The Chicago Rippers; Robin Gechts, Edward Spritzer, Andrew Kokoraleis, Thomas Kokoda- 1981-2
The first body from the Rippers was found 1st June 1981, the sight which was left for investigators turned even the most hardened detectives stomach. The body was left on wasteland behind The Moonlit Hotel on North Avenue. A maid who worked at the hotel first noticed a putrid smell outside the hotel which was becoming more pungent by the day. The hotel manager, Hank McGinnis investigated the smell and made the assumption that the smell was probably coming from a dead animal in the wasteland. Instead, he found the badly decomposed body of a young woman.
When the police arrived on the scene, it was quickly noticed that these were not the remains of an expired drug addict, but a murder scene. The woman was in pivotal stages of decomposition, lying face down in the wasteland. Her wrists had been clamped together behind her back with handcuffs prior to dumping her body and she had been gagged with a cloth. She was barely clothed, in a sweater and underpants, which had been pulled down to her ankles. Inside one of her socks, the investigators found a small roll of bills and change which amounted to thirteen dollars and a few cents. As this small amount had been left in place this proved that robbery was not a motive.
As there were no missing persons alerts matching the victims description this meant that the body had not been here for very long. However keeping rolls of bills in the socks was a trademark tactic used by Chicago prostitutes to ensure they did not get robbed.
It was another two weeks of searching before the police finally had an ID on their victim. Dental records and fingerprints matched up to a 21-year-old Linda Sutton a black woman with two children who had long history of prostitution and solicitation. The last person who saw Linda alive was her partner who got into a fight with her over her reliance on prescription cough syrup, this was a common cheap fix for the girls who worked this particularly hard beat. Following the argument Linda had left her partner to go get more cough syrup. However something else now bothered the investigator, by the time he got the coroners report it was noted that her body had been dead for three days. However, the level of decomposition made her body look like she had been dead for weeks. When the investigator asked the coroner to explain this, he explained that the advanced state of her decomposition was due to the fact that parasites had not had to burrow their way in steadily where they do so normally as they were able to access the internal organs quickly due to the two massive wounds inflicted on her body which allowed parasites to strip the body in record time. It appeared that both of Ms Sutton’s breasts had been severed.
However, in the morgue bodies began to pile up. Another five bodies had turned up with similar wounds. Firstly a 19-year-old identified only as Molly, who was reported missing by her parents in June 1981. Then, a 35-year-old cocktail waitress was abducted from her car on the early morning of 12 February 1982. The petrol gauge should show that her tank was empty- Had she left to seek help, only to find herself in the worst kind of company? It seems so-her purse was still on the passenger seat, her keys still in the ignition. There was no ID left inside the rifled handbag, However. The waitresses car was shown in the late night news. Her boss identified and reported her missing. Police and public combed the area around the abandoned motor for 2 miles. They found her body just outside the city limits, on a embankment by the side of the road. She had been raped, tortured and mutilated-one of her breasts had been severed. The police after press to keep this last fact secret as it was their most vital piece of evidence in establishing the identity of the actual killer from the regular round of cracks to confess to such things.
A few days later, the body 40-year-old Hispanic woman was discovered. She had also been raped, stabbed and strangled sometime of the previous two days. while her breasts had not been amputated, they had been badly bitten, and someone had masturbated over the body. Police didn’t formally acknowledge the links between Linda Sutton and the next five bodies found in a similar condition, unwilling to let loose the devastating cry of “serial killer“. It only been three years since John Wayne Gacy having been brought to justice, and no-one wanted to stir up the panic on that level unless it was solidly based in fact. But they did draft in the FBI to examine hair and fibres found at the dump sites and to establish a profile of who they were looking for.
On 15th of May 1982, 21-year-old Lorraine Borowski, known to her family as Lorry Ann, the due in early to open up the real estate office in Elmhurst where she worked. She parked her car in her usual place and even got as far as putting her key in the front door. But even when her fellow employees turned up, they found the key still dangling there, Borowski’s shoes and the scattered contents of her handbag laid scattered in front of the door.
