Today in Chicago History: 5 women slain inside Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park
Kori Rumore, Chicago Tribune
Mon, February 2, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC
2 min read
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Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Feb. 2, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
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Front page flashback: Feb. 2, 2008
2008: Five women — 42-year-old store manager Rhoda McFarland of Joliet; Jennifer Bishop, 34, of South Bend, Indiana; Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; Connie Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; and Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort — were killed, shot execution-style, inside a Lane Bryant women’s clothing store in Tinley Park by a gunman who posed as a delivery man. A sixth woman, also a store employee, was shot in the neck but survived and provided police with a description of the killer. The case is still unsolved.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
High temperature: 52 degrees (2020)
Low temperature: Minus 16 degrees (1996)
Precipitation: 1.45 inches (1983)
Snowfall: 6.6 inches (2011)
1925: Sears opened its first retail store on Chicago’s West Side.
The Homan Square site was already home to the company’s mail-order plant when the store, which featured an optical shop and a soda fountain, opened. Sears’ national headquarters was based here on a 55-acre site. Operations moved to the new Sears Tower headquarters in 1973, then to Hoffman Estates in 1995.
Sears closed its last Chicago store in 2018.
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1983: Pope St. John Paul II elevated Archbishop Joseph Bernardin to become the fifth Chicago Cardinal.
1999: Former Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton announced that he had primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a rare, life-threatening liver disease.
“The people that really care about me, if you could continue to pray. And to those who want to say what they say, God be with you also,” he said.
2011: Snowmageddon. Seven people died during a snowstorm from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 (nicknamed the Groundhog Day blizzard) that dropped 21.2 inches — the third largest snowfall in the city’s history.
Chicago’s 10 largest snowfalls since 1886 — and how the Tribune covered them
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