I can be nice, and I have been, for the last three days, the epitome of kindness.
[rant] You can be rude, crabby, ungrateful, passive-aggressive; You can barrage me with questions, while I am trying to pull up your MAR, or page the physician. Your family can stand 3" from the bed while I'm trying to change linens; you can pull the emergency cord in the bathroom, even though I'm 6feet away and you can see me; and you can use your call light every 29minutes; You can play the woe-is-me card all you want... But after 3days of wiping your butt and listening to you whine and moan about everything under the sun, am I allowed to hate you?
I'm an ER nurse myself for 33 years and I am disappointed by your tone. But to each their own. People can agree to disagree without being disagreeable. :hug:
My friend knew these nurses and was in the townhouse next door with 8 other girls in nursing school. I worked on the south side at Cook County ED and worked trauma flight for UCAN (University of Chicago Area-Medical Network) I have listed a few reliable sources for you. Peace.
Richard Speck was the notorious killer of eight student nurses whose bodies were found on July 14, 1966, strangled and stabbed in a townhouse on the Southeast Side of Chicago. He had also committed sadistic sexual assaults on most of them. A ninth student nurse, Corazon Amurao, survived by hiding. Speck, then 25, was arrested within days. He had slit his wrists, and a doctor at Cook County Hospital spotted his telltale blood-caked tattoo, "Born To Raise Hell." On April 15, 1967, after deliberating only 49 minutes, a jury found him guilty of the eight murders, and he was sentenced to death. After the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in 1972, Speck was sentenced to 400 to 1,200 years in prison. During his years at Stateville Correctional Center, Speck was an unremarkable prisoner. Once lean and sinister-looking, Speck grew doughy and lived only to drink, smoke and paint prison walls. On Dec. 5, 1991, the day before his 50th birthday, Speck died of a heart attack. Bill Martin, the Cook County assistant state's attorney who headed the Speck prosecution, said the impact of the murders on Chicago was profound. "Before July 14 of 1966," Martin said, "none of us comprehended the possibilities of random violence of this magnitude
Speck, on the run, tried to get work on a barge and was registered at the National Maritime Union Hall. Directly across the street from the union hall was student housing for nursing students working at the South Chicago Community Hospital. On the evening of July 13, 1966 Speck had several drinks at a bar under the rooming house where he was staying. Around 10:30 p.m. he walked the 30-minute walk to the nurse's townhouse, entered through a screen door and rounded up the nurses inside.
The Crime:At first Speck reassured the young women that all he wanted was money. Then with a gun and a knife he scared the girls into submission and got them all into one bedroom. He cut strips of bed sheets and bound each of them and began removing one after another to other parts of the townhouse where he murdered them. Two nurses were murdered as they returned home and walked into the mayhem. The girls waiting their turn to die, tried to hide under beds but Speck found them all but one.
The Victims:
Pamela Wilkening - Gagged, stabbed through the heart.
Mary Ann Jordan - Stabbed in the chest, neck and eye.
Nina Schmale - Stabbed in her neck and suffocated.
Patricia Matusek - punched resulting in a ruptured liver and strangled.
Valentina Poison - Her throat was cut.
Merlita Gargullo - Stabbed and strangled.
Corazon Amurao - The One Who Survived:Corazon Amurao slid under the bed and pushed herself tight against the wall. She heard Speck return to the room. Paralyzed with fear she heard him rape Gloria Davy on the bed above. He then left the room and Cora knew she was next. She waited hours, fearing his return at any moment. The house was silent. Finally in the early morning she pulled herself from underneath the bed and climbed out the window, where she huddled in fear, crying, until help came.
Speck Dies: Speck, age 49, died from a heart attack at 6:05 a.m. December 5, 1991, one day before his 50th birthday, at Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet under the name of Ebenezer Masade had been taken to Silver Cross after complaining of chest pains and nausea at Stateville Correctional Center. When he died he was fat, bloated, with ash-white pockmarked skin and hormone-injected breasts. No family members claimed his remains and he was cremated and his ashes were thrown in an undisclosed place.Profile of Richard Speck - Born to Raise Hell
On the night of July 14, 1966, eight student nurses are brutally murdered by Richard Speck at their group residence in Chicago, Illinois. Speck threatened the women with both a gun and a knife, tying each of them up while robbing their townhouse. Over the next several hours, Speck stabbed and strangled each of the young women throughout various rooms of the place. One young woman, Corazon Amurao, managed to escape with her life by hiding under a bed; Speck had lost count of his victims.
