Episode 2: Five Names and a Face

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the way. You've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. This is episode 2, 5 names and a face. A quick note, if while listening to this season you recognize any of the names or locations that are being discussed and have information you'd like to share, send me an email at counterclockaudiochuck.com.

Within hours of the Lane Bryant shootings, Tinley Park Police and investigators from the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force had assembled a full-fledged war room inside the village's small police headquarters. Former TPPD Commander Rick Bruno remembers it well. full of files and file cabinets, and they had on one wall pictures of the the victims. I remember seeing we work for these people. Something along those lines. But that was their motivation. Then everybody wanted to get this guy.

The war room was strictly need-to-know basis only. The village's mayor, Ed Zabraki, met that criteria. They had bulletin boards and they put everything up on the bulletin board. The slightest bit of information, even if it didn't make sense, there were notes and there were stickums and there was all set up. The setup included, of all items, tinfoil, reams of it, pressed into the windows.

My colleagues and I noticed that tinfoil was going up on some of the exterior windows and We thought that was a little odd. Access was extremely limited, and one of the things they had to do is they put up aluminum foil on all the windows. Because there are ways of

Eavesdropping. And at that time, I you know, I'm I'm not a techie, but they put up tinfoil to reflect any radio signals or whatever I was this which couldn't get in to see what was going on inside. They had some kind of meter to detect I don't know, uh radio signals or something. But quote unquote, somebody picked up something on a meter, and so they immediately did that. So there was the thought that someone could be listening in.

Former Commander Rick Bruno told me that the tinfoil precaution, albeit unusual, was a reflection of just how serious the detectives assigned to the case took confidentiality. We were worried that maybe the media was trying to get information and that information would get out before we were ready to let it get out. We were trying to keep certain details very confidential because we were getting thousands of tips.

literally thousands of tips. Part of the way that you can determine whether or not the tip is legitimate or useful is when they tell you something that's totally not true about the situation. Certain facts we had to keep very confidential. video cameras like to s look in the windows or was it more like like a listening device?

I think it was both. Um and I don't know if it was effective or not, but the media can be a little tenacious sometimes. But we were giving the media as much information as we could, as promptly as we could. The first formal press conference was on Sunday afternoon, February 3rd, 24 hours after the murder. Rick and his colleagues knew it was time to feed the media beast. So the department released the names of the five victims.

One by one, police read the names and ages off a list. All women, one as young as twenty two years old. Four of the victims were customers, and then there was forty-two-year-old Rhoda McFarlane, Lane Bryant's manager, and the 33-year-old survivor, who was a sales associate for the store. Hearing the names of their loved ones publicly announced as murder victims landed heavy on the family.

On the day of the crime, Rhoda's mother Barbara worried something was wrong, and had called one of Rhoda's brothers, Maurice. When she called, she asked me, hey, are you watching the news? And I was like, Ma, it's sadly. What why would I be watching the news? She said, boy, turn on the news. Said, Ma, what's on the news that I need to see? She said, just turn the TV on. Turn the channel five.

I said one dead. one kilt and it's going across the bottom line. So while I was sitting there, it kept the number kept going up. Most of Rhoda's family lived in Joliet, Illinois, and in suburbs about thirty minutes west of Tinley Park. So on the day of the murders, there were a lot of phone calls back and forth between them to figure out what exactly was going on.

Meanwhile, much closer to Brookside Marketplace in the suburb of Glenwood, Stuart Gibbs, Rhoda's boyfriend of more than a year, hadn't heard from her all morning. Which he thought was unusual because she always called him while she was on her way to work or first thing after she clocked in. That particular day, they'd made plans to get together after her shift. That was her off day.

But she went in because uh she took off Thursday. So she came in Saturday to to make up for Thursday. I said, Maybe she got tied up, you know. I didn't think nothing of it. Cause I know when she gets there she takes the money to the bank and stuff like that. But by noon, Stewart's optimism was waning. Thank you.

I got a phone call and the phone call stated that, you know, something about Rhoda. I'm like, well, what's going on? Well, something happening up at the lane brand. In my mind, right, if anything went down, she would call me. You know what I'm saying? Anything will not shut off. So... I was like, okay, let me let me call her. And normally when she worked, I don't call her when she at work. I don't. So I said, let me call her at work. So I called her cell phone and um

Uh was no answer on the cell phone. So when I called up there, it was like I didn't get no answer. I said, Oh shit, something, something is wrong. When I made it there, When I saw the command center and saw all these people out, I said, let me talk to the officer. And when I talked to the officer, and he was like, he told me, like, go to the police station.

