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On November 19, 1904 Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Junior was born in Chicago to a wealthy family of German immigrants. As was normal among the children of the very rich at the time his parents played a small part in his childhood, and much of his upbringing was left to a series of nurses and governesses. The traditionalist Leopold family favored European girls for these positions, and the young Leopold and his brothers Samuel and Foreman were raised in an environment where German was routinely spoken. Leopold’s first words, spoken at the age of only four months, were “Nein, nein. Mama.” His nurse at the time, and for the first five years of his life, was Marie Giessler, known as Mimie.
Leopold and Loeb had carefully worked out how to get rid of the physical evidence. Thanks to the blood there was a lot more than they’d bargained on, but they went ahead with the cleanup anyway. On the way back to the city they stopped so Leopold could call home. He told his father that he’d be slightly late and that his aunt, who he’d arranged to drive home, should wait for him. He didn’t go directly home, though. First they headed for Loeb’s house. Bobby Franks’ clothes went into the furnace. They wanted to burn the cloak, too, but decided not to. It was too large and they were worried it would create a smell throughout the house. They stashed it under some bushes in the garden for later disposal. Next they got a bucket of water and some cloths and tried to clean up the blood in the car. It was dark and they were in a hurry, so they didn’t make a very good job, but they planned to finish it next day. Only then did they drive to Leopold’s house, dump the hire car just up the street and go inside.
Leopold took his aunt home while Loeb chatted to his father. Leopold was away slightly longer than his father might have expected, because he’d stopped to make a phone call telling the shocked Mrs Franks that her son had been kidnapped. When he returned he said goodnight to his father then played cards with Loeb for a while, “for fun” as he clarified later. Finally, just before 1:30, he drove Loeb the three blocks to his house. On the way Loeb realized the murder weapon was still in his coat pocket.
# # #
The Kenwood district of Chicago was wealthy, and sometimes attracted burglars. The Chicago police department patrolled it regularly enough, but some residents weren’t reassured and took extra precautions. That included hiring night watchmen. The watchman’s job suited Bernard Hunt. He lived in a small white clapboard house three miles away on South Aberdeen, and patrolling these elegant mansions paid his bills with enough to spare. It was quiet, too. Kenwood’s wealthy might worry about break-ins, but nothing really happened here. There had been a few minor fires and some vandalism last year, but nothing much since. Rich kids acting up, he supposed.
That’s what he thought at 1:30 in the morning of May 22, when the flashy sports car came round the corner of 49th and Greenwood and something spun from the window. Whatever it was hit the street and bounced nearly to the sidewalk. As the car swept past Hunt got a good look at it. Yes, rich kids all right; he couldn’t tell the color so well under the orange streetlamps, but it had disk wheels, custom reflectors and a fancy light-colored top. Curious, he crossed the street and looked round for whatever had been thrown. Soon he found it; a chisel, with thick white tape wrapped round the blade. He picked it up. That was a strange thing to do to a good tool. And why had it been ditched? He examined it more closely, and saw the dark crusts on the handle and smeared into the tape. That looked like dried blood. Frowning, he pocketed it and returned to his beat.
The chisel was still weighing on his mind an hour later, when a black Essex sedan came rattling its way up the street. The hand-cranked bell on the passenger door marked it as a police car even before he could make out the white star and lettering beside it, and he walked to the curb and stuck a hand out. The Essex juddered to a halt beside him and the side curtain, buttoned against the cool night, was pulled open. Inside he recognized Officers Enos and Milligan of the “flivver squad” - the new team set up to patrol the city in cars.[16] Kenwood was part of their regular beat and they’d stopped to chat with him several times.
“Hey, Bernie, what’s up?” asked Enos. Hunt reached for his pocket.
“This got thrown out a car about an hour ago,” he said, handing over the chisel. “Looks like blood on the handle there. Thought you better see it.”
Enos turned the tool in his hands, thinking for a moment. “Reckon you’re right too. Did you get a look at the car?”
Hunt nodded. “I saw it.”
“OK then, jump in. We’ll head over to the station and get a statement. Best to have it on paper if it turns out somebody got smacked on the head with this.”
# # #
Tony Minke, an immigrant from Poland, worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad as a maintenance worker. His job took him along the company’s tracks, looking for anything that could be a problem. It wasn’t the best-paid job in the world, but it was an important one. It didn’t take much to cause a train wreck. Just last September 30 people had died in Wyoming on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincey Railroad when a bridge washed out after heavy rain. In this low, wet ground a lot of track was raised on embankments, and these relied on culverts for drainage. Flooding along the embankment could cause rapid erosion, and even slight settling of the tracks might be enough to send a train off the line. Tony Minke wanted to work his way up in this new country and he was determined to do his job well. No flood was going to happen on his stretch of line if he could do anything about it.
On the morning of May 22 he was checking the track along the Wolf Lake section of the line, looking for debris that could block a culvert. Passing one culvert he glanced down the embankment and saw something white protruding from the narrow tunnel. At first thinking it might be a piece of trash stuck in the culvert mouth he scrambled down to look. As he came closer he realized, to his horror, that it was a human foot. A small human foot.
Minke climbed down and looked inside. The small cadaver was stuffed grotesquely into the culvert, and even in the shadowed pipe he could see that the face and body were revoltingly burned. He looked along the track for his colleague. “Paul! Get over here, quick!”
Paul Korff heard the urgency in Minke’s voice and ran along the line. “What ya got, Tony?”
“There’s a dead child in here, a boy. I think he’s been murdered.”
Korff looked into the pipe. “Think so too. Hell, we better get the cops out here.” He stood up and backed away, repelled by the sight. Then a tiny glint of light caught his eye. He looked down. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses lay in the rough grass.
[6]
