Cannibals (19 page)

Karl Denke pickled the flesh of his victims and sold it on the market in Wroclaw as ‘pork’. . .

Karl Denke was born on December 8, 1870, the son of a wealthy farmer from Oberkunzendorf in Poland. The records show that Karl was quite a difficult child to raise and at school he was one of the worst students. He tried to run away from home for the first time at the age of 12.

When he eventually graduated from elementary school he started an apprenticeship as a gardener. Karl’s father died when he was 25, and the farm was taken over by Karl’s elder brother. Karl himself inherited a sum of money which enabled him to purchase his own farm and garden in the town of Ziebice. However, his career as a farmer was not very successful so he decided to sell the land and buy a house instead. He purchased a two-storey house with an accompanying shed in Ziebice, but after World War I, due to inflation, he lost his savings and was forced to sell once again. However, although he sold his house he did stay on as a tenant and rented an apartment on the ground floor.

Karl Denke was well respected in the town of 8,000 inhabitants. He was pious, refrained from alcohol and did not have relations with women. He led an honest, lower to middle class lifestyle and was known to give assistance to beggars, even as far as giving them a bed for the night in his small apartment. It was not surprising, therefore, that this devout, peaceful and charitable man was offered a vending licence when he applied to the police to sell goods on the market. He set up a small shop and sold leather suspenders, belts, shoe laces and on Wroclaw market he also offered boneless pickled ‘pork’. Nobody thought anything of it and he traded unhindered, that is until one particular day . . .

It was Sunday, December 21, 1924, at around 1.00 p.m. when a man entered the Ziebice police station covered in blood. He was rambling but managed to say how he had barely escaped death in Karl Denke’s apartment. At first the police did not believe this story, they were surprised that a vagrant like Vincenz Olivier could possibly be accusing such an upstanding citizen as Mr. Denke. The police decided that he was worthy of having a medical examination and the doctor confirmed that he had indeed been seriously wounded. Again they questioned Vincenz but he would not change his testimony and the police were obliged to arrest Karl Denke.

During his interrogation Denke told the police that the vagrant had attempted to rob him after receiving a handout, and he had been forced to retaliate to save his belongings. As a result of this Denke was locked up in a holding cell for the night. That very same night, around 11.30 p.m., when Sergeant Palke looked in on him, he discovered that Karl Denke was dead. He had managed to hang himself using a noose made from a handkerchief.

The police waited until his corpse had been handed over to his relatives and then they went and searched his apartment. It was Christmas Eve and the country was in the middle of an economic crisis. Polish money was losing its value from day to day, and most families were struggling to put any decent food on their tables. So the already despondent police, were even more dismayed when they arrived at the house and made some horrifying discoveries. What the police found in his apartment and shed made their bodies literally tremble with terror.

In the apartment, hanging in the closet were several items of bloodstained clothing, along with one skirt. On the windowsill lay various documents containing the names of people who had been released from either prisons or hospitals. They found several containers filled with pickled meat, and the laboratory analysis carried out later showed that it was of human origin. There was an apparatus for making soup along with human bones that had been placed ready for processing. On the walls were hanging dozens of belts, suspenders and shoelaces all of which had been made from human skin.

From the evidence they recovered from Denke’s house and shed the police were able to identify 20 victims of the Ziebice cannibal. Realistically, though, it is believed that Karl Denke killed, cut up, pickled and probably ate more than 40 people.

For now the local celebrity only has a small exhibit of bloody knives and axes in the museum in Ziebice but as his memory draws more crowds who’s to say that it won’t be enlarged.

During the 1980s Robin Gecht led a group of three other men known as the Chicago Rippers

In 1981 and 1982 Chicago was besieged with a string of gruesome killings that was believed to be the work of the Chicago Rippers, led by Robin Gecht. In some sort of sick cult ritual the killers would cut off their victim’s right breast and later eat it . . .

