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Morbid Network podcast.

I'm going deep into my wife's family history, digging up the cold case of her murdered great-grandmother.

Did I mention that I'm.

Looking into.

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Hey, weirdos. I'm Alena. And I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. It's Morbid.

And it's Morbid in the morning.

It is. My brain is also not functioning on any high frequency right now, so I apologize at the time.

She's a little lively.

Today, folks. I said my child's name wrong while I was just talking about her. I put all the names into one. Yeah, that was interesting.

I.

Liked that though. Yeah, I'm just not with it. I'm not with it. Get with it. I'm trying to get with it.

Maybe we should get you a.

Pump, teeny. Let's go.

Imagine. Fucking 8:00 AM pump teenie.

Just take you.

To pump teenie at 8:00 AM. Honestly, goals.

Lisa Vanderpump, is that you?

Oh, my Lord. Yeah, I don't think I have anything exciting to talk about, maybe because my brain isn't working.

Yeah, I don't know.

The actor strike is over. That's exciting. Now we'll get TV. I'm just excited about Stranger Things, season five.

Hell, yeah, brothers.

It's going to be fun. It's a countdown that my wedding is on again. -again? -everybody was very concerned that me and Drew didn't get married in October like we said we were going to. But family things happen, you move things, and now we're getting married at another time. There you go. But I'm not telling.

I'll never tell. Yeah, we're almost there, folks.

So close. I'm about to be a whole ass wife, you will. It's true.

But before that, we're going to talk about some terrible things.

Yeah, that's our job.

That's what we do, and we're here to do it. This particular one that I'm going to talk about is from the 50s. Shut up. I will not shut up. Shut up.

It's like in Princess... Or not Princess Diaries. It's in Mean Girls, and she's like, I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. I was just going to say that my case this week is.

Also from the 50s. Hey.

Or my next one, I guess it'll be next week.

Who knows? I don't know when any of these come out. It'll be at a time. By the time this comes out, Ash can be married. I have no idea about any consensus that I will be married. Mike, he just nodded. Congratulations on getting married.

Thank you so much. It was such a great time with you there.

Yeah, so we're in the 50s today, and this is unsolved, technically.

Oh, technically. That tells me it should have been solved.

There's someone who's an interesting suspect who unfortunately, we can't really get anymore. But there was someone that they followed. We'll get there. But it's technically unsolved. I really think it has the potential to be closed at some point.

Okay. Can we do a little exclamation, maybe?

Yeah, there you go. I would like to see this closed because this is a really, really sad story. Their parents, especially their mother, I feel like carried guilt that she didn't need to carry. Oh, that's terrible. I hate that she had it on her and that she felt that way. I can't fathom it. Let's get into this horrible, horrible tale. The murder of the Grimes Sisters and the investigation that followed is still one of Chicago's most notorious cold cases, and it is one of the most costly and labor-intensive searches in the state's history. Despite all of the hard work put in to search for this killer, the investigation was ultimately hitting dead end after dead end, partially because of bad leads at times that were chased a little too far, and also some well-intended but very misguided attempts to withhold evidence that allowed this killer to still go unpunished to this day. It left generations of people wondering what the hell happened to Barbara and Patricia Grimes.

Oh, I think I know this one.

It's really sad. Yeah. We'll get to it, but there is some withholding of information from the press and the public that obviously that is very important sometimes, and obviously that can push a case forward. Sometimes I fully support that. In this case, the reasoning behind it was like... Then it actually ended up hurting in the end. Oh, no. Which was obviously not the intent of the people who did it, but it didn't work out well in the end. Barbara Grimes was born May fifth, 1941, and Patricia Grimes was born December 31st, 1943, a couple of years later.

And a New.

Year's baby. Yeah. They were both born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and were the third and fourth of what would be seven children born to Joseph and Loretta Grimes. Wow, that's a lot of kids. Joseph and Loretta had married very young. They actually married when they were both 17 years old.

Were they just in love?

They were just in love. Then when they were 19, they had their first child, a daughter, Shirley.

Such cute names. I know.

It's really cute. Loretta, Shirley, Patricia, Barbara. Since they married so young, they didn't really get a chance to pursue a formal education. Yeah, that makes sense. They started a family quick. They definitely struggled in the beginning.

Yeah, and I mean, with.

That many children. Yeah, and they relied on welfare. They went without basic needs a lot like heat and electricity in the beginning. Eventually, though, the struggle was only for a little while and they got through it. But during the struggling time, as we know, that can be tough. Yeah, definitely. They have all these kids that they keep having and the struggle is getting worse. The burden, the financial burden is becoming harder. But eventually, Joseph did manage to find work as a truck driver. By the late 1940s, he was making around $80 per week, which now would be about $950 per week. That was a stable salary, and it did help relieve that financial pressure that was happening, especially having six children and one on the way at that moment. Seriously. At that moment, he had six children and one on the way.

That's a lot of pressure.

Unfortunately, the couple had not weathered the struggling time as well as they had hoped. In December 1951, they filed for divorce. Oh, that's sad. Now, luckily for the entire family, including the kids, Joseph and Loretta's divorce was pretty uncomplicated. They very much agreed on it mutually. That's great. There wasn't a lot of fighting. It wasn't a lot of upheaval and nastyness.

It was like they.

Still had respect for each other. They just agreed that this wasn't working. Too much happened. Once the papers had been signed and the divorce was official, they went their separate ways. Barbara, Patricia, and three of their five siblings remained in the custody of their mother, and Joseph moved to an apartment not far away. They still saw their father. Everything was-.

Just a hunky-dory. Yeah.

Now, the only problem was without the income of Joseph's job, although he did pay $35 per week in child support from his $80 a week salary. It's a good chunk. Loretta was forced to find work, and luckily she quickly did. She got work as a file clerk for Park Davis Pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to really take care of every... I mean, again, they have seven kids, that's a lot. They did have to rely on welfare still, some social supports from time to time. She worked a lot of hours, but despite that, she prided herself, and everyone said it, including the whole family said it, that she was an amazing mother to her kids, and she did the best she could while she was at home to be there whenever.

She could. That's incredible to have that much pressure on you of staying afloat financially, working all these hours and then to still be a great mom when.

You're home. And to be present and do whatever you could to be there for them.

That's amazing. Loretta was killing it. Yeah. By all accounts, Barbara and Patricia, in particular, were smart, polite, very well liked girls in their neighborhood, in their whole community, really, at school. Barbara ended up having a part-time job at 15 years old when she was only a sophomore at Kelly High School. She actually ended up working at Wolf Furniture House, and she ended up doing that to help her mom make ends meet. So she immediately was like, I want to help, because she respected her mom a lot. Now, her younger sister, Patricia, was described as super friendly, a little more outgoing than Barbara, and more energetic than Barbara. Barbara and Patricia were also described as seemingly in separateable, and they were said to often walk places hand in hand. Oh, my.

God.

That's so sweet. Now, Barbara is 15, Patricia is 13.

They're pretty close in age.

Pretty close in age. The two girls had a lot of interests in common, but like many of their peers at the time, what they were really passionate about was Elvis Presley.

Oh.

Elvis, baby. Elvis Presley. Now, in 1956, Presley was only a handful of years into what would be what we all know, an iconic career. You would say. Yeah, he had a pretty iconic career. Elvis? Yeah. Now, as devoted Elvis fans, Barbara and Patricia would often spend their afternoons at the local record store listening to his singles. I love it. They would find anywhere that had a jukebox around town just to hear his music over and over again. At home, their whole bedroom was covered in pictures of him. They cut out of magazines. You could also get them at the Five and Dimes store, so they had purchased them whenever they could. That's so cool. By the fall of 1956, they joined his fan club and were eagerly awaiting their membership cards. Oh, I love it. That's so much fun. Isn't that adorable? I remember a time when it was like magazines, like Teen Beat magazines and Tiger Beat and all that shit. You could send away for stuff. They had fan club mail that you could send. That's so fun. You could send it. It was wild.

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On November 15th, 1956, Elvis Presley's first feature film, Love Me Tender, was released in theaters across the country. It was something if you were devoted Elvis fan, you were going to see that movie a million times. It was just happening. And as dedicated Presley fans, Barbara and Patricia got their opening night, and by Christmas they had seen the film a ton, like dozens of times. I love that so much. They had seen it a ton. But Barbara and Patricia just couldn't get enough of it. On December 28th.

My birthday. And a couple of days before one of.

Their birthdays. On December 28th, Barbara and Patricia convinced their mother to allow them to go to the movies to see the film again for the 100,000th time. Now, early that week, Barbara had come down with a bad cough and was taking cold medicine for a few days. Loretta was a little reluctant because she was like, I don't know, you've had a cough. It's the winter. But eventually they begged and begged and she gave in and let them go.

Probably just wanted to.

Make them happy, of course. They promised they would be home before midnight, and she was like, Okay, as long as you promise, then you can go. Now, when she agreed to let the girls go, Loretta gave them explicit instructions to be home by 11:45. This gave them enough time to watch two movies that evening. When 11:45 PM came and went and no one came home, Loretta immediately began to get anxious and sent her two other children, Theresa and Joey, to the nearest bus stop to wait for them, hoping that they maybe just got the late bus. But three busses stopped and 15-year-old Barbara and 13-year-old Patricia did not get off.

Those busses. You just think of one, the mother, Loretta, having to send the kids out to be like... And hoping for the best, but probably thinking, This isn't right. Then those two siblings watching three busses.

Go by.

Just the increasing worry.

That was building up. Oh, my God. I can't even imagine. Then these two come home and.

Say- Anti-handed.

They didn't get off, and Loretta is just panicking. Fully, I bet. When she learned that the girl still hadn't returned, she immediately called the local police precinct around 12:30 AM and sent Theresa and Joey back to the corner to meet the officer. The kids explained that their sisters were supposed to be home an hour earlier and hadn't arrived. They hadn't heard anything. The officer immediately put out an alert for the sisters, but they still hadn't heard anything a few hours later, and so Loretta called the precinct again to officially report them missing. Now, although the investigation into Barbara and Patricia's disappearance officially began on the morning of December 29th, it didn't really get into high gear until it hit the Chicago newspapers on Monday morning, December 31st, which also happened to be Patricia's birthday. Right. Now, it was by then that the investigators had talked to the staff of the theater. They'd gone door to door speaking to people. They'd searched neighborhoods, garages, alleys, abandoned buildings, everywhere in between. They found no trace of Barbara and Patricia. Obviously, any child going missing or multiple children going missing is alarming for the residents of Chicago. But this disappearance started really setting everyone's minds going because it definitely reminded them of the disappearance of three local boys whose bodies were discovered on a rural road outside the city a little over one year earlier.

It was very similar. We actually talked about these boys John and Anton Schuzler and Robert Peterson in one of our spooky forest episodes because there's all these stories about the place where they were found. This certain forest has a lot of activity.

Yeah, that.

Rings a bell. It's a really horrifying story. Really horrifying. They were 11, 13, and 14. They were found stripped and stacked on top of each other. They were bound, gagged, raped, and strangled. That's absolutely horrific. The details are really horrifying for that one. That had already shook everybody. But this on top of it is now, Oh, fuck. What's happening is there's someone out there stealing kids. Now, the first tip finally came in on the afternoon of December 31st, when Jack Franklin, who was a security guard with the Admiral Corporation, reported to police that he thought he'd seen the girls a little after 9:30 AM on the morning they were reported missing. What we will see in this case is so many people say they saw these girls when they had already been dead.

I remember that being reported, like I've heard this case told a.

Few times. It's not like one or two people. It's a lot. Lots of people.

That's interesting.

It's weird.

Do you believe some of them?

I don't know. I mean, eyewitnesses to me are very- It's- It's shaky. It's dodgy, yeah. But so many people. Yeah, that is interesting. I think it's some phenomenon, but I'm also like, What is going on here? Well, and I think.

Styles, like girls were all dressing in very similar styles and had certain hairstyles back.

Then, so maybe that had something to do with it. But it's very strange. Now, according to Franklin, he said, quote, It was their rudeness that made him remember them. Oh, I doubt that. Which they're not described that way. Yeah, I doubt that entirely. Franklin told investigators he had been standing on a sidewalk on Lawrence Avenue Saturday morning, and he saw the two girls pass him. He said, One said to the other, I wonder where the bus stops. Franklin heard them, so he said, You just missed the bus. One of them looked over and said, Oh, shut up. Then the two continued walking towards the bus stop.

That doesn't sound like them from how they've been described.

Exactly. Again, this was very troubling because he was sure it was the girls. Then this is troubling because the three boys that we mentioned who were murdered in October 1955 were last seen in the same area before their bodies were found a few days later. Interesting. This was concerning to everybody like, Oh, shit. Now, the same day, 15-year-old Dorothy Fisher told police she'd seen Barbara and Patricia in the theater that night, the evening that they had gone to the movie.

They're thinking they made it.

To the movie. Yeah. She said they had spoken with briefly together, and then they left the theater. Okay. Apparently, the girls were also seen that evening around 11:00 PM by a bus driver who picked them up at the stop near the movie theater. But they were... But this bus driver reported that they got off at Western Avenue, which was nowhere near the Grimes' home.

Why would they get off there when they.

Promised they'd be home? That's the thing. Now, despite all the witnesses reporting that the girls were alone when they were seen, detectives had initially theorized that the girls had just run off for, quote, a date with sailors.

That's random.

Sounds random. Oh. But it's not. Because when I first read that, I was like, They're 15 and 13. What the fuck are you talking about? I came out of nowhere. Well, apparently a few days earlier, Patricia had told friends about a letter she'd received from a sailor acquaintance saying he would be home for the holidays. Okay. Just one month earlier, in fact, both girls had come home from a movie with two sailors they had met at the theater. Okay. This wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. I'm sorry. Yes, these sailors are men.

Right. I'm sorry, did you say a year earlier or a.

Month earlier? A month earlier.

They came.

Home with these men? I think these sailors brought them home from the theater. Okay. All right. It's the same reaction, indeed. Yes. I said, Huh?

You would hope... Well, no. I was going to say you'd hope that they're just 18, but even that's wrong.

No, still 15, 13. Oh, no, I meant.

The sailors. But then I was like, Yeah, they're 15.

And 13. But that's.

What I mean.

Still doesn't work, unfortunately. But yeah, that's a whole part of this that's just like, Oh.

And to that Loretta ever comment that she... Did she ever confirm that she had met these sailors?

