sock that could lead the police to the murderers.

Richard picked up the blanket, but it was saturated with blood, too much blood to safely burn in the furnace—it would give off a pungent odor. For the moment, they would hide it in the garden, behind the greenhouse.
³⁷

O
NLY ONE TASK NOW REMAINED.
That evening they would call the Franks household to tell the boy’s father that they had abducted Bobby and that he should expect a letter in the morning with details of the ransom.

The Walgreen’s drugstore at the corner of 47th Street and Woodlawn Avenue was still open, even at ten-thirty in the evening. They could see the clerk through the window as they approached, alone in the store, leaning across the front of the counter, reading a newspaper spread out before him.

Nathan purchased a telephone slug at the counter and walked, with Richard by his side, toward the rear of the store. Nathan picked up the receiver and read the number to the operator from a piece of paper in Richard’s hand. It was a tight squeeze for the two of them inside the booth; Nathan, waiting for the operator to establish the connection, could feel himself suddenly nervous.
³⁸

A woman’s voice came on the line and, in response to his query, explained that Jacob Franks had left the house about an hour previously; there was no telling when he would return. He waited for the maid to put Flora Franks on the line. Nathan’s apprehension increased at the delay—suppose the police had tapped the phone already? He should make the call as brief as possible. At last! A second woman had come to the phone.

“This is Mr. Johnson…your boy has been kidnaped.” Nathan spoke rapidly yet clearly, intent on wasting as little time as possible.

“We have him and you need not worry: he is safe. But don’t try to trace this call…. We must have money. We will let you know tomorrow what we want. We are kidnapers and we mean business. If you refuse us what we want or try to report us to the police, we will kill the boy.”
³⁹

He returned the receiver to its cradle with a sigh of relief and turned to Richard. They should go home, he suggested, and have a drink, play some cards, and relax.

Nathan’s father was still awake when they arrived at Greenwood Avenue. He greeted them and shook Richard’s hand warmly. Richard Loeb was an excellent influence on his son, he believed; Nathan could have done a lot worse in his choice of friends. They sat and talked in the living room, and after the old man had gone to bed, Nathan and Richard remained downstairs, playing casino.
⁴⁰

Soon it was time for Richard to return home; Nathan offered him a ride in his Willys-Knight.

As the car drove south on Greenwood Avenue, Richard felt the chisel in his jacket pocket—in the excitement, he had forgotten it. He threw it from the car; it landed on the sidewalk with a clatter, and as the car continued south, a night watchman, Bernard Hunt, stepped from the shadows. Hunt picked up the chisel and examined it curiously: someone had taped up the blade, and on the handle Hunt could make out traces of dried blood. As he put the chisel in his pocket, Hunt looked up, just in time to see the car, a red car with distinctive disk wheels and nickel bumpers, turn right, toward Ellis Avenue.
⁴¹

5 THE RANSOM

T
HURSDAY,
22 M
AY
1924–T
HURSDAY,
29 M
AY
1924

The thing that prompted Dick to want to do this thing and prompted me to want to do this thing was a sort of pure love of excitement, or the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different…. The money consideration only came in afterwards, and never was important…. The money was a part of our objective, as was also the commission of the crime; but that was not the exact motive, but that came afterwards.
¹

Nathan Leopold, 1 June 1924

T
HE CHAUFFEUR,
S
VEN
E
NGLUND, STOOD AT
the window of his apartment above the garage, wondering what was amiss. Nathan and his friend Richard Loeb were in the driveway below him, cleaning a dark green car: the same car, Englund remembered, that Richard had been driving the previous day. It was unusual to see Nathan performing physical labor—in fact, Englund could not recall that he had ever before seen Nathan work.

Englund approached the car. Richard stood on the left, with a pail of water by his side. In one hand he held a brush, and in the other a cake of Bon Ami soap; he was lathering the brush with the soap and rubbing vigorously at stains on the rear door panel.

Richard momentarily stopped rubbing at the car and straightened his back to greet the chauffeur. He explained that they had spilled some wine over the car and now he and Nathan were trying to remove the wine stains before he drove the car home.

Could he assist them? Englund asked. No, Richard replied politely, they were almost finished. There had been a lot of stains both inside and outside the car but it had been easy enough to remove them. Perhaps, Richard asked, they might need some more soap—did Englund have any in the garage?

He had only some Gold Dust cleaning powder, Englund replied, but he wouldn’t recommend using it on the outside of the car: it would probably take the varnish off the paint.

As they talked, Nathan cleaned the rugs in the rear seat; now he came around to their side of the car. He had obviously been working hard; Englund could see beads of sweat on the boy’s forehead, and as Nathan stood before him in the bright afternoon sunshine, holding a can of gasoline in his right hand, a rivulet of perspiration trickled down the boy’s left cheek.

