Actual Movements
Around noon, Richard Loeb was on the University of Chicago campus when he ran into his friend Howard Mayer, a reporter for the Chicago Evening American. Loeb tried to convince Mayer that they should look for the drug store the killers had tried to direct Jacob Franks to during the ransom attempt. While they were talking, students and Chicago Daily News reporters Alvin Goldstein and James Mulroy walked over and the group of four decided to investigate. Loeb helped them find the store, though he cautioned them not to use his name when writing their stories.
After the reporters relayed the news to their editors, Loeb and Mulroy continued to an inquest into Bobby’s death, which was held at Furth’s Funeral Home. Jacob Franks, Edward Anderson, Joseph Springer, William McNally, Irvin Hartman Jr., Tony Minke, John Kolezzke, Walter Knitter, Paul Korff and H J Stemmer testified. As not much was known yet, these witnesses testified only about Bobby’s disappearance and the discovery of his body.
Suspects
Currently the biggest suspects were three teachers at the Harvard School. Teachers Richard Williams and Mott Kirk Mitchell were released in the morning but Walter Wilson was brought back in for questioning in the evening. Their alibis, homes, pasts and friends were all being heavily investigated.
Other false leads included a 35-year-old man with a “sullen” expression sitting on the curb in front of the school shortly before the kidnapping, and 3 men in their late 20s who had been reported walking around the area where Bobby’s body had been hidden.
Bobby’s classmate Irvin Hartman Jr. told police that he saw Bobby get picked up in a gray Winton touring car while walking home from school, sending police to question the owners of gray Wintons and diverting them from the dark blue Willys-Knight which had actually been used.
Newspaper Coverage
The newspaper coverage of the case really exploded on this day; from what I’ve seen 45 states and Canada ran stories about it.
The following is the front page of the Chicago Daily Journal from May 23rd, and you can see that Bobby’s kidnapping is overshadowing the murder described in the column to the left of Bobby’s photo: “Self-Defense Beulah’s Plea in Murder Case.” Beulah Annan was made famous in 1926 when she was renamed Roxie Hart and her story was fictionalized in the play Chicago.
In the article “Find Original Model of Franks Crime in Detective Fiction” the Chicago Daily Journal compared the ransom letter in the Leopold-Loeb case with ransom letters from the story “The Kidnaping Syndicate” by Charles Booth, which had appeared in the May 3rd, 1924 issue of Detective Story Magazine. In the same story, the Journal noted that the killer lost their glasses in the Sherlock Holmes story The Golden Pince Nez and it led to their capture. The Journal wondered: “Will the Chicago police do as well as did Sherlock Holmes?”
Most of the major Chicago papers gave a column to discussing previous famous kidnapping of years past. Articles also appeared tracing the police’s work, and papers some started doing some of their own investigation, the Hearst papers asking: “Did You See Kidnaping of Robert Franks?” Other papers began to give background information on the Franks family, and interviewed Bobby’s teachers.
The cause of Bobby’s death and what the kidnappers had done to him was still being reported as a mystery. Cook County’s coroners were arguing in the newspaper columns; Coroner’s physician Joseph Springer released a statement that Bobby had been sexually mistreated, and soon after Coroner’s chemist William McNally refuted this: saying there was no evidence of either sexual mistreatment or poison, which had until then been a running theory about why Bobby had some discoloration on his mouth.
Chief of Police Michael Hughes ran with the first theory, declaring: “I firmly believe that someone in the neighborhood, probably someone who knew the boy at school, invited Robert to his home near the school. There, with the instincts of a moron, the slayer mistreated the lad. The boy probably threatened to tell his father or the principal of the school and the man became frightened. Then, in all probability, the man choked some poison down the child’s throat and killed him.”
Photos
Photographs relating to the case began to appear on this day. So far they mostly focused on Bobby, his relatives and home, the culvert, evidence that had been gathered (though not the glasses yet), Bobby’s teachers and police officers. There was also a map giving the public a sense of where the culvert was geographically.
Sources
- Chicago Daily Journal, May 23, 1924
- Chicago Daily News, May 23, 1924
- Chicago Evening American, May 23, 1924
- Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1924
- Transcript for the People of the State of Illinois vs. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb
The Lives and Legends of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold 