She was not the same person. His leisure tastes? 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. In the townhouse, she was known to sing while doing the dishes or the laundry. The Farris family lived in a quiet, tree-lined Far South Side neighborhood called Fair Elms. Richard Speck captured the nation's attention during the summer of 1966 after murdering eight female students who lived together on Chicago's South Side. Merlita grew up on the island of Mindoro where bananas, rice and coconut grow. Jewelry, makeup and nail polish were forbidden on duty. On that Monday, she was taken to a townhouse on East 100th Street rented by her new employer, South Chicago Community Hospital. 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. Cora the first of the residents to see Richard Speck that night, and the only one to survive unlocked it. Jack Wilkening, brother of Pamela Wilkening, remembers his sister and the days surrounding her 1966 murder along with seven other student nurses and nurseson Chicago'sSouth Side. She started college as an English major at Northern Illinois University, then switched to nursing. Changing his mind at the last minute, he summoned help, and was taken to Cook County hospital, where, again, his tattoo gave him away, and he was arrested and taken into custody. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune). Kubasek is 71, Baskys 68. Teacher. (Schmale family ). In this interview, Speck confessed to the murders for the first time publicly and said he thought he would get out of prison "between now and the year 2000", at which time he hoped to run his own grocery store business. 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. Her roommates and friends were killed by Speck on July 14, 1966, after he broke in armed with a gun and a knife. "Let people know who they were," she said. I had that put on me when I was 14 or 15. Girls, we need to clean the house.". He had no doubt. Here are five things to know about Richard Speck. To be reminded of his sister's kindness, to be able to speak with someone about her in that way, gave him rare comfort. Why should you be surprised?". Billy, the spirited boy who rarely spoke more than two words at a time, blurted three: "Mary Ann's dead!". On board was another exchange nurse, Corazon Amurao, whom she had met a month or so earlier. 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 . A few years ago, he ran into an old family friend and she told him a story he'd never heard, about how when she was in high school and couldn't afford a prom dress, Suzie made her one. The next time he saw her, her body was on a gurney behind a window in the coroners office. After she married and had three children, she told her kids that Aunt Gloria had died in a car crash. In their tightknit neighborhood, Pat and her friends stood on corners during the fall to help her dad sell peanuts for the Kiwanis Club. According to the New York Times, at least one victim was raped. 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. Richard Speck murdered eight student nurses in one night in 1966. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our. He had never met the women he was about to kill. '', Even when he attempted to express remorse for the murders, he still came off as a conscienceless criminal: ''I`m sorry as hell. On Aug. 7, 1966, when Lori Davy, 11, walked across the stage to accept her sister's diploma, her father's orders were fresh in her mind. Would she still love water ballet? Inside sat four square, off-white boxes labeled "Kodak," and on top of them lay a sheet of thin pink paper. A. I screamed there for about five minutes and nothing. They`ll never mess with nobody else.''. Would Kubasek help? At her father's urging, Lori considered becoming a nurse, but she finally told him that she couldn't, she was just too emotional for the job. Editor's note: This story was first published on April 28, 2016, and is being republished to mark the 50th anniversary of the murders. That was a good time that we had," she told Martin in a recent email. All of the bedrooms were upstairs, and none had a phone. "Did I just see Grandpa on the television?" 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. '', He said that if he were ever paroled, and someone annoyed him, ''I`ll be back in prison. Often after a day of classes at Fenger High School, Pat Matusek walked to Roseland Community Hospital to see her cousin Tommy. Richard Speck Mindhunter: Ford goes too far in interviewing Speck, trying to use inflammatory, sexist language to get the murderer to open up. Soon after he was born, the family moved to Monmouth, Illinois. A total of eight woman, between ages 19 and 24, were systematically bound, robbed, beaten, strangled and stabbed during Speck's frenzy. He spent a few days there before traveling to Monmouth, Illinois, where he stayed with some family friends from his early childhood. The police didn't rush them, but they left as fast as they could. But any kid can end up just like me.'' When. Forty miles from home, when they spotted a gas station, they were reluctant to stop for directions because their curlers made them look like creatures from Mars. He committed several violent crimes against his family as a teenager and young man before he became a mass murderer at the age of 25. Lori tries to live by her mother's words. Me, I`m not like Dillinger or anybody else. In those postwar years, most residents of Chicago's Far South Side were white and working-class, still close to their immigrant roots. By the time they were in their third year, they had helped deliver babies, treated sick children, watched people die. In the townhouse's unofficial sorority, Pam was the quiet one. Speck found work on a ship, and it began to seem like bodies turned up wherever