Transcript of Richard Speck : The Student Nurse Murders (Part 2)

As the seasons change and the weather turns, we're here for you. It's time to get a regatta. From weekend family walks to hiking in the hills, Regatta Great Outdoors has the kit to keep you warm, dry, and ready for anything. Plus, save up to 50% on waterproof jackets, fleeces, walking boots, and more. It's time to get a regatta. Visit us in store or online at regatta. Com. Selected lines only excludes any third-party products and products in a multi-buy offer.

New and exclusive on Disney Plus. Meet the Powerhouse Divorce Lawyers. Deep breath. Tell us your story. Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, and Glenn Close, who don't just play the game. They change it. You can't tell us to stop. This November.

Showtime, ladies.

Never settle. Love and war. All's fair. A new Hulu original series streaming November fourth, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's Hey, weirdos.

I'm Elaina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

Yeah, you all.

Morbid. It's a part two.

Part two, and we're one day closer to a twilight episode.

Yes, which we will desperately need after this.

I I know. Actually, that'll be perfect. We got a twilight episode, which will be coming out on the 14th.

14th. Because you guys said, If you don't do that twilight episode that you mentioned, we will revolt in the streets.

You guys said you were going to beat us up and twist us upside down and steal our lunch money.

Exactly. And we said, Don't have to tell me twice. We said, Fine. I'm very excited for our twilight bonus. And it's a bonus episode. It's not a regular episode. It's a bonus episode. Calm down. Just in case that wasn't clear.

Honestly, I think everybody was excited anyway. Yeah. Well, I'm so excited for that. I can't even say too many things because then I'll just start talking about it and it will just be the episode.

We got to save it all.

We also have a super special guest that's going to be on the show next week, this week. This week, Thursday. What is time What is time? And you'll just hear that when you hear it. But we love this guest. She's great, and I am excited to see her again.

I'm very excited to see her again. It's going to be really fun.

It's going to be super fun.

It's going to be so fun. You know what's not fun? What? Richard Speck. Not fun at all. That is not fun at all. He's horrible.

Yeah, part one really rocked my shit.

Yeah. I figured part one, there was just a lot to take in. Yeah, there was a lot There was much. It's a brutal crime. It's an unbelievable crime. And he's a sad, pathetic person. Yeah, he really is. Who is also evil and dastardly and irredeemable.

Truly, I think irredeemable is a perfect word to describe him. He's all those things. Great objective, you little writer over there. Thank you. What do you write books or something?

I do.

Tinyeerl. Com/thibutcher in the realm. Don't go there. It doesn't exist.

I was going to say it's not a thing anymore.

I just like to say it. It's called The Vocal Stem. Look it up.

I do love that. So many vocal stems. Oh, yeah. So many. Another one is... And Honey the land. Honey the land.

People keep messaging me Honey the Bangs because I cut Bangs.

I love that.

I know. I was like, I don't think we could do Honey the Land merch because it's not our quote. But I was like, could we do like Honey the land, dash, dash Sylvia?

Sylvia. I like that. In memoriam? In memoriam of Silver Brown.

Probably not. Silver Brown. Silver Brown. Silver Brown. Silver Brown. Silver Brown. Silver Brown. Silver Brown. I don't think we can do that.

No, but we can keep saying it.

I wish.

But we'll continue to say it. You guys can keep saying it because it's funny.

I might put that on my grave someday. Honey, the Land. Honey the Grave.

I say it about everything now. Yeah, you got it. When we left you and Pat one, Richard Speck had done some awful shit. Yeah. He had killed... These women, by the way, were between the ages of 21 and 23. No, they're super young. I think they were young. They were super young.

Their careers are just starting.

They were right before graduation, too. They were months away, weeks away.

And to think all the work that they had put into that.

For the rest of their lives. And this is how it ends. It It just pisses me off.

And to think that some of them had escaped very dangerous situations in different countries.

To come here to be safe. And then they meet this fucking nasty little fucking shit goblin, Richard Speck. Like, Oh, he's so gross. So when we last left you, that's what happened. They had, though, ended up finding a lead through a very interesting little avenue of having to take some resources from different parts that were not just the direct Chicago Police Department.

Very boots on the ground.

Very boots on the ground. Very boots on the ground. And it was the Robbery Squad that was the one that ended up having the cookey contacts to make this happen.

Not the cookey contacts.

And it was also People not taking out the trash, which is pretty sick. Don't take out your trash.

That happens so frequently. I never know when they are going to take my trash.

If you question, if you're sitting there and your gut says, you know what? I don't feel like taking out that trash today. Don't do it. Don't do it. There's a reason. Because I think it's telling something. Everything happens for a reason. Yeah. And they had through this whole little process of going to this mechanic who deals with a lot of petty criminals and then finding out that this guy had been in there who was a dickface to him and had left two of his bags there. They were able to follow that to the NMU, which is a union for people who work on ships and boats and shit, and they can get them assignments and jobs. They ended up going there. The administrator there was like, Oh, yeah, I think I a guy like that. We'd sent him on a job. He didn't get it. He was pissed. He wrote down all of his fucking information. Here it is. And I crumpled it up and put it in the trash because he was a piece of shit. What an idiot. And didn't deserve a goddamn job to begin with.

I know. I love that he didn't even get a job.

He just threw that shit right in the trash. And then he was able to pick up that crumpled piece of paper and say, well, actually, his name is Richard B. Speck, and here's a direct line to his sister, Caroline, who he is living with currently. A. We told you that Caroline was the one... I don't know. She's his big sister. I don't know. What happened? She took him in. She was trying to help him out. Don't make me mad at Caroline. I think she wanted him to be a better person than she was. She had blinders on. I think she had a lot of blinders on. So he's living there right now. He's currently drinking. He's still getting into trouble. He had promised her he was going to be a better person, and he just wasn't. Based on what detectives had learned from that administrator at the NMU, they knew that that's where he was staying. And from the look of things, he was trying to get out of the city as fast and as soon as possible because who they talked to, this guy was looking to get on a boat and he was looking to go to New Orleans.

