The Voices of Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  In an attempt to try to pull the wool over the jurors’ eyes, Gecht claimed that he was also innocent of rape and aggravated battery. He protested that during the time when most of the murders had occurred, he was not even acquainted with his co-defendants. (This was shown to be a complete lie, and one of his letters proves it.) Sadly, despite sworn statements by women who claimed that it was Gecht who had demanded that their nipples be cut off, the testimony of these witnesses was not admissible. With no physical evidence linking him to the murders, there was nothing to corroborate the witness accounts. Gecht, therefore, could not be prosecuted for any of the killings, and his cohorts were not willing to stand up in court and incriminate him.

  Nevertheless, the jury did find Gecht guilty on all counts relating to the attack on Beverly Washington: attempted murder, rape, deviate sexual assault, aggravated battery, and armed violence. He was sentenced to 120 years in prison.

  For his part in the proceedings, acting on his attorney’s advice, the garrulous, dim-witted Tommy Kokoraleis attempted to block his earlier confessions to police from being admitted into his trial. It was a no-brainer, and he lost. In 1984, Tommy was sentenced to 70 years in prison for his involvement in Lorraine Borowski’s murder.

  Andrew Kokoraleis was tried in two separate counties. The first trial was for the murder of Rose Beck Davis. In his confession, he admitted that he had abducted Ms. Davis with Gecht, Tommy, and Edward Spreitzer. They had forced her into the red van and beaten her with a hatchet until she was dead. This crime earned Andrew a life sentence.

  The murders weren’t planned. I guess they were random attacks. Andrew usually drove Gecht’s van and Robin would order him to stop whenever he saw a woman who appealed to him, and he was always on the lookout for one with sizeable breasts. He didn’t stop talking about breasts . . . he had a fixation about tits.

  —EDWARD SPREITZER

  At his second trial, Andrew Kokoraleis decided to recant everything he had confessed—that is to say, four totally different confessions—and went on to deny that he had killed or raped anyone. He claimed that the police had coerced each of his confessions. They had made false promises of leniency if he implicated his accomplices. He told the court that the cops had “beaten the shit outa me” to make him say what they wanted to hear. But prosecutor Brian Telander had the measure of his man. Telander reviewed the interrogations performed by six different detectives and two prosecutors.

  You are aware that Edward Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis at one time lived with my family and I . . . correct. Surely had I known about anyone dying or being killed I would of alerted police before I would risk my own families lives [sic]. I had no idea what so ever until police advised and started accusing me as they beat on me. UNtil [sic] that time I never met Thomas nor did I sense anything was wrong with Edward. Now Andrew Kokoraleis is a different story waiting to be told. One sick pup and hated women in my book. He was not a friend. His Sister babysat for us that’s how I came to know him and felt sorry for him at times. So I gave him some work with pay.

  —ROBIN GECHT

  “Are all of these honest police officers and attorneys lying?” asked a heated Telander of the jury. “Is this court being asked to believe that this defendant was told exactly what to say by these eight law officers, at different times, in different locations . . . that all of these public safety officers conspired to bring this defendant here . . . perhaps to conspire to have Kokoraleis executed, knowing that if they did so, and were found out, they could also face the death penalty themselves . . . that they would all ruin their careers and their families’ lives as the result?”

  When Telander put Detective Warren Wilcosz on the stand to describe his interrogation, the veteran cop 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.”

  It all came down to who was more believable—eight different law officers or the sullen, angry Kokoraleis. The jury deliberated for a few hours before reaching their verdict: guilty of the murder of Lorraine Borowski. At his sentencing hearing, Kokoraleis was condemned to death, and subsequent appeals upheld the sentence.

  Andrew Kokoraleis was scheduled to be executed on March 17, 1999. He was given a last-minute stay, which was later reversed. But Kokoraleis was still convinced he wouldn’t die. Indeed, right up to the morning of his execution he felt certain that it was not going to happen. He was flown to the Tamms Super-Max facility, where he spent the rest of the day praying and fasting. He spoke to a few select friends on the phone, bidding them farewell. Then, sobbing, he was strapped to the gurney, where he offered the Borowski family a belated apology: “I am truly sorry for your loss. I mean this sincerely.” He spluttered quotes from the books of Exodus and Proverbs, ending with “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” The drugs took effect in just under four minutes, putting the killer to sleep. He stopped talking and breathing at 12:24 a.m.

  Kokoraleis became the first person put to death in Illinois’s new execution chamber. Previously, executions had been carried out at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet. As a double-whammy, Andrew was to earn the unlucky distinction of becoming the last person to be executed in the Prairie State before the death penalty was abolished there.

  By the time of Kokoraleis death, Eddie Spreitzer’s punishment had already been determined. On April 2, 1984, he pled guilty to murdering Rose Davis, Sandra Delaware, Shui Mak, and a drug dealer named Rafael Torado. He received life sentences for each murder, as well as prison time for a multitude of charges from rape to deviate sexual assault. Appearing on a bench trial in front of Judge Edward Kowal on February 25, 1986, Spreitzer admitted that he and his accomplices had abducted Linda Sutton as she was walking near Wrigley Field. They took her to a wooded area near a hotel where Spreitzer was staying, and he handcuffed her, raped her, and removed her breasts. She was raped again and left to squirm around and die in agony.

