In the autumn of 2007, 21-year-old Theresa Bunn was joyfully preparing for the biggest moment of her life: the birth of her first child. Eight months pregnant with a son she had already named Michael Pierre Terry Bunn, in honor of her younger brother, Theresa was filled with gleeful anticipation. Her family remembers her excitement about becoming a mother, a new future she was eagerly looking forward to.
A daughter and the eldest of five siblings, Theresa was on the cusp of welcoming the family's first grandchild.
Those dreams were extinguished on the night of November 12, 2007. Earlier that day, Theresa, a young Black woman, told her family she was going out shopping. Her mother worried when she was out alone, as Theresa had a mental condition that could sometimes leave her confused. When she didn't return, her family grew frantic. Their worst fears were realized when firefighters, responding to a trash bin fire in Chicago's Washington Park neighborhood, made a horrific discovery.
Inside a dumpster in an alley on the 6100 block of South Prairie Avenue, they found a human body, badly burned and nude. The remains were so charred that identification was impossible at the scene. It took three days for the Cook County medical examiner's office to identify the victim as Theresa Bunn through dental records. The autopsy revealed she had been strangled to death before being set on fire. Her family was so devastated by the condition of her remains that they chose to hold a vigil at the place where she was found rather than a traditional funeral. "To me, this is her last place," her father, Anthony McCray, said. "It shouldn't be here. They took our baby and burned her like she was garbage."
The investigation into Theresa's murder was almost immediately complicated by a chillingly similar crime. Just two days later, on November 14, the body of 52-year-old Hazel Lewis was found. A mother, grandmother, and fiancée known for her kindness, Hazel was also strangled and her body set on fire in a trash receptacle, this time behind an elementary school less than two miles from where Theresa was discovered. The proximity and brutal similarities of the two murders raised alarms. A Chicago police spokeswoman acknowledged at the time, "There are similarities in the manner of death and how the bodies were disposed of."
Despite this, Theresa's case, like Hazel's, remains unsolved. No arrests have ever been made, and her family has been left without answers or justice for over a decade. Her murder is now viewed as part of a deeply disturbing pattern of violence against women in Chicago. The Murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization that analyzes homicide data, has identified a cluster of at least 51 unsolved strangulation and asphyxiation murders of women in the city between 2001 and 2018. The victims, predominantly Black women, were often left in alleys, abandoned buildings, or garbage bins on the city's South and West Sides.
This series of killings has led to speculation about one or more serial killers, sometimes dubbed the "Chicago Strangler," preying on vulnerable women. While Chicago police have historically been hesitant to officially link the cases or confirm the existence of a single serial killer, the patterns identified by outside experts are difficult to ignore. For the families of the victims, the debate over terminology is secondary to the fact that a killer, or killers, has operated with impunity for years.
For Theresa Bunn's family, the pain of her loss is compounded by the knowledge that her killer has never been held accountable. They remember a young woman full of life and love, excited to start a family of her own. Her unborn son, Michael, was murdered along with her, a second generation stolen before he could take his first breath. The family has pleaded for anyone with information to come forward, believing that someone holds the key to resolving the case that has left them shattered. Until that day comes, Theresa Bunn remains one of the many forgotten victims in a string of unsolved murders that continues to haunt the city of Chicago.
