There was also Billy. Merlita grew up on the island of Mindoro where bananas, rice and coconut grow. Elmhurst Blotter: Man charged with battery for allegedly punching a security guard at a bar, Hinsdale police blotter: multiple thefts reported by patients at Hinsdale Hospital, Glenview police blotter: Harwood Heights woman charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. "You are surprised I survived?" Speck is in jail for murdering and raping a group of women. The kitchen is where he and Suzie shared lunch, usually made by their dad, who worked afternoons while their mother worked days. 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. Richard Benjamin Speck was an American mass murderer who killed eight student nurses in their South Deering, Chicago residence on the night of July 13-14, 19. Elmhurst Blotter: Man charged with battery for allegedly punching a security guard at a bar, Hinsdale police blotter: multiple thefts reported by patients at Hinsdale Hospital, Glenview police blotter: Harwood Heights woman charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. On Aug. 7, 1966, when Lori Davy, 11, walked across the stage to accept her sister's diploma, her father's orders were fresh in her mind. For the past few years, Schmale, a friendly, white-haired man of 78, has searched for a way to honor exactly those aspects of his sister and her friends, a way that would emphasize not how they died but how they lived, that would focus on them more than on their killer. At the door stood a tall stranger with a pockmarked face and a gun. These attacks, however, paled into insignificance on July 13, 1966, when Speck arrived on the doorstep of a townhouse in South Chicago, which served as a communal home for a group of eight young student nurses from nearby South Chicago Community Hospital. Billy loved her tremendously.". 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. At her father's urging, Lori considered becoming a nurse, but she finally told him that she couldn't, she was just too emotional for the job. 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. Tina, 23, shared a bedroom with three of the American nurses, while Cora and Merlita shared another. Gloria's brother and three of her sisters are still alive. Attorney William J. Martin, 79, talks about Corazon Amurao Atienza, the lone survivor of the Richard Speck murders. Richard Benjamin Speck (December 6, 1941 - December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who killed eight student nurses in their South Deering, Chicago, residence via stabbing, strangling, slashing their throats, or a combination of the three on the night of July 13-14, 1966. There's another kind of sealed box many of them have carried around as well. The book is a detailed account of the months before the crime and ends with the drama of the trial. "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.". Mary Ann had family responsibilities. The doctor had just had a. We were just totally out of our minds.''. Her father, who had become a familiar figure on TV, with his cane or in his wheelchair as he protested the possibility of Richard Speck's parole, died in 1990 on Pat's birthday. These days, Farris is retired from his job as an administrative services manager at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago. On July 15, 1966, the Chicago Tribune's front page reported the news with the headline "Search for Mass Slayer." Gloria Davy jokes around in the South Side townhouse that was used as a dormitory for student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital, circa 1966. 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. "Let people know who they were," she said. According to a 1966 Life magazine story, Tina often mentioned money in her letters. Jewelry, makeup and nail polish were forbidden on duty. (Schmale family ). The Filipina women often ate dinner together at the townhouse kitchen table, sometimes joined by other exchange nurses. When Speck realizes he's being played, he. Nursing school exposed Pam and her classmates to life's wide range of joy and trouble. ''Some of them women`s gotta be nuts. His mother filed them away neatly, along with the pictures and newspaper clippings. After the murders, the nursing students in the nearby townhouses moved back into the dorms connected to the hospital. He has never discussed it with them in depth or with his sister Marilyn, who has moved away from Chicago. "She did well with other people in situations that you're not necessarily in control of," Farris said, "which I think is a good skill for nursing.". You're afraid in life, and here's someone who is comforting you.''. Not only had they been allowed a slumber party with their mother, but their big sister who was about to graduate from nursing school was coming home for good the next day. Being in the world of the older girls felt cool. Washed clothes in the bathroom sink, hung them to dry in the basement. From early childhood, she connected with him in a unique way, and he was why she wanted to specialize in pediatric nursing. He told Greene one of his pleasures in prison was "getting high." When Greene asked him if he compared himself to celebrity . In one of the slides that her brother recovered from the basement, a young man crouches next to the Bel Air, washing the whitewalls, smiling for the camera. What he did, however, is known, because Cora, a 4-foot-10 nurse from the land of the concealed knife, escaped his sight at one point and hid under one bed, then another, until he was gone. One of them, Corazon Amurao, steered him to the front door. According to a news account at the time, she thought it was a safer place to raise a family. Sickeningly mesmerizing because, as much as we hate to admit it, it is possible to talk to a mass murderer as a human being. "The Nurse Killer" Richard Benjamin Speck - Happy Scribe Amurao, she believes, saved her life. From left are Mary Ann Jordan, Judith Dykton, in cap, Suzanne Farris, Nina Jo Schmale, an unidentified woman and Pamela Wilkening, seated. The close quarters helped turn most of the women into close friends, and for all their dedication and discipline, they loved pranks. Their mother eventually forgave Richard Speck and urged her children to do the same. 