The vigils were supposed to be held every night until the girls came home.
More than 200 people showed up at the first one to pray for the safe return of Tionda and Diamond Bradley, who vanished July 6. Every night at 8, they met in the courtyard of the South Side apartment complex to grieve and hope together.
Everyone figured the sisters would be found within days. But the days turned into weeks, attendance dropped, and Rev. Bamani Obadele said an ending point was needed. Forty nights, he figured, because that seemed like a biblical time to end such a thing.
“The cameras are gone,” Obadele said. “The lights are out. There isn’t any more show. . . . Unfortunately, apathy set in.”
The last nightly vigil was held Thursday. Gone were the bullhorn and the candles. About 35 people showed up, more than twice as many as on recent nights, and they were more passionate in praying. Some wore T-shirts saying “Missing” with the girls’ pictures. The vigil lasted 40 minutes.
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Tionda, 10, and Diamond, 3, vanished from their three-bedroom apartment on a Friday morning, leaving behind only a note that said they were going to a nearby school and store.
For weeks, they were front-page news, the top priority of the Police Department and a neighborhood mission. But now, with the fading of the nightly vigils and the daily news coverage, the focus on the girls is in question. There is still no sign of them.
“Ain’t nothing happening,” said Freddie Leto, who has lived in the Lake Grove Village complex for 27 years and now dreams of the Bradley girls, although she never knew them. “Ain’t nobody out here like there used to be.”
At first, neighbors tied yellow ribbons around every tree, stretching up the block from the complex in the 3500 block of South Lake Park Avenue. They hung fliers. They built a shrine of fresh flowers, stuffed animals and butterfly balloons to the sisters in the lobby of their building.
They held the nightly vigils, with a parade of preachers just waiting to speak, with circles of love and hymns of hope.
Worried parents pulled their children inside, or they shadowed them outside, as the children hopped on pogo sticks and pushed on scooters.
Meanwhile, police and FBI agents interviewed thousands of people and exhausted hundreds of leads. A rotating crew of 100 detectives worked around the clock. They sifted through more than 40 tons of garbage, interviewed more than 100 registered sex offenders in the area, searched more than 5,300 abandoned buildings in the city.
Detectives built a database, with more than 800 interviews. They put together a family tree, detailing relationships involving more than 30 close relatives.
The volume of tips peaked in the first two weeks and then slowed dramatically, said Ross Rice, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago. He said agents are frustrated by the lack of clues.
Chicago Chief Of Detectives Phil Cline said about 50 investigators are still assigned to the case full-time. Just in the past two weeks, police have chased enough leads to fill a five-inch file of reports. Detectives continue to meet every day at 4 p.m. to talk about the missing girls.
Around the apartment complex, children still aren’t left alone to play. But most people don’t talk about the missing girls all the time anymore. Most of the rumors have dried up, most of the hand-wringing is finished. Now, it all comes down to one tired question: “Have you heard anything?” Nothing, people say.
Last week, several residents didn’t even know the vigils were still being held.
Theresa Foy, one of the original vigil organizers, has only come out a couple times in the past two weeks. She did not go to the final nightly vigil.
“When 8 o’clock rolls around, I wonder who is out there,” Foy said. “The hardest part, though, is that I’m getting more doubtful that the girls are still alive.”
Most of the time, Obadele is the only minister who comes. Last Saturday night, only Obadele and four other people showed up, the smallest group so far. Since then, the prayer circle has included between 10 and 15 people.
On Wednesday night, two women told Obadele they weren’t ready to stop, because the girls aren’t home yet. So he hopes to bring people out on the sixth day of every month for the girls, who disappeared July 6.
At Thursday’s vigil, Obadele led the prayer. “Lord, you have given us this keeping power to stay here for 40 days,” he said. “Lord, we just want to thank you tonight.”
Rev. Earthel Fleming, the family spokesman, showed up for the final vigil. So did Tracey Bradley, the missing girls’ mother.
“I just thank God I’m out here,” Bradley told the group. “I ask you all to continue on praying for us. I know sooner or later, they’re going to come home.”
At the Bradley apartment building, a flier from July 8 still asks neighbors to meet at 11 a.m. to go look for the little babies.
The stuffed animals are still there, sitting in the front lobby, near the hand-written sign that proclaims, “We’ll keep looking and looking and looking and looking.” But the flowers are all dead. The butterfly balloons are sagging. And a sign hanging on the nearby door advertises a trip to a water park for neighborhood children.