Trials of the Century by Mark J. Phillips

Author:Mark J. Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633881969
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2016-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Richard Speck enters court. © Bettmann/Corbis.

Just west across Cranden Avenue from the Maritime Union Hall on East 100th Street were three two-story attached townhomes used by South Chicago Community Hospital to house its student nurses. In one of the townhomes lived eight young women ranging in age from twenty to twenty-four. Three of them, Valentina Pasion, Merlita Gargullo, and Corazon “Cora” Amurao, were exchange students from the Philippines. The remaining five, Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Jo Schmale, Suzanne Farris, and Pamela Wilkening, were local girls. The eight slept upstairs in three cramped bedrooms and used a single bath. Downstairs were a kitchen and living area.

Speck had watched the student nurses come and go over the last two days as he waited for work at the Union Hall.4 This evening he approached the townhouse from the rear, dressed in black pants and a black jacket zipped up to hide a white T-shirt. He opened a downstairs window using the switchblade and reached in and unlocked the back door. It was about 11:30 p.m. On that hot July night, just six of the students were home, Suzanne and Gloria still out until the 12:30 curfew. Upstairs, Speck knocked on the door of the bedroom shared by Cora and Merlita, and Cora opened it. He pointed the gun at her. Then he forced them at gunpoint down the short hallway to the large bedroom at the rear of the townhouse where Patricia, Pamela, and Nina were in bed, gathering Valentina from her room along the way. He instructed all six students to sit in a semicircle facing him, assuring them that he was not going to hurt them. He only wanted money to get to New Orleans.

At 11:45 Gloria was dropped off by her boyfriend and entered the townhouse downstairs. Speck stood by the bedroom door, and when she entered he held up the gun and ordered her to join the others on the floor. Then he pulled the sheet from one of the beds, used his switchblade to tear it into long strips, and began tying each student's ankles and wrists. “Don't be afraid,” he told them, “I'm not going to kill you.”

When he was done he looked them over. Selecting Pamela, he untied her ankles, pulled her to her feet, and with the gun in her back marched her to the unoccupied northeast bedroom. There he gagged and spread-eagled her on the floor. But as he stood over her, the last of the students, Suzanne, unexpectedly entered the room accompanied by Mary Ann Jordan, a fellow nursing student who lived at home with her parents but who had come to spend the night at the townhome. Taking in Speck and the prostrate Pamela, they turned and fled. He blocked the access to the stairs, and they burst into the south bedroom where they found the remaining six students hog-tied and seated on the floor. Here they were trapped, and Speck marched them at gunpoint back to the northeast bedroom, where Pamela still lay on the floor.

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