A woman on her way to work told police that she had seen a car filled with people going past her on the way out of town. She didn’t recognise anyone in it, but felt that the woman in the back seat was being held against her will. When she heard about Lorry Ann’s abduction, the full horror of what you probably saw had dawned upon her. A massive search began but it wasn’t until five months later that Borowskis remains were found, hidden in the Clarendon Hills Cemetery, too decomposed for an exact cause of death to be given. However she had been left in the same area as Linda Sutton.
It seemed that this killer could not be sated. Only two weeks later, on 29th of May, Shui Mark was abducted as she returned home from her families ling-ling restaurant in the suburb of Streamwood. She had been travelling and her brother Kent’s car but they were in the middle of a furious row over their sisters desire to marry an American man. Around 1:30 AM, the argument had reached such a peak that Kent stopped the car and ordered Shui out. He thought their parents were following behind and pick her up. Instead they had actually overtaken and were waiting further up the road, thinking that Kent must have had a breakdown. None of her family ever saw Shui alive again. It was as if she had disappeared from the face of the earth. The investigators had been canvassing the baffled Chinese community four months when Shui's broken body was eventually found on 30th September, buried in a construction site in Barrington, one of the most exclusive suburbs in the state. Shui’s skeleton was in pieces, but the jade dragon pendant that she wore for good luck was still round her neck. Several pieces of sharp wire lay around her body. The Cook County medical examiner Dr Robert Stein found that she suffered extensive head injuries. Indeed, a horseshoe-shaped crack on the back of her head almost pierced the thick bone. It was an image that would haunt the investigators for the rest of their lives.
The was a report from 13 June from a young black prostitute called Angel York who would been hideously assaulted just up the stress on North Avenue, a teeming thoroughfare of streets innovative and had been cruising her for a while, and 19-year-old Angel was keen to get a strip and avoid any patrol cars. She ducked down an alley and the van followed. When Angel opened the door to talk money, she found herself staring down the barrel of the gun. The .45 was wielded by a short, skinny white man with greasy, shoulder length brown hair and icy blue eyes. He told her sit still and shut up as he drove away from the strip to a deserted industrial estate in North Cleaver. Once the man was satisfied he’d found an isolated enough location, he gestured to Angel to get into the back of the van, which had been partitioned off from the cab with a plywood door. There, he made her strip off and kneel down while he handcuffed her wrists behind her back and wrapped duct tape around her mouth. He then produced a pair of tights which which he quickly and expertly wound around her torso so that her breast protruded. When he was satisfied by her appearance, he took off his own clothes-and reached for a huge night from one of the shelves in the back of the van . He uncuffed her left hand and ordered her to cut into her left breast. When it first she refused, the man smacked angel round the head with his .45 and began shouting at her. Hyperventilating with fear, she made a small nick at the side of her breast, the pain from which made her almost pass out. Screaming and ranting, the man snatched the knife away from her and ripped the wound right open. He went on to torment her for over an hour, before slapping duct tape over the wound he had made and dumping Angel head first into an alley. She was found, bleeding and hysterical, on grand Avenue by security guard, who took her to the hospital and enough time to save her life. Doctors reported there was semen inside her wounds. Since making her report, Angel York had seemingly fled Chicago in terror of what had happened to her there. Certain that the man who had attacked her was the man that they were after, investigators tried in vain to find her again, to no avail. But her statement would provide crucial in tracking down the red van man. Despite the crucial information, the colour was still out in the Chicago night, cruising the victims and showing no signs of slowing down. The next victim’s bodies paid tribute to his increasing frenzy.
Teenage prostitute Sandra Delaware was found stabbed and strangled to death on the bank of the Chicago River on 28th of August. Her wrists were bound behind her with the shoelace and her left breast had been severed with piano wire. The coroner had estimated the time of death to be six hours prior to discovery.
