CHAPTER 40

Technically, the twelve jurors had only recommended that Speck be sent to the electric chair. It would be up to Judge Herbert Paschen to actually impose the death sentence, and he had the option of rejecting the jurors’ recommendation. Getty not only could move for a new trial; he also would be able to present evidence in mitigation of the jury’s recommended sentence as a final effort to help his client avoid the electric chair.

A brief session was convened by Judge Paschen Monday morning in Courtroom A of the Peoria County Courthouse. Much like a pin deflates a balloon, Saturday’s verdict had taken all the emotion out of the proceedings. Everyone—the judge, the prosecution, and the defense—was spent from Saturday’s passion and, in an anticlimactic gathering, it was agreed that all posttrial motions would be heard in Chicago and that Richard Franklin Speck would be transferred back to his death row cell in the Cook County Jail.

The papers of Sunday, April 16, had trumpeted the news from Peoria. The banner headline in the Chicago Tribune proclaimed DEATH SENTENCE FOR SPECK. Both the Tribune and veteran Chicago Sun-Times crime reporter Ray Brennan had obtained copies of the jailhouse interviews conducted with Speck by Dr. Marvin Ziporyn. Both papers reported extensive summaries of Ziporyn’s reports, and it was disclosed that Brennan had enjoyed access to the reports during the trial, but had withheld publication in order not to violate the press order issued by Paschen. This was strong proof of the effectiveness of—and necessity for—the press order.

That same Sunday night, the Amurao clan—Cora, Mama, and Roger—and their police friends enjoyed a celebratory dinner at Arnie Morton’s Restaurant in Chicago and reminisced about their days at the Moraine-on-the-Lake months earlier. The happy days of this odd extended family of Filipinos and police were drawing to an end.

Once the trial had concluded, reporters learned where Cora had been staying and police were now afraid that kooks might begin harassing her. A few days later, Cora and her police bodyguards moved out of the Sheridan-Surf and relocated to Chicago’s famed Edgewater Beach Hotel.

On April 20, Ziporyn was fired from his $8,100-a-year, part-time job as the Cook County Jail psychiatrist. Sheriff Joe Woods told reporters, “He has too big a mouth.” The official reason was that he had exploited his position and used county time to pursue a private project—his interviews with Richard Speck for the purpose of writing a book for financial gain. In the uproar over Speck’s conviction, Ziporyn also lost his publisher, Hawthorn Books. The publishing house was owned by W. Clement Stone, the Chicago insurance magnate and Republican fund-raiser, and Stone decided that he could not be associated in any way with Richard Speck. The publishing rights were subsequently sold to Grove Press in New York, which published Ziporyn’s book, entitled Born to Raise Hell, in the summer of 1967. The Saturday Evening Post paid $25,000 to excerpt portions.

On April 28, Martin accompanied the four-man police detail as it escorted the Amuraos to O’Hare Airport for their trip home to the Philippines. The Amuraos’ cover was retained right to the very end, as Martin leaked erroneous information to the press that Cora would be leaving Chicago on April 29—one day later.

Invoking the magic talisman, “for the Speck case,” the police also managed to get Cora and her family pre-boarded on the plane, a move that foiled a Tribune reporter who got a belated tip that Cora was leaving a day earlier than announced. By the time the photographer arrived at the airport gate, Cora, Mama, and Roger, who was anxious to get home to his wife, had already exchanged warm hugs and handshakes with their Chicago protectors and had settled in for the long flight home. The U.S. State Department had been notified of the Amuraos’ departure, and had made sure that Japanese security police would provide all amenities for their overnight stopover in Tokyo. One day later, the Amuraos touched down in Manila and were greeted with open arms by the Philippine government. The Philippine consul-general in Chicago, Generoso Provido, proved to be a politician to the end, sending Martin a florid telegram congratulating the State’s Attorney’s Office on its successful quest for justice. That quest, however, was not over.

