I don’t consider myself a true crime buff, but there have been a few cases that have stuck with me over the years. Like who the hell is Jack the Ripper? Lizzie Borden? Girrrrrl, whut? Another crime was that of William Edward Hickman. He suffered from schizophrenia and during his arrest he asked if he was going to be as famous as Leopold and Loeb. This was the days before the internet so for years I was left wondering who this Leopold and Loeb was. Eventually, I found a book by Hal Higdon called The Crime of the Century and read through it quickly. Since then, I have been intrigued by these two guys.
Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, two extremely wealthy, and highly intelligent, older teens from Chicago kidnapped and murdered a boy in 1924. I’m not going to go into the details of the crime as it has been sensationalized, mythologized, and even fetishized unnecessarily. The crime itself was horrific enough that it didn’t need that kind of publicity, but ya gotta sell them papers, yeah? And books. Through the years, authors have taken many liberties and fictionalized certain aspects of the dynamics of these two and far too many readers gobble it up, thinking it is the truth.
If you’re more of a just the facts, ma’am kind of person like I am then I can’t recommend The Leopold and Loeb Files : an intimate look at one of America’s most famous crimes, by Nina Barrett enough.
From the back cover:
In The Leopold and Loeb Files, author Nina Barrett returns to the primary sources—confessions, interrogation transcripts, psychological reports, and more—the kind of rare, pre-computer court documents that were usually destroyed as a matter of course. Until now, these documents have not been part of the murder’s central narrative. This first-of-its-kind approach allows readers to view the case through a keyhole and look past all of the stories that have been spun in the last 90 years to focus on the heart of the crime.
Although I have read a few other books about Leopold and Loeb and knew the case well enough, I took my time and combed through this one slowly, mainly focusing on the mind of Richard Loeb. All those tiny post-its you see in the photo above are mostly in reference to his psychological profile. What I wouldn’t give to fall down that rabbit hole a little more. Clearly, this guy wasn’t dealing with reality and had a psychosis of some sort that the early days of psychiatry couldn’t understand like we can today or, in this case, didn’t care to understand because they confessed and the prosecution was seeking the death penalty.
To purchase the book, you can buy it from Nina Barrett’s bookstore, Bookends & Beginnings The Leopold and Loeb Files
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