Gay Gibson: Murder on the High Seas

The Disappearance of a Young Actress Aboard an Ocean Liner Leads to One of Britain's Most Sensational Trials

Actress Gay Gibson (photo source) 

It was around 2:58 a.m. on Saturday, October 18, 1947 when Frederick Steer, a duty watchman for Union-Castle Line ship Durban Castle, was awakened by a summons from cabin 126, a first-class cabin on the B deck.  Upon arriving at the cabin, Steer noted that the lights for both the steward and stewardess had been rung by the cabin's occupant, something he found strange as normally a passenger would ring for one or the other but not both.  

He knocked on the cabin door and as he started to open it, it was slammed shut but not before Steer recognized the man who closed it.  He was James Camb, a thirty-year-old steward working on the liner.  Steer wondered if, since Camb was a steward, he had arrived for the summons before Steer himself had - but his uneasy feelings about the situation led him to report the incident to the night watchman, James Murray.  Steer and Murray returned to cabin 126, where all was quiet.  Murray relayed the events to the officer of the watch but without mentioning James Camb's name.  The officer on duty believed it to be a private matter and not of any concern to the ship's officers and that appeared to be the end of it.    

At 7:30 that morning, Eileen Field, the stewardess for B deck, arrived at cabin 126, prepared to begin cleaning.  She carried a glass of orange juice for the young lady occupying the cabin, an actress by the name of Gay Gibson.  

A promotional photo of Gay from 1945 (photo source) 

Gay

Born Eileen Isabella Ronnie Gibson in India, she had been educated in England, before joining the women's army corps during World War II.  She became interested in acting and acquired the stage name of Gay Gibson when she began touring with a theatrical company.   By the time she traveled to South Africa to appear as the female lead in the Clifford Odets play Golden Boy, the redheaded Gay was reportedly attracting men "like bees to a honeycomb." At a time when sexually active single women were considered scandalous, she reportedly flouted convention, carrying on affairs with two married men.  Following the run of the play The Man With a Load of Mischief, it was said to be one of these men who purchased her first class ticket aboard the Durban Castle, which departed Cape Town on Friday, October 10, 1947.   Gay was headed for London and a play in the West End.

As the only young woman among the ship's sixty first-class passengers, most of whom were quite a bit older than she was, the twenty-one-year-old Gay quickly caught the attention of not only the ship's male passengers but also the male employees, especially James Camb, who gossiped about her to other members of the crew and was said to be friendly with her on deck.  Other than a supposedly intimate friendship with Camb, Gay's activities appeared to have been fairly sedate, confined to dining with her assigned dinner companions (a Mr. Hopwood, who worked for the ship's line, and a Wing Commander Bray) and dancing with them.  

The Durban Castle (photo source)

On the evening of Friday, October 17, 1947, Gay dined with Hopwood and Bray, shared dances with both and then retired to her cabin to change into a swimsuit.  As it was a hot evening, she planned to take a dip in the swimming pool and either one or both of the gentlemen were going to swim with her.  However, she returned from her cabin still in her evening dress and saying that she could not locate her swimsuit.  With the swim party cancelled, Hopwood escorted her back to her cabin around 12:40 a.m., under the impression that she was retiring for the evening.  Twenty minutes later, around 1 a.m., Gay, still attired in her evening gown, was seen on the afterdeck, smoking a cigarette and telling the boatswain's mate that she found it too hot to sleep.  It was the last time Gay Gibson was seen by anyone other than James Camb.

A Mystery

When stewardess Eileen Field arrived at cabin 126 on Saturday morning, October 18, 1947, she found the door unlocked, which was very unusual as Gay had been in the habit of locking it each night.  Finding the cabin empty, she at first believed that Gay was in the lavatory and left the glass of juice in the cabin to go about other duties.  Returning two hours later, there was still no appearance from Gay.  The juice was still on a bureau untouched and Gay's bedroom slippers, which she would have worn had she left the cabin, were in their usual spot by the bed.  Field noted that the bed was a little more disheveled than usual and the porthole was open.  Panicked, she went to Captain Patey.

At 10 a.m., Captain Patey broadcast an appeal for Gay over the ship's PA system.  With no response, at 10:30, he turned the ship about and began a thorough search.  At the time, the Durban Castle was 60 miles off the coast of Equatorial Guinea in western Africa.  Word spread quickly amongst the passengers and the crew, all of whom searched for Gay to no avail.  By noon, Captain Patey concluded that Gay Gibson was no longer aboard the ship and must have tragically gone overboard into the shark-infested waters.  Feeling there was nothing else he could do, Captain Patey once again set sail for England.

James Camb's shipmates, however, reported his interest in Gay to Captain Patey as well as his odd behavior over the previous 24 hours.  Despite the heat, and the fact that the rest of the crew were wearing their short-sleeved uniforms, Camb remained in his jacket.  His cabinmate told Captain Patey that not only had Camb turned in in the very early hours of the morning but had retired in his jacket.  Captain Patey locked Gay's cabin and ordered Camb to submit to a medical examination.  

