Richard Speck
Encyclopedia
Richard Franklin Speck was a mass murder
er who systematically tortured, raped and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966.
, six miles southwest of Monmouth
in west-central Illinois
, the seventh of eight children of Benjamin Franklin Speck and Mary Margaret Carbaugh Speck. The family moved to Monmouth shortly after Speck's birth. Speck and his younger sister, Carolyn, born in 1943, were much younger than their four older sisters and two older brothers (Speck's oldest brother, Robert, died at the age of 23 in an automobile accident in 1952). Speck's father worked as a packer at Western Stoneware in Monmouth and had previously worked as a farmer and logger. Speck was very close to his father, who died in 1947 from a heart attack at the age of 53. Speck was six years old at the time.
A few years later, Speck's religious, teetotaling
mother met and fell in love with a traveling insurance salesman from Texas, Carl August Rudolph Lindberg, whom she met on a train trip to Chicago. The hard-drinking, peg-legged Lindberg, with a 25-year criminal record that started with forgery and included several arrests for drunk driving, was in every respect the opposite of Speck's sober, hardworking father. Speck's mother married Lindberg on May 10, 1950 in Palo Pinto, Texas
. Speck and his younger sister Carolyn stayed with their married sister Sara Thornton in Monmouth for a few months so Speck could finish 2nd grade, before joining their mother and Lindberg in rural Santo, Texas
, 40 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas
, where Speck attended 3rd grade.
section of Dallas, Texas
, living at 10 addresses in poor neighborhoods over the next dozen years. Speck loathed his often drunk and frequently absent stepfather who psychologically abused him with insults and threats. Speck, a poor student who needed glasses for reading but refused to wear them, struggled through Dallas public schools from 4th through 8th grade, repeating 8th grade at J. L. Long Jr. High School in part because he refused to recite in class because of a lifelong fear of people staring at him. In autumn 1957, Speck started 9th grade at Crozier Technical High School, but failed every subject, and did not return for the second semester in January 1958, dropping out just after his 16th birthday. Speck had begun drinking alcohol at age 12 and by age 15 was getting drunk almost every day. His first arrest in 1955, at age 13 for trespassing, was followed by dozens of other arrests for misdemeanors over the next eight years.
Speck worked as a laborer for the 7-Up bottling company of Dallas for almost three years, from August 24, 1960 to July 19, 1963. In October 1961, Speck met 15-year-old Shirley Annette Malone at the Texas State Fair
, who became pregnant after three weeks of dating him. Shirley married Speck on January 19, 1962, and initially moved in with Speck, his mother, his sister Carolyn and Carolyn's husband. Speck's mother and stepfather had separated and his stepfather had moved to California. Speck stopped using the name Richard Franklin Lindberg when he got married and began using the name Richard Franklin Speck. When Speck's daughter, Robbie Lynn, was born on July 5, 1962, his wife did not know where Speck was—he was serving a 22-day jail sentence for disturbing the peace in McKinney, Texas
after a drunken melee.
In July 1963, Speck was caught having forged and cashed a co-worker's $44 paycheck and having burglarized a grocery store, stealing cigarettes, beer and $3 in cash. The 21-year-old Speck was convicted of forgery and burglary and sentenced to three years in prison. He was paroled after serving 16 months (September 16, 1963 to January 2, 1965) in the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas
.
One week after his parole, at 2:20 a.m. on January 9, 1965, Speck, wielding a 17-inch carving knife, attacked a woman in the parking lot of her apartment building. He fled when the woman screamed, the police arrived within minutes and shortly thereafter apprehended Speck a few blocks away. Speck was convicted of aggravated assault, given a 16-month sentence to run concurrently with a parole violation sentence and returned to prison in Huntsville, but due to an error was released from prison just six months later on completion of his parole violation sentence on July 2, 1965.
After his release from prison, Speck worked for three months as a driver for the Patterson Meat Company and had six accidents with his truck before he was fired for failing to show up for work. In December 1965, on the recommendation of his mother, Speck who was by then separated from his wife, moved in with a 29-year-old divorced woman, an ex-professional wrestler who was a bartender at his favorite bar, Ginny's Lounge, and needed someone to babysit her three children. In January 1966, Speck's wife filed for divorce. That same month, Speck stabbed another man in a knife fight at Ginny's Lounge and was charged with aggravated assault, but a defense attorney hired by his mother was able to get the charge reduced to disturbing the peace. Speck was fined $10 and jailed for three days when he failed to pay the fine—the last time Speck was in police custody in Dallas.
On March 5, 1966, Speck bought a 12-year-old car. The following evening, he burglarized a grocery store, stole 70 cartons of cigarettes, sold them out of the trunk of his car in the grocery store's parking lot and then abandoned his car. The police traced the car to Speck and issued a warrant for his arrest for burglary on March 8. An arrest—his 42nd in Dallas—would mean another prison term, so on March 9, 1966, Speck's sister Carolyn drove him to the Dallas bus depot where he caught a bus to Chicago
, Illinois
.
where he initially stayed with some old family friends. Speck's brother Howard was a carpenter in Monmouth and found a job for him sanding plasterboard for another Monmouth carpenter. Speck became angry when he learned that his ex-wife remarried two days after she was granted a divorce on March 16, 1966; he moved to the Christy Hotel in downtown Monmouth on March 25 and spent most of his time in the downtown taverns. At the end of March, while Speck and some Monmouth acquaintances were on a bar-hopping trip to Gulf Port, Illinois
, they were detained overnight by police there after Speck reportedly threatened a man in a tavern restroom with his knife.
On April 3, Mrs. Virgil Harris, a 65-year-old Monmouth divorcée returned home at 1:00 a.m. to find a burglar in her house brandishing a knife—a 6 ft. tall white man who was "very polite" and spoke "very softly with a Southern drawl." The man blindfolded her, tied her up, raped her, ransacked her house and stole the $2.50 she had earned babysitting that evening.
A week later, Mary Kay Pierce, a 32-year-old barmaid who worked at her brother-in-law's tavern, Frank's Place in downtown Monmouth, was last seen leaving the tavern at 12:45 a.m. on April 9. She was reported missing on April 13, and her body was found that day in an empty hog house behind the tavern, having died from a blow to her abdomen that ruptured her liver.
Speck had frequented Frank's Place, and the empty hog house was one of several he had helped build in the preceding month, so Monmouth police briefly questioned him about Pierce's death when he showed up to collect his final carpentry paycheck on April 15 and asked him to stay in town for further questioning. When police showed up at the Christy Hotel on April 19 to continue their questioning of Speck, they found that he had left the hotel a few hours earlier carrying his suitcases and saying he was just going to the laundromat, but had instead left town. A search of his room turned up a radio and costume jewelry that Mrs. Virgil Harris had reported missing from her house as well as items reported missing in two other local burglaries in the past month.
neighborhood on the Northwest side of Chicago, where she lived with her husband Gene Thornton and their two teenage daughters; Martha had worked as a registered nurse
in pediatrics before she was married and her husband Gene worked nights as a railroad switchman. Speck told them an unbelievable story about having to leave Monmouth after refusing to sell narcotics for a "crime syndicate" there. Gene Thornton, who had served in the U.S. Navy
, thought the U.S. Merchant Marine
might provide a suitable occupation for his unemployed brother-in-law, so he took Speck on April 25 to the U.S. Coast Guard
office to apply for a letter of authority to work as an apprentice seaman—the application required being fingerprinted, photographed and having a physical examination by a physician.
Speck found work immediately after obtaining a letter of authority, joining the 33-member crew of Inland Steel
's Clarence B. Randall, an L6-S-B1 class bulk ore lake freighter
, on April 30. Speck's first voyage on the Clarence B. Randall was brief—he was stricken with appendicitis on May 3—and was evacuated by U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to St. Joseph's Hospital in Hancock, Michigan
on the Keweenaw Peninsula
of Michigan
's Upper Peninsula
where he had an emergency appendectomy.
After he was discharged from the hospital, Speck returned to stay with his sister Martha and her family in Chicago to recuperate. On May 20 he rejoined the crew of the Clarence B. Randall on which he served until June 14 when he got drunk and quarreled with one of the boat's officers and was put ashore on June 15. For the following week, Speck stayed at the St. Elmo, an East Side, Chicago
flophouse
at E. 99th St. & S. Ewing Ave. Speck then traveled by train to Houghton, Michigan
, staying at the Douglas House, to visit Judy Laakaniemi, a 28-year-old nurse's aide going through a divorce, whom he had befriended at St. Joseph's Hospital. On June 27, after Judy gave him $80 to help him until he found work, Speck left to again stay with his sister Martha and her family in Chicago for the next two weeks.
