Mercy For Leopold And Loeb Summary
American Rhetoric: “Mercy for Leopold and Loeb” by Clarence Darrow
Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the sons of two of Chicago's wealthiest and most prominent German Jewish families, precipitated one of the twentieth century's most sensational mass media events when they kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old neighbor boy, Robert Franks, in May of 1924. At first, there was little suspicion that the pair, close friends since childhood, had any involvement in the disappearance of the Franks boy. Law enforcement, back in 1924, was able to track down a killer from a pair of eyeglasses. This just recently was profiled in a homicide update story on a missing child. Police first missed the glasses altogether, missed the reflection in a beer
Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the sons of two of Chicago's wealthiest and most prominent German Jewish families, precipitated one of the twentieth century's most sensational mass media events when they kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old neighbor boy, Robert Franks, in May of 1924. At first, there was little suspicion that the pair, close friends since childhood, had any involvement in the disappearance of the Franks boy. Law enforcement, back in 1924, was able to track down a killer from a pair of eyeglasses. This just recently was profiled in a homicide update story on a missing child. Police first missed the glasses altogether, missed the reflection in a beer