Scratch marks were discovered on Camb's arms and nec, by the ship's surgeon.  Camb claimed they were result of scratching himself due to the heat and were exacerbated by the ship's rough bath towels.  He denied any involvement with Gay Gibson at all, much less that he was the man in her cabin when Frederick Steer had responded to the summons early Saturday morning.  

On Friday, October 24, the Durban Castle anchored off the Isle of Wight in southern England.  Two police detectives boarded the ship to conduct an investigation.  When they left the ship, they had James Camb with them, taking him to Southhampton police headquarters for further questioning.  Two days later, he was formally arrested and charged with the murder of Gay Gibson.

James Camb (photo source) 

Camb

James Camb came from a small mill town in southeast Lancashire, England called Waterfoot.  Unwilling to fall into what he considered the tedium of factory life, he aimed for adventure and excitement.  Blessed with a highly confident nature, an ability to smooth talk anyone and movie star good looks, he began working on ships at the age of 17, with a brief hiatus during the war when he was in the Merchant Navy Reserve.  While serving in the Navy, he married and fathered a child but did not allow having a family hamper his extracurricular activities.  

Originally hired as an assistant cook aboard the Durban Castle, Camb soon worked his way up to being the first-class deck steward, a plum position aboard a ship and a plum position for him to pocket generous tips and woo female passengers.  In a nod to Don Juan, he was soon dubbed "Don James" and "Don Jimmy" by the crew, who heartily disliked him.  He reportedly based the success of a voyage by the number of female passengers he bedded and was more or less reliably said to have slept with at least one woman on every cruise on which he worked.  

Arrest and Trial

Camb reportedly changed his story several times before giving what would ultimately be his final version of events, after telling the police that "my wife can know nothing of this."  Although he had at first denied being the man in Gay's cabin, under police interrogation he admitted that Steer was correct and he had been in the cabin.  He confessed to having gone to her cabin with a drink and having sex with Gay but insisted that it had been consensual.  According to him, while in the throes of passion, Gay's eyes had rolled back in her head, she had began foaming at the mouth, clutched at him and then died.  He said he had attempted resuscitation but had not pressed any alarms for help.  Fearing that Gay being discovered dead in her bed would expose Camb's unprofessional relationship, leading to him being fired, he decided the best way to handle the situation was to get rid of the evidence - the evidence being Gay herself.  Feeling positive she was dead, he picked up her body and forced it through the cabin porthole and into the ocean, saying "She did make one hell of a splash."    

James Camb's mug shot (photo source) 

As Captain Patey had had Gay's cabin secured, upon examination it told its own tale.  Traces of blood were found on the pillow and there was a urine stain on the bottom sheet.  Both could indicate that Camb, after trying to force himself on Gay, had strangled her.  

Inspection of Gay's suitcase failed to turn up the black silk pajamas she had worn during the first week of the cruise, which stewardess Eileen Field confirmed.  According to Camb, Gay had greeted him at her cabin door in nothing but a sheer dressing gown in which she had nothing on underneath and that dressing gown had been on her body when he had pushed it out the porthole.  He had no explanation for where her usual black pajamas were.    

The porthole from the Durban Castle is carried into trial (photo source)

Camb's trial opened at the Great Hall of Winchester Castle on Thursday, March 18, 1948.  In presenting their case, the prosecution did not have a body and so they hired the best medical experts and constructed a replica of Gay's cabin to use in the trial, as well as bringing in the bed and door from her cabin and the actual porthole that Gay had been pushed out of.  They stressed it was not a case of sexual misadventure but a murder of cruelty and callousness.  The prosecution believed that Camb had coaxed his way into Gay's cabin and then had strangled her either when she resisted him or as a means to avoid being charged with rape or attempted rape.  Before she had been strangled to death, Gay managed to scratch him (photographs taken of the scratches at the Southhampton police station were shown to the jury) and pulled both the steward and stewardess bells.  

During the investigation, affidavits were collected from three young women, all travelers aboard the Durban Castle before Gay Gibson's fatal voyage, who claimed that Camb had made unwanted and insistent advances toward them, all separate events that took place between September 18 and October 7, 1947.  One woman claimed she had been taking an afternoon nap in her cabin when she awoke to find Camb by her bed.  Before she could rise, he was on top of her, holding her down.  According to the woman, only mentioning that her aunt was in the cabin next door dampened Camb's ardor and he left the cabin. Another woman claimed that Camb had strangled her when she refused his advances and when she regained consciousness, he was standing over her and laughing.  

Unfortunately for the prosecution, they were barred from using these affidavits and bringing up Camb's predatory behavior.  

