''I like Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson. Their father was a cement finisher descended from Germans. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune). He had pried open the screen of a first-floor window, reached inside for the back-door handle and slipped into the house. After the death of his father when Speck was six, his mother remarried, moving the family to Dallas, Texas. It was the kind of neighborhood where kids walked everywhere and went home for lunch, though Pat took sandwiches to school because her mother worked during the day while her father, who ran the bar at night, slept. Mary Ann Jordanin her nursing uniform in an undated photo. Gloria Davy jokes around in the South Side townhouse that was used as a dormitory for student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital, circa 1966. ''I stay up at night as long as it takes me to fall asleep or pass out from the hooch or from whatever we have at the time.''. Phil was engaged to one of Mary Ann's classmates, Suzanne Farris, who still lived in the townhouse, and Suzanne was with him that evening. I give their addresses to my cellmates. That day was December 7th, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor that pushed the United States into World War Two. "You are surprised I survived?" A lanky man in dark clothes, with slicked-back hair and marks on his face, was standing there with a small black revolver in his right hand. Who Is Richard Speck? The Matuseks wanted Pat to be buried in the clothes she would have worn for her upcoming graduation, so on the day after the murders, Pat's sister, Betty Jo, asked Kubasek for a favor. Took a nap. One went into nursing. He opened it. They were the last women to arrive at the townhouse that night. In 1965 she became president of the Student Nurses Association of Illinois. "She is doing very, very well," said William Martin, 79, the former assistant state's attorney who was the lead prosecutor in the case. He keeps the photo in a plastic pouch, tucked next to the prayer card from her funeral. Lori Davy Sivek remembers her sister Gloria Davy, one of eight student nurses and nurses murdered together 50years ago on Chicago'sSouth Side. The children suffered considerable abuse at the hands of their drunken stepfather, and Speck's childhood was marked by juvenile delinquency and alcohol abuse, which soon led to petty crime. Speck, however, seemed to have a knack for making a quick escape and keeping police forces guessing. From early childhood, she connected with him in a unique way, and he was why she wanted to specialize in pediatric nursing. In one of the slides that her brother recovered from the basement, a young man crouches next to the Bel Air, washing the whitewalls, smiling for the camera. It is being republished for the anniversary with updated sections, including one about Atienza. Among Pam's favorite pleasures was watching Jack, who was seven years older, race cars. Speck is in jail for murdering and raping a group of women. Another time, according to a different news account, Tina wrote her sister saying she wished she could live in Chicago forever. Nursing school exposed Pam and her classmates to life's wide range of joy and trouble. I don`t know why it happened to me. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune). ''), the rest of the conversation was sickeningly mesmerizing. "It hurt everyone down to your soul and your being and your bone," Kubasek said. Look at her. According to news accounts published at the time, Merlita, 23, was quiet, shy, hardworking, efficient, pretty and blessed with a rich singing voice. Ate an early supper with Merlita and Tina. Teacher. It was the kind of childhood that half a century later people look back on and call simpler, innocent, a time when city kids were raised to be independent and unafraid. He hates knowing that anyone who Googles the name "Nina Schmale" lands on the name "Richard Speck.". There's another kind of sealed box many of them have carried around as well. She appreciates every day of life and wants to be happy all the time, because life is not long, Martin said she told him recently. Catherine Ceniza Choy, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, writes about the three exchange nurses extensively in "Empire of Care," her history of Filipino nurses in the United States. The eight nurses killed by Richard Speck on July 14, 1966, in Chicago were, top from left, Gloria Davy, Suzanne Farris, Merlita Gargullo and Mary Ann Jordan. And it turned out that it reopened her life.". They could talk about the wedding. Nurse. There, next to his kitchen near the village of Mahomet, 140 miles south of Chicago, the lost women flickered back to life. In the years that followed, Siouchoff, 70, distanced herself from everything and everyone involved with that awful night. "A lot of us never locked our doors but the Speck case changed all that.". It was that door that a student nurse from a neighboring townhouse approached at 12:15 a.m. on July 14, in search of bread for a late-night sandwich. His sister and seven of her fellow student nurses and nurseswere murdered 50years ago in one of Chicagos darkest crimes. Speck's death came as a relief to Wilkening and to the families of the other women he killed. The United States needed nurses, and Filipinas helped relieve the shortage. In that small room, with its linoleum floor and overhead light, Suzie taught him how to make a grilled cheese sandwich and how, if you mixed sour cream and dry onion soup mix, presto, you had French onion dip. And Carol Burnett. If that one girl wouldn`t have spit in my face, they`d all be alive today.''