Woman found dead had been arrested for prostitution

August 14, 2012 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- There is new information about the 22-year old woman who was found dead on the seventh floor of a Gold Coast hotel, shot in the head.

Just before she was murdered in a room at the Whitehall Hotel, Brianna Gardner was in Chicago Police custody on a prostitution charge, and it wasn't her first.

She had been arrested in Texas this year and was looking for work as a nude model or in the phone sex industry.

For Chicago Police homicide detectives Tuesday night, the question was who her final client was and where is he now.

On a website for aspiring strip club employees in her hometown of Dallas, Gardner posted her resume and listed her interests as phone sex and nude modeling updating the post in the past few months.

Perhaps because she had been arrested in Dallas on prostitution charges last April, she left Texas.

Last week in Chicago, authorities say that Gardner was also looking for work on West Hubbard Street in River North, standing in the street and on the sidewalk, waving her arms, curbing cars, stopping pedestrians and soliciting single men for sex, according to police.

She was arrested and booked into the Cook County Jail.

Less than four days after being released from custody, Gardner's body was found in a seventh floor guestroom at the Whitehall Hotel.

The Cook County Medical Examiner says an autopsy showed a single gunshot wound to the head.

Chicago Police carried out several bagloads of potential evidence but say they do not have a motive and have not revealed whether they have a suspect.

At the age of 18, Gardner had a different line of work in mind. She wanted to be a dancer according to her online profiles.

When the TV show So You Think You Can Dance held auditions in Dallas, Gardner tried out but never made it past the first round. One of the judges said that she merely "squirmed around the floor" and looked like "a very bored stripper."

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local, chuck goudie

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