Hi, and welcome to Serial Sisters, a podcast where my sister and I tell each other true crime stories, sometimes sporadically. I'm Tabana. And I'm Kristen. And this week, Kristen has a story for me.
This all comes from thelineup.com, chicagonow.com, and Wikipedia. 15-year-old Barbara Grimes and 12-year-old Patricia Grimes were two of Joseph and Loretta Grimes' seven children. Oh, my God. I know, seven's a lot, but it's the time.
They lived in the McKinley Park neighborhood of Chicago, and Loretta worked as a clerk for the Park Davis Company, and Joseph was a union truck driver. They divorced in the early 1940s, and Joseph had gotten reburied. So, both Barbara and Patricia were huge Elvis Presley fans. Around 7.30 on December 28, 1956, the girls went to a Brighton Park movie theater about a mile and a half away to see Love Me Tender for the 11th time.
Holy man. So they took... I know, that's a lot of times. I love Elvis, but he's a terrible actor.
Can you imagine watching 11 times? No. It's a lot. So, they took $2.50 with them to pay for their movie, and their mom had told them they could stay for the double feature to be home by midnight.
Okay. So they're going to stay and watch the double feature and see it 13 times. Oh, Jesus Christ. Well, they really love Elvis.
I know. It's a lot. A classmate of Patricia's named Dorothy was also at the movie that night, and she sat behind the sisters during the first showing. Dorothy and her sister decided not to stay for the second showing, and they left around 9.30.
Okay. Dorothy said she saw the girls in line at concessions to buy popcorn, that they seemed to be happy and having a good time. So, when midnight came and the girls still weren't home, Loretta sent two of the older kids, who were 17 and 14, down to the bus stop to wait for them. Loretta called all the girls' friends to see if they had gone somewhere else, and the kids stayed and waited through three different buses, getting to the stop and leaving.
Wow. And the girls weren't on any of them, so they went home. Loretta called the police, and she reported the girls as missing at 2.15 in the morning on December 29th. Okay.
And it was 9.30 when the classmate had seen her? Seen that? Yeah, 9.30 was the last time that they had seen her. Okay.
They were expected to be home by midnight. If they had gotten on the bus, they would have gotten home just before midnight. So. So, a citywide search for the girls was started on that day, with a dedicated task force being formed.
Hundreds of police officers assigned full-time, and a ground search bolstered by hundreds of local volunteers. Police conducted door-to-door canvassing of Brighton Park, which is where the movie theater was, and the canals and rivers were dredged. More than 15,000 fires were distributed, and the parishioners of the Grimes' church offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to their whereabouts. Wow.
So, as a result of all that, 300,000 people were questioned about their disappearance. Wow. Holy crap. And there were about 2,000 people that were seriously interrogated.
So, even though they were doing all this big, serious investigating, several of the investigators didn't believe that the girls were really missing. Of course. Yeah, I mean, it's the time. No, they were really.
Yeah, they're just like girls. Oh, that's fine. So, there were theories that the girls had decided to go to Nashville to see Elvis. Okay.
Which, they've seen this movie 11 times, at least 12, because Dorothy saw them after the first show, so they saw it at least 12 times. So, like, they do love Elvis, but. But they're probably not going to hop on a bus to Nashville to go see him. Exactly.
Yeah. So, despite protesting the parents, they believed that the girls had run away or were staying with boyfriends. It was only after a week had passed, with no one hearing from Barbara or Patricia, that they really began to take it seriously as a missing person's case. Oh, man.
So much can happen in a week. A full week. I know. I know.
It's awful. So, there were many unconfirmed sightings of the girls after that night, and they were including people saying that they saw them boarding a bus, walking home, getting into a car driven by a man resembling Elvis, and that's all supposed to have happened that night. Hmm. Okay.
But, like, that's also kind of the look of the times, too, right? Yeah. Like that hair. Yeah.
I know. I would think anyone with, like, that dark hair, slicked back in that style, it looks vaguely like wearing a leather jacket or whatever. Yeah. I know.
And then in the next few weeks, there are sightings, supposed sightings of them in different places around the city. Adding credence to the theory that both sisters had run away to Nashville, on January 17th, a woman named Pearl Neville contacted investigators to state that she had met both girls in a restroom in Nashville on January 9th, and that she had accompanied them to a state employment agency to search for work. According to her, both girls had been in what she described as being a tired and bedraggled condition. A clerk at this agency would later identify the sisters from photographs, also recalling that both girls had used the surname Grimes in the application forms they had filled out.
Okay. On January 19th, 1957, Elvis himself made a plea for the girls on television and the radio, saying, if you are good, Presley fans, you'll go home and eat your mother's worries. Aw. I know.
What a stand-up guy. Yeah, except for all the girls. And stealing all the music from everyone that wasn't white. But yeah, I like Elvis, too.
On January 22nd, 1957, warmer temperatures led to the snow thawing, and a construction worker, I know, a construction worker named Leonard Prescott saw what he thought were mannequins behind a guardrail on a rural road. I think there are no mannequins. I know. Named German Church Road in unincorporated Willow Springs.
