Image name	speck1966.jpg
Birth date	December 06, 1941
Birth place	Kirkwood, Illinois, USA
Death date	December 05, 1991
Death place	Joliet, Illinois, USA
Alias	Richard Benjamin SpeckRichard Franklin Lindberg
Charge	Murder on 8 counts
Conviction penalty	Death penalty (electric chair)later made life imprisonment
Conviction status	Died in custody
Spouse	Shirley Annette Malone Speck (from 1962–1966)
Parents
Children	Robbie Lynn Speck

Richard Franklin Speck (December 6, 1941 – December 5, 1991) was a mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966.

Early life and crimes

Monmouth, 1941–1950

Richard Benjamin Speck

A couple of years later, Speck's religious, teetotaling mother met and fell in love with a traveling insurance salesman from Texas, Carl August Rudolph Lindberg, whom she met on a train trip to Chicago. The hard-drinking, peg-legged Lindberg, with a 25-year criminal record that started with forgery and included several arrests for drunk driving, was in every respect the opposite of Speck's sober, hardworking father. Speck's mother married Lindberg on May 10, 1950 in Palo Pinto, Texas. Speck and his younger sister Carolyn stayed with their married sister Sara Thornton in Monmouth for a few months so Speck could finish 2nd grade, before joining their mother and Lindberg in rural Santo, Texas, 40 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas, where Speck attended 3rd grade. In autumn 1957, Speck started 9th grade at Crozier Technical High School, but failed every subject, and did not return for the second semester in January 1958, dropping out just after his 16th birthday. Speck had begun drinking alcohol at age 12 and by age 15 was getting drunk almost every day. His first arrest in 1955, at age 13 for trespassing, was followed by dozens of other arrests for misdemeanors over the next eight years.

On Wednesday, July 13, after picking up his bags and checking in at the NMU hiring hall angry at being sent to a non-existent assignment, Speck talked for thirty minutes in their car with his sister Martha and her husband Gene who had driven down to visit him at 9 a.m., parked on E. 100th St. next to Luella Elementary School, across the street from the townhouses where the nurses lived. At 10:30 a.m., tired of waiting at the NMU hiring hall for a job and with $25 his sister had given him, Speck left and walked a mile and a half east on E. 100th St. to check in at the Shipyard Inn at E. 101st St. & S. Avenue N, an East Side, Chicago rooming house.) — he raped then killed the young women, including Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Schmale, Pamela Wilkening, Suzanne Farris, Mary Ann Jordan, Merlita Gargullo, and Valentina Pasion. Speck, who later claimed he was high on both alcohol and drugs, may have originally planned to commit a routine burglary. Speck held the women in the house for hours, methodically leading them out of the room one by one, stabbing or strangling them to death, then finally raping and strangling his last victim, Gloria Davy. Only one woman, Cora (Corazon) Amurao, escaped because she managed to wiggle under a bed while Speck was out of the room with one of his victims. Speck may have lost count, or he may have known there were eight women living in the townhouse but had been unaware that a ninth student nurse was spending the night there. Amurao stayed hidden until almost 6 AM. When she emerged, she climbed out of her northeast bedroom window onto a ledge screaming, "They're all dead! All my friends are dead!"

Lieutenant Emil G. Giese headed the Identification Section of the Chicago Police Department. He compared and identified a smudged fingerprint that was found at the murder scene to another provided by the FBI, which belonged to Richard Speck. Sgt. Hugh Granahan assisted with the comparison and later that morning, Senior Examiner Burton J. Buhrke found a better fingerprint on a door at the scene.

Pre-trial

Felony Court Judge Herbert J. Paschen appointed an impartial panel to report on Speck's competence to stand trial and his sanity at the time of the crime. The panel comprised three physicians suggested by the defense and three physicians selected by the prosecution: five psychiatrists and one general surgeon. The panel's confidential report deemed Speck competent to stand trial and concluded that he had not been insane at the time of the murders. In a film inmates made at the Stateville Correctional Center in 1988, Speck recounted the deed.

Trial

Speck's jury trial began April 3, 1967, in Peoria, Illinois, three hours southwest of Chicago, with a gag order on the press. In court, Speck was dramatically identified by the sole surviving student nurse, Cora Amurao. When Amurao was asked if she could identify the killer of her fellow students, Amurao rose from her seat in the witness box, walked directly in front of Speck and pointed her finger at him, nearly touching him, and said, "This is the man."