On June 30, his brother-in-law Gene drove Speck to the National Maritime Union
(NMU) hiring hall at 2335 E. 100th St. in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood of South Deering, Chicago
to file his paperwork for a seaman’s card. The NMU hiring hall was one block east of six attached two-story brick townhouses, three of which were occupied by South Chicago Community Hospital senior student nurses and Filipino
exchange registered nurses, eight of whom lived in the easternmost townhouse at 2319 E. 100th St., just 150 feet from the NMU hiring hall.
cargo ship bound for South Vietnam
, and returned to his sister Martha’s apartment for the weekend.
By Monday, July 11, Speck had outstayed his welcome with his sister Martha and her family, and after packing his bags and again being driven by his brother-in-law Gene to the NMU hiring hall to await a berth on a ship, Speck stayed that evening at Pauline's rooming house, a mile away at 3028 E. 96th St. in the Vets Park neighborhood of South Deering, Chicago.
On Tuesday, July 12, Speck returned to the NMU hiring hall and in mid-afternoon received an assignment on Sinclair Oil's tanker SS Sinclair Great Lakes, a thirty-minute drive away in East Chicago, Indiana
, but when he arrived there he found his spot had already been taken, and was driven back to the by then closed NMU hiring hall. Speck did not have enough money for a rooming house, so he dropped off his bags six blocks east at the Manor Shell
filling station at 9954 S. Torrence Ave. and slept in an unfinished house just off E. 103rd St.
On Wednesday, July 13, after picking up his bags and checking in at the NMU hiring hall angry at being sent to a non-existent assignment, Speck talked for thirty minutes in their car with his sister Martha and her husband Gene who had driven down to visit him at 9 a.m., parked on E. 100th St. next to Luella Elementary School, across the street from the townhouses where the nurses lived. At 10:30 a.m., tired of waiting at the NMU hiring hall for a job and with $25 his sister had given him, Speck left and walked a mile and a half east on E. 100th St. to check in at the Shipyard Inn at E. 101st St. & S. Avenue N, an East Side, Chicago rooming house.
Speck spent the rest of the day drinking in nearby taverns before accosting at knifepoint Ella Mae Hooper, a 53-year-old woman who had spent the day drinking at the same taverns as Speck. Speck took her to his room at the Shipyard Inn, raped her, and stole her black .22 caliber Röhm
revolver—a $16 mail-order Saturday night special
. After dinner at the nearby Kay’s Pilot House, Speck returned to drink at the Shipyard Inn’s tavern until 10:20 p.m., when he left dressed entirely in black, armed with a pocketknife, a hunting knife, and Ella Mae Hooper’s revolver, and walked a mile and a half west on E. 100th St. to the nurses’ townhouse at 2319 E. 100th St.
neighborhood of Chicago
. It was functioning as a dormitory for several young student nurses, some of whom were Filipina
s. Armed with only a knife (the Illinois Supreme Court opinion recounting the facts of the case reports that the defendant appeared at the door of the townhouse holding a gun), he raped then killed most of the young women, including Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Schmale, Pamela Wilkening, Suzanne Farris, Mary Ann Jordan, Merlita Gargullo, and Valentina Pasion. Speck, who later claimed he was high on both alcohol and drugs, may have originally planned to commit a routine burglary. Speck held the women in the house for hours, methodically leading them out of the room one by one, stabbing or strangling them to death, then finally raping and strangling his last victim, Gloria Davy. Only one woman, Cora (Corazon) Amurao, escaped because she managed to wiggle under a bed while Speck was out of the room with one of his victims. Speck may have lost count, or he may have known there were eight women living in the townhouse but had been unaware that a ninth student nurse was spending the night there. Amurao stayed hidden until almost 6 AM. When she emerged, she climbed out of her northeast bedroom window onto a ledge screaming, "They're all dead! All my friends are dead!"
Lieutenant Emil G. Giese headed the Identification Section of the Chicago Police Department. He compared and identified a smudged fingerprint that was found at the murder scene to another provided by the FBI, which belonged to Richard Speck. Sgt. Hugh Granahan assisted with the comparison and later that morning, Senior Examiner Burton J. Buhrke found a better fingerprint on a door at the scene.
Two days after the murders, Speck was identified by a drifter named Claude Lunsford. Speck, Lunsford and another man had been drinking the evening of July 15 on the fire escape of the Starr Hotel at 617 W. Madison. On July 16, Lunsford recognized a sketch of the murderer in the evening paper and phoned the police at 9:30 PM after finding Speck in his (Lunsford's) room at the Starr Hotel. The police, however, did not respond to the call although their records showed it had been made. Speck then attempted suicide
, and the Starr Hotel desk clerk phoned in the emergency around midnight. Speck was taken to Cook County Hospital at 12:30 AM on July 17. At the hospital, Speck was recognized by Dr. LeRoy Smith, a 25-year-old surgical resident physician, who had read about the "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo in a newspaper story. The police were called, and Speck was arrested. Concerns over the recent Miranda
case that had vacated the convictions of a number of criminals meant Speck was not even questioned for three weeks after his arrest.
While awaiting trial, Speck participated in twice-weekly sessions with part-time Cook County Jail psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin Ziporyn. These continued after Speck's transfer from Cermak Memorial Hospital (inside Chicago's House of Corrections) on July 29, 1966 until February 13, 1967, the day before Speck was transferred to Peoria to stand trial. Ziporyn prepared a discharge summary that listed depression, anxiety, guilt, and shame among Speck's emotions, but also a deep love for his family. It went on to note an obsessive-compulsive personality and a "Madonna-prostitute" attitude towards women. Ziporyn maintained that Speck viewed women as saintly until he felt betrayed by them for some reason, after which hostility developed. He also diagnosed organic brain syndrome
, resulting from the cerebral injuries suffered earlier in Speck's life, and stated that he was competent to stand trial but was insane at the time of the crime due to the effects of alcohol and drug use on his organic brain syndrome.
Ziporyn did not testify for the defense or the prosecution as both sides were troubled to learn before the trial that Ziporyn was writing a book about Speck for financial gain. Ziporyn also earned the ire of the Cook County Jail, which fired him as its part-time psychiatrist the week after Speck's trial ended. At some point during his interviews with Speck, Ziporyn had obtained a written three-sentence consent from Speck authorizing him to tell "what I am really like." Ziporyn's biography of Speck was published in summer 1967.
of the murders, but he had confessed the crime to Dr. LeRoy Smith at the Cook County Hospital. Smith did not testify, because the confession was made while Speck was sedated. Illinois Supreme Court Justice John J. Stamos, Cook County's state attorney when Speck was tried, knew of the hospital confession stated, "...we didn't need it. We had an eyewitness." Speck confessed to the murders for the first time in public when he spoke to Chicago Tribune
columnist Bob Greene
in 1978. In a film inmates made at the Stateville Correctional Center in 1988, Speck recounted the deed.
began April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois
, three hours southwest of Chicago, with a gag order
on the press. In court, Speck was dramatically identified by the sole surviving student nurse, Cora Amurao. When Amurao was asked if she could identify the killer of her fellow students, Amurao rose from her seat in the witness box, walked directly in front of Speck and pointed her finger at him, nearly touching him, and said, "This is the man."
Lieutenant Emil Giese testified regarding the fingerprint
s which were matched. He provided the scientific evidence the prosecution needed for conviction and with Amurao's testimony, placed the evidence against Speck beyond a reasonable doubt which persuaded jurors.
On April 15, after 49 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Speck guilty and recommended the death penalty. On June 5, Judge Herbert J. Paschen sentenced Speck to die in the electric chair
but granted an immediate stay pending automatic appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction and death sentence on November 22, 1968.
and The Lancet
published the first preliminary reports by British cytogeneticist
Patricia Jacobs
and colleagues of a chromosome
survey of Scotland
's only security hospital
for the developmentally disabled
, that found nine patients, averaging almost 6 ft. in height (range: 5'7" to 6'2"), had a 47,XYY
karyotype
, and mischaracterized them as aggressive and violent criminals.
In August 1966, based on those mischaracterizations, Eric Engel, a Swiss endocrinologist and geneticist
at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee
, wrote to Speck's attorney, Cook County Public Defender
Gerald W. Getty, who was reportedly planning an insanity defense, and proposed confidentially karotyping the 6 ft. 1 in. tall Speck. Getty agreed, a chromosome analysis was performed, and the results—showing Speck had a normal 46,XY karyotype—were reported to Getty in a September 26, 1966 letter, one month before a court-appointed panel of six physicians concluded that Speck was mentally competent to stand trial.
In January 1968 and March 1968, The Lancet and Science
published the first U.S. reports of institutionalized XYY males by Mary Telfer, a biochemist
at the Elwyn Institute
. Telfer found five tall, developmentally disabled XYY boys and men in hospitals and penal institutions in Pennsylvania
, and since four of the five had at least moderate facial acne
, jumped to the erroneous conclusion that acne was a defining characteristic of XYY males. In January 1968, Getty contacted Telfer for more information on her findings and she not only incorrectly assumed the acne-scarred Speck was an XYY male, but leapt to the egregiously false conclusion that Speck was the archetypical
XYY male.
