- 2 months ago
- #richardspeck
- #serialkiller
- #truecrime
In 1966, Richard Speck murdered a townhouse full of nursing students.
#richardspeck #serialkiller #truecrime
#richardspeck #serialkiller #truecrime
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Dark Mystery Lounge.
00:03Today we're going to take a trip up to Illinois and take a look at a mass murderer, Richard Speck.
00:08A guy that was just rotten from a young age and grew up to be something that no one thought he would become.
00:14Stick around to the end because if you don't already know what happened to him in prison, it's just extremely bizarre.
00:21Well, let's not waste any more time. Let's get into it, shall we?
00:24Richard Benjamin Speck was born December 6, 1941.
00:33Yep, he was born the day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
00:36Or as Richard says, quote,
00:38Day after I was born, all hell broke loose the next day. Hasn't stopped since. Unquote.
00:43He was born in Kirkwood, Illinois, to Benjamin and Mary Speck, the seventh out of eight children.
00:49After Richard's birth, the family moved to Monmouth, Illinois.
00:52There was a large age gap between his older siblings and himself and younger sister, Carolyn, who was born in 1943.
00:59His father was a hard worker. He had many odd jobs to keep up with the mortgage every month.
01:04And when Richard was born, he picked up more hours to support his ever-growing family.
01:09He was an easygoing type father. His mother, on the other hand, was very strict and religious.
01:13She always preached to her kids and husband about the evils of smoking and drinking.
01:18His father once received a stern reprimand from Mary for having a beer at a fish fry.
01:23When he wasn't working, Benjamin would take Richard out on fishing trips, getting away from the stress of life at home.
01:30In 1947, Benjamin died of a sudden heart attack.
01:34It absolutely crushed Richard.
01:36Everyone in his class noticed a change in his behavior.
01:39He started whining and eating crayons to get extra attention from his teachers.
01:43During a movie in class, one of his classmates noticed that Richard was sitting on the teacher's lap.
01:49When the kid asked the teacher why Richard was sitting on her lap, she replied,
01:53Oh, Richard Speck was acting like such a big baby.
01:57I couldn't think of any better place to put him.
02:00His sisters lavished extra attention and affection to him, but his mother offered very little comfort.
02:06Not long after Benjamin's death, a traveling insurance salesman named Carl Lindbergh started dating Mary Speck,
02:12and in 1950, they were married.
02:15The marriage solved a lot of financial problems for Mary, but he was very different from the easygoing Benjamin.
02:21He had a criminal record that ranged from forgery to several DUIs.
02:25He treated Richard like crap most of the time, verbally abusing him, often drunk, and would be absent often.
02:32Mary, Carl, Richard, and Carolyn moved down to Texas.
02:36They moved around from place to place, usually to poor neighborhoods.
02:39They had ten different addresses in twelve years.
02:43Richard was struggling in school, refusing to wear his glasses that he needed for reading.
02:47He had to repeat the eighth grade.
02:49He resented his mother for remarrying, and he let it show.
02:52He rejected his religious upbringing, as he later tells the story.
02:57Quote,
02:57In autumn 1957, Richard started ninth grade at Co-Zero Technical High School, but failed every subject.
03:17Richard did not return for the second semester, dropping out of high school in January 1958,
03:22after his sixteenth birthday.
03:24His stepfather kept verbally assaulting him, calling him a gutter rat, and said that he couldn't stand the sight of him.
03:30Richard coped with all this pain by drinking a lot, stealing liquor out of his stepfather's liquor cabinet, and running away,
03:37getting drunk almost every single day.
03:39His first arrest happened at the age of thirteen for trespassing.
03:43He was arrested a dozen times for petty crimes,
03:46and whenever he got into trouble, his mother always was there to bail him out.
03:50His mother's attitude towards Richard became a lot sweeter, and he saw her as a saint in his eyes.
03:56Richard hung out with a group of tougher, older kids, teaching him all the tricks of the trade when it came to crime.
04:02They also introduced him to smoking pot and taking pills.
04:06He started carrying around a switchblade he used to pick locks and learned about sex from one-night stands with older girls in this group,
04:13or prostitutes.
04:14And he started to develop contempt for any woman he considered easy.
