Richard Speck
Richard Benjamin Speck was born on December 6, 1941, into a large Baptist family in Chicago, Illinois, marked by early personal tragedies and a troubled upbringing. After his father's death, his family dynamics changed, leading to a life characterized by academic struggles and delinquency. Speck's criminal behavior escalated over the years, culminating in a notorious crime spree. On July 13, 1966, he brutally murdered eight student nurses in a Chicago townhouse after initially claiming he only wanted money. His violent actions shocked the nation, leading to his capture and subsequent conviction in 1967, where he was initially sentenced to death. However, due to a Supreme Court ruling, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. Speck's case remains significant in discussions about crime, mental health, and the legal system, particularly due to the public outrage that followed the emergence of a controversial prison video after his death in 1991. His actions and subsequent notoriety continue to evoke discussions about the impact of violence on communities and the complexities surrounding criminal justice.
Subject Terms
Richard Speck
American mass murderer
- Born: December 6, 1941
- Birthplace: Kirkwood, Illinois
- Died: December 5, 1991
- Place of death: Stateville Penitentiary, Illinois
Major offense: Murder
Active: July 13, 1966
Locale: Chicago, Illinois
Sentence: Death penalty, commuted to eight counts of life in prison
Early Life
Richard Benjamin Speck (spehk) was born on December 6, 1941, into humble beginnings to Margaret and Benjamin Speck. He was the seventh of eight children in his large Baptist family. The family reportedly was raised in a strict environment, with alcohol staunchly forbidden. Speck was close to his father and was devastated by his untimely death when Speck was only six years old. After his father’s death, Margaret married Carl Lindberg, a Texan with abusive and alcoholic tendencies. The family relocated to Dallas, Texas, where Richard had severe academic difficulties and gradually adopted a delinquent life filled with crime, alcohol, drugs, and sexual promiscuity.
Criminal Career
By his early twenties, Speck had married fifteen-year-old Shirley Malone and had a young son. He often raped and beat his wife at knifepoint and was abusive to his mother-in-law. In 1965, he robbed a woman and served a fifteen-month sentence. His marriage soured and he was being sought for various crimes by Texas police. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1966 to live with his sister, Carolyn. He spent most of his time there working as a merchant seaman, drinking, using drugs, and committing more serious crimes. On April 13, 1966, Chicago police questioned Speck regarding the murder of Mary Kay Pierce, a barmaid at his favorite bar. When Speck did not return for a scheduled interview on April 19, police searched his apartment and found items taken during the rape, robbery, and kidnapping of sixty-five-year-old Mrs. Virgil Harris in Chicago. Before he could be questioned again, Speck would become one of the most notorious murderers in United States history.
On the evening of July 13, 1966, Speck went to a local bar and began drinking heavily. He left the bar sometime later and began the twenty-minute walk toward a townhouse where a group of student nurses lived. At approximately 10:30 p.m., armed with a gun, he entered an open door to the residence. Once inside, he told the young women that he wanted only money. Speck’s mood soon changed, however, and he began to bind his hostages with bedsheets. As more of the nurses returned home, he also bound them. Over the course of the next several hours, he began taking the women upstairs one at a time, where he savagely raped, stabbed, suffocated, and bludgeoned them to death. Two nurses were also ambushed and stabbed to death as they returned home in the middle of the killing spree.
Thinking he had killed all the eyewitnesses, Speck fled the crime scene. Unbeknownst to him, a witness named Corazon Amurao was alive and hiding under her bed, paralyzed by fear. Hours later, she crawled outside and saw the carnage in the townhouse. Hysterical, she fled to an outside window ledge and screamed for help until neighbors heard her pleas. Amurao was able to give police a detailed description of her attacker, leading to an extensive search by law enforcement. Speck’s six-foot-tall frame, acne-scarred face, southern accent, and Born to Raise Hell tattoo made Speck easily identifiable. He was captured in a seedy hotel after he had attempted suicide by cutting his wrists.
Legal Action and Outcome
After a massive national manhunt, Speck was captured and then convicted of the heinous murders of the eight student nurses in Chicago. In 1967, in less than one hour, the jury sentenced him to the death penalty. In a subsequent Supreme Court ruling that invalidated death sentences nationally in 1972, Speck’s sentence was commuted to eight counts of life in prison. Speck was never charged with any of the other crimes or the murder of the barmaid in Chicago of which he was suspected. Those crimes and other murders Speck was suspected of in Indiana and Michigan remained unsolved.
Impact
Richard Speck’s crime shocked the national conscience and was one of the worst mass killings in Chicago history. At the time, the murder of these student nurses was called the “crime of the century.” On December 5, 1991, Speck died of a massive heart attack after serving nineteen years. Even postmortem, however, Speck continued to cause controversy; a disturbing prison video from within Statesville Correctional Institute in Illinois was uncovered. This video depicted Speck with unusually large breasts, snorting cocaine, bragging about his murders, and having sex with another male inmate. As a result of this exposé and the subsequent public outrage, an intense investigation into the Illinois Department of Corrections was ordered.
Bibliography
Altman, Jack, and Marvin Ziporyn. Born to Raise Hell: The Untold Story of Richard Speck. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Ziporyn was a medical doctor who served as a defense witness and who interviewed Speck numerous times. This book provides insight into the mind of the notorious killer.
Breo, Dennis L. The Crime of the Century. New York: Bantam Books, 1993. Journalist Dennis Breo and prosecutor Bill Martin reconstruct the case against Speck. Includes intimate details of the murders and behind-the-scenes information on the trial and strategies to convict Speck.
Lane, Brian, and Wilfred Gregg. Encyclopedia of Mass Murder: A Chilling Record of the World’s Worst Cases. New York: Caroll & Graf, 2004. This encyclopedia offers a brief case study of the murders of Speck.