Many serial killers, when we read about them, have tell-tale signs of being somewhat different; being lonely or bullied, being abused at home, and so on. Richard Speck’s story is no different; it seems the abuse suffered at an early age warranted him to kill. However, he simply could have been born to raise hell...
Richard Speck / Picture Credit: Oxygen on YouTube
Who was Richard Speck?
Richard Speck captured the attention of the nation during the summer of 1966, when he went on a killing frenzy and murdered eight female nurses, who all lived together on Chicago’s South side.
Before then, he had a history of other acts of violence, some against his own family. He had a talent for escaping the police, also.
After his killing spree in 1966, a manhunt began and he was captured soon after. He spent the remainder of his days in prison, until he died of a heart attack in 1991, at 49 years of age.
Early years and adulthood
Richard Benjamin Speck was born on December 6th, 1941, in Kirkwood Illinois, into a large and religious family; he was the seventh of eight children.
After his father died when Speck was just six, his mother remarried and the family moved to Dallas, Texas.
The siblings all suffered abuse at the hands of their drunken step-father. Speck’s childhood was filled with juvenile delinquency and alcohol abuse, which quickly led to petty crime.
In November 1962, Speck married Shirley Malone and, soon after, had a daughter named Bobby-Lynn. Their marriage didn’t last long, however, as Speck couldn’t keep himself out of trouble; he landed himself a prison sentence for check fraud in 1963. He was paroled and got out in 1965.
He only lasted four weeks before getting arrested again for aggravated assault; he was jailed for 16 months, but only ended up serving six.
During this time, he had the words ‘Born to Raise Hell’ tattooed on his arm. His wife Shirley filed for divorce in January, 1966.
After Speck was arrested for burglary and assault, he fled to Chicago to seek solitude with one of his sisters, Martha, a couple of months later. He only spent a few days there, before heading to Monmouth, Illinois, where he stayed with family and friends from his childhood.
The horrific crimes of Richard Speck
After being a carpenter for a short while, Speck still couldn’t control his deadly urges; 65-year-old Virgil Harris was savagely raped and robbed in her home on April 2nd, 1966.
On April 13th that same year, a barmaid on his local tavern, Mary Kay Pierce, was brutally beaten to death. Speck managed to avert police questioning and evade them once again; however, police discovered a few of Harris’ personal effects in his vacant hotel room, which clearly tied him to her attack.
Speck later found work on a ship, but it seemed that wherever he went, bodies were left behind.
Indiana authorities wanted to interview the killer about the murders of three girls who had disappeared on July 2nd, 1966, and whose bodies were never found.
Authorities in Michigan wanted to question Speck too, this time regarding his whereabouts during the murder of four females, ages 7-60, as his ship was in the area at the time. Speck, however, was skilled at making quick escapes and keeping the police guessing...
On July 13th, 1966, the killer turned up on the doorstep on a Chicago townhouse which was used as a communal home for a group of young nurses, from nearby South Chicago Community Hospital.
23-year-old Corazon Amurao opened the door to Speck’s knock before he forced himself inside by gunpoint. He then proceeded to round the nurses up, order them to empty their purses, and tied them all up. He the brutalized them in the most horrific ways over the next few hours.
Any nurses who hadn’t been home were unfortunately not spared, as once the returned home they received brutal attacks at the hands of Speck.
A total of eight women, between 19-24, were systematically bound, robbed, beaten and stabbed during Speck’s terrifying frenzy. According to the New York Times, at least one of the eight victims was raped.
The body count was so high, that Speck didn’t notice Amurao, the women who opened the door to him, had hidden herself under a bed. Hours later when Speck left, she stayed hidden for a while, before gaining the courage to get out from under the bed and call for help.
She climbed out onto a window ledge and screamed for help, alerting neighbours who became concerned and called the police.
The arrest
Police arrived to a scene of carnage and horror. They took Amurao into custody, where they interviewed her and proceeded with the construction of an Identikit image. Luckily, Amurao remembered Speck’s distinctive tattoo; that, as well as the image, allowed police to identify Speck as their suspect.
Subsequent nationwide inquires also raised other incidents in which Speck was suspected of being involved with, as well as his criminal record. In the days before automated fingerprint identification, it took almost a week to identify the prints from the townhouse as Speck’s.
The media plastered the killer’s face all over the front pages and, in a desperate bod to escape, Speck attempted to take his own life on July 19th, 1966, by cutting his wrists in the hotel he was staying in.
Changing his mind last minute, Speck called for help and was taken to Cook County Hospital, where, once again, his tattoo gave him away; he was arrested and taken into custody.
He required surgery to repair his severed arteries; he was watched by over a dozen policemen, who were determined to make sure that Speck’s days of lucky escapes were over.
The trail and prison sentence
Speck’s trial began on April 3rd, 1967; his claim that he had no recollection of the night when the eight nurses were murdered saw Amurao take part as a star witness. Despite her trauma, she manages to give a faultless account of the night Speck attacked her and her roommates. She impressed the jury with a detail account of that evening, identifying Speck easily.
The trial lasted 12 days and, on April 15th, 1967, the jury found Speck guilty of all eight murders, after less than an hour of deliberation. The judge sentenced Speck to death.
However, in 1972, Speck’s death sentence became 50-100 years in prison, as the US Supreme Court abolished capital punishment.
Speck died of a heart attack in prison, on December 5th, 1991.
Written by Melissa, who you can follow on Twitter @melissajournal
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