Criminology - The Lane Bryant Murders

Episode Date: January 18, 2020

In February 2008, a lone gunman entered the Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park, Ilinois, and shot six women. Five of the women died that day while the sixth barely survived. The store manager managed to call 911 just before the shooting began. The resulting search for the killer would turn into a massive investigation. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Lane Bryant Murder case. The surviving victim was able to give a description of the killer but police have not been able to identify him. There are some that wonder if the killer was a man at all, or rather a woman in disguise. There are many unanswered questions in this case that have puzzled amateur sleuths for years. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 95 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? I'm feeling a little bit sick today, but I'm going to power through because I want to get this episode out. How about you? How are you doing? No, I'm doing great, man. I was just thinking we have had a pretty mild winner, at least where I live.

no school days, you know, off or really even delays. And then all of a sudden my wife this morning, who's a teacher, they were on a two-hour delay because of fog. We had some like massive fog, which is kind of strange. Normally you're having delays for snow and ice and things like that, but it's been pretty mild. Yeah, knock on wood, we haven't had any snow out this way. So I'm hoping that continues for the next six weeks. Yeah, I haven't even had to get my snowblower out yet.

So, right. Knock on wood is a good thing to say because it'll come quick. All right. Morph, we had some new Patreon shoutouts. So let's give those. We had James Clark, Kira Enright, Christine Weeby,

Tammy Moss Sutfin, Sherry Marshall, Bryn, Noel, Durthy, and Whitney Duhane. So big shout out to all of those folks. We really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for that support. I recognize some of the those names too from social media and people that are willing to support us on social media and Patreon. That's really cool. And if you're listening and you'd like to support criminology on Patreon, you can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. All right, buddy, let's jump into this episode. We're talking about what has become known as the Lane Bryant shootings. It was on a cold Saturday morning in February 2008 that a lone gunman entered the Lane Bryant shootings. women's clothing store in Tinley Park, Illinois, and shot to death five women and injured a sixth.

The store manager managed to call 911 before she was killed by the suspect. Police have theorized that the motive was a robbery gone back, the direct result of the manager calling for help. But there are other people that believe there was more to this brutal and shocking attack. than just a robbery gone wrong. And despite a massive investigation and thousands of tips over the years, the killer has never been caught. Tinley Park is a suburb of Chicago, Illinois,

located about 30 miles southwest of downtown Chicago in Cook County. Tinley Park is actually considered a village as opposed to a town. A small portion of the village is a neighboring Will County. Between 2000 and 2006, the village grew about 70% in population. size. Tinley Park was mostly known for the Hollywood Casino Amphitheater, originally known as the

World Music Theater, and formerly first Midwest Bank amphitheater, and one of Chicago's largest music venue since 1990. But in February 2008, the village became known for something else, something dark and deadly. In 2004, a new 117-acre, 600,000 square foot shopping center called Brookside Marketplace was built at 191st Street and Harlem Avenue in Tinley Park. The strip mall offered easy access off Interstate 80. One of the stores in the mall was Lane Bryant. Lane Bryant is a national women's clothing store owned by Charming Shops Incorporated and founded by Lena Himmleston Bryant, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrived in the United States in

1895 when she was 16 years old. After Lena's arrival, she began working as a seamstress. And before she was 20 years old, she married David Bryant, an immigrant jeweler from Russia. He died shortly after the birth of their son, Raphael. Lena turned to dressmaking as a means to support herself and her son. She became so successful that she eventually opened a shop with living quarters in the back And a bank officer misspelled her name on a business account application, putting Lane instead of Lena. And that's where the name Lane Bryant comes from and how the women's clothing company came to be. In 1999, the chain was sold to Charming Shops Incorporated for over $300 million.

Today, the large retail chain store is located in many shopping centers across the country. On Saturday, February 2, 2008, Lane Bryant store manager, Roda McFarlane opened up for business promptly at 10 a.m. Assisting her for the workday was a female part-time employee who has remained unidentified, and we'll explain why later in this episode. Shortly after opening, two female customers entered the store. At 10.15 a.m., a man knocked on the back door of the store, posing as a delivery man. He briefly chatted with the two employees and two customers. suddenly, the man pulled out a handgun and announced a robbery. At that exact time, two more female customers entered Lane Bryant.

Now there were total of seven people in the store, two employees, four customers, and the suspect. The gunman heard all six women to the back of the store, and ordered them to lie face down on the floor. He then bound their hands behind their backs with duct tape. Somehow, at 1044 a.m., Roda McFarlane, despite her hands being touched, Hyde, quietly managed to dial 911 from her cell phone while the gunman was distracted, and she alerted authorities of the dire situation that was unfolding in the store. 911 emergency. Stay on the line.

