Joliet Prisons

Joliet Prisons

Maybe this symbol of evil found peace

By John Whiteside
There was no eulogy for Richard Speck. No songs were sung. Not a tear was shed for this man who had become a symbol of evil.

And any emotions I felt at that moment were felt for the other two people who were also unwanted. They went to their eternal peace at the same time as the mass murderer.

One was just an infant whose tiny body was found in a garbage bag eight years ago. The other was a man who had died five years ago.

Both had gone unclaimed by their families. Their bodies had been cremated and the ashes stored in the county coroner's safe. The three containers of ashes-- Speck's in a black box wrapped in brown paper-- were carried from the courthouse as darkness started to fall upon the area. We drove to a secret location and met a church deacon.

After handshakes, the four of us walked to the selected spot. The containers were placed on the cold ground. The deacon read briefly from the scripture. Then we bowed our heads as he said a prayer. The ceremony took less than five minutes.

The deacon prayed to a merciful God whose forgiveness is unconditional and whose love is beyond our understanding. But the majority of mankind couldn't forgive nor love Richard Speck.

His crime, the brutal 1966 murder of eight student nurses, was well beyond human understanding. But the killer with the terrifying pock-marked face probably knew that as he settled into prison life for a quarter century. And that was far harsher than going to the electric chair. Speck was saved from his death sentence in 1972, after the U.S. Supreme Court abolished capital punishment.

He was resentenced to 400 to 1,200 years. Refusing to see the parole board each time a hearing was scheduled, Speck realized he would never see freedom.

Somewhere in those early years, he stopped seeing his family, which had suffered tremendously because of his heinous crime. In 1983, in one of the few interviews he granted, Speck told a reporter: "My family told me if I ever hurt an employee or an inmate or tried to escape, they were through with me. I'm the outlaw. That's something I can't change." Apparently to punish himself, he tried to remove the much publicized tattoo on his left forearm. He cut, scraped and burned away at the words that said "born to raise hell" until only "ell" could be seen among the scar tissue. At the same time, he had put several other tattoos on his arms and legs as he sat in the solitude of his Stateville cell.

I've been told by a convict who served time with Speck that he often consumed a gallon of prison-made "hooch" each day. But no matter how much "hooch" he drank or how many times he burned and scraped on the hated tattoo, Speck surely didn't escape from the nightmare he created on that hot July night in a Chicago townhouse. The public remembered it even if he occasionally forgot.

And so Richard Speck died on Dec. 5, a lonely convict whose name and easily recognized face brought instant fear to many people. His family even feared to collect his body and bury it in the family cemetery plot.

But they have suffered, too. They have experienced 25 years of pain simply because he was a relative. They feared that if the body was claimed, they would suffer even more. The family left the county coroner's office in charge of disposing of the ashes in that black box that was wrapped in brown paper.

Coroner Duane Krieger made it very clear that he was handling this situation because of Speck's family. He had inherited the other two containers of ashes when he took office.

The ashes were scattered around that secret location with the deacon and I watching the coroner and his assistant, Bill "Fergy" Ferguson. Fergy sliced open the plastic bag inside the black box and poured the ashes on several bushes and trees.

The wind scattered the clumps of gray dust and spread it closer to the ground. The first rain will wash those spots of ground clean again. Perhaps Richard Speck has found that understanding and peace now.