Five red, heart-shaped balloons floated silently away over a vacant storefront in Tinley Park Thursday in memory of the lives that were lost four years ago in one of the south suburbs’ most infamous crimes.

Family members came to remember the five women who were shot and killed inside the Lane Bryant women’s clothing store on Feb. 2, 2008, when a gunman entered at about 10 a.m. while posing as a deliveryman. He announced he was robbing the store and bound six women with duct tape in a back room. About 45 minutes later, police arrived to find five of them had been killed, shot execution-style. One woman survived with a graze wound to the neck.

Killed were Jennifer Bishop, 34, of South Bend; store manager Rhoda McFarland, 42, of Joliet; Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; Connie Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; and Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort.

Family members of Bishop, McFarland and Szafranski met one another outside the store at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. Bishop’s sister, Michele Talos, made the two hour drive from South Bend, with two of her best friends in tow to remember the five women for all the family members who couldn’t make it themselves that day.

“I feel like I want to come for them, too, because I know we’re all praying for each other and thinking of each other all the time,” she said.

Talos and her friends placed flowers at the glass door of the dark store that has remained vacant since the shooting. The Lane Bryant sign has been removed, but outlines of the former letters are still visible above the big glass windows.

Despite the lack of promising leads in the crime’s investigation, Talos said she still hopes justice can be served. At the same time, she fears the shooter’s arrest because of what it would mean for her family and for her sister’s three children, now ages 11, 9 and 4.

“I don’t want them to be older and have to sit through a trial and live through what this day was four years ago,” she said. “I just want to remember these women, and I know from talking to the other family members, they were all amazingly awesome.”

Tinley Park Police Cmdr. Pat McCain said 137 tips related to the case came in during 2011 for a total of 6,602. Four full-time investigators are working on the case, including three from Tinley Park and one from the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force.

Officers have followed tips to Texas, London and North Carolina and currently are combing through cell phone records of calls made in the area on the day of the shooting.

“I know there’s somebody out there who knows who did this,” McCain said. “I feel they’ll come forward. That, linked with the advancement in forensics, I think the time will come.”

Maurice Hamilton, brother of store manager Rhoda McFarland who made the 911 call to police from inside the store, said he gets monthly updates from the investigations team working on the case and he is optimistic police will find the person responsible.

“I don’t know who did it, what their angle was or anything like that, so therefore, I’ve got to let them do their job,” he said. “I can’t interfere with it. There ain’t no use in me getting upset with them. Some people say they might be taking their time, slow footing around, but what they’ve got to go on is what they’re using, and I commend them.”

Hamilton, of Gurnee, travels to Tinley Park on the anniversary of the shooting each year to remember his sister and the other four women killed that day. Now that four years have passed, he said he is working to keep the Lane Bryant shooting story in the media and in the minds of those he believes one day will lead police to the killer.

“I want this to stay as fresh as it can so people can see that sketch, think about the victims, the families,” he said.

A reward of up to $100,000 is still being offered for tips that lead to the arrest of the shooter.

Standing outside the store Thursday, Hamilton pointed to a parking spot where his sister’s van was parked four years ago and recalled how he learned about the tragedy through news reports that day.

“I have my good and bad days, sad days, wishing she was here,” he said. “But that would have been selfish on my part because she was needed in heaven.”

Anyone with information related to the case can call the tips hotline at 708-444-5394.