ANDREW KOLORALEIS: WORSE THAN JOHN WAYNE GACY

“This was the worst, most evil crime I’ve ever dealt with,” Elmhurst Police Chief John Miller said. “This offender was truly a monster to the unsuspecting victims he tortured and mutilated.” “Some crimes are so horrendous and so heinous that society has a right to demand the ultimate penalty,” said Illinois Governor George Ryan. “His crimes were indescribably evil,” Prosecutor Brian Telander said, shaking his head. “Worse than any of those of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.”

The story was played up plenty in Illinois newspapers. During the early stages of the 1980s eighteen Chicago-area women had been found raped, tortured and mutilated. Police were still scrambling to identify many of the victims.

At first the crimes didn’t appear to be much different from hundreds of other stabbings in a city full of blades. But as time passed, Chicago citizens worried that a maniac was running amuck in their city. Instead of fading from the headlines like most cases, this one picked up momentum as the case grew more unsettling.

The unidentified corpse in the morgue was a petite, brunette with hyacinth-blue eyes, standing 5-foot-6 and weighing 170 pounds. A tag on the big toe of her right foot read, simply, “Molly.” The 19-year-old girl had been reported missing by her parents in June of 1981 when she failed to return to the trailer park they shared together.

Like most of the other victims, “Molly” had been found in an isolated area, her left breast decapitated. Through sophisticated technology, medical evidence was able to determine that the girl had been raped, sodomized, and slashed repeatedly with a sharp instrument before being removed to the canal bank where she was found.

A sudden stillness settled over DuPage County that same year. Everyone’s attention had been riveted to the news that another girl had been found murdered. A detective working out of the special equipment division said she appeared to have been sexually assaulted. Her breasts had been amputated. The television station that spread the news was swamped with phone calls following the report. People wanted to know what the police were going to do about it.

Reporters spent days hanging around the sheriff’s office, questioning detectives and sheriffs deputies. If police gleaned even the vaguest information about the case, they wanted to be the first to know. Live updates were aired around the clock, often with no more to report than police had no suspects and no motives.

It wasn’t long before another young woman was found raped and murdered. The horror of this latest tragedy tore down layers of restraint the police had built up over the years in the counties of DuPage and Cook. Some further laboratory work was called for to help in the investigation. All evidence collected during the searches, including semen and hair fibers, were flown to the F.B.I. medico-legal laboratories in Washington D.C. for analysis.

Meantime, county investigators were making great efforts to track down the killer with what sketchy information they had. Many arrests were made and houses searched without result. There was nothing very remarkable about the 35 -year-old cocktail waitress who disappeared on her way home from work during the predawn hours of February 12, 1982. It was raining and she did not want to stop for gas, even though she noticed the gauge was shimmering on empty. If she could make it home she would get gas the next day.

Her car sputtered to a stop on a slight incline. She put it in neutral because she wanted it to roll closer to home. With the power gone, the windshield wipers wouldn’t work. The woman couldn’t see where she was going. The car boomeranged off a curb and stopped dead. Passerby’s going to work in the morning glanced curiously at the stranded automobile with the light-toned stripes running parallel. They noticed the driver’s side door was open and no one was about. No one stopped. Finally a twirling dust cloud rolled down the shoulder of the road and a patrolman got out to investigate.

The keys were in the ignition. A rifled purse was on the front seat. The purse contained no money and no identification. The driver had vanished into limbo. Foul play was in motion. The victim’s car was shown on the late night news. The waitress’ boss recognized the car and called the police to report her missing. Law enforcement officers and civilian volunteers trekked the area around the abandoned car for nearly two miles. Just outside the city limits they found the girl’s naked body on an embankment paralleling the road. The crime scene followed the ghastly routine of the other murders that had panicked the city: kidnapping, rape, torture, victims stabbed with knives or ice picks, corpses mutilated, remains concealed.

National press services and metropolitan dallies were asked not to report that the woman’s breast’s had been dismembered. It would be an important factor in light of a false confession. Several days later, another body was found in Cook County. The victim was an emaciated Spanish woman of about forty years of age. She wore an engagement ring, and did not appear to have borne children. When the body was found it was absolutely rigid, and its general condition suggested that it had been dead for at least two days. Post-mortem discoloration showed the woman had been strangled and stabbed. Neither of her breasts had been removed, but severely bitten.

The more gruesome details were withheld from the public for fear of a panic; attentive readers of newspapers were not told that a piano wire had been used to amputate the bosoms of the victims. Neither were they told that the killer needed to be stimulated by masturbating over his victim’s bodies.

