richard speck interview richard speck interview

On the 50th anniversary of the murders, he remembers Corazon's bravery in court. Pamela Wilkening, left, Mary Ann Jordan, right, and Suzanne Farris, second from right, are shown with other student nurses having fun with a South Chicago Community Hospital School of Nursing banner, circa 1966. (Curtis Thatcher & Assoc.). He managed to deflect police questioning and escape once again, but police discovered some of Harris' personal effects in his vacant hotel room that conclusively tied him to her attack. On July 13, 1966, Speck unleashed his terror on Chicago by breaking into a building in the neighborhood of South Deering. The End of Richard Speck: Cora Amurao, dressed as a nurse, entered Speck's hospital room and identified him to police as the killer. Seeing them together, it's hard not to wonder what Pat would be like at their age. Although she declined to be interviewed for this story, she has exchanged emails recently with John Schmale. They`re violent players. So did the fact that her brother, John, who was four years older, was studying to be a doctor. How do you talk about something so terrible? Phil taught public school, had a sailboat and was nice to him, the kid brother. So eight people got killed. Corazon Amurao Atienza has moved on with her life and wants to be happy every day. Richard Speck Mindhunter: Ford goes too far in interviewing Speck, trying to use inflammatory, sexist language to get the murderer to open up. Susan is 3. Lori tries to live by her mother's words. You're afraid in life, and here's someone who is comforting you.''. Opening the box at first meant to me that I was going to reopen her death. She closed the box, surely hoping that one day it would be opened. Another sister wired the news to their father in their hometown. Around 10:30 p.m., she went upstairs to bed, in the high bunk in the room she shared with Merlita. In the townhouse, she was known to sing while doing the dishes or the laundry. Speck's trial began on April 3, 1967, and his claim that he had no recollection of the eight murders committed placed Corazon Amurao in the spotlight as the star witness. The kitchen is where he and Suzie shared lunch, usually made by their dad, who worked afternoons while their mother worked days. She promptly planned a trip to the United States, but passport problems twice forced her to postpone. Lori has come to believe that Gloria's death prepared her to handle anything, and to see, in some useful ways, the possibility of death in everything. Me, I`m not like Dillinger or anybody else. The townhouse Gloria shared with the other student nurses was often a mess, so she sometimes paid her little sister a dollar or two to clean. That is no comfort to the families of his victims. (Schmale family ). Dr. John Schmale found a box of old slides in his waterlogged basement and opened a flood of memories. There was a man with a gun in the house. Peter McNamee washes the 1957 Chevrolet owned by his girlfriend, Nina Jo Schmale, whom he planned to marry after graducation, circa 1966. In one of the slides that her brother recovered from the basement, a young man crouches next to the Bel Air, washing the whitewalls, smiling for the camera. She roller-skated in the basement of the family's three-bedroom bungalow. Lori would ride her bike over, do the dishes, pick up the clothes scattered around the living room. I was gonna get that tattoo removed. In 1972, Speck's death sentence was commuted to 50 to 100 years in prison, when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished capital punishment. Theyre smiling and wearing regular clothes. she reportedly told friends a few days after the murders. Patricia Matusek was murdered along with five fellow nursing students and two visiting nurses in 1966 on Chicago'sSouth Side. At age 10, she walked her sister Susan to her first day of kindergarten. The following stories, accompanied by Schmale's photos and a few others, are a glimpse of who they were and how their deaths have marked the people who remain to remember them. Tammy Siouchoff remembers life with her fellow students before six of them and two visiting nurseswere murdered in a neighboring townhouse on Chicago's South Side in 1966. Merlita's father. Gloria Davy was the second of six siblings, born in the same hospital where she eventually studied nursing, raised not far from the townhouse where she died. Only Cora would survive. On many of those days she walked home crying, yet it was her afternoons with Tommy that made her think she could be a nurse. Martin and Atienza kept in contact as Martin collaborated with author Dennis Breo, updating the book "Crime of the Century," about the Speck murder case. She wanted to do Pat's hair and makeup for the funeral. Cora the first of the residents to see Richard Speck that night, and the only one to survive unlocked it. He thinks about the family she might have had, wishes she could have met his two sons and daughter and eight grandchildren. I don`t know why it happened to me. "Pat looks at us and says, 'Oh, for crying out loud!'" "What wonderful people they were.". Amurao had arrived the previous day to identify the killer in person, but Speck was not well enough. According to a news account at the time, she thought it was a safer place to raise a family. It was a world of hair curlers, hair spray cans, ashtrays, manual typewriters, textbooks, sheath dresses, corsages, cluttered rooms, a place where young women laughed, hugged, studied, ate, teased each other's hair. Between their second-floor apartments stretched a low, flat roof, and Pat and Arlene often ran across it to tap on each other's windows, looking for a playmate. In their tightknit neighborhood, Pat and her friends stood on corners during the fall to help her dad sell peanuts for the Kiwanis Club. As part of their psychiatric rotation, they dealt with mentally disturbed patients. Only one of her siblings, a brother, is still alive. ''What`s that dude who played in `Shaft`? Lori realized it was time to