Thomas Kokoraleis doesn't want to look back on the Chicago "Ripper Crew" conviction that landed him in prison for 35 years. He wants to move on with his life.
Kokoraleis and three others were implicated in the gruesome killings of women in the Chicagoland area in the 1980s. The infamy follows him around, knowledge of his presence putting people on edge.
Five years after his early release from prison, Kokoraleis has moved to Peoria, another community concerned about his specter.
'Nothing to worry about from me'
Kokoraleis, who spoke to the Journal Star from his residence at Pathway Ministries, wants the people of Peoria to know at least one thing: "From my heart, they've got nothing to worry about from me."
He was nervous about speaking to the media. When he was sent to prison, he was a young man in his 20s. Today, he is a 64-year-old man who stands short, and carries a belly and a bald head. By all appearances, he is no different from any other man his age.
When Kokoraleis speaks, he takes his time, giving answers in what is still a thick, working-class Chicago accent.
Kokoraleis doesn't want a spotlight, but as he and his counselors at Peoria Pathway Ministries have discussed, there will be scrutiny on him everywhere he goes for the rest of his life. It's a small price to pay, in the grand scheme of things, for a man tied to the Chicago Ripper Crew.
Kokoraleis agreed to speak to the Journal Star because he wants to put the people of Peoria at ease. Many residents were shocked and dismayed that he lives here.
"To tell you, from my heart, they've got nothing to worry about from me. I am here to live my life peacefully and with the Lord."
But there are those upset that Kokoraleis is living anywhere in Illinois as a free man. That includes Mark Borowski, the younger brother of one of the Ripper Crew's first victims, Lorry Borowski. She was 21 when she was murdered.
Lorry Borowski was kidnapped outside of the real estate office she worked at in Chicago, raped and killed in May 1982. Her body was found five months later in a cemetery. Her family was able to identify her because the killers had left her jewelry on her.
Some wounds never heal, Mark Borowski said, and even more than 40 years later, talking about his sister is difficult. The circumstances still haunt him.
The night before his sister disappeared in 1982, a 14-year-old Mark Borowski said he had a nightmare that something bad was going to happen to Lorry. In the morning, he offered to walk to work with her because his school was near her office. She declined and he never saw her alive again.
The aftermath of her death was traumatizing. Her parents never let their other children stray too far from home after Lorry went missing.
"Not even allowed to ride our bikes across the street," Mark Borowski said.
The family held out hope they'd find Lorry alive and even hired a psychic to assist in the investigation. Mark Borowski said that psychic was able to draw the family a map of a cemetery.
Today, the difficulty of Lorry's death still sits with the Borowski family. But the wounds open up in a different way. Mark Borowski said there is pain in knowing Thomas Kokoraleis is not in prison.
"It's disturbing he is walking around free with all of the things that he did, that's for sure," Borowski said. "There is nothing that I can do. I don't wish any harm upon anybody, but karma is a (expletive) sometimes."
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History of Chicago Ripper Crew
Kokoraleis to this day maintains his innocence in the Chicago Ripper Crew crimes. He told the Journal Star he had nothing to do with or had any knowledge of the killings.
He says investigators coerced him into a confession, tricking a young man who was on drugs and of questionable mental aptitude.
His intelligence was the subject of conversation at multiple junctures in court. Kokoraleis was a special education student and a high school dropout. A forensic psychiatrist said his IQ of 75 put him just above the level of being mentally impaired, according to the Chicago Tribune .
Borowski family members didn't believe Kokoraleis back in the 1980s, and they certainly do not today. Mark Borowski said, at the very least, Thomas Kokoraleis had knowledge of or even witnessed the murder of his sister and did nothing to stop it.
"It's disgusting, shameful," Borowski said of Kokoraleis maintaining his innocence. "It's disgusting he says, 'I did nothing wrong.' He had a chance to stop the insanity, but he didn't even try. It's, 'Oh, he just went along with it, but I didn't do anything wrong' — it's quite disturbing."
The Journal Star reviewed court documents from the appeals and convictions of Ripper Crew members, including Thomas Kokoraleis, Andrew Kokoraleis and Edward Spreitzer.
The taped confession Kokoraleis gave to police in November 1982 was the main piece of evidence used to connect him to the slayings of Lorry Borowski, Linda Sutton and Shui Mak.
Linda Sutton went missing on May 23, 1981. She was found dead 10 days later. She had been raped and mutilated; a breast had been amputated.
One year later, the Chicago Ripper Crew abducted Shui Mak as she was walking home from work. Her body was found four months later, having suffered the same evils.
Carole Pappas, then the wife of Cubs baseball player Milt Pappas, was also missing, but her body had not been found. Kokoraleis confessed to having something to do with her disappearance.
