EDWARD SPREITZER AND THE CHICAGO RIPPERS

Linda Sutton was the first victim of the Chicago Rippers. Her lifeless body was found in Villa Park on June 2, 1981. She had been sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated with a knife on May 23, 1981. Upon discovery of her body, it was apparent that the severing of the left breast was going to become a pattern in the yet-to-come string of murders that would infect Chicago, Illinois until Edward Spreitzer’s arrest on November 5, 1982. 

The Chicago Rippers claimed at least 18 victims in their almost year and a half of terror. This group of men were participants of a Satanic cult made up of Edward Spreitzer, Robin Gecht, and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. These men had a strict modus operandi and left a specific signature on each of their victims. They did not have a lot of leeway for creativity due to the fact that they were following murderous sacrificial rituals. According to police, the Chicago Rippers would cruise around in their van searching for prostitutes that they could sacrifice in the apartment belonging to Robin Gecht. The fact that this cult removed the left breast from each of their victims was gruesome enough but what they did with them was unimaginably worse.  Due to the following of these rituals, this cult severed one breast from each of their victims and consumed it as Robin Gecht recited verses out of The Satanic Bible. The next step in the ritual was for them to alternate sexually abusing the gaping cut. After the assault, the next course of action was for each of the members to masturbate into the breast before cutting it up and eating it. When Thomas Kokoraleis was arrested he painted a vividly accurate picture of the “Satanic Chapel” that was in Robin Gecht’s apartment. He described to them the rituals in which the men engaged. Rituals that incorporated detaching one, sometimes both, of the victim’s breasts. To perform this amputation, the men used a wire garrote. Then each participant was required to “take communion” by consuming a segment of the breast. Shortly after their arrests, Thomas and Andrew Kokoraleis and Edward Spreitzer confessed to the police. They even admitted that they each had devoured a piece of their victim’s detached breasts before Robin Gecht put what remained of the breast in a trophy box. Police also found Satanic novels in Andrew Kokoraleis’ apartment. The manager of the Rip Van Winkle Motel where the four men each had a room, described them to the police as “some kind of cultists”.

Their sadistic behavior was evident even in their first murder. The evidence found with the first victim, Linda Sutton, implied to police that she was abducted by sadists but the authorities had no substantial proof. It was almost one year before their next known victim was taken. Lorraine Borowski and Shui Mak were both kidnapped in May of 1982. Neither of their bodies were found until Fall of 1982.  Lorraine Borowski was employed at the Elmhurst Realtor’s Office. On May 15, 1982 she was expected to be the first one there. However, as the rest of the employees started to filter in for work, they found the office had not been opened and several of Borowski’s belongings such as her shoes and several items from her purse were laying on the sidewalk near the door. Police were summoned immediately but it was five months before they located her body. She was found in a cemetery on October 10. Her corpse was in progressive stages of decomposition and thus, at least at this point, the cause of her death was left unsolved.  Shui Mak was abducted 2 weeks after Lorraine Borowski on May 29, 1982. She had been reported missing but her mangled body was not found until September 30. One lucky victim named Angel York managed to live through the attack on her on June 13, 1982. She was a prostitute that was propositioned by a “john”. He took her in a van, he handcuffed her, and he had slashed her breast open. York was left on the side of the road, alive. Angel York had given police a recounting of the man who attacked her but these descriptions did not give police any solid leads. They were no closer by August 28 when young prostitute Sondra Delaware was discovered. She had been asphyxiated and left near a river with her left breast cleanly severed. Rose Davis was found in almost identical condition. She was discovered on September 8, 1982 in an alley. The Chicago Rippers’ next victim was substantially more high profile. Carol Pappas was the wife of a Chicago Cubs pitcher. She was kidnapped while out shopping on September 11, 1982 and was never seen or heard from again. Finally, The Chicago Rippers left the police a clue they had been waiting for.  Up to this point, the homicide detectives working on these cases had no indication of who could be committing these crimes or why. Police could not even settle on a definite body count. On October 6, 1982, twenty-year-old prostitute, Beverly Washington was near death and found next to some railroad tracks. Her left breast had been amputated and her right breast had been badly wounded, she had been raped and cut but she survived to give police a decent depiction of the man who had attacked her as well as the van in which she had been abducted. Washington’s description pointed police to a band of men who had previously cohabitated in a small motel near the locations where Linda Sutton and Lorraine Borowski had been found. The men were Robin Gecht, Edward Spreitzer, Thomas Kokoraleis and Andrew Kokoraleis.

