Meanwhile, detectives had learnt that Gecht was one of four men who rented adjoining rooms at Villa Park’s Rip Van Winkle Motel, several months before Linda Sutton was murdered nearby. The manager remembered them as party animals, frequently bringing women to their rooms, and he surprised investigators with one further piece of information: he believed that the men were ‘some kind of cultists’, perhaps devil worshippers. Two of the Rip Van Winkle tenants, brothers Thomas and Andrew Kokoraleis (b. 1958 and 1961), had been kind enough to leave a forwarding address, for any post they might receive. Police found 23-year-old Thomas Kokoraleis at home when they called. Following questioning, he agreed to go with them to the police station where he was given a lie-detector test, which he failed. When questioned in greater depth, he told police about a ‘satanic chapel’ that had been set up in Gecht’s upstairs bedroom, where captive women were tortured with knives and ice picks, gang-raped and finally sacrificed to Satan by members of a tiny cult including Gecht, Thomas’s brother Andrew and 23-year-old Edward Spreitzer.
Thomas went on to describe the cultic rituals, which included severing one or both breasts with a thin wire garrotte, each celebrant ‘taking communion’ by eating a piece before the relic was consigned to Gecht’s trophy box. At one point, Kokoraleis told detectives, he had counted 15 breasts inside the box. Some other victims had been murdered at the Rip Van Winkle Motel, out in Villa Park. Thomas identified a picture of Lorraine Borowski as a woman he had picked up, with his brother, and had taken to the motel, where she met her death. Thomas told the police that they would all kneel together around the altar and Gecht would produce the freshly removed breasts. He would read passages from the Bible as each man masturbated into the body part. When everyone was finished, Gecht would cut it up and hand around the pieces for them to eat. Thomas said that he had witnessed two murders himself and had participated in nearly a dozen such rituals. When the detectives asked him why he had done such macabre and illegal activities, he told them in all seriousness that Gecht had the power to make them do whatever he wanted. ‘You just have to do it,’ he said with conviction. Apparently he was convinced that Gecht had some supernatural connection, and he had been afraid of what Gecht might do to him if he did not do as he was told.
On 5 November, police arrested 20-year-old Andrew Kokoraleis. A search of Gecht’s apartment had revealed the satanic chapel described by Thomas Kokoraleis. Police found a rifle, which they were able to connect to the Torado shootings. Satanic literature was also retrieved from the apartment occupied by Andrew Kokoraleis. With their suspects in custody, police speculated that the gang might have murdered 18 women in as many months. Thomas Kokoraleis was charged with the murder of Lorraine Borowski on 12 November and formally indicted by a grand jury four days later. Brother Andrew and Edward Spreitzer were charged on 14 November with the rape and murder of victim Rose Davis.
Robin Gecht was found mentally competent despite trying to raise an insanity plea and his trial opened on 20 September. Gecht took the witness stand the next day, confessing to the attack on Beverly Washington. Convicted on all charges, he received a sentence of 120 years in prison. Although Gecht’s associates and other witnesses implicated him in some of the deaths, police never had enough evidence to charge him with murder. Although he initially confessed to murder, Thomas Kokoraleis changed his plea to not guilty, with his attorneys seeking to stop the reading of his statements in forthcoming trials, but on 4 December 1983, the confessions were admitted in evidence.
On 2 April 1984, Edward Spreitzer pleaded guilty to four counts of murder, including victims Davis, Delaware, Mak and Torado. Sentenced to life on each count, he received additional time on conviction for charges of rape, deviant sexual assault and attempted murder.
On 18 May 1984, Thomas Kokoraleis was convicted of Lorraine Borowski’s murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a scheduled release date of September 30, 2017. While awaiting sentencing, he led police to a field where Carole Pappas was allegedly buried, but searchers could find no remains. On 7 September 1984, he was given a further life sentence for the murder of Pappas, whose body was later found in 1987 in a shallow pond only four blocks from the Pappas home, with the cause of death being accidental drowning.
