William Heirens

William George Heirens (November 15, 1928 – March 5, 2012) was an American criminal who forcibly confessed to three murders. He was subsequently convicted of the crimes in 1946. Heirens was called the Lipstick Killer after a notorious message scrawled in lipstick at a crime scene. At the time of his death, Heirens was reputedly Illinois' longest-serving prisoner, having spent 65 years in prison.

He spent the later years of his sentence at the Dixon Correctional Center in Dixon, Illinois. Though he remained imprisoned until his death, Heirens had recanted his confession and claimed to be a victim of coercive interrogation and police brutality.

His story was the subject of a 2018 episode of the Investigation Discovery series A Crime to Remember.

Early life Heirens grew up in Lincolnwood, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of George and Margaret Heirens. George Heirens was the son of immigrants from Luxembourg and Margaret was a homemaker. His family was poor and his parents argued incessantly, leading Heirens to wander the streets to avoid hearing them. He took to crime and later claimed that he mostly stole for fun and to release tension. He never sold what he had stolen.

At age 13, Heirens was arrested for carrying a loaded gun. A subsequent search of the Heirenses' home discovered a number of stolen weapons hidden in a storage shed on the roof of a nearby building, along with furs, suits, cameras, radios, and jewelry he had stolen. Heirens confessed to 11 burglaries and was sent to the Gibault School for wayward boys for several months.

Murders

Josephine Ross On June 5, 1945, 43-year-old Josephine Ross was found dead in her Chicago apartment. She had been repeatedly stabbed, and her head was wrapped in a dress. Dark hairs were clutched in her hand. No valuables were taken from the apartment. Police were unable to identify a dark-haired man reportedly seen fleeing the building. Frances Brown was discovered in her apartment with a knife lodged in her neck and bullet wound to the head. Nothing was taken,

Police found a bloody fingerprint smudge on the doorjamb of the entrance door. A witness heard gunshots around 4 a.m., and the building's night clerk said that a nervous-looking man of 35 to 40 years old and weighing 140 pounds exited the elevator and left the building around that time.

Suzanne Degnan alt=The Daily Banner of Greencastle, Indiana reported a column on the Suzanne Degnan abduction stating that the six year old girl was abducted from her home in her pajamas and was held for a ransom (then) of $20,000. On January 7, 1946, six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was discovered missing from her first-floor bedroom in Edgewater, Chicago. Police found a ladder outside her window and a ransom note: "Get $20,000 ready & wait for my word. Do not notify the FBI or police. Bills are in 5's & 10's. Burn this for her safety."

Chicago mayor Edward Kelly also received a note:This is to tell you how sorry I am not to not get ole Degnan instead of his girl. Roosevelt and the OPA made their own laws. Why shouldn't I and a lot more? At the time, there was a nationwide meatpackers' strike and the Office of Price Administration (OPA) was talking of extending rationing to dairy products. Degnan was a senior OPA executive recently transferred to Chicago. Another executive of the OPA had been recently assigned armed guards after receiving threats against his children and, in Chicago, a man involved with black market meat had recently been murdered by decapitation. Police considered the possibility that the Degnan killer was a meat packer.

Acting on an anonymous tip, police discovered Degnan's head in a sewer a block from the Degnan residence, her right leg in a catch basin, her torso in another storm drain and her left leg in another drain. Her arms were found a month later in another sewer after her other remains had already been interred.

Police questioned hundreds of people, administered polygraph examinations to about 170 and several times claimed to have captured the killer, although all were eventually released.

Witnesses The coroner fixed the time of death at between 12:30 and 1:00 a.m. and stated that a very sharp knife had been used to expertly dismember the body. A basement laundry room near the Degnans' home was located, in which it appeared that Degnan had been dismembered, although it was determined that she was already dead when she was taken there. A coroner's expert stated that the killer was "either a man who worked in a profession that required the study of anatomy or one with a background in dissection ... not even the average doctor could be as skillful, it had to be a meat cutter"; the coroner added that it was a "very clean job with absolutely no signs of hacking."

Hector Verburgh arrest 65-year-old Hector Verburgh, a janitor in the building where Degnan lived, was arrested and treated as the suspect. Police told the press "This is the man," despite discrepancies between Verburgh's profile and that which the police had developed regarding the skills of the killer, including his surgical knowledge or experience as a butcher. Police noted that Verburgh had frequented the so-called "murder room" and the grimy state of the ransom note suggested that it had been written by a dirty hand such as that of a janitor. The police pressured Verburgh's wife to implicate her husband in the murder.

Police held Verburgh for 48 hours of questioning and beatings that severely injured him, including a separated shoulder. He spent ten days in the hospital.

A nationwide manhunt ensued and Sherman was found four days later in Toledo, Ohio. He denied ownership of the handkerchief and explained under interrogation that he had eloped with his girlfriend. Sherman passed a polygraph test and was later cleared. Costello, who lived several blocks from the Degnans, had been convicted of armed robbery at age 16 and sent to reform school. Campbell said that Costello admitted to kidnapping and killing Degnan and had told him to place the phone calls to the Degnans. Costello was arrested, By this time, the press was taking an increasingly critical tone toward the police's investigation into the Degnan murder. However, the authorities were intrigued by a promising new suspect reported to a newspaper on the same day that the Thomas development broke. A college student was caught fleeing from the scene of a burglary, brandished a gun at police and possibly tried to kill one of the pursuing policemen to escape. By this time, Thomas had recanted his confession, but the press generally did not notice in light of the new lead.