In April 1968, The New York Times
introduced the XYY genetic condition to the general public for the first time, using Telfer as a main source for a three-part series on consecutive days that began with a Sunday front-page story. The second story in the series, "Ultimate Speck appeal may cite a genetic defect", incorrectly reported that a chromosome analysis of Speck by Chicago geneticist Eugene Pergament in the summer of 1967 had shown Speck to be an XYY male. The third story in the series included a denial by Pergament that he had done a chromosome analysis of Speck, but continued to incorrectly report that a chromosome analysis had shown Speck to be an XYY male.
The following week, a Time
article using Telfer as a main source reported that "Richard Speck is said to be one such" man with two Y chromosomes and a Newsweek
article using Telfer as a main source reported that "according to some doctors" Richard Speck "exemplifies the XYY type" and that "His chromosomes have in fact been analyzed, but his lawyer will not reveal the results of the test."
In May 1968, after reading news stories about Speck being an XYY male, a dumbfounded Engel contacted Getty and learned that the news stories were false—other than Engel's September 1966 chromosome analysis which had shown Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype—no other chromosome analysis of Speck had been done. Engel performed a second chromosome analysis of Speck in June 1968 and the results—again showing Speck had a normal 46,XY karyotype—were reported to Getty in a July 3, 1968 letter, three weeks before Getty filed his 193-page brief in Speck's appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court
.
In November 1968, five days before the Illinois Supreme Court's decision on Speck's appeal, a Sunday front-page article in the Chicago Tribune
that again used Telfer as a main source, reported that prison records showed that blood samples were taken from Speck in Stateville
prison in June 1968 to determine whether he was an XYY male, and that Getty had confirmed that a chromosome analysis had been performed outside of Illinois, but refused to disclose the results. On November 25, 1968, three days after the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Speck's conviction and death sentence, Getty held a press conference at which he outlined the basis of his forthcoming appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court
and also made public the chromosome analysis results from Engel showing Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype.
In September 1972, Engel published his account of the story and a photograph of Speck's normal 46,XY karyotype in the American Journal of Mental Deficiency, but by then the false association of Speck with the XYY genetic condition had been incorporated into high school biology textbooks, college genetics textbooks and medical school psychiatry textbooks, where misinformation still persists decades later.
(citing their June 3, 1968 decision in Witherspoon v. Illinois
) upheld Speck's conviction but reversed his death sentence, because more than 250 potential jurors were unconstitutionally excluded from his jury because of their conscientious or religious scruples against capital punishment
. The case was remanded back to the Illinois Supreme Court for re-sentencing.
On June 29, 1972, in Furman v. Georgia
, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional, so the Illinois Supreme Court's only option was to order Speck re-sentenced to prison by the original Cook County
court.
On November 21, 1972, in Peoria, Judge Richard Fitzgerald re-sentenced Speck to 400 to 1,200 years in prison (8 consecutive sentences of 50 to 150 years). He was denied parole in seven minutes at his first parole hearing on September 15, 1976, and at six subsequent hearings in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1990.
in Crest Hill, Illinois
, Speck was given the nickname "birdman", after the film Birdman of Alcatraz
, because he kept a pair of sparrow
s that had flown into his cell. He was described as a loner who kept a stamp collection and listened to music, and whose work within the prison involved bars and walls. His contacts with the warden included requests for new shirts or a radio or other mundane items. The warden merely described him as "a big nothing doing time." Speck was not a model prisoner; he was often caught with drugs or distilled moonshine
. Punishment for such infractions never stopped him. "How am I going to get in trouble? I'm here for 1,200 years!"
Speck customarily refused all media requests, but granted one prison interview to Bob Greene
in 1978; Speck told Greene that he read Greene's column in the Chicago Tribune. In this interview, Speck confessed to the murders for the first time publicly and said he thought he would get out of prison "between now and the year 2000," at which time he hoped to run his own grocery store business. He told Greene that one of his pleasures in prison was "getting high." When Greene asked him if he compared himself to celebrity killers like John Dillinger
, Speck replied, "Me, I'm not like Dillinger or anybody else. I'm freakish."
Speck said that when he killed the nurses he "had no feelings," but things had changed: "I had no feelings at all that night. They said there was blood all over the place. I can't remember. It felt like nothing... I'm sorry as hell. For those girls, and for their families, and for me. If I had to do it over again, it would be a simple house burglary."
Speck's "final thought for the American people" was: "Just tell 'em to keep up their hatred for me. I know it keeps up their morale. And I don't know what I'd do without it."
received video tapes from an anonymous attorney that had been made at Stateville Prison in 1988. Showing them publicly for the first time before a shocked and deeply angry Illinois state legislature
, Kurtis pointed out the explicit scenes of sex, drug use, and money being passed around by prisoners, who seemingly had no fear of being caught; in the center of it all was Speck, performing oral sex
on another inmate, sharing a huge pile of cocaine
with an inmate, parading in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts (allegedly grown using smuggled hormone treatments), and boasting, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose." The Illinois legislature packed the auditorium to view the two-hour video, but stopped the screening when the film showed Speck performing oral sex on another man.
From behind the camera, a prisoner asked Speck why he killed the nurses. Speck shrugged and jokingly said "It just wasn't their night." Asked how he felt about himself in the years since, he said "Like I always felt ... had no feeling. If you're asking me if I felt sorry, no." He also described in detail the experience of strangling someone: "It's not like TV...it takes over three minutes and you have to have a lot of strength." John Schmale, the brother of one of the murdered student nurses, said, "It was a very painful experience watching him tell about how he killed my sister."
Portions of the tapes were later broadcast on the A&E Network
's Investigative Reports. The same airing of Investigative Reports included interviews with people who believed that Speck was not taking hormones, wearing panties, etc. voluntarily, and that he'd instead been forced to by other inmates — that this may have been his way of surviving his time in prison.
After Speck's death, Dr. Jan E. Leestma, a neuropathologist at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery, performed an autopsy of Speck's brain. Leestma found apparent gross abnormalities. Two areas of the brain — the hippocampus
, which involves memory, and the amygdala
, which deals with rage and other strong emotions — encroached upon each other, and their boundaries were blurred. Leestma made tissue section slides and presented them to others, who agreed that his findings were unusual. There was no further analysis, however; the tissue samples were lost or stolen when sent to a Boston neurologist for further study, and Leestma's findings were inconclusive.
Dr. John R. Hughes, a neurologist and longtime director of the Epilepsy Clinic at the University of Illinois College of Medicine
and a colleague of Leestma, examined photos of the tissue in the 1990s along with brain wave tests performed on Speck in the 1960s. Hughes stated, "I have never heard of that [type of abnormality] in the history of neurology. So any abnormality that exceptional has got to have an exceptional consequence." Hughes attributes Speck's homicidal nature to a combination of the brain abnormalities, the violence Speck suffered at the hands of his alcoholic stepfather, and his own drinking and violence in Texas.
After Speck died, his body was not claimed. Duane Krieger, Will County coroner when Speck died, said that he had talked to Richard Speck's sister: "She said they were afraid people would desecrate the grave if they had him buried out there." Krieger also stated that the sister "told her kids, 'You can never tell people Richard Speck was your uncle.'"
Speck was cremated
. The ashes were scattered in a location known only to Krieger, his chief deputy, a pastoral worker and Joliet Herald News columnist John Whiteside, who has since died. All witnesses swore to keep the location, a "pastoral" and "an appropriate location" in the Joliet area, secret. "We said a couple of prayers and spread them to the wind," Krieger said. "It was a very small funeral."
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
er who systematically tortured, raped and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966.
Monmouth, 1941–1950
Richard Benjamin Speck was born in the village of KirkwoodKirkwood, Illinois
Kirkwood is a village in Warren County, Illinois, United States. The population was 794 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Galesburg Micropolitan Statistical Area.-History:...
, six miles southwest of Monmouth
Monmouth, Illinois
Monmouth is a city in and the county seat of Warren County in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is the home of Monmouth College and contains Monmouth Park, Harmon Park, North Park, Warfield Park, West Park, South Park, Garwood Park, Buster White Park and the Citizens Lake & Campground. It is the host...
in west-central Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, the seventh of eight children of Benjamin Franklin Speck and Mary Margaret Carbaugh Speck. The family moved to Monmouth shortly after Speck's birth. Speck and his younger sister, Carolyn, born in 1943, were much younger than their four older sisters and two older brothers (Speck's oldest brother, Robert, died at the age of 23 in an automobile accident in 1952). Speck's father worked as a packer at Western Stoneware in Monmouth and had previously worked as a farmer and logger. Speck was very close to his father, who died in 1947 from a heart attack at the age of 53. Speck was six years old at the time.
