Creative Non-Fiction: Billy and Duke’s Trial of the Century and the Prosecution Argument the Jury Never Heard, Journal of the American College of Trial Lawyers, 63 (2018). On a sweltering 100-degree July 14, 1966, drifter Richard Speck broke into a Chicago townhouse at eleven o’clock at night. Carrying a gun and a switchblade knife, he ordered eight student nurses to sit in a circle, assuring them he would not hurt them as he tightly bound their hands and ankles with cut strips of bed sheets. Over five hours he would sodomize one, strangle her and four others to death, and stab three more twenty-two times. A citywide manhunt followed. Drunk, the twenty-four-year-old Speck slashed his wrists in a Skid Row flop house. At Cook County Hospital an intern in the emergency room spotted Speck’s tattoo “Born to Raise Hotel,” the same he had read about the murder suspect in the Chicago Tribune.

The Cook County State’s Attorney Dan Ryan assigned the Trial of the Century to a 29 -year-old prosecutor Billy Martin and 26-year-old Duke Murtaugh who had been in the office one year. Together the two tried the case against the renowned Public Defender of Cook County of four decades Gerald Getty. The two prosecutors put on the testimony of cops, cab drivers, tavern owners, a forensic pathologist, and the lone surviving student nurse. This is the story of the one argument Billy and Duke had the night before the Speck closing arguments. The two would remain the best of friends the rest of their lives and became wonderful mentors of Mr. Tarun. - Link to Story