Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 53 minutes ago
On May 21, 1924, 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks, the son of a wealthy Chicago watch manufacturer was kidnapped. A ransom note was sent to his family, but the Franks family could not have known that Bobby was already dead. He had been murdered shortly after being kidnapped by the sons of two of Chicago's wealthiest families, Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb, whose only motives were to see if they could commit the "perfect crime" and prove their intellectual superiority as self-perceived Übermenschen.
Leopold and Loeb vastly overestimated their superiority, however, and were soon caught. Their subsequent trial would go down as one of the most sensational in American criminal history, and also served as a platform for the arguments about capital punishment.
This is the full-length episode. Previous uploads are TV recordings with about 3 minutes cut.
There is a lot more to this case than could possibly be completely covered in under 30 minutes, but if this documentary makes Leopold seem rather sympathetic, one should keep in mind what Leopold himself told detectives before they traced the glasses to him: "If I were to murder anybody, it would be just such a cocky little son of a bitch as Bobby Franks."
On May 21, 1924, 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks, the son of a wealthy Chicago watch manufacturer was kidnapped. A ransom note was sent to his family, but the Franks family could not have known that Bobby was already dead. He had been murdered shortly after being kidnapped by the sons of two of Chicago's wealthiest families, Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb, whose only motives were to see if they could commit the "perfect crime" and prove their intellectual superiority as self-perceived Übermenschen.
Leopold and Loeb vastly overestimated their superiority, however, and were soon caught. Their subsequent trial would go down as one of the most sensational in American criminal history, and also served as a platform for the arguments about capital punishment.
This is the full-length episode. Previous uploads are TV recordings with about 3 minutes cut.
There is a lot more to this case than could possibly be completely covered in under 30 minutes, but if this documentary makes Leopold seem rather sympathetic, one should keep in mind what Leopold himself told detectives before they traced the glasses to him: "If I were to murder anybody, it would be just such a cocky little son of a bitch as Bobby Franks."