Arrest and questioning of Heirens On June 26, 1946, 17-year-old William Heirens was arrested for attempted burglary. According to Heirens, he drifted into unconsciousness under questioning and was interrogated around the clock for six consecutive days, beaten and starved.

Two psychiatrists administered sodium pentothal to Heirens without a warrant and without Heirens' or his parents' consent and they interrogated him for three hours.

Heirens' first confession After the sodium pentothal questioning but before the polygraph exam, Heirens spoke to police captain Michael Ahern. With state's attorney William Tuohy and a stenographer at hand, Heirens offered an indirect confession, confirming his claim while under sodium pentothal that his alter ego George Murman might have been responsible for the crimes and that George (Heirens' middle name and his father's first name) had given him the loot to hide in his dormitory room. Police hunted for George, questioning Heirens' friends, family and associations, but were unsuccessful.

Heirens was attributed as saying while under the influence that he met George at the age of 13 years. He was also reported as claiming that George sent him prowling at night, that he robbed for pleasure, that he "killed like a cobra" when cornered and that he related his secrets to Heirens. Heirens allegedly claimed that he frequently assumed the blame for George, first for petty theft, then assault and now murder.

Also in Heirens' possession was a stolen copy of Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), Richard von Krafft-Ebing's famous study of sexual deviance. Police also discovered a stolen medical kit, but they announced that the medical instruments could not be linked to the murders. No trace of biological material such as blood, skin or hair was found on the tools, and no biological material of the victims was found on Heirens himself or on any of his clothes. The medical tools were considered too fine and small to have been used for dissection. Heirens had used the medical kit to alter war bonds that he had stolen. Before the trial, inconsistencies in the witness's original statement had led many to dismiss his evidence. The small likelihood of a successful murder prosecution of William Heirens early prompted the state's attorney's office to seek out and obtain the cooperative help of defense counsel, and through them, that of their client. All the prosecution had in the Degnan case was a partial fingerprint on the ransom note. … And it was at this stage of the investigation that defense counsel moved forward in cooperation with my office. Heirens' lawyers pressured him to accept Tuohy's plea bargain. The deal stipulated that Heirens would serve one life sentence if he confessed to the murders of Josephine Ross, Frances Brown and Suzanne Degnan. With the help of his lawyers, Heirens began drafting a confession, using a Chicago Tribune article as a guide:As it turned out, the Tribune article was very helpful, as it provided me with a lot of details I didn't know. My attorneys rarely changed anything outright, but I could tell by their faces if I had made a mistake. Or they would say, 'Now, Bill, is that really the way it happened?' Then I would change my story because, obviously, it went against what was known (in the Tribune).

Both Heirens and his parents signed a confession. The parties agreed to a date of July 30 for Heirens to deliver his official confession. On that date, reporters assembled at Tuohy's office to ask Heirens questions and Tuohy delivered a speech.

Guilty plea On August 7, 1946, Heirens assumed full responsibility for the three murders. In public and before the press, the prosecution prompted him to reenact the Degnan crime. On September 4, with Heirens' parents and the victims' families in attendance, Heirens admitted his guilt on the burglary and murder charges. However, when Heirens was arrested in 1946, growing scientific opinion against "truth serum" had not yet filtered down to the courts and police departments.

During Heirens' post-conviction petition in 1952, Tuohy admitted under oath that he not only knew about the sodium pentothal procedure, he had authorized it and paid Grinker $1,000. supporting the two earlier results of the original 1946 investigation and Herbert J. Walter's original January 1946 opinion. In addition, the handwritings of the two notes don't match each other. It has since become the understanding that the nature of these inconsistencies is a clear indicator of false confessions. Others contend that Thomas was a strong suspect, given that:

Thomas previously had been convicted of an attempted extortion – with a ransom note that threatened the kidnapping of a little girl. As previously noted, handwriting experts at the time stated that the Thomas' ransom note from his previous conviction of extortion bears similarity in both style in regard to the wording and in form of the actual structure of the letters formed, to the Degnan ransom note. Thomas had a history of violence, including spousal abuse.

Heirens was given an institutional parole for the Degnan murder in 1965, and in 1966 he was discharged on that case and began serving his second life sentence. Although not freed, parole policies of the day meant that he was considered rehabilitated by prison authorities and that the Degnan case could no longer legally be put forward as a reason to deny parole. Based on the regulations of 1946, Heirens should have been discharged from the Brown murder in 1975 and from all remaining charges in 1983. However, in 1973 the focus moved from rehabilitation to punishment and deterrence, which blocked moves to release Heirens. to the Dixon Correctional Center minimum security prison in Dixon, Illinois. He resided in the hospital ward. He suffered from diabetes, which had swollen his legs and limited his eyesight, making him have to use a wheelchair. He continued with his efforts to win clemency.

Petition for clemency In 2002, Lawrence C. Marshall, et al., filed a petition on Heirens' behalf seeking clemency. The appeal was eventually denied.

Former Los Angeles police officer Steve Hodel, who had spent 25 years on the force, met Heirens in 2003 when he was investigating the murders. He was convinced that Heirens was innocent of the crimes. "I felt compelled to write an appeal to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board stating my professional belief that Heirens is innocent."

Heirens' most recent parole hearing was held on July 26, 2007. The Illinois Prisoner Review Board decision in a 14–0 vote against parole, was reflected by Board member Thomas Johnson, who stated that "God will forgive you, but the state won't". However, the parole board also decided to revisit the issue once per year from then on.