It took a Cook County jury only forty-nine minutes to convict Richard Speck of the crime of murder. On June 15, 1967, he was sentenced to die in the electric chair. After the U.S. Supreme Court set aside the death penalty, Speck was resentenced on Nov. 22, 1972, to 400 to 1200 years at the Statesville Penitentiary. This was the longest jail term ever given up to that time. Speck remained in prison until 1991, when he died at the age of forty-nine of a heart attack.
