William Heirens: The Man Known as The Lipstick Killer

Was the teenager guilty of three heinous murders or did he spend his life in prison for crimes which he did not commit?

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Chicago

Chicago in the 1940s was a juxtaposition of poverty and prosperity, security and crime, and optimism and pessimism. The city was segregated, with blacks and whites living in separate neighborhoods; the black middle class lived separately from the lower class blacks, as did the middle class and lower class whites.

In January of 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States and the first American soldier since the Civil War was executed for desertion. Three months later, in April, U.S. troops liberated the first Nazi concentration camp and landed in Okinawa, Japan, and Roosevelt died suddenly in Warm Springs, Georgia, making Harry S. Truman the 33rd president of the United States.

Josephine Ross

World War II was in its last days on the afternoon of June 5, 1945 when the body of housewife and widow Josephine Ross was discovered in her apartment on North Kenmore Avenue. Forty-three year old Josie had been widowed since July of the previous year and reportedly had dreams of…