Lieutenant Emil Giese testified regarding the fingerprints which were matched. He provided the scientific evidence the prosecution needed for conviction and with Amurao's testimony, placed the evidence against Speck beyond a reasonable doubt which persuaded jurors.

False reports that Speck was XYY

In December 1965 and March 1966, Nature and The Lancet published the first preliminary reports by British cytogeneticist Patricia Jacobs and colleagues of a chromosome survey of Scotland's only security hospital for the developmentally disabled, that found nine patients, averaging almost 6 ft. in height (range: 5'7" to 6'2"), had a 47,XYY karyotype, and mischaracterized them as aggressive and violent criminals.

In August 1966, based on those mischaracterizations, Eric Engel, a Swiss endocrinologist and geneticist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote to Speck's attorney, Cook County Public Defender Gerald W. Getty, who was reportedly planning an insanity defense, and proposed confidentially karotyping the 6 ft. 1 in. tall Speck. Getty agreed, a chromosome analysis was performed, and the results—showing Speck had a normal 46,XY karyotype—were reported to Getty in a September 26, 1966 letter,

In January 1968 and March 1968, The Lancet and Science published the first U.S. reports of institutionalized XYY males by Mary Telfer, a biochemist at the Elwyn Institute. Telfer found five tall, developmentally disabled XYY boys and men in hospitals and penal institutions in Pennsylvania, and since four of the five had at least moderate facial acne, jumped to the erroneous conclusion that acne was a defining characteristic of XYY males.

In April 1968, The New York Times introduced the XYY genetic condition to the general public for the first time, using Telfer as a main source for a three-part series on consecutive days that began with a Sunday front-page story. The second story in the series, "Ultimate Speck appeal may cite a genetic defect", incorrectly reported that a chromosome analysis of Speck by Chicago geneticist Eugene Pergament in the summer of 1967 had shown Speck to be an XYY male. The third story in the series included a denial by Pergament that he had done a chromosome analysis of Speck, but continued to incorrectly report that a chromosome analysis had shown Speck to be an XYY male.

The following week, a Time article using Telfer as a main source reported that "Richard Speck is said to be one such" man with two Y chromosomes and a Newsweek article using Telfer as a main source reported that "according to some doctors" Richard Speck "exemplifies the XYY type" and that "His chromosomes have in fact been analyzed, but his lawyer will not reveal the results of the test."

In May 1968, after reading news stories about Speck being an XYY male, a dumbfounded Engel contacted Getty and learned that the news stories were false—other than Engel's September 1966 chromosome analysis which had shown Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype—no other chromosome analysis of Speck had been done.

In November 1968, five days before the Illinois Supreme Court's decision on Speck's appeal, a Sunday front-page article in the Chicago Tribune that again used Telfer as a main source, reported that prison records showed that blood samples were taken from Speck in Stateville prison in June 1968 to determine whether he was an XYY male, and that Getty had confirmed that a chromosome analysis had been performed outside of Illinois, but refused to disclose the results. On November 25, 1968, three days after the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Speck's conviction and death sentence, Getty held a press conference at which he outlined the basis of his forthcoming appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and also made public the chromosome analysis results from Engel showing Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype.

In September 1972, Engel published his account of the story and a photograph of Speck's normal 46,XY karyotype in the American Journal of Mental Deficiency,

Death penalty reversal

On June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court (citing their June 3, 1968 decision in Witherspoon v. Illinois) upheld Speck's conviction but reversed his death sentence, because more than 250 potential jurors were unconstitutionally excluded from his jury because of their conscientious or religious scruples against capital punishment. The case was remanded back to the Illinois Supreme Court for re-sentencing.

On June 29, 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional, so the Illinois Supreme Court's only option was to order Speck re-sentenced to prison by the original Cook County court.

On November 21, 1972, in Peoria, Judge Richard Fitzgerald re-sentenced Speck to 400 to 1,200 years in prison (8 consecutive sentences of 50 to 150 years). He was denied parole in seven minutes at his first parole hearing on September 15, 1976, and at six subsequent hearings in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1990.

