MYSTERIOUS DEATH: The Lipstick Killer

Summary

MURDER: TRUE CRIME STORIES

Episode: Mysterious Death: The Lipstick Killer

Host: Carter Roy
Date: May 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

Main Theme:
Host Carter Roy presents a chilling deep dive into the infamous 1940s Chicago “Lipstick Killer” murders, focusing on the life and controversial conviction of William (“Bill”) Hirons—a teen whose proclamations of innocence and allegations of police misconduct have left the case shrouded in doubt. The episode probes deeply into the evidence, the hysteria surrounding the case, and the questions that still haunt investigators and listeners alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Crime Spree in Wartime Chicago

• Neighborhood Terrorized: Three murders occurred in the same Northside Chicago neighborhood in the mid-1940s—a widow, a Navy veteran, and a 6-year-old girl.

  "A city so desperate for answers that police did unspeakable things. And a question that still haunts us decades later. Did they catch the right guy?" (01:06, Carter Roy)

• Press dubbed the unknown perpetrator “The Lipstick Killer” after a cryptic message was left scrawled in lipstick at one of the crime scenes.

2. William Hirons: Troubled Childhood to Accused Murderer

• Family Background:
  • Born 1928, son of working-class parents, whose situation deteriorated with the onset of the Great Depression.
  • Bill displayed early signs of isolation, family strain, and delinquent behavior, especially after developing a compulsion for breaking and entering homes—what he linked to sexual gratification.

    "The act of breaking in itself gave him relief even more than wandering the streets did." (08:54, Carter Roy)

• Escalation:
  • Numerous burglaries by age 12; arrested multiple times and sent to reform school, then excelled academically and was provisionally admitted to the University of Chicago at 16 under a wartime enrollment program.

    "He wrote in his journal, quote: 'This is my first chance at showing how good I am to society and I intend to show even better signs tonight... I feel as if the world were mine.'" (12:27, Katie Ring)

3. The Murders

Josephine Ross (June 5, 1945)

• 40s, widow, found murdered in her bedroom after an apparent break-in.
• Victim was strangled, stabbed, and apparently the killer indulged in sexual acts post-mortem.
• No evidence directly linked Hirons at the time.

Frances Brown (December 11, 1945)

• Brown, a volunteer naval reservist, shot and stabbed after a nighttime break-in.
• The infamous “Lipstick Message”:

  “For heaven’s sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.” (17:58–18:08, Carter Roy)

• Police and public stumped by the message; press amplify the “Lipstick Killer” epithet.

Suzanne Degnan (January 6, 1946)

• 6-year-old abducted from her bedroom, with a poorly spelled ransom note left behind.
• After an anonymous tip, her dismembered body found in a sewer. The city erupted in horror, and police and media pressure intensified dramatically.

4. The Investigation—Mistakes, Media, and Misconduct

• Massive police dragnet: Over 5,000 tips, 800+ interviews, hundreds of handwriting and polygraph tests; even four false confessions.
• Mounting pressure led police to detain, beat, and attempt to coerce confessions from multiple suspects, including eventually the building custodian and Bill Hirons.

Arrest and Interrogation of William Hirons

• June 26, 1946: Hirons caught during a failed break-in; police immediately link him to the Degnan murder.
• Intense and Torturous Interrogation:
  • Three days held without access to counsel.
  • Beaten, ether poured on his genitals, threatened.
  • Subjected to sodium pentothal (“truth serum”) interrogation and a spinal tap without anesthesia.

    “These were not interrogation tactics. It was torture.” (29:07, Katie Ring) "A confession extracted under those conditions would be considered inadmissible in virtually any court today." (45:11, Carter Roy)

5. The Confession(s) and Trial

• Psychological Angle: Bill claims an alter ego named “George” compelled him to commit his crimes, referencing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
• Legal Maneuvering:
  • Police and prosecutors—under public scrutiny—press for a confession.
  • Initial partial fingerprint evidence (on the ransom note) did not meet the FBI standard for a conclusive match—9 points, vs. the required 12 (27:47, Katie Ring).

Confession, Recantation, and Dealings

• Bill’s first “confession” under truth serum was ambiguous, blaming George.
• Prosecutor promises to spare him from the death penalty if he confesses to all three murders.
• Under unrelenting pressure and convinced of likely conviction, Bill confesses at a press conference:

  “I first started to steal when I was about 10 years of age. The mere act of stealing carried with it a certain sex satisfaction...” (39:57, Katie Ring)

Public Reenactment

• Hirons is marched to crime scenes, reenacting murders in front of a press mob.
• The graphic detail in his confession and demonstration sways public opinion but troubles those still uncertain of his guilt.

6. Lingering Doubts & Questions

Doubts Surrounding Evidence & Confession

• Independent forensic examiners question the fingerprint’s authenticity—possibly planted.
• Handwriting experts dispute matches between Bill’s writing, the ransom note, and the lipstick message.
• Some journalists claim the lipstick message was written by a reporter, not the killer.
• Mitigating evidence/violations:
  • Bill's statements obtained with excessive force and without legal counsel.
  • Truth serum results are scientifically debunked today.
  • Warrants were not used for key evidence seizures.

Not Everyone Convinced

• Josephine Ross’s daughter publicly claims Bill was framed:

  “Hirons just does not fit into the picture of my mother’s death.” (41:25, Carter Roy)

Life in Prison & Legacy

• Bill becomes the longest-serving US inmate, maintains innocence until his death in 2012.
• Earns several college and graduate degrees while incarcerated.
• Refused parole for never expressing remorse.

