Will Increased Reward Flush Out Teen Girls’ Killers in 1979 Cold Case?
A former classmate of Susan Ovington and Eyvonne Bender is hoping $10,000 will persuade someone to come forward with information.
--
A new reward is being offered in a cold case dating all the way back to 1979 in the hope that it will provide fresh information that could lead to a conviction.
The case is the double murder of Susan Ovington and her best friend Eyvonne Bender, who were both 17 and about to start their senior year of high school in the Morton Grove area of Chicago.
On September 5th 1979, there was a teachers’ strike and the girls got the day off, so they decided to go clothes shopping at the E.J. Korvette/Par King shopping mall on Waukegan Road at around 2:30 PM.
They took Eyvonne’s family car and were told to return by 5:00 PM, but the hour came and went and there was no sign of the friends.
A search ensued and the small party of those out looking soon made a terrible discovery: in a wooded area behind a golf course near Dempster Street lay the bodies of Eyvonne and Susan. They were around 25 feet from each other and had suffered multiple gunshots, with wounds to the head proving fatal.
A newspaper report from the time said their bodies were “partly clad” and had apparently been dragged from a nearby location where investigators found a large pool of blood. Their purses were still inside Eyvonne’s unlocked car and a medical examiner deduced they had probably been killed within half an hour of leaving their respective homes.
Unfortunately, no leads as to who could have done this to the teenagers were forthcoming. The girls’ boyfriends — who had been among the party that discovered the bodies — were questioned and cleared and there were no witnesses.
Aside from two cold case reviews by Morton Grove police and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in the early 2000s, the double murder went cold.
Now though, 44 years after the crime took place, a former classmate of the two friends seems eager to finally learn the truth about what happened that early autumn day. The unnamed individual has put up a $10,000…
