My review of Mike Farris’ book Blowhard: Windbaggery and the Wretched Ethics of Clarence Darrow has been posted here.
The Newberry Library had a presentation yesterday evening, in which a panel of experts talked about what the Leopold-Loeb case would have looked like if it had been committed and tried today. When the video of that presentation gets posted to the Newberry’s youtube channel I’ll add it to the Videos page and link it here as well.
On April 20th in Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre Studio there will be a night of 4 one act plays presented back to back. One of those is ‘Bobby Franks’ by Paula Frew. The description from the website reads: “In an affluent suburb of 1920’s Chicago, University students, Richard and Nathan plan the perfect murder… because they can!” Admission is £12. To find out more information or buy tickets, go here.
I myself have some presentations coming up in the next month or two:
April 10th, 2024, 6:30pm Central Time, in-person and virtual: Talk at the Schaumburg Public Library. You can register for that event here.
April 14th, 2024, Sunday, 2pm, in-person: Talk at the Joliet Historical Museum. $5 for the general public, free for Museum members. For more information go here. To book tickets go to this page and find my program listed as: Second Sunday Lecture: Arrested Adolescence
April 17th, 2024, 7pm Central Time, virtual: Presentation for the Illinois Ornithological Society’s speaker’s series.
May 21st, 2024, 7:30pm Central Time, in-person: Talk at the Elgin Public Museum.
The Schaumburg talk will be a fairly general overview of the Leopold-Loeb story and Leopold’s later life, but the Joliet talk will focus in on the lives Leopold and Loeb led in Joliet prison, and the talk for the Illinois Ornithological Society will focus on Leopold’s birding (though both will still cover the crime as well). Hope to see some of you there!
Blowhard: Windbaggery and the Wretched Ethics of Clarence Darrow by Mike Farris is the latest nonfiction book to cover the Leopold-Loeb case. The title tells you pretty much everything you need to know: the book focuses on Darrow, doesn’t have a high opinion of him, and is pretty tongue in cheek.
This book’s conversational tone is evident right at the beginning; Farris quotes a Monty Python skit in his introduction and talks to the reader throughout. For some examples:
“Do you understand what Darrow was saying here?”
And
“That also explains one of Darrow’s several ethical lapses during the case. Perhaps, though, “lapse” is not the right word. That implies an ethical person temporarily slipping up, but not an attorney with a lack of character who was pretty much bereft of ethics to start with. That means it’s not a lapse but simply consistency in a pattern of conduct.”
Reading this book is like having your friend tell you about someone they hate.
Farris also makes clear from the beginning that “This book is not intended as a biography or a history of Clarence Darrow, full of details and dates, but rather as an analysis of, and commentary upon, Darrow’s overwrought oratory and abysmal ethics as a lawyer.”
I won’t be commenting on the other cases Farris touches on in his book, but I will be diving into his coverage of the Leopold-Loeb case, which covers about 100 pages.
As I do with all non-fiction books, I checked the sources and notes first, to see what kind of material the author was working with. Despite a blurb on the back claiming that Farris was “drawing on untapped archives and meticulous research,” there was nothing that I hadn’t seen before. In fact, it seemed like he’d done no archival research at all, at least for the Leopold-Loeb section. In his Leopold-Loeb chapters I counted up all of the sources he listed and there were 11 published books, 1, article, 1 thesis and 1 website.
That’s alright, especially since Farris said in his introduction that he wanted this to be an analysis of Darrow, not a biography. I think it’s totally possible to write great commentary when you’ve just read other published works. And Farris shows a good amount of skepticism for one of his sources: Irving Stone’s Clarence Darrow For the Defense. He writes that since Stone was heavily influenced by Darrow’s widow Ruby when writing his book, some of the more melodramatic stories likely came from her, and were probably embellished. I just wish he’d used more of that source skepticism and looked into the actual primary sources to find out the reality.
As happens with books based on other books rather than primary sources, I did notice a few inaccuracies that slipped through. Some things are small: the Leopold and Loeb families paid Darrow $65,000, not $70,000 for his work, and Leopold’s mother was dead by the time the hearing happened, so Darrow didn’t address her in his speech, as Farris says twice. Farris also claims that Leopold’s autobiography was a “commercial failure,” despite earning back its for-the-time astronomical advance of $16,000 (about $181,000 in 2024) in a couple months and being on the New York Times bestseller list for 14 weeks.
