Thomas Ray Lippert:An Unusual Criminal
Thomas Ray Lippert was born in New Ulm, Minnesota in 1949 to Myra and Raymond Lippert. His father,Raymond, was an assistant manager of the local Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store in 1950.
He grew up in New Ulm and finished high school and went on to college. He earned a degree and was hired by Notre Dame to teach business classes. While at Notre Dame he began thinking about abducting women in order to create a sex slave.
This is 1975. If you’ve seen the movie “Rudy” you have an idea of what Notre Dame was like in the 1970’s. Rudy graduated in 1976.
Thomas Lippert attempted to abduct Lynn Esther Hojnacki. Susan Wells Cochran was not so lucky. She was abducted by Thomas R. Lippert, but survived her ordeal. Susan was a Purdue University student and had placed her name on the campus “Ride Board” hoping to get a lift to Boston to visit her boyfriend at Tufts. She was instead abducted and taken to Minnesota.
FBI agents were able to track them down to Southwest Minnesota State College at Marshall, Minnesota. Susan Wells Cochran was found in a building there March 13th, 1975. Thomas Ray Lippert and a student at the college were arrested.
Thomas Lippert was tried and convicted of felony kidnapping after pleading guilty. Despite being caught red handed people in the courtroom were shocked that such a respectable young man would plead guilty. Attorney F. Lee Bailey defended Lippert. He was sentenced to only six years in prison.
He had married a Minnesota woman while out on bond before the trial. His marriage did not last though. The couple divorced while he was still in prison.
After those six years, what did he do? One of my habits is looking into criminals before they made headlines and after they made headlines. I like finding out as much as I can.
Thomas Lippert died in 1999 in Salt Lake City. But, he made headlines even after his death.
From 1988 to the mid 1990’s he worked at a fertility clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah. A University of Utah fertility clinic, Reproductive Technologies Inc. , apparently hired him without doing a thorough background check.
A 2014 Daily Mail article reported that at least one woman had a DNA test done and found that Lippert was actually her biological father.
Thomas Ray Lippert was swapping out the donor sperm and substituting his own in a terrible violation of patient trust. Investigators don’t know how many people this violation has affected. It all depends on individuals getting their DNA tested and looking into their family history.
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