My blog post this week concerns an unsolved crime from sixteen years ago. In 2008, a man shot six women inside a Lane Bryant clothing store in a Chicago suburb, killing five of them. The crime remains unsolved today.
Intruder at Lane Bryant
It was a little after 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 2, 2008. A tall man, six-foot to six-foot-two, entered the Lane Bryant store in the Brookside Marketplace shopping center in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. He claimed to be a deliveryman. Soon, however, he dropped the pretense. Pulling a .40-caliber Glock handgun, he herded the two employees and two women customers to a back room. He then bound them with duct tape and ordered them to lie face down on the floor.
Two other women, potential customers, came into the store and were also herded to the back and bound.
The Lane Bryant Murders
According to police, the intruder was in the store for 40 minutes. During that time, he sexually assaulted at least one woman before shooting all six, killing five. One victim, a part-time Lane Bryant employee, survived but declined to be identified.
During the attack, Lane Bryant store manager Rhonda McFarland managed to call 911 from her cellphone, pleading with the operator to “hurry.” A Tinley Park police officer was on a call in Brookside Marketplace a few hundred yards away. He was on the scene within a minute, but the gunman had already escaped.
Store manager Rhoda McFarland (Family photo)
The dead women were store manager Rhoda McFarland, 42, 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.
Epilogue
The Lane Bryant murders remain unsolved today (2024), sixteen years later. Tinley Park police still have a detective assigned full-time to the case.
Don’t Miss Out! Subscribe to the Newsletter
Subscribe to True Crime in the News, a monthly email newsletter that looks at recent news stories that will interest any true crime fan. There is also a summary of the previous month’s blog posts. You won’t want to miss this. Join the newsletter mailing list today.