Richard Speck victim Suzanne Farris appears as a young girl with a prayer card from her funeral on July 18, 1966. Her brother, John Farris, still carries the photo and prayer card in his wallet 50 years later.
The Farris family lived in a quiet, tree-lined Far South Side neighborhood called Fair Elms. Their father, John, had attended seminary, changed his mind about the priesthood and married a young woman, Mary, who had grown up three blocks from him. In the family's two-bedroom Cape Cod home, Suzie and her older sister, Marilyn, shared a bedroom. John had his own. Their parents slept on a hide-a-bed in the living room.
When John thinks about growing up with Suzie, he thinks about the kitchen. In that small room, with its linoleum floor and overhead light, Suzie taught him how to make a grilled cheese sandwich and how, if you mixed sour cream and dry onion soup mix, presto, you had French onion dip.
The kitchen is where he and Suzie shared lunch, usually made by their dad, who worked afternoons while their mother worked days. It's where Suzie taught him, as a 10-year-old, to play solitaire.
"You know," he said, "older sisters take care of you and I always felt taken care of. You're afraid in life, and here's someone who is comforting you.''The kitchen was also home to the family cookie jar, a white canister that said "Cooky" on the front, a detail he retains because "Cooky" was his father's nickname for Suzie.
He remembers that after she died, when the mourners came, their father wept and moaned, “Cooky, Cooky, Cooky.”