On Monday, May 15, Getty filed a fifty-five-page motion for a new trial, alleging multiple errors by Paschen during his conduct of the trial. Arguing for more than two hours, Getty cited everything from Paschen’s denial of a trial judge other than himself to Paschen’s refusal to move the trial out of Peoria after it had already been moved from Chicago to Peoria. Only Paschen could judge Getty’s motion because, as the trial judge, he was the only judge familiar with the entire record of the trial. However, Paschen was mindful that his decision would be reviewed by appellate courts and that any errors could lead to a reversal. Paschen was confident of his prior rulings. When Getty stopped talking, Paschen denied his motion for a new trial.

Richard Speck would be held guilty of the murders of eight nurses. The only issue remaining was an eleventh-hour effort by Getty to seek mitigation and mercy for his client—to help Speck avoid the electric chair. Paschen set this hearing for May 25. Getty was investigating the possibility that his client was suffering from an “epileptic furor” at the time he took his gun and knife, put on his black jacket, and walked to the town house to kill.

Getty’s extensive postverdict maneuverings were keeping Martin busy six days a week, but at least he had escaped from his cinnamon toast and cheeseburger diet at the Ramada Inn and was back home in Chicago, able to enjoy home-cooked meals and get reacquainted with his four children—Marc, age five, Patrick, four, Colleen, three, and Victoria, one. Sundays, he and his wife took the family to Brookfield Zoo, Kiddieland, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Since the older children understood what Speck had done, Martin frequently had to reassure them: “No, honey, he’s not going to get out of jail and try to kill you.” Martin also had time to go to his parents’ house and notice that the paint job remained to be done. He assured them he would get to it—soon.

George Murtaugh was overjoyed that he could return by day to his assignment in felony trial court and by night to his wife and two young children. John Glenville also returned to felony trial court, sad that he had not been able to participate in the Speck trial. Only Jim Zagel remained with Martin as a full-time member of Team Speck. The remaining phase of the case involved psychiatric testimony, which was Zagel’s specialty.

In the middle of May, the four prosecutors were briefly reunited at a meeting with their boss, State’s Attorney John Stamos. The meeting was a surprise and the four men wondered if, perhaps, something had gone wrong. Cigar in hand, Stamos arose majestically from behind his huge polished desk and nonchalantly handed each man an envelope. The four were stunned and speechless; each envelope contained a bonus check from the county board for a thousand dollars. Bonuses were unheard of in the State’s Attorney’s Office, and Martin’s entire salary was only ten thousand dollars a year. Observing the bewilderment on the faces in front of him, Stamos said laconically, “Shit, it’s the least we can do for you, after all you have done for us.”

On May 25, it was back to court to hear Getty ask Judge Paschen to authorize additional brain-wave tracings or electroencephalograms (EEG’s) of Speck to determine whether or not he had been suffering from an alcohol-induced “epileptic furor” on the night of the murders. The defense was desperately trying to find a biological reason to explain Speck’s evil. The feisty and loquacious Jim Doherty argued that it was absolutely imperative that additional EEG’s be taken of Speck both while he was in a deep sleep and while he was under the influence of alcohol. Doherty said that the new tests would show whether or not Speck might have been prone to epileptic fits when drinking.

In response, Martin filed the formerly confidential eleven complete examinations of Speck by the six-member psychiatric panel and its five consultants, plus the reports of Drs. Feinerman, Haines, Littner, and Ziporyn. The reports had not been part of the court record previously in order to prevent their contents from being reported by the media. The fear was that if jurors were aware that the panel unanimously found Richard Speck sane, then they could not fairly judge an insanity defense, if one were presented. Martin also filed the original EEG taken of Speck on September 29, 1966, at the Psychiatric Institute and subsequently analyzed by the panel’s consulting neurologist and electroencephalographer.

Martin argued that fifteen medical experts had already examined Speck without finding any trace of epilepsy, and that the defense had not stated sufficient grounds that the new tests they were proposing would in any way affect the court’s decision on the mass murderer. Paschen adjourned the session by telling Getty to be prepared to proceed the next day with any evidence that he had mitigating against the death penalty. The judge said that he would rule on the advisability of the proposed new EEG’s at that time.

The next day, the defense called Dr. Frederick Gibbs, a prominent electroencephalographer from the University of Illinois Medical Center, to testify in favor of the new tests. Dr. Gibbs said that alcohol-provoked and deep-sleep EEG’s would “complete” the brain tests of Speck. He added that the additional tests could be performed upon ten-channel EEG machines, compared to the “limited” eight-channel machines used during the earlier tests.

