My new post is up, looking at how the book The Crime of the Century came to be.
I’ve added a few new podcasts and videos to the nonfiction page.
I’ve got about 20 fictional pieces inspired by the case which I want to read/watch before I put them up on the fiction page, hopefully I’ll tackle some of those this month. I’m also considering giving an alternate way of organizing the fiction, by how closely the piece sticks to the story, so you wouldn’t have something like Scream next to something like Never the Sinner.
Book News
I’m beginning to schedule some talks to coincide with the publication of my book, which are looking to mostly be in May of this year. Once I have firm dates I’ll share them, and if anyone is in the Chicago area I’d love to have you stop by!
Other News
The fictional genderswapped Leopold-Loeb novel Jazzed just had an audiobook version released, which can be bought on audible here.
I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine’s Day and a great rest of the month!
Originally I thought about just reviewing 1975’s The Crime of the Century by Hal Higdon, but what could I say? That it’s the best non-fiction book about the case despite being nearly 50 years old? That it’s still the only one that did extensive original research and because of that research a ton of information was saved that otherwise would have been lost? That it’s an incredible achievement and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants the facts without wading through creative nonfiction or bias? Yes, all of those things.
I could also talk about how it’s not perfect, that I think in some cases Higdon was too trusting with the memories of people he interviewed and quotes from newspapers, and the non-chronological order can make looking things up within the book kind of a nightmare, but there we go, I said it. Two paragraphs. So what I thought might be more interesting is to write about how the book came to be, because its evolution is a pretty interesting one.
The book got its start not with Hal Higdon, but with James Singer, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter who regularly covered criminal cases and had already written a book about another trial. When Nathan Leopold died in 1971, Singer’s publisher reached out to him with the idea of writing a book about the Franks murder. Singer took on the project and worked on it for about a year and a half, interviewing relevant people and pouring over the transcripts and newspapers. He was aided by Leopold’s lawyer, Elmer Gertz, and Gertz’s enormous collection of material, as well as Don Lebold, Leopold’s nephew, though Leopold’s widow Trudi was hostile and refused to cooperate.
By the end of 1973 Singer had completed a draft of about half of the book, but when he passed it on to his publisher, he was less than pleased. “It reads like an expanded synopsis of the story rather than the first half of what can be a successful book,” publisher Walter Minton wrote. “Structure is bad…There are bits and pieces of extraneous material scattered throughout…[his] portrait of Loeb and Leopold is incorrect…Singer doesn’t seem to have the sensibilities to evaluate or handle their personalities and specific types. They seem almost like clowns, which they weren’t. Psychotics, yes, but not louts…But my main problem is that the story is not fleshed out. It is at best a newspaper rendition of the story.”
Singer’s first draft was quite chronological and fact heavy, but also had a healthy mix of creative non-fiction and background material about what was going on during the time period. In response to the critiques, Singer tried again, adding invented conversations and even more material on subjects unrelated to the case. However, shortly afterward Singer got a new job and moved to Washington, where he struggled to fit the book project into his new life. As they were represented by the same agent, Hal Higdon was called up and asked if he would be interested in coming on as a co-author to help Singer finish the book. “I thought about it for about two seconds and said yes,” Higdon recalled.
Higdon running for the University of Chicago in 1955
Born in 1931, Higdon had been raised in Chicago, and as he recalled about his introduction to the case: “I grew up on the south side of Chicago. Leopold and Loeb disposed of some of the evidence at one of the beaches where I used to swim, and I went to the same high school as Loeb and one of his favorite teachers was still there. Like all Chicagoans of my generation, Leopold and Loeb was something we grew up with.”
Higdon had already written several non-fiction books on a variety of topics and threw himself into researching for The Crime of the Century. Along with the groundwork Singer had laid, Higdon reached out to dozens more who had known Leopold and Loeb, including fraternity brothers of Loeb’s, men who had been there when Bobby’s body was discovered, witnesses at the Franks trial, and jurors at the Loeb-Day trial.
Despite his best efforts, many declined to respond, like the former girlfriends of both Leopold and Loeb, and Loeb’s youngest brother Tommy, who ignored all attempts at contact. Leopold’s widow remained hostile to Higdon as she had to Singer, and threatened to sue him if he quoted from Leopold’s autobiography or letters too extensively. She also told her friends not to speak to Higdon, which cut off his ability to write much about the later part of Leopold’s life, though he does write about it more than any author other than Gertz.
Higdon had a further hurdle in attempting to marry his and Singer’s visions for the book, which turned out to be very different on key points. The biggest were that Singer had not indicated any sources he used, while Higdon meticulously sourced every piece of evidence, and Singer’s penchant to make up details and conversations in the name of setting the scene or making something seem more realistic.
As an example, take the way Singer wrote about the drive back from Ann Arbor after the fraternity robberies in 1923, when Leopold and Loeb fought (in plain caps):
“Let’s go out of here,” Loeb cried suddenly. He turned and dashed out of the house, knocking over a lamp on the way. Furious, Leopold ran after him, clutching the camera.
“Why the hell did you leave?” he said, as he jumped in their car.
“Someone was coming.”
“You’re crazy.”
“What do you mean, crazy? I heard him. I heard a noise.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Then you’re deaf.”
