August 20, 2003
Richard Speck
by David Lohr
On the Sunday morning of
July 14, 1966, residents on South Chicago’s East 100th Street were
suddenly awakened by a woman’s screams. As local residents ran outside, they
were shocked to notice a young woman standing on the second story ledge of a
small townhouse unit. According to George Carpozi’s 1967 book, The Chicago
Nurse Murders, the young woman, Corazon Piezo Amurao, began shouting:
"Help me! Help me! Everyone is dead … Oh God … he’s killed them all!" she
cried out.
Just then, one of the onlookers noticed a Chicago police
car turning onto the street and quickly flagged the patrolman down. Officer
Daniel R. Kelly of the South District Station noticed the girl balancing
dangerously on the edge of the apartment building and immediately pulled off
to the side of the street and jumped out of his patrol car. "You mustn’t
jump," he yelled. "Stay right there. I’ll come inside and help you."
As Kelly made his way through the apartment he made a
startling discovery. Just to the left of the front door was the body of a nude
woman sprawled out on a couch. Kelly immediately ran over to check the young
girl's vitals, but it was too late. Her body was cold to his touch -- she had
been dead for several hours. Uncertain what he was getting into, Kelly drew
his service revolver and made his way up a narrow flight of stairs. Once at
the top of the stairway, he immediately noticed a pair of feet sticking out of
a doorway into the hall. As he made his way towards the doorway, he made
another startling discovery. A half-nude young woman was lying on her back;
slash marks were visible on her neck and breasts. The girl was obviously dead
and so Kelly continued to make his way down the hall. Then, just a few feet
from the second woman’s body, Kelly looked into a bedroom and discovered three
more girls’ bodies strew about the room. Their wrists were bound and all three
appeared to have had their throats slashed.
With each step he took, the scene unraveling before him
was becoming more surreal. Kelly had had only been on the force for 18 months
and had never witnessed such brutality, especially on such a scale. This was
supposed to be a safe and quiet neighborhood and certainly not an area where
one would expect to discover multiple murders. Temporarily clearing his mind
of his atrocious discoveries, Kelly continued making his way through the
second story.
Gun in hand, Kelly stepped into a second bedroom and
made yet another gruesome discovery -- three more girls were lying dead and
scattered about the room. The scene was eerily reminiscent of the last and no
one appeared to be alive. Kelly spotted the screaming young girl on a ledge
outside the window. He quickly ran to her aid and pulled her inside. She was
hysterical and trembling uncontrollably. Several patrol cars were beginning to
arrive outside, so Kelly yelled down and asked one of the officers to escort
the young woman downstairs while he secured the scene.
Less than an hour after Officer Kelly discovered the
scene at Jeffrey Manor, Commander Francis Flanagan, chief of Chicago homicide
detectives, began interviewing the only surviving witness, 23-year-old Corazon
Piezo Amurao. According to the book
Crime
of the Century: Richard Speck and the Murder of Eight Student Nurses, by
Dennis L. Breo and William J. Martin, the young woman’s voice trembled as she
explained to Flanagan that she and the other girls shared the apartment
together and they were nursing students at South Chicago Community Hospital.
As she spoke, Flanagan did his best to comfort her and asked her to describe
to him, as best she could, what happened to her friends.
The nurses's apartment.
Cora told Flanagan that the ordeal began the previous
night when she heard a knock at the door. When she opened the door, she said
she saw a young man in his mid-20s. She could not remember what color hair the
man had, stating that it was either dark blonde or brown, but she did recall
that it was cut short. She described him as weighing approximately 175 pounds
and said that he was wearing a dark waist-length jacket and dark pants. In
addition, she remembered the man had a tattoo on his arm, which read "Born to
Raise Hell."