Farris also falls into Meyer Levin’s trap and believes that Levin knew both Leopold and Loeb in school and “covered the case as a cub reporter for Chicago Daily News, and even broke a scoop or two about the case.” Meyer Levin’s only article about the case in 1924 was one in which he described the habeas corpus hearing which took place on June 2nd, before he went off to Europe for the rest of the summer.
Some other things in the book were just confusing, like when Farris described Bobby’s injuries: “According to the autopsy report, he also bore defensive wounds on his face, shoulders, and buttocks, as if he had struggled with his assailant.”
The first footnote in Farris’ book is from Miriam-Webster, so I hope you’ll excuse me if I quote from Encyclopedia.com: “Defensive wounds are any type of injuries that result from an attempt, or repeated attempts, to defend against an assailant.” Nowhere in Bobby’s autopsy report did it call any of his wounds defensive or give any indication that he had sustained injuries while trying to protect himself. It seems that the attack on him was too quick and unexpected for any defense. And as defensive wounds are almost always received on the hands and arms, when victims shield themselves that way, I’m wondering what the situation was where Bobby tried to protect himself from injury with his face and buttocks.
But all of that isn’t what Farris is here for. The entire backgrounds of the killers, their crime and how they were caught and confessed is covered in 12 pages. The real meat is what Darrow brought to the table.
As is obvious from the title and tone of the book, Farris really has a bone to pick with Darrow. Most of the Leopold-Loeb section is Farris going down a list of things he thinks Darrow did or thought wrongly about. He objects to a quote from Darrow in which he says he doesn’t think that ‘justice’ and ‘law’ are synonymous.
He also disagrees with Darrow saying that to him, the ends justified the means. That if he thought a cause was just, he would break the rules if he needed to, to see that the outcome he wanted was achieved. To Farris, this is narcissistic, an example of Darrow seeing himself as a superior being, able to mete out the law as he sees fit.
This is also where your mileage may vary with this book. To many of Darrow’s fans, what Farris calls flaws were actually Darrow’s strengths. Darrow acknowledging that he was working within a very flawed system, where the innocent were often blamed for things they didn’t do, and the guilty seen as monsters to be executed with no humanity or potential for redemption. In the broken establishment he found himself in, he was willing to work both within and outside of the system to try and steer things the way he wanted, is how his fans would view it, and I can’t see Farris’ argument swaying them.
Darrow’s closing argument got the biggest break down, possibly because it’s been long-heralded as a gold standard in legal circles. Farris quotes Darrow extensively from the trial, but what I find odd is he never sources these quotes, and there’s often multiple on a page. I assume he’s getting them from published sources, either other non fiction books or the published pamphlet version of Darrow’s speech (because I checked some quotes against the actual transcript and they don’t line up), but why not source them?
Farris mocks many things in this section and I agree with some of it, and disagree with some. I agree that the way Darrow talked about Bobby and the Franks family was insulting. I also don’t think it helped his case at all, in my opinion it was a losing strategy, trying to say that the victim and his family were better off than the killers and their families. It’s an aspect of his argument that I think deserves to be criticized.
Farris mocks Darrow for calling Leopold and Loeb by their nicknames, which I agree was a pretty obvious ploy to try to play down their ages and make them seem more vulnerable, human and relatable. Not harmful, but a clear example of Darrow strategizing. Some of the other points Farris brings up, I agree with less.
He points to Darrow as a hypocrite, because though he was agnostic, he invoked God and Christianity several times. This seems to be a sticking point for Farris, who quotes a lot of scripture and uses biblical examples throughout his book. Many times when Darrow brought up God in his argument he did it to say to the State: you’re saying America is a Christian nation, but killing these defendants wouldn’t be a Christian act. He can say that and not contradict his own beliefs.
Then Farris talks about what is “perhaps, the most remarkable and outrageous of Darrow’s arguments. Were it not so tragic, it would be laughable. Darrow contended that not only was the killing of Bobby Franks not cruel or cold-blooded, it would be worse to punish Leopold and Loeb for killing him.”
