CHAPTER 12

Thursday, July 14, 1966

By early morning, Speck had already slid back into the seedy world of Calumet Harbor bars, to begin another day of bragging, drinking, lying, and whoring. At ten-thirty, fresh from several hours sleep, he strolled into his favorite hangout—Pete’s Tap. He was wearing clean, neatly pressed slacks and T-shirt and was freshly shaven, smelling of Old Spice cologne. Hanging in a scabbard from his waist was a brown-handled, foot-long hunting knife. This was the same knife Speck had carried on his belt when he strutted about the Shipyard Inn before he set out to kill. Since he had not used the knife in the town house, he felt safe in brandishing it again.

Speck gave bartender Ray Crawford a ten-dollar bill and said that he wanted to get the watch he had left in pawn about a month earlier. It was a twenty-five-jewel, self-winding gold Benrus. Crawford gave Speck the watch and three dollars change, prompting Speck to order a glass of beer. Crawford, a former U.S. Army master sergeant, struck up a conversation with his customer. Suddenly, Speck reached down and removed the hunting knife, asking, “Ray, put this knife behind the bar. I don’t want to be seen with it.”

Crawford put the knife away, and Speck began a long story about how he had killed several people in Vietnam with this very knife. He also repeated his lie about having stabbed a first mate, this time saying it happened on a ship sailing from Vietnam. Then, standing up from his bar stool, Speck leaned over, retrieved the knife from behind the bar, and walked up behind Crawford, who was standing at the end of the bar. Putting his left arm around Crawford’s chest, Speck took the hunting knife in his right hand and placed it at the bartender’s throat, tilting the blade so that it touched the Adam’s apple. “If I was gonna kill somebody, this is how I would do it,” Speck said. Crawford pushed Speck away and reclaimed the knife, warning, “I don’t go for that. I don’t like to mess around with knives.”

Speck treated the incident as a big joke and returned to his bar stool to strike up a conversation with another saloon regular, William Kirkland, who lived upstairs at the St. Elmo flophouse. Speck was sitting there, talking and laughing with Crawford and Kirkland, when two girls he had met during his earlier stay at the St. Elmo walked in—Judy Feather and Wanda “Boots” Hooper. Judy Feather was the stage name of the young woman, who was a go-go dancer at a local bar; she and Speck had once had sex together. Hooper was divorced from Zack Hooper, a son of Ella Mae Hooper. Speck stood up and strutted over to the jukebox, where he bent over the machine, choosing hillbilly tunes. The girls were playing the nearby bowling machine. Neither Feather nor Hooper had seen Speck for weeks and Feather asked, “I thought you left town.” Speck answered, “I changed my mind.”

Returning to the bar, Speck told Crawford that he had a $1300 check coming the next day, inquiring, “Can you cash it for me?” Crawford replied that he did not have that kind of money on hand. Speck asked him for his knife back, and then sold it to Kirkland for a dollar. Wanting Kirkland to know what a valuable piece of weaponry he was buying, Speck explained that he had bought the knife from a soldier in Vietnam, where he had sailed on an ammunition ship. While returning to the United States, Speck added, he had gotten drunk and stabbed the first mate in a fight. The knife, with its seven-inch blade, had actually been given to Speck by his brother-in-law Gene Thornton, who obtained it during his days in the navy. Newfound friends Speck and Kirkland then walked across the street to the Soko-Grad tavern. Kirkland noticed that Speck appeared nervous and gulped down two beers in fifteen minutes.

While Speck whiled away the hours drinking, the manhunt and media blitz were well under way. With racial violence beginning to erupt, Chicago was already a jittery city. Now, Speck’s murders had pushed the race riots to the bottom of the front page. EIGHT NURSES ARE STRANGLED read the big, black headline in the early edition of the Chicago Tribune. The subheads added, “Student building invaded by sex maniac … Report hospital aides raped.”

These were the last days of big-city “front-page” journalism and Chicago’s four dailies, two published in the morning, two in the afternoon, would demonstrate an insatiable appetite for reporting the story. The murder of the nurses was the biggest crime in the U.S. since 1949, when ex-serviceman Howard Unruh had taken a midday walk onto the sidewalks of Camden, N.J., and gunned down thirteen people in twelve minutes. Unruh told police, “I’d have killed a thousand if I’d had enough bullets.” He was found insane and committed to a mental institution. Now, the murder of the nurses was bringing back memories of Chicago as the home of Al Capone, the mastermind of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929. Capone’s men, disguised as federal agents, had lined up seven members of a rival gang and mowed them down from behind with machine guns.

