Evil Summer: Babe Leopold, Dickie Loeb, and the Kidnap-Murder of Bobby Franks (Elmer H Johnson &...
by Southern Illinois University Press

	Evil Summer: Babe Leopold, Dickie Loeb, and the Kidnap-Murder of Bobby Franks (Elmer H Johnson &...
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Book Description

<div><div>In 1924, fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was abducted while walking home from school, killed by a chisel blow to his head, and later found stuffed in a culvert in a marshy wasteland at the Illinois-Indiana state line. Acid had been poured over his naked body. <i>Evil Summer</i> examines the shocking kidnapping and murder of Franks by two University of Chicago students, Nathan “Babe” Leopold and Richard “Dickie” Loeb, both from families of privilege.

In this new examination of the crime, author John Theodore takes readers into the minds of the two criminals as he focuses on three months in 1924. Theodore covers the killing, the confessions, the defense, and the sentencing surrounding the horrific murder, placing the killers’ actions and Clarence Darrow’s historic defense into the context of 1920s Chicago.

Theodore deftly investigates the psychological dimensions of the crime, revealing the murderers’ fantasies, relationships, sexuality, and motives. The author examines the killers’ past, outlining Loeb’s obsession with detective fiction and crime and his editorial on random killing—written at age nine—and Leopold’s nightly master-slave fantasies and fascination with Nietzsche.

<i>Evil Summer, </i>which includes twenty-three illustrations, meticulously traces the murder from inception to confession<i>,</i> including such details as the special-delivery ransom letter sent to Jacob Franks and the discovery of Leopold’s horn-rimmed eyeglasses lying on a railroad embankment near Bobby’s dead body. Theodore re-creates such scenes as the convergence of hundreds of people in front of the Franks home, Bobby’s body lying in a small white casket in the library, and Loeb being voyeuristically drawn to the home while Bobby’s classmates carry the casket to the hearse.

Worldwide press coverage reflected the public fascination with the case in what was then called “the trial of the century.” The story became a media circus: Chicago’s six daily newspapers battled vigorously for readers, two <i>Daily News</i> cub reporters became part of the story, and the <i>Chicago Tribune</i> carried a voting ballot asking readers whether radio station WGN should broadcast the courtroom spectacle. The changing drama was delivered to Chicagoans every morning and evening, and the public feasted on every press run.

More than a crime story, <i>Evil Summer </i>illuminates the dark side of American life in the 1920s, including the excesses of privileged youth, the troubled childhoods, the random victimization, the anti-Semitism, and the sexuality.

Reader Reviews

As a young girl growing up in Chicago I remember watching Nathan Leopold on television when he was released from Statesville prison. I asked my Mother who he was and she told me he and another young man had killed a boy name Booby Frank. I became interested in the Crime of the Century and read the books Compulsion as well as Life plus 99 years and the Crime of the Century and now add this book to my collection. You can feel Chicago in 1924 and the hysteria that was to be the trial of two young men who held such promise that summer. The question why still haunts after all these years as does the human toll on the boys families..the Franks, The Leopolds and the Loebs. Babe on his way to Europe and the pride of his family with his intellect and potential for greatness. Dickie..handsome, charming, loved by all who meet him collide with Babe to do the unthinkable for what seemed to be just a thrill. Together they could do what as individuals they could not kidnap and kill a superior crime or so they thought. Darlings of the media who sought their every words and then gleefully waited for the hangman to put his noose around their necks. Enter Clarence Darrow the Old lion who surprises by pleading his clients guilty avoiding a jury trial and pleads for his young clients lives instead. The book covers the crime, the trial and the aftermath.. Babe and Dickie slowly adjusted to prison life and found redemption in the library and taught at the prison. Dickie killed in prison by James Day who was upset that his prison bank account could no longer be funded by the Loebs. Babe would continue the work they started until his parole many years later. Nathan Leopold is often used right or wrongly as an example that a prisoner no matter how heinous the crime can be rehabilitated. The sadness of all this is the greatness both Babe and Dickie might have given the world if not for a seemingly innocent ride in a roadster.