And it was there, inside the police station, that Stuart, Rhoda's mother Barbara, Maurice, and one of her other brothers encountered another family and quickly pieced together what had happened. They was waiting just like we so they called them in. And so when I saw I saw the priest, I already made up my mind. I was like, she called. I didn't express it to them. I knew Mia. She was gone. Because something from my heart the spirit of my heart

At the press conference on Sunday, police confirmed what Stewart already knew. Rhoda had been killed, along with four customers. Thirty-four year old Jennifer Bishop, twenty-two year old Sarah Safransky, thirty-seven-year-old Connie Wolfolk, and thirty-three-year-old Carrie Chuso. When Carrie's name was announced, journalist Ben Bradley, who was sitting in the press pool, froze. And I did a double take on one of them, Carrie Chuso.

who I knew is Carrie Hoodek. We went to high school together. Graduated the same year. She was this, you know, incredibly effervescent, bright, dispositioned person who, you know, talked to everybody and and was friendly with everybody. She's one of those people who her name comes up and you're like, Yeah, of course I know Carrie. To see her name that day on the list of victims, you know, was startling.

The only saving grace? Police announced there was a single survivor. So how did this happen? In order to create a timeline of that morning's events, I reviewed news coverage from 2008, police officials statements about what the sole survivor told them, and I conducted my own interviews with family members of the victims. The timeline starts at 10 a.m. when the Lane Bryant store opened to the public. About 10 to 15 minutes later, the suspect entered.

They told us the guy posed as a delivery guy and came in the back door. That's Michelle Talos, who lost her sister Jennifer. And here's Aaron Woolfolk, who lost his sister Connie. They knocked on the back door, somebody opened the door. Who was this? And after that, the two employees, Rhoda and the survivor, were trapped. Over the course of approximately the next 35 to 40 minutes, the suspect took Jennifer, Carrie, Connie, and Sarah as hostages.

Either as they entered the store or while they were already inside. They told us that their hands were tied together with duct tape. He did go through their purses. It's unknown, except maybe to police, in what order the women were taken hostage. From what Carrie's husband Tony and her brother Michael told me about her personal movements that morning, it's believed she was one of the victims who came into the store while the crime was already in progress.

And that's mostly based off when she departed her and Tony's home that morning. She left it like 201025. According to one of the police officers who was talking to me, who interviewed, said, um, she walked in on it. From what I've been told when she walked into the store it was already ongoing, so she was I think if she wasn't the last person to walk in, she was one of the last At 10.44 a.m., Rhoda managed to get free from her bindings and dial 911.

When police arrived a few seconds after ten forty six AM, they found the women's bodies and noted that their belongings had been rifled through, but as far as valuables that were missing, not a whole lot was. Here's former Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabraki. It was less than one hundred and fifty dollars in a till, and the tip money was still there. Items including the victim's jewelry, cell phones, and credit cards were also left behind. Whoever did this didn't take anything. All he took was cash.

Tony Chuso is certain his wife's purse was ransacked because she was carrying money with her when she left their place, and that money was never accounted for again. Carrie had cash on her um I won a football pool the week before with Carrie's dad. It was money that I won. It was like like a couple hundred dollars. That was taken. All the cash was taken.

For those closest to the victims, hard-nosed journalists who were doing the math, and even some investigators working the case, the narrative that the crime was simply a robbery gone wrong had some holes, some pretty big ones. Why would you pick a a woman's clothing store right when they open to go to? Of all the stores you could pick across any place in any town, why would you pick a woman's clothing store that's got probably zero to any money in the capture at that point?

The whole thing just, you know, at some point, you know, doesn't add up. For somebody to be cold-hearted enough to chat with the people in this store, pose as a delivery driver, and then a switch flips and you kill them, and then another switch flips. That you go back about your life, presumably not talking about it, not committing a new crime. I mean that's that's a lot of switches to flip in his favor.

The length of time that he stayed in the store before things went really bad, none of it made sense. It didn't make sense, the timing, the target, the victims. That's not an armed robbery.

