who is richard speck

Richard Speck was an American mass murderer known for killing eight female student nurses in a Chicago townhouse on the night of July 13-14, 1966. He brutally attacked the women by stabbing, strangling, and in some cases, raping them. One nurse survived by hiding under a bed and later helped identify him. Speck was convicted of the murders in 1967 and sentenced to death; however, his sentence was later commuted to multiple life terms due to a Supreme Court ruling against the death penalty in 1972. He died in prison in 1991 at the age of 49. Speck's case remains one of the most notorious in American criminal history and has been widely discussed in the context of crime, mental health, and the justice system.