December 17th, 1956 at the Brighton Theater in
Chicago, two young sisters went to see their idol Elvis Presley’s new movie “Love
Me Tender” for the 14th time, little did they know this would be
their last time. Today we are going to be talking about the cold case murders
of Barbara and Patricia Grimes.
Barbara was 15, Patricia was 13 and like most teenage girls
at the time they begged their mom to go see their favorite new movie that was
just a short bus trip away. Their mom Loretta Grimes agreed to let them go. The
girls left the house at 7:30pm and were told to be back before midnight, but by
midnight the girls hadn’t come home and she began to worry. Two of the older
Grimes children went to look for their sisters, they went to the bus stop in
hopes that they would run into them at some point. Unfortunately by 2am it was
clear to everyone that something had happened to the girls and they contacted
the police.
Police Officers and Civilians combed through the streets to look
for the sisters, adjacent towns and counties offered their services to help
with the search. It turned into one of the largest city wide hunts in Chicago’s
history. As the days passed the searches stalled and law enforcement was desperate
for answers.
There were a number of sightings reported in Nashville Tennessee
of the girls. Police thought maybe they had run away to see Elvis himself. Elvis heard about the sisters and went on
radio pleading for the girls to return home. Their mother never thought they
had run away; they had no money, no change of clothes and had never done
something like this before. She started fearing the worst. Police had no other
leads and the case went nowhere for over a month.
January 22nd, 1957 a man named Leonard Prescott
spotted what he thought to be 2 mannequins on German Church Road in Willow
Springs, Illinois. He didn’t approach them, but instead ran home to get his
wife. Together they came back and as they inched closer they realized it was
the naked bodies of Barbara and Patricia Grimes. Barbara was lying face down
while Patricia was lying face up on top of her sister. It was evident that
their faces had been damaged my neighborhood animals.
The police figured that their bodies had been lying on the
side of the road since the snowfall occurred at least 2 weeks prior. Because of
the cold the bodies were well preserved. An Autopsy didn’t occur until their
bodies thawed. It revealed that the last meal they both had was dinner the
night they went missing; this finding proved that the sisters were killed
within hours of going missing. There weren’t any stab or bullet wounds or signs
of strangulation on either girl. It determined that Barbara had experienced
some sort of sexual activity before her death, but it didn’t seem to be
violent. There was no alcohol or drugs in their systems. The doctors on the
case stated “the killer was diabolically clever,” and was able to use a method
of murder that was undetectable. The official cause of death was listed as
murder, but the only explanation of their death was “Secondary shock due to
exposure to the elements.”
Multiple witnesses saw them at the theater and after the
movie was over, but no one quite knew what happened after they left. Several people had said they saw the girls at
different locations, but police were unable to pin point the series of events
that followed them leaving the theater.
Because this case had been so widely publicized the crazies
came out of the wood work. Mrs. Grimes received several phone calls and letters
from people claiming to have murdered her daughters or knew how they died. The
police tracked down the information, but most of it appeared fabricated and
were just people seeking media attention. However there was one caller that
really stuck out to Mrs. Grimes, it was a man claiming to have killed her daughters;
he gave details about the girls and the crime that were never published. The
police had no way of identifying the caller or tracking him down.
About a year after the Grime sister murders a 15 yr old girl
by the name of Bonnie Leigh Scott was murdered in another part of Illinois.
After this murder Mrs. Grimes received another phone call from the same man. In
this call he said he not only killed her daughter, but he also killed Bonnie
Leigh Scott.
A man by the name of Charles Leroy Melquist was arrested and
convicted for the murder of Bonnie Leigh Scott and was sentenced to 99 years in
prison. Later Loretta heard his voice in an interview and she knew immediately that
it was the same man that had called her, his voice was unforgettable. He served
11 years of his sentence before his release, and later married and had two
children. Melquist was never officially implicated in the Grimes killings.
There were a few other suspects in the Grimes murders, but there
was never enough evidence to prove that they committed the crimes. The first
suspect was Walter Kranz. Before the bodies of the sisters were found and they
were presumed missing Kranz called the police station and said that the girls were
dead and told the cops where to find them. He claimed that the information came
to him in a dream. Given the bizarre nature of the call the police picked him
up for questioning. He was questioned, but he didn’t have any other information so
he was released.
The next was a bum from skid row named Bennie Bedwell, he
looked like he could have been Elvis’ twin, he suggested that he had lured the
girls to a bar using that resemblance to entice them. He ended up weaving a
complicated story that culminated in his confession of murder the girls. He
concocted a story about how he and his friend had partied with the girls for
days before finally knowing them out and leaving them naked in the snow. Throughout
the investigation he made up three different stories about how the
girls were killed. Later he recanted all three confessions, saying he was
mistreated by the police and he had confessed in order to stop the abuse. The forensics
also didn’t support any of his stories, so he was release and never convicted.
As with many murder cases, there were many arguments over
which police department had jurisdiction to investigate the crime. The
departments were not sharing information early on in the investigation, meaning
crucial details could have been missed. The coroners and forensic investigators
were also not cooperative with each other because of the debate over the cause
of death. A group came to the conclusion of death due to exposure, but the lead
corner publicly disagreed. He believed the girls had been beaten before their
death and possibly molested. He was fired over this disagreement.
Loretta Grimes never gave up on finding out what happened to her daughters. She dedicated
her life to finding out who did it, she believed police never interviewed a
strong suspect, she begged the police to never stop looking for the killer or
killers. Unfortunately she died in 1989 at the age of 83 without answers, and
to this day almost 63 years later we aren’t any closer to solving the murders
of Barbara and Patricia Grimes.
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