The Long,

Long Life

of the

Lipstick Killer

by Adam Higginbotham

photograph by Alessandra Petlin

when william heirens confessed to three of the grisliest murders in history, harry truman was in the white house and the nightly tv-news broadcast hadn’t yet been invented. and now, sixty-two years later—after much of the evidence against him has fallen apart— he’s still behind bars, praying for at least one free day of adult life before he dies

176 PHOTO CREDIT FOR MINOR CREDITS AND STYLING PHOTOGRAPHS by NAME HERE JUNE 2008 JUNE 2008 gq . co m 177 in the silence frances brown’s wall.

h bodsltee aatet a be rnakd bt police found no but fingerprints and no obvious ransacked, motive. been had apartment blood-splattered The had been covered with adhesive tape and her head bound in a skirt. the on North Side of home the city, her stabbed four in times in the throat. dead Her wounds found was Ross Josephine 43-year-old front pages of the Chicago papers. On the afternoon of June 5, 1945, for sixty-one years and eleven months: a man buried alive. incarcerated continuously been has far so Heirens system, prison spent behind bars. The inmatelongest-serving in the has he time the of fraction a only are years ten past these prising; sur- it’shardly five, room visiting in man old the for blurred come be- have decades and months the if But 1998. 8, April on Dixon to transferred 11-15-1928,was DOB Heirens, George William C06103, be written down somewhere.” cago, he simply gives up. - Chi of west miles hundred a nothingness wind-scoured the in out wire razor with ringed buildings low of cluster Center,a rectional long he’d spent there—elude how him. and ago, year a in been he’d system penal details— the of the part which but more, little a problem the considers yet.…” He his voice heavy says, with resignation. “Just he happened,” grew another year older.” Nothing day.… other any from di≠erent shirt strains at the buttons. But for now, he remains motionless. twiddle his thumbs or scratch his belly where his worn, grubby blue he’ll or him, of front in table plastic the toward downward flicker will eye good his likeit, much others in or place this in passed has search his memory, his mind skittering back over the many years he his to pauses he gray.when from and Sometimes, thin now is but back forehead straight combed still is statements, him witness identify from to used was it that dark and thick so once hair, His number c of visiting room five, he celebrated his birthday. remember the last time wheelchair and struggles to the the first 178 the message scrawled Department of Corrections records show that prisoner that show records Corrections of Department Illinois It’sgottaknow,”it.… don’t of trackI keep “Oh, didn’t “I says. he Cor- Dixon in here up locked spent has he long how ask I When here wasn’t I here. wasn’t I at? I was Where Let’ssee.… 78. “Uh, And the birthday before? “No unnoticed: passed that and 79, turned he ago, weeks Two in lipstick on

of the murders 06103 sits in his

didn’t didn’t even make the

where Suzanne was dismembered and tortured him for two days two for him tortured and dismembered was Suzanne where building the from janitor 65-year-old the in took They man. their found definitely had they that announced Touhy William torney at- state’s arrest, each With suspects. many arrested and women postwar era. The Chicago police questioned thousands of men and the of sensation crime national first the became case Degnan the key element in his landmark theories about serial homicide. to become a criminologist, and the Degnan murder itself became a Ressler inspired summer that of events The time. the at Chicago term the coining with credited often profiler FBI former the Ressler, Robert night,”says havecould granted for that they unlocked atalone walk and doors taken had people where neighborhoods of innocence the changed “It lives. their in point turning a Degnan’sas Suzanne murder ber ered from separate locations in sewers recov- nearby.were torso and legs child’s the hours, few next the During hair. her in tied still ribbons blue basin, catch sewer a in floating away, block a than less found was head severed Suzanne’s night, 7 At ruse: cruel a as revealed was this before long wasn’t kidnapper.It the from word for wait to and FBI, the or police the notify to not ransom, $20,000 a prepare to family the telling note crumpled a found cops room, Suzanne’s Searching tra∞c. recting and a patrolman atpress photographers, the corner, detectives, di- 10 by and police, the called Degnan Side. North the on enclave wealthy a in ment, - apart their in bedroom her from missing was daughter,Suzanne, ing of January 7, 1946, James Degnan discovered that his 6-year-old morn- the on thirty seven about terror.At with paralyzed was city ing work of the murderer they christened the Lipstick Killer. sationalist press—they splashed across their front pages the shock- control myself. for Chicago’s custom-made It was a detail - sen for heavens sake catch me before i kill more i cannot words the were lipstick, red Brown’sown using hand curling odd, an writtenin wall, room living the On them: for message a left had apparently been wiped clean of fingerprints. But this time, someone them- selves found once Policemore hampered towels. by a in lack of wrapped evidence; the head apartment had her blood, of rinsed the other side of her throat. Her body had been nakedstripped and been had that knife bread a driven into with her neck with stabbed such force and that the head blade emerged the through in shot been had Brown Hotel. Grove Pine the at apartment her of room bath- the in 11, December of morning the on later months six ered lineup, summer 1946. bill heirens in a police As the gruesome details of the murder went out on the wires, the on out went murder the of details gruesome the As remem- still time the at Chicago in children were who Those The third crime was the last, and the most savage—overnight, the The body of 32-year-old stenographer Frances Brown was discov- in police custody. five brutal days cook county jail after heirens signs in at forty-five men were on the scene: reporters, reporters, scene: the on were men forty-five a.m. who was a 9-year-old living in living 9-year-old a was killer,who serial bars, one month heirens behind confession. after his p.m.that

