In the 15 years since five women were slain in a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park, leads in the case have fallen off but police say they remain committed to bringing closure to the families who lost loved ones in the Feb. 2, 2008, killings.
“We would love nothing more than to solve this,” Tinley Park police Chief Matt Walsh said.
Some 7,500 leads have been received in the case, and “there is still someone out there who knows something,” Deputy Chief Larry Rafferty said.
More Top Picks Best Bed Sheets
“There’s nothing bigger that we’d like to solve,” he said Wednesday. “This is in our thoughts, in our heads every single day.”
Killed that day were 42-year-old store manager Rhoda McFarland of Joliet; Jennifer Bishop, 34, of South Bend, Indiana; Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; Connie Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; and Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort.
A sixth woman, also a store employee, was shot in the neck but survived and provided police with a description of the killer.
“There is still someone out there who knows something,” Rafferty said. “Somebody has to make that stand in their life and come forward.”
Upon the retirement of the former detective assigned full time to the case, the department a year ago assigned Detective Jeff Graves to take over the investigation. Roger Davisson, another detective, has been assisting when time permits
Graves’ assignment started with the first 100 leads that were received, Rafferty said.
“When things are coming in that frantic, things can get missed,” Rafferty said. “Everything is chaotic like that. You’re doing your best.”
“It’s got to be gone over methodically, painstakingly,” Rafferty said. “It’s a huge case, a massive amount of evidence.”
Leads can be called into the department at 708-444-5394 or by email to [email protected]. There’s a $100,000 reward for information leading to arrest of the offender, according to Tinley Park.
“The leads have fallen off considerably,” Walsh said, although the number does pick up each year around the anniversary of the slayings.
One room in the department’s headquarters is devoted to the case, with photos of the victims posted on a wall and several filing cabinets filled with reports and other paperwork. The detectives are converting some to digital form to make it easier to review.
The department also plans to hire a part-time employee to analyze information from cellular calls relayed through a cell tower near the store at the time the women were slain.
It’s hoped that looking at that data, despite the age of the calls, might produce a fresh lead, Walsh and Rafferty said.
Walsh said several thousand calls were made around the time of the slayings and relayed by the cell tower. The analyst will pore over the information, and Tinley Park is working on a contract to hire her, he said.
The Lane Bryant store, since closed, was located at the Brookside Marketplace shopping center southwest of Harlem Avenue and Interstate 80.
A police officer was responding to another call in the shopping center near the Lane Bryant store when the women were slain.
Shortly after 10 a.m. the day of the shootings, which was a Saturday, an African American man about 6-foot to 6-foot-2, with a husky build and broad shoulders, came into the store posing as a delivery man, according to police.
Based on the description by the surviving woman, police said he had three to five “puffy” corn rows running from the back of his head to the front, with one strand with green beads hanging over his right cheek.
Four women, including McFarland and the surviving employee, were in the store at the time. The man pulled out a .40-caliber Glock pistol, told them he was robbing the store, then herded the women into a backroom, where they were bound with duct tape and ordered to lay facedown on the floor, according to police.
Two other women who came into the store were similarly restrained.
McFarland managed to call 911 on her cellphone, whispering her location to an operator, who told her to stay on the line. McFarland pleaded “hurry” before the connection was lost. An edited version of the 911 call is at the Police Department’s website.
More Top Picks Best Motion Control Shoes For Flat Feet
The call was first received by the Will County sheriff’s office and immediately transferred to Tinley Park, which took the call at 10:44 a.m., according to authorities. The Tinley Park police officer on a call in Brookside Marketplace, in the parking lot of Super Target a few hundred yards away, was on the scene within a minute, but the gunman had already fled.
Police said they know, by the survivor’s account, that the man was in the store for 40 minutes and suspect the women’s deaths were the result of a botched robbery.
Police had said their investigation didn’t uncover any evidence to suggest any of the women knew the assailant.
Rafferty and Walsh said the department isn’t getting as frequent of inquires from the victims’ families as the years progress. Rafferty said Graves contacted the families on Tuesday.
“We let them know we are still working, we’re still plugging away,” Rafferty said.