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Born to Raise Hell: The Untold Story of Richard Speck
1-13-67
I understand Dr. Ziporyn is writing book about me. I"an glad he is doing this, because he is the only person who know's anying thing about me. I want the world to know what I am really like, and I fell he is the one who can tell about me.
Richard F Speck
(p193)
I understand Dr. Ziporyn is writing book about me. I"an glad he is doing this, because he is the only person who know's anying thing about me. I want the world to know what I am really like, and I fell he is the one who can tell about me.
Richard F Speck
(p193)
- GenresTrue CrimeNonfiction
256 pages, Library Binding
First published January 1, 1967
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 21, 2015
Horrible book, both content and writing is only confused and poor.
Richard Speck, violent troublemaker, knocked on the door to a nurse student's house late one night in Chicago in 1966. He tied up the 7 young women there and two more that got home some time later. While assuring them he wouldn't hurt them and that he just needed money, he preceded to collect them one by one from the room, killing all but one girl who hid under the bed. Following this, he made no attempt to run away or hide or acted guilty in any way, but was eventually arrested, identified by the surviving girl and identified trough fingerprints.
This is the extent of this terrifying story as told in this book, the rest is excerpts from Dr Ziporyn's interviews with Speck in prison and his outlandish and confused theories and opinions of perpetrator's of violent crime such as mass murder.
First, Ziporyn states that the study of these criminals is so important "so that we learn about them and can prevent future crimes", but if 10% of everything that Speck was guilty of prior to the murders according to this book had not sounded any alarms, then what in the world would? He was constantly in fights, knifings, drug deals, assaulting women, shoot-outs with the police(!), did time in prison and all of this on multiple occasions. He was notoriously violent and especially when drinking and doing drugs, which was more or less constantly apparently. He was 25 at the time of the murders.
Secondly, Ziporyn argues throughout the entire book that Speck was not guilty on reason of insanity, or rather "could not help who he was" or, in the doctor's own words "could not help killing the girls more than another man could help sneezing". Therefore, he should not be punished. Oh, and by punished Ziporyn meant "be given the death penalty". Obviously that's the only punishment worth the name. On more than one occasion, he suggests that Speck be given 199 years in prison. Why one would put an innocent man in prison for 199 years is kind of unclear, but so is all of the reasoning in this book.
In the afterword, Dr Ziporyn describes the work of this book, that dialog is verbatim, mostly from 100's of hours of conversations with Speck - and this is so that we readers can form our own opinion - the doctor is totally objective in his own mind (...). The narrative is written by the journalist (Altman) and is both boring and repetitive.
Top this off with absolutely no empathy for the victims and there goes the last star I can pull on my review.
Richard Speck, violent troublemaker, knocked on the door to a nurse student's house late one night in Chicago in 1966. He tied up the 7 young women there and two more that got home some time later. While assuring them he wouldn't hurt them and that he just needed money, he preceded to collect them one by one from the room, killing all but one girl who hid under the bed. Following this, he made no attempt to run away or hide or acted guilty in any way, but was eventually arrested, identified by the surviving girl and identified trough fingerprints.
This is the extent of this terrifying story as told in this book, the rest is excerpts from Dr Ziporyn's interviews with Speck in prison and his outlandish and confused theories and opinions of perpetrator's of violent crime such as mass murder.
First, Ziporyn states that the study of these criminals is so important "so that we learn about them and can prevent future crimes", but if 10% of everything that Speck was guilty of prior to the murders according to this book had not sounded any alarms, then what in the world would? He was constantly in fights, knifings, drug deals, assaulting women, shoot-outs with the police(!), did time in prison and all of this on multiple occasions. He was notoriously violent and especially when drinking and doing drugs, which was more or less constantly apparently. He was 25 at the time of the murders.
Secondly, Ziporyn argues throughout the entire book that Speck was not guilty on reason of insanity, or rather "could not help who he was" or, in the doctor's own words "could not help killing the girls more than another man could help sneezing". Therefore, he should not be punished. Oh, and by punished Ziporyn meant "be given the death penalty". Obviously that's the only punishment worth the name. On more than one occasion, he suggests that Speck be given 199 years in prison. Why one would put an innocent man in prison for 199 years is kind of unclear, but so is all of the reasoning in this book.
In the afterword, Dr Ziporyn describes the work of this book, that dialog is verbatim, mostly from 100's of hours of conversations with Speck - and this is so that we readers can form our own opinion - the doctor is totally objective in his own mind (...). The narrative is written by the journalist (Altman) and is both boring and repetitive.
Top this off with absolutely no empathy for the victims and there goes the last star I can pull on my review.
Displaying 1 of 1 review