Chicago Area Local News

CHICAGO (CBS) ― The family of a missing pregnant woman is holding out hope after the gruesome discovery of two murdered women in the area.

Twenty-one-year old Theresa Bunn has been missing since Monday night. She is eight months pregnant.

Details are coming out Wednesday night about the two bodies found near Washington Park this week.

As CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot reports, both women were strangled before their bodies were set on fire. And Wednesday night a mother is hoping and praying that one of those victims is not her daughter.

The burnt body of a woman was found about midnight Tuesday in an alley only two miles from where a second body was discovered Wednesday morning.

The woman found at 6125 S. Prairie Ave., Tuesday was pregnant, a law enforcement source said. Meanwhile, police asked Bunn's family for her dental records "to take it to the morgue and see if it's one of the women who was burnt up," said her mother, Rosemary Williams.
Detectives from Wentworth and Calumet areas were working together to see whether the cases were related.

Roll calls were scheduled for Thursday on the blocks where the incidents happened. Detectives also were canvassing the area.

Missing persons reports were being reviewed, and detectives were collecting dental and medical records as well as DNA material to use for comparison, the source said.

Williams last saw her daughter when she left their home about 5 p.m. Monday. Bunn told her mother she was going to the Evergreen Park Mall but then changed her plans and said she was going to the Ford City Mall instead.

She was supposed to call home from the mall at 8 p.m. but Williams never heard from her. Bunn doesn't have a car or cell phone, and the last report Williams has of her daughter is from a friend of her son's, who said he saw her in front of Sears at 61st Street and Western Avenue.

"She said she was going straight to the mall with her friends but her friend said she hasn't talked to Theresa," Williams said. "She was just staying here [at home], living with me and trying to go through her pregnancy. She has never done anything like this before. Never."

Williams said her daughter was expecting a boy, whom she planned to name Michael after her younger brother.

Please let my daughter go," Williams said. "If you have her locked up, let her go… please."

As CBS 2's Rafael Romo reports, another victim was found Wednesday at Reavis Elementary School, 834 E. 50th St., in the South Kenwood neighborhood, about two miles from where the other woman was found. The medical examiner's office confirmed the cause of death of the woman found in the dumpster there was strangulation.

Two police officers, one who just graduated from the police academy, saw the garbage can fire behind the school around 1 a.m., according to Prairie District police Lt. Michael Pigott. The square city garbage can on wheels was situated between two dumpsters, and was left mangled by the fire, Pigott said.

The woman appeared to have been clothed, but the clothes had been melted off and her face was disfigured. It was impossible to tell whether she suffered any other injuries beside the burns, according to Pigott.

"Hopefully she was already dead,'' Pigott said.

Detectives have launched a death investigation.

Reavis School Principal Michael Johnson sent parents a letter Wednesday afternoon explaining what happened and reassuring them that there's no imminent danger to students or to the school.

Church leaders came to the school for a noon prayer Wednesday right in front of the main entrance.

"The public has a right to know if there's a serial killer in our community and if that's the case he needs to certainly be caught," said Old St. Paul Baptist Church Rev. Paul Jakes.

CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot, Rafael Romo and Kristyn Hartman, and the STNG Wire, contributed to this report.

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