Richard Speck Crime Scene: Survivor, Trial, and Prison Years

The Richard Speck murders were the killings of eight student nurses inside a South Side Chicago townhouse on the night of July 13–14, 1966. Speck, a 24-year-old drifter with a long criminal record, forced his way into a dormitory at 2319 East 100th Street, bound the women with strips of bedsheet, and killed them one and two at a time over several hours. A ninth woman, Corazon Amurao, hid under a bunk bed and survived. Her testimony convicted him. He was sentenced to death, had that sentence overturned, was resentenced to eight consecutive prison terms of 50 to 150 years, and died of a heart attack in an Illinois hospital in 1991.¹

What Happened Inside the Townhouse

The townhouse served as a dormitory for student nurses enrolled at South Chicago Community Hospital. Speck pried open a window screen, unlatched the back door, and gathered the women in an upstairs bedroom, armed with a gun and a knife.²³⁴

He then led the women out of the bedroom, sometimes one at a time and sometimes in pairs, to other rooms in the house. Amurao, still bound on the floor, could hear muffled sounds of struggle after each woman was taken away.³ Between killings, Speck went into the bathroom repeatedly to run water. Gloria Davy was sexually assaulted and strangled with a ligature; the other seven were killed by stabbing or strangulation.²

The Eight Women He Killed

All eight victims were within weeks of completing their nursing program.⁵

Gloria Jean Davy, 22
Mary Ann Jordan, 20
Suzanne Bridgit Farris, 21
Nina Jo Schmale, 24
Pamela Lee Wilkening, 20
Patricia Ann Matusek, 20
Merlita Ornado Gargullo, 23, an exchange student from the Philippines
Valentina P. Pasion, 24, an exchange student from the Philippines

How Corazon Amurao Survived

Amurao, also a Filipino exchange nurse, wriggled under a double-decker bunk bed while Speck was occupied elsewhere in the house, her wrists and ankles still tied. She stayed there for hours. Speck returned to the bedroom around 3:30 a.m. on July 14 but did not find her.² She remained hidden until an alarm clock rang at 5:30 a.m., then worked herself free, discovered the bodies, and screamed for help from a window.⁴

Amurao gave police a detailed description of the intruder that became the basis for a composite sketch circulated in newspapers and on television. Before formally identifying Speck in person, she picked his photograph from a group of pictures, saying it looked “more similar” to the killer than any other.⁴

How Speck Was Caught

A two-day manhunt followed. Speck checked into the Starr Hotel at 617 West Madison Street, on Chicago’s Skid Row, under a false name. After reading newspaper accounts of the murders, he slashed his wrists and was taken to Cook County Hospital around midnight.²

A resident physician, Dr. Leroy Smith, had been reading a newspaper article about the manhunt before being called to treat the new patient. The article described the suspect’s tattoos, including one that read “Born to Raise Hell.” Smith saw the tattoo on the patient’s arm and asked his name. The patient answered, “Speck.”² Amurao was later taken to Speck’s hospital room and confirmed he was the killer.⁴

Who Speck Was

Richard Benjamin Speck was born on December 6, 1941, in Kirkwood, Illinois, the seventh of eight children. His father died of a heart attack when Speck was six. His mother remarried and moved the family to Dallas, where Speck and one of his sisters were regularly abused, verbally and physically, by their often-drunk stepfather.⁶ He was arrested for the first time at 13 and dropped out of high school at 16.

By his early twenties he had a substantial criminal record. He married a fifteen-year-old, Shirley Malone, in 1962; they had a daughter, and Malone filed for divorce in January 1966.⁷ In 1963 he was convicted of theft and check fraud and sentenced to three years, was paroled after sixteen months, and was arrested again within weeks for aggravated assault.¹ In the months before the Chicago murders he was suspected of raping and robbing a woman in her home and of beating a barmaid to death. Indiana authorities wanted to question him about the disappearance of three girls; Michigan authorities were investigating him in connection with the murders of four women. In a 1978 interview, Speck said he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs during the townhouse murders.

The Trial in Peoria

Pretrial publicity in Chicago was so heavy that the defense successfully moved the trial to Peoria. It was the first case in Illinois history transferred to another county on those grounds. The lead prosecutor was William J. Martin, a 28-year-old Cook County assistant state’s attorney. Speck was represented by Cook County public defender Gerald Getty, who at that point had never lost a client to the electric chair.⁸

Two pillars carried the state’s case: fingerprints and Amurao’s identification. Two experts testified that three latent prints from the crime scene matched Speck’s right index, right middle, and left middle fingers.⁴ Sweat- and blood-soaked T-shirts at the scene matched a shirt cut from Speck’s body at the hospital. To comply with the then-new Miranda v. Arizona ruling, Martin waited three weeks after Speck’s arrest before questioning him.⁸

The trial’s central moment came on April 5, 1967. After more than three hours of testimony in which Amurao used a scale model of the townhouse to walk the jury through the night, Martin asked whether she saw the man who had come to her door with a gun. She said yes, unlatched the gate of the witness stand, walked across the courtroom, pointed her finger within inches of Speck’s forehead, and said, “This is the man.”⁹ Martin later described the reaction in the courtroom as “pandemonium.”⁸ Amurao, described as being afraid of men after the attack, had stipulated that the same four police officers who responded on the night of the murders sit in the front row during her testimony.