Andrew Kokoraleis was tried in two separate counties. The first trial was for the murder of Rose Beck Davis. In his confession, he had admitted that he had abducted Davis with the other men, forced her into the van and had beaten her with a hatchet until she was dead. The jury deliberated for just over three hours before finding him guilty of rape and murder. They sentenced him to life in prison.
At his second trial, Andrew Kokoraleis decided to recant everything he had confessed to and denied that he had killed or raped anyone. He claimed that the police had coerced each of his confessions, had made false promises and had even beaten him into admitting what they wanted him to say. Andrew insisted that they had told him exactly what to say. He also indicated that one police officer had told him the details of the crime scene, giving him all that he needed to confess. Yet when Detective Warren Wilkes took the stand to describe his interrogation, he said that when he had shown Kokoraleis a line of photos, he had picked out Lorraine Borowski and said, ‘That’s the girl Eddie Spreitzer and I killed in the cemetery.’
The jury deliberated for just three hours. They found Andrew Kokoraleis guilty of the murder of Lorraine Borowski and sentenced him to death. At his sentencing hearing, he once again denied the charges and his attorneys argued later that, despite the verdict, the act did not merit the death penalty. In addition, a prison chaplain and a counsellor testified that Kokoraleis was non-threatening and could be rehabilitated. In addition, Kokoraleis argued that he had received ineffectual counsel at sentencing and that, in the case of the murder of Rose Beck Davis (from the earlier trial), that offence had not warranted the death penalty but life in prison. He insisted that the court had not proven his intent to kill or any degree of premeditation. Nevertheless, the court saw otherwise, as the panel of judges dismissed the appeals and upheld the sentence in 1989. He was executed by lethal injection on 16 March 1999.
Spreitzer pleaded guilty on 2 April 1984 to murdering Rose Davis, Sandra Delaware, Shui Mak and drug dealer Rafael Torado. He received life sentences for each murder, as well as time for a multitude of charges, from rape to deviant sexual assault. Yet he still had to go to trial for the Linda Sutton murder. He appeared in a bench trial in front of Judge Edward Kowal on 25 February 1986, but retained his right to have a jury decide his sentence. He admitted that he and his comrades had abducted Linda Sutton as she was walking near Wrigley Field and took her to a wooded field near a hotel where he was staying. He then handcuffed her, raped her and removed her breasts. Then she was raped again and left to die.
Spreitzer’s bid for mercy failed. He was convicted on 4 March of aggravated kidnapping and murder. Two weeks later on 20 March, a jury deliberated for an hour before giving him the death penalty for this crime. He exhausted all of his appeals, despite claims by his attorney Gary Prichard that he had been denied due process and that an examination after the trial indicated that he had brain damage. Prichard argued that the jury had not been correctly instructed. Yet, despite the appearance that this case was now at an end, there was one more unexpected development.
In October 2002, when Spreitzer was 41, he was among 140 of 159 Illinois death row inmates having their cases heard, influenced by the moratorium on capital punishment. Clemency was not granted to Spreitzer, but as Governor Ryan was leaving office in January 2003, he pardoned four of the 164 death row inmates and offered blanket clemency to the rest, including Edward Spreitzer. The families of the victims were outraged and vowed to fight for justice. Spreitzer may have at last won reprieve, but he faces life in prison with no parole.
CHAPTER 9
UNITED KINGDOM
JOHN REGINALD HALLIDAY CHRISTIE
John Christie was born in Halifax in Yorkshire in 1898 and as a child was abused by his father
and dominated by his mother and sisters. His one happy childhood memory, at the age of eight, was seeing his grandfather’s body as it lay at rest in the family home; he felt powerful in front of the lifeless, helpless body of a man he had once feared. Christie attended Halifax Secondary School when he was 11, and was a very bright pupil. He was skilled at detailed work, and it was later found that he had an IQ of 128. He sang in the choir and became a boy scout but was unpopular among his peers. Upon leaving school in 1913, Christie became an assistant cinema projector. The cinema and photography were two interests that he would retain for the rest of his life.
