On this day in 1945, Chicago police entered a North Side apartment and found a crime scene so brutal — and so chillingly theatrical — that it made headlines across the country and birthed one of the most haunting nicknames in American true crime history: The Lipstick Killer.

Frances Brown, a former Navy WAVE and working woman in her early 30s, was found shot and stabbed in her apartment near Wrigley Field. A message, scrawled in red lipstick on the wall, read: “For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself.”

Her murder stunned postwar Chicago and was eventually linked to a string of crimes that plunged the city into fear — including the later kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan.

Seventeen-year-old William Heirens was arrested, confessed under controversial circumstances, and spent over 65 years behind bars. But serious doubts about his confession, the evidence, and the police tactics used during the investigation have never gone away.

In today’s episode, we revisit the murder of Frances Brown — a woman whose life was overshadowed by a message, a nickname, and a legal case that still sparks debate decades later.

#LipstickKiller #FrancesBrown #ChicagoCrime

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