Leopold and Loeb: The Murder of Bobby Franks
The documentary examines one of the most shocking criminal cases of the 1920s, in which Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two privileged and highly gifted students from Chicago, kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks.
Influenced by Nietzsche's philosophy of the superman, the two young men planned what became known as the "perfect crime" in order to prove their intellectual superiority. On May 21, 1924, they lured Bobby Franks into a car, killed him, and hid his body in a railway culvert outside Chicago.
The case drew enormous attention, not least because of the perpetrators' backgrounds as wealthy, well-educated young men. The subsequent trial became a sensation, with the famous attorney Clarence Darrow defending the two accused and managing to spare them from the death penalty through a passionate argument against capital punishment.
WTTW's documentary walks through the details of the case, from the murder and the ensuing investigation to the dramatic trial and its lasting impact on the American justice system. The film sheds light on the psychological aspects behind the crime and raises questions about the line between genius and madness.