Then the battered body of marketing executive Rose Beck Davies, 30, was found in an alleyway behind an apartment block on 8 September. A Black sock was found tied around her neck and another around her left wrist. Her clothes had been pulled away from her torso and abdomen, they tangled around her wrists and ankles. She lay in a pool of blood, and great arcs of it splattered surrounding walls to 2 feet high and 9 feet around. Her face had been battered in, her breasts carved up and pieces of wood from an axe inside her vagina.
Just three days later, 42-year-old Carole Poppas, wife of a Chicago baseball player, disappeared without trace in a department store in Wheaton, Illinois. By now it was apparent that there wasn’t a woman in Chicago who was safe. Although the killer had started his work and continued to pray on vulnerable prostitutes, he was obviously completely opportunistic.
It was a long four months from Angel Yorks description of the small, skinny guy until detectives got another such break. In October 1982, another prostitute, Beverley Washington, 20, had been found stripped and savaged by a railway track. Her left breast had been severed, her right deeply slashed-but she was alive. emergency treatment saved her life.
Even in her brutalised state, she was able to give descriptions are provided significant details the police to work on. Beverley had also been cruised by a red van driven by a slender white man around the age of 25, dressed in a flannel shirt and square toed boots, with greasy brown hair and a moustache. He had offered her significantly more money than she’d asked for and seemed to Beverley to be unaccountably nervous. Inside the van had also been red, with tinted windows and wooden divider partitioning off the back. Beverley even noticed there were feathers and a roach clip hanging from the rearview mirror. As he led her into the back of the van with him, the man pulled out a gun. He ordered her to strip then handcuffed her, forced her to fellate him and then threatened her with violence if she didn’t swallow the handful of pills he crammed into her mouth. At that point she passed out, her last memory being of her attacker standing over her, with some kind of cord in his hands. At this point, Washington thought she was about to die. Once he had done his worst, the man dumped Beverley into a dumpster on North Maplewood, where she was discovered the next morning by elderly vagrant looking the scrap metal. His screams for help brought paramedics to the scene quickly enough to save her. it was time for the police to begin hunting.
Within three weeks, the investigators pulled over a van that matched Washington's exact description. The driver did not, however-he had a shock of fuzzy bright red hair that reminded the investigators of bozo the clown. the man acted as if he wasn’t all there. He stammered and shouted as investigators asked him to get out of the van and answer their questions. He told the police name was Eddie spritzer and that the van belonged to his boss, Robin Gecht, with whom he was working on renovating a house on North Linder. The officers told Spreitzer to drive to this house and beckon Gecht outside, so they could take a good look and see if the drivers boss would turn out to be the greasy haired, hillbilly type that Washington had described. Ambling towards them as if he had all the time in the world, 28-year-old Robin get was even wearing the same flannel shirt and work boots. Yet, when Spreitzer made his unease plain, virtually hopping up and down on the spot when confronted by the investigators telling him that is vehicle had been implicated in a recent crime, Robin Gecht acted completely calm. He told the investigators that he wanted to cooperate fully when they suggested a further chat down the station. For Gecht was that most dangerous of types- a psychopath with charisma.
investigators went back to Beverley Washington hospital bed to show her a selection of photographs which now included a picture of Robin Gecht. She pointed out Gecht without a moment’s hesitation. Then things had became more complicated, As the next thing they need to do was to put Gecht into a lineup. Because her injuries were so severe there was no way Beverley could come to the police station to do this. They had to bring the men to her. Still in a wheelchair and breathing through tubes, Washington faced the man who had destroyed her life. The investigators could see her fighting back her panic. She positively identified Robin get and then subsequently fainted. As the investigators moved to arrest him Gecht was a picture of outrage. As they took him straight back to area five, where his wife Rosemary was waiting for him. The profilers had been right. The suspect was a married man children. And the man who had been staring up trouble for a long time now, with a past and a predilection for the company of young girls that bore strong similarities to another man who’d started a death cult in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Robin Gechts was Chicago’s answer to Charles Manson.
