But 18 years later - and in an irrecognizable cultural context where gay marriage is the law of the land (for now) - the Leopold and Loeb story is back in the form of the recently released novel, These Violent Delights. The incarnation most recognizable today is the 2002 film Murder by Numbers, in which a possibly queer and definitely sociopathic Michael Pitt and Ryan Gosling plot a perfect murder, only to be undone by Sandra Bullock’s scrappy gumshoe character. More importantly for our purposes, Leopold and Loeb set a template that writers have regularly used since 1929 to tell dark stories about angry young men in some kind of love. Franklin, their trial set into motion the scholarly chain reaction that ultimately led to homosexuality being enshrined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (it was nominally removed in 1973). For almost 100 years, this queer duo has reliably reappeared in American culture, altering the course of homosexuality’s public perception. Leopold and Loeb - boy geniuses heirs to Jewish fortunes egghead intellectuals convenient examples of Modernism’s effete, ethnic and degenerate manliness - were also, worst of all, lovers. For that, something far fouler was necessary.įortunately for the rapt American public, the strange relationship between the two accused murderers provided just that. Monstrous, tragic and especially “perverse,” per the language of the time, Franks’ murder was, on its own, still not the stuff of which the “Crime of the Century” could be made.

On May 21st of that year, the Chicago teenagers kidnapped 14-year-old Bobby Franks, bludgeoned him with a chisel until he died, undressed him, melted his face and circumcised his penis with hydrochloric acid and then dumped him in a culvert in a swamp. When Nathan “Babe” Leopold, 19, and Richard “Dickie” Loeb, 18, were put on trial in 1924, it was ostensibly because they committed a murder that was as heinous as it was unusual.

Paul and julian these violent delights