But until investigators could do more digging, the nagging feeling that something was off was just that, a feeling. The same day police released the victim's names and these additional details about the perpetrator's ruse to gain access to the store, Charming Shops, Lane Bryant's parent company, announced it was offering a$50,000 reward for information. It was about that same time that news coverage about the case ramped up and went wall to wall.

Journalists from all over Chicago clamored for scraps of information and interviews, and they weren't afraid to be pushy. There was some that were were truly wanted you know, you could f you know, they wanted help and then there was there was there was a couple that were just there for a story. World. Worldwide, I could not believe how much attention this got. Like I didn't stay in my house for a while, I stayed with Carrie's parents.

'Cause I there's I I couldn't be there by myself. And so I was at their house and the whole family was there. This was the first night, I believe. Yes. And um the second night it was that Sunday because the Super Bowl actually, the Super Bowl was the next day.

And so like cousins, like the whole family was there and news people were coming up to their house, knocking on the door and like it was very like intrusive, very like, you know, just people just trying to get a story and it was just There was Press lined up, parked out, up and down my street.

Remember some lady talking to me on the phone and I hung up with her and I went out in the garage to get a soda out of the refrigerator and somebody reached out and touched my hand and it was the woman that I had just been talking to. In the first 48 hours, rumors ran rampant that authorities had already nabbed a person of interest, when in reality, they'd only questioned one or two men who loosely fit the suspect's appearance. I got a phone call.

one of the Chicago media, major media outlets, and he said, Hey, we hear that you've got somebody in custody. And I said, No, we don't have anybody in custody. He goes, Well, I have a source that says you guys picked somebody up and you got someone in custody. And I said, Look, I'm telling you we don't have anybody in custody. If we did, I would say so. We don't have anybody in custody. We do not have a suspect.

And he said, Well, I have to go with my source. I said, Well look, I I can't tell you what to say and what not to say. All I can tell you is if you put it out that we have someone in custody, it can hurt the investigation. He goes, Well I have to go with my source.

I said, fine. So he put it out and then ended up having to retract it. Once the the dust settled, and he called me later, and I told him, look, I'm not gonna lie to you. If I have information that I can give you, I will give it to you. Former Mayor Ed Zabraki was also fielding inquiries from the press, many of whom were after authority's most valuable lead, the survivor.

Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, sometime I got a call from Good Morning America and a couple of those other things who wanted me to arrange to get her to go on, you know, and and I I says, first of all, I would recommend to her not to do it. And number two, I'm gonna tell you straight up front, I don't know who she is. And they said, Well, you really you know you're BSing me. Nope. I said, That's my design.

Journalist Ben Bradley remembers tension between the police and the press seemed to grow rapidly with each passing hour. A responsible journalist will understand and navigate the need to know with the need to protect an investigation, just as a responsible law enforcement agency. will understand the line between I need to protect the investigation, but I also can't let bad information or wrong information live out there.

Whether it was a gesture of good faith or simply coincidental timing, within days of the crime, authorities presented the media with an official statement from the survivor. A spokesperson for the Tinley Park Police read the message, but I'm having a voice actor read it for you in this format.

On Saturday, February 2nd, an unspeakable tragedy occurred, and five of the bravest women I have ever met were senselessly murdered and taken from their families. My deepest sympathies and condolences go out to their families and friends. Please know that during the unfathomable events of that day,

Their thoughts were focused on you and coming home. My heart aches that they were unable to do so, and I am working with the authorities in any way possible for all of the victims. I ask that the media please respect all our families. and allow us to grieve and cope privately with the horrific crime that ripped our worlds apart. I also ask that everyone respect that neither I nor my family can discuss the horrible events of that day.

I thank everybody who has expressed concern and asked that any person who can assist in the investigation contact the authorities immediately.

The pressure she was under herself. You know, my God, I almost died. And secondly, the drama of seeing, you know, five other people next door to you lying next to you being killed. And so it was a slow process. In the midst of this media maelstrom, the victims' family members also had to process the reality that their loved ones were gone. Twenty-two-year-old Sarah Safransky's family didn't respond to my requests for interviews, but they did speak with the Southtown Star after the murders.

Sarah's parents, Mary and Ted, said that for most of the day on February 2nd, Sarah hadn't been picking up her phone, but they didn't necessarily think much of it. They had no idea she was one of the victims until a news van pulled in front of their home that evening around the same time they got a call from police. The Southtown Star reported that the notification of Sarah's death shattered her family's world.

