Robert E. Crowe

Robert Emmett Crowe (January 22, 1879 - January 18, 1958) was a Chicago lawyer and politician, who is best known as the prosecutor in the 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case.^[1]

A product of Chicago public schools, Crowe graduated from Yale with a law degree in 1901. With the help of Big Bill Thompson, he was elected a Circuit Court judge in 1916. Three years later, Crowe achieved a level of fame and notoriety by imposing the death penalty on Thomas Fitzgerald who had plead guilty to the murder of 6 year-old Janet Dolly Wilkinson. The following year, with Thompson's continued backing, he was elected state's attorney. He held office until 1928.

In 1924, he prosecuted Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb for the premeditated murder of Bobby Franks, squaring off against defender Clarence Darrow. Later that year Crowe oversaw the capture and extradition of Leo Koretz, a Ponzi schemer who had fled to Nova Scotia in 1923. Koretz, claiming he controlled oil fields in Panama, had defrauded wealthy Chicagoans of as much as $30 million ($400 million in today's terms).^[2]

References

Further reading

• Jobb, Dean (2015). Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation. New York and Toronto: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill / HarperCollins Canada. ISBN 978-1-61620-175-3. 
• Krist, Gary. City of Scoundrels: The Twelve Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago. New York, NY: Crown Publisher, 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-45429-4.