Nearly 60 years ago, the face of Chicago mass murderer Richard Speck made headlines after he murdered multiple women.
An observant viewer of CBS News Chicago recently saw something that deeply upset her and the family of one of Speck’s victims.
People in the Chicago area in the 1960s may have heard the name Pamela Wilkening, one of Speck’s victims. Her cousin, Keith Wilkening, said his father thinks about Pamela “every day.”
Georgeann Georges has never met the Wilkening family, but she knows them.
“I was 16 when the murders happened,” Georges said. “It was on the news all the time.”
Georges was entering her junior year of high school in 1966 when a row house on East 100th Street became the center of headlines. Speck broke in and brutally murdered Pamela Wilkening and her seven classmates, all of whom were studying to become nurses.
AP
“I’ll never forget those faces,” Georges said. “Never. It really hurt to see it.”
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Georges was hurt by an internet ad that recently appeared on her iPad. The ad read: “The average salary of a nurse in 2024 is simply astonishing (check it out).” The clickbait ad featured a photo of a murder victim from 1966.
“When I saw this photo appear on the screen, I was shocked,” said Georges.
She was shocked to see that the advertisement contained a photo of Pamela Wilkening.
“How and why is her photo being used to attract nurses to the profession?” Georges said. “This is horrible.”
She said she had seen the ad with Wilkening’s image more than once. CBS News Chicago shared a screenshot of the ad with the Wilkening family.
“It’s just an old photo of a nurse, for anyone who doesn’t know what happened and who it was. I was wondering why out of all the photos of nurses you picked this one?” said Keith Wilkening.
Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, showed CBS News Chicago search terms that content creators can use to find free, nostalgic photos of nurses online, such as “vintage,” “nurse” and “nursing.”
CBS
“I don’t know how they got this image,” Jones said.
Although Pam’s photo did not appear in any database he used, Jones suspected that a computer program had found the photo of her wearing a nurse’s hat and matched it to a headline about nurse salaries.
“There were probably no people involved in determining whether that image would appear,” Jones said.
Keith Wilkening said the explanation of how the photo of his aunt surfaced was “fascinating, but I think it’s the care of the editor and the people who put the photo together not to just take anything.”
That’s how MGID, the California-based international marketing firm behind the ad, says it works. CBS News Chicago found MGID guidelines that state that a “compliance team thoroughly reviews every ad,” including the “thumbnail image.” They also state, “We use automated algorithms and manual reviews” and “all ads are proofread.”
What happened here?
MGID officials declined an interview request, but said in an email: “An internal investigation is underway to determine how this image passed our moderation process. We deeply regret this oversight and apologize to the Wilkening family and the viewer involved.”
For Pamela’s nephew, the absence was still painful.
“It doesn’t make me angry, it’s just frustrating,” said Keith Wilkering.
Georges added: “The fact that this was used as an advertisement just didn’t feel right to me.”
