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SheShark
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« on: May 30, 2008, 05:42:10 pm »

http://video.nbc5.com/player/?id=251544

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« Reply #1 on: August 01, 2008, 03:10:54 am »

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-lane_bryant_webaug01,0,1642159.story?page=1

TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT

Lane Bryant mystery deepens
Six months ago five women were killed in a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park. Police thought it was a botched robbery. Now they are probing a financial scandal in a closed evangelical church where the slain store manager had been associate pastor:
By David Heinzmann, Stacy St. Clair and Matthew Walberg | Chicago Tribune reporters
11:33 PM CDT, July 31, 2008
1 2 next AUSTIN, Texas — The trail for investigators probing the murders of five women in a Lane Bryant store has led here, to the homes of several former members of a splintered church where one of the victims had ministered.

The new focus this week developed after detectives dug through the lives of the women slain Feb. 2 in Tinley Park and began to have questions about the Embassy Christian Center, a now-defunct Crest Hill, Ill., church where store manager Rhoda McFarland had been an associate pastor.

The fact that investigators are aggressively pursuing the church angle signals they are looking at scenarios far different from the botched-robbery theory authorities have publicly discussed.

One potential clue police are examining is a 20-minute phone call placed by a former Embassy member about an hour before the murders that was routed through the cell tower nearest the Lane Bryant store.



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Original story: 5 women slain in store
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Enhancing the images Video Investigators came to Texas to talk to former Embassy members who moved here to start a new church, including the pastor and proprietor of the church, George Aja Jr., 44. Several church members followed Aja from the Joliet area to Austin in 2005. The church he incorporated here, Embassy Nation Network, briefly leased space in an industrial park, but the church now appears to be out of business.

Aja at one time had close ties to McFarland, who was one of the five women shot to death execution-style in a back room of the store. Before going to work at the store, McFarland worked as an associate pastor at Embassy and was a key figure in the non-profit corporations Aja set up to run the churches in Crest Hill and Austin.

McFarland, 42, left Embassy in 2006 in a disagreement with Aja and others that was largely over the finances of the church, law-enforcement sources and several former church members said.

Police stressed that while this is the most promising development they have seen in the case, a connection between the cell phone call and the murders has not yet been established.

Still, task force Cmdr. Tom Wetherald of the Illinois State Police acknowledged, "It's a significant one because we sent 11 people to Texas."

No church members have been accused of any role in the killings.

Whether or not the lead has a link to the quintuple slaying, investigators find themselves peeling the lid off an internal scandal at a once-popular evangelical church that played a central role in McFarland's life. Authorities, however, say they care about the strife at Embassy only if it pertains to the murders and they do not intend to investigate allegations of financial misdeeds alone.

The Tribune first broke this story on its Web site Thursday afternoon. The paper has known about the lead for more than two weeks but delayed publishing the information for multiple reasons, including a request from detectives, who feared it could compromise their investigation.

Late Tuesday afternoon at the restaurant Aja owns in Spicewood, Texas, the former Embassy pastor declined to comment and ordered a Tribune reporter to leave his property.

An advance team of investigators traveled to the Austin area last week to scout out addresses they needed to visit and to coordinate with local police. They were joined Monday by a group of investigators who began interviewing people, including Aja, on Tuesday, police said. FBI agents and Austin police accompanied the officers during their interviews, Wetherald said.

Similar interviews were conducted starting Tuesday in the Chicago area, with investigators questioning former congregation members about McFarland's life and the church's internal strife.

Wetherald said Thursday that task force members would be in Texas through the weekend, hoping to re-interview many of the eight people questioned there. A total of 18 people were on their list to be interviewed, police said.

Among those they were still trying to contact was the man who placed the phone call, Wetherald said. Police have a Chicago-area phone number that received the call, he said, but because of delays in acquiring records from phone companies, they have not yet identified the person.

He stressed that the investigation has not identified any suspects.

The Embassy Christian Center was renamed Embassy Nation Network and rented space in an industrial park south of downtown Austin in 2005 and at least part of 2006. Workers at neighboring offices said the church has been gone for more than a year.

In addition to the church, Aja had multiple businesses registered to the church's address and his home—a ranch-style property 30 miles west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country.




Lane Bryant mystery deepens
previous 1 2 Aja now operates a restaurant, and his wife runs a catering business. The restaurant, registered under two names, is housed in a building about a half-mile from Aja's sprawling stone house, which sits on 3.5 acres tucked into the side of a hill on the outskirts of Spicewood, Texas.

