If Park Forest police Chief Paul Winfrey could change one thing about the new mural on Orchard Drive, it would be to add the words “no longer” before “missing.”
Police have worked for several years to locate Jerrica Laws and Brenda Gonzalez-Jackson, the Park Forest residents pictured on a mural installed Oct. 23, on the facade of the Old Plank Road Trail underpass along Orchard Drive. The hope is the art may prompt anyone with information that could provide new leads to contact police.
“Words cannot describe what it would mean to everyone in our agency to get a break in either or both cases,” Winfrey said. “There have been thousands of hours spent investigating the cases, including the initial searches, interviews, analyzing data and surveillance.”
Joshua Vinson, Park Forest’s communications coordinator, said Laws’ family saw a similar mural elsewhere and reached out to the village. Village officials asked the family of Gonzalez-Jackson if they would like her image included. The resulting mural is a first related to a missing persons case for Park Forest.
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“The hope is that the mural will keep Jerrica and Brenda in the forefront of the mind of everyone who sees it,” Winfrey said.
Laws was last seen at 7 p.m. Aug. 17, 2015, walking in the 200 block of Lee Street in Park Forest, according to a news release from the village. She is described as a 31-year-old African American female, 5-foot, 2-inches tall, weighing 140 pounds, with a single piercing in each ear, black hair and brown eyes. She was just 24 when she went missing while on a routine walk in her neighborhood.
Shantinel Laws, Jerrica’s mother, helped paint the mural. Laws tries to keep her daughter’s case on everyone’s mind and to keep other families safe by speaking at missing persons forums. After seven years, it can feel “discouraging and disheartening” and sometimes leaves her wondering whether enough is being done, Laws said.
“I’m very thankful to the community,” Laws said. “It warms my heart that they allowed the mural to go up and that we were able to capture Jerrica and Brenda at the same time.”
Gonzalez-Jackson was last seen in the late evening Jan. 3, 2016, when a relative dropped her off at a home in the 200 block of Arcadia Street in Park Forest. She is described as a 37-year-old Hispanic female, 5-feet tall, 125 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. She has a scar on her upper chest and star tattoos on both sides of her neck, as well as a heart tattooed on her ring finger and a tattoo that says “Michael” on her left inner wrist. She is a mother of six and a U.S. Army veteran of the Iraq War.
Her mother, Maria Gonzalez, also was involved with painting on Orchard Drive. Some of the family also went back privately a few days later to place candles near the mural.
“It means a lot to us,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t want her to be forgotten. I know there’s somebody out there that knows something, saw something.”
Police had initial leads in both cases, which have been and continue to be investigated, with detectives monitoring individuals who may have information, checking databases and sources for activity related to the women, and reviewing bulletins from other agencies, according to Winfrey. Both women are included in local, state and federal databases, with the Federal Bureau of Investigations involved with data analysis, he said.
The department also requested that the Cook County sheriff’s office missing persons unit review and investigate the cases, which it is doing, Winfrey said.
The cases are not thought to be connected in any way, Winfrey said, as the circumstances surrounding their disappearances are completely different. With changes in the detective division, he tasked different investigators with reworking the cases from the start. But there have been “no new leads for quite some time for either case,” he said.
So when Winfrey took over as chief in March, he made it a mission to raise more awareness for the cases and “pressure anyone who has information to come forward.”
“I truly believe that there are people who have information about each of these cases and have not come forward, for whatever reason,” he said. “We implore those individuals to contact our investigators … to help us bring Jerrica and Brenda back to their families and ease the pain that they feel.”
Shantinel Laws has not given up hope that her daughter is alive somewhere and going to return home soon. It is the not knowing where Jerrica is, if she might be cold or sick or hungry, that hurts the most.
“It still feels like yesterday,” Laws said. “The pain never goes away. It’s affected my family tremendously. Most of us have sleepless nights. … We miss Jerrica tremendously. We love her and she needs to be back home with her family.”
Gonzalez knows resolution may not mean seeing Brenda walk through the door again. As a mother, she worries her daughter is “not on this earth anymore.” But she still wants answers and justice.
“It’s still as painful as the first day,” Gonzalez said. “I want to have some closure. I want her children to have some closure.”
Chicago-based artist Damon Lamar Reed, who created the mural as well as others around the Chicago area through the Still Searching Project, said the art has the power to bring hope to the families of missing persons.
“The greatest hope is that somebody will see the mural and call in, but I’m also throwing the stone in the lake and creating that ripple effect,” Reed said. “Maybe I do this mural, maybe somebody else makes a social media post, the newspaper calls me. It just creates that effect and keeps these women’s names in people’s mouths and we eventually can bring them home.”
Reed said when he set out to start painting these murals, he wanted to raise awareness of crimes against Black women, which he said are underrepresented in the media. He never thought about meeting the families of women such as Laws and Gonzalez-Jackson.
“That has caused me to become very empathetic and compassionate,” Reed said. “I can’t really understand what they’re going through, but I want to support it.”
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Police ask anyone with information regarding either case to call the Park Forest Police Department investigations division at 708-748-1309. Both families have privately offered rewards related to information that closes their respective cases. But Laws emphasized that tips can be delivered anonymously and would make all of the difference for the families.
“I’d like for them to put themselves in my shoes,” Laws said. “How would you feel if one of your loved ones went missing? Just have that compassion and come forward and give us any information.”
Bill Jones is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.