A few years later, Speck's religious, teetotaling
Teetotalism
Teetotalism refers to either the practice of or the promotion of complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages. A person who practices teetotalism is called a teetotaler or is simply said to be teetotal...
mother met and fell in love with a traveling insurance salesman from Texas, Carl August Rudolph Lindberg, whom she met on a train trip to Chicago. The hard-drinking, peg-legged Lindberg, with a 25-year criminal record that started with forgery and included several arrests for drunk driving, was in every respect the opposite of Speck's sober, hardworking father. Speck's mother married Lindberg on May 10, 1950 in Palo Pinto, Texas
Palo Pinto, Texas
Palo Pinto is an unincorporated town in Palo Pinto County, Texas, United States. It is the county seat , and has an estimated population of 425.-History:...
. Speck and his younger sister Carolyn stayed with their married sister Sara Thornton in Monmouth for a few months so Speck could finish 2nd grade, before joining their mother and Lindberg in rural Santo, Texas
Santo, Texas
Santo is an unincorporated community in Palo Pinto County, Texas, United States. It lies on Farm to Market Road 4, fourteen miles south of Palo Pinto, and has an estimated population of 315.-Education:...
, 40 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
, where Speck attended 3rd grade.
Dallas, 1951–1966
After a year in Santo, Speck moved with his mother, stepfather, and sister Carolyn to the East DallasEast Dallas
East Dallas comprises many communities and neighborhoods in Dallas, Texas, .- Neighborhoods :*Baylor/Meadows*Belmont*Hilltop*Bryan Place*Buckner Terrace*East Grand*Casa Linda Estates*Cochran Heights*Casa View*Claremont*Deep Ellum*Eastwood...
section of Dallas, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
, living at 10 addresses in poor neighborhoods over the next dozen years. Speck loathed his often drunk and frequently absent stepfather who psychologically abused him with insults and threats. Speck, a poor student who needed glasses for reading but refused to wear them, struggled through Dallas public schools from 4th through 8th grade, repeating 8th grade at J. L. Long Jr. High School in part because he refused to recite in class because of a lifelong fear of people staring at him. In autumn 1957, Speck started 9th grade at Crozier Technical High School, but failed every subject, and did not return for the second semester in January 1958, dropping out just after his 16th birthday. Speck had begun drinking alcohol at age 12 and by age 15 was getting drunk almost every day. His first arrest in 1955, at age 13 for trespassing, was followed by dozens of other arrests for misdemeanors over the next eight years.
Speck worked as a laborer for the 7-Up bottling company of Dallas for almost three years, from August 24, 1960 to July 19, 1963. In October 1961, Speck met 15-year-old Shirley Annette Malone at the Texas State Fair
State Fair of Texas
The State Fair of Texas is an annual state fair held in Dallas, Texas . The fair season usually begins the last Friday in September and ends 24 days later. The fair is held at the historic Fair Park where it has been held since 1886. The 2012 State Fair of Texas will run from September 28th...
, who became pregnant after three weeks of dating him. Shirley married Speck on January 19, 1962, and initially moved in with Speck, his mother, his sister Carolyn and Carolyn's husband. Speck's mother and stepfather had separated and his stepfather had moved to California. Speck stopped using the name Richard Franklin Lindberg when he got married and began using the name Richard Franklin Speck. When Speck's daughter, Robbie Lynn, was born on July 5, 1962, his wife did not know where Speck was—he was serving a 22-day jail sentence for disturbing the peace in McKinney, Texas
McKinney, Texas
McKinney is a city in and the county seat of Collin County, Texas, United States, and the second in population to Plano. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 131,117 The Census Bureau listed McKinney as the nation's fastest growing city from 2000 to 2003 and again in...
after a drunken melee.
In July 1963, Speck was caught having forged and cashed a co-worker's $44 paycheck and having burglarized a grocery store, stealing cigarettes, beer and $3 in cash. The 21-year-old Speck was convicted of forgery and burglary and sentenced to three years in prison. He was paroled after serving 16 months (September 16, 1963 to January 2, 1965) in the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas
Huntsville, Texas
Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas, United States. The population was 35,508 at the 2010 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area....
.
One week after his parole, at 2:20 a.m. on January 9, 1965, Speck, wielding a 17-inch carving knife, attacked a woman in the parking lot of her apartment building. He fled when the woman screamed, the police arrived within minutes and shortly thereafter apprehended Speck a few blocks away. Speck was convicted of aggravated assault, given a 16-month sentence to run concurrently with a parole violation sentence and returned to prison in Huntsville, but due to an error was released from prison just six months later on completion of his parole violation sentence on July 2, 1965.
After his release from prison, Speck worked for three months as a driver for the Patterson Meat Company and had six accidents with his truck before he was fired for failing to show up for work. In December 1965, on the recommendation of his mother, Speck who was by then separated from his wife, moved in with a 29-year-old divorced woman, an ex-professional wrestler who was a bartender at his favorite bar, Ginny's Lounge, and needed someone to babysit her three children. In January 1966, Speck's wife filed for divorce. That same month, Speck stabbed another man in a knife fight at Ginny's Lounge and was charged with aggravated assault, but a defense attorney hired by his mother was able to get the charge reduced to disturbing the peace. Speck was fined $10 and jailed for three days when he failed to pay the fine—the last time Speck was in police custody in Dallas.
On March 5, 1966, Speck bought a 12-year-old car. The following evening, he burglarized a grocery store, stole 70 cartons of cigarettes, sold them out of the trunk of his car in the grocery store's parking lot and then abandoned his car. The police traced the car to Speck and issued a warrant for his arrest for burglary on March 8. An arrest—his 42nd in Dallas—would mean another prison term, so on March 9, 1966, Speck's sister Carolyn drove him to the Dallas bus depot where he caught a bus to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
.
Monmouth, March–April 1966
Speck stayed with his sister Martha Thornton and her family in Chicago for a few days, and then returned to his boyhood hometown of Monmouth, IllinoisMonmouth, Illinois
Monmouth is a city in and the county seat of Warren County in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is the home of Monmouth College and contains Monmouth Park, Harmon Park, North Park, Warfield Park, West Park, South Park, Garwood Park, Buster White Park and the Citizens Lake & Campground. It is the host...
where he initially stayed with some old family friends. Speck's brother Howard was a carpenter in Monmouth and found a job for him sanding plasterboard for another Monmouth carpenter. Speck became angry when he learned that his ex-wife remarried two days after she was granted a divorce on March 16, 1966; he moved to the Christy Hotel in downtown Monmouth on March 25 and spent most of his time in the downtown taverns. At the end of March, while Speck and some Monmouth acquaintances were on a bar-hopping trip to Gulf Port, Illinois
Gulf Port, Illinois
Gulf Port is a village in Henderson County, Illinois, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the village population was 207. It is part of the Burlington, IA–IL Micropolitan Statistical Area. The village was completely submerged, save the roofs of some homes and buildings, by a levee...
, they were detained overnight by police there after Speck reportedly threatened a man in a tavern restroom with his knife.
On April 3, Mrs. Virgil Harris, a 65-year-old Monmouth divorcée returned home at 1:00 a.m. to find a burglar in her house brandishing a knife—a 6 ft. tall white man who was "very polite" and spoke "very softly with a Southern drawl." The man blindfolded her, tied her up, raped her, ransacked her house and stole the $2.50 she had earned babysitting that evening.
A week later, Mary Kay Pierce, a 32-year-old barmaid who worked at her brother-in-law's tavern, Frank's Place in downtown Monmouth, was last seen leaving the tavern at 12:45 a.m. on April 9. She was reported missing on April 13, and her body was found that day in an empty hog house behind the tavern, having died from a blow to her abdomen that ruptured her liver.
Speck had frequented Frank's Place, and the empty hog house was one of several he had helped build in the preceding month, so Monmouth police briefly questioned him about Pierce's death when he showed up to collect his final carpentry paycheck on April 15 and asked him to stay in town for further questioning. When police showed up at the Christy Hotel on April 19 to continue their questioning of Speck, they found that he had left the hotel a few hours earlier carrying his suitcases and saying he was just going to the laundromat, but had instead left town. A search of his room turned up a radio and costume jewelry that Mrs. Virgil Harris had reported missing from her house as well as items reported missing in two other local burglaries in the past month.
