Thomas Kokoraleis was born in 1959. He, his younger brother Andrew and Edward Spreitzer worked for a Chicago roofing contractor, Robin Gecht, and the four men became the group the Chicago press called the Ripper Crew.
Between May 1981 and October 1982 women were taken from the streets of Chicago and its western suburbs in a van, sexually assaulted, mutilated and killed. At least eighteen are attributed to the group.
The case broke in October 1982 when a young woman was attacked, mutilated, thrown from a van and survived to describe what had happened to her. Thomas Kokoraleis, his brother and Spreitzer confessed. Gecht did not.
His statement to police is the source of the most detailed account of the group’s conduct that exists: a room in Gecht’s flat fitted out as a chapel, a satanic text read aloud, the removal of a breast with a wire garrotte, and a box in which what remained was kept. That account convicted the men who gave it. Because a confession is evidence against the man who makes it and hearsay about anyone else he names, it did not reach Gecht, whom all three described as the man giving the orders.
Thomas Kokoraleis was convicted of one murder and served the sentence imposed for it. He was released in 2019, and the objection that followed was about the eighteen rather than about his conviction, which was for one. His brother Andrew was executed in 1999.