The Voices of Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  Beverly Washington

  At the start of this chapter I quoted verbatim the Statement of Facts issued by the Illinois State Attorney’s Office (1982), with reference to prostitute Beverly Washington, who was able to provide detectives with several significant characteristics about one of the men who had attacked her: The driver of the red van was a slender white man who looked to be around 25, wearing a flannel shirt and square-toed boots. He had greasy brown hair and a mustache. He offered me more money than I asked for and he seemed unaccountably nervous. He ordered me to get into the back seat. He had a gun. He told me to remove my clothes, and I did. Then he placed handcuffs on me. He forced me to perform oral sex on him. He threatened me with violence if I did not swallow a handful of pills he handed to me. As I was passing out, I saw him holding a cord over me. I feared I was going to die.

  Beverly was dumped out of the vehicle—one breast severed, the other nearly so—but someone found her and called the police. When questioned, she was able to describe the red van. It was a Dodge with tinted windows. It had a wooden divider between the front seats and the rear. She also told the investigators that there were feathers and a roach clip hanging from the rearview mirror.

  Around October 20, 1982 (the exact date is uncertain), police stopped a red Dodge van and questioned the driver. Although he did not fit Beverly Washington’s description, the van did. The driver, Eddie Spreitzer, said that the van belonged to his boss, Robin Gecht, and a check through the Bureau of Vehicle Licensing proved this to be correct.

  The police then took Spreitzer to Gecht’s house, where they asked him to beckon the van’s owner outside. When Robin Gecht calmly emerged, he matched the description of the man who had attacked Beverly Washington, even down to his shirt and boots.

  Ever anxious to clear his name from being associated with a bunch of lowlife sexual sadists, Mr. Gecht had this to say in a letter. The spelling and grammar are his own:Have you looked at the Illinois Department of Corrections Website [INMATE SEARCH]? If so, you will notice what I was charged/convicted of there on that site. NO-WHERE does it state “murder!”

  That he was charged and convicted of attempted murder seems to have slipped Gecht’s mind; nonetheless, he rails on, and on, and on. Once again, Gecht is quoted verbatim:These set of charges and this conviction is 1 conviction/1 case/1 victim and does NOT involve any of the other crimes alleged on internet websites that ALL came out of a book written in 1986. I will soon be sending you an information packet.4 That will help you understand facts surrounding this conviction on based website crap. I am in prison and convicted of an alleged NON-FATAL attack on a northside Chicago prostitute by the name of Beverly Washington. [B.W.] as the State’s Attorney’s refer her as in legal arguments. B.W. is alive and well last time I heared in 199. This victim [B.W.] i.d’s me as her attacker in a suggestive lineup held by police on Oct. 1982 while she was hospitalized just after the attack. [B.W.] i.d was based on 2 elements . . . [1] . . . Police told her “I” owned the van she described to police two weeks before the lineup. [2] . . . She i.d-ed a blue company shirt that anyone that worked for me . . . ”owned” at that time. I was wearing the shirt and the jeans at the time of the lineup just an hour after [B.W.] was shown photos taken of myself in the same clothing. [We call that SUGGESTIVE]. Edward and Andrew both also owned this company shit. This entire conviction was souly based on identification by Ms. Washington. No other evidence presented at trial as to biological was presented.

  Remarkably, it has now been proven that Robin Gecht used to work for one of America’s most notorious homosexual, sado-sexual serial killers, former Menard CC inmate John Wayne Gacy, out of Des Plaines, Illinois.

  Gacy, as we all know, killed 33 young men, burying the majority of their bodies in the crawlspace under his home or dumping the remains into the Des Plaines River.5 However, of some interest, perhaps even mega interest, is the fact that January 1979—a month after he was arrested and long before the Chicago Ripper murders started—Gacy continually told investigators that Robin Gecht, who Gacy claimed was bisexual, had been involved with killing some of the victims attributed to him!

  With all of this being said, it is fair to say that Robin Gecht has denied being involved with any murders, and he persists in his arguments today. It is also true that the only witness testimony against Gecht comes via Beverly Washington, a prostitute, and from Eddie Spreitzer in his statements given to police, numbering some 46 pages in all.