I think we find out who those sailors are, and I think they were able to clear them. Yeah, but not much is known about them. But tips kept coming in, and the next day one of their school friends said they had seen Barbara and Patricia in her neighborhood on Saturday afternoon. A passenger on the train said they'd seen them board his Milwaukee-bound train on Sunday afternoon. So two days after they've gone missing. Now we're seeing somebody has seen them at the theater, somebody has seen them on... A bus driver has said they dropped them off somewhere far away from their home that night. Then someone else is saying they saw them the next morning, and then a school friend is saying they saw them the next afternoon, and then somebody else is saying they saw them Sunday. Now we're seeing them all three days, and we have multiple people saying it. Right. Very strange. Very. Now, according to this passenger on the train that said they got off that Milwaukee-bound train, he said that the girls got on at the Edison Court Station, which is just two stops away from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, which further supported their belief that they had met up with Patricia's sailor friend.

Now based on this information, detectives began looking into the sailors that had brought them home the previous month, known only as Terry and Larry.

Terry.

And Larry. No, since it was all looking a little crazy here now with the possibility of fucking adult men being involved here. That's always a problem.

The case did.

Get assigned to a task force led by Chief of Detective Patrick Daley. This task force had actually been put together a few months earlier to investigate the murders of those three local boys in October. 40 officers were assigned to the case, and they were from the... 40 officers from the Brighton Park Precinct were assigned to the case. You got it. Several of these were from the Juvenile Bureau, which was put together to investigate sex crimes and homicides. Now, meanwhile, the students at St. Maureen, where Patricia attended school, were helping out however they could. They stuffed over 15,000 missing flyers into mailboxes. The clergy and parishioners at the family's church had collected enough money to offer a $1,000 reward for any information for their safe return. The whole community is on this. It's a huge search. That's great. Now, unfortunately, weeks passed and it seemed like they had just vanished. Loretta Grimes told reporters, I'm waiting here for news, hoping and praying. If someone is holding them, please let the girls call me. I'll forgive them from the bottom of my heart if they just let my girls go. Oh, God. I literally almost tear up hearing that.

It's just like I can't fathom the depths of her despair here. She insisted to media and police that the girls didn't have boyfriends, and neither one of them were the type to run away, and they never had run away. Right. Especially since it was days before Patricia's birthday and there was a party planned. She was like, They wouldn't have run away.

Obviously, this was just something they did. Went to the movie, saw the Elvis movie, came home.

They didn't miss. They were coming home. They were coming home.

They had done this a.

Million times. Yeah, this wasn't out of the ordinary. It wasn't a sudden thing they wanted to see this movie. They'd seen it a million times. Right. Reporters even suggested to her, which I was like, Cool, reporters. You're saying this to a devastated mother? What did they say? They were like, Oh, do you think they ran off to Tennessee to see Elvis at Graceland? Okay.

I get where the thought is coming from. But it's.

Also like- She really- -a cute joke. Fun.

Not the time. Yeah.

What the fuck? By January 19th, Elvis Presley himself made a statement. Wow. He released it from his home in Graceland and said, quote, if you're good Presley fans, you'll go home and ease your mother's worries. Thanks, Elvis. That's helpful.

Everyone's.

Really helpful here, I can see. Thank you, Mr. Presley. I don't think you needed to make that statement. You could have made a different statement. Because right now it's not really looking like they're holding up somewhere and just worrying their mom. Right. Sounds like something happened. Yeah. Let's not put it on them. Yeah, I know. Let's put it out there and say, Let's get you girls home. If you're holding these girls, let them home. Spend that a different way. Spend that a little bit different. Now, horrifically, all of those hopes and prayers fell away just a few days later on January 22, 1957, when the bodies of Barbara and Patricia Grimes were discovered off County Line Road in nearby Will Springs, Illinois.

That's almost a month after they disappeared.

Now, that day, Leonard Prescott was on his way to the grocery store outside Willow Springs and was traveling on German Church Road when he saw what he thought were mannequins. He said he thought they were to store mannequins. Never. He later told reporters, I didn't have a care in the world. My wife told me to go out and get groceries. I was going mighty slow, and I noticed these flesh-colored things underneath the railing along the side of the road. He didn't stop initially, but he said he went grocery shopping, and then on his way home, he was like, It really bothered me the whole way home. I couldn't shake it. He was like, He said he had read about the missing Grime, Sisters, and the Papers because everyone in Chicago and beyond had at this point. And even though he had convinced himself those were just store mannequins, he was like, I just need to confirm this because I can't just go about my day. He and his wife, Marie, actually went back to the spot that afternoon. When they reached the embankment, Marie Prescott screamed- Oh, God. -because it was clearly the sight of the nude bodies of two girls lying in that ditch, barely covered by a layer of snow.

Marie began weeping uncontrollably. Leonard had to literally carry her back to the car. The absolutely horrified couple just sat there for a while trying to calm themselves. Once they were able to speak, they drove down the road only about a mile to the Springs Police Department. Only about a mile away. They were even a mile away. Now, Sergeant John McKay was just getting out of his car, showing up at the station. The Prescots got out of their car and came right up to him. Mckay said he was all excited. He'd seen two what he thought were dummies lying alongside the road on German Church Road. I told him that I would immediately go over there. He should show me the spot. Now, when they reached the scene, McKay confirmed what the Prescots had suspected that these were the bodies of two girls. Someone had obviously dumped the bodies of two girls along the side of the road, and he was strongly suspecting that these were Patricia and Barbara Grimes. Right. Mckay radioed the sheriff station and stayed on scene until all the officers arrived. Now, the discovery of the Grimes sisters brought a heartbreaking end to a weeks-long search that had been underway right from December 28th.

But no questions were answered here. More questions were asked. The bodies were covered in snow, which indicated they had been there since the last snowfall, which was on January ninth. Oh, wow. This was January 22nd. They had been there since January ninth at the very least. They had only become visible when the snow began to melt a few days earlier. Now, at the time, German Church Road was not traveled a lot. It was in an unincorporated town. Oh, okay. Which makes sense. That explains why they hadn't been discovered earlier. No one went down that road. It was a very seldom traveled road.

How fucked up is it, though, that they were a mile away from the.

Police station. Yeah, and nobody knew just under Snow. Right on the side of the road, too, they were not far off the road. There's, unfortunately, crime scene photos, and they're right off the side of the road.

I might be getting ahead of myself here, but do they think that they had been there the whole time?

We'll get to that. Okay. Yeah, we'll definitely get to that. But unfortunately, there was no clues on the scene to what the hell happened here. Before the girls were removed from the scene, unfortunately, Joseph Grimes, their father, was taken to the site. Oh, God. Where he positively identified them as Barbara and Patricia. As he did so, he just dropped to the ground and burst into inconsolable tears. I can't even fathom that scene. Well, you don't hear a.

Lot of parents being brought to.

The crime scene. I think it was the '50s. It was just wiling back then. Holy shit. They don't do that now. That's the thing.

That's horrific anyway to have to identify your child, but at the crime.

Scene or wherever they were- The dump scene?

Yeah. God, I.

Can't imagine. Now, according to Harry Gloss, a representative from the coroner's office, the bodies had been hastily covered with leaves and grass. Barbara's body laid across Patricia. Both girls had three puncture wounds in the chest. That appeared to have been made by an ice pick. Oh, my God. Barbara's face had bruises that indicated that she had been beaten. There were cans, bottles, and other debris just strewn all around the area, but none of it appeared to be related to the crime scene. It was just a place where people threw trash. I'm sure they've been there. Now, the autopsies were performed a few days later because they had to give the bodies adequate time to thaw out because they had been essentially frozen there. But they didn't get a lot of extra information even then. According to all three of the very qualified pathologists who performed the examinations, both Patricia and Barbara's causes of death were shock and exposure. Wow. Which indicates that they were dumped alive.

