Introduction On May 21st, 1924 in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Kenwood, young Bobby Franks left The Harvard School for Boys at approximately 5 o’clock in the afternoon following a day of academics. Oblivious as to what he would encounter on the brief jaunt home, this would be the last time Bobby Franks is seen alive. Franks, the 14 year old son of wealthy Chicagoland businessman Jacob Franks, was targeted as the victim of a premeditated plot by two young men to kidnap and murder a person at random. The young men, identified as Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, later confessed their reason behind such a heinous act was simply to experience the thrill; Leopold and Loeb also sought an opportunity to prove to themselves they were intellectually superior as criminals by being vindicated of any involvement and essentially getting away with the colloquial “Perfect Crime”. It was also later revealed that the murder was actually a secondary detail of their plan the pair agreed was necessary in order to eliminate …show more content…
Like Leopold, Loeb exhibited a high level of intelligence enabling him to skip several grades in school and become the youngest graduate of the University of Michigan at just 17 years old.2 Though he was successful in school, Loeb had an unhealthy interest in crime and spent much of his time obsessing over it, often acting on urges such as cheating at cards and smashing car windshields or store windows with bricks.1 Although it was not pursued by Loeb, he and Leopold sustained a homosexual relationship that went well beyond the boundaries of a plutonic friendship. Years later, Leopold wrote of his motive behind committing the murder with Loeb, which read "To the extent that I had one [a motive], it was to please Dick [Loeb]" and also remarked "Loeb's friendship was necessary to me; terribly