Richard Speck Totally Explained

Everything about Richard Speck totally explained

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, the seventh of eight children of Benjamin and Mary Speck. He was raised in a religious family. His father died when he was six, and sometime afterwards, his mother took Richard and his younger sister Carolyn to Dallas, Texas.They moved to a section called East Dallas.After the move, his mother married Carl Lindberg, whom Speck loathed for his drunkenness, abuse, and frequent absences from the house.
Speck was a poor student. By the age of 12, he'd begun drinking alcohol, a habit that would last for the rest of his life. He used alcohol partly to ease the pain of headaches he'd begun to suffer at the age of five, after suffering head injuries from a claw hammer with which he'd been playing. He fell out of a tree twice, and at 15 he ran head-first into a steel girder. Speck dropped out of school in the 9th grade.

The murders

At 11:00 PM on July 13, 1966, Speck broke into a townhouse located at 2319 East 100th Street in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood of Chicago. It was functioning as a dormitory for several young student nurses, some of whom were Filipinas. Armed with only a knife (the Illinois Supreme Court opinion, recounting the facts of the case, reports that defendant appeared at the door of the townhouse holding a gun — 41 Ill.2d 177, 242 N.E.2d 208(1968)), he terrorized the young women, who included 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 wriggle 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 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.

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 hadn't been insane at the time of the murders.
Ziporyn didn't testify for the defense or the prosecution. Both sides were troubled to learn before the trial that Ziporyn was writing a book about Speck for financial gain--as was the Cook County Jail, which fired Ziporyn as its part-time psychiatrist the week after Speck's trial ended.

Trial

Speck's jury trial 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 fingerprints 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.

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 reversed his death sentence, because more than 250 potential jurors were unconstitutionally excluded from his jury owing to their views, religious or otherwise, 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 United States 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). The sentence was reduced in 1973 to a new statutory maximum of 300 years, making Speck 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 hearings in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1990.
   While incarcerated at Stateville Prison in Crest Hill, Illinois, Speck was given the nickname "birdman", after the film Birdman of Alcatraz, because he kept a pair of sparrows that had flown into his cell. He was described as a loner who kept a stamp collection, 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 wasn't 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 theory rejected

According to one theory briefly advanced, the XYY syndrome rendered a person more likely to commit crimes, and it was suggested that Speck had the syndrome. Later it was proven that he did not. The theory that there's 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 — 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.

A 1976 film, entitled alternately "Born For Hell" and "Naked Massacre" is a direct retelling of the Speck murders, except that the locale is Northern Ireland.

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 Richter.

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 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.

Episode 18, Season 7, of, titled Empty Eyes, featured a story line with many elements paralleling the Speck case. For details see the article about the episode Empty Eyes.Further Information

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