The Ripper Crew: Chicago’s Ritualistic Killers

She was last seen stepping out of her car on a quiet Chicago street on a calm autumn night—one of those evenings where the city seems to hold its breath. Still, distant, silent. She never made it to the front door.

Witnesses would later remember a red van gliding down the street. Slow. Deliberate. Hunting. A door sliding open, a figure stepping out, and a woman pulled inside before she could blink. And then nothing—just the sound of that van disappearing into the dark.

For months, Chicago police couldn’t understand what they were dealing with. Women were vanishing. Their bodies, when found, were mutilated with a precision that felt ritualistic. Not frenzy. Not chaos. Routine.

This wasn’t one man. This wasn’t one predator. This was a crew—a group of men bound together by a self-made ideology, a twisted belief system, a leader they obeyed, and rituals they carried out with surgical devotion.

This is the story of the Ripper Crew of Chicago—one of the strangest, darkest murder teams in American history. Part cult. Part criminal enterprise. Part human nightmare.

This is Tales of the Twisted. True stories of the strange, weird, and bizarre.

Chicago, 1981. A city with scars. Decades of industrial decline had hollowed out neighborhoods. Crime had surged. And the legacy of one of the most infamous serial killers—John Wayne Gacy—still hung heavily over the region.

People were wary, suspicious, tired. Yet beneath the day-to-day rhythm of the city, something new was forming. Something darker than what Chicago had already endured.

A predator wasn’t lurking. A group was.

At the center of it all was a man named Robin Gecht—a construction worker, father, and husband who, by all outward appearances, was unremarkable. Not charismatic. Not handsome. Not intelligent. Not the sort of man anyone expected others to follow.

But behind closed doors, Gecht was something else entirely—controlling, manipulative, domineering, and obsessed with developing his own twisted belief system.

His followers—Edward Spreitzer and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis—were young, aimless, and deeply impressionable. Some had cognitive limitations. Others had minimal education. All were vulnerable to someone offering purpose, identity, and belonging.

Gecht offered that—at the price of obedience.

Inside Gecht’s home on the north side was a small unfinished attic room. Dim, cramped, lined with candles. Crude symbols decorated the walls. A chair sat in the middle—a throne of sorts—where Gecht performed what he called his “ceremonies.”

His followers would later describe what happened inside that room: violent rituals, invented scripture, commands of loyalty, sexual domination, and blood-based offerings.

It was a cult—but without the trappings of one. No recruitment. No pamphlets. No public gatherings. Just Gecht and the young men who would become the Ripper Crew.

On May 23rd, 1981, 28-year-old Linda Sutton vanished. She left her workplace, a hotel in Villa Park, and never made it home. Ten days later, her body was found in a field behind a motel.

She had been tortured. Brutally injured. One of her breasts had been removed. The mutilation was so precise investigators assumed the offender had medical training.

They were wrong.

It wasn’t a surgeon. Not a doctor. Just a man with a knife—and a group willing to hold a woman down while he did the rest.

Police didn’t connect her case to anything else. Chicago was seeing dozens of homicides each month. Linda’s murder seemed like another isolated tragedy in a city drowning in violence.

No one realized the pattern. Not yet.

The women who disappeared shared almost nothing in common. Some were sex workers. Some were not. Some were young. Others middle-aged. Some vanished in the suburbs, others in the city. Some at night, some in broad daylight.

The randomness made the case nearly impossible to track.

But there was one link—a detail that would haunt every survivor, witness, and detective.

A red van.

The sightings seemed too generic to matter—until the reports piled up. A woman pulled from a street corner. A woman forced inside near a bus stop. A woman chased in an alley. A woman assaulted and dumped miles away. All describing the same vehicle.

In August 1982, 21-year-old Angel York was abducted by the crew. She survived. Her injuries were severe—her trauma indescribable—but she told detectives everything she could.

There were multiple men. They acted methodically. They had done this before. And she mentioned the red van.

Police believed her—but they still had no suspects.

Then, on October 6th, 1982, everything changed.

That night, 20-year-old Beverly Washington was standing near a Chicago motel when she noticed a red van slowing beside her. She didn’t run. Vans like that were everywhere.

Then the door slid open.

Hands grabbed her. She was pulled inside.

She was beaten, tied, gagged, and drugged. Hours disappeared. She remembered three men—maybe four—speaking calmly, as if everything they did was routine.

She remembered the knife. The pain. The mutilation. The ritualistic precision.

She should have died. But she didn’t.

She was dumped near railroad tracks—alive. Barely.

