Serial Murders of Black Women Series: The Unsolved Murders of Chicago Women

CPD to probe whether serial killer at work in 51 unsolved murders of women

Vice News:  Is There A Serial Killer Roaming in Chicago

Theresa Bunn and Hazel Lewis are just two of 75 Chicago women who were murdered in the past 18 years that are unsolved to this day.

The following article is from the Chicago Sun-Times Newspaper regarding the unsolved murders of Black Chicago women from early 2000s

Facing pressure from activists over the unsolved killings of 51 women since 2001, the Chicago Police Department has begun to review those cases to determine if a serial killer was at work.

A report by the Murder Accountability Project, a Virginia-based nonprofit group that analyzes information about homicides, said the killings of the 51 women — all of whom were strangled or asphyxiated — “have characteristics of serial murder.”

In the past, Chicago police had collected 21 separate DNA profiles of unidentified people other than the victims, Guglielmi said. There were no matches among the 21 profiles to point to a serial killer, he said.

Guglielmi said multiple DNA profiles were collected in some of the killings. That could be because some of the women were sex workers and had multiple sex partners, he said.

Detectives will coordinate with the FBI when they need technical assistance during their review of the evidence, Guglielmi said.

Police are doing an audit of all of the forensic evidence collected in the cases — everything from fingernails to semen to blood samples, he said.

“It could take a long time” to complete the examination of the cases, Guglielmi said.

According to the Murder Accountability Project’s report, most of the 51 victims in Chicago were found in alleyways, garbage cans, empty lots or abandoned buildings. Many of the cases involved prostitutes and appeared to have been sexually motivated, the report said.

“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.”

“It actually stretches credulity to imagine that these 51 women were killed by 51 separate men,” he said.

In an interview Friday, Hargrove said he’s “relieved” the Chicago police are “taking a hard look” at the 51 killings.

“It is extremely valuable to look at all the cases as a group. We are pretty confident there will be commonality,” he said.

The killings were identified using a computer algorithm “known to detect serial killings,” according to the Murder Accountability Project’s report.

Two of the victims, Theresa Bunn and Hazel Marion Lewis, were found dead in burning trash cans within a day of each other in November 2007 at Washington Park, the report said. Bunn was eight months pregnant. At least seven of the victims were found in garbage receptacles.

Back in 2007, I wrote a blog post on Theresa Bunn.  Ms. Bunn was eight months pregnant when she was murdered.  Around the same time period, another story about a missing pregnant woman was found murdered near Cleveland.  She got intense media coverage and police went full force in searching the missing pregnant mother.  Her name is Jesse Davis.  Her murderer was her ex boyfriend, Bobbie Cutts.    Her death and funeral were covered by the media whereas the murder victim from Chicago barely got any coverage.  No obituary, no extensive interviews from friends and family.  Little more than a footnote in Chicago media.

Theresa Bunn was expecting her first child, a son. She was so excited about her journey into motherhood that she went shopping for baby clothes on the day before she went missing. The day after, her badly burned body was found in a dumpster. It was so gruesome to describe.  Her family didn't have a funeral.  Instead, they had a vigil on the site where she was found.

Theresa Bunn, R.I.P.

Most of the women were found on the South and West Sides. And most were African-American.

Hargrove turned over his findings to Johnson in March. He also gave the report to Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) and state Sen. Patricia Van Pelt, D-Chicago, who held a hearing in March to investigate the state crime lab’s backlog of DNA evidence from hundreds of murder cases.

At the Police Board meeting Thursday night, Greer urged Chicago police to begin issuing community alerts and offering other information to the public about the killings, even if the department isn’t ready to determine whether they’re linked.

“Fifty cases is too much. We need accountability posthaste. It’s gotta stop,” Greer said.

But Johnson stressed that there’s nothing to link any of the 51 cases so far.

“Trust me, if there was, there would be no reason for us not to share that with ya’ll,” he said. “What would we gain by not being transparent? Nothing.”

Until we care about vulnerable and marginalized women in Chicago and the world and become proactive in solving the murders and bringing the perpetrator to justice, the misogynoir that fuels those evil men to target Chicago's Black women has gone unabated as well as the general indifference when it comes to Black female victims of crime.