Yeah.

And died.

From the cold. From the elements. From the cold.

But they can't get a lot more than that, which is like, horrifying because they were stabbed three times in the chest. Right. One of them at least was beaten, and then they were stripped and thrown in the snow. Right. What the fuck?

Did they know had they been assaulted at all?

We will get to that. Okay. They couldn't agree on an exact time of death for either victim. All of them agreed that they had likely died the night they went missing and had been in the ditch covered by fresh snow for quite some time. A while. Now, in their final report, the pathologists also noted that the girls, quote, had not been sexually molested. Okay. There were, quote, no signs of external violence on the bodies that could have caused the death. Okay.

That's so strange.

Yes. Now, ultimately, the autopsy results produced obviously more questions than answers. Yet again. For one thing, if the girls had been killed the night they disappeared, how is it possible for so many people to say they'd seen them around the city. Right. After their disappearance. It doesn't make any sense. The answer to that, to me, feels like eyewitnesses are just notoriously unreliable. These people are probably just mistaken, I'm assuming, or they wanted to see these girls and be part of the help. They wanted to feel like they saw them, and so they were mistakenly thinking. But who knows? It's still strange. Even though eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, we all know that. We've seen it a million times. It is strange how many people were sure they saw them or interacted with them. Right.

Like classmates from school.

That's the thing. It's not just strangers. People who knew them. It's people who actually knew them. It's very weird. But the remarkably well-preserved state of the bodies did support the theory that they'd been left packed under snow for quite some time. Wow.

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Now, the bigger problem, though, was that, and no one was going to become aware of this until much later, the bigger problem was that the pathologists who conducted the examinations had been under strict orders from Harry Gloss, who was the representative for the coroner's office, that the coroner's office had to withhold certain sensitive information. For example, the pathologist report and subsequent news reports clearly stated that neither girl had been sexually molested, which was vague enough to be defensible. If challenged, they could at least defend the wording of that, I guess. But it wasn't exactly true. In fact, when the autopsy was conducted, evidence strongly indicated that Barbara had either been raped or had consensually, but she's 15, so engaged in sexual activity near the time of her death.

How are they able to get away with that because of the wording?

Because I think it's sexually molested. It's different than that. They're saying here that they couldn't determine whether it was forcible or consensual. Later, it will come out they were both raped. Both of them? Mm-hmm. You should know that right off the bat though. Of course. It does come out later that they were both raped.

Well, and that's interesting because they're also one was laid across the other, just like in that previous.

Case where the three boys were raped and laid across.

Each other. They were stacked on top of each other. -and laid across each other.

It seems to correlate. This is why the coroner's office had done that?

Because of that.

Previous case? No. Oh, sorry. They were trying to protect Barbara's chastity and the image that both the girls were pure.

Okay.

Which is upsetting. They're trying to hold back this point so that they are still looked at as children deserving of our sympathy.

They are no matter what, because either.

Way, they.

Are not of legal age to consent to anything.

But how horrifying is it that they had to think that way? That the coroner's office literally was like, we should protect their reputations by not telling the public or the press that any sexual assault happened because it could be looked at as their fault. Wow. Everyone's- We love patriarchy. -take that in. Take that in. That's the thing. I believe the coroner's office believed they were doing something.

Right here. They had good intentions.

They had good intentions. They by no means had bad intentions withholding that, but it didn't help later. It actually ended up hurting. Right. Obviously, now we know... Now it's like this was the '50s, obviously. They were looking at it as if we released that, people are going to look at them differently. Which is so fucked. That's mind-blowing. I'm sure they would have. They are children.

Then the other theme is people need to know this information, if this is something they need to worry about, is their children going out into the streets getting abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered.

Well, this hindered the investigation big time, so we'll get to that for sure. But the discovery was obviously fucking devastating for the Grimes family, particularly poor Loretta, who learned of her daughter's fates that afternoon as she was on her way to St. Maurice's Church. Oh, my God. She told the reporters, I knew they hadn't run away. I knew that something had happened to them. I kept telling the police that they wouldn't run away. She told this to reporters, and then she just ran into one of her neighbors' home.

That's so sad.

Now, those who knew the family knew that the deaths would be particularly awful. I mean, losing a child, never mind two, is unthinkable. But this was the second time that Joseph and Loretta had lost a child. In 1954, the couple's 26-year-old daughter, Leona, had died after a kidney operation. Oh, God. They've gone through the wringer.

Yeah, they lost.

Three of their seven children. Later, Loretta Grimes would be very outspoken about how she felt largely responsible for the deaths of her daughters because she gave them permission to go out that night.

She could have never, ever, ever had known that this would happen. That poor mother.

I can't even imagine feeling that way, and she doesn't deserve to feel that way. No. She did not deserve to feel that way. She didn't do anything wrong or out of the ordinary, especially given the time period. In the 50s, kids were going... That 11, 13, and 14-year-old, the case before this one, they were out at 9:30 at night by themselves. It was the 50s. It's just the way it was. It was just kids got on busses and just came home.

This wasn't even like we've said it already. They were going to the movies. They were going to the movies. They'd done that a million times.

This was no different. In the 50s, especially going to the movies, going to a diner and playing something on the jukebox was the thing to do. Kids did it all the time. Parents let them do it. This was not strange. That mother did nothing fucking wrong. I hate that she had to live with that guilt.

That's the thing. She's sending them to a public place that's safe.

And.

Together. Yeah, and she should have been able to send her kids out to go watch a movie.

I just feel so awful for her because it's like she did not deserve to have that guilt.

But you can understand, I'm.

Sure, as a mom, why she did. Absolutely. That's what kills me. I just wish I could... I'm like.

Sorry, Loretta. I know.

But since the discovery of Barbara and Patricia Grimes was the second set of children, like we talked about, found brutally murdered in the Chicago area, many in the press and public were worried that there was a serial killer afoot abducting and killing children. Sounds like it. In both cases, the victim's bodies have been found nude in or near a forested area and on top of each other. Investigators believe the inclement weather had helped the killer lure the victims. And all had been like it was rainy or snowy out, so they could be like, Oh, you need a ride? That's easy. And all had last been seen headed to a movie theater. Oh, the three boys were also- They were on their way to a movie theater, too. They were going to see like... It was Disney's Live Lion movie or something like that that was out that year.

That's strange that they were all headed to movies.

Now, because of all this, and I get it, detectives vehemently pursued the case with the possibility that all five murders could somehow be linked.

I get that. 100%. I mean, all the factors line up.

Now, once the bodies were removed from the scene, a team of more than 70 men began searching the area for any clues that could lead to the killer. They combed that area all along Devil's Creek, where the girls were discovered. The investigators hoped to find anything, any physical evidence like clothing, anything in that debris and garbage that they could link to anybody, but nothing. Now, at the same time, another team was starting to dig into the leads pouring into the police. They started putting together a possible suspect list. They started with 53-year-old self-described, psychic, Walter Krantz. He was top of the list because a week earlier, he had called the police with an anonymous tip saying the girls would be found in Santa Fe Park. He refused to give his name when he called, but he said he, quote-unquote, dreamed of seeing the bodies there. Police were able to trace the number back to Krantz, obviously, and he immediately became their number one suspect. But he passed two polygraph tests, and after being interviewed for hours and hours, it was determined he had no involvement in the case. Now, just two days after detectives abandoned that investigation, another suspect, Edward Benny Bedwell, came into view.