They did admit that a contraceptive device was found in Gay's suitcase and suggested that if the young woman had been planning a sexual encounter with Camb (or anyone), it would not have been in her suitcase.  They also believed that had Gay been expecting Camb, she would not have been wearing her black pajamas, which they believe she had on when she died and accounted for the fact they had not been located.  

The prosecution also introduced a statement the police claimed he had made to them that "She struggled.  I had my hands around her neck . . . I threw her out of the porthole." 

The defense denied that Camb had made such a statement and insinuated that Gay was a young woman with loose morals, as evidenced by her contraceptive device.  They suggested that she had been pregnant at the time of her death as a result of one of her affairs and it was that condition that necessitated her journey to London.  A pregnancy, they said, would make the contraceptive device unnecessary and explained why she would not have taken it from her suitcase.  

The defense had witnesses who testified that Gay had been "hysterical" and "neurotic" and that she was subject to fainting fits in which her mouth, hands, and fingernails turned blue.  They also said that she had "a weak chest,"  perhaps congenital heart disease.  

In opposition, Gay's mother testified that her daughter was none of the things the defense claimed and instead was "one of the finest types of English womanhood physically, mentally, and morally."  

Camb himself took the stand and while he admitted that pushing Gay out of the porthole was "beastly conduct," he denied any other wrongdoing.  When confronted with his story changing multiple times, he claimed it was for "self-preservation" and said he believed he was an honest man.

Following the four-day trial, the jury deliberated only 45 minutes before finding James Camb guilty of the murder of Gay Gibson, making him the first defendant in Britain to be convicted of murder without a body.   As the abolition of the death penalty was being deliberated in Parliament at the time, his death sentence was overturned.  Escaping the hangman's noose, he was instead sentenced to life in prison.  Winston Churchill was enraged by this, stating that "The House of Commons has, by its vote, saved the life of the brutal lascivious murderer who thrust the poor girl he had raped and assaulted through a porthole of the ship to the sharks."  

Convictions

Camb had served less than nine months of his sentence when, in December, his wife divorced him on grounds of adultery.  

In September of 1959, after serving eleven and a half years of his sentence, Camb, then 41 years old and considered a "star prisoner" by authorities, was released.  Still denying his guilt, he sold his story to the press and remarried to a woman with a child that he adopted.  In 1967 he was jailed again after he attacked a 13-year-old girl and served two years.  Following his release in 1969, he obtained work in Scotland as a head waiter for a hotel.  Only months later, he was charged with the sexual misconduct of three 11-year-old schoolgirls when he broke into the room they were staying in.  He was imprisoned once again, where he remained until 1978.

In July 1979, he died of heart failure at the age of 62, no longer the dashing Tyrone Power lookalike but a disheveled shell of his former self but still denying the murder of Gay Gibson.

Gay's body was never recovered.  

The bed and door from Gay's cabin (photo source) 

Sources:

Crime Reads (March 25, 2021), The Actress, The Steward and the Ocean Liner.

Criminal Encyclopedia (November 12, 2016), James Camb - 1947.

Fido, Martin, The Chronicle of Crime.  Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993.

Keith, W. Barrington, The World's Greatest Crimes.  Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1990.

The Mirror (March 25, 2018), Gorgeous Gay Gibson Was Thrown Out of  a Cruise Ship Porthole.

 Murderpedia (2021).  James Camb. 

Soapboxie (October 8, 2020).  The Porthole Murder.  

    

   

 

William Heirens: The Man Known as The Lipstick Killer

Was the teenager guilty of three heinous murders or did he spend his life in prison for crimes which he did not commit?  

(Photo source) 

Chicago

Chicago in the 1940s was a juxtaposition of poverty and prosperity, security and crime, and optimism and pessimism.  The city was segregated, with blacks and whites living in separate neighborhoods; the black middle class lived separately from the lower class blacks, as did the middle class and lower class whites.  

In January of 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States and the first American soldier since the Civil War was executed for desertion.  Three months later, in April, U.S. troops liberated the first Nazi concentration camp and landed in Okinawa, Japan, and Roosevelt died suddenly in Warm Springs, Georgia, making Harry S. Truman the 33rd president of the United States.  

Josephine Ross (photo source) 

Josephine Ross

World War II was in its last days on the afternoon of June 5, 1945 when the body of housewife and widow Josephine Ross was discovered in her apartment on North Kenmore Avenue.  Forty-three year old Josie had been widowed since July of the previous year and reportedly had dreams of opening a restaurant with the life insurance proceeds from her late husband's death.  Her body had been posed in her bed and her head had been wrapped in a skirt.  She had been stabbed repeatedly, including to her throat, before her body had been washed, the stab wounds covered with tape, her head covered with the skirt, and then her body posed.  Although her killer had washed her body, investigators managed to find dark hairs clutched in Josie's hand.  

