Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images
Suzanne Degnan, aged six, was kidnapped from her home in an affluent neighborhood in Chicago on January 7, 1947. His father found a note on the floor asking for a ransom from 20.000 Dollars.
Although James Degnan spoke on the radio to plead for his daughter’s safety, the hijacker never made any contact or further demands.
Later, a police search in the neighborhood found the body of the little girl. She had been strangled to death the night of the kidnapping and then dismembered with a hunting knife. His remains were left in five different sewers and sinkholes.
At the scene of the attack, the killer had written a message in lipstick on the victim’s wall: “Please love of God catch me before I kill more, I can’t control myself.” The ransom note at Degnan’s house was the best clue investigators had to locate to the serial killer.
The note was indented from an adjoining page on the pad that took them to a restaurant at the University of Chicago, but the detectives hit a dead end and didn’t get much help from the university administration.
Just when it seemed the case was dead, a student from 17 years old named William Heirens was arrested after being caught red-handed during a robbery.
When the police searched his bedroom, they found suitcases full of stolen items, pictures of Hitler and other Nazis, and a letter to Heirens signed “George M”.
Authorities soon learned that some of the stolen items came from the homes of the victims
. However, they were unable to locate Heirens’s apparent associate, George.
Heirens was given sodium pentathol, the truth serum, and questioned, where he claimed that George Murman had killed Suzanne Degnan. However, it quickly became clear that George was not a real person, but an alter ego of Heirens himself.
Slowly, investigators pieced together the pathology that led to Heirens. Apparently, he could only find sexual satisfaction through robberies, he later discovered that killing during robberies increased the thrill .
Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against Heirens. He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Heirens died in prison at 2012.
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