A few days before she died, Pam called her mother to say she couldn't come visit that weekend. "She was kind of your average good kid who was really dedicated to being a caregiver.". She worked at the hospital from 7 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Like the other Filipina nurses, she sent money home. . Their mother eventually forgave Richard Speck and urged her children to do the same. She was petrified of Speck but had the courage to step down from the witness stand, walk up to him and point her finger 2 inches from his forehead. Merlita grew up on the island of Mindoro where bananas, rice and coconut grow. Speck was never officially charged with the murders of which he was suspected prior to the events that took place in the South Chicago townhouse and, officially, those cases remain unsolved. Not long afterward, Arline Davy, sitting on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, made an announcement to her daughters. That day was December 7th, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor that pushed the United States into World War Two. His little sister. Asked if she recognized the killer, she stepped off the stand and pointed: Since then she has rarely spoken to the media, though in a 1970 court hearing she described her fear of the night, of being alone, of a knock on a door. Its a typical 1950s school photograph, small, black-and-white, cropped with pinking shears, showing Suzie at about 10, wearing what looks like her Brownie uniform. Speck also has a foul mouth on him and Ford realizes that there is only one way to communicate with him. In the basement's dim overhead light, a big, brown cardboard box caught his eye, a box so soggy its bottom was ready to fall out. Suzanne Farris, left, and Gloria Davy pose at the dinner table, circa 1966. "For Filipinos and Filipino Americans who came of age during the 1960s," she said in a recent email, "I think Gargullo and Pasion are remembered as nurses who encountered American violence and tragedy, and Amurao is remembered as the nurse who used her wits to survive.". "She is doing very, very well," said William Martin, 79, the former assistant state's attorney who was the lead prosecutor in the case. Murder made Richard Speck famous. ''I like Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson. For those girls, and for their families, and for me. She loved Elvis, cats and the color pink. Richard Speck full prison video : r/masskillers - Reddit ''How am I gonna get in trouble?'' Catherine Ceniza Choy, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, writes about the three exchange nurses extensively in "Empire of Care," her history of Filipino nurses in the United States. "Don't hate," she told them. Fifty years later, Pat Matusek's two best childhood friends are the primary custodians of her past. Mary Ann Jordan grew up hearing her father's tales of her Irish grandmother, Grace. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune). If you live your life in hatred and anger, you'll lose more than Gloria. And it turned out that it reopened her life.". "She wasn't the prom queen or the valedictorian," her brother recalled. Their mother, of English and Czech stock, stayed at home to take care of her children. When her father was at work and her mother was taking care of the house and Billy, she took Susan along while she ran family errands on 79th Street, where the shopkeepers knew her name. It was the kind of childhood that half a century later people look back on and call simpler, innocent, a time when city kids were raised to be independent and unafraid. Speck was the seventh of eight children. Atienza, 73, retired about five years ago after many years as a critical care nurse in Washington, D.C. She now spends most of her time with her husband, Alberto, daughter Abigail, son Christian and her six grandchildren.
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