Have you ever had a speck that wouldn’t go away? Whether it’s
in your eye or on your shirt it can be a bothersome nuisance. Let’s take a look
at how an early morning traveler from the 60’s in Chicago handles such a
problem.
It was 3:00 a.m. Thursday July 14, 1966 and the humidity in
Chicago was nearly unbearable. Barely coherent, Richard staggered down the
street and came to rest at a bus stop. “The bitch,” Richard uttered to himself,
but then a thought came, “which bitch am I talking about?” He chuckled to
himself as he counted the number of people throughout his life that could aptly
wear that moniker. Settling on his ex-wife for now, he mumbled “She couldn’t
even wait for the ink to dry before gallivanting off with that weasel,” Richard
recalled how his ex-wife was remarried in less than two days after their
divorce was finalized. Richard flopped
down upon a bus stop bench and attempted to convey the reason for his current
state of drunkenness to a man waiting at the bus stop. Attempting to look
concerned, yet secretly hoping the tall intoxicated man would leave, the man
sharing the bus stop bench listened to Richard’s drunken banter.
The warm Chicago air only exasperated Richard’s intoxicated
condition has he rattled on to his unwilling audience about his life as a
merchant marine. “I came up to leave on the SS Sinclair Great Lakes, but they
gave the job to some punk ahead of me!” Richard said with slurred speech. The
man had to admit, the stories were entertaining, at first; he then became
nervous when Richard told of his troubles while living in Dallas, Texas. Soon
the weary traveler became down right uncomfortable when Richard told him of his
exploits of the last few hours.
“My sister and brother in law dropped me off up here at the National
Maritime Union (NMU), hiring hall for a job, she gave me $25 and split; I left and walked east on 100th
St. and got a room at the Shipyard Inn,” Richard told the leery listener. Looking into the night sky as if he could see
himself, he then told the man how he and others began to slam shots of whiskey
at the bar. Suddenly Richard stopped talking and stood stoic for a few seconds.
“That’s when she came in,” he said after the silence. “Who came in?” The bus stop
man asked Richard. He paused to recall
her name, “Ella, Ella Mae I think her name was,” Richard responded loudly and
flopped onto the bus stop bench as if the thought exhausted him. “The bitch
flirted with me from the time she came in,” he said as his blank look of drunkenness
was now replaced with an evil sneer. Gone too was the stuttering and stammering
of a babbling drunk. In its place was a man ready to tell a tale of true
depravity to a captivated audience of one.
“She had been watching me and flirting the whole time,” Richard
said as he lit a cigarette. “I told her that I had a bottle in my room and
invited her to have a nightcap with me,” he continued. “She thought she was
going to drink my booze and leave.” “What did you do?” The man asked with
renewed interest. With a facial expression that can only be described as sheer
evil, Richard told the man in full detail how he pressed his knife to her
throat and raped the woman repeatedly. He also told the man how he rummaged
through her purse and took the woman’s 22 caliber revolver before he callously threw
the woman out of his room.
The man stared at Richard with a look of sheer amazement. Questioning
if Richard had been lying to him the whole time, he wondered if his common
sense was simply being put to the test. He
thought to himself, “is this guy some type of jokester, using me to simply
while away the time as they waited for the early morning bus?” He watched Richard’s face hoping to see some indication
of truth or at least the slightest hint of prankery. Instead, what he saw was a cold soulless gaze.
Any shadow of disbelief would soon be erased from the man’s mind as his Richard
continued the story of that night’s activities.
“After I gave that bitch the what for, I was fuckin hungry,”
Richard said with an air of bravado. “I
grabbed supper from Kay’s Pilot House and returned to the tavern.”
“While I was at the
bar, I saw a group of
young girls heading up 100th street,” Richard said has he stood and
pointed. Richard explained to the man how
the girl’s laughed and giggled as they made their way up the darkened street to
their townhouse. “I crouched down in the bushes across the street and watched
them,” he said as he demonstrated his stance. “I started to masturbate in the
bushes as I watched them undress in the window,” he said proudly. “Then they started
talking to me, they sent messages to my head to come over; I could hear them in
my head calling my name”. As he spoke, the captive listener could hear another
distinct change in Richard’s speaking voice. The storyteller’s tone became one
of utter disdain and hatred for the subjects in his tale. As Richard spoke, the listener now recognized the
psychosis in the man that had held his attention for so long; even worse, he
realized that every word of his story was the absolute truth. Worried about seeming
inattentive and turning Richard against him; the man acted more attentive than
ever.
Oblivious to the man’s anxiety, Richard continued his story
with a sense of renewed vigor, “I ran across the street, man I’m telling you, they
were talking to me straight into my brain, and I knew it was them. The broads told me to use the window so that’s
what I did, I only wanted to burglarize the joint but the chics were in my head
telling me how they wanted me.” Richard then
pulled out a knife and illustrated his next move, “The first chic screamed and
played dumb, so I gutted the whore with my blade. The next broad came in so I
choked the shit out of her, that’ll teach them about playing with people’s
minds.” The man, now frightened to the core, sat wide eyed and speechless. Fully
engrossed into the reenactment of his wickedness, Richard continued for at
least another 20 minutes with his street side testimony. He explained in full
detail how he took the lives of seven nursing students. Richard concluded his monologue with the vivid
description of his violent sexual assault, torture and murder of the eighth young
woman to die at his hand that night.
The sun was beginning to come up as Richard closed the story
with the man. Not knowing what to say; truthfully afraid to say anything the
man simply sat and looked and Richard. He then began to crack a smile as he hoped
on all that is holy that Richard had simply made the whole story up. He was
just about to commend Richard on his story telling ability when he heard a
blood curdling scream followed by "They're all dead! All my friends are
dead!" The man turned to where he heard the scream. In the distance he
could see a woman running and waving her arms wildly. At that moment the man
froze, it dawned on him that he had just listened to the confession of a
heinous murderer. A question arose in the man’s mind. “Is this guy about to
kill me too? Afraid to turn around but
refusing to die from an attack to the back, he whipped around.
Astonishingly, the man was gone, the only thing remaining
was the stench of old alcohol and dried blood. The early morning summer sunrise
glistened off of the bus stop sign; a sign that read, ”no service between
Midnight and 6 a.m. Aghast, the man stood mesmerized that for the better part
of 3 hours, a guy named Richard had given him a confession of his murderous
rampage and was now gone. The man abandoned his travel plans and returned home.
When his wife asked him what had happened and where had he been, the man simply
replied, “I had a Speck that wouldn’t go away!”
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| Richard Speck |
