(Extraction from the book: Programmed To Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder by author David McGowan)
Robin Gecht was born on November 30, 1953 at, appropriately enough, the Illinois Masonic Hospital. His parents never married and young Robin was raised primarily by his grandparents. At a fairly young age, Gecht was sent to a school for troubled youth. He was later sent by a judge to a live-in facility that likewise catered to delinquent youth. Still later, as a young teen, Robin formed a close relationship with a man named Thomas Farley, a known pedophile who lived in the same building as the Gecht family. During his teen years, Gecht was accused of molesting his own sister. Around that same time, he began living with Farley, an arrangement that apparently was of no great concern to Gechtâs parents or grandparents. At one point, Robin even took to the road with Farley, journeying to the state of Florida for reasons unknown.
Robin Gecht married a woman named Rosemary McCaffrey and fathered three children by her. Rosemary has been described by Gecht chronicler Jaye Slade Fletcher as âbizarre looking, with long black hair, Cleopatra eye makeup, long red fingernails, and a hard-eyed stare.â At the urging of Robin, who enjoyed reading books on the torture practices of ancient cultures, she reportedly kept hatpins stuck through her breast. Like Rosemary, her brother Thomas was also thin and chalk-white with jet-black hair. He was later implicated by Robin Gecht in the Ripper murders. Thomas, who denied any involvement in the killings, claimed that one of the accomplices who was later convicted of complicity was a lover of Robinâs, and that another accomplice was a former lover.
In addition to his boyfriends, Robin also reportedly maintained a large stable of girlfriends. Like others profiled in this book, Gecht reportedly had a steady stream of teenage boys and girls coming and going from his house, some of whom stayed there for varying periods of time. One of them, a fifteen-year-old girl, accused Robin of raping her at gunpoint, but the charges were later dropped. Robin apparently was not too picky about who, or what, he copulated with; on at least one occasion, he reportedly had sexual relations with his wifeâs parentsâ dog.
Gecht has been described as a master manipulator who is adept at reading others. He is also said to be an accomplished hypnotist who has an uncanny knack for getting people, especially women, to do what he wants them to do. He has also been described as a sufferer of a multiple personality disorder who speaks in various voicesâincluding those of a small child, a teenager, and a businessman. Experts, of course, have declared this a sham.
Robin frequently visited an unidentified drugstore where he apparently was on close terms with the pharmacist. Associates of Gechtâs have said that he could get whatever he wanted there, in whatever quantities he desired; he was therefore able to keep a large and steady supply of prescription pills of various kinds on hand. All of thisâthe fascination with hypnotism and the control of others, the fascination with torture, the associations with pedophilia, ready access to drugs, indications of a dissociative disorderâis by now familiar terrain.
Two of Robinâs convicted accomplices were brothers Andy and Tom Kokoraleis. Along with their four siblings, the two boys had been raised by their father following the premature death of their mother. One of those siblings filed numerous complaints with a youth protection agency charging their father with sexual molestation. In one of those strange twists that are forever popping up in serial killer cases, Warren Wilkosz, who served as the lead investigator on the Ripper case, had been a friend of the Kokoraleis family for a number of years.
In April 1982, Robin Gecht suddenly disappeared for several weeks, much as Richard Chase had done several years before. Upon his return, Gecht refused to explain the reason for his sudden disappearance or to discuss where he had gone.
On May 6, just after he returned from his mysterious sojourn, an unidentified Chicago police officer responded to a call of a man with a gun. That man turned out to be Robin Gecht, who was arrested and charged with carrying a loaded weapon. Robin purportedly quickly established a rapport with the officer, despite the circumstances of their meeting. A few days later, the two met at the officerâs house and Robin, a building contractor/carpenter, just as Gacy had been, began working for the officer.
Television station WLS-TV reported Gecht had worked briefly for convicted mass murderer John Wayne Gacy - and was supposedly on the witness list used during Gacy's trial. But authorities could not confirm there was any connection between Gecht and Gacy.
