The Ripper Crew

Madness in humans can take on various forms, some benign and some horrific to the point of causing blood to freeze and guts to turn. As we have already mentioned on this Blog, the non-existent Black Rose is synonymous with sectarian activity in these parts, although no one knows its members directly - many swear that they have heard third-hand that someone somewhere has committed atrocities in the name of the devil...

Although the memory of Satanic sects that commit devilish acts today most often causes ridicule - the reality is that such sects not only exist, but if we take an average between the number of members in a religious group and the crimes committed by its members - the worshipers of the Evil One would be at the top without serious competition. Unlike other sects where the `herd` directs their madness towards themselves - some of those with a preference for Satan manifest their madness exclusively on their surroundings. There are many such examples and the bloody trail stretches from Scandinavia to Mexico, from Siberia to Chicago, there are creatures who try to give meaning to their psychopathy with the help of rituals and appropriate murders - in the name of the devil...

One of the `most famous` satanic episodes is the sect known as `The Ripper Crew` that operated in the USA, specifically Chicago and the surrounding area in the early eighties. It was not about deluded intellectuals or people who were `looking for themselves` and thus took refuge in exotic sects. This group consisted exclusively of poorly educated working class people, characters who earned an honest living, construction workers and craftsmen who instead of class consciousness developed a taste for the occult, necrophilia and cannibalism. Sort of an `equal opportunity` psycho club. Officially, their campaign in honor of the Fallen Angel began somewhere in May 1981. in a suburb of Chicago where a strangled prostitute (a favorite prey of maniacs) was found. The murders of the "ladies of the night" are a common occurrence, but this time there was something more, the breasts of the murdered woman were missing and there were also stab wounds in the vagina. The police would have passed over that if in the next year and a half 17 more corpses of women of various profiles and ages had not appeared, all with their trademark - severed breasts and butchered vaginas...

Coincidence played the biggest role in the discovery of this sect, which numbered at least five people. The nineteenth victim - miraculously survived and gave an accurate description of one of the sect members as well as the vehicle that was used to kidnap her. The police soon noticed exactly such a vehicle (a red van) again by chance and during the search they found piles of clothes and "souvenirs" of stuffed female breasts...

The arrested person quickly confessed and "sniffed out" his Satanic friends. The number of 18 victims is the most conservative estimate, i.e. those for whom the justice system had sufficient evidence. But that did not mean much because the number of missing women whose fate was never known during that period was much higher, some estimate that there are at least fifty victims of this sect. Naturally, not all the missing were the result of the orgy of fear and psychopathy that ended in October 1982, but the indications of other victims besides those already prosecuted did not lead to further investigation.

The trial also revealed other characteristics that set this sect apart from the rest: the strong leadership skills of the leader Robin Gecht, who "infected" the other members with Satanism, their rituals with sexual penetration into the severed parts of the bodies of fresh corpses, the mixture of blood and sperm that they prepared in the severed breasts and then drank, the singing of ritual songs, the tattoos and drawings on the floors in Gecht's attic, where they mainly performed their rituals, the collective trances... Gecht also had a mini-library where he educated himself with books on topics such as "Medieval Methods of Torture" and "Rituals in Honor of Evil"...Two sect members received the death penalty, but the leader's sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, which was also given to two other lunatics. The fifth was not convicted in the absence of evidence and whether there were other members of the `Team` remained only a matter of conjecture.

The dominance of one madman over several others? That was the official explanation - but it does not hold water because the chance of finding several serial killers who would commit acts like the above - simultaneously, in such a small geographical area - is impossible. There are examples where two maniacs worked together, but they are extremely rare in the annals of crime.

Legitimate service to the imaginary Prince of Darkness? Unlikely since there is no such thing. But there are those who believe in his existence and believe that there is a way to `get close` to him, to serve him with various outbursts of depravity and malice and to earn a place `next to him` in the imaginary dimension where they believe he will take them.

No different from other religiously motivated criminals and murderers, from the beginning of time to the present day...

(Roger Mortis, 087)