Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. Hey, everybody, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious. I have a case that I want to talk to you about today. And, you know, I kind of feel like after 38 years in this business, I know all of the massive crimes out there, but every so often something comes across my radar that sort of throws me for a loop. And this case today threw me for a hell of a hula hoop because I had not heard of it. Many of you may have, and I am, and I am glad if you have. And I feel embarrassed that I haven't. But when I sort of looked into the headlines on it, I was absolutely gobsmacked that 17 and a half years after this quintuple murder, which was supposed to be six murders, one went wrong. It's not solved, and there's no suspect. But it's not because this was a clever, secret, strategized murder. You know, this was messy and crazy without a mask. All the things that lent to loads of clues, right? This was no Brian Coburger. Right. This was just somebody who did something so horrendous and was very careless, and yet there is no suspect. So let me take you back to the beginning to explain a little bit about this case and how it started, how it, how it evolved, what happened at the murder scene and then what happened with the investigation. And then I'm going to talk to somebody who's like a dog with a bone on this one. He is not letting this crime go, not because he's the survivors or he's a victim's family member or a survivor's family member. He's. It's because he is a true crime fan, just like you, and he believes that this does not deserve to be unsolved, that there's just too much out there and that us, all of us together, we actually could make a difference in this one. So let me start here. The whole thing began just after 10am on February 2 in 2008. It was groundhog Day. Tinley Park, Illinois, it's just a suburb outside of Chicago. And inside the Lane Bryant clothing store were four women. Rhoda McFarland was the manager of the store. There was a store clerk who was also working, and there were two customers. This is the morning, right? So maybe not such a shopping time. You know, just after 10 in the morning. I don't do a lot of shopping in the morning. But two customers were in the store. A man walks in and tells Rhoda, the manager, that he is a delivery driver. But soon he would bring out a 40 caliber Glock. And then everything went sideways. He forced all four of those women, the manager, the employee, the two customers who were in their shopping. He forced all of them into the back room. And then he duct taped their hands. He ordered them to lie face down on the floor. Two more shoppers then came into the store to the front door in the middle of all of this. And what an unfortunate moment for them as well. He grabbed them too. Then he brought them back into the back room and he duct taped them as well. And then he put garments from the store, from the Lane Bryant store undergarments over their heads as hoods. So now you've got six women, all of them duct taped, all of them forced to lie on the floor face down, all of them trapped in this back room. But at 10:44am the manager, Rhoda McFarland, somehow she manages to dial 911 on her cell phone. Obviously she was trying to do this secretly because you can sort of hear her saying, lane Bryan, but she is not talking. She is trying to secretly call 911 to get help. Also on that call, you can hear the suspect's voice. It's a little bit faint, it's a bit muffled, but it is definitely there in the background. Have a listen. Here is where the story is so unbearably tragic. Two minutes after Rhoda places that 911 call, a Tinley park police officer arrives at the store. And that should be the end of this, right? Two minutes. They were there fast. They would have caught this guy, right? But it was too late. Within two minutes, it was already too late. The gunman had shot every single one of those six women execution style. Just imagine this for a minute. Two minutes. Six women, all shot execution style in that back room. Five of them died instantly. One of them survived, and the police say she survived because she turned her head just at the last moment as he was pulling the trigger and the bullet grazed her neck. Now, I'm going to talk about that a little bit because you may have questions. Wait, hold on. That's impossible. You don't just graze someone's neck after executing five women and walk away. There's a lot of good reasons why that could have easily happened. You're going to hear that. Just a moment. But she was able to give a description to the police, and the investigators were able to create a 3D composite sketch. This is what she could tell them. The killer was an African American male, 5 foot 9 to 6ft tall, stocky build, Wearing a black ski cap with braids or cornrows that were sticking out. So they created the sketch just from that. That sketch went right across the country. It was nationwide and actually billboards went up all across the Midwest as well. This was big. This was massive. This was five murdered women but an attempt for a sixth as well, right? Absolutely bizarre that this all happened within two minutes and still they get there in two minutes. And 17 and a half years later, it is unsolved. That extraordinarily dangerous maniacal killer is still out there. Possibly unless he's dead or jailed somewhere else. 911 emergency.