Life in prison

While incarcerated at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, Speck was given the nickname "birdman", after the film Birdman of Alcatraz because he kept a pair of sparrows that had flown into his cell. He was described as a loner who kept a stamp collection, listened to music, and whose work within the prison involved bars and walls. His contacts with the warden included requests for new shirts or a radio or other mundane items. The warden merely described him as "a big nothing doing time." Speck was not a model prisoner; he was often caught with drugs or distilled moonshine. Punishment for such infractions never stopped him. "How am I going to get in trouble? I'm here for 1,200 years!" sharing a huge pile of cocaine with an inmate, parading in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts (allegedly grown using smuggled hormone treatments), and boasting, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose."

Portions of the tapes were later broadcast on the A&E; Network's Investigative Reports. The same airing of Investigative Reports included interviews with people who believed that Speck was not taking hormones, wearing panties, etc. voluntarily, and that he'd instead been forced to by other inmates — that this may have been his way of surviving his time in prison.

Speck's death: autopsy and funeral

Speck died of a heart attack at 6:05 a.m. December 5, 1991, one day before his 50th birthday, at Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet. He had been taken to Silver Cross after complaining of chest pains and nausea at Stateville Correctional Center.

After Speck's death, Dr. Jan E. Leestma, a neuropathologist at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery, performed an autopsy of Speck's brain. Leestma found apparent gross abnormalities. Two areas of the brain — the hippocampus, which involves memory, and the amygdala, which deals with rage and other strong emotions — encroached upon each other, and their boundaries were blurred.

A 1976 film, entitled alternately Born For Hell and Naked Massacre, is a direct retelling of the Speck murders, except that the locale is Northern Ireland. The film stars Mathieu Carrière and Carole Laure.

In 2002, a movie called Speck was made about the case.

Photographs of the eight nurses Speck murdered were the basis of Eight Student Nurses (1966), a painting series by German artist Gerhard Richter.

In 2007, the movie Chicago Massacre retold the events of the nine student nurses that were held hostage and the eight that were murdered.

The film 10 to Midnight starring Charles Bronson parallels the Speck Murders, in that a man enters the home of several student nurses and systematically kills them while one, who was hiding under a bed, escapes.

Episode 18, Season 7, of , titled "Empty Eyes", featured a story line with many elements paralleling the Speck case.

The book Project X, the main character, Edwin, when asked who is his hero, replies that it is Richard Speck.

Canadian punk group The Viletones have a song titled Richard Speck.

Wesley Willis had a song about and entitled Richard Speck.

The song "The Ballad of TV Violence" from the first '77 self titled Cheap Trick album was originally called "The Ballad of Richard Speck" and is about Richard Speck. Their label made them change the track to "The Ballad of TV Violence" because they thought "The Ballad of Richard Speck" was too offensive.

Original keyboardist of Marilyn Manson, Perry Pandrea, went by the stage name of Zsa Zsa Speck. Combining the names of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Richard Speck.

"Female Trouble", the movie by director John Waters and starring Divine (1974) made several references to Richard Speck.

References

"The Voice Of Richard Speck," Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1991.

Further reading

External links

Richard Franklin Speck. Carpenoctem.tv An independent website.

Night of Terror Crime Library

Richard Speck at Find A Grave

Richard Speck Handwriting sample, dated 1-13-67, by R. Speck saying he endorses the book authored by Dr. Ziporyn.

"Maybe this symbol of evil found peace" Eulogy by John Whiteside, Chicago Suburban News. Reprint of article written 12/17/91 after Whiteside witnessed the secret dispersal of Speck's ashes. Speck's ashes were disposed of at the burial of the ashes of an unclaimed infant and a John Doe.

Category:1941 births Category:1991 deaths Category:People from Warren County, Illinois Category:American mass murderers Category:American rapists Category:American people who died in prison custody Category:American prisoners sentenced to death Category:Prisoners sentenced to death by Illinois Category:Prisoners who died in Illinois detention Category:American people convicted of murder Category:People convicted of murder by Illinois

Name	James Traficant
Image name	James Traficant.jpg
State	Ohio
District	17th
Place of birth	Youngstown, Ohio
Date of birth	May 08, 1941
Spouse	Patricia "Tish" Choppa Traficant
Party	Democratic (1981-2010)Independent (2010-present)
Preceded	Lyle Williams
Succeeded	Tim Ryan
Term	January 3, 1985 – July 24, 2002
Religion	Roman Catholic
Website	Traficant Speaks

James Anthony Traficant, Jr. (born May 8, 1941) is a former Democratic Representative in the United States Congress from Ohio (from 1985 to 2002). He represented the 17th Congressional District, which centered around his hometown of Youngstown and included parts of three counties in northeast Ohio's Mahoning Valley. He was expelled after being convicted of taking bribes, filing false tax returns, racketeering, and forcing his aides to perform chores at his farm in Ohio and on his houseboat in Washington, D.C., and was released from prison on September 2, 2009, after serving a seven-year sentence.

