The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (14 page)

blows.

An engine failure on September 14 almost cost Gwen Burton her life. When Harvey Carignan appeared to
CATOE, Jarvis R.

offer her a ride, she had no inkling that the trip would At 6:00 A.M. on August 4, 1941, 26-year-old Evelyn turn into a waking nightmare. Once they were alone, he Anderson left her home in the Bronx, walking to her ripped her clothing, choked her into semiconsciousness, job as a waitress in a nearby restaurant. She never and raped her with his hammer, finally slamming her punched the clock that day, and it was 9:00 P.M. before across the skull before he dumped her in a field to die.

her lifeless body was discovered in an alley off Jerome Miraculously, she survived and crawled to a nearby Avenue. She had been strangled by a powerful assailant, highway, where a passing motorist arrived in time to marks of fingernails embedded in her throat, but she save her life.

had not been sexually abused.

On September 18—the same day Eileen Hunley’s

A few days later, Anderson’s watch was recovered body was recovered—Harvey picked up Sally Versoi from a New York City pawnshop, hocked by one

and Diane Flynn. He used the old ruse about fetching Charles Woolfolk. Under questioning, Woolfolk swore another car, then began to make lewd propositions, that he received the watch from a lady friend, Hazel assaulting both girls when they failed to respond on Johnson, who in turn pointed an accusing finger at sus-command. They escaped when he ran short of fuel and pect Mandy Reid. Hauled in for interrogation, Reid was forced to stop at a rural service station.

said she got Anderson’s handbag—containing the Two days later, 18-year-old Kathy Schultz did not watch—from her friend Jarvis Catoe, a resident of return on schedule from her college classes, and a miss-Washington, D.C. A background check on Catoe

ing-person bulletin was issued by police. Her corpse revealed two arrests for indecent exposure in 1935, was found next day, by hunters, in a cornfield forty after which he worked part-time as a taxi driver, sup-miles from Minneapolis. As in the other cases, Kathy’s plementing his income by selling information as a police skull had been destroyed by crushing hammer blows.

informant.

Police in Minneapolis were talking to their counter-Catoe, a 36-year-old black man, was arrested by parts in Washington by now, and within days, survivors authorities in Washington. On August 29, he confessed started picking Harvey out of lineups as the man who to the murders of seven women in Washington and one had abducted and assaulted them throughout the past in New York City; four others had been raped but left two years. A search of his possessions turned up maps alive, and he reportedly had failed in efforts to abduct
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“CHICAGO Rippers”

Department. Still, the case remained unsolved until Catoe got careless in New York.

At once, police from several eastern jurisdictions sought to question Catoe in a string of unsolved murders. Officers from Lynn, Massachusetts, suspected a connection with a homicide recorded in July of 1941, and detectives in Garden City, Long Island, were curious about the death of a patrolman in 1940. Authorities from Hamilton Township, New Jersey, questioned Catoe about a series of shotgun murders, between 1938

and 1940, later cleared with the arrest of Clarence Hill.

Spokesmen for the NYPD requested that Catoe be questioned about the February 1940 strangulation death of Helen Foster. For all the circus atmosphere, the final tally stands, as far as anyone can tell, at nine murdered women.

Brought to trial in late October 1941, for killing Rose Jarvis Roosevelt Catoe confesses to strangling 10 women Abramovitz, Catoe sought to recant his confessions, with “these hands.” (Wide World API)

claiming that police had tortured him while he was “sick and weak.” A jury failed to buy the act, deliberating only 18 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty, with two more. Another slaying in the District of Columbia a recommendation of death. Catoe was executed in the was added to the list on September 1. Corroborating his capital’s electric chair on January 15, 1943.

confession, Catoe told police where they could find one victim’s lost umbrella, and he knew that 20 dollars had been stolen in another case—a fact known only to

“CHICAGO Rippers”

detectives, members of the victim’s family, and her It was a case with all the grisly melodrama of a Holly-killer.

wood production. A serial slayer, predictably dubbed Catoe named Evelyn Anderson as his New York vic-

“Jack the Ripper” by newsmen, was stalking young tim, but the rampage had started years earlier in Wash-women in Chicago and environs, discarding their muti-ington. Florence Darcy was the first to die, raped and lated corpses like cast-off rubbish. Homicide detectives strangled in 1935, but the case had been “closed” a had no inkling of the killer’s motive or identity; they year later with the conviction of an innocent man.

couldn’t even manage to agree upon a final body count.

Josephine Robinson was next, murdered on December The speculation published daily in Chicago’s press was 1, 1939. Lucy Kidwell and Mattie Steward were killed bad enough; the truth, when finally exposed, was infi-two months apart in September and November 1940.

nitely worse.