It certainly helped that they now had a name to go with the detailed description from Cora, and now the sketch made by a police sketch artist. But they still had to tread carefully when it came to releasing this information to the press. Now, earlier that year, the US Supreme Court's decision in Miranda versus Arizona, you might know it. I think I've heard of it. It had cast a spotlight on police abuses of power during criminal interviewing, and both the district attorney and investigators on the case worried that if they posted the sketch in the paper or mentioned spec by name, That might be caused for the case to be completely thrown out in court because they just haven't nailed them yet. What they needed was some piece of evidence that conclusively connected Speck to the murders and made him an irrefutable suspect. Now, at In the NMU office, investigators decided to set a trap to try to lure spec to the officer where they could take him into custody. The administrator placed a call to Caroline's apartment, his big sister, where they spoke to her husband, who informed them that he hadn't seen Richard all day.

The administrator asked the man to relay a message to Richard, telling him they had a job for him on the Sinclair Great Lakes, but they needed him to come into the office as soon as possible. Smart. The trap is laid, and a large number of undercover officers waited in the NMU office posing as sailors.

I love a trap.

They waited anxiously for their suspect to arrive because they knew that he's probably their guy.

Yeah. I mean, everything is lining up too perfectly.

Now, while detectives work to lure Speck into the NMU office, analysts at the Chicago Police Department have been doing their best to track down Speck's fingerprints. If they were able to find a set of prints, they hoped they could match them to the prints found in the townhouse, and that would allow them to publicly identify him as a suspect and release his name in the sketch. Yeah. As luck would have it, the FBI headquarters that Speck's prints were on file from an earlier arrest in Texas, so they already had them. But in a time before fax machines and email, the only way to get the prints from Washington, DC, to Chicago was either drive them or send them by air. Oh, man. At the time, there was an ongoing airline strike across the country, and flights out of DC were grounded until further notice, putting investigators in a pretty tough Yeah. Back at the NMU office, the phone rang just a little after 05: 00 PM, and when the administrator answered, it was Richard Speck calling about the job. Oh, God. This man just murdered eight women, and now he's like, A job, you say?

Thanks. I'm getting out of here.

The man reiterated the details. It was a last-minute job in the Sinclair Great Lakes, and if Speck wanted the work, he needed to come down to the office that afternoon and get the assignment. Speck told the man he'd take the job and promise he'd be there soon, but Hours passed and he didn't show up. After several hours, it occurred to investigators that Speck might be onto their plan. Oh, shit. In fact, when he spoke to the man from the NMU, the administrator told Speck the job was on the Sinclairgate, Great Lakes, the exact name of the ship Speck had been previously assigned to and was passed over for someone else. If he had caught the name, he probably would have known that that ship already left Port, which would have been a strong indication that this was a trap.

That's not a good to lay your trap. Use a different ship. You have to have everything planned out.

So now certain that Speck was on to them, Chicago officers and detectives spread out across the city again, this time with a clear understanding of who they were looking for. The problem was, though, that with the ongoing protests and the general policing that was occurring at the same time, messages and alerts didn't always get relayed. Case in point, in the early evening of July 16th, two beat cops received a call from dispatch about a man at a local hotel with gun. The officers arrived at the hotel and were told by the front desk clerk that the room was registered to a David Staten. But when they went up to the room, the man inside identified himself as Richard Speck. Having not been directly involved in the investigation of the student nurses, the officers had no way of knowing the suspect had been named. Please tell me you're kidding. So they simply gave Speck a verbal warning and confiscated the gun, allowing Speck to slip from their fingers yet again. Shut When the news of the check of the hotel reached homicide detectives, they raced to the hotel, but by the time they got there, he was gone.

And they said, You fucking idiots. For the second time in one day, the killer of eight innocent young women had managed to slip away into the city. What are the odds? And investigators were starting to think that they might lose their chance to catch him. If he managed to get through the roadblocks and make it out of Chicago, they were never finding him. They were never finding him. Their best bet remained the fingerprints in the sketch. And finally, that afternoon, they caught a lucky break. Despite the ongoing airline strike, a pilot with American Airlines volunteered to fly the fingerprints from Washington, DC to Chicago. Hell, yeah, brother. Once they received the prints, two analysts work through the night analyzing the set by hand and comparing them to the prints found at the house.

That is too cool. Too cool. To think about people analyzing fingerprints before you could just like, plug it into a database is bit by bit. So fucking cool.

And they worked all night to make sure these were... Of course. Like, those two are bad asses. By the next morning, they were able to confidently and conclusively match the prints at the scene to Speck's prints from the FBI file. And detectives rushed to get the sketch of Speck onto the front page of every newspaper that morning, along with a description of his Born to Race, Hell tattoo. No. Now, as soon as the description and identification of Speck went out, calls started flooding into the Chicago Police Department. Most were misidentifications or know, of little about. Hooligans. But there were a few who claimed to have seen or spoken with Speck at local bars in the days before and immediately after the murders.

And they said, Those are probably correct because that guy drinks. He drinks.

One man, Claude Lunsford, told investigators that he had been drinking with Speck a few nights earlier on the fire escape of the Star Hotel. He remembered that tattoo on his arm and the gun he had been carrying that night. That's such a Claude story. It really is such a Claude story, right? Yeah. On the fire escape of a bar. Yeah.

That's just clod doing Claude shit.

Of the Star Hotel. That's right. Just Claude. Just Claude things.

Where Claude hangs.

Find yourself a Claude and he'll have a story.

I know it. That is at the Star Hotel.

While officers fielded calls that morning, Dr. Leroy Smith was on his break at County Hospital, where he was casually flipping the newspaper, and he read the description of the suspect and the tattoo. Moments later, Dr. Smith was called into surgery to help a young man who had been brought to the hospital with what appeared to be superficial cuts on his wrist from a half-hearted attempt to end his life. As Smith was wiping the blood away from the young man's arm, he recognized the tattoo on that left arm that read Born to Rise Hale. Stop it. And realized the man on the hospital, Gurnie, is none other than Richard Speck. Stop it. The most wanted man in Chicago.