So he later returned to the site with his wife, Marie, because he didn't know really what he saw, so he took her back. Oh. So she looked closer at what he thought were the mannequins, and she painted. Oh my gosh.
Why didn't he just investigate closer himself? Why is he like, I don't know what it is. I'm going to make my wife look. I know, so she could pass out in the middle of the room.
Oh, man. In all this thawing snow, so it's nice and cold and wet. I know. Yeah.
Rude. So when she came to, the Prescott immediately reported it to the Willow Springs police. Obviously, it's the girls. Ugh.
Of course it is. Mm-hmm. So three wounds that might have been made by an ice pick were found on Barbara's chest, and injuries resembling blunt force trauma were found on her face and head. Ooh.
I hate that. Patricia's, I know, it's awful. Patricia's face and body had many bruises, and their father was driven to the crime scene to identify their bodies. Oh.
So following his positive identification, over 160 police officers, as well as many volunteers, combed the area for evidence, but they didn't find any, and in all likelihood, that many people in the area probably destroyed any evidence that there was to be found. Uh-huh, exactly. Yeah. So the girls' autopsies were performed the day after they were found.
They were performed by three different forensic pathologists, and none of them could agree on a cause of death. There weren't any drugs or alcohol found in their system. Their stomach contents indicated that they had died about five hours after the last confirmed sightings of them at the movie theater. Most of the wounds on the girls' bodies were determined to be caused by rodents after their death.
Okay. And the puncture wounds were most likely caused after their deaths, as well. Huh, okay. So eventually, their cause of death was listed as murder, with a specific means being secondary shock.
Hmm. Disposed to death, and they don't know how. That's crazy, okay. No items of their clothing were ever found.
Really? They were found naked. They were found, like, naked and kind of piled on top of each other. Oh, that's not true.
Yeah, yeah. The autopsy did show that Barbara had had sex around the time of her death, but it was impossible to tell if it was consensual or not. Of course. I know.
So, despite these official conclusions, the chief investigator for the Cook County Coroner's Office, Harry Gloss, disagreed with the official time of death. He later stated to the media that there had been numerous marks of violence on these girls' faces, strongly indicative of there being the recipients of violence instead of post-mortem rota infestation. Okay. He also said that a thin layer of ice found encrested upon the sisters' bodies indicated that they had most likely been alive until at least January 7th, since only after that date would there have been sufficient snowfall to react with the girls' natural body heat in such a climate, which would create the layer of ice discovered upon their bodies in this location.
Okay, yeah. He contended that this fact proved that their bodies had been warm when they were deposited beside the road, since only after January 7th had there been sufficient snow to create such an ice layer upon and around their bodies. Gloss also stated that curdled milk had been found in Barbara's stomach, and she's not known to drink drunk milk either at home or at the movies that night. Okay.
He refused to retract his statements, and he was fired for all of it. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's how much the other investigators believed that he was wrong. Okay.
But he believed they were wrong, and that's why he wouldn't take it all back, so. And everyone's just pointing fingers. Yeah. They all think that they're right, and everyone else is wrong.
So, there were a couple suspects that were seriously considered. Walter Kranz was a 53-year-old steam fitter. He called Chicago's Central Police Complaint Room on the 15th of January, and he told them that he believed both sisters were dead, and that their bodies could be found in an unincorporated area of Lyons Township. He refused to give his name to the operator, saying that he had this revelation in a dream.
Of course. It's not a dream. Mm-hmm. Since the park that he said the girls' bodies were at ended up only being about a mile from where the girls' bodies were actually found, the police tracked him down, and they questioned him.
He told the police that he came from a long line of psychics, and that he had had this vision after a night of heavy drinking. So, is it a vision, or is it a hallucination? I don't know. Sorry.
After a night of drinking. I'm a really good psychic. I predict all kinds of shit when I'm drunk. Right.
Oh, man. I predict that I'm going to barf. So, he was initially the number one suspect, but there was no evidence, and after being subjected to multiple interrogations, he was released. So, Max Fleig was a 17-year-old suspect in the case.
Due to his age and laws at the time, police couldn't officially have him take a polygraph test. Unofficially, they had him take one anyway, and he allegedly confessed to the murders during it. Of course. But since they couldn't legally use it, and they had no physical evidence to hold him, he was released.
Wikipedia says he was later jailed for the unrelated murder of another woman, but I can't find shit about it, and Wikipedia doesn't even give the name of who he killed, so I don't know. So, Edward Lee, Benny, Bedwell, Benny's his nickname, was a 21-year-old, semi-literate drifter, and he was originally from Tennessee, and he occasionally worked as a part-time dishwasher. He was a tall individual who allegedly bore a strong resemblance to Elvis. According to John and Minnie Duros, the owners of the restaurant where Bedwell worked, he and another young male had been at the restaurant in the company of two girls who physically resembled the grandsisters in the early morning of December 30th.
Okay. Duros, which, if you remember the timeline, that could be after they were already dead, or it could not be, depending on whose autopsy you leave. Exactly, uh-huh. Yeah, that's what's so fucked up about Elvis.
