Nurses’ Deaths MAN ARRESTED IN CHICAGO

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31114, 18 July 1966, Page 11

Nurses’ Deaths MAN ARRESTED IN CHICAGO

GN.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CHICAGO, July 17. Richard B. Speck, wanted in the slaying of eight young student nurses, was arrested late last night after he was taken to Cook County Hospital for treatment of severe slash wounds on his wrists, United Press International reported.

Speck was charged with the murders of the nurses.

The news agency said it was reported that Speck was taken from a “skid row”j boarding house in West Madison street after he had slashed both wrists and arms deeply, apparently with a broken bottle. The policemen who took him to Cook County hospital for medical treatment report edly did not recognise him; his face was covered with blood. But doctors saw the tattoo on his left upper arm which said “Born To Raise Hell,” and the identity was established.

Speck, named earlier in the

day as the man who stabbed I and strangled the eight young women in one of modern history’s worst mass slayings, was reported to be in an emergency room. Doctors said he was in a ! serious condition from severe loss of blood. FINGERPRINTS FOUND A nation-wide hunt had been in progress for the 25-year-old Speck since Chicago police identified him last night. The police claimed they had found his fingerprints in the nurses’ home, and that his picture had been identified bv Miss Corazon Amurao the 23-year-old Filipino student nurse who hid under a bed for five hours while the eight were killed one by one.

Police Superintendent O, W. Wilson said that Speck was a “loner” who has drifted from place to place across the na tion. He is also known by several aliases.

Superintendent Wilson said Speck had held a variety of jobs ranging from lorry driver’s mate to bakery worker. LONG RECORD Speck has a long police record for such offences as forgery, burglary, malicious destruction and disturbing the peace. He completed his second prison spell in June last year. While out on parole after his first term, he was found guilty of threatening a woman with a butcher’s knife in January, 1965.

Superintendent Wilson described Speck as “an itinerant, moving from hotel to hotel.” The lanky, blue-eyed seaman has a number of other tattoos, apart from his “Born To Raise Hell” mark. On his upper arm is a drawing of a hat and goggles. His right arm carries a tattoo of a dagger and sickle. A brother, Howard, in Monmouth, said Speck has a sister in Chicago. Another sister lives in Dallas, with Speck’s mother. ANOTHER MATTER Chief of Police Harold Tinder, of Monmouth, said today that Richard Speck was wanted for questioning about a slaying in Monmouth. “He was a prime interest in connexion with the killing of Mary Pierce, a barmaid who disappeared on April 9,” Mr Tinder told a reporter. Her body was found five days later in a disused pig pen near the tavern where she had worked.” Mr Tinder said Speck was well known in Monmouth, especially to the police who had questioned him in connexion with several house-breakings or burglaries. One case in March, Mr Tinder said, involved the attempted rape of a 65-year-old woman who returned home as the intruder was looting her home. “She was threatened with a knife,” Mr Tinder said. “DISARMING” MAN “He was a very disarming man to talk to,” Mr Tinder recalled. “He seemed sociable. He was a real professional, and after you’d talked to him you had the impression he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Mr Tinder described Speck as a “braggart during the day and a loner after midnight.” I He said Speck would enter ; a tavern, sit alone until some'one noticed him, strike up a conversation—and then brag about things he had done. “He liked to act like a wheel,” Mr Tinder said. The picture is a cutaway drawing showing the Chicago town house where the eight student nurses were killed. The surviving girl shouted an alarm from the front ledge at daylight.