Nathan wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. He held out the gasoline to the chauffeur. “Here is your can,” he said. They were trying to remove the wine stains before their parents caught them, Nathan explained. “We’ve been out doing a little bootlegging,” he added, with a wink to Englund. “We don’t want the folks to find out. Don’t say anything about it.” Nathan turned to Richard and remarked that he had cleaned as much as he could—there was still some slight discoloration of one of the rugs but no one would ever notice.
²

H
OW UNLUCKY
, R
ICHARD EXCLAIMED,
as they drove away from the house, that Englund had seen them cleaning the car! But Englund could never have known that the stains were blood. And why should there not be wine stains on the car? It was a plausible explanation, surely?

Nathan was irritated. Couldn’t Richard stop worrying? It was done; there was nothing they could do about Englund. Why, he asked, did Richard have to nag him so?

And there was still a lot to do that afternoon; they would have to hurry if they were to make the schedule.

That afternoon—Thursday, 22 May—they were to set up the ransom payment.

They still had to contact Jacob Franks with instructions; they had to lay a series of clues for Franks to follow, clues that would get him onto the three o’clock Michigan Central train. And then, once Franks was on the train, they had to drive to the drop-off position, not far from the Champion Manufacturing Company, to pick up the packet of money that Jacob Franks was to throw as the train made its way southward, out toward Indiana.

N
ATHAN WENT OVER THE PLAN
one more time as they drove north along Greenwood Avenue. They would telephone Jacob Franks at his home, directing him to a litter bin at the intersection of Pershing Road and Vincennes Avenue, where he would find a letter, instructing him to drive to the Ross drugstore at 63rd Street and Blackstone Avenue. Franks was to wait at the rear of the store, by the telephone booth, for a phone call, for further instructions.

Nathan had always thought it a very clever plan and, as he rehearsed it again on the ride, it still seemed foolproof.

While Jacob Franks waited at the drugstore, he and Richard would telephone Franks from a second drugstore, instructing him to walk to the railroad station one block west on 63rd Street to catch the train that came down from Chicago, the train that left at three o’clock from Central Station. Once Franks was on the train, he was to go to the rear platform, where he would find a second letter in the box for telegraph blanks. This letter provided further instructions: Franks was to stand on the east side of the train, to wait until he had passed the large redbrick factory with a water tower on its roof—there could be no mistake; a white Champion sign was painted on the water tower—to count to five, and throw the packet of money as far as possible.

It was brilliant!—what could go wrong?

T
HEY DROVE EAST ALONG
P
ERSHING
Road and parked the car near the corner of Oakwood Boulevard.

In his right hand, Nathan held the letter that would tell Jacob Franks to drive to the 63rd Street drugstore and wait for the telephone call.

But already there was a problem. No matter how they tried, they could not attach the letter to the inside of the box at Vincennes Avenue; the tape would not adhere to the black metal surface.

They could not run the risk that the letter would blow away in the wind—Jacob Franks might never know to drive on to the drugstore.

Better to omit this stage. They would call Franks: he should drive directly to the drugstore to wait for the phone call.
³

There was not much time; it was already a few minutes past two o’clock; the train would leave Central Station in less than an hour.

T
HE
M
ICHIGAN
C
ENTRAL TRAIN TO
Boston would leave at three o’clock and make its way south along the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, stopping at branch stations to pick up passengers before skirting south of Lake Michigan. Its final destination was Boston, but Jacob Franks, after entering the train at 63rd Street, would get off at Michigan City, the first stop after Chicago.

The train was waiting to depart from Central Station when Nathan and Richard parked the car close by. Richard looked at his watch—twenty-five minutes past two! It had taken them exactly twenty minutes to drive from Pershing Road.

Inside the station, steam rose from the train’s engine; passengers preparing for the journey to Boston were climbing the steps, settling into their carriages, saying good-bye to friends and relatives, and stowing their luggage in the overhead racks.

In the bustle of departure, no one noticed Richard Loeb pay seventy-five cents for a ticket to Michigan City. And even if some casual observer had picked him out in the crowd, Richard’s disguise—black-rimmed glasses, a black hat, and a heavy overcoat—successfully obscured his identity. He entered the train at the rear door, a letter in his hand, looking for the telegraph box in the last carriage of the Pullman car.
⁴

The telegraph box was empty. Richard placed the letter in the slats, so that it would be visible; the edge of the envelope peeked out half an inch above the metal slat. Jacob Franks would retrieve the letter, read its instructions, and follow the directions to throw the money.

Richard jumped off the train onto the platform. It had taken less than five minutes to place the letter on the train; now he was walking back through the station, looking right and left, looking to see if anyone had noticed him, pushing his way through the crowd of passengers preparing to board the train—no, no one had noticed him.

