A member of the sadistic Ripper Crew who is believed to have been responsible for as many as 20 of the mutilation sex slayings during the early 1980s is scheduled to be paroled next month with prosecutors fighting the release.
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Thomas Kokoraleis, 57, is due to be paroled September 29 after serving only half of a 70-year sentence from his conviction of the abduction, rape and fatal stabbing of Lorraine “Lorry” Ann Borowski, of Elmhurst. With this date set, prosecutors are attempting halt the release by reviewing whether Kokoraleis fits the legal standard to be held beyond his parole date as part of a civil commitment for inmates deemed to sexually violent to be freed, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Kokoraleis is currently eligible for day-for-day credit for good behavior under old Illinois sentencing guidelines and his older brother, Andrew Kokoraleis, 35, was the last inmate to be executed in Illinois in 1999 by lethal injection. The brothers, originally from Villa Park, were part of a satanic gang that creeped along the streets of Chicago looking for women to kidnap, rape, torture, beat and kill.
The gang drove around the streets in a red utility van, seeking victims whom they would torture by doing things such as cutting off the women’s breasts, often while they were still alive, as part of cannibalistic, sexual rituals, according to the Tribune.
“This guy should never get out of prison,” John Smith, a retired DuPage County Jail chief who took Kokoraleis to his first jail cell decades ago, told the Tribune. “I was appalled when I saw he was going to get out. My opinion? They all should have gotten the death penalty.”