Forty miles from home, when they spotted a gas station, they were reluctant to stop for directions because their curlers made them look like creatures from Mars. For the people who loved the women who died, their deaths remain vivid. The next time Lori heard the phone ring, it was morning. He told Greene one of his pleasures in prison was "getting high." When Greene asked him if he compared himself to celebrity . In the spring of 1966, she stepped into an airplane bound for Chicago. Nursing school, as one former student describes it, was like a cross between a convent and boot camp. Not long afterward, Arline Davy, sitting on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, made an announcement to her daughters. So eight people got killed. The kitchen is where he and Suzie shared lunch, usually made by their dad, who worked afternoons while their mother worked days. "I really don't know how to break the news of Tina's death to our parents," one of her sisters sobbed when word reached the Philippines. Mary Ann Jordanin her nursing uniform in an undated photo. Atienza visits the Philippines every three years to see relatives. It was the kind of neighborhood where kids walked everywhere and went home for lunch, though Pat took sandwiches to school because her mother worked during the day while her father, who ran the bar at night, slept. He touched on feelings of pressure from police and investigators to help solve cases, as well as the empathy and duty he felt towards families of victims. Though she rarely talked to her two children about what happened, she made sure her sister Pat lived on through her daughter, to whom she gave the name Patricia Ann. Years later, when Nina moved into the townhouse where she died, she installed an old "Schmale Rd" street sign in her bedroom. Guarded by detectives, Corazon Amurao arrives at the courthouse in Peoria to testify as the state's chief witness against Richard Speck on April 5, 1967. Wednesday, July 13, began as an ordinary day. But to this day Atienza suffers nightmares that Speck will come back and kill her. Speck was never officially charged with the murders of which he was suspected prior to the events that took place in the South Chicago townhouse and, officially, those cases remain unsolved. When Susan Jordan Morin, who now lives in Chicago's suburbs, thinks back to the day her family heard the news, her mind lands on a vivid memory of Billy. With Sonny Valicenti, Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Greg Harpold. Speck was the seventh of eight children. Childhood friends of Patricia Matusek share memories with Matuseks niece, who never met her. He was matter-of-fact about. Pam had been quiet, studious and decisive since she was a girl in south suburban Lansing. Among Pam's favorite pleasures was watching Jack, who was seven years older, race cars. After that day, Arline Davy was different. Here`s half the country down on a person, they call him all kinds of names-and these women are trying to get to meet him. Patricia Matusek was murdered along with five fellow nursing students and two visiting nurses in 1966 on Chicago'sSouth Side. Nina Jo Schmale appears in an undated photo. All Rights Reserved. In the family's two-bedroom Cape Cod home, Suzie and her older sister, Marilyn, shared a bedroom. They laughed as they sunbathed on the roof between the tavern and the funeral home, watching the people and the cars down on Michigan Avenue, which they called "The Ave.". By the time Nina entered nursing school, she was three or four years older than most of her classmates and worried that she was over the hill. It will be available May 10. And yet news of Speck continued to haunt them. '', He said that if he were ever paroled, and someone annoyed him, ''I`ll be back in prison. Tammy Siouchoff remembers life with her fellow students before six of them and two visiting nurseswere murdered in a neighboring townhouse on Chicago's South Side in 1966. These days, Farris is retired from his job as an administrative services manager at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago. As part of their psychiatric rotation, they dealt with mentally disturbed patients. News item: Richard Speck sentenced. Law- enforcement officials familiar with the 1966 mass murder said there was no chance an accomplice existed. Finding no one there, he marched them back upstairs. If I had to do it all over again, it would be a simple house burglary. She loved swimming, ice skating and softball. I was high on heroin that night. Editor's note: This story was first published on April 28, 2016, and is being republished to mark the 50th anniversary of the murders. "For Filipinos and Filipino Americans who came of age during the 1960s," she said in a recent email, "I think Gargullo and Pasion are remembered as nurses who encountered American violence and tragedy, and Amurao is remembered as the nurse who used her wits to survive.". Until he was six-years-old, he lived a fairly normal life in a small town in Illinois. A couple of days after his basement flooded, John Schmale finally mustered the energy to head downstairs and investigate