Richard Speck
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Richard Franklin Speck (December 6, 1941–December 5, 1991) was a mass murderer who systematically killed eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 14, 1966.
Speck was born in Kirkwood, Illinois. He was the seventh of eight children and raised in a religious family. His father died when he was six, and he was frequently beaten by his drunken stepfather. He suffered a head injury when he fell from a tree near White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas where he spent much of his adolescent and teenage years.
Speck was a poor student and an incorrigible juvenile delinquent, beginning his life of crime at a young age.
He was briefly married, a union marked by abuse and spousal rape. Speck spent much of the marriage in and out of prison, although he allegedly fathered a child. In January 1966, six months before the nurse murders, his wife Shirley filed for divorce.
Prior to the nurse murders, Speck is known to have been arrested for burglary and stabbing, although he got away with raping Virgil Harris (65), and beating Mary Kay Pierce to death; in both cases, he avoided in-depth interrogation.
The Mass Murder
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. He held them hostage for hours, beating and raping them, before finally 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.
He attempted suicide and was taken by the police to Cook County Hospital at 12:30 AM on July 17 where he was first recognized by a 26-year-old surgical resident physician (who recognized Speck's "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo from a newspaper story) and then by Cora (Corazon) Amurau, a Filipino student nurse who had luckily escaped by hiding silently under a bed while her housemates were being killed. Speck, who was quite fond of various types of pills, did not notice Amurau and left the house in a drug-induced haze.
Saying he had no recollection of the murders, he was declared sane but a sociopath after being examined.
The Trial
Jury trial began April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois, three hours south of Chicago, with a gag order on the press. Amurau 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.
On April 15 1967, after 49 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Speck guilty and recommended the death penalty. On June 5 1967, 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 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 resentencing.
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 resentenced to prison by the original Cook County court.
Resentencing
On November 21 1972, in Peoria, Judge Richard Fitzgerald resentenced 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 statuatory maximum of 300 years, making him eligible for parole in 1977.
He was denied parole in 7 minutes at his first parole hearing on September 15 1976, and at six subsequent parole hearings in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1990.
While incarcerated at Stateville Prison, Speck was given the nickname "birdman", after the film Birdman of Alcatraz, when he kept a pair of sparrows that flew into his cell. 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." A model prisoner he was not; 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!"
He died on December 5, 1991, from a heart attack. On autopsy, he was found to have an enlarged heart and occluded arteries. His body was not claimed and he was cremated.
The Video
In May 1996, television news anchor Bill Kurtis received video tapes made at Stateville Prison sometime before the end of 1991. Showing them publicly for the first time in front of a shocked, and deeply angry Illinois state legislature, the video showed prisoners passing money and drugs around without fear of being caught, engaging in sexual acts, 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." The tapes were later broadcast on the A&E Network's Investigative Reports, and were used to argue for the death penalty. John Schmale, the brother of one of the slain nurses, said "It was a very painful experience watching him tell about how he killed my sister," in response to a scene in which Speck describes what needs to be done when strangling a victim.
Cultural References
In 2002, a movie called "Speck" was made about that case. [link]
The Simon and Garfunkel song "7 O'Clock News" was comprised of several radio broadcasts being read against the soothing Silent Night, and contained the verse In Chicago, Richard Speck, accused murderer of nine student nurses, was brought before a Grand Jury today for indictment. The nurses were found stabbed and strangled in their Chicago apartment.
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 has also made a song on Speck called "What The Heck, Richard Speck (8 Nurses You Wrecked)", which appeared on Sinister Slaughter, 1993.
In addition, portraits of the eight nurses Speck murdered were made into a painting series by German artist Gerhardt Richter, titled "Eight Student Nurses" (1966).
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 (film)", the photo of Vanessa's father that she shows to Bob is of Richard 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 has a audio tape message from Speck.
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