W
HILE
R
ICHARD HAD BEEN PLACING
the letter on the train, Nathan had called the Yellow Cab company to order a taxi to the Franks’s home on Ellis Avenue. Now he must make a second call, to Jacob Franks, to tell him to take the cab to the 63rd Street drugstore. Nathan took a deep breath and tried to relax. He placed the number and waited for the operator to make the connection. Almost immediately, someone picked up the phone on the other end, as if he had been waiting for the call.

“Hello?”

“Hello.” Nathan could feel his voice flutter with fright as he spoke into the mouthpiece. “Is Mr. Franks in?”

“Who wants him?”

“Mr. Johnson wants him.”

“Who is that?”

“George Johnson.”

“Just a minute.”

There was a moment’s silence. Nathan twisted the telephone cord around his fingers as he waited for Jacob Franks to come on the line.

“Mr. Franks?”

“Yes?”

“This is George Johnson speaking…. There will be a Yellow cab at your door in ten minutes…. Get into it and proceed immediately to the drugstore at 1465 East 63rd Street.”

“Couldn’t I have a little more time?”

“No, sir, you can’t have any more time; you must go immediately.”
⁵

Nathan replaced the mouthpiece and pushed open the door of the phone booth. As he stepped outside, he glanced at his watch. It was now two-thirty. Jacob Franks would be leaving his house almost immediately; within ten minutes Franks would be at the Ross drugstore waiting for their second phone call.

There was no time to lose. They planned to call Franks from the Walgreen’s drugstore on the southeast corner of 67th Street and Stony Island Avenue. From there, they could drive the short distance to the pickup stop underneath the elevated railroad tracks where Franks would throw the money.

But their intricate planning, their careful calculations, had come to nothing. The afternoon newspapers had already appeared on the newsstands. As Nathan and Richard drove up to the intersection, the headline on the early edition of the
Chicago Daily Journal
caught their eye. Nathan bought a copy of the paper and quickly scanned the article. The police had discovered the nude body of a young boy in a culvert near 118th Street! The body had not yet been identified, but surely it was only a matter of time before the police realized that the victim was Bobby Franks.
⁶

Richard Loeb could scarcely believe that the body had already been found—less than twenty-four hours after he had killed Bobby! How could their plan unravel so quickly?

It shocked him that the crime had been uncovered. They had assumed that the body would remain undisturbed—they had never anticipated its discovery so soon after the murder.

T
HERE WAS
, R
ICHARD ARGUED,
no point in continuing with the ransom plan. Jacob Franks would soon learn that his son had been killed. If they attempted, nevertheless, to get the ransom, they ran the risk of being captured. Why take the chance? The police had no clues; why should they risk the possibility of capture?

But Nathan would not give up. He had worked too long to abandon his plan now. Perhaps Jacob Franks had not heard the news. They might still get the money!

They must hurry. The three o’clock train would leave from Central Station in twelve minutes. Jacob Franks might already be waiting with the ransom money at the Ross drugstore, adjacent to the train station, expecting instructions.

They ran to the drugstore at 6734 Stony Island Avenue. Nathan fished for a telephone slug among his loose change and inserted it into the slot. He placed the call and waited impatiently.
⁷

At the Ross drugstore, James Kemp, the porter, answered the phone. It had been a slow day; only a few customers had been in the store, and Kemp heard the phone ring with a sense of relief that something, if only a phone call, was breaking up the monotony of the afternoon.

It was a man’s voice, asking the question, “Is Mr. Franks there?”

Kemp looked around the store—at the front, he could see two women making a purchase from the pharmacist, Percy Van De Bogert, but otherwise the store was empty.

“No,” he replied, “there is no Mr. Franks here.”

There was a slight pause at the other end, and then the voice spoke again, in a low mutter, before hanging up: “Probably I have the wrong number.”
⁸

Kemp shrugged his shoulders in disappointment; somehow he had expected more. Reluctantly, he picked up his broom to sweep away at the dust in the back of the store.

Even Nathan now had to admit that there was no point any longer in pursuing the ransom. Jacob Franks was not at the drugstore—perhaps he had never left his house; perhaps he knew already that his son was dead.

And, in any case, the Michigan Central train had now left Central Station and would soon be at the 63rd Street station. Obviously Jacob Franks would not be on the train.

Their grand adventure was over—there was nothing more to be done except return the rental car.

It suddenly seemed so anticlimactic; disappointment hung in the air as they drove silently downtown, to the rental office on Michigan Avenue.
⁹

T
HEY ARRIVED BACK AT
K
ENWOOD
shortly after four o’clock.

At the Loeb house on Ellis Avenue, Leonard Tucker, the family chauffeur, greeted Richard as he reached the front door. Tucker was leaning against a car in the driveway, absorbed in reading a newspaper, and as Richard approached, he showed him the news about the discovery of a boy’s body in swampland south of the city. It was a terrible crime, Tucker exclaimed; the newspapers were reporting that the kidnappers had mutilated the body before stuffing it into a drainage culvert.
¹⁰