Lora Harbin, 44, was found strangled behind an abandoned building in the 4500 block of West West End Avenue, in West Garfield Park on Chicago's West Side, on Friday, May 25, 2018, the start of the Memorial Day weekend. The Chicago Sun-Times homicide tracker, which lists every homicide in the city, records the address as 4533 W. West End Ave. The Chicago Police Department investigated.
Few details of how she died have been made public. The Chicago Tribune reported that she was strangled and that her body was found outdoors, behind the abandoned building. Public accounts do not say what time she was found, who found her, how long she had been there, or when she was last seen alive. The Sun-Times tracker lists no suspect.
Her death drew attention because of who else had died the same way.
In May 2019 the Tribune reported that Chicago police had assigned a team of detectives to review the strangling and smothering deaths of 55 women, after the newspaper found that at least 75 women had been strangled or smothered in the city between 2001 and 2017 and that 51 of those cases remained unsolved. Harbin was one of four more women found between May and September 2018, all outdoors on the South or West sides. The Murder Accountability Project, a national group that studies unsolved killings, has argued that some of these deaths could be the work of one or more serial killers. Police have not publicly linked her death to any other case.
Little about Lora Harbin's life has been published. She appears on lists of the women remembered by activists as the "Unforgotten 51," and her name is included in coverage of the Discovery+ documentary The Hunt for the Chicago Strangler. On social media, a person who said Harbin was their mother wrote that they would have appreciated being contacted for the documentary instead of finding it on their own. Her family has otherwise not spoken publicly in the sources found.
The 4500 block of West West End Avenue lies in West Garfield Park, a West Side neighborhood near the Green Line and Garfield Park, where vacant buildings and lots sit among homes and small apartment buildings. An abandoned building offers cover, but neighbors often notice who goes in and out of such places, and who was on the block in the days before Memorial Day 2018.
Chicago recorded about 580 homicides in 2018 and about 500 in 2019. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of homicides in the years that followed, though those figures count cases closed without charges.
Cases like this can still be solved years later. In 2020, Chicago police charged Arthur Hilliard with the March 2017 murder of 21-year-old Diamond Turner, another woman on the list of strangling victims, after DNA linked him to the crime. He was convicted of her murder in December 2025.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Lora Harbin could be found in news archives or public records. More than 8 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Lora Harbin, saw her in late May 2018, or noticed someone near the vacant building on West End Avenue, may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Chicago Police Department's anonymous tip line at (833) 408-0069 or submit a tip online at CPDTIP.com, or contact Cook County Crime Stoppers at (800) 535-STOP (7867).
