Four Years After the Lane Bryant Shooting: The Road Behind and The Road Ahead

Four years and 6,602 potential tips later, a storefront still remains empty in Brookside Marketplace.

It serves as a stark reminder of what once was — a bustling Lane Bryant store, frequently crowded with shoppers. But four customers and a store manager, all women, were in the wrong place at the wrong time on Feb. 2, 2008. A gunman ruthlessly stole their lives, and remains at large. Thursday marked the fourth anniversary of that day; a day that is branded in the minds of everyone in the  community.

Those who were there to see it for themselves remember it like it was yesterday.

'It Happened on Our Watch'

"," Mayor Ed Zabrocki said this past week. "Sleet was coming down, wind was blowing. I got a call from (Tinley Park Police Chief) Mike O'Connell that says 'We've got a homicide over at Lane Bryant out on Harlem Avenue. Looks like we've got one or two dead."

He then got a call back. O'Connell upped that number to three.

"By the time I got there they'd had it all cordoned off," Zabrocki continued. "A Frankfort police officer stopped me and asked me for identification. I stopped about 100 or 150 feet from the store. Mike saw me and I remember rolling down the window. He had this blue skull cap on and a parka. I looked at him and he had tears in his eyes. He said, 'Ed, we've got five dead.' My heart sank." 

O'Connell, who died in May 2011 from complications following heart surgery, kept the case very "close to the vest," Zabrocki noted. It happened on his watch, he would say.

"I always told him, 'No Mike. It happened on our watch,'" said Zabrocki, who noted he drives by the area at least once a day and thinks of it "vividly" each time.

No Stone Unturned

All these years and the case is, in many ways, at the forefront of the 's investigations sector. Of the 6,602 tips submitted so far via phone and e-mail, 137 came in the past year, said Tinley Park Police Cmdr. Pat McCain, who was incident commander the day of the shooting.

He has three full-time investigators assigned to the case along with an analyst from the Illinois State Police. The effort began with seven full-time investigators but has been downsized due to various personnel and day-to-day operational matters. 

"We're pretty confident that we're going to get him someday," McCain said. "It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. But we'll get him."

Members of the department are now doing "nitty gritty" work, like analyzing cell phone records connected to two towers that serve that area, Zabrocki said. Investigators have gone so far as London to gather more evidence. McCain said a doctor there developed a break-through method of extracting fingerprints.

"I can't even give you the exact results of those procedures, but we did get somewhere," he said. "We follow up on every single tip we get and we leave no stone unturned."

Those follow-ups have cost $1.5 million and that doesn't include help from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Illinois State Police, Secret Service and South Suburban Major Crime Task Force, as well as other agencies.

We Talk

Nothing can every bring those women back. Sarah T. Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest. . Connie R. Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor. Jennifer L. Bishop, 34, of South Bend, Ind. Rhoda McFarland, 42, of Joliet.

But through talking, we can celebrate their lives. We can honor their memory. And one day, we can hopefully put a man to justice.

"The fact is, somebody knows something somewhere someplace," Zabrocki said. "It's just a process that takes time. I'm convinced that somewhere along the line, someone is going to trip up. Someone is going to talk. They have to."

He's right. Someone somewhere knows who did this. Maybe they are afraid. Maybe they are callous. If you had a chance to talk to that person, what would you say? How would you persuade them to come forward?