Episode 6: Hold Up

Summary

CounterClock – Episode 6: Hold Up (May 28, 2026) Host: Kylie Lowe (Audiochuck)

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Episode Overview

In "Hold Up," investigative journalist Kylie Lowe explores a provocative new angle in the infamous unsolved 2008 Lane Bryant murders in Tinley Park, Illinois. This episode investigates whether the now-shuttered Tinley Park Mental Health Center—located just a short walk from the murder scene—might have played a more significant role in the crime than previously considered. Simultaneously, the episode meticulously examines systemic failures in DNA collection among Illinois felons, proposing that these bureaucratic gaps may have allowed a violent perpetrator to evade capture for nearly two decades.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Proximity & Decay of the Tinley Park Mental Health Center

• Location Visit ([00:28]–[03:44]):
  • Kylie takes listeners to the old mental health center property, noting its abandonment and eerie atmosphere.
  • The site is mere walking distance (about 20 minutes) from where the Lane Bryant murders occurred.
  • Security confronts Kylie and her producer for taking photos, emphasizing local unease about the site.

“The vibes just keep getting worse. I wouldn’t even want to step foot inside this property. It is so overgrown and the buildings look extremely creepy.” — Kylie Lowe [02:30]

2. Historical Lawlessness at the Mental Health Center

• Frequent Police Calls ([04:19]–[06:00]):
  • In the mid-2000s, the facility was a hotspot for police activity—often daily, including theft, escape, assault, and more.
  • Multiple sources reinforce the idea that violent individuals, both patients and staff, were present at the center.

“From January 1, 2008, until the morning of the Lane Bryant murders on February 2, officers had been called to the property 13 times.” — Kylie Lowe [05:27]

• Testimony from Lynn, Former Employee ([06:00]–[12:56]):
  • Lynn describes a chaotic environment where escapes were common and abuse by employees was rampant.
  • Patients could use tunnels under the property for undetected exits and entries.
  • Witnessed and experienced abuse, felt unsafe working there.

“It was a disgusting, horrible job. Cleaning blood, semen, urine...If someone wanted to get out of there, they could.” — Lynn [06:36]

3. Connecting the Center to the Lane Bryant Crime

• Possible Suspect Pathways ([10:18]–[12:16]):
  • Descriptions of tunnels and lack of oversight raise the possibility that a perpetrator could have left the center, committed the crime, and returned unnoticed.
  • Medications that controlled violent behavior weren’t always administered, making some patients unpredictable.

"It would be nothing for them to walk out the mental health center...commit a murder, come back, go back into [the center] and go right back up to where you were at." — Lynn [11:46]

4. The Nature of the Lane Bryant Perpetrator

• Criminal Profile ([14:18]–[15:09]):
  • Local and retired officials describe the suspect as “cold, evil, calculating,” and likely previously experienced with violent crime.
  • Several potential suspects considered by police, including Michael Rogers and Michael King, do not ultimately lead to a resolution.

“I think he went there to kill people. I don’t think he went there to rob it. I think he went there with intent.” — Rick Bruno [15:02]

5. DNA Collection Failures in Illinois

• Systemic Issues Uncovered ([17:56]–[27:54]):
  • A 2002 law required DNA from all felons, but bureaucratic delays and incompetence meant that tens of thousands of qualifying individuals were never swabbed, especially in Cook County.
  • Many felons, including violent offenders, slipped through the cracks, leaving crucial forensic evidence missing from state and federal databases.
  • The host explores efforts by the Attorney General’s Office to retroactively collect samples.

"There were approximately 100 defendants being released from state prisons a day...So the number is a big number." — Kara Smith [21:13]

6. Implications for the Lane Bryant Case

• What DNA Failures Could Mean ([26:11]–[27:54]):
  • The absence of a DNA match may reflect not just luck, but systemic obstacles—possibly the suspect was one of the uncollected felons, or deceased before another felony.

"So because I know DNA from so many Illinois felons is missing...I wonder if maybe the Tinley Park suspect was one of those felons who should have had his DNA taken but it never was." — Kylie Lowe [27:33]

7. Gang Angle & Culture of Silence

• Alternate Suspect Profile ([30:13]–[34:48]):
  • Suggests that if the perpetrator was a gang member, loyalty or fear could prevent witnesses from coming forward.
  • Despite detailed suspect sketches (e.g., cornrow hairstyle with green beads), no personal tip-offs have led to the killer’s identification.