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. High school nursing club. You climbed down to the ledge on 100th Street? They were excited. Merlita was considered quiet, shy, hardworking, efficient, pretty and blessed with a rich singing voice. John and Nina grew up on an acre of land near suburban Wheaton, a remnant of the Schmale family farm. Merlita's father. Jordan Morin, who was 15 when Mary Ann died, has never before spoken publicly about her sister's death, and she doesn't talk easily about it now. Richard Benjamin Speck (December 6, 1941 - December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 13, 1966. Marriage was prohibited for student nurses. Richard Speck Mindhunter: Ford goes too far in interviewing Speck, trying to use inflammatory, sexist language to get the murderer to open up. Betty Jo, whose married name was Purvis, died in 2015. (Schmale family ). 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? Her childhood resume wasn't flashy. Merlita Gargullo, left, one of eight nurses slain by Richard Speck, gets a goodbye kiss from her aunt, Ancia Anyayahan, as she left Manila for the United States. When 23-year-old Corazon Amurao opened the front door to Speck's knock, he forced his way in at gunpoint. Kubasek said no. Martin said he'll never forget a key moment in Atienza's testimony during the trail. That's where she was on the night of July 13, 1966, when someone knocked at the bedroom door. According to the New York Times, at least one victim was raped. 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. Me, I`m not like Dillinger or anybody else. The kitchen was the townhouse social hub, a place where Nina and her roommates congregated to eat, study and listen to the record player from the nearby living room. During their first two years, all the nursing students were required to live in dorms attached to the hospital, but in their third and final year, in the hot Chicago summer of 1965, Nina and five others moved into one of the three townhouses the hospital rented on East 100th Street. In May 1966, Valentina Pasion boarded an airplane in the Philippines, headed for Chicago. Her mother, Bessie, passed away in 2005. She climbed out on a window ledge and screamed for help, at which point concerned neighbors summoned the police. That was a good time that we had," she told Martin in a recent email. For those girls, and for their families, and for me. It reinforced his sense of mission and its urgency. Kubasek hurried to her car and drove to the townhouse. Inside sat four square, off-white boxes labeled "Kodak," and on top of them lay a sheet of thin pink paper. He'd turned on the TV news in Pennsylvania. (Schmale family ). He had no doubt. Atienza did not respond to Tribune requests for an interview. He proceeded to brutalize them in the most horrific fashion over the following few hours. Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. I had that put on me when I was 14 or 15. Lori Davy Sivek remembers her sister Gloria Davy, one of eight student nurses and nurses murdered together 50years ago on Chicago'sSouth Side. ''Dillinger and them guys, that was the Depression, they were robbing banks because that was their only way to survive. Baskys says that for a while she slept with a flashlight or a knife, but eventually, determined not to raise her children in fear, went through five years of therapy to retrain her thinking. In 1966, Richard Speck committed one of the most horrifying mass murders in American history when he brutalized and killed eight student nurses living on Chicago's South Side. She wrote her daughter's name, Nina, on a piece of pink paper. To be reminded of his sister's kindness, to be able to speak with someone about her in that way, gave him rare comfort. Who Is Suspected Pentagon Leaker Jack Teixeira? ''A lot of them send pictures,'' Speck told me. Suzie was lucky. What a waste that Nina and her friends weren't able to give the world everything they had to give, or enjoy its pleasures. Pat asked. It is being republished for the anniversary with updated sections, including one about Atienza. 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. That was almost true; the man whose crimes introduced the term ''mass murderer'' to the American lexicon did not like to talk. ", "But work is easier than in the Philippine Islands," she continued, "only the patients are as big as water buffalo.". They`ll never mess with nobody else.''. Richard Speck - Born to Raise Hell | Crime Scene Database ''Because any kid can end up to be like me. Richard Speck - Video, Tattoo & Daughter She also wrote about Chicago's weather, which she described in one letter as "really terrible. No immediate relatives were there. One went into nursing. Pat lived above Joe Matusek's Club, the tavern her father ran in the 10800 block of South Michigan Avenue. Pam had been quiet, studious and decisive since she was a girl in south suburban Lansing. Childhood friends of Patricia Matusek share memories with Matuseks niece, who never met her. Jack Wilkening is 79 now, retired from his job as a Standard Oil cashier. Chicago was chilly, with a trace of snow, on May 9, 1966, when Tina's plane landed hardly the steamy weather she had known in Jones, a town 240 miles from Manila, where she grew up with five siblings. He has remained in contact with her all these years. "I'm in," said Gloria, who phoned her mother every night to say she was back and safe. 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. They shoved their beds edge to edge in a single room and lay there at night listening to the newly hired security guard's shoes click along the hallway tiles. The Untold Truth Of Murderer Richard Speck - Grunge Richard Speck was one of the most fiendish mass murderers in American history as his slayings of eight nursing students in a single evening captured the attention of the entire nation.