Thursday, February 1, 2007

Jango Speck

Jango Fett
A fictional character from the Star Wars universe whose first cinematic appearance was in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, in which he was played by Temuera Morrison. The name is thought to have been inspired by several sources: "Jango" from Django, since both Jango Fett and Boba Fett's profession as bounty hunters appears to be a reference to Spaghetti Westerns, and "Fett" from George Lucas' revisiting the name "Bob Falfa" (which turned into Boba Fett) from his earlier film American Graffiti.
Jango Fett's son is his clone Boba Fett, made famous in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Both father and son served as bounty hunters; the latter part of Jango's life was spent serving political figures as Count Dooku, Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, indirectly aiding the rise of the Empire.

Richard Speck
On July 14, 1966, Speck broke into a South Chicago townhouse and took as hostages nurses Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Schmale, Pamela Wilkening, Suzanne Farris, Mary Ann Jordan, Merlita Gargullo, and Valentina Pasion. Speck was high on both alcohol and drugs, and his original plan was to commit a routine burglary. He became enraged when one of the girls spit in his face, and he held the girls hostage for hours, methodically beating, raping, and stabbing them to death. A leading psychiatrist who interviewed Speck remarked that Speck experienced the Madonna-whore complex, and that Gloria Davy reminded Speck of his ex-wife.
Speck attempted suicide and was taken by the police to Cook County Hospital at 12:30 AM on July 17 where he was first recognized by a 26-year-old surgical resident physician (who recognized Speck's "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo from a newspaper story) and then by Cora (Corazon) Amurao, a Filipino student nurse who had luckily escaped by hiding silently under a bed while her housemates were being killed. She stayed hidden under the bed until 5 a.m. and then she came out, made it to the balcony and began screaming, "They're all dead! All my friends are dead!" Speck, who was quite fond of various types of pills, did not notice Amurao was missing and left the house in a drug-induced haze.
Saying he had no recollection of the murders, he was declared sane but a sociopath after being examined.
In May 1996, television news anchor Bill Kurtis received video tapes made at Stateville Prison in 1988. Kurtis showed them publicly for the first time in front of a shocked and deeply angry Illinois state legislature. The video showed prisoners passing money and drugs around without fear of being caught, engaging in sexual acts, and in the center of it all was Speck, ingesting cocaine, parading around in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts grown from smuggled hormone treatments, and boasting "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose."[1]
From behind the camera, a prisoner asked him why he killed the nurses. Speck shrugged and jokingly said "It just wasn't their night." The tapes were later broadcast on the A&E Network's Investigative Reports, and were used to argue for the death penalty. John Schmale, the brother of one of the nurses, said "It was a very painful experience watching him tell about how he killed my sister," in response to a scene in which Speck describes what needs to be done when strangling a victim.
Jango.
Speck.
Never the two shall meet.

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