Angela Ford: Family of Chicago woman murdered over 2 decades ago awaits justice

CHICAGO - There are dozens of cases of unsolved murders of black and brown women in Chicago.

The victim’s voices were silenced when they fell prey to someone who thought nothing of their lives, or the families left to suffer the unimaginable loss.

One West Side faith leader is relentlessly pursuing of justice for the victims–like Angela Ford–whose now grown daughter still has no answers two decades later.

"We would get together on Sundays and go to my great aunt’s house and have dinner after church. Those are some of the best memories of her," Angela Ford's daughter Keyana Brickell said.

Brickell shares one of the few fond memories she has of the mother, Angela Ford, the rest is really a blur.

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"I remember me and my brother asking to come with her to the school to pick up our report cards, and she said no, she loved us, and she would be right back and that it wouldn’t take long," Brickell said. "That was pretty much the last time I saw her."

Only, her mother didn’t come back. Instead, she went missing for several days before she was found in an abandoned building less than two miles from her home.

She was sexually assaulted, beaten, strangled and left for dead. That was in 1999.  

Angela lingered in a coma for a year and a half before dying. DNA evidence had no match to her assailant and Keyana’s questions of "why" and"who" have never been answered.

"I just couldn't believe like someone would do that to her," Brickell said.

Angela Ford is one of dozens of murdered women in Chicago whose cases remain unsolved. The similarities are undeniable. Most of the victims are black women who were found in vacant homes, lots or in dumpsters. Some were set on fire, some dismembered, but all of them were strangled.

"In Chicago, in places like Chicago, the police department says 'don’t say serial killer’ because you might scare somebody. But we should want to scare somebody," Robin Hood said.

West Side Reverend Robin Hood is on a mission to get answers for the victim’s families

Rev. Hood works tirelessly to find answers from an overwhelmed Chicago Police Department.

"Law enforcement on a daily basis pick what they got to work on. Every day, as you know in Chicago, we have gun violence," Hood said.

Some of the cases go back nearly three decades and the questions are usually the same he says.

"Asking them if they were an alcoholic? Were they a drug addict, were they a prostitute? It’s the most hurtful and painful thing that anybody could feel when their loved one is missing," Hood said.

Brickell says the longer families wait for justice the more likely they start to believe their loved ones just don’t matter.

"Nothing pretty much is being done about it because of the where these ladies come from–the neighborhoods. They feel like black women have no value," Brickell said. 

The Chicago police says these cases remain open, but they can not make a connection among the cases. 

"To not answer those crimes and to not put the resources in there is really a situation I would call not getting cooperation from all the resources and people don’t trust you when you don’t solve the crimes," Hood said. 

Though some sources within the police department tell say some of these cases are definitely connected. The murder accountability project based out of Washington D.C. agrees there is clearly a connection among some of the cases.