the damage. After she married and had three children, she told her kids that Aunt Gloria had died in a car crash. Me, I`m not like Dillinger or anybody else. The Farris family lived in a quiet, tree-lined Far South Side neighborhood called Fair Elms. Cora came from Batangas, a province south of Manila known for its volcano, its beaches and the balisong, a traditional folding pocket knife in which the blade can be concealed. With a rush of excitement and a pang of dread, he read her penciled note: "Nina South Chicago Hospital.". Richard Speck has been described as a drifter, a loner, a high school dropout, a sociopath, a heavy drinker, a violent man who could be charming. His sister and seven of her fellow student nurses and nurseswere murdered 50years ago in one of Chicagos darkest crimes. "What do I have here?". Student nurses Patricia Matusek, left, and Suzanne Farris, circa 1966. That day was December 7th, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor that pushed the United States into World War Two. The Matuseks wanted Pat to be buried in the clothes she would have worn for her upcoming graduation, so on the day after the murders, Pat's sister, Betty Jo, asked Kubasek for a favor. She had the guts to move (under the bed), which saved her life," Martin said. Nursing students were under strict rules during the 1960s, but still they found time for fun. My mother had an appointment for me at Parkland Hospital, the same place where Kennedy ended up dying. Despite fears that Cora, in one doctor's words, would "lapse into a psychosis" and never be able to discuss the murders, she testified boldly at Speck's trial. They are young and together and happy. Richard Speck was a murderer notorious for killing eight student nurses in 1966. From the transcript of Speck's trial: Q: How long did you scream, in a sitting position, with the window open? Sickeningly mesmerizing because, as much as we hate to admit it, it is possible to talk to a mass murderer as a human being. Nina was 19 when she announced to her family, "I'm going to nursing school.". Her mother, Bessie, passed away in 2005. He keeps the photo in a plastic pouch, tucked next to the prayer card from her funeral. Just below, in smaller type, was the news that six policemen had been shot during riots on the West Side. If that one girl wouldn`t have spit in my face, they`d all be alive today.''. She waved and waited for Pat to go inside. Nurse. With whom? Then one day last fall, she found a voicemail from John Schmale. News item: Another Speck parole hearing at Stateville Correctional Center. ''What`s that dude who played in `Shaft`? Betty Jo had one more request. The trial lasted just 12 days and, on April 15, 1967, the jury found Speck guilty of all eight murders, after less than an hour's deliberation. Come spend the night, Suzie suggested. I don`t want nothing to do with them women.''. In 1965 she became president of the Student Nurses Association of Illinois. Atienza was the states key witness when Martin prosecuted Speck in the 1967 trial. By the time I was 16 or 17 I knew it was nasty and cheap. "You know," he said, "older sisters take care of you and I always felt taken care of. When her father was at work and her mother was taking care of the house and Billy, she took Susan along while she ran family errands on 79th Street, where the shopkeepers knew her name. Speck was captured two days later when an emergency room doctor at Cook County Hospital thought a patient he was treating for self-inflicted gashes looked familiar. ''. The Mystery Novelist Who Committed a Real Murder, Boston Marathon Bombings Survivors, 10 Years Later, A Complete Timeline of Adnan Syeds Trial, Release. (Schmale family ). A doting mother and grandmother, she enjoys baby-sitting her grandchildren about twice a week and the constant companionship of her children. It's the psychological kind, full of memories and emotions, the kind Schmale means when he says: "Opening the box at first meant to me that I was going to reopen her death. She was too hot. After Speck's trial she moved back to the Philippines and married in 1969, but she returned to the U.S. about four years later. What about the notorious ''Born to Raise Hell'' tattoo that led to his capture? Whatever confluence of forces saved her, Cora Amurao made it through the night alive. Schmale was a student nurse at South Chicago Community Hospital. So was pregnancy. The children suffered considerable abuse at the hands of their drunken stepfather, and Speck's childhood was marked by juvenile delinquency and alcohol abuse, which soon led to petty crime. In 1991, while still in prison, Speck died of a heart attack. A lanky man in dark clothes, with slicked-back hair and marks on his face, was standing there with a small black revolver in his right hand. Marriage was prohibited for student nurses. Their lives are what John Schmale wants the world to see, and he can't help but believe that's what his mother wanted too. She worked part time at a bakery. I like him. Subscribe. ''How am I gonna get in trouble?'' Gloria's brother and three of her sisters are still alive. Being in the world of the older girls felt cool. The kitchen door opened onto a narrow alley where Nina parked her Bel Air and where a hospital shuttle picked up and delivered students. Before then, he had been responsible for other acts of violence against his family and others but had a knack for escaping the police. Her dad was on the line. I don`t know why it happened to me. She accepted an assignment at South Chicago Community Hospital and landed at O'Hare airport on May 1, 1966. You're afraid in life, and here's someone who is comforting you.''