The hotel where Richard Speck attempted suicide after murdering eight student nurses has been demolished. The nursing school has been closed for four years.
But 25 years later, the case one former prosecutor says showed the nation "what evil is capable of" has not been forgotten.On July 14, 1966, Speck broke into a townhouse where nine seniors from the South Chicago Community Hospital School of Nursing were staying. He left only one alive.
The 24-year-old itinerant seaman bound all nine women with strips of bed sheets. He led eight of them one by one to other rooms in the townhouse. He raped one. He killed all eight by strangling them, or stabbing them, or both.
Corazon Amurao, a visiting exchange nurse from the Philippines, survived by wriggling under a bed while Speck was out of the room. She alerted authorities to the crime by climbing onto a ledge outside her rom and screaming: "They are all dead! My friends are all dead! Oh, God, I'm the only one alive!"
"This case in a sense defined an era," said Bill Martin, who was chief prosecutor for the Cook County state attorney's office and, at 29, led Speck's prosecution.
"Before July 14th of 1966, who ever would have thought that one man, ostensibly an intruder who only wanted money to go to New Orleans, and smiled, and said repeatedly he wasn't going to hurt anyone, was capable of stabbing and strangling one by one over 41/2 hours these eight young women?" said Martin, now a Chicago criminal defense attorney.
"It ended the sense of security, even naivete, of the American public about the presence of evil and what evil was capable of."
Police have vivid memories of the grisly crime.
"I still can visualize the scene, the bodies . . . I knew three of the girls myself," said Jack Wallenda, one of the first detectives on the scene. "I think about it every once in a while, but you try to put it out of your mind as much as you can."
Speck attempted suicide two days after the murders and was taken to Cook County Hospital. He was arrested after a physician recognized an arm tattoo that read "Born to Raise Hell," which Amurao had described to police.
"I remember the courage and integrity of Corazon Amurao," Martin said.
"She told the police the day of the murders, `I want to do everything I can to help, I really want to help.'
"She lived that out for nine months, between the time of the murders and the time she electrified the world by walking from the witness box to a couple of inches from Speck, where she raised her finger and pointed directly at him and said, `This is the man.'
"She's just a remarkable person," Martin said. Amurao has since returned to the Philippines.
Most of the victims' parents have died in the quarter-century since the attack; families have moved away.
"It's something we live with every day," said Jack Wilkening of suburban Lansing, whose sister, Pamela, was slain. "We have to learn to live with it."
Wilkening has attended all seven of Speck's parole hearings.
"In my eyes, he has not paid for it yet," Wilkening said.
Speck has never attended the hearings, the last of which was in September. He is serving eight consecutive 50- to 150-year terms at the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.
Speck, now 49, has a standing denial for requests for interviews, said Nic Howell, department of corrections spokesman.
South Chicago Community Hospital held a brief memorial service for the student nurses Wednesday.
"It was requested by some of the longtime employees here at the hospital who had known some of the nurses," said the Rev. Bill Hoglund, director of religion and health.