"A gang member would have had comrades, loved ones and other people in his life who were either fiercely loyal to him or extremely fearful of him." — Kylie Lowe [31:45]

8. Unifying Theories and a New Lead

• Complex Suspect Profile ([34:48]–[36:32]):
  • Kylie posits that maybe the killer wasn’t simply “unhinged” or “professional,” but a complicated overlay: part gang member, part escape artist, part skilled killer.
  • Hints at new investigative leads involving a local felon/parolee noted for violent crimes and proximity to the site.

“Maybe he was part professional killer, part experienced escapist, part unhinged hostage taker, part premeditator, part protected gang member. And to my complete surprise, I found someone that checked a lot of those boxes.” — Kylie Lowe [34:48]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the mental health center’s dangers:

  • "There was very mean individuals at the Menelaus Center. Some should have been in prison, not there. And there were homicidal people there." — Lynn [06:00]

• On systemic DNA failures:

  • “When you look at terrible crimes... like with the Lane Bryant case, you have to wonder if the offenders were among the felons whose DNA was not gathered.” — Kara Smith [24:56]
  • “How in the world is this person not in the system?” — Kara Smith [27:09]

• On the suspect’s criminal mindset:

  • "Cold, evil, calculating...if he’s done it once, he can do it again." — Rick Bruno [14:18]

• Victim family perspective:

  • “This thing with death...I think you start to really understand, you know, life. It's the one thing that's promised... but it's no guarantee.” — Ed Zabracki recounting Aaron’s words [34:02]

• On community silence and fear:

  • “No one came out. You know, we had such a detailed sketch...and it’s wild to me that someone didn’t say something.” — Kylie Lowe [31:36]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Tinley Park Mental Health Center Site Visit: [00:28]–[03:44]
• Facility’s troubled history and staff interview (Lynn): [06:00]–[12:56]
• DNA Systemic Failures: [17:56]–[27:54]
• Discussion of Gang Activity and Silence: [30:13]–[34:48]
• Unifying Suspect Theory & New Leads Introduced: [34:48]–[36:32]

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Tone & Language

Kylie Lowe maintains a blend of investigative rigor and empathetic concern, reinforcing the gravity of the cold case, the devastation for victim families, and the daunting complexity of unsolved violent crimes. The tone is earnest, sometimes chilling, and always forward-driving—she is both critical of systemic failures and hopeful that dogged inquiry might finally shine a light on the truth.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode of CounterClock challenges prior assumptions about the Lane Bryant murders, introducing a plausible new angle focused on the nearby mental health facility and exposing how bureaucratic holes in DNA collection could conceal a killer. It highlights the complexity of cold cases—entwining institutional neglect, the unseen fissures of small-town life, and the silent codes that let such horrors persist. Listeners are left with unsettling questions and a hint of a new lead, setting the stage for deeper revelations in upcoming episodes.

Transcript

[Ashley Flowers]

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Brit break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before and not the cases 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.

[Kylie Lowe]

Wherever you listen to podcasts, this is episode six. Hold up 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 [e-mail]. So I'm going to try and see if we can. I'm going to go down to the other side and see if there's more of an area we could pull over. It's a Saturday morning in November 2025, and for the third time in a matter of five months or so, I'm in a rental car navigating through traffic in Tinley Park. Because the village itself isn't very big, most of my field reporting has stayed within a small radius, with Brookside Marketplace at the epicenter. After stores began opening there in 2005 and 2006, it became the centerpiece of the sleepy bedroom community. Here's former Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabracki and local businessman Brian Yonker.

[Lynn]

It was our premier shopping center. It literally is even today, probably our premier shopping center.

[Ed Zabracki]

It brought a lot of excitement for people to, you know, shopping and restaurants and what have you all in that area.

[Kylie Lowe]

The only other place in the village with this much of a footprint and notoriety is 10 minutes down the road. This is it. That's it. So this is the former site of the Tinley Park Mental Health Center. There are multiple buildings on this property and it is fenced off. It's been inoperable since 2012. The former site of the Tinley Park Mental Health center is a 280 acre swath of land that was previously owned and operated by the of Illinois. It closed permanently in 2012 and in 2023, state lawmakers and the governor agreed to sell it to the village for $1. For more than a decade, it's wasted away as leaders aim to remediate its many boarded up buildings. Those buildings, those buildings are rough as I and a video producer named Hannah who's joining me park our car along a barricaded fence line and get out. The. The vibes just keep getting worse. I wouldn't even want to step foot inside this property. It is so overgrown and the buildings look extremely creepy. It's like a time capsule. It's like everything stopped here 15, 20 years ago, stopped working, and everyone just left it. From where we're standing, though, we can see the marquee sign for Brookside Marketplace in the distance. The shopping center, and more specifically the backside of the strip mall building that Lane Bryant was formerly located in, is within walking distance. We estimate it would take the average person about 20 minutes or so to get there. As Hannah snaps some photos of the collapsing buildings punctured with overgrowth and the maze of cracked streets within the site, we notice a concerned looking security guard with a cell phone pressed against one of her ears, making her way towards us.