Now, according to a cab driver who had seen the girl's pictures in the newspaper, he'd seen Barbara and Patricia on the morning of December 30th in the company of two men at the DNL restaurant in Chicago's Skid Row neighborhood. Now, although he didn't know their names, the cab driver recognized one of the men who he described as having Elvis Presley sideburns and a duck tail haircut. Now, investigators spoke to the owners of the DNL restaurant, John and Minnie Duros, who confirmed the cab driver's story and identified the one who looked like Elvis as Benny Bedwell.

That would have meant that they spent two days with him? Yes.

Now, they confirmed that this was Benny Bedwell because the couple who owned the restaurant said that they had actually occasionally hired him to wash dishes.

They knew.

Him well. They knew him well. According to Minnie Duros, the group, so it was Benny, who they are saying was Patricia and Barbara Grimes and one other man together. She said the group had come into the restaurant early that morning and sat in a booth and she told investigators the older of the two girls was in bad shape. She looked sick or drugged.

And.

She had been sick, right? Yes, she had been sick. Eventually, they all went outside where she saw the two men try to get the girls into a car, but the taller girl came back into the booth and put her head on the table. So when the others came back and tried to get the girl back outside, Minnie told them to leave her alone. But the three persisted and Minnie became distracted by another customer. When she looked back at the table, she saw the man she identified as Benny Bedwell, escort the girl out of the restaurant. According to Duros, the group came back later that afternoon, and the taller girl, whom she believed to be Barbara, was, carrying on with Benny, so she asked them all to leave. Now, by the time investigators became aware of Benny Bedwell, there was already three law enforcement agencies pursuing this case together, but not together, independent of one another. Chicago police had taken the initial Missing Persons Report. Cook County Sheriff's Department discovered the bodies, and the FBI was following up on the handful of ransom demands that the family had received since the girls went missing. People are so disgusting.

Because people are and always will be absolute fucking garbage. Truly. We're garbage, everybody. We're a garbage species. Garbage. Now, as is often the case, the famous ego game becomes a problem, and each agency was reluctant to share information with the others and actively withheld shit from each other.

It's like, Guys, we all have a common cause here. Let's figure out what happened to these two children.

Seriously, shake your dicks around later. There's two children who were fucking raped and murdered, and you can't get your shit together to give some information to another agency because they might get credit for it. Yeah. I don't know any of your names. That's the thing. I don't know any of your names except the ones that actually did the work. So do the work and we'll know your names for it. But if you're holding shit, we're not going to know shit.

Exactly.

In fact, on January 24th, when sheriff's department officers arrested Benny Bedwell, Chicago police investigators complained to the press that, quote, they were not informed of the arrest and said it violated a pledge of cooperation among the various law enforcement agencies. They didn't even tell the other agencies that they arrested.

The guy. That's exciting news. Hey, we might have.

This guy here. The other agencies are wasting time.

Like pursuing other needs are- Still looking when you've.

Got this guy. Yeah, right. Tale as old as motherfucking time. Imagine not being able to put your egos aside for the sake of solving the abductions, possible rape, and murders of two young girls. Imagine that. No. The sheriff's officers eventually tracked Bedwell to the Star-Gauder Theater, a former burletteDesk Theater turned movie house in downtown Chicago. Interesting. It ran double features all day and night. The Chicago police had turned out were right to have complained because rather than fill the other law enforcement agencies in on the arrest, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office just went to the press to talk about having a suspect in custody. Going to the.

Press and being like.

Look, we did it. Instead of telling the other agencies first. Right. Now, according to their report, 21-year-old Bedwell had grown up in central Illinois and taken a job with a traveling circus when he was 18. Oh, wow. But he had recently returned to Chicago around the area after a very short stint with the military. At the time of his arrest, he was living at the McCoy Hotel. Now, the reporters immediately jumped on the story and started digging in to find more about Benny Bedwell. Less than 24 hours after he was arrested, they had found his mother, Ethel Bedwell Bradbury, who was more than happy to talk about her son. She was 16 when she became the sixth wife to John Bedwell, a man who is 30 years older than she was. Holy shit. She gave birth to John Jr. Not long after they were married, and six years later, she had Benny Bedwell.

Damn.

As far as his mother was concerned, Benny was, quote, a lazy, shiftless bum, just a big, lazy boy who didn't like to work. She didn't know anything about her son's involvement in the case of the missing Grime Sisters, but she did tell reporters, quote, on several occasions, Benny had mentioned having a new girlfriend. Now, in custody, Benny insisted he had never even met the Grime Sisters and certainly didn't kill them. He did, however, admit to being at the DNL restaurant. On the evening, he was spotted there, and he said he was with a friend and two girls. Now, according to Bedwell, they were not The Grime Sisters. He said he had met the two girls and their male companion at the movies that day, and the two had gone to a bar near the theater, left when the bartender refused to serve the two underage girls because he loves underage girls. Gross. After that, they went to another bar nearby where they each had three drinks, and he said, We were only in there a little while when the girls went to the washroom. He said, When they came out of the washroom, they ducked us.

We saw them leave, and the other guy said, Let's follow them. But he said that he refused, and he claimed that the girls, they got away. He said they ran into the girls a few days later and they ignored him.

I bet.

That's a weird story, Benny. Now the problem was... That's a weird story, Benny. Well, the problem with this was this wasn't the first statement Benny gave to police. This was the second one. The initial statement he gave, he claimed he had been out that day with friends that he referred to as Louis and Frank. He said they met up with the girls he identified as being the Grimes sisters.

Okay, so first he knows them, and then he doesn't.

According to Benny, he was driving the car and the girls were in the back with his friends, and he heard, quote, the sound of scuffling, and he looked back to find the two girls were dead.

That's his first statement.

I want you to picture this. He's driving a car, they're in the back seat. He hears a little bit of scuffling. He looks back, they're dead.

Doubt it.

Benny then said the men stripped the girls' clothing off and forced him to drive out to German Church Road where they dumped the bodies. When asked why he told that first story, if it wasn't true, Benny said, I thought you would let me go if I told you that.

I thought you would let me go if I told you I was a necessity to murder. Yeah.

Let's think about that. It seems legit.

Let's do some critical thinking here.

Benny Boy. I don't think he knows how to do that. Now, while the multiple statements from Benny didn't make him look any less suspicious, the second story he told police about meeting the girls at a theater who weren't- The Grand Sisters. The Grand Sisters. That was eventually corroborated by the two young women who were part of the story, apparently, whose names Benny said he had forgotten at the time. Their names were Irene Dean and Carol King. Carol King. The other man in the group was Richard and Meyer. So, boom, alibi. Okay. The guy came forward and was like, Yep, the girls were like, Yep, it was us. Do we.

Believe.

Them? He had already told multiple stories, which was a red flag, obviously. Yeah. They tried to corroborate. They were like, That's nice, but let's corroborate the story even further. They went to the owners of the DNL restaurant and were like, Were these the.

Girls that they were with? Do you.

Recognize these girls? The owners of the DNL restaurant swore that Dean and King were not the girls that they had seen Benny with.

I wonder if somebody intimidated.

Those girls. This was further suspect because there were many other witnesses who told investigators they had also seen Barbara and Patricia Grimes with Benny on or around the time they went missing. Yeah, so there you go. Now, in fact, between the night they went missing and the week that followed, no less than eight witnesses claimed to have seen the girls in the company of two men, each including in their statement a fact or detail that would not have been known to the public.