. She has rarely spoken in detail about what happened, not even to her husband. And did he have any particular feelings about the American people? In the days before automated fingerprint identification, it took almost a week to identify the prints found in the townhouse as his. "He is not going to harm you," the voice said. But 50 years ago, the murders were perhaps as shocking in the Philippines as they were in Chicago. Catherine Ceniza Choy, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, writes about the three exchange nurses extensively in "Empire of Care," her history of Filipino nurses in the United States. Cora has gone on to have a life that appears normal. (Farris family). Tina was known as a good cook. Pamela Wilkening, left, Mary Ann Jordan, right, and Suzanne Farris, second from right, are shown with other student nurses having fun with a South Chicago Community Hospital School of Nursing banner, circa 1966. Speck found work on a ship, and it began to seem like bodies turned up wherever Speck had been. A native Tagalog speaker, she began learning English in first grade. He'd turned on the TV news in Pennsylvania. After the murders, the nursing students in the nearby townhouses moved back into the dorms connected to the hospital. It was all right. In winter they went sledding. "I don't believe this," Schmale said to his wife on that day half a century later, gazing inside the box. According to a news account at the time, she thought it was a safer place to raise a family. The time he spent unpacking the food. A total of eight woman, between ages 19 and 24, were systematically bound, robbed, beaten, strangled and stabbed during Speck's frenzy. It was a world of hair curlers, hair spray cans, ashtrays, manual typewriters, textbooks, sheath dresses, corsages, cluttered rooms, a place where young women laughed, hugged, studied, ate, teased each other's hair. She worked at the hospital from 7 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Like the other Filipina nurses, she sent money home. Pat and Arlene Kubasek could hardly stop laughing on the night, during their high school sophomore year, that they went to the drive-in with four other girls, then sat in the car eating popcorn and rolling their hair on giant curlers. Her roommates and friends were killed by Speck on July 14, 1966, after he broke in armed with a gun and a knife. Now, with the 50th anniversary of the massacre by Speck approaching, we are recuing our report on the compelling interview with the sole survivor of this grisly attack. But whatever the veracity of his account of that murderous night (''It was just one of them weird coincidences. The particulars could have come from a college fraternity boy. It was Wednesday, July 13, shortly after 11 p.m. Richard Speck was already upstairs. For years, whenever July 14 comes around, John Farris has found himself depressed for a week before and after. 29. It was a close-knit community where almost no one locked their doors. According to the New York Times, at least one victim was raped. I watch. Sat down to write letters. Pat was 20 on the hot evening of Wednesday, July 13, 1966, when Arlene Kubasek dropped her off at the townhouse, well before curfew, which was 10:30 p.m. except for the two nights a week the women were allowed to stay out until 12:30 a.m. Do you want to come in for coffee? Martin and Atienza kept in contact as Martin collaborated with author Dennis Breo, updating the book "Crime of the Century," about the Speck murder case. She displayed uncommon ease with the dying and never balked at the mess that came with tending to the human body. Student nurses Suzanne Farris, left, and Mary Ann Jordan are shown in their townhouse,circa 1966. Corazon Amurao, center, the nurse who survived the massacre of eight of her fellow student nurses, walks between another nurse and William Ruddel, Bridewell jail superintendent, from Bridewell's Cermak Memorial Hospital after a second visit to the building where Richard Speck was being held on July 19, 1966. When 23-year-old Corazon Amurao opened the front door to Speck's knock, he forced his way in at gunpoint. In the basement's dim overhead light, a big, brown cardboard box caught his eye, a box so soggy its bottom was ready to fall out. For her to discuss an event she calls "still unbelievable" is an act of faith, one she commits only because she'd like the world to pause and think about Mary Ann and her friends. In the early 1900s, Grace Jordan was a high-ranking surgical nurse at the University of Michigan, and the stories of her accomplishments made Mary