Member of sadistic Ripper Crew due for prison release, unless prosecutors can stop it
Sep 1, 2017But, in an effort to thwart his release, prosecutors are reviewing whether Thomas Kokoraleis fits the legal standard to instead be held beyond his parole date as part of a civil commitment process for inmates who are deemed too sexually violent to be freed, sources tell the Tribune.Kokoraleis, 57, is due to be paroled Sept. 29 after serving half of a 70-year sentence for the abduction, rape and fatal stabbing of Lorraine "Lorry" Ann Borowski, of Elmhurst. He is eligible for day-for-day credit for good behavior under old Illinois sentencing guidelines.His older brother, Andrew Kokoraleis, 35, was the last inmate to be executed in Illinois. He died by lethal injection March 17, 1999, 12 years before the state's death penalty was abolished.The Kokoraleis brothers, of Villa Park, and two other men were part of a satanic gang that stalked streets in Chicago and the west and northwest suburbs in a red utility van, looking for lone women to kidnap, beat, rape, torture and kill. They cut off their victims' breasts, often while the women were still alive, as part of cannibalistic, sexual rituals."This guy should never get out of prison," said John C. Smith Jr., a retired DuPage County Jail chief who took Thomas Kokoraleis decades ago to his first jail cell. "I was appalled when I saw he was going to get out. My opinion? They all should have gotten the death penalty."Another member of the Ripper Crew, Edward Spreitzer, 56, is ineligible for parole. A DuPage County jury sentenced him to death in 1986 but then-Gov. George Ryan in one of his final acts in office in 2003 cleared out death row, commuting to life terms the sentences of all of the state's condemned inmates.The crew's ringleader, Robin Gecht, an electrical contractor and handyman who employed the other men, is the only member who wasn't convicted of a murder. He, unlike the others, never confessed. Instead, Gecht was sentenced in Cook County to 120 years for the rape and mutilation of a teenager working as a prostitute. She survived and provided police crucial information to end the crew's c... (Chicago Tribune)