However, Carole Pappas' body was found submerged in a car. Her death was ruled a drowning and no foul play was suspected.
In October 1982, Robin Gecht, then 28, was arrested in connection with an attack on a prostitute who survived to tell how she was raped and mutilated by a man who fit Gecht's description. He posted bond but was rearrested in early November and connected to other homicides.
One investigator described Gecht as a ringleader who would make Charles Manson "look like a Boy Scout," according to the Chicago Tribune.
Two days after Gecht was rearrested, police arrested Thomas Kokoraleis' younger brother Andrew Kokoraleis. He and another suspect, Spreitzer, confessed to police under questioning that they had been involved in up to 18 slayings of women. They said Gecht was the ringleader of their group.
Thomas Kokoraleis was arrested one week later and under questioning from police admitted to being present for at least three of the murders.
He says he inserted himself unwittingly into the investigation. Shortly after Andrew Kokoraleis was arrested and charged with murder, Thomas Kokoraleis approached detectives on the street around 2 p.m. on Nov. 10, 1982, and told them he wanted to speak to them about his brother.
Thomas Kokoraleis began telling police about how Gecht was able to control people, including his brother.
He agreed to go to the Villa Park Police Station with the detectives. By 5:15 p.m., detectives had Thomas Kokoraleis hooked up to a polygraph machine and were asking him questions about the case. Around 8:45 p.m., detectives had a taped confession from him admitting to involvement in the murders.
Days earlier, Andrew Kokoraleis and Edward Spreitzer had never mentioned Thomas Kokoraleis in their confessions to police. Gecht never confessed anything to police.
Mark Borowski and his family are steadfast in their belief that Thomas Kokoraleis at least witnessed or knew of the murders. They point to Thomas' knowledge of a satanic sacrament area in the attic of Gecht's home as proof that he knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it.
The Borowskis also believe that Thomas Kokoraleis was riding in a van with the Ripper Crew when some of the abductions and murders occurred.
"He was working with the other guys, they were doing plumbing work, so he had intimate knowledge of everything that was going on," Borowski said. "Don't tell me he didn't know anything that was going on. He had a chance to stop anything that was happening, but I believe 100% he participated in that. But it's my word against his."
Authorities at the time of the investigation identified Gecht as the mastermind of the group's crimes, saying he was able to easily manipulate the others.
Much like Thomas Kokoraleis, Spreitzer was also a man of lower intelligence. A clinical psychologist testified at Spreitzer's trial that the accused killer had an IQ of 76 and said his mental capacity was "borderline defective."
Yet, Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis, too, confessed to police they had been involved in the murders of 18 women, delivering police grisly details of how they and Gecht would kidnap, mutilate, torture, rape and kill female victims. While they confessed to 18 killings, Andrew Kokoraleis and Spreitzer were implicated in only five. The actual number of victims credited to the Ripper Crew is disputed.
The details Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis gave to police matched evidence found in the red van used to commit the crimes and in the details found when investigators pieced together trauma wounds on the victims' bodies.
Andrew Kokoraleis and Spreitzer were both sentenced to death for their involvement in the killings. Andrew Kokoraleis was executed in 1999, the last person to be executed in Illinois. Spreitzer had his death sentence commuted to a life sentence in prison.
Gecht was never convicted of the murders. Rather, he was convicted of attacking, raping and mutilating the prostitute who survived the attack and identified him as the culprit. He was sentenced to 120 years in prison. He is eligible for parole in 2042, when he will be 89 years old.
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Confession of Thomas Kokoraleis disputed in court
Thomas Kokoraleis, who was a heavy drug user at the time of the Ripper Crew investigation, today calls himself a "dumb fool" for telling police he was involved in the Ripper Crew killings. He said police fed him information during the questioning, pausing the tape recorder to tell him what to say before starting it again.
Kokoraleis also says he has no one to blame but himself for ending up in prison.
"I put down the Bible and I blamed God for putting me in the predicament I was in for 39 years," Kokoraleis said. "Then one of the guys in the penitentiary, he told me, 'Why do you blame God for your situation? Blame yourself.' I don't blame myself, per se, but I put myself in the penitentiary by opening my mouth and inserting my foot."
In court, Kokoraleis tried to retract the confession, which was the key piece of evidence against him, claiming that police fed him information. Police argued that Kokoraleis wasn't smart enough to remember and repeat details even if they had fed them to him, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Thomas Kokoraleis did not testify during his trial. Instead, his police confession was given to the jury in two parts.
Kokoraleis had told investigators that he, Spreitzer, Gecht and Andrew Kokoraleis had kidnapped Lorry Borowski outside a shopping mall, forcing her into a light-gray vehicle. He then told investigators that they drove to a motel, where the other three men had intercourse with Borowski before Spreitzer killed her with an ax.