Case Impact

• The Lipstick Killer case inspired Robert Ressler, later famed for coining the term “serial killer,” to pursue criminal profiling within the FBI.

  “The investigation that may have sent an innocent teenager to prison for life also gave us the modern science of understanding serial killers.” (48:41, Carter Roy)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “For heaven’s sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.” (17:58–18:08, Carter Roy)
  — The lipstick message that became both legend and controversy.

• “These were not interrogation tactics. It was torture.” (29:07, Katie Ring)
  — The extent of police brutality.

• “A confession extracted under those conditions would be considered inadmissible in virtually any court today.” (45:11, Carter Roy)

• “Hirons just does not fit into the picture of my mother’s death.” (41:25, Carter Roy - quoting Mary Jane Blanchard)

• “The investigation that may have sent an innocent teenager to prison for life also gave us the modern science of understanding serial killers.” (48:41, Carter Roy)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Content | | ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | 01:06 | The case’s introduction and lingering question | | 07:16–08:57 | Hirons’s developing compulsive criminal behavior | | 12:27 | Bill’s hopeful journal entry on being accepted to college | | 17:58–18:08 | The Lipstick Message: “Catch me before I kill more...” | | 21:04 | The abduction of Suzanne Degnan | | 27:41 | FBI’s standards & partial fingerprint evidence | | 29:05–29:22 | Police torture during interrogation | | 39:57 | Key excerpt from Bill’s confession | | 41:25 | Ross’s daughter expresses doubts | | 45:11 | On the inadmissibility of coerced confessions | | 48:41 | Broader influence—birth of serial killer profiling |

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Unanswered Questions & Final Provocations

• Was William Hirons truly guilty of the Lipstick Killer murders, or was he a convenient scapegoat for an overwhelmed and desperate system?
• Did police and public hysteria result in a miscarriage of justice?
• The uncertain ending leaves listeners reflecting on “how public pressure, media hysteria, and institutional desperation can corrupt justice.” (49:22, Katie Ring)

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Episode Tone

Reflective, investigative, and haunting—Carter Roy and Katie Ring maintain a sober, empathetic tone that invites skepticism and critical thinking, challenging listeners to weigh opposing perspectives and consider the personal, legal, and societal costs of an unsolved mystery and a controversial prosecution.

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Listen On

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Transcript

[Carter Roy]

Hi listeners, it's Carter Roy.

[Katie Ring]

Real quick. Before today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to tell you about another show from Crime House that I know you'll love. America's Most Infamous Crimes. Hosted by Katie Ring. Each week, Katie takes on one of

[Carter Roy]

the most notorious criminal cases in American history. Serial killers who terrorized cities. Unsolved mysteries that keep detectives up at night, and investigations that change the way we think about justice.

[Katie Ring]

Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes Tuesday through Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Carter Roy]

This his crime house. A message written in a dead woman's lipstick.

[Katie Ring]

A teenager who claimed a murderous alter

[Carter Roy]

ego made him do it. A city so desperate for answers that police did unspeakable things. And a question that still haunts us decades later. Did they catch the right guy? In the mid-1940s, Chicago, Illinois was gripped by fear.

[Katie Ring]

Three people had been murdered in the same Northside neighborhood.

[Carter Roy]

A widow, a Navy veteran and a six year old girl. The killings seemed random, the evidence was thin and the press was hungry.

[Katie Ring]

What followed was one of the most

[Carter Roy]

controversial criminal investigations in American history.

[Katie Ring]

A 17 year old boy eventually confessed

[Carter Roy]

to all three murders. He went to prison for the rest of his life. He died there at 83 years old, still insisting he was innocent. His name was William Hirons and this is his story.

[Katie Ring]

People's lives are like a story.

[Carter Roy]

There's the beginning, a middle and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon. And we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community.

[Katie Ring]

Please rate, review and follow the show and for ad free access to every episode, subscribe to Prime House plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Carter Roy]

Welcome back to another episode of Murder

[Katie Ring]

Mystery Fridays where I'm covering unsolved cases

[Carter Roy]

with questions that I can't get out of my head. The ones where the evidence points in multiple directions and every theory feels like a possibility.

[Katie Ring]

Remember, these episodes are also on YouTube with full video to search for murder True crime stories.

[Carter Roy]

And be sure to like and subscribe.

[Katie Ring]

Please note this episode contains descriptions of violence and murder.

[Carter Roy]

Please listen with care. Today's case is one that's always stuck with me, especially once I really dug into it.

[Katie Ring]

On the surface, it seems open and shut.

[Carter Roy]

A troubled young man committed a series of violent crimes, eventually confessed and spent his life in prison. Case closed.

[Katie Ring]

But the deeper you go, the murkier it gets.

[Carter Roy]

There are fingerprints that didn't quite match

[Katie Ring]

handwriting, experts who said the key evidence

[Carter Roy]

was forged torture allegations and a very controversial confession.

[Katie Ring]

This is the story of William Bill

[Carter Roy]

Hirons, the Lipstick Killer. Or at least the man the state of Illinois said was the Lipstick Killer. All that and more coming up. You know that moment in spring when

[Katie Ring]

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[Carter Roy]

William George Hirons was born on the north side of Chicago, Illinois on November 15, 1928. He was the first child of George

[Katie Ring]

and Margaret Hirons, two working class Roman Catholics. When Bill was born, the family was doing pretty well. George owned a floral shop nearby and

[Carter Roy]

Margaret was a homemaker. But less than a year later, on October 24, 1929, everything changed. The stock market crashed, kicking off the Great Depression.

