Leopold and Loeb Trial - The Clarence Darrow Collection

After running out of ideas for a potential victim, they decided that they would set the date
for the crime and let circumstances and fate pick a victim. They chose Wednesday, May
21 st 1924 as the date. On that afternoon, they would go to the Harvard School for Boys
and observe the students leaving school. All the students at that school came from
wealthy families. They could size up the boys and choose one who was walking alone.
This could be done at the very last minute. It was this random selection that added
considerably to the crime’s notoriety.
How to Secure the Ransom?
Leopold and Loeb soon realized that the most difficult part of their plan would be
collecting the ransom; they planned to demand $10,000. Actually acquiring the money
presented the greatest danger to them. After much thinking and discussion they came up
with a plan in which the kidnapping victim’s father would be sent on a sort of treasure
hunt. Directions would be provided in such a way that the father would not be able to
alert the police.
They spent a considerable amount of time on this part of the plan. To prevent the victim’s
father from alerting the police they planned to give him only portions of the instructions;
he would have to travel to the next designated location to get the next set of instructions.
The plan also required specific timing to prevent the police from shadowing the father.
They would phone the father later in the evening after kidnapping his son. They would
inform him that his son had been kidnapped but was alive, and forbid him from notifying
the police. A message would be delivered to the victim’s father the next morning with
further instructions about the sum and packaging of the ransom. Next would be a phone
call explaining where to proceed for further instructions. The father would then be sent
on a precisely timed scavenger hunt in order to throw off any police who might be
trailing him.
Leopold and Loeb decided to direct the victim’s father to board a certain train that they
knew would pass by the distinctive red-brick building of the Champion Manufacturing
Company. Loeb practiced riding the train five or six times, throwing a package from the
train just after passing the Champion building in the vicinity of the 74th and Illinois
Central tracks. They determined that if a rider in the train counted to five after he passed
the Champion building, the package would land near Seventy-Fifth Street, where in their
practice runs, Leopold was waiting to retrieve it.
The Murder Plan
They decided that after they lured the victim into the car, the person in the back seat
would use a chisel with tape wrapped around one end as a handle to hit the victim in the
head and knock him unconscious. But how should they actually kill him? Loeb
strenuously argued that the actual murder had to be done jointly. Loeb came up with idea
that they would put a rope around the victim’s neck and they would both pull on an end
of the rope to strangle the unconscious boy. That way they would both face the death
penalty if they were caught.
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