Although nothing appeared to have been taken from the apartment, police assumed that Josie had surprised an intruder and been killed as a result.  Based on the dark hairs in her hand, they believed the killer to be a dark complexioned man.  

Several of Josie's previous boyfriends were questioned and all had alibis.  Despite the gruesomeness of the crime, it barely made a blip in the media.  

Frances Brown (photo source)

Frances Brown

The Josephine Ross case was still open, but with no leads, on December 10, 1945 when stenographer Frances Brown was found dead in her apartment on North Pine Grove.  Her apartment door was found open and a cleaning woman noted the sounds of a radio playing loudly.  Thirty-two year old Frances was found naked and slumped over her bathtub.  In addition to the gunshot wound to her head, a butcher's knife had been driven sideways through her neck with such force, the blade protruded from the opposite side.  Like Josephine Ross, after death, her body had been washed and her head wrapped (this time with a towel).  

Once again, nothing was taken from her apartment but the police still theorized she had surprised an intruder.  Unlike the Ross crime scene, this time the killer left a message.  On the wall in the living room, the killer had written a cryptic note in Frances Brown's red lipstick: 

"For heavens

Sake catch me

Before I kill more

I cannot control myself."  

(Photo source)

It was this widely publicized note that led to the press dubbing the unknown perpetrator "The Lipstick Killer."    

This unknown killer also left behind a bloody fingerprint smudge on the doorjamb to the apartment, as well as two witnesses.  George Weinberg heard gunshots around 4 a.m. and the apartment building's night clerk, John Derick, noted a nervous man get off the elevator and head to the street on foot.  Derick described the man as roughly 140 pounds and aged 35 to 40.

Inexplicably, the Chicago PD investigated the Brown murder for several days with the theory of her killer being a woman.   

Suzanne Degnan (Photo source) 

Suzanne Degnan

In January of 1946, the killer had circled back to his previous hunting ground on Kenmore Avenue.  At 7:30 on the morning of January 7,  James Degnan realized that his six-year-old daughter Suzanne was missing from her bedroom and notified the police.  Outside the girl's bedroom window, a ladder was discovered and in searching her room, the police found a crumpled, crudely worded ransom note demanding $200,000 and instructions not to notify the police or FBI and to wait for word from the kidnapper.  Nine hours passed, during which time several ransom calls were made to the Degnan residence before authorities received an anonymous call to check the sewers.  Suzanne's severed head was found floating in a sewer catch basin, blue ribbons still in her hair, less than a block away.  Over the next several hours, both of Suzanne's legs and her torso were discovered in separate nearby sewers.  Her arms were discovered a month later in a sewer drain, more than three blocks from the Degnan residence.  Each of the sewer drains was capped and covered with cast iron manhole covers weighing over 100 pounds but no witnesses came forward to state they heard them being removed or slid back into place.

A standard neighborhood search unearthed a basement laundry room in an apartment building very close to where Suzanne's head had been discovered.  In that laundry room, evidence was discovered in four tubs that seemed to indicate the child's body had been dismembered there.  The floor was mopped but blood was found in the drains of all four tubs.  

Suzanne's autopsy indicated her time of death was between midnight and 1 a.m. and that she had died from strangulation, leading authorities to theorize she had been taken from her home alive and strangled in a secondary location before being transported to the laundry room. 

Six months went by with no arrests and no answers for Chicago's worried residents until June 26, 1946. 

Heirens under arrest in 1946 (photo source) 

William Heirens

William Heirens was born in 1928 to immigrants from Luxembourg who ran flower shops in Evanston until their businesses faltered as a result of the Great Depression.  A younger son named Jere soon joined the family, which was quickly fracturing from the tensions.  Although his father managed to find work as a security guard, he spent most off his off-time drinking, forcing Heirens' mother to supplement the family's income by working various jobs.  

(Photo source)

From the time he was young, Heirens worked; first, alongside his father in the flower shops before becoming a delivery boy for a local grocery store, an electrician's helper at a steel mill, and as an orchestra usher.   

Heirens was an above-average and creative student, although noted to be prone to daydreaming.  His first arrest came just before his graduation, when he was busted for burglary; a large cache of stolen goods was discovered near his home.  As a result, Heirens was sent to a reform school for boys in Terra Haute, Indiana.  He was allowed to return home at the end of the school year but before the summer was out, he was arrested once again for burglary.    This second arrest sent him to be boarded at the St. Bede Academy in Peru, Illinois, where he excelled in his schoolwork and participated in the school's wrestling team and worked in the library.

Shortly after beginning his senior year at St. Bede, he was granted early acceptance to the University of Chicago, where he began studying electrical engineering.  He quickly fit into the social life of the university and soon had a girlfriend, and although he had told himself he would not burglarize anyone again, the financial pressures of school and dating soon had him back to his old tricks.  