Sarah had recently graduated from college and was set to start a new job. Her mother told the newspaper the only reason she could think of as to why Sarah visited Lane Bryant in Brookside Marketplace that morning was to purchase a new outfit for work. For Carrie Chuso's husband, Tony, he'd noticed something was amiss not long after his wife departed their home on Saturday morning. She left it like that.

1020, 1025. Carrie's plan was to scoot right around the corner to Brookside Marketplace and buy a new shawl at one of her favorite stores, Lane Bryant. Then she was going to drop off a present for one of her nieces and eventually visit an ATM to get some cash out. One of her college friends was in from California and we were we were gonna meet up with her and all of her other friends downtown.

I was waiting at home because Comcast was gonna come install cable. So she's like, I'll go get the shawl, drop off the presents, come back and get you, and then we'll leave. Standing in the garage, I, you know, gave her a kiss and I said, I'll see you later. I love you. And we always wave at each other as you know, until they're out of sight. So I was able to wave her and um That was my last interaction with her. About ten minutes after Carrie's departure, Tony got a hankering.

I was a smoker at the time and uh I had my last cigarette and I couldn't find the cigarettes and I was like I called and I'm like, Babe, where are the cigarettes? I can't find them and I hung up. And then I found him. I'm like, uh disregard that message, babe. I'm sorry. I don't know why like, call me back, I love you. I found him. This was after she left. So I don't know she didn't answer the phone. Was that weird for her not to answer?

Yes, but I didn't think anything of it at the time because I'm like, she was in the store, she might have been, you know, rushing. And then that's when I started getting phone calls from my friends. A friend of mine that I w grew up with called and said, Hey, did you see what's going on at uh Target? He goes, There was a shooting at the Target. And I'm like, what? And so I'm like, oh, Carrie's over there.

And then I get another phone call from another guy at work. And like, Chouso, did you hear what happened? You know, it's it's you know, the lame brand. I'm like, I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm like I kept getting phone calls. I'm trying to call Carrie. I'm like. trying to call Carrie and so from there I called Penny, Carrie's mom, and I'm like, listen, something happened over there. I'm trying to get hold of Carrie and she's not answering.

Tony's conversation with his mother-in-law Penny led to an even more panicked phone call between Penny and Michael Hudak, Carrie's only sibling who lived in a nearby suburb. My mom had called me and said, Have you heard from your sister? and I said, No.

And my mom said, I'm coming over, something's happened over by the target over there and that your sister was there. So I said, Okay, so we she came over and we couldn't get a hold of her and called and called and called and you could see the thing going on in the news with the helicopters flying overhead.

There's traffic stopped everywhere, there's helicopters, you know, all over the place and my mom and jumped in my car and we tried to get into that area and they wouldn't let us So we came back home, tried and tried and tried and then watching the news reports if I remember the if I'm remembering this correctly, that we saw her car in front of the or a few parking spots down from the Lane Bryant store. All I can do is just I kept trying to call her cell phone.

And Michael was like calling the police and everything. And he goes, Tony, where was she shopping at? Where'd she go? And I'm like, lame Brian. He goes, That's where it happened. And I just My heart dropped. I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe it, but I just I was like almost mentally trying to prepare myself. By noon, Tony, Michael, and Carrie's parents were at Brookside Marketplace.

As we were driving by, we were like, let's try to get into the parking lot. So we were able to get in. We drove by, like the snow was really high at the time. It was r a lot of snow. So uh we drove by and we talked to a police officer and they're like, Go over by the Best Buy, like in the Best Buy parking lot. That's where the

The head they like who we can talk to. They can give us more information. And we were talking and I looked and I saw her trailblazer in front of the in front of there still. And they said just uh they told us, go to the Tinley Park police station. We were the first family there, and as I was sitting there I saw it. Going like walking around the office picking up boxes of tissue. We walked in, you know, we were been told that she had been murdered.

My parents aged half their lives right then and there. It was awful for them. I just Stood there and I just sat down inside. I couldn't I I didn't know what to say or what to do. had the Comcast Direct TV situation not been happening, you would have been with her, you think. Yeah. I would have I would have been there. I don't know if I would have gone in,'cause if she was just getting a shawl, I probably wouldn't go in and walk around in a women's store. But I would be there.