Unwilling to call the crimes the work of a “serial killer,” Chicago-area police nevertheless noted the striking similarities in the apparent abductions while allowing the striking mimesis and obvious geographical connections. Sleuths made no communal comment on the case, concentrating on their search for the ghostlike killer.

The key lay in a psychiatrists’ report: Rather than a rootless drifter, he was probably the man next door, living a harmonious life with a family and a abiding love for animals. Outwardly, he was a family man and a diligent worker, at night, he turned into a psychopath, snatching helpless women off the streets or creeping through unlocked windows, raping and killing women at his own leisure. His ghoulish post-script was to leave obvious marks of cruel mistreatment in his flight.

The crimes remained unsolved while frustrated forensic pathologists, forensic serologists, and forensic toxicologists -- each adept specialists in their own right -- quietly gathered a line of telltale evidence. The morning of May 15, 1882 was silhouetted by the sunrise against a rose-colored sky as the comely blonde put her key in the door of her Elmhurst real estate office. When office help arrived they found the key still dangling from the lock. The 21-year-old real estate agent’s car was parked in her usually spot. But, without explanation, Lorraine “Lori” Borowski was gone.

A woman on her way to work saw a hazy image of a car filled with people, moving past her on way out of town. She didn’t recognize anyone in the car but felt the woman in the back seat was being held against her will. When she heard about Borowski’s apparent abduction the realization of what she had witnessed came more clearly into focus. Police were notified. Much of the week following Borowski’s abduction was spent searching for her and sorting through phone tips from people whose interest in the series of murders had suddenly been revived. All calls to law enforcement agencies in the vicinity were followed up. As a matter of procedure, detectives questioned everyone who might have information that would help to solidify the case.

Five months later Lori’s remains were found. The hiding-place was the Clarendon Hills cemetery. In voluminous detail a medical report confirmed adequate evidence of rape and signs of death by stabbing. On September 8, 1982 newspapers covering Chicago’s Gold Coast woefully announced the murder of pretty Rose Beck Davis on front pages. The story continued with police accounts of how the young woman was raped, beaten and stabbed by a sexual sadist obsessed with the desire to cut off her breasts. It was the distinctive modus operandi of the faceless killer who had been stalking victims in the counties of Cook and Du Page.

Whether it was skilled detection or by some queer chance, four men were arrested in Du Page County on November 7, 1982 and charged with the murder of Lori Borowski. The term, “The Ripper Crew” grabbed headlines and aptly described the sadistic predators with a taste for savage mutilation. Undermanned police were entirely unprepared for what lay ahead. It was inconceivable that there were four madmen in the same area with the same irresistible compulsion for sadomasochism-masochism. At first the killers were stubborn and dogmatic but eventually they “squealed” on one another in the hope of finding leniency by testifying for the state.

Andrew Kokorakeis’ confession narrated a ghastly routine of kidnapping, rape, torture and stabbing of 18 women with can openers, lids of tin cans, ice picks, razor blades, and knives. He said that he and his confederates not only amputated the breasts of these women but they masturbated on them and ate their victim’s breasts.

At his trial, Kokoraleis had a change of heart. On the witness stand, he repeatedly denied killing Borowski or anyone else. The charges against him were ludicrous, he said. As for his four confessions, they were coerced by police who beat him and falsely promised he would be released if he told on the others.

Kokoraleis’ testimony was challenged under cross-examination by prosecutor Brian Telander, chief of the Du Page County state’s attorney’s criminal division, and Assistant Du Page County State’s Attorney Daniel May. They took him through a line of six Chicago detectives and Du Page County sheriff’s deputies and two Cook County prosecutors who had interrogated him at length. In each case Telander asked whether any of his interrogators had told him what to say. In every case Kokoraleis leaned forward in cold anger and replied, “yes.”

Kokoraleis testified that a Chicago police lieutenant talked him into confessing to the Borowski murder after filling him in on the details of the crime scene.

Kokoraleis looked straight ahead, wide-eyed and frozen, as Du Page County sheriff’s detective Warren Wilcosz told his story. According to Wilcosz, he interviewed Kokoraleis in the interrogation room at the Chicago police station shortly after his arrest. the detective said he showed Kokoraleis a line of photographs and that Kokoraleis pointed to a picture of Borowski and said: “That’s the girl Eddie Spreitzer and I killed in the cemetery!” In his summation to jurors Telander told jurors these law enforcement officers would have nothing to gain by bullying Kokoraleis into a confession.