On June 26, 1946, the seventeen-year-old Heirens had a date with his girlfriend planned for the evening but was short on cash.  He planned to cash in a savings bond but his plan was foiled when he found the post office closed on his arrival.  His Plan B was to fall back on his old habit of theft, which previous M.O. had been to check apartment doors and then burgle those that were unlocked.   He found an unlocked door at the Wayne Manor Apartments, the home of the Pera family.  He was stealing a dollar when he was spotted and took off running, with police officers in hot pursuit.  He later claimed that the officers shot at him first; the officers claimed that Heirens fired off the first bullets.  Heirens was carrying a gun in the back of his jeans, supposedly to protect himself from any potential muggers.  

It was an off-duty police officer, still clothed in a bathing suit from his day by the water, who stopped Heirens by smashing several clay flowerpots over his head and knocking him unconscious.  Heirens was taken to the hospital ward of the Cook County Jail, had his head stitched and was then subjected to a protracted and painful interrogation, during which he slipped in and out of consciousness.  Detectives felt they had their killer although Heirens did not and would not confess and so disturbing and questionable tactics were used.  A nurse was called in to pour ether in Heirens' genitals while Heirens was strapped down.  When that failed to elicit a confession, a police officer repeatedly punched Heirens in the stomach while shouting details of Suzanne Degnan's abduction and murder, believing that would trigger Heirens' memory.  When that did not work, Heirens was given a spinal tap without anesthetic.  Following the spinal tap, a polygraph was ordered but it was determined that Heirens was in too much pain for an accurate reading.  

While Heirens had been unconscious, his fingerprints were taken and said to have been a 9-point match to prints found on the Degnan ransom note.  His room at the University was searched, as well as his parents' home and a locker he kept at the train station.  Evidence of Heirens' years-long hobby of thievery was discovered but nothing tying him to the murders.  

Heirens' parents had hired attorneys to represent their son but they were denied access to him for six days.  Not until July 2 were they able to speak with him.  Instead, authorities informed the media they had caught The Lipstick Killer and provided Heirens' name.

During the four days that Heirens was interrogated he was also injected with sodium pentothal ("truth serum").  The injection put him into a state of delirium and in between pain and bare consciousness he spoke of someone named "George" who could have committed the murders.  As George was Heirens' own middle name, the cops believed it was Heirens' way of confessing.  

(Photo source) 

On July 12, 1946, seventeen days after he was arrested, William Heirens was indicted on twenty-three counts of burglary, for robbery, assault with intent to kill, and on three counts of murder.  

Chicago area residents felt they could breathe and sleep easier, not knowing that Heirens had been grilled and tortured for four days, that he had been denied legal representation, that his residences and locker had been searched without a warrant, that his handwriting did not match the ransom note or the printing on Frances Brown's wall, that the 9-point fingerprint match fell short of the 12-point requirement and that his so-called "confession" was disputed by nurses.  

The media played their part in "reporting" on the case.  Although Heirens had not confessed, George Wright, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, fabricated a full confession in order to sell papers.  Other newspapers picked up on Wright's article and not only reprinted his fabrication but began making their own.  All the newspapers called for Heirens to be executed for his crimes.

(Photo source) 

Decades later, Heirens would recall that after seeing the newspaper stories he felt he had little hope and wanted to avoid being executed.  He made a deal with the State's Attorney for three consecutive life sentences in exchange for pleading guilty on all three murder charges.  On September 4, 1946, he admitted his guilt in court.  Although he was given the opportunity to take the stand, he declined to do so.  The following day he was sentenced to three life terms, as well as a one-to life term for burglary, assault, and robbery.  That night, he attempted to hang himself in his cell.  He was revived by the jail physician.  

Heirens continued to deny his guilt in the murders.

Other Possible Suspects

The Office of Price Administration

James Degnan worked for the Office of Price Administration as a senior executive.  At the time his youngest daughter was killed, he had been recently transferred to Chicago and there was a nationwide meatpackers' strike.  The OAP had threatened to extend its rationing to dairy products as well, leaving some very disgruntled folks.  

At the time of Suzanne's murder, a man involved in the black market meat trade had been murdered and decapitated.  Another OAP executive had received threats against his children and armed guards were assigned to protect him and his family around the clock.

Chicago's mayor, Edward Kelly, received a note wherein the author stated he was sorry to get Suzanne instead of James Degnan and mentioned the OPA laws.  

Despite this, and other than considering that Suzanne's killer was a meatpacker, the authorities never looked into the OPA connection in the Degnan case. 

Hector Verburgh

A 65-year-old janitor named Hector Verburgh, who worked in the same building the Degnan family lived in, was arrested and initially considered Suzanne's killer by the police, who went so far as to inform the media.  Verburgh, like Heirens, did not fit the profile that was determined following Suzanne's autopsy.  The coroner believed the killer had surgical knowledge, or at least experience working as a butcher.

