RICHARD SPECK
HE NEARLY GOT AWAY WITH IT THE NIGHT RICHARD SPECK SNUCK INTO A CHICAGO TOWNHOUSE AND MURDERED EIGHT NURSES WAS ONE THE CITY AND HIS ONLY SURVIVING VICTIM WOULD NEVER FORGET – BUT SPECK CAME VERY CLOSE TO GETTING AWAY WITH HIS HEINOUS CRIMES ALTOGETHER
According to the tattoo on Richard Speck’s right arm, he was “Born To Raise Hell”. A dangerous drifter with a criminal history, he was already wanted for rape and murder by the time he arrived in Chicago in the spring of 1966. Within days of arriving, he unleashed chaos on its residents in a single, unforgettable night. When police were called to a townhouse located in a South Side middle-class neighbourhood in the early hours of a July morning, so fierce was Speck’s bloodlust that he changed the landscape of crime forever. Inside lay the slain bodies of eight student nurses. Chicago recoiled at how so many innocent women could be killed in their beds in the dead of night, without so much as a peep from this slaughterhouse.
But what rocked them more was the only surviving victim’s recollection of the truly terrible events that had unfolded: a pockmarked stranger with a southern Texas drawl, distinct tattoo and “soft, gentle eyes” had forced his way into their home, picked the young women off one at a time from the rest of his gagged and bound victims, and killed them. It took police an adrenaline-fuelled 72 hours to capture Speck thanks to the surviving victim’s ability to identify her assailant. But speaking to Real Crime, Florida author and journalist Dennis Breo, co-author of The Crime of the Century, recounted for us over 50 years later how easily Speck could have got away with what’s been described by law experts as ‘Chicago’s first motiveless mass-murder’.
HE WAS ALSO SUSPECTED OF COMMITTING A BURGLARY AND RAPE OF AN ELDERLY WOMAN AS WELL AS THE MURDER OF A BARMAID
BLOWN AWAY
In Chicago, USA, the summer sun raises temperatures to an average of 23 degrees Celsius. However, the week that Speck, a violent, 24-year-old convict from Kirkwood came to town in July 1966, the balmy days in the ‘Windy City’ had risen to above average temperatures, enveloping the town in a twoweek heatwave. Breo recalled how during 1966, “the average salary was about $8,000, the car of the hour was the Pontiac GTO and sold for about $3,000, and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood sold for about five dollars and 95 cents in hardcover. The neighbourhood of Jeffery Manor, where the murders took place, was a very conservative and family-oriented place.” Breo described the South Deering community where Speck struck as an area where “a big event with the police might be if a cat had run up a tree and
