Photos by Lorah Haskins

 In 2005, Stephen Dolginoff's musical Thrill Me premiered off-Broadway to rave reviews. The six week run was quickly extended as tickets sold, and the show was nominated for two prestigious Drama Desk awards for Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Score. Since the New York production closed, regional theatres all over the world have been discovering this gem of a musical. Productions have been mounted in Seattle, Los Angeles,New Jersey, and even Melbourne, Australia, and a large scale production opened to great success in Seoul, South Korea and is being revived in 2008. In only three years, this musical has piqued the interest of numerous theatres and will no doubt become a staple of contemporary American musicals. YOU will be among the first to see it when Thrill Me makes its Wisconsin premiere on the MTM stage! The intimate musical utilizes only two actors in the roles of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, and is enhanced by a chilling score written solely for piano.

     Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were an unlikely pair. Though both were highly intelligent and from affluent families, Leopold was shy and often perceived as arrogant, while Loeb was charismatic and popular. At only 18 they had both acheived more academic success than most people did in a lifetime. Leopold had graduated from the University of Chicago and was already working toward a law degree. He was said to have an IQ of approximately 220, well above genius level. Richard Loeb was the youngest graduate in the history of the University of Michigan at age 17, and was also planning to pursue a law degree.

    But their relationship went deeper than that of academic colleagues. It has been said, and is the premise of Thrill Me, that Nathan Leopold was in love or at least infatuated with Richard Loeb. Loeb, on the other hand, was infatuated with the idea of his superior intelligence, as described in the Nietzschean theory of the "superman", a man whose intellect placed him above the rest of society. Quickly it became clear that Loeb was a dangerous sociopath, as he began to obsess over committing crimes and not getting caught. It is proven, and fleshed out in Thrill Me , that Nathan and Richard had a contract between them stating that Leopold would assist Loeb in his crimes in exchange for sexual attention. The two experimented in petty crimes such as theft, vandalism and arson. But they quickly grew bored with these acts and decided to take their crimes to a new level: They would commit the perfect murder.

      The two spent months planning the exact crime: They would lure a child from a wealthy family into their car, murder him and destroy the body so it was unrecognizable, then write a ransom note to his family claiming the boy was still alive and collect $10,000. They toyed with the idea of murdering someone they knew, but decided upon a random choice in an affluent neighborhood, which was perhaps the most cruel twist of fate for their victim, 12 year old Bobby Franks.

        Had Franks left school a bit earlier or a bit later that day, he would never have fallen prey to Leopold and Loeb's plot. But it was Franks that the two spotted from their rented car, and they lured him in with a promise of a ride home. Once inside the vehicle, one of the men (it was never determined which one) struck Franks with a chisel and stuffed a sock into his mouth. The boy died shortly after. They took Franks' body to a lake in Hammond, Indiana, where they poured hydrochloric acid on it to wipe out any detectible marks. They then paused for dinner at a hot dog stand, and after dark they stuffed the destroyed corpse into a culvert pipe along the Pennsylvania Railroad. They then spent the evening calmly playing cards. They were careful to destroy every scrap of evidence.

     The two wrote the ransom note as planned, but before they could collect, Franks' body was found and identified as Franks by a birthmark on his back, which had escaped destruction from the acid poured on the body. Nearby, investigators found a pair of eyeglasses. The brand was quite common, however a special hinge mechanism had been used on this particular pair. This mechanism was on only three pairs of glasses in the entire city. Through his optometrist, the trail soon led to Nathan Leopold.

The glasses that sealed Leopold and Loeb's fate

    At first Leopold told investigators he had dropped the glasses while bird watching. The two collaborated on a fictional story about an evening spent with two girls they picked up in a bar. But police questioning soon wore them down, and both confessed to the murder. In the state of Illinois they were eligible for death by hanging.

    The wealthy families hired famed attorney Clarence Darrow (whose work on the "Scopes Monkey Trial" is dramatized in the popular play Inherit The Wind) to defend the two boys. Darrow shocked the city by entering a plea of guilty for his clients. In doing this, he avoided a jury trial and limited the courtroom activity to a sentencing hearing, where he would only have to convince one judge, rather than 12 jurors, to sentence to boys to life in prison as opposed to death. He used the theory of mental illness as his strongest evidence. Externally the boys appeared normal, but Darrow felt he could convince one man of their mental incompetence as a reason for their commission of the crime.

     Darrow delivered one of the most famed speeches of his career in his summation at the Leopold and Loeb trial. (Read it here) He tugged at the judge's conscience and won out in the end. Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life plus 99 years in prison.

    For twelve years in prison the men maintained their friendship, teaching courses at the prison school. In 1936, Richard Loeb was attacked in the shower by James E. Day, a fellow prisoner. Day cut Loeb's throat with a razor, killing him. Day's defense was that Loeb had tried to sexually assault him. This statement was believed, even though evidence showed that Loeb's throat had been slit from behind. Day was never charged with Loeb's murder.

    Leopold was released on parole in 1958 after 33 years in Joliet Prison. He married a widow and lived a quiet life until his death in 1971.

    The Leopold and Loeb story has been the basis for numerous theatrical adaptations, including the book and movie Compulsion, which starred Orson Welles as Darrow, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, Tom Kalin's film Swoon, and John Logan's play Never the Sinner.

BOOKS AND LITERATURE ON LEOPOLD AND LOEB:

• Crime of the Century by Hal Higdon
• Life Plus 99 years by Nathan Leopold
• For The Thrill of It by Simon Baatz
• Evil Summer by John Theodore
• Compulsion by Meyer Levin: Fiction book based heavily on the case
• Never The Sinner by John Logan: Play detailing the crime