Stay on the line. Let me get you to Tinley Park. Don't hang up. So, Morf, we have to talk about this 911 call. Much of the call is hard to understand. But you can clearly hear Roda whispering, asking, the dispatcher for help. The gunman then apparently catches Rota making the call and confronts her. And a voice that seems to be just a little bit higher than Rota's whisper, you can hear the gunman

talking. It's hard to hear clearly. But the suspect seems to be saying, I'm losing it. And then this is bullshit before the call goes dead. And I think it's the voice, morph, that really hasn't a lot of people that have followed this case, the voice seems very soft. It doesn't seem like a deep voice. There is almost a feminine quality to it. And that's important. Because later on, when we start talking about the description of this suspect, it will come into play that many people think that this suspect is not a man, rather is actually a woman. Anytime you hear a recording of someone that is a killer or commits these horrible crimes that we talk about, it is very eerie. And this call is definitely no exception.

Well, and add on to that the fact that you're hearing a call of not just the killer, but of a woman that you know is about ready to be murdered. I think all of that is very eerie. I mean, we try to play these calls when they're out there, when they're out there, when they're. are available, it adds an element to the case because it's real. This is what happened. I think what it does for me, Morph, is it really gives you an idea, it lets you picture, or really think about how scared these women must have been in this situation. And the fact that she had the wherewithal to try and make that call and alert police in the first place, she really went out on a limb, but unfortunately, she'd wind up being one of the ones

that was killed. Yeah, I have been robbed multiple times while working in like smaller store settings. This is in my earlier days when I was a manager of stores. It is a very scary proposition. Anyone out there that has been robbed at gunpoint, you know, if you want to think you're Mr. big and bad, go ahead. But when somebody puts a gun in your face, you know, a lot of that bravado goes out the window. And did you have a gun in your face during those robberies? I did. Yeah, twice. Well, actually, there was a third time in Detroit as well, but the guy tried to rob me with a screwdriver and I was behind bulletproof glass. That one was not as scary. It was a little bit comical. But the other

two where a gun was involved, they were very scary. Before you were robbed with a gun in your face, Did you ever have a plan in place of what you would do if you were ever in that situation? Yeah, the plan was give them whatever they want and get them the heck out of there. Now, luckily, these were robberies, right? The motive was robbery. These people weren't out to do harm. That's not the same with a lot of the cases that we talk about. That's definitely not the case in Lane Bryant store here.

Just a minute later, after the phone call disconnects at 10.45 a.m., the gunman started to shoot. the women execution style. He killed all but one. Believing the women were all dead, the gunman fled the store. The timing here is important because at 1046 a.m., the first Tinley Park police officer arrived at the scene, followed by at least eight more officers from local departments. He set his sights on the store entrance for any sign-up movement, or any potential suspects, but he didn't see any. Police cautiously made their way inside the store searching for the gunman, but never found them. The suspect had apparently forced to.

fled the store only seconds before the first officer arrived. What awaited police inside the store was the gruesome aftermath of a violent attack and six women who were either dead or dying. And more, if you said the timing is important, obviously it is, it's almost unbelievable. How quickly everything happened from the time that the gunmen began shooting to the time that the officers arrived. It's like a window of a minute or so. At 1050, police redirected traffic attempting to go west of Harlem Avenue on 191st Street. They blocked all entrances to the shopping center and all of the stores in the mall were on lockdown. At around 11 a.m., the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force was activated.

This task force investigated major crimes in 54 South Suburban communities. Soon after, Tenley Park detectives arrived at the scene. Eight armed police officers entered the adjacent target store, locked the doors, and ordered customers to stay away from the glass entrance doors. The officers then searched other individual stores and even stopped a school bus on the Harlem Interstate 80 eastbound ramp. Chicago police used helicopters to perform aerial searches for the killer. Once the store is at Brookside Marketplace had been searched.

About an hour and 15 minutes later, police allowed customers to leave the store. They ordered them to go directly to their cars and they searched all vehicles exiting the shopping center. While police searched the area around Lane Bryant for the suspect, other officers and EMT units were tending to the women inside the store. But unfortunately, most of them were already dead. There was one woman still alive. She had played dead and hadn't received a major gunshot wound. It was the store employee who had opened up the store that morning alongside Rota. She was rushed to the hospital.

So more if we mentioned that, police were on the scene very quickly. And obviously, this was due to Rota's 911 call. I also think it's incredible how quickly they went into action, right? searching stores, locking everything down. I mean, all of this happened within a pretty short amount of time. Yeah, that's pretty impressive to coordinate all of that and get all that stuff in position. They had a plan in place. And unfortunately, the suspects seem to have slipped through the cracks.

