On this day, June 5, in 1967, mass murderer Richard Speck was sentenced to the electric chair for systematically killing eight student nurses in a single night in Chicago.
On the night of July 14, 1966, Speck, a 24-year-old drifter, broke into a women’s dorm, bound the women, and one by one, led each student out of the room, where he strangled or stabbed each one.
Speck left, and a woman who had survived by wriggling under a bed climbed to a window, screaming, “They’re all dead!”
Police were able to identify Speck two days later by his tattoo, “Born to Raise Hell.”
Speck was convicted and sentenced to death. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the sentencing, so a judge gave him 400 to 1,200 years in prison.
Speck died of a heart attack in 1991. In death, he caused another uproar after a video surfaced of him engaging in sex with another prisoner and snorting cocaine.
“If they only knew how much fun I was having,” Speck says to the camera, “they would turn me loose.”
