Crime of the Century

Lunsford put Speck off by saying, “Meet me down in the lobby in a few minutes.” Then he tried to avoid his pesty pursuer by walking one block west to a restaurant, where he ordered a cup of coffee. Speck, carrying his plaid bag, soon tracked him down, pleading, “Let’s get that freight and get out of here.” Lunsford countered, “Look, let’s work this one more day and then we’ll have enough money to eat and get by on.”

Like many roomers at the Starr, Lunsford did day labor to finance his drinking bouts. The hiring agency, Lake Shore Employment, was right across the street from the hotel, and it needed laborers to work at McCormick Place, the city’s giant convention center on the lake. Speck accompanied Lunsford to Lake Shore to register for a job, but got nervous and fidgety. “I’m not feeling so hot,” Speck said. “You go ahead and work, and I’ll see you tonight. I’m going to sell this bag to make some money.” Lunsford took a bus to McCormick Place; Speck faded back into the shadows of Skid Row.

At nine A.M., Lieutenant Giese turned his findings over to his senior fingerprint identification specialist, Burton Buhrke. Giese was an intensely loyal supervisor. He figured that the Speck case would be Buhrke’s swan song, and he wanted him to have the credit. “Take over,” Giese told Buhrke. “It’s your case now.” As Giese was taking the subway home, Buhrke helped nail down the fingerprint identification.

He got a second match, this time between Speck’s right index finger and another latent print from the inside of the town house door. In the meantime, two crime lab mobile unit technicians returned to the town house and found a new print at the bottom of the inside of the door to the south bedroom. Instead of lifting the print, the technicians called Burton Buhrke to the scene, where he compared Speck’s fingerprint cards with the new print. Once he had established that the print matched the middle finger of Speck’s left hand, Buhrke preserved the print and removed the entire door for possible use in court.

On Saturday morning the first funeral was held, for Gloria Jean Davy. A requiem mass was offered in St. Joseph Church, in Dyer, Indiana, her hometown. Her parents were Arline and Charles Davy. Her father, a handsome, polished man, was a successful sales executive. Gloria had four sisters and a brother.

Sitting behind the bereaved parents and siblings was an honor guard of Gloria’s classmates from South Chicago Community Hospital. Dressed in their white uniforms and nurses’ caps, they offered a striking contrast to the mourners in black. The hospital had offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone supplying information that would lead to the arrest of the killer.

The Reverend Ambrose E. Switzer tried to explain the loss with a poem Gloria herself had written in 1963 after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. At the age of nineteen, she had written:

“God, please instill in the hearts of the people the understanding of the meaning of this tragedy. I plead for a purpose, a worth in so disastrous a loss. Why this death? Its reason I do not know. But in the years to come it will show. I trust in this.” She was buried in Holy Cross cemetery in Calumet City, Illinois.

Meanwhile, it was a tired, tense, but relieved group of people who gathered at one that afternoon at a walnut conference table in the large second-floor office of Cook County State’s Attorney Daniel P. Ward, in the Criminal Court Building on South California Street. Sergeants Clancy, Vrdolyak, and John Murtaugh, and detectives Carlile, Pete Velesares, Wallenda, and Wielosinski had been sent by Chief Orlando Wilson to obtain a warrant for Speck’s arrest from the State’s Attorney’s office. The police delegation was met by Ward, criminal division chief Louis Garippo, and an assistant state’s attorney, William J. Martin.

With their coats off, shoulder holsters showing, and emotions in check, Carlile, Vrdolyak, Wallenda, and Wielosinski gave a long recitation of the pursuit of Speck, concluding that the trail had gone cold at the Raleigh Hotel. State’s Attorney Ward decided that Garippo and Martin would work together to question Speck if he were captured. Everybody in the room feared that Speck had escaped and, if found, would not come out alive.

Carlile and Martin adjourned to a nearby office to prepare the warrant for Speck’s arrest. Carlile, who had done this type of thing hundreds of times, sat down at the typewriter. Suddenly fearful, the hard-eyed copper said, “Oh, hell, I’m afraid to do this. If I make a typographical mistake, the SOB may go free!” Martin took his place and pecked out the simple arrest warrant.

Daniel P. Ward, a legal scholar and former law school dean, was very concerned that Speck’s legal rights be scrupulously observed, and he emphasized this to everyone in the room. One of the detectives told Ward that Police Chief Wilson had scheduled a press conference for that very afternoon to name the killer. Ward was a member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Free Press—Fair Trial, and he knew that an overzealous press could jeopardize a fair trial and conviction. He grabbed the phone to call Wilson at police headquarters and to give him the circumspect guidelines for public dissemination of news about a suspect.

“This is State’s Attorney Ward,” he told the answering officer. “Please put me through to Chief Wilson.”

There was a long pause, then the response: “He’s giving a press conference right now. Oops, wait a minute, he’s just finished.” Wilson had gone the other way. He had decided to let the news media publicize Speck as the killer and help track him down. At the press conference, a grim-faced Wilson had held up a photo of Speck and named him as the killer. Reciting Speck’s description, tattoos, and long police record, Wilson concluded: “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no question that he’s the murderer.” It was too late for Ward to do anything about it.

An all-points alert was issued for Richard Speck. The FBI said he was the most wanted man in America. Within hours, his name and photo were on all the front pages and TV screens of America.

In the meantime, Speck had sold his plaid bag at a Skid Row junk shop and had money to finance another drunk. There was no problem finding liquor. Sid’s Junction, right next to the Starr, offered a “large glass of tap beer” for a dime. Harvey’s, below the Starr, offered package goods, including a pint of California muscatel wine for forty-nine cents.