Did that weigh on you? Oh. A hundred percent.'Cause I always think, you know, could I have done something to stop it? I feel like if I was there it might not have happened. Or if you know, if we would have stopped at the cash station beforehand, you know, it w wouldn't ha it wouldn't have happened. after it was said and done, I got up and I just like speed walked out of there and I just broke down and Rhoda's older brother came and uh like gave me a big hug and I just broke down there.

In the minutes and hours that followed, other families trickled into the police station, including Connie Woolfolk's next-of-kin. Connie was a single mother with two boys, and she came from a family of all brothers. Her younger brother Aaron had never spoken publicly about the murders until I showed up at his house last summer. to us she was always like a second mother, right? You know, she would always try to mom number two to us, uh her younger brothers.

She was gonna tell you if something was wrong or s or she had to explain something to you, it would be just like your mother would. But other than that, I mean she just you know a really, really fun person, you know, um caring person. At the time, Connie's two school aged sons were at their father Victor Rodriguez's house in a neighboring suburb. Connie and her ex shared custody of their boys, and Saturday, February 2nd was Connie's rare chance to have a day to herself.

She planned to go shopping, visit a salon, and eat dinner with some girlfriends. She was driven. She had a drive about herself to make it very intelligent. That's Victor, Connie's former part. She was incredible. She's an amazing woman. No matter what we went through, I was very happy to have her as mother of my chief. The day of her murder, my mother came by my house.

And um we were just randomly just talking. Just out the blue, I just kinda told it I love the fact that Johnny is the mother of my kids. And as we were sitting there on the couch watching the uh footage on T V, that's what I told her, I I enjoy I love it because I was the mother of my kid. Robert. As the words left his mouth, Victor's eyes paused on the TV screen and the breaking news story, which prior to that moment he'd only been half paying attention to.

I saw the car, a car in a parking lot was every car. But you know, of course I didn't I wasn't thinking of the mercy. The worst would come about a half hour later when one of Connie's brothers pulled into his driveway. In the world of true crime, the real story isn't always in the headlines. It's in the evidence. I'm Brandy Churchwell, host of 13th Europe Podcast.

And I'm here to take you past the news cycle and straight into the courtroom. Every week, I'll break down the investigation, the prosecution. We'll examine every testimony, every exhibit, and every hidden motive. Listen to 13th Juror wherever you get your podcast.

Not long after watching a morning news story about a situation unfolding at Brookside Marketplace in Tinley Park, Victor Rodriguez's former brother-in-law showed up unexpectedly and asked to take his boys to Connie's mom's house for the rest of the day. And then that's what he said when Connor was in the lacks. Yeah. Shortly after that, the Wolfolks and Victor gathered together, and then some of them went to Tinley Park Police Station to join other grieving families.

Before I even walked in, I had my youngest son crying. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Feel how I felt. And just knowing that I couldn't do nothing to help it, you know.

About two hours east of Tinley Park, in South Bend, Indiana, Jennifer Bishop's older sister, Michelle Talos, had spent Saturday morning zipping her kids between various sports and activities. After lunch, she arrived home and was looking forward to a moment to recuperate, when suddenly, I pulled into the garage.

And my husband came out and said, Hey, we have to go to your mom and dad's and I was like, Okay, can I use the bathroom first? And he's like, Nope, we gotta go right now. I goes, I don't know what's up, but something's up and I was like, Okay, this is really weird. Michelle's mind started to spin with questions.

Was one of her and Jennifer's parents gonna tell them they were terminally ill? Had they fallen? The scenario swirled in her head. Not once did her sister Jennifer's well-being cross her mind, though, because she knew Jennifer wasn't even in town. her husband had a work conference that was taking place in Tinley Park, kind of their holiday gala thing. They were able to leave the kids with Brian's parents and went For a fun weekend away from the kids.

A rare opportunity, considering the fact that Jennifer and Brian's kids were super little at the time. The youngest was six months old and then five and seven. As Michelle and her husband walked toward her parents' place, she was completely unprepared for what she was about to hear. went to the front door and my mom answered crying and told me that Jenny was dead. And I just laughed and was like, No, she's not like, no way.

And I just was like no. I remember saying no. I think I said it like a million times. They huddled together, turned on their local news station, and Michelle watched, still incredulous to her current reality.