Police rushed her to the hospital. Doctors were stunned she survived. Beverly woke up—and talked. Through tears and agony, she described the red van, the men, their voices, their leader, their methodical brutality.

Her description was so detailed that Chicago PD searched every red van in the registry. Thousands of them.

Only one matched her description: a van owned by Edward Spreitzer.

Detectives discovered he worked for a construction crew run by Robin Gecht. Suddenly everything fell into place.

Police pulled Spreitzer in first. Nervous. Young. Fragile. He denied everything—until detectives lied to him, saying they had fingerprints and survivor IDs.

His face fell. His hands shook. And he talked.

There was a group. They abducted women. They mutilated them. Gecht was the leader.

But the most horrifying detail? The attic rituals.

Spreitzer described ceremonies involving mutilation, blood, obedience, and the removal of body parts.

Detectives moved quickly and arrested the others. Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis broke just as fast—describing the same acts, the same rituals, the same leader, the same attic.

They called the mutilations “offerings.” They said Gecht had biblical reasoning for everything he made them do.

This wasn’t a simple serial murder case. This was a death cult.

Chicago police raided Gecht’s home at dawn. They found the attic. The candles. The symbols. The chair. The altar. The knives. The metal box—filled with women’s belongings.

Trophies.

The attic confirmed everything. But prosecutors had a problem: there was still no physical evidence tying Gecht directly to the mutilations. He had been careful, methodical, and calm.

He denied everything.

When questioned, he smiled. He said, “I don’t harm women. I respect women.”

About the attic: “It’s just storage.”

About his crew: “They’re confused.”

But his eyes told detectives everything. He believed he was still in control.

His followers, however, kept talking. Their testimony painted a nightmare: multiple women, multiple murders, one leader.

By late 1982, the media caught wind. Headlines exploded:

“Ritual Murders Shake Chicago.” “Red Van Linked to Killings.” “Woman Escapes Mutilation Group.”

The city reeled. Prosecutors prepared their case.

The charges included kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, murder, attempted murder, mutilation, ritualistic torture, and participation in a criminal cult.

But Gecht would not confess. His followers testified in detail. They described the hierarchy. Gecht the leader. Spreitzer the enforcer. Andrew the participant. Thomas the helper.

They described the kidnappings, the torture, the rituals, the mutilations. One brother even drew diagrams.

It was enough—almost.

But still, prosecutors lacked physical evidence tying Gecht directly to the murders.

So Gecht—the alleged mastermind—was not convicted of murder. Instead, he was convicted of attempted murder, aggravated battery, and kidnapping. He received 120 years and remains in Illinois custody, still denying everything.

Spreitzer confessed in graphic detail and received multiple life sentences.

Thomas Kokoraleis was eventually released in 2019, sparking outrage across Illinois.

Andrew Kokoraleis was executed in 1999—the last person ever executed in the state before the death penalty was abolished.

Among the known victims were:

Linda Sutton Rose Davis Lorraine “Lori” Borowski Shirley Williams Stefana “Steffie” Wood Beverly Washington — survived Angel York — survived

There were likely more. Dozens of disappearances match the crew’s pattern. Investigators believe the true victim count may never be known.

Even today, unanswered questions linger: Was there a fifth member? Did Gecht kill before forming the crew? Why did courts accept plea deals so easily? How many victims remain unidentified?

And perhaps the most haunting question: how did one man control them?

Gecht was not charismatic. Not brilliant. Not persuasive. But he didn’t need to be. He targeted young, vulnerable men—those seeking belonging, identity, or stability.

Once inside the group, Gecht created rules, rituals, punishments, and bonding through violence. His followers would later say it felt like being under a spell.

For women in Chicago, the Ripper Crew became a quiet ghost—a reminder that danger didn’t always look like a shadowed stranger. Sometimes it looked like four ordinary men in a red van.

Taxi drivers refused to pick up women alone. Hotels patrolled parking lots. Bus stops added lighting. Sex workers formed networks long before cell phones or GPS could protect them.

The city learned a lesson it didn’t want: evil does not always work alone. Sometimes, it works as a team.

Today, Robin Gecht remains imprisoned, still denying everything. Spreitzer remains behind bars for life. Andrew Kokoraleis is gone. Thomas Kokoraleis walks free. And the families of the victims carry wounds that never fully heal.

The Ripper Crew remains one of the most terrifying cases in American true crime history because it forces us to confront a truth we rarely face:

Evil is not always solitary. Sometimes, it is organized. Sometimes, it recruits. Sometimes, it obeys.

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