After six days of testimony, jurors in Judge Wedard Kowal’s Wheaton courtroom deliberated for three hours before finding Kokoraleis guilty of killing Lori Borowski. At his sentencing Kokoraleis again took the stand and denied killing anyone. Conceding that the panel had not bought his argument, Kokoraleis’ council argued that as atrocious as the crimes were, it was not enough to deserve the death penalty.

A witness who disagreed was Elmhurst Police Chief John Miller. “This was the worst, most evil crime I’ve ever dealt with,” he said. “These offenders were truly monsters to the unsuspecting victims they tortured and mutilated.” Kokoraleis had at least two sympathizers. A chaplain at Cook County jail and a counselor at the Du Page County jail testified that they had found him to be very helpful, unthreatening, and a prime candidate for rehabilitation. In their opinion, capital punishment in this case was unnecessary to protect society.

With the evidence at hand, one of Illinois’ most intriguing murder mysteries came to an end. Andrew Koloraleis, a resident of Villa Park, was given a life sentence in Cook County for the murder of Rose Beck Davis, and the death sentence in Du Page County for raping, beating and stabbing to death Lori Borowski. Eddie Sprietzer was sentenced to death for his part in the Borowski murder. He is currently on death row.

Both Kokoraleis and Sprietzer said Robin Gecht was the leader of the dastardly, unforgivable crimes committed by the “The Ripper Crew.” However, Gecht was the only one who did not confess. He was convicted of attempted murder on the testimony of a surviving victim. Gecht and Tommy Kokoraleis were sentenced to 120 and 70 years per capita. The multiple murderers were sent to the Pontific Correctional Center. As Andy Koloraleis’ execution date approached, his lawyers began the usual fight for his life. His appeal, case No. 95 C 3913, was first argued before Judges James Zagel, Bauer, Easterbrook, and Diane Wood on November 25, 1997 and decided on December 16.

The defendant presented three arguments in his appeal; first that he received ineffectual support of counsel at sentencing; secondly that the evidence did not support the conclusion that he was eligible for the death penalty. Lastly, in seeking to turn the Rose Beck Davis conviction to his advantage, Kokoralesis contended that another jury’s decision not to impose the death penalty for this murder precluded capital punishment for his murder of Borowski.

The bases of his argument was that Illinois was “collaterally estopped” to seek capital punishment a second time for the same series of murders that was placed before a preceding panel even though the Davis trial took place in Cook County while the Borowski trial was held in Du Page County. Kokoraleis argued that he was ineligible for capital punishment because the judgement of conviction did not amply show that the deaths were the result of either an intent to kill more than one person or of separate premeditated acts.

The panel of judges dismissed the appeal as a theatrical ruse and on Wednesday, October 25, 1989, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence. Kokoraleis’ new legal team took a different line of defense. They argued that his prior attorneys should have presented him as a schizophrenic “lust killer” and they should have pled insanity. It was their judgement that Kokoraleis’ trial lawyers should have suspected that he was a candidate for psychiatric evaluation and should have conducted an appropriate investigation to obtain use at sentencing. They also questioned why the trial judge had not recommended psychiatric treatment for his “troubled condition.”

In a further attempt to save Kokoraleis from his fast-approaching date with the executioner, his defense team presented an affidavit from a prison psychiatrist who wrote that he was incompetent for trial and possessed a “borderline personality disorder,” making him vulnerable to the influence of a criminal cult organizer, namely Gecht. This affidavit failed to persuade a district judge who felt it was an inadequate argument to overturn the decision of a state court. According to Kokoraleis’ former trial lawyers they had reasons not to pursue a diminished-mental capacity defense inasmuch as neither Kokoraleis nor any of his family or acquaintances suspected that he was anything but normal.

His new lawyers countered this argument by saying a serial killer who rapes, tortures, and eats his victims after fetishistic, misogynous ceremonies is anything but normal. The court ruled that one can be abnormal without being mentally impaired. The court further ruled that since the jury knew Kokoraleis and Spreitzed kidnapped and murdered Borowski without Gecht’s joining in, Kokoraleis was abnormally nefarious rather than unusually deficient in resistance to the control of others.

Council also thought it was better to present a line of defense on “I didn’t do it,” rather than “Gecht made me do it.” The Appeals Court ruled Kokoraleis’ trial lawyers made the best of a bad situation by pursuing a particular line of defense that satisfied the constitutional minimum.