Marion Spiropoulos, a neighbor of the Gechts, remembered loud music coming from his apartment and many visitors.
ââTeen-agers were coming and going constantly,ââ she said. ââOne girl, who was maybe 15, was staying overnight and wouldnât go home.ââ
(Source: The Dispatch Moline, Illinois 11 Nov 1982, Thu ⢠Page 27)
Robinâs new friend on the force soon opened his home to the entire Gecht family, who essentially lived with him for a period of four months. During that time, Robin was allegedly directly complicit in a string of grisly murders. The first of these occurred just nine days after that fateful, and rather bizarre, meeting between Gecht and the officer. Lorraine Ann Borowski disappeared on May 15, 1982. Borowski shared an apartment with a man who told police investigators that she had not slept at home the night before she disappeared, even though it was quite obvious to the officers that she had. It has never been explained why the man lied to the officers, or why he was not considered a suspect after doing so.
Lorraine had told her mother the day before she vanished that a âbig, giant manâ in a car had been following her. That was a description that would have fit Ed Kemper, but it was certainly not a description that fit the rather diminutive Robin Gecht. The owner of a nearby liquor store had seen a struggle at the side of a gray or dull silver, older model car. A suspect was identified who had driven such a car until just after the abduction, when he claimed to have sold it. The man was said to have an explosive temper and a fondness for knives and Oriental throwing stars. He had been in-and-out of mental hospitals for a number of years, with release from his most recent confinement having come just the day before the abduction. His younger brother was already serving time for another abduction and murder.
This was not the first abduction/murder that was later attributed to Robin and his crew. It would later be claimed that the killings actually began the year before, and that as many as twelve girls had fallen victim to the Rippers before Lorraine Borowski. Police though were never able to produce more than one of the purported bodies, or to identify who any of the other missing victims might be. The first of them was said to be a Chicago-area prostitute named Linda Sutton, whose nearly skeletal remains were found facedown in a field on June 1, 1981. She had last been seen on May 24 at a family function in the company of a new boyfriend. It was claimed that she had been killed just three days before her remains were discovered, on about the twenty-ninth of May. The advanced decomposition of the body, however, suggested that she had actually died just after the time she was last seen. Her whereabouts between that day and the alleged day of her death were never accounted for.
There is nothing to indicate that Linda Suttonâs murder had any connection to those that occurred a year later. And there is no evidence to suggest that any other murders were committed by the Gecht crew between June 1981 and May 1982. In other words, there is nothing to suggest that the killings began before Robin returned from his mysterious sojourn and took up residence with a member of the Chicago Police Department. Indeed, the additional murders appear to have been a fabrication intended to draw attention away from the unusual circumstances surrounding the actual time that the killings began.
On May 29, 1982, a woman named Shui Mak disappeared; her corpse surfaced shortly after that in one of Chicagoâs most exclusive suburbs. The next month a prostitute named Angel York was attacked and her left breast was brutally slashed, which was to become a distinguishing feature of the Ripper killings. It would later be revealed that the severed left breasts of the victims were utilized by the cult in rituals that involved cannibalism and necrophilia. This preoccupation with the left breast of victims is, perhaps significantly, shared by other serial killers. Included on that list are Richard Chase and the Boston Strangler, one of whose victims was found with eighteen stab wounds forming a ritual pattern on her left breast.
The body of prostitute Sandra Delaware was found on August 28, 1982, bearing the distinctive mutilation wounds of the Ripper Crew. Delaware had been working for a pimp identified only as âThe Minister,â but had recently left his stable and had subsequently received death threats from him. Just over a week later, Rose Davis was savagely beaten, stabbed and strangled. Robert Ressler, one of the founding fathers of the âscienceâ of profiling, just happened to be in the Chicago area when Davisâ body was found, and he was promptly put to work creating a profile of her killer. Why this was necessary remains largely a mystery, since the police already had a prime suspect in the case. The suspect lived in the apartment building outside of which the crime took place, and he was seen by witnesses at the scene of the crime at the time that police estimated the girl had been killed. He was given a polygraph test that revealed that he had, at the very least, witnessed the murder. The police concluded, bizarrely enough, that the man had heard the assault in progress from inside his apartment, and had gone outside to watch. He was cleared as a suspect.
