If Thursday had not been Veterans Day, a neighbor said, she might have thought twice about the scream she heard around 9:30 a.m. on Cedar Lane in Crete.
But with back yards full of children home from school, at least one of Dollie Crenshaw’s neighbors said Friday that she dismissed the scream she heard as that of a playing child.
Hours later, however, the nearby residents learned that the 50-year-old Crenshaw had been abducted from her home in the 3000 block of Cedar Lane during what the Will County sheriff’s police believe started out as a robbery or burglary attempt.
Shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, police and firefighters went to the scene of a car burning in the 4200 block of South Langley Avenue, on Chicago’s South Side. It was Dollie Crenshaw’s car, and her body was in the trunk.
According to the Cook County medical examiner’s office, she died of strangulation and multiple stab wounds.
Will County Sheriff Tom Fitzgerald said Mayron Crenshaw, 70, a lawyer in Chicago, returned to his home at 3:30 p.m. Thursday to find his wife missing and their one-story brick house ransacked and spotted with blood. He then called police to report his wife and their 1990 black Cadillac Seville missing, Fitzgerald said.
Police said they have no suspects. As they canvassed the neighborhood around the Crenshaw home Friday, seeking more information about what happened there a day earlier, neighbors and friends stopped by to extend their condolences.
Police were taking an inventory of the house to determine if anything is missing. Dollie Crenshaw ran a clothing manufacturing business from the basement of her home, according to Fitzgerald.
“She’s a very fine young lady,” said Dr. A. Lincoln James, minister of the Greater Bethesda Baptist Church in Chicago. Dollie Crenshaw had been a member of the congregation since her marriage to Mayron Crenshaw about five years ago, James said. Mayron Crenshaw declined to comment and referred questions to James.
“She was a very talented seamstress,” he said. “She represented the best.”
“She’d do anything for you,” recalled a neighbor, who asked that her name not be used. “She’d say, `If you want to do something, leave the kids at my house.’ “
The neighbor who reported hearing a scream Thursday morning from the direction of the Crenshaw home said she assumed it was from youngsters visiting on their Veterans Day holiday from school. “I thought it was kids; you take it for granted.” she said.