Morbid Fact Du Jour For August 16, 2009
Today’s Nightmarish Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
It sounds like a recurring nightmare: an armed male intruder breaks into a women’s dorm and with a gun and a butcher’s knife, binds and gags all the residents. Then one by one, he kills them cruelly and with great brutality. All of that happened in Chicago on the night of July 14, 1966, in a dormitory that housed eight nurses who worked at the South Chicago Community Hospital. The perpetrator was Richard Speck, then 24, a drifter born in Illinois, raised in Texas, wandering from petty crime to petty crime and bar to bar. At the age of 19, he had the words “Born to Raise Hell” tattooed on his arm. His victims were all eulogized as saints, people who had committed their lives to helping others. He would be positively identified by one of his intended targets, Corazon Amurao, who survived the attack by hiding under a bed. Speck knew there were eight women in the dorm; he did not know that a friend was also staying over that night. So Amurao survived as the guest was led to slaughter. The jury found Speck guilty after a mere 49 minutes of deliberation and he was sentenced to the electric chair. In 1972, however, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death sentence unconstitutional. Resentenced to hundreds of years in prison, Speck died in 1991. No one claimed his body, which was cremated and the ashes scattered to the wind.
Culled from: Time.Com
You may remember that Speck gained infamy after his death when a prison video came out showing him with hormone-enhanced breasts snorting cocaine, having oral sex with a fellow prisoner, and bragging about how much fun he was having in prison. Apparently, this was all a survival mechanism to make himself more desirable to his fellow inmates so they didn’t kill him.
The amazing thing to me about this murder is that 8 girls could allow themselves to be so paralyzed by a gun that they would let a man tie them up one by one like that. Maybe it was a different time, but I can’t imagine not jumping the guy. Eight against one, after all. (Well, actually, nine against one.) But, I guess they were hypnotized by the power of the gun, or by the power of men. Shame.
Last Sunday (August 9th), I took a drive to the townhouse where the girls were murdered to photograph it for Chicago ghostlore author Ursula Bielski’s upcoming book. (She’s featuring several of my photographs in the book, and I’m quite excited about it.) It’s amazing to me that the building is still standing. I wonder if the current residents know its history?
You have to remember, he didn’t have all eight/nine of the girls all together at the beginning. He started with just Corazon Amurao, if I remember right, and the others kept drifting in from dates and studying and such over several hours. I think And he separated them, as time went on, so they couldn’t really get together ona plan. He also led each girl into another room to kill them, so the others didn’t know for sure just what was going on.
(They were tied pretty tightly too, with sailor’s knots which are notoriously hard to undo.)
As a matter of fact, if all nine of the girls had been there together right from the start, I don’t think Speck would have attempted it, or if he did, I doubt it would have gotten as far as it did.
Just looked it up: apparently after a couple girls had been taken into other rooms and dispatched, some of the others discussed whether they should try to get loose and either escape or overpower Speck. They couldn’t agree on whether to resist or not, and didn’t have much time to argue the matter anyway.
Yeah, I suppose you’re right… still, I can’t imagine not fighting back under ANY circumstance. If I was alone, with a friend, or with several friends. I’ve been thinking a lot about these poor girls, and I’m reminded of a Kathleen Hanna lyric:
how many girls stay awake all night
too scared to sleep and too scared to fight back
i know you know what i’m talking about
another woman killed and hardly a pout about it
green river killer my fucking ass
the cops have gotta be deaf, dumb, and spastic
to not catch the killer of a hundred women
i guess it’d be different if they thought we were human
i wanna know what love is
what the fuck if we all got guns
to off the fucking pigs and all the other motherfuckers
raping the children they paint like dolls
jon benet didn’t scream because she never fucking was
come on now the police aren’t gonna save you
they’re part of the problem that society gave you
locking up black men for whistling in the wind
you see a mirage when you call the cop your friend
i wanna know what love is
the killers and the cops give us special advice
like cross your legs and act fucking nice
while they kill us off old and fucking young
for breathing, relieving, and having fun
they’ll keep you scared so you have to have a boyfriend
and take your kids away if you’re a la la lesbian
arrest you for whoring then rape you in the car
it’s time we point the fingers at who the real criminals are
i wanna know what love is
i want you to show me
so i’ll stay awake almost every night
a pen in my hand and in the other a knife
cuz i’d rather be scared and fight back
than be some dick’s maid, babe or wife
i don’t care how we get it but we’ll get it someday
On the subject of what people would or would not do, I highly recommend Amanda Ripley’s excellent book “The Unthinkable: Who survives when disaster strikes – and why”. It goes into some detail about survival mechanisms and the way different people react in disaster situations, using real information gleaned by experts from 9/11, Virginia Tech, the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, amongst others.
There are many situations where an individual has gained power over a group and sex and society may have surprisingly little to do with people’s behaviour.
And that’s why everybody should have a gun. The real murderers wouldn’t last very long.
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