04:18His dirty blonde slicked back hair, acne-scarred face, and tattoos made him look dangerous.
04:24He had one tattoo on his forearm that read,
04:27Born to Raise Hell.
04:28But it was an empty boast from a young man who always wished he was tougher.
04:32If he got into trouble, he would use his good old boy charm to weasel his way out of any situation.
04:37In October 1961, Richard met 16-year-old Shirley Malone at the Texas State Fair.
04:45She became pregnant after three weeks of dating.
04:47They got married on January 19, 1962.
04:51His job at the 7-Up Bottling Company as a truck driver was supposed to be enough to support the both of them,
04:56but he blew his money on prostitutes and alcohol.
04:59He had different standards for his wife.
05:01He had what's called Madonna Whore Complex.
05:03Either women were pure, and if they weren't, then they were whores in his eyes.
05:08He felt like his wife fit the whore category because he thought that she was cheating on him and was no good for him.
05:14She denied ever cheating on him, but he didn't believe her and decided to punish her any way he could.
05:20He would pick up ladies he would bring back to his apartment,
05:24and as his pregnant wife watched, he would kiss and fondle them in the car before laughing at her and speeding away.
05:30He didn't pay for Shirley's medical bills and wasn't around for the birth of his daughter, Robbie Lynn, on July 5, 1962,
05:38because he was serving a 22-day sentence for disturbing the peace.
05:42But his short time in the county jail was just the beginning.
05:45His first trip to state prison was in July 1963 at the age of 21.
05:51Richard was sentenced to serve three years in prison after being convicted of forgery and burglary.
05:56He was paroled in 1965 after serving 16 months.
06:00After he got out, his contempt for his wife became worse.
06:04He demanded sex from her four to five times a day, and if she refused, he would slap and choke her.
06:10Richard was arrested again on January 9, 1965.
06:14He attacked a woman in a parking lot of her apartment building wielding a 17-inch carving knife, but fled when the woman screamed.
06:21The police arrived within minutes and arrested Richard just a few blocks away.
06:25He was convicted of aggravated assault and given 16-month sentence to run concurrently with a parole violation sentence and returned to prison.
06:34But due to an error, he was released just six months later upon the completion of his parole violation sentence on July 2, 1965.
06:43He worked for three months as a driver for the Patterson Meat Company.
06:47Although he had six accidents in the company's truck, he was fired for failing to show up for work.
06:52In December 1965, upon the recommendation of his mother, Richard moved in with a 29-year-old divorced woman, an ex-professional wrestler,
07:01and now a bartender at his favorite bar, Jenny's Lounge, to babysit her three children.
07:07In January 1966, Shirley, who had been separated from Richard, filed for divorce.
07:13That same month, Richard stabbed a man in a knife fight at Jenny's Lounge.
07:17He was charged with aggravated assault, but the defense lawyer hired by his mother got the charge reduced to disturbing the peace.
07:24He was fined $10 and jailed for three days after failing to pay the fine.
07:29This was the last time Speck was in the police custody in Dallas.
07:32On March 5, 1966, Richard bought a 12-year-old car, then robbed a grocery store the following evening,
07:40stealing 70 cartons of cigarettes, which he then sold out of the trunk of his car in the grocery store's parking lot.
07:47The police traced the car, which had been abandoned, and issued a warrant for his arrest for burglary on March 8.
07:54Had he been apprehended under that warrant, it would have been his 42nd arrest in Dallas,
07:59and would have surely resulted in another prison term.
08:02But on March 9, 1966, Richard's sister Carolyn drove him to the Dallas bus depot, where he took the bus to Chicago.
08:13Richard was on the run.
08:15He decided he wanted to go back to Monmouth, hoping to turn back the clock to his childhood when he had fond memories of his father.
08:22Maybe he could straighten himself up and start flying right in the right environment, of course,
08:26but his demons would come back to haunt him.
08:29He lived with his older sister for a brief period of time.
08:32All of his older siblings knew what kind of trouble he got himself into down in Texas,
08:37but he convinced them that he had outgrown his wild ways.
08:40They found him a cheap apartment, and his brother got him a job with a carpenter sanding plasterboard.
08:46He kept his tattoos covered and showed up to work on time and sober.