Traficant signed a limited, three-month contract to work as a part-time weekend talk radio host for Cleveland news/talk station WTAM in January 2010. His contract permitted him to quit if he chose to run for office. As of July 2010, it remains unclear if Traficant will return to the station; the WTAM website currently makes no mention of him.

Traficant ran for his old seat in the 2010 general election as an independent; he was defeated by incumbent Tim Ryan.

Early life and career

Born into a working-class, Catholic family in Youngstown, Ohio, Traficant graduated from Cardinal Mooney High School in 1959 and the University of Pittsburgh in 1963 (where he was a standout in football), was drafted into the NFL in the twentieth round (276th overall) by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1963, and obtained a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh and another from Youngstown State University. He was the executive director of the Mahoning County Drug Program from 1971 to 1981 and Sheriff of Mahoning County from 1981 to 1985. While serving as Sheriff, Traficant made national headlines by refusing to execute foreclosure orders on several unemployed homeowners, many of whom had been left unemployed by the recent closures of steel mills. This endeared him to the local population, which had long derived its wealth from steel and steel-associated businesses. In 1983, he was charged with racketeering for accepting bribes. Traficant, who represented himself in the criminal trial, argued that he accepted the bribes only as part of an undercover investigation into corruption. Traficant was acquitted of the charges, becoming the only person ever to win a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case while representing himself.

Publicity from the RICO trial increased Traficant's local visibility. He was elected as a Democrat to Congress from Ohio's 17th District, defeating Lyle Williams, a three-term Republican incumbent. He was reelected eight times without serious opposition.

On April 12, 2002, after a two-month federal trial, a jury found Traficant guilty of bribery and other charges. He was sentenced to a federal prison, where he served seven years. He was expelled from the U.S. Congress on July 24, 2002 by a 420-1 vote. The sole Congressman voting against expulsion was Gary Condit, who at the time was in the midst of a scandal involving the disappearance of his former intern, Chandra Levy.

2010 Independent candidate for the US House of Representatives

In September 2010, Traficant was certified to run for the same seat he held in the US House of Representatives before his expulsion.

Independent voice

In the House, Traficant was known for his flamboyant and eccentric style. He was a constant thorn in the side of the Democratic caucus with his eccentric behavior, an image he embraced. He often dressed poorly , with narrow neck ties (then out of style), wide-lapelled sportcoats and an occasional denim suit. He also sported an unkempt pompadour, which he jokingly claimed he cut with a weed whacker (it was revealed, after his conviction, that he wore a toupée). Casting himself as a rough-hewn populist and "regular guy," he gave speeches that were far outside the staid norms of political speaking. Many people tuned into C-SPAN just to watch his one-minute speeches at the beginning of each day's sitting. His trademark closing lines were "Beam me up... I yield back the fact..." His Website featured a picture of him swinging a two-by-four with the words "Bangin' away in D.C."

After the Republicans took control of the House in 1995, Traficant tended to vote more often with the Republicans than with his own party. On abortion, for instance, Traficant voted the pro-life position of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) 95% of the time in the 105th Congress, and 100% of the time in the 106th and 107th Congresses. However, he voted against all four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton. After he voted for Republican Dennis Hastert for Speaker of the House in 2001, the Democrats stripped him of his seniority and refused to give him a committee assignment. Because the Republicans did not assign him to any committee, Traficant became the first member of the House of Representatives in over a century without any committee assignment who was not in a leadership position.

Traficant championed the unpopular cause of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born autoworker from Seven Hills, who had been convicted in Israel and sentenced to hang for having been the brutal concentration camp guard "Ivan the Terrible." For almost a decade, Traficant (along with Pat Buchanan) insisted that Demjanjuk had been denied a fair trial, and been the victim of mistaken identity; the Supreme Court of Israel eventually overturned the conviction, on the basis of doubt, in 1993. Demjanjuk was later deported to Germany on May 11, 2009, after the Israeli Supreme Court refused to overturn his deportation order.