In its 41-page opinion the court ruled that it could find “no reversible error in the trial.” And so Kokoraleis’ execution was affirmed and a date for his demise was set for 12:01 Wednesday, March 16, 1999. Inevitably, the usual applications for stay of execution were filed at the last minute. And, as usual, some of these applications were of highly incredulous merit.

The result was massive and costly delay, and a process once called “chaotic” by Chief Justice Rehnquist. Thirty hours before he was scheduled to die, death penalty opponents rallied but they failed to pressure Governor Ryan and the General Assembly to temporarily halt the execution pending a review of the state’s capital punishment system. As defense efforts dwindled in the eyes of Kokoraleis’ supporters, they held an emergency meeting to see who they could turn to that would salvage the situation. Their only recourse, they decided, was Illinois Supreme Court Justice Moses Harrison. He ordered a stay of execution.

But it was doubtful whether this move would postpone the execution because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to expedite the case because the stay was pending at state level. Harrison then called for a moratorium on all executions in Illinois.

“The question is whether the full state count can overturn it, and we don’t believe they can,” said Kokoraleis’ attorney Alan Freedman. “Unless the U.S. Supreme Court clears the way for the execution or Harrison’s colleagues on the state court overturn him, the execution will not go on.” “This could buy him a moratorium and an investigation into the truth or no execution at all,” Freeman added.

Aside from state Rep. Coy Pugh (D-Chicago) who petitioned the state supreme Court to delay Kokoraleis’ date with the executioner, Harrison’s order was the last-ditch effort by Kokoraleis’ sympathizers to stonewall what would be the state’s first execution at the recently built Tamms Correctional Center in Southern Illinois.

The Illinois Supreme Court reversed a stay of execution filed by Harrison on a 4-3 vote. The moment finally arrived for Governor George Ryan to take a stand. In a three-page statement issued on March 17th -- just 4 1/2 hours before Kokoraleis’ scheduled execution, he said: “A jury has decided his fate according to the law of the land. His repeated attempts to appeal the verdict and his sentence have been considered and rejected many times by state and federal courts over the last 16 years. Accordingly, I will not stand in the way or alter the verdict of the sentence handed down in this case.”

“Just because Kokoraleis confessed to the crime doesn’t mean he did it,” said attorney, Kathy Kelly of the Midwest Center for Justice. Kokoraleis’ attorneys withheld from him the governor’s decision not to keep him institutionalized any longer. Each tick of the clock brought him nearer to his date with destiny. On the morning of the transfer, Warden Jerry Gilmore told him, “Well, Andy, it’s time to go.” Kokoraleis grinned. “You know we’re just going to Tamms for nothing,” he said. “They ain’t going to execute me.” On Tuesday, March 16th he was flown by helicopter to the new super-maximum security prison in Tamms, a $60 million facility that houses “the worst of the worst” from Illinois criminal institutions.

The fatigue of the appeal process had taken its toll on Kokoraleis. There had been no error in procedure, no lack of sufficient evidence revealed in the judgement of the courts of review. The last flicker of hope gone, it was time to pay the supreme penalty for a career of random murder. He spent his last day fasting and reading the Bible. Unable to keep the executioner at bay any longer, the condemned man spent his final hours talking with friends on the telephone and praying. He spent five hours visiting with a brother who drove 375 miles to say good-bye on the eve of his execution. They held hands, prayed together, and cried.

So utterly horrible were his crimes that the usual sympathetic crowd of sign carriers were absent on the night of his execution. One lone protester stood in a fenced off field. He left at 10 p.m., two hours before the lights dimmed throughout the new maximum-security Tamms Correctional Institution, north of Cairo.

Kokoraleis refused a sedative with the complete conviction that before the injection needle was put in his arm, he would be pardoned by the governor just like they do in the movies. He climbed up on the gurney arms and legs strapped down, waiting for deliverance.

Maybe he was resigned to his fate when he made his final speech at Downstate Tamms before being put to death by lethal injection. “To the Borowski family, I’m truly sorry for your loss. I mean this sincerely,” he said. Quoting the Bible, he said, “Repent ye for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

The execution chamber did not threaten the savagery of the cemetery where poor Lori Borowski was traumatized and murdered. Instead, soothing fluorescent lights reflected off glittery waxed floors. It was an atmosphere of warmth and coziness, not the gaseous envelope of fear and pain that Kokoraleis’ 18 victims were subjected to.

He took three deep breaths after a lethal intravenous cocktail of chemicals took effect. One leg quivered like Johansson on the canvas at Miami Beach. He was pronounced dead at 12:34 p.m., becoming the 12th man executed since Illinois reinstated the death penalty.