Verburgh was also a Belgian immigrant who did not know English well enough to write the Degnan ransom note.  

Verburgh was held for 48 hours and during the interrogations was subjected to beatings that left him with a separated shoulder, among other injuries, that sent him to the hospital for ten days.  He continued to deny his involvement.  Police even pressured Verburgh's wife to implicate him.  Verburgh later said that the police blindfolded him and pulled him up on a bar while handcuffed.  He was given no water or nourishment.  He said that had it continued for much longer, he would have confessed to anything.  

He later sued 17 members of the Chicago Police Department for $15,000, receiving $10,000 for himself and $5,000 for his wife, who had been pressured to implicate him.

S. Sherman

The examination of the Degnan crime scene uncovered a handkerchief that police initially thought could have been used to gag the little girl.  It bore a laundry mark reading "S. Sherman."  Going through records, including military records, they found Sidney Sherman, a Marine who had served in World War II and had been recently discharged.  His current address was the Hyde Park YMCA, roughly 15 miles from the Degnan residence.  Officers were immediately dispatched the YMCA to question Sherman but discovered he had left without checking out, even quitting his job without picking up his last paycheck.  Feeling it a clear sign of guilt, a nationwide manhunt ensued, ending in Toledo, Ohio four days later.  Immediately taken in for interrogation, Sherman denied the handkerchief was his and said he had left Illinois because he had eloped with his girlfriend.  He was given a polygraph test, which he passed and authorities cleared him of the Degnan abduction and murder.

The handkerchief was later found to belong to a gentleman in New York who had no idea how it got to Chicago.  As he himself was out of the country when Suzanne Degnan was kidnapped and murdered, he was not considered a suspect.

Theodore Campbell and Vincent Costello

Two local teenagers, Theodore Campbell and Vincent Costello, came under scrutiny in the Degnan murder.  Costello had a record, having been convicted of armed robbery at the age of 16 and he lived only blocks from the Degnans.   Campbell claimed that Costello had confessed to abducting and killing Suzanne and had coerced him (Campbell) to make the ransom calls to the Degnans.  Police arrested Costello and administered a polygraph exam to him.  The polygraph indicated that neither Costello nor Campbell knew or had anything to do with the murder.

Richard Russell Thomas

A 42-year-old nurse by the name of Richard Russell Thomas was briefly considered a suspect.  He had lived in Chicago at the time Suzanne Degnan was killed but had moved to Phoenix in the months after, where he had been imprisoned for molesting one of his daughters.  He had been convicted of attempted extortion, using a ransom note in which he threated to kidnap a little girl and had a history of spousal abuse.   Thomas's medical background matched the profile authorities had come up with for the Degnan killer and his jailers noted similarities in his handwriting and phrasing and that of the Degnan ransom note.  Furthermore, when he had lived in Chicago, he had often gone to a car yard located across the street from where Suzanne Degnan's arms were eventually found.  When confronted, Thomas admitted to having abducted and killed Suzanne.  It was June 26, 1946, the same day that William Heirens was arrested.  Authorities lost interest in pursuing Richard Russell Thomas and he eventually recanted his confession.  In 1974, he died in prison in Arizona.  The majority of his interrogation over the Chicago murders, as well as his prison records, have been lost and/or destroyed.  

The Newspaper War

In 1946, the year Suzanne Degnan was killed and William Heirens was arrested and convicted, Chicago had five daily newspapers, each struggling to best the others in the city's circulation fight.  The end of World War II left a dearth of news stories and pages to fill.  Postwar life was upbeat but it didn't sell papers.  An exclusive, or a juicy headline, could boost circulation by 30,000 in a day.

The murders of Josie Ross and Frances Brown, as terrible as they were, were not front-page stories.  The abduction of a senior executive's small daughter from the bedroom of her family home and her resulting dismemberment, however, was.  In a sickening and ironic way, the Suzanne Degnan case was the answer to the newspapers' prayers, as well as the eventual arrest of the white, middle-class teenager William Heirens.  The lack of an apparent motive by Heirens to commit the murders fed the public's morbid fascination.

The newspapers were fortunate that the police department and, eventually, the prosecution was incredibly cooperative, sharing every lead and even questionable suspicion they had and leaking false information to then be printed as fact.  With their help, the papers were able to cast Heirens in the most negative light possible, with everything involving him suggesting a sinister significance.  

Eventually, the reporters were in competition with the police, sometimes arriving before them at crime scenes and picking up leads before they did.  Although the papers initially relied on the police for information, they now mocked the police for failing to apprehend the killer.  Reporters found family members of the victims and pressured them to make a positive identification of Heirens; they contacted psychological experts for their expert opinions, opinions fostered by facts provided by the press, much of which they manufactured.     

It was the July 16, 1946 Tribune cover story, in which a manufactured Heirens confession was published, that broke the dam and pushed Heirens, still protesting his innocence, to accept a plea deal.