Martin stood on the scientific reports that the State had already filed with the court and argued that the additional EEG’s were not required medically, scientifically—or legally. However, since the State had no standing to oppose a defense request to test the defendant, all Martin believed he could do was make a strong push with Paschen to expedite the proceedings.

However, Martin changed his position when he learned that the two new psychiatrists Getty was proposing examine Speck were planning to use the new EEG results for a “treatise” on violence, and that the Chicago lawyer who represented them was the same lawyer who had represented Dr. Marvin Ziporyn in negotiating his book, Born to Raise Hell, and the Hollywood rights for it. Believing that the Public Defender and his client were being unwittingly used to further another scheme to profit from the sensational case, Martin adamantly opposed the new tests. To bolster his position, Martin interviewed the members of the court-appointed panel. Their response was unanimous: the proposed EEG’s were “neither essential, indicated, nor necessary.” Martin also enlisted the testimony of Dr. John R. Hughes, the Northwestern Memorial Hospital electroencephalographer who had read Speck’s EEG for the court panel. He said that deep-sleep EEG’s are “not as reliable” as the light-sleep readings he had previously analyzed, and that “alcohol-provoked EEG’s had been discredited as a diagnostic tool twelve years ago.”

Judge Paschen had heard enough. He denied the defense motion for the new EEG tests, noting: “I am not interested in making Richard Franklin Speck a guinea pig for history.” Adding that the proposed tests would not have any bearing on mitigation for the mass killer, Paschen continued the case until June 2—at which time, he told Getty, he wanted to hear actual evidence arguing for mitigation.

The only thing left between Richard Speck and the death penalty would be the testimony of Dr. Ner Littner, an urbane, Freudian analyst and child psychiatrist who had interviewed only one other murderer in his professional life. For reasons only hinted at previously, Getty had decided not to use Dr. Ziporyn as a witness in the presentencing hearing. Marvin Ziporyn, the man who had spent more than a hundred hours with Richard Speck and become his closest confidant and his biographer, would never take the witness stand to try to save his patient’s life.

Martin was determined that neither the distinguished Freudian psychiatrist nor the final impassioned arguments of Gerry Getty, who had never lost a client to the electric chair, would help Speck avoid his just punishment.

With the case winding down to its final days, Getty and Martin were still able to walk into Judge Paschen’s majestic seventh-floor courtroom accompanied, as usual, by several colleagues, and appear civil to each other. The ordeal of the eight-week trial, however, had taken its toll, and now the two lawyers were about to get personal. The flash point was reached on June 2, when Getty told the judge that the State had previously agreed to allow Speck to undergo the new EEG tests. Martin termed this “an absolute falsehood,” prompting Getty to blast back, “Well, I’m just sick and tired of being accused of falsehoods by this angelic altar boy.”

The only witness of the day, the energetic and trim Dr. Ner Littner, dressed and looked more like the CEO of a major accounting firm than a psychiatrist. At the time, there were 18,000 psychiatrists in the U.S., and only 1,100 psychoanalysts like Littner. He took the stand looking confident and unconcerned about his lack of courtroom experience. Littner had interviewed Speck for two hours on the morning of February 4 and for another two hours that same afternoon. He had also studied the reports of the court-appointed psychiatric panel and the inquiry into Speck’s Dallas years that had been compiled by the Assistant Public Defender Jim Gramenos.

Littner told Judge Paschen that Speck suffered from a “serious mental disease,” which he termed “chronic personality disorder, with neurotic features.” He observed that Speck used a number of neurotic and self-destructive behaviors to try to cope with the “excessive anxiety” and “unbearable tension” in his mind.

He explained that this anxiety was due to Speck’s sense of guilt and inadequacy and that it caused him to have no control over his impulses, especially when he was drinking. Littner said that Speck had been suffering from this mental disease from at least age thirteen and possibly as early as age six. He then enumerated seven broad patterns of behavior as examples of Speck’s mental illness. Littner’s explanation of these seven behavior patterns tripped off his tongue as fluently as if he were lecturing a seminar of graduate students. Judge Paschen turned toward the witness with great interest and took notes rapidly.

