The Crime of the Century: Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation - Softcover

Review

"They are all dead! My friends are all dead! Oh, God, I'm the only one alive!" Chicago, 1966: a drifter from Texas named Richard Speck broke into a small townhouse one hot summer night. He tied up nine student nurses, then methodically raped and killed eight of them, one after another. One of the roommates, a tiny Filipino woman, hid under a bed for hours, and survived to crawl out a window the next morning and scream for help. The Cook County coroner, having surveyed the carnage, said to a gathering crowd, "It's the crime of the century." After Speck died in jail, 25 years later, the prosecuting attorney for the case (Bill Martin) and the journalist who won an award for his coverage of the crime (Dennis Breo) teamed up to write this brilliantly crafted book. A bizarre murderer, a spunky heroine, a stormy period in U.S. history, fascinating legal maneuvers, a dramatic trial, and sensitive treatment of human suffering-- The Crime of the Century brings it all together for a classic of true crime reporting.

From the Publisher

On July 14, 1966, Richard Franklin Speck murdered eight student nurses in their quiet Chicago town house. He broke in as his helpless victims slept, bound them one by one, and then stabbed, assaulted, and strangled all eight in a sadistic sexual frenzy. By morning only one young nurse had miraculously survived. The barbarity of the attack shocked a nation and and opened a new chapter in the history of American crime: mass murder.

Here is the never-before-told story of Richard Speck by the prosecutor who put him in prison for life.In The Crime Of The Century, William J. Martin has teamed up with Dennis L. Breo to re-create the blood-soaked night that made American criminal history, offerning fascinating behind-the-scenes descriptions of Speck, his innocent victims, the desperate manhunt and massive investigation, and the trial that led to Speck's successful conviction. In 1991 Richard Speck died of a heart attack in prison, but the horror of his crime still haunts the conscience of a nation.