 

The Attorneys

From July 2, 1946, the day that Heirens' attorneys were finally allowed to speak with him, they had a nearly unprecedently cooperative relationship with the State's attorney.  Although they apparently had their own questions about whether Heirens was actually guilty, they worried that the slanted press would quickly earn their client a one-way ticket to the electric chair.  So their first priority was to keep Heirens from going to trial.  By doing so, they believed they could save his life, even if he were convicted for crimes he perhaps did not commit.

Equally uncertain, apparently, was the State's attorney, William Touhy, who worried that he might not get a conviction, once the reality of the paucity of evidence became apparent in a courtroom.  

And so the prosecution and the defense worked together, sharing practically every scrap of information, until a mutually acceptable plea bargain was conceived and born.  

(Photo source)

The Next Six Decades

William Heirens became prisoner number C-06103.  On September 5, 1946, while waiting to be transferred from the Cook County Jail to Menard Correctional Center, Heirens was asked if Suzanne Degnan had suffered.  "I can't tell you," he said, "because I didn't kill her.  Tell Mr. Degnan to please look after his other daughter because whoever killed Suzanne is still out there."  

Shortly after his conviction, the stress of the case led to Heirens' parents divorcing.  They, and Heirens' brother, changed their surname to avoid the connection with Heirens.  

The same year Heirens was convicted, 1946, Josie Ross's daughter, Mary Jane Blanchard, publicly stated her belief that he had not killed her mother.  

In 1952, Heirens filed a post-conviction petition.  By that time, many scientists were disavowing the value of sodium pentothal interrogations due to the high level of suggestibility to persons who had been administered the drug.   The State's attorney, William Tuohy, admitted after the petition was filed that he had known of the issues and problems with truth serum and that he had personally paid the psychiatrist to administer it to Heirens in 1946.  That psychiatrist, Roy Grinker,  said that same year that Heirens had never implicated himself during the sodium pentothal examination.  Furthermore, Grinker had filed a report back in the summer of 1946 that he believed Heirens to be "a disassociated psychotic schizophrenic," a "mentally sick boy."  Tuohy had been provided with Grinker's report but had chosen not to share it with Heirens' attorneys, who could have used it to plead insanity for their client.

The court found, in its answer to Heirens' petition, that he had not been coerced into a confession or accepting his plea.  

In 1953, a textbook called Lie Detection and Criminal Investigation was published.  In direct contradiction to Tuohy's claims that Heirens' two polygraph examinations were inconclusive, the authors said the tests were not inconclusive but clearly established him as innocent.

In June of 1965, Heirens completed his sentence for the murder of Suzanne Degnan.  His conviction was officially discharged on December 15, when he was given an institutional parole.  

Three years later, in 1968, another appeal was denied.  One judge dissented, feeling that Heirens' guilty plea and sentencing was nothing more than a "post-mortem of a prior public trial conducted by and in the press."  

By that time, in the late 1960s, although Heirens had a clean prison record with no infractions, and with his institutional parole asserting his rehabilitation, the public had grown weary of prison rehabilitations.  He would eventually be denied 29 times.

Based on the 1946 parole regulations, Heirens should have been discharged for the Brown murder in 1975, from the Ross murder in 1983 and from the other assorted charges six months after that.  At least one parole board member admitted that the publicity from the case was the sole reason Heirens was never granted parole. Other parole board members said that they believed Heirens was fully rehabilitated within a decade, or fifteen years, of his incarceration.  

In 1980, Heirens' father died.

In 1983, after an inmate named Gary Welsh set a precedent on overturning parole denial on the basis of deterrence grounds, Heirens, who had helped Welsh with his lawsuit, appealed his own parole. It went so far as federal court, where the Magistrate ordered Illinois to release William Heirens at once.

The public was outraged at the Magistrate's order.  Suzanne Degnan's brother and sister came forward and made an appeal to authorities to fight the ruling.  Their plea got the Attorney General on board, who suggested that only Heirens himself knew how many women he had actually murdered.  The AG promised to see that Heirens stayed put in prison.  The Illinois Senate stepped in with a resolution stating that the release of Heirens would be detrimental to the people of Illinois, as he was the confessed killer of Suzanne Degnan.  All parties ignored that Heirens had been legally discharged from the term of that murder nearly 20 years earlier.

The Illinois Department of Corrections asked the federal court to review the Welsh decision, which had to that point been uncontested.  The court did so and promptly reversed its decision, now saying that inmates convicted before 1973 could be held to post-1973 rules on deterrence.   

Also in 1983, parole rules changed and inmates, including Heirens, were no longer allowed to apply for parole each year but rather every three years - with threats of extending that to ten.  

Where once freedom had seemed within reach for William Heirens, it now appeared he would spend the remainder of his natural life behind bars.

In 1987, his younger brother Jere died.  