On October 5, a prostitute named Denise Gardner was found alive but bleeding profusely from severe mutilations. Her left breast had been completely removed and her right breast was nearly severed. She was rushed to Illinois Masonic Hospital where she told investigators that she had been forced to swallow some unidentified blue capsules. She also gave a detailed description of the van that was used to abduct her. The very next day, a drive-by shooting left one known drug dealer dead and one of his associates paralyzed. To investigators, it looked very much like a routine gang-related drug hit, which is no doubt exactly what it was. Nevertheless, it was credited to the Ripper Crew.
Police pulled over a van two weeks later that closely matched the description that had been given by Gardner of the vehicle that was used to abduct her. The driver of the van was a young man named Eddie Spreitzer. Eddie led the officers to his boss, Robin Gecht, who was the owner of the van. Eddie was then taken in and questioned at length. His interrogation quickly yielded the names of Gecht and the Kokoraleis brothers. Andy Kokoraleis was then taken into custody, and Eddie and Andy were held in separate interrogation rooms for an extended period of time, forced to sleep on couches and endure frequent questioning. They soon confessed to as many as eighteen murders.
Both of the young men displayed a palpable fear of Robin Gecht, who they said had an altar set up in his attic where he performed rituals. Police later found black and red crosses painted in that attic, but the altar had apparently been removed. Gecht was arrested and formally charged with aggravated battery, deviate sexual assault, armed robbery and kidnappingâall in connection with the assault on Gardner. Eddie and Andy were indicted for murder, rape, kidnapping, armed violence, and deviate sexual assault.
On October 25, Gecht was released from custody after posting bail. Six days later, on Halloween, another woman was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment after having her breasts slashed. Gecht was formally charged with that attack on November 5, but the charges were later dropped on the request of an assistant stateâs attorney. Eleven days later, with all of the Rippers safely in custody, the mutilated body of another young prostitute was found under a bridge in exactly the same spot where Sandra Delawareâs body had been dumped. Authorities deemed that just a bizarre coincidence.
Eddie Spreitzer and Andy Kokoraleis, both teenagers who appeared to be the least culpable of the suspects, took the majority of the fall; both ultimately received death sentences. Eddie initially pled guilty to four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder and received four life sentences plus an additional 360 years. He was then indicted on additional charges and he went to trial, resulting in a death sentence. Andyâs first trial, in February 1985, resulted in a life sentence after he was found guilty of murder. Two years later, in a second trial, he was again found guilty. On April 30, 1987âWalpurgisnachtâthe presiding judge formally sentenced Andy Kokoraleis to death by execution.
The purported leader of the cult, Robin Gecht, never faced murder charges, but he was charged with various lesser crimes. His first trial ended very quickly in a mistrial. At the second, he was convicted of attempted murder, rape, deviate sexual assault, aggravated battery and armed violence; he was given a 120-year sentence. Tommy Kokoraleis was initially given a life sentence for his complicity in the crimes, but that sentence was later reversed. Facing trial again, he accepted a plea agreement that netted him a seventy year prison sentence No one else was ever charged in connection with the murders, although there was certainly no shortage of suspects, including the Chicago police officer whose home provided Gecht with his base of operations. The name of another man came up repeatedly during the investigation, and that suspect failed a polygraph examination during which he was questioned directly about being present and participating in the killings. He was released âpending further investigation.â
Some of the witnesses in the case implicated others as well, either directly or indirectly. Some said that Gecht slaughtered animals during ceremonies performed in the woods. They also spoke of his fondness for guns and of his seemingly unlimited access to drugs. Some of them also spoke of orgies that were attended by Gechtâs sister-in-law and her circle of friends. Many of the witnesses warned of a satanic âfadâ sweeping through the local high school; students, they said, were wearing pentagrams and carving â666â and inverted crosses into their desks. Secret ceremonies were reportedly being held and candles and witchcraft were hot topics of whispered conversations. Teachers told of finding circles of stones and the skeletal remains of cats and dogs in the wooded area behind the school.