OPENING PAGE, : STUART DEE/GETTY IMAGES. THIS PAGE, SECOND FROM LEFT: /MCT/NEWSCOM. RIGHT: AP. RIGHT: COURTESY OF KEITH PHILPOTT

phonograph, and began a collection of South American and clas- and American South of collection a began and phonograph, radio a bought chess, play and dance to learned He busy: himself made and campus the to moved engineer.He electronics an come gifted students; he enrolled for a bachelor of science, hoping to be- to open scheme experimental an of part as Chicago of University the at place a won he 16 at and student, good a proved he places, this time sent away to a private school in Peru, Illinois. But in both and again arrested summer,was following he the Chicago in Back sentenced to spend a year at a semi-correctional school in Indiana. grams and comics—he thought it would be exciting. pro- radio from burglaries the for idea the got he parents his told Heirens time, the At home. his near apartment an in locker ment base- a into breaking for 13, of age the at 1942, June in time first the for arrested was He undershorts. men’s and shakers, cocktail handkerchiefs, also but guns and cameras, radios, useless: the and valuable the of list shopping random a people’shomes other from it.” Yet it also seemed compulsive and irrational, the things he took doing on kept just early,I do and to learned “AndI it’ssomething “We weren’t very well-o≠ financially—the folks weren’t,” he tells me. developed into a burglary habit. Today he says and it was motivated by the need easier,for money. became stealing that, After side. in- purse open an from bill dollar single a lift to door apartment chain-locked a in crack the through reaching by di≠erence the up After accidentally shortchanging himself with a customer, he made time: first the for boy, stole he delivery grocery a as when, 12 only an experienced petty criminal known to the Chicago police. He was fiction stories about rockets and space travel. But by 17, he was also science brother younger his telling and drawing of fond was who cago. He was a bright boy with a precocious interest in fixing things would see in the twentieth century. He was 17. Heirens Bill freedom of day full last the also was It Lincolnwood. in home Heirens the to back him welcome to gathered family the of members thirty and war, celebration:the from of returned just day had uncle a His was It 1946. 25, June on did he what actly - ex remember still can he says Heirens Bill since, passed has that be solved.” to going is “that announced, crime,”he one is “This thwarted. be note were all they had left to go on. Still, William Touhy would not ransom the on FBI the by found prints smudged few a 1946, mer and the police exhausted what leads they had. By the start of sum- releasing before him when he to refused confess. Months went by, graduation, 1972. photographed at his college heirens and his mother, despite despite his dimming memory Found guilty in a juvenile court of ten counts of burglary, he was In many ways, Bill apparently enjoyed a happy childhood in - Chi

