09/06/2026
On April 22, 1987, 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911 from her apartment in Chicago’s Grace Abbott Homes. She desperately tried to explain that people in a neighboring unit had removed their bathroom cabinet and were trying to enter through hers. The report was initially treated as a disturbance rather than the extraordinary home invasion Ruthie was attempting to describe.
The buildings contained plumbing access spaces behind bathroom medicine cabinets. By removing cabinets, intruders could exploit these spaces to enter neighboring apartments, and similar break-ins had already occurred. Neighbors soon reported screams and gunshots from Ruthie’s apartment. When authorities finally gained entry, Ruthie had been fatally shot and her apartment had been breached through the bathroom medicine cabinet.
Two men were eventually charged, but the case against them did not result in convictions and Ruthie’s murder remains unresolved. Years later, the horrifying architectural detail became part of the mythology surrounding Candyman. The 1992 film was adapted from Clive Barker’s fiction, but reporting on Ruthie’s murder helped inspire the movie’s famous concept of an attacker entering through the space behind a bathroom mirror.