And you have to believe that the killer went out the back door, the same door that he entered the store. With everything happening so quickly, I just don't think there's. any way he could have gone out to front door, I think he would have been seen. But you also have the police who, let's face it, you know, they, like you said, they have a plan in place. Part of that plan is they just don't rush headlong into the store. They don't know exactly what's going on. They have to be tactical, right? About it. And it was probably during that short period of time that the killer slipped out the back door and got away. You have to wonder if one of those police officers had encountered the suspect as he was leaving

if after just shooting that many people, he probably wouldn't have hesitated to shoot at a police officer. I think if this person thought that's the only way I could get away, I don't think they would have hesitated. A careful search by investigators revealed that there were no security cameras inside Lane Bryant. So police officers checked surveillance footage from every single business within a mile and a half of the store, looking for any clues, trying to spot any shred of the suspect on camera. Additionally, detectives searched every inch of the Lane Bryant store for clues and evidence. Police dogs scoured the parking lots. The next day, a man propped five white crosses stapled with red roses in the snow near Lane Bryant.

Locals placed dozens of flower bouquets, angel statues, and rest in peace signs on the ground next to the store. Initially, police told the media that there were no survivors, but as we know, media often have their inside sources and they learned that there actually was a survivor. But police wanted to keep that close to the vest. Detectives were able to talk with her and get the full story of how things unfolded, and this woman was able to provide details about the shooter. On February 3rd, the day after the shooting, police spoke to the media, and they gave a vague description of the suspect based on the survivor's description. The offender is described as a medium-skinned male black, 5'9, 230 to 260 pounds.

He was wearing a black waist-length winter coat, a black knit cap, and dark jeans. The massive manhunt for the killer continued. And while police released few details to the public about the shooting, including any info on the survivor, they did identify the five deceased victims. They were 42-year-old store manager, Rhoda McFarland, and customers, 37-year-old Connie Wolfolk, 34-year-old Jennifer Bishop, 33-year-old Carrie Hudec Chousseau, And Sarah Safransky, who was 22 years old, the murder weapon was revealed by police to be a 40 caliber Glock. And for people that don't know much about handguns, Glock is one of the most popular handguns out there. Glock sells a ton of handguns every year. They're reliable. They're relatively inexpensive. And the reason I bring it up, Morp, is because.

of the sheer number of glocks that are out there, that's probably not what police want to find out that the suspect used a glock. Now, 40 caliber is not quite as prevalent as 9mm, but, you know, they would much rather find out that the shooter used some obscure handgun that only X amount of people would own. That's not the case here. I can't even fathom how many 40 caliber glocks are in the United States and even in the Chicago, Illinois area. I think one thing worth mentioning is the caliber itself that was used because traditionally police prefer a heavier caliber, like a 40 caliber, as opposed to a 9 millimeter because it has, it's more powerful and has more stopping power. So it seems this person shows that weapon

too, maybe for a similar reason. Yeah, so we're talking about 2008. My thinking, my thinking, is that back then, most police officers would have been carrying a 40 caliber. And a lot of them would have been carrying glocks. Now, over the last few years, more and more police agencies have gone back to 9mm, but I'm pretty sure in 2008, it was mostly 40 caliber. Roda McFarlane, the Lane Bryant store manager, was born on January 10th, 1966, and graduated from Lyonsetownship High School in LaGrange. in 1984. She was a U.S. Air Force veteran and lived in Julia, Illinois. She had worked as Elaine Bryant manager for two years. Prior to that, she worked at NICOR in New Lennox and as a

pastoral assistant at Embassy Christian Center in Cresthill. She worked there for several years before becoming an ordained minister. Shortly after, she started a church group called Princess Unveiled, where she worked with the young girls of the church, teaching them how to cope with peer pressure and respect themselves. What's really tragic is that Rhonda wasn't scheduled to work the day of the shooting, but went in anyway to help on what she thought might be a busy Saturday. Following a divorce, Rhoda had become engaged over the 2007 holiday season. Connie Wolfolk was a mortgage lender who lived in Flossmore. She was a single mother of two boys and worked as a real estate agent to make extra money. Connie was described by her father as a loving person who would help anyone.

She went to Lane Bryant that fateful morning to pick out an outfit for a night out with friends. Connie really went out and decided to treat herself to a manicure and pedicure before heading to Lane Bryant. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.

A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Jennifer Bishop was married with three small children, her youngest being only six months old. She graduated from nursing school in 1996. Jennifer, along with her husband Brian Bishop and their children, lived in South Bend, Indiana, where she worked part-time as a nurse in the ICU at South Bend's Memorial Hospital. She was well-liked, popular, and an exceptional nurse. Jennifer had gone to Chicago with Brian, who was attending a roofing conference.

Carrie Hudak Chuso was born on January 12, 1972 to Don and Penny Hudek. She was a 1993 graduate of Hall of Hudec. Homewood, Flossmore Community High School, and she resided in Frankfurt, Illinois. She met her future husband at Morgan's Bar and Grill in Mochina, and seven months later, they were engaged. The pair married on June 10, 2006, at St. Joseph Church in Homewood. On the day of the shooting, Carrie called her husband Anthony to let him know that she was heading to the bank and then to Lane Bryant to buy a shawl.

for their day out in the city later. The couple was set to spend the day shopping on Michigan Avenue and then later was set to eat dinner with some college friends. The youngest victim was Sarah Zafranski, who lived in Oak Forest. Sarah was born on May 26, 1985. She graduated from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb in May 2007, with a degree in finance. She immediately landed a job in the accounting department at CNA Finlayfirm.

financial corporation in the city. She was described as smart, funny, and sweet. Sarah loved playing board games such as cranium and competing in Chicago Bears trivia contest. Police have never revealed the surviving victim's identity because the killer has yet to be caught. What we do know about her is that she was a part-time employee at Lane Bryant. She also held another part-time job and was enrolled in nursing school.

She grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but her parents lived near extended family in Providence, Kentucky. This was where her family came from originally. Her maternal grandparents moved to Chicago in the 1930s to find better jobs during the Great Depression. This woman escaped death. She was shot in the neck because apparently the gunman had aimed for the back of her head, but she turned her head at the last minute, which said, saved her life. Then she played dead for the killer. She was treated for her injuries in the hospital and put in protective police custody. But as we mentioned earlier, she was able to give detectives

information on the shooter and the events that took place in the store. And Morp, had this woman not survived, police might not have anything to really help them with this case. And we wouldn't, most likely, have many of the details that we've been able to give, there would have been no one left to tell the details of what happened that day. And fortunately, she did live to give investigators a lot of information. She told detectives that the gumman wasn't wearing a mask or disguise, and they had fondled one of the victims, but there was no other sexual contact beyond that. It's not known which victim it was that was fondled, but the family of Connie Wolfolk had claimed her body and stated to the media that it looked like she had fought her attacker. She looked beat up and had scratches on her

skin and blood under her fingernails. As you heard earlier in the clip that we played, the surviving victim provided police with an initial description of the suspect, but after working closely with her, she provided additional details, adding that his hair was pulled back and styled in three to five puffy cornrows that ran from the back to the front of his head. One strand with four light green beads hung over his right cheek. She also said he was six feet tall, of average weight and medium to dark skin tone with the husky build, and was between 25 and 35 years old. The shooter wore a charcoal gray ski cap or skull cap, a dark colored waist link jacket and black jeans with embroidery, similar to a cursive letter G on the back pockets.

Police released a composite sketch shortly after speaking with the witness. The witness told detectives that when Rota made the 911 call, the gumman heard the dispatcher's voice and began opening fire on the women. So police came up with their theories. They theorized

that the suspect was a drug addict who needed money for a desperate fix. But the question of why the killer chose to rob the Lane Bryant store is a mystery. He made off with only about $200 in cash. This is a store that never had a ton of cash on hand. And he robbed the store at the beginning of the workday instead of at the end when there would have been more money in the

cash register. I don't think there's any doubt, Morf, that the suspect would have benefited more from choosing a different store in the area to rob. He also spent a surprising amount of time in the store with the victims, about 30 minutes. Maybe the killer chose the store because of its close proximity and easy access to interstate 80, which offered a fast getaway. He may have also visited the store and knew that there were no security cameras inside. But I want to go back to this 30 minute time frame. To me, that does seem like a pretty long period of time if your only intention is to bust in and rob the store. Doesn't take 30 minutes to get $200 out of the register and run out.

Yeah, that seems very strange to me too, because in these cases, these guys want to get in and get out as fast as they can before the police get notified and there's a greater chance they're caught. Now, he did have six people in the store that he had to deal with. But even with that, 30 minutes to me seems like a long time. And even if the motive was not robbery and it was to shoot these people, even that he could have accomplished in a much shorter time. So that 30 minutes really is odd. Detectives considered the possibility that the killer knew one of the victims and targeted them

and that the others in the store were collateral damage to him. They interviewed friends, family, and coworkers of all the victims, probing for anything that might stand out. but nothing did. Meanwhile, a total of $60,000 in reward money was being offered for anyone with information leading to the rest of the gunmen. $50,000 of the reward was offered by Lane Bryant. Shortly after the killings, the parent company of Lane Bryant, Charming Shops Incorporated, established the Lane Bryant-Tinley Park Memorial Fund. The Memorial Fund was administered through Harris Bank, and its intention was to provide financial assistance to the immediate family of the victims, according to her statement released by Charming Shops,

the company also offered to pay for the funerals of all five victims. On February 9th, 2008, this was one week after the shooting, a small vigil was held in honor of the victims. The vigil was held at a local business called Angels Among Us. This was a spiritual product store. The owner, Renee Tabor, wanted to provide an opportunity for the community to be able to come together as a means to help cope with the tragedy. While the community mourned over these victims, police continued to search for the killer.

They reviewed every bit of information that they had. It was during this time that police came out and said that a Tinley Parked police officer was actually in the parking lot of the adjacent target store when the shootings took place. However, this officer had no idea what was going on in the Lane Bryant store at the time. The officer had responded to another call in the parking lot. He didn't hear any of the shots fired due to traffic noise. He was later dispatched to the Lane Bryant store about a minute after Roda called 911. He was the first officer who arrived at the scene.

Following the murders, local businesses remain vigilant, wondering this. something like that could happen again. As time passed with no arrest, people wondered if the killer would ever be caught. Police followed all leads and tips they got, but came up empty. By the one-month anniversary of the shooting, police had received 1,400 tips, but nothing that led to the identity of the gunman. The task force of detectives working the case dropped from 50 to 20. This task force had worked hard to catch the killer, a task force that was formed following a previous mass shooting. Major Crimes Task Force was formed in 1999.

After the January 1993 Brown's Chicken Massacre in nearby Palatine, Illinois, police were criticized for not being prepared when gunmen entered the restaurant, led seven people into the restaurants walking cooler, shot them to death, and left with $2,000. In response, police departments in the Chicago area created regional task force groups with the goal that law enforcement agencies would be able to work together to solve similar serious crimes. The Brown's chicken massacre went unsolved for nine years until a former girlfriend implicated James Degorsky and his associate Juan Luna who had worked in the restaurant. Luna's DNA matched DNA found on a partially eaten piece of chicken that had been recovered

from the restaurant. Luna confessed shortly after in May 2002, both men were later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. So Morph, this helps explain something that we talked about earlier. We mentioned the establishment of this task force, or I should say the fact that this task force started working on the Lane Bryant shootings very quickly. Well, the reason why they were able to do that, was because essentially the plan was already there. The task force was already assembled and ready

to work on a case like this. You know, in a lot of the cases that we talk about, a task force is formed and it takes time, but it's formed in the wake of some horrific crime. It sounds like here, the task force was already in place and they jumped into action very quickly. And you mentioned earlier that the local businesses remain vigilant, you know, that's something that I always wonder about. You know, what's it like to have to go back to work in a store in a shopping mall or some other setting where a very horrific set of murders has taken place? That can't be easy. You're not going to go about your daily work activities. in the same way that you did before.

There's just no way. You're going to be on edge, I would think, every second of the day for some period of time, wondering, is this person going to come back? Are we the next door to be targeted? All of that has to be running through people's minds. In March 2008, a month after the Lane Bryant murders, Tinley Park Police released a series of photos from a surveillance video at Target, about 100 yards away from Lane Bryant.

The surveillance video showed a dark SUV and a dark sedan near the shopping center around the time of the shootings. Police didn't know if the vehicles belonged to the shooter or customers, but wanted to track down the owners. They had the video enhanced, but never identified the drivers or the owners of the vehicles. A few months later in May, police announced that they had recovered hair and fingerprints from the crime scene, but added that nothing had come from the evidence at that time. In early August 2008, police investigated a possible link between the Lane Bryant murders and the murders of five victims during a home invasion in the Chatham community on Chicago's south side. The gun used in those killings was determined to be a 40 caliber glock, the same type of gun used in the

Lane Bryant shootings that was never recovered. Police arrested 27-year-old Michael King in the home invasion murders. He did resemble the Lane Bryant suspect. The only difference really was that he didn't have his hair in cornrows. Police said that he could have easily changed his hairstyle. Two other men were also arrested in the home invasion, but police later learned King purchased the gun used in the home invasion. murders after the February 2nd Lane Bryant shootings.

And so he was never charged in that crime. Now, I think more of what is unclear to us is whether or not police ever conducted any ballistic tests on his gun. I mean, that would definitively rule it out. But I guess if you look at it from their perspective, it's kind of hard to use a gun in a murder if you haven't yet purchased the gun. Pretty tough. Around the time of the home invasion murders, detectives also began aggressively investigating a connection between Lane Bryant's store manager Rhoda McFarlane and former members of her church, the Embassy Christian Center, which

had closed its doors by this time. The new lead developed after investigators began looking into the lives of the shooting victims earlier in the year. Detectives discovered a 20-minute phone call placed by a former embassy Christian member about an hour before the killings that was transmitted through the cell phone tower closest to the Lane Bryant store. The name of this former member isn't known, but police apparently were very interested in that call. About a dozen investigators traveled to Austin, Texas, where former members and the pastor of embassy Christian had relocated to in 2005 in order to start a new church called Embassy Nation Network. The church had rented space in an industrial park south of downtown Austin.

At one time, the pastor had close ties with Rhoda. While she worked at the church, Rota left Embassy Christian in 2006 after a disagreement with this pastor and some other members over the church's finances. During the murder investigation, detectives and agents, agents looked closely into the church finances. The pastor had sold Embassy Christian in November 2007 for $1.25 million. While Rhoda was employed there, she had co-signed mortgages as far back as 2003. But when the pastor took out what was an almost $900,000 mortgage on the church property

in March 2005, Rota's signature was not on the paperwork. And it was this secretive, loan that caused some major turmoil within the church. Five months after the pastor took out the loan, he sold his Homer Glenn home and moved to Austin with his family and congregation. He left Rode in charge of the Crest Hill location while he attempted to start the branch in Austin. Not long after the pastor moved, rumors of mismanagement within the church caused several members to leave after their questions were left unanswered. The pastor handled the church's accounts. The congregation went to the Will County Recorder's Office to check the center's deeds.

That's when they learned about the March 2005 mortgage. Up to that point, members thought the building was almost paid off. After Roda left embassy Christian, the pastor stopped speaking to her, which upset Rhoda because of their close ties. She took a job at Lane Bryant to make ends meet and was promoted to store manager in October 2007. The church pastor has denied any involvement in the Lane Bryant shootings and said he was devastated overrode his death. In September 2008, the FBI came in and thoroughly searched the Lane Bryant store, which was still close to the public. They were looking for anything that detectives may have missed. Agents were hoping to find fresh clues to help solve this case.

And it really wasn't long after that that the company removed all Lane Bryant's signs. from the building. By this time, the reward money had increased to 100,000, but that large reward didn't lure anyone to come forward with information. Two months later in November 2008, Lane Bryant made a statement to the press that the survivor would be taken off their payroll. While the company couldn't talk specifically about any one employee, spokeswoman Gail Kulik said in a statement that the company spoke to the survivor, and she was very appreciative and agreeable to how the company had handled the situation. Charming Shops Incorporated decided to permanently close the Lane Bryant store at that time.

Businesses where tragedies occur are called stigmatized properties in the real estate world. How communities handle these properties varies. In the aftermath of the Brown's Chicken Massacre, for example, the new owner of the building, Guido Tanuda, purchased it in 2001, and decided to tear it down. In Tinley Park, there were talks of tearing down the Lane Bryant store and putting a memorial in its place in honor of the victims. Police pulled the families of the victims, and they were actually against putting up the memorial. In the end, the building stayed intact. Many locals vowed, however, to never step foot in the building again. But others thought it didn't make any difference, as businesses go on. Yeah, this stigmatized

properties thing is very real. So in my previous job, I was involved in the selling of real estate. Now, it was residential. It wasn't commercial like we're talking about here, but there were many properties where people were found dead. And, you know, that's a situation where potential home buyers are not going to be jumping up and down when they find out that someone died in the home that they're thinking about purchasing. Now, sometimes they weren't found for quite some time because they didn't have immediate family. These are definitely properties that are hard to sell.

I, for one, would want to know if someone had been murdered in something I was buying, whether it be for a business or for a house to live in. But does that generally affect home values, Mike? Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does. And there are some disclosure. that are required, right? I think if somebody's murdered in a home, I think that might be one that you have to disclose. Again, I can't remember all of the disclosure requirements. And it may vary

from state to state, but no doubt. I mean, especially in a smaller community where everyone knows what goes on, right? If you have a horrific murder in a house, there's not going to be people lined up to buy that house at full market value. You might. You might. find someone that's willing to take it on the cheap. I think more often times than not, a lot of those houses are level. And maybe somebody feels much more comfortable coming in and building a brand new house as opposed to living in a house where somebody was murdered. I can tell you right now, it's not something that I would want to do. Even getting that house at a huge discount. In November 2013, Over five years after the shootings, the chain store T.J. Max moved into the building.

The company claimed that it had no idea. The shootings had occurred there when they signed the lease. In honor of the victims, T.J. Max donated $10,000 to a group called Together We Cope, a Tinley Park Homeless Prevention charity that serves 27 communities in four townships in Chicago's, South Suburbs. DDR Corporation, the owner of the shopping center, matched the $10,000 donation by T.J. Max, two, together we cope. Within days of the shooting, the family of Kerry Hudek-Chuso launched a charity in her honor called Carrie Fest, a day-long concert held in Frankfurt, Illinois. The first event raised over $100,000, and helped send students from Carrie's former high school, homewood flossmore High and Lincoln Way Community High School District 210 to college. The fund gave scholarships to students who were going to study social work, like Kerry,

as well as those who chose to attend culinary arts or beauty schools. The charity event was only helped three times with the last Carrie Fest in 2011. Her family stopped the event after attendance had dropped. The first year drew over a thousand people, and the second year drew around the same. But in 2011, only about 600 to 800 people showed up. Like Carrie's family, relatives of Sarah Zafranck and Connie Wolfolk created scholarship funds in their honor. After the shooting, Jennifer Bishop's family established a fund to help pay for her children's education. In 2011, Jennifer Bishop's husband, Brian, spoke to the local media and said how difficult it had been, raising his children.

alone. The couple had three children. At the time of Jennifer's death, the oldest child Jacob was seven, their daughter Josie was five, and little AJ was only six months old. To help his children understand what had happened to their mother, Brian collected every piece of news about the Lane Bryant shooting and morph when you fast forward to today, Jacob and Josie are now adults and AJ would be around 12 years old. It's heartbreaking. When you think about these three young kids having to grow up without their mother. Yeah, when you think about all of the families that were affected by this mass shooting, it's sad the number of people who lost loved ones and had to live their lives without that person after they were taken. In November 2016, Tinley Park Police Chief Steve Newbauer,

