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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. I am your Norwegian host, Tamas Viborg Thun.
We stay in Chi-Town, Chicago, for one last time to cover the fascinating case of Bill Hirons, infamously accused of being none other than the Lipstick Killer. I know I mention Patreon every single week.
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Rumors are flying that you've got me sighing.
We left last week's episode, just as Bill Hirons had pulled a gun on a police officer, in an attempt to flee after he had been caught red-handed breaking and entering. Bridewell was the hospital attached to the Cook County Jail.
The first thing Bill became aware of when he awoke there, cranium bandaged, were a couple of words. Hirons. Suspect. Child. Degnan. Whispered near his ear.
His eyes still closed, he could feel his fingertips being forcibly pressed down, one after another, onto a cold ink pad, then onto the crinkle of paper. It was a sensation he recognized even half-conscious. People into his room, people out, voices fading, voices lingering into a monotonous undertone, saying nothing.
He wasn't sure, but he thought he felt himself being wheeled from one room to another. A jarring movement under his mattress. The squeak of bedwheels. Interns in white coats. Something about taking x-rays of his head. Then a voice saying something like, Now rush him back to the examining room where everyone's waiting. Then being wheeled once more.
down fuzzy hallways with fuzzy overhead lights, and into a room with more fuzzy overheads, where many voices mixed together, chaotically this time, to an orgy of babbling. Taz voices, most of them. Loud voices. And faces, too. Blurred and twisted. Fat noses, shoving into his, glaring eyeballs, nearly tapping his own.
He felt hands, meaty hands, shoving him while he lay in bed. And now he became aware he was strapped in. And the shoving continued. Big hands with fingers and thumbs, like little logs, pushing his shoulder, pinching his elbows, pounding his hips and jabbing his ribcage. And the more he woke, the harder they pushed and pinched and pounded and jabbed.
It soon became apparent to Hirons that he was being accused of more than break-ins. He listened to their questions, and he slowly realized they, the police, were blaming him for killing the Degnan girl. They were asking questions about her and asking why he loved to cut up little children. The more he protested, he said later, the more they beat him. Hour after hour.
The grilling persevered until it heated red-hot. At one point, a patrolman allegedly slammed his fist so hard against his testicles he nearly vomited. One shift of policemen left and another took their place. "'Aren't you sorry, Bill?' his tormentors continued.
"'Tell us how you did it. You know how you did it, and God knows you did it. Confess, Bill, and save yourself. We know you're guilty. You killed her, you son of a bitch. The game's over. You're guilty. Now tell us how you did it. Tell us, Bill.' Grueling questions and threatening accusations drummed without let-up over and over and over the first few days he was in Bridewell Hospital.
Whether it was day outside or night mattered to neither the suspect nor the inquisitors. When fully conscious, Hirons found himself strapped spread-eagled onto his cot, with each arm and leg tied down. A policeman, whose name he thought was Hanrahan,
picked up where other interrogators had left off, asking the same questions, hurling the same accusations, but walloping harder physically than any of the others. The small examining-room where he lay was, at any given time, packed with scowling men in uniforms blue, silent eyeballs sunken in umbrage under detective Stetson fedoras.
inquisitive brows that spoke strange lingo, like doctors would speak. Two psychiatrists, who introduced themselves to Hirons as Dr. Haynes and Grinker, told him that they were going to put him to sleep. The doctors both only smiled unaffected, as Hirons told them he didn't need drugs to sleep.
and simply resumed their business with the nonchalance of a family physician taking a patient's temperature they pricked the boy's right bicep with a needle and asked him to count backwards starting with one hundred
They watched him smirk, until he, at number ninety-four, drifted off into the subconscious depths that only sodium pentothal, also known as trus serum, could induce. According to authorities, Hirons, under the power of the serum, spoke of a strange alter ego, a shadow named George, who committed his crimes for him.
The figure of which he spoke was reflective of Robert Louis Stevenson's fictional character, Edward Hyde, who haunted Dr. Henry Jekyll. George, according to those who were present at the interview, slipped in and out of Hiram's life uncontrollably, a hoodoo, relentless and deadly and void of conscience.
In short, Hirens showed strong indications of being schizophrenic, living two personalities within one flesh and blood shell called William Hirens. Years later, Hirens told author Lucy Freeman, who wrote Before I Kill More, that he woke up remembering very little of what he said under the eminence of the serum.
upholding his innocence he nevertheless recalls one thing in particular i quote after the use of the hypnotic drug i had the strange compulsion to take the blame for all the charges pressed against me it must have been a post-hypnotic influence and he attested
In the beginning, it didn't have much effect. But later, it overcame my own will and judgment of my innocence for these crimes. End quote. When Hirons, under the drug, was asked George's last name, he supposedly told the examiners he wasn't quite sure that it was a murmuring name. According to Hirons, the police translated it to Merman.
