Crime of the Century

At midnight, as Gregrich was sitting on his cot and sipping his last quart of beer, Speck staggered against his open door, forcing it to slam against Gregrich’s left knee. Jumping up, the roomer shouted, “What the hell’s going on?”

Speck fell to the floor, covered with blood. Not wanting to mess up his own cubicle with Speck’s blood Gregrich reluctantly helped him back to 584. He then pushed the elevator emergency button to summon help.

The emergency buzzer was answered by the elevator operator, who rushed to the fifth floor, where he saw a crowd of roomers gathered outside room 584. Speck had remained a loner to the end, and no one had the foggiest notion who he was. Someone said, “We got a man bleeding to death here.” The elevator man rushed down to the basement and got the hotel’s night handyman. He took one look and said to call the police.

At twelve-ten A.M., a call went out from the police communications center to patrolman Michael Burns and his partner Eugene Krause to investigate an “injured man” in room 584 of the Starr Hotel, on West Madison. Burns, a balding heavy man who wore black horn-rimmed glasses and walked with a lumbering gait, was a career wagon man, having spent the last twenty-five years in this depressingly routine work. He and Krause had begun their twelve-hour shift at two P.M. on Saturday and were nearing the end of their long night. They were called to the Starr six or seven times a week to transport injured or sick roomers, so to them, this was just another night.

The coppers were told there was a man bleeding to death in 584. As was customary, they asked the name and were told “B. Brian.” Arriving on the fifth floor, they found a semiconscious Speck, who said only one word: “Water.” The roomers told them that there was broken glass at the end of the hallway. Burns and Krause believed this was just another case of a “drunk falling on some broken glass.” While Burns left to get a stretcher, Krause said that he needed something to make a tourniquet. A leather belt was found, and using his nightstick, Krause wrapped the belt tightly around Speck’s upper left arm to stop the bleeding.

The officers then carried Speck, mattress and all, out of the cubicle and put him on the stretcher, requiring help to maneuver the stretcher down the narrow hallway to the elevator. This was another routine hospital run with an injured drunk, and it was only a ten-minute drive from the Starr to the gigantic Cook County Hospital on the city’s near West Side. Within this medical complex is the Cook County Morgue, where the bodies of the eight nurses had been taken for identification.

The coppers asked the Starr’s elevator operator to come along to hold the tourniquet, so they wouldn’t have to bother. While Krause drove the paddy wagon and Burns sat shotgun, he sat in the back with Speck, holding the tourniquet. Since he appeared nervous, the coppers occasionally looked back into the wagon and told him to “hold the nightstick tightly.” Otherwise, they concerned themselves with more pressing topics, like the fact that Mayor Daley had persuaded Illinois governor Otto Kerner to call up the National Guard to put down the race riots. They never bothered to check the Police Bulletin on their dashboard, which contained a description and photo of Speck.

The Starr Hotel soon resumed life as usual. Gregrich told anyone who would listen, “That guy really bugged me … he really bugged me.” One roomer volunteered, “He was here about four months … kinda stuck to himself … I think that he’s a lumberjack.”

In a trash can at the end of the corridor was a broken San-Clar California muscatel wine bottle. Remaining behind in room 584 were the last of Speck’s clothes and his black wallet with the Coast Guard ID photo and seaman’s card. Arranged neatly on a stool were his toilet articles: a toothbrush, a tube of Gleem toothpaste, a pack of Gillette razor blades, a bottle of Old Spice after-shave, and a smeared bottle of Max Factor Signature cologne.

During the short ride to the hospital, Speck asked for water about fifteen times. He said nothing else. At the emergency room, the police reported, “Patient, B. Brian, had been drinking and evidently fell on a broken bottle causing lacerations of both arms.” Then they left and returned the elevator man to the Starr. They had done their job.

