[chris]

On the surface, William Heirens seemed to have every advantage. Born in 1929, he was the only child of affluent parents in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood. His family weathered the Great Depression without serious difficulty, and if Heirens had any problems, they sprang from within. At age eleven, he observed a couple in the act of making love and told his mother, receiving the sage advice that "All sex is dirty. If you touch anyone, you get a disease."

In later years, while necking with a girlfriend, Heirens spontaneously burst into tears, vomiting in the girl's presence and fleeing the scene in abject humiliation. His adolescent frustration began to find other outlets, with Heirens dressing in women's garments, achieving climax as he leafed through a scrapbook filled with photos of Hitler and other ranking Nazis.

In 1942, at age 13, Heirens was arrested for bringing a loaded pistol to school. His parents were stunned when police came calling, turning up a rifle and three more pistols behind the refrigerator, four more weapons hidden on the roof. A judge agreed to grant probation, on condition that William be sent to a youth facility at Peru, Indiana. Returning home after three years "in school," he was bright enough to enroll at the University of Chicago as a sophomore, skipping over the usual freshman classes. At the same time, he was honing his skills as a housebreaker, finding sexual release through burglary and the risk of invading strange dwellings.

On June 3, 1945, Heirens was looting the Chicago apartment of Josephine Ross when his victim woke and caught him in the act. Attacking ruthlessly, he cut her throat and stabbed her several times, relenting at the sight of blood and trying hopelessly to bind her neck with bandages. That done, he spent two hours at the scene, wandering aimlessly from room to room as he enjoyed multiple orgasms.

Four months later, on October 5, he was surprised while prowling the apartment of an army nurse, Lieutenant Evelyn Peterson. Heirens decked her and fled, leaving fingerprints behind, but police failed to match them with the records from his earlier arrest.



On December 10, 1945, 33-year-old Frances Brown emerged from her bathroom to find Heirens rifling her purse. As she began to scream, he shot her twice, then fetched a kitchen knife to finish off the job.

Dragging his victim into the bathroom, Heirens tried in vain to wash her blood away, then left her draped across the tub, half-covered with a housecoat. On the mirror, in his victim's lipstick, Heirens wrote: "For Heaven's sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself."

A month later, on January 7, 1946, he invaded the bedroom of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan, abducting the child and leaving a written demand for $20,000 ransom as a ruse, to baffle the police. Retreating to a nearby basement, Heirens murdered the child and dismembered her remains with a hunting knife, wrapping the pieces in paper and dropping them into storm drains as he roamed the streets in early morning darkness. The case was still unsolved on June 26, when police answered a prowler call on Chicago's north side. Confronted with uniforms, Heirens drew a pistol and squeezed the trigger twice, his weapon misfiring each time. Undaunted, he began to grapple with the officers, struggling fiercely until he was cracked on the head with a flower pot.

In jail, the teenage killer blamed his crimes on an alter-ego, "George Murman" -- short for Murder Man. Despite a plea of innocent by reason of insanity, Heirens was convicted of triple murder in September 1946 and sentenced to three consecutive life terms. A federal judge ordered Heirens' release in April 1983, citing his alleged "rehabilitation," but the ruling was overturned on appeal by the prosecution, in February 1984. At this writing, he remains in prison, still convinced of George Murman's existence. "To me, he is very real," Heirens says. "He exists. A couple of times I had talks with him. I wrote lots of notes to him, which I kept."


Heirens confessed to the following three murders

• Josephine Ross, 1945
• Frances Brown, 1945
• Suzanne Degnan, 1946

The following image was taken at the crime scene of one of Heirens murders, the words were written in lipstick and read "For heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself".



After being taken from his cell at the Dixon Correctional Center on February 26, 2012, due to health problems, Heirens died at the University of Illinois Medical Center on March 5, 2012, at the age of 83.

[murofhsirgo]

This guy I have my doubts about. It seemed alot of things he told to law enforcement were simply repeated statements he had heard from them

[AliceInChains]

How did they figure that he's rehabilitated if he still believes that his alter ego is "very real to him"?

That's not OK on any level, glad the prosecution won the case against his release - don't see this guy going free working out well...

[K53]

Now he has to deal with the almighty.

[LilCurious]

He was innocent of these murders. Anyone who is interested should read "Most Evil" by Hodel. The perpetrator of these murders was the same serial killer who murdered Elizabeth Smart (the Black Dahlia).
Heirens was a burglar but no killer. After being caught stealing a $1 bill and attempting to flee the scene, the police (with rising pressure from the public to catch the perpetrator of the heinous murder of a child) framed him to wash their hands of the case. Despite claiming his innocence, he was grilled for days, deprived of sleep and food, kept from seeing his parents and much worse. They poured ether on his testicles and injected him with Sodium Pentothal. He was also subjected to painful spinal taps without anesthesia and made to take a lie detector test without legal consent. He passed the polygraph and maintained his innocence despite all this.
After being threatened with the death penalty, Heiner finally gave a confession, but it was unsupported by the facts of the case. He claimed to have strangled the child with his bare hands when in fact a clothesline was used to strangle her. He was forced to give writing samples that expert analysis revealed absolutely no similarity to the writings of the actual killer. Further expert analysis determined the murderer had to be a surgeon of other trained medical professional capable of the refined skill in dismembering the body. Anyone else would have created a hatchet job. This was not the work of an uneducated teen.
There were fingerprints discovered that were found to be unreadable smudges and the Chicago PD Captain said Heirens was cleared of all charges. Suddenly the fingerprints became readable and within 12 days of the captain's statement, Heirens was suddenly and irrefutably guilty. It also didn't help that the assigned Defense Attorney was by his own words a close friend of the victim's father.
There are numerous other issues with evidence and testimony that prove Heirens was framed for these murders and that the Dahlia killer was the true murderer...a very rich doctor who paid off a highly corrupt police force at that time. Several attempts have been made to exonerate Heirens, but that would have revealed a deplorable display of corruption and injustice to this man, so he remained in prison until his death. For more about the crime, I'd highly recommend "Most Evil", as well as Hodel's book, "Black Dahlia Avenger".

[jowils]

this is a very interesting case. I will be reading the suggested material in the interest of hearing all sides of this. thanks for the post and thanks for the rebutting info. maybe this is not too far from the "Halbach" case in essence.

[Tami0813]

I will be reading more as you recommended. If the true murderer was set free, especially with the graphic nature of the crimes, it horrible to imagine. Thanks for the suggestions!

[Schrödinger]

I always thought he was very good looking as a lad.. what a waste

[Ninjavandal]

A sick, spoiled little bastard got his just rewards.