And there it was on TV. So we sat there just in disbelief and watched, you know, what was going on and try to believe that it was our Jenny that was there. But then you could see her car in front of Lane Bryant, so sh In subsequent conversations with Brian, Jennifer's husband, the family learned that he'd been participating in a work conference at the couple's hotel all morning on Saturday.

Jennifer had told him she planned to check out a nearby mall, Brookside Marketplace, because there were stores there she liked. When Jennifer failed to meet up with her husband during a lunch break at the hotel, he'd realized their van was still gone. At that exact same time, he learned from people at the hotel that there had been a shooting at Brookside Marketplace. Brian had immediately gone to the scene and not long after was told his wife was one of the victims.

The rest of that day he'd spent alone, in an unfamiliar city, making unimaginable phone calls back home to family members in Indiana. we were all so worried about him and just felt Couldn't even imagine how he fell how awful this was.

I mean once I talked to him, I wanted to go there. I was like, I need to go be with Jenny. I didn't want Brian to be alone, didn't want my sister to be alone, that was how I felt. I think that's why I wanted to go there that night, like I was gonna be able to still save her or something. It wasn't until the following day, Sunday, February third, the same day as police's first press conference, that Michelle made it to Tinley Park in person. We were invited to a meeting at the police station.

And I went Brian went it was really weird to me because they had rental trap on the windows and I was like, what the heck? They had tinfoil on all their windows in there and they're like, Oh man, people will do anything to get a story or to get part of what we're talking about, so you know, we don't want them to know They didn't want the media to know certain things and they didn't want us to know certain things because they wanted to preserve the things that only the killer would know.

But even with all this secrecy, investigators did reveal some details to Michelle, mostly what they believed Jennifer had been doing shortly before her death. And it was as wholesome as anything could be. There were two onesies from Kohl's in the back seat of her car. She had a tall Starbucks in her car and she loved her coffee.

So I would imagine she was just running into Lane Bryant for to pick something up quickly. I remember thinking, okay, I know you were at Cole's. Why didn't you go look at shoes one more time for ten minutes? And then you could have missed it. Why didn't you have to go to the bathroom? Why Yeah. Why wasn't the line longer at Starbucks? I wish I could have warned her if I would have known, if I would have had any inkling, I would have begged her not to go to Tinley Park that weekend.

The notion that Jennifer and the rest of the women were seemingly just in the wrong place at the wrong time is what made the situation so tragic. So in a sense random in that it could happen to anyone. They were all in the store that day for different reasons, and they never came home.

As friends and family of the victims sat with their grief, Tinley Park Police and the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force shifted their focus to finding the suspect. They quietly began working with arguably the heaviest hitting true crime television show in America at that time. I'm John Walsh. Tonight on America's Most Wanted. We've got the story of a mass murderer near Chicago. The weekend of the Lane Bryant massacre, Jenna Griffiths hopped on a plane and hightailed it to Tinley Park.

In 2008, she was a producer for America's Most Wanted. And in a series of events she described to me as bizarrely serendipitous, she ended up chasing two breaking news stories for her employer that weekend. I immediately flew out to Tinley Park the next day. I think the shooting was on a Saturday and I flew out on a Sunday. Another one of my fugitives had been caught because of the shooting. Wait, what?

The fugitive's name was Esther Elizabeth Reed. It was an identity theft case out of South Carolina. She used to Used the um the fake identity to get into Ivy League schools. I had traveled to Montana, I had traveled to I believe Portland, Oregon. I had traveled to South Carolina, all completely separate from Tinley Park, having nothing to do with Tinley Park. These trips took place far, far, far before the Tinley Park tragedy happened.

Bizarre. Sheer coincidence, Esther Elizabeth Reed was staying in a hotel in Tinley Park that weekend, and after the shoot. Well, yeah. police were doing surveillance in different parking lots, hoping to find the fugitive. from or the perpetrator of the Tinley Park tragedy, they noticed a suspicious car and thinking that it could be related to the Tinley Park tragedy, they began investigating that car and that led them to a hotel room where Esther Elizabeth Reed was staying.

I was already working because of Tinley Park and then I got a call that Esther Elizabeth Reed had been c captured in Tinley Park and I was like, what the heck? Yeah. Unfortunately they didn't catch the Tinley Park killer, but they did catch another fugitive that weekend. A bittersweet conclusion, at least for Tinley Park investigators.