08:50After only two weeks, he learned that his ex-wife was getting remarried to another man.
08:54The news overwhelmed him, bringing back memories of betrayal and abandonment.
08:59He quit his job, rented a cheap hotel, and lost himself in a haze of alcohol and pills.
09:04One night, he went out with a group of locals out drinking and started bragging about a woman he almost killed back in Dallas.
09:11While at the bar, he showed off an eight-inch hunting knife he called his insurance policy.
09:16This scared a lot of the men in that group.
09:18They normally didn't talk about things like that at all.
09:21His rage started to get the better of him.
09:23On April 3rd, he broke into a 65-year-old woman's house in Monmouth, brandishing a knife and speaking with a soft southern drawl.
09:31He blindfolded the woman, assuring her that he wouldn't harm her if she complied.
09:36He raped her and cut her house coat into strips, using them to tie her arms and legs together, then disappeared.
09:42She told police that the man who attacked her had a soft southern drawl, and very few people fit that description.
09:49So after the police briefly questioned Richard, they let him go, and he skipped town.
09:54He showed up at his sister Martha's doorstep in Chicago, spinning this elaborate story about the local mafia were trying to force him to sell drugs.
10:02She didn't believe him, but she took him in anyways.
10:05Her husband, Gene, who had served in the Navy, thought it would be a good idea for Richard to get a job with the U.S. Merchant Marines.
10:12As an apprentice seaman, Richard found work right away, boarding the Clarence B. Randall oarboat as a deckhand.
10:19But after four days at sea, one of the crew found Richard doubled over in pain.
10:23It was an appendicitis.
10:25He was flown from the ship by helicopter to the hospital.
10:28He enjoyed his time at the hospital, being cared for by the pretty nurses.
10:32After being discharged, he went back to his sister's house to recuperate.
10:35Richard boarded the Clarence B. Randall, on which he served until June 14th, when he got drunk and quarreled with one of the ship's officers and pulled a knife on him.
10:45He was fired from the ship and brought ashore on June 15th.
10:49He took his paycheck and went to visit Judy Lakanimi, a nurse's aide that he met while in the hospital.
10:55They dated for a brief period of time.
10:57She described him as the perfect gentleman, showering her with gifts and expensive dinners.
11:02After two weeks, they parted on good terms.
11:05He returned to his sister's house broke.
11:07He spent two weeks napping on the couch and reading comic books.
11:10She finally kicked him out of the house, telling him he needs to find a job on another ship.
11:15He did, but when he went to board the ship, he had been told that his position had been given to another deckhand with more seniority.
11:22He was furious, so he took what money he had left and went to the bar.
11:26He ended up in a park called Luella Park, which overlooked a group of townhouses that held senior nursing students from South Chicago Community Hospital.
11:35He had seen them before.
11:37With graduation coming up, the students were cramming for their final exams.
11:41He wanted to take out his rage and frustration somehow.
11:44Richard took a good long look at the apartment buildings, and a plan began to form.
11:48On the morning of July 3, 1966, Richard waited at the Maritime Union Hall looking for work.
11:56There was nothing available, so he called his sister Martha begging for help.
11:59Within an hour, she showed up in front of the hall and gave Richard $25.
12:04With money in his pocket, he didn't feel like looking for any work, so he checked into the shipyard and hotel and spent all day drinking at the hotel bar and following a middle-aged woman from bar to bar.
12:14Around 6 p.m., he approached her on the street and held her at knife point, leading her up to his room, where he raped her and stole a .22-caliber pistol from her purse.
12:24Around 10 p.m., dressed in all black, armed with a switchblade and a gun, he pried open a window screen in the back of the apartment.
12:31He quietly walked up the stairs, and when he saw the first bedroom door, he knocked.
12:35Waking her up, court is on Amaral, opened the door, he pointed the gun at her.
12:40He led her at gunpoint to the other bedrooms, waking the other student nurses up, leading them to the largest bedroom.
12:46Scared and not really sure what he wanted from them, the six of them sat silently as Richard lit a cigarette, smiling and using his softest southern drawl.
12:55He told them that he just wanted their money, and that he was leaving on a boat for New Orleans soon.
