All week we’ve been dancing around the first ‘Crime of the Century’, the 1924 murder of a youth named Bobby Franks by two wealthy Chicago teenagers. So let’s end things with a nice, crisp History Channel doc on the crime. Aside from those dreadful ‘reenactment’ shots using non-speaking (and therefore non-SAG) actors nodding and looking morose, it’s a good doc (and best of all lasts only 42 minutes). If you already know enough about the case to consider not bothering to watch it, I suggest skipping to the last ten or so minutes which documents how Nathan Leopold rehabbed himself in prison and actually managed to achieve parole after serving only 33 years of his ‘life plus 99 years’ sentence. What became of him is interesting and impressive enough to make one wonder why our country’s dreadful penal system couldn’t learn from his success. Meanwhile, Loeb was murdered in person after twelve years of his sentence, having been stabbed to death by a prisoner who claimed Loeb had made sexual advances toward him. Upon learning of Loeb’s murder, Broadway columnist (and later film producer) Mark Hellinger announced in his column: “Richard Loeb, despite his erudition, today ended his sentence with a proposition.”