It is not difficult for me to understand how Leopold and Loeb were constantly confused for one another; the boys are represented in so many different manners I have a hard time trying to keep them separate. They really were a team; “One was Leopold and one was Loeb, but they became Leopold and Loeb. Though possessing different personalities, they became the sum of those personalities” (20). The Tribune was quick to point to Leopold as the evil genius and hypnotist and Loeb as gentle and sensitive Dickey, but then they just as quickly changed their story to “Loeb ‘Master of Leopold’ Under Solemn Pact Made: Sex Inferiority is Factor”. Experts debated which one of the boys actually killed Bobby Franks. Alienists portrayed Leopold as the more intelligent of the two boys, whereas “Loeb is pictured as little more than a crude criminal” (220). The many experts “spent twice as much time dissecting Leopold as Loeb. The result has been a distorted and oversimplified picture of Richard Loeb” (219).
The alienists said Leopold, even though the more cunning, saw his friend as “Superman” (210). He was infatuated with Loeb, and apparently initiated homosexual tendencies: “Loeb admitted them but claimed he” only “submitted in order to have Leopold’s aid in carrying out his criminal ideas” (215). The power dynamic again shifts; who was manipulating whom? Higdon believes “there was genius and criminality in both” (220).
The alienists speculated on how the relationship functioned, arguing it was very possible “this friendship between the two boys was not altogether a pleasant one to either of them…Their friendship was not based so much in desire as on need, they being what they were. Loeb did not crave the companionship of Leopold, nor did he respect him thoroughly. But he did feel the need of someone else in his life. Leopold did not like the faults, the criminalism of Loeb, but he did need someone in his life to carry out this king-slave compulsion” (225).
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