Once the investigators began to look at Robin Gecht’s life they realise that he was far from a normal father and husband. Robin married his wife in early 1975, followed by their first child being born early 1976. It wasn’t long before he was cheating on Rosemary openly. Teenage girls descended Gechts’s first house at all hours of the day and night. At one point, he was accused of raping a 15-year-old at gunpoint in his daughter’s bed, but the girl later dropped the charges. Rosemary was always threatening a divorce, yet it never happened. The couple had two more children, a boy and another girl. And in an attempt to make sense of what her husband was doing to her, Rosemary began to make friends with his numerous girlfriends. She needed to compare notes on a few of Robin’s quirks. She showed them the six hat pins that get forced her to wear skewered inside her breasts, feeding her drugs to numb the pain and to stop the wound from going septic. She then told them about the way he forced her to watch him having sex with her parents dog in their front room. The weapons he made as sex aids-sticks with pins in them and axes. The friend with whom Gecht lived with as a teenager told police that profound changes come over Robin after he split with the mother of his first child. He apparently got into drugs in a major way and had a source giving him all kinds of prescription uppers and downers. He also began boasting about all the woman he had conned out of money and began to amass stockpile of guns.
The cops already had Spreitzer and Gecht in custody, but getting anything out of them was a different matter. The latter have retained his cool under intense questioning, never deviating from his line that he had never seen Beverley Washington before however Eddie Spreitzer was a different matter. It soon became apparent to the investigators that Spreitzer, 22, was very afraid of the older Gecht. Keeping them apart, they worked on Eddie until he began to crumble. The weight of what he had seen in doing eventually came tumbling out. The sweating, stuttering Spreitzer first admitted that he had been at the wheel of the red van when get committed a drive-by shooting on to Puerto Rican men. His story checked out-one of the men had been killed and the other was left paralysed. After this little prelude, Gecht then ordered him to drive to the Villa Park where it was easy to pick up prostitute. Spreitzer said that Gecht disappeared down an alley with a black woman and came back alone. But he had a little trophy to show Eddie, which he threw on the floor of the van. It was the woman’s left breast. After that night, he said, Gechts became insatiable. Spreitzer had witnessed him killing, mutilating and carving up woman after woman to get his diseased sexual kicks, which were all fixated around breasts. Sometimes he would masturbate in front of Spreitzer with the freshly severed organ one time he “forced” Eddie to do likewise. By the time Spritzer finished his testimonies, Spreitzer had furnished his interrogators with the details of seven murders and one aggravated battery. The officers were profoundly disturbed by what they’d heard and only hoped it would give them something with which to break down Gecht with. But when they went into show him the photos of the known victims, get reacted as if they were simply boring him-he knew nothing about these women and never met them before in his life. The cops tried another tack: moving get into a room where he could clearly see Spreitzer cooperating with the police and showing them something. Gecht didn’t even flicker. But when the officers reversal scenario, Eddie’s reaction was extreme. Seeing his accomplice again, Spreitzer began to panic and immediately changed account, saying that Gecht had not murdered anyone. His testimony became so chaotic that it was near impossible to follow what he was even talking about. It seemed like the very nearness of Gecht had turned Spreitzer into a gibbering wreck. Spreitzer now claimed that there was another man involved in all this carnage, who was the real ringleader and killer. A man called Andrew Kokoraleis. Spritzer led the investigators to the Kokoraleis town house in Villa Park. The area was run down and shabby. The rent was cheap and parking lot at the rear of the buildings had become a hangout for teenage stoners. 23-year-old Andy Kokoraleis was at home when the investigators called. He seemed oddly unsurprised when he was asked about Spreitzer and Gecht. In the interview room when the investigators began questioning, once they had told Kokoraleis that Spreitzer had implicated him in a string of murders he replied “what all 18 of them?”