Richard Speck: The Original Random Mass Murderer
(From the #WeirdDarkness episode, “The Alien Abduction of Lynda Jones”: https://weirddarkness.com/alienabductionoflindajones/)
How else can horror rooted in the unimaginably human be translated into a male criminal whose crimes are so terrible that we needed to come up with a new phrase just for his monstrousness? The term “random mass murder” was coined to describe the chilling acts that Richard Speck performed. Mass murders had happened before Speck’s crimes, but the horror of what he did literally terrified a nation, and some would argue changed all life thereafter in this country.
Speck was born on December 6, 1941, in Kirkwood, IL. His family was already large, with Richard being the seventh of eight children born to Benjamin and Mary Speck. After Speck was six, his father died, and his mother soon married Carl Lindberg, moving the family to Dallas, TX. Lindberg and Speck’s biological father were vastly different. While Benjamin Speck was a responsible man, Lindberg was an alcoholic drifter. Lindberg influenced young Speck, who began drinking early and eventually dropped out of high school.
Speck was serving multiple life terms for the murders of eight nursing students on July 14, 1966. The crimes took place on Chicago’s South Side, a neighborhood where most felt comfortable in their homes without even bothering to lock their front doors. All that changed with the Richard Speck killings. Mothers were too scared to let their kids out on the playground and women worried about going outside even just to hang up a load of laundry.
The crime of the century was committed by a man that frightened an entire nation.
On the evening of July 13, 1966, Speck entered a townhouse at 2319 E. 100th Street in Chicago while drunk and armed with a gun and knife. Six student nurses were in the home sleeping, and Speck awakened each of them, gathered them into one room, and tied them up with bedsheets. Two other women who arrived home while Speck was binding the nurses were also tied up. He then took each of the women, one by one, into another room and stabbed or strangled each one. The nurses did not die quickly; some were sexually assaulted before being murdered.
At the time of the murders, 22-year-old Filipino exchange student Corazon Amurao was also staying at the townhouse. Amurao managed to slip under a bed as the killings took place and was undetected by Speck. For seven hours, she stayed pinned under the bed. Amurao, who had a clear view of Speck’s face, described him to the police, describing a tattoo on Speck’s left arm that read “Born to Raise Hell.”
Chicago was a city on edge two days after the murders as police continued to search for their suspect, but it wasn’t long before he was caught. That same day, Speck sought treatment at the hospital for a self-inflicted knife wound. An emergency room doctor recognized the tattoo Amurao had described after reading a news article and called the police, who promptly arrested Speck.
During the trial, Amurao bravely testified that Speck was responsible for killing her friends.
Speck was first believed to have killed in 1966. Mary Kay Pierce, a bartender at one of Speck’s favorite taverns, Frank’s Place, was found dead in a shed behind the bar. Her autopsy revealed that she died from a fatal blow to her stomach, which lacerated her liver. Speck was a suspect in Pierce’s murder and brought to the police station for questioning, but an onset of nausea abruptly ended his interview. Speck left the station, promising to return after he felt better. Instead, he packed a bag and immediately got on a bus to Chicago.
Less than a year before turning 20, Speck met fifteen-year-old Shirley Malone at a fair in town. Malone soon became pregnant with Speck’s child, and they married in January 1962. Their daughter, Bobby Lynn, was born in July. Despite spending much of his marriage behind bars, Speck still found time to torment his wife. Malone said that Speck would frequently violate her at knifepoint, demanding sex four to five times a day. After four years of marriage, Malone filed for divorce from Speck.
Speck delved into a life of crime as early as eleven years old. In 1955, at age 13, he was arrested for trespassing. He managed to stay out of trouble for a while but was arrested again in 1963 on forgery charges. Not long after, Speck tried to sign and cash a co-worker’s paycheck but was caught by police. He was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime, though he served a little over a year before being paroled. Four months after his release, he pulled a knife on a woman and was sent back to prison for two more years for aggravated assault. He was later released but would be arrested at least another forty times in the following three years for various offenses including drugs, sexual assault, and robbery.
Speck took his motives to the grave. At first, he told his attorney, Gerald Getty, that he had been drinking and blacked out, with no memory of anything during the blackout. He even implied that the men he was drinking with could have been his accomplices. One legend alleges that Speck was angry after being turned down for a job and took out his frustrations on the victims. It has also been theorized that Speck initially entered the home to burgle it. Speck’s life was a record of violence and sexual assault culminating in murder.
When researching chromosomal abnormalities in serial killers, doctors investigated whether having an extra chromosome could explain violent tendencies. Many medical professionals believed that an extra chromosome and criminal activity were linked. In 1966, a geneticist approached Speck’s attorney with findings, albeit unsubstantiated. Speck’s lawyer was overjoyed, as he could argue that Speck’s violence was due to his extra Y chromosome. However, Speck was tested and did not have the extra chromosome. The geneticist later recanted his statements about chromosomal defects.
Speck stayed occupied in the general population at Statesville Prison. He worked as a wall painter and socialized with fellow convicts. Speck claimed to receive plenty of fan mail and interview requests, which he usually ignored. However, in 1978, he was contacted by Bob Greene, a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, and agreed to an interview. In this interview, Speck confessed to the murders for the first time, saying “Yeah, I killed them. I stabbed them and I choked them. If that one girl wouldn’t have spit in my face, they’d all be alive today.” Speck also claimed that he did heroin for the first time that night and partly blamed the murders on his drug use.
A jury found Speck guilty after only 49 minutes of deliberation and sentenced him to death by electric chair in April 1967. However, in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional. Speck’s death sentence was overturned, and he was re-sentenced to multiple life terms with parole. He had seven parole hearings, held every few years, and was rejected each time.
Speck’s partying lifestyle outside of prison followed him even more-so inside prison. He was taken to a hospital after complaining of chest pains and died of a heart attack on December 5, 1991, the day before his 50th birthday. His family did not claim his body, fearing his grave would be desecrated. Instead, he was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Joliet, IL area.
Even in death, Speck wreaked havoc. In May 1996, TV journalist Bill Kurtis was shooting footage for a documentary on prison conditions and visited Statesville Prison, where Speck had been held until his death. Kurtis was given a covert videotape at the facility. The tape showed an aged Speck in women’s underwear, with breasts from hormone treatments, engaging in sex with a cellmate, and using drugs. In the video, Speck boasted: “If they knew how much fun I was having in here, they would turn me loose.” Kurtis featured parts of the video in his TV show American Justice, causing national news and leading to a major scandal within the Illinois Department of Corrections.
(“The Original Random Mass Murderer” source: Jessika M. Thomas, Unspeakable Crimes at Ranker.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8er27w | Cover photo, courtesy of Udemy)
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