And he obviously knew that the police were onto his ass.

Thank goodness he read the paper that morning. Wow. Dr. Smith called for hospital security who kept an eye on Speck until homicide detectors were able to get to the hospital, and they placed him under arrest for murder. Shut up. So he basically walked right into it. Yeah. Now, when the news broke of the arrest, the residents of Chicago heaved a collective sigh of relief. Ief because remember, they're all terrified. This guy walked into a fucking house that night and massacred eight women.

It's shocking. Absolutely shocking to me that he had never murdered before.

They're all terrified. And think about Cora. Cora is fucking terrified. She's the only one that survived. She's sitting there being like, Is he going to come find me?

Andy, that's the thing. He's seen her face. Yeah.

Sergeant John Griffith told press immediately after he was taken into custody of the hospital, There's no doubt that this is a speck. Later that morning, Cora was brought to the hospital where she viewed Speck through a two-way mirror, and she confirmed that he was the killer, telling detectives, This is the man.

What a brave fucking girl.

What a badass, truly. Yeah. That's really brave.

After Everything she went through and everything she heard having to be sedated.

She's still traumatized. That's the thing.

She had to be sedated after this.

Oh, yeah. Now, in their press conference, following the positive identification, police Superintendent O. W. Wilson said, I feel we have enough evidence to convict him. We have physical evidence placing him in the building, and we have positive identification from an intended victim. As far as I'm concerned, there's no question but that this is the man. More positive identifications followed, including those from the National Maritime Union and various bars and hotels where Richard had been seen before and after the murders occurred. Okay. The next day, July 18th, spec was arranged for the murders, but the prosecutor was hesitant to rush the case to a grand jury. Given how much scrutiny the courts and law enforcement had been under with regard to the rights of the accused, State's attorney, Daniel Ward, told the press that they would be proceeding with an abundance of caution and making sure the case was air tight before presenting it to a grand jury. Would you understand? Yeah. They don't want this guy getting released again. No. Jesus Christ.

And he's been in and out of the system forever.

Yeah. Ward said, We anticipate going to the grand jury this week with the case. Although Speck is presently under sedation, we plan to have him appear in felony court. In fact, more than three weeks passed before investigators were even given approval to interview Speck. But eventually, Ward presented the evidence to a grand jury with a small but pretty significant amount of circumstantial evidence behind him. Among other things, they were presented with the fingerprint evidence that linked him to the crime scene, Cora's positive identification of him as the killer, and various others who testified, including William Kirkland, who told the jury he'd bought a twelve-inch hunting knife from Speck at a downtown bar just hours after the murders were committed. Stop it. Bought the fucking knife from him. Hours. Hours later. According to Kirkland, we were sitting there talking and Speck brought the knife out and began talking about it. I asked him if he wanted to sell it, offered him a dollar, and he handed me the knife. A dollar? A dollar because he wanted to get rid of that murder.

Yeah, that should have been a red flag for that guy.

Yeah, I would say so. Now, the grand jury voted to indict Richard Speck on eight counts of first-degree murder, but the road to the trial is going to be long and filled with delays. For one, Speck's attempted suicide, no matter how sincere or insincere, was evidence of a deep depression that would surely hinder his ability to aid in his own defense, unfortunately. At the time, there was still a great deal of concern, again, over the rights of the accused. So the prosecutor's office is saying, unless everything's done completely by the book, there's a chance that one little technicality is going to get us, and we're just not walking into that.

Good for them to be so- So careful.

Yeah. Because this is just like, we don't need the verdict to overturn. No. We don't need an appeal. We don't need some technicality cutting this short. We got to send him away for good. To walk out that door and do it again. Yeah. As a result, the preparation for the trial took months as both sides ready for what would surely be the biggest trial of the year. Oh, yeah. In the meantime, Richard Speck sat in jail waiting for the trial to begin. Between July 26, 1966 and February 17, 1967, he was held at Kermack Memorial Hospital in the Chicago House of Corrections, and he was being treated for depression and suicidal ideation. Also, according to Dr. William Norcross, there was, an 80% chance that Speck had suffered a coronary thrombosis on the morning of his arraignment. So he required treatment for that as well.

As the seasons change and the weather turns, we're here for you. It's time to get a regatta. From weekend family walks to hiking in the hills, Regatta Great Outdoors has the kit to keep you warm, dry, and ready for anything. Plus, save up to 50% on waterproof jackets, fleeces, walking boots, and more. It's time to get a regatta. Visit us in store or online at regatta. Com. Selected lines only excludes any third-party products and products in a multi-buy offer.

New and exclusive on Disney Plus. Meet the Powerhouse Divorce Lawyers. Deep breath. Tell us your story. Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, and Glenn Close, who don't just play the game, they change it. You can't tell us to stop. This November.

Showtime, ladies.

Never settle. Love and war. All's fair. A new Hulu original series streaming November fourth, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply.

During this time, he participated in twice weekly sessions with a psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin Zaporin, who would go on to write a book about his experience with spec.

Isn't that very against everything?

Isn't that very against everything?

Do you know what I mean? Like HIPAA?

Yeah, I'm sure.

But maybe, do criminals not get HIPAA?

Do you not get HIPAA?

I hate criminals.

Do you get your criminals? You got HIPAA?

You know what I'm saying?

Because I know that when you're a criminal and you write a book, you can't profit off of it.

When you're a killer.

That's like a newer law.

I know that's newer. I said, That's so rude. I was like, I know that's newer.

I know that.

But no, I'm like, damn. The psychiatrist writing about it, isn't that like, no. Isn't that bad news bears?

I think they have to still maintain an amenity when it comes to the person that they were treating. But they can talk about their experiences without naming them.

I'm fairly certain. And then everybody will just know that it's that person.

And everybody will know, but like...

Interesting. I mean, I guess he can't sue you.

