Lane Bryant Shooting
Saturday morning shoppers had just begun arriving at the Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park’s Brookside Marketplace on 2 February 2008 when a man posing as a delivery worker forced six women into the back room, bound them with duct tape, and shot them; only one, wounded and pretending to be dead, survived to describe him. Store manager Rhoda McFarland’s 911 call captured the killer’s voice before she, Carrie Chiuso, Connie Woolfolk, Sarah Szafranski, and Jennifer Bishop were killed, leaving investigators with a composite sketch, a description of a tall husky man with cornrows and light-green beads, thousands of tips, and no name. By February 2026, the question was not only who he was, but how he walked out of a suburban shopping center after killing five women and disappeared.
On a cold Saturday morning in Tinley Park, Illinois, the Lane Bryant store at Brookside Marketplace opened into what should have been an ordinary retail day. The store stood near 191st Street and Harlem Avenue, close to Interstate 80, in a suburban shopping area where a clearance sale and weekend traffic would not have seemed unusual. Shortly before 11 a.m. on 2 February 2008, an unidentified man entered the store. Police later described him as tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing braided hair with light green beads. He was reported to have posed as or appeared like a delivery person before announcing a robbery.
Inside the store were six women: store manager Rhoda McFarland, another employee, and four customers. The gunman forced them into a back room, bound them with duct tape, and shot them. Five died at the scene or from their wounds: McFarland, Jennifer Bishop, Carrie Hudek Chiuso, Sarah Szafranski, and Connie Woolfolk. The sixth woman survived after the bullet grazed her neck. Her identity has not been publicly released, but her description of the attacker became central to the investigation. The attack combined the structure of a retail robbery with a level of violence that investigators and relatives have struggled to reconcile with a simple theft motive.
The emergency call became one of the case's most important pieces of evidence. McFarland was able to contact 911 while the situation was unfolding. Later reports and police notices state that a short audio recording captured both her voice and the muffled voice of the offender. Officers reached the store within minutes, but the killer had already fled. The shopping center was locked down and searched, but no suspect was found. The store itself, once part of a normal commercial landscape, became the center of one of the Chicago area's most haunting unsolved mass murders.
The Tinley Park Police Department, the South Suburban Major Crime Task Force, the Illinois State Police, the FBI, the Will County State's Attorney's Office, and other agencies have been connected to the investigation at different stages. Police released sketches, an updated three-dimensional likeness, a detailed clothing and hair description, a tip line, and a reward notice. The suspect was described as a man between about 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall, with a husky build, medium to dark skin tone, and three to five puffy cornrows pulled back. One braid reportedly hung down the right cheek and ended with four light green beads. He was said to have worn a dark waist-length jacket, black jeans with embroidery on the back pockets, and a charcoal gray ski or skull cap.
The central mystery is not whether a crime occurred. The deaths, survivor account, suspect composites, emergency response, and ongoing police investigation are officially documented. The unresolved question is who the offender was, why the robbery became a mass killing, how he escaped the area without being identified, and whether forensic evidence or a future witness can still connect him to the crime. Later coverage has raised theories about a botched robbery, panic, a hidden personal motive, a transient offender, or someone shielded by silence. None has been proven.
The case remains active in public statements. On later anniversaries, Tinley Park officials and police have said that evidence and leads continue to be reviewed, that newer forensic capabilities are being considered, and that the investigation has not stopped. Family members and journalists have continued to call attention to the five women who were killed and the surviving employee who lived through the attack. The Lane Bryant shooting is therefore a documented criminal case rather than folklore, but its unanswered identity, motive, and escape questions have left it with the unresolved gravity of a modern American mystery.