Chicago, April–June 1966
On April 19, 1966, Speck returned to stay at his sister Martha's 2nd-floor apartment at 3966 N. Avondale Ave. in the Old Irving ParkIrving Park, Chicago
Irving Park is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community area located on the Northwest Side. It is bounded by the Chicago River on the east, the Milwaukee Road railroad tracks on the west, Addison Street on the south and Montrose Avenue on the north, west of Pulaski Road stretching to...
neighborhood on the Northwest side of Chicago, where she lived with her husband Gene Thornton and their two teenage daughters; Martha had worked as a registered nurse
Registered nurse
A registered nurse is a nurse who has graduated from a nursing program at a university or college and has passed a national licensing exam. A registered nurse helps individuals, families, and groups to achieve health and prevent disease...
in pediatrics before she was married and her husband Gene worked nights as a railroad switchman. Speck told them an unbelievable story about having to leave Monmouth after refusing to sell narcotics for a "crime syndicate" there. Gene Thornton, who had served in the U.S. Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
, thought the U.S. Merchant Marine
United States Merchant Marine
The United States Merchant Marine refers to the fleet of U.S. civilian-owned merchant vessels, operated by either the government or the private sector, that engage in commerce or transportation of goods and services in and out of the navigable waters of the United States. The Merchant Marine is...
might provide a suitable occupation for his unemployed brother-in-law, so he took Speck on April 25 to the U.S. Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
office to apply for a letter of authority to work as an apprentice seaman—the application required being fingerprinted, photographed and having a physical examination by a physician.
Speck found work immediately after obtaining a letter of authority, joining the 33-member crew of Inland Steel
Inland Steel Company
The Inland Steel Company was a U.S. steel company active in 1893-1998. Its history as an independent firm thus spanned much of the 20th century. It was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois at the landmark Inland Steel Building....
's Clarence B. Randall, an L6-S-B1 class bulk ore lake freighter
Lake freighter
Lake freighters, or Lakers, are bulk carrier vessels that ply the Great Lakes. The best known was the , the most recent and largest major vessel to be wrecked on the Lakes. These vessels are traditionally called boats, although classified as ships. In the mid-20th century, 300 lakers worked the...
, on April 30. Speck's first voyage on the Clarence B. Randall was brief—he was stricken with appendicitis on May 3—and was evacuated by U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to St. Joseph's Hospital in Hancock, Michigan
Hancock, Michigan
Hancock is a city in Houghton County; the northernmost in the U.S. state of Michigan, located on the Keweenaw Peninsula, or, depending on terminology, Copper Island. The population was 4,634 at the 2010 census...
on the Keweenaw Peninsula
Keweenaw Peninsula
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the northern-most part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It projects into Lake Superior and was the site of the first copper boom in the United States. As of the 2000 census, its population was roughly 43,200...
of Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
's Upper Peninsula
Upper Peninsula of Michigan
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the northern of the two major land masses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan. It is commonly referred to as the Upper Peninsula, the U.P., or Upper Michigan. It is also known as the land "above the Bridge" linking the two peninsulas. The peninsula is bounded...
where he had an emergency appendectomy.
After he was discharged from the hospital, Speck returned to stay with his sister Martha and her family in Chicago to recuperate. On May 20 he rejoined the crew of the Clarence B. Randall on which he served until June 14 when he got drunk and quarreled with one of the boat's officers and was put ashore on June 15. For the following week, Speck stayed at the St. Elmo, an East Side, Chicago
East Side, Chicago
East Side is one of the 77 official community areas of Chicago, Illinois. It is located on the far south side of the city, between the Calumet River and the Illinois-Indiana state line, approximately south of Downtown Chicago...
flophouse
Flophouse
A flophouse , doss-house or dosshouse is a place that offers very cheap lodging, generally by providing only minimal services.-Characteristics:...
at E. 99th St. & S. Ewing Ave. Speck then traveled by train to Houghton, Michigan
Houghton, Michigan
Houghton is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and largest city in the Copper Country on the Keweenaw Peninsula. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 7,708. It is the county seat of Houghton County...
, staying at the Douglas House, to visit Judy Laakaniemi, a 28-year-old nurse's aide going through a divorce, whom he had befriended at St. Joseph's Hospital. On June 27, after Judy gave him $80 to help him until he found work, Speck left to again stay with his sister Martha and her family in Chicago for the next two weeks.
On June 30, his brother-in-law Gene drove Speck to the National Maritime Union
National Maritime Union
The National Maritime Union was an American labor union founded in May 1937. It affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in July 1937...
(NMU) hiring hall at 2335 E. 100th St. in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood of South Deering, Chicago
South Deering, Chicago
South Deering, one of the 77 official community areas of the City of Chicago, Illinois, is located on the far south side. It was a very industrial neighborhood, consisting of a small group of homes in the northeast corner and Lake Calumet taking up most of the remainder. It exists in the 10th Ward,...
to file his paperwork for a seaman’s card. The NMU hiring hall was one block east of six attached two-story brick townhouses, three of which were occupied by South Chicago Community Hospital senior student nurses and Filipino
Filipino people
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....
exchange registered nurses, eight of whom lived in the easternmost townhouse at 2319 E. 100th St., just 150 feet from the NMU hiring hall.
Chicago, July 1966
On Friday, July 8, 1966, his brother-in-law Gene drove Speck to the NMU hiring hall to pick up his seaman's card and register for a berth on a ship. Speck lost out that day to a seaman with more seniority for a berth on the SS Flying Spray, a C1-AType C1 ship
Type C1 was a designation for small cargo ships built for the U.S. Maritime Commission before and during World War II. The first C1 types were the smallest of the three original Maritime Commission designs, meant for shorter routes where high speed and capacity were less important. Only a handful...
cargo ship bound for South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
, and returned to his sister Martha’s apartment for the weekend.
By Monday, July 11, Speck had outstayed his welcome with his sister Martha and her family, and after packing his bags and again being driven by his brother-in-law Gene to the NMU hiring hall to await a berth on a ship, Speck stayed that evening at Pauline's rooming house, a mile away at 3028 E. 96th St. in the Vets Park neighborhood of South Deering, Chicago.
On Tuesday, July 12, Speck returned to the NMU hiring hall and in mid-afternoon received an assignment on Sinclair Oil's tanker SS Sinclair Great Lakes, a thirty-minute drive away in East Chicago, Indiana
East Chicago, Indiana
East Chicago is a city in Lake County, Indiana. The population was 29,698 at the 2010 census.-Geography:East Chicago is located at ....
, but when he arrived there he found his spot had already been taken, and was driven back to the by then closed NMU hiring hall. Speck did not have enough money for a rooming house, so he dropped off his bags six blocks east at the Manor Shell
Shell Oil Company
Shell Oil Company is the United States-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational oil company of Anglo Dutch origins, which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Approximately 22,000 Shell employees are based in the U.S. The head office in the U.S. is in Houston, Texas...
filling station at 9954 S. Torrence Ave. and slept in an unfinished house just off E. 103rd St.
On Wednesday, July 13, after picking up his bags and checking in at the NMU hiring hall angry at being sent to a non-existent assignment, Speck talked for thirty minutes in their car with his sister Martha and her husband Gene who had driven down to visit him at 9 a.m., parked on E. 100th St. next to Luella Elementary School, across the street from the townhouses where the nurses lived. At 10:30 a.m., tired of waiting at the NMU hiring hall for a job and with $25 his sister had given him, Speck left and walked a mile and a half east on E. 100th St. to check in at the Shipyard Inn at E. 101st St. & S. Avenue N, an East Side, Chicago rooming house.
Speck spent the rest of the day drinking in nearby taverns before accosting at knifepoint Ella Mae Hooper, a 53-year-old woman who had spent the day drinking at the same taverns as Speck. Speck took her to his room at the Shipyard Inn, raped her, and stole her black .22 caliber Röhm
Röhm (RG)
Röhm, often referred as simply RG, is a German brand of firearms and related shooting equipment. Since 2010 Röhm RG is a brand name of UMAREX GmbH & Co. KG.- History :...
revolver—a $16 mail-order Saturday night special
Saturday night special
The phrase Saturday night special is pejorative slang used in the United States and Canada for any inexpensive handgun. Saturday night specials have been defined as compact, inexpensive handguns with low perceived quality; however, there is no official definition of "Saturday night special" under...
. After dinner at the nearby Kay’s Pilot House, Speck returned to drink at the Shipyard Inn’s tavern until 10:20 p.m., when he left dressed entirely in black, armed with a pocketknife, a hunting knife, and Ella Mae Hooper’s revolver, and walked a mile and a half west on E. 100th St. to the nurses’ townhouse at 2319 E. 100th St.