This argument of Darrow’s was that the killing of Bobby wasn’t, as the State’s Attorney was claiming, the most horrible, cruel, unbelievable murder in the history of Illinois. And I’d agree with him. Bobby wasn’t tortured, there was no excessive amount of pain or fear, no prolonged or drawn-out death. There was one victim, a few blows to the head and unconsciousness. There were worse murders happening in Chicago every day; multiple murders, murders where the victims slowly bled out, where they were tortured for hours or days. It’s disingenuous to say this was the worst murder ever committed when there’s a whole bloody human history stretching out behind it. But I can see, like with the earlier complaint about the Franks family being better off, that this was likely a misstep on Darrow’s part. By trying to play down the importance of the murder, he may have inflamed more people to explain just why it was so cruel and horrible.
Farris also complains several times about the length of Darrow’s speech: “And as he, at last, approached the end of his twelve-hour filibuster, he said, ‘Now, I must say a word more and then I will leave this with you where I should have left it long ago,’ and shortly after that, ‘I feel I should apologize for the length of time I have taken.’ Do I hear an ‘amen’?”
As I love to bring up, Darrow spoke for a bit less than 8 hours, in four 2 hour long sessions from Friday to Monday. And State’s Attorney Crowe spoke just about 10 minutes less than him. But Farris has no criticism for the length of time Crowe took.
Farris ends his Leopold-Loeb section quoting Baatz, King and Wilson:
“The authors of Nothing But the Night assert that, as hard as it might be to believe, the published version of Darrow’s closing that is dissected in this book ‘was not Darrow’s actual closing, but instead a carefully edited version.’”
Through those three authors Farris claims that the full transcript is gone forever because Darrow didn’t return it. And then he moves on to the Scopes trial. After dissecting that closing argument for about 50 pages, Farris says that it wasn’t even Darrow’s actual closing and just walks away. Even if I had been agreeing with him up until that point, this would completely negate that experience for me. Because if the quotes Farris spent all that time disagreeing with weren’t even Darrow’s words, what was the point of it all? What did Darrow actually say? It’s a huge blow to his book that could have been avoided if he’d realized that, despite King, Wilson and Baatz’s assertions, the pamphlet version of Darrow’s argument is extremely close to what he said in court. And, if he’d wanted to comment on Darrow’s actual speech word for word, the full transcript is available at the Library of Congress. If you’d like more information about the content of his speech, you can see my post here.
If I’m being honest, this book didn’t really work for me. I think the idea of critically analyzing Darrow’s speech and ethics is a good one, I certinley don’t think he was a paradigm of virtue, but many of the arguments Farris makes don’t hold water to me. His picking at little contradictions that all humans make (like Darrow claiming Leopold and Loeb had been hurt by their wealth but also wanting money for his work) and his disinterest in establishing the actual facts before making his judgements means I don’t have much trust in what he’s saying. But it is a pretty unique take on the case, so if you’re interested in his unconventional analysis of Darrow’s closing argument and don’t mind the conversational tone, give this one a try. You can pick it up on Amazon here.
Happy March everyone, I hope you all enjoyed the leap day. This time I have a post about the potential victims who were considered by Leopold and Loeb, and the lives they led. It also explores those who claim to have been considered as potential victims, and the evidence supporting or against that.
In other news:
The movie American Criminals just wrapped up their 4th week of shooting, check out this page to see the new behind the scenes photos. They have at least one more week of shooting before they wrap, and no anticipated release date.
The book Blowhard: Windbaggery and the Wretched Ethics of Clarence Darrow was published on February 28th and can be ordered on Amazon.
A 21st-Century Reconsideration of Leopold and Loeb, a panel discussion at the Newberry Library, will be held on March 14th and is free to attend in person and virtually. More information is available here.
Thank you to Bill Marks, for his help with the Junie Harris section.
While it’s no secret that Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murdered Robert ‘Bobby’ Franks of May 21, 1924, they very easily could have chosen someone else. When they went out to search that day they didn’t have a particular target: leaving it to fate to take whichever victim drifted into their path.
Initially though, this random chance wasn’t the plan. When he first broached the idea, Loeb had a specific victim in mind. As the story was told in one of his psychiatric reports:
“On the way back from Ann Arbor the plan of kidnapping a boy coupled with the idea of ransom was first broached by [Loeb]. [Loeb] had a definite boy in mind at that time. [Loeb] did not like this boy nor his family, the details of which have not been brought out. He was [Loeb’s] own age, and rather large for his age. [Loeb’s] idea was to get hold of this boy when he was coming back from a party and lured him into an automobile. He could not figure out any safe way of getting the money. [Loeb] and [Leopold] discussed this idea quite frequently, [Loeb] enjoying these discussions intensely.”