It's one of those things. Or can't, you know? I don't know. So many legal questions. Well, spoiler alert, he's dead now. Okay. He's not doing shit. All right. Except for rotting wherever he is. Good, good, good.

Maybe that's it.

Maybe that's what it is. All right, anyway. Sorry, I got caught up in the minutiae. Yeah, it's cool. But so he wrote a book and he said later, Yes, Speck was suicidal. He was emotionally unstable, impulsive, and depressive. In his early sessions, he noted that Speck's mood changed constantly through their meetings and was, never the same for more than two or three minutes at a time. Wow, that's horrifying. Scary. Like nearly all Americans at the time, Zaporin was desperate to find an explanation for what was an inexplicably brutal and pretty fucking senseless set of murders. Yeah. Speck had forcibly entered the house, presumably to rob the nurses who willingly gave up their money and listened to him. Then for reasons that made no sense at the time, he just chose to brutally and systematically murder them all? The modem was supposed to be robbery. That was pretty weak motive for him to claim now.

Especially because they all just were sitting in a room and were bound. That's the thing.

They all were bound. They were sitting there saying, We'll give you everything. You can take all you want. I don't give a shit.

And there's a living witness to testify to that.

It's like that doesn't... And so it's like, after they cooperated, why he would murder them, and so brutally, is beyond comprehension, truly.

Absolutely, it is.

But Zaporin spent months digging deep into Speck's psyche, looking for the key that would explain his actions. There was a great deal of talk about his upbringing, the death of his father, the abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather, of course. There was also the discovery that as a teenager, he might have suffered a head injury at the hands of a police officer when he was 16 years old. There it is.

That's also really bad timing for the police.

Yeah. That he told Zaborin, I was fighting this kid. I had him on the ground really giving it to him, and a cop came to break it up. He broke it up, okay. Cracked my head with his club till he knocked me out clean. So Since then, Richard claimed he had been experiencing headaches, migraines, all that were pretty debilitating. He said he often blacked out and would awake an hour later with no memory of what had happened, which I said, Wow, convenient.

Yeah, here's the thing. Did that happen or did he look at the social climate and say, Hey, I've been affected by a big old policeman, too. Yeah, and hey, I can say- And they're the reason I did this. I just blacked out.

Sometimes I close my eyes and I don't know what happened. It's crazy.

It's a little too convenient.

And just for good measure, Speck also included a story about falling out of a tree when he was six years old and sustaining a similar head injury. So he just bopping his head all over the place. He's like, I don't even... What? Head? Who?

I don't know her. I was trying to say anything, but I couldn't stop laughing. I was like, Yeah, I don't know, man. Maybe I have a head injury.

No, we'll never know whether Richard was telling the truth in these interviews. I'm going to go with no. We can wildly speculate It's entirely possible that he was telling the truth and that he had an injury.

I mean, hey, something was wrong with him.

Something was wrong. But maybe he was fabricating the whole thing in preparation for an insanity defense. That was clearly being telegraphed by his lawyer, Cook County public defender, Gerald Getty. In preparation for the case, Getty had enlisted three well-respected psychiatrists whose opinions he hoped would override those of the prosecution's experts. In fact, Getty was in a very tricky spot. On the one hand, It was strong evidence that placed his client at the scene and a witness who repeatedly identified him as the killer. On the other hand, an insanity defense carried some significant risks. For instance, if Speck was evaluated by Getty's psychiatrist and determined to be a sociopath, it would completely undermine his insanity defense. Yep. Still, insanity was the most viable strategy at this point. Getty moved forward and hoped that they could convince the jury Speck wasn't responsible for his actions. What That he didn't know at the time was that Dr. Zaporin's evaluations and log of contacts with Speck might work in the defendant's favor. After spending months with Speck, Zaporin concluded, Speck is an obsessive compulsive personality whose rigidity, ambivalence, and hostility had been accentuated by his organic cerebral pathology. In other words, Speck had an organic mental illness that had been exacerbated by his reported brain injury when he was 16.

When those symptoms were at their worst, wrote, A patient is not responsible for his conduct. It may be completely unaware of what he is doing. I disagree. I fully disagree. But I'm not there.

We got to really take into consideration How long it must have taken him to do everything he did to those women.

He systematically- One by one. Walked to those women out there and sexually assaulted some of them and then brutally fucking... He himself himself later says, which we will get to, that strangling someone isn't like you see in the movies. You got to go at it for a good three minutes. Jesus Christ. That's literally what he says, and it's on tape later.

It's also like, how do you know that if you've never done it?

So I'm sorry.

Because you don't remember your blackouts.

You're not responsible for your actions, though. So how do you know that? I don't know about that. Yeah. Now, this wasn't the first time the prosecutor's office had heard Zaporin's chronic brain syndrome, quote, unquote, as an explanation for criminal behavior. In fact, he He presented it several times in previous criminal cases. Dude, come on. Never with much success. Yeah. Kind of sounds like he was trying to get that to be a thing, and it just it isn't a thing.

It's like, Maybe let's not try to make that a thing.

Yeah. Anticipating Zaporin and others' attempts to explain away Speck's behavior, the prosecution began building their own case to demonstrate that Richard Speck wasn't some ordinary man afflicted with a Jekyll and Hyde syndrome. Instead, he had developed his criminal personality and cunning over many years of illegal activity and being a shit bag. It's just like, he's just an asshole.

Simple as that.

Richard Speck's trial began April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. In his opening statements to the jury, prosecutor William Martin detailed the carnage that unfolded in the townhouse on the night of July 13, including eight murders, robbery, and sexual assault, all of which was committed by Richard Speck all alone. At no time did any of the victims attempt to fight or resist Speck because they were bound. Yeah. In fact, they willingly handed over whatever valuables they had in order to cooperate and get him to leave. But Speck didn't leave. Martin reminded the jury he chose instead to brutally stab, slash, and strangle everyone in that house in order to cover his tracks and get away with his crime, which also means he's sane, everybody. He literally did it to not leave a witness so he could get away with it.

And then also sold the knife afterwards, which shows that he was trying to get rid of the murder weapon. Like, hello.

