For God’s sake catch me before I kill no more I’m out of control was written in large letters on the wall with lipstick when police entered Frances Brown’s Chicago apartment in December 1945.
Otherwise the apartment was the cleanest and nothing had been stolen.
The first two murders
Frances was dead, murdered, with a bread knife sticking out of her throat. The media and public were absolutely furious, such posts went virtually unheard of, and the nameless killer was nicknamed the Lipstick Killer.
Police found fingerprints on the front door frame and said the concierge saw a man, aged 35 to 40, enter the building’s elevator on the same day. He would have seemed extremely nervous.
A thorough investigation into the case was immediately opened and it was quickly believed that it was not the first crime of the murderer, whom he had also killed six months earlier.
In June 1945, Josephine Ross, 43, was found dead in her home, stabbed several times with a knife in the neck. The police questioned her ex-boyfriend first, but they were all cleared of suspicion.
No evidence was found in Josephine’s apartment except for a few black hairs and nothing had been stolen, nor was it in Frances’ apartment.
But then came the third murder.
The terrible fate of little Suzanne
Around 7 a.m. on January 7, 1946, James Degnan noticed that his six-year-old daughter, Suzanne, had disappeared from her bedroom in one of Chicago’s uptown areas.
Police were immediately called and found a crumpled note in the child’s bedroom demanding a $20,000 ransom for the girl. The family had to wait for instructions to hand over the money.
But unfortunately nothing came of it since little Suzanne Degnan was found dead 12 hours later.
First his head was found in a sewer, then his legs and finally what was left of his little body.
Guillaume Heirens
On June 26, a certain William Heirens was arrested when he tried to break into an apartment in the same building where the Degnan family lived.
He was only 17 but has a criminal record for theft and embezzlement. William grew up in poverty and violence, started to stutter very young, but was an excellent student and, among other things, received a scholarship for university studies at only 16 years old.
William was aiming for an engineering degree but couldn’t bring himself to go back to his past ways and break and enter at times but had no history of violence.
William attempted to flee from the police, but an off-duty policeman who lived nearby threw a heavy flowerpot at his head, petrifying William.
However, that was just the start.
Torture
William was taken to hospital where he was simply tortured.
He was given all kinds of drugs in order to make him confess to the murder of the child, in addition to being accused of the murders of Frances and Josephine, although they were of a completely different nature.
William initially vehemently denied all murders, regardless of what he was accused of.
Among other things, he was tied up and ether was poured on his genitals. The police beat him in the stomach and back, and doctors and other nursing staff helped with the procedure.
He was given a lumbar puncture then hooked up to a lie detector, then paralyzed below the waist and semi-conscious by drugs including sodium pentanol, sometimes called the truth drug, as the drug has long been believed to make incapable people come under its influence.
Little or no evidence
Police searched William’s apartment but found nothing to link him to the murders. Among the items found were handwritten letters, but William’s handwriting bore no resemblance to the handwriting of the person who wrote the letter found in Suzanne’s room. Or the writing that wrote on Frances’ wall with lipstick. He also didn’t look like the man the guard had seen.
After four days, a medicated and injured William began to stutter which police interpreted as a confession.
William Heirens has been charged with three murders as well as a number of burglaries.
There were a lot of things wrong. Although nothing could be conclusively proven, it turned out that his fingerprints were not those found in Frances’ apartment. Or the hair in Josephine’s apartment.
The torture was never mentioned during the trial, nor that his handwriting did not match the handwriting found at the crime scene.
William was so desperate that he attempted to hang himself in his cell, but it was his turn before he could accomplish his mission.
Maintained his innocence for the rest of his life
The prosecutor offered William to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty, and 17-year-old William accepted the offer, exhausting his body and soul.
William Heirens spent no less than 65 years in a maximum security prison, until his death at the age of 83 in 2012. No man has been incarcerated in Chicago longer.
He tried to escape three times during those years, without success.
He maintained his innocence until his death, and today it is believed by many that William Heirens was murdered and was innocent of the murders.
But that will never be proven by or on.