Such stories were largely ignored by the local media, which was uncharacteristically muted in its coverage of the case. Coincidentally or otherwise, the Ripper case was overshadowed by a much more high-profile series of deaths that were attributed to Tylenol packages that had been tampered with. The Tylenol/cyanide case, which succeeded in ratcheting up the level of fear not just in Chicago, but across the country, was never solved. The lackadaisical coverage of the case was likely due to the fact that authorities were forced to acknowledge that the Ripper Crew was indeed a satanic cult that killed as a group, much like the Manson Family. Prosecutors in fact likened Gechtâs followers to Charlieâs, who yearned to please their leader and killed on his command.
I've researched the Gecht worked for Gacy angle extensively and I've come to believe that the rumor came from a reporter to sell newspapers. Unless Gacy paid Gecht under the table there's no paperwork to confirm it.
What I find mind boggling is that Thomas Kokoraleis who admitted to 19 mutilation murders is now a free man but William Heirens who was innocent and supposedly only killed 3 died in prison after serving over 65 years.
oh man! i just learned about these monsters today and had to jump on the forum and see if you had it covered!!! you never disappoint! i am surprised i hadn't heard about this case before. absolutley horrific! are there any videos on the YT channel on these guys? thnx patrick!! :)
(The following is from the book: ââSerial Killers. Up Close and Very Personal by author Victoria Redstallââ)
There were apparent satanic rituals performed, where âLeader Gechtâ would order his disciples to eat the breasts. But the reader might smell a rat here for nowhere in all of the documents â defence and prosecution, and during both trials â was there the slightest hint of truth to any of this. In fact, Gecht is in prison simply because of eyewitness testimony from the only victim who survived at the hands of The Chicago Rippers. Moreover, DNA testing could prove Gechtâs innocence, but at the time of writing the State of Illinois has consistently refused his requests for this test. One has to ask: âWhy?â In many ways there are disturbing similarities between the Gecht case and that of Clarence Elkins, who was convicted in Ohio of murder, aggravated murder, rape and felonious assault in 1999. With solid alibis for his movements, no DNA match and the very suspect eyewitness testimony of Elkinâs niece, he served 6½ years before he was freed. Elkinâs family had had to raise $40,000 to fund new DNA tests (the State of Ohio refused), which confirmed that another criminal, Earl Mann, was the perpetrator.
This author highly recommends that the reader visits http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/larence_Elkins.php, and considers Gechtâs claims of innocence in the light of this. Robin wore his work shirt in the police line-up. This same type of shirt was worn and owned by three other men who worked for Robin and his wife. The shirts all had âR & R Electricâ embroidered on the front, upper-left corner. All of the other men in the identity parade up wore generic clothing. Two members of âthe Ripper Crewâ were not in the line-up at all. So when the only surviving victim was asked who sliced her breast off, she pointed at Robin. Why? Could it be because she recognised him only by the shirt he was wearing? For the police, it was game, set and match. Gecht is now serving 120 years in a maximum-security prison in Southern Illinois because this woman, who was also delicate from just coming out of major surgery after having had her breast sewn back on, stated that it was Robin Gecht who had tried to kill her and she had recognised him solely from the distinctive âR & R Electricâ shirt.
We talked first about his life in the prison â his daily routine, his cellmate, how often he goes to the yard, his typewriter, his phone calls to his daughter and so on. I got some food for us from the vending machines, we had a key lime pie each and some sodas. He didnât want anything else as heâd already eaten.