13:00The women gave him all their money, but he just sat there talking to them casually as he smoked.
13:05Around 11.40 p.m., Gloria Davey came home from a date.
13:09He now had seven captives.
13:11They sat there terrified, hoping that they could use their psychology training to calm him down.
13:16But the room fell silent as Richard crushed his cigarette out, stood up, and flicked open his switchblade.
13:21He cut long strips from a bed sheet, then tied them up one by one, tying their wrists behind their back and their ankles tightly.
13:28The first one he grabbed after tying them up was 20-year-old Palma Wilkening.
13:33She showed her contempt for him.
13:34She spit in his face and told him that she was going to pick him out of a lineup.
13:38He dragged her to a room across the hall, gagging her and pinning her to the floor, intending on raping her,
13:44when two other student nurses, Suzanne Ferris and Marianne Jordan, came home and saw what was going on, startling Richard.
13:51They tried to run out of the bedroom, but they never made it.
13:54He stabbed them both 20 times.
13:56His rage exploded, stabbing each of his victims, washing his hands after each murder.
14:02Valentina Passione's throat was sliced down to her larynx.
14:05Patricia Matuszak suffered a vicious kick to her midsection, but he saved Gloria Davey for last.
14:10He dragged her downstairs to the couch in the living room, raped her, sodomized her, and strangled her to death.
14:17He then looked for money and any valuables to steal.
14:20After four hours of bloodshed, Richard strolled out of the front door like nothing had happened.
14:25He stopped by a bridge and threw the knife in the water, then went back to his room at the shipyard inn, thinking he had committed the perfect murder.
14:32By daybreak, the story became front-page news.
14:38Richard was only a mile away from the crime scene, drinking in a bar, feeling pretty confident about himself.
14:43But he made one mistake.
14:45He left a witness.
14:46Corazon Amaral, the same lady that he first led around the apartment at gunpoint, managed to give Richard the slip.
14:52After he left the large bedroom with Pamela Wilkening, she managed to hide under one of the beds out of sight from her attacker.
15:00I guess in his blind rage, perhaps he forgot to count.
15:03He originally had nine, but murdered eight.
15:05She managed to get out of the apartment once she saw that the coast was clear, learning about this news that he left a witness, Richard Rand.
15:12He changed his name, trying not to leave a paper trail.
15:15He ended up on Skid Row in a 90-cent-a-day room.
15:18He checked in under the name R. Franklin.
15:21He didn't stray far from his hotel, knowing that every cop would be out looking for him.
15:26The police managed to lift 33 fingerprints, and based on Amaral giving a positive identification,
15:32they managed to match the fingerprints to Richard thanks to Dallas police.
15:36The announcement was made by police with his name and picture for all to see.
15:40Once Richard learned that they were looking for him, he couldn't possibly leave Chicago without being spotted.
15:46On July 16th, he drank the last of a bottle of cheap wine.
15:50Breaking the bottle, he cut his wrist with a broken glass.
15:53But a hotel handyman saw Richard laying on his bed, bleeding to death, and called the police.
15:59He was quickly rushed to the hospital, not recognizing him at first,
16:02until one of the nurses cleaning the cuts on his arms noticed a tattoo that said,
16:07Born to Raise Hell.
16:08He was under arrest.
16:10Richard was questioned by police and his attorney about where he was on the night of the 13th.
16:15He claims he has no memory of what happened past 8 p.m.
16:18He was drinking at the bar from 6 to 8 p.m., and a stranger gave him an injection of speed.
16:24He said, if I did do it, I don't have any memory of it.
16:27He was trying to go for an insanity defense.
16:29But when he would talk with his psychiatrist, who met with him twice a week,
16:33and formed a bond of trust with Richard, he would say,
16:36You don't remember what happened?
16:38Maybe it wasn't you.
16:39These are just allegations, hypothetically.
16:41But then Richard would reply with,
16:43Of course it was me.
16:43Who else could it be?
16:44He was also asked to paint as part of his defense to show that he was harmless.
16:49At first he painted a picture of a leopard, which his lawyer thought he was just like a leopard.
16:54He then told him to paint a picture of Bambi, so he did.
16:57He painted a lot of pictures and had them hanging all over his cell.
17:01He enjoyed his time in county jail.