[Kara Smith]

I mean, to me it's okay, but

[Kylie Lowe]

the people that own this, they don't want y' all on the property. It's village of Tinley park, correct?

[Kara Smith]

Yeah, but they. That's why I just called. They said they don't want no pictures.

[Kylie Lowe]

I disagreed, but it was cold and unnecessary to keep pressing the issue, so we left. Visiting the location, though, and seeing firsthand just how close it is to the crime scene made some comments that several of my sources shared in their interviews seem more important than ever. And several questions became apparent. Could the suspect have come from this place? Did he hide out there after the

[Ed Zabracki]

crime for a while? You'd hear people say, oh, it must be somebody from there.

[Rick Bruno]

I felt it was somebody with. Had psychological issues against women. You gotta be somewhat, you know, sick in the head to do something like that.

[Kylie Lowe]

I think dude was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. I think he was deranged.

[Rick Bruno]

He was crazy.

[Kylie Lowe]

On its face, this theory initially felt like a stretch to me. I mean, realistically, the odds seemed low that the perpetrator was an escapee who'd come to Lane Bryant armed with duct tape, a gun, and had managed to pull off posing as a delivery driver. But it wasn't impossible. You see, the Tinley Park Mental Health center wasn't just super close to Brookside Marketplace. It was a hot spot for police activity throughout the mid-2000s, activity that sometimes resulted in criminal arrests. For example, in 2006, Tinley Park Police responded to incidents at the property 387 times in 2007, officers went there 209 times. In 2008, TPPD was called there 225 times. The call out data I obtained from the village shows that during some months, police officers were there multiple times a day. And on average at least three times every week. They'd get called for incidents involving theft, sexual abuse, assaults, bomb threats, disorderly conduct, escapes and Battery. From January 1, 2008, until the morning of the Lane Bryant murders on February 2, officers had been called to the property 13 times.

[Lynn]

There was very mean individuals at the Menelaus Center. Some should have been in prison, not there. And there were homicidal people there.

[Kylie Lowe]

That's Lynn, a former employee who worked at the facility for seven years in the mid to late 1990s. I interviewed her over the phone last year, and she explained to me that she had a passion for helping people who had developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. But almost as soon as she took the job at the mental health center, she discovered that what she believed was going to be a professional and secure place to treat and rehabilitate patients was anything but that.

[Lynn]

It was a disgusting, horrible job. Cleaning blood, semen, urine. It was a horrible, horrible job. The mental health center did have locked wards and locked doors, however. If someone wanted to get out of there, they could. They would just. You'd open the door to bring in food or something, and they'd dart past you and go running.

[Kylie Lowe]

Did that sort of thing happen often? And if it did, was it ever really noticed?

[Lynn]

People who lived across from the mental health center knew if they saw someone to dial 911, and it wasn't once in a while.

[Kylie Lowe]

Lynn told me that patients escaping from the property became such a common occurrence that for years there were signs posted along Harlem Avenue warning motorists to never pick up hit hitchhikers. The signs implied that someone walking on Harlem Avenue likely had come from the mental health center and could be a danger to themselves or others. But according to Lynn, it wasn't just the patients who posed a potential threat. She also claims some of her former co workers were purportedly dangerous as well.

[Lynn]

A lot of the workers were much more better people than the patients, criminals themselves.

[Kylie Lowe]

Can you expand on that?

[Lynn]

I witnessed abuse all the time. I got threatened to be killed for talking.

[Kylie Lowe]

How did people like that get hired by the mental health center and then retain their jobs with that kind of behavior?

[Lynn]

All she had to do was, number one, we had a great union. Number two, all you had to do was take the civil service test and know somebody you were in.

