Columnist wanted to free killer he helped send to prison

Horrifying “Lipstick Killer” William Heirens, the longest-serving inmate in Illinois history, might never had been convicted if not for the work of my dear departed Daily Herald columnist friend Jack Mabley and his former newspaper crew at the Chicago Daily News.

The 83-year-old Heirens died this week in prison, where he spent the last 66 years of his life. Jack, who died in 2006 at the age of 90 after a long career including 16 years as a Daily Herald columnist, repeatedly said during the last decade of his life that he thought Heirens, who was in a wheelchair and suffered from diabetes, had been a model prisoner, was no longer a threat to society and would save taxpayers money if he were released to a nursing facility beyond the prison walls.

In that spirit, Jack supported the efforts of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions to win Heirens' release. But he disagreed with any assertions that Heirens was innocent.

“I think Heirens should be released,” Jack wrote in a 2002 column, “but I have no doubt he killed Suzanne Degnan.”

Jack, as was often the case, was the first reporter on the scene of the crime the morning of Jan. 7, 1946, shortly after police were called to investigate the disappearance of the 6-year-old Degnan girl. In this case, Jack happened to live a few doors north of the crime scene. Degnan's parents found her first-floor bedroom empty, her window open and a ladder leaning against the house.

“Law enforcement was casual in those days,” said Jack, who once took a killer's confession at the police station because he was the only guy there who knew how to work a typewriter. Jack walked up to the beat cop stationed behind the Degnan's house.

“Is that her room?” Jack asked. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Go ahead,” the cop responded.

“I climbed in the window, looked around the little girl's bedroom, didn't touch anything and backed out the window and jumped a few feet to the ground,” Jack later wrote in his column. “I landed feet first in the soft ground under the window.”

Those footprints were thought to be a major clue in the investigation for a brief time.

Police found the little girl's severed head that night in a sewer after an anonymous tip. When they discovered the building where the girl apparently had been dismembered, the janitor walked in and was grabbed by police.

He underwent a brutal police interrogation that left him hospitalized, but unwilling to confess to a crime he didn't commit. A ransom note found in the girl's bedroom had been sent to crime labs, but returned without any leads. Police allowed Jack and his co-workers at The Daily News to see if they could make any sense of the note.

The newspaper's graphic artist, Frank San Hamel, discovered that the note had been written on a pad, and that it still contained indentations of the note written before the ransom note.

Jack wrote about how the artist determined the note came from a University of Chicago dorm and that the indentation of the letters “eire” could be found on the note.

Heirens, a 17-year-old known burglar and University of Chicago student, was soon arrested. He was injected with sodium pentothal (the “truth serum”) and subjected to interrogation methods that wouldn't be legal today. Faced with circumstantial evidence and threatened with the death penalty, Heirens confessed to the Degnan murder and the slayings of two other women, one of which gave him the “Lipstick Killer” nickname because the killer scrawled in lipstick on the wall: “For heAVenS SAke cAtch me BeFore I kill more I cannot control myselF”

Jack had a copy of the FBI telegram reading, “Latent palmprint on kidnap note identical left palm print of William Heirens. John Edgar Hoover.”

Heirens soon recanted his confession and maintained his innocence until his death this week. In a state infamous for false confessions and inaccurate convictions, Heirens convinced some legal experts that he didn't kill anybody.

“There is no question in my mind that Heirens is guilty,” Jack concluded in one of his final columns at the Daily Herald and one that serves as a benediction for this sad case. “He was a sicko then. He has paid dearly and has earned some peace.”