The manhunt for the nurses’ killer had begun immediately. At six-thirty A.M., patrolman Leonard Ponne took down the first statement from a hysterical Corazon Amurao. Cora’s initial description was marked by her heavy accent and hesitancy with the English language, and by her hysteria. Ponne himself was shaken by what he had seen. The description of the event was this:

“One white male, approximately 25 years old, 6 feet tall, short or crew-cut hair, no hat, wearing a black waist-length jacket, dark pants…. At about 11 P.M., offender had knocked on her bedroom door. When she opened door, offender was standing with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other hand … Offender tied nurses up and made them sit in a circle in the room. Offender stated, ‘I won’t hurt you, I want money to go to New Orleans.’ ”

At six-fifty, Detective Byron Carlile arrived at 2315 to take over the interview with Cora. Carlile worked the midnight shift with his partner Wallenda. He was a big man with broad shoulders, short gray hair, dark-rimmed glasses, and a craggy, weathered face. He had seen it all and was smooth and classy, possessing a profound understanding of the motives that drive people. He suggested that they move to an upstairs bedroom for privacy, and a grateful Cora quickly agreed. To provide emotional support, she was accompanied by Tammy Sioukoff and Josephine Chan. Carlile obtained the additional details that the killer spoke in a soft drawl and had blond hair. Cora emphasized, “I really want to help.”

The descriptions were relayed to communications central of the Chicago Police Department. Cora was taken to South Chicago Community Hospital, where she was placed under police guard and heavy sedation. In the meantime, grief-stricken parents and relatives of the nurses were assembling at the Cook County Morgue to identify the victims. Wallenda recalls, “Hardened men broke down and cried. What could we tell the parents? I knew Joe Matusek, who ran a saloon at 108th and Michigan. And knew Suzanne Farris and Mary Ann Jordan from the hospital emergency room. We simply didn’t have any answers. How could we?”

The nearest Chicago police station, Area 2, was located at Ninetieth and Cottage Grove, about one mile from the murder scene. Homicide Commander Flannagan and Deputy Chief of Detectives Mike Spiotto had decided that Area 2 burglary should be involved in the manhunt, since there was a possibility that a “known burglar” might have been the perpetrator. This instruction was relayed to Sergeant Victor Vrdolyak, the acting lieutenant for the burglary unit, and his deputy, Sergeant Michael Clancy. Vrdolyak, an ambitious, bright Croatian whose father owned a tavern on the Southeast Side, was a big, muscular man who combined high intelligence and a dry wit with exceptional street savvy. He was given to wearing twin brown leather shoulder holsters carrying magnum-force firepower. He was also given to aggressively taking over a case, if he could. Clancy was an ascerbic, tough, no-nonsense stocky Irishman who wore glasses and had thinning gray hair.

The homicide and detective commanders advised Vrdolyak and Clancy that since few people knew about the nurses’ residences, the killer must have either lived in the area, had business in the area, or been in some way a “hanger-on” who became aware of who lived in 2319. They provided Cora’s description of the killer and added that he apparently had started out looking for nothing more than money to get to New Orleans.

Vrdolyak and Clancy relayed this information to their detectives, who were told to begin the hard grind of ringing doorbells and asking questions.

Thursday was a day off for burglary detective Edward Wielosinski, but he knew that his Area 2 colleagues needed all the help they could get. The blond, boyish Wielosinski was a cop’s cop with a natural instinct for people, and he knew the Southeast Side like the back of his hand. By 1966, Wielosinski had been on the police force for sixteen years. He had heard about the murders on his car radio while returning home from his moonlighting job as a security guard. He tried to drive to the scene, but he couldn’t get past the crowd. Instead, he turned his car around and showed up for the eight-thirty A.M. roll call at Area 2 headquarters. Sergeant Vrdolyak read off the murderer’s description: “Six feet, one hundred sixty pounds, short blond hair, black coat, Southern drawl, wanted money to go to New Orleans.” Wielosinski and two other burglary detectives, Edward Boyte and John Mitchell, went to work.