[Kylie Lowe]

I didn't want to just take Lynn's word for it, though. So I searched for any records I could find that might corroborate what she told me about the facility, prior patients and employees. I specifically wanted to find documentation from around the time of the Lane Bryant murders. And, boy, did persistence pay off. Turns out, between 2008 and 2011, an Illinois watchdog organization called the South Suburban Regional Human Rights Authority conducted seven separate investigations into complaints of employee misconduct, verbal abuse, staff smoking in the buildings, staff selling patients contraband, inadequate medical care, and restricting or denying visitor access. The general counsel for this organization did me a solid and gave me all the reports from their archives. In one incident, a patient claimed she'd been injected with psychotropic medication after a staff member caught her praying by her bedside. Human rights investigators concluded that's exactly what had occurred, but they wrote in their report that the incident didn't violate the facility's consumer rights statement. So life went on. Other reports I read, though, did determine that in some instances, several protocols had been broken. Old news coverage by the Chicago Tribune, South Town Star, and CBS News reported that on several occasions, actual laws were suspected to have been broken. These even more egregious issues occurred across various years while the facility was operational. In 2011, a former psychologist was charged with coercing a patient into performing a sex act on him. And in 1986, a young man who had an intellectual disability claimed to have been beaten and sexually abused. This dark history about the employees and their treatment of the patients, as well as the patient's easy access to the streets of Tinley park, gave me pause. What were some ways that a patient was, or an employee could get on and off that property without going potentially like a traditional route.

[Lynn]

All the elevators went down to the tunnel. They could go down in that tunnel and come up in several different buildings and then walk out the front door without ever being seen leaving. We had to use those tunnels a lot. In the winter, we used them to take patients to the dentist, to the infirmary. I hated being in them, but got a lot of the workers would smoke dope down there. They had drinks down there.

[Kylie Lowe]

They didn't care what were typical operations on a weekend morning, like a Saturday morning.

[Lynn]

Lackadaisical. No big bosses around. No one cares what anyone's doing.

[Kylie Lowe]

When I brought up the Lane Bryant case during my interview with Lynn, she had a moment of clarity about her former workplace that she'd never had before.

[Lynn]

I shopped in that store. That could have been any of us. It was horrible. In all of us, I don't think there was a human being that lived in Finley that didn't look for him.

[Kylie Lowe]

In the wake of the Lane Bryant homicides. Did you ever think, huh, I wonder if they're over there questioning anybody?

[Lynn]

No. Why? I don't know. But no, I did not. And when you said it, a big light bulb went off, like, yeah, that would have been like the perfect place to hide. The police were looking along I80. I'll guarantee you they weren't looking there. They were too busy. I80. I80. That's all they worried about was him being on I80. It would be nothing for them to walk out the mental health center, whether it was a worker or a patient. A worker would have it a little easier, maybe, but a patient could definitely do it. You're an elevator and a tunnel. Walk away from freedom. The wards were locked, but the front door wasn't. So you could get off the elevator, go out the front door, walk over to Lane Bryant's, commit a murder, come back, go back into vine hall, take the elevator, go back down the tunnel and go right back up to where you were at.

[Kylie Lowe]

That's very concerning. Lynn told me that the patients who she remembers most often tried to escape or did successfully escape were folks who required strong antipsychotic medications or sedatives that suppressed violent outbursts. When the patients didn't get those drugs for whatever reason, she says, they became extremely unpredictable and paranoid until they could be medicated. Combine that with the fact that patients could essentially come and go from the mental health center property without recourse, the theory that the Lane Bryant suspect might have been someone from there who'd experience experienced a psychotic homicidal episode doesn't seem so far fetched anymore.

[Lynn]

They saved those strong meds for the worst people.

[Kylie Lowe]

If that individual doesn't get the medication, they become overly aggressive, go out and commit a crime in return and receive that medication. By the time anyone sees them next, they're going to be calm and sedated. They're not going to be displaying behaviors that would align with the behavior that the offender did when they were committing the crime.

[Lynn]

Absolutely.

[Kylie Lowe]

Do you remember if the patients were majority male or female?

[Lynn]

It was a lot of males.

[Kylie Lowe]

Whether or not Tinley park police ever investigated a potential link to the mental health center is something I don't know. They've never said that they did look there, but they've also never said that they didn't. Retired TPPD Commander Rick Bruno and former Mayor Ed Zabracki, who were both very close to the investigation, don't know the answer either. More than likely, all these years later, patient and employee records regarding who was at the Mental health center in February 2008 are long gone. But I think it could be critically important to the case to at least know if potentially violent individuals with criminal records were at the mental health center. A conclusion many folks closest to this crime have made is that the Lane Bryant offender was someone who was comfortable with crime, particularly violent crime.

