CHAPTER 33

On Thursday, February 16, Bill Martin and George Murtaugh packed their bags and set out on the three-hour drive to Peoria. A bright but unwarming sun stared down at the frozen Chicago landscape—temperature zero—as the two assistant state’s attorneys settled into the unmarked gray four-door Ford sedan that John Stamos insisted they use. The drive ahead of them was a dull stretch of Interstate 55, which cuts southwest from Chicago through miles of flat midwestern farm land until it reaches the Peoria turnoff.

Martin had more on his mind than driving through the hypnotic landscape, and was so engrossed in his thoughts that he nearly tipped over the squad car while swerving at the last minute to make the Peoria turnoff. Specifically, he had Dr. Marvin Ziporyn on his mind, wondering if the psychiatrist would come to Peoria to testify that Richard Speck was not responsible for his crime. Not one to worry idly if something could be done, Martin weeks before had begun a covert investigation of the troublesome psychiatrist.

A minor news item had caught Martin’s attention. Herb Lyon’s “Tower Ticker” gossip column in the January 16 Chicago Tribune had reported that Richard Speck was collaborating with “an unnamed psychiatrist and a pro writer” on a book for New York’s Hawthorn Books, Inc. The title: Born to Raise Hell. Martin knew that the unnamed psychiatrist was not a member of the court-appointed panel, and that as of January 16 psychiatrist Ner Littner had not yet seen Speck. That left Ziporyn. The rules of evidence allow a witness to be cross-examined for bias, including any financial interest in the subject on which the witness is testifying. If Ziporyn had a royalty contract with Hawthorn, he had a substantial financial interest in Richard Speck. If this were true, and if Ziporyn were to be called to the witness stand by the Public Defender, the State could explode his testimony by questioning him about the economic profit he stood to make from a Speck book and the conflict of interest between his dual roles as treating psychiatrist and author. Martin needed to pierce the anonymity with which Ziporyn and his coauthor were trying to cloak themselves.

On January 24, Martin turned for help to a close friend from his college days, Bob Ellison, who had the perfect cover for this assignment. Ellison wrote a three-times-a-week bylined arts and entertainment column for the Chicago Sun-Times, reporting on books, movies, plays, and television personalities and the young columnist was savvy about the ways and wiles of this world.

Martin asked Ellison to meet him at O’Rourke’s, an eccentric and grubby bar in Chicago’s Old Town area that caters to journalists. It was located exactly one half mile north of the Cabrini-Green apartments where Speck had alighted with his two suitcases six months earlier after fleeing from the scene of the crime. O’Rourke’s strong ales, stiff drinks, and philosophical conversations are all enjoyed under posters featuring the baleful stares and poetic words of the great Irish bards—Brendan Behan, Sean O’Casey, George Bernard Shaw, and James Joyce. Seated at a rear booth, Martin asked Ellison if he could find out the terms of the Hawthorn contract and the identity of the two authors. Ellison’s response was quick: “Hawthorn leaked the story to the Tribune,” Ellison said, “to scare off any other writers from doing a Speck book. I bet that Hawthorn will talk to me because they know that I can give them a lot of ink once the book is published.”

Martin asked, “Are you willing to stick your neck out on this? There’s nothing I can give you in return, not even a story.”

Wiry and intense, Ellison sipped on a stein of Guinness Stout and stared hard at Martin before replying, “I’ll help any way I can. I don’t want anything.”

Martin kept Ellison’s identity secret from his colleagues, even Murtaugh, who was his closest confidant on the case, and told only State’s Attorney John Stamos and First Assistant Louis Garippo about the secret operation—without naming Ellison.

The morning after his drink with Martin, Ellison called Fred Kerner, the editor of Hawthorn Books, explained who he was, and asked Kerner if he had any interesting projects under way. The columnist explained that the Hawthorn line was of particular interest to Chicagoans because it was owned by W. Clement Stone, one of Chicago’s most prominent and wealthiest citizens. Kerner quickly took the bait. Eager to please Ellison so that he could enlist his help in promoting the book, Kerner agreed to speak “off the record.” At the time of this conversation, Ellison was in a position to really help an editor like Kerner. His entertainment column was carried by the Field Enterprises Wire Service to newspapers around the nation, and he was doubling up as Chicago’s first movie critic on television, foreshadowing the later success of Chicago’s Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Kerner told Ellison that he had been approached by an attorney-agent on behalf of a book to be written about Speck by two authors whose names he could not divulge. Kerner said that half the manuscript had already been written and that he was projecting an initial press run of at least 100,000 hardcover books. “I don’t want the prosecutor to find out about this manuscript,” Kerner told Ellison. “If the authors’ identities were to become known, the prosecutor would lay a subpoena on them and either they wouldn’t finish the book or our sales would be diluted.”

Indeed.

As a former working journalist himself, Kerner quickly developed a rapport with Ellison. A week later, he excitedly called Ellison to report that major magazines and paperback publishing houses had been calling Hawthorn about the possibility of purchasing secondary rights to the book. Kerner was very enthusiastic, believing that he had a bombshell best-seller in his grasp.

Kerner’s next call to Ellison, on February 15, included the kind of news that Martin had been hoping to hear: the two secret authors were flying to New York on Saturday, February 18, to hand over the first half of their manuscript. Kerner added that the balance of the manuscript was expected to be delivered either during the trial of Speck or, at the very latest, within thirty days after the verdict. He said that he planned to publish the book within sixty days of the verdict. Kerner confided to Ellison that the authors were being given a greater percentage of all book royalties than is normally granted because “they have excellent credentials and, more importantly, they have what no one else has—access to Richard Speck.”

On February 15, Martin was preparing to leave for Peoria to begin jury selection. He had only two days to pull together a team to learn the identity of the authors and to prove their delivery of a manuscript. His choices were obvious: Detective Eddie Wielosinski and Sergeant Ken Alexander. Martin had great affection for the two veteran policemen, both of whom were handling the unique assignment of keeping track of the fifty or more State’s witnesses that were expected to be called to Peoria to testify. This was a tough job. The characters in Speck’s drama were hard to pin down, whether they were seamen, Southeast Siders, or residents of Skid Row. Each week, Wielosinski and Alexander would make location checks at bars, ships, and dangerous street corners to find out which of the nomadic witnesses had changed flophouses or gone to sea. Bald and muscular, Ken Alexander, thirty-five, was a Lithuanian who had worked as an iron worker before joining the police force. He was a dead ringer for TV star Telly Savalas, but his “Kojak” role was for real. He and Wielosinski, the unsung burglary detective whose sharp instincts had cracked the case by linking Speck to the maritime union hall, would subsequently be given the sensitive assignment of guarding and entertaining all State witnesses sequestered in the Ramada Inn in Peoria. They would handle the assignment flawlessly, their only friction being Alexander’s locomotivelike snoring. “He snores so loud,” Wielosinski complained, “that I have to sleep in the bathtub with the door closed.” Martin unhesitatingly gave this odd couple the delicate assignment of zeroing in on Dr. Ziporyn and his mysterious coauthor.

