Is Justice Ever Possible for Dyke and Karen Rhoads?

by Diane Fanning

"I'm told I'm naive to expect prosecutors in an adversarial system of justice to seek truth rather than victory and go wherever the evidence leads them. Until now, this story seemed to underscore that naivete and serve as yet another frightening example of how the engine of the State, once in motion, can roll right over the innocent as well as the guilty."  –Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune

I knew the basic outline of facts in the 1986 double murder of Dyke and Karen Rhoads. I knew that two innocent men, Herb Whitlock and Randy Steidl, were convicted of that crime. Herb received a life sentence, Randy the death penalty.

I knew there were problems with the investigation. I had no idea of the extent of the problems. If it weren't for Bill Clutter, investigator with the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, maybe none of us would have ever known.

Clutter traced the unethical behavior of law enforcement back to the original investigators in Paris, Illinois. They rounded up two witnesses: the town drunk and a known drug addict. They plied the two with booze and fed them the story of Herb and Randy's responsibility. It didn't matter that they contradicted each other in places. It didn't matter that other, more reliable witnesses possessed information that made their stories lies–the investigators simply ignored that information.

The unethical–in fact, criminal–behavior of these officers was complicated by the less than honest prosecution team. Ed Parkinson and David Rands hid exculpatory evidence from the defense. The two state's attorneys were familiar to me; they also played a major role in the perversion of justice that resulted in the wrongful conviction of Julie Rea.

After years behind bars, the injustice perpetrated on Herb Whitlock and Randy Steidl was finally receiving the attention it deserved, thanks to Clutter's relentless investigation. The Center for Wrongful Convictions rallied to their cause, and 48 Hours began producing a show about the case.

That's when Michale Callahan entered the picture. Callahan, a lieutenant with the Illinois State Police, was newly promoted to investigations commander over a nine-county area in Eastern Illinois. His first assignment: Take a fresh look at the murder of Dyke and Karen Rhoads.

When he started on the case in 2000, Callahan assumed that he was expected to uncover the truth.  He believed that if he found merit in anything uncovered in his investigation, it would lead to a re-opening of the case.  Soon, he learned that the truth was the last thing the state wanted to find.

At first, he thought he must be mistaken about his suspicions.  He had always believed the Illinois State Police where he'd served for decades was an honorable institution–above politics and dedicated to justice.  That idealism was soon dashed when he stood in the office of his superior officer.  She told him that he could not re-open the case.  It was "too politically sensitive."

Callahan was not a political puppet.  He was a man of principle.  He could not accept the fact that any murder was "too politically sensitive."  Although he'd been ordered to stop investigation of the case, he continued to work with federal law enforcement in any way he could.  He'd discovered a fetid stream of corruption running through the state government and its agencies, iincluding the Illinois State Police. He could not ignore that.

Callahan's reward for pursing truth and justice?  His payment for uncovering institutional corruption?  He was removed from the investigations and stuck in a desk job in the patrol  division.  They insisted it was a lateral move for the betterment of the department, but Callahan knew better.

Michale Callahan's book, Too Politically Sensitive, is the story of the corrupt culture in the highest reaches of Illinois government, the pursuit for justice for the Rhoads and the cover-up order by the highest ranks in the administration of the Illinois State Police.

It is a warning to all of us.  Illinois is only the canary in the coal mine.  There is corruption in every state that needs to be ferreted out before it takes complete control of our system of justice as it has in the Land of Lincoln.

Yes, Herb Whitlock and Randy Steidl have been vindicated and released from prison after approximately two decades behind bars.  What about the two victims, Dyke and Karen Rhoads?  Will they ever find justice?   Even if new dedicated, ethical detectives took over the case at this point, the original investigation has been so compromised, it would probably be impossible to identify and convict the real killers.

Instead, those who committed the cold-blooded, vicious murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads still walk among us–smug in knowing they got away with murder, confident in the protection they continue to receive from a corrupt state agency and the excessively unethical prosecutors who orchestrated this travesty of justice.  And no one has been punished for perpetrating this deliberate miscarriage–no one but the one man who blew the whistle.

When the Casey Anthony trial begins, currently scheduled for May, you'll find daily updates of the case on Diane Fanning's blog, Writing is a Crime.

