During Speck's brief stint with the U.S. Coast Guard when he was seen by doctors (once, because of an appendicitis attack), his past arrests and erratic behavior certainly should have been well-known and taken into consideration. Was he mind-controlled to carry out his deadly assault on the student nurses?
-NW
Richard Speck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck
Dallas, 1951–1966
In 1951, after a year in Santo, Speck moved with his mother, Lindberg, and sister Carolyn to East Dallas. The family moved frequently, living at 10 different addresses, usually in poor neighborhoods over the next 12 years. Speck loathed his stepfather who was often drunk, verbally abusive, and was frequently absent.
Speck struggled in school, refusing to wear the glasses that he needed for reading. He repeated the eighth grade at J. L. Long Jr. High School, in part because of his fear of people staring at him and his subsequent refusal to speak in class.
Having started drinking alcohol at age 12, by age 15 he was getting drunk almost every day. His first arrest, in 1955 at age 13 for trespassing, was followed by dozens of other arrests for misdemeanors over the next eight years...
...In July 1963, at the age of 21, Speck was sentenced to serve three years in prison after being convicted of forgery and burglary. Speck had forged and cashed a co-worker's $44 paycheck and also robbed a grocery store for cigarettes, beer, and $3 in cash. He was paroled in 1965 after serving 16 months at Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas.
Chicago, April–June 1966
On April 19, 1966, Speck returned to stay at his sister Martha's second-floor apartment at 3966 N. Avondale Ave., in the Old Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest side of Chicago, where she lived with her husband, Gene Thornton, and their two teenage daughters. Martha had worked as a registered nurse in pediatrics before she was married, and her husband Gene worked nights as a railroad switchman. Speck told them an unbelievable story about having to leave Monmouth after refusing to sell narcotics for a "crime syndicate" there.
Gene Thornton, who had served in the U.S. Navy, thought that the U.S. Merchant Marine might provide a suitable occupation for his unemployed brother-in-law, so on April 25 he took Speck to the U.S. Coast Guard office to apply for a letter of authority to work as an apprentice seaman. The application required being fingerprinted and photographed, and having a physical examination by a doctor.
Speck found work immediately after obtaining the letter of authority, joining the 33-member crew of Inland Steel's Clarence B. Randall, an L6-S-B1 class bulk ore lake freighter, on April 30. Speck's first voyage on the Clarence B. Randall was brief, since he was stricken with appendicitis on May 3, and was evacuated by U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to St. Joseph's Hospital in Hancock, Michigan, on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan's Upper Peninsula where he had an emergency appendectomy.
After he was discharged from the hospital, Speck returned to stay with his sister Martha and her family in Chicago to recuperate. On May 20, he rejoined the crew of the Clarence B. Randall on which he served until June 14, when he got drunk and quarreled with one of the boat's officers and was put ashore on June 15. For the following week, Speck stayed at the St. Elmo, an East Side, Chicago flophouse at E. 99th St. & S. Ewing Ave. Speck then traveled by train to Houghton, Michigan, staying at the Douglas House, to visit Judy Laakaniemi, a 28-year-old nurse's aide going through a divorce, whom he had befriended at St. Joseph's Hospital. On June 27, after Judy gave him $80 to help him until he found work, Speck left to again stay with his sister Martha and her family in Chicago for the next two weeks.
On June 30, Speck's brother-in-law Gene drove him to the National Maritime Union (NMU) hiring hall at 2335 E. 100th St. in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood of South Deering, Chicago to file his paperwork for a seaman's card. The NMU hiring hall was one block east of five attached two-story brick townhouses, three of which were occupied by South Chicago Community Hospital senior student nurses and Filipino exchange registered nurses. Eight of these nurses lived in the easternmost townhouse at 2319 E. 100th St., just 150 feet (46 m) from the NMU hiring hall.
