With her participation in a new documentary series spotlighting a decadeslong string of murders on Chicago’s South and West sides, Beverly Reed-Scott worked to humanize the 51 women who were brutally killed as well as the communities where they lived.
The three-part series, called “The Hunt for the Chicago Strangler,” is available on the discovery+ streaming channel. It explores a series of murders spanning 20 years in which Black women were strangled to death, their bodies dumped in trash bins, alleyways and abandoned buildings.
After learning of the killings, Reed-Scott, an Olympia Fields resident who describes herself as a “spiritual activist,” became involved in the mission to bring attention to what some believe are the heinous actions of a serial killer.
She became a liaison of sorts between the families, community members and police investigators. In 2017 she organized a vigil for the slain women.
Her involvement in the case led Reed-Scott to connect with documentary director Jen Anderson, who asked her to work as a consulting producer on the project.
“I felt very honored that they would embrace my vision,” Reed-Scott said. “My concern was it would be another ‘found dead in an alley’ (documentary) — something graphic, with no heart.”
The series, which is streaming now, traces the seemingly linked killings from 1999 to a resurgence in murders and renewed police interest in 2017. At the same time, it explores the lives and families of the women who died.
Herself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, rape and strangulation, Reed-Scott said she empathizes with the women who were killed. While police and activists do their respective work, she works on matters of the heart, she said.
“My work is to raise consciousness and open hearts around these ladies’ lives,” Reed-Scott said. “I’m expressing the humanity of these ladies to those who do the work.”
Scott trained in community organizing alongside future President Barack Obama at the Lugenia Burns Hope Center in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. She worked as a columnist and reporter at the Chicago Defender newspaper and eventually married the publisher, Col. Eugene F. Scott, who has been her husband for 23 years.
Together, the couple worked at the executive level of Chicago Defender Charities, which supports numerous efforts for youth and acts as a major sponsor of the annual Bud Billiken back-to-school parade on Chicago’s South Side.
For 20 years, Reed-Scott also has operated a business called The Soul Garden Empowerment Center, in which she primarily works with women.
“I’m not a minister, but my work is matters of the soul,” she said. “Good is not what I do; good is who I am. This is me expressing myself in the world, as close to my soul whispers in this lifetime.”
Now she’s also fulfilling a longtime dream of earning a college degree, with one month remaining in her studies for a bachelor’s degree in creative writing, and a focus on consciousness studies.
Reed-Scott described her life story as one of transformation from victimization to empowerment. Though the women discussed in “The Hunt for the Chicago Strangler” are no longer living, participation in the series was Reed-Scott’s way to empower them as well.
“That their humanity be impressed upon whoever comes to view this docuseries, for the police and for anyone who has in their mind that Black women’s lives somehow have less value,” she said. “To say it out loud, that they have families who love them, they had dreams and hopes for the future.”
Rather than being told in an older style that makes you “so dang depressed and scared when you watch it,” Reed-Scott said new storytelling approaches allow viewers to understand the victims as humans, along with their lives and environments.
Reed-Scott said she tries to defy superficial perceptions of Chicago’s South and West sides as crime-ridden urban areas, focusing instead on the neighborhoods as centers of Black history and culture dating back to the turn of the century.
“When you watch it, you will see the beauty, the nature of life for Black people in Chicago on the South Side from the Great Migration until now,” she said.
All three parts of “The Hunt for the Chicago Strangler” series are available on discovery+.
Carole Sharwarko is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
