Richard Speck

Richard Speck
File:Speck1966.jpg Richard Speck, during his trial in 1966
Status	Died in prison
Spouse	Shirley Malone (m. 1961, div. 1966)
Parent(s)	Robert Speck Gladys Sterner
Criminal charge	Murder, Kidnapping, Rape
Penalty	Capital punishment, later changed to life imprisonment

Richard Franklin Speck (December 6, 1941–December 5, 1991) was a mass murderer who systematically killed eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital, Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966.

Early life

Speck was born in Kirkwood, Illinois. He was the seventh of eight children by Robert and Gladys Speck, and raised in a religious family. His father died when he was six, and sometime afterward Gladys took Richard and daughter Carolyn to Fair Park, Texas, a small town to the east of Dallas. It was there that Gladys re-married to a man named Lindbergh, who was loathed by Richard for his drunkenness, abuse, and frequent absences from the house. (Time-Life, pg. 8)

Richard Speck was a poor student in school, and by the age of 12 he had started drinking alcohol, which would last for the rest of his life. The alcohol was used, in part, to stem the headaches received from a series of head injuries which began at the age of five while playing in a sandbox with a claw hammer; he would fall out of a tree twice, and at 15 he ran head-first into a steel girder. School would last only until he dropped out in the 9th grade. (Time-Life, pg 8)

At the age of 19, Speck did something that wouldn't pass notice at the time, but would figure later in life as the essence of the man. "We all had something different," he recalled in an interview during the time he was inside a tattoo parlor. "I couldn't think of nothing to have on my arm, so I asked the tattooer if he had any ideas. He suggested all kinds of things, slogans and stuff, and one of them was BORN TO RAISE HELL. That sounded kinda good, so I let him put that. Didn't mean anything special to me." (Time-Life, pg.9)

Early crime

About the same time he began drinking, he posted his first arrest, for trespassing. Speck is also known to have been arrested for burglary and stabbing. Although he was a suspect in the raping of Virgil Harris (65), and the beating death of Mary Kay Pierce, he avoided in-depth interrogation and was never charged. Speck was also a suspect in the July 2, 1966 disappearance of three women in Indiana and the murders of four other females in Michigan.

The mass murder

File:NYTspeck1966.jpg

Speck's killings stunned the country during an era in which murder was rare and mass murder was unheard of; this example is from a full page spread in the New York Times, July 18, 1966. (NYT)

On July 14, 1966, Speck broke into a South Chicago townhouse and took as hostages nurses 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, originally planned to commit a routine burglary. Speck held the women hostage for hours, methodically beating, raping, and stabbing them to death. A leading psychiatrist who interviewed Speck remarked that Speck experienced the Madonna-whore complex, and that Gloria Davy reminded Speck of his ex-wife.

After the murder, Richard Speck was observed to enter a diner near the scene and sit at the counter. Richard Speck was in such an agitated and disordered state that he aroused the suspicions of Mr. Robert Everhart, a patron at the diner, who although unaware of the crime that was committed, called and left an anonymous tip to the police about Speck before leaving the diner. After Speck had become a wanted fugitive, he was initially identified by a drifter named Claude Lunsford. Speck, Lunsford and another man had been drinking on July 16 on the fire escape of the Starr Hotel at 617 W. Madison. Lundsford recognized Speck's picture in the paper on July 17 and phoned the police after visiting Speck in his room at the Starr Hotel. The police, however, did not respond to the call although their records showed the call had been made. Speck had attempted suicide and the Starr Hotel desk clerk phoned in the emergency after Lundsford had called the police. Speck, who was not recognized by the police, was taken to Cook County Hospital at 12:30 AM on July 17. At Cook County Hospital, Speck was recognized by Dr. LeRoy Smith, a 25-year-old surgical resident physician and the police were alerted to his real identity (Smith recognized Speck's "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo from a newspaper story).

Speck was later identified in a dramatic scene in court by Cora (Corazon) Amurao. Amurao was the sole surviving student nurse. She had escaped by hiding silently under a bed during the massacre. Speck knew there were eight nurses living in the dorm, but he was unaware that a friend had spent the night. Amurao stayed hidden until 5 AM. When she came out, she ran to the balcony and began screaming, "They're all dead! All my friends are dead!"

Speck later said he had no recollection of the murders, but he had in fact confessed his crime to Dr. LeRoy Smith at the Cook County Hospital. Dr. Smith did not testify under directions from the prosecutors however, since the confession was made while under the influence of drugs. The Illinois Supreme Court Justice John J. Stamos, Cook County's state attorney when Speck was tried, knew of the confession, "We couldn't use it because [Speck] was under the influence of sedatives," "And we didn't need it. We had an eyewitness." In a film convicts made at the Stateville Correctional Center years later, Speck recounted the deed.

Speck was examined by six psychiatrists and declared competent to stand trial. According to William J. Martin, there was also no evidence -- other than Speck's claims -- that he was influenced by drugs and booze the night of the murders. Martin was head of the prosecution team and later co-authored "The Crime of the Century".

The fingerprints

Lieutenant Emil G. Giese headed the Identification Section of the Chicago Police Department and compared a fingerprint that was dusted from a door at the murder scene to another provided by the FBI. Lt. Giese was also chosen by the chief prosecutor William Martin to testify at the trial, along with the only eyewitness - Corazon Amurao. The fingerprints provided the scientific evidence the prosecution needed for a conviction, and along with Amurao's testimony, put the evidence toward Speck beyond any reasonable doubt.

The trial

Speck's jury trial began April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois, three hours south of Chicago, with a gag order on the press. Amurao also testified at the trial. Even though she had been kept hidden out of fear of Speck, a dramatic moment occurred during the trial when she was asked if she could identify the killer of her fellow students. She 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".