[Katie Ring]

George's flower shop went out of business. Then in 1931, the family had a second son named Jer.

[Carter Roy]

Should have been a happy time.

[Katie Ring]

And it was. But it also meant the Hirons had

[Carter Roy]

another mouth to feed in an already strained household.

[Katie Ring]

But George and Margaret found ways to get by. George landed a job doing security for

[Carter Roy]

steel mill and Margaret worked part time at a local bakery.

[Katie Ring]

Together they made enough to keep food on the table.

[Carter Roy]

But there were some trade offs.

[Katie Ring]

Young Bill and his brother spent most

[Carter Roy]

of their time with the neighborhood babysitter.

[Katie Ring]

And Bill seemed to thrive in his parents absence, maybe because he had plenty of hobbies.

[Carter Roy]

He loved tinkering with old radios and

[Katie Ring]

broken appliances and got so good at fixing things that he was known around the neighborhood as something of a whiz kid.

[Carter Roy]

When his parents were home, though, Bill struggled.

[Katie Ring]

He never described them as abusive. In fact, he often spoke warmly of them.

[Carter Roy]

But George and Margaret fought a lot, almost always about money.

[Katie Ring]

It seemed like Bill's brother Jer was

[Carter Roy]

able to tune the arguments out, but Bill couldn't. The fights gave him severe headaches and he started looking for ways to escape them. The first thing he tried was literally running away.

[Katie Ring]

At only 7 or 8 years old, Bill would wander the streets of Chicago

[Carter Roy]

for hours just to clear his head. But before long, he found another form of escape, One he knew he had to keep secret. At around nine years old, Bill developed a fetish for women's underwear. Sexuality was a taboo subject in his household. His mother had told him sex was dirty. But Bill couldn't help himself.

[Katie Ring]

He began sneaking into the laundry rooms of apartment buildings to steal women's underwear

[Carter Roy]

and stash it around the house, making sure his parents never found it. And in the process, he discovered something unexpected.

[Katie Ring]

The act of breaking in itself gave

[Carter Roy]

him relief even more than wandering the streets did.

[Katie Ring]

The tension in his head would lift the moment he slipped through a door

[Carter Roy]

that wasn't meant for him. By the time Bill was 12, he had a job as a delivery boy for a local pharmacy.

[Katie Ring]

He used those drop offs as a

[Carter Roy]

chance to learn the layouts of people's homes. Once he had a good sense of a place, he'd return and break in. It was thrilling.

[Katie Ring]

And soon Bill began experiencing what he

[Carter Roy]

later described as sexual stimulation from the act of breaking and entering. He got especially aroused by climbing through windows. Every burglary left him wanting more.

[Katie Ring]

Over the next several months, the 12 year old committed at least nine burglaries.

[Carter Roy]

And he got more daring with each one.

[Katie Ring]

He moved on from women's underwear to ladies, furs, men's suits, tools, radios. And firearms.

[Carter Roy]

Bill was particularly fascinated by guns.

[Katie Ring]

He loved taking them apart and putting them back together.

[Carter Roy]

He also liked just carrying them around, which is exactly what he was doing when he got caught. In June of 1942, the 13 year

[Katie Ring]

old broke into a building and was

[Carter Roy]

arrested after police found him with a gun.

[Katie Ring]

Officers searched the Hyran's home and discovered

[Carter Roy]

his stash of stolen items hidden in an empty shed on a nearby rooftop.

[Katie Ring]

He was charged as a juvenile and sentenced to a year in reform school. It seemed to help.

[Carter Roy]

At first it looked like Bill was genuinely sorry. He reportedly cried himself to sleep some nights.

[Katie Ring]

But whatever remorse he felt didn't last long. When the 14 year old returned to Chicago in June of 1943, he went right back to breaking and entering.

[Carter Roy]

Within two months he was arrested again.

[Katie Ring]

This time he was sentenced to two additional years at St. Bede's Academy, a school run by monks about 100 miles from home. By all accounts, Bill excelled at St. Bede's. He got along with other students, earned good grades and impressed his teachers with how mature he was. But In June of 1944, when the

[Carter Roy]

15 year old came home from summer break, his old habits were back in full force. Bill went right back to breaking and entering. Despite the arrests and the Stinson Reform

[Katie Ring]

School, Bill seemed pretty well adjusted. He was admitted to the University of Chicago at only 16 years old in 1945. This wasn't quite as impressive as it sounds. At the time the university was running a special enrollment program.

[Carter Roy]

With millions of young Americans away fighting

[Katie Ring]

In World War II, the university opened its doors to exceptional high school sophomores and above.

[Carter Roy]

As an average student with a criminal record and three years of reform school

[Katie Ring]

behind him, Bill was hardly the model candidate. But he applied anyway.

[Carter Roy]

And thanks in part to a glowing

[Katie Ring]

letter of recommendation from the principal of St. Bede's, he was accepted.

[Carter Roy]

Bill was ecstatic.

[Katie Ring]

He wrote in his journal, quote, this is my first chance at showing how good I am to society and I intend to show even better signs tonight. I feel as if the world were mine.

