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TINLEY PARK, Ill. (CBS) ― It has been six months since five women were shot dead at a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park, and now detectives have followed leads to Austin, Texas.

Police in Tinley Park stress they are following many leads, and no one has been named a suspect. Two teams of investigators are assigned to the case, and are combing through all tips the department's received. Police are following up on almost 3,000 tips so far.

The leads have been pouring in, thanks in part to a detailed sketch of the suspect, enhanced to reveal detail about his skin tone and hair.

The case is also being probed for any possible link to a massacre in the Chatham neighborhood last April. The sketch is being compared to the suspect in that quintuple murder.

The manager of the store, Rhoda McFarland, was a church pastor in Crest Hill before she began working for Lane Bryant. The building that housed the Embassy Christian Center was relocated to Austin, Texas.

Police say they have examined the backgrounds of all the victims, and that McFarland – who was killed in the attack – was the associate pastor of the church, but quit before it relocated.

McFarland is credited with making a desperate 911 call to police just before the gunman opened fire.

A gunman opened fire on the store on Feb. 2. Killed in the shootings were: McFarland, 42, of Joliet; Carrie H. Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort; Connie R. Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; Sarah T. Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; and Jennifer L. Bishop, 34, of South Bend, Ind. A sixth woman, whom authorities have declined to name, was injured.

McFarland quit the church shortly before it moved out of state. She took a job at the Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park and became a manager there.

McFarland's brother, Maurice Hamilton, said her church was like a second family, and she asked him to help her leave the church.

"All she did was one day, called me and asked me to help her move her stuff out of the church, and I helped her," Hamilton said. "We never discussed the actual problem that was happening; why she left. But some people speculated that something was happening within the church that she didn't approve of, and she wanted to leave."

Hamilton said McFarland did not talk about business at the church, but he believes there was a dispute over finances there.

"Something was happening within the church that she didn't approve of," said Maurice Hamilton, McFarland's brother. "She wanted to leave."

Ironically, McFarland's funeral, attended by hundreds of mourners, was held in the same building as her old church, now occupied by a new church – the Word of Life Christian Center.

A highly placed source said Thursday night that the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force suspects McFarland left Embassy in the wake of the financial dispute.

In a news release Friday, Tinley Park police said sending detectives out of state was "a routine procedure in cases of this severity."

"As has been previously stated, this investigation will leave no stone unturned to identify, apprehend and prosecute the killer of the five women. The recent venture to Texas demonstrates this commitment," Tinley Park police Cmdr. Rick Bruno said in the release.

"We recognize that a lot of the investigation has already been published in the local papers and the local media," said Tinley Park police Cmdr. Rick Bruno. "We really have nothing in addition to add to what's already out in the media. We continue to follow up on every tip and lead that comes in.

Police have also compared the sketch of the suspect to a man in custody in the murders of five people in a house on Rhodes Avenue in the Chatham neighborhood last April. Police say they are doing that because they have not ruled anything out.

The Lane Bryant Store in Brookside Marketplace never reopened. The company displays a black sign in the window saying it is closed "until further notice," and expressing condolences to the families of the victims.

Tinley Park police stress that at this time, there are no suspects in the case.

CBS 2's Joanie Lum, Susan Carlson and Chief Correspondent Jay Levine contributed to this report.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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