On February 16, as Martin and Murtaugh were driving to Peoria, Wielosinski and Alexander headed for Chicago’s O’Hare Field. Explaining their purpose, they were rapidly ushered to a secret office within the bowels of the giant airport and allowed to inspect the manifest lists of all outgoing flights. The American Airlines manifest included a reservation for “Charlotte Ziporyn” on American Flight 324 from Chicago to Newark, New Jersey, arriving at 11:26 P.M. on Friday, February 17. Once the detectives were armed with this knowledge, the chase was on.

Meanwhile, city boys Martin and Murtaugh watched the scenery begin to change dramatically once they made the Peoria turnoff. Slowly rising hills herald the approach to Peoria, a city that rises from a spectacular valley within the otherwise drab Illinois topography. Surrounded by bluffs, lakes, and the Illinois River, Peoria surprised Martin and Murtaugh with its raw physical beauty. Their stereotype of Peoria as just another drowsy, flat Illinois town was dead wrong. As they drove across the majestic four-lane bridge into Peoria over the winding Illinois River, the two prosecutors couldn’t resist the morbid reflection that this bridge would be a fitting place from which to jump if they were to lose the Speck case.

The first Europeans to discover the lush Peoria Valley were the Frenchmen Louis Joliet and Père Jacques Marquette, and, in 1673, Marquette exclaimed, “We have seen nothing like this in all our travels!” By 1845, Peoria had been incorporated as a city and, aided by the heavy steamboat traffic plying the Illinois River, its agricultural, brewing, and whiskey trades were flourishing. During the 1920’s, Peoria became known as the “earthworm city,” in recognition of the international headquarters of the Caterpillar Tractor Company, which in 1967 remained the city’s largest employer. As of 1967, fully forty percent of all Peorians were of German descent and, in a real oddity of the saga of American immigration, there was a substantial population of Lebanese living in Peoria—all of whom had migrated from the single city of Itooli, Lebanon, to seek their fortunes on the banks of the Illinois River.

Martin and Murtaugh joined fellow prosecutors John Glenville and Jim Zagel, who had arrived earlier in the week, to begin studying the names on the lists of prospective jurors. The Peoria County sheriff and his deputies went over the lists with the prosecutors and provided personal information about the prospective jurors they knew. The transplanted Team Speck—prosecutors Martin, Murtaugh, Glenville, and Zagel—plus four police officers—Byron Carlile, Mike Lambesis, Frank Lassandrella, and Jack Wallenda—established their headquarters on the second floor of the Peoria Ramada Inn. A makeshift conference room with blackboard, screen, and slide projector was created between two of the bedrooms. Similarly, Gerry Getty, Jim Gramenos, Jim Doherty, and the rest of the Public Defender’s staff set up shop at the downtown Peoria Voyager Inn and enlisted the help of local defense attorneys to give them personal information about the potential jurors.

Back in Chicago, Wielosinski and Alexander plotted their undercover strategy. It was decided that Alexander would fly to New York early on the morning of Friday, February 17 to check out the location of Hawthorn Books, and Wielosinski would shadow Ziporyn on the actual flight that night. Each carried a small publicity photo of Ziporyn taken from his concert violin tours.

On Friday morning, Alexander flew from Chicago to New York, where he met Detective James Harrington of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, who had been assigned to help the Chicago investigation. He and Alexander drove to the twelve-story white-stone Forbes Building at Fifth Avenue and Thirteenth Street, where Hawthorn Books was headquartered.

Later that night, Wielosinski boarded Flight 324 and took a coach seat in the rear of the aircraft. Alexander and Harrington were waiting at Newark Airport to pick up the surveillance. Friday night, however, was to become a comedy of errors for the undercover operatives. The flight was so turbulent that Wielosinski, who had a deathly fear of flying, became nauseated and worried that he might throw up. And he was amazed at how many bald heads dotted the rows in front of him; he began to despair of ever positively identifying Ziporyn. But after lurching up and down the aisle three times, and carefully studying the photo of Ziporyn he carried in his pocket, Wielosinski was finally sure that he had his man—two seats directly in front of him and across the aisle. Wielosinski couldn’t help but think that the briefcase at Ziporyn’s side held the manuscript in question.

Meanwhile, Alexander and Harrington were stationed at a bar in Newark Airport, awaiting the arrival of a baldheaded man with glasses. They were confident they would recognize him from the photo. Despite these well-laid plans, Ziporyn stepped off the plane and walked right past Alexander and Harrington, whose attentions were diverted by the four other baldheaded, bespectacled men who had deplaned from the same flight. Nevertheless, Wielosinski subsequently convinced his fellow sleuths that one of the men they had observed was, indeed, Ziporyn. Shortly after midnight, Alexander excitedly called Martin in Peoria to report that Ziporyn had arrived in Newark carrying a briefcase that, no doubt, held the manuscript. Martin, too, was excited. He was on the verge of a cross-examination that lawyers only dare dream about. Martin told Alexander, “Whatever you do, Kenny, be sure that this guy doesn’t figure out that he’s being followed.” No further surveillance was required that night because the sleuths knew that Ziporyn was going to visit Hawthorn Books the next morning.

In Peoria, Judge Herbert Paschen and his wife, Helen, settled into a large suite at the forty-year-old Pere Marquette Hotel, an elegant five-hundred-room brick hotel which described itself as “the largest hotel in southern Illinois.” It was located only one block from the courthouse. Paschen was the only participant in the trial able to create a semblance of a normal home life by having his wife with him. On Saturday, February 18, only two days before the trial started, Martin and Murtaugh took a long walk from their Ramada headquarters to downtown Peoria to get a feel for the town and its people. In the afternoon, as they walked past the Pere Marquette coffee shop, they were stopped by a smiling Judge Paschen who insisted that they join him and his wife. The two young prosecutors stayed only long enough to drink chocolate milk shakes and deferentially discuss gardening with Helen Paschen, a gentle and outgoing woman. The judge, more than anyone else, deserved to have his wife with him. Otherwise, he would have suffered the terrible loneliness of presiding over a death-penalty case while living alone in a hotel room in a strange town. The lawyers at least had each other for company.

Meanwhile, at ten this same Saturday morning, Alexander and Harrington were across the street from the Forbes Building, staking out the scene and waiting for Ziporyn to appear. A wiry man dressed in a tailored European suit approached the detectives and politely asked, “Do you know how I can get to Hawthorn Books on the seventh floor?” The main entrance of the Forbes Building was closed on Saturdays, and the man, who spoke with a British accent, didn’t know what to do. Harrington pointed to a side entrance, and the man thanked him profusely. After the man entered the building, Alexander hurried into the lobby just in time to see the elevator stop on the seventh floor. He then returned to the stakeout across the street.

