The Townhouse Massacre

The Unforgettable Crimes of Richard Speck

De: Ryan Green

Narrado por: Steve White

“It just wasn’t their night.” (Richard Speck)

On the evening of July 13, 1966, an intoxicated Richard Speck broke into a townhouse at 2319 East 100th Street in Chicago to rob a group of student nurses. Speck woke the residents and ordered them into a room, calmly requesting money in exchange for their safety. The young women obliged. They believed that he was just going to take the money and leave, but Speck had other plans.

He tied them all up with strips of bed linen and led one of the girls into a separate room to “talk alone”. The situation took a turn for the worse when two more resident nurses burst into the townhouse, surprising Speck in the act. What transpired in the following hours would grip the nation with fear and forever change the perception of society.

The Townhouse Massacre is a chilling and gripping account of one of the most brutal and gruesome true crime stories in American history. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the listener into the real-life horror experienced by the victims and has all the elements of a classic thriller.

Caution: This audiobook contains descriptive accounts of abuse and violence. If you are especially sensitive to this material, it might be advisable not to listen to this book.

©2019 Ryan Green (P)2019 Ryan Green

Complete and concise

Ryan Green has managed to provide just the right amount of detail to form a clear and complete picture of Richard Speck and his crimes. And Steve White's narration is excellent.

Note: I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Deconstructing the Monster Richard Speck

I have always been fascinated by Richard Speck and the gruesome murder of 8 nursing students in one drunken, debased night in the 60's. I first heard the story when I was a very young boy, too young to understand any aspect of the events. My parents were watching the news while I played on the floor, and the Speck murders had just occurred. I can actually recall watching the story wide-eyed for a few horrified moments until my Dad jumped up and switched the channel. The part of the news story I heard involved one of the young nursing students hiding under a bed, listening and watching the carnage this monster inflicted on her friends and roommates, and that image was burned into my brain and amplified a hundred-fold in my imagination. Richard Speck became my childhood boogeyman at that moment, and I spent many hours lying in bed in the semi-dark of a night-lighted bedroom worrying that Speck -- or, rather, the insanely murderous monster my imagination conjured him up to be -- would be coming for me and my family. The fact that he was eventually caught an jailed apparently didn't enter into my imaginings.

I mention all this because it obviously had a significant impact on my interest in --- and reaction to --- Ryan Green's detailed telling of the Speck story. Because of Speck's out-sized role in my childhood imaginings, I was looking forward to this book more than any new True Crime book in a long time, and my expectations were greater still because one of my favorite True Crime authors was researching and writing the story. Simply put, Green is the perfect writer to handle this kind of subject, and Speck is the perfect subject for his brand of investigative, psychologically-motivated storytelling. So my expectations were ratcheted as high as they could possibly get.

The author, as he often does, exceeded those inordinately high expectations. It's another fascinating deep-dive into the mind and soul of a despicable human being and the people whose lives he destroyed. I really enjoyed listening to the book, but I was actually a little disappointed in Richard Speck the Evil Murdering Monster. He is not Hannibal Lecter. He is in fact a very small, intellectually-stunted failure of a man, suffering from a head trauma inflicted by a despicable step-dad, pathetically self-medicating all his physical and mental pain with a deluge of alcohol and drugs. He is the most mundane kind of evil, tortured by demons he mostly birthed and fed himself. In other words, this turned out to be a very different kind of story than I expected. But by the end of the book, that initial disappointment turned out to be the most interesting aspect of the story, replacing the imaginary monster with a very real, deeply flawed human being. To an adult, that very real descent into mindless, murderous rage is more frightening than any childhood boogeyman. I was provided a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review, but I would have bought this one the day it came out, both because I enjoy the author's work and because Speck loomed so large in my childhood. Whether you have a preconceived notion of Speck going in or not, "The Townhouse Murders" is a fascinating account of the making of a mass murderer that is well worth listening to.

A Sick Man

You halfway want to feel sorry for this guy. He was severely abused as a child and had a head injury as a child, that probably contributed to his deranged way of thinking. Medical help consisted of institulizatiin for his behavior at that time. The medical community had not discovered the long-term effects of head injuries on personality and emotions. That being said, he was a monster. The torture and abuse he inflicted on women, in particular, was unthinkable. The world would have been a better place had he been locked up.

A real monster

Speck is a really guy. To hear his opinions on women not only made me cringe, but horrified me knowing someday they would create the monster that he wound up being. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the word wh*** being used about 1500 times, but if that’s how the killer thought, I understand. Another winner by Green!

Interesting "read'

This was different from what I expected. This dealt with Richard Speck's early life an shared not only the interaction between Speck and his family but showed how they enabled him. In addition, apparently he had a severe head injury caused by his stepfather that was never treated. This could have exasperated his already present tendencies to violence.

I was familiar with the actual crime in Chicago but learned more about the way the events played out. The actual crime isn't addressed till the last few chapters and hearing a description of what happened was scarier than reading the same words.

I received an ARC of this Audible to listen to and give a fair review. This is well worth listening to. It's less than four hours so I listened to it last night.