17:04He even had a hot plate in his cell so him and his psychiatrist could have coffee.
17:08He kept his cell meticulously clean.
17:10Not a single thing was out of place.
17:12He felt like jail was a safe haven for him.
17:15But thanks to all the public pressure, Richard snapped one day at his psychiatrist while visiting.
17:20Richard picked up a razor blade, put it to the psychiatrist's throat, and said,
17:24Quote,
17:25If I'm such a monster, as everyone thinks I am, why don't I just kill you now?
17:29Unquote.
17:30Without blinking, the psychiatrist said,
17:32Because you don't have a quart of alcohol and eight redbirds in you.
17:35Richard replied,
17:36Yeah, I guess that's true, and put the razor down.
17:39Redbirds are pills that Richard liked to get high with while he was drinking.
17:43He was deemed mentally competent to stand trial and concluded he had not been insane at the time of the murders.
17:49I'm not going to get into the XYY syndrome myth because to me it's irrelevant.
17:54He didn't have it, but because he had some telltale signs that could point to it,
17:59like his deep acne scars and his aggressiveness,
18:02they tested him twice and his chromosomes were normal.
18:05Richard's trial began on April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois, with a gag order on the press.
18:12Without drugs or alcohol to bolster his nerves,
18:15he became the shy little boy that he was when he was in second grade.
18:18He wouldn't come out into the courtroom until he saw his defense attorney sitting there at the table.
18:24He really didn't want any publicity.
18:26As much as he bragged in the past with his friends,
18:29he really didn't want to be in the spotlight.
18:31On the second day of testimony, Corazon Amaral was called to the stand to identify and testify against Richard.
18:38When she was asked the standard question,
18:40Do you see the man in the courtroom today that committed the murders?
18:43Instead of just answering, Corazon stood up, walked over to where Richard was sitting,
18:49thrust a finger in his face, and defiantly said,
18:51This is the man.
18:52Almost solely on the strength of her testimony,
18:55on April 15, after 45 minutes of deliberation,
18:58the jury found Richard guilty of eight counts of first-degree murder
19:02and was sentenced to death.
19:03On June 5, he was sentenced to die in the electric chair.
19:07He was prepared to die for his crimes,
19:09but he believed he would be killed long before he would ever be executed.
19:13Once he was on death row, it was clear that surviving was going to be more difficult than he could ever imagine.
19:21The under-imates already heard about what he had done
19:23and began taunting him from their cells about what they were going to do to him.
19:27It just drove Richard absolutely up the walls.
19:30For his safety, he was moved to the isolation unit.
19:33He seemed to relax a bit more once he was there.
19:35He was given a job as a janitor,
19:37and one day he requested if he could paint his cell.
19:40So they got him to paint, and he did an excellent job.
19:43So they gave him the job of painting the entire isolation unit.
19:47He was soon given jobs all over the prison to paint.
19:50He got a bit of freedom with this work.
19:52He stashed raisins in jars and sewer pipes to ferment them into alcohol.
19:56He started smuggling cigarettes,
19:58but in June 1971, Richard's death sentence was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court,
20:03ruling that during his jury selection that some potential jurors were improperly excluded.
20:08They sentenced him to 400 to 1,200 years in prison,
20:13then reduced it again to 100 to 300 years.
20:17He went up for parole a total of seven times in the years to come.
20:21After the last parole hearing, he simply gave up.
20:24He lost himself in the prison's subculture.
20:26Violence and sexual abuse were the only way to survive.
20:30In a video recorded in 1988,
20:32which I'm still wondering how they smuggled a camcorder into the prison,
20:36you could see Richard talking about the night of the murders.
20:39When he was asked why did you kill them by someone off camera,
20:42he just replied it just wasn't their night.
20:44He admitted to killing them.
20:46He was asked how he felt.
20:47He said,
20:48like I always felt,
20:49had no feeling.
20:50If you're asking me if I felt sorry,
20:52no.
20:53At some point in the recording,
20:54he was asked sickening questions about having sex with men,
20:58and if he enjoyed it,
20:59and has he always enjoyed it.
21:00He would just simply reply with absolutely,
21:02or sure.
21:04You can tell how much he had changed.