  It was Spreitzer who first admitted to driving the red Dodge van as Gecht allegedly committed a drive-by shooting that killed one man and left another man paralyzed. This shooting incident was confirmed by police. Therefore, Spreitzer had first-hand knowledge of the incident, because he gave an account that only the participants in the shooting would have known. Gecht denied all knowledge of it.

  After this shooting, Spreitzer claims that Gecht told him to slow down to pick up a black prostitute. Gecht, he says, had sex with the woman in the back of the van, then took her into an alleyway and used a knife to remove her left breast, which he placed on the van’s floor. Although Spreitzer was less than specific, one may assume that the victim was Linda Sutton, for an alleyway ran alongside the Brer Rabbit Motel and Sutton’s corpse was found on vacant land at the rear of the premises.

  On another matter, it was Spreitzer who said that the sight of blood sickened him, which is confirmed by Gecht. It was Spreitzer who told police that Gecht had shot a black woman in the head after chaining her up and that Gecht had used bowling balls to weigh her down in the water. This could only have been Sandra Delaware, who was found in shallow water along the bank of the Chicago River.

  Spreitzer had much to say about other murders allegedly committed by Robin Gecht. He stated that Gecht had “forced him” to have sexual contact with a dead woman’s gaping wounds. But one only has Spreitzer’s word for this. Again, Gecht denies everything.

  By the time Spreitzer was finished, he had offered firm details regarding seven murders and one case of aggravated battery. His interrogators put the matters to Gecht, who was in an adjoining room, and were amazed that Gecht seemed unfazed. “It was as if he didn’t give a damn,” recalled one of the officers present. “He acted as if he had nothing to hide.”

  When Spreitzer learned that his boss, Gecht, was sitting in a room just a few yards away, he suddenly changed his story. As if afraid, he said that Gecht had not murdered anyone. His account became so erratic that his interrogators didn’t know what to believe, other than that Spreitzer had been involved with at least seven of the murders from start to finish.

  Spreitzer said that his girlfriend’s brother, Andrew Kokoraleis, had been the killer. Oddly enough, he could not—or would not—offer any further details.

  For his part, Gecht admitted that he knew Andrew, and he even provided police with Kokoraleis’s home address. He seemed not to know the gruesome things about Kokoraleis that Spreitzer obviously did.

  Kokoraleis was arrested and soon confessed about how the threesome had kidnapped women off the streets, raped them, stabbed them with knives, razors, tin can lids, and can openers. He went on to allege that Gecht had a fetish about women’s breasts and had used a needle to puncture them multiple times. He told police that in several cases they had amputated one or both breasts and masturbated into them. Kokoraleis admitted the murders of Rose Beck Davis and Lorraine Borowski, and he inadvertently confessed that he had been involved in the deaths of some 17, maybe 18, women.

  In the murder of Sandra Delaware, he said that he had shoved a rock into her mouth to keep her from screaming. That he had forced a wine bottle into her vagina that made her bleed badly. That he had stabbed her with a knife.

  And, while autopsy reports confirmed that all of this occurred, Gecht steadfastly continued to deny any involvement whatsoever.

  As we already know from Gecht’s own correspondence, police themselves soon learned from Robin’s friends and acquaintances that he had a breast fetish, asking girls he associated w
ith to let him stab their breasts with pins. It is alleged that Gecht’s wife suffered the “pin treatment,” although she never turned him in. But when the cops began questioning Andrew Kokoraleis’s slow-witted brother Tommy, they were in for a surprise. He, too, had been in the Chicago Ripper Crew, and he would break down, confessing to details that would even make an avid Stephen King fan cringe.