[Carter Roy]

That feeling wouldn't last because the summer before he left for college, his parents arguments started up again and so did the headaches. And this time Bill's need for relief was more powerful than ever. On the morning of June 5, 1945,

[Katie Ring]

Chicago was unseasonably cold with a low of 36 degrees. But 16 year old Bill Hirons had a terrible headache.

[Carter Roy]

So he bundled up and headed out. As he later told a psychiatrist, quote, it seemed as though I was in a Dream. I did not have any feeling.

[Katie Ring]

It was like walking through darkness and

[Carter Roy]

pushing a mist aside. In that muddled state of mind, Bill

[Katie Ring]

climbed a fire escape to the sixth

[Carter Roy]

floor of an apartment building and slipped through a window. The person renting the space was a woman named Josephine Ross. Josephine was a twice divorced widow in

[Katie Ring]

her early 40s who lived in the

[Carter Roy]

apartment with her two adult daughters. Bill broke in, expecting it to be empty. It wasn't. Josephine had seen her daughters off to work and gone back to bed. When Bill climbed through her bedroom window, she was right there and she screamed. Instead of running, Bill silenced her. When Josephine's daughter came home that afternoon, she found her mother's body. Josephine was naked with a dress and stockings tied around her head. Her throat had been cut. She had multiple stab wounds. The apartment had been ransacked, and there were signs that the killer had masturbated multiple times, either during or after the murder. At the time, no one could connect Bill Hirons to Josephine Ross's death. There was little forensic evidence, no witnesses, and DNA testing was decades away.

[Katie Ring]

Over the next several months, investigators proposed countless theories. But they all agreed on one thing.

[Carter Roy]

This was not the accidental outcome of a routine burglary. Whoever killed Josephine Ross had deeply enjoyed it. In September of 1945, three months after Josephine's murder, Bill's freshman year at the University of Chicago began.

[Katie Ring]

He was 16 years old, enrolled in

[Carter Roy]

one of the country's most prestigious universities and apparently a killer.

[Katie Ring]

At school, he made choices that, in

[Carter Roy]

retrospect, tell a troubling story. He chose to study German, an odd decision for a boy who'd failed classes in his native English.

[Katie Ring]

He also began reading the philosopher Friedrich

[Carter Roy]

Nietzsche, whose work Adolf Hitler famously admired.

[Katie Ring]

He'd also stolen a neighbor's private collection of Nazi memorabilia. He also picked up a book by German philosopher Richard von Krefft Ebing called Psychopathia sexualist. Published in 1886, the book explores a broad range of human sexuality, including practices

[Carter Roy]

that are considered healthy today.

[Katie Ring]

But the book also contains descriptions of

[Carter Roy]

violent, non consensual acts like lust, murder, violation of corpses, and the kidnapping and dismemberment of children. Whether Bill read it to try to understand himself or the book gave him some new ideas, that's still up for debate. On December 11, 1945, just as school was letting out for the winter holidays, 17 year old bill got another headache. He went back to the same neighborhood where he'd allegedly murdered Josephine Ross and broke into an apartment in the middle of the night. The tenant was 33 year old Frances

[Katie Ring]

Brown, a woman who had served as a volunteer naval reservist during World War II and was known for living a quiet life. According to Bill's later testimony, he expected the apartment to be empty and only killed Frances to keep her quiet.

[Carter Roy]

But there were some holes in that explanation. Bill said the same thing about Josephine's murder.

[Katie Ring]

And in that case, it did take place in the early morning when the apartment might have plausibly been empty.

[Carter Roy]

But this one happened in the middle of the night when people would obviously be home. Either way, what happened in Frances Brown's apartment was worse than the first murder. Bill allegedly shot her in the head, then stabbed her body repeatedly. He removed her clothes, wrapped her pajamas around her head and left.

[Katie Ring]

But before he did, he apparently did

[Carter Roy]

something that would define the entire investigation and his legacy.

[Katie Ring]

He picked up one of Francis lipsticks

[Carter Roy]

and wrote a message on the wall. It read, for heaven's sake, catch me

[Katie Ring]

before I kill more.

[Carter Roy]

I cannot control myself.

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[Carter Roy]

After finding the lipstick message in Frances Brown's apartment, police were baffled.

[Katie Ring]

They couldn't understand why a killer would

[Carter Roy]

murder a woman and then leave a note like that.

[Katie Ring]

Without a strong theory from law enforcement,

[Carter Roy]

the press stepped in and had a field day.

[Katie Ring]

Reporters dubbed the unknown killer the Lipstick Killer.

[Carter Roy]

The name stuck during this period. 17 year old bill Hirons had been wondering where his impulses came from.

[Katie Ring]

He compared himself to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyd.

[Carter Roy]

And he had his own name for the part of himself that committed crimes. George. Bill later told psychiatrists that George first appeared sometime around 1942, when he was 12 or 13. When his parents fought and the headaches came, George was the one who planned their Escapes. Those escapes became burglaries and then murders. Bill said that at first he tried

[Katie Ring]

to argue with George, but when he

[Carter Roy]

did, the headaches got worse.

[Katie Ring]

So he started going along with his alter ego, following him wherever he wanted to go. He even had a phrase for it. When George wanted to act, Bill said he wanted to, quote, get out.

[Carter Roy]

And it wasn't long before George was raring for another escape. In the late hours of January 6, 1946, a married couple on the north side of Chicago, James and Helen Degnan, were woken up by what sounded like

[Katie Ring]

their six year old daughter Suzanne, crying.