  Initially, as one would expect, and indeed pray for, Spreitzer was sentenced to death and he wound up on death row in the Pontiac State Correctional Facility in Joliet. However, in October 2002, Spreitzer, at age 41, was among 140 of Illinois’s 159 death row inmates to have their cases heard, all influenced by the moratorium on capital punishment. After further appeals, Governor Ryan pardoned just four of them and offered blanket clemency to the remainder. Spreitzer, despite the outrage expressed by his victims’ families, was one of the beneficiaries.

  Author Jennifer Furio undertook a project of writing letters to serial killers to see how they would respond, and Robin Gecht and Eric Spreitzer both sent letters that she printed in her book The Serial Killer Letters.

  Spreitzer told Furio that he felt bad about his involvement in the crimes and had “even passed out at the sight of blood.” But he insisted that he had done it because he had been afraid of Gecht and his shotgun. “I never did bad things alone,” he claimed.

  Jennifer Furio describes Spreitzer as being “weak, vulnerable, directionless, illiterate, and an easy target, thanks to a bad home life and substance abuse.” This analysis was matched by Spreitzer’s defense attorney, Gary Pritchard, who argued that his client had suffered brain damage: “His IQ of 76 and his troubled history had been instrumental in making him easy for a person like Robin Gecht to manipulate,” Pritchard said.

  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 threatened to send to the police.

  Jennifer Furio’s assessment is that Spreitzer was “sweet and gentle . . . He failed to come across as a murderer . . . all he needed was the love of a good woman.”

  NO, NOT AN OPTION—A FACT!! Never killed anyone nor even considered it. Have you?

  —ROBIN GECHT TO JENNIFER FURIO

  Personally, this author is bound to question Ms. Furio’s sense on this point. “Sweet and gentle”?

  “All he n
eeded was the love of a good woman”? Jesus Christ! Mr. Spreitzer’s prison rap sheet can be viewed at: www.idoc.state.il.us/subsections/search/inms.asp. Perhaps if Jennifer Furio had been present when the “sweet and gentle,” mentally retarded pygmy Spreitzer abducted, raped, tortured, mutilated, and slaughtered his victims, she might have noted that this little man was not all she imagined him to be.

  With Robin Gecht denying any involvement in the murders attributed to him, it would be quite proper for us to attempt a little lateral thinking here and delve deeper into his manifesto of proclaimed innocence. Is he telling us the truth or a pack of lies? For my part, I think he is living in a world where lead balls bounce, elephants fly, and fairies reign supreme.

  Breast partialism: To begin with, let’s consider Gecht’s own unsolicited admissions that he does have a fetish for female breasts. In fact, for a man who is desperately trying to convince others that he is not responsible for a series of crimes where carving off the victims’ breasts played no small part, he is extremely forthcoming in boasting of his fetish with “breast partialism,” a clinically recognized type of sexual fetish that involves a sexual interest and psychological investment among males for female breasts.

  In defense of Mr. Gecht, however, in today’s more enlightened society, the debate still continues as to whether the modern attraction to breasts among heterosexual males in Western society still constitutes a sexual fetish. In the clinical literature of the 19th century, the focus on breasts was considered a form of paraphilia (see definition below), but in modern times, this interest is viewed as normal except when the preference overshadows or dominates the relationship with the female partner—or in the case of Robin Gecht, the victims.

  Paraphilia: Paraphilia is a medical term used to describe sexual arousal by objects or situations that are not part of normative stimulation and that can cause distress or serious problems for the people associated with the perpetrator, who often treats his partners (or victims) as non-human objects. In layman’s terms, this sexual disorder—referred to in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) is characterized by recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors generally involving acting on these urges, and by sadism in acting on these urges with a non-consenting person. There can be no doubt that the crimes committed by the Chicago Ripper Crew were propelled by the recurrent urge to inflict pain and humiliation, linked with a morbid kind of voyeurism, with an exclusive focus on the female breasts.

  Sadistic personality disorder: Sadistic personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of cruel, demeaning, and aggressive behavior as indicated by the repeated occurrence of the following:

  Use of physical cruelty, blackmail, intimidation, or violence for the purpose of establishing dominance in a relationship

  Humiliation or demeaning of people in the presence of others

  Treating or disciplining someone under his/her control unusually harshly

  Lying for the purpose of harming or inflicting pain on others

  Getting other people to do what he/she wants by frightening them through intimidation or even terror

  Fascination with violence, weapons, injury, and torture

  Absorption in literature relating to the Antichrist and satanism

  Breast partialism, paraphilia, and a sadistic personality disorder all combine to make up the psychopathology of Robin Gecht, whether he admits a part of these conclusions or not. He checks all the boxes.

  There can be no doubt that Gecht has an obsessive need to control other people and situations; he’s a bully who craves power. And it is proven that this type of person will often accuse others of their own character trait when or if they feel that their powers are in decline or brought into question. This control is an attempt to impose excessive predictability and direction on others or on events.

