Something that astounds me are criminal cases wherein the individual who was incarcerated for a given crime has lots of light on him or her suggesting they may have been wrongfully convicted and then everyone acts like nothing should be done about it. We always talk about innocent until proven guilty and about the horrors of putting an innocent person away for something they didn't do, but then it's astounding to me even further that the family and friends of victims of crime, in my focus I am discussing murder victims, cry out for justice and then when someone is captured, tried and found guilty there is nothing further for them to discuss; even if there is ample reason to believe that the convicted party was innocent! It is certainly not my contention to attack the victims of tragedy, who have experienced the horribly painful and impossible to forget experience of losing a love one by homicidal means (I experienced that myself as a child), but if you truly care about someone who's life was taken it should matter the world to you that the right person pays for it.
I was disgusted almost to the point of anger, wanting to throw something across my room, when I watched a documentary on William Heirens. Heirens recently died and is the longest serving inmate in the history of the Illinois prison system, having been imprisoned for approximately sixty-six years. Heirens was convicted of being the infamous "Lipstick Killer" a named credited to a killer who took the lives of three people in 1946 Chicago, and at two of the locations etched pleas on the wall of the crime scene in lipstick for the police to catch him before he killed again. Heirens was a 17-year old with a criminal record that consistent practically of just various burglaries. Months after the last victim of the Lipstick Killer was discovered, that being the chopped up body of a 6-year old girl (a crime for obvious reasons I won't get too detailed on), Heirens was captured after being caught in the midst of a burglary. The police had a lot of pressure on them to capture the killer, especially since he had murdered a little girl, while the city of Chicago had five major newspapers fighting valiantly for readership, and thus were willing to print anything they could if it sold papers. The moment the Chicago police had Heirens, a troubled youth with a criminal record, the pointed the finger at him with practically no evidence to support it. But the newspapers went with it, going with it to the point that they printed the detailed account of a confession that Heirens hadn't even given. After being nothing short of tortured by Chicago police, and being threatened repeatedly with claims that he was going to the electric chair, Heirens took a plea bargain, confessing to the crimes and earning three life sentences. "Evidence" used to convict him in the public's mind was either fabricated or presumed to have been fabricated (such as fingerprints of his that weren't found in initial police searches that suddenly showed up later on) and the only solid argument anyone who honestly believes he was the Lipstick Killer poses is that he confessed, and why would an innocent man plead guilt? The answer is very simple and Heirens has expressed it time and time again. With the complete and utter prejudice established against him by the police and by the newspapers there is no way he would have received a fair trial had he gone to trial for these killings. And had he gone to trial for these killings and been found guilty, which would have been the foregone conclusion, he would have received a death sentence and been electrocuted. Now how could he have pleaded his innocence if he were dead? He confessed to save his life so that in time he would be able to prove his innocence. But try as he has, and likely through ulterior reasoning, he has never been paroled.
It is astounding to me, there I use that word again, that people still honestly argue that Heirens could have possibly been the serial killer. Everyone who has known him since he was incarcerated in prison has claimed him to be one of the most productive inmates in the history of the American prison system. Beyond that, various psychologists, with focused studies into areas of crime and serial killing, have studied Heirens and his behavior and determined that he in no way fits the persona of any type of serial killer. Just watching interviews with him, as a novice individual interested in criminology, I look at interviews with various other famous killers like Bianchi, Bundy, Gacy, and so on and they all have this very similar manner of speaking and constantly pushing their innocence in a way that is sometimes overkill. This is unseen in Heirens who when he claims his innocence he does it quick, without question and gets past it. I cannot see anything in him that suggests he did these crimes and near the end of the documentary I was watching they showed a clip with the sister of the 6-year old girl that the Lipstick Killer killed. Even now, with so much suggesting that the man who spent his whole life in prison for the murder of his sister is innocent, what she had to say literally sickened me. Sister or no sister, bereaved or not bereaved, what she said was essentially, this was so long ago and we need to leave it behind us and let everything go, we're where we need to be and he is where he needs to be. I'm sorry, but we need to let it go because it was so long ago?! We're supposed to just forget it? That's real easy to say sitting in your nice warm home with the freedom to go where you want when you please. You know one of the reasons why you're able to do that? Because you weren't wrongfully convicted of multiple murders and set to prison for three quarters of your life. It baffles me how naive and in denial people can be when they say things like this. It is never to late to set an innocent person free for something they never did so how long ago it happened doesn't matter. Unfortunately it is too late for William Heirens, who passed away last year.
In closing, it's just amazing to be how sheepish people were back in the earlier part of the 20th Century, how easily they were led on like cattle and believed anything they were told. Now granted they didn't have the plethora of proof we have now as to government and police corruption in certain places, but still, the lengths people would go to just to get something taken care of and out of the way, even if it meant ruining the life of an innocent person who never did anything to deserve their presumed guilt. And even today there are misguided fools who still defend their guilt, and practically none of these people know or understand the details of these cases and so when asked why they think the way they do their answers are often very vague and unsatisfying. And look at all of the botched inept cases that came from this period of time: the Lipstick Killer, the killing of Bruno Richard Hauptman for the the killing of Charles Lindbergh's baby, Sacco and Vanzetti, the list goes on. I understand it was a different time, different people, a different system, a different world, but still there are some things that defy logic and baffle the mind. In particular the horrible injustice put upon William Heirens is right up there for me.
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