Mary Ann Szatkowski was a beloved wife, daughter, sister, and aunt. A friend who remembered her after her death described her as "a wonderful woman who always gave to others and thought of them before herself." She was married to her husband, Edward, and was the daughter of Walter Sr. and the late Rose Szydelko. At 56 years old, the White female should have been looking forward to her future, but her life was stolen in a brutal act of violence that remains unsolved.
On May 2, 2007, Mary
Ann was killed in Chicago, Illinois. Her death was ruled a homicide caused by strangulation. She was found indoors in the city’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, a detail that set her case apart from many similar murders where victims were left in alleys or abandoned lots. The discovery of her body added a chilling new dimension to a pattern of violence that was already plaguing the city. Investigators noted that the location where Mary Ann was found was less than a thousand feet from where two other women, Bessie Scott and Judith Wilson, had been killed and left in 2002.
Mary Ann’s murder was not seen as an isolated crime. Her death by strangulation fit a disturbing profile of killings that had been occurring across Chicago’s South and West Sides since 2001. The Murder Accountability Project, a non-profit organization that analyzes homicide data, identified a cluster of 51 unsolved murders of women in Chicago between 2001 and 2018. The victims were killed by strangulation or asphyxiation, and Mary Ann Szatkowski is officially considered one of them.
This series of killings has been attributed to a potential serial killer, or possibly multiple killers, sometimes referred to as the "Chicago Strangler." While many of the victims were Black women, the inclusion of Mary Ann and other White women in the case files shows the killer or killers did not exclusively target one race. Despite extensive analysis and the clear patterns in method and location, the Chicago Police Department has not officially confirmed that a single serial killer is responsible for the 51 deaths, and the investigations have been fraught with difficulty.
For years, activists and victims' families have fought to bring attention to these unsolved cases, demanding justice for the women whose lives were so violently cut short. They have criticized the lack of progress and what they perceive as a lack of urgency in solving the murders. For the families, the pain is compounded by the absence of answers. After Mary Ann was killed, her family held a funeral Mass at St. Albert the Great Church and laid her to rest in Resurrection Cemetery, but they were left without knowing who was responsible for their loss.
Today, Mary Ann Szatkowski’s case remains cold. Her murder is a stark and tragic part of a larger, deeply unsettling mystery in Chicago's history. There has been no justice for Mary Ann, nor for the dozens of other women who died in a terrifyingly similar manner. Her family, and the families of all the victims, are still waiting for a breakthrough that will finally identify the person or people responsible and close a dark chapter for the city.