And the press, afterwards, dramatized it to Murder Man. Immediately after Hirons' arrest, the police began to wonder. The young man they had in their custody, this college kid who admittedly had been so adept at climbing in and out of high apartment windows to steal, and who in all likelihood might have butchered the Degnan youngster.
had also killed Josephine Ross and Francis Brown. He was being uncommunicative, and, outside the ramblings of a George-murder-man-fantasy-character, and withstood their torrents of punches, kicks, and taunts to leave them highly suspicious, yes, but still guessing.
Pressure was certainly put on the lab to find the one incontestable piece of evidence against Hirons, a fingerprint. And the police had at their disposal two sources from which to decipher a possible Hirons print. One was the ransom note, and the other...
was the door jam from Francis Brown's apartment, where a bloody smudge was found. While Hirons was still prone in the Bridewell Hospital bed, the Chicago Police Department announced that a print made by a small left finger on the corner of the ransom document matched that of Bill Hirons. Fingerprints are measured by loop patterns.
The loop pattern of Bill's fingerprints was of the most common pattern found, that of the majority of the populace, but in points of comparison, nine points matched the print on the note. Hirons supporters at the time, however, were quick to allude to the FBI handbook, which stated that twelve, not nine, identical points is needed to make a conclusion.
Nevertheless, the department believed it had its man, and, with renewed glow, their eyes turned to the evidence left at Miss Brown's death scene. On the 30th of June, Captain Emmett Evans had told newspapers that Hirons had been cleared of suspicion in the Brown murder, as the fingerprint left in the apartment was not his. In addition, the night clerk—
who had seen a man leaving the hotel shortly after the time of the murder, viewed Bill at Bridewell Hospital and announced he was not the man he had seen. However, twelve days later, Chief of Detectives Walter Storms revealed to the press that the bloody smudged print on the door of the victim did, after all, belong to Bill.
Chicagoans remembered the case well. The Navy WAV was maimed and mutilated, and upon whose walls had been written in red lipstick, reading, "'Catch me before I kill more. Cannot control myself.'" At that point, Bill Hirons became the author of that message, and from then on was known as the Lipstick Killer.
a hellish moniker he would carry into infamy. George W. Schwartz, a handwriting expert, was summoned. After comparing both samples of the killer's writing, note and wall, to term papers Hirons had written at the university, he declared, "'The individual characteristics in the two writings do not compare in any respect.' Another professional opinion was immediately sought."
This time, too, he hired Herbert J. Walter, the man whose handwriting analysis had cornered the killer of the Charles A. Lindbergh baby twenty years earlier. For four weeks, Walter pored over available Hirons-authored school papers. Finally, he announced that not only was that University of Chicago student the scribe of the ransom note,
but also had scrawled the lipstick message. Despite some attempts to disguise his natural hand, Hirons undoubtedly had authored both, he said. On the fifth day in custody, a nurse and doctor lay Bill in a fetal position and ordered him to remain so until they were done with what they needed to do. What they planned was a spinal tap—
drawing fluid from Hirons' spine. This was done with no anesthetic preparation, apparently to rule out any possibility of brain damage. For Bill, the p*** was excruciating. At the bureau, officials carted him into a small den, where they told him to take a lie detector test. Hirons was in such physical agony that
that the test was rescheduled for four days later, at which time it was administered. Test results were, said State's Attorney Toohy, inconclusive. In 1953, John E. Reed and Fred E. Inbaugh, inventors of the instruments that measured Hirons' responses, published test findings in the textbook Lie Detection and Criminal Interrogation.
According to them, the test was not inconclusive, and again I quote, Murderer William Hirons was questioned about the killing and dismemberment of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan. On the basis of the conventional testing theory, his response on the Cod test clearly establishes him as an innocent person, end quote.
before the lie detector test but not long after the truth serum fiasco bill hirons asked to see captain michael ahern one of the few policemen who had showed him some kindness he told ahern that he had more to say about his alter ego george
"'Ahern sent for the state's attorney to he, and a stenographer, "'in front of whom Hirons admitted a kinship to his dark other half. "'He admitted that there was a George he talked to, who did things for him, "'who may have been responsible for the crimes that were being tacked to Bill Hirons. "'It was George who stole those guns, "'who may have crawled into Zeus and Degnan's window,
and who may have killed those other women. In less than a week, the state's attorney's office had built up an almost impenetrable case against Bill Hirons, with the evidence mounting against him. The accused was refused permission to speak to his lawyers until six days after his arrest. He didn't know much about lawyers, and of his counsel he knew only their names. There were three—
The two Coughlin brothers, John and Malachi, a pair of the smartest criminal lawyers in Chicago, and Roland Towle, a whiz in civil law, on the 1st of July, they petitioned to have Hirons, who was looking quite the worse for wear, released from the custody of the Chicago police and transferred to the sheriff's office.