During the 1980s, Robin Gecht led a group of three other men – Ed Spreitzer and Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis – who became known as the Ripper Crew or the Chicago Rippers. They are estimated to have killed around 18 women. Their modus operandi was to kill a woman, sever her left breast with a thin wire, clean it out to use for sexual gratification, and then cut it into pieces for consumption. Their claim was that they were worshipping Satan and that eating the flesh of a fellow human being was a form of devilish communion.

For some reason Robin Gecht had inherited a bizarre obsession with breasts and when asked about it he claimed that it went back as far as his great grandfather. He went on to say that all the male members of his family had gone on to marry women with large breasts, and indeed his own wife had a very fine pair of size 39Ds.

Gecht had the ability to attract people like magnets and seemed have a strong influence over their actions. It didn’t seem to matter how sick or perverse his requests became, his followers were only too pleased to carry out his instructions.

The first sign of any maladjustment came when he molested his own sister and was subsequently sent to live with his grandparents. Even in adolescence Gecht developed a keen interest in Satanism and he believed that its secret rituals offered some form of power over others.

Gecht met the other three members of the gang when he was 30 and, being the oldest member of the gang, naturally assumed the role of both mentor and leader. Spreitzer was 21 while the two Kokoraleis brothers were only in their teens. All three young men were hypnotized by the powerful charisma of Gecht’s personality, and together they would drive around at night in Gecht’s old van looking for female victims.

The Chicago Rippers found their first victim on May 23, 1981. Twenty-eight-year-old Linda Sutton was abducted from Elmhurst, a suburb of Chicago and ten days later her mutilated body was recovered from a field in Villa Park. The young woman had been stabbed to death and her left breast had been removed by using a sliver of wire. The evidence suggested that the woman had been used in some sort of sadistic ritual, but the police had nothing in the way of solid clues. The gang had apparently taken the amputated breast, scooped out the inside and then used it for sexual gratification before being eaten by the gang as part of the Satanic worship.

A year went by before the gang would claim their next victim. Twenty-one-year-old Lorraine Borowski was reported missing on May 15, 1982, when she failed to turn up to open the Elmhurst realtor’s office where she was working. When the employees turned up for work that morning they found the office door still locked, and Borowski’s shoes and the contents of her handbag strewn across the pavement outside the office. They called the police immediately, but it was five months before they managed to find her body. It was discovered in a cemetery on the south side of Villa Park on October 10, but advanced decomposition left the cause of her death a mystery.

Two weeks later on May 29, 1982, a woman called Shui Mak was reported missing from her home in Hanover Park, Cook County. Her mutilated body was recovered at Barrington on September 30. Just like the other two victims, the killers had removed her breast and had sex with the open wound. The removed breast was then taken home by the men and the flesh scooped out and eaten.

On June 13, the same year, prostitute Angel York was picked up by a man in a van, subsequently handcuffed, her breast slashed open before being dumped on the roadside, still alive. She survived the attack and was able to give the police a good description of her attackers. Unfortunately her descriptions did not lead the police anywhere, and the gang struck again on August 28. Sandra Delaware, a teenage prostitute, was found stabbed and strangled to death on the banks of the Chicago River. Once again the killers had left their hallmark – amputation of the left breast.

Thirty-year-old Rose Davis was found in an identical condition in a Chicago alley on September 8. Three days later, 42-year-old Carole Pappas, who was the wife of the Chicago Cubs’ pitcher, vanished without any trace from a department store in nearby Wheaton, Illinois.

The police had been making no headway in their investigations until October 6, 1982, when they got the break they needed. Twenty-year-old prostitute Beverly Washington was picked up by the Chicago Rippers and dragged into their van. She was stripped naked, raped, had her left breast sliced from her body and her right breast partially removed. Then her attackers throw her out of the van leaving her to die on the side of the road. However, even with the severity of her wounds, Beverly survived the attack and was picked up and taken to hospital where she received emergency treatment. When she was well enough she was able to give the police a really good description of the men and the type of van they drove.

Several hours later, in a seemingly unrelated incident, a drug dealer named Rafael Torado was killed and his male companion was wounded when the occupants of a van opened fire on the two men in a phone booth.