In the meantime, Speck was in shock. The first nurse to help him was Geraldine Gorski, R.N., who was working the night shift in the ER. She was a tall, young, blue-eyed blonde. When the police had removed their makeshift tourniquet, the blood spurted and Gorski put a compress over the cut on the crease of Speck’s left elbow and wrapped it with an Ace bandage. She did the same on his right wrist. Then, she used scissors to cut open his blood-splattered T-shirt and check for any additional wounds. She lowered his trousers to do the same. There were none. She wheeled the gurney into the hallway and directed, “Emergency … take him to trauma.” She saw Speck as “a clean-shaven young boy with muscular arms and tattoos.” She had removed from his pants’ pocket a key with a plastic tag and the name “Starr Hotel”—well known to hospital emergency room staff as a notorious Skid Row hotel—causing her to wonder, “This is not the kind of guy who belongs in a flophouse.”

At twelve-fifty, Speck was taken to the trauma unit on the hospital’s third floor, where he would be helped by six more nurses, including Shirley Azares, who was a Filipino working at County under the same exchange program that had brought Cora, Merlita, and Valentina to South Chicago Community Hospital. Without medical help, Speck would have died within an hour. When he arrived at trauma, his pulse was very weak and his blood pressure was a very low 70/50 (normal is 120/80). His eyes were closed and his skin was pale, cold, and clammy. Nurse Kathy O’Connor asked him what his name was and what had happened. There was no response. Following normal procedure, O’Connor slapped Speck a few times in the face, trying to rouse him. He did not respond. The nurses immediately started an intravenous solution of dextran and saline and an intravenous infusion of blood to restore his blood pressure.

The physician on duty in the trauma ward was Dr. Leroy Smith, a first-year resident in orthopedic surgery. A boyishly handsome, eligible young bachelor and man-about-town, he came from a socially prominent family in Long Beach, Michigan. Smith was new to the trauma unit, and had been scheduled to have this Saturday off before trading shifts with his roommate. Having begun a twenty-eight-hour shift at eight A.M. on Saturday morning, he was scheduled to stay on duty until Sunday noon.

A few hours before meeting Speck, Smith had taken his dinner break at The Greek’s, a popular restaurant directly across from the hospital. A stack of newspapers had been dropped off near the door, and while eating, Smith had idly read about Speck and his tattoos, including the trademark “Born to raise hell.” He had been paged to return to the emergency room. Nurse O’Connor, a short, spunky brunette with big blue eyes and a wry sense of humor, told him that the pace was picking up; a stabbing victim and a man in shock from loss of blood were now in trauma. Smith folded the Chicago Tribune under his arm and returned to work to treat a patient whose hospital name tag read “B. Brian.”

As the doctor started to examine Speck, he thought that the patient “looked very familiar, as if I had just seen him.” I had brought the Tribune back to my office right off the trauma floor, and I asked Kathy O’Connor to go get it. She thought that I was crazy, but she did it, anyway. I checked the photo and the story and I held the paper next to the patient’s face. Except for the acne, this patient named B. Brian was a dead ringer for the photo of Richard Speck.

“His arms were caked with blood and I was so excited that I used saliva to begin to scrub the blood off. As I removed the blood from the left arm, I saw the ‘B’ first and then the rest of ‘Born to raise hell.’ In my mind, this was definitive. Speck’s blood pressure was 70/50 and mine must have been 270/150. The adrenaline was really pumping. I called Kathy over to the side of the room, away from the patient, and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this….’ Then I returned to the side of Speck, who was beginning to come out of shock, and I said, ‘What’s your name?’ I grabbed him by the back of the neck—there’s a major spinal-accessory nerve there near the trapezius muscle—and I squeezed hard, real hard.

“I repeated, ‘What’s your name?’ He answered: ‘Speck. Richard Speck.’ Then, he gasped, ‘Water … water.’ ” Smith found himself muttering, “Did you give those nurses any water?”

Then he instructed the nurses, “Let’s get busy and not let this man die.” Speck kept repeating, “Water, I want water … I am sick.” O’Connor asked how he had hurt himself and Speck said, “I did it to myself.” Another nurse let some ice shavings drip into Speck’s mouth. Smith told Nurse O’Connor to call the police.

