TABLET MAG
by Adam Kirsch
April 16, 2015

When you think of how many people have died violent deaths in the last 90 years, it’s strange that a single murder from 1924 should still be remembered at all, much less regarded as the crime of the century. But the killing of 14-year-old Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb was no ordinary murder. We are used to murderers who kill out of greed, rage, jealousy, fear, or hatred; we are even used to genocides committed for ideological or political reasons. What is hard to comprehend, even today, is a murder committed for no reason at all. Yet when Leopold and Loeb, two teenage friends from wealthy Jewish families in Chicago, convinced Franks to get into their car one afternoon after school and then beat him to death with a chisel, the sheer absence of motive was itself their motive. READ MORE