[Carter Roy]

But she quieted down and they went back to sleep. The next morning, James went to wake Suzanne up for school. Her door was closed, which was strange because he'd left it open for her the night before. And when James went inside, his heart sank. She was gone.

[Katie Ring]

The police arrived quickly.

[Carter Roy]

Chicago PD had been on high alert since Francis Brown's murder a few weeks earlier. So when they heard a child was missing from the same neighborhood, they feared the worst. There was no sign of Suzanne anywhere.

[Katie Ring]

But outside her room, the police found a ladder tall enough to reach her window. And in her bedroom, crumpled on the

[Carter Roy]

floor, almost like garbage, they found a

[Katie Ring]

ransom note written in odd block letters with multiple misspellings. It demanded $12,000 in fives and tens and promised further instructions.

[Carter Roy]

And that would be more than than $200,000. Today, Suzanne's father went on the local

[Katie Ring]

radio to try to reach the kidnapper. Investigators went door to door.

[Carter Roy]

Hours passed without any word. Then, that evening, an anonymous tip came in.

[Katie Ring]

The caller told police that if they were looking for Suzanne Degnan, they should

[Carter Roy]

search the sewer behind her apartment. They did. They found her dismembered body in a sewer grate. It seemed like the Lipstick killer had struck again. The murder of Suzanne Degnan shook Chicago to its core. A six year old girl abducted from her bedroom and dismembered. It's the kind of crime that makes people lose sleep, demand answers, and sometimes stop waiting for due process. The press was relentless.

[Katie Ring]

Chicago had five daily newspapers at the time, all vying for subscribers in the same city.

[Carter Roy]

And they found everything they needed in Suzanne's story.

[Katie Ring]

For months, reporters hounded officials hungry for updates.

[Carter Roy]

Detectives obliged, offering theories in exchange for tips.

[Katie Ring]

The publicity generated over 5,000 tips about Suzanne's murder alone, which investigators suspected was

[Carter Roy]

connected to the killings of Josephine Ross and Frances Brown.

[Katie Ring]

They followed up on more than 60% of those leads. They interviewed over 800 persons of interest,

[Carter Roy]

administered 170 lie detector tests, and compared over 7,000 handwriting samples to the ransom note. They found nothing. Even four men who confessed to Suzanne's murder were released. Their stories were so clearly fabricated that police had no choice but to let them go. As the weeks dragged on, the pressure mounted.

[Katie Ring]

Letters poured into public officials, police stations and newspaper editors demanding to know where, why the killer was still free.

[Carter Roy]

And it wasn't long before that pressure began to warp the investigation. Sometime in early 1946, police arrested the 65 year old custodian of Suzanne Degnan's building. They kept him in custody without access to a phone or a lawyer. Reportedly, they beat him, trying to force a confession. After two days with no confession and no evidence, they released him to his attorneys. The search for the Lipstick Killer was back at square one. Meanwhile, Bill Hirons went back to school in January, looking by all accounts, like

[Katie Ring]

any other happy student.

[Carter Roy]

But in April 1946, he came close to getting caught. He was walking down the street with a loaded rifle when police stopped him. He talked his way out of it, pointing out correctly that carrying an unconcealed rifle was legal in Chicago at the time. The officers, apparently unaware of his record, let him go. The near miss didn't slow Bill down.

[Katie Ring]

By the end of the spring semester, Bill was, as he later put it,

[Carter Roy]

at the height of his powers. On June 26, 1946, a few weeks after returning home for the summer, Bill

[Katie Ring]

broke into the basement of an apartment

[Carter Roy]

building on the north side. But this time, a custodian caught him in the actual Bill bolted.

[Katie Ring]

The custodian raised the alarm. Bill was surrounded before he could get far.

[Carter Roy]

After a brief chase, a pursuing officer knocked him unconscious. When Bill woke up hours later, he was strapped to a hospital bed in Cook County Jail, surrounded by men in suits and police uniforms. He was informed that he was a suspect in the murder of Suzanne Degnan. When Bill was first arrested, the police were already looking for anyone committing burglaries. Since Bill had tried to break into

[Katie Ring]

that building, he was pretty much immediately

[Carter Roy]

seen as a suspect in Suzanne's murder.

[Katie Ring]

For three days, Bill allegedly remained in

[Carter Roy]

custody without access to a lawyer.

[Katie Ring]

He was questioned endlessly about Suzanne's death. He repeatedly denied any involvement.

[Carter Roy]

Then word came back on his fingerprints.

[Katie Ring]

Investigators had found a print on the ransom note left in Suzanne Degnan's bedroom,

[Carter Roy]

and apparently it matched Bill's.

[Katie Ring]

State Attorney William Tuohy took that and ran with it.

[Carter Roy]

He announced to reporters that the Lipstick Killer was in custody. But privately, Twohy wasn't as confident as he sounded. The match had been made.

[Katie Ring]

Using the so called Galton system, which

[Carter Roy]

identifies patterns or points in the human

[Katie Ring]

fingerprint, the FBI required a match on at least 12 points to make a positive identification. Bill's print only matched nine of those

[Carter Roy]

points on ransom note. That meant it may not have been Bill's print. It left room for reasonable doubt. And the problems didn't stop there. There was no forensic evidence linking Bill to Josephine Ross's murder at all.

[Katie Ring]

His connection to Francis Brown's murder was minimal. Witness testimony was virtually non existent. One man had seen a nervous looking figure leaving Francis Brown's building the night of the murder. Another had spotted someone with a shopping

[Carter Roy]

bag in Suzanne Degnan's neighborhood.

