Pharthania L. Dukes, 32, was stabbed to death in a condominium in the 1900 block of South State Street, near Archer Avenue on the Near South Side, on the afternoon of Monday, January 31, 2022. The Chicago Police Department investigated her death.
According to the Cook County medical examiner's office, Dukes was stabbed in the chest. She was discovered shortly after 2 p.m. and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, police said.
The reports did not say who found her, whether she lived in the unit, or whether anyone else was hurt.
A person of interest was questioned by detectives the day after the stabbing. On Thursday, February 3, police said that person had been released without charges. Nearly a year later, on Saturday, January 7, 2023, volunteers with Cook County Crime Stoppers handed out fliers in the 1900 block of South State Street asking for information. Crime Stoppers offered a reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to an arrest.
Few details about her life were made public. Leak and Sons, a South Side funeral home, posted an obituary page for Pharthania Dukes with a wake and funeral on February 20, 2022. Her unusual first name makes her easy to tell apart from other people in public records, and it appears again and again in a Facebook list kept by a legal help firm that tracks unsolved killings of women in Chicago.
Her case stands out because police had a person of interest within a day and released that person without charges. That usually means prosecutors did not believe the evidence at the time was strong enough to approve a charge. The Crime Stoppers campaign a year later showed that investigators were still looking for new information.
The 1900 block of South State Street is in the South Loop area of the Near South Side, a stretch of newer condominium buildings, older commercial buildings and storefronts near Cermak Road and Chinatown, served by the CTA Red Line. A condominium building in that area often has a lobby, doorstaff or cameras, and residents who were home that afternoon may remember visitors coming or going.
Chicago recorded about 720 homicides in 2022, down from about 800 in 2021, the deadliest year in the city in a quarter century. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of the city's homicides in the years from 2019 through 2023, though those figures count cases closed without charges, so the share of killings that led to a criminal case was lower.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Pharthania Dukes could be found in news archives or public records. More than 4 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was in or near the condominium building on South State Street on January 31, 2022, or who knows who was with her that day, may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Chicago Police Department's anonymous tip line at (833) 408-0069 or submit a tip online at CPDTIP.com, or contact Cook County Crime Stoppers at (800) 535-STOP (7867).