They began their investigation on foot and quickly proceeded to the intersection of 100th Street and Torrence Avenue. The trio figured that since Torrence Avenue provided the quickest exit from the city on foot, and since 100th Street provided the best way to hitch a ride east to Indiana, the murderer might have walked this route to try to get out of the city.

This intersection was also the location of a Shell gas station, which Wielosinski knew to be a popular hangout for the neighborhood punks. He suggested to Boyte and Mitchell that they check it out. At eight forty-five, the three burglary dicks walked into the station and asked attendant Dennis Ryan if he had seen anybody matching the suspect’s description. Ryan thought a moment and replied, “Well, yes, there was a guy who came in early on the morning of July thirteenth to wash up and get some bags he had left at the station. He had a soda and ate a candy bar and made some small talk. He spoke with a real Southern drawl and appeared plenty pissed off. He mumbled something about a ‘damn ship’ or an ‘ammunition ship.’ ”

Wielosinski had been in the merchant marine, during World War II and he knew that there was a seaman’s hiring hall across from the scene of the murders. At nine A.M., Wielosinski, Boyte, and Mitchell fought through the crowd gathered around the town house and entered the National Maritime Union building to talk to the Chicago Port Agent, William Neill, to see if he recalled anyone answering the description just provided by Ryan. Neill wanted to be helpful, but nothing rang a bell. Finally, he suggested that the only seaman answering the description was a man named Peter Crowell, who had shipped out on July 11 aboard the Flying Spray, a ship bound for Vietnam. Neill offered to cable the ship to see if Crowell was aboard.

The detectives returned to the streets and revisited the Shell station. This time, Ryan suggested, “Why don’t you talk to Dick Polo. He talked to this guy, too.” Polo, the manager of the station, was the man who on July 12 had given Speck permission to leave his bags. He was now home sleeping, having worked through the night. Mitchell called Polo’s home from the station and insisted that he be awakened. Polo recalled Speck and volunteered, “Well, I assumed the guy was a sailor. He had two bags, he was looking for a room, and he was very upset about something. I referred him to a rooming house at Ninety-fourth and Commercial and allowed him to leave his bags overnight.”

Encouraged by developments, Wielosinski called headquarters and requested reinforcements, so that two two-man teams could split up and canvass the nearby hotels and rooming houses. Boyte and Mitchell were one team, and Wielosinski was paired with the meticulous and tenacious Eugene Ivano.

The teams split, and, a few moments later, Wielosinski and Ivano checked out the Clark Gas Station at 2416 East 100th Street, which was west of the Shell station and only a few blocks from the town house at 2319. The attendant, David Wilhelm, recalled that “Yes, a man who appeared to be a sailor came here about five-thirty or so on July twelfth and wanted to leave two bags overnight. He appeared disturbed and loitered around and made me so nervous that I finally had to ask him to leave, refusing to keep his bags. He appeared pretty upset about something, and said he hoped to ‘ship out in a few days.’ He also had some funny tattoos on his arms.”

At ten-thirty A.M., about the time a refreshed Speck was walking into Pete’s Tap, Wielosinski and Ivano returned to the Maritime Union Hall. “A second gas station attendant has placed this stranger in the area,” Wielosinski said. “Did Peter Crowell miss a ship or did some other seaman miss a ship? This guy was complaining about a ‘damn ship’ or an ‘ammunition ship.’ ”

Suddenly, Neill snapped his fingers and began rifling through his wastebasket. “Wait a minute,” Neill said. “On July twelfth, in the morning, a ship berthed in Indiana Harbor requested two seamen, when only one was required. Two seamen were sent from the hall. One was hired, and the other returned the next morning disgusted and mad. This guy has a Southern drawl, like a hillbilly, and he fits the description. He’s tall. I finally had to tell him to quit blowing steam and settle down, that he’d get another ship.”

Incredibly, Neill reached down and fished out of his wastebasket a duplicate of the assignment slip that had dispatched Speck to the Sinclair Great Lakes. The slip provided the name, “Richard B. Speck.” The address provided was that of the Thorntons, his sister and brother-in-law, and read, “3966 N. Avondale, telephone: AV 3–2830.”

With this information, Neill was able to retrieve the entire union file on Speck. He informed Ivano and Wielosinski that Speck had been fired from the Clarence B. Randall for assaulting a ship’s officer, and that he also had several tattoos on his arms. The description on file perfectly matched the ones provided by Ryan and Wilhelm of the disturbed stranger who had visited their gas stations.