[Katie Ring]

When shown Bill's photo in a lineup,

[Carter Roy]

neither could identify him. Twohey needed more and he was willing to go further than the law allowed to get it.

[Katie Ring]

According to reports, police beat the 17

[Carter Roy]

year old suspect repeatedly punching him in the stomach and the testicles in an effort to force a confession.

[Katie Ring]

They allegedly had a nurse poor ether

[Carter Roy]

over his genitals which could have caused severe chemical burns. These were not interrogation tactics. It was torture. Despite all of it, or perhaps because

[Katie Ring]

of it, Bill insisted he was innocent.

[Carter Roy]

But his attitude toward the victims raised eyebrows.

[Katie Ring]

He didn't seem to grieve them the

[Carter Roy]

way an innocent person might. When asked how he'd felt reading about Francis Brown's murder in the paper, he said it was just like anything else. But suspicion wasn't evidence and Bill seemed to know that. After all, why would they need to torture him if they had more than just a partial print? That might be why.

[Katie Ring]

On June 30, 1946, four days after his arrest, police reportedly brought in two psychiatrists to administer sodium pentothal truth serum. They did it, allegedly without obtaining legal permission. As Bill lay restrained on a hospital bed, doctors placed two vials above his head and inserted a needle into his arm.

[Carter Roy]

They told him to count backward from 100.

[Katie Ring]

He got to 94 before slipping into

[Carter Roy]

semi consciousness under the drug. Psychiatrists asked Bill a series of questions. Some were casual. When asked about his favorite movies, he said he especially liked Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the story of a good man with a violent alter ego, he said

[Katie Ring]

he identified with it, that it reflected his life. The doctors pushed him on that and Bill began to tell them about George. He described how George would appear when he wanted to, to get out. When the tension at home got to be too much.

[Carter Roy]

George would entice him to commit crimes. George was the one in control. After the drug wore off, Bill confirmed Most of what he'd said.

[Katie Ring]

He told State Attorney Tuohy that George was real and that George may have

[Carter Roy]

been responsible for all three murders. It was the closest thing to a confession the investigators had gotten.

[Katie Ring]

But Touhy wasn't satisfied. He believed Bill was fabricating George as a mental illness defense. That if Bill convinced a jury he had a split personality, he'd be sent

[Carter Roy]

to a hospital instead of a federal prison.

[Katie Ring]

Tuohy wanted to prove Bill was of

[Carter Roy]

sound mind before proceeding. So on July 1, 1946, five days

[Katie Ring]

after Bill's arrest, doctors administered a spinal

[Carter Roy]

tap, ostensibly to check for markers of brain damage.

[Katie Ring]

They allegedly did it without anesthesia. Bill was ordered to lie in a fetal position while the needle was inserted between his vertebrae.

[Carter Roy]

As the 17 year old groaned in

[Katie Ring]

agony, police reportedly pulled him out of bed, strapped him to a chair and pushed him into a patrol wagon. They planned to administer a polygraph test at the police detective bureau. But Bill was in such excruciating pain

[Carter Roy]

that the polygraph had to be rescheduled. Maybe investigators felt they had gone a step too far. Because the next day, July 2, 1946, Bill was finally allowed to see his lawyers.

[Katie Ring]

By the time Bill's attorneys arrived, the

[Carter Roy]

damage had largely been done.

[Katie Ring]

While he was in custody, police had searched his dorm room and his parents home without a warrant and recovered a collection of stolen Nazi memorabilia.

[Carter Roy]

On its own, that wouldn't mean much,

[Katie Ring]

but those items had been stolen on

[Carter Roy]

December 3, 1945, from a home close to where six year old Suzanne Degnan had lived. They also found a medical kit containing surgical knives and scalpels.

[Katie Ring]

None of them had blood on them,

[Carter Roy]

but they suggested an interest in dissection and Suzanne's body had been dismembered. Investigators then conducted another search of Frances

[Katie Ring]

Brown's apartment and found a partial fingerprint that matched Bill's.

[Carter Roy]

Bill still refused to officially confess after

[Katie Ring]

his truth serum questioning. He'd only said it was possible he

[Carter Roy]

had something to do with the murders. But that distinction didn't matter to the Press.

[Katie Ring]

In mid July 1946, newspapers and radio

[Carter Roy]

programs began running stories that made it sound like he had fully admitted his guilt. And they described the murders in lurid detail.

[Katie Ring]

By then, Bill was convinced he'd be

[Carter Roy]

found guilty in the court of public

[Katie Ring]

opinion before ever setting foot in a courtroom. And if he was convicted in court, he was sure he'd get the death penalty. State Attorney Touhy offered him a deal. Confess to just one murder, Suzanne Degnanz, and receive a single life sentence, meaning he could be eligible for parole in roughly 20 years.

[Carter Roy]

To a 17 year old boy, a life sentence sounded like an eternity. But the electric chair sounded worse. After several days of discussion with his lawyers and parents, Bill agreed to take the deal. On July 30, 1946, Bill was escorted to the state attorney's office. The room was packed with reporters expecting a direct confession. Instead, they got a stunning surprise.

[Katie Ring]

At the moment Bill was supposed to reveal all, he announced he knew nothing about the murder.

[Carter Roy]

The room went silent.

