60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
7/14/66 – The Beatles receive a gold record for sales of their latest single, “Paperback Writer”
Also on 7/14 – Richard Speck rapes and murders eight nurses here in Chicago
(more below)
Also on 7/14 - Actor Matthew Fox is born
'60's FLASHBACK:
From our 50th anniversary piece regarding the day that Richard Speck murdered eight female student nurses in their Chicago South Side townhouse, we file this update:
It was a brutal and senseless crime, the likes of which Chicago had never seen before. Breaking into their apartment on the evening of July 13th ... and not finishing his brutal murder spree until the morning of the 14h, Richard Speck robbed, beat, raped, strangled and stabbed eight Chicago nurses.
The series of events took hours as Speck waited for each girl to return home and then added them to his list of victims.
A ninth potential victim, Filipino Nurse Corazon Amurao, escaped murder by this mad man by hiding under a bed. Lying still and keeping quiet, she had to endure the agony of watching as each of her friends was brutally slaughtered from this hidden vantage point.
It sent terror throughout the city, knowing that this man with the "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo was still loose somewhere in our city.
As an irrational and naive preteen, I remember being scared to death that Speck might show up in our neighborhood seeking shelter ... or more victims. There was no escaping it ... it was literally everywhere you looked ... covered virtually non-stop by every television station and plastered all over every local newspaper. (Apparently at some point after the murders Speck attempted what amounted to a botched suicide attempt, which ultimately brought him into Cook County Hospital where, while lying on a gurney, nurses noticed his now infamous tattoo, covered with blood, and called local police.) In all, only two days had passed between the time the murders took place and Speck was in police custody.
Then Chicago Tribune Reporter (and noted syndicated columnist, current Forgotten Hits Reader and sometime contributor) Bob Greene later became the only person to ever interview Speck while he was incarcerated. (He died in jail nineteen years later of a heart attack, one day shy of his 50th birthday.)
At first Speck denied the murders ... then said he had an accomplice ... before ultimately admitting that he had committed the crimes, saying at one point that "they'd probably all still be alive today if one of them hadn't spit in my face." Not a likely scenario, given Speck's previous 41 counts of arrest, including drunk driving, trespassing, forgery, violence, rape, robbery and murder. He was also suspected of several other unsolved murders in Indiana and Michigan.
Biography.com offers a pretty comprehensive overview of Speck's "career" on the dark side ...
http://www.biography.com/people/richard-speck-11730438#horrifying-crimes
And this link provides more information on Bob Greene's landmark interview ...
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-12-08/features/9104200595_1_murderer-confession-heroin
Much will be said today about Speck's heinous crime and the way that it shook our city ... but it is doubtful that you will see any interviews with survivor Corazon Amurao, now in her early 80's ... she has had sixty years to move on from the trauma and the tragedy.
But eight women lost their lives that night ... eight young women who were dedicating their careers to helping others ... so please, let's take a moment today to remember them ... inspired lives and dreams cut short by this mad man.
Please take a moment today to honor these victims ...
