The Crime of the Century, Dennis L. Breo
The Crime of the Century, Dennis L. Breo
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The Crime of the Century
Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation

Author: Dennis L. Breo, William J. Martin

Narrator: Christina Delaine

Unabridged: 18 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/31/2017

Synopsis

On July 14th, 1966, Richard Franklin Speck swept through a quiet Chicago townhouse like a summer tornado and stabbed, strangled, and killed eight young nurses in a violent sexual rampage. By morning, only one nurse, Corazon Amurao, had miraculously survived, and her scream of terror was heard around the world. As the eight bodies were carried out of the small building, the coroner, who had seen the carnage up close, told a gathering crowd: "It is the crime of the century!"

Now, the prosecutor who put Speck in prison for life (William J. Martin) and the author and journalist who won an award for his coverage of the crime (Dennis L. Breo) have teamed up to recreate the blood-soaked night that opened a new chapter in the history of American crime: mass murder. Corazon Amurao, the nurse the killer left behind, confronted Speck at trial and told jurors, "This is the man!" Richard Speck was spared execution by Supreme Court rulings and here is the inside story of how he confessed to the murders in a sordid prison video made three years before his death of a heart attack in 1991. And here is the life today of the nurse who survived the crime that murdered American innocence.

About Dennis L. Breo

Dennis L. Breo, a Florida author and journalist, is the former national correspondent of the Journal of the American Medical Association. His cover story on the Speck murders, published in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, won an award for exemplary journalism from the Chicago Headline Club. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, his work has also appeared in Parade, People, Chicago Magazine, Chicago Sun Times, Reader's Digest, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, News America Syndicate, and New York Times Syndicate.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Katherine

This book has one major flaw, and I'm going to talk about it right up front. It is co-written by a journalist and the lead prosecutor at Richard Speck's trial. The prosecutor is obviously a main character in the book, and they talk about him always in the third person and in a weirdly adulatory way,......more

Goodreads review by Cathy

Detailed account of the infamous and shocking nurse murders committed by Richard Speck in 1960’s Chicago. Having been written by the lead prosecutor in the case no detail was left out of the narrative. Hence my problem. This book often slowed down to a crawl while each piece of evidence or each expe......more

Goodreads review by Elyse

Wow. What a horrific crime. I'd never heard of Richard Speck or these murders until I listened to this book. I immediately Googled the "confession" tape as soon I finished the book. There's a short clip of it on Youtube and WTF?! This guy was messed up. A clear sociopath. And I was so so pissed that......more

Goodreads review by Lance

July 13-14, 1966: eight young student nurses are brutally stabbed, strangled, and sexually assaulted in the nurses' town house in Chicago. It was considered the first random mass murder of the 20th century. Richard Benjamin Speck, the murderer was a drifter and 24 years old at the time. Reading the b......more

Goodreads review by Kimberly

When I think of the infamous Speck murders, it never occurred to me that the trial would be anything more than a formality. After all, one of the most famous aspects of the case is the nurse that was able to hide and later identify her friends murderer. However, in this very interesting account of t......more

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