Some forty-five minutes later, the duo spotted Marvin Ziporyn walking toward the Forbes Building. They fell into step and entered the building behind him. The courtly psychiatrist stepped aside to allow the detectives on the elevator first. Alexander loudly announced to the elevator operator, “Tenth floor.” Ziporyn said softly, “Hawthorn Books, suite 710.” The operator pulled out a clipboard and asked the three men to officially sign in. Ziporyn signed his real name and the notation, “7th floor, 10:50 A.M.” A “Mr. Anderson” and a “Mr. Moran” signed in for the tenth floor. Alexander and Harrington watched Ziporyn step off the elevator on the seventh floor and walk toward the entrance to Hawthorn Books. Alexander reluctantly fought off his instinct to flash his badge and take the sign-in sheet from the elevator operator, fearing Ziporyn might be tipped off as a result.

After Ziporyn departed the elevator, the detectives continued up to the tenth floor, returning to the lobby after a few minutes to again take up watching positions across the street from the entrance. At one-thirty P.M., Ziporyn and the man who asked for directions were seen leaving the building together. The briefcase that Ziporyn had carried with him both aboard the airplane and in the elevator was no longer in his hand. Alexander had a hidden miniature camera, which he used to take clandestine photos of Ziporyn entering and leaving the Forbes Building. Alas, the film would later come back blank.

Excited by their success, Alexander hurried to a pay phone and called Peoria, where Martin had just returned to the Ramada after his pleasant chat with the Paschens.

“Boss, you’ve got eyewitnesses to put Ziporyn and his coauthor delivering an attaché case to Hawthorn Books today.”

Martin was gratified. He knew that while jurors might have trouble distinguishing between the psychiatric panel’s finding that Richard Speck was a sociopath and Ziporyn’s theory that he suffered from an organic brain syndrome, that these same jurors would have little difficulty disbelieving a witness whose testimony was discredited by his huge financial interest in that very same testimony. Still, the prosecutor knew that he needed more evidence concerning the manuscript and the terms of the contract.

By now, the prosecutors were settling into their new home. A State’s Attorney’s Office electronics expert was assigned to check the telephone lines and hotel rooms for hidden listening devices. The prosecutors were not concerned that the Public Defender would tap their conversations, but they had less confidence in the integrity of the journalists who were eager for a competitive advantage. A bug-free private telephone line was installed in Martin’s room.

The Speck trial would play out in a brand-new facility. The four-story Peoria County Courthouse had been dedicated in September 1965 by Lady Bird Johnson, and Peorians considered the courthouse’s surrounding plaza to be a downtown park. Much to the delight of the nature-loving Lady Bird, the courthouse square featured a small forest of more than two hundred trees, representing seventeen different species. A blue-stone path led to three interlocking circular pools framed by sixteen golden weeping willows. In February, this pastoral square was strangely quiet. The ground was hard and frozen, the trees were barren, and the pool fountains still. In the weeks ahead, however, the trees would bloom, the fountains would bubble, and the blue-and-amber pool lights would form shimmering rainbows.

Inside, the courthouse sported an antiseptic look, sort of a cross between a racquetball court and a cocktail lounge. Speck would be tried in Courtroom A, where the floor was tiled in marbelized gray, the walls were paneled in dark brown walnut, separated by slabs of cream-color pitted marble, and the partially lowered ceiling featured recessed art deco fixtures that spilled soft lighting on the walnut benches reserved for spectators. The well of the court was set off from the spectator benches by a traditional walnut railing and a modern swinging aluminum gate.

On Monday, February 20, at 11:33 A.M., Richard Speck emerged, pale and unsmiling, from a police van that had traveled a circuitous route over one-way streets to bring him from his jail cell to the courthouse across the street. Subsequently, for security reasons, he would be kept locked up in a cell in the basement of the courthouse itself. A raw wind blew through the plaza as a crowd of spectators, including both young kids playing hooky from school and big kids playing hooky from work, elbowed each other aside to try to get a closer look at Speck’s greased-back hair and pockmarked face. Handcuffed to two armed guards, Speck followed his convoy of heavily armed policemen, who pushed aside the crowd and quickly led him to a lockup in the bullpen behind the courtroom. The crowd then scrambled to Courtroom A on the second floor and submitted to a lengthy security check before being admitted inside.

Judge Paschen had spent most of the morning in conference, going over the ground rules of jury selection with the lawyers for both sides. Before Speck was brought into the courtroom, he briefed the twenty-five credentialed reporters who filled the first three rows of the spectator benches. Noting that “the world is watching,” Paschen said that he was slightly modifying his February 14 press order to respond to the mounting editorial criticism.

Throughout the actual trial, once the entire jury was selected, sworn, and sequestered, Paschen said the official court reporters would be allowed to sell transcripts of the proceedings to reporters. Also, at this time, the judge said the names and addresses of both excused and selected jurors could be published. Still barred was any reporting of the actual questioning of all jurors. Paschen told the reporters that he was afraid that some prospective jurors would be tempted to master the answers required to have them removed from consideration. As an experienced trial judge, Paschen realized that many persons summoned for jury duty try to avoid serving by deliberately giving answers that will cause them to get excused—if they know the answers that can get them off the jury. The longer the expected trial, the more acute the danger of jurors giving “wrong” answers to evade their civic duty.

Unaware of these heavy issues, Speck had spent most of the morning sleeping on the cot in his cell. Now, in the midafternoon, he was led from his lockup into Courtroom A. Minutes later, as the first wave of fifty prospective jurors filed into the room, the slightly built and bespectacled court clerk, Paul Trompeter, arose and, without pomp and circumstance, announced in a flat Midwestern monotone: “The People of the State of Illinois versus Richard Franklin Speck.”

The first step in the trial—the selection of a jury—was about to begin. Jury selection is a big bore. For the prosecution, however, this boring procedure is terrifying, because the mistake of selecting one wrong juror can cause a hung jury and undo months of preparation. Whenever Martin lectured on trial techniques, he used a simple question and answer to explain the relative importance of the different stages of a trial:

“What is the most important part of a criminal trial?”

“Whatever part you’re doing.”

Beginning February 20, selecting the right jury was the most important part of the prosecution of Richard Speck. If a single juror would refuse either to find Speck guilty or to fix his punishment at death, then seven months of preparation was undone. A hung jury was a victory for the defense, because the State would have to try the case again. Martin had to be right twelve times and Getty had to be right only once in this crucial preliminary battle.