Okay, fucking... There you go.

For example, a waitress at Mount Pindos restaurant told Detective she'd seen the girls in the restaurant with two men, and as they were leaving, she heard one of the girls referred to the other as Peody, which was Patricia's family nickname. Oh, wow. I just got chills. Also, most of the witnesses indicated or at least implied that the girls looked uncomfortable and looked like they were not exactly with these men/pigs. Willingly. Like, voluntarily. Things got more complicated on December 28th, the day after statements were taken from Witten, Mayer, Dean, and King, because now Benny Bedwell made another statement. Early that morning, Chicago police arrested a guy named William Willingham Jr, who was a known associate of Bedwell's. They'd picked up on a disorderly contact charge. When they showed Willingham a photo of Benny Bedwell, he admitted knowing Benny, but strenuously denied having anything to do with the Grimes murders and told police, I don't know anything about this, and I never went out with those girls. I was like- That sounds a little sass like that. -me thinks that I'd just protest too much. Correct. But when Benny was informed about Wilmingham's arrest, he recanted his previous story about being ditched by the girls at the Movies- Oh, okay, that one.

-and returned to another version of his initial statement that included the Grimes sisters. Right. Now, according to Benny, now he'd met both girls, Patricia and Barbara Grimes, on the evening of January seventh at Harold's Club, and they were in the presence of a man he referred to as Frank. Benny claimed they had a few drinks at the club and then got a room at the Crest Hotel. There, he said he, quote, went to bed with Patricia and Frank with Barbara. Benny claimed all four of them spent several days drinking and driving and stopping at random bars and friends' apartments where they kept drinking heavily. Finally, on the 11th or 12th, they stopped for gas and to get some lunch with the girls, and the girls went to use the bathroom at a gas station. When they got back, both men indicated they wanted to find a place to have sex, but both the girls refused, and he said that both the men got violent. In a recorded confession, Benny told Sheriff Joseph Lomin, I hit Patricia harder than I was aiming to on the chin. Both men, he said, knocked both girls unconscious, beat them unconscious.

He's one of these guys? Yes. Him and Frank?

Frank, yes. They immediately thought they had killed the girls, so they drove them up to the little used German Church Road, stripped them of their clothing, and dumped them behind the guardrail. The sheriff asked whether they knew the girls were dead or not, and Benny said, They didn't move anyway. I didn't know the girls were dead. I figured they would come to you and go for help. I didn't do it intentionally.

Well, then that makes sense because they believed that they had died of exposure, so he beat them unconscious and then left.

Them there.

Because I was saying, in my head, I was like, They died of exposure, but did they try to get home somehow?

Don't worry, we'll get through... We'll talk about that. Benny said it wasn't until several days after this that he read about the Grimes sisters in the paper and realized that it was them. He claimed neither one of them had mentioned running away from home and never mentioned they were being looked for. He also said he only met Frank a couple of times, didn't know his last name. Benny said when they got back to the city after this whole thing, they departed from each other and he hadn't seen Frank since. Now, his statement was read back to him for clarification, and Benny identified Barbara and Patricia Grimes from photographs presented to him by the sheriffs, confirming they were the girls he'd been with. Then, with his statement having been taken, Benny guided investigators on a 50-mile tour of where he and Frank had taken the girls, ending at the site on German Church Road where the bodies were found. Now, along the way, hundreds, if not thousands, watched and followed this whole ordeal. The press referred to this whole thing as, quote, a tragic circus parade at high speed, which is chilling. Yeah. Sheriff Lomon was immediately convinced of Benny's guilt, particularly because it seemed to be in line with what they've learned from witnesses in the days prior.

And just the fact that he's told about 40 different stories.

In fact, one of the witnesses who claimed to have seen the girls after they disappeared was Leonard Was, an employee at a service station not far from where the girls' bodies was discovered. According to Was, all four had stopped at the gas station in early January. He couldn't be certain of the date. The girls asked to use the restroom. Boom. As they were leaving, Was claimed the girl he identified as Barbara, quote, gave him a strange look, which he interpreted as her desire not to get back in the car. Oh, no. I love that not a one person has stepped in to be like, Girl, are you okay? Well, that's the thing. Are you all right? Because all these- Is everything okay? All these adults are like, Yeah, it looked like they were being abducted. It was wild. It's like, I don't know, fuck faces. Why don't you go ask that child if they're okay? What the fuck is.

Wrong with you? It's like clearly they looked young enough that you wouldn't go ask them because at one place they weren't served because they were so young.

It's never a bad thing to just be.

Like, Hey, you all right?

Hey, you all right? Yeah. Do you.

Need help? Yeah.

What the.

Fuck, dude? Especially when they're with these two older men. Yeah, come.

On, guys. Now, there were some people, though, who didn't really buy Benny's confession. He had lied a lot.

What number of confession is this?

He had told a lot of stories by this point. Although some of his stories seemed like it was being confirmed by witnesses and shit, there was a lot that didn't make a lot of sense.

Well, there is.

Confirmation bias. There's one big thing. So, Benny had claimed both... There's a couple of big things, actually. Benny had claimed both girls ate hot dogs for lunch at the service station. The autopsy said, Nope. There were no hot dogs in their stomachs. In fact, there was nothing recent in their stomachs. Interesting. Both girls had light bruising on their faces, but not enough to corroborate a beating that would knock them unconscious. Okay. Like Benny had described. He described it as very violent.

Yeah, and he said when they dumped.

Those girls, they were- He thought he had killed them. Right. Also, did you remember the puncture wounds in the chest?

I was just.

About to ask. He never mentioned those. No. Where did those come from? Benny never mentioned those. The press immediately pointed out all of this, and his confession was now being questioned by everyone.

But there are so many things that he did.

Know that do make sense. Well, there's also another problem here because the biggest issue that everyone had with his confession was that Benny claimed to have engaged in repeated sexual intercourse with Patricia. But according to the autopsy report that everyone knew about, neither girl was, quote, sexually experienced, meaning neither had engaged in sexual intercourse because, remember, they were withholding that information. Right. Now the public is hearing this confession involving that, and they're saying, Well, it can't be true.

But it is.

In fact, when reporters asked one of the pathologists whether the girls were chased, he refused to answer the question. Because, again, remember, the coroners are being told you're not allowed to say it. Right. He said the question, and his answer was that's a question of morals, not science. He was like, I'm not answering that. I'm not telling you whether these girls are chased. That's not. That's like opinion. That's not science. I'm here to talk about science.

Let's not put that in your story, asshole.

In truth, his refusal, again, was the direct result of being under strict orders from the the governor's office to protect their reputation and not answer those questions. Loretta Grimes, on the other hand, wasted no time reinforcing what the autopsy had included. She said, Our girls came from a good home and were brought up in religious surroundings. He's not right, she said of Benny Bedwell, and she insisted that he was lying. She said, I want to see my girls' clothing before I believe anything. Even then, I won't believe what Bedwell says about their being in bars, which I don't blame her.

No, of course not.

More than any of the other inconsistencies in Benny's confession, which I think the puncture wounds are huge inconsistency, he never mentioned them. I think if you stabbed the girls three times with an ice-picky, she would mention that in your confession.

Did he head back to the car, though, and Frank did that?

I don't know.

To ensure.