While in Congress, Traficant was a supporter of immigration reduction, and a strong opponent of illegal immigration. In the controversy surrounding the defeat of Congressman Bob Dornan (R-CA) by Democrat Loretta Sanchez, Traficant was the only Democratic member of Congress who advocated a new election, due to possible voting in that race by illegal aliens. Sanchez would later introduce a bill expelling Traficant from the House of Representatives.

Indictment, conviction, testimony to House Ethics, and expulsion from Congress

In 2002, Traficant was indicted on federal corruption charges for taking campaign funds for personal use. Again, he opted to represent himself, insisting that the trial was part of a vendetta against him dating to his 1983 trial. On April 15, he was convicted of 10 felony counts including bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion. As per House rules, he lost his right to vote on legislation pending an investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

Eventually, the House Ethics Committee recommended that Traficant be expelled from Congress. On July 24 the House voted 420-1 to expel him. Gary Condit was the lone "no" vote, and nine members voted "present." Traficant was the first representative to be expelled since Michael Myers's expulsion in 1980 as a result of the Abscam scandal.

After his expulsion, Traficant ran as an independent candidate for another term in the House while incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institute, Allenwood. He received 15 percent of the vote (27,487 votes) and became one of only a handful of individuals in the history of the United States to run for a federal office from prison. The election was won by one of his former aides, Tim Ryan. Traficant served his first 17 months in prison at FCI Allenwood and shortly after, he was shackled and put in solitary confinement for causing a riot after telling a guard, "People can't hear you. Speak up." For nine months, beginning in March 2004, he served with 20 inmates in one locked room at the Federal Correctional Institution Raybrook with a public commode, and with four in a room at Federal Medical Center, Rochester for three years. He was admonished by prison officials in Raybrook he was only a "few points away" from a penitentiary. In the seven years of incarceration, he refused any visitors because he didn't want anyone to see him. He wore his hair in a pony tail without his trademark hairpiece. Traficant took up artwork while in prison; according to his wife, he did not have access to a computer there.

While in prison, Traficant received support from David Duke, who urged visitors to his personal website to donate to Traficant's canteen fund. Duke also posted a letter written by Traficant stating that he was targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice for, among other things, defending John Demjanjuk. Traficant also claimed, in the letter, that he knew facts about "Waco, Ruby Ridge, Pan Am Flight 103, Jimmy Hoffa and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy", which he may divulge in the future. Author Michael Collins Piper, who initially helped circulate Traficant's letter, said that "There's stuff I've written about Traficant that's showing up in places I don't even know. It's like (six) degrees of separation with the Internet now," and denied that Traficant had any direct connections to Duke.

Release from prison

Traficant was released from prison on September 2, 2009.

Current political views

In an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren in September, 2009, Traficant has also expressed his support of the Fair Tax plan and criticized President Obama's stimulus bill. He has said of Congress, "I think it is a big whorehouse and they better start taking care of America and stop worrying about the Middle East and worry about the Midwest."

After his release from prison, he was featured as a guest speaker at a Tea Party Protest in Columbiana, Ohio. He has also committed to speaking at an American Free Press-sponsored event in Washington D.C. in February. In May 2010, Traficant filed petitions to run as an independent in the 17th district, and said that his platform would be to repeal the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Traficant ultimately received 16% of the vote, finishing third to Democratic incumbent Ryan (54%) and Republican challenger Jim Graham (30%).

See also

List of United States Representatives from Ohio

References

External links

Traficant Speeches and Explusion Hearing Transcript

"Look at what Traficant swept under the rug" — CNN, August 1, 2002

Archive of many of Traficant's congressional speeches

RBN Radio Broadcast on the Jim Traficant Case (8/03/07)

Jim Traficant On Demand - WTAM archive

Jim Traficant on The Alex Jones Show (PrisonPlanet.TV), 19 February 2010 (YouTube)

Trafficant quarterbacking Pitt over Navy

Category:American anti-illegal immigration activists Category:American people of Italian descent Category:Ohio sheriffs Category:American talk radio hosts Category:People convicted of bribery Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:American people convicted of tax crimes Category:Expelled United States Representatives Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio Category:Ohio Democrats Category:Paleoconservatism Category:People convicted of racketeering Category:People from Youngstown, Ohio Category:Pittsburgh Panthers football players Category:Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government Category:United States presidential candidates, 1988 Category:University of Pittsburgh alumni Category:American football quarterbacks Category:1941 births Category:Living people