American homicide, a mass murderer who gained entry to a dorm for student nurses, knifing and strangling eight and raping one on 7/14/1966. Speck died 12/05/1991, never confessing to his crimes.
He was one of eight kids born to Mary and Benjamin Speck. A religious, hardworking potter, Speck’s dad died when the boy was six. His mom married a Texan, Carl Lindberg, in 1950 and he and his younger sister, Carolyn, moved with the couple to Dallas. A troubled loner, he was a poor student who dropped out of school in ninth grade. First arrested at age 13 for starting a fire in a used-car lot, he was arrested 40 more times over the next 11 years as he drifted from one odd job to another. In 1963 he was sent to the state penitentiary at Huntsville, TX for forgery and burglary.
Released in 1965, he divorced a wife in early 1966 and in March moved back to Monmouth, IL. Shortly after that he went to Chicago where on 4/25/1966 he applied to work as a seaman on a Great Lakes ore carrier. He returned to Chicago after he had a fight with a Ships Officer and was fired. He took piece-work and drank at night in the lower side of town. After learning a job had fallen through on 7/12/1966, he spent most of the next day, July 13, drinking at a bar before leaving around 10:30 PM. At about 11:00 PM Speck slipped in through a kitchen door and knocked on the bedroom door of a nurses dorm where Carazon Amurao (now Atienza) answered. At gunpoint he led Amurao and her bunkmate, 23-year-old Merlita Gargullo, to the large bedroom where four of their housemates, Valentina Pasion, 23, Nina Jo Schmale, 24, and Pamela Wilkening and Patricia Matusek, both 20, were sleeping. He ordered all six women to sit on the floor, telling them he only wanted money to go to New Orleans. After another student nurse, Gloria Jean Davy, 22, came into the room, Speck used his knife to slice a bed sheet into strips and began binding his victims’ ankles and wrists. For a while he just sat smoking cigarettes and bantering.
In the early morning hours of 7/14/1966 the killing orgy began. Speck untied Wilkening’s ankles and marched her into another bedroom where he strangled and stabbed her in the left breast. When housemate Suzanne Farris, 21, and friend Mary Ann Jordan, 20, came into the bedroom, Speck appeared behind them and herded them into the room where he had taken Wilkening. There was a struggle and some 20 minutes later came the sound of running water as Speck washed his hands after stabbing the two women 22 times. The killings continued as Speck hauled his victims, some of them hiding under the bunk beds, from the floor and slaughtered them outside the room. His last victim was Davy, whom he raped on the bed while Amurao (the only survivor) lay underneath a nearby bunk. Speck then took Davy to the living room and strangled her. Speck rifled through Davy’s purse to get some change and left. Amurao waited until she could hear nothing else in the house, somehow untied herself and at 5:30 AM walked to her bedroom and climbed out the window onto the ledge where she screamed, “They are all dead! My friends are all dead! Oh, God, I’m the only one alive!” Within an hour, Amurao had described the murderer and police set up one of Chicago’s largest dragnets. By 7/15 detectives matched up Speck’s fingerprints from the dorm with his arrest record and traced him to a North Side hotel. Speck had already left the hotel and checked into a skid-row flophouse on 7/16 where, after learning he had left a survivor, he attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a broken wine bottle. He was taken to Cook County Hospital where an alert resident, Dr. Leroy Smith, recognized him from newspaper photos and the now famous “Born to Raise Hell” tattoo. His trial was held nine months later where the jury deliberated for only 49 minutes before convicting him of eight counts of murder. His sentence to die in the electric chair was changed to eight consecutive terms of 50 to 150 years in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the death penalty in 41 cases, including Speck’s. Speck died of a heart attack on 12/05/1991 at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, IL, never confessing to his crimes. He was cremated by the state.
When he was 19 Speck married Shirley Malone, a 15 year old who he met at a county fair. They had a daughter, Robbie Lynn, before he was sent to the state penitentiary at Huntsville, TX in 1963 for forgery and burglary. They divorced in early 1966 after he was released.
His victims were given by Garth Allen in AA Digest 1967:
1. Pamela Lee Silkening, 8/08/1945, Lansing, IL
2. Mary Ann Jordan, 10/04/1945, Chicago, IL
3. Suzanne Farris, 9/10/1944, Chicago, IL
4. Nina Jo Schmale, 12/27/1941, Sheaton, IL
5. Not given
6. Patricia Ann Matusek, 12/08/1945, Chicago, IL
7. Gloria Jean Davy, 1/26/1944, Dyer, IN (raped)
8. Not given
Link to Wikipedia biography