The Speck jurors would be selected by a unique process. Normally, each side would be allowed 20 peremptory challenges—the right to dismiss jurors without stating a reason. Getty, however, had asked for 20 peremptory challenges per indictment, or 160. Martin agreed to this request, because he believed that the State would obtain both a proper jury and a strong appellate record if each side was allowed to dismiss up to 160 jurors peremptorily. If a prospective juror admitted that he could not be fair or that he had definite preconceived beliefs about the case, the juror was excused for cause. In a death-penalty case in 1966, a challenge for cause was allowed if a juror said that he or she would never sign a death-penalty conviction because of conscientious or religious scruples against capital punishment. There was no limit to the number of jurors who could be challenged and dismissed for “cause,” and jurors excused for cause would not count against the 160 peremptory challenges allowed for each side.

The selection of a fair jury requires candid answers from the prospective jurors. This is especially true in a highly publicized case. The usual method of selecting a jury is to put twelve jurors in the jury box, with the remaining thirty-eight in the spectator benches, and to question each of the fifty jurors in the presence of their fellow prospective jurors. Martin believed that the usual method was fraught with danger for the Speck case. If one juror blurted out a prejudicial answer, such as “I read somewhere that he confessed,” every other juror in the room would be contaminated by the prejudicial response. Martin was also concerned that jurors are prone to the “herd instinct”—succumbing to the social pressure of giving the same answers they heard from other jurors rather than answering candidly. To avoid these risks, Martin asked Judge Paschen to implement an innovative procedure: interrogate the prospective jurors one by one outside the presence of their fellow jurors; though time-consuming, this process is more likely to allow candor. Paschen quickly agreed and followed these steps:

First, the judge read the indictments and instructed the fifty jurors on general principles of law. This mini-lesson in civics instructed the jurors that the defendant is presumed innocent, that the defendant does not need to prove that he is innocent, that the State bears the burden of proving guilt, and that the defendant cannot be convicted unless the State proves every material element of the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt.

Next, Paschen had all fifty prospective jurors removed from the courtroom and brought back one at a time for individual questioning. The lone juror sat center stage in a swiveled leather chair in the middle of the jury box, facing an array of men sitting in suits behind two long Formica tables. Seated at the prosecution table were Martin, Murtaugh, Glenville, and grizzled homicide detective Byron Carlile. Martin respected Carlile’s understanding of human nature and wanted his advice in analyzing the personalities of the jurors. Seated at the defense table, next to their infamous client, Richard Speck, were Getty, Gramenos, and Doherty. The State asked questions first, followed by the defense. If, after both sides concluded their questioning, the juror had not been excused for cause or for peremptory challenge, then he or she was tentatively accepted and sent to the jury room behind Courtroom A. Jurors were accepted and tendered in panels of four. Once the State had found four jurors it was willing to tender to the defense, then the panel of four was presented to the Public Defender to exercise his peremptory challenges. Any juror he bumped was replaced immediately by a new juror, and the questioning of the new juror was started by the defense, followed by the State. The defense would keep at a panel until it was ready to tender the four jurors it accepted back to the State. Eventually, this humdrum routine would produce four jurors found acceptable to both sides.

Speck sat listlessly through it all. When the first panel of fifty jurors was brought into Courtroom A and when every subsequent panel of fifty jurors was assembled, Speck was asked to rise and meet the stares of this group of common citizens who had been called to help decide his fate. On February 20, after rising to meet the first group of fifty jurors, the killer slumped back into his chair by the defense table and stared impassively, as for fifteen highly charged minutes Judge Paschen solemnly read the eight separate indictments of murder with which Speck was charged. The repetition of the eight indictments carried a powerfully hypnotic effect, associating the name of Richard Franklin Speck again and again with “the offense of murder” … “intentionally and knowingly” … “strangled” … “stabbed” … “killed.”

On Monday, February 20, as Judge Paschen walked back to his hotel suite after supervising the first afternoon of what resembled a slow-moving tennis match, he knew that he was in for a long, grueling ordeal. He found his suite brightened by the arrival earlier that afternoon of a lovely floral arrangement, sent courtesy of the Chicago Tribune. The accompanying card wished him well. The plant would turn out to have thorns. The next morning, Paschen received a legal summons, also courtesy of the Chicago Tribune, which had filed suit against him before the Illinois Supreme Court, attacking his press order.

In a blazing page one headline on February 21, the newspaper trumpeted, TRIBUNE FIGHTS COURT GAG. An accompanying page one editorial was entitled “The Public’s Right to Know.” Not content with suing the judge, the Tribune asked the Illinois State Legislature to issue a public rebuke of the court order and reported an interview with Illinois Congressman Robert Michel, who obliged the paper by criticizing the judge.

Paschen, in addition to presiding over the most sensational criminal trial in Illinois history, would now have to defend himself in writing before the Illinois Supreme Court. By day, he supervised the selection of jurors; by night, he drafted his response to the Tribune suit. Both the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office were allowed to file briefs supporting the press order that they had helped craft.

Taking into account the voluntary modifications that Paschen had already made, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a ruling on March 1 from Springfield that upheld his amended court order. Both sides were satisfied. Although no other newspaper, radio, or TV station joined the suit, the Tribune took credit for maintaining freedom of the press. Paschen, too, was satisfied that justice would not be obstructed by the modifications. When Paschen allowed the names and addresses of excused jurors to be published, the Peoria Journal-Star—the only newspaper for whom this information carried any real news value—still refused to identify the jurors. Often imitated, the Speck press order survives today as the best way for a trial judge to manage a celebrated case.

Despite the sideshow over the press order, the selection of a jury continued to crawl forward. Getty’s questioning of the jurors indicated that he intended to keep the State in suspense over his ultimate trial strategy. After describing the three usual forms of verdicts that applied to the Speck trial—not guilty, guilty, guilty with the death penalty—Getty always asked a prospective juror this question: “Now, there may be other verdicts in this case, depending upon the evidence that may be developed, and you would consider the not guilty verdict and all the other verdicts after you hear all the evidence, is that correct?” There was only one other possible verdict—not guilty by reason of insanity. As Martin slogged through the tedium of choosing a jury, Marvin Ziporyn remained on his mind.

On February 23, as Martin was in his fourth day of jury selection, his newspaper columnist buddy Bob Ellison called again. He was relaying a report from Hawthorn Books editor Fred Kerner, who had just read the first 40,000 words of Ziporyn’s manuscript. “It is very, very well done,” Kerner had told Ellison and Ellison was now telling Martin. “It has a lot of depth, a great deal of suspense.” Kerner added that he had received inquiries about purchasing rights to the book from Britain, France, and West Germany, and that leading U.S. magazines were already bidding for first serial rights. Kerner excitedly told Ellison, “Born to Raise Hell will be one of our biggest books, if not the biggest, in 1967. It’s a brilliant analysis, incredibly exciting, better than I had hoped for.” Kerner told the columnist he would be given an exclusive opportunity to interview the two secret authors immediately after the verdict, adding that doing it sooner would be premature and might burn off sales.