[Katie Ring]

Defying Touhy may have satisfied some impulse

[Carter Roy]

in Bill, but it was a catastrophic miscalculation. Touhy was furious and swift in his response. The deal was off.

[Katie Ring]

Bill would now face 23 counts of burglary, three counts of murder, and a charge of attempting to kill a police

[Carter Roy]

officer by pointing a gun at him. During his arrest, Touhy also promised to seek the death penalty.

[Katie Ring]

But Touhy left a door open. If Bill confessed to all three murders,

[Carter Roy]

he would now receive three consecutive life sentences. He would never be free again, but he would live. Bill's lawyers pressured him to take the deal.

[Katie Ring]

They knew what the defense attorneys in these cases always know. Once the press has made up its

[Carter Roy]

mind, the jury is rarely far behind. Then, a new piece of evidence emerged that made the decision even harder to fight.

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[Carter Roy]

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[Carter Roy]

After a fake confession was published in the papers on July 15, 1946, reporters

[Katie Ring]

had been looking for the knife allegedly

[Carter Roy]

used to dismember Suzanne Degnan's body. And there was a rumor that Bill had thrown it under the subway tracks near her home. Police hadn't seriously pursued it, but a few journalists asked workers at the nearby station if anyone had found a discarded knife. Someone had not Realizing what it was, a worker had put it in storage. The journalists turned the knife over to

[Katie Ring]

police, who discovered it had been stolen from a man named Guy Rodrick about a month before Suzanne Degnan's murder. During the same burglary, the assailant also took Guy's gun. That gun turned out to be the firearm Bill had been carrying when he was arrested.

[Carter Roy]

Now the prosecution had something concrete.

[Katie Ring]

Bill had stolen a gun and a

[Carter Roy]

knife on December 3, 1945.

[Katie Ring]

There were no fingerprints on them, and

[Carter Roy]

DNA testing didn't exist yet, but the implication was clear.

[Katie Ring]

A little over a week after stealing

[Carter Roy]

those weapons, someone broke into Frances Brown's apartment and shot her. Three weeks after that, someone kidnapped Suzanne Degnan and dismembered her. For Bill, who'd escaped consequences so many times before the walls were closing in. As his 18th birthday approached, Bill made his decision. On August 7, 1946, he appeared at a second press conference with State Attorney Touhy, this time with a 19 page confession in hand. He said, quote, I first started to steal when I was about 10 years of age.

[Katie Ring]

The mere act of stealing and carried

[Carter Roy]

with it a certain sex satisfaction. From there, he explained how burglary had become an addiction he couldn't stop feeding. He described how that compulsion led him to murder, saying he killed Josephine Ross, Francis Brown and Suzanne Degnan to stop them from screaming.

[Katie Ring]

After Bill finished reading, Touhy loaded him

[Carter Roy]

into a sheriff's department vehicle. Together with a caravan of law enforcement, journalists and lawyers from both sides, they

[Katie Ring]

drove to the scenes of the crimes. At each location, Bill was prompted to

[Carter Roy]

reenact the murder he had just confessed to committing. At Suzanne Degnan's house, onlookers gathered as

[Katie Ring]

a ladder was propped against the building

[Carter Roy]

leading to Suzanne's window. Bill showed them how he'd gagged the six year old girl, carried her down the ladder and taken her to the basement of a nearby building. The level of detail disturbed many who had doubted his guilt.

[Katie Ring]

But there were still a few who weren't convinced. One of them was Josephine Ross's adult

[Carter Roy]

daughter, Mary Jane Blanchard.

[Katie Ring]

Mary told at least one reporter that she believed Bill had been framed.

[Carter Roy]

As she put it, quote, hirons just does not fit into the picture of my mother's death.

[Katie Ring]

She also found it strange that nothing belonging to her mother had ever turned up in Bill's stash of stolen goods.

[Carter Roy]

The counter argument was that Bill himself

[Katie Ring]

had admitted in letters to his parents written from jail that he didn't burglarize Holmes for material gain.

[Carter Roy]

He did it for the Sexual thrill. Sometimes he broke in only to masturbate and leave. Which people pointed out was precisely what happened in Josephine Ross's apartment. The killer had broken in, masturbated multiple times, then murdered her. Whether or not Mary Jane Blanchard was

[Katie Ring]

right about Bill being framed, he was

[Carter Roy]

officially a convicted murderer in the eyes of the law. On September 4, 1946, he pleaded guilty to killing Josephine Ross, Francis Brown, and Suzanne Degnan. That night, Bill tried to take his own life. He tied his sheets to the bars of his cell and attempted to hang himself. Guards caught him in time. The next morning, he was taken to court for sentencing. As agreed, the judge handed down three consecutive life terms. On September 6, 1946, one year after gaining early admission to the University of Chicago, Bill was chained to a dozen other prisoners and loaded onto a bus.

[Katie Ring]

Before he boarded, reporters asked him to say farewell to his mother for the cameras.

[Carter Roy]

He complied. His mother kissed him goodbye and told him to be a good boy. Bill told her he would. Then he got on the bus.

[Katie Ring]

On board, he was reportedly approached by a sheriff who was friends with Suzanne Degnan's father. The officer asked Bill if Suzanne had

[Carter Roy]

suffered before she died. Bill replied, quote, I can't tell you if she suffered, Sheriff. I didn't kill her. Tell Mr. Degnan to please look after

[Katie Ring]

his other daughter, because whoever killed Suzanne

[Carter Roy]

is still out there.