Wielosinski and Ivano passed this information on to Sergeant Clancy in Area 2, suggesting that he check the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Inquiry Section. Clancy made the check, but Chicago police knew nothing of Richard Speck.

For the next four hours, the four burglary cops pounded the pavement, knocking on the doors of nearby rooming houses in search of a “Richard Speck.” At two P.M., the four returned to Area 2 headquarters to meet with Commander Flannagan, who had overall responsibility for the case. He told them to “stay with the case. We’ve got our hands full as it is.”

In the meantime, technicians from the Chicago Police Department crime lab and from the lab’s identification section were hard at work inside 2319 checking for possible fingerprints.

While the cops chased leads, Speck and Kirkland were still drinking. They were at the Soko-Grad when the TV broke in with a more accurate report about the murder of eight nurses. For the first time, Speck learned that he had left a survivor. He said to Kirkland, “It must have been a dirty motherfucker that done it!”

The two returned to Pete’s, where Speck kept up his storytelling, excitedly jabbering away. He confided to Kirkland that he had a “pig” Puerto Rican girlfriend he kept at the Shipyard Inn. Speck launched into a long anecdote about his brother-in-law, Gene Thornton. In this fiction, Speck related how he had stolen a fifth of whiskey from Thornton’s home one Sunday while Thornton and his sister were at church. “I got good and smashed,” Speck explained, “and my brother-in-law threatened to call the police and have me jailed. Well, I handed him the phone and said, ‘Is this what you want?’ When he said, ‘Yes!’ I hit him over the head with the receiver. His face was covered with blood. My sister gave me eighty-five dollars and said, ‘Get the hell out of here!’ So, I packed my bags and here I am.”

Speck had shrewdly taken an experience rooted in fact—how he had once stolen liquor from his stepfather—and transformed it into an excuse-making fiction, in this case to explain why he had money.

By noon, Kirkland had seen enough of Speck, who seamlessly relocated to Eddie and Cooney’s Tap, a few blocks north of Pete’s. Here, he ran into another drinking buddy—Robert R. “Red” Gerrald. Speck and Gerrald, fellow hillbillies, had worked together and drunk together while sailing on the Clarence B. Randall back in April of that year. Gerrald had a slender build, big nose, and close-cropped red hair. He wore a perpetual puppylike sad expression, and on this day was well on his way toward a monumental drunk.

Speck ordered a hamburger, took only two bites, and pushed it aside. “I have a bad hangover from last night,” he explained. Gerrald thought that Speck seemed “calm, but nervous.” The two continued to drink beers, with Speck occasionally suggesting that they “walk over to Bond’s, so I can buy some new clothes.” The drinking got in the way, however, and the two moseyed only a few blocks farther north to the Ebbtide Inn.

While drinking at the Ebbtide, Speck and Gerrald heard the bartender and two customers discussing how the nurses had been murdered. Speck spoke up, “It must have been a sex maniac to have done something like that.” Then, persuading Gerrald to join him, Speck decided to return to the Shipyard Inn. Speck tried to call a taxi, but was unable to get through. Frustrated, he gave the bartender a dime and asked him to make the call, adding, “Thank you, sir.” A Commercial Cab arrived at the Ebbtide to take Speck for the short ride back to his room at the Shipyard Inn. Slowly, he was beginning to run.

At two-ten P.M., Speck and Gerrald arrived at the Shipyard Inn bar, where Speck switched his drink from beer to Jim Beam and Coke. He went up to his room to switch T-shirts. When he returned, Gerrald was on the verge of a boozy collapse and wanted to return to his rooming house “to straighten up.” Speck suggested that Red go to his room instead, and handed him the key. First, though, Speck laid another alibi on his drinking buddy. Speck said that he had picked up a girl the night before and that she had stayed with him all night. He embellished the story with the detail that she had first told him she wanted ten dollars for her favors, but “she got drunker than I did and I ended up getting it for nothing.”

Red went upstairs, but was unable to get the key in the lock and had to return to ask Speck for help. Finally, the door was opened and Red managed to lie down for forty minutes or so to try to stop his head from “slithering around.” Gerrald noticed that the bed had been slept in. Speck remained in the bar and ordered another Jim Beam and Coke.