After opening the door, Cora said the man produced a gun
and shoved her inside. Two of her roommates, 22-year-old Merlita Gargullo and
23-year-old Valentina Pasion, walked over to see what was going on and were
taken off guard when the man pointed his gun at them and ordered all three
girls to walk down the hall to a bedroom at the back of the house. Walking
into the dark room, the man flicked on a light and discovered three other
girls sleeping. The sudden light awoke the girls, 21-year-old Nina Jo Schmale,
24-year-old Pamela Wilkening, and 20-year-old Patricia Ann Matusek.
The armed man ordered all of the girls to grab their
purses and give him all of their money. One by one, each girl got her purse
and emptied out the contents. Suddenly, 19-year-old Gloria Jean Davy walked
into the room. She had just gotten in from a date and was unaware of what was
happening. The intruder quickly ordered her to join the others on the floor.
He then yanked a sheet from one of the beds and began cutting it into strips.
Afterwards, he restrained each of the girls and bound their arms and legs.
Moments later, the scene was again interrupted when 21-year-old Suzanne Farris
and 20-year-old Mary Ann Jordan walked in. The two girls had just gotten home
and were immediately startled by the scene. They quickly turned and ran down
the hallway. Based upon Cora’s statements and the evidence at the scene, it
was apparent that the man quickly caught up to them and shoved them into
another room. He then stabbed and strangled the women as they tried to fight
back.
After killing Jordan and Farris, the man returned to the
room with the other girls and grabbed Pamela Wilkening. He dragged the young
girl back to the room where he had just killed the other two girls and stabbed
her in the heart with a knife. After washing the blood from his hands, he went
back and got Nina Schmale and led her down the hall to a bedroom. Once out of
sight, he stabbed her in her neck and suffocated her with a pillow. Cora knew
he would eventually come for her and began to squeeze
herself under a bed.
When the killer returned, he grabbed Valentina Pasion
and dragged her out of the room. Once out of sight, he stabbed her in the neck
and began strangling her to death. He then returned for Merlita Gargullo. He
lifted the young girl up off her feet and carried her off to meet the same
fate as the others. A short while later, the man returned and grabbed Patricia
Matusek. He shoved her into the bathroom and punched her so hard in the
stomach that he ruptured her liver.
The killer apparently lost track of how many women were
in the apartment and did not account for Cora hiding under the bed when he
returned. Instead, he stripped down Gloria Davy and raped her. Afterwards, he
strangled her, gathered up the money from the girls' purses and left the
scene. Cora said that she remained under the bed for hours before she was
finally able to gain the courage to climb out on the ledge and cry for help.
After recreating the events that took place, Flanagan
immediately went to work on identifying the killer. Police sketch artist Otis
Rathel put together a sketch of the suspect and within hours an employee of
Maritime Union Hall recognized the man as a merchant seaman named Richard
Speck. Now all investigators had to do was track him down.
According to Jack Altman and Marvin Ziporyn, authors of
Born to Raise Hell, Richard Benjamin Speck was born December 6, 1941,
in Kirkwood, Ill. The seventh of eight children, Speck’s father died when
Speck was just 6 years old and his mother raised him. Eventually, Speck’s
mother remarried and the family moved to Dallas, Tex. His new stepfather had
problems with alcohol and soon began taking his anger out on Speck and his
siblings. In retaliation, Speck dropped out of school and started hanging out
with older boys.
Speck drank most of his adolescence away and little is
known about his early years. In November 1962, 18-year-old Speck attempted to
settle down and married Shirley Malone. Shortly thereafter the couple had a
daughter, Robby Lynn. Speck was not ready to settle down and eventually
reverted to his old ways.
During November of 1963, Speck was arrested and
convicted for theft and check forgery. He was later sentenced to three years
in prison. After serving a little over two years, Speck earned parole and was
released on Jan. 2, 1965. He didn’t stay free long. He was arrested on Jan. 29
for aggravated assault and sentenced to 490 days in prison. After serving only
six months, he was again released.
In January 1966, Shirley became tired of Speck's
problems with the law and filed for divorce. Later that same year, Speck was
arrested for burglary and assault. Nonetheless, he fled the area before he
would go to trial and took a bus to Chicago. Once there he began working as a
carpenter and spent the majority of his free time frequenting local taverns.