Richard Speck was an alcoholic and a petty criminal with over 20 arrests on his record by the age of 25. He had "Born to Raise Hell" tattooed on his forearm and periodically worked on cargo boats traveling the Great Lakes. On the night of July 13, after drinking heavily at several Chicago bars, Speck broke into the townhouse for student nurses of the South Chicago Community Hospital.
Speck then used his gun to force three nurses into a bedroom, where he found three more women. Using nautical knots, he then tied the women's hands and feet with strips torn from bedsheets. By midnight, three more nurses had come home only to be tied up as well. Speck assured the women that he was only going to rob them.
After stealing from the women, he took them into separate rooms, killing them one by one. The remaining women heard only muffled screams from their roommates. Amurao, who was hiding under her bed, waited until 6 a.m. the following day before leaving her hiding place. She then crawled out onto a second-story ledge and screamed for help. Police responding to the cries obtained a detailed description of Speck from Amurao; the sketch was placed on the front page of every local newspaper the next morning. Speck, who was hiding out at a dollar-a-night hotel, slashed his right wrist and left elbow in a suicide attempt on July 16.
Speck was arrested the next day at the Cook County Hospital. With Amurao identification and his fingerprints left at the scene, Speck was convicted and sentenced to death. However, in 1972, when the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty law under which he was sentenced, Speck was re-sentenced to 400 years in prison. He died at Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet under the name of Ebenezer Masade had been taken to Silver Cross after complaining of chest pains and nausea of a heart attack on December 5, 1991.
I have to say I respect your effort with the facts and adding a few other sources other than Wikipedia. I'm not saying that I don't believe that you believe it, but the fact that someone was throwing this big story at you. You know the kind of people who are all ready and willing to talk about their stories, their amazing accounts of their own amazing-ness, and just general "I love myself" stuff. I just find that I need proof, and lots of it, before a story can be credible. Perhaps it's the media and our culture, but so much of what we see and hear out there is scrambled by bias. Just look at this current political race and how Ron Paul has been treated (or ignored, I should say).
I do know the Richard Speck history, so thanks for recapping that. Peace fellow ER sista.
Being that a wikipedia article usually has 30+ citations and it reviewed by many editors for many things I would find it to be more accurate that a single source such as a newspaper article. "Famous" people don't exist in a bubble. Eventually mere mortals run into them.
"CHECKMATE THAT SISTA" Really if you want to be more believable in your cynical disbelief you might want to leave the "ghetto" insults out of it.
My position on the issue it doesn't make sense that Esme12 would make this story up in response to this thread. A thread about Speck maybe but this thread is not really worth the effort of a fictious story. No offense to the OP
sarcasm, dear friend, sarcasm.
How would you know the original story teller's intent?
PS. Anyone can add or detract from Wikipedia, so your "editors" comment doesn't hold true. If anyone can, then it is not a reliable resource or a trusted source.
You know the kind of people who are all ready and willing to talk about their stories, their amazing accounts of their own amazing-ness, and just general "I love myself" stuff. I just find that I need proof, and lots of it, before a story can be credible.
Yeah, they're a lot like the kind of people who are all ready and willing to show their cynicism about other's stories, their amazing accounts of their own amazing-ness at being smarter than us gullible fools, and just general "I love telling people they've obviously been had."
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
I'm not usually a big wiki fan but there are time the information is crediable for informational purposes. I was working in Chicago when Speck died and I know my friend was working that night and she called me. She did grauate from the nursing school where this happened and was there when this occured. Can I prove it per se....no.
It's just a story to give an example that you can hate a patient even if they are in your care.
