July 13, 1966: The Speck Murders

July 13, 1966: Eight student nurses are murdered in their dormitory in Chicago. Richard Speck is arrested for these murders.

Richard Benjamin Speck was born on December 6, 1941, the day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in Kirkwood, in western Illinois, and grew up in nearby Monmouth. He was 6 years old when his father died. Three years later, his mother remarried, and the family moved to Texas. His stepfather was an abusive alcoholic. Richard followed in his footsteps, and was first arrested at age 13.

He married and had a daughter, but was jailed for a year and a half for forgery and burglary. Shortly after his release, he attacked a woman with a knife, but she got away, and he served 6 months for this. His wife divorced him, and he moved back to Monmouth, moving in with an older sister. Together, they moved to Chicago. He got and lost several jobs due to his drinking and disorderly conduct.

He had dated a nursing student at South Chicago Community Hospital. She and the other students roomed at a townhouse at 2319 East 100th Street, 13 miles southeast of the Loop, and just 3 miles from the Indiana State Line. She had dumped him, and so he sought revenge.

On the night of July 13, 1966, he walked into the townhouse, armed with a knife, and killed Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Jo Schmale, Pamela Wilkening, Suzanne Farris, Mary Ann Jordan, Merlita Gargullo, and Valentina Pasion. Speck, who later claimed he was both drunk and high on drugs, may have originally planned to commit a routine burglary.

Speck held the women in a room for hours, leading them out one by one, stabbing or strangling each to death, then finally raping and strangling his last victim, 22-year-old Gloria Davy. Intervals of between 20 and 30 minutes elapsed between each murder.

One woman, Corazon Amurao, escaped death because she crawled and hid under a bed while Speck was out of the room. Speck, who later claimed to have no memory of the murders, possibly lost count, or might have known 8 women lived in the townhouse, but was unaware that a 9th woman was spending the night. Amurao stayed hidden until almost 6 AM. Amurao and two of the murder victims, Gargullo and Pasion, were exchange nurses from the Philippines.

Amurao identified Speck, and his fingerprints were found at the scene, but it took 4 days to find him and arrest him. On April 15, 1967, following 49 minutes of deliberation, a jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to death. In 1972, with the death penalty overturned, he was re-sentenced to 100 to 300 years in prison.

He was taken to the Stateville Correctional Center in suburban Crest Hill, Illinois, and remained there until dying of a heart attack on December 5, 1991, a day before what would have been his 50th birthday.

Just 18 days after Speck's murders, Charles Whitman killed 14 people on the University of Texas' campus in Austin. This seemingly back-to-back occurrence would seem routine today, but, at the time, it was terrible shocking. On March 18, 1968, running for President, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, his life already touched by gun violence, gave a speech at the University of Kansas:

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs that glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Just 16 days after that, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. And, 62 days after that, so was RFK. Crime was out of control -- but, in the case of Richard Speck, it was, as it so often seems to be these days, both a medical and a mental health issue.

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July 13, 1966 was a Wednesday. Singer Gerald LeVert was born. This was also the day that Jim Brown retired from professional football, despite being only 30 years old and, arguably, the best player in the game. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was the only major North American sport in season, and this was during the All-Star Break. The day before, the All-Star Game was played at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The National League won, 2-1, on a walkoff single by Maury Wills of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But the World Cup was underway in England, where Brown was filming The Dirty Dozen. On this day, France and Mexico played to a 1-1 draw at the old Wembley Stadium in London. (Brown is not known to have attended.) Argentina beat Spain, 2-1 at Villa Park in Birmingham. Portugal beat Hungary, 3-1 at Old Trafford in Manchester. And Italy beat Chile, 2-0 at Roker Park in Sunderland.