On May 10, 1950, three years after the death of his father, his mother Mary married Carl August Rudolph Lindberg in Palo Pinto, Texas. She and Lindberg had met during a train ride to Chicago. Lindberg was a traveling insurance salesman from Texas, with a 25-year criminal record that ranged from forgery to several DUIs. Lindberg was also a hard drinker which was the opposite of Speck's father. Speck and his sister Carolyn stayed with their married sister Sara Thornton in Monmouth for a few months so Speck could finish second grade, before joining their mother and Lindberg in rural Santo, Texas, west of Fort Worth, Texas, where Speck attended third grade.