Police and federal agents are looking at the finances of the Crest Hill church, which Aja sold in November 2007 for $1.25 million, according to Will County land records. A Denver-based evangelical church bought the property on Cedarwood Drive and now operates a church there under a different name.

McFarland joined Aja's Crest Hill-based Embassy Christian in the late 1990s, after stints as an Air Force nurse and a Nicor supervisor, relatives said. She initially began working as Aja's administrative assistant but was ordained as a minister around 2002 and became the congregation's youth pastor.

She started a church group called Princess Unveiled, which aimed to teach prepubescent girls how to respect themselves and cope with peer pressure. She also became Aja's most trusted colleague, as he named her to the church's board of directors and put her name on several mortgages for the Crest Hill property, records show.



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Original story: 5 women slain in store
 Community mourns Photos
Enhancing the images Video McFarland co-signed mortgages as far back as 2003. However, when Aja took out a $859,680 mortgage on the property in March 2005, McFarland's signature does not appear on the paperwork. Former church members and a law-enforcement source say the furtive loan caused major upheaval at the center.

Five months after taking out the mortgage, Will County records show, Aja sold his Homer Glen home and moved with his family and congregation members to Austin. He left McFarland in charge of the Crest Hill location as he tried to start a branch in Texas.

McFarland's sister was among those who went with Aja to Texas. She did not respond to requests for an interview at her Austin home this week, but her brother Maurice Hamilton said she is no longer one of Aja's followers and no one in the family speaks to him any longer.

Soon after Aja left Crest Hill, rumblings of financial mismanagement prompted a mass departure from the church, several former members and law-enforcement sources said. People began asking questions, but there were few answers, because the church's accounts were handled by Aja in Austin, said Sandra McGhee, a former church member and McFarland's best friend.

The concerns prompted congregants to check the center's deeds at the Will County recorder's office, and that's when they learned about the March 2005 mortgage, ex-members said. Until then, church members believed they were close to paying off the building.

The discovery hastened the ongoing exodus, with hundreds of people leaving in a year's time. At its peak, the church had more than 1,000 members. By fall 2006, as few as 75 people were attending Sunday services, former congregants said.

McGhee was among those who left and encouraged McFarland to do the same.

"There were things going on that were just wrong," said McGhee, who spoke with police for 45 minutes Tuesday. "As a Christian, I could not support it any longer."

McFarland resisted leaving because she worried about what would happen to the church, friends said. But in November 2006, she severed ties, telling her congregation she no longer felt comfortable serving there.

By January 2007, documents indicate the Austin church had fallen into disarray. The Texas secretary of state rescinded Embassy Nation's tax-exempt status for failing to file a tax return.

In Crest Hill, Aja's original church was struggling to survive, so he visited from Austin to calm the remaining members' fears. Two congregants who attended the meeting said Aja refused to answer specific financial questions and asked them to put their faith in God. The meeting did not go well, and Aja sold the church in November 2007.

After McFarland left the church, Aja stopped speaking to her, a decision that wounded McFarland because she considered him her spiritual mentor and adored his family, McGhee said.

McFarland took the job at Lane Bryant to make ends meet upon leaving the church and was promoted to manager of the store in October 2007. Family members said the job gave her a chance to interact with the public and use her employee discount to purchase clothes for the underprivileged.

"She may have left the ministry, but she was still ministering," McGhee said.

On Feb. 2, McFarland went to work at Lane Bryant on her day off. She had been expecting increased traffic because of a sale and went in to help.

Shortly after opening, an unknown man forced McFarland, a sales associate and four customers into a backroom, where he bound their hands behind their backs with duct tape and covered their faces with clothing.

At some point, he left the women unguarded. McFarland managed to free herself from the tape, but instead of running out the back door, she called 911 and whispered pleas for help.

When the man returned, he noticed she was on the phone and opened fire, killing her and four other women. A 33-year-old woman survived a gunshot wound in the neck and has been working with police to identify the man.

All of the other victims were shot in the back of the head except for McFarland, who was shot in the forehead, Wetherald confirmed Thursday. Police said it's unclear whether it is significant that McFarland's wound was different from the others.

In addition to McFarland, those killed included Jennifer L. Bishop of South Bend, Ind.; Carrie A. Chiuso of Frankfort; Sarah T. Szafranski of Oak Forest; and Connie R. Woolfolk of Flossmoor.

McFarland was buried Feb. 9 after funeral services at her former church. Aja did not attend, but he sent a letter of condolence.

David Heinzmann reported from Chicago and Austin; Stacy St. Clair and Matthew Walberg reported from Chicago.




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