In May of 1993, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board notified Heirens that he had satisfied his lesser sentences. 

In April of 1995, a case for Heirens' innocence in the murders of Josephine Ross, Frances Brown, and Suzanne Degnan was presented before the Prisoner Review Board.  Defense attorney Jed Stone and his team, composed of psychiatrists, lawyers, handwriting analysts, fingerprint experts and even friends of Heirens, studied the evidence in each of the cases.  Although most of the evidence in all three cases had been either lost or destroyed, and almost all the principals involved in the original investigation were deceased, the Stone team found the evidence against Heirens to be weak.    

The team found that after analysis of the confession, numerous inconsistencies were revealed.  Heirens was wrong about the locations, times, related events and other basic facts of the case.  The bloody fingerprint found on a the doorjamb of the Brown apartment was a "rolled" fingerprint, like those found on police station fingerprint cards - not often found at crime scenes.   A fingerprint that had reportedly been found on the face of the Degnan ransom note was actually found on the back and like the Brown doorjamb print, was a "rolled" print; again, not often found on ransom notes or other random pieces of paper.    The handwriting on the Degnan note was not Heirens'.  The indentation handwriting that Chicago Daily News artist Frank San Hamel claimed to have found on the ransom note was a fraud; it didn't exist but the hoax helped to send Heirens to prison.  The lipstick message on the wall of the Brown apartment was not Heirens', nor did it match the author of the Degnan ransom note.  Perhaps most explosively, it was found that an enterprising newspaper reporter, arriving at the Brown crime scene before the police, had written the message himself in order to create more interest and headlines.

Stone's team brought the name of Richard Russell Thomas to the forefront once again. Their experts found that the handwriting on the Degnan ransom note very clearly matched Thomas's known writing.

The petition was denied in January of 1999, a year after Heirens' mother died. 

In 2002, Heirens, through his attorneys, filed a petition seeking clemency.  That petition was denied.  It would be the end of the legal line for Heirens.  

In 2003, former LAPD police officer Steve Hodel, who had done his own extensive investigation into the infamous Black Dahlia murder and who was investigating the crimes for which Heirens was convicted, met William Heirens and became convinced that Heirens was innocent, going so far as to write a letter of appeal to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

William Heirens Behind Bars

The first few years of Heirens' incarceration, suffering with depression and wanting to be out of the public eye, he was held in the Psychiatric Division at Menard Correctional Center.  In 1951, he transferred to Stateville Prison, where he would remain for the next 24 years.  

Heirens spent his first five years at Stateville at the Vocational School learning radio and television repair and teaching the craft to other inmates.  It was the start of many productive decades.  For ten years he was employed as an office manager in the prison garment industry.  For five years, he was secretary to the Stateville School Program Superintendent.  He filled in as a mathematics and English teacher when needed and helped fellow inmates to obtain their GEDs.  

In 1970, Heirens was transferred to the Stateville Honor Farm and spent five years in the radio-tv shop, maintaining radios and tvs for the institution and its staff.

In 1975, Heirens transferred to Vienna Correctional Center, a minimum security facility and enrolled in the Emergency Medical Technician.  He completed the program and worked in the prison's ambulance service for a brief period.  For seven years, he worked in the prison library, maintaining the law library and assisting fellow prisoners with their legal problems.  While at Vienna, Heirens became eligible for a day release program and worked in a nearby orchard.  He also worked as the secretary to the prison's chaplain, a position he held until 1998, when he left Vienna for Dixon Correctional Center.  Shortly before he left Vienna for Dixon, he took a course in computers.  In addition to his busy work schedule, Heirens founded the Seven Steps program, a self-improvement organization for inmates.  He also helped to form a three-day religious retreat at Vienna.   

At the time Heirens was initially incarcerated back in 1946, the prison did not provide college-level courses so he took correspondence courses from various universities at his own expense.  In 1972, he became the first Illinois prisoner to receive a degree when he graduated from Lewis University with a degree in liberal arts.  He continued to study after graduating, amassing 250 credit hours.  

Heirens also developed an interest in art while in prison, eventually becoming expert in watercolor painting and calligraphy; his paintings won ribbons in art shows.  

In his later years, Heirens suffered with diabetes, affecting his eyesight and swelling his legs to the point of needing a wheelchair.  On March 5, 2012, William Heirens died at the University of Illinois Medical Center at the age of 83, effectively serving his sentence in full.

(Photo source) 

Sources

All That's Interesting (December 5, 2018).  William Heirens Was 17 When He Was Convicted of Beheading a 6-Year-Old Girl But Did He Do It? 

Chicago Reader (August 24, 1989).  Kill-Crazed Animal? 

Crime Traveler (July 12, 2015).  William Heirens: The 1946 Lipstick Killer.

Northwestern University Law (April 2002)  Clemency Petition, 

Wikipedia (2021).  William Heirens.