. "She was great with him," recalled their sister, Susan Jordan Morin. Her dad was on the line. These attacks, however, paled into insignificance on July 13, 1966, when Speck arrived on the doorstep of a townhouse in South Chicago, which served as a communal home for a group of eight young student nurses from nearby South Chicago Community Hospital. That's where she was on the night of July 13, 1966, when someone knocked at the bedroom door. Shes in her nurses uniform, gazing down. No answer. In the basement's dim overhead light, a big, brown cardboard box caught his eye, a box so soggy its bottom was ready to fall out. It hurt to see Nina in her yellow swimsuit he thought back to the Life magazine photo after the murders that showed it hanging on a rod in her bedroom but it also made him glad, glad to be reminded of who his sister was before death defined her. John and Nina walked together to the one-room Queen Bee schoolhouse, carrying tin lunch pails. He's still searching for the words to explain to his three children who his sister was, what happened to her. (Schmale family ). But any kid can end up just like me.'' When. On this day, Amurao personally identified Speck as the killer. In one of John Schmale's slides, Nina poses wearing nothing but a white towel and her nurse's cap, holding a hypodermic needle and pretending she's about to give one of her housemates a shot. A. "Life is looking good for Suzie.". And the mail. She perpetuated the ruse until the day her daughter, then in high school, was watching a TV show about Speck, the women he murdered and the families left behind. On the night of the crime, 24-year-old Speck snuck into a townhouse in Chicago where the nurses lived. I wanted to get rid of it. Elmhurst Blotter: Man charged with battery for allegedly punching a security guard at a bar, Hinsdale police blotter: multiple thefts reported by patients at Hinsdale Hospital, Glenview police blotter: Harwood Heights woman charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. In 1991, while still in prison, Speck died of a heart attack. He thinks about the family she might have had, wishes she could have met his two sons and daughter and eight grandchildren. Speck died of a heart attack after 25 years in prison. A couple of days after his basement flooded, John Schmale finally mustered the energy to head downstairs and investigate the damage. Secretary. No one in her village had ever gone to America. An impressive and brazen mimic, Mary Ann made everyone around her laugh. Martin and Atienza kept in contact as Martin collaborated with author Dennis Breo, updating the book "Crime of the Century," about the Speck murder case. Washed clothes in the bathroom sink, hung them to dry in the basement. Mary Ann Jordan grew up hearing her father's tales of her Irish grandmother, Grace. In the townhouse's unofficial sorority, Pam was the quiet one. I`d never shot heroin before. Who Is Suspected Pentagon Leaker Jack Teixeira? "The mailman would bring them in boxes," he said. "She did well with other people in situations that you're not necessarily in control of," Farris said, "which I think is a good skill for nursing.". An average student at Aquinas High School, she was turned down by Loyola University, so after graduation she took a job as a file clerk for Peoples Gas. The next morning, Pat's mother called Kubasek, worried. She loved Elvis, cats and the color pink. Between their second-floor apartments stretched a low, flat roof, and Pat and Arlene often ran across it to tap on each other's windows, looking for a playmate. News item: Another Speck parole hearing at Stateville Correctional Center. Billy, the spirited boy who rarely spoke more than two words at a time, blurted three: "Mary Ann's dead!". His mother filed them away neatly, along with the pictures and newspaper clippings. Richard Benjamin Speck (December 6, 1941 - December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 13, 1966. Richard Speck was waiting. The first season of Mindhunter saw Ford interview a number of famous serial killers, including Edmund Kemper (Coed Killer), necrophile Jerry Brudos and mass murderer Richard Speck all of. Best Known For: In 1966, Richard Speck committed one of the most horrifying mass murders in American history when he brutalized and killed eight student nurses living on Chicago's South Side. Media coverage splashed Speck's image all over the front pages and, in a desperate bid to escape, Speck tried to commit suicide on July 19, 1966, by slashing his wrists in the seedy hotel he was staying in. For her to discuss an event she calls "still unbelievable" is an act of faith, one she commits only because she'd like the world to pause and think about Mary Ann and her friends. The Mystery Novelist Who Committed a Real Murder, Boston Marathon Bombings Survivors, 10 Years Later, A Complete Timeline of Adnan Syeds Trial, Release. She was petrified of Speck but had the courage to step down from the witness stand, walk up to him and point her finger 2 inches from his forehead. He was matter-of-fact about. "Well," she wrote, "it was a fine, dizzying, exciting and wonderful weekend, but I still believe there is no place like home.". Lori Davy, center, accepts a nursing school diploma on behalf of her slain sister, Gloria Davy, at a ceremony at McCormick Place in 1966. On some summer days, because it gives him a warm feeling he can't entirely explain, he drives around, top down, in a car he bought a few years ago. Opening the box at first meant to me that I was going to reopen her death. If you asked Mary Ann where she was from, she'd give a classic South Side answer, naming not her neighborhood but her parish, Our Lady of Peace. He has never