I receive hundreds of e-mails each year from famous trial fans. Some of those letters come from people with close connections to the case. Among the persons sending messages concerning the Leopold-Loeb case, for example, have been the neice of murder victim Bobby Franks (who tells me that--as of 2001--her mother, Bobby Franks's older sister, is still alive and well and living in Chicago), a student in Nathan Leopold's sociology class at the University of Puerto Rico (who tells me that he attended dinners at Leopold's home and found him to be amiable and stimulating), and a friend of the son of prosecutor Robert Crowe (who was in ill health and hoping to get his side of the story to the public before he died). Other messages have come from Hal Higdon, author of the the leading book on the trial (recently republished on the 75th anniversary of the crime), and from several actors playing roles in a new play about the old case, "Never the Sinner."
I also receive some messages from writers who disagree with the conclusions stated in my trial accounts. Although I think the evidence of Leopold's and Loeb's guilt is overwhelming, readers have disagreed. Here are two e-mail I have received:
After researching this case for several years, my men and I have discovered that the lawyer Clarence Darrows [sic] was paid $36 million dollars for the two boys to confess.
They weren't meant to get the death penalty. They were only to be tried for assisting the kidnapping. The two boys alibias checked out, and the scripted confession was taken too far.
Clarence Darrows was paid by rival businessmen who were jealous of the success of the two boys. Both boys were heterosexuals, both boys were engaged, and both boys died for no apparent reason. It was their intellect that was envied. I hope you would like to help me clear their names.
Thank You,
Fitzgerald
I agree with those people who say that neither of the two plotted, kidnapped and murdered Bobby Franks. I really think the Chicago Police put a lot of horrible physical pressure on the two young adults which even the teachers who had earlier been interrogated had complained about. However, the teachers were adults and could withstand pressure. I agree that it was a real frame-up, I think the on the rise of the Kennedy family along with Marshall Field Enterprises which was of course Sears' rival had a lot to gain. Did you know that Marshall Field's has a famous showroom in the Merchandise Mart owned for many years by the unscrupulous and poorly rooted (Nuevo Rico) Kennedy family? A chance to conspire against the Loeb family true rivals to getting the Kennedy Family's son to the White House which was of course the Kennedy family goal to get to the Presidency at all costs. Kennedy was an Irish bootlegger, he had to have connections in Chicago, connections even with Bobby Franks dad a pawnbroker, neither were very respectable people. The child's own father never bothered to identify the body. The child's own father forgot the name of the drug store were he was supposed to drop off the money. Did the child's own father set his youngest boy up, was he part of the frame up. We know Marshall Field profited immensely as did the Kennedy's. Their children would not be outshined by Nathan Leopold attending Harvard Law School at 19, Nathan Leopold best friends with US's youngest college graduate ever. How could the competitive Jack and Joe Junior beat those boys for the top spot.
It sickens me in my soul to think that this happened. This is what could have happened to OJ Simpson. Thank the Lord that prayers were answered and planted evidence was realized as just that because the logistics of the witch hunt were just not there as in the case of Loeb and Leopold. This case is just too circumstantial and obviously framed.
The glasses themselves were probably pick-pocketed by a professional thief whom the Kennedy's professional thieves themselves would know, or a pawnbroker would certainly interact with. A pawnbroker does business with criminals all day long pawning off stolen items, the mob after all was in its heyday in 1924 and wasn't somewhere in all of this a young Adolph Hitler arrested for trying to overthrow the German government. What a thing to show him for later when he got there that he could indeed rid the world of the Jews in much the same way.
I grew up in a world where the Kennedy Family was supposed to have all of our compassion for all that had happened to them and I agreed with the cartoon where Abraham Lincoln wept after assasination number two, it brought tears to my heart that this had happened to Abraham, John, Martin now Bobby, but as I look at this case and the sick crucifixion of Richard Loeb who even until prison he was being framed to be proved that he was not the smartest kid ever, it had to be the work of the Kennedy Family. Talk about the providence of God, do you think that during World War II when Joe Jr. had been sent on a suicide mission that the FBI, CIA, Interpol and every other silent police agency also had sensed this finger print of the Kennedy Family, they were fairly poor compared to the wealth of the Loeb family in 1924. That those agency's considering what was happening in Germany to the Jews set Joe Jr. up with reason and then decided to get rid of the other two for other reasons which still remain unspeakable but which Dwight Eisenhower and Dick Nixon were aware existed.
That's my perspective, and I have lived in this town for many years, Chicago, I know the police are mean, Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden and Bobby Seals know the police are mean, look how the police in New York planted dope on John Lennon to have him deported. Justice will be served in the case of Loeb and Leopold when we realize who framed them and why.
PS: Along with Clarence Darrow being paid by Marshall Field to cough up a guilty plea from the two, do you think after a while (in prison) that Nathan Leopold was also paid to continue to slam Richard Loeb and the Loeb family into the gutter. It was just such a professional frame up, Jesus Christ is our true Savior that Richard Loeb could find comfort in his arms after such an ungodly ordeal which began on his birthday, June 11th. What that young man must have dealt with truly breaks my heart and causes me to rethink my whole life, such a horrible sacrifice. Perhaps as a nation we should consider removing the bodies of the Kennedy's from our national cemetary since they really in God's knowing had something to do with this man's death and his family's demise. My grandmother used to say the God knows, and maybe some day the USA will know as well what the God knows.
Very sincerely,
A Heart Sickened Person