Gecht was born in 1953 in Chicago and worked as a carpenter and electrical contractor. For a period in the 1970s he was employed by John Wayne Gacy's construction business, a detail that has attached itself to the case ever since and means nothing beyond the coincidence.
Between May 1981 and October 1982 women in and around Chicago were abducted from the street, sexually assaulted, mutilated and killed, most of them working as prostitutes. Three other men were involved: Edward Spreitzer and the brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. The accounts they gave described rituals in a room at Gecht's house, with Gecht directing. The Chicago press called the group the Chicago Rippers.
The convictions did not follow the accounts. Andrew Kokoraleis was convicted of murder and executed by the state of Illinois on March 17, 1999, the last person Illinois has put to death. Thomas Kokoraleis was convicted of one murder, served his sentence and was released in 2019. Spreitzer was convicted of four murders and sentenced to death, commuted to life in 2003.
Gecht was convicted on February 17, 1984 of attempted murder, rape and aggravated battery for the attack on a woman who survived, and sentenced to 120 years. He was never convicted of any murder, and he has always denied all of it.
The figure of eighteen or more comes from the confessions of his associates and from the number of unsolved deaths of women in the area at the time. He has been convicted of none of them.
That gap is the case. The man described by the others as the one giving the orders is serving a long sentence for the crime with a living witness, and the killings are, as against him, unproven. The entry is marked accordingly, and the 120-year term means he will die in prison either way.