and the ocean of time landscape drawings at the minimum-security heirens works on his vienna prison. but there’s much he just can’t recall: The The recall: can’t just he much there’s but He says he often thinks about the terrible things they claim he did, to talk to. His memory, once sharp and vivid, isn’t what it once was. was accused of.” I murders the for blame the taking of thought “I wrote, time,”he first the “For point: turning a as interview pentothal sodium the on back look would Heirens finished, never he autobiography an His Day in Court, “and I kept on screaming.” book 1991 the of author and friend longtime his given. “I screamed for the first time,” he later told Dolores Kennedy, ostensibly to determine if he was “malingering”; no was anesthetic behind a folding screen. On the fifth day, he was given a spinal tap, sight of out state’ssat attorney assistant the while hours three for Heirens delirium, questioned semiconscious was of Heldstate a in arrived, and he was injected with sodium pentothal—“truth serum.” psychiatrists day,two fourth the On confess. to refused he Still it. to him again and again to prompt him to explain why he had done blazing spotlight: The details of the Degnan murder were repeated ders had never been solved. Heirens was grilled relentlessly under a Frances Brown, Josephine Ross, and two other women whose mur- Deg­ of killing the for only not responsible was Heirens that insisted cops The stomach. the in him punching detective a by later and genitals, his on ether pouring nurse male American. “He knows he did it and he knows we know he did it.” the told Prendergast John Commissioner one,”Police this on miss can we how see don’t “I confession: a extract to termined a pressfrenzythatpolicebecamede- wouldgo onformonths.The mediately hurled into the headlines of the Chicago papers, starting Degnan’sSuzanne arrested murderer.had Heirens’sim- was name the ransom note, and the state’s attorney announced that the police killed Suzanne Degnan. No attorney was called. hovered at his bedside, asking the apparently comatose boy how he three of shifts rotating in cops burglaries; previous many his from the university, and a locker at an El station and discovered the haul taken.Meanwhile atroom his house, parents’ raidedhis police the being fingerprints his felt case—and Degnan the in suspect a was he say someone heard but unconsciousness feigned He bed. a to CountyCook atJail,the hospital police the strapped was he where By the time the third pot shattered, Heirens was unconscious. flower­ a day at the beach, arrived on the scene. Picking up a stack of three after trunks swimming his in still Cunningham, dutyAbner o∞cer o≠- struggled, they As him. at stairs the down leapt Heirens and revolver, own his with times three fired Constant But policeman. the revolver misfired; Heirens denies that but he ever tried to trigger shoot the the pulled Heirens that records statement Constant’s a nearby building; cornered by two policemen, he pulled the gun. ment when a tenant spotted him. Heirens ran up the back stairs of - apart open an inside from bill dollar a lifted just had He house. Degnan the from blocks few a just before, stolen had he where ing build- a burglary,in by needed he cash the get to decided Heirens closed, was o∞ce post the found he When pocket. his in revolver a girlfriend, and because he planned to his so carry much money, with he put date a for cash needed He burglaries. previous in taken the post o∞ce to cash $1,000 in savings bonds, bought with money ers’ homes to steal whatever he could lay his hands on. strang - into breaking habits, old his to returned had Bill missing, went Degnan Suzanne before weeks two 1945, Christmas by And girlfriends. of series a life—and social newfound a of distractions the with especially di∞cult, work course Hethe music. found sical

at 79, In prison more than thirty years later, typing the manuscript of manuscript later,the years typing thirty than more prison In a by talk—first to encouraged was Heirens bed, a to tied Still to matched been had prints his that day,heard third he the On to taken was he and bandaged, and Heirens’s stitched was head Ti∞n O∞cer next. happened what about disagreement is There for out set Heirens 1946, 26, June of afternoon muggy the On

pots, Cunningham smashed it repeatedly over Heirens’s head. bill bill heirens is not always nan but also for those of those for also but nan