Ellison also told Martin that he had learned that the book’s royalties were to be paid to a Chicago attorney who was acting as agent and escrowee for the two authors. Martin was disturbed to hear this. If Ziporyn were to testify and be cross-examined, he might still get off the hook with the dodge that technically he did not have a financial interest in the book. Also, Martin had no proof as to the precise contents of the manuscript, and he was relying on them to prove that Ziporyn exploited the physician-patient relationship with Speck for his own private gain. Martin asked Ellison what to do next, and his friend had another bright idea. “I can go to New York on other business,” Ellison suggested, “and I’ll tell Kerner that I would like to stop and read the manuscript. He really wants to play ball with me because he’s convinced that I will do a huge story about the book after the verdict. I think that he’ll let me see the manuscript.” Martin certainly hoped so, because Getty’s behavior during jury selection seemed to presage a plea of insanity.

Meanwhile, Martin was encouraged by the success of his efforts to protect Corazon Amurao from the press, as was amply proven by Edmund J. Rooney’s page one report in the Chicago Daily News on February 21, the day after jury selection began. The star crime reporter, who was noted for his aggressive sleuthing, wrote that “Cora has quietly been brought back to Illinois. One source says that she has been in California.”

Elsewhere in the world, the U.S. Congress was debating what to do about the Vietnam War. On February 23, the U.S. Senate voted $4.5 billion to intensify the U.S. military effort in Vietnam. Georgia Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, strongly supported the new funding, and also asked that selected navy ships be taken out of mothballs to help shell enemy supply routes. While supporting the measure, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith added some prophetic words. “The need for this money,” Senator Smith said, “shows how wrong the Pentagon guesses on this war have been.” The war was also being brought home to Chicago. The Tribune reported the names of eight young soldiers from Chicago and its suburbs—all recently killed in the widening conflict. John H. Hammack, director of the Illinois Selective Service Commission, said the state’s draft call for May would reach a new high—1,194. “This may signal higher call-ups for the summer months,” Hammack added. Another view was provided by Argentinian heavyweight Oscar Bonavena. Referring to his scheduled championship bout with Cassius Clay, Bonavena said, “Cassius Clay is so afraid of me that rather than meet me in the boxing ring he will first go to Vietnam!” Clay would later knock out Bonavena to retain his crown, lose it for refusing to serve in Vietnam, acquire a new name, “Muhammad Ali,” and explain his decision with the immortal sentence, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me n----r.”

The world inside Peoria’s Courtroom A was moving very slowly. During eight long days of questions and answers, a veritable “sea of soul-searching,” as Chicago Tribune reporter Bob Wiedrich described it, the jury selection process had been both enlivened and prolonged by the performance of Assistant Public Defender Jim Doherty. A barrel-chested, whimsical, redheaded Irishman who also sported a red mustache, Doherty was both an articulate and booming courtroom presence given to spellbinding flights of oratory, and a gifted and poetic crusader against the death penalty. When Doherty wanted to excuse a juror without using up one of the defense’s 160 peremptory challenges, he would patiently recite the charges against Speck in gory detail. Then, he would ask in a charmingly slow voice, “Now, Madame Juror, doesn’t the fact that this man is charged with the brutal stabbing and strangling of eight beautiful, innocent young women start you off with just an eensie-weensie bit of prejudice?” As he asked this question, he would drive home the point by holding two fingers close together in his upraised hand. If the juror stammered “Yes,” Doherty was on his feet, exclaiming, “Cause, Your Honor.”

Martin feared that if Doherty continued to sweet-talk jurors into admitting that they had an “eensie-weensie” bit of prejudice, all of Peoria County’s 190,000 potential jurors would be excused. Fortunately, though, Getty sent Doherty to Chicago to assist in preparing the defense case. Otherwise, a world record might have been set for length of time required to choose a jury.

Jury selection is a highly inexact science. Some prosecutors believe in certain shibboleths handed down from generation to generation, such as:

Avoid the Irish, Italians, Jews, and other Mediterraneans, because they are too antiauthoritarian.

Be wary of anyone with a college degree.

Never accept anyone who has a Ph.D. or other advanced degree.

Pray for a juror of Middle European ancestry who has lived in the same house and worked in the same job for at least twenty years.

Other prosecutors believe that you can pull any twelve names out of a hat and still have the same chance of success. Believing that the jury should be tailored to the evidence in the case, Martin was looking for jurors whose experience in life would make them comfortable with the prosecution’s evidence crucial to convicting Speck—an eyewitness identification, fingerprints, and possibly testimony pitting the impartial panel psychiatrists against Marvin Ziporyn and Ner Littner, the potential defense psychiatric experts. Martin had the additional burden of finding jurors with the emotional strength to vote for the death penalty, if they believed that the evidence against Speck constituted a proper case for it. Saying they would sign a death-penalty verdict was not as significant to Martin as the jurors’ body language as they responded. If a juror reacted to the question about fixing Speck’s penalty at death with a catch of the voice or a turn of the head or a sudden squirm or a lack of eye contact, he dismissed that juror with a peremptory challenge.

The State’s first priority was to choose at least one juror with exceptional leadership abilities. Believing that twelve equally strong-willed people would not end up on the jury, and that most jurors would turn out to be followers of a strong leader, Martin concentrated on finding that strong leader.

On March first, George Weiman, a middle-aged, blond, stocky man, took a seat in the black leather swivel chair in the center of the jury box. The first lawyer to question him was Gerry Getty. The reporters were doodling on their pads and choking back yawns. Getty’s approach to questioning was as friendly and informal as a backyard chat:

“Mr. Weiman?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to ask you a few questions. That’s George Weiman?”

“Yes.”

“W-e-i-m-a-n?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what is your address, Mr. Weiman?”

“One oh six Madison Court, Bartonville.”

To show prospective jurors he was an ordinary guy lacking the pretentiousness of the grim-faced prosecutors, Getty fell into his practice of deliberately mispronouncing words.

“Is that Bartville?”

“Bartonville.”

“Are you a married man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what does your family consist of?”

“My wife and a boy of twenty-one years old.”

“And what kind of employment are you engaged in?”

“I’m the head foreman of Keystone Steel and Wire Company.”

“Well, Mr. Weiman, have you read anything about this case?”

“Yes.”

“And, I might ask you, have you discussed this case with anyone?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“In other words, what I’m trying to ask you is this: from what you have read or heard, have you made up your mind?”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“And you would listen to evidence in this case and make up your mind, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. I think I can.”

“Do you have any relatives that are engaged in law enforcement?”

“No, sir. I do not.”

“Do you have any relatives who are connected with hospitals or employed by hospitals?”

“No, sir.”

“And have you been connected with any hospitals in more or less charitable activities?”

“No, I haven’t. I give blood. That’s the only connection I have.”

