Police arrested and filed charges against a Lafayette, Ind. man last week for the robbery of a Madison Street lingerie shop in 2008.
Forty-three-year-old Edmond Tate was taken into custody by Forest Park police on May 1, after eluding capture for almost three years. He is accused of tying up the owner of Baubo’s Garden, 7234 Madison St., with several pairs of underwear and then robbing her of the money in the cash register and stealing several pieces of her jewelry.
The case was cold because the investigators had no suspect; Tate’s name only surfaced late last month when the results of a latent fingerprint sample submitted to the Illinois State Police crime lab in August 2008 matched those on record in his criminal file.
Det. Sgt. Mike Keating was at the scene of the robbery in 2008 and recovered fingerprints from a coat hanger in the store and also inventoried the panties that were used to tie up the victim.
Both pieces of evidence were submitted around the same time in 2008.
DNA results from the panties arrived first – last year – but were a mixture of three different samples. The DNA identified belonged to two different females and one male. This did not help police at the time because they had no suspect to compare the male sample to.
“Probably it was the person who made the panties or packaged them and our offender’s,” said Keating.
The break in the case came on April 22 when the state lab contacted Forest Park police to tell them the fingerprint belonged to Tate, a convicted sex offender.
Keating said it probably took the state so long to return the results because of a backlog of crime evidence in the lab and limited resources.
At the time, Tate was in violation of his legal obligation to register his address with the state, and there was a pending narcotics charge against him.
Forest Park investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Tate and notified departments statewide on May 1, but a Forest Park police report states that Tate turned himself in to the Country Club Hills Police Department. Keating said that Forest Park units contacted Tate’s parole officer about the charges; the detective said that he believed the parole officer prompted Tate to turn himself in at the Country Club Hills police station. Tate was later extradited to Forest Park headquarters and kept overnight.
The following day, Tate appeared in a live lineup in front of the victim of the Baubo’s Garden robbery and was identified as the suspect.
Tate was charged with felony counts of aggravated robbery and unlawful restraint; he is currently at the Cook County Department Jail.
This story was first reported as a Web extra on Tuesday, May 10. It has been updated for print.
