What did Richard Speck do?
Richard Speck was an American mass murderer who killed 8 student nurses in July 1966 in South Deering, Chicago. He stabbed, slit their throats and strangled his victims, and also raped his final victim before murdering them. Speck broke into the 2319 E. 100th St. townhouse where the student nurses resided in Chicago’s Jeffery Manor area.
He killed Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Jo Schmale, Pamela Wilkening, Suzanne Farris, Mary Ann Jordan, Merlita Gargullo, and Valentina Pasion. Speck claimed he was drunk and high on drugs and had only meant to commit a robbery. He killed them at 30-minute intervals in a brutal mass murder spree. Specks’ fingerprints were found at the scene, and he was arrested 2 days after the murders.
What happened at the trial?
Speck’s trial began in early April 1967 in Peoria, Illinois. Speck was identified in court by a surviving student nurse, Corazon Amurao, who had hid under a bed during the murders.
On the 15th of April, the jury found Speck guilty of all 8 murders and recommended he receive the death penalty. On the 5th of June, Speck was sentenced to die in the electric chair. However, he was granted an immediate stay of execution pending an appeal. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence in late November of 1968. His sentence was later reduced to 400–1,200 years in 1972, and this was later reduced to 100–300 years.
Where is Richard Speck now?
Speck died of a heart attack while imprisoned at Stateville Correctional Centre the day before he would’ve turned 50 years old in 1991.
FBI profiler John Douglas interviewed Speck as part of his research into murderers in the 1970s and wrote about him in his book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. This was later adapted into a Netflix crime series called Mindhunter, created by David Fincher. Speck features significantly as a character in the series.
Read more: Mindhunter Season 1 Review
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