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WILLIAM J. MARTIN began his involvement with the prosecution of Richard Speck on Saturday afternoon, July 16, 1966, by typing an arrest warrant shortly after the Chicago Police Department identified Speck’s fingerprints at the crime scene. Speck was the object of a manhunt but had not yet been arrested. Martin, 29, was a four year veteran of the State’s Attorney’s Office who had prosecuted several major cases. He was named Chief Prosecutor and, with tremendous support from his Office, stayed with every aspect of the case from Speck’s arrest through the error-free trial and through the successful appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. He lived with the case date and night the entire time it was pending. Martin has twin loves: the law and writing. He was editor of all of his school newspapers and founded and was editor of the Loyola Law Times, a Journal of Opinion at his law school. He and Dennis Breo had an ideal working arrangement in the writing of the first edition of the Crime of the Century in 1993 and the revised 2016 edition. He has had short stories published in the Chicago Bar Record and a Newberry Library anthology, all dealing with a life in the criminal law which he has practiced from 1970 to the present. He also defends lawyers and judges against disciplinary charges. Martin is a member of the Order of Coif, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and is regularly named in The Best Lawyers in America. He has lectured nationally on the Speck case and is a Fellow of American College of Trial Lawyers. He collects first-hand sources from Prohibition-era Chicago murder cases and is writing stories about celebrated cases.
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