Smiling easily, Getty wanted Weiman to realize the Public Defender also gave blood and said, “Well, we all do that. Now, how long have you worked at Keystone Steel and Wire?”

“Twenty years.”

“And your boy, is he employed or does he attend school?”

“He attends Bradley University. He’s a senior at Bradley.”

“Did you attend schools here in Peoria?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What schools did you attend, Mr. Weiman?”

“The secondary school, Manual Training High School.”

“Did you have any other employment before Keystone Steel and Wire?”

“The United States Marine Corps.”

“And how long were you in the Marines?”

“Six years.”

“And did you have a commission in the Marines?”

“Yes, sir. I was a First Lieutenant.”

“Have you ever served on a jury before?”

“No, sir. I never have.”

“Have you ever testified for or against anyone?”

“No, sir. I never testified.”

“In any case?”

“No, sir.”

“Now, you heard, Mr. Weiman, that it’s the duty of the State to prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, if after you hear all the evidence in this case and the instructions on the law, if you have a reasonable doubt, would you return a verdict of not guilty?”

“Yes, sir. I would,” Weiman said emphatically.

“And you also heard His Honor state that there is a presumption of the defendant’s innocence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this remains with the defendant all during the course of the trial and until such time as twelve jurors retire into the jury room, and it still remains during their deliberations, the presumption of the defendant’s innocence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“As you sit here now, do you have any difficulty in presuming his innocence?”

“No, sir, I have none.”

“So that anything that you have read or heard, you will not bring that into the jury box with you at all, will you?”

“No, sir. May I explain something?”

“Yes, please.”

“We have only one paper in Peoria. I don’t always agree with it, and you can’t form opinions while reading only one paper.”

“Uh-huh. Do you ever read the Chicago papers?”

“No.”

“Now, the fact that there are eight indictments here, does that tend to start you off with any prejudice?”

“No.”

“In other words, you want to determine from the evidence, number one, has this man been proven guilty or not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, number two, from the evidence, if you should decide he’s guilty, did he intentionally and knowingly murder?”

“Yes.”

“Now, there will be various verdicts in this case. And one of the verdicts will be a ‘not guilty’ verdict. And, of course, you told me, after you heard all the evidence in this case, if you had a reasonable doubt, you wouldn’t hesitate to sign that verdict, would you?”

“No, sir.”

“And there will be a verdict of guilty in which the court sets the penalty and there will be a verdict of guilty in which the State will ask for the death penalty.

“And I might as well ask you this because, when the State takes over your questioning, they will ask you. Now, part of our law in Illinois is that the death penalty may be inflicted.

“Now, they will ask you, do you have any religious or conscientious scruples against the infliction of the death penalty in a proper case? And, they will ask, do you? And I will ask you that question: do you have any religious or conscientious scruples against the infliction of the death penalty in a proper case?”

“No, I don’t. I am a Christian, but I don’t have any scruples on that matter.”

Getty thought that the “I am a Christian” answer indicated that Weiman had religious qualms about capital punishment. He thought that this was the juror for him, one who had the courage to hold out against the death penalty. However, jury selection is like poker—you don’t let your opponent know you have just been dealt a winning hand. Fearing that he might tip off the prosecutors to his belief that Weiman was weak on capital punishment, Getty quickly changed the subject.

“Yes. Now, there will be Chicago policemen testifying in this case, Mr. Weiman, and I will ask you this: would you give their testimony any greater weight than you would another witness, merely because they are policemen?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“In other words, you will determine the credibility of each witness, and you will determine that from your own mind, isn’t that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“And the procedure here, Mr. Weiman, is that the State will put on witnesses first. Now, these witnesses will be subject to cross-examination. And the purpose of the cross-examination is to point out other things that might be an aid for jurors to arrive at a just decision in this case.

“And, then, after that, the defense will put up witnesses, although His Honor told you that the defendant doesn’t have to prove anything. And, of course, then there will be instructions on the law. After you have heard both sides of the case, instructions will be given to you on the law.

“Now, you wouldn’t make up your mind after you heard some of the State’s witnesses, would you?”

“You can’t make up your mind until you hear it all.”

Getty liked this answer a lot—the Public Defender desperately needed jurors who were open-minded.

“That’s right. And that is what you would be looking for in this case—to consider all the evidence and instructions on the law?”

“Yes, sir.”

Throughout the questioning of every juror, Getty left the door open to putting in an insanity defense by asking his question about possible “other verdicts.”

“And, of course, you would follow the law, as given to you by Judge Paschen. And I recited all these various verdicts. And, as the evidence is developed, there may be other verdicts in this case. But, in any event, you would consider all the verdicts, in arriving at a just decision, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes. Have you ever made a study of fingerprints?”

“No, sir.”

“Or read anything much about them?”

“No, sir.”

“Or know anything much about them?”

“No, sir.”

“And, as you sit here right now, you feel you have an open and free mind, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. I do.”

“All right. I submit Mr. Weiman for questioning by the State,” Getty said without betraying his enthusiasm for this juror.

Martin, Murtaugh, and John Glenville were alternating the tiresome routine of questioning jurors, and it was now Glenville’s turn. Martin whispered, “Keep it short, John. We really want this guy.” Martin believed that George Weiman was a tough-minded ex-Marine who had no qualms about the death penalty and whose job as chief foreman at a huge steel company gave him the leadership experience to become the jury’s foreman. Glenville, a middle-aged ex-FBI agent with every strand of his thinning gray hair in place, began his questioning of Weiman in a resonant and self-assured voice.

“Now, Mr. Weiman, we are going to be very brief. Mr. Getty has covered the field pretty well. Now, if the State should prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, would you hesitate about signing a verdict of guilty fixing the death penalty, if you consider this a proper case?”

“No, sir.”

“While you were in the Marine Corps, did you in any way have any connection with any court martial?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That in no way would affect your judgment in this case?”

“No, sir. As a Second Lieutenant, I was prosecuting attorney for three different cases in court.”

Glenville was inadvertently falling into a dialogue that could cause Getty to have second thoughts about George Weiman. Martin, a good poker player, remained expressionless, but scribbled a note to Glenville: “Stop NOW.”

Glenville said, “No further questions.”

Looking at Getty, Judge Paschen asked, “Are you finished with Mr. Weiman?”

Martin thought that Getty would requestion Weiman about his prosecuting experiences in the Marines and then dismiss him. He was surprised when Getty said he had no further questions and did not use a peremptory challenge to dismiss him.

Paschen said, “Very well. Mr. Weiman, you may retire.”