That they were dead? I don't know. But his insistence that he engaged in sex with one or both of these girls was held up by the press, the family, and many others as evidence that he was lying. After all, the autopsy report indicated that had not happened, so there was no way he could be telling the truth. Unfortunately, it would be many years before anyone learned that the coroner's office had, out of some misguided sense of decency, basically conspired to suppress certain results to protect them, their innocence. This is so interesting. In truth, several members of the sheriff's department had seen the autopsy slides and years later would confirm, like I said, that both girls had been sexually assaulted before their deaths. Right.

We're moving from one of the most magical times of the year, spooky season, to the other magical time of the year.

Speaking of, what's your favorite Christmas story?

Oh, hands down the Grinch. Same. It cracks me up that he hates all merrimont. Same. But then it's so heartwarming at the end when the whole town's singing and he realizes there's more to Christmas than just gifts.

If I had to get to the tables, it would hit.

Me right in them. Well, the best part is Wundery has a new podcast starring The Grinch, and I think there's someone who wants to tell you more about it.

Hi, it's me, the.

Grand.

Pouba of The Humbug. The OG Green Grump, The Grinch. From Wundery.

Tiz the Grinch.

Holiday talk show is a pathetic attempt by the people of Hooverille to use my situation as a teachable moment.

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Listen as I launch a campaign against Christmas cheer. Grilling celebrity guests.

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Follow Tiz the Grinch holiday talk show on The Wondery.

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Get your podcasts.

Now, despite the many flaws in the case, Lomon remained convinced of Benny Bedwell's guilt.

I'm.

Convinced. I'm not.

You're.

Not? Okay. He accepted the confession and he booked the man on murder charges and intended to see the case through to trial. The announcement of Benny Bedwell's confession and the impending indictment brought some comfort to the people of Chicago, particularly those who had been increasingly anxious over the rising instances of children being abducted and raped and murdered in the city and the surrounding areas. But for others, Benny seemed like a scapegoat in a case that multiple law enforcement agencies had failed to solve. Okay. Benny's pro bono lawyer, David Bradshaw, told the reporters, The boy in this case is wholly illiterate, doesn't understand what's going on, and has found himself the main object in a case of nationwide interest. Loretta Grimes agreed, telling reporters he's changed his story so many times. Who wouldn't? He's had no sleep and nothing to eat. She's a consumant mama. Yeah, she really is. She's literally like, the boy hasn't had anything to eat and he hasn't slept. He's going to say whatever. Like, she's just looking at it like this is a 21-year-old. Right. Loretta Grimes is a.

Mama bear.

That's my girl. She really is. But she did not agree. She did not think that this was the guy.

All right, well, I respect how she, whatever she thinks, because you also have to think like there's a mama in.

Stage there. Instinct to happen in there. Now, Benny's lawyer, David Bradshaw, believed investigators were under intense pressure to solve this case, obviously. Since Benny was their only real suspect, they pursued him despite all the contradictions in his confession.

It's like, okay, I understand pursuing him based on some of the things he was saying, but don't do it exclusively at the expense of.

Finding other people. I think it reminds me of something, the West Memphis Three, which reminds me of when they just went forward with Jesse Miskelly, even though there was several contradictions in his confession, they just corrected them.

That confession is one of the saddest things you will ever hear about in your life.

Now, also, Bradshaw believed his client was being scapegoated because the public and men in law enforcement continued to cling to the Grimes sisters' purity. Right. They refused to believe that the two teenagers had gone anywhere near Skid Row bars and theaters and that something could have happened. He was like, I think he's just being put up here as the easy way to understand all of this.

At that point, his lawyer also didn't know about.

The truth. The more investigators dug into Benny's story, the less likely it seemed he was telling the truth. William Willingham, the friend that had been arrested when he was, had told investigators that he had gone out drinking with Benny around the time the girls went missing and that he swore the girls were with... The girls that they were with were Irene, Dean, and Carol King. The results of his polygraph test indicated he was telling the truth. Oh, interesting. Also, when Dean and King were shown photos of Benny Bedwell and William Wilmington, they again identified them as the men they had been out with at the DNL restaurant, among other places. They were like, That was us. That's interesting. Now, a coroner's inquest began on January 30th, 1957, and much of what was learned did little to support Benny's confession. It was determined that the girls had most likely been abducted shortly after they left the movie theater, a little after 11:30 PM. At that time, Benny Bedwell was known to have been at work. The inquest also demonstrated the extent to which so many involved in the case were committed to protecting the, quote-unquote, innocence of Barbara and Patricia.

At one point, while the girl's school friend, Dorothy Weiner was testifying that she saw both of them buying popcorn and a candy bar at the movie, Loretta jumped up out of her chair and started calling the girl a liar because she said she had only given them money for movies. She said she insisted that she gave her money for the bus ride, the ticket for the movies, and one popcorn. Because of how sensitive everything was, just because this school friend had said that these girls had an additional 30 cents, many interpreted it as that they must have been dishonest or they'd done something immoral to get that 30 cents. Wow. That's why Loretta jumped up and was like, No, no, no, no, no, no. No, I gave them this amount. But that's how ridiculous it had gotten.

That's.

Insane. Now, after three days of testimony, Betty Bedwell once again recanted his 14-page confession, saying he had only confessed because he was threatened and beaten by police. Oh, wow. In fact, he again said he had never met or seen the Grime Sisters and only knew the case through the newspapers. Benny had told so many conflicting stories by this point that it would have been reasonable for anyone to be skeptical of this latest one.

At that.

Point, I mean, come on. But now the coroner's inquest, that was starting to show that he was probably innocent. He was probably innocent of this, I should say. Well, the inquest was in its third day. The lab and toxicology reports came back and found that both girls most likely died December 28th, the night they disappeared. Also, there was no alcohol in either of the girl's systems, and the contents of their stomachs turned up particles of fish and potatoes on those later reports, not hot dogs.

Bedwell had only claimed that they had eaten hot dogs, and that was in January.

Do you have any idea if Loretta said they.

Had fish and potatoes for dinner that day? I'm assuming that's what they had for dinner. I didn't see it in any of the things, but because they weren't concerned by it, it makes sense that that's what they had for dinner.

They were going to a later movie.

Yeah, and that movie was later and they weren't concerned about these. They weren't using it as part of the investigation. I'm assuming that was from home. It also.

Just sounds like.

A family dinner. It does. Now, a few days later, on February sixth, a bail bondsman named Morris Brown put up the $20,000 bail for Bedwell's release. He believed him innocent, so Benny was released from custody.

Now.

When Benny Bedwell got out of jail and was seemingly exonerated by the findings of the autopsy and the coroners inquest. Investigators were just back to square one. Yeah. Detectives and deputies from the Chicago Police Department and Cook County Sheriff's Department returned to German Church Road and the theater where the girls had gone the night they disappeared, but they couldn't find anything else to help them. Investigators revisited their previous suspects. They found a couple that seemed promising at some point, but then they would go nowhere. The most promising of these suspects was 17-year-old Max Fleague. There's little known about Max Fleig, but he was picked up by police shortly after the bodies were discovered and was convinced by Captain Ralph Pataki to take a polygraph test. According to author Troy Taylor, Max failed the polygraph exam and confessed to the murders, but, quote, because the test was illegal and admissible, the police were forced to let him go.

Because he was coerced.

