chicago pd suspect serial killer in black women slayings

For the last 20 years, someone has been killing Black women in Chicago. Thirteen years ago Teresa Bunn was already eight months pregnant when her body was found inside a burning trash can. Just one day after another woman by the name of Hazel Marion Lewis was found in a similar state, burning in a trash can. Now, according to the Murder Accountability Project (MAP), these women are just two out of 51 women in Chi-town to have been found murdered, their bodies lit on fire. All 51 of the deaths were caused by strangulation, but many of their bodies were disposed of in trash cans. All the victims were women, but more than three-quarters of them were Black Women.

And now — finally — Chicago PD are interested in finding out who is doing all this killing after decades of pressure from activists over these unsolved murders. “We believe that there is a serial killer in Chicago that is on the loose,” said Gregg Greer of Freedom First International brought up the report during a Police Board meeting. According to a report by the MAP, the suspicious circumstances around each of these deaths “have characteristics of serial murder.”

“If you look at these, at the nature of the cases, it’s classic. It couldn’t be more serial-looking,” said Thomas Hargrove, founder of the Murder Accountability Project. “It’s got every element for a classic pattern.”

Related to these cases, Chicago police had collected 21 separate DNA profiles from unidentified victims but found no matches to single out a potential killer. Revisiting this evidence, police are auditing all the forensic evidence related to the case. “It could take a long time” to complete the examination of the cases, said Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the police department.