He told detectives that they then dressed the body and dropped her in a cemetery, where she was found months later.
Spreitzer's confession in the Borowski case offers a different sequence of events.
Spreitzer told police that he and Gecht had been driving around the morning of May 15, 1982, looking for a woman. He said they were driving around in Gecht's red work van, not a light-gray vehicle.
A witness who testified during Andrew Kokoraleis' trial also said he saw a red or orange van, or some color in between, near where Borowski went missing the morning of her abduction. Yet, a witness who testified during Thomas Kokoraleis' trial said he saw a light-gray car leaving the area.
Spreitzer went on to say in his confession that Gecht drove the van to a cemetery, where he stabbed Borowski many times and amputated her breast. Forensic anthropologists who testified in both Andrew Kokoraleis' trial and Spreitzer's trial said that Borowski's wounds indicated she was stabbed with a circular object.
Andrew Kokoraleis also told police in his confession that Borowski was stabbed to death in a cemetery.
Thomas Kokoraleis had told police she was struck with an ax in a motel.
While Thomas Kokoraleis' confession in the Borowski killing doesn't match up with the details that Spreitzer and his brother gave, the confession was similar to how Sutton was killed. She was killed near the Brer Rabbit Motel with a homemade hatchet.
The trial court in Thomas Kokoraleis' case did not allow Andrew Kokoraleis' or Spreitzer's confessions, which did not align with Thomas Kokoraleis' statements, to be mentioned in court.
A woman who worked at the motel where Thomas Kokoraleis said Borowski was killed testified for the defense during his trial and said she recalled nothing unusual about the state of any rooms during May when she was working at the motel: no thefts of mattresses or bedsheets, no handcuffs, no large amounts of blood, no overturned furniture.
The owner of the motel also testified, noting these same observations.
Thomas Kokoraleis' lawyers tried to have the confessions suppressed from the jury, arguing that police had mentally and physically coerced the confessions from a mentally weak Kokoraleis. The court denied a motion to suppress the confessions, and it was played for the jury.
A psychiatrist also testified for the defense and said that Thomas Kokoraleis was functioning in the borderline range of intelligence "just above mental retardation." The psychiatrist also described him as someone who was eager to please and would answer questions, even if he did not know the answer. He also testified that Kokoraleis was intimidated by authority and was susceptible to being easily led.
On cross-examination, the psychiatrist also said of Thomas Kokoraleis that there was no question of his sanity, his general knowledge was average and stated that his low intelligence did not impact his understanding of morality or truthfulness.
The investigators admitted in appeals court that they had lied to Thomas Kokoraleis at least twice during their original questioning of him. They admitted to creating a fake written confession, supposedly written up by Spreitzer, that implicated Thomas Kokoraleis in the crimes. In truth, Spreitzer had never done such a thing.
Investigators also admitted they had lied to Thomas Kokoraleis about the results of his polygraph test. They told him he had failed it when in reality the results were inconclusive.
He was convicted by a DuPage County jury in 1984 for the murder of Borowski and was sentenced to life in prison. However, an appeals court threw out the conviction in 1986 and ordered a new trial.
The appellate court noted in its decision that his low intelligence did not play a factor in its decision to overturn the ruling of the trial court.
The appellate court also ruled that deception used by the investigators did not warrant Kokoraleis' confession to be considered involuntary.
However, the appellate court did look at the confessions of Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis when determining to overturn Thomas Kokoraleis' conviction.
In its ruling, the appellate court said that the confessions of Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis should not have been barred from Thomas Kokoraleis' trial because the facts of their confessions, mainly how and where Borowski was killed, did not align with Thomas Kokoraleis' telling of the murder.
Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis' confessions also aligned with facts and evidence established in the case, whereas Thomas Kokoraleis' confession did not.
The appellate court stated that the trial court "abused its discretion" when excluding the confessions of Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis from Thomas Kokoraleis' trial.
Instead of going to a new trial, however, Thomas Kokoraleis agreed to a deal in which he would plead guilty to Borowski's murder and receive a 70-year prison sentence. In exchange, charges brought against him for the murder of Linda Sutton were dropped.
In all, Kokoraleis served 35 years in prison, convicted to life in 1984, reduced to 70 years in 1987, and released in 2019. His release happened because Illinois law at the time of his conviction had a clause about good behavior.
He spent five years living in the Chicago suburbs and has since found his way to Peoria, where he must check in quarterly with the Peoria Police Department.
The Borowski family wishes he did not even live in the same state. If Mark Borowski had his way, Kokoraleis would be "sent to Alaska."
But Kokoraleis is a free man, free to live wherever he chooses, and for now, that choice has landed him in Peoria.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: As he maintains innocence in infamous killings, family of victim furious he's free in Peoria
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