Richard Speck : The Student Nurse Murders (Part 1)

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Speaker 16 Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Elena. And this is Morbid.

Speaker 16 This is more of it. It's more of the bid.
It's more of it. And bid it for more.
Absolutely. It's our show.
Yeah. What's up?

Speaker 16 We went to yoga this morning. We yogaed so hard.

Speaker 16 Actually, we did. Let me just say for a second, we yogaed with the best of them this morning.
That was a hard class. A difficult flow.
I was not quite flowing, but you know, but I moved.

Speaker 16 We got through it.

Speaker 16 What was it? Half moon reverse and moon left and moon right. Moon was long moons.
There was so much mooning. There's a lot of mooning.
Not that kind of mooning. We were not showing our asses.

Speaker 16 I was showing my

Speaker 16 showing my ass with showing how I don't know how to do all yoga poses. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 16 But yeah, I feel we're trying to like move, you know? We're trying. We tried a Pilates class yesterday.
Yeah, I'm just trying to like. And then we signed up for a lot of Pilates classes.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 And I feel, you know what it is? It's like

Speaker 16 ever since like the kids are getting like older, and I'm sitting there being like i need to be like around

Speaker 16 and healthy yeah for the rest of your days yeah i need to be 150 years old still kicking it with you and your my great great grandchildren

Speaker 16 so i'm looking to stay to do that yeah so i think 10 moving days are really quite a lofty goal You know what? I'm a Capricorn.

Speaker 16 I mean, I make big goals. You know what? Actually, I've been shouting out my nail guy so much and I got my nails done the other day and he was like, thank you so much for shouting me out.

Speaker 16 Here I go again. Helly.
I went to the nail salon last week and he had an on-black mirror, which I've never seen before.

Speaker 16 It's like, obviously, like very sci-fi futuristic. You know, maybe you will live until 150 because they might upload you to the cloud and you could just continue living on.
That'd be pretty sick.

Speaker 16 Yeah. Let's go.
I don't know if I would want to live on the cloud. Do you think you would? I mean, if my kids are still around, I would like to still be around.
That's beautiful. That's how I feel.

Speaker 16 That's the most beautiful thing I've ever done.

Speaker 16 If they're still kicking it, throw me on the cloud. Okay.
I'll read that down. You can stay around.
I think I'm like, you know, I'm something in your will, so I'll make sure I know that.

Speaker 16 So there you go. I guess you won't even need the will because you'll be kicking it.
You'll just be around. Everybody's just kicking it.
Yeah. And I want to be like a cool grandma.

Speaker 16 What do you want your grandma name to be? Have we talked about that? That I haven't figured out yet. I know what I want mine to be.
I won't know that until I think it's like happening.

Speaker 16 I want to be grandma. That makes sense.
And I refuse. I refuse to be called anything else.
I kind of want to do the thing where I let them decide. What if they call you like schnoogen?

Speaker 16 Then schnoogen it is? Schnugen and schnoogen. Yeah, then schnoogen it is.
Hey. I love a weird grandparent name.
I do too.

Speaker 16 Like, um, I don't want to say names, but like one of the, yeah, one of our friends, their kids call their grandparents goo and goopy. Oh, yeah, that one.

Speaker 16 I think that's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. And then in our family, like we have extended family where their grandkids call them banka.
Yep, Banka and Gigi, I think. And Gigi, yeah.

Speaker 16 Oh, you know what, though? Maybe I do want to be called Gigi. See?

Speaker 16 This is tough. You got some time to think about it.
Yeah, I don't even have children yet.

Speaker 16 You know, you're like, my kids are nine. Yeah, we all have time to think about it.
That's why I'm not worried about it right now. All right.
Well, Pilates, kids, Glamma's uploading to the cloud.

Speaker 16 What do you got for us today? What do I have for you today? What's up, Red? Oh, I have a t-shirt for you today. You have a t-shirt for me?

Speaker 16 Mikey, I wait over. It's not the universal signature for

Speaker 16 your t-shirt. I just looked over.
I said, what do I have for you today? And I just happened to look at Mikey and he just, he kind of like felt

Speaker 16 like placed his hands down his body. And I said, t-shirt.
But you also kind of like, he kind of did it like in the chicken dance way and like moved his shoulder. He like darted under.

Speaker 16 It kind of felt like he was coming at you. Yeah.
And I got it. I was like, t-shirt.
That's like we mind-melded for a minute. I said, t-shirt.
I just stood over here like, what? Yeah. We, um,

Speaker 16 I'm not good at this, so maybe Ashley will.

Speaker 16 We teamed up with, and it doesn't even feel like we teamed up with them because they're just so talented. I don't really feel like I did anything.
Yeah, they did all the talented part of this.

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Um, if you go to the Salem night fair, you know who Matt and Ryan are.

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Speaker 16 What the fuck? What? It's a piece of lettuce.

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Speaker 16 remnants of a past lunch whenever i laugh i'm like i don't laugh like that and people are like yeah you do i just laughed like so many varieties

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Speaker 16 leave yourself in mikey leave yourself in i'm like mikey what is it leave it in leave it in we need to get merch also that just says leave it in um

Speaker 16 also

Speaker 16 they created our uh rewatcher artwork so if you're not going over to listen to the rewatcher we're now covering true blood we're all done with buffy which was so much fun

Speaker 16 if you haven't listened to to the Buffy one, do that. But now we're on to more different things.
And Andrew McMahon did our fucking theme song. Can you believe it? So I'll never stop saying that.

Speaker 16 We might say that every episode.

Speaker 16 And you can't really well. And you can't blame us.
No, who could blame us? What millennial can blame us? I don't, even the Gen Zs, you can't blame us. No, you can't.
I'm saying crazy. You are.

Speaker 16 She's really off her. I'm a little bit rogue.
I wasn't going to have a Diet Coke Coke. She's a little bit rogue.

Speaker 16 I'm a little bit rogue. I wasn't going to have a Diet Coke and then I had a Diet Coke.
Yeah, that'll only have like four sips, but it's making me rogue.

Speaker 16 Well, before we go too rogue, before I allow Ash, before Rogue loses all the unique fly off into the wild blue yawn, into the vaguey.

Speaker 16 We have a toupada here. I didn't even know that.
Yeah, we have a toupada. Yes, I did.
You knew that.

Speaker 16 But I liked your feigning shock. The funny thing is, I wasn't even feigning.
I just forgot that it was for carts. You know, it's the Diet Coke.

Speaker 16 It's the aspartame, you know?

Speaker 16 But we're going to be talking about a pretty gnarly case. It's one that he's a bigger name.
Richard Speck. You might have heard of him.
Yep.

Speaker 16 You might remember. He was in Mindhunter.
Yep, yep, yep. Like they showed, like, portrayed him in Mindhunter.

Speaker 16 I believe he's the one that like kills the bird. I think in Mindhunter during their interview, he like, is it the first second? I was going to say, is it the first second or the second second?

Speaker 16 The first second.

Speaker 16 It's the first one i believe why don't i remember that uh it's when they're interviewing a lot of the serial killers i think he's the one who kills the bird and it may be a bit of douchebag um it's very him though uh and he's also uh so ugly um

Speaker 16 that's he's very ugly i love that's i love who you are he's i mean that's pretty i think like across the board we can all agree i i think i'm not alone on this island uh he's ugly inside he's ugly outside he's ugly all around his aura is ugly yeah he's disgusting disgusting And this is

Speaker 16 disgusting. Nicholas would yell that right now.

Speaker 16 But this is also known as the student nurse murders. Yep.

Speaker 16 This case is super gruesome. It's brutal.
And it's also fucking shocking. Really?

Speaker 16 He

Speaker 16 contained and murdered so many women at once. It is like, I still,

Speaker 16 and we'll get into it, but the investigators in this case were like, there had to have been more killers. Like, there's no way one person did all this.
And I don't blame them.

Speaker 16 Sometimes they do, though. Like, sometimes one person is capable of the craziest shit.
But honestly, I haven't, this

Speaker 16 is one of a kind. So do you think he possibly wasn't working solo? Oh, no, he was.
It's just this is. It's shocking that he was able to do it.

Speaker 16 This isn't one of those where it's like, oh yeah, some people, that happens before. This does not.
Like, when you hear how it happens, you're like, how did that happen though?

Speaker 16 I don't know any of the details of this. I know the name and I know like the overview, but not any details.

Speaker 16 It's a horrifying case. It really is.
So we're going to go to 10.30 p.m. on the night of July 13th, 1966 in Chicago is where we are.

Speaker 16 Cora Amaro had just drifted off to sleep when she heard a knock at the front door of the townhouse that she was sharing with eight other young women.

Speaker 16 And it was in the Jeffrey Manor neighborhood on Chicago's south side. All nine students were in the nearby South Chicago Community Hospital Nursing Program.
And the house was kind of like a dorm.

Speaker 16 You know, it almost had like, it wasn't a sorority, but it had that like vibe to it. There was even like a house mother who lived in like an adjacent townhouse.

Speaker 16 And many of these students, like Cora, had come from other parts of the country or the world. Yeah.
They were from everywhere.

Speaker 16 Now thinking it might be one of her roommates who'd forgotten their keys, Cora, of course, gets up to let them in.

Speaker 16 And she started to open the door and she said that the person on the other side started pushing it open like forcibly.

Speaker 16 And it didn't feel like one of her friends, like who would just, you know, like help open the door kind of thing. This was like with force.

Speaker 16 So she finally, the door swings open because she's kind of like taken off guard by it. And it was not one of her roommates.
It was a young man that she'd never seen before. No, thank you.

Speaker 16 So Cora told a jury the next year, I saw a man standing in the center of our door holding a gun in his right hand, pointing it towards me. Fuck.
She just woke up from this.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and just like thought she was getting the door for one of her friends. Yeah.
She said, I noticed marks on his face, the dark clothes, his hair blondish, combed over in the back.

Speaker 16 Cora stared at who this was, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Speaker 16 And she said it felt like several minutes, but then she was just like shaken out of her shock by him saying, where are your companions? And he grabbed her by the arm. Ew, what?

Speaker 16 And she's like, what the fuck? And by then, the five other women who were in the house at the time heard all of this commotion and had come out to see what was going on.

Speaker 16 And as soon as they saw the gun, Cora and two of her roommates, Merlita Garjulo and Valentina Passion, ran into one of the closets in an attempt to just hide from him because they didn't know what the fuck else to do.

Speaker 16 I mean, what do you do? So for five minutes, they tried to hold the door closed from the inside, all of them holding the doorknob to keep it from turning as he's trying to open the door.

Speaker 16 Oh, that's chilling. Now, ultimately, what's even scarier is it wasn't this man who convinced them to come out, but one of the other girls in the house.

Speaker 16 One of the other girls said, you come out of the closet and he's not going to harm you.

Speaker 16 Because they were believing or at least hoping that if you just come out and listen to what he says, he's not going to hurt us. That's what he's saying.
And that's what he kept telling them.

Speaker 16 I'm not going to hurt you. Just listen to what I say and you'll be fine.
It's like then, why the fuck are you here, bro?

Speaker 16 So they come out of the closet to find this man pointing his gun in their direction. He's now rounded up all six women.
There's six women.

Speaker 16 And the man instructed him to them all to go into the nearby bedroom and sit on the floor. And in a super calm and even voice, he explained he just needed money to get to New Orleans.

Speaker 16 And if they would just give him whatever money they had, he would leave and no one would get hurt. Okay.
Now, if someone says that, you're going to be like, okay, take all that. Yeah, take all I have.

Speaker 16 Well, just listen, take whatever the fuck you want. I don't even see you.
Like,

Speaker 16 whatever. Didn't even hear your voice.
So to Cora and two of her roommates who had also come from the Philippines to study in the U.S., that was Merlita and Valentina,

Speaker 16 the insistence that all he wanted was money seemed disingenuous to them. Yeah.

Speaker 16 They were like clocking him a little bit.

Speaker 16 They said they had all known men like him back home, or at least heard about these kind of men, men who would like promise that you'll be fine just to convince you that you're safe, only to turn on you without warning.

Speaker 16 Oh, man. They all watched in complete terror as he began stripping the bed sheets with a large hunting knife that he pulled from a sheath on his belt.
What the fuck?

Speaker 16 Using the strips, he started binding them at the hands and ankles. So that would immediately be like, no,

Speaker 16 you don't need to bind me if you're just trying to get money. So while the man was occupied doing this, Cora and the others are whispering to each other.

Speaker 16 Cora and the other two students that were born internationally, they all decided, they were like, let's rush this motherfucker and knock him down. Let's go.
Like, what do we like?

Speaker 16 There's more of us than there is of him. Right, right.
And it's like, yeah, sure. Like, one or two of us might get hurt in the process, but there's no way he can control all five or six of us at once.

Speaker 16 Well, and it's like, Russia hurt, or God

Speaker 16 knows what's going to happen here.

Speaker 16 And it was pretty reasonable, and one that probably would have worked, I think, if they could have.

Speaker 16 But also, so what happened was the other girls insisted that they should just do what he said and he'll leave. Which you can understand.

Speaker 16 I can't fathom being in this situation. So I'm not going to sit here and say, well, in this situation, I would do this.

Speaker 16 Go fuck myself. I'm not going to say that like are you kidding me

Speaker 16 like go shut up i hate never have i ever heard somebody tell themselves to fuck off myself like that's i i'm not gonna sit here and be like yeah well i would have rushed her like i no i don't know what the fuck i would have done in this situation yeah this sounds fucking terrible and it's like so you can see both sides like what like Cora, I understand her friends.

Speaker 16 I can understand that they were like, let's rush this motherfucker because I want to believe that I also would have thought that. But at the same time, you might be frozen with terror.

Speaker 16 You're fucking terrified. I've never been in this position before.

Speaker 16 So it's like, if he's telling you, I just want to go to New Orleans, I need money, you guys have money, just give me the money and I'll leave.

Speaker 16 I can understand why they were sitting there going, okay, maybe if we just do what he says, I'll just leave. And like, but I'd also be like, why is he tying us up?

Speaker 16 Like, that would be a question on my mind. And why did he come with a hunting knife and a gun? Exactly.
That's a little scary. You could say like intimidation.

Speaker 16 He's just trying to intimidate us into not rushing. Well, you're also just not going through all the possibilities, like, necessarily, right.
Yeah.

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Speaker 16 So once this guy had tied the hands and ankles of all six women, he untied one of the women, Pamela Wilkining, and he led her out of the room into the living room.

Speaker 16 From their spot on the bedroom floor, the other girls could hear him demand that Pamela remove her clothes. Oh, no.
And they could also hear as he sexually assaulted her. Oh, that's awful.

Speaker 16 Then something

Speaker 16 very unexpected happened. In the middle of his assault on Pamela, He was interrupted by the arrival of another roommate, Gloria Davey,

Speaker 16 who he he quickly subdued and led into the bedroom with the rest of them where he tied her ankles and wrists just like the others. Okay.
So he is just in the middle.

Speaker 16 He was interrupted and managed to get her into a room as well. Yeah.

Speaker 16 The scene repeated itself 20 minutes later when two remaining roommates, Suzanne Ferris and Marianne Jordan, returned as well. Oh my god.

Speaker 16 So thinking quickly, he brandished his gun and forced them into the bedroom off the living room as well.

Speaker 16 I can't imagine one experiencing this from the very very like start and then two walking into this scenario. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Like,

Speaker 16 and you just can't even like fathom it. You're like, what? And how did this happen? How your life changes in a split second.
Like, split second.

Speaker 16 Like, who's like, those two girls are probably coming from class or shopping or running errands. It's coming home.
You're just coming home for the night and you think your day is ending. Yeah.

Speaker 16 And this motherfucker is in your house doing this. Yes.
Like. That's so scary.

Speaker 16 You should all know now that none of the victims in the the other room survive except one. Oh man.
There's one survivor to this. One.
That's unreal.

Speaker 16 So it's impossible to know exactly how things unfolded in that room. We can rely on Cora, her testimony, because she is the one that survives.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 And the coroner's report to piece together, you know.

Speaker 16 a little bit of an accurate picture of what happened in there.

Speaker 16 But from the bedroom, the other women could only just sit there and listen as he just unsheathed his knife and drove it into Pamela Wilkining's chest, killing her almost immediately because it severed her pulmonary artery.

Speaker 16 Oh, wow.

Speaker 16 And they're just tied up listening to this.

Speaker 16 And once Pamela was dead, there was no turning back. This guy is now a killer, and now he has to get rid of witnesses.

Speaker 16 So the man returns to the bedroom where he locked all of the roommates.

Speaker 16 And he took them from the room one by one and killed them. Just like that.
First, it was Suzanne Ferris, who he stabbed at least 18 times before strangling her to death.

Speaker 16 Then it was Marianne Jordan, who he stabbed multiple times, including once in the left eye.

Speaker 16 According to the coroner, her cause of death was from a stab wound directly to her heart, but the coroner couldn't tell when the fatal wound was administered.

Speaker 16 So she could have been alive when she was stabbed in the eye. That's awful to think about.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 And finally, he killed Nina Shimala, who he stabbed three times in the neck before ultimately strangling her to death.

Speaker 16 It's crazy that he's also switching off between stabbing and strangling them, and that he has the

Speaker 16 like, not, I don't want to say strength, but like the wherewithal to be able to do that. Like that many times over.

Speaker 16 The stamina, exactly. Yeah.
And it's also he's choosing two very intimate ways to kill someone. Yeah.
And he has a gun. Yeah.
And it's like,

Speaker 16 I guess he just brought that to get them

Speaker 16 to do what he said. And just think about it.
From the other room, they're all just listening helplessly as their friends are murdered one by one. Yeah.
And knowing that they're next.

Speaker 16 And just going to come in and get you. Not knowing exactly who is going to be next.
Are you next?

Speaker 16 Eventually, I'm being let out there to die

Speaker 16 because I'm bound and I can't help myself. What are you going to do?

Speaker 16 Many months after this, Cora would tell the investigators from the district attorney's office that despite the absolute fucking horror show that was happening out there she said there were no screams no sounds of violence in fact Cora recalled that if she didn't know otherwise she never would have expected her roommates were being systematically and brutally killed just feet from where she was that's it was like eerie silence how

Speaker 16 because a lot of the times he was stabbing them in like the neck and shit so that silence

Speaker 16 immediately it only sank in when after killing the first three women this man now fucking covered in blood came back to the bedroom where he'd left the others and started bringing them into the room as well.

Speaker 16 So now they're seeing this man come back covered in more and more blood each time.

Speaker 16 That's a nightmare. Like that you can't make that shit up.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 First was Valentina Passion, who was stabbed in the neck. She was followed by Merlita Garjulo, who was also stabbed in the neck before being strangled.

Speaker 16 Then he came for Patricia Matusic, who died of strangulation, but not before, and this is fucking terrible, before,

Speaker 16 so she died of strangulation, but not before she was kicked in the stomach so hard that her stomach began to hemorrhage. What?

Speaker 16 Yeah. Do you know how hard you have to kick someone in the fucking stomach to do that? I can only imagine.

Speaker 16 It was during one of these times that Cora, thinking quickly, managed to stuff herself as far back under one of the beds as she could, hoping that he wouldn't detect that she was gone.

Speaker 16 Like maybe he didn't count or something. Right.

Speaker 16 And in fact, when he returned, he seemed so singularly focused and in like a rampage state.

Speaker 16 Like he seemed like a fucking animal at this point that he didn't notice that one of the six original women was now missing from the room. That's, yeah.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Imagine how you would feel in that moment, realizing like, okay, I got away with this, but also exactly what you're about to say. How long did she sit there?

Speaker 16 So, well, first he grabs Gloria Davy by the arm and drags her away. And when the bodies were discovered, Gloria was the only one who hadn't suffered any stab wounds.

Speaker 16 Her cause of death was listed as strangulation. So maybe, I don't, I would say like maybe he was exhausted by this point, but strangulation takes more strength than stabbing does.
I don't know.

Speaker 16 I think maybe he just, that's what he decided on. Yeah.
Now. From her hiding spot under the bed, Cora just lay there fucking terrified.

Speaker 16 Every muscle is tensing in her body as she's listening to him now in a total fucking animalistic frenzy rummaging around the townhouse looking for valuables and cash like just ripping shit apart and she's just sitting there being like is he gonna look under the bed next and realize

Speaker 16 she wouldn't remember precisely when he left the house but

Speaker 16 they think it wasn't very long after midnight and once he thought everyone in the house was dead that's when he left apparently like he he thought he had gotten everyone he got everything he could out of there but still cora was so fucking terrified that she still didn't make a sound and she didn't move from her spot under the bed.

Speaker 16 So she stayed silently pressed up against the wall under the bed, bound until 5 a.m. Wow.
This was not even midnight, essentially. So like hours and hours.
Hours and hours.

Speaker 16 And she said she was literally sitting there just staring straight ahead, dead silent. just in a state of terror for hours.
She had to have been in shock.

Speaker 16 And then the alarm clock starts going off at 5 a.m. because that's when the nurses would have started their day.

Speaker 16 Imagine how jarring that sound must have been in that house. In the silence of that house, that alarm going off to start the day.

Speaker 16 Now, she's terrified that the man is still in the house at this point. She doesn't know.
She didn't hear him leave. She doesn't know what's going on.

Speaker 16 So she still lays there completely still for another hour before crawling out from under the bed. And just listening to that alarm go off over there.

Speaker 16 She said this was such a scary part because she said it was like eerie silence when usually in the morning when that alarm goes off, she's like, it's laughter it's us talking about our day it's us getting ready it's showers starting it's makeup being done it's hair stuff being like and it was just dead silence so sad and she said but nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when she walked out of that room and she said she crept slowly down the hall towards her own bedroom at the front of the house and she said Every single place she looked, it was just horror.

Speaker 16 It was just blood. It was horror.
And she said, scattered throughout the entire house were the bodies of her roommates, mutilated, motionless, just everywhere. Oh my God.

Speaker 16 And this isn't like, no matter what, you come out of the room and you see one murdered person. That's going to change you for that.
I can't even fathom that. Seeing this many.

Speaker 16 And these are all your friends. Like multiple, multiple friends brutally mutilated.
And you're the sole survivor. You can't even fathom that.
You can't even write write that. You can't.
That's it.

Speaker 16 I was just going to say, it's something that you would see in a movie. Cora did her best to just look straight ahead down the hall.
She was just focused on her bedroom door.

Speaker 16 And finally, she gets in there and closes her door behind her. And then she ran to the open window and pushed the screen out into the ground below.

Speaker 16 And she climbs out the window, crawled onto a two-foot ledge about 10 feet off the ground. And she said she was cowering there because she was scared to yell.

Speaker 16 So she said she finally broke her silence and screamed, Help me, help help me. Everyone is dead.
I am the only one alive on the sampon.

Speaker 16 Now, a sampon is a kind of flat-bottomed boat that's common in East and Southeast Asia.

Speaker 16 So in her mind, in her shock and trauma, she was back in the Philippines fleeing one of the violent insurrections that ironically had caused her to seek a better life in the United States in the first place.

Speaker 16 Oh my god. So she was like fully transported back to like literal like war and insurrection.
What your brain and your body does in

Speaker 16 times of stress and times of just like, I don't even know what to think about. There's no words to describe this situation.
It's remarkable what your brain does. I'm the only one alive on the sampon.

Speaker 16 Like she fully was like that. That's where I am.
Horrifying. And just for her to even be scared to yell, like, which Everyone's been in like a situation where they don't want to make any noise.

Speaker 16 And like, you think about it and you're like, oh my God, I'd be scared to scream right now. Yeah.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 16 Like thinking, or like watching a movie and being like, I don't think I could yell in that situation because I'd be so scared. This is one of those.
Would you actually be faced with it, though?

Speaker 16 That's the thing. Now, a few houses away, Betty Windmiller was standing out on her back porch and she heard Cora's cries for help.

Speaker 16 So Betty ran around the front of her house and ran directly into her neighbor, Robert Hall, who was out walking the dog.

Speaker 16 And the two ran down the street in the direction of the screaming and found Cora perched on the ledge outside her second story window. What a sight.

Speaker 16 And she kept repeating over and over, my friends are all dead, all dead, all dead. And she just kept yelling it.

Speaker 16 And by then, others had come out of their houses to see what was happening, and they came over to try to help calm Cora while Wynn Miller and Hall called for the police.

Speaker 16 Now, just by chance, a patrol car was driving through the neighborhood around the time Cora's neighbors placed the call. So

Speaker 16 that's how it happens. I know, it happens a lot.

Speaker 16 Now, searching around the outside of the house, Officer Daniel Kelly found the back door of the house unlocked, with one of the screen panels on the door having been pushed out.

Speaker 16 Inside, Kelly discovered exactly what had driven Cora to be hanging out on a ledge on her second story. In the living room, Kelly found Gloria Davis's nude body face down on the couch.

Speaker 16 So also, he had definitely sexually assaulted more of these women. Yeah.

Speaker 16 He recognized her immediately as the sister of his former girlfriend. Oh my God.

Speaker 16 Which must have been

Speaker 16 that's next legal shit. Yeah.

Speaker 16 And still, he just had to keep

Speaker 16 my job, man. Now, the rest of the horror awaited him on the second floor.

Speaker 16 Just outside the doorway to Cora's room, Marianne Jordan's body lay on the floor, a vicious knife wound very visible on her chest. Right next to Marianne was the body of Suzanne Ferris.

Speaker 16 Her clothing was torn, like whoever killed her had tried to remove it by cutting it away with a knife.

Speaker 16 It was like sheared away.

Speaker 16 There were several slashes and stab injuries visible on her neck, face, and back.

Speaker 16 In a nearby room, Pamela Wilkining's body lay on the floor. A long strip of fabric was still tied tightly around her neck.

Speaker 16 In the other bedroom at the front of the house, he found the body of Valentina lying across the body of her friend Merlita.

Speaker 16 Both had been stabbed repeatedly and were there were dark marks on Merlita's neck indicating that she had been strangled. And she was literally lying across the body of her friend.
That's just.

Speaker 16 So either like, she tried to crawl away or he placed her there. Which both are horrifying.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Now, Nina Shimala's body was on the bed, and she also had been stabbed repeatedly and strangled.

Speaker 16 And Kelly found the body of Patricia Matusik on the floor in the bathroom with large, dark abrasions on her neck.

Speaker 16 With the exception of Gloria Davy and Marianne Jordan, all the victims were still bound around the wrists and ankles, which

Speaker 16 take that what you will.

Speaker 16 By the time he'd found the last body, Daniel Kelly had already called for backup and a full forensic team.

Speaker 16 He told the dispatcher what he'd discovered there, but none of them, not even the most hardened senior homicide detectives at this point, were at all ready for what they were going to find there.

Speaker 16 I don't know how you would ever begin to prepare yourself to walk into something. Nobody was walking in here being like, oh, you know, typical day on homicide.
Like they were like, what the fuck? No.

Speaker 16 Now, when homicide detectives arrived there a short time later, they were greeted by a big throng of reporters who'd beaten them to the crime scene. Nice.

Speaker 16 And all of them, police and reporters alike, were traumatized by what they had seen.

Speaker 16 In an article describing his experience, Daily Calumet reporter Tom Hollitz wrote, I entered the residence of the eight slain student nurses. It was silent.

Speaker 16 There were other newsmen milling about in the back bedroom. I walked in and saw that the room had been torn up.
Women's undergarments, prayer books, and assorted coins were on the floor.

Speaker 16 I walked into the front bedroom. It was then that I wanted to vomit, but held back.
There was blood everywhere. I just stared.

Speaker 16 Now, the officers on the scene were equally shaken by what they saw that day. Commander Edward Sheehy told a reporter, I've seen bodies before.
I don't know why I'm upset. I'm shaking.

Speaker 16 Like, I think even he was like, usually I can handle this, but like, I'm fucked up.

Speaker 16 Like the other officials at the scene, Edward Sheehy had little to tell the press at this time other than say it was a massacre. Like, it's a nightmare.

Speaker 16 He's like, I don't have anything else to say to you. This is fucking terrible.

Speaker 16 Now, because of the scale of the carnage here, investigators immediately assume that the murders were definitely done by more than one person.

Speaker 16 Like, there's just the scale of the carnage, the amount of women that were killed. Right.
And like this small area, no one would think this was one person. Not one person.
That makes no way.

Speaker 16 It seemed completely impossible that a single person could control nine adults

Speaker 16 long enough to murder each of them. Like, that's wild.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Now, at a glance, it was clear to detectives that whether it was one man or ten, the killer or killers had at some point clearly escalated to the point of absolute fucking frenzy. Yeah.

Speaker 16 The bedroom where the original six women had been held was completely trashed. Belongings, clothing, other items just thrown around the room, like ripped up, just frenzied.

Speaker 16 Picturing somebody lose control like that is so scary. And Cora was under a bed during this.
Yeah, she heard everything, start to finish, everything.

Speaker 16 Everything. Purses were, pocketbooks were turned upside down.
Their contents was everywhere all over the floor. Any cash or valuables was stolen.

Speaker 16 Despite the chaotic state of the house, there was also little physical evidence actually to be found anywhere that would help them. That's crazy.

Speaker 16 As far as investigators could tell, everything that had been tossed around the bedrooms belonged to the eight women who lived there

Speaker 16 and told them nothing about the killer or killers

Speaker 16 there was however one item discovered that probably didn't belong there it was on a desk in the living room they found a man's white t-shirt that was sweat stained gross but curiously very free of any bloodstains oh yeah

Speaker 16 So I don't know. Yeah, that's weird.
But

Speaker 16 he just left a shirt there. Elsewhere in the house, they collected more than 30 fingerprints from the walls, the furniture, personal items, and the bodies themselves.

Speaker 16 Outside on the front lawn, they discovered tire tracks from a car that appeared to have sped away from the scene.

Speaker 16 Otherwise, there was really little to be found that could explain what the fuck happened there the previous night, and especially not tell them who did it.

Speaker 16 Now, the best lead detectives had, it seemed, was their only surviving witness, Cora.

Speaker 16 She had been in the house when the whole thing happened and could presumably describe the killers and hopefully give some like crucial details that they needed to try to get any kind of lead.

Speaker 16 But also who remembered, who would even remember like exactly what he looked like after all that?

Speaker 16 Well, by that time, Cora had been safely rescued from the second floor ledge and she was taken to South Chicago Community Hospital, the same hospital where she and two of the others worked.

Speaker 16 Having learned of the murders, the hospital staff sent all the student nurses home because they didn't want to.

Speaker 16 them they they wanted to spare them the emotional chaos of seeing their classmates bodies Yeah, of course. A few did choose to stay, though, because they wanted to be of some help.
That's sweet.

Speaker 16 So when investigators were finally able to sit down with Cora that morning, they quickly realized that she was very much in a state of shock and far too traumatized to be of any help. Yeah.

Speaker 16 For two hours, though, they tried to act this absolutely devastated student nurse.

Speaker 16 anything about what had happened that night, which like

Speaker 16 you have to try, I guess, but it's like you have to try for two hours. Well, that's the thing

Speaker 16 you don't if you don't get anything hour one It's safe to say you're probably not gonna get after hour one It's like give her give her some time to you know and it's like I get it, you know, like everybody has a job to do but and that you want to get you don't want this to be and you don't want something

Speaker 16 gosh forbid that she just forgets

Speaker 16 any of the crucial information. Yeah, it's a hard time situation.
But if she responded, which sometimes she didn't respond at all, she was just kind of capturing

Speaker 16 shock. All they got was like a, you know, store, short strings of sentences, mostly in her native language, which is Tagalog.
So they couldn't understand, anyways.

Speaker 16 Ultimately, she had to be sedated, and it was several hours before they could even speak to her again, which, like, I get that poor girl. Yeah.

Speaker 16 So while they're waiting to talk to Cora, they started canvassing the neighborhood, just hoping that someone saw something.

Speaker 16 Unfortunately, as Cora would later tell the jury, the murders and the ransacking of the townhouse were surprisingly quiet for such a brutal crime. None of the neighbors heard anything.

Speaker 16 What?

Speaker 16 Nothing. But I mean even like she later said how quiet it was while he was taking everything.
Oh yeah, she said it was like shocking.

Speaker 16 So one neighbor a few doors down thought she saw a car parked in front of the nurse's house when she arrived home at 3 a.m. But she couldn't be sure.

Speaker 16 Also, can you imagine looking back and thinking how you spent your night when that was happening? Yeah. Like however many doors down?

Speaker 16 Like you're sitting there being like, I was watching a movie or like I I was taking a shower. That would be such an out-of-body experience.
It would. It would fuck me up.
That would absolutely.

Speaker 16 Like I'm just living my life completely oblivious to the absolute horror and to the fact that like people needed help. Yeah.
And I couldn't help them because I didn't even know they needed help.

Speaker 16 Like that would really throw me for a living.

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Speaker 16 Another neighbor told police that there was a, quote, strange collar at her door the day before, but no one else had any similar experience. to that.
That's weird.

Speaker 16 Even the house mother, who lived in an adjacent townhouse and was awake at the time, said she didn't recall anything out of the ordinary that night. Wow.
Yeah. That's crazy.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Now, by that afternoon, more than 150 officers were assigned to the case, pulling from officers from the robbery and homicide squads, in addition to a lot of the beat cops that they could get.

Speaker 16 By early evening, Cora had started to come out of her sedation and was finally able to speak to detectives. To their incredible surprise, the murders were committed by a single man.

Speaker 16 She was like, nope, there was no one else in that house. Cora described him as being about 25 years old.
What the fuck? Six feet tall and weighing about 170 pounds.

Speaker 16 Now, despite her trauma and shock, she walked detectives through everything that had happened as best as she could remember, from the moment she woke up to the knock on the door to the following morning when she came out from under the bed after hearing the alarm clock.

Speaker 16 She said, I thought if the man was still in the house, that would scare him off, but I wasn't sure if he had left. I waited.
And when I didn't hear anything, after a while, I crawled out.

Speaker 16 When she was asked if she could pick him out of a lineup, she said, I would recognize him. I would know if I saw him again.
Which he has a very distinct face. He does.
He has terrible skin. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Now, to the press and the public, investigators expressed confidence in their ability to catch who was responsible for these murders.

Speaker 16 Lead detective Michael Spiato told reporters during a press conference, I'm optimistic about some of the leads we now have in the case. But the truth was, detectives said very little,

Speaker 16 other than the description provided by Cora, which didn't really help because it kind of described thousands of young men in Chicago at that time. Yeah.
They had no idea where to start.

Speaker 16 But it's like they can't tell that to the press because you're going to freaking pandemonium.

Speaker 16 Now, if there was any place in the United States where social and cultural changes of the 1960s were happening in full display right now, it was Chicago in the summer of 1966.

Speaker 16 By this summer, it was the turbulence of the national debate over civil rights had definitely reached Chicago.

Speaker 16 And a typically pretty chill Midwestern city, after police arrested a black man they believed was wanted for armed robbery, that's when things really boiled over. Yeah.

Speaker 16 People were tired of the oppression, the marginalization, and the abuse that they'd taken from police for decades at this point.

Speaker 16 And black residents of Chicago's west side took to the streets to protest their poor treatment.

Speaker 16 For three days between July 12th and July 15th, the majority of the Chicago Police Department was deployed to these protests.

Speaker 16 It turned out, though, that the protests, what was going on, which had stretched the department really thin at this point, also became somewhat of a benefit in the hunt. for this killer.
Really?

Speaker 16 Because they were forced to pull detectives from other departments.

Speaker 16 So the squad of officers that they got were made up of men and women from with a variety of resources and skill sets. Okay, that's really cool, actually.
Yeah, that it worked out lately.

Speaker 16 And what's wild is the most valuable of these turned out to be the robbery squad. Really? Because robberies are hyper-local crimes that typically involve the selling of stolen goods.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Robbery detectives, because of that, develop a network of contacts, both upstanding contacts and criminal contacts. Okay.
They can be relied upon as a source of information in situations like this.

Speaker 16 That makes sense.

Speaker 16 So when the large squad of investigators and officers spread out across the city, the detectives naturally engaged their networks, hitting up their informants, seeing if anyone heard anything about the murders.

Speaker 16 One of the robbery detectives had a contact who worked at a south side garage known as a gathering spot for a lot of petty criminals. Okay.
And people just like passing through.

Speaker 16 The mechanic didn't know anything about the murders and hadn't heard anything from the men who usually hang around the garage.

Speaker 16 But when detectives described the man based on what they'd learned from Cora, something did sound familiar to him.

Speaker 16 A few days earlier, a younger guy had been hanging around the station who fit that description. The mechanic remembered the guy because he was like, he was so fucking rude and belligerent.

Speaker 16 He was an asshole. And he's like, I remember him.
According to the mechanic, the guy had said something about how he was shipping out or taking a boat somewhere.

Speaker 16 He said they'd be able to pick him out of a crowd because the tattoo on his left arm read, born to raise hell. Oh, God.

Speaker 16 Fucking loose catigrip. The man had even left two of his bags with the mechanic while he went out to look for work at the National Maritime Union, the NMU,

Speaker 16 around the corner from the station, and he hadn't come back for them. Oh, so now they have his shit.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 So the mention of the boat and the National Maritime Union made the detectives think back to the crime scene and to the unusual knots used to bind the victim's hands and feet. Oh, shit.

Speaker 16 After hours spent combing the streets and alleys and hitting up every contact they could think of, investigators had finally gotten a break and a potential suspect. That's a solid lead.
Yep.

Speaker 16 Founded in, because those knots were maritime knots. Like they are, you know, those are Marines.
Easily identifiable.

Speaker 16 Founded in 1937, the National Maritime Union functioned as a labor union where sailors and others with experience on a boat or ship could find work through assignments that were arranged by the union.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Having received this tip from the mechanic, the detectives rushed over to the union building, but found no one there who matched the description given by Cora. Damn it.

Speaker 16 But when they spoke to the administrator on duty and gave the description, the man recalled someone who'd been in a few days earlier who matched that description.

Speaker 16 Okay, everybody is really looking at it. We're working.
We're working.

Speaker 16 According to the man at the NMU, a young man matching their suspect had been in a few days earlier, and he was looking for work on a boat headed to New Orleans. Huh.

Speaker 16 Something the killer had mentioned when he gathered up the six original victims in the bedrooms.

Speaker 16 Now, as luck would have it, the trash at the NMU still hadn't been taken out from the previous few days.

Speaker 16 And after digging through the waste paper basket, the administrator was able to find the crumpled slip of paper containing the information they needed. Dop.

Speaker 16 The slip had sent the man to a job on a on a ship called the Sinclair Great Lakes, but when he arrived, there was only one bunk available, and the job had already gone to another man.

Speaker 16 The suspect returned to the NMU in a highly agitated state. He was pissed off.
And the administrator told him if he left his information, they would do their best to find another assignment for him.

Speaker 16 Fortunately for the detectives, this man wrote his name and a number where he could be reached on the slip. No.
Suspect's name was Richard B.

Speaker 16 Speck, and the number was a direct line to his sister who lived in the city. Hello? So let's, before we get into the next part, let's go back to who Richard fucking Speck is.
Yeah, I'm curious.

Speaker 16 Richard eventually. Yeah.
Richard Benjamin Speck was born December 6th, 1941, and he was born in Kirkwood, Illinois. A Sag.
He was the seventh of eight children, born to Benjamin and Mary Speck.

Speaker 16 That is so many children.

Speaker 16 The family struggled financially, but they, you know, they were resourceful, and Ben and Mary Speck managed to support themselves and their eight children, even in the hardest of times.

Speaker 16 Through most of his adult life, Ben Speck was a farmer and a logger and would sometimes supplement his income with odd jobs here and there. Okay.

Speaker 16 Mary Speck spent the bulk of her time raising all those children. In fact, Richard's six older brothers and sisters were considerably older than he and his younger sister, Carolyn.

Speaker 16 So Mary had her hands full far longer than would have otherwise happened if she had evenly spaced them.

Speaker 16 And when she wasn't wrapped up in family life, Mary Speck was a devout Christian who volunteered regularly with the Presbyterian Church.

Speaker 16 Unlike most marriages of the day, it was Mary, not Ben, who ruled over the house with a dominant personality.

Speaker 16 Oh,

Speaker 16 guided by

Speaker 16 her very strong religious convictions, she set standards for how everyone, including her husband, would behave. Oh, no, mommy issues and religious trauma? Yeah.

Speaker 16 She was not above imposing her will on everybody whenever it suited her. This all changed somewhat when Richard was six years old and his father died from a heart attack at the age of 53.

Speaker 16 Oh, wow, that's so young. Richard had been close with his father, and this hit him pretty hard.
He was only six. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 16 But given their financial circumstances, there was very little time to grieve this loss.

Speaker 16 Just three years later, in 1950, Mary Speck met and married Carl Lindberg, a man she'd met on one of her many train trips back and forth to Chicago after Ben's death. Okay.

Speaker 16 Mary had been instantly charmed by this insurance salesman.

Speaker 16 But once they were married, she learned quickly that he was nothing like Ben. While Ben was generally kind and submissive, he just went went with the flow.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Carl was a, quote, hard-drinking hellraiser. Oh.
With a long criminal record of fraud, forgery, and disorderly conduct. How delightful.

Speaker 16 He was quick to anger, and he didn't hesitate to resort to violence if he had been drinking. Damn, that's like the stepdad way.
Yeah, the stepdad from hell. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Now, following the marriage, Mary moved to Texas to live with Carl, while Richard and Carolyn were sent to live with his oldest sister, Sarah, in Chicago, so he could complete the third grade.

Speaker 16 The third grade. Throughout this time, Richard was remembered as being, quote, a very good boy who got along well with his peers and his sister.

Speaker 16 This all changed though when the school year came to an end and Richard and his sister moved to be with their mother in Texas.

Speaker 16 And once again, Carl Lindberg proved to be the antithesis of Richard's biological father.

Speaker 16 Lindberg was physically and emotionally abusive to Richard, and within a very short period of time, the effects of that abuse were very noticeable to his teachers. You can fuck a kid up real easy.

Speaker 16 Yeah, Yeah. His eighth grade teacher said he was sort of sulky, but he didn't talk back.
Over time, he withdrew himself. He became isolated, failing to make any friends.

Speaker 16 His teacher later said, he seemed sort of lost. I don't think I ever saw him smile.
I wasn't able to teach him anything. Did you try to? Which is just like really sad.

Speaker 16 In 1957, Speck enrolled in Crozier Technical School and managed to earn no credits in his first semester, even failing Jim. Bitch, how do you fail Jim? Yeah.
Even I didn't fail. Fail Jim.

Speaker 16 When the next semester started, he didn't bother to return to school.

Speaker 16 Instead, he just started engaging in criminal behavior and was picked up by the police very frequently for vandalism and petty theft, which he didn't have a... He really didn't have a shot.

Speaker 16 Like, unfortunately, he just did not have a shot. You feel bad for the kid version.

Speaker 16 Now, six years later, Carl Lindberg divorced Mary Speck, but as far as Richard was concerned, the damage had already been done. I mean, yeah.

Speaker 16 By then, he'd begun hanging out with an older group of young men, many of whom had already amassed a very very long criminal history, and they all spent their lives drinking, gambling, fighting, doing just like dumb shit.

Speaker 16 Raisin hail! Raising hail! He was born to do it. During this time, he started supporting himself through petty theft, breaking into homes, stealing whatever valuables he could find lying around.

Speaker 16 He was a delinquent. Now, as far as criminals went, Richard Speck was.

Speaker 16 Not sophisticated, I would say. Okay.
But he really didn't need to be. All he needed was enough to get by.
Like, he wasn't looking to do any like big heists.

Speaker 16 At the same time, his behavior on the street was becoming more and more aggressive. In 1965, Speck and a friend were arrested for beating a 15-year-old boy and cutting his face.
What the fuck? Yeah.

Speaker 16 A few months later, Richard was arrested after police found him crouched outside the window of a house that he intended to burglarize, carrying a screwdriver in his pocket. I'm sorry, what?

Speaker 16 When they asked him what he needed the screwdriver for, he answered, I always carry a screwdriver. Oh, okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 He does. I was like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 16 He looked at them like they were crazy. It's like, you don't have your screwdrivers tonight, fellas?

Speaker 16 No big deal.

Speaker 16 So, how old is he now? He's, he's like 23. Oh, 24.
Yeah, depending on who he was.

Speaker 16 During this period of criminality, he also made time for,

Speaker 16 I would say, women, but no, girls. No.

Speaker 16 Including a 15-year-old girl. No.
Named Shirley Malone, who he dated briefly. That's not dated.
Who he groomed and

Speaker 16 was a pregnant person. Assaulted, probably.
When Mary Speck discovered that Shirley had become pregnant,

Speaker 16 she demanded that her son marry this girl. So in 1962, they married at City Hall.

Speaker 16 Married and with a child on the way, Richard and Shirley moved in with Richard's mother, but that didn't last long. Married to a child with a child on the way.
Exactly.

Speaker 16 Between Richard's hard drinking and his tendency to lose jobs every four minutes, The couple were soon kicked out of his mother's house and spent several months moving around from one apartment to another.

Speaker 16 Oh,

Speaker 16 In July, Shirley gave birth to their daughter, Robbie, but by then the relationship had completely deteriorated and fallen apart.

Speaker 16 And rather than continue following her deadbeat husband around one tenement to another, she chose to return to her parents' house.

Speaker 16 By this time, the relationship had become physically abusive, including one time where Richard threw a knife at Shirley and hit her in the leg.

Speaker 16 What the f- So she was like, nah, I don't really see a reason to stay with you. I'm out.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Now, while their relationship may have ended, Shirley's connection to Richard through their daughter meant that she could never sever all ties to him.

Speaker 16 In the years after that, Richard not only harassed and frequently terrorized Shirley, but also Shirley's parents, Ida and Albert Malone. Like, dude, what are you doing?

Speaker 16 In addition to frequently making inappropriate and wildly disrespectful sexual comments to his mother-in-law,

Speaker 16 he would often threaten them with guns and other weapons, including an incident in 1965 where he twice attacked Ida Malone with a knife while her husband and daughter were out of the house.

Speaker 16 It was only after Ida grabbed a knife and shouted, I'll make you eat that knife

Speaker 16 that Richard finally retreated. And that's what we call queen chill.
A bad bitch.

Speaker 16 She said, I'll make you eat that fucking knife. He retreated and threatened to kill her as he left the house.

Speaker 16 It's like, yeah, you're going to kill me while you retreat because I told you to eat that knife? Swallow that knife. Finally in china of southern charm when Catherine says, I hope you fall on an ass.

Speaker 16 She's like, why don't you fall on an ass?

Speaker 16 That's the most intense thing to say.

Speaker 16 Blaze damn.

Speaker 16 Now, finally, in January 1966, after years of abuse from Richard, the Malones brought their daughter to the courthouse and formally filed for divorce and requested sole custody of their child.

Speaker 16 The divorce was not contested, and it was granted on the spot. God, I thought you were going to say not granted.

Speaker 16 The next day, Shirley married Tinker Frazier, a man she'd been seeing for several months. And just before the divorce was filed, Richard visited Shirley one final time and begged her to reconsider.

Speaker 16 Shirley, baby, no. When she refused, he pathetically asked if he could borrow her car before exiting their lives forever.
What a deadbeat. What a pathetic beat.
What a deadbeat. Loser.

Speaker 16 That's such ex-husband behavior. Such a fucking loser.
Please get back with me. Please, please, please.
Can I borrow the car?

Speaker 16 If we're not going to get back together, can I use your car? She's like, fuck off. It reminds me of driving in cars with boys.
Ugh.

Speaker 16 Now, between 1961 and 1966, Richard bounced between jobs, apartments, even penitentiaries. And it was really the latter of the three where he seemed most comfortable and at ease, to be honest.

Speaker 16 Isn't that so like I don't feel bad for him, but isn't that such a sad concept

Speaker 16 to be locked up in that and that some people

Speaker 16 are more comfortable in that scenario? It's a sad state of being. More comfortable in that scenario where all of your creature comforts are taken away from you.
Exactly.

Speaker 16 Now, in the real world, there were so many variables and social norms to be navigated, but in prison, he knew what was expected of him. It felt like it's simplified.
Okay. Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 16 He doesn't do well with complex thoughts and complex ideas and notions. He needs it simple as fuck.

Speaker 16 You get up, you eat your food, you go back in your cell, you, you brush your teeth, and you go to sleep. Like that's

Speaker 16 what he needed. That's so sad.

Speaker 16 And also, he didn't have to be anything other than what he truly was, which by this point, according to one former employee, was quote, careless, troublesome, and dishonest.

Speaker 16 He could be that in prison. Imagine people, they're like, hey, what are three words that describes this person? And that's what they do.
Careless, troublesome, dishonest.

Speaker 16 I'd be like, damn, I should probably do some inner work.

Speaker 16 Now, in the fall of 1966, after yet another stretch in prison for forgery this time, Richard Speck was released from jail and accepted an invitation from his sister Carolyn, who remember had taken care of him when he was little to join her and her husband in Chicago.

Speaker 16 And remember, when he was living with Carolyn, he was good. He was happy.
But he was also like,

Speaker 16 but still, like he was, I think like... Well, obviously she was a good influence.
I think it went, really went downhill when he moved to Texas with his mom and his stepfather.

Speaker 16 Because he was being abused. Now, at that time, Richard had promised his sister and just about anyone else who still spoke to him that he was ready to give up his hard.

Speaker 16 hard-living life and straighten his shit out.

Speaker 16 And all he needed was a place to stay. Well, he got himself a job and got back on his feet.
He didn't want to do this. And of course you want to do that for your siblings.

Speaker 16 They're promising you the world. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Now, unfortunately it turned out that richard's promises to get his life together were just another empty shit can promise um and within a few weeks of arriving in chicago he'd spent most of his time and money getting drunk and hanging around downtown so

Speaker 16 carolyn was just trying to help him out and be a good big sister just like she had done when he was i mean she took That's her little brother who's like in third grade.

Speaker 16 And his mom and his stepdad were just like, bye, we're going to Texas. You can live with your sister in Chicago.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 And like just abandoned, like like straight up, we're like, you take care of them. Yeah.
She sounds like she was more of a mom. She probably just tried to step in.

Speaker 16 And like at this point, she's like, I'm trying to get back. I did my best, but like, I did my best.

Speaker 16 And that's where we are going to end for part one, because then we are going to get into his arrest for the murders of the nurses in Chicago in 1966. In part two.

Speaker 16 But that is Richard Speck so far. Wow.
That was a whirlwind. And I can only imagine what part two will be.
And we've caught up to where we are now in 1966.

Speaker 16 We've caught up to he is now living with Carolyn, his sister, in Chicago. He's promising the world, and he's still being a shitbag.
I have a feeling that he does more shitbag things. Yes.

Speaker 16 I mean, he definitely does. All right.
Well, with that being said, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird,

Speaker 16 but not so weird that you're just born to raise hell. Oh, fucking loser.

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