Speck had been. Life, though not idyllic, felt safe. Kubasek said no. Suzanne Farris, left, and Gloria Davy pose at the dinner table, circa 1966. He wonders what it would have been like to grow old with a sister, his sister. ''), the rest of the conversation was sickeningly mesmerizing. A native Tagalog speaker, she began learning English in first grade. Despite fears that Cora, in one doctor's words, would "lapse into a psychosis" and never be able to discuss the murders, she testified boldly at Speck's trial. In Lori's words, Gloria was driven, independent, intelligent, headstrong, poised, creative and snippy when she didn't like what you were doing. Born on December 6, 1941a day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that dragged the US into World War IIRichard Benjamin Speck was born in rural Illinois, the seventh of eight children. The Filipina women often ate dinner together at the townhouse kitchen table, sometimes joined by other exchange nurses. ''Here,'' he said. By July of 1966, however, Mary Ann, 20, had moved out of the townhouse and back into the family bungalow. Despite concerns about her ability to testify after her harrowing ordeal, she gave a faultless performance, impressing the jury with every detail of that evening, identifying Speck unequivocally. Amurao had arrived the previous day to identify the killer in person, but Speck was not well enough. On many of those days she walked home crying, yet it was her afternoons with Tommy that made her think she could be a nurse. Finding those carousels of slides, in September 2015, may have been a fluke, but it felt like a providential sign. Then I screamed for help. Kubasek hurried to her car and drove to the townhouse. Richard Benjamin Speck was born on December 6, 1941, in Kirkwood, Illinois, into a large, religious family, where he was the seventh of eight children. Where Is Acquitted Murderer Candy Montgomery Now? Patricia Matusek was murdered along with five fellow nursing students and two visiting nurses in 1966 on Chicago'sSouth Side. Took a nap. 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. He watched it once and hurled it into a corner. Speck is the character who, while being interviewed by Ford and Tench, tosses a pet bird into a fan. 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. Her experience there whetted her interest in nursing. "Well," she wrote, "it was a fine, dizzying, exciting and wonderful weekend, but I still believe there is no place like home.". She wanted to make her sister look like her sister, Kubasek said, choking up on the word sister., Student nurses Patricia Matusek, left, and Suzanne Farris, circa 1966. But to this day Atienza suffers nightmares that Speck will come back and kill her. 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. I don`t want nothing to do with them women.''. 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. Speck then rounded the nurses up and ordered them to empty their purses, before tying them all up. A Tribune freelancer in the Philippines had no success either, and reported that the Philippine Nurses Association in Manila had no contact information for their families. Law- enforcement officials familiar with the 1966 mass murder said there was no chance an accomplice existed. In the days before automated fingerprint identification, it took almost a week to identify the prints found in the townhouse as his. (Farris family). Shortly after the Filipina women arrived, the Chicago women threw them a welcome party, and over the next few weeks helped them learn their way around the city. John Farris carries a photo of his sister Suzie in his wallet. They were excited. Just a few glimpses of the video have been shown (in the A&E) documentary about Richard. What would Nina, who died at 24, look like today, at 74? The body count was so high that he failed to notice that Amurao, who had opened the door for him on his arrival, had managed to hide herself under one of the beds. She wanted to do Pat's hair and makeup for the funeral. Too tired. Fortunately, Amurao remembered the distinctive "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo that, along with the image, enabled police to identify their suspect as Richard Speck. There she joined two other Filipina exchange nurses, Merlita Gargullo and Corazon Amurao, who had arrived a few days earlier. Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich contributed. She still gets a kick out of playing poker at casinos in Nevada with her husband. Richard Speck was a murderer notorious for killing eight student nurses in 1966. They could talk about the wedding. Tina, 23, shared a bedroom with three of the American nurses, while Cora and Merlita shared another. Dr. John Schmale found a box of old slides in his waterlogged basement and opened a flood of memories. In 1991, while still in prison, Speck died of a heart attack. Schmale was a student nurse at South Chicago Community Hospital. News item: Richard Speck dies in prison, of a heart attack, the day before his 50th birthday. Jack Wilkening is 79 now, retired from his job as a Standard Oil cashier. I`m not a violent man.''. I watch. Speck also has a foul mouth on him and Ford realizes that there is only one way to communicate with him. "Pat looks at us and says, 'Oh, for crying out loud!'" I like him. Amurao had arrived the previous day to identify the killer in person, but Speck was not well enough. In 1972, Speck's death sentence was commuted to 50 to 100 years in prison, when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished capital punishment. ''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.''. The police arrived to scenes of carnage, and took Amurao into custody, interviewing her and proceeding with the construction of an Identikit image.