And further explained in a different psychiatric report:
“[Loeb] at this time was angry at a certain youth named William, and [Loeb] suggested that they kidnap William for ransom, and incidentally kill him and destroy any marks of identification so William, in order that William could not escape to incriminate them later. He was Loeb’s age and rather large for his age.
…
The first person they contemplated killing they decided was too large and strong, and they also knew that he would be out of town, away at school.”
It’s possible that this initial potential victim was either William Flarsheim or William Fleischaker, both fraternity brothers of Loeb’s at the University of Michigan. Flarsheim was two years behind Loeb in school and had been initiated into the fraternity on the same night Loeb was, and Fleischaker was one year behind Loeb. It’s also possible that it was a different William entirely, as the sources only say that William was away at school, not which school or fraternity he belonged to.
The pair also discussed their fathers and brothers, and their mutual friend Richard Rubel, but they eventually settled on certain parameters:
The victim must be a boy, because they were less supervised than girls, less likely to be accompanied by a governess and so would be easier to take unnoticed.
The victim had to be young and small enough that Leopold and Loeb could overpower him and carry his body easily.
The victim had to have a rich family who would be willing to pay a ransom to get him back.
Though they didn’t state it, Leopold and Loeb only seemed to have been looking in their neighborhood, as all of the potential victims lived nearby and attended the Harvard School for Boys. This may have been so they could observe the reactions of their neighbors without seeming out of place, but that’s just speculation, as far as I’ve seen, they didn’t publicly discuss that aspect of the selection process.
When Leopold confessed he had this conversation with Robert Crowe:
Crowe: Your original plan when you were thinking it out as late as last November, Nathan, did you have anyone at that time that was to be the victim?
Leopold: Nobody in particular. We had considered Mr. Clarence Coleman, also Mr. Walter Baer, Walter Baer, Jr., as the victim and Clarence Coleman’s son.
Crowe: When was the plan finally effected whereby you considered the Franks boy?
Leopold: When we saw him on 49th by pure accident.
On May 21st Leopold and Loeb watched Coleman, Baer, and another boy who fit their criteria: John Levinson. In his confession, Loeb relayed how he talked to Levinson at the Harvard School, then he and Leopold watched Coleman and Baer playing baseball. Levinson was playing in a different lot, and after watching him for a while, they decided he would be their victim. Leopold went home to get binoculars so they could better watch their potential victims, while Loeb went to a drug store to look up Levinson’s address, so they would know where to send the ransom note. But after they regrouped to watch Levinson, he and a group of other children went up an alley away from the lot and didn’t return.
When Leopold and Loeb went around to the other lots where kids were playing and Levinson’s home, they failed to find him. That’s when they did another loop around the neighborhood and spotted Bobby Franks walking home. Either Levinson, Baer or Coleman could have been chosen that day, had the situation unfolded a little differently.
After the pair confessed two more names were added to the list: Armand Deutsch Jr., the grandson of Julius Rosenwald and Samuel ‘Junie’ Harris. Though they hadn’t been stalked on the 21st as the other three had, and they were listed nowhere in the confessions or other documents that I could find, Robert Crowe was quoted in newspapers as saying that Leopold and Loeb had told him that Deutsch and Harris had been considered as potential victims as well.
John Levinson
Chicago History Museum, Chicago Daily News
Born on October 24, 1914, John was nine years old when he almost became a victim of Leopold and Loeb. John’s father Salmon had three children from a previous marriage and John was the baby of the family; his two eldest siblings 18 and 19 years his senior and away at college.
Salmon seemed delighted with his youngest son: his letters often mentioning updates on his growth and interests. When John was five months old Salmon wrote to his eldest son: “John Oliver is a peach; he has grown and looks very much like a new boy rather than a baby. He is great fun to play with – the best natured little thing I ever saw.” The updates continued as John grew: as his speech developed, the nicknames he had for his siblings, his interest in baseball and his many friends.
It was a shock when the truth about Leopold and Loeb was revealed, as Salmon wrote to a friend: “The escape of our boy was indeed miraculous, as the confession shows, and as the facts we have checked up corroborate. We have been in a kind of nightmare, first, because the Loeb boy’s father is an intimate friend of mine and, secondly, because of the feeling that we might have been in a life-long tragedy and calamity ourselves.”
The Levinson family went to their summer home in Maine shortly after the confessions, but returned in late July so that John could testify, the only potential victim to do so. Court spectators seemed to find him a welcome change as he chatted to the judge and relayed his story of talking to Loeb with little nervousness, despite the crowd.
According to John, after the near miss his father was very protective and wanted to have him driven to and from school every day, but his mother wouldn’t allow it, saying that would traumatize him more. He appreciated her for letting him have his independence.
After high school John went to Yale, got a law degree, married and had two children. He often competed in amateur golf tournaments, but on that front was outstripped by his son, also named John, who became a pro golfer.
When John died in 1974 at 59 years old from lung cancer, most of his obituaries were more concerned with his connection to the Leopold-Loeb case than the 50 years of his life that came after. His Chicago Sun Times obituary consisted of an opening paragraph explaining his death, 6 paragraphs about the crime, and 3 summarizing his life and family. John doesn’t seem to have spoken much publicly about the crime, but it still became what most people would remember him for.
John Coleman
New York Daily News, December 30, 1934
Born on April 11, 1911, John Coleman was thirteen when he was considered as a potential victim by Leopold and Loeb. He attended the Harvard School for Boys and lived at 5100 Ellis Avenue, less than a block away from the Loeb and Franks houses. He was on Harvard’s basketball team and his classmates poked fun at him in his sophomore year, writing in his yearbook: “Johnny is perfect in every respect, save for his habit of sleeping during the third period, and his snoring is particularly irritating to his more studious neighbors.”
He became a commodity broker and joined the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1932. In 1934 Coleman married Marjorie Friedman and went to work at her father’s company, selling butter and eggs. Their marriage was heralded with reminders that Coleman had been named as a potential victim in the Franks case, the Chicago Tribune’s headline reading: ‘Intended Victim of Loeb-Leopold Weds.’ When he died in 1985 at the age of 74 he had four children and five grandchildren.
Walter Baer Jr.
1926 Harvard school yearbook
‘Wally’ was born on September 3, 1911, so was twelve when he was considered for kidnapping. His father, Walter Baer Sr. had co-founded the banking and investment firm Baer, Eisendrath and Company in 1915 after working as a lawyer for a number of years.
Baer Jr. and John Coleman were very close as kids: they lived in the same building, both at 5100 Ellis Ave, were in the same class, and played on the same sports teams. They were playing together on May 21st, and them sticking together could have been what saved them from Bobby’s fate.
Baer married Margaret Mayer and the couple had three children. When Baer died in 1997 at the age of 86 he had nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He escaped the notoriety of other potential victims; his obituary didn’t mention the case at all, and was instead an outpouring of love from his family: “We remember him with love and will grievously miss his kindness, his unbridled optimism and his sense of fun.”
Samuel Harris Jr.
Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1924
Samuel H. Harris Jr., usually called ‘Junie,’ was born in June of 1909, so was not quite 15 years old when he was considered for kidnapping in May of 1924. He lived at 5006 Ellis avenue, just about 200 feet up the street from the Loeb mansion. His father, Samuel Sr., was one of the founding members of the ‘Chicago House Wrecking Company,’ which was eventually renamed to the gentler ‘Harris Brothers Company.’ They got their start in the wreckage and salvage business, and eventually expanded to include designing, building and shipping houses as well.
It’s a family legend that when Helen Harris, Junie’s older sister, celebrated her 19th birthday shortly after the murder but before the confessions (she was born on May 22nd), Leopold and Loeb mingled among the guests, discussing their theories with neighbors who were none the wiser.
According to one newspaper “Mrs. Harris wept continuously as she discussed the confession of young Loeb. “‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Richard was one of the sweetest boys in the world. It was impossible to know him without being fond of him. Junie, who is unusually large for his 14 years, played tennis with Richard nearly every afternoon on the Loeb court.’”
