On February 2, 2008, a man entered the Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park where Harlem Avenue (IL-43) meets Interstate 80. He killed five of the women in the store, and left one survivor, who police believe, he also intended to kill. They called it an attempted armed robbery gone wrong. I don't think robbery was the motive.
If armed robbery had been the motive, there are several better prospects for quick cash at that interchange. There are several gas stations, convenience stores, and fast food resturants there with easy cash on hand, and lot of it in the tills. So why pick a Lane Bryant, a clothing store where most purchases are made via credit cards?
I am proposing an ulterior motive based upon the killer's looks in the sketch, the place he chose to do his crime, and the victims.
1. Since there are better prospects for quick cash via armed robbery, armed robbery and a botched robbery attempt seems not to be the motive.
2. The store he chose is a women's clothing store where there are unlikely to be any men.
3. All six victims were women.
4. He had each of them tied up in the backroom and he shot them execution style to make sure they were dead.
5. There was a police squad car in the parking lot. The squad responded to the shooting at the store because of the 9-1-1 call placed by the store's manager, not to any shots fired. I find it very odd that no one ever reported any gunshots. I suspect he was using a silencer on his weapon. What armed robber uses a silencer?
6. The sketch of the gunman shows him wearing a skullcap and a braid. To me, he appears to be stereotypical Nation of Islam. Whether he is or isn't is up for debate, but stereotypes exist for a reason.
Due to all of these, I suspect the shooting at the Lane Bryant were not motivated by robbery, but by something else, possibly sudden jihad syndrome (SJS). SJS seems a likely motivation here due to the target chosen, the victims chosen, and the way it was performed. This was done to instill terror, not to rob the store. Again, as in the NIU shooting, there is not concrete evidence, but many of the signs seem to point in that direction.
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You gotta be kidding with this Islamic connection theory. If you want to instill terror, you don't do it this way. I think your reasoning is sound about this probably not being robbery as the motive. Another puzzle is how could somebody make that phone call without being seen and when did the phone get hung up? There should have been sounds of shots on the tape, if the call continued. If the call continued and no shots were heard over the phone, then you have proven your silencer theory.
Another possibility is that the killer was accompanied by a woman who saw that whatever this was was going too far and tried to alert the police without giving herself away. They said something on AMW about TWO cars being at the scene. Definitely this does not add up. I would definitely look at past employees who suffered some kind of perceived slight and quit or were fired. If no money was taken, something motivated this person to go way off the hook to respond with overwhelming premeditated murder. Very interesting case. Seems to me they haven't done much work on it.
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