For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago Read Online Free Page A

beforehand—they could then send it as soon as they had kidnapped their victim. That evening, after dinner, in Nathan’s study, they composed the letter asking for $10,000. Earlier that day, Richard had shown Nathan a recent copy of Detective Story Magazine . It contained a tale about the kidnapping of a banker’s wife by two ex-convicts. Perhaps, Richard suggested, they could use the ransom letters in the story as the model for their letter. Nathan agreed, and glancing occasionally at the magazine, open at page twenty-six, he began to draft the ransom letter, writing it out in longhand, pausing occasionally to read it back to Richard. Finally Nathan was done. He turned to the typewriter standing on the spinet desk by his side. It was the portable Underwood typewriter that he had stolen six months before from the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at the University of Michigan. He fed the sheets of paper into the machine and, with Richard looking over his shoulder, typed out the demand for the ransom money. Nathan had never learned how to type, and he ponderously tapped out the letters one by one, searching out each key and striking it with his forefinger. But eventually he was done. He looked at the letter with a sense of pride—it was flawless; he could not see a single grammatical error. 33
    Everything was now in place for tomorrow. Nothing could go wrong. They were about to commit the perfect crime, a murder that would never be solved.

5 THE RANSOM
T HURSDAY, 22 M AY 1924–T HURSDAY, 29 M AY 1924
The thing that prompted Dick to want to do this thing and prompted me to want to do this thing was a sort of pure love of excitement, or the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different…. The money consideration only came in afterwards, and never was important…. The money was a part of our objective, as was also the commission of the crime; but that was not the exact motive, but that came afterwards. 1
Nathan Leopold, 1 June 1924
    T HE CHAUFFEUR, S VEN E NGLUND, STOOD AT the window of his apartment above the garage, wondering what was amiss. Nathan and his friend Richard Loeb were in the driveway below him, cleaning a dark green car: the same car, Englund remembered, that Richard had been driving the previous day. It was unusual to see Nathan performing physical labor—in fact, Englund could not recall that he had ever before seen Nathan work.
    Englund approached the car. Richard stood on the left, with a pail of water by his side. In one hand he held a brush, and in the other a cake of Bon Ami soap; he was lathering the brush with the soap and rubbing vigorously at stains on the rear door panel.
    Richard momentarily stopped rubbing at the car and straightened his back to greet the chauffeur. He explained that they had spilled some wine over the car and now he and Nathan were trying to remove the wine stains before he drove the car home.
    Could he assist them? Englund asked. No, Richard replied politely, they were almost finished. There had been a lot of stains both inside and outside the car but it had been easy enough to remove them. Perhaps, Richard asked, they might need some more soap—did Englund have any in the garage?
    He had only some Gold Dust cleaning powder, Englund replied, but he wouldn’t recommend using it on the outside of the car: it would probably take the varnish off the paint.
    As they talked, Nathan cleaned the rugs in the rear seat; now he came around to their side of the car. He had obviously been working hard; Englund could see beads of sweat on the boy’s forehead, and as Nathan stood before him in the bright afternoon sunshine, holding a can of gasoline in his right hand, a rivulet of perspiration trickled down the boy’s left cheek.
    Nathan wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. He held out the gasoline to the chauffeur. “Here is your can,” he said. They were trying to remove the wine stains before their parents caught them, Nathan explained. “We’ve been out doing a little