The circumstances around Jawad’s murder are based on the horrifying real-life slaying of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in May 1924. Leopold and Loeb were obsessed with Nietzsche’s Übermensch (superman) theory and believed themselves to be intellectually superior to others—above the law and society’s norms. To prove that superiority, they decided to commit the perfect crime and spent months plotting a murder. Loeb knew Franks (they were second cousins), and Leopold and Loeb easily lured him into their car—rented under a false name—and killed him, dumping his body in a culvert.
At the time of the murder, Leopold and Loeb were nineteen and eighteen years old, respectively, and were from very wealthy, well-connected families. Loeb was affable and popular. Leopold was an introvert and avid bird watcher. After the murder, they left a ransom note for the Franks and even called, assuring them that their son was alive and that he was kidnapped, not murdered. The pair hoped to mislead both the parents and the police, but Bobby Franks’ body was soon discovered with an incriminating piece of evidence—a pair of eyeglasses with a unique hinge, belonging to Leopold.
Leopold and Loeb confessed during interrogation, but each accused the other of being the mastermind and murderer. The murder called “the crime of the century” was met with a media frenzy, and the press often highlighted the wealth, family connections, and good looks of the accused alongside salacious details not always based in fact. The pair was defended by renowned attorney Clarence Darrow. In an unusual move for the time, Darrow employed an “affluenza” defense, along with claiming other mitigating factors, in hopes of preventing the death penalty for his clients. Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison plus ninety-nine years. Loeb was murdered in prison in 1936. Leopold was paroled in 1958 after serving thirty-three years in Illinois’s Stateville Penitentiary.
To this day, we don’t know the actual facts of what happened in that car. But here’s a truth: Both Leopold and Loeb were murderers. Here’s another truth: Bobby Franks has essentially become a footnote in the larger history of Leopold and Loeb. Bobby—an athletic kid who liked to play tennis and excelled on his school’s debate team. He deserved a full life and now, at least, our remembrance.
To learn more about this case and get a look at primary sources, a good place to start is The Leopold and Loeb Files: An Intimate Look at One of America’s Most Infamous Crimes by Nina Barrett.