Tina was part of the wave of Filipina exchange nurses who came to the United States in that era to learn new things, make friends and, most of all, to work. And so, shortly after 12:15, Mary Ann and Suzanne climbed the stairs to Suzanne's bedroom. Mary Ann Jordanin her nursing uniform in an undated photo. she reportedly told friends a few days after the murders. It was small and nothing fancy: One bathroom and three bedrooms upstairs. He was arrested and stood trial for murdering the eight nurses. In 1966, Richard Speck committed one of the most horrifying mass murders in American history when he brutalized and killed eight student nurses living on Chicago's South Side. Sat down to write letters. He spent a few days there before traveling to Monmouth, Illinois, where he stayed with some family friends from his early childhood. Sitting in her Naperville home, she sobbed. Mary Ann brought her Irish humor, her sense of duty and her talent for friendship to nursing school and to the townhouse on East 100th Street. In the days before automated fingerprint identification, it took almost a week to identify the prints found in the townhouse as his. Her childhood resume wasn't flashy. In one of the slides that her brother recovered from the basement, a young man crouches next to the Bel Air, washing the whitewalls, smiling for the camera. Despite the horror of what happened, Atienza carries warm memories of her friends, Martin said. What the camera couldn't catch were the girl's thoughts, the confusion she felt at the spectacle of all these other graduates. Speck was never officially charged with the murders of which he was suspected prior to the events that took place in the South Chicago townhouse and, officially, those cases remain unsolved. Ate an early supper with Merlita and Tina. This important Mindhunter moment didn't happen in real life - Digital Spy During one of Pam's shifts, a patient slugged her. It was that door that a student nurse from a neighboring townhouse approached at 12:15 a.m. on July 14, in search of bread for a late-night sandwich. Finding no one there, he marched them back upstairs. She married Alberto Atienza, and then, with her husband, a lawyer, moved back to the United States. Nina Jo Schmale appears in an undated photo. His sister and seven of her fellow student nurses and nurseswere murdered 50years ago in one of Chicagos darkest crimes. It was a world of hair curlers, hair spray cans, ashtrays, manual typewriters, textbooks, sheath dresses, corsages, cluttered rooms, a place where young women laughed, hugged, studied, ate, teased each other's hair. Why should you be surprised?". In the spring of 1966, she stepped into an airplane bound for Chicago. She did, however, like her volunteer job at an elder-care facility known as the poor farm, and she made friends with her patients, even brought them Christmas presents. How to Talk to Serial Killers: An Interview with 'Mindhunter' John Her brother, John Farris, still carries the photo and prayer card in his wallet 50 years later. Nurse. In the years that followed, Siouchoff, 70, distanced herself from everything and everyone involved with that awful night. Speck, however, seemed to have a knack for making a quick escape and keeping police forces guessing. Before then, he had been responsible for other acts of violence against his family and others but had a knack for escaping the police. When John Schmale talks about what happened that night, he uses the words "anger," "rage," "mourning.". On board was another exchange nurse, Corazon Amurao, whom she had met a month or so earlier. We were just totally out of our minds.''. ''Because any kid can end up to be like me. On Aug. 7, 1966, when Lori Davy, 11, walked across the stage to accept her sister's diploma, her father's orders were fresh in her mind. On this day, Amurao personally identified Speck as the killer. But any kid can end up just like me.''. Why were they here, and her sister wasn't? ''Here,'' he said. "It was terrible," Kubasek said, remembering what she saw. She appreciates every day of life and wants to be happy all the time, because life is not long, Martin said she told him recently. There's another kind of sealed box many of them have carried around as well. And it turned out that it reopened her life.". The student nurses' white and pale-gray uniforms had to be strictly starched, their crisp white caps perfectly placed a tough trick on bouffant hair. Richard Speck has been described as a drifter, a loner, a high school dropout, a sociopath, a heavy drinker, a violent man who could be charming. Speck's father, to whom he had been deeply attached . "I think there was somebody up there who was hiding me from him. When her father was at work and her mother was taking care of the house and Billy, she took Susan along while she ran family errands on 79th Street, where the shopkeepers knew her name. After the death of his father when Speck was six, his mother remarried, moving the family to Dallas, Texas. The next time he saw her, her body was on a gurney behind a window in the coroners office. In court, Speck was positively identified by the sole surviving student nurse, Cora Amurao. Inside sat four square, off-white boxes labeled "Kodak," and on top of them lay a sheet of thin pink paper. Abigail Atienza followed in her mother's footsteps and became a nurse practitioner, and Christian is a certified public accountant. The particulars could have come from a college fraternity boy. Speck, asked how many lovers he has had in prison, responded that he can't count that high. "She was kind of your average good kid who was really dedicated to being a caregiver.". Politicians delivering food to the wake. He was the man Nina planned to marry but only after graduation. Jack Wilkening is 79 now, retired from his job as a Standard Oil cashier. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune). (Curtis Thatcher & Assoc.). Pam had been quiet, studious and decisive since she was a girl in south suburban Lansing. It sure gets way out. Gloria Davy jokes around in the South Side townhouse that was used as a dormitory for student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital, circa 1966. Videos by Chicago Tribune's Chris Walker. It will be available May 10. Speck was the seventh of eight children. Richard Benjamin Speck (December 6, 1941 - December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who killed eight student nurses in their South Deering, Chicago, residence via stabbing, strangling, slashing their throats, or a combination of the three on the night of July 13-14, 1966. Tina, as her family called her, had graduated the year before among the top 10 nursing students in her class at Manila Central University. Richard Speck - Wikipedia Come spend the night at the townhouse, Suzanne suggested to Mary Ann. She still gets a kick out of playing poker at casinos in Nevada with her husband. (Schmale family). Over his 25-year career with the FBI's Investigative Support Unit, Douglas interviewed hundreds of America's most notoriously brutal killers, from Charles Manson and Ted Bundy to " Son of Sam " David Berkowitz and the " BTK Killer ," Dennis Rader. Richard Speck | American murderer | Britannica Once, remarking on her diligence and steady temperament, her brother told her she'd make a good military nurse. Forty miles from home, when they spotted a gas station, they were reluctant to stop for directions because their curlers made them look like creatures from Mars. She waved and waited for Pat to go inside. By the time he was 24, in 1966, Speck was in Chicago looking for work. The Richard Speck massacre: 50 years later - ABC7 Chicago Her experience there whetted her interest in nursing. She walked off the stage, shoulders back, carrying a diploma dated July 14, 1966. One of her sisters would later say the delay may have been a sign that "God didn't want her to leave.". They shoved their beds edge to edge in a single room and lay there at night listening to the newly hired security guard's shoes click along the hallway tiles. And the mail. Years later, when Nina moved into the townhouse where she died, she installed an old "Schmale Rd" street sign in her bedroom. She was home on the night of July 13, when her brother Phil stopped by. A few years ago, he ran into an old family friend and she told him a story he'd never heard, about how when she was in high school and couldn't afford a prom dress, Suzie made her one. Martin and Dennis Breo are co-authors of a 1993 book called "The Crime of the Century." Changing his mind at the last minute, he summoned help, and was taken to Cook County hospital, where, again, his tattoo gave him away, and he was arrested and taken into custody. "She found the thing she loved doing, she meets a guy that she says 'yes' to about being married," he said. Dr. John Schmale found a box of old slides in his waterlogged basement and opened a flood of memories. News item: Richard Speck dies in prison, of a heart attack, the day before his 50th birthday. "This is the man," she said as pandemonium erupted. Would Kubasek go with her to the townhouse to get Pat's nursing cap and uniform? Atienza was the states key witness when Martin prosecuted Speck in the 1967 trial. In the townhouse, she was known to sing while doing the dishes or the laundry. Richard Speck was one of the most fiendish mass murderers in American history as his slayings of eight nursing students in a single evening captured the attention of the entire nation. He has made sure that his niece, who is the keeper of the old family cookie jar, knows why she can't get rid of it. She'd bring him water, fluff his pillow, hold his hand, tell him that she loved him. Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich contributed. Who is Corazon Amurao? Guarded by detectives, Corazon Amurao arrives at the courthouse in Peoria to testify as the state's chief witness against Richard Speck on April 5, 1967. ''A lot of them women are pretty,'' Speck said. Me, I`m not like Dillinger or anybody else. ''What`s that dude who played in `Shaft`? Amurao, she believes, saved her life. Stewardess. Life magazine cited her "pancit," made of noodles and vegetables with pork. Its why he wants a 50th anniversary commemoration that reclaims all the womens names, all their lives. Childhood friends of Patricia Matusek share memories with Matuseks niece, who never met her. Billy died at 42, with Susan as his caretaker.