tell the truth. On what occasion? He was the man Nina planned to marry but only after graduation. "I don't believe this," Schmale said to his wife on that day half a century later, gazing inside the box. When he agreed to talk about his sister, he asked to meet at the Lansing Public Library, which used to be the Indiana Avenue School where he and Pam attended first through fifth grades. A photo shows four of the eight slain student nurses at South Chicago Community Hospital, circa 1966. After graduating from Glenbard Township High School in Glen Ellyn in 1959, she worked as a secretary but didnt like it. On that Monday, she was taken to a townhouse on East 100th Street rented by her new employer, South Chicago Community Hospital. I wanted to get rid of it. After Speck's trial she moved back to the Philippines and married in 1969, but she returned to the U.S. about four years later. She began working at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington and then at the Veterans Administration Medical Center. I want you to look at her eyes.". Mary Ann had family responsibilities. The Farris family lived in a quiet, tree-lined Far South Side neighborhood called Fair Elms. ''Because any kid can end up to be like me. He watched it once and hurled it into a corner. Like others Schmale has contacted, she was wary at first of resurrecting the past, but she has felt some relief in it. John and Nina grew up on an acre of land near suburban Wheaton, a remnant of the Schmale family farm. The body count was so high that he failed to notice that Amurao, who had opened the door for him on his arrival, had managed to hide herself under one of the beds. '', He said that if he were ever paroled, and someone annoyed him, ''I`ll be back in prison. In 1991, while still in prison, Speck died of a heart attack. Suzanne Farris, left, and Gloria Davy pose at the dinner table, circa 1966. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune). When he left, hours later, taking the money he had stolen, she cowered in her hiding place, terrified, for hours, before finally summoning the courage to seek help. Sickeningly mesmerizing because, as much as we hate to admit it, it is possible to talk to a mass murderer as a human being. Mary Ann was at the Jordan bungalow on the night of July 13, 1966, when Phil and Suzie stopped by. She displayed uncommon ease with the dying and never balked at the mess that came with tending to the human body. I was high on heroin that night. God was so nice," she said in an email to Martin. It was the kind of childhood that half a century later people look back on and call simpler, innocent, a time when city kids were raised to be independent and unafraid. Episode #1.9: Directed by David Fincher. Their father was a cement finisher descended from Germans. Mary Ann was the fourth of the six kids of Philip and Mary Jordan. Not only had they been allowed a slumber party with their mother, but their big sister who was about to graduate from nursing school was coming home for good the next day. In court, Speck was positively identified by the sole surviving student nurse, Cora Amurao. Abigail Atienza followed in her mother's footsteps and became a nurse practitioner, and Christian is a certified public accountant. Richard Speck once remarked that the day after he was born, all hell broke loose. ''Because any kid can end up to be like me. Richard Benjamin Speck (December 6, 1941 - December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 13, 1966. Kubasek hurried to her car and drove to the townhouse. The first season of Mindhunter saw Ford interview a number of famous serial killers, including Edmund Kemper (Coed Killer), necrophile Jerry Brudos and mass murderer Richard Speck all of. Martin said he'll never forget a key moment in Atienza's testimony during the trail. No one in her village had ever gone to America. A. I screamed there for about five minutes and nothing. In 1996, five years after Speck's death, a TV journalist made public a prison video, which showed Speck taking drugs and engaging in sex with another inmate during the 1980s, while he was an inmate at Statesville Correctional Institute; Speck appears to have breasts in the video, apparently as a result of hormone treatment received while in prison, and is wearing women's underwear. Just below, in smaller type, was the news that six policemen had been shot during riots on the West Side. He keeps the photo in a plastic pouch, tucked next to the prayer card from her funeral. "Let people know who they were," she said. Life in the new country must have brought surprises, but it was hardly dramatic. Girls, we need to clean the house.". Photo: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images, G. Gordon Liddys Wild Career After Watergate, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads, Name: Richard Speck, Birth Year: 1941, Birth date: December 6, 1941, Birth State: Illinois, Birth City: Kirkwood, Birth Country: United States. Speck, however, seemed to have a knack for making a quick escape and keeping police forces guessing. Lori Davy, center, accepts a nursing school diploma on behalf of her slain sister, Gloria Davy, at a ceremony at McCormick Place in 1966. ''Here,'' he said. The kitchen door opened onto a narrow alley where Nina parked her Bel Air and where a hospital shuttle picked up and delivered students. "What do I have here?". What about the notorious ''Born to Raise Hell'' tattoo that led to his capture? It was around dawn when she made her way to an upstairs window. Nina was 19 when she announced to her family, "I'm going to nursing school.". They were the last women to arrive at the townhouse that night. With her salary, she paid tuition for college night classes downtown, after which she commuted home to 111th Street and Avenue E. Eventually she enrolled in nursing school, and though it wasn't a field she had dreamed of as a girl, she had a knack. "She showed the indomitability of her spirit by continuing her path as a nurse and dedicating her life to helping others and