  Making no bones about it, in the intelligence department Tommy Kokoraleis never held a full deck of cards, but he most certainly had joined in a fad that was sweeping the country during the early 1980s, especially among teenagers—Satan worship. He has admitted to paying many visits, with his accomplices, to the ruins of the former Ovaltine factory in Villa Park. There, among the damp corridors and dank rooms, Tommy claimed they somehow believed they could contact the “Dark One.” He said that Gecht and his associates took the flesh they had removed from their victims, cut it up and consumed it as a form of ancient devilish communion. He said that Gecht had an altar in the attic of his northwest side apartment where they all gathered during the nocturnal hours after Gecht’s wife had gone to work. Gecht had painted six red and white and black crosses on the walls, he said, and covered the altar with a red cloth—Old Nick-influenced scenarios that could have come straight from the pages of Dennis Wheatley’s novel To the Devil a Daughter.

  Rising to his theme, Tommy told police that they would all kneel together around the altar and Gecht would produce the freshly removed breasts. Gecht would read passages from a copy of the Codex Gigas (the Devil’s Bible) as each man masturbated into the fleshy portion of the body. When everyone was finished, Gecht would cut it up and hand around the pieces for them to eat.

  The police bought Tommy’s story lock, stock, and barrel, more so because Tommy said he had witnessed two of the murders himself and had participated in nearly a dozen rituals. When the detectives asked him why he had committed such macabre illegal activities, he told them in all seriousness that Gecht had the power to make them do whatever he wanted. “You just had to do it,” he said with conviction. Apparently, he believed that Gecht had some supernatural connection, and he was afraid of what Gecht might do to him if he didn’t do what he was told.

  One person warned detectives never to look into Gecht’s blue eyes. No matter how sick and disgusting an act might be, he could inspire others to get involved. It has been alleged by author Jennifer Furio, although Gecht denies it, that he started off by molesting his sister. He does admit that during adolescence he developed a keen interest in Satanism and its secret rituals. And in this telling comment, Gecht says: “I have no problem with what John Wayne Gacy did. I just think he went about his killings the wrong way.”

  As the police interviewed more and more people known to to Gecht, they learned that Spreitzer and the Kokoraleis brothers were not alone in their fear of Gecht or their belief in his powers. There seemed to be a Mansonesque quality about the man that drew impressionable people to him like some dark, satanic messiah.

  Charles Milles Manson is almost unique among mass murderers. Although there have been many such killers in the United States, there have been only a handful quite like “Our Charlie”—for he murdered by proxy. The power of his personality made others want to do his killing for him. To some extent, we can see echoes of Manson in Robin Gecht, for even if we do believe Gecht when he says that he didn’t murder anyone, those under his psychological control most certainly did. But how could this happen?

  Interviews with Manson and those who knew or followed him bring out very different pictures. To some, he is a racist, misogynist, ill-educated bigot. To others, he is the most dangerous man alive, or even God or the devil. To himself, he was a small-time pimp and thief, yet something in his personality allowed Manson to dominate and manipulate a very small group of devotees in which he was the alpha male.

  From the world of darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment.

  —CHARLES MANSON

  Any study of Manson and his personality yields two overriding images. One is the chameleon, and the other is the dog. As we see with the serial killers featured in this book, they all can be chameleons and dogs. They are all Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes.

  Manson frequently characterized himself as a mirror to humanity, a reflection of the sickness inherent in the hippie-versus-establishment culture of his time. Family members attest that he was a changeling. He could be whatever the other people wanted him to be.

  Manson could reflect the views of others, specifically his own family of disciples. To use a more simplistic term, he was a control freak, exactly like Robin Gecht—and like John Wayne Gacy, for that matter.

  For example, in conversations with prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi, Charlie Manson could be rational and quick-witted, bringing out his prison lawyer skills time and again to try and impress. However, Bugliosi could also see the mesmerizing effect Manson had on Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sandra Good, two members of his murderous family. Bugliosi knew that Manson was a changeling, so he played his cards accordingly.

  No luck will come to any family in which there is a changeling because the creature drains away all the good fortune which would normally attend the household. Thus, those who are cursed with it tend to be very poor and struggle desperately to maintain the ravenous monster in their midst.