. Kokoraleis was vastly more lucid than Spreitzer. He began by describing what he, Gecht and Spreitzer did to Shui Mak. How they abducted her off the side of the road and silenced her screams of protest with punches to the face. Then they took her to a deserted construction site and punched her some more, get slamming her head into the van door which caused the horseshoe crack that disturbed the investigators. Then get started cutting her, while eddie held a the wire to her throat. Each man took turns inserting himself into the wound. By the time he had finished his interview Andy admitted the murders of Lorraine Borowski, Rose Beck Davis, Sandra Delaware and 15 other women. Kokoraleis could remember the hideous detail of each woman fate. he told police that he had shoved a rock into Sandra Delaware’s mouth to stop her from screaming, forced a wine bottle into her and stabbed her with a knife. The autopsy report confirmed that he was telling the truth. When the investigators went back to the Kokoraleis house, they had found out that Andy had a sister, Elizabeth and a brother, Tommy. It was Tommy who the police wanted to speak to. Almost as soon as the detective arrived at their home, Tommy began to look nervous. He had in low IQ anyway, but it wasn’t just that which sent the investigator’s instincts prickling. It was the way he squirmed around on the couch, acting guilty without being accused. It soon became clear that this interview would be best conducted down at the station. What Tommy explained there was a whole new complexion on Gek’s obsession. Gecht he said, wanted to put his mark upon the world. The women had died so that Robin get could make sacrifices to Satan at the altar he had house.
Robin gave had a shrine in the eye of this Northwest side form, Tommy told the investigators at Elmhurst police station. It was painted with six red and black crosses and there was a red cloth placed across home-made altar. Here the killers would take the severed breasts harvested from the victims, cut the flesh and then devour it as part of an ancient ritual honouring Satan. They did this most nights, while Rosemary Gecht was out working as a barmaid. Tommy described how the four men would kneel together around the altar involving would produce and divide the flesh of their victims in a mockery of the act of stop he would then recite passages from the Bible as each man masturbated into a portion. When each is finished, they would consume the flesh. Gecht kept a trophy box to keep the skin of the breasts in. Tommy said he once counted 15 of them in it. from what KK confessed, he had been more active in gecht’s “church” than he had at the actual killings, although he had witnessed the murder of two of the women including Lorraine Borowski. the appalled officers asked him how he could have brought himself to do such things. Tommy replied seriously. Gecht, he said, had the power to make the other three comply exactly with this wishes. You just have to do it, he emphasised firmly. Tommy believed that Jack had personal connection with Satan and feared what satanic powers would be unleashed if he refused to obey his commands. He also furthered the information that Gecht was bisexual, its story that will be backed up by the friends and acquaintances of the four killers. Various people claimed that both Eddie and Andy were Gechts sometime lovers and every expert asked had vouched that such extreme sadism could only have been the work of a man or men at raging odds with their sexuality.
Still, Satan’s little helper tried every trick he knew to keep oneself away from facing trial. His power over his followers were still strong-they all refuse to testify against him, despite repeated assurances that he would never be out of custody to get them ever again. When finally faced with a trial, Spreitzer, Andy and Tommy all tried to recant their testimonies and blame each other- anyone but Gecht. All this meant was that they alone could be tried for murder. With no physical evidence against him- Robin had always been very careful to wash and clean his van after every night on the town- and no confession, Gecht could only be tried for the physical attacks, kidnappings and rapes of Beverley Washington, Angel York and 16 other dead women. He first attempted to plead insanity, but is psychiatric assessors found him competent to stand trial, as well as being of sound mind at the time his offences took place. Lurid stories in the press caused his first hearing to be deemed a mistrial. it wasn’t until 20 September 1983 when he finally took the stand. Beverley Washington was brave enough to give evidence against him. She described what Gecht had done to her, in the months of reconstructive surgery she is undergone as a result. Then there was a testimony of Angel York, read out to the court, along with the graphically detailed victim reports, in which the murderers modus operandi was detailed the jury. Against this, Rosemary and Ruth Gecht professed Robin’s innocence and his lawyers tried to insinuate that Spreitzer had acted alone in the attacks. Gecht had only one tactic left, to deny everything. When he took the stand to speak in his own defence, he began by saying that he had killed and raped no one. He was totally innocent of the crimes, and furthermore not even made the acquaintance of his co-defendants at the time the attacks took place. The jury was not taken in by this pious act. They found him guilty of all the crimes he’s been charged with: attempted murder, rape, deviant sexual assault, aggravated battery and armed violence. He was sent down with a 120 year sentence.