Ann think she could be a nurse too. Here are the details of the Richard Speck case, explained. I had that put on me when I was 14 or 15. They`re violent players. Half an hour later, she heard four knocks at the bedroom door. By the time Pat was 5, she had another best friend, also named Arlene Arlene Kubasek and through the years the three girls laughed a lot together. Indiana authorities wanted to interview Speck regarding the murder of three girls who had vanished on July 2, 1966, and whose bodies were never found. I screamed for about 20 minutes. With her salary, she paid tuition for college night classes downtown, after which she commuted home to 111th Street and Avenue E. Eventually she enrolled in nursing school, and though it wasn't a field she had dreamed of as a girl, she had a knack. Who is Corazon Amurao? William Martin, shown April 22, 2016, in his Oak Park law office, was the lead prosecutor in the Richard Speck mass murder case. The student nurses' white and pale-gray uniforms had to be strictly starched, their crisp white caps perfectly placed a tough trick on bouffant hair. She played baseball in the alley, badminton across the back fences. Menudo Star Says Jos Menendez Assaulted Him. The doctor had just had a. To be reminded of his sister's kindness, to be able to speak with someone about her in that way, gave him rare comfort. She hit her head against a brick wall and suffered a slight concussion. Repacking it. A photo that appeared in Life magazine after the murders shows her sitting with three of her housemates. Cook County Assistant States Attorney William Martin, left, watches as witness Corazon Amurao uses a scale model of the townhouse crime scene to detail the murder of eight nurses by Richard Speck, center background, during Specks 1966 trial in Peoria, Ill. (R.K. Davidson). On a trip to Florida with her classmates not long before she died, she sent a postcard home to report that immediately after their plane landed, they had gone to Mass. She laughs to see the pictures Schmale found, like the one of her and Nina dressed up like cats. Richard speck video noorvideo 81 subscribers Subscribe 253 Save 164K views 11 years ago Notice Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines) Almost yours: 2 weeks, on us 100+ live channels. Billy loved her tremendously.". On many of those days she walked home crying, yet it was her afternoons with Tommy that made her think she could be a nurse. I asked him if he wasn`t afraid of getting in trouble for talking about the contraband he kept in his cell. Student nurses Suzanne Farris, left, and Mary Ann Jordan are shown in their townhouse,circa 1966. Lori Davy, center, accepts a nursing school diploma on behalf of her slain sister, Gloria Davy, at a ceremony at McCormick Place in 1966. (Schmale family). (Chicago Tribune historical photo / Chicago Tribune). How do you talk about something so terrible? "She is doing very, very well," said William Martin, 79, the former assistant state's attorney who was the lead prosecutor in the case. Life, though not idyllic, felt safe. "Awful, awful. Changing his mind at the last minute, he summoned help, and was taken to Cook County hospital, where, again, his tattoo gave him away, and he was arrested and taken into custody. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. (Chris J. Walker / Chicago Tribune). At age 10, she walked her sister Susan to her first day of kindergarten. Suzanne Farris appears as a young girl with a prayer card from her funeral on July 18, 1966. In 1996, five years after he died, a video surfaced of Speck in prison, doing drugs and engaging in lewd acts with other prisoners. I give their addresses to my cellmates. After his father died, his mother married an abusive alcoholic who savagely abused Speck and his seven siblings. It was the early 1960s, before the flowering of the women's liberation movement, an era when it wasn't assumed that women would leave the house to work, and those who did had few choices. Their mother eventually forgave Richard Speck and urged her children to do the same. Dykton and the unidentified woman were not killed by Richard Speck. ''), the rest of the conversation was sickeningly mesmerizing. In court, Speck was positively identified by the sole surviving student nurse, Cora Amurao. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune). And so, shortly after 12:15, Mary Ann and Suzanne climbed the stairs to Suzanne's bedroom. He thinks of his sister every day. He thinks about the family she might have had, wishes she could have met his two sons and daughter and eight grandchildren. The judge sentenced Speck to death. Betty Jo, whose married name was Purvis, died in 2015. Bill Kurtis obtained the tape through an anonymous lawyer, his production company paid 5K for it back in the 90's. The camera also catches the misery on those women's faces. The townhouse Gloria shared with the other student nurses was often a mess, so she sometimes paid her little sister a dollar or two to clean. On the night of the crime, 24-year-old Speck snuck into a townhouse in Chicago where the nurses lived. ''A lot of them send pictures,'' Speck told me. Be married, divorced, retired? Parts of the confession were almost certainly bogus; Speck said that he had not killed all eight nurses-that an accomplice, whom Speck later shot to death, had killed one of the nurses, while Speck killed the other seven. The doctor had just had a dinner break and had seen the front page of a newspaper featuring the killer's face. He had no doubt. His horrifying violence had made him a murderous celebrity on the level of John Dillinger. Cora the first of the residents to see Richard Speck that night, and the only one to survive unlocked it. I`m not a violent man.''