And that's, Martin argued, that's the behavior of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and exactly what would happen if he was caught. As he wrapped up his opening statements, Martin reminded the jury that his office was asking for the death penalty in this case as nothing less was appropriate for what he had done.

In this scenario?

Yeah. He's an animal.

He is an animal.

When it came time for Jerold Getty to present his case, it was as simple defense as any had ever heard in this courthouse. He said, I don't know.

He lost his head.

Are you ready?

No, probably not.

He told the jury, My man didn't do it.

No, no, no, no. Get that out of here. No.

My man didn't do it. Period? My man didn't do it, period. Now, at some point- No.

He got up there with his whole chest and talking about a massacre said, My man didn't do it.

My man didn't do it.

This is just your My man now? My man didn't do it. That's a conflict of interest, my guy.

Here's the thing. I think at some point it became pretty clear to Getty that the insanity defense was not going to happen and probably very risky. So instead, he just chose the oldest defense in the book, which is, Wasn't me? Wasn't me. He said, The theory of the defense is that Speck is not the perpetrator of this crime. The state will have to prove its contention beyond a reasonable doubt.

Okay. Bye. The girl who experienced it is right over there and says otherwise. Thanks.

You fucking idiot. His strategy might have been bold, given the evidence. Might have been. But he was right about one thing. It was very much incumbent upon the state to prove its case against Speck, not the other way around. Yeah, that's true. Getty told the jury their evidence will include an eyewitness, and you will have to test whether that witness is an eyewitness.

What a douchebag.

Which, whoa. Getty's case may have seemed like a big risk, but the fact was the forensic evidence only indicated Richard Speck had been in the house at some point, and not necessarily during the time the women were killed, unfortunately. It was only Cora, her testimony, that identified him as the killer, and by her own admission, she hadn't seen her roommates being murdered. She only saw the killer when he entered the house and tied everyone up. Therefore, it was entirely possible that Cora was mistaken in identifying Speck or that she was so traumatized by the event that she misremembered the situation entirely. Probably not, though. That's what they would have argued. Yeah. Getty's subtle attack on the state's most important witness was to be expected, of course, and it was given a certain amount of credibility in the eyes of the public, considering that Cora hadn't been seen or heard from since she was rescued from that scene.

In fact, many- I'm sorry. They said we didn't see her in the public, so we don't know. We haven't seen her. That would only lead me to believe her more. Yeah.

In fact, many reporters and speculators wondered whether Cora was even still in the United States. On the second day of the trial, those questions were put to rest, though, when the prosecution called Cora up to testify.

I'm like, Oh, racism.

It turned out that there was a very good reason for her sudden disappearance following the murders. Cora had been placed in witness protection by the prosecution who worried she might be a flight risk or otherwise too fragile to testify against spec. Yeah. In the end, Cora proved everyone wrong and ended up being William Martin's single greatest asset. Good. Good?

That's a real good for her moment. Good for her. I hate that the public was Is she even in the United States anymore?

Isn't that so- Go fuck yourself. Isn't that so the public?

Is that traumatized girl even in the US?

Probably not. Isn't that so the public, though?

Yes, it's so the public. Isn't that so the public? Not the public listening right now, but the other public.

No, but that's those people on the internet who are like,. Those are people before the internet. And I got to tell you, that's what you all sound like. If you're listening right now and you're not our public and you're a hub of a ball. That's what you sound like. And I know it's not you guys. No, it's not you guys. I'm saying you know. Yeah, you guys know. You know those deep goblins on the internet who just have some shit to say about fucking everything. Everything. Their fucking opinion matters, their fucking words matter. And they just go around going...

I literally just picture Spongebob in the Spongebob text where it's like, Is she even in the United States anymore? Like, okay. It's so true. Where are you exactly? Look around.

It's so true. It's so, so true. Get a grip, public. See, that's those people.

I love that she was like...

She said, Fuck you. Let me clear my throat. She said, Listen, the public Fuck you all. Good. Now, over the course of several hours, Cora answered a seemingly endless barrage of questions and detailed precisely what she'd seen and heard on the Nights of the Murders, during which she frequently paused to compose herself, but never broke down. Good for her. During the course of her testimony, she described the killer's appearance, the fact that he smelled of alcohol because he's a nasty ass drunk, and even provided detailed descriptions of the knife and gun that were nearly an exact match. Wow. Finally, when Martin asked whether the man who committed the murders was in the courtroom, Cora rose from the witness stand, walked over to the defense's table, standing only about a foot in front of him. She extended her arm and pointed directly in Speck's face.

The warm that my body just did.

Her finger, nearly touching his nasty little fucking nose.

She said, not only am I in the US, you fucking asshole.

I'm right here, bitch.

I'm like a millimeter away from him. I am still warming.

And she said, loud enough for the whole court to hear, this is the man.

Oh, honey.

This is the man.

They love to doubt a woman. And a woman loves to fuck them up. Fuck you all. Fuck you all. Oh, good for her. That it... Cora said, Bitch. Please. Enough can't be said. Enough can't be said about the fucking survivor she is. She did that for every single one of her friends and sisters and classmates. I have goosebumps. No, I'm still WAMing. It's insane.

I've read this a few times. I have fucking goosebumps.

That man, we really need to sit with this for a second. That man broke into her house. She was the one who was at the door, right?

She was in bed, heard a knock on the door. He knocked on the fucking door. He knocked on the door.

He shoved his way in. She opened the door with a gun in her face. He gets her into a... They all run into a closet to hide. He somehow convinces them to come out, ties her and her friends up. Systematically, she can hear them being sexually assaulted stilted, strangled, stabbed over and over again. And she hides underneath the bed for hours and hours and hours and hours, then comes out to that carnage and lives to tell the fucking tale, stays in the United States, which everybody was so fucking doubtful about, and then goes into the courtroom and relives all of that. To relive all of that and then walk right up to that fucking table. It's literally. The snaps can't be fucking snapped enough.

To saunt her up to that fucking table, nearly touch the tip of that little bitch's nose and go, That's the man.