[Katie Ring]

Officially, the case was closed.

[Carter Roy]

Bill Hirons was a convicted murderer.

[Katie Ring]

Chicago could breathe again. But the questions didn't go away.

[Carter Roy]

Away.

[Katie Ring]

They followed Bill into prison, and they outlasted him. In the years after his conviction, serious doubts emerged about the evidence at the

[Carter Roy]

heart of the case.

[Katie Ring]

An independent forensic examiner said the fingerprint on the ransom note appeared to have been planted. Handwriting experts showed that Bill's writing didn't match the ransom note or the lipstick message on Francis Brown's apartment wall. And multiple Chicago journalists have claimed that

[Carter Roy]

famous message, for heaven's sake, catch me

[Katie Ring]

before I kill more, was actually written after the fact by a reporter looking

[Carter Roy]

to make the story more sensational. There were also the circumstances of the confession, confession itself. Bill had been held without counsel for days.

[Katie Ring]

He'd been beaten, had ether applied to

[Carter Roy]

his genitals, had an unannounced drug administered by psychiatrists, and had undergone a spinal

[Katie Ring]

tap without anesthesia, all before his lawyers arrived. A confession extracted under those conditions would

[Carter Roy]

be considered inadmissible in virtue, virtually any court today.

[Katie Ring]

And the sodium pentothal itself, the truth serum, is now understood to be an unreliable interrogation tool.

[Carter Roy]

The drug doesn't compel honesty.

[Katie Ring]

It lowers Inhibitions in ways that can

[Carter Roy]

make a subject more susceptible to suggestion, more prone to saying what the questioner seems to want to hear. A confession made under its influence proves very little about what actually happened.

[Katie Ring]

Despite numerous appeals, Bill's conviction was never overturned.

[Carter Roy]

He spent decades in Stateville Correctional center

[Katie Ring]

in Illinois, eventually becoming the longest serving

[Carter Roy]

inmate in American history.

[Katie Ring]

In that time, he earned a college degree and several graduate degrees. Through correspondence programs. He became something of a model prisoner.

[Carter Roy]

Although he was denied parole multiple times,

[Katie Ring]

not for behavioral problems, but because he refused to express remorse for crimes he

[Carter Roy]

maintained until the very end he had not committed. He died on March 7, 2012, of complications from diabetes. He was 83 years old. After everything, here's what I keep coming back to. Bill Hirons was a sexual burglar. That much was established long before his arrest. He had a documented compulsion to break into homes. He was caught with stolen weapons.

[Katie Ring]

He was seen near the scenes of the crimes. A partial fingerprint connected him to Francis Brown's apartment. Stolen items linked him, at least circumstantially, to Suzanne Degnan's neighborhood on the night she was taken.

[Carter Roy]

And his behavior was, to put it gently, suspicious. He didn't show much concern for the victims.

[Katie Ring]

He claimed a murderous alter ego made him do it. He confessed under questioning, recanted, reconfessed in

[Carter Roy]

a 19 page document complete with a

[Katie Ring]

public reenactment, then denied everything again on the way to prison. But the fingerprint that kicked the whole thing off didn't meet the FBI's own

[Carter Roy]

standard for a positive identification.

[Katie Ring]

Experts said the handwriting evidence pointed away from him.

[Carter Roy]

His confession was extracted using methods we now recognize as torture and an interrogation drug we now know doesn't work.

[Katie Ring]

And the evidence from his dorm room was seized without a warrant. But there's one more thread that's worth

[Carter Roy]

pulling at Bill Hiron's case. And the fear it generated in Chicago in the mid-1940s inspired a young boy named Robert Ressler to pursue a career in law enforcement.

[Katie Ring]

Years later, Ressler joined the FBI, where he and his partner became the first officials in the country to systematically study multiple murderers, developing the methodology and eventually

[Carter Roy]

coining the phrase serial killer. In other words, the investigation that may have sent an innocent teenager to prison

[Katie Ring]

for life also gave us the modern

[Carter Roy]

science of understanding serial killers. The Lipstick Killer case has no clean ending. There's no moment of clarity, no piece of evidence that resolves it one way or the other. We're left with what we always have in cases like this, a collection of facts that don't quite add up. A dead man who insisted he was innocent and victims whose families deserve the truth. What do you think?

[Katie Ring]

Did Bill Hirons kill Josephine Ross, Francis Brown, and Suzanne Degnan? Or was the investigation that led to

[Carter Roy]

his conviction a textbook example of how

[Katie Ring]

public pressure, media hysteria, and institutional desperation can corrupt justice?

[Carter Roy]

You tell me. Because all these years later, it's up to us to decide where to go from here.

[Katie Ring]

Thanks so much for listening.

[Carter Roy]

I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of another murder and all the people it affected. True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media and at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram.

[Katie Ring]

Don't forget to rate, review and follow

[Carter Roy]

Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime

[Katie Ring]

Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House

[Carter Roy]

plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad free. We'll be back on Tuesday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benidon, Natalie Pertofsky, Lori Marinelli, Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.

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[Carter Roy]

Thanks for listening to today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories. Not sure what to listen to next?

[Katie Ring]

Check out America's Most Infamous Crimes hosted by Katie Ring.

[Carter Roy]

From serial killers to unsolved mysteries and

[Katie Ring]

game changing investigations, each week Katie takes on a notorious criminal case in American history. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous crimes now. Wherever you listen to podcasts.