When we got around to talking about the crimes of the Ripper Crew, and his part in knowing these men, his story was very convincing. I wanted to believe what was written on the Internet; I wanted to trap him into telling the story differently each time. But no, he remained consistent throughout. I asked him about stabbing his wifeâs nipples, to which he replied that they both had had their nipples pierced when they were younger, although stabbing, cutting or mutilation was something he had never done with anyone.
He told me why Edward Spreitzer carried a vendetta against him, and that this was due to the fact that Robin and his wife had asked the sister of the Kokoraleis (Kathy Kokoraleis) to babysit one evening; she decided to bring her boyfriend, young Edward. When the Gechts returned home, they saw Spreitzer there whom they had never met before. He was smoking pot and drinking heavily. Robin forcibly threw him out of the house, telling him never to return again. This must have somehow humiliated Spreitzer as it was said in front of his girlfriend. I asked about Andrew Kokoraleis, and Robin Gecht replied, âAndrew was a strange duck, Victoria. We would drive around the neighbourhood when we were out working and he would scream profanities out of the window to any woman that was walking down the street. He would call them âwhores'' and âbitchesâ until they turned round and shouted back at him. I hated it. I told him to stop but he just insisted as he seemed to find it funny. I knew then that he had a deep hatred towards women in general.
Robin told me that he was an electrician, and that he and his wife Rose had had shirts made for themselves and their employees bearing the logo of their business â âR&R Electricâ [Robin and Rose] â on the upper corner. Robin hired Andrew but swore blind that he had never met Andrewâs brother Thomas until in the interrogation room at the police station. Although he didnât see Spreitzer, he knew that he was afraid of Robin. So when Andrew wanted to hang out with Spreitzer, he would pick him up in Robinâs van and they would go off and do their thing. âTheir thingâ might very well have been the killing of 18 women and the attempted murder of at least one, but I was just starting to get to the bottom of this. Although Robin had a good relationship with his wife Rose, he still managed to have affairs. Robin had a thing for waitresses; he didnât know why, they were just the type he liked to have affairs with.
One day, he was given a contract to do the electrics at a Dennyâs restaurant. It was an ongoing job and he struck up a friendship with a lady by the name of Tina. Tina and Robin started having an affair and, lo and behold, she became pregnant. She not only decided to keep the baby, but Robinâs wife Rose took her in and cared for Tina and the new baby her husband had sired. Rose never even contemplated divorcing Robin â she just hoped that he wouldnât do it again. Tina was not the first of Robinâs flings and she certainly wasnât the last. After Tina realized that Robin was not going to divorce his wife and run off with her, she allegedly became vindictive and apparently made up lies about Robin. The lies apparently came out when she was summoned to court; she apparently said that Robin had said to her that he wanted to âcut her breasts offâ. Clearly, that didnât look good for a man who had been accused of committing just such an act, but I do know how vindictive women can be and it would not surprise me if she had made that up because she had heard the serious charges of which Robin had been accused.
We went on to talk about why Rose is still with him over three decades on. She still refuses to divorce him. She hasnât been to visit him for years but divorce has always been out of the question. Robin has always been very close to his daughters, whose names I wonât mention, but they love their father very much, firmly believing in his innocence.
I asked Robin why his DNA relating to the Beverly Washington case had not been checked out when he was cleared, through DNA, on the other charges. He claims he has pleaded with the State and they refuse point blank. Is it so expensive to test DNA these days? The fact of the matter is that upon successful conviction, and then if the conviction is upheld on appeal, it becomes the responsibility of the guilty party to fund any further DNA analysis. With a going rate of around $40,000 a time, the cost can be prohibitive. The Clarence Elkins case mentioned earlier is another example of just such a situation. The Elkins case also highlights an all-too-common practice amongst law enforcement agencies â that of a police âmindsetâ developing throughout the course of an investigation, in which a suspect is made to fit the crime. In British parlance, a suspect is âfitted upâ. No doubt while the State of Illinois may be well aware that independent DNA testing on Gecht might prove his complete innocence, they could also find themselves footing a hefty bill for keeping Mr Gecht in jail for 28 years at a cost to the taxpayer of $150 per day.