After Weiman left the room, the proceedings were adjourned to Paschen’s chambers, where Getty said, “Your Honor, the defense will tender Mr. Semick, Mrs. Tomsovic, Mrs. Mertens, and Mr. Weiman.” Jurors could not be selected individually, but only in groups of four. This fact led to a lot of game-playing, as both prosecution and defense tried to come up with panels of four whose chemistry seemed favorable to its side. Now that the defense had committed itself to a panel of four, the State had a choice. If it wanted to be sure of keeping Weiman, it had to accept the entire panel of four, including Mertens, Semick, and Tomsovic. If the State decline the four and “broke the panel,” it meant the entire selection exercise would continue and any of the four jurors, including Weiman, could be “bumped” in favor of a new juror selected by either the defense or the State. So, before the prosecutors entered Paschen’s chambers, they looked at their notes and debated whether or not to accept the panel.

Frank Semick was the embodiment of stability, a retired painting contractor with five married children who had once lived in Chicago and who had been in Peoria for the last thirty-two years. Adelle Tomsovic, a Chicago native, was a volunteer worker at the state mental hospital in Peoria and had a brother who worked in the pharmacy at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. Martin believed that she would know the difference between feigned and real mental illness. The auburn-haired, blue-eyed Kay Mertens was a twenty-nine-year-old divorced mother of two who worked in the accounting department at the Caterpillar Tractor Company. The prosecutors hoped that her work with the details of accounting would help her understand the details of fingerprint evidence. Besides, it is a tradition among trial lawyers to choose at least one attractive juror for the grueling days ahead, and Kay Mertens was the most striking juror to come to the courtroom. Martin believed that Semick, Tomsovic, and Mertens were solid citizens and good prosecution jurors, but even if they were not he would have taken them to get George Weiman. Expressionless, Martin looked at Paschen and said, “The State accepts the panel, Your Honor.”

The empaneling of the first four jurors on March 1 was a milestone of sorts, but Richard Speck, pleading a bellyache, had missed the event. The killer had awakened that morning with stomach pains, and under heavy security had been taken to a local clinic where his ailment was diagnosed and treated as a routine case of gastritis. It was a rare moment of physical activity for Speck, who had been spending most of his out-of-court time painting, reading paperback westerns, and sleeping. In court, he usually appeared indifferent to the details of his own trial. The major exception to this lethargy was Speck’s habit of turning and staring at women in the audience. Throughout the six weeks of jury selection, Speck would stare at women in the courtroom as if he were saying, “I’m not afraid of you—I’ll stare you down.” He did this frequently with Abra Rockefeller Prentice, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times who was tall, slender, elegant—and very rich. She stared right back at him, never flinching. One day a prospective female juror appeared in the jury box dressed in her nursing whites. Speck sat bolt upright and stared long and hard at the young woman before she was excused, allowing him to fall back into his own fog.

Late on Sunday night, March 16, Martin’s phone rang at the Ramada Inn, where he was up working late. This phone line was checked three times a week to be certain that no one had wiretapped it. The line was secure. The excited voice at the other end was Bob Ellison, calling from New York.

“I just spent the last two and a half hours reading six chapters of the Ziporyn manuscript,” Ellison said. “It’s one hundred twenty-two doubled-spaced eight-and-a-half-by-eleven typed pages. It opens with Speck in a jail cell, moves to the crime, then goes into Speck’s background, as told to Ziporyn.”

Martin now had evidence not only of the existence of a Ziporyn manuscript, but of its contents as well. Ellison had an Irish poet’s love of words and spoke rapidly with great animation as Martin tried to jot down notes of the conversation. The columnist had taken a big risk for his buddy.

“I had to read the manuscript right in front of Kerner,” he told Martin, “and I could not take any notes. In fact, I was afraid to even leave the room to go to the john. He may have thought that I was taking notes in there of what I had read and would suddenly change his mind and take the manuscript away from me. It was a helluva scene, because, believe me, I was sweating—if not on the outside, definitely on the inside. There was no margin for error. I had your career and reputation on the line in the cause of a life-or-death trial situation. I got the information—accurate and complete. I made notes of the whole story after I got out of there. I’ll get them to you when I get back to Chicago.”

Martin said, “You did a terrific job, Gordie. I owe you big.” Ellison’s nickname was “Gordie,” because he skated with the smoothness of hockey legend Gordie Howe. Before hanging up, Ellison added, “Kerner and I hit it off. I’ll keep calling him to see what’s going on.”

The next morning was St. Patrick’s Day. Although Martin and Murtaugh were not able to have a traditional Irish celebration, they were able to mark another milestone in the case. Both the State and the defense accepted the second panel of four jurors—Donald Albanito, Richard Krause, Mildred Sanders, and Walter Atkisson. Martin broke a sacred prosecutors’ rule in accepting Albanito, who was a Ph.D. and chairman of the Department of Business Administration at Bradley University in Peoria. Despite Albanito’s advanced degree, Martin liked the fact that he had worked two years for the American Psychological Association and had completed both undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology. He figured that Albanito, too, would know feigned mental illness when he saw it. Krause was a welder for Peoria’s Westinghouse Air Brake Company and had served in the Air National Guard for six years. Mildred Sanders was a receptionist for the Peoria Board of Education. Walter Atkisson had worked thirty years as a general laborer for the Hiram Walker Distillery Company after serving in the U.S. Navy. Solid jurors all, Martin thought. Judge Paschen was delighted—two-thirds of a jury had been selected. He encouraged the lawyers to keep working on the final panel, but by week’s end the selection process was again bogged down in tedium.

Bob Ellison, however, never lost his momentum. On March 23, the clever and tenacious Ellison made another late-night call to Martin to report that Dr. Ziporyn’s financial stake in the manuscript was rising. Life magazine was considering paying $100,000 for a portion of Ziporyn’s manuscript and had already paid $10,000 just to read it. A few days later, during a recess in jury selection, Martin was approached by Jack Altman, who was covering the trial as an accredited reporter for Time. “I’m doing a story on the general topic of selecting a jury,” Altman told Martin, “and I’d like to interview you.” Although Martin regularly bantered and joked with reporters outside of the courtroom, he was resolute in refusing to discuss the trial. Altman assured Martin that he would not ask him any questions about the Speck case.

Figuring that he might be able to find out if Altman was Ziporyn’s coauthor, Martin agreed to have a drink with the reporter that night at the Ramada. Arriving at the Ramada cocktail lounge early, Martin asked the hotel’s owner, Roy Demanes, for a favor. Demanes, a big fan of Team Speck, was willing to do anything to help the prosecution.

“Roy,” Martin said, “I’m going to meet a gentleman here shortly. Have the bartender do me a favor. Whatever this guy drinks, make it a double; whatever I order, leave out the booze.”

