Swoon

SWOON is the true story of two notorious, thrill-seeking young men in 1920s Chicago. Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb were two Jewish intellectuals who became famous for the kidnapping and murder of a boy named Bobby Franks. These brilliant, precocious eighteen-year-old gentlemen genuinely took pleasure in criminal activity, the savagery of which remains legendary. Their motives were chilling. They wanted to do it simply to prove themselves that they were smart enough to get away with it. After committing the murder, however, they were easily captured by the innumerable clues they left behind and by their jumbled alibis, and the subsequent trial became international news – and served to reinforce the culture’s then-stereotypes about the dangers of homosexuality, Judaism and intellectualism. Leopold and Loeb escaped the death penalty only because of an impassioned defense by Clarence Darrow, the best-known defense attorney of the time, who argued that they were insane, and used their homosexuality as proof of insanity.