Detective Ray Violetto and his partner Detective Tim Polis traveled to Philadelphia to present the Lane Bryant case to the Vydok Society, a group of current and former law enforcement professionals who assist investigators in non-solved cases. Detective Violetto had also previously traveled to Washington, D.C., to be interviewed by producers of America's Most Wanted, for a segment on the Lane Bryant shooting. On the 10-year anniversary of the shooting,

Tinley Park Police released a new enhanced 3D composite image of the shooting suspect. It was created by Michigan State Police based on the original sketch made from the surviving victims account in 2008. Tenley Park PD said the new image, quote, utilizes the latest in facial identification technology to provide a more lifelike representation of the suspect. Police also said at the time they had averaged a little more than a tip a week in the case over the past three years. Around the 10-year anniversary, a memorial service for the victims

was held at St. Stephen Deacon and Martyr Church in Tinley Park. The Tinley Park Police Department has never given up on finding the Lane Bryant shooter. On a wall inside the station or pictures of the five women killed. And on their website is a link to a page with information on the shooting,

a hotline number for tips and a highly edited version of the 911 call. Police still warn people that the killer has never been caught should be considered armed and dangerous. Police believe someone out there knows who committed this crime. They just need to come forward. And more if I think in a lot of cases that we do, unsolved cases, this is a real possibility, right? That there is someone out there that knows who this killer is and makes.

maybe over the years has protected them for one reason or another. Maybe it was out of fear. Maybe it was because the killer was a relative or, you know, a love interest or something like that. And you mentioned the fact that this person may still be armed and dangerous. I think that goes without saying. To me, anyone capable of coldly executing five women without a doubt is. dangerous and probably wouldn't hesitate to kill again. I don't know that a number of years

changes that. In my mind, if you were able to do something like that, you could do it again, whether it's two years down the road, five years down the road. I don't know that it matters. Now, is there a chance that this person committed these murders and was so shaken by what they had done, that they completely reversed course in their life? Yeah, maybe. Is that what we often see? No. And if they were so shaken by what they had done, they weren't shaken enough to come forward and say, hey, I did this. I deserve whatever punishment fits the crime. Yeah, it seems that if this killer had any kind of conscience or had grown any kind of conscience since the murders, he would have came forward to face justice. And you mentioned the possibility that someone out there may or may not know that this

person is the one that committed to crime. I think what's interesting is the details about this killer are very specific, right down to the green beads in his hair. That's very specific. And you have to think that if this person lived in that area, somebody after seeing that composite sketch and thinking about those green beads would would most likely know who this person is. So for them not to come forward is, is pretty bad. Yeah, I mean, I'm out about almost every day. I don't run into a lot of people that have green beads in their hair cascading down their face. It's just not something I see on a routine basis, I'm with you. I feel like from that description, there's somebody that would say, oh, that's Jeff, that's George, that's whoever. From that standpoint, it's surprising because it's

a pretty hefty reward being offered in the case. Well, so to me, that goes back to what we just talked about. There has to be a reason for a person to protect this vicious killer. Not sure what that reason would be, family, boyfriend, whatever, it's got to be a pretty compelling reason. We haven't talked about it much up to this point, but we have to talk about the motive for the crime itself. Was it simply a robbery gone bad? Did this person intend to let these women live after the robbery but got angry and snapped after catching a road on her phone? Or could there have been some other motive perhaps tied to one of the victims past? What do you think? My inclination is to go with the robbery gone bad, the person got upset after catching Rota making the 911 call.

And I think for me, part of that goes to the investigators diving into the victim's past, not finding anything that would lead them to a suspect. But there's really no way to know in this case and many cases like it. We all know that violent criminals do some bizarre and questionable stuff sometimes, but the risk that this person took in murdering these five women and attempting to murder the sixth, the punishment would be so harsh. You wonder if 200 hours in cash was really the motive, and in my mind, that's what I tend to think. It almost seems as if there's something more at stake that he decided to go this far. Yeah, I think you can look at this case in a number of ways. You know, you can make the argument that regardless of the fact that Rota was able to make the

911 call, the person still escaped, could have escaped without shooting anyone, grab the money and made his escape, didn't have to kill anyone. It wouldn't have changed anything. So I think for me, that's one of the most perplexing things of this case. I just don't see where there was any need to murder anyone. It wasn't going to help this individual in any way. And to your point, Morph,

