Joliet Prisons
Joliet Prisons
Joliet Prisons
John Wayne Gacy
Richard Speck
State pen was Speck's playpen
By LaTrina Blair
In the way to Stateville Correctional Center on Tuesday, the photographer
and I talked about how cool it would be to finally go behind the walls we
had passed a hundred times on Illinois 53.
But once inside, all I wanted was out.
The air inside the prison felt mean and oppressive. I actually could feel
the passing inmates' eyes groping me. I felt dirty and strangely guilty
for being there. Under the weight of those lustful stares, my mind turned
to Richard Speck, a Stateville resident until he died there in 1991.
Excerpts from an explosive video, secretly taped by another inmate, have
been headline news all week. On the tape, Speck is partying it up with another
inmate, doing drugs, having sex with other inmates -- obviously not shown
on the 10 o'clock news -- and reminiscing about murdering eight nurses in
Chicago 30 years ago. I wondered how, in a maximum security prison, could
Richard Speck and company have the opportunity to sit around in their undies
flashing $100 bills, while snorting cocaine and taking occasional sex breaks?
"That's the $64 question, and we don't know," said Nic Howell,
spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. "When we became
aware the tape was made, we tightened up the procedure for inmate access
to video equipment." Video equipment often is used within the prison
for training and educational programs, he said.
Speck and the other inmate seen in the tape were part of an inmate painting
crew that had more freedom than other inmates, he said. "They had more
freedom of movement to do the job. Obviously, they took advantage of that,"
Howell said.
Howell said prison officials found out about the tape less than two months
ago. The tape was made about eight or nine years ago, he said. "We
immediately put the whole thing under investigation," he said. A former
Stateville guard was not surprised by the shocking video footage. Wednesday,
the former guard said the prison is so huge there is no way guards can monitor
every square inch all the time. So, inmates knew that there were places
they could go to hide out to do sex or drugs. Where did he get all that
money? I wanted to know. It looked like more than I, a law-abiding citizen
who has killed no one, have in my bank account. "I busted a guy one
time who had about $11,000 in $100 bills," the former guard said. "It's
from their drug deals. Visitors bring it in. They roll it up real tight
and hide it ... We get some of it, but it's so spread out." What about
the sex?
Sex between inmates, the former guard said, "is an everyday thing.
You get a new person in there who has never been in the prison system before,
and -- boom, they're somebody's girlfriend." The former guard, and
other guards there, have said inmates seemed to have more rights than prison
officials did, at least a few years ago. Guards tried to keep everything
on the up and up, the former guard said, but they also wanted to keep the
peace. Coming down hard on inmates could mean more trouble for them.
But a current guard told me on Tuesday that under the present administration,
prisoners have a lot less freedom than they did even a few years ago. When
I took my tour, the prisoners had been confined to their cells for three
weeks. Maybe things have changed. When I was there, I didn't see anyone
who looked like he was having fun. I know I wasn't. But I still thought
I should have gone home, taken off my skin and put it in the washing machine.
That Speck tape made me want to add a little bleach, too.