Richard Speck

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 the night of July 13–14, 1966. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later overturned due to issues with jury selection at his trial. Speck died of a heart attack after 25 years in prison. In 1996, video tapes featuring Speck were shown before the Illinois State Legislature to highlight some of the illegal activity that took place in prisons. 2Early life and crimes 3Monmouth, 1941–1950 Richard Benjamin Speck was born in the village of Kirkwood, Illinois, the seventh of eight children of Benjamin Franklin Speck and Mary Margaret Carbaugh Speck. The family moved to Monmouth, Illinois shortly after Speck's birth. Speck and his younger sister, Carolyn, born in 1943, were much younger than their four older sisters and two older brothers (Speck's oldest brother, Robert, died at the age of 23 in an automobile accident in 1952). Speck's father worked as a packer at Western Stoneware in Monmouth and had previously worked as a farmer and logger. Speck was very close to his father, who died in 1947 from a heart attack at the age of 53. Speck was six years old at the tim