(continued on page an an easy man William Heirens: William Herald 200) RUNOVER places and the people are sometimes con- cess to an attorney for five days, Heirens other prisoners and prepared for the drive fused; names and dates are frequently be- was finally indicted for assault with intent to Joliet, escorted by the chief of the county yond him. to kill, robbery, twenty-three counts of bur- highway police and by nine deputies armed My visits with Bill in the Dixon Correc- glary, and three counts of murder on July with shotguns. Before he left, reporters tional Center are tightly controlled by the 12, 1946. He was transferred to the county asked Margaret Heirens to kiss her son Illinois Department of Corrections. Each jail, where lawyers hired by his parents good-bye for the cameras. “Be a good boy,” must be cleared in advance and continu- explained that for the burglaries alone he she whispered. “Mind the regulations.” ously monitored by a corrections o∞cer. faced . Dixon—classified as a level-three prison, Reporters camped outside the Heirens heirens began his sentence at or high-medium security—currently holds home and each day filed stories linking Stateville, the maximum-security prison just over 2,000 prisoners and is home to him with apparently damning evidence of that housed Chicago’s most dangerous the best medical facilities in the Illinois the three murders: His fingerprints were criminals. On the day of his arrival, a crowd penal system. And although it includes the matched to ones belatedly found at the of more than 300 people and a dozen press Health Care Unit, which holds geriatric scene of the Brown killing; his handwrit- photographers gathered to catch a glimpse convicts, including Heirens, it bears little ing matched that on the ransom note. The of the handsome teenage killer. Inside, he resemblance to a hospital or retirement firestorm of public opinion raised by state’s had his head shaved in the prison barber- home. Beside the prison helipad, a sign in attorney Touhy, the police, and the Chi- shop. “Wouldn’t it be something,” he asked large red letters announces: inmates ap- cago press reached a peak of intensity on watching reporters as his heavy black curls proaching incoming aircraft will July 15, when Heirens heard over the radio fell to the floor, “if I said I didn’t do those be shot. in his cell that he had given a confession, things now?” Heirens himself can be guarded and can- reproduced in full by the Chicago Tribune At first there was nothing about prison tankerous. And perhaps because his experi- under the headline how heirens slew itself that frightened him. He recognized ence with the Chicago press has made him 3. A Tribune reporter had apparently gone that the looming penitentiary walls were distrust reporters—“I think they’re willing ahead and concocted a “confession” from just something he had to get used to. “I was to sell out their mother if they could,” he as- existing information about the crimes, and young, too—and this was all new to me,” he sures me—he’s sometimes obstructive and the other Chicago papers reprinted it as says. “I hung around with the older prison- often impatient with details he thinks are fact. To his parents, Heirens continued to ers, and they helped me understand what stupid or “oddball.” “I can’t see you’re go- insist on his innocence, but he knew that was going on. The frightening thing is los- ing to get much out of this,” he confides at if he came to trial in a city already con- ing your friends and relatives on the out- one point, his good eye flashing out an un- vinced of his guilt, there could be only one side. That’s the thing that scares you. You mistakable semaphore of irritable disdain; outcome: “I would be tried and convicted don’t have that guidance anymore.” The at another he simply observes that all these and executed,” he says. “I would get electro- older convicts taught Heirens to smoke, questions are boring. cuted.” explaining that it would help him to do And for all the undoubted misery and The state’s attorney o≠ered him a deal: his time. (“By the time you get lit up and injustice of his experience, Heirens reveals In exchange for a confession to all three blowing smoke around, getting over the neither anger nor frustration, but an im- murders, he would be spared the chair and dizziness—well, you’ve served some time pregnable front of stoicism. Eventually, I would receive three concurrent life sen- already,” he says.) They also told him to ask him why he never complains. tences, with a chance for parole in twenty drink plenty of water and walk slowly. Wa- “Well,” he says. “I complain, but it doesn’t years. Two weeks later, after being kept in ter is good for you, and walking quickly just do no good.… I’ve come to live with it.” solitary confinement and repeatedly re- attracts attention. “That was all the advice But do you think you deliberately play it hearsed in the details of the crimes by his they gave me. From there on, you pick up down—do you think it’s something you do attorneys, Heirens was ready to confess. on your own what’s going on.” because you’ve been inside so long? But when the day came and he faced Touhy Warden Joseph E. Ragen—an obese mar- “No, no—I’m mad as hell about it. It isn’t across a courtroom, Heirens again denied tinet known by the inmates as Meatball— something I can…” He trails o≠. “It doesn’t knowing anything about the murders. Fu- maintained discipline with a network of happen to very many people.” rious and humiliated, the state’s attorney informers, a thicket of rules laid out in a In all his time inside, Bill Heirens has adjourned the hearing and told Heirens’s rule book given to every inmate, and tower talked to many men serving long sentences attorneys that the deal was o≠: Now his guards with .30-caliber rifles who regularly