So eight people got killed. "But I come from the place where they make balisong. 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. They shoved their beds edge to edge in a single room and lay there at night listening to the newly hired security guard's shoes click along the hallway tiles. Her brother, John Farris, still carries the photo and prayer card in his wallet 50 years later. In court, Speck was positively identified by the sole surviving student nurse, Cora Amurao. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,.css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}contact us! (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune). What he did, however, is known, because Cora, a 4-foot-10 nurse from the land of the concealed knife, escaped his sight at one point and hid under one bed, then another, until he was gone. Jack Wilkening, brother of Pamela Wilkening, remembers his sister and the days surrounding her 1966 murder along with seven other student nurses and nurseson Chicago'sSouth Side. He instantly recognized his mother's cursive handwriting. 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. From the transcript of Speck's trial: Q: How long did you scream, in a sitting position, with the window open? We kind of lost her, Lori said. She probably wouldn't still wear her hair in a perfect flip. Speck is the character who, while being interviewed by Ford and Tench, tosses a pet bird into a fan. 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. His horrifying violence had made him a murderous celebrity on the level of John Dillinger. What a waste that Nina and her friends weren't able to give the world everything they had to give, or enjoy its pleasures. 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. And it turned out that it reopened her life.". In 1972, Speck's death sentence was commuted to 50 to 100 years in prison, when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished capital punishment. A photo that appeared in Life magazine after the murders shows her sitting with three of her housemates. A few years ago, he ran into an old family friend and she told him a story he'd never heard, about how when she was in high school and couldn't afford a prom dress, Suzie made her one. How do you talk about something so terrible? Theyre smiling and wearing regular clothes. And did he have any particular feelings about the American people? He has found another way as well to hang on to his sister's hopeful spirit. He could be seen doing what appeared to be cocaine and in an interview-like discussion he answered questions about the murders of the nurses . She had the guts to move (under the bed), which saved her life," Martin said. Years later, when Nina moved into the townhouse where she died, she installed an old "Schmale Rd" street sign in her bedroom. "This is the man," she said as pandemonium erupted. Kubasek recalled one day not long ago, sitting with her old friend Arlene Baskys. William Martin, shown April 22, 2016, in his Oak Park law office, was the lead prosecutor in the Richard Speck mass murder case. Mary Ann Jordanin her nursing uniform in an undated photo. The kitchen was the townhouse social hub, a place where Nina and her roommates congregated to eat, study and listen to the record player from the nearby living room. Richard Speck had a troubled past and a rap sheet a mile long. She went home, not knowing that a little more than an hour earlier, a drifter with a knife, a gun and a history of violence had broken in and was holding her friends hostage upstairs. Being in the world of the older girls felt cool. 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. In May 1966, Valentina Pasion boarded an airplane in the Philippines, headed for Chicago. But any kid can end up just like me.''. Fortunately, Amurao remembered the distinctive "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo that, along with the image, enabled police to identify their suspect as Richard Speck. Girls, we need to clean the house.". 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. Took a nap. If you live your life in hatred and anger, you'll lose more than Gloria. In that small room, with its linoleum floor and overhead light, Suzie taught him how to make a grilled cheese sandwich and how, if you mixed sour cream and dry onion soup mix, presto, you had French onion dip. It may be difficult for those who weren't alive half a century ago to understand how profoundly Speck's crime shook the city, how far the ripples ran through time and space. 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. Menudo Star Says Jos Menendez Assaulted Him. Too tired. Before then, he had been responsible for other acts of violence against his family and others but had a knack for escaping the police. Subscribe. Though she rarely talked to her two children about what happened, she made sure her sister Pat lived on through her daughter, to whom she gave the name Patricia Ann. The trial lasted just 12 days and, on April 15, 1967, the jury found Speck guilty of all eight murders, after less than an hour's deliberation. It was all right. 