Altman arrived shortly, and the two adjourned to a corner table in the dimly lighted lounge. Born and educated in England, Altman wore European suits and spoke with a pronounced British accent. “Gin and tonic,” Altman ordered. “Same,” said Martin. Altman got a double, Martin a tonic water and lime. Some two hours and six rounds of drinks later, Martin had heard enough from Altman to confirm that he was the coauthor of Ziporyn’s book about the psychiatrist’s supposedly confidential interviews with Speck. Bright and literate, Altman sprinkled the conversation with speculations about Speck’s psychological state at the time of the murders. These speculations sounded to Martin as if they came right from the mouth of Marvin Ziporyn.

“I’m working on an exciting project right now about this case,” Altman said with a smile, “but I really can’t say anything about it now. It’s going to be very, very big.” After stepping out of the darkened lounge, Martin went directly to Ken Alexander’s room and described Altman to the police officer. “The British accent does it,” Alexander said. “That’s got to be the guy I saw in New York who asked for directions to Hawthorn Books.” The pieces of the Born to Raise Hell puzzle were beginning to fall into place, and Martin took comfort in knowing that he would have something very, very big for Marvin Ziporyn if the psychiatrist took the witness stand.

Back in court, jury selection droned on. Winter turned to spring. Easter weekend arrived. On Saturday night, March 25, Martin was the only passenger on the last Ozark Airlines flight from Peoria to Chicago. He wanted to be at home for a family Easter egg hunt the next morning. His four children were as excited about hunting for Easter eggs and jelly beans on Easter as they were looking for presents on Christmas morning. Martin spent Easter Sunday afternoon with Detective Eddie Wielosinski retracing Speck’s steps from the Shipyard Inn to the nurses’ town house. Then, Wielosinski drove him to O’Hare for the last Ozark flight back to Peoria. Before leaving, Martin happily told his family that he believed that the jury would soon be selected.

Corazon Amurao enjoyed a sumptuous Easter brunch at Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel with her family and bodyguards. Oblivious to the proceedings in Peoria, Cora and Mama continued to regularly get out of the Sheridan-Surf for shopping expeditions to Chinatown and department stores and for soothing long rides in the country.

Meanwhile, Ken Alexander and Wielosinski increased the frequency of their location checks on the State’s Chicago witnesses, many of whom were brought to Peoria on weekends for pretrial meetings with the prosecutors. Tabs were also kept on the expert medical and psychiatric witnesses, as well as the lay witnesses in Dallas who could testify to Speck’s sanity. Presenting the prosecution case is like building a house, brick by brick, witness by witness. The bricks needed to be ready because the trial was fast approaching.

On March 30, to the relief of everyone in the case, the final panel of four jurors was finally accepted—Clarence Donaldson, Caroline Edenburn, Lawrence Hankins, and Ellen Adams. Donaldson, an elderly retired parking lot operator, had lived his entire life in Peoria. He had sat on a murder jury back in the 1930’s, but neither side asked him any questions about this jury’s verdict lest it appear that they were invading his privacy by intruding on that jury’s deliberations. That jury may have voted the death penalty; if so, Donaldson had more experience in death-penalty cases than the prosecutors. Caroline Edenburn was the mother of four children, ages fifteen to twenty-four, and her husband was a laborer for the Pabst Brewing Company. Lawrence Hankins, the father of three teenagers, was an assistant boiler operator for a Peoria chemical plant. Ellen Adams, another Peoria native, was a computer operator for a department store.

After six weeks of painstaking, individual questioning, twelve average citizens, seven men and five women, had been chosen to decide the fate of Richard Speck. The two alternate jurors, who would also sit throughout the trial in case of injury or illness of one of the other twelve, were George Shamrock and Mary Payne. Shamrock was a machine operator for Caterpillar Tractor, and Mrs. Payne, the mother of five, was a volunteer worker at a Peoria nursing home. Her husband was the foreman of the machine shop at Caterpillar. It seemed to Martin that at least one member of every Peoria family worked at “CAT,” the town’s major employer.

The final scorecard showed that a total of 609 prospective jurors had been questioned, and 259 had expressed a preconceived opinion about the case and were excused for cause. Their admitted bias was due not so much to what they had read about the Speck murders as by the brutal nature of the killings themselves, which they had found out about when Judge Paschen read the indictments. Thankfully, Peoria was not penetrated by the big Chicago and St. Louis news media and the only newspaper in town, the Peoria Journal Star, had reported the case responsibly.

Among other excused jurors, there were fifteen with personal relationships with either nurses or policemen; twenty-four who testified that they disagreed with the instructions of law, namely the presumption of innocence and the right of the defendant not to offer any evidence; and forty-four who testified that jury duty would be an extreme hardship. Surprisingly few jurors—only seventy-nine—were excused because they testified that they would not sign a death-penalty verdict in any case. By coincidence, the State and the defense had each exercised eighty-one peremptory challenges. Since the defense had left seventy-nine peremptory challenges unused, it appeared that Getty would have little chance on appeal to claim that Peoria was an unfair venue.

Service on the Speck jury was not going to be a Caribbean cruise. During the coming weeks, the jurors would have to get used to as much security as that enveloping Richard Speck. They would be sequestered on the fourth floor of the Pere Marquette Hotel, where the entrance to the floor was guarded twenty-four hours a day by a Peoria deputy, who, in effect, barricaded the jurors from the outside world. Both a female and a male deputy were on duty inside the blocked-off complex at all times. The jurors would take all their meals in the same area of the hotel’s fourth floor, and the same meal would be served to all of them. Direct telephone calls were barred. Any calls were made with the assistance of a court-appointed bailiff, who repeated both sides of the conversation. The jurors would be allowed no reading of newspaper articles, no viewing of TV news or crime shows, and no intimacy with loved ones. Their “entertainment” would consist of a closely monitored trip to the barbershop or beauty parlor and a bumpy Sunday ride in a county-owned bus.

Elsewhere in the world, the alleged conspiracy case in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was falling apart in New Orleans. District Attorney Jim Garrison saw his star witness, Perry Russo, fall apart when he was forced to admit that his “evidence” linking Lee Harvey Oswald to New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw and pilot David Ferrie in the alleged conspiracy to kill the President had been fabricated. Russo, it turned out, had never even seen Oswald, except on TV.

On March 30, as selection of the Speck jury was finally concluded, New Orleans was again in the news. A Delta jet on a training flight crash-landed into a motel near the New Orleans airport, killing all nine aboard the plane and seventeen others, including nine young girls from Juda, Wisconsin, who had taken their senior high school trip to New Orleans. On Friday morning, March 31, the Chicago Tribune ran page one photos of the nine graduating seniors. It was a page eerily reminiscent of the newspaper pages of July 14, 1966, when all four Chicago dailies also ran page one photos of nine young women—the eight nurses who had been stabbed and strangled to death by Richard Speck and the nurse he had forgotten to kill, Corazon Amurao.

At long last, on Friday, March 31, Judge Paschen was able to tell the increasingly restless jurors that the Speck trial would begin the next Monday with opening arguments. In the hardened slang of prosecutors, it was “showtime.”