Leopold and Loeb

Among the criminal celebrities of Prohibition-era Chicago, two well-educated Jewish boys from wealthy South Side families were notorious. Revealing secret testimony, this book separates fact from myth as it unravels the crime, the investigation, and the trial, in which they were defended by the era's famous attorney, Clarence Darrow.

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The razor-sharp account of a notorious murderThe 1924 murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb shocked the nation. One hundred years later, the killing and its aftermath still reverberate through popular culture and the history of American crime.


Hal Higdon’s true crime classic offers an unprecedented examination of the case. Higdon details Leopold and Loeb’s journey from privilege and promise to the planning and execution of their monstrous vision of the perfect crime. Drawing on secret testimony, Higdon follows the police investigation through the pair’s confessions of guilt and recreates the sensational hearing where Clarence Darrow, the nation’s most famous attorney, saved the pair from the death penalty.


In-depth and definitive, Leopold and Loeb tells the dramatic story of a notorious crime and its long afterlife in the American imagination.