By the time Christie reached puberty, he already associated sex with death, dominance and violent aggression, and this made him impotent unless he was in complete control. His first attempts at sex were failures, leaving him branded ‘Reggie-No-Dick’ and ‘Can’t-Do-It Christie’ throughout adolescence. He was a hypochondriac and suffered from a personality disorder; he would often exaggerate or feign illness to get attention.
Christie later joined the army and after his discharge met 22-year-old Ethel Simpson. They were married on 10 May 1920. It was a dysfunctional marriage, with Christie sighting his impotence as a reason to visit prostitutes. Friends and neighbours said that his wife stayed with him out of fear. They separated after four years, when Christie moved to London.
Over the next decade, Christie was convicted for many petty criminal offences and served several terms of imprisonment. Christie and his wife reconciled after his release from one such sentence in November 1933, but he did not change his ways. He continued to seek out prostitutes to relieve his increasingly violent sexual urges, which now included necrophilia.
Christie and his wife lived in the ground-floor flat of 10 Rillington Place, in London’s Notting Hill, from December 1938. When war was declared in 1939, he applied to join the police force and was accepted, despite his criminal record. Assigned to Harrow Road police station, he enjoyed the respect that came with his position. Christie was both hardworking and efficient. He began an intimate relationship with a woman who worked at the police station whose husband was a serving soldier. The relationship lasted until December 1943, when Christie resigned from the police. The husband had caught Christie with his wife and beat him up. Following this incident, Christie started to invite women to his house while his wife was away visiting relatives.
One such woman was an Austrian girl named Ruth Fuerst, a tall, spirited 21-year-old with brown eyes and hair. Having taken a job in a munitions factory, she lived in a single room not far from Rillington Place. There is some evidence that she may also have earnt money from time to time as a prostitute. One day when they were in bed, Christie strangled her while they were having sex. He wrapped her in her leopardskin coat and put her under the floorboards in the front room, with the rest of her clothes. As soon as he was able, Christie removed the body from the house and placed it in the wash-house out the back. He started to dig in the garden, on the right-hand side, but was interrupted by the return of Ethel, so they had a cup of tea together. He waited until she went to bed that night and then returned to his gruesome task. He placed the dead woman, with her clothes, into the hole, covered it with earth and went to bed. The next day, he straightened the garden and raked it over. He pulled up some of Ruth’s clothing and burnt it in an old dustbin. Months later, Christie accidentally unearthed her skull. He put it into the dustbin to be burnt with the other rubbish. Fuerst’s disappearance was reported to the police on 1 September, but her whereabouts remained a mystery.
In the company canteen of a radio firm where Christie was now employed, he met his second victim, Muriel Eady, 32, who worked in the assembly department. She lived with her aunt and had a steady boyfriend. She was short and heavily built, with dark brown hair. Christie often invited Muriel and her friend for tea, served by Ethel. Once, the foursome went to the movies together. Christie decided to lure her into his home so he could repeat what he had done to Ruth Fuerst. ‘I planned it all out very carefully,’ he later wrote.
In October 1944, Ethel went to Sheffield to visit relatives, giving Christie his opportunity. Christie had told Muriel that, due to his first-aid background from his time with the War Reserve, he had a remedy for the catarrh that she suffered from. She came over alone. This time, he would avoid a struggle. He had prepared himself. Christie told Muriel that he had a special kind of inhaler that would work quite well. Into a jar he had put some inhalant, disguised with the odour of Friar’s Balsam. He had made two holes in the top of the jar, one of which he used for a small hose that he ran to the gas supply. That tube ran into the liquid and another tube came out the other hole and did not touch the liquid, but was meant to keep the stuff from smelling like gas. According to his own account, after first giving her a cup of tea, he had Muriel sit on a kitchen chair with a scarf over her head to inhale his concoction. As Muriel breathed in, she inhaled carbon monoxide. In less than a minute, it weakened her, which gave Christie the opportunity to strangle her with a stocking, having sex with her as he was strangling her. Christie once again experienced the peaceful thrill over the body of his victim. He then placed her in the communal wash-house while he dug a hole for her in the garden. He buried her, fully clothed, not far from the first grave. Later, digging around in the garden, he came across a broken femur bone, which he used to prop up the trellis.