The murders
At 11:00 PM on July 13, 1966, Speck broke into a townhouse located at 2319 East 100th Street in the Jeffery ManorSouth Deering, Chicago
South Deering, one of the 77 official community areas of the City of Chicago, Illinois, is located on the far south side. It was a very industrial neighborhood, consisting of a small group of homes in the northeast corner and Lake Calumet taking up most of the remainder. It exists in the 10th Ward,...
neighborhood of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. It was functioning as a dormitory for several young student nurses, some of whom were Filipina
Filipino people
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....
s. Armed with only a knife (the Illinois Supreme Court opinion recounting the facts of the case reports that the defendant appeared at the door of the townhouse holding a gun), he raped then killed most of the young women, including Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Schmale, Pamela Wilkening, Suzanne Farris, Mary Ann Jordan, Merlita Gargullo, and Valentina Pasion. Speck, who later claimed he was high on both alcohol and drugs, may have originally planned to commit a routine burglary. Speck held the women in the house for hours, methodically leading them out of the room one by one, stabbing or strangling them to death, then finally raping and strangling his last victim, Gloria Davy. Only one woman, Cora (Corazon) Amurao, escaped because she managed to wiggle under a bed while Speck was out of the room with one of his victims. Speck may have lost count, or he may have known there were eight women living in the townhouse but had been unaware that a ninth student nurse was spending the night there. Amurao stayed hidden until almost 6 AM. When she emerged, she climbed out of her northeast bedroom window onto a ledge screaming, "They're all dead! All my friends are dead!"
Lieutenant Emil G. Giese headed the Identification Section of the Chicago Police Department. He compared and identified a smudged fingerprint that was found at the murder scene to another provided by the FBI, which belonged to Richard Speck. Sgt. Hugh Granahan assisted with the comparison and later that morning, Senior Examiner Burton J. Buhrke found a better fingerprint on a door at the scene.
Two days after the murders, Speck was identified by a drifter named Claude Lunsford. Speck, Lunsford and another man had been drinking the evening of July 15 on the fire escape of the Starr Hotel at 617 W. Madison. On July 16, Lunsford recognized a sketch of the murderer in the evening paper and phoned the police at 9:30 PM after finding Speck in his (Lunsford's) room at the Starr Hotel. The police, however, did not respond to the call although their records showed it had been made. Speck then attempted suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, and the Starr Hotel desk clerk phoned in the emergency around midnight. Speck was taken to Cook County Hospital at 12:30 AM on July 17. At the hospital, Speck was recognized by Dr. LeRoy Smith, a 25-year-old surgical resident physician, who had read about the "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo in a newspaper story. The police were called, and Speck was arrested. Concerns over the recent Miranda
Miranda v. Arizona
Miranda v. Arizona, , was a landmark 5–4 decision of the United States Supreme Court. The Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant...
case that had vacated the convictions of a number of criminals meant Speck was not even questioned for three weeks after his arrest.
Pre-trial
Felony Court Judge Herbert J. Paschen appointed an impartial panel to report on Speck's competence to stand trial and his sanity at the time of the crime. The panel comprised three physicians suggested by the defense and three physicians selected by the prosecution: five psychiatrists and one general surgeon. The panel's confidential report deemed Speck competent to stand trial and concluded that he had not been insane at the time of the murders.While awaiting trial, Speck participated in twice-weekly sessions with part-time Cook County Jail psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin Ziporyn. These continued after Speck's transfer from Cermak Memorial Hospital (inside Chicago's House of Corrections) on July 29, 1966 until February 13, 1967, the day before Speck was transferred to Peoria to stand trial. Ziporyn prepared a discharge summary that listed depression, anxiety, guilt, and shame among Speck's emotions, but also a deep love for his family. It went on to note an obsessive-compulsive personality and a "Madonna-prostitute" attitude towards women. Ziporyn maintained that Speck viewed women as saintly until he felt betrayed by them for some reason, after which hostility developed. He also diagnosed organic brain syndrome
Organic Brain Syndrome
Organic brain syndrome , also known as organic brain disease or organic brain disorder, is an older and nearly obsolete general term from psychiatry, referring to many physical disorders that cause impaired mental function. It usually does not include psychiatric disorders...
, resulting from the cerebral injuries suffered earlier in Speck's life, and stated that he was competent to stand trial but was insane at the time of the crime due to the effects of alcohol and drug use on his organic brain syndrome.
Ziporyn did not testify for the defense or the prosecution as both sides were troubled to learn before the trial that Ziporyn was writing a book about Speck for financial gain. Ziporyn also earned the ire of the Cook County Jail, which fired him as its part-time psychiatrist the week after Speck's trial ended. At some point during his interviews with Speck, Ziporyn had obtained a written three-sentence consent from Speck authorizing him to tell "what I am really like." Ziporyn's biography of Speck was published in summer 1967.
Confessions
Speck later claimed he had no recollectionRecollection
Recall in memory refers to the retrieval of events or information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory. There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall...
of the murders, but he had confessed the crime to Dr. LeRoy Smith at the Cook County Hospital. Smith did not testify, because the confession was made while Speck was sedated. Illinois Supreme Court Justice John J. Stamos, Cook County's state attorney when Speck was tried, knew of the hospital confession stated, "...we didn't need it. We had an eyewitness." Speck confessed to the murders for the first time in public when he spoke to Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
columnist Bob Greene
Bob Greene
Robert Bernard Greene, Jr. is an American journalist. He worked for 24 years for the Chicago Tribune newspaper, where he was an award-winning columnist. Greene has written books on subjects varying from Michael Jordan, to small towns, to U.S. presidents. His Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael...
in 1978. In a film inmates made at the Stateville Correctional Center in 1988, Speck recounted the deed.
Trial
Speck's jury trialJury trial
A jury trial is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact which are then applied by a judge...
began April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois
Peoria, Illinois
Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated...
, three hours southwest of Chicago, with a gag order
Gag order
A gag order is an order, sometimes a legal order by a court or government, other times a private order by an employer or other institution, restricting information or comment from being made public.Gag orders are often used against participants involved in a lawsuit or criminal trial...
on the press. In court, Speck was dramatically identified by the sole surviving student nurse, Cora Amurao. When Amurao was asked if she could identify the killer of her fellow students, Amurao rose from her seat in the witness box, walked directly in front of Speck and pointed her finger at him, nearly touching him, and said, "This is the man."
Lieutenant Emil Giese testified regarding the fingerprint
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
s which were matched. He provided the scientific evidence the prosecution needed for conviction and with Amurao's testimony, placed the evidence against Speck beyond a reasonable doubt which persuaded jurors.
On April 15, after 49 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Speck guilty and recommended the death penalty. On June 5, Judge Herbert J. Paschen sentenced Speck to die in the electric chair
Electric chair
Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body...
but granted an immediate stay pending automatic appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction and death sentence on November 22, 1968.
False reports that Speck was XYY
In December 1965 and March 1966, NatureNature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
and The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...
published the first preliminary reports by British cytogeneticist
Cytogenetics
Cytogenetics is a branch of genetics that is concerned with the study of the structure and function of the cell, especially the chromosomes. It includes routine analysis of G-Banded chromosomes, other cytogenetic banding techniques, as well as molecular cytogenetics such as fluorescent in situ...
Patricia Jacobs
Patricia Jacobs
Patricia Ann Jacobs FRS FMedSci is a British geneticist, fellow of the Royal society. She is Professor of Human Genetics in University of Southampton at Salisbury District Hospital...
and colleagues of a chromosome
Chromosome
A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve to package the DNA and control its functions.Chromosomes...
survey of Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
's only security hospital
State Hospital for Scotland and Northern Ireland
The State Hospital for Scotland and Northern Ireland is a psychiatric hospital providing care and treatment in conditions of high security for around 140 patients from Scotland and Northern Ireland who need to be detained in hospital under conditions of special security that can only be provided...
for the developmentally disabled
Developmental disability
Developmental disability is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe lifelong disabilities attributable to mental or physical impairments, manifested prior to age 18. It is not synonymous with "developmental delay" which is often a consequence of a temporary illness or trauma during...
, that found nine patients, averaging almost 6 ft. in height (range: 5'7" to 6'2"), had a 47,XYY
XYY syndrome
XYY syndrome is an aneuploidy of the sex chromosomes in which a human male receives an extra Y-chromosome, giving a total of 47 chromosomes instead of the more usual 46. This produces a 47,XYY karyotype...
karyotype
Karyotype
A karyotype is the number and appearance of chromosomes in the nucleus of an eukaryotic cell. The term is also used for the complete set of chromosomes in a species, or an individual organism.p28...
, and mischaracterized them as aggressive and violent criminals.
In August 1966, based on those mischaracterizations, Eric Engel, a Swiss endocrinologist and geneticist
Geneticist
A geneticist is a biologist who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a researcher or lecturer. Some geneticists perform experiments and analyze data to interpret the inheritance of skills. A geneticist is also a Consultant or...
at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
, wrote to Speck's attorney, Cook County Public Defender
Cook County Public Defender
The Cook County Public Defender provides legal representation in the areas of felony and misdemeanor criminal, delinquency, abuse/neglect, some appeals, post-conviction and traffic cases throughout the Cook County in Illinois. Currently, the head of the Cook County Public Defender is Abishi C....
