Two Cowardly Ruffians Committed the Coldest-Blooded Murder in the History of the World: Constructing Criminality, Sexuality, and Jewish Masculinity in the Leopold and Loeb Case

Abstract

In the summer of 1924, nineteen-year-olds Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb committed what would come to be called "the crime of the century" when they murdered fourteen-year-old Robert Franks on the outskirts of Chicago. From a pair of glasses found near the body, which experts deemed could only belong to a woman or "a particularly wizened face fellow," to psychiatric testimony in the courtroom claiming the murderers were hormonally deficient, improperly gendered, and inherently amoral men, the Leopold and Loeb case was rife with coded language that would come to connect homosexuality, Jewish masculinity, and criminality. In particular, the role of phrenology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and popular pseudoscience were combined to craft a legal strategy that would paint Leopold and Loeb's homosexuality and fragile Jewish masculinity as indicators of their predisposition to criminal behavior and deviant activity. Combined with media coverage intent on sensationalizing the role of affluence, sexuality, and intellectual dominance in the case, the story of Leopold and Loeb created a lasting correlation between Jewishness, gendered performance, abnormal sexuality, and criminality in American public life and cultural politics.