During the spring of 1966, Speck began working on an iron-ore ship on Lake
Michigan. He was fired after a few months later for drinking on the job.
When investigators looked over Speck’s criminal record,
they discovered that he was wanted for questioning by Monmouth, Ill.,
investigators regarding two separate incidents. According to the reports, on
April 13, 1966, Mary Kay Pierce, a barmaid at Frank’s Place, was found dead
behind the tavern. She had been murdered three days earlier. Five days later,
65-year-old Virgil Harris was attacked and raped in her home. The assailant
had cut up the victim’s housecoat and used the strips to tie her up. Speck was
immediately flagged as a suspect in both crimes and later, during a search of
Speck’s hotel room, investigators discovered items, which had been stolen from
Mrs. Harris’s home, as well as items from other burglaries around town. Speck
however was nowhere to be found. He had already fled the area.
As the investigation continued, Flanagan discovered that
Indiana authorities also wanted to interview Speck in regard to the murder of
three girls who had vanished on July 2, 1966, while Speck was working aboard a
boat docked at the local harbor. The girls' purses and personal belongings
were eventually discovered, but their bodies were never found. In addition to
Indiana authorities, Michigan investigators wanted to interview Speck
regarding the murder of four females whose ages spanned four generations — the
victims were 7-years old, 19, 37, and 60 — each was murdered near Benton
Harbor, while Speck’s ship was docked in the area.
By Saturday July 19, 1966, all of South Chicago was on
the lookout for Richard Speck. With few places to hide, Speck decided to avoid
arrest by committing suicide in his room at the Starr Hotel. After finishing
off a fifth of wine, he smashed the bottle and used the broken glass to slit
his wrists. Apparently Speck began to have second thoughts and moments later
he called out for help. While no one answered his cry for help, someone did
place an anonymous call to the police. Eventually an ambulance arrived and
Speck was taken to Cook County Hospital.
As first-year resident Leroy Smith attended to Speck’s
wounds, he suddenly realized that the man he was treating resembled the
suspected nurse killer he had read about in the newspaper. He then checked the
man’s arm, looking for the now infamous tattoo and almost immediately saw it
there, "Born to Raise Hell." Smith quickly raced down the hall and called over
a policeman who was guarding another patient. The officer, who was initially
stunned by the resident’s accusation, started summoning other officers to the
scene. Within minutes Richard Speck was arrested and taken into custody.
Speck’s trial began on Monday, April 3, 1967. The
prosecution's team, made up of William Martin, George Murtaugh, Jim Zagel, and
John Glenville, presented the case to the jury. Regardless of all the evidence
they had against Speck, in the end Corazon Amurao’s testimony proved to be the
most damming. On April 15, just 12 days after the trial began, Speck was found
guilty of all eight murders. Following the jury’s announcement, Judge Herbert
Paschen sentenced Speck to death.
In 1972, Speck was saved from his death sentence when
the U.S. Supreme Court abolished capital punishment. In the wake of that
decision, Speck was re-sentenced to a term of 400 to 1,200 years. On December
5, 1991, 49-year-old Richard Speck died of a massive heart attack after having
served 19 years of his sentence. His body was never claimed, so prison
authorities had his remains cremated; the ashes were later dumped at an
undisclosed location.
Richard Speck in 1989.
In 1996, five years after Speck's death, television
journalist Bill Kurtis uncovered a bizarre 1980s home video of Speck, which
was shot in his prison cell at Statesville Correctional Institute. On the
video, Speck is donning a pair of woman’s breasts -- apparently a result of
hormone treatments -- wearing panties and having sex with another inmate. Some
segments also showed Speck indulging in drugs and bragging of his crimes. The
tape was later shown on the television program "American Justice," causing a
major scandal within the Illinois Department of Corrections. Officials at the
prison later claimed that Speck and two other inmates obtained the video
camera from the prison's educational building.
Richard Speck was never officially charged in any of the
other homicides and to this day those cases remain unsolved.