She said, You didn't get me. She said, And really, you didn't get any of us.

This one bitch.

I applaud her. I will applaud her till my dying day.

She's everything. Cora for life.

Yeah, she's everything.

And she just said it loud and proud. Good for her. In fact, one reporter said, It was a moment few in the crowded courtroom would ever forget. It was filled with the courage that was in the diminutive 4'10 form of the sole survivor of a tragic mass murder. It's always the shorties. She's little. You got to.

She is little, but she is fierce.

You got to. Everyone's going to doubt you. Yeah, I know a little No one's going to underestimate you.

So you got to be. That's how Little Red became Big Red. She's forceful and courageous.

4'10. And she walks up to that table.

Good. Good for her. Like a fucking powerhouse. And he's a 6' It's all like, gross-looking monster.

Goblin. And she walks up a fucking powerhouse. Obsessed. Yeah. It's amazing. So on April 14th, both sides gave their closing arguments.

Honey, the Cora.

Honey, the Cora.

I said, Hold on It came to me.

I was like, What? William Martin reminded the jury of all that they'd seen and heard throughout the trial. Details of his long criminal history, his propensity for violence, the irrefutable evidence that's placed him at the scene, and Cora's powerful testimony that identified Richard Speck as the killer. Gerald Getty, on the other hand, restated his argument that Speck had never been at the house on the night of the murders.

He said, Let me say one more time. Yeah. My man didn't do it.

My man didn't do it. That's all. The fingerprints, he argued, were just too similar to those of two people living in the house, to be conclusive. Are you fucking kidding me? Fbi analysts literally spent all night hand analyzing those.

I'm like, Hey, babe, do you know about fingerprints?

Yeah. And also, Speck had an alibi from two customers at a local tavern that placed him somewhere else that night. And you know how credible two customers of a local tavern usually are? Honey.

You know?

Honey, the tavern. And then Getty just said, Mistaken identity. Peace. Mistaken identity. He just said, Peace. Peace. Also, I'd like you all right now to look up a picture of Richard Speck. I shall. Then I want you to tell me if you could ever mistake that man for someone else. He's pretty fucking distinct. Yeah. He's pretty fucking distinct. Yeah. He's foul. It's pretty distinct. He's heinous.

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Ultimately, the jury disagreed with Getty. After deliberating for just 45 minutes, they returned guilty verdicts on all eight counts, each one carrying a death sentence. Wow. When the verdicts were read, Richard Speck looked up at the clerk, but otherwise registered no emotion. Is he even capable, do we think? Probably not. Detective Brian Carlyle told a reporter it was the only verdict the jury could have reached. Yeah. Noticeably absent in the court that day was the only surviving victim, Cora. Later that afternoon- She did what she needed to do. She didn't give a shit. She was like, I know what I did.

Yeah. And she knew that was going to be enough to get him put away.

Later that afternoon, when William Martin called to tell Cora the news, her response was Congratulations. Period. She said, Good job.

She said, Cool. I'm going to go about my life now. Bye. I'm going to pretend like this never happened.

Now, on June fifth, 1967, Richard Speck was sentenced to die in the electric chair, pending any appeals guaranteed to by the Constitution. In 1968, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the conviction and the sentence, and that conviction was upheld a second time on an appeal in 1971. But just one year later, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was unconstitutional. In November 1972, a judge in the same county resentenced Richard Speck to between 400 and 1,200 years in prison. I don't know if that's enough. Effectively giving him a life sentence without parole.

I love when judges get petty like that.

That's delicious.

They're like, Okay, can't sentence you to death. How about a gajillion years?

That's very delicious. I really like that. The commutation of Speck's death sentence was a disappointment to some, but the fact remained that he would spend the rest of his life and several other lifetimes behind bars. And yet throughout all of the hearings and appeals, one thing remained unsolved. Speck's motive for the murders. What the fuck?

Why did he do this? Why did he just walk into that house one day?

In the years before Charles Manson and his followers reframed the public's understanding of murder, and before the FBI began researching and profiling, leading to what we understand now about this horrifying phenomenon. The general public's perception of murder was Pretty simple. Basically, people could understand murder in the commission of a robbery, murder in a domestic violence situation, and even murder in the commission of a sex crime. Understand is a word, I can't think of another word to say it. You know what I mean? I'm not saying they're justifying They're saying, My brain can comprehend that that happens. People just couldn't understand. That to a messed up brain, that is a reason to do that. They could at least understand that. What was incomprehensible, though, was murder simply for the sake of murder. That was just not something people could wrap their brains around.

Which is incomprehensible, even still to this day.

And again, I said in Mind Hunter, you see them, they talk to Richard Speck in Mind Hunter. I got to rewatch that. He was part of this whole thing. So it's like They didn't understand. They desperately wanted to understand why he did this. And honestly, we'll never understand. He's just a piece of shit.

I hope someday we can figure out what happens in someone's brain.

I don't know if there is a reason, though. I really don't. There's got to be. I don't know what it could be. But the idea that someone would kill not for any material gain, but just for the satisfaction of killing was just a concept we couldn't get. Of course, killers like Speck had existed for centuries, and again, always would. But in the American imagination, they'd always been relegated to the pages of fiction, not reality. It's like this, once it started coming into their regular lives, it was like, what? That's confounding. Because of this, Speck's mass murder of eight women, for for no fucking reason was, according to prosecutor William Martin, the end of an age of innocence. It was like the glass shatter. It's so heavy. It's very much the glass shatter moment. It was always happening. But now it was publicly recognized. But it was behind that glass that we just didn't know about or we didn't understand. Now the glass is shattered and now we have to accept that there are people in this world that kill because they like to kill. It's like that must have been a fucked up-time. Yeah, absolutely.

We've always lived in a time where people have killed for the sake of killing or for satisfaction because they like to do it. They like to hurt people. We can sit here and wonder why, but we've never lived in a world where we didn't know that that even happened. Then suddenly to be thrust into this new way of thinking of like, oh, fuck, that person over there could just really like killing people. They might just do it for no reason.