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The Ripper Murders

by Susan Murphy-Milano

The old case file had been tucked away for over twenty years in the rafters of an attic. On the case file jacket in bold, handwritten letters was the name Robin Gecht. It was the original police file containing the names of twenty women connected with one of the most notorious gangs of serial killers in history.

The Chicago Rippers were a group of four hoodlums—Andrew Kokoraleis, Tommy Kokoraleis, Robin Gecht, and Edward Spreitzer (pictured below, left to right)—who practiced satanic worship. The men had journeyed into a trend of sorts that swept through the country in the late 1970's and into the early '80s, especially among teenagers: practicing satanic worship.

"The Ripper Crew," as they would come to be known, had taken their rituals much further than most who believed they could somehow make contact with evil from the dark side.

The case file revealed how the killers saved the flesh they had removed from their victims. According to the signed confession of Thomas Kokoraleis, he "cut up the breasts," and consumed them as a form of satanic communion in front of a makeshift altar.

Robin Gecht, the group's leader, had an altar in the attic of his Northwest Side home, where the young men gathered during the evening hours after Gecht's wife had left for work. Gecht had painted six twelve-inch red-and-black crosses on the walls and draped the altar with a red cloth.

Detectives from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs worked together to solve these horrific murders. Each case began as an abduction or a missing persons report. The first known case was Linda Sutton, 28, abducted from a Chicago suburb. Her severely mutilated body found with the left breast cut out from her chest was left naked in a field.

Each of the twenty victims were gang-raped and then forced to endure having their breasts sliced open and cut off using piano wire, ice picks, can openers, and hunting knives. The men would then use the cut body parts for a satanic sacrifice by eating the women's breasts. All but two of the victims died.

After several months, police hit a dead end. Nearly another year would pass before the next victim would be reported.

A break in the case finally came on October 7, 1982. A twenty-year-old woman by the name of Beverly Washington was discovered nude beside railroad tracks in Chicago. Barely alive and naked, with her left breast severed and the right badly mutilated, she survived the brutal attack.

Two Chicago Police Detectives from Area Four Violent Crimes were called into the case. They interviewed Beverly Washington from her hospital bed. She provided details of the van and a description of the four men who had abducted her.

A directive in the form of a memo from the Mayor's office stated this case was a priority. Specific case details of the victims' murders were withheld from the public. The detectives worked around the clock.

DNA testing had yet to be developed. The solving of the serial murders would be done using pure instinct and good old-fashioned police work.

On November 7, 1982, all four men were arrested. They were placed in separate interrogation rooms. Andrew Kokorakeis was the first to break, confessing to at least seven of eighteen known murders. The case notes included a hand-drawn map of a cemetery in a nearby suburb of Chicago. The badly decomposed body of a victim murderd five months earlier would be recovered by police based on the map.

The two detectives who would eventually solve the murders, Thomas Flynn and Phillip Murphy, had been partners for over twenty years. On January 6, 1984, during a ceremony at the police academy—with the Attorney General, Mayor, and Superintendent present—the detectives were honored and presented with a special plaque for solving the serial murders.

This would be their career case. One that the City of Chicago and this police detective's daughter would never forget.

In the strange twist of events that would follow, the detective, Philip Murphy, would no longer be known for solving the worst serial murder case in Chicago's history. Instead, five years later, his legacy would be for the murder of his wife, my mother, in 1989, before he took his own life.

My father was one hell of a detective, loved and revered by so many. He would be a man I never really knew. A man who brought terror and violence into our home on a regular basis.

And yet, a man who made the streets of Chicago a safer place to live. Much safer with the Ripper Crew off the streets. What became of them? Andrew Kokoralesis was executed in March of 1999; Thomas Kokoralesis is serving 470 years; Edward Sprietzer received a life sentence; and Robin Gecht is serving 120 years.

Susan Murphy-Milano is a nonfiction author and violence expert—a defender of victims' rights. Susan has appeared on Oprah, 20/20, American Justice, and CNN. As a nationally recognized women's advocate, she was intrumental in the passage of the Illinois Stalking Law and the Lautenberg Act. Susan's third book, It’s Him or Me, will be available soon.

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