The Ripper Crew

18 deaths

 In the early eighties Robin Getch, a former employee of John Wayne Gacy, and three associates, Edward Spreitzer and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis, had a Satanic cult suspected for the disappearances of 18 women in the streets of Chicago. Known as the Ripper Crew, Gecht and his gang drove around in a van looking for prostitutes to sacrifice in Gecht's apartment. They would remove one breast from each victim and eat it as Robin read passages of the bible.

Getch and his friends were arrested in 1982 for the stabbing of a teenaged prostitute. Like every good Satanist they all started squealing on each other. Though Robin's associates and other witnesses implicated him in some of the deaths, investigators never had enough evidence to charge him with murder. Robin is serving 120 years in Menard Correctional Center for mutilating and raping an 18-year-old prostitute. Fellow cultist Edward Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis were sentenced to death. Kokoraleis' brother Thomas was sentenced to life for his role in the murders.

On March 16, 1999, Andrew Kokoraleis was executed by lethal injection at Tamms Correctional Center in Southern Illinois for the 1982 strangulation murder of Lorraine Borowski, a 21-year-old secretary at a real estate office that was abducted on her way to work. Her mutilated body was found in a cemetery. Kokoraleis, 35, sighed three times, licked his lips and appeared to be speaking quietly to himself before he died.

Defense attorneys unsuccessfully argued that Andrew was coerced into confessing. They also argued that new information cast doubt on the credibility of confessions by two co-defendants who accused Kokoraleis. Kokoraleis, who had been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Rose Beck Davis, was the first prisoner executed at a new super-maximum-security prison in southern Illinois.

On March 7, 1999, David A. Gecht, the son of Robin, and two others, were charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of a Northwest Side man. The killing is believed be to gang-related, police said.