My friend the would-be killer

This is a complex tale involving an American murder, the popular British TV series Flipper, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – but bear with me. Next month sees the centenary of the conviction of two spoiled Chicago boys – Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18 – who admitted carrying out what the press at the time dubbed the ‘crime of the century’. 

The two student friends were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, plus 99 years in jail for abduction, after admitting kidnapping and killing a 14-year-old boy, Bobby Franks, before mutilating his body with acid to disguise his identity. Loeb was slashed to death with a razor in a prison shower by another inmate, but Leopold proved a model prisoner and indeed succeeded in rehabilitating himself. He reorganised the prison library, taught other lags to read and write, and deliberately exposed himself to malaria to further medical knowledge of the disease.