Shortly before ten-forty-five on the morning of Saturday, February 2nd, 2008, a man entered the Lane Bryant clothing outlet store in the Brookside Marketplace in Tinley Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Wielding a Glock, he herded four customers, the store manager, and a part-time employee, all women, into the back of the store.
There, he bound all of them, proceeded to rape at least one of the victims, then shot them all execution style. Five of the women were killed: thirty-four-year-old Jennifer Bishop, thirty-three-year-old Carrie Hudek Chiuso, forty-two-year-old Rhoda McFarland, twenty-two-year-old Sarah Szafranski, and thirty-seven-year-old Connie Woolfolk. The sixth woman, the thirty-three-year-old part-time employee, was shot in the neck but survived. Her identity was withheld by police.
The perpetrator was described as a stocky black man aged between twenty-five and thirty-five years old, who stood about five-foot-nine. He had a receding hairline and thick braided hair; one of the braids hung over his right cheek and had four light green beads at the end.
Further, the shooter was dressed in black jeans with rhinestones on the back pocket, a black waist-length coat, and a knitted cap.
Though police initially suspected that the attack was a robbery gone wrong, the motive wasn’t entirely clear; as it was early in the day, there likely wouldn’t have been much cash in the till, so it wasn’t certain if any had been taken.
A reward of $100,000, half of which was put forward by the parent company of Lane Bryant, was offered for information, but it has gone unclaimed. The Lane Bryant store eventually closed and the building remained empty until 2013, when it was taken over by T.J. Maxx.
The horrific mass murder of five women remains unsolved as of this writing.
Crime Immemorial 