The lawyers met with him the next day to represent him at his arraignment, where he was charged with a large number of burglaries and the murders of Josephine Ross, Francis Brown, and Suzanne Degnan. Bail was set at $270,000, an enormous sum back then,
and the Coughlin saw that he was safely transported from the city's police headquarters downtown to the county jail under the wardenship of Frank Sain. After signing in at his destination, he collapsed from fatigue at the admissions desk. He was hospitalized for ten days. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up.
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Worse for Hirons, the police uncovered a scrapbook on Nazi soldiers and a copy of a book on sexual deviation, entitled Psychopathia Sexualis. The latter book is a history of dark fetishisms and sexual oddities. It includes tales of famous dismemberments and other sadomasochistic crimes.
If the press went wild with the revelation of the find of a surgical kit, it absolutely tilted over the presence of that particular book. In light of what happened to Suzanne Degnan, Psychopathia Sexualis was the worst possible keepsake for anyone accused of her death to have had in his possession.
Also, the prosecution team worked overnight to find victims' hairs or bloodstains on Hirons' clothing, but could detect nothing. State's attorney, Toohey, understood that so far even the macabre sex book was circumstantial evidence. He needed more to convince the public of the young man's guilt. The state admittedly needed an eyewitness.
For instance, someone who had seen Bill in the vicinity of the Degnan home at the time of the killing. They found that persona in 25-year-old George E. Sobgronski, a soldier on furlough. When shown a photo of Bill Hirons on the 11th of July, Sobgronski said he was unable to identify the man as Hirons. Only five days later...
At a criminal hearing, Sobgranski pointed a finger at Bill and said, That's the man I saw. The testimony and evidence continued to pile up, and Hirons knew the end was near. He knew that the state's attorney's office and the police already had condemned him, and were expecting a confession.
The five metropolitan newspapers were literally at war, scrambling over each other for the first to run the confession story. When it came, within days, Bill Hirons, on the advice of his lawyers, would accept a plea bargain offered by the office of the state's attorney.
The police, he felt, had found him guilty. The newspapers advertised his guilt and hammered it home with a fiery eloquence. He would confess to the three murders to avoid the electric chair. In a later interview, he simply stated, I had to be guilty to live. A date was set, the 30th of July, for his official confession before the state's attorney. I managed, dear listener,
To find a newspaper article in the Creston News Advertiser from the 30th of July, 1946, it writes as follows. Chicago, Illinois.
An elaborate plan for William Hirons to confess formally to the Suzanne Degnan kidnap-killing and two other slayings collapsed today when state's attorney, William J. Toohey, announced the youth would say only, I don't remember. The prosecutor had received the 17-year-old University of Chicago student at the behest of the youth's attorneys, who announced Saturday he was willing to sign a confession.
Toohey had announced at 10.12 a.m. that Hirons had started making his statement on the Degnan case. He disclosed three hours later, however, that the responses were of no consequences, and that would not be transcribed. The prosecutor said that as a result of the youth's position, he would proceed with the murder charges against Hirons, end quote.
embarrassed by the aborted confession. Too he changed the premise of his plea bargain from one life term to three life terms. Hirons' attorneys, livid at their client's display of silence, an act on which they hadn't been pre-consulted, warned him to reconsider.
They reminded him, frankly, of the electric chair, and that the probability of his being strapped into it as a road's end was coldly, calculatingly real. Toohey would not wait, and was not open to bartering, they stressed, and because of his behavior at the hearing there was now no way that he could hope for a fair trial. Hirons cooled down,
opted for the one way out of the death chamber. And so it was that on the 7th of August, Bill Hirons fully admitted his guilt. He told in detail how he had committed the Degnan slay. He described how, after he threw the ransom note into the Degnan window, he tossed the knife with which he dismembered the body onto the elevated tracks near the Degnan home.
burned his blood-stained topcoat, ate donuts and coffee in a nearby restaurant, took the EL back to the university and studied before he went to class at 8 a.m. As to the Brown and Ross murders, he described how he entered each apartment, how he killed each woman.
