Chicago-area satanic 'Ripper Crew' murderer Thomas Kokoraleis paroled after 37 years in prison

[Eugene]

Source: USA Today

Chicago-area satanic 'Ripper Crew' murderer Thomas Kokoraleis paroled after 37 years in prison

Doug Stanglin and Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY Published 10:20 a.m. ET March 29, 2019 | Updated 3:37 p.m. ET March 29, 2019

CHICAGO — A member of the infamous satanic gang known as the Ripper Crew that kidnapped, raped, mutilated and murdered as many as 20 women in the Chicago area in the early 1980s was released from an Illinois prison on Friday.

Thomas Kokoraleis, 58, spent 35 years in prison for his part in the slaying of 21-year-old Lorry Ann Borowski, a real estate office receptionist who was snatched by the sadistic gang outside her workplace in 1982 before being raped, mutilated and murdered.

An alert from Illinois’ victim notification system announced his discharge Friday from the Illinois Department of Corrections. He was being held at the Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton, about 30 miles west of Peoria.

Kokoraleis will have to register with police as a convict wherever he lives within three days. His information will be also publicly disclosed on Illinois’ sex offender registry.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/03/29/ripper-crew-killer-thomas-kokoraleis-paroled-after-37-years-prison/3308889002/


This undated photo provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows Thomas Kokoraleis. (Photo: AP)

[Stare Decisis]

1. Let me guess otherwise exemplary life?

[Lucky Luciano]

2. Uggg. Put this thing back in prison. nt

[secondwind]

3. I agree. Why release him and simultaneously send out warnings that he is loose?

Doesn’t seem to make sense.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. From the Chicago Tribune:

The Ripper Crew abducted and murdered women in the '80s. Now Thomas Kokoraleis, 58, is set to go free.

Christy Gutowski
Chicago Tribune
March 29, 2019, 11:10 AM

After nearly four decades in prison, one member of a sadistic four-man crew whose sexually motivated crimes were so depraved that authorities compared their acts to a modern-day Jack the Ripper or Charles Manson is expected to be free on Friday. ... Based on their own recorded statements and signature style of mutilating their victims, the group known as the Ripper Crew is thought to be responsible for the slayings of as many as 17 women and for an unrelated fatal shooting of a man in the early 1980s. Authorities said they stalked streets in Chicago and the west and northwest suburbs in a reddish-orange van in search of lone women to abduct.

Update: Murderer from notorious Ripper Crew released, heads to Wheaton to begin life as a free man »

At 58, Thomas Kokoraleis is likely the only member of the group who will get a chance to rejoin society. He originally received a life sentence for his role in the murder of a 21-year-old Elmhurst woman who was abducted outside the suburban office where she worked in May 1982, but a series of legal maneuvers and now-defunct sentencing rules allowed for him to go free after serving just half his prison term.

Timeline: Sadistic exploits, innocent victims of the Ripper Crew

His younger brother Andrew was executed by lethal injection 20 years ago this month at age 35, before Illinois abolished the death penalty. The other two defendants have exhausted their appeals and probably will die in prison, though one will be eligible for parole if he lives to be 89.
....

Warren Wilkosz, a former DuPage County sheriff detective whose work helped end the crew’s cruel run, described passing out flyers to prostitutes along Cicero Avenue with a description of the van. Chicago police eventually located it, with Spreitzer behind the wheel, which led authorities to the rest of the men. The teenage prostitute identified Gecht as her assailant in a police lineup held in the hospital where she was recovering. ... Years later, Wilkosz witnessed Andrew Kokoraleis’ execution. Long retired, Wilkosz said he doesn’t have strong feelings about Thomas Kokoraleis’ release. Gecht, though, would be “a whole different thing,” he said. ... “He made Manson look like a Boy Scout.”

[e-mail]

Twitter @christygutowsk1

Associated Press contributed