They argued violently as they drove back to Chicago, each accusing the other of having acted foolishly. Leopold denounced Loeb as selfish and undependable, Loeb said he was tired of Leopold’s constant complaints, that he was a bore and a pest, a pain in the ass. They left Michigan and crossed into Indiana, still fuming and oblivious to the late burst of Indian summer sunshine.
Then how Higdon tried to bend it toward his style, while keeping the spirit of Singer’s original (in bold):
The pair argued violently and profanely as they drove back to their homes on the south side of Chicago. They continued to drink. Alcohol fueled their anger. Each voiced his disgust at the way the other had performed; each accused the other of having acted foolishly.
Their conversation went unrecorded, but Leopold undoubtedly denounced Loeb as selfish and undependable, as he would during a later confrontation before witnesses. Loeb probably said he had grown tired of Leopold’s constant complaints, that he found him a bore, a pest, a pain in the ass. For a while their friendship threatened to collapse. They drove on, still arguing. The sky grew lighter behind them in the east.
And finally how the event was published in the final book (in italics):
But the second burglary that same night had ended in failure when Loeb, who had been reluctant to press their luck by entering a second, unfamiliar fraternity, heard someone upstairs and panicked. They fled, taking only a camera as their loot, and drove back to Chicago.
“Each was disgusted with the other’s work in the robberies,” explained Drs. Hulbert and Bowman. “They raised other personal questions about which they were disharmonious. Their friendship threatened to collapse. The argument was very bitter and lasted for several hours. It was suggested that the friendship should dissolve.”
Clearly the two authors had quite conflicting styles, and to add onto that, they disagreed with certain facts of the case. Singer believed that Loeb had hit Bobby with the chisel, and wrote the scene of the murder matter-of-factly from that perspective. Higdon, however, seems unsure, but inclined to believe that it was Leopold who did the killing, writing in his book that while it was possible that Loeb had killed Bobby, “it did not seem probable, and the impression held by most who studied the case early would be that Nathan Leopold struck the death blow.”
An invented conversation from a Singer draft, set during the first day of the trial
They also had varying viewpoints on what the sexuality of the killers was, Singer seemingly thinking they were straight, with a lot of emphasis in his original draft on girlfriends and very little on the relationship between Leopold and Loeb. He claimed that with Leopold’s plans to go to Europe and Harvard, the “only problem was that he didn’t have much time left with his girl,” and extensively covered his dates with Susan Lurie. He also invented that while Loeb’s reporter friends were questioning the drug store employees about the ransom calls to Mr. Franks, “Loeb wandered over to a table where a pretty girl was sitting and had a soda with her, charming her with his chatter.” This fabricated detail managed to slip its way into Higdon’s final version.
Higdon was unsure about Loeb, but thought that Leopold was either “AC/DC,” an older slang term for bisexual, or gay. In a draft of his version of the book, Higdon wrote: “Leopold marched to the beat of a different drum; he was homosexual…If Loeb were motivated be a desire to commit a perfect crime, Leopold was motivated by a more basic desire.”
Despite the differences, I haven’t seen any evidence of disagreements between Singer and Higdon, and it seems that Singer dropped the project solely because of his work and location restraints. Singer and Higdon were supposed to be listed as co-authors, but as Higdon continued working on the project, Singer grew increasingly uncomfortable about the idea, as his close friendship with Leopold’s nephew Don made him less willing to be associated with the book. He eventually asked for his name to be removed, and Higdon would publish as the sole author.
While some pieces of Singer’s work remain in the published book, the majority is Higdon’s, and it was published in 1975 to roaring success. Within a month a second printing was ordered, as over 12,500 copies had sold. Reviews were exceedingly positive, and as Higdon toured the United States giving lectures to promote the book, enthusiastic newspaper articles followed. “The Crime of the Century will capture your attention and leave you gruesomely entranced,” one reporter claimed. Despite many reporters praising Higdon for being “objective” and “fair-minded,” Higdon revealed that “I also came to really dislike, even hate, these two guys – both for their incredible arrogance and for their utter lack of morality.” Higdon has long been considered the go to expert on the case, and is almost always interviewed when a Leopold-Loeb documentary is made.
Since the publication, Higdon has gone on to author several more books, but has focused mainly on running, which is his passion. He ran for the University of Chicago in his college days, and since his retirement he writes books and gives advice to others about the sport. Singer had a successful career in journalism, enjoyed sports and the company of his wife, children and grandchildren. He died in 2016.
I’m happy to finally be able to share this project with you all, which has been over a year in the making: a searchable database of all of the pre-1929 non Chicago newspaper photos I’ve been able to find relating to Leopold, Loeb as well as their friends and families.
There are currently over 900 photos in the database, and I’ll continue updating this with photos as I find them. Because of the limitations of the free version of the website I’m using, the Chicago and non-Chicago papers had to be split up. I have about 1,000 more photos to add on the Chicago side of things and then I’ll make that public as well.
Please let me know if there are any questions, or suggestions to make this better, and happy searching!
Other News
The musical Thrill Me is being staged until February 4th by the Teddington Theatre Club in Hampton Hill in the United Kingdom. More information and tickets can be found here.
The Lives and Legends of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold 