On this day, May 21, 1924, two wealth University of Chicago students murdered a 14-year-old boy in what they meant to be the perfect crime.
Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold believed themselves to be supermen who could commit a crime without being caught. Turned out they weren’t.
After coaxing a 14-year-old neighbor into a rented car, they drove out to the country and killed him. They then left his body in a drainage ditch, grabbed hot dogs at a nearby stand and went home, where they played cards.
They hoped to get a ransom from the boy’s family, but the plan unraveled when the body was discovered. It didn’t take long for police to trace the crime back to the so-called geniuses, who then each implicated the other in the murder.
They were sentenced to life in prison.
— Freeman Klopott