First, beginning at age six, Littner told the court, Speck had developed various phobias, including a fear of closed spaces; an irrational fear of being stared at by strangers and an excessive anxiety about reciting in front of classmates; a fear of swimming because of the possibility that water moccasins might be lurking in the water; a tendency toward nightmares in which he was buried alive; and a fear of spiders. Littner termed these fears as being all part of one cluster of symptoms—using phobias to deal with inner tension. Second, Speck used hysterical, or bodily symptoms—throbbing headaches, blurring vision, dizzy spells, and sexual impotence—to try to deal with the tension in his mind.

Third, Littner said, was Speck’s long history of self-destructive behaviors—auto accidents, falling from trees, running into poles, acquiring gonorrhea on five separate occasions and syphilis on two—which were Speck’s way of handling his great surges of guilt. Fourth was Speck’s pattern of abusing alcohol and drugs and seeking out violence, especially knife fights, a sign of unbearable tension in Speck’s mind and a symptom of his mental disease. Fifth was Speck’s trouble-proneness, including thirty-six arrests in Dallas and two stays in prison. He needed to get into trouble and get caught by the police, Littner said, because of his anxiety and tension.

Sixth, the analyst said, was Speck’s inability to be close to people, preferring the company of older beaten-down men and bad-news women to people his own age. Littner said that Speck’s association with prostitutes proved his basic difficulty in forming close relationships with women. Seventh was the fact that Speck had been proven inadequate to the “major tests of maturity”—school, jobs, marriage, every aspect of growing up that implies independence. Pointing out that Speck was the “family deviate,” Littner suggested that the cause of the difference from the rest of the law-abiding, church-going family was Speck’s mental illness.

Littner maintained a detached professorial air as he began to address the burning question of why Speck murdered eight women:

On Wednesday, July 13, 1966, Littner theorized, Speck was “living in a pressure cooker in his mind,” and drank all day, one of his favorite ways to relieve tension. Further, Speck took a lot of pills he got from a stranger and also injected himself in the arm with an unknown drug. In Littner’s version, Speck paid for a prostitute but was unable to perform, and turned her over to the men with whom he had been drinking. Littner saw Speck’s entire Wednesday as a means of trying to cope with the overwhelming tension in his mind.

The erudite psychiatrist was an impressive witness. He did not refer to notes and displayed a mastery of the evidence. Littner concluded with his opinion that Speck should be confined and given intensive psychoanalytic treatment so that “society can learn something to prevent the Richard Specks of tomorrow. I think that it would be a great disservice to psychiatry if we pretended that there are no reasons to explain a Richard Speck, if we pretend to ourselves that he is just ‘bad’ and explain his crime away on that basis.”

Based upon what he had heard about and from Littner, Martin thought that the psychiatrist was both brilliant and honest and that his only motive for testifying was his sincere view that psychoanalyzing Speck was a way to prevent future mass murderers. At the same time, the prosecutor thought that Littner’s theory was fatally flawed, because it assumed that Speck had told the truth—and Speck was a world-class liar who had manipulated the Freudian analyst as easily he had the nurses. In an effort to burst what he considered a hot-air balloon of Freudian jargon, Martin did a mildly sarcastic cross-examination.

Littner was the only witness of the day, and Paschen adjourned the hearing until two-fifteen P.M., at which time he said that he would hear the final arguments on whether or not he should impose the death penalty.

During the luncheon recess, Martin was left alone to ponder the fact that Getty’s hope for an insanity verdict after a two-stage trial probably would have failed, anyway, because it was now apparent, after Littner’s testimony, that his two experts—Ziporyn and Littner—were in irrevocable conflict.

Ziporyn said that Speck was an “obsessive-compulsive personality who demonstrated guilt, remorse, and shame.” Littner testified that Speck was suffering from a “severe chronic personality disorder with mixed neurotic traits,” and that he had found “no evidence of guilt, remorse, or shame.”

Ziporyn found that Speck totally had no control over his impulsive behavior because of his “organic brain syndrome” and “alcohol-, barbiturate-, and methedrine-poisoned nervous system that cannot brake, control, or censor him.” Littner emphasized how Speck’s inner anxieties and tensions led him to impulsive behaviors.