It was later suggested that Christie was a necrophile, but others claim that any sexual activity always took place before his victims’ deaths. Necrophilia is defined as having sex with the unconscious or dead, and keeping them close – and Christie certainly kept the bodies of Ruth and Muriel nearby. There are three types of necrophile: violent, fantasy and romantic.
The violent types have an overpowering urge to be near a body, so they kill in order to achieve this. They may then keep the body around to sexually assault it again, or to visit it where they left it.
Fantasy necrophiles make death a central part of their erotic imagery. They may ask a lover to ‘play dead’ during a sexual act or take photos of that person looking dead, over which they can later masturbate. Christie apparently needed his victims to be unconscious, in a deathlike pose, if not actually dead.
The romantic types feel such a strong bond with their victims that they keep them around after death. They may not touch them again, but derive comfort from their proximity. It does not matter, in this case, whether Christie had sex with a dying woman or a corpse. He kept each one close by.
Some have argued that Christie killed his victims because he feared the consequences of his wife finding out, but such a motive would apply only to the first two cases, as his wife was to be his third victim. With the first one, he said that he strangled her while having intercourse and that as he pulled away from her, excrement and urine came out of her, which would indicate that she was dead before he was finished. So we can surmise that the dying women excited him. Perhaps the origin of this was a desire to punish the girl who ridiculed him after a failed adolescent encounter. In any event, killing women made Christie feel peaceful and powerful.
In 1948, 10 Rillington Place was to be the subject of more drama and intrigue. The Christies had decided to take in lodgers and, as a result, Timothy Evans and his wife took up residence. Several months later, Beryl Evans gave birth to a daughter. She soon fell pregnant for a second time and tried many ways to abort the baby, allegedly seeking the help of Christie. What he actually did has never been made clear; in any event, Mrs Evans was dead when her husband returned home. Christie told Timothy Evans that the abortion techniques and blood poisoning had killed his wife. However, it was later suggested that Christie had strangled her. Christie said that they should not report the death to the police as they would both get into trouble and that he should leave the baby with friends and go back to Wales for a short time. But before he did so, they needed to hide the body – Christie told Evans he would hide it down a drain at the house.
While in Wales, Evans’s aunt confronted him abou
t where his wife and daughter were. Having few mental resources to cope with all of this, it was not long before Evans arrived at the Merthyr Tydfil police station, telling police he had disposed of his wife by putting her down the drain. Police were not sure what to make of this. He had not actually confessed to killing anyone, but what he did say needed to be checked out.
Evans went on to explain that his wife was dead but that he had not killed her. Afraid that mentioning Christie, a former police officer, would only end up incriminating him, Evans claimed that a stranger had given him something to help his wife abort a baby. He had met a man, he said, who had given him some medication intended for spontaneous abortion. He allowed his wife to take the bottle from him, but he warned her not to use it. That day, however, when he returned from work, he found her dead. He attended to the baby and wondered what he should do. He was afraid that the police would think he had killed her.
The next morning, he said, he had put his wife’s body head first down the drain outside the front door. He then stayed home from work but later went in to give notice. He also made arrangements to have someone look after his child. He wanted someone to please find his wife and get this situation resolved.
While Evans waited in Wales, the police in London were notified. They went to the house to investigate. It became immediately apparent that something was amiss when it took three men to move the manhole cover. Evans could not have done this by himself, as he claimed. Once they had it raised, they could see that there was no body. Back in Merthyr, Evans was told of this discovery. He was amazed, but immediately changed his statement. He would now tell the truth.
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