21:06Richard stripped off his clothes,
21:08revealing that he had grown breasts
21:09thanks to smuggling in female hormone pills,
21:12and he was wearing a pair of blue panties.
21:14He became a queen bee.
21:16He adapted his body,
21:17making him more desirable.
21:19He was being prostituted out to other inmates,
21:22but as a reward,
21:22he would enjoy goodies like cigarettes,
21:25cocaine,
21:25and alcohol.
21:26He said in the video,
21:27If they only knew how much fun I was having,
21:30they'd turn me loose.
21:31The tape reportedly had been turned off
21:33after he was performing oral sex
21:35on the man beside him.
21:37They really didn't seem to care
21:38if they would get caught by the guards.
21:40It was just disturbing to see.
21:41Well, I didn't see the oral sex part.
21:43That was never shown, thankfully,
21:45but it was reported.
21:46On December 4th, 1991,
21:48Richard was experiencing severe chest pains
21:51and was rushed to Silver Cross Hospital.
21:53On the morning of December 5th, 1991,
21:56just one day shy of his 50th birthday,
21:59Richard Speck died from a massive heart attack.
22:01His body was not claimed by his family.
22:04He was cremated,
22:05and only two people know
22:06where his ashes were scattered.
22:11I find it ironic how Richard was treated in prison.
22:14He had went from raping women
22:15to becoming the woman in the relationship.
22:18In a way, his punishment seemed very fitting.
22:20Sure, he didn't get beat to death
22:22like a lot of prisoners do,
22:23but being humiliated like that
22:25and also being recorded for the world to see
22:28just showed that no matter how tough you are,
22:30there is always someone tougher than you
22:32that will put you in your place.
22:34Now, Richard was just one of those guys
22:35who just wanted to be seen as a badass.
22:38He enjoyed it when someone was afraid of him.
22:40He got off on it.
22:41I don't know if his life
22:42could have ever been turned around at some point.
22:45His views on women
22:46with his Madonna whore complex,
22:48it just seemed like nothing could turn his life around.
22:50He was given chance after chance after chance,
22:53and he always blew it,
22:54sometimes not right away,
22:56but other times it was instant.
22:57And those poor nurses that he killed,
22:59all they wanted to do was help heal people.
23:02It's heartbreaking that they didn't even have a chance
23:04to start their lives as nurses.
23:06This is one guy I'm glad that he's gone.
23:08There's no memorial for him,
23:09no grave marker.
23:11He's just ashes that have been soaked back into the ground
23:14to be forgotten forever.
23:15As for those nurses that were killed,
23:17they were given proper funerals and burials as they should.
23:20Rest in peace, ladies.
23:26What is there really to say about this guy?
23:28Richard Speck was a real piece of work.
23:30Went from a rapist and a murderer to a prison bitch.
23:33He just seemed to cause trouble for no good reason
23:36other than he just wanted to.
23:37He could never commit these crimes
23:39without the help of some kind of vice in his system.
23:41He would always get short stays in jail or prison.
23:44He beat his wife.
23:46He treated her like crap.
23:47I feel sorry for his daughter.
23:48I honestly hope she changed her name
23:50or at least doesn't know who her father was.
23:53I couldn't even imagine how these kids
23:54from mass murderers or serial killers cope with it.
23:57I'm actually glad I didn't see the full tape recording
24:00of Richard while he was in prison.
24:02I couldn't stomach that crap at all.
24:04But the parts I did see...
24:05He needs to put his shirt on.
24:07He just has his titties out there flopping around
24:10and it just seems so off to me.
24:11Being trans is one thing
24:13but this was just a whole nother level.
24:15Yes there are plenty of books, documentaries
24:17made about him.
24:18I haven't had a chance to read the book
24:20that was written by Ryan Green.
24:22The same one that wrote the Charles Whitman book
24:24that I briefly talked about in that video about him.
24:27But I know his psychiatrist wrote a book
24:29about him a long time ago
24:30and I have yet to find it.
24:32Anyways if you stuck around to the end
24:34thank you.
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24:47Thank you for hanging out with me
24:49in the Dark Mystery Lounge.
24:50This is Phoenix signing out.
24:52Have a good evening
24:53and stay safe.
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