[lilylangtree]

Very sad! It still brings anger. Is Speck still alive? Or was he fried?

[john drake]

Wasn't the Boston Strangler considered the first American serial killer,just a few years before?

[ThreePuttinDude]

I lived on the north side when this happened, and
I can still remember how we all felt when we heard
of this.

A&E had an hour show on this dirt bag, and he actually
was laughing with his boyfriend during the taping. What
a waste of time it is keeping these scum suckers alive.


TPD

[Steely Tom]

Isn't Speck the mutant who boasted about how much fun he was having behind bars, and who had the state of Illinois pay for hormone therapy to help him grow... ah... feminine characteristics.

[The Brush]

I was away at Boy Scout camp that week and our bus driver told us about what had happened when we were driving home.
Like the O.L.A. school fire in Chicago or the flight 191 plane crash in 1979. It's something you never forget.

[AdvisorB]

Can you imagine an inhumane monster like this getting life in prison. He endend up in prison, a living the life of Reilly while in prison, because we had too many liberal/leftists on the US Supreme Court. And these fools had struck down the death penalty as being unconstitutional.
This is how speck was able to weasel his way from a rendezvous with the gas chamber. BTW, we have too many liberal/leftists on todays SCOTUS.

[TASMANIANRED]

Even if he had a gun they would have been better off fighting.

Better to die standing than on your knees.

[Pelham]

I remember the Speck murders. And Charles Whitman playing sniper on the Texas Tower that same summer. Before that summer headline murders were something like the killing of Kitty Genovese, or the Dr. Sam Sheppard case that inspired the plot of 'The Fugitive'.

[the invisib1e hand]

But to those still around, the memories cut as sharp as a knife.

welp, there you have B-grade journalism and poor taste all in one.

[onedoug]

An eternity in hell since 1991.

[PacesPaines]

I was 7 years old, living in the Chicago area at the time of the murders. I was a very good reader, so by that time, was regularly reading the newspaper. How well I remember seeing the frightening Chicago Tribune front page with the photos of Speck's victims. It gives me the chills 40 years later.

If there ever was an example of pure evil, it was the monstrosity known as Richard Speck.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Exactly 40 years ago this week, Richard Franklin Speck broke into a two-story town house in a quiet middle-class neighborhood on the Southeast Side and made nightmares come true...almost three years to the day before Teddy Kennedy let a young woman die in his submerged car in Chappaquiddick pond, another horrendous crime......

[CrazyIvan]

Nice to have your hometown famous for something. Richard Speck was from mine (Monmouth Ill.). He lived at the "Y" for awhile and had a record at the time. Our moms would warn us not to talk to him. Of course we did anyway. There was a barmaid murdered and left in a hog house that locals credited to him but nobody was ever convicted. He had two nephews that were a year older and younger than I and both are great guys. The younger is named Richard Speck also and I remember that a local judge asked him if he wanted to change it. He didn't, which I could never understand. We went on a family vacation shortly after the murders and of course every time someone would ask us where we were from that's what came up. So much for my brush with fame. Oh, and John Wayne Gacey lived down the road in Roseville for awhile.

[DCPatriot]

I remember this. I believe the author is right. Richard Speck and Charles Whitman changed this country's outlook.

We were already somewhat numb when Bundy and Gacy arrived.

[Atlantian]

I remember my mom waking me up in the morning with a shocked look on her face telling me about these murders.

There were some horrible murders in Chicago during the 50's and 60's. I can still remember the names of children who were murder--the Grimes sisters, the Schultz brothers and Mary Ann Anderson.

I had to walk two blocks to elementary school by myself and I remember being afraid. You never knew who was luring around.

[Sandy]

I always thought these women were killed while sleeping. Why the hell didn't they fight the guy? Weird.

[Lancey Howard]

Interestingly, it was less than a month later that the Texas Tower Sniper, Charles Whitman struck.

[Mercat]

I had just graduated from HS. My dad sat me down and scared me to death with talk of locking apartments, not driving at night, etc.