But there were no meaningful leads that week, nor, really, in the more than one thousand weeks since. But other than proximity, there was no reason to distrust the men and, having completed their work, they left without ever knowing that they were, briefly, in the mind of a childless aunt peering through the window in her van, suspected kidnappers.įor the better part of a desperate summer week 20 years ago, Shelia sat in that parking lot, hoping to see something that would give her a clue as to who had taken her great-nieces. The two of them together weighed just over 100 pounds. Were the rolls large enough to smuggle two young girls out of the building? Probably-Diamond was 3, and Tionda was 10, and both were small. #DIAMOND RUSH DESPERATION DISTRUST FULL#The second morning, a truck full of men arrived at the complex for a carpet job: old carpet out, new carpet in. She sat through the dark hours, smoking and sipping soda. In the late morning she retreated to her niece’s apartment for several hours but returned to her vigil at 10 o’clock that night. She noted the comings and goings of the neighbors and their visitors.Īny one of these people might know who did it. She watched the first city bus of the day roll through in the new morning sun, watched as the crossing guard arrived around 7 o’clock to escort neighborhood children across the busy intersection, watched the students from a nearby learning center disembark their yellow bus an hour later. Shelia waited, patient as a desert predator in the shade of its burrow, although everything inside of her was screaming, knowing her two little great-nieces could be getting farther and farther away. Shadows shrank, going from an even blanket across the landscape to distinct shapes that stretched across the sidewalk. The tip of Shelia’s cigarette shone orange, framed by the metallic blue body of the van.Įvery person she saw, she wondered, Was it you? Humidity had been building in the air for hours, spilling over briefly into drizzle just as the day broke and then settling, sticky and thick, over the city. Across 35th was the low brick facade of the Sixth Grace Presbyterian Church, silent in the crepuscular light. The complex comprised two blocks of apartments that bordered the south and east sides of the lot the west was hemmed in by S Cottage Grove Avenue, intersecting at a diagonal with E 35th Street, which formed the lot’s northern boundary. She did not buckle her seatbelt or ease the car out of park. Just before dawn on July 7, 2001, Shelia Bradley-Smith climbed into her ’97 Dodge Caravan in the parking lot of a housing complex on the south side of Chicago.
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