The Harris family got an additional scare when on August 18th, 1924 a skull and crossed arm bones were found on the porch of Frank Harris, Junie’s uncle. With the bones was the note: “If the court don’t hang them, we will. K. K. K.” The police guessed that this warning hadn’t been specifically targeted to the Harris family, it was just that the Franks and Loeb homes were being guarded by police, so they chose a random home close enough to the others that they wouldn’t be apprehended.
After that difficult summer, Harris Jr. joined the family company and married Julie Meyer. The couple had two children. The couple enjoyed travelling the world and Harris Jr. taught high school Spanish classes, as he was fluent in the language. He died in 1992 at the age of 83.
Armand Deutsch
Miami Herald, September 12, 1996
Armand Deutsch was the son of Armand and Adele Deutsch, and the grandson of Julius Rosenwald. He was born on January 25, 1913, and was eleven years old when he was considered by Leopold and Loeb as a potential victim.
Deutsch is unique among the potential victims in that he talked a lot about this part of his life, and often publicly. He published several articles discussing it, wrote about it in his autobiography and was interviewed in Leopold-Loeb documentaries. And not only that, but he moved himself beyond just being one of many boys to be considered as a victim: to hear Deutsch tell it he was their first choice. As he wrote in his autobiography:
“There is no question that I was the intended kidnap victim. And, if they had asked me to get into their car, I would have gone with them. Fortunately, on the day of the crime, I had a dentist appointment, and the family chauffeur picked me up and drove me there. Obviously, that’s how Bobby Franks became the standby victim.”
In a 1996 article he wrote, Deutsch narrated the event: “On May 21, Dickie and Babe, in their rented Wilys-Knight, cruised around the Harvard School looking for me. Instead, they found my 10-year old classmate, Robert Franks, high on their list of acceptable candidates.”
Honestly, for a while I wasn’t even sure if Armand had been considered as a victim at all, let alone singled out as their first choice. In the 1924 newspaper coverage it was usually just referenced that “the grandson of Julius Rosenwald” had been considered as a possible target. Even when papers did name him, the names were usually different from each other. One called him “S. Deutsch,” another “young Deutsch,” I’ve actually only seen one paper get his entire name correct, and they also correctly identified his mother.
But my biggest confusion about if Armand was considered was Crowe mentioning a Deutsch during the trial: “When I questioned the defendant Richard Loeb he told me that they had contemplated killing Billie Deutsch among others, and I asked who Billie Deutsch was, and he said: ‘He is the grandson of Julius Rosenwald.'”
Because of all this name confusion I did consider the possibility that Leopold and Loeb had instead considered Armand’s seven-year-old brother Richard as a victim instead, he being the only other Deutsch grandson of Rosenwald. While I ultimately do believe that it was most likely Armand who was considered as a victim, there’s no evidence at all that he was Leopold and Loeb’s first choice.
Deutsch also wasn’t the only one to get in on talking about him as a potential victim. It was claimed that football coach Fritz Crisler helped save his life. As relayed in the book Great College Football Coaches of the Twenties and Thirties by Tim Cohane:
“To supplement his income as assistant to Stagg and the baseball coach, Crisler tutored the son of Morris Rosenwald [Morris Rosenwald was actually Deutch’s great grand-uncle], prominent Chicago businessman. And the youngster was the one Leopold and Loeb planned to kidnap. That day, however, the headmaster of the school called Crisler to tell him young Rosenwald had a toothache. Fritz called the chauffeur and took the boy to the dentist.”
Deutsch married twice and had six children. He became a successful film producer and made friends among politicians and other celebrities. He died in 2005 at the age of 92.
Claims
In addition to the potential victims revealed to the press, there’s others who claim (or others claim it about them) to have been in consideration as well.
William Shawn (Chon)
1924 Harvard school yearbook
Born in August of 1907, William Chon (he later changed his last name to Shawn) was sixteen when Bobby Franks was kidnapped. He lived at 5030 Ellis Avenue, directly across the street from the Loeb house, and also attended the Harvard School for Boys.
The first time I’ve seen the Leopold-Loeb rumor in regards to him is the 1965 article ‘Tiny Mummies’ by Tom Wolfe, which mocks Shawn and claims his brush with death is partially why he’s so retiring: “[Leopold and Loeb] wanted a small and therefore manageable teenage boy, from the Harvard School, with wealthy parents who would be able to pay the ransom. They went over six names, the first of which was ‘William.’ The court records do not give the last name…They dropped the idea of ‘William’ only because they had a personal grudge against him and somebody might remember that.”