[Rick Bruno]

Cold, evil, calculating. I find it hard to live with myself if I run over a squirrel by accident. And this guy has done this to not only these women, but their families and apparently has no problem with it. You know, I don't like to say humans are inhuman, but if he's done it once, he can do it again.

[Kara Smith]

You couldn't do that and have any empathy or love in your heart. And I believe there are people out there like that, unfortunately.

[Kylie Lowe]

Do you think he had committed a murder before?

[Kara Smith]

Kind of, I do, because most things I've learned is when you shoot somebody execution style, you've done it before.

[Rick Bruno]

I think he went there to kill people. I don't think he went there to rob it. I think he went there with intent.

[Kylie Lowe]

This characterization of the suspect is probably why Tinley park police paid particularly close attention to men who'd committed crimes similar to the Lane Bryant murders in the suburbs of Chicago in the months after the crime. For example, in June 2008, a guy named Michael Rogers robbed an insurance office in Dalton, Illinois, about 25 minutes northeast of Tinley Park. He held a woman who was working inside hostage and then beat, stabbed and shot her. When police officers responded, they shot and killed Michael when he came outside with a gun. He was the same race and within the estimated age range of the Lane Bryant suspect. At the time, Tinley park police wouldn't confirm if he was a person of interest in their case. But in private, there were some detectives who told Carrie Chuso's husband, Tony, they thought he could be their guy.

[Rick Bruno]

Pulled me aside and told me a story about how he thinks that they caught the guy and he's dead because there was a robbery in Dalton, same situation, took hostages, and they shot him. And they think. And they, the police officers think it was the same. The same guy. They told the Tinley park police, but they said, I don't know if the Tinley park looked into it or anything like that, but they said, but that police officer thought that that was the guy.

[Kylie Lowe]

However, because so many years have passed and the Lane Bryant murders are still unsolved, it's safe to assume that Michael Rogers was someone police eventually ruled out. There was also another man, this guy named Michael King. Who'd been arrested in April 2008 for shooting five people dead inside a home in the south suburb of Chatham, Illinois, which is also located about 25 minutes northeast of Tinley Park. King hadn't acted alone, though. He'd had two accomplices with him, and the trio specifically set their sights on the house where the crime occurred to obtain cash and jewelry. That was a pretty big dissimilarity to the Lane Bryant murders. After King came on Tinley Park's radar, he was never named an official person of interest or suspect in the Lane Bryant homicides. News reports from that time explain that TPPD planned to compare either his or his accomplice's DNA to DNA in their case, but it's unclear if that ever happened or what the results were. That information is something only TPPD detectives would know. One would think, though, that Tinley park police's ability to rule out violent felons would have been as simple as bing bang boom. Put the Lane Bryant suspect DNA in the state and federal databases and see if anyone pops. But in Cook County, Illinois, during the early 2000s, that was way more complicated than it sounds.

[Kara Smith]

A large population of defendants who were covered by the new law were released without that DNA being collected.

[Ashley Flowers]

In the world of true crime, the real story isn't always in the headlines. It's in the evidence. I'm Brandi churchwell, host of 13Zero 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 podcasts.

[Kylie Lowe]

We've all probably heard someone use the idiom dropping the ball. It's a way to convey that you, I or someone else failed in a task or responsibility, regardless of whether it was intentional or not. The end result of dropping the ball on something is that the outcome isn't what it would have been. And in some situations, that can be catastrophic. When I tell you that a lot of people dropped a lot of balls with regards to obtaining convicted felons DNA in the state of Illinois in the early 2000s, that doesn't even begin to describe it. On August 22, 2002, a brand new state law went into effect in Illinois which required every felon currently incarcerated or who'd been sentenced on or after that date to give a sample of their DNA. This included felons who were on Supervised probation as well. Prior to that point, DNA samples were only retrieved from specific offenders who'd been convicted of certain sex crimes, murder, and so forth. Thanks to the newly implemented all felons DNA law in 2002, though, more felon DNA samples than ever would go to the Illinois State Police to be put into the state database, as well as to the FBI, which would make sure samples got entered into the national database codis. This way, law enforcement agencies trying to crack unsolved crimes could compare their case evidence to known offenders DNA and determine if someone was linked to a particular crime or. Or multiple crimes. But Fast forward to August 2009, though, and the Illinois Attorney General's office discovered what I have to imagine felt like their worst nightmare.

[Kara Smith]

A large population of defendants who were covered by the new law were released without that DNA being collected.

[Kylie Lowe]

That's Kara Smith, former deputy chief of staff for former Attorney General of Illinois Lisa Madigan. We spoke over Zoom last year, which is why her audio sounds a tad glitchy at times. Kara and her team realized that for years after the 2002 law went into effect, the Illinois Department of Corrections and county probation departments across the state, but most prominently Cook county, had allowed tens of thousands of convicted felons to be released from prisons or supervised probation programs without making them give samples of their DNA. The Illinois Attorney General's office at the time estimated that DNA from at least 50,000 convicts had never been collected.

[Kara Smith]

There were approximately 100 defendants being released from state prisons a day. So that's 27,000 defendants right there alone. And we know that probation departments were situated very similarly. So the number is a big number.

[Kylie Lowe]

According to Kara, it took eight to nine months for the Department of Corrections to comply with the law and actually start collecting felon's DNA. But it took far longer for individual county probation offices to get on board. The Illinois State Police, which controlled the Illinois offender database, blamed the failure on not having the right collection kits. County probation staffers blamed lack of knowledge and training because, you see, initially they'd been told DNA had to be collected via blood draws, which they had no medical training to actually do. It wasn't until 2004 that they were instructed to start swabbing felons in the mouths. And of course, during that transition period, convicts were falling through the cracks by the droves.

[Kara Smith]

It put the prison system, which is a critical piece of the puzzle, really at a disadvantage, particularly when the technology required a blood draw, because you can't stand that up overnight. You have to hire staff, and you have to establish procedures. I know that, you know, probation departments were likely similarly situated to the prison system in that you don't have blood drawers on staff.

[Kylie Lowe]

But it wasn't just lack of resources or proper instructions. Coverage by the Chicago Tribune and Prison Legal news stated that some county probation offices just straight up admitted that they'd let upwards of a year go by before getting around to actually collecting samples from released inmates or parolees. Felons who'd walked out of prison or jail in that time without giving their DNA included registered sex offenders and people who'd committed violent crimes. By 2009, 2010, with so many DNA samples from Illinois felons missing from the state and national databases, Carr and her team began the tedious task of trying to track down every felon who'd been released without providing their DNA.

[Kara Smith]

We identified the people that were missing from the database. We also got lists of convicted sex offenders that were registered in Illinois who did not have DNA on file. And we simply sent them letters saying, you know, you owe a sample. Please come to this address between the hours of, you know, eight and two on this day. And the Illinois law carries a criminal penalty for failure to cooperate and failure to submit. So we included that language in there.

[Kylie Lowe]

But a letter in your mailbox, even if it is strongly worded, is more bark than bite. And Kara and her team knew that

[Kara Smith]

if there's an offense out there that I have not been yet charged with, maybe you would just ride your luck and not ignore the letter.

[Kylie Lowe]

To her surprise, though, that wasn't what happened.

[Kara Smith]

It was one of those things where I was unsure if we were going to get anyone to show up, but we did, and long lines, and we just got to work. We had various stations set up and began to collect those samples.

[Kylie Lowe]

The fact remained, about seven years had passed before the full extent of the problem was realized and the attorney general's office could get their arms around the issue, many felons fell through the cracks, possibly forever. In 2009, Kara emphasized to the Chicago Tribune just how crippling this failure was for law enforcement agencies across the state, but none, perhaps more than the investigators in Tinley Park. She said, quote, when you look at terrible crimes that were committed where investigations have not produced a defendant, like with the Lane Bryant case, you have to wonder if the offenders were among the felons whose DNA was not gathered, end quote.

[Kara Smith]

You know, I have the same reaction to that horrible offense today that I did then. And I just think of the families of the victims and how they. That sense of, I Don't know how. Not that you could ever have closure like that, but just sort of wondering how such a thing could happen.

[Kylie Lowe]

To this day, the ripple effect of so many felons DNA not being taken during the early 2000s is still felt in Illinois. In 2012, state law was updated which allowed courts and authorities to retrieve people's DNA pre conviction. Kara now works in pretrial services doing that very thing. And quite often she sees defendants files come across her desk who have never been swabbed for DNA but should have been.

[Kara Smith]

We know on the pretrial reports that we create, we indicate whether the defendant has a sample on file. So we're trying to highlight for the stakeholders, defendants who may owe a sample and those who have one on file already. So there's no. I wish there was a silver bullet solution to this issue, but there's not.