On September 29, 1983, he was found guilty and sentenced as follows: to 120 years in prison for the following offenses: attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping, deviate sexual assault and rape. In a letter to me, Robin Gecht responded:
This is the entire [States Attorneyâs] case to which I stand accused. I will have and will continue saying that BWâs ID is a mistake and DNA testing would prove that [sic], but I am being DENIED such testing by the Courts. So whatever else youâve read is hearsay based solely on a book long outdated and, of course, 2 so-called friends that never meant what truth meant. And look where they are today. [sic] I do know who attacked BW. Police told her in the hospital I owned the van ⌠a long story weâll get into another time âŚ
So there you have it. This is what I was charged with [Attempted Murder, Aggravated Kidnapping, Deviate Sexual Assault and Rape] ⌠and to this day I still claim innocences [sic]. This conviction is also still on APPEAL as we write. In 1997 by means of DNA testing in the murders others were charged with. I was found NOT GUILTY and not involved in those matters and cleared as a suspect as I was from 1982 to 1997⌠based on what others ALLEGED [sic] to or said to police as I was part of their crime spree ⌠I was not or did not know anything at that time.
But the aforementioned âlong storyâ of Gechtâs has never been forthcoming, despite his extensive claims to me that he has a:
⌠huge respect for women in general ⌠you will be shocked and understand my continuing fight for justice ⌠Iâm no angel ⌠I will not try to convince you of anything ⌠I cry, just as you would ⌠and, sure, I do have an obsession about women with big breasts. It is a thing with my entire family going back, as I am told, to GREAT GRANDFATHER & his. Each of us have married large-breast women. I am as well!! My ex-wife is a 39D & YES she was very satisfying to me.
And it is at this point one has to get serious. If we are to believe a word Mr Gecht says, then he is an innocent man. He is, he says, the victim of corrupt law enforcement agencies, a blinkered prosecutor, an inept defence attorney, even a biased judge or two. He even claims that his confession was beaten out of him by brutal cops â although there is certainly no proof to support his claims. He says he has been âstitched upâ by his two-timing, back-stabbing, testimony flip-flopping co-defendants. If this is true, then we should release this guy from prison immediately, and pay him appropriate compensation for having detained him for so long.
Edward Spreitzer, in one of his statements, claimed, âRobin once became so furious with his wife that he cut off her nipples.â When I asked Gecht about this claim by Spreitzer, he replied, âMy wife [Rose] will be more than happy to show you that her nipples are still there where they have always been. Pierced, yes, we both had pierced nipples back in the day, but cut off ⌠never. Only a sick person would ever think of that.
Gecht had offered Spreitzer a job when he was down on his luck and made some empty promises. According to Spreitzer, Gecht then blackmailed him with obscene photographs that he said he would send to the police.
Gecht is quoted verbatim: These set of charges and this conviction is 1 conviction/1 case/1 victim and does NOT involve any of the other crimes alleged on internet web sites that ALL came out of a book written in 1986. I will soon be sending you an information packet. That will help you understand facts surrounding this conviction on based website crap. I am in prison and convicted of a alleged NON-FATAL attack on a northside Chicago prostitute by the name of Beverly Washington. (BW) as the Stateâs Attorneyâs refer her as in legal arguments. BW is alive and well last time I heared in 1999. This victim (BW) i.dâs me as her attacker in a suggestive line-up held by police on Oct. 1982 while she was hospitalized just after the attack. (BW) i.d was based on 2 elementsâŚ(1)âŚPolice told her âIâ owned the van she described to police two weeks before the line-up. (2)âŚShe i.d a blue company shirt that anyone that worked for meâŚâownedâ at that time. I was wearing the shirt and the jeans at the time of the line-up just an hour after (BW) was shown photos taken of myself in the same clothing. (We call that SUGGESTIVE). Edward and Andrew both also owned this company shirt. This entire conviction was solely based on identification by Ms. Washington. No other evidence presented at trial as to biological was presented.'