  Perhaps we do not need to hear another word from Gecht, who vehemently proclaims his innocence, for laterally he has, through his own words, actions, and deeds, and via his association with three men—two now serving life sentences, and another who was executed—who pointed accusatory fingers at him, proven that he has an unhealthy breast fetish and is a para-philiac, a sexual sadist, and fully emerged psychopath.

  Yet, there is something else we might wish to investigate a little further, and this is Gecht’s past relationship with John Wayne Gacy.

  Gacy’s period of homicidal activity ran from 1972 through 1978. For a good part of the time when Gacy was most active, Gecht, then about age 23, subcontracted for the Des Plaines serial killer, and this is not in dispute.

  Gecht, then a slightly built and quite attractive youth, would have been a typical Gacy mark, and Gacy had a homosexual penchant for employing young lads on a casual basis, if not to target them for rape, torture, and murder. Gacy accused Gecht of being involved in murder most foul when he was interviewed by Des Plaines detectives in 1978.

  Control freak Gacy didn’t simply pull Robin Gecht’s name out of a hat . . . surely not! We can be sure that Gacy’s modus operandi involved trawling for vulnerable young lads, on whom he inflicted imprisonment or physical restraint, torture, rape, and then murder. We also know that during the commission of several of his confirmed kills, Gacy did not act alone. This being the case, Gacy would have used someone who was comfortable with such heinous activity, a person who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. Since his arrest, Gecht has, indeed, kept his mouth shut about Gacy.

  A clown can get away with murder . . . I should never been convicted of anything more serious than running a cemetery without a license.

  —JOHN WAYNE GACY

  While Gacy’s preferred victim type has already been established, perhaps we can now use the same criteria to evaluate control freak Robin Gecht, who targeted women with large breasts.

  So forget all this devil worship, satanic ritual stuff, for the truth may be even more horrific. Perhaps, just perhaps, Gacy was Gecht’s homicidal mentor. Here are the last words from a man who claims that butter would not melt in his mouth:I have no problem with what John Wayne Gacy did. I just think he went about his killings the wrong way.

  —Robin Gecht

  CHAPTER 3

  WAYNE ADAM FORD—ROOM ZERO

  My name is Wayne Adam Ford. I am the serial killer. In 1997 I was experiencing some real problems. My wife left me and took my son away. I started drinking heavily and I was suffering from the lingering effects of a head injury that put me in a coma years ago.

  I began a series of killings in 1997 and 1998. During this time I killed four women. I blacked out during the killings but I knew that I was responsible. I cut up one body, burying some of the remains and putting other body parts in my freezer. I was not in my right mind. The remorse and guilt was crushing me.

  The police investigation into all four killings had turned up no leads. When I checked into Room Zero, at the Ocean Grove Lodge,6 I thought it was very eerie that there was a Room Zero. I had never seen a Room Zero before. It seemed kind of ominous and foreboding.

  Prior to the day of my arrest, I spent the day working up the courage with alcohol and, eh, self-prodding to work myself up to what had to be done.

  On November 3rd, 1998, I walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff ’s Department after deciding that I was too dangerous to be out in society, even if I was out, living rough in the woods. I had realized at this point that I was losing it for short periods of time. I was afraid this was going to happen on a permanent basis. Then I would be, ah, just a roving monster. I had with me a severed woman’s breast in a baggie in my pocket. This, I thought, would be enough to prevent me from having to say anything to the police and that I could say it through an attorney.

  —WAYNE ADAM FORD

  LIKE GARY BOWLES, Wayne Adam Ford’s family history is riddled with violence and neglect. Ford was born December 3, 1961, in Petaluma, Sonoma County, California, to Calvin Eugene Ford and his German immigrant wife, Birgette.

>   “My father was in the military,” recalls Wayne. “the Secret Service, and stationed at the time at a base called Turlock, eh, right near San Quentin State Prison, as a matter of fact. And I have a brother that’s a year and nine months older than me, named Rodney . . . he tried to kill me when I was a baby with a wooden coat hanger.”

  You know, the recipe for making a monster is like this. First of all you have to have two parents, who, during your formative years, they neglect you. My mother would save up everything my brother and I did wrong and when my father got home the first thing he did was beat the hell out of us with a belt.

  But my mother never hit me until I was bigger than her, and one day she just kicked the shit outta me. The problem was that she gave me too much attention when I was really young, and then after the divorce she cut it off completely.

  My dad? Well, he is just flat emotionally abusive and he used us kids as slave labor. I was swinging a hammer at seven or eight years old. I put a roof on when I was thirteen. We were digging asbestos out of buildings that my dad and his partner were buying. Every weekend when we went with my dad, we spend the whole weekend working the whole time.

  —Wayne Adam Ford

  Following a stormy marriage, Wayne’s parents divorced in 1971, with Mrs. Ford traveling the world for some six years while leaving her boys in the care of their father, who was now living in the wine country town of Napa. This was a bad choice, because Wayne didn’t see eye-to-eye with his father. Indeed, they didn’t get along at all.