Most significantly, Ziporyn based his diagnosis on Speck’s ability to “have loving relationships with members of his family,” while Littner testified that one of the killer’s basic problems was “a chronic inability to form close relationships with others.”

The essence of Ziporyn’s thesis had been that “Speck cannot be understood without reference to multiple cerebral injuries,” and that “Speck has an organic brain defect—chronic brain syndrome, associated with cerebral trauma.” Littner considered this alleged cerebral trauma, but concluded that Speck “shows no evidence of neurological physical disease.”

Clearly, Getty could not have presented these two “experts” to the same jury without incurring the substantial risk that each of their contradictory diagnoses would be disbelieved and rejected. Martin felt better—the Illinois Supreme Court could not logically find that Judge Paschen had erred in denying the Public Defender’s motion for a two-stage trial.

It was time for the final task—to convince kindly Herb Paschen, gardener and grandfather, that the twenty-five-year-old Speck should be jolted to death by electricity.

In his final argument, Getty made an impassioned personal plea to Paschen not to inflict the death penalty. Part of his argument included his reasons for not using an insanity defense for Speck.

Getty began by estimating that the six court-appointed panel physicians had spent a total of twenty-one hours and fifty minutes trying to fathom the depths of Richard Speck’s mind. He continued: “Many people have suggested that I should have had a psychiatric defense, although I have reiterated again and again that I could not have used a psychiatric defense. The defendant has never admitted his guilt to me, nor has he been able to tell me how the murders were done. So, there isn’t any lawyer who pleads guilty a client who cannot tell him that he is guilty or how the murder was done. And that is exactly what a psychiatric defense is—you are pleading your client guilty and saying, ‘Yes, but this is the mental condition of this man at this time.’ ” Getty added that even if Speck had told him that he was guilty that the odds against an insanity defense “were too great—one (Littner) against seven (the six panel members, plus Dr. Haines).”

Referring specifically to Ziporyn, whose financial involvement in Born to Raise Hell had been publicized widely after the verdict, Getty told Paschen, “I could have had two witnesses for the defense, but I have not called one in mitigation because I do not think that he would have any influence on Your Honor because of reports of his writing a book for personal gain, and I would not bring that kind of testimony before Your Honor.”

There had been a great amount of armchair quarterbacking questioning Getty’s choice of an alibi defense over the defense of insanity, especially since the alibi kept the jury out for only forty-nine minutes. In truth, though, this was an unfair and uninformed criticism of Getty. For an insanity defense, all he had to work with were the conflicting theories of a psychiatrist with an enormous financial interest in the defendant and a Freudian analyst with no experience in dealing with criminals. Had Getty tried an insanity defense, he knew he would face as many as thirteen experts who found Richard Speck sane at the time of the murders.

Speaking with passion and conviction, Getty turned his attention to why Paschen should not inflict the death penalty. Pointing out that the abolishment of capital punishment had occurred in thirteen states and was “knocking on the door in Illinois,” Getty said that the judge should heed the temper of the times. Getty knew that Paschen was not a “hanging judge,” and he tried to appeal to his humanitarianism and sensitivity. He offered him the compromise of giving Speck, instead, eight consecutive life sentences. “This would be a greater punishment,” Getty concluded.

It was Martin’s turn. He knew that Paschen found it personally distasteful to take a man’s life. It would take a strong argument to convince him, and this was Martin’s final assignment during the Speck trial. Standing at the lectern with Murtaugh and Zagel seated to his left, Martin’s voice rose and fell with emotion. He gave the same argument to the judge he would have given to a jury, comparing Speck’s evil to that of the Nazis and noting, “We know that there is evil in this world and that it does not masquerade as insanity. This is the nature of man.” Speck had shown no mercy to the nurses, Martin argued, and the law could now show no mercy to Speck.

There was nothing more to be done or said. Paschen took the case under advisement, saying that he would return to Peoria the next Monday, June 5, to pronounce sentence. That Sunday, Martin and Murtaugh, once again, set out in their unmarked squad car for the Peoria Ramada Inn. This time, though, they traveled light.