Mystery Unsolved Inc True Crime

Leopold and Leon

Reynard Todd narrates, "It's no secret that plenty of murderers make a big deal out of their own intelligence. It's a trademark characteristic of a sociopath. They think themselves above the petty morality of us mere mortals but honestly I think the trope of the genius killer is overused so much so that any old idiot with a smug smile and a murder conviction gets the label, with that in mind I'd like to introduce today's case one of the most famous crimes in the history of Chicago which chilled the city to the bone back in the 1920s. High on a cocktail of trust fund wealth, nihilistic philosophy, and the promise of mass media attention, two young men set out to commit what they believed would be the perfect crime. When the story broke of two book smart rich kids tried to prove their intellectual superiority over the police, press, and well everybody else really, the case was cemented in the American consciousness for decades after. If they were after media attention while they certainly got it didn't they? According to some, the perpetrators had a decent claim to the title of criminal geniuses but in reality their execution was anything but flawless, perhaps this deadly duo weren't quite as clever as they always thought. So let me tell you the facts and we'll see if you agree. Without further ado here is the story of Leopold and Leon, the genius killers."

Reynard pulls out a case file titled [The Crime]

"The crime. On May 21st, 1924, fourteen year old Bobcat Franks was walking home from playing baseball with his friends through the affluent neighborhood of Kenwood on Chicago's south side. This wasn't the sort of place where parents worried about their kids walking home alone, only wealthy people stayed here predominantly familiar faces from the feline community. The crime which plagued the rest of the city in the 1920s tended to not cross over into this particular postcode. Young Bobcat was one such wealthy resident, son to a watch manufacturer named Jacob Franks. He was well known and well liked around the area, a keen young sportsman with a love of tennis. His parents waited at home on that day to ask him about the game but dinner time came round and Bobcat still wasn't home. The clock ticked on him by the evening their confusion had given way to fear. They spread words that Bobcat hadn't made at home that day. They asked around the neighborhood in the hopes that he might have gone off to dinner with a teammate but no such luck. Nobody had seen him since he left the baseball field after school. Eventually, Bobcat's mother received a phone call with news of her son, the exact kind of news that she and her husband had been dreading. The man on the other end of the line went by the name of Clifford Michaels he had kidnapped their son."

"Michaels instructed the terrified mother to await instructions on how to deliver the ten thousand dollar ransom which would secure Bobcat's safety which is roughly a hundred and fifty thousand in today's money. Sure enough after a sleepless night, the next morning a typewritten message arrived in the post accompanied by another call with the first set of instructions. This set Bobcat's father off on an anxious treasure hunt which was intended to send him to a string of locations and dead drops but unfortunately the whole thing ran into a brick wall pretty quickly. The stress of the situation caused Bobcat's father to forget the address of the store which Johnson had given out over the phone. He couldn't receive the next part of the instructions."

"Before his wife could give him a slap around his head for his forgetfulness however, the whole treasure hunt was cooled off apparently it had all been in vain from the get-go. Bobcat was dead. His body had been hastily abandoned in a railway culvert in Hammond, Indiana. His clothes were missing and he had acid burns over his face and body. The apparent cause of death was severe bludgeoning to the head. This front page news story sent a shock wave through Chicago, a city which was no stranger to murder but rarely saw the violent death of a wealthy suburban teen. The pressure was on for investigators to find the culprits, a task which would turn out to be far easier than anyone first thought."