Tommy Kokoraleis has admitted to paying many visits, with his accomplices, to the ruins of that former Ovaltine factory in Villa Park.
Here, among the damp corridors and dank rooms, Tommy claimed that they somehow believed they could contact âThe Dark Oneâ. He said that Gecht and his associates took the flesh they had removed from their victims, cut it up and consumed it as a form of ancient satanic communion.
He said that Gecht had an altar in the attic of his Northwest Side apartment, where they all gathered during the nocturnal hours after Gechtâs wife had gone to work. He added that Gecht had painted six red, white and black crosses on the walls and covered the altar with a red cloth. These were all Old Nick-influenced scenarios that could have come straight from the pages of a Dennis Wheatley novel â specifically To the Devil a Daughter. Rising to his theme, Tommy told police that they would all kneel together around the altar and Gecht would produce the freshly removed breasts. Gecht would then read passages from a copy of the Codex Gigas (Devilâs Bible) as each man masturbated into the fleshy portion of the body; when everyone was finished, Gecht would cut it up and hand around the pieces for them to eat.
It has been further alleged, although Gecht denies it, that he started off by molesting his sister. When I visited with him, Robin told me that there were, in fact, rumors of his father molesting his sister, but that he had never heard the rumor that heâd committed any act like this himself. This was neither confirmed nor denied by his sister or mother, as tragically, after a visit with Robin in the same visiting room that I was sitting in, they were both killed in a car crash after driving out of the Menard Prison parking lot. Nonetheless, he does admit that during adolescence he developed a keen interest in Satanism and its secret rituals.
Gechtâs mother, sister, and nephew were involved in a car crash after visiting him at the Menard Correctional Center on the evening of Wednesday, November 16, 1988. Their car was described as being âsandwichedâ between two semitrucks. The accident was reported to have occurred during a traffic jam, which was caused by the repairs of power lines that were down at the time.
The crash claimed the life of Gechtâs mother, 57-year-old Loretta, along with her grandson and Gechtâs nephew, three-year-old Nicholas Miller. The driver of the vehicle was Gechtâs sister, Rachelle. She remained on life support in a comatose state for four months, until her death on April 10, 1989, at the age of 29.
In March 1999, Robin Gechtâs son David, along with two other men, were charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a northwest Chicago resident, Roberto Cruz. The attack appeared to be unprovoked, given that Cruz was walking to his car at the time of the shooting, unaware of his impending doom.
The attack was reminiscent of the method his father used to ambush his victimsâcowardly, unexpected, and from behind. Although police believe the attack to be gang-related, we cannot ignore the possibility that madness runs in the family.
Fortunately, David Gecht was 18 at the time of the killing and was therefore able to stand trial as an adult. In March 2000, David Gecht was found guilty of first-degree murder. He is currently serving a 45-year prison term at the Pontiac Correctional Center in Pontiac, Illinois.
(Source: 10 Haunting Facts About Chicagoâs Cannibalistic âRipper Crewâ By Adam R. Ramos)
Carole Pappas, the wife of former Chicago Cubs pitcher Milt Pappas, went missing on September 11, 1982. Authorities considered her disappearance unusual since she wasn't someone who would leave her family and home without warning. It also occurred during the height of the Ripper Crew murders. Five years later, Pappas's body was found during the draining of a pond near her house. She was submerged in her car, and her body showed no signs of violence or trauma. Because she didn't fit the usual MO of the Ripper Crew, the four men (who were already in the justice system by 1987) were no longer suspects.
The inscription read, "Dear Bob Ressler, you cannot hope to enjoy the harvest without first laboring in the fields. Best wishes + good health. Sincerely, John Wayne Gacy, June 1988."
Was Gacy predicting his young accomplice, or accomplices, would eventually become serial killers?