Restless Victims
Are the ghosts of murdered people really more prone to stay earthbound?
Yes, according to Richard Crowe, Chicago’s original ghost hunter. Leading ghost tours for three decades, the author of Chicago’s Street Guide to the Supernatural frequently makes the connection between murder and ghosts.
He points to the case of Bobby Franks, the thirteen-year-old victim in a 1924 “thrill kill.”
The murder made headlines not just because of the viciousness of the killing, but because both the victim and the killers were the sons of Chicago millionaires.
Nathan Leopold, eighteen, and his partner in crime, Richard Loeb, seventeen, had been planning to kill someone for months before accosting Bobby as he walked home from Harvard School on the southwest side of Chicago, explained Richard Crowe.
Bobby was Richard Loeb’s second cousin, so the boy probably was not alarmed to see the familiar face peering from the car as it pulled up beside him. Relative or not, the sociopaths did not care. They thirsted for blood and took the opportunity to make their twisted fantasy a reality.
They brutally killed Bobby and dumped him in a culvert, where he was found so quickly that the ransom note was just being delivered to his parents’ home.
A tip from a chauffeur led police to the rich boys. When a pair of tortoise-shell eyeglasses were found near the culvert, their prescription was matched to the pair worn by Leopold. Though he claimed that he’d lost them while in the area bird-watching, evidence against the teens mounted. Each blamed the other for the murder. In the end they were both convicted but escaped execution due to the expert defense by famous attorney Clarence Darrow.
While Darrow was fighting for the lives of the teenage killers, State’s Attorney Robert E. Crowe was in Bobby’s corner.
Robert and Richard Crowe are branches from the same family tree. Their roots are in Tipperary, Ireland, and it seems they have a karmic connection, each ending up in Chicago as a voice for murder victims. While Robert worked to put killers behind bars, Richard tells the stories of the restless spirits of the slain.
Was the spirit of Bobby Franks aware of this link when Richard Crowe visited his crypt in Rosehill Cemetery? Did he recognize the younger Crowe as the relative of the man who fought so vehemently to avenge his death?
It was 1988 when Richard Crowe, along with a cemetery caretaker, visited Bobby’s grave. Richard told me he walked up to the door of the crypt and tried the handle, even though he did not expect it to be unlocked.
The caretaker gasped as the normally locked door creaked open. “Maybe the ghost of Bobby wants you to go in!” he exclaimed.
Richard entered and said a prayer for the soul of Bobby.
Afterward, as he stared solemnly at the cold, gray crypt, the caretaker shared some fascinating history. Years earlier, cemetery workers had frequently seen a boy wandering near the crypt. As they approached, the youngster would vanish. Everyone said it was the ghost of Bobby Franks. Interestingly, the ghost did not settle down until his killers met their own deaths.
Despite the fact they were incarcerated, the two enjoyed special privileges. “They had the run of the prison,” said Richard. “They had special meals and private dining in the officers’ lounge.”
Richard Loeb died from razor cuts after a fight in the shower in 1936. Nathan Leopold, paroled in 1958, succumbed to heart failure in 1971. It was only then that the ghost sightings of Bobby Franks stopped.
Another Chicago area ghost, however, is not at rest.
“The murder of Emily Keseg is one of the area’s most baffling mysteries,” said Richard Crowe. An eighteen-year-old freshman in the fall of 1969, Emily attended classes at Morton College in Cicero, Illinois. At that time, Richard explained, the new college had not been built, so sessions were held at Morton East High School.
Emily was a quiet girl and a good student, embroiled in the drama of the typical teenager. She had quarreled with her boyfriend on Friday, October 17, but did not sit home crying that night. She joined her friends for pizza, advising her parents not to expect her home till midnight.
At some point that evening, she decided to visit her boyfriend and asked a friend to drop her off near his home. He and his parents, however, reported that she never arrived.
A witness spotted a young girl matching Emily’s description walking on a deserted street in the early morning hours of Saturday. Someone else in the area heard moaning in the alley behind their house and later discovered a bloody dollar bill and a wig. Though police suspected that the moaning was connected to Emily, the clues made little sense.
Emily was found strangled in a field on Saturday afternoon.
“The case has many loose ends,” said Richard. “It was never solved.”