{"id":338068,"date":"2025-12-09T22:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/338068\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T22:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:23:09","slug":"today-in-history-december-10-chilling-message-scrawled-on-wall-in-lipstick-at-murder-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/338068\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History – December 10: Chilling message scrawled on wall in lipstick at murder scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police investigating a murder scene on December 10, 1945 found a chilling message scrawled on the wall in lipstick.<\/p>\n

Chicago woman Frances Brown was found in her apartment stabbed and shot to death.<\/p>\n

Written on the wall was the message: “For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more, I cannot control myself.”<\/p>\n

It came six months after another fatal stabbing of Chicago woman, Josephine Ross. Like the Brown case, nothing of value had been taken from the apartment.<\/p>\n

\"WilliamWilliam Heirens photographed behind bars. (Getty)<\/p>\n

And in January 1946, a six-year-old girl was kidnapped and murdered.<\/p>\n

All the cases were quickly linked to the one killer by police, though the connections were somewhat dubious.<\/p>\n

After 370 suspects were questioned, some under torture, a 17-year-old was arrested for attempted burglary.<\/p>\n

William Heirens was interrogated for six days, during which time he was beaten, starved and drugged.<\/p>\n

When drugged, Heirens spoke of another boy named George Murman who committed the crimes.<\/p>\n

\"WilliamWilliam Heirens said he was pressured by his lawyers to plead guilty. (Getty)<\/p>\n

After questioning his family and friends without success, police concluded George was an alter-ego Heirens had created for himself.<\/p>\n

The alter-ego allowed Heirens to psychologically separate himself from the crimes he had committed, police hypothesised.<\/p>\n

A partial fingerprint found at the scene of the Frances Brown murder also did not eliminate Heirens as a suspect.<\/p>\n

But the print was so smudged that two-thirds of the population could have matched it.<\/p>\n

Convinced of his guilt, Heirens’ defence lawyers offered to make a deal with prosecutors.<\/p>\n

If he pleaded guilty, he would be spared the electric chair but face a life sentence.<\/p>\n

Using details he had read in the Chicago Tribune, Heirens drafted a confession under the supervision of his lawyers.<\/p>\n

Police ignored the 29 inconsistencies between his confession and the facts of the case.<\/p>\n

“I confessed to save my life,” he later said.<\/p>\n

\"WilliamWilliam Heirens became the first prisoner in Illinois to earn a degree behind bars. (Illinois Department of Corrections)<\/p>\n

After his sentencing, the local sheriff asked Heirens if the little girl he had pleaded guilty to killing, Suzanne Degnan, had suffered.<\/p>\n

“I can’t tell you if she suffered, Sheriff Mulcahy. I didn’t kill her,” Heirens said.<\/p>\n

“Tell Mr Degnan to please look after his other daughter, because whoever killed Suzanne is still out there.”<\/p>\n

At the time of his death in 2012, Heirens was the longest-serving prisoner in Illinois history<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police investigating a murder scene on December 10, 1945 found a chilling message scrawled on the wall in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-338068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}