Richard Speck: Mass Murderer

After tying up each of the women, Speck untied Wilkening’s legs and led her out of the room. She was his first murder; he gagged her and stabbed her through the heart (Hawkins). About 20 minutes later—around 12:30am—two more nurses, Suzanne Farris (age 21) and Mary Ann Jordan (age 20), returned home after their dates. They just encountered their friends, tied up in the largest bedroom, when Speck returned to the room after murdering Wilkening. He immediately ordered the two young women to follow him, marching them out of the bedroom (Fornek). Speck strangled Suzanne Farris with her own stockings and stabbed her 18 times. He then stabbed Mary Ann Jordan three times (Hawkins). He rinsed the blood off in the bathroom before returning to the bedroom where he untied Nina Jo Schmale’s legs (Fornek). After leading her into another room, he stabbed her in a pattern around her broken neck (Hawkins). Davy, Gargullo, Matusek, Pasion, and Amurao, all of whom still waited in the bedroom, ran under the bunkbeds to hide from Speck while he was out of the room killing Nina Jo Schmale (Fornek). Upon his return, he quickly found the nurses. The order of his next three murders is unclear, but he slit Valentina Pasion’s throat, stabbed and strangled Merlita Gargullo, and strangled Patricia Matusek (Hawkins). The last murder was Gloria Jean Davy. He raped her on the bed, as Amurao hid beneath a bed across the room, covering her mouth to keep herself from breathing too loudly. Speck grabbed Davy from the bed and continued his assault on a couch downstairs, where he stabbed her (Fornek).

Now alone in the large bedroom, Amurao agitatedly crept across the floor to hide under another bed, one with a blanket draped over the side. About 45 minutes after he h...

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... Richard Speck's sister: “She said they were afraid people would desecrate the grave if they had him buried out there.” Krieger also stated that the sister told her kids, “‘You can never tell people Richard Speck was your uncle.’” He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in a location known only to Krieger, his chief deputy, a pastoral worker and Joliet Herald News columnist John Whiteside, who has since died. All witnesses swore to keep the location a secret. "We said a couple of prayers and spread them to the wind", Krieger said. "It was a very small funeral” (Minor). Speck took with him the horror of his crime. “The tragedy is we didn't learn a goddamn thing from Richard Speck,” observed William Martin, one of the attorneys who prosecuted his case, “and his death seals his lips forever. We'll never know why he did what he did” (Richard Franklin Speck 1999).