Families of Lane Bryant victims brace for 3rd anniversary

Police report no major breaks, but team of 6 still working on case

February 02, 2011|By Ashley Rueff, TRIBUNE REPORTER
  • Don and Penny Hudek show a photo of their daughter, Carrie Hudek Chiuso, in their home in Frankfort. Hudek Chiuso was among five women slain in a Tinley Park Lane Bryant. Another woman was shot and survived. There have been no breaks in the 3-year-old case.

Brian Bishop knows that someday his three young children will grow up and want to learn about the tragic shooting that ended their mother's life.

To help them understand, he and his family have tried to collect every piece of news about the Lane Bryant shooting in Tinley Park that forever linked the five women who lost their lives that day.

His children, Jacob and Joci, now 10 and 8, were forced to grow up too quickly, and 3-year-old A.J. now runs to the men in his life for comfort because that maternal caregiver role was snatched from him when he was just 6 months old.

Exactly three years ago, on Feb. 2, 2008, Brian's wife, Jeni, and four other women were killed inside a Lane Bryant women's clothing store when a gunman posing as a delivery man entered about 10 a.m. He announced that he was robbing the store and herded four women into a back room, and then another two women who entered during the robbery. All six were bound with duct tape and forced to the floor.

About 40 minutes later, police arrived to find five of them had been killed, shot execution-style. One woman survived with a graze wound to the neck.

Killed were Bishop, 34, of South Bend; store manager Rhoda McFarland, 42, of Joliet; Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; Connie Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; and Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort.

There have been no big breaks in the case in the last year. But Tinley Park police Cmdr. Pat McCain said there still is a lot of work to do with information they already have, plus the new tips that come in regularly.

Investigators have combed through 5,920 tips at least once and are working their way through a second time.

Though the frequency of tips has slowed in the last year, with 293 reported, police are as diligent as ever, McCain said.

"From my perspective, it's not cold until we get through everything and would have to go back to square one and start all over again," McCain said.

In the last year the case again took investigators to Texas, where they looked into a church associated with McFarland. He indicated investigators had followed other leads out of state, as well, but declined to discuss them.

In the first weeks after the shooting, as many as 60 investigators from the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force and Tinley Park police were working the case.

Today, four full-time investigators, a part-time intern from Tinley Park and a full-time analyst from the Illinois State Police still report to the converted training room that now serves as task force headquarters inside the Tinley Park Police Department.

Every time they enter the room, investigators pass the photos of the shooting victims hanging from the wall, reinforcing their dedication to the case.

"It reminds me of what we're fighting for and what we're striving to accomplish," McCain said. "This is for those ladies and their families and the village, to bring this to a successful conclusion."

The village of Tinley Park has put an estimated $1.17 million toward the investigation and the task force has contributed manpower equivalent to an estimated $500,000, McCain said, with all 64 area agencies that make up the task force contributing in some way.

Investigators are waiting for that one person to step forward who knows the shooter. They and family members cling to the resolution of Palatine's 1993 Brown's Chicken and Pasta slayings, another mass shooting that took years to solve.

A $100,000 reward for the Lane Bryant shooter is still advertised on wanted posters around town depicting a man with cornrows and one dangling braid with green beads. The sketch, developed with the help of the lone survivor, is a constant reminder in the town of nearly 60,000 that the case is unsolved.

Though he admits publicity surrounding the case has diminished in the last few years, Mayor Ed Zabrocki said he is sure someone will step forward with the tip that will lead to the shooter's arrest.

"Somewhere, somehow, somebody knows something, and it's got to come out," he said.

Last month's shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that left six dead and 13 injured raises painful memories for family members of the Lane Bryant victims.

"It just stirs up memories," said Maurice Hamilton, brother of McFarland, who managed to make the 911 call to police with her cell phone before the shooting.

"I just turned away from it," he said of the Tucson shooting. "It's hard to watch things like that."

Hamilton said the pain of losing his sister only intensifies with the knowledge that the shooter is still out there. "You always have this question on your mind, why did this person do it?"

For now, he takes solace in the belief that, one way or another, the person responsible for killing his sister will be held accountable. "A day will come when that person will eventually have to answer either to a judge or to God himself," Hamilton said.

Penny Hudek, mother of Hudek Chiuso, said she has learned to adjust to her daughter's absence, but that doesn't mean the pain hurts any less.