28. In March of 1978, during an interview I had with him inside the walls of Stateville, Speck confessed for the first time to murdering the eight young women in 1966. On this day, Amurao personally identified Speck as the killer. Richard Benjamin Speck[1][2] (December 6, 1941 - December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight stude. Speck was captured two days later when an emergency room doctor at Cook County Hospital thought a patient he was treating for self-inflicted gashes looked familiar. And yet news of Speck continued to haunt them. Having been paroled in January 1965, he lasted only four weeks outside, before being arrested again for aggravated assault, and he was jailed for a further 16 months, of which he served 6 months. Later she learned that Speck, responding to the bell, had forced two of his hostages downstairs, a gun at their backs. I was gonna get that tattoo removed. I want you to look at her eyes.". "What wonderful people they were.". In their tightknit neighborhood, Pat and her friends stood on corners during the fall to help her dad sell peanuts for the Kiwanis Club. Her family her father, John, a pipe fitter; her mother, Lena, a homemaker born in Germany; and her only sibling, Jack lived in a small, one-story brick Cape Cod on Commercial Avenue. Her mother, Bessie, passed away in 2005. Sat down to write letters. Phil was engaged to one of Mary Ann's classmates, Suzanne Farris, who still lived in the townhouse, and Suzanne was with him that evening. Who are the victims of the mass murderer? ''I like Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson. I`d never shot heroin before. But she still can't stand the smell of roses. "It was almost like he had five boys," said Lori Davy Sivek, who is now 61 and teaches eighth-grade science and technology in a Houston suburb. 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. But life wasn't all play. One victim was also raped prior to her murder. With a rush of excitement and a pang of dread, he read her penciled note: "Nina South Chicago Hospital.". Gloria Davy jokes around in the South Side townhouse that was used as a dormitory for student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital, circa 1966. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later overturned due to issues with jury selection at his trial. Growing up, Nina pronounced "Nigh-nah" was a good student, well-liked, quiet but with a sense of humor. Speck also has a foul mouth on him and Ford realizes that there is only one way to communicate with him. But she came with a coveted distinction: She had a car, and not just any car, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible in pale yellow "Colonial Cream," a gift from her father, who could barely afford it and who himself drove a run-down pickup truck. Not long afterward, Arline Davy, sitting on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, made an announcement to her daughters. "She laughs a lot.". (Schmale family). Richard Speck has been described as a drifter, a loner, a high school dropout, a sociopath, a heavy drinker, a violent man who could be charming. It's where Suzie taught him, as a 10-year-old, to play solitaire. Finding those carousels of slides, in September 2015, may have been a fluke, but it felt like a providential sign. Media coverage splashed Speck's image all over the front pages and, in a desperate bid to escape, Speck tried to commit suicide on July 19, 1966, by slashing his wrists in the seedy hotel he was staying in. 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. Pat was 20 on the hot evening of Wednesday, July 13, 1966, when Arlene Kubasek dropped her off at the townhouse, well before curfew, which was 10:30 p.m. except for the two nights a week the women were allowed to stay out until 12:30 a.m. Do you want to come in for coffee? In the spring of 1966, she stepped into an airplane bound for Chicago. The kitchen door opened onto a narrow alley where Nina parked her Bel Air and where a hospital shuttle picked up and delivered students. The kitchen is where he and Suzie shared lunch, usually made by their dad, who worked afternoons while their mother worked days. Speck is in jail for murdering and raping a group of women. 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. 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. There she joined two other Filipina exchange nurses, Merlita Gargullo and Corazon Amurao, who had arrived a few days earlier. On July 15, 1966, the Chicago Tribune's front page reported the news with the headline "Search for Mass Slayer." News item: Richard Speck sentenced. I was high on heroin that night. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. The eight nurses killed by Richard Speck on July 14, 1966, in Chicago were, top from left, Gloria Davy, Suzanne Farris, Merlita Gargullo and Mary Ann Jordan. He had pried open the screen of a first-floor window, reached inside for the back-door handle and slipped into the house. The doctor had just had a. Around 10:30 p.m., she went upstairs to bed, in the high bunk in the room she shared with Merlita. Ate an early supper with Merlita and Tina. Who Is Richard Speck? Name: Richard Speck Birth Year: 1941 Birth date: December 6, 1941 Birth State: Illinois Birth City: Kirkwood Birth Country: United States Gender: Male Best Known For: In 1966, Richard Speck. (Schmale family ). 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. John and Nina walked together to the one-room Queen Bee schoolhouse, carrying tin lunch pails. Its a typical 1950s school photograph, small, black-and-white, cropped with pinking shears, showing Suzie at about 10, wearing what looks like her Brownie uniform. It was small and nothing fancy: One bathroom and three bedrooms upstairs. Books, documentaries, countless news stories, a 2007 film called "Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck" were dedicated to the so-called crime of the century. Nursing students were under strict rules during the 1960s, but still they found time for fun. Nina Jo Schmale appears in an undated photo. During their first two years, all the nursing students were required to live in dorms attached to the hospital, but in their third and final year, in the hot Chicago summer of 1965, Nina and five others moved into one of the three townhouses the hospital rented on East 100th Street. (Schmale family ). Another time, according to a different news account, Tina wrote her sister saying she wished she could live in Chicago forever. Subsequent nationwide enquiries also raised the other incidents in which Speck was suspected, as well as his criminal record. You're afraid in life, and here's someone who is comforting you.''