William George Heirens did not look like the monster Chicago newspapers had spent months imagining.
He was seventeen.
Intelligent.
Young enough that he had advanced quickly through school.
He attended the University of Chicago.
He could sit in a classroom during the day and appear to be another academically gifted student.
But Heirens also had another life.
He had been involved in burglary and theft from a young age.
He broke into apartments.
He stole property.
He had already come into contact with law enforcement.
That background made his arrest on June 26, 1946 unsurprising in one sense.
What happened afterward was anything but ordinary.
Police caught Heirens during a burglary.
He struggled violently while officers tried to arrest him.
During the confrontation, an officer struck him with flowerpots.
He suffered serious head injuries and was taken unconscious to a hospital.
The federal appellate record would later note that he remained a hospital patient for several days while investigators rapidly began treating him as a suspect in the Degnan case.
Then came the fingerprint announcement.
Authorities said a fingerprint associated with the Degnan ransom note matched Heirens's left little finger.
Contemporary newspapers reported that the FBI had confirmed the identification.
That single development transformed the seventeen-year-old burglar into the prime suspect in Chicago's most notorious murder case.
From that moment onward, public attention became enormous.
The University of Chicago's archive notes that for more than two months, Heirens dominated the Chicago press to an extraordinary degree.
For long stretches, his name appeared on front pages almost every day.
The war had ended.
Now Chicago had a new obsession.
Police searched Heirens's belongings.
They connected him to numerous burglaries.
There was no real dispute that Heirens had committed serious property crimes.
The larger question was whether burglary had escalated into murder.
Investigators now returned to Frances Brown.
Could Heirens be connected to the bloody fingerprint found in her apartment?
Initially, reports were contradictory.
One police announcement indicated the Brown print did not belong to Heirens.
Later, authorities claimed it did.
This change would become one of the central arguments used by Heirens's supporters many years later.
They alleged that the print was unreliable, mishandled or possibly even planted.
Law enforcement maintained that it was legitimate evidence linking him to Brown's apartment.
There has never been universal agreement over that issue.
The eyewitness description also created difficulty.
The nervous man reportedly seen leaving Brown's building had been described as much older than seventeen.
Supporters of Heirens later emphasized that the witness reportedly did not identify him.
Again, this did not automatically prove Heirens innocent.
Eyewitness descriptions are often imperfect.
But it meant the case was already developing contradictions beneath the sensational headlines.
Then investigators moved into psychology.
Heirens was subjected to long questioning.
On June 29, psychiatrist Dr. Roy Grinker administered sodium pentothal, commonly described at the time as “truth serum.”
The phrase sounds scientifically definitive.
It was not.
Sodium pentothal can lower inhibition.
It does not magically force a person to tell the truth.
Statements made under the drug would later become a deeply disputed part of the case.
The federal appellate record states that Heirens did not actually confess to the murders during the drug-induced interview.
Instead, investigators heard about a supposed second personality or companion named “George,” later represented in sensational press coverage as “George Murman.”
When asked to describe George physically, Heirens reportedly described someone much like himself.
Psychiatrists and prosecutors interpreted this through the language of dissociation and schizophrenia being used at the time.
Newspapers turned it into something simpler.
A split personality.
One William.
One killer.
The story was almost too perfect for the press.
But Heirens still had not gone before a murder jury.
And he still faced the possibility of execution.
His lawyers began discussing a plea.
According to later court records, Heirens and his parents were told that avoiding the electric chair required accepting responsibility and negotiating with prosecutors.
A deal developed.
Heirens would confess.
He would plead guilty to the three murders.
The prosecution would not seek his execution.
His attorneys prepared a written confession based on discussions with him.
The document described the deaths of Josephine Ross, Frances Brown and Suzanne Degnan.
Heirens signed it.
On September 4, 1946, he entered guilty pleas.
There would be no jury trial deciding whether the forensic evidence truly proved that the seventeen-year-old had written the lipstick message.
No jury would hear opposing handwriting experts battle over the ransom note.
No jury would watch the Brown fingerprint problem tested under modern-style adversarial scrutiny.
Heirens pleaded guilty.
The next day, he received three consecutive life sentences, along with sentences for numerous burglaries, robberies and assaults.
To Chicago, the Lipstick Killer had been caught.
The case appeared finished.
But almost immediately, another version began taking shape.
Heirens would spend the rest of his life saying he confessed for one reason.
He wanted to stay alive.
And as decades passed, experts began reexamining the very evidence that had made his guilt appear certain.