Oh, my gosh. Duros conveyed this information to police on January 24th, so almost a full month later, after the girls were already found. Bedwell was arrested thereafter, and he was subjected to interrogation for three days. So, initially, he was insistent that John and Minnie and a patron named Renee Eccles, who had corroborated their eyewitness statements, were mistaken in their identification, although he was formally charged with a sister's murder on January 27th, 1957, and he had signed a 14-page confession in which he claimed that he and a 28-year-old acquaintance of his, named William Cole Willingham, had indeed been in the company of the grandsisters on December 30th, and they had also kept them until January 7th, and that they were hanging out and drinking in various West Madison Street skid row saloons.
According to Bedwell, after several days in the girls' willing company, shortly after he and a companion had fed the sisters' hot dogs, they had extensively beaten both the girls before throwing their nude bodies into a snow-filled ditch when both sisters had refused their sexual advances. Ah, fucking assholes. I know. So, upon reading Bedwell's confession, Rhett Grimes was quoted as saying, It's a lie.
My girls wouldn't be on West Madison Street. They don't even know where it is. So, William admitted that he had been in the company of Bedwell and the two girls in the early hours of December 30th, but he denied that the girls had been the Grimes' sisters. Okay.
He also emphatically denied any involvement in the murders. And Bedwell himself would later recant the confession he had provided to the investigators, stating that he had only provided a confession after being held in custody for four days in the mistaken belief that the police would subsequently release him if he did so. Exactly, right? Like, at that point, you're just like, get me the fuck out of here.
Uh-huh. So, and the official autopsy reports from both girls also supported his recantation, because they had found no alcohol or hot dogs in either victim's blood or digestive systems. And the girls had not been beaten to death. Right.
I know why you said that. I was thinking about all that. Yeah. So, Bedwell is also known to have clocked in at the Ajax Consolidated Company, where he was working, from 4.19 p.m.
on December 28th, 1956, to 12.30 a.m. on December 29th. Okay. Which covers the time period of their most likely abduction, because they were last seen in 9.30 of the 28th.
And there are further records confirming that Bedwell had been working in Cicero on the date that he claimed to have murdered them. Okay. So. Charles Leroy Melquist was convicted of the 1958 murder of a 15-year-old girl named Bonnie Lee Scott.
Scott's body was found less than 10 miles away from where the Grimes' sister's bodies were found, and there are similarities between the wounds on all three bodies and the way their bodies were disposed of. Melquist was never questioned for the Grimes' case, and his attorney forbade him from talking to the police. When Melquist was convicted of Scott's murder, he was sentenced to 99 years in prison. But guess what?
He served 11, he got married, and he had two children. What? He passed away in 2010. Oh my god, what the fuck?
Yeah. That's a twist. I know. I thought about looking up that case, too, because what the fuck?
Yeah. He murdered a 15-year-old girl, and he only had to serve 11 years. He's like, 99, and he's like, psych. Uh-huh.
I know. So the day after Bonnie Scott's body was discovered, Loretta Grimes received a phone call from someone who claimed responsibility for her murder. The caller said, I've committed another perfect crime. This is another one those cops won't solve, and they're not going to pin it to Bedwell.
Loretta Grimes would remain adamant until her death that this caller had been the same individual who contacted her in May 1957, and they'd revealed the deformity upon one of her daughter's feet, which had never been released to the press or the public, stating, I will never forget that voice. Huh. Yeah. So.
That's compelling. Who knows? Yeah. Might have been him.
No way to know. He's been dead for a decade. Of course. I know.
So. In 2013, retired police officer Ray Johnson began an investigation into the case. He says that someone had contacted him saying that she had been abducted with the Grimes sisters that night, but she had escaped. Okay.
She said she never came forward because she was too scared. He still maintains a Facebook group dedicated to solving the case. Oh, wow. And that's it.
Holy shit, that's it? That's it. That's crazy. They have no answers.
That is nuts. No answers at all. That's bonkers. I mean, personally, I think that the most compelling one is probably Melquist.
Yeah, right. But who knows? Might not be. Ugh.
But like knowing the flip of Formity? Yeah. But who's to say that that was for sure Melquist that called her? That's true.
Huh. Like it. Yeah, it happened right after Bonnie Lee Scott's murder. But.
And she claimed the responsibility for that too, but who's to say that he really did? Exactly. Oh my God. It's just a phone call.
That's crazy. Yeah. Not crazy that that cop is like in 2013 looking into it. That's awesome.
He was writing a book about like haunts of Chicago. Okay. So that's how he heard about the grandsisters. Yeah.
Because they supposedly haunt places, which shocker. Right. I would too. So, yeah.
I don't think I've ever heard that one. Yeah, I hadn't either. It's nuts. That is just nuts.
It was big enough that Elvis got involved with me. I know, right? If I go missing, I want someone famous to try to help me. I'll call Connor Roberts.
Oh, I'll just die. I'll be happy. I'll already be dead. You'll be dead, Mike.
I'll die again. Ugh, okay. Thanks for listening. You can email us at serialsistersatoutlook.com.
Find us on Instagram and Twitter at Serial Sisters. We'll see you next week. Bye.