The Perfect Crime by Fergus Mason

Author:Fergus Mason
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: true crime, film study, hitchcock, rope, murder, murderer
Publisher: Absolute Crime
Published: 2020-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

Errors, Suspicions, and Arrests

Despite the years of build-up and the intricate planning that had gone into the crime, the deception plan developed by Leopold and Loeb began to unravel within hours of Franks’ death. Perhaps rattled by the unexpected problems during the actual killing they made a series of errors from that point on. The complicated plan now started to work against them, as there were too many opportunities for people to remember them and too many things to go wrong. They hadn’t yet realized their mistakes, though, and kept on with their scheme.

Next day Leopold picked Loeb up around 11:30 and they moved the rental car to Leopold’s garage. While they were scrubbing the rest of the blood from the seats and carpet Sven Englund, the chauffeur, came in and asked him what they were doing. Leopold told him that they had spilled some red wine in the car and he didn’t want his father to know. Englund offered to help them clean it, but they declined. They kept scrubbing until the stains were as faint as they could get them, then set out to get the money.

Like everything else about the crime the system for collecting the ransom was carefully planned and complex. The main concerns were to avoid being seen at any stage, and to eliminate opportunities for the police to ambush them. This was the hardest part of the plan, and Loeb was delighted at the ingenious solution they came up with. The first stage had been the phone call to the Franks telling him that their son had been kidnapped. Next a special delivery letter was mailed, containing the ransom note. Another phone call was made to the Franks’ home the next day with further instructions; Franks was to get in a cab that would come to his house, and would be taken to a trash can on a street corner. Taped to the trash can would be a note directing him to go a drug store and wait. A phone call to the drug store would then tell him to get on a train leaving in a few minutes from a nearby station - the idea being that he wouldn’t have time to tell the police what was planned - and go to the telegraph message box in the last car. In the message box would be a final note telling him to go out on the back platform and wait for the train to pass a distinctive brick factory. On passing this he was to count to five then throw the parcel of money as far from the track as he could. Leopold and Loeb would be waiting nearby in the hire car, watching for the parcel to be thrown. Because Franks wouldn’t know what to do with the money until he boarded the train it would be impossible for him to tell the police where the drop-off was; even if police had managed to board the train with him they wouldn’t be able to do anything.

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