Yeah, they're a lot like the kind of people who are all ready and willing to show their cynicism about other's stories, their amazing accounts of their own amazing-ness at being smarter than us gullible fools, and just general "I love telling people they've obviously been had."
ETA: Oops, sorry. Forgot to say: Peace sistah!
oooooh, JAB JAB! Well someone's gotta point it out. You can't believe everything you hear and read. Really, people need to stop being so sensitive. This is a website, on the internet, where people can post anything. (well, nearly, before moderators interfere with the natural movement of posts/threads.)
And there are a lot of "gullible fools." You say cynicism, I say realism. It's all on how open-minded you are to the fact that reality is not all peaches and cream. I'm not saying anyone "has been had," but one should be aware that the possibility does exist. Why ignore the obvious? Why put your head in the sand? Stop trying to berate one who wants to enlighten.
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
oooooh, JAB JAB! Well someone's gotta point it out. You can't believe everything you hear and read. Really, people need to stop being so sensitive. This is a website, on the internet, where people can post anything. (well, nearly, before moderators interfere with the natural movement of posts/threads.)
And there are a lot of "gullible fools." You say cynicism, I say realism. It's all on how open-minded you are to the fact that reality is not all peaches and cream. I'm not saying anyone "has been had," but one should be aware that the possibility does exist. Why ignore the obvious? Why put your head in the sand? Stop trying to berate one who wants to enlighten.
I tend to be a pretty skeptical person myself, but I also know truth can be stranger than fiction.
I have --and know others who have-- many stories that are bizarre and absolutely frightening.
Considering Speck committed his crimes in Chicago and stayed in the area (Joliet Prison) it is not outside the realm of possibility that he would, at some point, be under the care of a nurse who knew his victims.
Somebody has to know these people.
This stuff really happened and is not made up for kicks.
Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.
I have had exasperating patients, but I usually vent about them in the med room to my bestie at work and then get over it, or think to myself when I see the assignment "I don't want this patient again..."
No one as bad as what you've described though. Sheesh! I've had some demanding ones, but the ones who really get on my nerves are people who are "vomiting" when what they are really doing is spitting into a bucket. People who are supposed to be discharged, and then are overcome with "nausea and vomiting". They can scarf down Popsicles no problem, but usually as soon as they get the discharge instructions, the whole family charges in and then it's retch, retch, spit in a bucket. I find it very manipulative. I might be young, but I can tell the difference between real vomit, dry heaving, legit nausea, and then spitting into an emesis basin for the benefit and sympathy of family members.
I recently had a post-op patient who was all set for discharge - stable vitals, stable labs, pain well controlled with PO meds, all PT goals met, etc - and then pitched a fit when it came time to be discharged, saying that they were and had been in intractable, unbearable pain, despite all documented evidence to the contrary. They let the patient stay another night, because of a tantrum. And the best part? They wouldn't accept IV pain med. Or any pain med, after they won that round. Gotta keep those patient satisfaction scores up! *shaking my head*
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
YOu would be surprised what you can do for your profession and to remain professional. Usually when a prisoner in admitted to a hospital outside the prison you do not know what they have been incarcerated for so it makes it better......unless they are high profile. You can always ask to be excused from the patients care if you can't be objective......everyone will understand.
oooooh, JAB JAB! Well someone's gotta point it out. You can't believe everything you hear and read. Really, people need to stop being so sensitive. This is a website, on the internet, where people can post anything. (well, nearly, before moderators interfere with the natural movement of posts/threads.)
MassED, BSN, RN
2,636 Posts
I have to say I respect your effort with the facts and adding a few other sources other than Wikipedia. I'm not saying that I don't believe that you believe it, but the fact that someone was throwing this big story at you. You know the kind of people who are all ready and willing to talk about their stories, their amazing accounts of their own amazing-ness, and just general "I love myself" stuff. I just find that I need proof, and lots of it, before a story can be credible. Perhaps it's the media and our culture, but so much of what we see and hear out there is scrambled by bias. Just look at this current political race and how Ron Paul has been treated (or ignored, I should say).
I do know the Richard Speck history, so thanks for recapping that. Peace fellow ER sista.