Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the sons of two of Chicago's wealthiest and most prominent German Jewish families, precipitated one of the twentieth century's most sensational mass media events when they kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old neighbor boy, Robert Franks, in May of 1924. At first, there was little suspicion that the pair—close friends since childhood—had any involvement in the disappearance of the Franks boy. The nineteen-year-old Leopold, son of a millionaire box manufacturer, was a law student at the University of Chicago and had earned earlier distinction for his path-breaking studies in ornithology. One year younger than Leopold, Loeb, whose father was a respected executive at Sears, Roebuck and Company, was also an accomplished student, having become the youngest person ever to graduate from the University of Michigan at the age of seventeen. On May 31, 1924, however, the pair shocked the nation when...