One by one the rest of Gecht’s sect fell down with the realisation dawning all too slowly, Tommy made a futile attempt to get his confession blocked from his trial. He lost. He was convicted in 1984 for his part in the Lorraine Borowski murder, and sentenced to 70 years. The next trials, those of his brother Andy, were going to prove a great deal more complicated. Andy was being tried separately on two counts. The first was for the murder of rose beck davis. In his confession, Kokoraleis said that he had abducted Davies along with his accomplices, forced her into the van and beaten her death with a hatchet. the jury deliberated three hours before returning their verdict of guilty of rape and murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Andy had never been so much a stooge as much as his dimwitted brother and Spreitzer. his first recollection of events to police indicated that he was more like Robin’s right-hand man. A man who took part in the extreme sadism the gang meted out with as much gusto as its commander. Now he was going to try using the same methods as Gecht to avoid taking any responsibility for his actions. At his trial for the murder of Lorraine Borowski Andy recanted everything he had confessed on four separate occasions previously. Instead, he claimed that the police had beaten his confession out of him, making false promises that if he admitted everything he would get off lighter, and even directed him what they wanted him to say. his line was even more audacious than Gecht, and the prosecutor was forced to go through each interrogation, the work of six separate detectives and two prosecutors. The investigators took the stand to describe how he interrogated Andy- he said he had shown the defendants a selection of photographs, and Kokoraleis picked out the face of Borowski “That’s the girl Spritzer and I killed in the cemetery” he said. When it came to convincing a jury, Andy wasn’t as clever as he thought, sullen and angry, he stared with the undisguised loathing into the court room. His claims of innocence sounded hardly convincing. The deliberations did not take long. Andy was found guilty of the murder of Lorraine Borowski and sentenced to death. Spreitzer also had the face two separate trials the first of which was very straightforward. He pleaded guilty on 2 April 1984 to the murders of Rose Beck Davis, Sandra Delaware, Shui Mak and a drug dealer named Raphael Torado-the victim of the drive-by that he confessed to. He was awarded life sentences for each murder as well as time for deviant sexual assault and rape. He was then tried the Linda Sutton murder-and faced a possible death sentence for it. Which was when Eddie start to squirm. On 25 February 1986, he admitted that he and his comrades had snatched Linda Sutton of the street as she walked near Wrigley Field, taken her to the field at the back of the moonlit hotel and inflicted rape, murder and mutilation upon her. yet his attorney, Carol Anfinson, painted a picture of a young man who’d lost his way, and was way too immature and unsure of himself to resist obeying the dictates of the stronger willed companions. Friends and relatives testified that Spreitzer was indeed a docile young man who had a history of being bullied. His attorney asked the jury to spare his life. however, the prosecution had a witness who testified that Spreitzer had bragged about the killings to him, referring to the woman as “broads” and happily admitting to slashing and killing along with the others. The prosecutor summed it up, “Spreitzer isn’t a cute little boy who goes and delivers sugars to its neighbours… Eddie Spreitzer is every woman’s worst nightmare.” the jury didn’t take a lot of convincing. Any spritzer was convicted of kidnap and murder and sentenced to death however due to Gov Ryan’s moratorium on death row inmates spritzers conviction was commuted to life in prison. however, his his co-conspirator was not saved from the same fate as Andrew Kokoraleis who was executed 17th March 1999. From this prison cell, Robin get still proclaimed his innocence to anyone who will listen to him, most recently Jennifer Furio who interviewed him for her book the serial killer letters in 1998. His wife and family continue to stick by him.