This story seems to be either a misunderstanding or skewing of the actual evidence. Leopold and Loeb did consider a William and the court documents gave no last name for him, but they also specified that William was large for his age (Shawn was described as small and slight), that he was Loeb’s age (Shawn was 2 years younger), and that he was out of Chicago away at school, (Shawn was not).
Lillian Ross, in her memoir Here, But Not Here, also claimed that Shawn told her that he thought Leopold and Loeb considered kidnapping him:
“Leopold and Loeb had stopped in at Bill’s house a short time before the murder. Bill told me about it. ‘I barely knew them when, for no apparent reason, they came to our kitchen and kept staring at me,’ he said. ‘They were, I imagine, looking me over as a candidate for what they were going to do.’”
I’ve seen nothing from Shawn himself directly claiming this, and have never seen his name come up regarding the case otherwise.
When Shawn graduated from Harvard in 1925 he went to the University of Michigan, joining Loeb’s old fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau. He married journalist Cecille Lyon in 1928 and the couple had three children. He worked at the New Yorker for 53 years and was editor from 1951–1987. He died in 1992 at the age of 85.
Robert Asher
1924 Harvard school yearbook
A boy named Robert Asher also claimed to have been in the running for potential victim. Born in October of 1910, Asher was thirteen years old in May of 1924. In 1924 he lived at 4008 Greenwood avenue, a little more than half a mile from the Harvard School. He was interviewed in 2000 and told this story:
“I was the class president that freshman year and therefore got involved very early in the case as a good friend of Bobby Franks, who at first appeared to have been kidnaped for ransom. I knew Dick Loeb and my sister was in a birding class led by Nathan Leopold. They’d go into parks and suburbs looking for uncommon birds, and Nathan Leopold was the expert, pointing out to these youngsters recognizable differences between birds they saw.
On the Saturday before the murder, Dick Loeb came by and we tossed a ball for a while. He was four or five years older than I. He said, “You ought to come out and see some real ball games sometime.” And I said, “Where?” And he said, “At the University next week.” I said, “I don’t have any way to get there.” To which he replied, “I could give you a lift.” I said, “Thank you.”
But the next Wednesday, when I got home from my dentist appointment, I got a call from Mrs. Franks asking whether I knew where her son was. He was normally home by that time. It was 5:30, six o’clock. I said, I didn’t know because I had left school at three o’clock, whatever time we got out, and had gone downtown to the dentist. But I would try to find out for her. And I established the fact that he left school around 3:30, as far as anyone knew, walking south from 47th Street to his home on 51st Street and should presumably have been home by the time she had called.
What had happened came out later. It was that he had been picked up by Loeb and Leopold in their car. They were looking for any eligible young person of the group that they knew at Harvard school, including, as they later said, Junie Harris, me, Johnny Coleman, Bobby Franks. They really weren’t particular.”
Apparently the dentist saved at least two boys’ lives this day.
Asher got a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1934 and went on to work for the federal and state governments. He married Ethel Watson and the couple had two children. When Ethel died in 1987 he remarried Marilee Harris (a cousin of potential victim Junie Harris). Asher died in 2008 at the age of 97.
Horace Wade
Chicago American, August 7, 1924
One book, Horses, Burroughs and Other Animals, discussed the young Chicago American reporter Horace Wade and claimed that “When the thrill killers were apprehended, a list of other scheduled victims was found among their effects. And lo, little Horace’s name led all the rest.” I’ve seen no other sources claiming this about Wade.
Born in 1908 in St. Louis, Missouri, he was old for the pair, being sixteen, and he didn’t live in their neighborhood or go to the Harvard School like the other potential victims.
Wade had a flash of celebrity early: he published his first book at the age of 11 and was hired by the Chicago American to be their ‘boy reporter.’ He covered the Leopold-Loeb case in this capacity, before the confessions he even interviewed Loeb and staged a reenactment of what authorities thought Bobby’s kidnapping may have looked like.
When he grew up he got into horse racing, moving to the east coast and working for the Narragansett Racing Association. He wrote several other books, movie scripts and short stories and died in 1993 at the age of 85.
The Lives and Legends of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold 