Richard Speck

In 1952 his oldest brother Robert died at age 23 in an automobile accident.

Serial killer who single-handedly committed the most number of murders in a single day - 8. He was the 7th of 8 children born to Robert Speck and Gladys Sterner. His father died when he was 6 and his mother moved the family to Dallas. While there he had 37 arrests for drunk and disorderly behaviour and burglary. He worked as a garbage man for a while. In 1965 he was caught trying to assault a woman at knife point. He was sentenced to 490 days and released as a parole violator.

In March 1966 he was separated from his wife and went to Monmoth, Illinois where he has some distant relatives. By then he had become an alcoholic and harboured homicidal threats against his wife. He worked as a merchant seaman on the ore barges that plied the Great Lakes. Speck suffered from Satyriasis (sexual addiction in men) and though he is remembered now for his 8 victim tally on one bloody night he was resposible for 4 other killings that occurred over a period of 3 months before that. This truly makes him a serial-killer and not just a mass murderer.

His first killing took place on April 10, 1966. Most of his victims were women who were abducted, raped and either strangled or stabbed to death. His oldest victim was 65.

On July 10, 1966 he moved to Chicago. Speck needed money to get passage on a vessel bound for New Orleans.

On the 'infamous' night of July 13/14, 1966 he approached Jeffrey Manor a 2 storey townhome at 2319 East 100th Street. It served as a dormitory for nursing students from South Chicago Community Hospital. He was high on downers and inebriated when he knocked on the door. The door was opened by a young Filipino nurse who was immediately taken hostage at both gun and knife point. Speck then aroused 5 other students and herded all 6 of them into one room where he bound and gagged them. Over the next hour 3 more nurses came back to their dormitory and Speck now found himself with 9 potential victims. Speck then came to his brutal decision - he would just dispose of them. He took them one by one, like lambs for slaughter, into adjacent rooms, where he stabbed, strangled and at times raped them. While this was going on the remaining nurses tried to crawl under beds or escape. Speck finished killing 8 out the 9 nurses. He had lost count and the lone survivor of the Carnage - the Filipino nurse who had let him in, had managed to crawl away in the darkness and hide in a dark corner in another room. She waited there until 5 in the morning before she came out and screamed for help. The nurses were young who ranged in age from 20 to 24. When the police examined the corpses and noticed the use of square knots they suspected their killer might be a seaman. The lone survivor gave a description of the pock-marked Speck, including a tattoo on his left forearm that said 'born to raise hell'.

On July 17, 1966 Speck was found in his crashpad and admitted to Cook County Hospital. He had tried to overdose on drugs to commit suicide. He was recognized by the doctors as the possible killer and the authorities were alerted.

In April 1967 he was convicted of multicide and sentenced to death in August, 1967.

However in 1972 the verdict was overturned when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. His sentence was commuted to consecutive life terms amounting to 400 years. While in prison Speck considered sex change and even got regular injections with female hormones so that he could gradually change his appearance.

His picture is featured in Freeway (1996). The photograph of him represents the father of Reese Witherspoon's character, Vanessa Lutz.