Richard Honeck (January 5, 1879December 28, 1976) was an American

murderer Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

who served one of the longest custodial sentences ever to terminate in a prisoner's release in American criminal history. Jailed in November 1899 for the murder of a former school friend, Honeck was paroled from Southern Illinois Penitentiary in

Chester, Illinois Chester is a city in and the county seat of Randolph County, Illinois, United States, on a bluff above the Mississippi River. The population was 6,814 at the 2020 census. It lies south of St. Louis, Missouri. History Founding Samuel Smith is ...

on 20 December 1963, having completed 64 years and one month of his life sentence, and served a total of 23,418 days in jail.Irving Wallace et al., ''The People's Almanac'', Doubleday, 1975, p.1341.

Koeller murder

Honeck, a

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

operator and son of a wealthy dealer in farm equipment, was 20 years old when he was arrested in

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in September 1899 for the murder of Walter F. Koeller. He and another man, Herman Hundhausen, had gone to Koeller's room armed with an eight-inch Bowie knife, a sixteen-inch Bowie knife, a silver-plated case knife, a .44

caliber In guns, particularly firearms, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated as "cal") is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel Gauge (firearms) , bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the f ...

revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six roun ...

, a .38 caliber revolver, a .22 caliber revolver, a club, and two belts of cartridges. They also carried a getaway kit consisting of two satchels filled with

dime novel The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term ''dime novel'' has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, r ...

s, obscene etchings, and clothes from which the names had been cut.''New York Times'', 4 September, 5 September 1899. Koeller, who was later found by the police sitting in a chair stabbed in the back, had testified for the prosecution some years earlier when Honeck and Hundhausen were charged with setting a number of fires in their home town of

Hermann, Missouri Hermann is a city in and the county seat of Gasconade County, Missouri, United States. It has been the county seat since 1842. It is near the center of the Missouri Rhineland and south of the Missouri River. The population was 2,185 at the 2020 ...

. According to a confession made by Hundhausen, the two men had sworn revenge and planned Koeller's murder in considerable detail. Honeck, Hundhausen said, had stabbed the dead man with the eight-inch bowie knife, which was discovered "smeared with coagulated blood".

Prison

Honeck spent the first years of his sentence in

Joliet Prison Joliet or Jolliet may refer to: People * Louis Jolliet (1645–1700), French-Canadian explorer of North America * Oscar Joliet (1878–1969), Belgian scholar-priest and Catholic Auxiliary bishop of Ghent Places in the United States * Joliet, Illi ...

, where in 1912 he stabbed the assistant warden with a hand-crafted knife. He served 20 days in solitary confinement for that infraction, and was shackled with a

ball and chain A ball and chain is a physical restraint device historically applied to prisoners, primarily in the British Empire and its former colonies, from the 17th century until as late as the mid-20th century. A type of shackle, the ball and chain is de ...

for six months, but had a clean record after moving to Southern Illinois Penitentiary, where he worked for 35 years in the prison bakery. In the decades between his conviction and the time his case came to public notice again in August 1963, Honeck received one letter—a four-line note from his brother in 1904—and two visitors: a friend in 1904, and a newspaper reporter in 1963.

Media attention

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reporter Bob Poos brought attention to Honeck's case in 1963 after seeing reference to it in the Menard prison newspaper. In a follow-up report, Poos noted that the aged murderer had subsequently received a mailbag of 2,000 letters, including a proposal of marriage from a woman in

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, offers of employment, and gifts of money in sums ranging from $5 down to 25 cents. Honeck, who was permitted under prison rules to answer one letter per week, observed: "It'll take a long time to deal with these." "I guess I'd have to be pretty careful if I got paroled," the 84-year-old prisoner concluded when interviewed by Poos. "There must be an awful lot of traffic now, and people, compared with what I remember."

Later life and death

According to a later newspaper article, Honeck was released upon the intervention of his niece, Clara Orth, and the two eventually settled in Sutherlin,

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

. In 1971, he was admitted to a Roseburg nursing home, where he spent the last five years of his life. He died in December 1976 at the age of 97.

Honeck's time served compared

The time served by Richard Honeck has been exceeded since his release in at least three cases. Johnson Van Dyke Grigsby (1886–1987) served 66 years and 123 days at

Indiana State Prison The Indiana State Prison is a maximum security Indiana Department of Correction prison for adult males; however, minimum security housing also exists on the confines. It is located in Michigan City, Indiana, about east of Chicago. The average d ...

from 1908 to 1974 after stabbing a man in 1907 during a poker game/bar fight. Joseph Ligon (1938-present) served 68 years at the

State Correctional Institution – Phoenix The State Correctional Institution – Phoenix is a state prison in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with a Collegeville postal address, History The SCI Phoenix buildings were built on the SCI Graterford land area, and the P ...

and was at one time the oldest juvenile lifer in the US, Ligon at age 15 was sentenced in 1953 to life without parole for murder, a mandatory sentence at the time. Ligon first rejected a resentencing and parole offer in 2016. Ligon was again resentenced in 2017 and immediately eligible for parole but refused it, pending his appeal. Ligon contends that he should be resentenced to "time served" and released, so he can cut all ties to the justice system. He was released in 2021, after serving 68 years in prison.

Paul Geidel Paul Geidel Jr. (April 21, 1894 – May 1, 1987) was the longest-serving prison inmate in the United States whose sentence ended with his parole, a fact that earned him a place in Guinness World Records. After being convicted of second-degre ...

, (1894–1987) who was convicted of second-degree murder in 1911, served 68 years and 245 days in various New York state prisons. He was released on May 7, 1980, at the age of 86. Geidel's case differed from Honeck's in several key respects. First, he was initially sentenced not to life imprisonment but to twenty years to life, but was later declared insane and was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. Secondly, Geidel was offered parole at an earlier date than was Honeck – in 1974, when he had served only 63 years. By this time, Geidel had become institutionalized and declined release, voluntarily choosing to remain confined for an additional six years.

William Heirens William George Heirens (November 15, 1928 – March 5, 2012) was an American criminal and possible serial killer who "confessed" to three murders. He was subsequently controversially convicted of the crimes in 1946. Heirens was called the Lipstic ...

, (1928–2012) the "''Lipstick Killer''," confessed and plead guilty to three murders in

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in 1946, sentenced to three life terms, and imprisoned 5 September 1946. He exceeded Honeck's record of time served in August 2010. Heirens died still incarcerated on March 5, 2012.

References