With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

The Speck murders: 40 years later

Kathy Domzalski remembers waking to the screams of the survivor. Pat Waddington remembers how close she came to sharing the fate of the eight student nurses -- opting at only the last minute not to stay overnight with her friends in the neighboring town house.

The fear ran through all of Chicago.

Exactly 40 years ago this week, Richard Franklin Speck broke into a two-story town house in a quiet middle-class neighborhood on the Southeast Side and made nightmares come true.

It was a case that made headlines around the world, prompted an entire generation of Chicagoans to start double-checking the locks on their doors and plunged society into the modern era of the mass murderer and serial killer.

Read entire article at Chicago Sun-Times