Richard Speck was an American mass murderer who killed eight student nurses in their residence in South Deering, Chicago, on the night of July 13–14, 1966. He stabbed, strangled, or slashed the throats of his victims, and he raped one of them before killing her. A ninth nurse survived by hiding beneath a bed. Convicted of all eight murders in 1967, he was sentenced to death, a sentence later reduced to long prison terms. He died of a heart attack in prison on the eve of his 50th birthday.
Early life
Speck was born in Kirkwood, Illinois, in 1941, the seventh of eight children. His family moved to Monmouth, Illinois, shortly after his birth. After his father died when Speck was six, his mother married a traveling insurance salesman with a long criminal record. The family moved frequently around Texas, and Speck struggled in school, dropped out at 16, and began drinking heavily at an early age. He accumulated dozens of arrests for minor offenses before reaching adulthood.
Criminal record
Speck was convicted of forgery and burglary in 1963 and served time in a Texas prison. After his release in 1965 he was arrested again for attacking a woman with a carving knife, and was later jailed for a knife fight. In March 1966 he left Dallas for Chicago and then moved to Monmouth, where he spent much of his time in downtown taverns before traveling to Chicago again.