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player ready...Police and the state crime lab are still analyzing hair and fingerprint samples recovered from the Lane Bryant store where five women were slain and a sixth was wounded in February, officials said Thursday.
“Keep in mind, this is a store where there were hundreds of customers and where there were dozens of employees who worked there,” Tinley Park Police Cmdr. Phil Valois said. “There’s going to be fingerprints; there’s going to be hair. We’ve collected all that. But we don’t know if we’ve got the suspect’s fingerprints.”
Police believe the man was not wearing gloves, and so far the Illinois State Police crime lab has been able to eliminate some fingerprints. But Valois said he did not know how many were eliminated or how many remained.
“It’s a slow process,” he said. “It’s not like ‘CSI.’ It doesn’t happen that quickly.”
Still, he said Thursday at a news conference, investigators believe it’s only a matter of time before they catch the killer, who fled just before police arrived. They suspect he may have committed previous crimes because of the coldblooded way he shot the victims, Valois said.
“This person is an animal — he needs to be taken off the street,” he said. “These ladies could have been your mother, your sister, your wife. It’s just, you know, it’s terrible, and we want to do everything we can to catch this guy.”
Shortly after 10 a.m. Feb. 2, the man entered the store near 191st and Harlem Avenue posing as a delivery man. After chatting briefly with four women, he announced a holdup and forced them to a backroom, where he bound them with duct tape, placed them face down on the floor and covered their heads with clothing. Two more women entered the store and were subdued like the others.
At 10:44 a.m., store manager Rhoda McFarland, 42, of Joliet was able to free herself and call 911 from her cell phone while the gunman was in the front of the store.
When he returned and noticed McFarland had called police, he opened fire, killing her and four other women: Jennifer L. Bishop, 34, of South Bend, Ind.; Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; Connie Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; and Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort.
The 33-year-old survivor was shot in the neck but has recovered and is working with police.
“She’s doing OK,” Valois said. “Not every day is a good day, but she wants to be a good witness for us; she wants to do whatever she can to help the investigation, so she’s working with us as much as she can.”
More than 25,000 investigative hours have been spent on 3,000 tips, officials said. About 20 investigators from Tinley Park and the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force work the case daily, and Valois said Tinley Park may add more investigators.
They also sought NASA’s help to enhance security photos that show several vehicles outside the store at the time in hopes that one of them may be linked to the killer.
There is a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
“There is somebody out there that knows this person, that knows what he did — we’re convinced of that,” Valois said. “And the message I would send to him or her is please call us. You’re in danger because if he knows you know, he might do harm to you so he can’t be fingered.”
The gunman was described as 25 to 35, African-American, 5-foot-9 to 6 feet tall with a husky build and his hair in thick, puffy cornrows with a small braid sporting several green beads along the right side of his face. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 708-444-5394.
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