Episode Details

Leopold and Loeb: Criminal Supermen or Dumbest Criminals in History?

3 Oct 2023

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The perfect crime…a favorite topic among mystery writers and television showrunners, who are always coming up with new and clever ways to commit cunning, albeit fictional murders. It is not so much a concern for real criminals. As far as most of them go, a perfect crime is any one that they can get away with. There is, perhaps, one notable exception to this - Leopold and Loeb, two well-off, educated students who killed a young boy in 1924 because they wanted to commit “the perfect crime.” It wasn’t murder that excited the duo. It was getting away with murder. As far as they were concerned, that was where the challenge lay. A challenge that, as we all know by now, they failed…miserably. Because Leopold and Loeb were not the criminal masterminds they thought they were. Sure, they had high intellects, but the superiority they liked to flaunt in everyone’s faces was all in their heads. A smart person does not necessarily equal a successful criminal and the pathetic reality was that Leopold and Loeb only committed a string of petty vandalism acts and, once they moved up to a serious crime, they were caught almost immediately. But due to a sensational trial, nationwide media coverage, and a controversial verdict, this murder was among the select few to be heralded as the “crime of the century,” ensuring everlasting notoriety for Leopold and Loeb. → Subscribe for new videos at least twice a week! https://www.youtube.com/c/biographics?sub_confirmation=1 Love content? Check out our other YouTube Channels: Geographics: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHKRfxkMTqiiv4pF99qGKIw TopTenz: https://www.youtube.com/user/toptenznet Check out Karl's channels: https://www.youtube.com/@UCaR-e8ComPih10DqPi3sdWg https://www.youtube.com/@UCtrzkwlnKfS9knQ-zuwYBLQ https://www.youtube.com/@UCLJvIXTMM7bjZ5-ju8xckJg Further Reading: https://homicide.northwestern.edu/crimes/leopold/ https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/nathan-leopold https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/richard-loeb https://allthatsinteresting.com/leopold-and-loeb https://medium.com/crimebeat/the-crime-of-the-20th-century-28352511895a https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/arts/armand-s-deutsch-hollywood-fixture-dies-at-92.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/leopold-and-loebs-criminal-minds-996498/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093735/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/3c.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080731123915/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/index_1.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093806/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/invest_2.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093725/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/2b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093725/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/2b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080731205300/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/arrest_3.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093732/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/3b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093735/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/3c.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080801204823/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/sentence_6.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093755/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/7b.html https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/07/26/reopening-the-case-files-of-leopold-and-loeb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080801093800/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/7c.html

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