Joliet Prisons

Joliet Prisons

Speck tape, prisons subjects of state probe

By Terry H. Burns and Emily Wilkinson
Chicago-- A lurid videotape showing mass murderer Richard Speck snorting cocaine and having sex behind prison walls prompted Attorney General Jim Ryan on Tuesday to launch an investigation "into conduct at state prisons." Calling the videotape a "disturbing" revelation, Ryan said the investigation would probe "every facet and circumstance surrounding the Speck tape and wherever that might lead."

Ryan also said his office would examine "any allegations of wrongdoing (within the Illinois Department of Corrections) that may surface" during a legislative hearing on the Speck tape that begins Wednesday in Springfield. The probe of the tape is "significant," Ryan said, because it comes on the heels of other recent allegations of wrongdoing in the Illinois prison system.

The state already is looking into claims of guards having sex with female prisoners at Dwight Correctional Center and allegations that Gangster Disciple boss Larry Hoover continued to run his street gang from prison despite being under close watch. The Speck incident "elevates our concerns that we'd better take a close look at what's going on," Ryan said. The infamous tape, obtained by WBBM-TV and broadcast last week, showed Speck, who died of a heart attack in 1991, apparently taking drugs, waving around $100 bills and having sex with another inmate. Speck even bragged about the good time he was having in prison. "If they knew how much fun I was having in here, they would turn me loose," he boasted.

Corrections officials believe the clandestine tape was made by Speck and two other inmates somewhere inside the educational building at the maximum security Stateville Correctional Center sometime in 1988. Speck was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1966 slayings of eight student nurses in Chicago. On the tape, Speck claimed he killed the women because, "It just wasn't their night." When asked by one of the other inmates how he felt about the killings, Speck replied, "Like I always felt. Had no feelings. If you are asking if I felt sorry, no."

Ryan said the tape not only was "shocking" because of its content, but "the tape itself raises questions about potential criminal wrongdoing by employees" at the prison. Corrections Director Odie Washington vows to fully cooperate with the investigation. He said, however, that in the years since the making of the Speck tape, the agency "has taken significant action to increase the level of security inside the state's correctional institutions." Washington refused to say whether an internal investigation had determined how Speck got access to a video camera or how the inmates were able to make the grisly tape undisturbed and undetected. "It would be premature to speculate on the involvement of any officials at Stateville at this time," he said. As for how Speck apparently got his hands on a large quantity of cocaine while behind bars, Washington admitted that drugs are a constant problem in the prison system. Many of the drugs, he added, are smuggled in by visitors or prison employees.

"With our 26 adult institutions, 38,000 inmates and a large number of visitors, we find drugs on a weekly basis," despite random drug testing of inmates and regular searches of visitors and staff," Washington said. "We have a right to get to the bottom of this," Ryan insisted. "It's very disturbing to have a film made behind prison walls that purportedly shows an inmate who's been convicted of mass murder ingesting drugs and apparently having sexual contact with another inmate." "Obviously, inmates should not be permitted to engage in further criminal activities when they are behind bars," he added. Ryan admits that the investigation faces several major hurdles, including the statute of limitations on drug crimes. Despite the complexity of the case, Ryan vows to "answer all the questions" involving the Speck tape.