Girls while many of us may think NYC or gritty parts of Florida have an edge on murders and killings, I would like to offer up Chicago. Just think of it.....Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Leopold and Loeb, Richard Speck, and back in 1945, someone I had never heard of known as "The Lipstick Killer," named for the above message found in the home of the second victim, written in lipstick.
That first victim happened to be Josephine Ross, who met her death on June 5, 1945, in her apartment, at 4108 Kenmore Avenue. It was presumed a robbery gone wrong. Seven months later, on December 10, 1945, a second woman, Frances Brown, was found with a knife in her neck, and a bullet through her head. It was at her residence that the celebrated message was written. The last victim of this killer was Suzanne Degnan, who was abducted from the bedroom on the first floor of her residence, in Edgewater, Chicago. The other two victims were adult, but she was a six-year-old child. There were no signs of sexual assault.
Now, already, things get dicey, dears. Like Jack The Ripper, who killed twice as many victims, the killings suddenly stopped. There were only three, and the victims varied in age, and matter of killing. There was no exact consistency to any of these killings.
Which would have made me suspicious immediately. And, if I understand the story, as presented on "A Crime To Remember" (I don't!) this past Saturday night, in a story entitled "The Bad Old Days," my suspicions were well founded, if one believed the young reporter, who acted as the narrator of the piece.
During the investigation, one witness spotted a young man fleeing from an apartment building in the areas near the other victims. It seemed he had only committed theft, but the pressure was on the cops, so this was good enough for them. The man turned out to be William Heirens, a man in his twenties with a penchant for thievery. He came from an abusive, troubled family, but excelled scholastically enough to gain admittance to the University Of Chicago's Special Program.
If history (if not Wikipedia) is to believed, he is accorded identity as The Lipstick Killer. Through a process of coercion that would at least be questioned today, he was reduced to confess by a series of grotesque methods--psychological torture, an injection of sodium penethol, and (get ready girls, this is gross!) having ether applied to his testicles! Ewwwwwwwww!
I am not convinced this was The Lipstick Killer. There was mention of another man, Richard Thomas, a male nurse, residing in Phoenix, Arizona!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! While the investigation was going on, he was imprisoned in Arizona for sexually assaulting one of his own daughters. When I heard he had the capacity for this, and that he head been in the Chicago area, at the time of Suzanne Degnan's killing, I began to look at him. However, when the investigation was going on, he was not in Chicago, so, then who could have killed Josephine Ross and Frances Brown????????
This was the first "A Crime To Remember" I have seen, where there was no clear cut answer, and may never be, Heirens was convicted as the Lipstick Killer, and received LWOP. He died, at the age of 83, in 2012.
Something went awry with this investigation. Who was trying to cover up for whom? Because what other explanation could there be for incarcerating someone the program made clear no one was one hundred per cent certain they had the right guy.
Street justice can be bloody, darlings! Media justice is a bitch!!!!!!!!!!
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