Gerald W. Getty, who was reportedly planning an insanity defense, and proposed confidentially karotyping the 6 ft. 1 in. tall Speck. Getty agreed, a chromosome analysis was performed, and the results—showing Speck had a normal 46,XY karyotype—were reported to Getty in a September 26, 1966 letter, one month before a court-appointed panel of six physicians concluded that Speck was mentally competent to stand trial.
In January 1968 and March 1968, The Lancet and Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
published the first U.S. reports of institutionalized XYY males by Mary Telfer, a biochemist
Biochemist
Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. Typical biochemists study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. The prefix of "bio" in "biochemist" can be understood as a fusion of "biological chemist."-Role:...
at the Elwyn Institute
Elwyn Inc.
Elwyn, founded in 1852, is one of the oldest and largest care facilities in the country serving children and adults with a wide range of physical, developmental, sensory , and emotional disabilities, as well as those with mental illness, those with disabilities due to age, and those who are...
. Telfer found five tall, developmentally disabled XYY boys and men in hospitals and penal institutions in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, and since four of the five had at least moderate facial acne
Acne vulgaris
Acne vulgaris is a common human skin disease, characterized by areas of skin with seborrhea , comedones , papules , pustules , Nodules and possibly scarring...
, jumped to the erroneous conclusion that acne was a defining characteristic of XYY males. In January 1968, Getty contacted Telfer for more information on her findings and she not only incorrectly assumed the acne-scarred Speck was an XYY male, but leapt to the egregiously false conclusion that Speck was the archetypical
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
XYY male.
In April 1968, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
introduced the XYY genetic condition to the general public for the first time, using Telfer as a main source for a three-part series on consecutive days that began with a Sunday front-page story. The second story in the series, "Ultimate Speck appeal may cite a genetic defect", incorrectly reported that a chromosome analysis of Speck by Chicago geneticist Eugene Pergament in the summer of 1967 had shown Speck to be an XYY male. The third story in the series included a denial by Pergament that he had done a chromosome analysis of Speck, but continued to incorrectly report that a chromosome analysis had shown Speck to be an XYY male.
The following week, a Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
article using Telfer as a main source reported that "Richard Speck is said to be one such" man with two Y chromosomes and a Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
article using Telfer as a main source reported that "according to some doctors" Richard Speck "exemplifies the XYY type" and that "His chromosomes have in fact been analyzed, but his lawyer will not reveal the results of the test."
In May 1968, after reading news stories about Speck being an XYY male, a dumbfounded Engel contacted Getty and learned that the news stories were false—other than Engel's September 1966 chromosome analysis which had shown Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype—no other chromosome analysis of Speck had been done. Engel performed a second chromosome analysis of Speck in June 1968 and the results—again showing Speck had a normal 46,XY karyotype—were reported to Getty in a July 3, 1968 letter, three weeks before Getty filed his 193-page brief in Speck's appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court
Supreme Court of Illinois
The Supreme Court of Illinois is the state supreme court of Illinois. The court's authority is granted in Article VI of the current Illinois Constitution, which provides for seven justices elected from the five appellate judicial districts of the state: Three justices from the First District and...
.
In November 1968, five days before the Illinois Supreme Court's decision on Speck's appeal, a Sunday front-page article in the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
that again used Telfer as a main source, reported that prison records showed that blood samples were taken from Speck in Stateville
Stateville Correctional Center
Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, USA.-History:Opened in 1925, Stateville was built to accommodate 1,506 inmates. Parts of the prison were designed according to the panopticon concept proposed by the British philosopher and prison...
prison in June 1968 to determine whether he was an XYY male, and that Getty had confirmed that a chromosome analysis had been performed outside of Illinois, but refused to disclose the results. On November 25, 1968, three days after the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Speck's conviction and death sentence, Getty held a press conference at which he outlined the basis of his forthcoming appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
and also made public the chromosome analysis results from Engel showing Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype.
In September 1972, Engel published his account of the story and a photograph of Speck's normal 46,XY karyotype in the American Journal of Mental Deficiency, but by then the false association of Speck with the XYY genetic condition had been incorporated into high school biology textbooks, college genetics textbooks and medical school psychiatry textbooks, where misinformation still persists decades later.
Death penalty reversal
On June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme CourtSupreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
(citing their June 3, 1968 decision in Witherspoon v. Illinois
Witherspoon v. Illinois
Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 , was a U.S. Supreme Court case where the court ruled that a state statute providing the state unlimited challenge for cause of jurors who might have any objection to the death penalty gave too much bias in favor of the prosecution.The Court said, The decision...
) upheld Speck's conviction but reversed his death sentence, because more than 250 potential jurors were unconstitutionally excluded from his jury because of their conscientious or religious scruples against capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
. The case was remanded back to the Illinois Supreme Court for re-sentencing.
On June 29, 1972, in Furman v. Georgia
Furman v. Georgia
Furman v. Georgia, was a United States Supreme Court decision that ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. The case led to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment throughout the United States, which came to an end when Gregg v. Georgia was...
, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional, so the Illinois Supreme Court's only option was to order Speck re-sentenced to prison by the original Cook County
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, with its county seat in Chicago. It is the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County. The county has 5,194,675 residents, which is 40.5 percent of all Illinois residents. Cook County's population is larger than...
court.
On November 21, 1972, in Peoria, Judge Richard Fitzgerald re-sentenced Speck to 400 to 1,200 years in prison (8 consecutive sentences of 50 to 150 years). He was denied parole in seven minutes at his first parole hearing on September 15, 1976, and at six subsequent hearings in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1990.
Life in prison
While incarcerated at the Stateville Correctional CenterStateville Correctional Center
Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, USA.-History:Opened in 1925, Stateville was built to accommodate 1,506 inmates. Parts of the prison were designed according to the panopticon concept proposed by the British philosopher and prison...
in Crest Hill, Illinois
Crest Hill, Illinois
Crest Hill is a city in Will County, Illinois, United States. The population was 13,329 at the 2000 census and the 2010 census population estimate was 20,867.-Geography:Crest Hill is located at...
, Speck was given the nickname "birdman", after the film Birdman of Alcatraz
Birdman of Alcatraz (film)
Birdman of Alcatraz is a 1962 film starring Burt Lancaster and directed by John Frankenheimer. It is a fictionalized version of the life of Robert Stroud, a federal prison inmate known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz" because of his life with birds. In spite of the title, much of the action is set at...
, because he kept a pair of sparrow
Sparrow
The sparrows are a family of small passerine birds, Passeridae. They are also known as true sparrows, or Old World sparrows, names also used for a genus of the family, Passer...
s that had flown into his cell. He was described as a loner who kept a stamp collection and listened to music, and whose work within the prison involved bars and walls. His contacts with the warden included requests for new shirts or a radio or other mundane items. The warden merely described him as "a big nothing doing time." Speck was not a model prisoner; he was often caught with drugs or distilled moonshine
Moonshine
Moonshine is an illegally produced distilled beverage...
. Punishment for such infractions never stopped him. "How am I going to get in trouble? I'm here for 1,200 years!"
Speck customarily refused all media requests, but granted one prison interview to Bob Greene
Bob Greene
Robert Bernard Greene, Jr. is an American journalist. He worked for 24 years for the Chicago Tribune newspaper, where he was an award-winning columnist. Greene has written books on subjects varying from Michael Jordan, to small towns, to U.S. presidents. His Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael...
in 1978; Speck told Greene that he read Greene's column in the Chicago Tribune. In this interview, Speck confessed to the murders for the first time publicly and said he thought he would get out of prison "between now and the year 2000," at which time he hoped to run his own grocery store business. He told Greene that one of his pleasures in prison was "getting high." When Greene asked him if he compared himself to celebrity killers like John Dillinger
John Dillinger
John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...
, Speck replied, "Me, I'm not like Dillinger or anybody else. I'm freakish."
Speck said that when he killed the nurses he "had no feelings," but things had changed: "I had no feelings at all that night. They said there was blood all over the place. I can't remember. It felt like nothing... I'm sorry as hell. For those girls, and for their families, and for me. If I had to do it over again, it would be a simple house burglary."
Speck's "final thought for the American people" was: "Just tell 'em to keep up their hatred for me. I know it keeps up their morale. And I don't know what I'd do without it."
Prison video
In May 1996, Chicago television news anchor Bill KurtisBill Kurtis
Bill Kurtis is an American television journalist, producer, narrator, and news anchor. He is also the current host of A&E crime and news documentary shows, including Investigative Reports, American Justice, and Cold Case Files...
received video tapes from an anonymous attorney that had been made at Stateville Prison in 1988. Showing them publicly for the first time before a shocked and deeply angry Illinois state legislature
Illinois General Assembly
The Illinois General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois and comprises the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate. The General Assembly was created by the first state constitution adopted in 1818. Illinois has 59 legislative districts, with two...