Two weeks later the police picked up Robin Gecht and charged him with the violent assault on Beverly Washington. He was also suspected of wounding prostitute Cynthia Smith before she managed to escape his van. Gecht was certainly an odd character, but the police had no real evidence to convict him and he made bail on October 26.

Continuing with their investigations on Robin Gecht the police learned that he was in fact one of four men who had rented adjoining rooms at Villa Park’s Rip Van Winkle Motel just a few months before Linda Sutton was found murdered nearby. The manager of the motel remembered them well, and described them as party animals who loved to bring women back to their rooms. Another piece of information he came forward with also surprised the investigators, as he said they were possibly some sort of cultists, or even devil worshippers. The two Kokoraleis brothers had left a forwarding address for their mail and when the police called round they found 23-year-old Thomas at home. When he failed to answer their questions with any consistency, the police decided to take him down to the police station for further interrogation. Thomas failed a polygraph examination and eventually cracked under the stiff interrogation. He described how Gecht had set up some sort of Satanic chapel in his bedroom, where captive women were taken and tortured with knives and ice picks. Then the victim would be gang-raped and finally sacrificed to Satan by members of the four-strong cult. He described in detail how their rituals included the severing of one or both of the women’s breasts with a thin wire garrote. Next each participant of the ritual would take ‘communion’ by eating a piece of the flesh before it was placed inside Gecht’s trophy box. Thomas went on to tell the police that he remembered seeing as many as fifteen breasts inside the box. He also told his interrogators that other women had been killed out in Villa Park and he was able to pick out Lorraine Borowski from police records as the woman they had picked up for a one-way ride to the motel.

The police now had enough evidence and they swooped on Robin Gecht, Ed Spreitzer and 20-year-old Andrew Kokoraleis on November 5. When the police searched Gecht’s apartment they found the Satanic chapel that Thomas had told them about, and they also discovered the rifle that had been used in the recent phone booth shooting. When the police searched the apartment occupied by Andrew Kokoraleis they discovered a considerable amount of Satanic literature. They now had enough evidence to charge their suspects and it was thought that the gang may have murdered as many as eighteen women in as many months.

Thomas Kokoraleis was charged with the killing of Lorraine Borowski on November 12, and was formally indicted by a grand jury four days later. His brother Andrew, along with Edward Spreitzer, was charged on November 14 with the rape and murder of Rose Davis.

Robin Gecht, who had been assessed as being mentally competent to stand trial, faced charges of attempted murder, rape and aggravated battery. His trial opened on September 20, 1983, and Gecht took the witness stand the very next day confessing to the attack on Beverly Washington. He was convicted on all counts and received a prison sentence of 120 years.

On April 2, 1984, Ed Spreitzer pleaded guilty on four counts of murder which included victims Davis, Delaware, Mak and Torado. He was sentenced to life on each count and received additional time on convictions of rape, deviant sexual assault and attempted murder.

Thomas Kokoraleis was convicted of the murder of Lorraine Borowski on May 18, 1984, but while he was waiting to be sentenced he led police to a field where Carole Pappas was allegedly buried, but her remains were never found. However, on September 7, due to his helpful attitude Thomas was rewarded with a sentence of life imprisonment. Eighteen days later his brother, Andrew and Ed Spreitzer were both sentenced to death for their roles in the murders. Andrew Kokoraleis was subsequently executed on March 17, 1999. Edward Spreitzer was convicted of murdering Linda Sutton and was formally sentenced to death on March 20.

The charges of kidnapping and rape have since been dropped against Robin Gecht and he is still trying desperately to obtain DNA testing that he is certain will clear him of all charges. So far he has been unsuccessful and the authorities refuse to comply with his request.

He is reported to have said that each day he sits in jail he loses hope. He admitted that although he is no angel he would never intentionally kill or indeed hurt someone unless it was to protect his own family. There is no hard evidence to prove that Robin Gecht is guilty of anything except the attempted murder of the gang’s last victim. Gecht’s family have supported him all the way and are looking forward to the day when he will be eligible for parole in 2022.

One other small point worth remembering about this man is that he used to work for the serial killer John Wayne Gacy.