I've gone pretty far down the Esther Elizabeth Reed rabbit hole, and like police, I feel confident her being in Tinley Park the same weekend as the Lane Bryant murders is purely coincidence. She was a con woman on the run, crossing through the Midwest. That's pretty much it. So once Jenna and America's Most Wanted put a check mark next to Esther's name, Jenna refocused her attention on the five women who'd been killed at Lane Bryant. Starting with a trip to Brookside Marketplace. Thank you.

It was freezing, there was snow on the ground. It was just so stark. I remember being there at night, you know, and of course there were candles lit. somber and sad. I remember thinking they were just doing the best that they could and that everybody in everyone was just shocked that the person had gotten away. Five white crosses stood planted in a median in front of the plaza.

Several yards away there is a makeshift memorial. Throughout the day people drive by and stop and leave pictures, notes, and flowers. The haunting image of the Snow White crucifixes has become synonymous with this case over the years. Marie, the ear witness to the crime who worked at Sally Beauty Supply, all but winced every time she walked by them on her way to work. Yeah, she had to go back within a day or so of the crime.

you know, it was February so it was like snowing and stuff. So you see the snow and you see these big white crosses and people would come by just to talk about it. It was surreal. The only way I can explain it is I surreal. I've never dealt with anything like that before. I think a couple of my employees were they were frightened. Me too, like, you know, thinking about how easily that could have been our location.

you know, when it hits you when you're watching the news, like how close something like that was to you and it's just really scary. Fear and anxiety were intense feelings that Erica Carson's, Elaine Bryan employee who'd been off on the day of the crime, was grappling with too. The corporate offices flew down and we all met at a a location. It was a secret location at the time to meet about all the events.

And with all the police officers that were involved to give us updates, like, here's what happened, here's what we know, and we are all just trying to make sense of it, but they're like, Hey. Um we'll take care of you guys, we'll offer you this, we'll offer you a severance, we'll offer you pay, we'll offer you if you want to relocate to a different location, whatever you guys want to do, we're going by you. So they really try to take care of us.

in a sense of like therapy and giving us time off that was paid, because they knew we were all pretty shook up about it. They let us know about the update about the survivor and how she was, you know, put in protective custody. I was

happy that she had survived, but I was scared, not just for her life, because I was worried that if it wasn't the media that was gonna release her name, that somehow that person would find out that she survived and come back at her. What if this guy Has her information, has all of our information. No one knew the answers to those questions. There were so many things law enforcement needed to find out.

With America's most wanted working behind the scenes, police were banking that a segment set to air on the program at a later date would help drive useful information their way. In the meantime, authorities kept at it the good old-fashioned way. The police department has added extra patrols. They're reviewing security tapes from around the area and investigating more than 200 tips. In the shopping center's parking lot, yellow police tape courts off an area in front of the Lane Bryant.

The boarded up clothing store remained closed indefinitely, for good reason. There was a twenty four hour watch in the front and the back of the store for several days afterwards because if the technicians needed to go back in, we needed to maintain the chain of custody of the store. Police also scoured partially frozen retention ponds that abutted Brookside Marketplace.

that was searched by divers because we thought maybe the guy threw the gun out the window or whatever. If he was in a car, if he was on foot, maybe we thought he'd try to get rid of the the weapon. The weekend after the murders, the biggest update yet made headlines.

The lone survivor was able to get a look at the shooter and provided officials with a description that This sketch. In the world of true crime, the real story isn't always in the headlines. It's in the evidence. I'm Brandy Churchwell, host of 13th Juror Podcast. And I'm here to take you past the news cycle and straight into the courtroom. Every week, I'll break down the investigation, the prosecution, the defense, and everything that unfolds beyond the jury box.

We'll examine every testimony, every exhibit, and every hidden motive. Listen to 13th Juror wherever you get your podcast. The woman who survived has been working with police to craft a composite sketch of the suspect. By February 10th, one week into the investigation, there was officially a face and a more specific description for the unknown offender, thanks to the sole survivor, the one woman who'd made it out alive.

She described the shooter as an African American male between 25 and 35 years old with a medium complexion and broad shoulders. He was somewhere between 230 and 260 pounds. 5'8 to 6'2 with a clean shaven face and well groomed with manicured nails. The most distinct information about him though was what he looked like from the eyes up. He had three to five puffy cornrows going front to back, and a single braid of hair with four green beads on the end laying against his right cheek.