[Kylie Lowe]

This many years later though, I actually think officials failure to collect felon's DNA might tell us more about the Lane Bryant suspect than we think. I know it sounds backwards, but let me explain. From pretty much day one, law enforcement and those closest to the case strongly believed the Lane Bryant murderer was someone who'd already committed a violent crime in their life.

[Lynn]

Do you believe this perpetrator meant to kill all six women?

[Ashley Flowers]

Yes.

[Lynn]

He did not want to leave a witness. What was going through through the perpetrator's mind to take these innocent women and put them in this position? I'll tell you. A wicked mind, a violent mind, a mind that does not care about you, you and you.

[Rick Bruno]

If he's done it once, he can do it again.

[Kara Smith]

When you shoot somebody execution style, you've done it before.

[Kylie Lowe]

This is why it baffled so many people that a DNA hit didn't come right away.

[Kara Smith]

How in the world is this person not in the system?

[Kylie Lowe]

A lot of times these cases are solved and they barely have half of the evidence that was at the scene. Even just the fact that they have DNA, it's just wild to me that they haven't been able to go further with that.

[Rick Bruno]

There was no doubt in my mind that we were gonna get this guy. No doubt in my mind. And I was wrong.

[Kylie Lowe]

So because I know DNA from so many Illinois felons is missing from the databases. I wonder if maybe the Tinley park suspect was one of those felons who should have had his DNA taken. But it never was. And him not being in the databases now, 18 years later, suggests that one of two things likely happened.

[Kara Smith]

The fact that there hasn't been a hit that we're aware of tells us that all these intervening years, these 18 intervening years, whomever committed those, that those horrific offenses hasn't been convicted of a

[Kylie Lowe]

felony offense or they're deceased.

[Kara Smith]

Correct.

[Ed Zabracki]

We can, I think, safely assume that, you know, they haven't been arrested to the point that their DNA was swabbed because it would have pinged in the system with the sample. I'm told Tinley park police have. We can assume that this person has not confided in many others, which is a rarity for a crime like this. Does that mean we assume this person is dead, is no longer with us?

[Lynn]

I don't know.

[Kara Smith]

I mean, he could be lying somewhere dead too, for all I know. If he's dead, you know, it'd be nice to know so we could all stop worrying about it.

[Kylie Lowe]

If I were a Tinley park detective working the case today, and I didn't think my suspect was a goody two shoes prior to 2008, but couldn't prove it because of the screw up in the early 2000s, one type of individual I'd be looking for is a male convict who got out of prison or off probation in the early 2000s, but who might have died not long after the Lane Bryant murders. A guy matching those parameters wouldn't have shown up in the databases in 2008 when police first looked, and he hasn't come up in the years after the crime because he didn't live long enough to get convicted of another felony. When I think about who might fall into that category, one type of individual comes to mind that was definitely, you know, a conspiracy that a lot of people had. Oh, it was a gang thing.

[Ashley Flowers]

In the world of true crime, the real story isn't always in the headlines. It's in the evidence. I'm Brandi churchwell, host of 13Zero 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 podcasts.

[Kylie Lowe]

Per the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, the presence of gangs in Chicago and murders associated with gangs have been problematic for the Windy City and its state suburbs for decades. For example, as of 2017, law enforcement estimated there were over 100,000 active gang members from various groups and subgroups in the Chicago metropolitan area. Blood is a form of currency in the economy of ganglands. And 2008, 2009 and 2010 were particularly bloody years. Chicago Police Department's annual report for 2008, for example, stated that 229 murders, nearly 50% of all murders in CPD's jurisdiction, were gang related. If the Lane Bryant Killer was a gang member, it would make sense why no one ever came forward and positively ID'd him. Despite multiple opportunities and avenues to do so.

[Kara Smith]

Police in Tinley park have made appeals throughout the week for the public to

[Kylie Lowe]

call a tip hotline.

[Lynn]

This guy had his hair in cornrows with a single straight strand that had four green beads hanging over one side of his face. Now, I'm sure somebody knows who killed five women in cold blood in that sleepy suburb outside of Chicago, but so far that person has not come forward.

[Kylie Lowe]

No one came out. You know, we had such a detailed sketch with, like, the braid and the beads, and it's wild to me that someone didn't say something. A gang member would have had comrades, loved ones and other people in his life who were either fiercely loyal to him or extremely fearful of him. And no amount of billboard trucks.

