My biography: ‘Arrested Adolescence: The Secret Life of Nathan Leopold’ is now available to purchase through my publisher’s website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books A Million.
The audiobook version is available through Audible, Audiobooks.com and Tantor Media. Thank you to Daniel Henning for his wonderful narration work.
Nathan Leopold seemed to live a charmed life: a published, polyglot college graduate by the time he was 18 and from a prominent, wealthy Chicago family. So it was a shock to everyone when he and his lover, Richard Loeb, confessed to killing their 14-year-old neighbor Bobby Franks “for a thrill.”
During the summer of 1924 the world watched in fascinated horror as the pair were defended by the famous Clarence Darrow in what many labeled "the trial of the century." There was a massive public outcry when the murderers were spared the death penalty, and once they were behind bars, most hoped they would never be heard from again.
33 years after the murder, it seemed that Nathan Leopold was a changed man. In prison he ran a high school and library, worked as a nurse and helped find a cure for malaria. He was deemed rehabilitated and paroled to a tiny town in the mountains of Puerto Rico. There he got a degree in social work, raised funds to build a hospital and advocated for the abolishment of prisons and capital punishment. When he died in 1971 there was an outpouring of support for the “gentle” “reformed” killer. Yet his life was not what it seemed.
One hundred years after the murder, this groundbreaking new biography uses previously unseen archival collections to look at the full life of Nathan Leopold and reveal the motivations behind Bobby’s death and the secrets kept hidden from history.
Advance Reviews
Arrested Adolescence is an engrossing account of one of the most sensational crimes of the 1920s. Through meticulous research, Rebain gives us a careful and astute retelling of the life of Nathan Leopold, his 'crime of the century,' and his life after prison. What emerges is a complex portrait of a privileged and gifted youth, a self-avowed hedonist, and an unapologetic conman, unspooling a life that has been layered in so much myth and legend for decades.
— James Polchin, author of Indecent Advances: A History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall
In Arrested Adolescence, author Erik Rebain delves deeply into the life of Nathan Leopold, challenging the lurid portraits and self-serving narratives surrounding the infamous murderer. At the book's heart, Rebain wrestles with the question of Leopold’s rehabilitation and whether he was truly a reformed man. Looking closely at Leopold’s 33 years in prison and the 13 years in Porto Rico after his release, Rebain tells a new story, one that differs dramatically from Leopold’s and his supporter's carefully crafted tale of redemption. Utilizing a vast array of archival materials, Rebain presents Leopold in all his human flaws, a man whose life, behaviour, and motivations could never escape his teenaged obsessions, entitlements, desires, and crime.
— David S. Churchill, University of Manitoba, Canada
Fascination with Nathan Leopold, and his partner in crime the ‘evil’ Dickie Loeb, seems to survive decades of changes in fashion and taste in celebrities. This volume usefully sheds light on Nathan Leopold’s childhood and return to society after imprisonment. Crime and its reception always a mirror of its social context, when and where it happened, and later.
— Leigh Bienen, senior lecturer, Northwestern University School of Law, and co-author of Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O.J. Simpson