Richard Loeb was the
second of four sons of Albert and Anna Loeb. Albert Loeb, vice
president of Sears, Roebuck, and hired a governess named Emily
Struthers to assist in his boys' upbringing. As a boy, Richard
was an avid reader, with a passion for historical novels and crime
stories. At age 12, he entered the innovative University High
School, adjacent to the University of Chicago campus. Richard was
an outgoing and popular boy, and seemed to thrive in the rich learning
and social environment that University High provided. He joined
the Freshman Literary Society, the Discussion Club, and the Engineering
Club.
At home, however, Richard
grew increasingly resentful of his governess's unceasing demands that
he study, even while most of his friends played baseball or
fished. Loeb, in his own words, "formed a habit of lying...to get
by her." Struthers, meanwhile, concluded that Richard was such an
exceptional student that he should accelerate his studies and pushed
him to complete his high school career in just two years. Richard
struggled with the mounting burden of homework, but managed to graduate
from high school just after his fourteenth birthday.
Socially and
intellectually, however, Richard's rapid glide path left him unprepared
for the demands of the curriculum at the University of Chicago.
After a year of mediocre grades, Loeb met an intellectually intense and
aloof boy who was preparing to the university the next fall, Nathan
Leopold. The two boys, with dramatically different personalities
and interests, seemed to have almost nothing in common. With his
hovering governess now gone, Richard spent most of his evenings
drinking, socializing with friends, or picking up girls--all activities
which bored his new friend.
By 1921, Loeb had
embarked on a course that would, four years later, take him to Joliet
Prison. It began with cheating at cards and soon progressed to
smashing car windshields and store windows with bricks. Crime
thrilled Loeb, and over time his attention drifted to ever more serious
offenses. Leopold accepted a role as Loeb's partner in crime in
return for sex, which was Nathan's driving motivation. The boys'
list of crimes grew to include arson and theft.
When Richard Loeb announced he
planned to transfer to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1921,
Nathan quickly decided that he needed to follow his crime partner and
lover to Ann Arbor. At Michigan, the gregarious Richard became an
active member of a fraternity and largely abandoned his former friend
who was left to mope and study with a few other Jewish boys who shared
his inaptitude for the frat scene. Loeb, despite devoting an
inordinate amount of time to drinking and card playing, graduated from
Michigan in 1923 at age 17, the youngest graduate in the history of the
university.
Following graduation from
Michigan, Loeb returned to the University of Chicago in September 1923
to enroll in a course in constitutional history. Leopold had
enrolled in the University of Chicago Law School, and the two boys
renewed their relationship. Soon thereafter began Loeb's
obsession with commiting the perfect crime. By November, the plan
had begun to take shape. It would involve the kidnapping of the
son of wealthy parents and the demand for a hefty ransom. Of
course, the boy would have to be killed to prevent later
identification....
Following conviction for
the murder of Bobby Franks, Loeb entered Joliet Prison. Later, he
and Leopold were transferred to Statesville Prison. On January
28, 1936, while in the prison shower, Loeb was fatally assaulted by
another inmate, James Day, with a straight razor. Day was not convicted
for the assault, which he claimed was in self-defense.