, Kurtis pointed out the explicit scenes of sex, drug use, and money being passed around by prisoners, who seemingly had no fear of being caught; in the center of it all was Speck, performing oral sex
Oral sex
Oral sex is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a sex partner by the use of the mouth, tongue, teeth or throat. Cunnilingus refers to oral sex performed on females while fellatio refer to oral sex performed on males. Anilingus refers to oral stimulation of a person's anus...
on another inmate, sharing a huge pile of cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
with an inmate, parading in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts (allegedly grown using smuggled hormone treatments), and boasting, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose." The Illinois legislature packed the auditorium to view the two-hour video, but stopped the screening when the film showed Speck performing oral sex on another man.
From behind the camera, a prisoner asked Speck why he killed the nurses. Speck shrugged and jokingly said "It just wasn't their night." Asked how he felt about himself in the years since, he said "Like I always felt ... had no feeling. If you're asking me if I felt sorry, no." He also described in detail the experience of strangling someone: "It's not like TV...it takes over three minutes and you have to have a lot of strength." John Schmale, the brother of one of the murdered student nurses, said, "It was a very painful experience watching him tell about how he killed my sister."
Portions of the tapes were later broadcast on the A&E Network
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
's Investigative Reports. The same airing of Investigative Reports included interviews with people who believed that Speck was not taking hormones, wearing panties, etc. voluntarily, and that he'd instead been forced to by other inmates — that this may have been his way of surviving his time in prison.
Speck's death: autopsy and funeral
Speck died of a heart attack at 6:05 a.m. December 5, 1991, one day before his 50th birthday, at Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet. He had been taken to Silver Cross after complaining of chest pains and nausea at Stateville Correctional Center.After Speck's death, Dr. Jan E. Leestma, a neuropathologist at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery, performed an autopsy of Speck's brain. Leestma found apparent gross abnormalities. Two areas of the brain — the hippocampus
Hippocampus
The hippocampus is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in...
, which involves memory, and the amygdala
Amygdala
The ' are almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.-...
, which deals with rage and other strong emotions — encroached upon each other, and their boundaries were blurred. Leestma made tissue section slides and presented them to others, who agreed that his findings were unusual. There was no further analysis, however; the tissue samples were lost or stolen when sent to a Boston neurologist for further study, and Leestma's findings were inconclusive.
Dr. John R. Hughes, a neurologist and longtime director of the Epilepsy Clinic at the University of Illinois College of Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine
The University of Illinois College of Medicine offers a four-year program leading to the MD degree at four different sites in Illinois: Chicago, Peoria, Rockford, and Urbana–Champaign....
and a colleague of Leestma, examined photos of the tissue in the 1990s along with brain wave tests performed on Speck in the 1960s. Hughes stated, "I have never heard of that [type of abnormality] in the history of neurology. So any abnormality that exceptional has got to have an exceptional consequence." Hughes attributes Speck's homicidal nature to a combination of the brain abnormalities, the violence Speck suffered at the hands of his alcoholic stepfather, and his own drinking and violence in Texas.
After Speck died, his body was not claimed. Duane Krieger, Will County coroner when Speck died, said that he had talked to Richard Speck's sister: "She said they were afraid people would desecrate the grave if they had him buried out there." Krieger also stated that the sister "told her kids, 'You can never tell people Richard Speck was your uncle.'"
Speck was cremated
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
. The ashes were scattered in a location known only to Krieger, his chief deputy, a pastoral worker and Joliet Herald News columnist John Whiteside, who has since died. All witnesses swore to keep the location, a "pastoral" and "an appropriate location" in the Joliet area, secret. "We said a couple of prayers and spread them to the wind," Krieger said. "It was a very small funeral."
Speck in media
- Japanese "pink film" director, Koji WakamatsuKoji Wakamatsuis a Japanese film director who directed such pinku eiga films as and . He also produced Nagisa Ōshima's controversial film In the Realm of the Senses...
, based his 1967 film, Violated Angels (犯された白衣 - Okasareta Hakui) on the Speck murders. - A 1976 film, entitled alternately Born For Hell and Naked MassacreNaked MassacreNaked Massacre is a 1976 West German / Canadian / French / Italian film directed by Denis Héroux.- Plot summary :Naked Massacre roughly tells the story of mass murderer Richard Speck, set in Ireland.- Cast :*Mathieu Carrière as Cain Adamson...
, is a direct retelling of the Speck murders, except that the locale is Northern Ireland. The film stars Mathieu CarrièreMathieu CarrièreMathieu Carrière is a German actor.Carrière grew up in Berlin and Lübeck; he attended the Jesuit boarding school Lycée Saint-François-Xavier in Vannes, France, a school which had previously been attended by the director of Carrière's first major film, Volker Schlöndorff. In 1969 Carrière moved to...
and Carole LaureCarole LaureCarole Laure is an actress and singer from the province of Quebec in Canada.-Career:Throughout most of her career, Carole Laure primarily collaborated with Anglophone singer, songwriter, producer, and director Lewis Furey, whom she met in 1977 and who later became her husband...
. - In 2002, a movie called Speck was made about the case.
- Photographs of the eight nurses Speck murdered were the basis of Eight Student Nurses (1966), a painting series by German artist Gerhard RichterGerhard RichterGerhard Richter is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style.- Biography :Gerhard Richter was born in...
. - In 2007, the movie Chicago Massacre retold the events of the nine student nurses that were held hostage and the eight that were murdered.
- The film 10 to Midnight10 to Midnight10 to Midnight is an action-crime-thriller film directed by J. Lee Thompson from a screenplay originally written by William Roberts. The film stars Charles Bronson in the lead role with a supporting cast that includes Lisa Eilbacher, Andrew Stevens, Gene Davis, Geoffrey Lewis, and Wilford Brimley...
starring Charles BronsonCharles BronsonCharles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...
parallels the Speck Murders, in that a man enters the home of several student nurses and systematically kills them while one, who was hiding under a bed, escapes. - Episode 18, Season 7, of CSI: Crime Scene InvestigationCSI: Crime Scene InvestigationCSI: Crime Scene Investigation is an American crime drama television series, which premiered on CBS on October 6, 2000. The show was created by Anthony E. Zuiker and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
, titled "Empty Eyes", featured a story line with many elements paralleling the Speck case. - The book Project X, the main character, Edwin, when asked who is his hero, replies that it is Richard Speck.
- Canadian punkPunk rockPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
group The ViletonesThe ViletonesThe Viletones were a Canadian punk band from Toronto, led by Steven Leckie, a.k.a. "Nazi Dog" or "Dog" on vocals. Other members from the original line-up were Freddie Pompeii, on guitar/vocals; Chris Paputts, a.k.a. "Chris Hate" on bass guitar/vocals and Mike Anderson, a.k.a. "Motor X" on the...
have a song titled Richard Speck. - Wesley WillisWesley WillisWesley Willis was a musician and artist from Chicago. A diagnosed chronic schizophrenic, he gained an enormous cult following in the 1990s after releasing several hundred songs of simple but unique music, with emphasis on his humorous, bizarre, and frequently obscene lyrics...
had a song about and entitled Richard Speck. - The song "The Ballad of TV Violence" from the first '77 self titled Cheap TrickCheap TrickCheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, formed in 1973. The band consists of members Robin Zander , Rick Nielsen , Tom Petersson , and Bun E...
album was originally called "The Ballad of Richard Speck" and is about Richard Speck. Their label made them change the track to "The Ballad of TV Violence" because they thought "The Ballad of Richard Speck" was too offensive. - Original keyboardist of Marilyn MansonMarilyn MansonMarilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
, Perry Pandrea, went by the stage name of Zsa Zsa SpeckZsa Zsa SpeckZsa Zsa Speck was the keyboardist for Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids in 1989. His stage name came from the combination Zsa Zsa Gabor and Richard Speck, following the band's naming style of combining the names of a fashion icon and mass murderer...
, combining the names of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Richard Speck. - "Female Trouble", the movie by director John Waters and starring Divine (1974) made several references to Richard Speck.
- Japanese doom metal band Church of MiseryChurch of Miseryis a doom metal band from Tokyo, Japan. Church of Misery's style melds early-era Black Sabbath style doom with psychedelic rock.-History:Most songs by Church of Misery are about serial killers and mass murderers...
wrote "Born to Raise Hell" about Richard Speck.
External links
- Richard Franklin Speck. Carpenoctem.tv An independent website.
- Night of Terror Crime Library
- Richard Speck at Find A GraveFind A GraveFind a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.-History:...
- Richard Speck Handwriting sample, dated 1-13-67, by R. Speck saying he endorses the book authored by Dr. Ziporyn.
- "Maybe this symbol of evil found peace" Eulogy by John Whiteside, Chicago Suburban News. Reprint of article written 12/17/91 after Whiteside witnessed the secret dispersal of Speck's ashes. Speck's ashes were disposed of at the burial of the ashes of an unclaimed infant and a John Doe.