I think that's why a lot of people think it couldn't have been just a robbery gone bad because why did the person need to do it? Now, on the flip side of that, you can also say it's impossible to sometimes make sense of what these criminals do because it just doesn't make sense. You can't force it to make sense sometimes. And unless that killer's identified, we'll probably never know why he did what he did. Perhaps it was just simply to not be identified and arrested and sent the prison for whatever

amount of time he would have gotten for the robbery itself. Yeah, that's another argument to be made. We know that the killer was not hiding his face. Well, if you're going to to rob a store and you've made the decision that you're not going to disguise your face in any way, did you also make the decision ahead of time that I don't need to do it because I'm going to murder whoever I encounter, right? You can definitely make that argument. And Morp, we mentioned a theory out there among some people that this killer might actually be a woman. You heard the voice earlier, it's not an overly masculine voice. And if you Google the sketch of this killer, you can see there's somewhat of a feminine appearance. So I think you can look at it two different

ways. Is this a man that has some, I guess what you'd call feminine features? Or is this a female that maybe looks a little masculine? We did mention that this killer fondled one of the the victims. What does that mean? When it comes to trying to identify the sex of the attacker, I don't know. When you look at the killer's overall physical appearance being six foot tall, that would typically doesn't have to be, but it would typically point you in the direction of a man. There are women out there that are six foot tall, though. Besides the height, though, The physical build wasn't described as what you would call a muscular physique. So it's kind of perplexing, right?

Again, another thing that I think a lot of people debate as it relates to this case, what we don't know is if investigators aggressively pursued both male and female suspects when looking for the killer. But you can ask the question, if they didn't take a question. if they didn't take a hard look at possible female suspects, could that be a reason that the shooter was able to slip through the cracks? One thing we mentioned earlier, and I think we should probably touch on again, is the timing of the attack. It happened just after opening before any sales were made. So unless that person was absolutely desperate for whatever cash it could get quickly, why do the robbery at that time?

It's light out. There's more risk of being seen. Why not wait until closing time when it's dark and there's going to be a full cash register? Is there a chance that this killer had an ulterior motive other than the money? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense unless, as we've talked about, the killer had other motives for the murders. But I always go back to trying to make sense of what some of these criminals do, right? we're discussing it as if we expect them to act in a logical way. The problem is they don't always act in what you would think is a logical way.

And that's why I think a lot of times the aspects of some of these cases, they don't make a lot of sense. Is it because these people are not very bright? Is it because they're not really planning out what they're going to do? I don't know. There's so many unanswered questions in this case. And unfortunately, I just, I don't know that we'll ever have those answers unless the person is caught and comes clean about what they did and why they did it. So no doubt.

This is a very perplexing case. It's a case that is often analyzed online by amateur slews. It's one of those cases, Morph, that gets a lot of attention. There is a lot of interest in this case. case still today because of the strange circumstances, the amount of people that were killed, the small amount of money that was taken from the register, all of that kind of helps to fuel the speculation. And we've riffed a little bit about the strangeness of the timing of the robbery, right? Right. Right as the store open, it seems as though there would have been much better times to

commit this robbery. There are a lot of people that look at that and wonder, was it done for a very specific reason at that time because of who was in the store? And that's where you get into the area of this not being a robbery gone bad. Rather, the killer was targeting someone specific, one of the six victims. But we just don't know who or have any evidence that. that kind of backs that theory up. But it is a very well-known, unsolved murder. I mean, number one, you're talking about the Chicago area, very big city. Some of the unsolved cases that happen in some of the big cities, they tend to get scrutinized more. But horrific. Five women lost their lives. One victim survived. The amount of grief, the amount of grief, the amount of

of trauma that that woman has had to deal with has to be staggering. Not to mention the fact that you know the killer has not been caught. How can you not, Morf, be constantly thinking that this person may know who I am and they're going to come back for me at some point. How would you get that out of your head? Yeah, I could imagine that feeling. If I was her, I'd be thinking the same thing. And like you mentioned, as always.

with these types of cases, you have countless numbers of children, husbands, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, all kinds of family, large numbers of the members of these victims' families that were devastated. Their lives were changed forever. If you have any information on the identity of the Lane Bryant suspect, please call the tip hotline. It's. 708-44-5394, or email your tip to lanebriant. Dot tipline at Tenleypark.org. There remains to this day, a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer. Thanks goes up to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode.

As always, if you love the show and you haven't done so yet, Take a minute. Go out. Give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends about criminology. It really helps out. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast Discussion in Fans. Now, before we leave you, we'd like to play a preview of a new true crime podcast that we know you're going to love. It's a collaboration of our friends, Tyler from Minds of Madness and Justin from Generation Y. Their new podcast is called Deadly Misadventures. So here's a short preview.

Take a listen and go check it out. Wondry Plus presents its newest podcast, Deadly Misadventures. hosted by Justin from Generation Y and Tyler from the Minds of Madness. We'll bring you some of the most terrifying real life stories of those who came face to face with death. Some who lived to tell the tale? While others succumbed to their deadly misadventures. I'm going to do bad. Doing bad things to you.

You know the odds. The stakes are high. Care to take your chance with Lady Luck? To hear all deadly misadventure episodes, exclusively ad free just visit wondery.fm.f, d'nepham slash deadly to start listening now. Doing bad things to you. All right, Morph, that is it for another episode of criminology.

But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.