Richard Honeck was born on January 5, 1879, to a prosperous farm-equipment dealer in Hermann, Missouri. By his early twenties, he worked as a telegraph operator—a steady job in the growing network of communication. Honeck never displayed outright criminal inclinations growing up, but his friendship with Herman Hundhausen and fascination with petty mischief hinted at something darker. In 1899, trouble caught up with Honeck when both he and Hundhausen were charged with setting fires in Hermann. That winter, they attended a hearing where Walter F. Koeller testified against them. Koeller's testimony ignited a chilling obsession in Honeck: revenge. “They swore retribution,” records later described. Armed with knives, revolvers, a club, and even a satchel of clothes without labels—likely to obscure their identities—they went to Koeller’s room in Chicago. Honeck, then 20, stabbed Koeller repeatedly, leaving him slumped in a chair in September 1899. Arrests followed swiftly after police traced the weapons and getaway kit.

In September 1899, after the Kellers testified against him, Honeck and companion Hundhausen traveled to Chicago with an arsenal of weapons and plotted a deadly conspiracy. According to police, they stormed Koeller’s room with Bowie knives, revolvers, and a club. Koeller was later found seated in a chair, stabbed in the back, deathly silent. Hundhausen later confessed that Honeck had wielded the eight-inch Bowie knife, its blade matted in dried blood—a brutal mark of revenge.

Honeck was convicted and sent to Joliet Prison, where he spent the first years of his life sentence. In 1912, he attempted to stab the assistant warden with a homemade knife and spent 20 days in solitary, followed by six months chained with a ball and chain. After that incident, Honeck maintained a quiet prison record, working 35 years in the bakery workshop at Southern Illinois Penitentiary. Over the decades, he lived in near-total isolation—receiving a single letter from a brother and only two visitors until 1963. In August of that year, Associated Press reporter Bob Poos rediscovered Honeck’s story through a prison newsletter. The elderly prisoner suddenly found himself flooded with 2,000 letters—ranging from marriage proposals in Germany to job offers and coins from sympathetic strangers.

His parole on December 20, 1963, at age 84 was largely due to the intervention of his niece, Clara Orth. Honeck moved to Sutherlin, Oregon, with her and spent his final years in a nursing home. In final interviews, he told reporters, “It’ll take a long time to deal with these,” referring to his letter backlog. He admitted the world had sped up in his decades away. Honeck died of natural causes on December 28, 1976, at age 97.