Nicole Ridge, 47, was found strangled inside a garage off an alley on 104th Place, in the Fernwood area of Roseland on Chicago's Far South Side, on the morning of Tuesday, June 12, 2018. The Chicago Sun-Times homicide tracker, which lists every homicide in the city, records the address as 20 W. 104th Place. Area South detectives of the Chicago Police Department investigated.
Her body was found about 8:30 a.m. inside the garage, according to Chicago police. An autopsy the next day found she had been strangled, and the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office ruled her death a homicide. For a time her identity was not released. Public accounts do not say who found her, how long she had been in the garage, or when she was last seen. The Sun-Times tracker lists no suspect, and no description of a suspect, vehicle or motive has been made public.
Her death became part of a larger story.
In May 2019 the Chicago Tribune reported that 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 Chicago between 2001 and 2017 and that 51 of those cases remained unsolved. Ridge was one of four more women found between May and September 2018, all outdoors on the South or West sides. The Tribune wrote plainly that "Ridge's slaying is still unsolved." The Murder Accountability Project has argued that some of these deaths could be the work of one or more serial killers, though police have not publicly linked her death to any other.
Nearly a year after she died, someone was still keeping her memory alive in that alley. A bouquet of purple and red silk flowers surrounded her smiling picture on the unfinished wooden garage door, the Tribune reported, beside a white cross marked "RIP" and the words "Love all way." Years later, a person who said Ridge was their mother wrote online that police "couldn't have cared less about finding her murderer."
The first block of West 104th Place is a residential stretch of Fernwood, part of the larger Roseland community area, with single-family homes, garages and alleys running behind them. Residents who use those alleys every day may have noticed someone entering the garage, a car parked where it did not belong, or activity during the night of June 11 into June 12.
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.
Old cases like this one can still be solved. 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, and he was convicted in December 2025.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Nicole Ridge 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 Nicole Ridge or saw her in early June 2018 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).
