Mental status today reveals a neatly and casually dressed . . . man who has never married. His hair is graying, he is alert and in good contact. He is normally oriented in all spheres. Memory for recent and remote events is intact. . . . Calculating ability is accurate. Knowledge of current events is appropriate. Abstracting ability with familiar proverbs is appropriate. Stream of thought and association are normal. No psychotic ideation or hallucinatory activity is elicited. When asked why he is seeing a psychiatrist today, he says, “They want to be able to come up to the public [with the assurance that] three different psychiatrists have seen me. . . . Due to the nature of the case . . . the public will have some qualms about it.”
A janitor was arrested as a suspect, grilled mercilessly, then released. A top-to-bottom shake-up of the Police Department was ordered to improve neighborhood surveillance and criminal investigation. Unlike some vicious crimes that arouse attention and quickly fade, the Degnan atrocity would not go away. Almost every week some new lead surfaced or some human-interest angle intrigued the press.
When I told several friends of my curiosity about the Heirens case, they said, “Don’t write about him! What he did is too awful, and he is too awful! They found his fingerprints. The evidence was overwhelming. He even admitted his crimes. There is nothing more to be said.”
His critical brush with the law came on June 26, 1946, when he was spotted looting an apartment on North Wayne Street. He was chased by policemen, wrestled to the ground, and finally subdued when one of the cops hit him on the head with three flower pots. During questioning by the police, Heirens could not account for his whereabouts on the night almost six months before when Suzanne Degnan was killed. Three days later police announced that the fingerprints on the ransom note left in the Degnan apartment matched those of Heirens.
Whatever incriminating evidence was amassed from these efforts would not have been admissible in a trial. A skillful defense attorney would have had little difficulty demonstrating extreme bias and reckless disregard from the start on the part of investigators.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The fingerprint and writing evidence proved questionable. The ransom note contained a “partial” print of one finger and a “latent” palm print. Although the police and the FBI said the prints belonged to Heirens, doubts remained. At first, police said the print had 6 points of similarity with Heirens’s print. When it was noted that 11 points of similarity are usually required for a positive identification, a police captain declared. “There are a thousand points! But on a latent print, one that has to be dusted and lifted–there are not always that many possibilities because it may not be clear or complete.” What he was conceding has never been made clear either. Besides, the note had been handed around to numberless persons and agencies after the murder; for a time it was even in the custody of the press.
Handwriting experts disagreed as to whether the lipstick message in the Brown apartment and the Degnan ransom note had been written by the same person, and there was no consensus that either was the work of William Heirens. Several experts, including George Schwartz, asserted that the handwriting on the notes “did not compare in any respect,” that some letters were similar “but only those that follow the usual writing pattern.” Police investigators preferred the judgment of another expert, Herbert Walter, who claimed definite similarities.