[Ed Zabracki]

The truck is a printed color ad

[Kylie Lowe]

10ft by 20 or America's most Wanted segments his appearance.

[Lynn]

But if you know, someone who once

[Kylie Lowe]

had their hair just like this was going to crack a gang member's cone of silence, especially if he just killed five innocent women in cold blood. Here's former America's Most Wanted producer Jenna Griffiths.

[Jenna Griffiths]

America's Most Wanted really did work. We caught so many of the fugitives I worked on, so this is one where we never caught him. It was so unusual to have a mass shooting or a mass execution really, without the person being found right away. Lane Bryant is a mass shooting, but it's really a mass execution, which is so stark and just, if you really think about it, so horribly terrifying for those women. But to have the sketch, to have the audio, you know, even though it was only a snippet of audio, to have the dash cam footage, those are three pretty good pillars to go on. And the fact that for all the cases that I worked on that they never found him, he never slipped up, he never said anything to a roommate, a neighborhood, no family member ever thought, hmm, you know, so and so was Ms. You know, wasn't around for a few days. So I think that that's another thing that's really stuck out to me, is that America's Most Wanted really did work. But for some reason in this case, it didn't. And unfortunately, it was just a terribly tragic case for it not to work.

[Kylie Lowe]

No one is more Aware of the collateral damage of Illinois's gang violence than Connie Woolfolk's brother Aaron.

[Ed Zabracki]

I was shot myself back in 2002.

[Kylie Lowe]

He wasn't affiliated with a gang, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Ed Zabracki]

I went out to a little club over in Harvey, Illinois, and, yeah, we were standing out in front of the club. They said it was a bunch of gang initiations going on in the area at the time. Somebody shot across the street, and I got hit twice.

[Kylie Lowe]

Just like in his sister's case. Police have never caught the police person who shot him.

[Ed Zabracki]

This thing with death, it's just one of those things that when you experience it at a young age, I think you start to really understand, you know, life. It's the one thing that's promised that we all will see one day. We hope to see it, you know, on our own and not somebody taking it from us, but it's no guarantee.

[Kylie Lowe]

The more I mul over the possibility that the Lane Bryant suspect could be someone who is now deciding deceased, but who could have been involved in even more crimes while he was alive, the more I stewed on something journalist Ben Bradley had previously mentioned to me.

[Ed Zabracki]

This guy had a lot of things break in his direction. And the fact we're still talking about the case nearly 18 years later tells you that he's either lucky or good, which is also scary, isn't it?

[Kylie Lowe]

Scary indeed. Which is why I began to wonder, maybe everyone had been thinking about the killer too linearly. Maybe he was a combination of all the characterizations people had made about him. Maybe he wasn't just one thing. Maybe he was part professional killer, part experienced escapist, part unhinged hostage taker, part premeditator, part protected gang member. And to my complete surprise, I found someone that checked a lot of those boxes. An Illinois felon who'd been let out of prison in the early 2000s, whose parolee address was near Brookside Marketplace, and who had a reputation for carrying out extremely violent crimes in very public places.

[Lynn]

And they've got the street blocked off,

[Rick Bruno]

and the Northbrook Police are swarming the house.

[Lynn]

Bank robbery at Fifth Third Bank. Wanted it to fail. Black and a white vehicle. Handgun was displayed. Hey, we got a cop being shot

[Kylie Lowe]

out in front of my house.

[Lynn]

Where? At Kilpatrick in Lincolnwood. Major shootout.

[Kylie Lowe]

So I saw the gun coming up

[Lynn]

over his door as he was swinging his right arm around. And then that's immediately where I'm like,

[Kylie Lowe]

oh, okay, here we go.

[Rick Bruno]

That's going to be a gunfight because you. He's coming up with a gun.

[Lynn]

Stay on the line.

[Kylie Lowe]

I'm transferring to the fire department. Does anybody talk to you about this?

[Lynn]

No. It's not a good subject to investigate or try to push on as far as reopening avenues for some cases to get solved.

[Kylie Lowe]

That's next time on Counterclockwise, episode seven, A History of Violence. 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

[Ashley Flowers]

the heart of every case I cover. I don't just retell crime stories, I investigate them.

[Kylie Lowe]

I'm speaking with families, searching court records

[Ashley Flowers]

and piecing together the facts that have

[Kylie Lowe]

been overlooked and forgotten with time. The result? True crime storytelling that digs as deeply into a case as you do. You can listen to Dark down east wherever you get your podcasts.