Patrolman Alan Schuman was outside the trauma unit, guarding another patient. Within two minutes, he responded to Smith’s summons. “You’re not going to believe this—” Smith began. Schuman replied, “Bullshit! Don’t bullshit me!”

It was one A.M. when Schuman relayed the news to his commanders. Five minutes later, there were fifty police cars converging on the hospital. The reporters quickly followed. By one-thirty, police were swarming the trauma unit. Speck was placed in leg irons and chained to his hospital gurney. Three FBI agents appeared, but were asked not to interrogate him. By one-fifty, Chicago Police mobile crime lab technicians had arrived to fingerprint and photograph Speck and take custody of his clothing.

The police asked Smith not to question Speck about the murders until a representative from the state’s attorney’s office and a court reporter arrived. Smith said, “Fine, I’ll just ask him medical questions.” Assistant state’s attorney Bill Martin arrived at two A.M. Also on hand by then was the supervising surgeon, Dr. William J. Norcross, who asked Smith to brief him. Informed of Speck’s capture, Norcross told Smith, “Well, we have a patient to worry about. How’s he doing?”

Smith reported that Speck might have severed an artery and that he required surgical exploration and repair of the inside left elbow. The cut on the right wrist, Smith added, was no problem. No vessels had been severed and the cut had easily been repaired with four stitches. Smith had also noticed a superficial scratch on Speck’s chest that was about two and a half inches wide. The scab indicated that it was about three days old and that it could have been inflicted by a fingernail.

It took two hours to prep Speck for the exploratory surgery. During this time, the police stayed in the background, only asking what the doctors intended to do. Smith replied, “We’re going to try to move him to surgery as fast as possible.”

At three, Nurse O’Connor administered atropine as an anesthetic and antispasmodic and morphine as a pain reliever, and Speck was wheeled up to the eighth-floor surgical suite. Trailing behind were twelve policemen and the representative from the State’s Attorney’s Office, Bill Martin. Smith scrubbed for surgery and took Speck into the surgical suite, where an anesthesiologist and surgical nurse were waiting. By now, Speck was becoming lucid. Before the general anesthetic was given, the following conversation took place:

Smith: “Hey, man, where you been?”

Speck: “In a flophouse.”

Smith: “What have you been eating?”

Speck: “I haven’t been eating … I haven’t had a damn thing to eat. Just been drinking cheap wine. Hey, Doc, can I ask you a question?”

Smith: “What?”

Speck: “How long is this going to take?”

Smith: “About an hour. Have you ever had surgery before?”

Speck: “Once, for a busted appendix. Say, are you going to get the ten-thousand-dollar reward?”

Smith remained mute, offering no further conversation. Around them in the OR, there was deadly silence.

Smith told Speck that he needed to pass a tube down his throat. Speck replied that this had not been necessary during his appendectomy and he didn’t want it done.

Smith: “If you don’t cooperate, I will have to cut your damn arm off.”

Speck: “I don’t give a damn. Cut it off. How about some water, Doc? How about some water?”

Smith: “No water until after surgery.”

The tube was passed down Speck’s throat, sodium pentobarbital was administered for anesthesia, and surgery was begun upon Speck’s left arm. While Smith proceeded with his surgical repairs, Norcross gave hell to Martin and the policemen, asking them to leave the area because they were not in surgical attire. As this debate was intensifying, Speck temporarily came out of the anesthesia, sat bolt upright, and screamed, “I’m scared, I’m scared.” Throwing his legs off the operating table, he began to wrestle with Smith over the surgical scalpel, a reaction not uncommon in patients who have been drinking.

Six policemen rushed into the OR to subdue Speck, breaking the sterile environment and enraging the two other surgeons operating on other patients. Speck was subdued, the anesthesia was turned up, Speck went back under, and Smith continued with the operation. The surgery proved routine. Smith found that Speck had missed the major artery inside the left elbow, merely making a superficial laceration of the brachiocephalic vein inside the left elbow. The vein had a seventy-five-percent tear in the wall and had collapsed. Smith quickly repaired it with five nylon sutures.

The doctors and nurses of Cook County Hospital had saved the life of Richard Speck.