Sentencing was slated for the 4th of September. Chief Justice Harold G. Ward presided. In attendance were the main players of the drama from the legal and law enforcement circles, as well as many of the people whose names had been front-page news throughout. These latter included Mr. and Mrs. Hirons, James Degnan, father of the murdered Suzanne,
and Mary Jane Blanchard, Josephine Ross's daughter. Surprisingly, Blanchard remarked to the Herald American that she thought Hirons was framed. I quote, "'I cannot believe that young Hirons murdered my mother. He just does not fit into the picture of my mother's death,' she stated."
I have looked at all the things Hirons stole, and there was nothing of my mother's things among them. End quote. The session opened with a concentration on the burglary charges, and to each charge Hirons pleaded guilty. The courtroom rustled, but when the murder indictments were read, a silence fell over it. The clerk read the Degnan indictment, and Bill hesitated.
His hands clenched, he moistened his lips with his tongue, and glanced swiftly at John Coughlin, who nodded encouragement. Then, taking a deep breath, Bill plunged forward. "'Guilty.' And then the Ross and Brown indictments, and Bill's reply of, "'Guilty,' to all charges. Judge Ward sighed deeply and observed.
That, it seems, disposes of all the murder cases. Because of the long afternoon, hearing witnesses, reading indictments, methodically collecting Hirons' replies to each indictment, sentencing was postponed until the following day, the 5th of September. That night, Hirons tried to hang himself in his cell.
He threw a bedsheet across an overhanging pipe, climbed atop a chair, slipped a noose around his neck, and jumped. The guards had been in the middle of shift change, but the quick reaction of some who spotted him dangling saved his life. In 1955, Hirons recalled to journalist Lucy Freeman the frustration that drove him to attempting suicide. I quote, "'Everyone believed I was guilty.'
If I weren't alive, I felt I could avoid being adjudged guilty by the law, thereby gain some victory. But I wasn't successful even at that. Before I walked into the courtroom, my counsel told me to just enter a plea of guilty and keep my mouth shut afterward. I didn't even have a trial." The following day, the court pronounced Bill Hirons guilty of all charges.
Even though his lawyers had told him privately that he could expect parole consideration in time to come, Hirons soon discovered that his chances to ever see the light of day again would turn out to be like an impossible dream that evening, while Hirons sat in his cell waiting to be escorted to Stateville Prison, Sheriff Michael Mulcahy,
who was in charge of the young man during his weeks at Cook County Jail, paid him a visit. His manner was almost beseeching. I quote, "'You probably didn't realize this, Bill, but I'm a personal friend of Jim Degnan. He wants to know, did his daughter Suzanne suffer?' Hirons' eyes caught those of the sheriff, who had been one of the very few who had not treated him like a monster. Hirons said,
"'I can't tell you if she suffered, Sheriff Mulcahy. I didn't kill her. Tell Mr. Degnan to please look after his other daughter, because whoever killed Suzanne is still out there. Now, dear listener, I do not, as you know, like to make assumptions or speculation too much on this show.'
I prefer to let the story and the facts speak for themselves. However, the Hirons case, aka the Lipstick Killer case, is very polarizing. You have people insisting he is guilty, and a still growing number of people insisting he was innocent. In my research, I found much evidence, as told here, that indicated he was innocent.
But I also found several incriminating things that I think the media tends to gloss over. Here are a few of them I would like you to consider before making up your own mind. Bill Hirons has in later interviews stated that he burglarized hundreds of homes in order to smell women's underwear and masturbate over them.
This, in addition to his claim that he only burglarized in order to feel in control and to feel the thrill, paints a picture of a very disturbed mind. He also states that his mother suppressed his sexuality growing up, and that he had violent sexual fantasies. The claims of a dominating dark-minded alter ego is very real, and not a result of coercion.
He stood by this all the way. In addition to actually confessing, let's not forget that, to the three murders in graphic detail, Hirons repeatedly changed his story, seemingly to fit a changing narrative. He had no alibi. And the killings, they did have a very typical psychopathic serial killer modus operandi. They stopped immediately after Hirons was arrested.
After Mr. Hirons went to prison, his parents and brother changed their names to Hill. He left no known survivors. While serving the fifth longest prison term in America's history, Bill Hirons became the first prisoner in Illinois to earn a degree from a four-year college. He also managed a prison garden factory and set up several education programs.
In recent years, his diabetes damaged his eyesight, and he used a wheelchair. He didn't make many lasting friends while in prison, and told newspapers and media that prison friendships were fleeting.
William Hirons, who at the time had served 65 years and 181 days incarcerated, was found dead in his cell at Dixon Correctional Center in Dixon, Illinois, in 2012. He was 83 years old.
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♪♪♪
And so ends part three and the final part of the Lipstick Killer story. Next week I will bring you a fresh serial killer tale. Perhaps one you have not heard of before. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. I have been your host, Thomas Warburg Thun.
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