The Chicago Rippers

A thirty-five-year-old cocktail waitress was abducted from her car on February 12, 1982.  The gauge showed that the tank was empty, implying that she had run out of gas and possibly sought help when she was abducted.  Her purse was on the front seat and the keys were still in the ignition.  A search turned up her nude body on an embankment near the road.  She had been raped, tortured and mutilated.  The press was asked not to report that her breast had been amputated, according to Bill Kelly in Homicidal Mania, so that the police could retain that detail for interrogation purposes.

A few days later, the body of a Hispanic woman wearing an engagement ring was discovered. She had also been raped and strangled.   While her breasts were not removed, they had been badly bitten.  Her killer had also masturbated over her body.  A psychiatric assessment of this crime pegged the attacker as a local man who probably loved animals and had a family.  He also had a dark side that no one knew, turning into a cruel psychopathic murderer at night. 

In May, according to Amanda Howard and Martin Smith in Rivers of Blood, another young woman, Lorraine Borowski (Fletcher calls her Lorry Ann, as her family had done) was abducted from where she worked as she crossed the parking lot alone.   She was repeatedly raped and then subjected to having a wire wrapped around her breast to sever it from her body.  Finally, one of her attackers killed her with a hatchet.    The woman's remains were discovered at a dump site which was in the same general area where Sutton had been dumped, although this time it was in a cemetery known as Clarendon Hills. 

The unknown attacker did not wait as long for the next assault.   Two weeks after Borowski had been abducted and killed, Shui Mak was abducted on May 29 as she was returning home from her family's restaurant in Streamwood.  She had been riding in her brother's car, but after they argued, he dropped her off to wait for a ride with other relatives whom he believed were following behind.  They never saw her again, because she was abducted.  Her body was discovered four months later at the end of August, buried at a construction site, and it, too, had been similarly mutilated.

The police now had a number of similar killings to deal with and the link seemed obvious: young women who all had lost a breast in a similar manner.   They had a difficult time finding any leads, however, until another victim turned up.  But this one, Angel York, had survived, according to Howard and Smith.  She was able to report that two men were using a red van to abduct women and hold them inside with handcuffs for rape and torture.  They had even forced her to use a large knife to cut her own breast, which drove one man into a frenzy.  He cut her more and then masturbated into the wound before closing it with duct-tape and dumping her into the streets.  That was in June 1982.  She reported what she knew to the police.

However, they were unable to stop the men from killing another woman.   In August, Sandra Delaware was found dumped along the side of the Chicago River.  Her wrists were bound together behind her with a shoelace, says Fletcher, and her left breast had been removed in the same fashion as the prior victims.  A bra was knotted around her throat.  She was just a kid, but as a prostitute, she had been vulnerable.  They estimated her death at approximately six hours earlier.

In less than two weeks, Carol Pappas, 42, turned up missing, as did Rose Beck Davis, 30, a marketing executive.   She was found stabbed, raped, and strangled on September 8, 1982 behind a stairway of a North Lake Shore apartment building.  A black sock was tied around her neck and her clothing was in disarray.  Her face was crushed and blood pooled beneath her.  It turned out later that she had been beaten with a hatchet.  Deep cuts were evident on her breasts and her abdomen was full of small punctures.

Robert Ressler from the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit was asked for a profile. He indicated that this woman's attacker was uncertain about his sexuality and was probably bisexual. He expected the man to look somewhat effeminate.  

By October, another prostitute, Beverly Washington, 20, was grabbed, mutilated, raped, and dumped.  Her abductors had left her for dead, but she survived and was taken to the hospital.  She was able to give the police a description of the gang of men who were grabbing women off the streets and subjecting them to an extreme form of sadistic sexual abuse.