raising a family, but you can never get something like this out of your life," Martin said. In the spring of 1966, she stepped into an airplane bound for Chicago. "It hurt everyone down to your soul and your being and your bone," Kubasek said. Before long, the Davy home was packed with people, and every room, it seemed, was packed with roses, so many roses the scent made Lori sick. Martin and Atienza kept in contact as Martin collaborated with author Dennis Breo, updating the book "Crime of the Century," about the Speck murder case. She has looked at the Facebook page Schmale started as part of the commemoration for the nurses, a place for trading stories and photos, though she doesn't linger. He'll never forget the cards and letters that flooded in from strangers all over the world. At South Chicago Community Hospital she earned $350 a month, much of which she sent back to the Philippines, and, like the other exchange nurses, she wrote a lot of letters. Here are five things to know about Richard Speck. Clicking from slide to slide, Schmale stepped into his sister's vanished world. These attacks, however, paled into insignificance on July 13, 1966, when Speck arrived on the doorstep of a townhouse in South Chicago, which served as a communal home for a group of eight young student nurses from nearby South Chicago Community Hospital. In this interview, Speck confessed to the murders for the first time publicly and said he thought he would get out of prison "between now and the year 2000", at which time he hoped to run his own grocery store business. On this day, Amurao personally identified Speck as the killer. Be married, divorced, retired? At Thornton Fractional South High School, she attended almost every basketball and football game with her closest girlfriends, but she didn't play sports. He pushed up his left sleeve to reveal ugly scars on his arm. Bottom row from left are Patricia Matusek, Valentina Pasion, Nina Jo Schmale and Pamela Wilkening. ''Just tell `em to keep up their hatred for me,'' Speck said. "The mailman would bring them in boxes," he said. The Matuseks wanted Pat to be buried in the clothes she would have worn for her upcoming graduation, so on the day after the murders, Pat's sister, Betty Jo, asked Kubasek for a favor. A lanky man in dark clothes, with slicked-back hair and marks on his face, was standing there with a small black revolver in his right hand. One of eight young nurses killed in a Chicago townhouse on July 14, 1966, by a man who became notorious: Richard Speck. The student nurses' white and pale-gray uniforms had to be strictly starched, their crisp white caps perfectly placed a tough trick on bouffant hair. And it turned out that it reopened her life. .css-m6thd4{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;display:block;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;color:#323232;text-transform:capitalize;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-m6thd4:hover{color:link-hover;}}G. Gordon Liddys Wild Career After Watergate. Astrological Sign: Sagittarius, Death Year: 1991, Death date: December 5, 1991, Death State: Illinois, Death City: Joliet, Death Country: United States, Article Title: Richard Speck Biography, Author: Biography.com Editors, Website Name: The Biography.com website, Url: https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/richard-speck, Publisher: A&E; Television Networks, Last Updated: December 1, 2021, Original Published Date: April 2, 2014. Often after a day of classes at Fenger High School, Pat Matusek walked to Roseland Community Hospital to see her cousin Tommy. They are young and together and happy. She played baseball in the alley, badminton across the back fences. He was referring to letters he received in his prison cell every week from women-female admirers who, he said, wanted to correspond with him. (Schmale family ). "She wasn't the prom queen or the valedictorian," her brother recalled. For her to discuss an event she calls "still unbelievable" is an act of faith, one she commits only because she'd like the world to pause and think about Mary Ann and her friends. ''Dillinger and them guys, that was the Depression, they were robbing banks because that was their only way to survive. And yet news of Speck continued to haunt them. Parts of the confession were almost certainly bogus; Speck said that he had not killed all eight nurses-that an accomplice, whom Speck later shot to death, had killed one of the nurses, while Speck killed the other seven. Her father, Charles, was a former Marine who expected as much from his five daughters as he did from his son. "Gloria's been murdered," Lori remembers her saying. Her graduation from nursing school was less than a month away, exams were coming up and she needed to stay at her townhouse in the city to study. Best Known For: In 1966, Richard Speck committed one of the most horrifying mass murders in American history when he brutalized and killed eight student nurses living on Chicago's South Side. It hurt to see Nina in her yellow swimsuit he thought back to the Life magazine photo after the murders that showed it hanging on a rod in her bedroom but it also made him glad, glad to be reminded of who his sister was before death defined her. Shortly after the Filipina women arrived, the Chicago women threw them a welcome party, and over the next few weeks helped them learn their way around the city. William Martin, shown April 22, 2016, in his Oak Park law office, was the lead prosecutor in the Richard Speck mass murder case. Grief will always be tangled in that youthful happiness. Lori didn't cry. You climbed down to the ledge on 100th Street? Where Is Acquitted Murderer Candy Montgomery Now? A funeral parlor jammed with mourners. Richard Benjamin Speck was an American mass murderer who killed eight student nurses in their South Deering, Chicago residence on the night of July 13-14, 19. I give their addresses to my cellmates. Her roommates and friends were killed by Speck on July 14, 1966, after he broke in armed with a gun and a knife.