As Gerrald slept off his hangover and Speck sipped his drink, Sergeant Clancy sat in Area 2 headquarters only a mile away. At three P.M., he picked up the phone and dialed AV 3–2830. Gene Thornton answered the call, and Clancy attempted a ruse. “This is Mr. Olsen at the National Maritime Union,” Clancy said, “and we have an assignment for Richard Speck. Is he there?”

Told that Speck was not there, Clancy persisted, “Well, can you locate him? He needs to get in touch with us immediately, if he’s going to ship out.” Thornton understood the opportunity, adding, “Thanks for calling. We need to get this guy on a ship and out of our hair. I’ll see what I can do.” Minutes later, the phone rang at the Shipyard Inn and was answered by the day bartender, a bespectacled, jolly plump man who looked like he could easily pass for Santa Claus. “Richard Speck?” he announced.

Speck took the call and was told by Thornton to call the union hall about a job. Moving to the saloon’s pay telephone, Speck called the hiring hall and asked to speak to Mr. Olsen. William Olsen, the deputy port agent, had been rehearsed by Clancy in what to say to lure Speck to the union hall. Detectives Wielosinski, Boyte, and Mitchell were at his side, staking out the site for Speck’s arrival. In his nervousness, however, Olsen was too clever by half:

“We have a ship for you,” Olsen told Speck. “It’s the Sinclair Great Lakes and we’ll hold the assignment open until you come on over here.”

Speck, however, knew full well that the Sinclair Great Lakes had already shipped out. Mumbling in a slurred voice, he replied, “Well, I’m up in the Loop”—the city’s downtown business district—“right now at Ruth’s Place. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

The killer had a different destination in mind, however. Quickly spinning out new stories, he first called Gene Thornton and thanked him for the call, adding, “I turned the job down because it was only good for one day.” Speck returned to his room, roused Red from his stupor, and told a new story. “I’ve been given an assignment on the Sinclair Great Lakes, but I have to go to my sister’s to get some money.” He quickly tossed his clothes into the tan suitcase and plaid zipper bag, left the room with the suitcase, and asked Red to bring down the plaid bag.

Returning downstairs, Speck took his tan suitcase out the side door and placed it on the curb. Then, he went back inside and told the bartender, “I’ve just been given a job on a ship docked at Indiana Harbor”—in nearby East Chicago, Indiana—“and I’m going to have to check out.” He did not ask for a refund on his one week’s rent, but he was given a one-dollar refund for the key. Next, Speck went to the phone, and called the Commercial Cab Company. Asked his name, he replied, “Johnson.” Asked his destination, he said, “North Side.” Gerrald reappeared and was told by Speck to wait for the cab, too. He took the plaid bag and walked out the tavern’s side door, where he sat on the curb, holding his aching head in his hands.

Still acting cool and collected, Speck decided that he had time for one final game of pool while he awaited his escape vehicle. Since no one else was there, he played by himself. As the balls clicked about the pool table, three Chicago police vice officers from Area 4 headquarters walked into the Shipyard Inn, which was one of their stops in a canvass of Southeast Side taverns favored by sailors.

The three officers were all dressed in plain clothes. They were looking for Richard Speck, but they did not yet have the name. All they had to work with was the initial description given by Corazon Amurao earlier that morning, as the identification of Speck’s name by Eddie Wielosinski and his burglary colleagues from Area 2 had not yet been passed on to the officers from the 4th District, who were assisting in the manhunt.

The three detectives “looked the place over pretty good,” according to the bartender, who was asked if he’d seen anyone fitting their description of Speck: “White male, about twenty-five, six feet one inch tall, a hundred sixty pounds, slender build, with a blond crew cut.” Speck was only ten feet away, lining up a pool shot. The bartender replied, “No, doesn’t ring a bell with me.”

At three thirty-five P.M., Matthew Hogan, a driver for Commercial Cab, walked into the front door of the Shipyard Inn and announced, “Commercial.” Speck, who by now was sitting at the end of the bar, only a few stools away from the policemen, raised his hand and said, “Just a moment.” Hogan walked back out the front door, and, moments later Speck slipped out the side door. He again roused Red, and helped load him and the bags in the cab.

A mile away, at the union hall, detectives Clancy, Wielosinski, Boyte, and Mitchell sat waiting for Speck, a vigil they would continue until the hall closed. Speck, however, was long gone.