Man Admits To Killing Dozen; Mom Helped Dispose Of Body

A man was charged with killing 12 women on the city’s South Side, many of them drug addicts and prostitutes, and stashing his latest victim in his bedroom closet until his mother could help him dispose of the body.

Gregory Clepper, a 28-year-old crack addict, signed confessions to the killings, State’s Attorney Jack O’Malley said Thursday.

In a string of slayings that began in 1991, Clepper strangled or beat prostitutes when they objected to his refusal to pay them, and left the bodies in alleys or garbage bins, police said. One body was discovered by a worker sorting items at the city’s recycling center.

Police said they tracked Clepper down after he boasted to an acquaintance of killing 30-year-old Patricia Scott. She was found raped and strangled in a trash bin at a high school on April 24.

Clepper allegedly killed Scott a day earlier at the home he shared with his mother, Gladys Clepper, and stashed the body in his closet. Mrs. Clepper and a friend of Clepper’s, Eric Henderson, helped him carry the body to a car, police said.

“When we talked to the mother she readily admitted her participation in concealing the body,” Lt. Joseph Murphy said. “At first she didn’t believe her son, but then when she went up there and found the body, I feel, she felt compelled to help her son.”

Clepper’s arrest marks the third time in less than a year that a man from Chicago’s South Side has been charged as a serial killer.

He was jailed without bail on 12 counts of murder and three counts of aggravated sexual assault. O’Malley said he hasn’t decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Mrs. Clepper, 46, was charged with concealing a homicide. Henderson, 30, was charged with two counts of the same offense. Mrs. Clepper and Henderson could get five to 10 years in prison each.