What it must have been like to just go about your day in certain ways and not expect to be killed. Yeah. In the parking lot this morning, I thought I was going to get killed. Yeah. It always happens all the time. Always think of that. That's a woman's Roman Empire. Getting killed. Getting killed. Yeah. That's why we do this, I think. Yeah.

Now, for two days, while we didn't know who he was, people in Chicago lived in direct fear of this unknown killer capable of anything, just stalking the streets and capable of killing eight people at a time. Alone. Martin said, It changed everything. We all became much more conscious of our security. Eight nurses could be slaughtered in their beds for no reason by a stranger. If it could happen to eight young women all on the verge of starting their lives and all well loved and well respected and smart and capable, it could happen to anyone. In the years that followed, the fear and anxiety that gripped Chicago for those two days would creep into every corner of America, obviously, as the nation grew more and more aware that not everyone around them was safe. But in many ways, that fear can be traced back to Richard Speck's decision to murder eight innocent women for no fucking reason. Now, maybe it's because of that fear that so many people became obsessed with understanding his crimes.

Well, when there's no answer, you do keep going back to something. You just want it.

You just want it. Gerald Getty wanted to prove his client was insane at the time of the killing. While doctors of Porin theorized that it was likely a head injury combined with an organic mental illness that led to it. If they could find an explanation, a lot of people were reasoning, maybe we could stop these killers. Before it even happens. Or at the very least, make them safe from themselves, stop it from happening. And there was a real movement and still is to figure out what is happening, how this happens and stop it before it actually even begins to start. But on December fifth, 1991, one, just one day before his 50th birthday, Richard Speck died.

One day before his 50th birthday? Yeah.

Wow. He died at Silver Cross Hospital from a heart attack.

And his dad had died early on.

Yeah, it's true. And young. Like Pretty young, yeah. So that should be where the story of Richard Speck ends. But there's a weird bizarre coda at the end of this that I don't think anybody really could have seen coming, like after death. So in the spring of 1996, he died 1991.

That's my literal time. The spring of 1996.

Rot-ro. You know, different. Big difference. In the spring of 1996, television news anchor Bill Curtis interviewed William Martin for a special that he was working on for A&E television. Oh, A&E. After the interview- We know drama.

Yeah. No, that's T&T. I'm so sorry. You're like, Shut the fuck up.

After the interview was done, Martin was walking Curtis to the elevator when he suggested come to his office sometime soon. He said, I want to show you something. That's terrifying. I would have said no.

And is Martin the guy that was like, My man didn't do it.

No, that's Getty. Okay. Martin was on the good side.

Oh, okay.

I'd go to his office. So at the time, he's a veteran prosecutor, so he's like, Sure. At the time, Martin thought Curtis was just being polite, so he acknowledged the offer, but then forgot about it. But a few weeks later, Martin got a call from Bill Curtis's assistant, again inviting Martin to Curtis's office to see something he thought would be some importance. So because there was repeated requests at this time, Martin's like, All right, cool. He must have something to show me. So a few days later, he found himself sitting before a television in Curtis's Chicago office. According to Bill Curtis, he had received a videotape from an unnamed lawyer with access to inmates at Stateville Correctional Center, where Richard Speck was serving his sentence. The lawyer claimed that the tapes contained irrefutable evidence of profound corruption and abuse happening in the Illinois prison system him, and he wanted Curtis to expose that corruption. Oh, fuck. Bill Curtis was like, Fuck, yeah, I will. But before he showed those tapes to a committee of the state legislator, he wanted William Martin to see them. When Bill Curtis pressed play on the VCR, the first thing that Martin saw was Richard Speck on the videotape sitting beside another inmate, Ron Zell Laramore, in an otherwise empty room with blank walls.

There was a third person who has never been identified operating the camera. They're in prison, by the way. Why do they have a video camera? Yeah. Martin was so scared right now. You should be. So Martin was shocked when he saw Speck in the video because it had been decades since he'd last seen Richard Speck, and he remembered him being awkward He's a gangly. Like really skinny, gangly. But in the video, Richard was considerably heavier and looked much older than 47 years old. Okay. Yeah. He was sporting this really odd page boy haircut, too, and was wearing old paint-smeared clothing. It's a very unsettling image.

Have you seen it?

The image? No. I've seen an image from it. Oh. Should I Google now? Careful when googling. I will give you that. Okay.

I'll have you show me the one image.

Everybody careful when googling. Oh, no. The video itself, the fact that unsupervised inmates had access to a video camera in an empty room. Yeah, weird. We're surprising to Martin and certainly seemed like evidence of poor prison management right off the bat. But the content of the video was what shocked him the most. In the video, Lara Moore can be heard interviewing Speck, and it's revealed that the two of them have been in a sexual relationship for many years. Richard is seen on the video performing sex acts and using drugs on camera. They're in prison.

Using drugs and so they're making a sex tape in prison? Yeah.

Okay. And he also reveals that he had some hormone smuggled into prison, which he had been taking and no one had known about it.

Okay.

And then he goes on to, now this is Richard Speck, he goes on to remove his clothing and can be seen walking back and forth in front of the camera, wearing nothing but a pair of women's underwear.

Which I assume he's in a men's prison. So where did he get those?

Not real sure. Just before the video ends, the conversation turns to the crimes for which Richard Speck was in there for. Laramore asks, What are you locked up for? And he says, 8 counts of murder. And Laramore smiles and says, Did you kill them? And Richard chuckles and says, Sure, I did. And when he's asked why he did it, which is the question that everyone had been asking forever, he does not hesitate even a little. And he says, It just wasn't their night.

What the fuck?

Isn't that the most chilling thing you've ever heard? Eew. Like, the most chilling thing. It just wasn't their night.

It just wasn't their night.

No hesitation. It just wasn't their night. Like, what the fuck? What does that even mean, dude? What does that even mean?

To be so like, is Cavalier the right word for that?

Yeah.

That just popped into my brain.

