Word: specking
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Grim Optimism. The most dramatic example of Miranda's early effects is the way Chicago police have handled Richard Speck, accused killer of eight nurses, in what the coroner called "the crime of the century." The police were so fearful of prejudicing their case that they did not even question Speck during the first three weeks after his arrest. Ironically, they seem also to have ignored another historic Supreme Court decision-the recent reversal of Dr. Sam Sheppard's murder conviction on grounds of "virulent" pretrial publicity. While recoiling from Speck himself, the Chicago police have talked about...
...Speck's first arrest, at 13, was for trespassing; in all, he was picked up 36 times as a juvenile for offenses ranging from drunkenness to burglary. In 1962, Speck married a pretty, 15-year-old brunette named Shirley Annette Malone (now remarried), and they had a daughter who was, according to one of Speck's sisters in Dallas, his "real love." In the bloody Chicago flophouse cubicle where detectives retrieved Speck's wallet, they found a color picture of a pert little girl, grinning up at the camera from the front steps of her house...
...Victims. Speck's mother, who lives in tawdry East Dallas, refused to talk with reporters. But Shirley's mother told newsmen: "He's crazy when he gets liquor in him." In 1963, three days before Oswald killed Kennedy, Speck was sent from Dallas to the Texas Penitentiary at Huntsville to start a three-year term for forgery and burglary. Freed on parole, he was jailed a week later on charges of assaulting a woman with a knife, confessed that he had meant only to rob her but had fled when she screamed. Returned to Huntsville to serve...
Last March, Speck showed up in Monmouth, Ill., where he had spent his early years. Soon afterward, a 33-year-old barmaid was found beaten to death in an abandoned hog house; then a 65-year-old widow was bound, robbed and raped. According to Police Chief Harold Tinder, Speck left town the night of the latter crime. In late April, he shipped out on an iron-ore boat but was sent ashore after one week to undergo an emergency appendectomy in Hancock, Mich. There, he made friends with a newly divorced nurse, Judy Laakaniemi, 28. Speck dated her several...
...dead nurses' apartment got the impression that he was talking to Cook County Coroner Andrew Toman, and he started spilling all the gory details of the crime-until he saw Toman walk into the room. Whereupon he slammed down the receiver in embarrassment. Somehow, Suspect Richard Speck's mother in Dallas got the idea that she was talking to a lawyer hired to defend her son. She gushed information meant to help build his case. The banner headline over Romy's story read FAMILY'S STORY OF SPECK'S LIFE; there was ample detail...