After years of local activists taking to the streets about the 51 Black women and girls murdered, the Chicago Police Department and the FBI are finally launched a review to investigate these deaths. That, and they plan to determine whether a serial killer or killers may be involved.

According to the Chicago Sun Times, a report by the Murder Accountability Project, a Virginia-based nonprofit group that analyzes information about homicides, said the unsolved killings of these women “have characteristics of serial murder.”

“If you look at these, at the nature of the cases, it’s classic. It couldn’t be more serial-looking,” Thomas Hargrove, the founder of the project, told the newspaper.

He added, “It’s got every element for a classic pattern. It actually stretches credulity to imagine that these 51 women were killed by 51 separate men.”

Despite the report, Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said last week that he doesn’t believe a serial killer is involved, but stressed that they will look into these murders and do an inventory of the forensic evidence connected to deaths of these women.

Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the police department, announced at a press conference last Thursday that DNA collected from 21 victims did not match to same person. But not having a match, doesn’t mean the deaths aren’t linked.

As BlockClub Chicago pointed out, because the women, some who were sex workers, had multiple sex partners, the DNA may be mixed, harder to decipher and match.

It’s not a secret that there have been accusations that because almost all of these women were Black and from impoverished areas such as the south and west sides, local police haven’t cared as much. Especially when the women were believed to be sex workers or drug addicts, who we know experience a disproportionate amount of violence.

Brenda Myers-Powell, a former sex worker who co-founded The Dreamcatcher Foundation, told the Chicago Tribune last January that she understands this first-hand.

“It’s upfront and personal,” said Myers-Powell. “I have been (choked) so much, it became, like, you don’t let guys get close to your neck.”

The Sun-Times noted that two of the victims, Theresa Bunn and Hazel Marion Lewis, were found dead in burning trash cans within a day of each other in November 2007 at Washington Park. Bunn was eight months pregnant. At least seven of the victims were found in garbage receptacles.

Last year, HelloBeautiful reported that a group of concerned Chicagoans were terrified that two missing young women and the deaths of two others may be linked.

At least four women and girls have gone missing: Sadaria Davis, 15; Shantieya Smith, 26; Victoria Garrett, 15; and Anna Stanislawczyk, 18. They were all last seen very close to one another on the West side.

Hopefully, this new investigation will shed more light on all of these unsolved deaths.

Say her name.

Watch this 2017 Vice report:

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