It was very d detailed. The guy's hairstyle was very detailed and unique. That's not something that you can do yourself. So somebody who knew how to do hairstyles did that for him. Marie from Sally Beauty Supply and Erica Carstens, the Lane Bryan employee who was off that day, racked their brains when they first saw the composite sketch.

When I saw the the picture, I was like, okay, I have no idea who this person is. No idea. Because especially the characteristics they they had in those drawings, I'm like, yeah, I would I would remember. I'm good with faces. I'm terrible with names, but I'm great with faces. I would remember that face. It was every customer from then on out. I looked with a different lens. There was this like, I should be paying more attention. Did I see this person in the days leading up?

Or, you know, I asked all my employees, you know, we shared we talked about it amongst ourselves and and that kind of thing. But it was definitely gave me a different perspective that I carried with me even to this day. Okay. The specificity of the killer's appearance, the fact that flyers featuring his likeness were distributed nationwide, and that a substantial reward was up for grabs were three things that law enforcement considered favorable to making an arrest.

That was plastered on every window, every top side. He couldn't get away from it. We were confident that somebody knew who he was. And our job was to try to convince them that it was important for them to come forth. And we went to churches We went to all kinds of different places, community events to try to convince people that this guy was dangerous and that he needed to be caught and that we needed their cooperation.

the individual involved was African American, so they went to places who did cornroast. And did you put green beads in anybody's head lately? This was a guy that was still on the loose and I saw the media as a way to get the word out and to maybe shake someone's conscience to look give us the information that we needed to find this guy.

There was reward money that was put up. If the tragedy wasn't enough to shake somebody's conscience, we were trying to go beyond that. Okay, here's some financial gain that you know all we need is an arrest. But as the days passed and the reward money increased to$60,000, disappointment. If people called the dedicated tip line that Tinley Park police had set up, it doesn't appear they offered a name that led authorities to the killer.

So some folks couldn't help but ask, was the sketch inaccurate? Former Mayor Ed Zebraki and even some family members of the victims, including Maurice Hamilton and Aaron Wolf, thought, maybe. Sketches like that are sometimes either I I outsider looking in, they're either very good or very bad. There seems to be no in between. So, I don't know. Maybe someday we'll find out.

that sketch ain't getting do it,'cause you got a bunch of nationalities that look like that particular person. How do we know that that wasn't a pull on and he was not ball headed? Some people do have like my wife, right? She could see something one time and give you everything a person had on and what he was wearing, uh what she was wearing, hairstyle. Me, I can't do it, right? You know, so

If the young lady or the person who gave the sketch, she has a vivid imagination and she's good at that, then I say that it's maybe it's a good sketch. But if she's like me, I would say that the sketch is probably way off. Could you even imagine, you know, shots ringing out, people dying, lot of noise, how much could you really concentrate to try to figure out what a person looked like, what he had on?

how his hair was, you know, so some people could do it. And uh pray to God that, you know, her she was one of those people that could do it. Erica Karstens, who knew the survivor and had previously worked many shifts with her at Lane Bryant, had no doubts though that the image was likely accurate.

She was always good with recalling details. Like she would know, like if you came in like a week ago, she was like, oh, you were just here for da-da-da. So she was really good just with any detail. So for her to be like, hey, here's how it happened, here's who it was, here's this, here's that, like that, I wouldn't put it past her. But regardless of how good the sketch was or wasn't, the bigger question still plaguing everyone involved was why?

That is going to be probably the biggest issue of Motivation. It was a very odd thing. What were you doing in there for forty minutes? What is your mind state? The why is what caused the theory about what was really going on to begin to bend further and further away from random robbery. They told us she fought back. know we have DNA and I'm like, Well how do you know?

A surveillance camera at a target store about 100 yards away captured the images, and Fox TV's America's Most Wanted paid a NASA scientist to enhance it. We contacted NASA. The question is, did this gunman do this alone? Es gibt immer eine Frage. Does it remain a question? That's coming up in the next episode of Counter. Episode 3, 40 Minutes. Listen right now. Every case file, interview, and archive tells a piece of the truth.

I'm Kylie Lowe, and on my podcast, Dark Down East, original reporting is at the heart of every case I cover. I don't just retell crime stories. I investigate them. I'm speaking with families, searching court records, and piecing together the facts that have been overlooked and forgotten with time. The results? True crime storytelling that digs as deeply into a case as you do. You can listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your pocket.