for murder: some who admit they did it, confession would get him three consecu- practiced their marksmanship. As a result, others who say they didn’t. Some handle it tive sentences, life terms to be served end Stateville was one of the safest places in the well, others badly; to many, the reasons and to end. country to do time. And the authorities, it legal mechanisms that led to their incarcer- Heirens could see no alternative but a seems, made sure the other inmates never ation remain a mystery. They never under- full trial—and with it, the inevitability of laid a finger on Heirens. “Well, no,” he says stand why they were condemned to spend the chair: “The thing is,” he says now, “once when I first ask him if other inmates had their lives in a cell or why they haven’t been you’re dead, there’s no clearing things up. abused him. “I guess they expected that. released. Some spend all their time cursing When you’re alive, you still have a chance And Warden Ragen frowned on that. He the people who put them there. “And that,” to prove that you weren’t guilty. So I was would be notified if anything like that was Heirens tells me, “doesn’t do ’em any good.” better o≠ being alive than being dead.” going on.” Heirens says he understands exactly “If there’s nothing else to do,” he told his You were a good-looking 17-year-old how he came to be in prison and who was lawyers, “let’s do it.” boy sent to a maximum-security prison in responsible: “But there isn’t anything I can And so on August 7, 1946, after spend- 1946—and nothing happened to you? do about it. I just keep in mind there must ing forty-two days in custody and making “Oh no,” he says. “No—I didn’t get raped have been a reason for all this. And I do three attempts to commit suicide, Heirens like everybody thought I would be.” think that God had a reason for the whole confessed to the state’s attorney how, in the Mail began arriving for Bill almost im- mess that I’m in. He’s trying to teach all hu- course of two botched burglaries, he had mediately, much of it fan mail from strang- manity a lesson from it.” stabbed, shot, and killed Frances Brown ers but also a long letter from his girlfriend, and Josephine Ross and gone on to stran- Joann, who reminisced about their time after being intermittently tor- gle and dismember Suzanne Degnan. On together and brought him up to date on tured and held without food, sleep, or ac- September 6, he was manacled to a dozen what his friends were up to: “I think of you often, very often,” she wrote. “I don’t worry to go out the window, anyhow; it’s too far in Chicago, where nearly forty witnesses because I know you can take care of your- a drop, and if you drop out the window, testified at a ten-day evidentiary hearing. self.” Bill asked his mother to give Joann there’s no place to go. And the guys out But in the end, his petition was denied. As his class ring, and Joann promised to send there are too old to escape. Heck, I even he sat in the back of the car returning him a photograph the next time she wrote. He have trouble just walking to the wash- to his cell, he broke down and cried. never heard from her again. room.” It was the beginning of more than forty By the end of his first month at Stateville, Bill says that because of his health, he’s years of litigation during which Heirens at- Bill still felt harassed by the continuing at- glad to share his space with another man: tempted to win the right to a new trial or tention of visiting reporters and psychia- He needs someone to help him get up to have his conviction overturned or his trists, and was overwhelmed by isolation, when he falls. He’s recently had an opera- sentences reduced—or as he had originally hopelessness, and the grim future he saw tion to remove one cataract from his left been promised, made to run concurrently. stretching ahead of him within the rigid eye, but another makes him all but blind in He brought legal actions and petitions be- routines of Warden Ragen’s clockwork pe- his right. In all his 62 years in prison, Bill fore state, federal, and appellate courts nology. He had heard from other inmates says, he’s had a total of only six cellmates. and over the years learned enough about that if he could get himself into the psychi- “I kept cell partners a long time,” he says. the law to win parole for many of his fel- atric division at Menard—a distant sand- He can’t really say who the best one has low prisoners. “A lot of them I got out that stone fortress overlooking the Mississippi been: “Some of them had di≠erent things way,” he says. “And it made me feel good. It River on the state border with Missouri— that were good. All of them, you miss when didn’t get me out, but it got them out. So I conditions would at least be less regi- they go, because you’ve been with them for had something to show for my time.” mented. So he spent one afternoon on yard so long.… When a guy goes home…it’s like He says he could have escaped if he’d exercise collecting five large stones, which a relative died.” wanted to. There was the time back in Me- he threw as hard as he could at the corner Few paroled inmates want to maintain nard, in 1947, when he found himself alone tower. This stunt got him expressed down ties with the life they left behind inside. in the yard on a foggy day; nobody even to Menard. There, the first five years of his Even if they do, it’s all but impossible: Once knew he was there. He could have climbed sentence passed listlessly as he adopted released, they are forbidden from contact- the wall and gone. But Heirens always knew the monotonous routines of the lifer. He ing those still serving time, either in person his case was too hot. If he’d tried anything, played pinochle and handball in the yard or by mail. Bill has never really gotten used the whole country would have been out and worked in the library and the laundry. to this abrupt spiriting away of the people looking for him, so he’d never have gotten Transferred into the general population, he gets close to. One day they’re with you far. Besides, he says, “I was always thinking he found himself locked in his cell from almost all the time; the next they’re gone, of getting out other ways.” 