Getty rejected an insanity defense. He argued instead that Speck was not at the scene at all, calling two witnesses from a nearby tavern to support an alibi, and challenged Amurao’s identification as unfairly suggestive because Speck had been the only patient in the hospital room when she confirmed him.⁸ The Illinois Supreme Court later rejected that challenge, finding Amurao had an “unparalleled opportunity” to observe the killer over the hours he spent in the townhouse.⁴ Getty later said: “Speck told me that he didn’t do it, or that if he did, he didn’t remember it. I tried to prove that he wasn’t at the scene on the night of the crime.”

On April 15, 1967, a jury of seven men and five women deliberated for 49 minutes and returned guilty verdicts on all eight counts. On June 5, Judge Herbert C. Paschen sentenced Speck to die in the electric chair, with the execution set for September 1, 1967.⁸¹⁰ The sentence was automatically stayed pending appeal.

From Death Sentence to Life in Prison

The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on November 22, 1968. In June 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the death sentence, citing the systematic exclusion of jurors who had expressed reservations about capital punishment under the earlier decision in Witherspoon v. Illinois. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional nationwide, and the Illinois Supreme Court voided the state’s remaining death sentences, Speck’s included.⁸ Speck was resentenced to eight consecutive terms of 50 to 150 years.⁶

The XYY Chromosome Claim, Later Retracted

In 1968, news broke that a genetic analysis at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago had found Speck carried an extra Y chromosome, a condition then theorized by some scientists to produce unusual aggression. His defense confirmed the finding and considered raising it on appeal, though it acknowledged “no precedent for evidence of this type.”¹¹

Later testing showed Speck did not in fact have the XYY constitution, and the retraction received far less attention than the original claim. Broader research found no link between XYY and extreme violence; studies of XYY inmates showed they committed fewer crimes against people than the general prison population.¹²

The 1988 Prison Videotape

In May 1996, five years after Speck’s death, Chicago’s WBBM-TV anchor Bill Kurtis broadcast a two-hour videotape secretly recorded at Stateville Correctional Center in 1988. The footage showed Speck snorting what appeared to be cocaine, displaying a wad of cash, engaging in sexual activity with another inmate while wearing women’s underwear, and boasting about how easy prison life was.¹³ Speck also admitted to the murders on camera and described strangulation matter-of-factly: “It ain’t like you see on TV… You have to go at it for about 3½ minutes.”¹⁴

The tape had been made with prison video equipment ordinarily reserved for staff training. How Speck and two other inmates gained access to it was, in the words of a corrections spokesman, “the $60 million question.”¹⁴ Kurtis obtained the footage from an anonymous attorney for roughly $5,000, which was directed to an Illinois victim assistance fund.¹⁵

Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan opened a criminal investigation, and the Illinois House Judiciary Committee held hearings through the summer and fall of 1996. Illinois then implemented a series of correctional reforms: designating specific facilities for permanent lockdown, prohibiting contact visits in maximum-security prisons, ending inmate “picnics” with guests, and upgrading contraband-detection equipment.¹⁵

Speck’s Death and What Became of the Survivor

Speck died of a heart attack on December 5, 1991, in a hospital in Joliet, Illinois, one day before what would have been his fiftieth birthday. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location.¹

Corazon Amurao married in 1969 after returning to the Philippines, later moved back to the United States, and worked for many years as a critical care nurse at Georgetown University Hospital and the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She raised two children; her daughter became a nurse practitioner. She declined most interview requests and said she continued to have nightmares. “After that night, I’m always scared,” she told one interviewer. “I’m not the kind of person because I was always a happy person.”¹⁶¹⁷

1
Chicago History Museum. First Mass Murderer: Richard Speck
2
CBS News Chicago. Killer Richard Speck Confessing Video
3
The New York Times. Survivor Points Out Speck as the Slayer of 8 Nurses
4
Justia. People v. Speck, 41042
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Crime+Investigation UK. Richard Speck’s Victims
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Britannica. Richard Speck
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Biography. Richard Speck
8
Illinois State Bar Association. Remembering the Richard Speck Trial
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WTTW News. Lead Prosecutor Reflects on Richard Speck’s Chicago Murders
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The New York Times. Speck Is Sentenced to Chair on Sept. 1
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The New York Times. Ultimate Speck Appeal May Cite a Genetic Defect
12
Science for the People. XYY: Fact or Fiction
13
Chicago Tribune. House Committee to Investigate Speck Prison Tape
14
Roanoke Times. Richard Speck Prison Tape Report
15
Connecticut General Assembly. Richard Speck Prison Videotape Report
16
Orlando Sentinel. Richard Speck Attack Survivor: ‘Somebody Up There Was Hiding Me From Him’
17
ABC7 Chicago. Slain Nurses Remembered on 50th Anniversary of Speck Murders