Yeah. It just wasn't their night. And he even asked him, why? He's like, why did you bring a gun and not use it? And he said, it makes too much noise.

It was just for intimidation.

So once again, he's proving that he knew exactly what he was in there to do. And he planned. So that whole thing where he was like... Because then he said something like, all I want to do is burglary. It started off as burglary. No, it didn't. No, it didn't. You just showed your ass, though, because you said that the gun would be too loud. So you were planning to use it. You were planning to use something to hurt them, and you knew the gun would be too loud. That's why you brought the knife.

I don't think I will ever forget it just wasn't their night.

Yeah. That's like... It just wasn't their night?

That's like, what's her name? Brenda.

Oh, my God.

Who said, I just don't like Mondays.

That's fucked up. And he even says he talks to him. This is when he says, strangle a person. It's not like what you see on TV. About three seconds and they're dead. You've got to go at it for three and a half minutes. It takes a lot of strength.

I'm just like, I'm shook right now.

Yeah, he's a horrifying human being. So again, up until this point, it had been decades to try to figure out why the fuck he murdered eight innocent women.

And nobody ever really got an answer.

But it was also just right in front of him the whole time. He wasn't mentally ill. He didn't have any neurological disorders that caused him to kill without knowing what he was doing. He was a shitty person, a petty criminal who'd found himself caught in the act of robbery and sexual assault. And instead of going to jail for his crimes, he just decided to wipe out all the witnesses. And he went in there thinking, well, maybe I'll kill some people tonight. He just didn't care. And he was pissed off, I think. He was a pissy little bitch. And I think he got into moods and he got into rages. And when he got mad- Got off the handle. Someone else was going to pay for it. I just- So I think that was part of it.

That's got to be like, even though we're saying he's not mentally ill, it has to be some mental illness that we just haven't figured out yet. Yeah. You know what I mean?

I don't even know if I want to classify it as a mental illness. I think it's like he's missing something.

Yeah. I see what you're saying.

He's missing a piece of what makes you a human. Yeah. Which I think is different from a mental illness. No, I don't think you're I don't think you're wrong. I think he is missing a fundamental piece of what makes you a human being. I think we just haven't figured out what that piece is yet. I think eventually we will figure out what the pieces are that fundamentally make you a human being and keep your humanity intact. And I think he is missing it or it's irrevocably broken.

Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the brain and which part of the brains connect and which part of the... Which pathways are fucked up. And I do feel like if we keep studying the brain, we will find out.

We'll figure it out, I think.

And it's got to be some pathway to two different parts of the brain that just don't connect. Or that maybe two parts of the brain that do connect and aren't supposed to. I don't know.

I hope I'm alive when they figure it out. I know. Because the thing is, he was in a fucking frenzied state during this. Like, frenzied. Like animalistic, not blackout, but like rage. Wild frenzied. And only because of that, only because he was in such a frenzied, rage-filled, just chaotic state. That's why he failed to notice that one of his intended targets had disappeared. It wasn't sitting in the room. It's only thanks to the bravery of Cora Amar Cora that Speck was held accountable at all. Yeah. And he even says that in the video, which further goes to show you that Cora is the fucking hero here, because in the video, they asked him, Lairmore asked him, How did it feel after killing all those ladies? That's how he says it. And he says, Like I always felt. Have no feeling. If you're asking if I felt sorry, no. And he says, A very like... And he says, Did none of them get away? Somebody else asked that. And he says, One did. That's why I'm sitting here now. And he says, If none of them got away, I wouldn't be sitting here. So he unknowingly also just proved that Cora is the fucking badass of the century here, and she's the reason he's behind bars.

I can't imagine being Cora and hearing that. Yeah.

That you're the reason, that he knows it. That he's been sitting in prison. That's the biggest part of it. That must have been simultaneously horrifying and also satisfying. So validating. Because it's like, you know he's been sitting in prison for however long, just thinking about the fact that you're the reason. Because you're so brave. Which would be terrifying because thinking about someone that evil, thinking about you at all, in any capacity. Having any just vengeful thoughts against you would be horrifying.

Well, and just having every single day to sit there in a cell thinking about you.

Exactly. But then also sitting there and being like, now you're dead. What are you going to do about it? Right. And now you're dead. So that was the end of your life was sitting there thinking about how I fucked your life up.

This was one of the gnarliest, but also at the same time most fascinating cases I think you've ever told.

It's a wild one. Like, truly, truly wild.

The end of that is so chilling.

It just wasn't their night. No, I hate that. Yeah. What a fucking... What a cold answer. It's cold as ice, that answer. It's no thought at all.

It almost feels like he's trying to be funny.

Yeah. But it's like if you think that's funny, motherfucker. Yeah, that's dark. That's so dark. Yeah. If you read more about the video is a wild. Martin, William Martin sitting there watching that must have been like, what the fuck did you just show me?

He's like, you really want me to see this? What a chaotic video.

I just didn't need to see this.

The shit those people must see. And then just they have to go home to their families is nuts.

Just live.

Like, lawyers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, police. Prison guards. Anybody in that field, you see the gnarliest shit.

It's true. It's wild. Yeah. That's the case of Richard Speck.

Well, I need to go cut off on top of my head, take out my brain and wash it and put it back in.

Yeah, that's definitely what I have to do.

And then I'll see you later. So while I do that, we hope to keep listening.

And we hope you... Keep... It...

Weird. But not so weird as Richard Speck, honey.

Never.

Don't do that.

Never do that.

I don't even know how you could possibly.

Cora for life.

Cora, five ever. Keep it as weird as Cora. Yeah. Keep it as badass as Cora.

Hell, yeah.

As the seasons change and the weather turns, we're here for you. It's time to get a regatta. From weekend family walks to hiking in the hills, Regatta Great Outdoors as the kit to keep you warm, dry, and ready for anything. Plus, save up to 50% on waterproof jackets, fleeces, walking boots, and more. It's time to get a regatta. Visit us in-store or online at regatta. Com. Selected lines only excludes any third-party products and products in a multi-buy offer.