AUTHORS’ NOTES

First, we want to thank the thoughtful and energetic Skyhorse team for publishing the fiftieth anniversary edition of this infamous true crime:

Publisher Tony Lyons was an early and enthusiastic champion of the authenticity and appeal of our account of the crime that murdered American innocence and ushered in the era of mass murders that plagues us today. Assistant editor Alexandra Hess adroitly, unflappably, and enthusiastically handled the myriad details required to revise and update the manuscript of a twentieth century crime for readers in the twenty-first century, offered helpful insights for our many rewrites, and wove the many changes into a seamless story. Director of editorial operations Dean Notte provided timely assistance to secure the use of exclusive photographs of Corazon Amurao Atienza, the sole survivor of the murders, and her happy family. For fifty years, Corazon never posed for a public photograph. The pictures she agreed to have taken for publication in this book are a worldwide publishing first.

The impetus for this book came from our collaboration in 1986 to produce a cover story published in the Chicago Tribune Magazine on the twentieth anniversary of the murders. Tribune editor Mary Knoblauch provided invaluable help in preparing this anniversary article for a new generation of readers.

Special acknowledgments must go to the slain nurses’ classmates and relatives, many of whom agreed to be interviewed for our book. Classmates Karen Besida Geronovich, Judy Dykton, Kathy Donzalski Emmons, Pat McCarthy, Tammy Sioukoff, and Ellen Harnisch Stannish gave generously of their time and thoughts. Marilyn Farris McNulty, older sister of Suzanne Bridgett Farris, allowed an extraordinary interview to be conducted in her home in the presence of her husband, Bob McNulty, and daughters Peg and Beth. Other helpful interviews were granted by Mary Jo Matusek Purvis, sister of Patricia Matusek, Dr. Leroy Smith, attorney Casimir Wachowski, hospital administrator Harlan Newkirk, Public Defender Gerald Getty, and retired Stateville warden Vernon Revis.

Among the publications we consulted were the four Chicago newspapers thriving in 1966—Chicago Tribune, the Chicago American, Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Daily News; and two books, My Life as Public Defender, by Gerald Getty (1974), and Born to Raise Hell: The Untold Story of Richard Speck, by Jack Altman and Dr. Marvin Ziporyn (1967). The 1966 article in Life magazine “The Nine Nurses,” written by Loudon Wainwright, was very helpful in providing quotes from letters written home by Filipino nurses Merlita Gargullo and Valentina Pasion and in providing descriptions and quotes from the South Chicago Community Hospital Class of 1966 about their slain colleagues and friends.

Mostly, I want to thank my wife, Julie, for first envisioning the idea of expanding a magazine article into a book; for helping with all the necessary marketing and sales of the original book proposal; for reading every word of the many revisions of this manuscript, usually within hours of the writing; and for offering unfailing encouragement and unflagging good cheer. She was the perfect elixir to transform the writer’s pessimism into productive work.

D.L.B.

This book is based upon primary sources: the 10,000-page trial transcript; the Abstract of Record and Books of Exhibits; the complete case reports of the Chicago Police Department; dozens of verbatim statements of witnesses taken by prosecution investigators; detailed internal memoranda describing the extensive prosecution pre-trial investigation throughout Texas, upper Michigan, New York, and in Chicago and Monmouth, Illinois; Detective Byron Carlile’s comprehensive personal investigative file; Richard Speck’s lengthy psychiatric, psychological, medical, employment, school, arrest, jail, and prison records; voluminous scrapbooks filled with the era’s press clippings; and interviews with most of the living participants, including Corazon Amurao. There are no reconstructed quotes or other artificial contrivances in this true story of a true crime.

W.J.M.