  —IRELANDSEYE.COM

  With Robin Gecht we can again draw a parallel with Manson, because Gecht had exactly the same mesmerizing effect on Eddie Spreitzer and the Kokoraleis brothers, members of his own murderous “family.” Only when this spell was finally broken, when they were free of his threats and influence, did Gecht’s cohorts spill the beans on him.

  Many people describe Manson as “the Man with a Thousand Masks,” ready to be whatever ingratiated him with companions. For a physically small man (Manson is 5 feet 2 inches tall), who has spent most of his life in prison, the ability to agree with all men is obviously a powerful survival strategy.

  The same label might also be affixed to Robin Gecht, for the stone-cold killer uses the same ingratiating methods in denying his guilt today. The five-and-a-half feet tall Gecht weighs in at an impressive 135 pounds. When the mind-control techniques of Scientology or satanism are fueled by paranoid anger at the world, the result is a very powerful persona indeed. Both Manson and Gecht had this power in spades.

  Manson regards a dog as his own favorite metaphor for himself. Loyal friend, rejected puppy, coyote pariah are all frequent Manson personas. At the same time, when he came across other dominant males—members of biker gangs, for example—Charlie felt it necessary to establish his position by boasting of the killing he had done. Like an unsocialized dog, Manson fed on others’ fear. People who showed fear were punished, assigned to a lowly position in the pack hierarchy.

  Charles Manson changes from second to second. He can be anybody he wants to be. He can put on any face he wants.

  —SUSAN ATKINS MANSON FAMILY MEMBER

  Charles Manson was also capable of articulation and understanding. Yet his attitudes revealed stark contradictions; he respected nature but thought nothing of human life. However, if there is any single redeeming factor concerning the monster who orchestrated the Sharon Tate killings, it is that he admits it all, totally unlike Robin Gecht, who hasn’t the balls to admit anything at all.

  Despite all of his claims of being as sane as the next man, Gecht wasn’t slow in trying to avoid trial by offering an insanity excuse. He was evaluated for competency and found to be mentally fit to stand trial; he was also considered to have been sane at the time the offenses took place. But luck favored him, and he received a mistrial decision based on a legal technicality surrounding submission of evidence. Nonetheless, this problem was overcome, and his second trial began on Tuesday, September 20, 1983, with the prosecutor producing some pretty compelling evidence.

  During a search of Gecht’shome, policefoundthe“chapel” Tommy Kokoraleis had told them about. They also found a rifle that had bee
n used in the shooting of one of the victims. Rummaging through the place, police located satanic literature and a “trophy box” owned by Gecht, in which Andrew Kokoraleis had claimed to have seen as many as fifteen pieces of human breast.

  I don’t only face the injustices, but the nightmares that follow. You have no idea the pain and hurt I face and feel every single day I sit here and loose hope [sic]. I am no angel . . . but I never intentionally hurt anyone unless it was to protect myself or my family. I could never live with killing or knowing I was responsible for taking one’s life.

  —ROBIN GECHT LETTER TO JENNIFER FURIO

  It was also established to the satisfaction of the jury, through surviving victims’ statements and autopsy reports, that the victims had been abducted from the streets and held against their will. They had been tortured with implements such as needles and ice picks. They were gang-raped and then forced to endure having their breasts sliced off with a piano wire garrote so the men could use them for satanic sacrifices. Most of the women died, but they had likely felt the horrendous pain of this mutilation before they finally expired. Yet, two women survived their near-death ordeal to testify against their attackers and to live with the nightmares created by Gecht for the remainder of their lives.

  To all or most I’m not even a human or if so “deranged” but the fact is . . . I’m a simple person, and I too have feelings. I to cry and I hurt just as you would. That makes me human and I have a huge respect for women in general regardless whats said [sic].

  —ROBIN GECHT

  Robin Gecht took the stand to speak in his own carefully planned defense. He recognized that the evidence against him in the Beverly Washington matter was so overwhelming that if he fully admitted the Washington offenses, the jury might believe him when he claimed he had not actually been involved with killing anyone else. Attempted murder was one thing, but conspiracy to commit serial homicide was something else.