discussed it with them in depth or with his sister Marilyn, who has moved away from Chicago. By July of 1966, however, Mary Ann, 20, had moved out of the townhouse and back into the family bungalow. (Harold Norman / Chicago Tribune). At South Chicago Community Hospital she earned $350 a month, much of which she sent back to the Philippines, and, like the other exchange nurses, she wrote a lot of letters. What about the notorious ''Born to Raise Hell'' tattoo that led to his capture? The last time John Farris saw Suzie, 21, he had just come home from a track meet, carrying his victory medals, and she was visiting with her boyfriend, Phil. So eight people got killed. Speck is the character who, while being interviewed by Ford and Tench, tosses a pet bird into a fan. The student nurses' white and pale-gray uniforms had to be strictly starched, their crisp white caps perfectly placed a tough trick on bouffant hair. Photo: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images, G. Gordon Liddys Wild Career After Watergate, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads, Name: Richard Speck, Birth Year: 1941, Birth date: December 6, 1941, Birth State: Illinois, Birth City: Kirkwood, Birth Country: United States. It reinforced his sense of mission and its urgency. Being in the world of the older girls felt cool. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,.css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}contact us! Stewardess. Lori realized it was time to tell the truth. Q. 28. The judge sentenced Speck to death. These days, Farris is retired from his job as an administrative services manager at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago. Nursing students were under strict rules during the 1960s, but still they found time for fun. Her family her father, John, a pipe fitter; her mother, Lena, a homemaker born in Germany; and her only sibling, Jack lived in a small, one-story brick Cape Cod on Commercial Avenue. Pamela Wilkening, left, Mary Ann Jordan, right, and Suzanne Farris, second from right, are shown with other student nurses having fun with a South Chicago Community Hospital School of Nursing banner, circa 1966. Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. ''You`re talking about two different categories of people,'' Speck said. Gloria Davy jokes around in the South Side townhouse that was used as a dormitory for student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital, circa 1966. Another sister wired the news to their father in their hometown. Today the townhouses on East 100th Street are still standing and occupied, but no longer by student nurses. Suzie was lucky. Their married bliss was short-lived, however, and Speck's reversion to type landed him a jail sentence for theft and check fraud, in 1963. No immediate relatives were there. Law- enforcement officials familiar with the 1966 mass murder said there was no chance an accomplice existed. "Gloria's been murdered," Lori remembers her saying. Atienza became friends and learned to play penny-ante poker with the policemen and bodyguards who watched over her for an entire year while she was in protective custody. At age 10, she walked her sister Susan to her first day of kindergarten. Menudo Star Says Jos Menendez Assaulted Him. Indiana authorities wanted to interview Speck regarding the murder of three girls who had vanished on July 2, 1966, and whose bodies were never found. The townhouse Gloria shared with the other student nurses was often a mess, so she sometimes paid her little sister a dollar or two to clean. Having been paroled in January 1965, he lasted only four weeks outside, before being arrested again for aggravated assault, and he was jailed for a further 16 months, of which he served 6 months. He was referring to letters he received in his prison cell every week from women-female admirers who, he said, wanted to correspond with him. ''A lot of them women are pretty,'' Speck said. Come spend the night, Suzie suggested. Guarded by detectives, Corazon Amurao arrives at the courthouse in Peoria to testify as the state's chief witness against Richard Speck on April 5, 1967. After the murders, the nursing students in the nearby townhouses moved back into the dorms connected to the hospital. He spent the rest of his life in prison until he died of a heart attack in 1991 at age 49. Girl Scout. Pam had been quiet, studious and decisive since she was a girl in south suburban Lansing. And so, shortly after 12:15, Mary Ann and Suzanne climbed the stairs to Suzanne's bedroom. After the trial, she went home to the Philippines, got a job as a nurse and was elected to the town council in her hometown of San Luis. "She laughs a lot.". One summer night in 1966, when her father, who worked for a steel company, was in Pittsburgh on business, Lori and her two younger sisters crowded into their parents' bed. William Martin was the lead prosecutor for Speck's trial. He could be seen doing what appeared to be cocaine and in an interview-like discussion he answered questions about the murders of the nurses . After that day, Arline Davy was different. And I don`t know what I`d do without it. There was a man with a gun in the house. But she came with a coveted distinction: She had a car, and not just any car, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible in pale yellow "Colonial Cream," a gift from her father, who could barely afford it and who himself drove a run-down pickup truck. During one of Pam's shifts, a patient slugged her. Speck's jury trial began April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois, three hours southwest of Chicago, with a gag order on the press. For years, Pam's name, along with those of her housemates, was in the paper two or three times a week, or so it seemed to Jack, and always attached to the name of the man who killed her. Martin and Dennis Breo are co-authors of a 1993 book called "The Crime of the Century." Half an hour later, she heard four knocks at the bedroom door. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune). By the time Nina entered nursing school, she was three or four years older than most of her classmates and worried that she was over the hill. When 23-year-old Corazon Amurao opened the front door to Speck's knock, he forced his way in at gunpoint. On July 13, 1966, Speck unleashed his terror on Chicago by breaking into a building in the neighborhood of South Deering. Dr. John Schmale found a box of old slides in his waterlogged basement and opened a flood of memories. "She walked within two inches of his forehead and pointed . The radio said some nurses had been killed; the police wouldn't give out information. All of the bedrooms were upstairs, and none had a phone. Gloria's brother and three of her sisters are still alive. From the transcript of Speck's trial: Q: How long did you scream, in a sitting position, with the window open? "But I come from the place where they make balisong. Holden's methods during a disturbing interview with mass murderer Richard Speck create dissension among the team and kick off an internal FBI probe. Just below, in smaller type, was the news that six policemen had been shot during riots on the West Side. She roller-skated in the basement of the family's three-bedroom bungalow. He pushed up his left sleeve to reveal ugly scars on his arm. She teaches her students about them and what they meant in both countries. She climbed out on a window ledge and screamed for help, at which point concerned neighbors summoned the police. She still gets a kick out of playing poker at casinos in Nevada with her husband. It's the psychological kind, full of memories and emotions, the kind Schmale means when he says: "Opening the box at first meant to me that I was going to reopen her death. She liked clothes, and since the family didn't have a lot of money, she made her own. There she joined two other Filipina exchange nurses, Merlita Gargullo and Corazon Amurao, who had arrived a few days earlier. Richard Speck has been described as a drifter, a loner, a high school dropout, a sociopath, a heavy drinker, a violent man who could be charming. Before long, the Davy home was packed with people, and every room, it seemed, was packed with roses, so many roses the scent made Lori sick. The doctor had just had a dinner break and had seen the front page of a newspaper featuring the killer's face. Richard Speck was one of the most fiendish mass murderers in American history as his slayings of eight nursing students in a single evening captured the attention of the entire nation. Patricia Matusek was murdered along with five fellow nursing students and two visiting nurses in 1966 on Chicago'sSouth Side. News item: Richard Speck sentenced. Clicking from slide to slide, Schmale stepped into his sister's vanished world. Martin said he'll never forget a key moment in Atienza's testimony during the trail. Around 10:30 p.m., she went upstairs to bed, in the high bunk in the room she shared with Merlita. "She showed the indomitability of her spirit by continuing her path as a nurse and dedicating her life to helping others and raising a family, but you can never get something like this out of your life," Martin said. When he agreed to talk about his sister, he asked to meet at the Lansing Public Library, which used to be the Indiana Avenue School where he and Pam attended first through fifth grades. Come spend the night at the townhouse, Suzanne suggested to Mary Ann. She worked part time at a bakery. By the time he left, around 3:30 a.m., eight women were dead, some stabbed, some strangled, some both. "I don't believe this," Schmale said to his wife on that day half a century later, gazing inside the box. One of them, Corazon Amurao, steered him to the front door. Speck is played by Jack Erdie on "Mindhunter." Netflix/AP Speck is one of the later interviewees in "Mindhunter." He was a high-school dropout and alcoholic by age 15. In those postwar years, most residents of Chicago's Far South Side were white and working-class, still close to their immigrant roots. They laughed as they sunbathed on the roof between the tavern and the funeral home, watching the people and the cars down on Michigan Avenue, which they called "The Ave.". Suzanne Farris appears as a young girl with a prayer card from her funeral on July 18, 1966. The image suggests who she was, serious and slightly removed from the fun. Richard Speck once remarked that the day after he was born, all hell broke loose. In one photo that captures her impish side, she's tucked in bed with a housemate, the covers pulled to her chin, her hair in a shower cap. She worked her regular shift. ''What`s that dude who played in `Shaft`? '', He said that if he were ever paroled, and someone annoyed him, ''I`ll be back in prison. He had no doubt. Baskys says that for a while she slept with a flashlight or a knife, but eventually, determined not to raise her children in fear, went through five years of therapy to retrain her thinking. To be reminded of his sister's kindness, to be able to speak with someone about her in that way, gave him rare comfort. Their mother, of English and Czech stock, stayed at home to take care of her children. After his father died, his mother married an abusive alcoholic who savagely abused Speck and his seven siblings. By the time I was 16 or 17 I knew it was nasty and cheap.