Two weeks after Beverly Washington had been found, police arrested 28-year-old Robin Gecht on October 20, 1982. They charged him with the attack on Beverly Washington. Police also were suspect of his involvement of attacking Cynthia Smith. Gecht was a strange man. He had been previously employed by John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer also known as The Killer Clown. Police also learned of his troubled past. In his younger days, he had been implicated in the molesting of his own younger sister. Right away, police connected him with the Ripper killings but unfortunately they did not have any solid evidence and, on October 26, Robin Gecht made bail. After detectives learned that the man they had arrested was one of four men that had rented a room at the Rip Van Winkle Motel, police questioned the manager to inquire about these tenants. The manager disclosed that two of the men, Thomas and Andrew Kokoraleis, had left a forwarding address just in case they got any mail. When police went to investigate, they discovered Thomas Kokoraleis was home. They questioned him and, due to his erratic answers, they took him to the police station. After Thomas Kokoraleis failed a polygraph test, he broke under intense examination. He specified about the Satanic Chapel where the men had lured women and subsequently tormented them with knives and ice picks. He also told police that these women were gang raped and ultimately sacrificed to Satan. Police also got out of Thomas information about the severed breasts. He told them, at one point, he had tallied fifteen breasts in Gecht’s trophy box. He chose a photograph of Lorraine Borowski and identified her as a woman he and his brother had kidnapped for sacrifice at the motel.

Police got search warrants and arrest warrants for the other three men and on November 5, 1982 arrested Robin Gecht, Andrew Kokoraleis, and Edward Spreitzer, who was 20-years-old at the time. The men were placed in jail with a $1 million bond. Authorities explored Gecht’s apartment and found the Satanic Chapel exactly as Thomas Kokoraleis had described it. They also found a gun matching a shooting that had occurred recently. Once this murderous group of men had gotten a taste for killing, no one was safe. Though they sought out prostitutes for sacrificial purposes, these women were not their only victims. Well into their killing spree, the four men were driving in their van and killed Rafael Torado, a drug dealer, when rifle fire was unleashed upon the phone booth this man happened to be using.

With the Chicago Rippers in custody, police suspected that these men might have killed eighteen women in about eighteen months. They charged Thomas Kokoraleis with Lorraine Borowski’s murder on November 12 and he was indicted four days later by a Grand Jury. Thomas received a life sentence. Kokoraleis used the fact that he had helped the police to his advantage. He haggled his sentence to 70 years for his participation in the killing of Lorraine Borowski. Between the times of his confession and his trial, Thomas had second thoughts and his attorney tried to keep the submission of his testimony out of the trials. His confession was accepted as evidence in a trial on December 4, 1983. While he was waiting to be sentenced, he disclosed to police the alleged resting place of Carol Pappas but when police went to search the field, they found no remains. Thomas Kokoraleis was convicted of the murder of Lorraine Borowski on May 18, 1984. Thomas was compensated with a life imprisonment sentence on September 7 for his helpfulness in the police’s investigation. On September 25, Thomas, Andrew, and Edward were all indicted for Linda Sutton’s murder.

Andrew Kokoraleis and Edward Spreitzer were both charged with the murder and rape of Rose Davis on November 14, 1982. Edward Spreitzer pled guilty to four murder charges, including the murders of Rose Davis, Sondra Delaware, Shui Mak, and Rafael Torado on April 2, 1984. He received life sentences for each charge and was charged with additional sentences for rape, attempted murder, and aberrant sexual assault. Andrew Kokoraleis and Edward Spreitzer were also included in a second indictment for the murder of Lorraine Borowski. At Andrew Kokoraleis’ trial for the Davis murder on February 6, 1985, a statement from the defendant was read to the jury. In his statement, he stated that he had been “cruising” with the other members of his cult, Gecht and Spreitzer, when they abducted Rose Davis. He declared that he had stabbed her repeatedly during the kidnapping.  Andrew Kokoraleis was convicted on February 11 and his death sentence was handed to him on March 18. One year later Edward Spreitzer was convicted of the murder of Linda Sutton on March 4, 1986 and he received his death sentence on March 20. Andrew Kokoraleis’ attorney attempted to argue that he had been intimidated into confessing but their arguments were unsuccessful. Andrew Kokoraleis was the first convict to be executed at, what was then, a new maximum-security prison located in Southern Illinois. On March 16, 1999 when Andrew Kokoraleis was 35-years-old, he was put to death by lethal injection at Tamms Correctional Center. This was his sentence for the asphyxiated murder of Lorraine Borowski. Edward Spreitzer, who also received a death sentence, had his sentence replaced by a life imprisonment sentence when the new Governor, George Ryan, outlawed the death penalty in 2003. As it happens, Andrew Kokoraleis was Governor Ryan’s sole execution after he had been in office just over two months.

Robin Gecht, the apparent leader of the Ripper Crew, never implicated his own involvement with any murders. Although several of his fellow cult members had informed the police of his involvement, they never had sufficient evidence to prove he was guilty of murder. Gecht was charged with multiple charges including rape, attempted murder, and aggravated assault. On March 2, 1983, he was deemed mentally competent for trial. His trial began September 20 and Robin Gecht was called to the witness stand on September 21. While under oath, he confessed to Beverly Washington’s attack. He was found guilty on all charges and the judge sentenced him 120 years in prison.

Robin Gecht is still serving his sentence at Menard Correctional Center and The Chicago Rippers are still serving their time for the heinous crimes they committed.