Into taking it? Yeah. Got you. Now, as the month and years went by, there would be other suspects. People would confess to it again. None of them were strong enough to get a conviction. In late 1962, Alfred Lawless, an Illinois prisoner about to be released from jail on a drunk and disorderly charge, claimed that he had killed the Grimes sisters, quote, Six years ago today, I killed Barbara and Patricia Grimes, and I've been running over ever since. According to him, he had met the girls at the theater the night they disappeared, and he murdered them a few hours later. He said, I had to tell somebody about the murders. I'm scared that if I didn't, I might do the same thing again to other innocent girls. But like Benny's confession years before, his story was surprisingly detailed, but all the information he provided, no matter how small the detail, had been reported by the press. There you go. So investigators were like, I don't know about that. Those delts only grew when Lawless began confessing to other crimes, including the murder of a man in Jamestown, Kentucky, 15 years earlier, in which Lawless got many of the details wrong.

I think he was just- Going through it. -off the deep end. In fact, when they started to take a closer look at his story, there were more than a few important discrepancies, and investigators were like, No, he's not a viable suspect. Now, in time, unfortunately, the leads began to dry up and slowly but surely it seems like the story disappeared first from the press, then from the public's memory. After years of inaction, the case had gone cold and was shelved by all law enforcement agencies. That's awful. Now, the Grimes sisters cold case had sat on a shelf for more than 50 years when it was rediscovered by a retired West police officer, Ray Johnson. Let's go. In 2010, Johnson began going over old newspaper articles and reviewing the evidence in the case for a book he hoped to write. He told the reporters, I thought nobody should give up on this case. Two years into his research, he was contacted by a woman who claimed she had been with Barbara and Patricia the night they disappeared, but she was too scared to go to the police in 1957 to tell them what she knew. According to this anonymous woman, she left the theater with the sisters when they were offered and accepted a ride from a man in his early 20s.

But this woman became uncomfortable and had jumped out of the car when it slowed down and left the sisters in the car. Now, eventually, Johnson came across a report from Loretta Grimes about one of the anonymous calls she received about the time the girls went missing. Because remember, people have always been and will always be fucking garbage. So she was getting a ton of anonymous phone calls while she was grieving her children missing. Again, garbage.

We're garbage.

What goes through people's heads? Now, unlike the previous ransom calls and harassment, this caller seemed to know things about the case that other people didn't. He claimed, quote, he was the one who undressed the girls. Oh, that's and then he hung up the phone. That poor fucking woman. That's so sick. A little over a year later, Loretta received another call from an anonymous man who told her he, quote, got away with another one. He said this time, the police would not be able to pin this one on Benny Bedwell. The next day after this call, police found the decapitated body of 15-year-old Bonnie Lee Scott in nearby Addison.

Oh, my whole entire body.

Only about three miles from where Barbara and Patricia's bodies were discovered.

Oh, that. Nope.

Eventually, police arrested 23-year-old Charles Melquest for that murder, and he quickly confessed. He said, I'm sorry about it all. I don't care what happens to me. He was convicted of the murder of Scott, but only served eight years in prison due to what he says were his connections to the Chicago Machine. What? The murder of Bonnie Lee Scott bears many similarities to the Grimes sisters case, but there's no real connection that they could pull on. Melquest had connections to Sheldon Teller, who had been one of the lead investigators on the Grimes case. But John, that retired detective that was looking into this case and found all this, he believed that Charles Melquest could be the murderer in the Grimes case. But Teller, who he was connected to, who was the lead investigator in the Grimes case, had connections to the Chicago machine and helped Melquest skirt the charges. That's also why he got such a light sentence for the other murder and got away with shit.

Is the machine.

Like the mob? The mob, yeah. Got it. Now, unfortunately, Charles Melquest died in 2010.

Oh, how strange. That was the same year that the author decided.

Yeah. Wow. But at the time of his arrest, he was considered a strong suspect in the Grimes case, and Johnson believes he could very well be the man who killed Barbara and Patricia Grimes. We'll never know. As of now, the case remains open, and Johnson hopes new information can be found to link Melquest definitively to the case and finally solve the heartbreaking murders of Patricia and Barbara Grimes. I think Charles Melquest is the guy. Really? I think he's the guy. Wow. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to fully get the justice and-.

Maybe someday.

You never know. Unfortunately, Loretta Grimes has passed away at this point. I was going to say. But it's like-.

I'm sure maybe they have living siblings.

Yeah, I'm hoping something can... I just want this family to have the closure. I really do believe... I think the fact that this shit happens. These are a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old girl, both abducted from movie theater, found naked, raped, stabbed, beaten, and murdered on the side of the road. And people are calling this family and pranking them. It's unfathomable. Look in the fucking mirror. What the fuck is wrong with you?

A laundry list.

Of things. All I can hope is that karma just bites them in the ass. I hope karma chews on their ass. Honestly, people.

Are so fucked.

Anytime I hear about that shit, I'm like, You got to be, especially when it's a child involved. You have to be truly deranged. You have to be a deranged, just feral fucking animal to do that shit. It makes me so angry.

It's just you.

Can't even fathom it. That these people going through what they went through and her having that guilt that she was living with that she did not deserve to have, but she's a mother, that guilt she had and to be having to deal with fucking pigs calling her and pranking her.

And saying.

Disgusting things and saying disgusting shit like, Man, you deserve what you get. Society, man.

But- It's rough.

-i think Charles Melquest is a great suspect for this. I really do believe he is. The fact that he got eight years for decapitating a young girl because of his connections. That poor girl's family. Can you imagine being in.

The trial or in the courtroom for sentencing, and you find out the man that decapitated your child gets eight years? He's 23. I mean, that's nothing. Nothing.

Yeah, he's going to be a young guy just walking out.

Of there. I'd be interested to see.

Or to hear. I would love to follow what the rest of his life was. There's no way that man stopped what he was doing. Yeah. It's like somebody needs to, and I'm hoping, who knows, maybe Johnson there is- Working on it. -is piecing together what that guy was doing because I would love to find out and start digging into what his life was after that. I mean, he lived until 2010. I would like to know what happened there, and I hope that somebody's looking into it. I'm like, Can I help? Because you.

Would imagine that he would have gotten out of jail sometime in the late 60s, early 70s, I think.

To be honest, I'm probably going to start trying to dig into this guy's life because it's bothering me. I know this retired police detective is probably on that chip, but I'm like, I'm just going to do this for my own personal wellbeing because I need to fucking know what this guy.

Was doing. I mean, maybe we can do some follow-up.

Yeah, I would love to.

Who knows if you'll.

Find enough. Yeah.

Hey. Keep us updated, man.

I know. I'm like, You know what? Please, Ray Johnson, please let me know what the fuck is going on if you're listening. Let's get together.

Let's squad up, Ray.

But yeah, this is a horrific, terrific tale. Yeah, that's really devastating. It doesn't have the ending that you're really looking for, but it's got something at the end that you feel like there's something to work with.

Yeah, what an interesting case all around, though. Just all the eyewitnesses afterwards and then the many stories and the people that were so convinced that they saw Benny with him.

So convinced. Perhaps. Yeah, it's fucked up. It is. It's really fucked up. I hope the Grimes family was able to move past it. I know. Not move past it, but move forward. Yeah.

Well, with that, we hope.

You keep listening. And we hope.

You- Keep.

It weird.

-keep it weird.

I got nothing. Yeah, don't be this. Don't call people who are going through things and prank them. They're just pieces of shit. There you go.

Don't keep it.

That weird. Don't do that. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to more of it early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen to Ad-free with Wundry Plus and Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wundery. Com/survey.