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day. He listened to never to be heard from again. “It makes In the ’50s and ’60s, the penal system classical music on the radio and captured you do hard time then.” Over the years, it’s still emphasized rehabilitation over retri- the cockroaches that swarmed through the something that’s discouraged him from bution, and eventual release on parole— old buildings of the penitentiary. He made making friends: “ ’Cause you know what’s even for a man serving three consecutive little hats for them that he glued to their gonna happen. One day they’re gonna go life sentences—did not seem totally impos- heads before releasing them to run around home. And you’re gonna be left here.” sible. So after four years of marking time in the gallery; there was nothing else to do. Menard, he picked up his education where It was at least three years before he first on november 22, 1963, Bill Heir- he had left o≠. He started with a correspon- witnessed real violence. He was waiting ens was working as a clerk in the tailoring dence course in college algebra and began in line one afternoon to be shaken down shop back at Stateville Penitentiary when to spend every penny his parents sent him after a work detail when another inmate the news came over the radio that Presi- on tuition, to prepare himself for the day he ran across the yard, fell on the man stand- dent Kennedy had been shot. Heirens had might be released. Back up at Stateville, he ing next to Heirens, and began throwing just turned 35 but had already spent more enrolled in vocational school for radio and punches into him. Only when he saw the than half his life in prison and would soon TV repair, first as a student and then as an blood did Heirens realize that they weren’t be known by the other inmates as Old Man instructor. He developed interests in callig- punches: The man had an ice pick in his Bill. He had long since learned to keep to raphy, line drawing, and watercolor paint- fist. “He was bleeding pretty good,” he himself and adhere to the advice given on ing. In January 1965, he completed courses says. “I guess he was trying to puncture his the third page of Warden Ragen’s little blue from the Pennsylvania State University Col- heart. But all he did was make holes in him, rule book: “Above all, do your own time.” lege of Agriculture, covering Home Lawns, and not in a vital place.” Heirens has insisted upon his innocence Propagation of Plants, Shrubs for Home I ask him what he felt when it happened. almost from the moment his sentence be- Grounds, and Landscape Planning for “Uh, nothing,” he says. “Nothing I could gan, when he realized that if he recanted, Small Properties. Later that same month, have done about it. I didn’t even know he the grilling—the beating and the torture— he appeared for the first time before the Il- was being stabbed.” wasn’t going to start all over again. When linois Parole and Pardon Board, requesting But you weren’t frightened—or alarmed? he first arrived at Stateville in 1946 and clemency on his sentence. He told them he “No. Because it wasn’t happening to me. psychiatrists were still regularly question- hoped to be released in five years, or per- It was happening to somebody else.” ing him, Bill asked an orderly what they haps ten. His petition was denied. would do to him if he told them he hadn’t In 1966, having spent twenty years in today heirens is one of thirty murdered anyone. prison, Heirens was deemed by the pa- terminally ill and geriatric patients in the “Well, kid,” he replied, “I don’t give a role board to have served out the first of Health Care Unit at Dixon Correctional damn one way or another. And now you’re his three life sentences, for the murder of Center. He shares a room with Jack, who in prison for it, nobody else will care one Suzanne Deg­nan. He still had two more to works in the prison greenhouse but has to way or another, either.” serve, one after the other. be careful because he’s recently been fitted In 1949, at the suggestion of a jailhouse with a pacemaker. Their room—not a cell— lawyer he’d met on yard exercise, he began “it was politics,” Heirens says is twenty feet square, and there is a window to prepare a petition to win a hearing to re- now, “from the get-go. When a crime hap- but no bars. examine the evidence and circumstances of pens, people want it solved right away, and “They haven’t come around to putting his sentence. It took him three years, and in they don’t care how it’s solved.” He insists bars in yet,” Bill says. “But no one’s going November 1952, Heirens traveled to court that if only the police and the state’s attor- ney had taken their time, they could have fruit and vegetables were cultivated be- tempted to win a postconviction hearing. found the real killer—“instead,” he tells me, yond the prison walls. But with Warden In denying his petition, the presiding judge “of picking on somebody else.” Ragen now long gone, the prison was a pointed out that nearly forty-four years had Yet there are those who remain con- dangerous place, in the control of warring passed since Heirens had pleaded guilty vinced that the old man in visiting room Chicago street gangs. O≠ered a transfer to and that everyone else involved in sending five at Dixon is the monster responsible Vienna, an experimental new prison in the him to prison was long dead. “As is with for the atrocious crimes committed in 1945 gently rolling