Ada Puller was the first victim of 1941, murdered on On May 23, 1981, 28-year-old Linda Sutton was

January 2.

abducted by persons unknown from Elmhurst, a

Thus far, all of Catoe’s victims had been black, but Chicago suburb. Ten days later, her mutilated body—

things heated up for Washington police, when the stran-the left breast missing—was recovered from a field in gler shifted to Caucasian prey. Rose Abramovitz, a Villa Park, adjacent to the Rip Van Winkle Motel. The bride of one month, hired Catoe to wax some floors on evidence suggested Sutton had been kidnapped by a March 8 and was murdered for her trouble, left sadist, but police had no solid clues to his identity.

sprawled across her bed while Catoe scooped up 20

A year passed before the next acknowledged victim dollars and escaped.

in the series disappeared. On May 15, 1982, 21-year-It rained in Washington on June 15, and Jesse Strieff, old Lorraine Borowski was scheduled to open the a pretty secretary at the War Department, was relieved Elmhurst realtor’s office where she worked. Employees when Catoe stopped to offer her a lift. Mistaking his turning up for work that morning found the office car for a taxi, she climbed in and was driven to a nearby locked, Borowski’s shoes and scattered contents from garage, where Catoe raped and strangled her, hiding her her handbag strewn outside the door. Police were called umbrella and stuffing her clothes in a trash bin. Strieff’s at once, but five more months elapsed before

nude body was discarded in another garage, 10 blocks Borowski’s corpse was found, on October 10, in a away, her death provoking congressional investigations cemetery south of Villa Park. Advanced decomposition and a personnel shakeup in the Washington Police left the cause of death a mystery.

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“CHICAGO Rippers”

Two weeks later, on May 29, Shui Mak was

Authorities immediately linked him to the “Ripper”

reported missing from Hanover Park, in Cook County, slayings, but they had no proof, and he made bail on her mutilated body recovered at Barrington on Sep-October 26.

tember 30. On June 13, prostitute Angel York was Meanwhile, detectives had learned that Gecht was picked up by a “john” in a van, handcuffed, her breast one of four men who had rented adjoining rooms at slashed open before she was dumped alive on the Villa Park’s Rip Van Winkle Motel several months roadside. Descriptions of her attacker had taken police before Linda Sutton was murdered nearby. The manager nowhere by August 28, when teenage hooker Sandra remembered them as party animals, frequently bringing Delaware was found stabbed and strangled to death women to their rooms, and he surprised investigators on the bank of the Chicago River, her left breast neatly with one further bit of information. The men had been amputated. Rose Davis, age 30, was in identical condi-

“some kind of cultists,” perhaps devil worshipers.

tion when police found her corpse in a Chicago alley Two of the Rip Van Winkle tenants, brothers

on September 8. Three days later, 42-year-old Carole Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis, had left a forwarding Pappas, wife of a Chicago Cubs pitcher, vanished address for any mail they might receive. Police found without a trace from a department store in nearby 23-year-old Thomas at home when they called, and his Wheaton, Illinois.

inconsistent answers earned him a trip downtown. The Detectives got the break they had been waiting for suspect promptly failed a polygraph examination, on October 6. That morning, prostitute Beverly Wash-cracking under stiff interrogation to describe the ington, age 20, was found nude and savaged beside a

“satanic chapel” in Gecht’s upstairs bedroom, where Chicago railroad track. Her left breast was nearly sev-captive women were tortured with knives and ice ered the right deeply slashed, but she was breathing, picks, gang-raped, and finally sacrificed to Satan by and emergency surgery saved her life. Hours later, in a members of a tiny cult including Gecht, the Kokoraleis seemingly unrelated incident, drug dealer Rafael brothers, and 23-year-old Edward Spreitzer. As Torado was killed, and a male companion wounded described by the prisoner, cultic rituals included sever-when the occupants of a cruising van peppered a street-ing one or both breasts with a thin wire garrote, each corner phone booth with gunfire.

celebrant “taking communion” by eating a piece Two weeks later, on October 20, police arrested before the relic was consigned to Gecht’s trophy box.

unemployed carpenter Robin Gecht, a 28-year-old for-At one point, Kokoraleis told detectives, he had mer employee of contractor JOHN GACY, and charged counted 15 breasts inside the box. Some other victims him with the cruel assault on Beverly Washington. Also had been murdered at the Rip Van Winkle, out in Villa suspected of slashing prostitute Cynthia Smith before Park. He picked a snapshot of Lorraine Borowski as a she escaped from his van, Gecht was an odd character, woman he had picked up, with his brother, for a one-once accused of molesting his own younger sister.