So many fascinating people grew up in our neighborhood. The Wikipedia for ‘notable alumni’ of Woodrow Wilson High School is an interesting read, for example.
One infamous name I’d never heard associated with our neighborhood came up in an episode of “Mad Men” Sunday. A macabre storyline begins with Sterling Cooper copywriters passing around contact prints of crime scene photos from “the sex murders in Chicago, the student nurses,” as one character describes it.
Richard Speck, the mass murderer who slaughtered eight women in Chicago on July 13, 1966, had been arrested 41 times in Dallas when he moved to Illinois four months before the murders.
Speck’s previous crimes include forging a check at Minyard’s, 6015 Lindsley. He stole 57 cartons of cigarettes and 14 six packs of beer burglarizing McKee Food Store off Live Oak. He was out on parole for those crimes in January 1965 when he attacked a woman with a 17-inch knife behind her apartment building at 5315 Junius. He was out on parole again at the time of the Chicago murders.
It is creepy to think our neighborhood was Richard Speck’s neighborhood. He was born in Illinois and moved to East Dallas in second grade, after his mom married his step father. He attended J.L. Long and dropped out of ninth grade at Crozier Tech. He worked for the city Parks Department and 7-Up. Old newspaper stories say he lived on Reiger and on Terry Avenue in Old East Dallas.
It’s a neighborhood connection I’d never heard before, but that’s not too surprising, even given my longtime fascination with true crime stories. No one wants to be associated with someone so horrible and disgusting.
But the association is there. Speck’s sister Carolyn Wilson had driven him to the bus station to go to Illinois in March 1966 because Dallas police were looking for him after they caught bootleggers selling 70 stolen cartons of cigarettes out of the trunk of Speck’s car at A&M Grocery and Market, 5641 Culver. If she hadn’t done that, this might be a different story.