By midafternoon, Speck had bought several papers, all with his name and photo on the front page, and had taken them back to the Starr along with a pint of San-Clar muscatel. He made one last effort to hide his identity, telling a hotel employee that he had lost his key and gaining entrance to room 584—where Lunsford was registered under the name “B. Brian.” The rent was paid three days in advance. In this desolate cubicle, rented to another man with an invisible identity, Speck tried the ultimate escape: suicide.

At about five P.M., he walked to the community washroom at the end of the hall and broke the bottle of wine he had just finished drinking. Using the jagged glass, he slashed the inside of his left elbow and his right wrist. Then he returned to 584, leaving behind a trail of blood. He fell back upon the cot in the cubicle and lay there, his left arm dangling over the side of the bed and staining the newspapers scattered on the floor.

He would find no pity from the roomers of the Starr Hotel. The first to encounter him was George Gregrich, the roomer in 582, who had been out all day on a job. He had returned to Skid Row at about six, cashed his check, and returned to the Starr with a six-pack of Budweiser and a half-pint of Jim Beam.

Gregrich was a serious drinker and was oblivious to most everything else. He returned to his cubicle, dropped his stash of booze, and walked to the community shower, stepping over the trail of blood left by Speck. After showering, Gregrich returned to 582, took a sip of whiskey, and opened a can of beer. He then settled in with the day’s racing form. “I wanted to see who was running,” he recalled. “Even though I didn’t play it, I still liked to follow them up.”

Speck heard the commotion coming through the thin plywood partition, and there followed a conversation:

Speck: “Please get me a drink.”

Gregrich: “Get it like I do. I worked all day, and I had to walk a mile to get my drink.”

Speck: “I need a glass of water. Won’t you please come over and see me?”

Gregrich: “How the hell did you get in there? Listen, like I told you before, you can certainly go out and get yourself a glass of beer or drink whatever you want.”

Speck: “I got a story to tell you. I did something bad.”

Gregrich: “I don’t want to hear no part of your story. I don’t know you. Leave me alone. I just got through working and I’m tired.”

Speck: “Please come to my room.”

Gregrich: “Are you sick?”

There was no reply. Ten minutes later, Speck again asked for water and Gregrich told him, “I’m not leaving this room. If you want any water, you know where it’s at.”

Speck continued to beg for water, and Gregrich went downstairs and told the desk clerk, Bill Vaughn, “If you don’t get this guy out, I’m going to put him out.”

When Gregrich returned to his room, Speck continued to plead with him, saying on three occasions, “I did something bad. I want to tell you.”

Speck then resumed his pleas for water, begging Gregrich to come to his room. Gregrich cut him off: “I know you hillbillies all got a good story to tell. I don’t want to hear your story.” Gregrich then went downstairs to complain a second time about Speck. By this time, Gregrich had killed the half-pint of whiskey and four cans of beer. He left the hotel to resupply, buying two quarts of Budweiser and another half-pint of Jim Beam, returning to the hotel about eight o’clock. The man in 584 was the least of his concerns.

In the meantime, Claude Lunsford had finished his day of work at McCormick Place and returned to Skid Row at about six-thirty P.M. He promptly went to the Blue Ribbon to cash his check for $8.47 and to buy a bottle of Bud. Then, he moved over to Sid’s Junction, where he drank two more bottles of beer. As he drank, Lunsford noticed the front page of the paper that was being read by the man sitting next to him. He thought the face looked familiar.

Lunsford walked into the Starr Hotel to go to his room. He passed the open door of 582 and was asked by Gregrich: “Don’t you have the same room?” Lunsford said, “Sure.”

Lunsford unlocked the door and found Speck, lying on the cot, covered with blood. “What happened to you?” Lunsford asked. Standing up with great effort, Speck replied, “I fell into the window.”

The window was glass brick and Lunsford knew that it could not possibly have cut anyone. Lunsford said, “See you later,” closed the door, and beat a hasty retreat. He walked down to the Silver Dollar restaurant, where he found an early edition of the Sunday Tribune lying around. He ordered a cup of coffee and stared long and hard at Speck’s photo, which the newspaper had enlarged and run over three columns in the center of the front page. Lunsford had normal vision in his one good eye.

The newsprint made Speck’s hair look black, and Lunsford recalled it as dirty blond. After fifteen minutes, he walked over to the Lake Shore Employment Agency and asked the owner, Louis Novinson, “Say, what was the color of the hair of that guy I was with this morning?”

Moving outside, Lunsford asked another day laborer, George Hanson, to read him the description of Speck, as published in the Tribune. When Hanson was through reading, Lunsford told him to keep the paper. “I don’t need it no more,” he said.

Lunsford then walked very slowly toward the LaSalle Street commuter station a few blocks away. He didn’t want to get involved, but he thought that he should do something. Thinking that he looked too “beat up” to use a phone in any respectable place, Lunsford chose the anonymity of the pay phone at the train station. He deposited a dime, dialed the operator, and asked to be connected with the police emergency number. The operator promptly put him through to the Chicago Police Department’s hot line.

A police officer answered and Lunsford said, “The man you’re looking for is in room 584 of the Starr Hotel with blood all over.” Pushed for his name, Lunsford said that he did “not want to get involved, but my initials are C.L.” After making his call to the police, Lunsford walked down to the Ram Hotel a few blocks away and registered for the night. He then settled into his new surroundings with a six-pack of beer, turned on the TV, and watched the Miss Universe pageant.

Protocol for the multimillion-dollar telephone system required the police dispatchers on duty to carefully log all incoming calls and then radio a police car to go to the scene. The police never sent a car.