Family, Friends Mark One Year Since Lane Bryant Killings

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Feb 2, 2009 9:40PM

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Today, February 2, marks the one-year anniversary of the Lane Bryant killings, when an unknown gunman walked into the Tinley Park location of the store and shot six women in a robbery, killing five. The lone survivor was able to give police a description of the killer, but in spite of several leads (most being proved false), the killer still remains at large. The victims were Rhoda McFarland, 42, of Joliet, 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. To mark the anniversary, family of friends of the victims gathered at the Tinley Park Convention Center to remember the victims and celebrate their lives.

Today's memorial marked the first time many of the families of the killed women had seen each other since the tragic day last year. Brian Bishop, husband to Jennifer, visited the scene of the crime for the first time yesterday. "I stopped by for about a half hour by myself. I just wanted to be there and see it." McFarland's brother, Maurice Hamilton, told the Trib of the ongoing investigation, "This is a hard day, but it's another day and you have to move forward. It's in the police's hands now."

The Trib also has as succinct a recap of the events as we could find:

Shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 2, a man entered the store at 191st Street and Harlem Avenue on the pretext of making a delivery. After chatting briefly with two employees and two customers in the store, he announced a holdup and forced the victims into a backroom, where he bound them with duct tape, placed them face down on the floor and covered their heads with clothing, police have said. At some point, two other women entered the store and were similarly subdued.

But when the gunman left the women unguarded for a short period of time, store manager Rhoda McFarland, 42, of Joliet, was able to free herself and call 911 on her cell phone.

In the weeks following the slayings, police released snippets of the 911 tapes, on which the gunman could be heard yelling in the background as McFarland whispered for help.

When the gunman noticed that McFarland had called police, he opened fire...

A store employee, 33, survived a gunshot wound to the neck, and was able to help police produce a composite sketch of the man.

According to CBS 2, in the year since the killings, police have spent 30,000 hours processing 5,600 tips. Cmdr. Patrick McCain of the Tinley Park Police Department said, "I come in every morning and I start my day by looking at the pictures of the victims. It gives you a renewed sense of cause. We don't discount anything. Nothing is trivial." Because it's still considered an active crime scene, the Lane Bryant store remains shuttered and untouched since the day of the killings. [CBS 2, Trib]