farmland near the Kentucky life,” he concluded, “all litigation has a be- and 1946. As part of his FBI profiling work border, Heirens took it. The institution had ginning and, of necessity, an end. The end on serial killers, Robert Ressler interviewed no guard towers—not even a fence—and for William Heirens has long since passed many of the most infamous murderers in was organized more like a college campus as far as these claims are concerned.” United States history—Charles Manson, than a prison. Inmates were known as “res- With all other legal means exhausted, David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy—and he vis- idents,” could move freely around the com- parole remained his last hope for release. ited Heirens twice, in the late ’70s and in plex wherever they liked, and wore civilian Meanwhile, as the prison system grew the early ’80s. “It was very exciting to see clothes. After more than three decades in gradually more overcrowded and violent, the guy that I was so fascinated by when prison blues, it took Heirens a year before the experiment at Vienna neared its end. I was a kid,” he tells me, “kind of like see- he could comfortably pick out outfits each In 1994 a fight between gang members ing a baseball or football hero. Heirens was day. “It took me a while,” he told Dolores from the Gangster Disciples and Metro- an antihero to me.” Ressler remains cer- Kennedy, “to get the hang of it, picking the politan East St. Louis ended with inmates tain that Heirens was once a psychopathic right color combinations.” uprooting six-foot cedar fence posts from killer. “He’s kind of a pathetic old man now. And there was something else di≠erent the grounds to use as clubs. The following I have no doubt that releasing him would about Vienna: It was a coed prison. For year, DEA agents removed the Gangster not be dangerous to society. However, it’s the first time since he was 17, Bill Heirens Disciples’ leader, Larry Hoover, from the the magnitude of his crimes that keeps him regularly found himself in the company of Honor Dorm he shared with Heirens and in prison. He did some horrible things.” women. Some female prisoners took advan- convicted him of running the gang’s drug- But after so many years, it’s simply too tage of the freedoms of Vienna by selling dealing operations from Vienna. late to prove whether Ressler’s convictions naked photographs of themselves for $5 By the time Heirens left in 1998, sick are well-founded. Six decades after his con- each and, occasionally, simply selling them- with the diabetes that would soon confine fession, almost all the evidence that helped selves. Although punished with the loss of him to a wheelchair, Vienna had become put Bill Heirens in jail has been discredited. good time and a return to segregation if a penitentiary just like any other. But to The fingerprints connecting him to the discovered, there were men at Vienna who Bill Heirens, it seems that life beyond the crime scenes may well have been planted. managed to have sex with the women pris- walls has changed in the same way it has in Independent experts have shown that his oners. Bill, however, was not one of them. prison: Everyone has been made to su≠er handwriting matches neither the Degnan He hasn’t had sex with a woman since he because of the acts of a few individuals, and ransom note nor the lipstick scrawl on the got inside. “Didn’t have any outside, either,” people today have less liberty than they did wall of Frances Brown’s apartment; indeed, he says. “I could be made into a pope and in 1946. “If you’re given so much freedom,” veteran newspapermen in Chicago say that I’ll have the celibacy taken care of.” he says, “eventually that freedom will be the message of the Lipstick Killer wasn’t Every fall he worked on day release, pick- taken away.” written by the murderer at all but by a re- ing apples at a local orchard. He trained as porter who arrived at the scene before po- an EMT and worked on an ambulance in the file held on Bill Heirens at lice and decided to add an extra twist to the the community. Outside, in a small garden, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board o∞ces in story. In the meantime, the decay of physi- he began to grow flowers. He also spent a Springfield, Illinois, is more than two feet cal evidence has placed the case far beyond lot of time in the law library. “I was pretty thick—a bureaucratic monolith of ragged, the reach of DNA analysis. The surviving knowledgeable on the current law, which yellowing statements, letters of support, fingerprint evidence is locked in the vaults changes all the time,” he says. “But if you rebuttals, and appeals for executive clem- of the Chicago Police Department, and the get it at the right time, you win.” ency. Transcripts of parole-board meetings state cannot be compelled to surrender it And in 1983, after years of litigation over record its members remarking on Heirens’s for retesting. the interpretation of parole law and time impressive record of rehabilitation more “I am not persuaded by his guilt,” says served, he did: U.S. Magistrate Gerald P. than forty years ago; in 1975 they told him Steven Drizin of Northwestern Law School’s Cohn ordered that Heirens be released, on “you have done beautiful things.” They also Center for Wrongful Convictions, who has the grounds that he had been rehabilitated. warned Heirens not to expect release un- worked on Heirens’s case for the past seven Heirens began, finally, to make prepara- til the public’s memories of the killings of years. “I tend to lean toward his innocence, tions to begin life as a free man. He ar- Ross, Brown, and Degnan were finally bur- but I recognize that I can’t prove it.” ranged employment at the orchard and a ied. “There are just too damn many people trailer there where he could