On April 15, after 49 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Speck guilty and recommended the death penalty. On June 5, Judge Herbert 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.

Death penalty reversal

On June 28, 1971, the United States Supreme Court (citing their April 24, 1968 decision in Witherspoon v. Illinois) upheld Speck's conviction, but it reversed his death sentence because objectors to capital punishment had been systematically excluded from his jury. The case was remanded back to the Illinois Supreme Court for re-sentencing.

On June 29, 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the United States Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional because its arbitrary and inconsistent imposition constituted cruel and unusual punishment, so the Illinois Supreme Court's only available option was to order Speck re-sentenced to prison by the original Cook County court.

Resentencing

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).

The sentence was reduced in 1973 to a new statutory maximum of 300 years, making him eligible for parole in 1977. He was denied parole in seven minutes at his first parole hearing on September 15 1976, and at six subsequent parole hearings in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1990.

He was described as being a loner, keeping a stamp collection, listening to music, and he would carry out his work details painting the bars and walls throughout the prison. His usual contact with the warden would include 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!"

XYY rejected theory

It was thought that the XYY syndrome made a person more likely to commit crimes and that Richard Speck had the XYY syndrome. Later on it was proven that Speck did not have the XYY syndrome and the theory that there is a relation between XYY syndrome and criminal behavior was rejected soon afterward.

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 encroached on each other and their boundaries were blurred -- the hippocampus, which involves memory, and the amygdala, which deals with rage and other strong emotions.

Leestma made tissue section slides and presented them to others who agreed 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 and brain wave tests of 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 drinking and violence in Texas.

After Speck died, nobody wanted to claim his body. Duane Krieger, Will County coroner when Speck died, stated that he had talked to Richard Speck's sister but, "She said they were afraid people would desecrate the grave if they had him buried out there. Duane 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 (Whiteside has since died). All witnesses swore to keep the location secret, a "pastoral" and "an appropriate location" in the Joliet area. "We said a couple of prayers and spread them to the wind," Krieger said. "It was a very small funeral."

The video

In May 1996, Chicago television news anchor Bill Kurtis received video tapes from an anonymous attorney which were made at Stateville Prison in 1988. Showing them publicly for the first time in front of 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, and in the center of it all was Speck, ingesting cocaine, parading around in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts grown from smuggled hormone treatments, and boasting, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose."

From behind the camera, a prisoner asked him 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 feel. Had no feelings." He also described in detail what must be done when 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 nurses, said, "It was a very painful experience watching him tell about how he killed my sister."

The tapes were later broadcast on the A&E Network's Investigative Reports, and were used to argue for the death penalty. 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, and this may have been a way of surviving his time in prison.

Cultural references

• Japanese "pink film" director, Koji Wakamatsu, 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 Massacre" is a direct retelling of the Speck murders, except that the locale is war-torn Ireland.

• In 2002, a movie called Speck was made about the case.

• The Simon and Garfunkel song "7 O'Clock News" was comprised of several radio broadcasts being read against Christmas standard "Silent Night." One of the broadcasts referred to the indictment of Speck by a grand jury for his murder of the student nurses.

• The Cheap Trick song "The Ballad of T.V. Violence" is about Speck, the lyrics sung from the murderer's point of view. The song was originally titled "The Ballad of Richard Speck," but the band changed it out of concern for the families of Speck's victims. Their song "Born to Raise Hell," which appeared in the animated film Rock & Rule, may be a reference to Speck's tattoo, although this is unconfirmed.

• Macabre recorded a song about Speck called "What The Heck, Richard Speck (8 Nurses You Wrecked)", which appeared on Sinister Slaughter, 1993.

• Portraits of the eight nurses Speck murdered were made into Eight Student Nurses (1966), a painting series by German artist Gerhard Richter.

• Former Marilyn Manson member Zsa Zsa Speck formed the name from Zsa Zsa Gabor's first name and Richard Speck's last name.

• The film Ten to Midnight starring Charles Bronson 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.

• In the 1996 movie Freeway, the photo of the main character's father is of Speck.

• The film director John Waters also mentions Speck in a few of his films including the 1974 movie Female Trouble, Divine mentions Richard Speck in her nightclub act, saying: "I blew Richard Speck!", and also in the 1994 film Serial Mom, Kathleen Turner's character's husband finds an envelope with the return address "Richard Speck, Statesville Correctional Center, Joliet, Illinois 60434" containing an autographed 8x10 glossy photograph of Speck.

• Richard Speck was the subject of a song by the same name by Wesley Willis.

• The 29 March 2007 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, titled Empty Eyes, featured a story line with many elements paralleling the Speck case.

References

• "The Voice Of Richard Speck," Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1991.
• True-Crime: Mass Murderers (chapter "Loser"), Time-Life books, Morristown, New Jersey 1991. ISBN 0-7835-0004-1

External links

• Richard Franklin Speck. Carpenoctem.tv An independent website.
• Night of Terror Crime Library
• 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.

Further reading

• Dennis L. Breo and William J. Martin (1993) Crime of the Century; Richard Speck and the Murder of Eight Student Nurses.

William J. Martin was the prosecutor that succeeded in getting Speck imprisoned.

• Jack Altman and Marvin, Ziporyn, M.D (1967) Born to Raise Hell: The Untold Story of Richard Speck. The Man, The Crime, The Trial. Grove Press,

Dr. Ziporyn interviewed Speck approximately twice a week over a period of six months before Speck's trial and was an expert witness for Speck's defense.

• Jay Robert Nash (1995) Bloodletters and Badmen. M. Evans and Co.

Contains a chapter on Speck