. They laughed as they sunbathed on the roof between the tavern and the funeral home, watching the people and the cars down on Michigan Avenue, which they called "The Ave.". When he recalls the terrible summer of 1966, much of what he remembers is conspicuously small. Among Pam's favorite pleasures was watching Jack, who was seven years older, race cars. Cook County Assistant States Attorney William Martin, left, watches as witness Corazon Amurao uses a scale model of the townhouse crime scene to detail the murder of eight nurses by Richard Speck, center background, during Specks 1966 trial in Peoria, Ill. 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. It sure gets way out. Her brother Phil, who lost both his sister and his fiancee on that July night, died at 64. Michigan authorities also wanted to question him about his whereabouts during the murder of four other females, aged between 7 and 60, as his ship had been in the vicinity at the time. His leisure tastes? High school nursing club. She did, however, like her volunteer job at an elder-care facility known as the poor farm, and she made friends with her patients, even brought them Christmas presents. "Did I just see Grandpa on the television?" She liked clothes, and since the family didn't have a lot of money, she made her own. Pam had been quiet, studious and decisive since she was a girl in south suburban Lansing. Holden's methods during a disturbing interview with mass murderer Richard Speck create dissension among the team and kick off an internal FBI probe. On the way back, they got lost. Suzie was lucky. He thinks of his sister every day. Elmhurst Blotter: Man charged with battery for allegedly punching a security guard at a bar, Hinsdale police blotter: multiple thefts reported by patients at Hinsdale Hospital, Glenview police blotter: Harwood Heights woman charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. ''I`m in here for 1,200 years. Suzanne Farris appears as a young girl with a prayer card from her funeral on July 18, 1966. As part of their psychiatric rotation, they dealt with mentally disturbed patients. Opening the box at first meant to me that I was going to reopen her death. The Filipina women often ate dinner together at the townhouse kitchen table, sometimes joined by other exchange nurses. They were the last women to arrive at the townhouse that night. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. Richard Speck | The Chicago Nurse Killer 10,333 views Apr 17, 2020 61 Dislike Share Real Ghost Stories Online 67.8K subscribers In 1966 residents of south Chicago were traumatized by a deviant. "She wasn't the prom queen or the valedictorian," her brother recalled. He was arrested and stood trial for murdering the eight nurses. She also had a hard time believing he actually died of a heart attack in prison in 1991 and wonders why she was spared. He was matter-of-fact about. The doctor had just had a dinner break and had seen the front page of a newspaper featuring the killer's face. He remembers that after she died, when the mourners came, their father wept and moaned, Cooky, Cooky, Cooky., Suzanne Farris, left, and Gloria Davy pose at the dinner table, circa 1966. And so, shortly after 12:15, Mary Ann and Suzanne climbed the stairs to Suzanne's bedroom. She roller-skated in the basement of the family's three-bedroom bungalow. That was a good time that we had," she told Martin in a recent email. Then one day last fall, she found a voicemail from John Schmale. William Martin, shown April 22, 2016, in his Oak Park law office, was the lead prosecutor in the Richard Speck mass murder case. They`ll never mess with nobody else.''. He has made sure that his niece, who is the keeper of the old family cookie jar, knows why she can't get rid of it. The interview only goes south when Holden oversteps the bounds his newfound. At age 10, she walked her sister Susan to her first day of kindergarten. Bottom row from left are Patricia Matusek, Valentina Pasion, Nina Jo Schmale and Pamela Wilkening. She started college as an English major at Northern Illinois University, then switched to nursing. Childhood friends of Patricia Matusek share memories with Matuseks niece, who never met her. In Lori's words, Gloria was driven, independent, intelligent, headstrong, poised, creative and snippy when she didn't like what you were doing. She appreciates every day of life and wants to be happy all the time, because life is not long, Martin said she told him recently. The murders happened in a townhouse in the 2300 block of East 100th Street that served as housing for student nurses who worked at South Chicago Community Hospital. Life in the new country must have brought surprises, but it was hardly dramatic. Pat asked. The Mystery Novelist Who Committed a Real Murder, Boston Marathon Bombings Survivors, 10 Years Later, A Complete Timeline of Adnan Syeds Trial, Release. Atienza was the states key witness when Martin prosecuted Speck in the 1967 trial. I don`t want nothing to do with them women.''. It was a close-knit community where almost no one locked their doors. Nursing school, as one former student describes it, was like a cross between a convent and boot camp.
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