live. that remember this case,” one panel mem- in november 1975, Heirens But the court’s decision rekindled the ber said in 1965. “You have to just allow turned 47. He had spent almost thirty blaze of publicity that had surrounded his time to be in your favor on this.” years inside, and the skinny, handsome case in 1946. In Chicago, then state’s attor- But neither time nor his model record teenager was now a paunchy middle-aged ney Richard M. Daley and seven former po- is apparently on Heirens’s side. Although man. Three years earlier, he had become lice superintendents formed the Committee the number of people who remember the the first convict in the state of Illinois to to Remember Suzanne Degnan; Degnan’s Lipstick Killer continues to dwindle, Betty graduate with a college degree; he was ac- surviving sister Betty collected signatures Degnan, who was only 10 years old when companied to the ceremony by two prison from local politicians on a petition to her younger sister was murdered, has vig- guards. His watercolors—European land- keep Heirens behind bars; the state senate orously opposed every parole application scapes of places he had never seen, drawn passed a resolution against his parole; and Heirens has made since 1983. Now 72, she from postcards and pictures clipped from Magistrate Cohn received death threats. claims to remain terrified that the half- travel magazines—sold well in penal art In 1984 the U.S. Court of Appeals re- blind man in the wheelchair at Dixon might shows. He’d finally been reclassified as a versed the decision, and Heirens remained one day be set free. “There can be no sense minimum-security prisoner and was given in prison. of security if he gets out,” Betty’s younger a job on the Stateville Honor Farm, where In February 1990, Heirens once again at- brother James said last year. And whether Heirens was truly responsi- had a lobster. Don’t know what a lobster ble for the murders of Degnan, Brown, and tastes like.” Ross apparently no longer matters to those He knows there’s a lot of catching up now considering his parole. “I don’t know to do. In prison he doesn’t see anything of that they really care so much about his the world outside except what he watches guilt or innocence anymore,” Steven Drizin on the news and in the movies. He spends says. “I think they’re just invested in keep- much of his time in his room watching the ing him locked up for the rest of his life.” Discovery Channel and, at night, Turner On August 2, 2007, the Illinois Prisoner Classics. Over the years, he’s even caught Review Board denied Bill Heirens parole the odd prison movie. In the middle of his for the thirtieth time, voting 14–0 against PRB file, in a binder of documents sup- his petition for release. “God will forgive porting his application for executive clem- you,” board member Thomas Johnson said ency in 2002, there’s a copy of an e-mail afterward, “but the state won’t.” message from a former inmate who re- Heirens’s case is due to be considered calls one in particular: Back at Vienna, he by the PRB once again in June this year. came upon Heirens sitting alone in front Board member Craig Findley says that Bill of the dayroom TV, watching The Shaw- is unlikely to be released; there hasn’t been shank Redemption. The scene just begin- a single vote in his favor since 2001. “Hei- ning showed Brooks, the geriatric prison rens is radioactive,” he says. “The protest librarian, finally being released after fifty has been as vigorous today as it has been years in Shawshank Penitentiary. Brooks for many years.” tries to make it on the outside, but after all Privately, even some of those who know those years in a cell, he finds nothing in the Bill Heirens best admit that he is almost world but loneliness and alienation, a me- certain to die in the Health Care Unit of nial job, and a room in a halfway house. As Dixon Correctional Center. the scene ends, his feet dangle at the top of the frame, an institutionalized man killed bill heirens gets very few visi- by freedom. tors these days. “Early on,” he tells me one “Bill,” the message reads, “could not have afternoon in November, “there was quite been watching more intently.” a few. As time went on, well, my family died away, so I don’t get to see them any- adam higginbotham is a writer living more. Old friends—I still get to see some of in New York. This is his first story for gq. them.…” A couple of times a year, three old class- mates from high school will drive over to Dixon together; Dolores Kennedy comes from Chicago whenever she can. But almost everyone else is dead. In many ways, he says, he knows that his life has been wasted. There are a lot of things he’d like to have done if he hadn’t been arrested in 1946. He could have gotten in on the ground floor of solid-state elec- tronics or become an inventor; he’s had a few ideas that he thinks could have made him rich. Or maybe he’d just have started a business: “Right at that time is when pizzas were starting. Going into the pizza business would be good as a starter.” Above all he re- grets not taking advantage of the chances he had as a teenager, that he became a petty crook. “Everybody, when they’re a kid, they have curiosity. But with me, it took a wrong turn.” Bill says that he’s never considered any of the prisons he’s been in as home; that’s how you become institutionalized. “My home was outside. If I talk about going home, it would be outside.” He’s still expecting to get out sometime soon. He says he’d like to travel, to see the wilderness and the cities. He plans to take a transcontinental railroad trip on one of those trains with an observation car. A prisoners’-aid group has already agreed to buy him the ticket; all he has to do is get his feet on-board. He’ll eat well, too. “I’d try di≠erent foods,” he says. “Lobsters. Never