Richard Speck

In this episode of Serials and Themes, the hosts discuss the disturbing and cold-blooded killer, Richard Speck. They explore his troubled upbringing and the impact it had on his criminal behavior. They delve into his family dynamics, his mother's religious beliefs, and the abusive stepfather he had. They also highlight how his exposure to violence and alcohol from a young age contributed to his criminal tendencies. The hosts then discuss Speck's criminal history, including his numerous arrests for theft and assault. Finally, they discuss Speck's infamous crime, where he brutally murdered eight young student nurses. The hosts emphasize the calculated and sadistic nature of the killings, highlighting Speck's lack of remorse and clear motive. They also mention the survivor who played a crucial role in identifying Speck. The crime shocked the nation due to its brutality and randomness. Hi everyone and welcome back to Serials and Themes. If you're new here, hi, I'm Sandy. And I'm Sam. Today I am diving deep and discussing one of the most disturbing and cold-blooded killers in American history, Richard Speck. You may know his name, but today we're going to break down not just his horrific crimes, but also the troubled upbringing that shaped him into the man he became. It's a case that shocked the world and left an indelible mark on the history of crime in the U.S. Before we dive into his crimes, let's start at the beginning. Richard Benjamin Speck, born 6 December 1941 in Kirkwood, Illinois, USA, to Benjamin Franklin Speck and Mary Margaret Carpo. Richard was the second youngest of children to Benjamin and Mary. He and his younger sister Carolyn were a lot younger than their older siblings, and the family moved to Monmouth, Illinois, shortly after Richard's birth. Damn, that's old. They were BFBs. That's not TVs. Oh, true. That's their understatement. And so Mary was a... I've only just learned this word. I didn't know what it was. I had to Google. She was a teetotaler. Okay. Which, do you know what that means? I've heard the word teetotaler been used, or the word teetotaler been used. Basically, she was super religious and was against alcohol and stuff like that. Oh, not just... Like, didn't drink, but against it, and was, yeah. So, that's... These days, they'd be called straight edge. Yeah. Yeah. Rock on, Mary. But, like, if she was... Yeah, so they were Catholic and didn't... Yes, yeah. Okay. Whatever works. His parents, Benjamin and Mary Speck, couldn't have been more different in terms of temperament. Benjamin Speck's father was a kind and gentle man who had previously worked as a farmer and logger, but after moving to Monmouth, he worked as a packer in a factory called Western Stoneware. He was the calming force in Richard's life, but in 1947, when Richard was just six, his father died unexpectedly from a heart attack at only 53 years old. This event left a profound impact on young Richard, and his life began to spiral downwards soon after. After Richard's dad died, Mary met a Carl August Rudolph Lindbergh on a train ride to Chicago. The original Tinder. 1950s Tinder. Mary remarried in 1950 to Carl Lindbergh, a hard-drinking man with a criminal record and a penchant for abusive behavior. Oh, so after the calming force in his life. Yeah, yeah. He would even just move to another, you know, guy, role model in his life, but like, let's just go. Let's go with the use of alcoholics. No. Good job, Mary. Props. Good pickin'. Richard and his younger sister stayed with their older sister in Illinois until he finished second grade, and then the two young children moved to Santo, Texas to be with their mom and Carl. Carl was a heavy drinker and had a criminal record. Several DUIs and forgery charges. He was often drunk and absent, but when he was around, he was verbally abusive and Richard despised him. So he was the Carl of the catch. Oh, yeah, like. Oh, lovely. Good thing your husband died. Otherwise, he never would have found him. What the hell, man. Lindbergh's violent and erratic behavior rubbed off on young Richard, who began skipping school, drinking and getting into trouble by the age of 12. The instability of his home life, coupled with his exposure to alcohol and violence, created the foundation for the man he would later become. The seeds of criminal behavior were sown early in Speck's life. By his teenage years, he had been arrested for petty crimes, mostly involving theft and alcohol. His relationship with his mother was strained, particularly as she often excused his misbehavior, refusing to acknowledge the extent of his problems. That's interesting, like she's tough and like, you know, she's raised eight children, but she's a little. Yeah. Like, why is it? Because she knows that. It's cows, you know, like, well, what she feels guilty was like after, you know, they lost the kind of gentle, kind father they had. Yeah. You know, and then she brings this freaking. She would remember. Well, as I said, like she's raised. She's right. This is eight children that she's got here. The others are all well-rounded. And then, you know, he was, you know, he was probably a good kid, hung off his dad's every word type thing. And then the next man, you take care of that. When is that gone? The first six years were great. And then the next six years are terrible. It's all about. Yeah. Yeah. And then. Yeah. He's doing all these things wrong. But if she acknowledges that behavior, does she then. Have to do something about it. And then your authorities get involved. Like, why is he acting like this? And then it's because. And I imagine like Mary would be in denial about her choices. If she's a Catholic at all. Yeah. You know, not just drinking. And we have really strong morals on that. She'd probably be trying to, like, deny to herself that Kyle is an alcoholic as well. Right. Which I would have denied it to herself. So, you know what I mean? That's like religious delusion. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's wild. But you would be. You'd be an angry kid. You would grow up to be an angry. But you're angry because the world took your dad away. Yeah. And then you're angry because. You know, you probably. He's probably. And his mom left him. Yeah. In Illinois to go and be with this guy. And then he finds out who the guy is. A bit more. And realize, you know, like this guy. I mean, it seems abusive. So, he's the only boy in the house. Well, the only man in the house is Richard. So, you can assume that the abuse is happening to him. Maybe it's happening to his mom. So, he's angry about that. Yeah. And then he sees everything else that's. Yeah. So, Richard's teenage years were only the beginning of his criminal career. He dropped out of school at 16. And soon after, his life became a revolving door of arrests for misdemeanors from forging checks to burglary. By the early 1960s, he was living in Dallas, Texas, and married a young woman named Shirley Malone, with whom he had a daughter. However, his violent temper and drinking habits led to the end of their marriage within a few years. Well, it's not going to continue. Yep. Well. Of course. I mean, his. Yeah. I don't, I mean, I can't see that marrying a child broke up. And then his mom and dad didn't break up. His dad just died. So, but the, yeah, his drinking and stuff. I mean, it starts at 12, it's carrying on through the 20s and 30s, I guess. By 1966, Richard had accumulated nearly 40 arrests, ranging from theft to assault. And like you say, the apple doesn't fall. I mean, it's not even the tree he came from, but it's the tree that raised him. Much of it is nature. Ranging from theft to assault. But his crimes were about to take a much darker turn. After being released from prison in Texas, he moved back to Chicago. His reputation as a small-time criminal didn't prepare anyone for what was to come. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that his life spiraled in this direction. You admit the violence towards his partner is what he saw, right? So it must have been happening to his mom. Yeah. Otherwise you just, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. That's why I feel like maybe it was a cycle just continuing on because obviously it's all he saw as a kid, right? Yeah. It's a 50-50 thing as well, right? If you're raised by a drunk, you either got to be it yourself or you're probably going to stay away from it completely. Yeah. And then you've got the abuse thing. You're either going to be just like that or you're going to treat a woman with such respect. I know it's 50-50. He's either going to do it or he's not. But it's not like that. It's actually, yeah. It will either go one extreme or the other when you're raised like that. Yeah. I mean, based on what we know and what we've experienced with people, I guess, it seems to be coming through. Yeah. Now let's turn to the crime that made Richard Speck infamous. On the night of July 13, 1966, Richard Speck entered a townhouse in South Chicago that was home to eight young student nurses. Armed with a knife, he methodically terrorized the women for hours, binding and gagging them or brutally stabbing or strangling them to death one by one. What makes this case particularly chilling is how calculated his actions were. He took his time, moving through the house with no regard for the humanity of his victims. Speck claims to have been drunk and high on drugs that night, and he may have originally planned a routine burglary. But Speck killed eight women that night. Only one. My pronunciation is going to be absolutely horrendous. Corazon Amaral? I don't know about the last name, but Corazon, I'm not sure. Yeah. Let's go with that. She survived by hiding under a bed and remaining completely silent throughout the ordeal. Cool. You're under the bed. I'm just going to protect myself. But you're listening to eight of your friends be brutally murdered. That's kind of gang murder. Yeah. Or he was the original. Yeah. The girl hid under the bed and remained silent. Yeah. She stayed hidden until 6 a.m. He had broken into the house at about 11 p.m. So she just... Then jumped out a window and ran for her life. She later became a key witness in identifying Speck. The attack shocked the nation, both for its brutality and its randomness. Speck didn't know the woman he killed. Nor did he have a clear motive beyond his own sadistic desires. So, do you think that these were Richard Speck's first... Were these his first murders, I guess, recorded? Yeah, I think so. Because it's so, like... It feels extreme. But it's, like, really clean as well. You know when someone has a snap and they go on, like, a rant, they're just messy, they leave DNA everywhere, they... I mean, he did too, but, like... I mean, like, I feel like this was always his... I don't know. Like, this feels so... It was, like, a well-thought-out plan. Yeah, a little bit more calculated. Although they say it was random. And it was random. He didn't know them. There's no reason, but, like... He knew the method around it. Yeah, like you said, like he'd done it before. Yeah. Like it was a... Oh, yeah, been there, done that. So, like, a snap of someone taking a machete or a machine gun and just, like, wiping the whole place out. And stuff like that. So, like, so he'd take supplies for that. And if he didn't, then it's... Otherwise, what? Now you're looking through the house trying to find ropes. No. No, and he wouldn't have time to, like, get them to wipe on the head or, like, you know what I mean? Or run up the house screaming. He must have... So it's 11pm. So they must have been... Maybe they were in bed. But how did he keep it so... Each one so quiet that he could move through the house into eight different women without them gapping out the window. Yeah. Or door or whatever. Like, between the eight of them or nine of them with the carousel. Yeah. Like, how, you know, they could have... I agree. Yeah, they must have been... Maybe back in that day, maybe everyone wasn't in bed in sleep by 8pm, you know? So they'd have been, like, dead in sleep. Not dead. Not dead, anyway. I also, like, can't imagine, like, having been on their bed for seven hours and having the fucking strength to go and talk about it and help them find him. I can just... The smell of death and blood, you know? And... I think they should have bolted them. But, you know, there's a lot going on. Yeah, that's so horrible. I mean, it was... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.