. After Speck was arrested for burglary and assault, he fled to Chicago to seek shelter with his sister, Martha, a couple of months later. On the way back, they got lost. It was the kind of childhood that half a century later people look back on and call simpler, innocent, a time when city kids were raised to be independent and unafraid. Fifty years ago she managed to crawl under a bed and hide while Richard Speck methodically stabbed and strangled eight young nurses after telling them he would not hurt them, that he just needed money to get to New Orleans. At South Chicago Community Hospital she earned $350 a month, much of which she sent back to the Philippines, and, like the other exchange nurses, she wrote a lot of letters. "It hurt everyone down to your soul and your being and your bone," Kubasek said. He wonders what it would have been like to grow old with a sister, his sister. Her village was small (200 people) and her family was large (eight kids). Nursing school exposed Pam and her classmates to life's wide range of joy and trouble. Lori Davy Sivek remembers her sister Gloria Davy, one of eight student nurses and nurses murdered together 50years ago on Chicago'sSouth Side. Another sister wired the news to their father in their hometown. Speck, asked how many lovers he has had in prison, responded that he can't count that high. `Parents ought to be careful about their kids,'' Richard Speck said. Would Kubasek go with her to the townhouse to get Pat's nursing cap and uniform? A. I screamed there for about five minutes and nothing. Mary Ann brought her Irish humor, her sense of duty and her talent for friendship to nursing school and to the townhouse on East 100th Street. He remembers that after she died, when the mourners came, their father wept and moaned, Cooky, Cooky, Cooky., Suzanne Farris, left, and Gloria Davy pose at the dinner table, circa 1966. He watched it once and hurled it into a corner. I watched `Magnum Force` the other night. A photo shows four of the eight slain student nurses at South Chicago Community Hospital, circa 1966. ''I`m in here for 1,200 years. Atienza became friends and learned to play penny-ante poker with the policemen and bodyguards who watched over her for an entire year while she was in protective custody. He opened it. He unearthed his ancient 35 mm slide projector, marveled that the bulb still worked and began projecting images on a wall. "She found the thing she loved doing, she meets a guy that she says 'yes' to about being married," he said. Billy was the youngest, born with Down syndrome. At Thornton Fractional South High School, she attended almost every basketball and football game with her closest girlfriends, but she didn't play sports. Tina, as her family called her, had graduated the year before among the top 10 nursing students in her class at Manila Central University. I`d never shot heroin before. John Farris carries a photo of his sister Suzie in his wallet. In this interview, Speck confessed to the murders for the first time publicly and said he thought he would get out of prison "between now and the year 2000", at which time he hoped to run his own grocery store business. Those who had been fortunate enough to be out at the time of his arrival found themselves also subjected to brutal attacks when they returned home later that evening. He managed to deflect police questioning and escape once again, but police discovered some of Harris' personal effects in his vacant hotel room that conclusively tied him to her attack. I want you to look at her eyes.". A few days before she died, Pam called her mother to say she couldn't come visit that weekend. Richard Speck once remarked that the day after he was born, all hell broke loose. Mary Ann was at the Jordan bungalow on the night of July 13, 1966, when Phil and Suzie stopped by. Shortly after the Filipina women arrived, the Chicago women threw them a welcome party, and over the next few weeks helped them learn their way around the city. As you all know, in 1988 Richard Speck and Ronzelle Larimore made a video in prison that is half talkshow, half pornography. He pushed up his left sleeve to reveal ugly scars on his arm. The American student nurses and the exchange nurses never grew close, but from the outset they were friendly. The knocking was done in a normal manner, she would later testify. Took a nap. (Schmale family ). Opening the box at first meant to me that I was going to reopen her death.

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