IL IL - Barbara, 15, & Patricia Grimes, 13, Chicago, 27 Dec 1956

[Paul B.]

@Gunther Toody do you know why they only remodeled the Grimes house, rather than demolish it like they did for example to other houses associated with murders?

 

[Gunther Toody]

Hello Paul...the Grimes family was poor by the standards of the time. Mr. Grimes had long since divorced Loretta and remarried. The house was in need of updating and repair so out of sympathy, local contractors donated time and materials to remodel the home inside and out. A collection was taken up through various organizations to pay off their $8000 mortgage as well.

 

[Paul B.]

I sometimes think of a - much better - alternate universe where Barbara and Patricia, now in their seventies, watch and listen to their beloved Elvis Presley on streaming.

 

[Pinkish Panther]

Unofficial investigation
In 2013, a retired West Chicago police officer named Raymond Johnson began a personal investigation into the case. Johnson—considered by many to be an expert on this case—had become interested in the Grimes sisters' case in 2010,[46] when he had been researching a book he had been writing about the city's history.[94] Having extensively researched the case, Johnson has stated his conviction that the case is still a solvable one, but only with public assistance,[95] and that he believes that the perpetrator of this crime had been a 23-year-old self-confessed child killer named Charles LeRoy Melquist, who had been considered a suspect in the sisters' abduction and murder in 1957.[96]

Melquist had been convicted of the September 1958 murder of a 15-year-old girl named Bonnie Leigh Scott, whom he had known prior to her murder,[97] and whose decapitated body had been found two months after her disappearance less than 10 miles from where the Grimes sisters' bodies had been discovered.[98] Following the discovery of Scott's body, investigators had noted similarities in this murder and body disposal, and that of the Grimes sisters. Nonetheless, Melquist was never questioned as to his potential culpability in the Grimes sisters' murders, as his attorney had forbade him to be subject to questioning.[99]

The day after the body of Bonnie Leigh Scott was discovered, Lorretta Grimes received a phone call from an individual who, on this occasion, claimed responsibility for Scott's murder. On this occasion, the caller had stated: "I've committed another perfect crime ... This is another one those cops won't solve and they're not going [to affix blame onto] Bedwell or Barry Cook."[90][n 16] Lorretta Grimes would remain adamant until her death this caller had been the same individual who had contacted her in May 1957 and had revealed the deformity upon one of her daughters' feet which had never been released to the press or the public, stating: "I will never forget that voice."[90]

 

[Pinkish Panther]

I wonder who the mystery person is that leaves flowers on the girls gravestone?

 

[Chappy]

More on the banana fibers...
The girls brother Jim indicated that he bought the girls banana splits at around 3 PM in the afternoon of Dec. 26th. He was shoveling snow at the church and on the way home, he found $10 on the ground. He used that money to treat the girls to ice cream.

Eyewitness Earl Zastrow stated that he saw the girls at about 11:30 PM the night they disappeared....two blocks from their home clowning around with each other as they made their way toward their home.
Obviously, they never made it and Zastrow was on his own way home at the time.

We can reasonably assume that the girls disappeared at around midnight the night of the twenty sixth...

The temp at Midway Airport at that time was about 23 deg.
Midway is about 7 miles from where they were found and about the same from their Damen Avenue home so the temp should be fairly the same at either location.

The next day...the temp high was 27 deg.
The point is that these temps are not conducive to the body being able to freeze. The coroner stated that the bodies were frozen solid when found and the pathologists had to wait for at least a day for them to thaw enough for autopsy. That being the case....means that there is no way banana fibers would still be in the digestive system 3 weeks later when the bodies were found rendering it highly unlikely that the girls were murdered the same night they disappeared.


To do an assessment of the temps at Midway Airport for each day the girls were gone, go here.
Local Weather Forecast, News and Conditions | Weather Underground

This will also show the precipitation on a day by day basis.

Did anyone read where they found Melquists address book of young girls and one of them were coincidentally neighbors of the Grimes Sisters? Could he have randomly been in the neighborhood for this other girl?

 

[Richard]

Barbara and Patricia Grimes

----------------------------------------------

... it’s often been wondered in the years since the murders if whoever killed Bobby Peterson (14), and brothers John (13) and Anton (11) Schuessler (October 1955) was also involved in another gruesome Chicago child murder just months later: that of the Grimes sisters.

The cases have eerie similarities; on December 28, 1956, the two girls (15-year-old Barbara and 13-year-old Patricia) had gone to a movie before they vanished. (Their choice? Love Me Tender. The girls were huge Elvis Presley fans and it was their 11th time seeing the movie.) Their bodies were not found until January 1957, and just like the boys, they’d been dumped naked on a roadside. But unlike the earlier trio of victims, who’d clearly been strangled, there was no obvious cause of death, a fact that would later become a point of contention, as the Chicago Reader recalls:

A coroner’s jury finally ruled that the Grimes sisters froze to death the night they disappeared. But the coroner’s chief investigator, Harry Glos, publicly disagreed. He contended that a layer of ice around the bodies proved they were warm when they were left on German Church Road, and that only after January 7 was there enough snow to create that ice and hide the bodies. Coroner Walter McCarron’s response was to announce on television that Glos had been fired.

Time of death wasn’t the only issue Glos raised. “The puncture wounds in Patricia’s chest were never adequately explained or explored,” he said, convinced that the marks on the bodies were signs of violence before death. And he asserted that Barbara Grimes had been molested—something the pathologists had denied.

The Grimes sisters murder remains one of Chicago’s most baffling unsolved mysteries.

LINK:
The Hideous Chicago Triple Child Murder That Was Finally Solved ... After 40 Years

 

[mysuspect]

Did the pathologists say that Patricia had been sexually assaulted? If not, I can't help thinking of a suspect from Chicago's north suburbs (William Thoresen III) who was a suspect in the Judith Mae Anderson murder (8 months after the Grimes murders) and the Valerie Percy case (1966) and who now has been considered to have emerged as Zodiac in the late sixties in the Bay Area.

 

[tilomagnet]

Is there anything happening in this case anymore? Were the leads that Gunther Toody brought in ever followed upon? Another dead end? This is nearing 64 years since the girls were found.

 

[swedeheart]

Starts at about 29:00.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

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Cold Case File: BARBARA and PATRICIA GRIMES​

Name:	Barbara and Patricia Grimes
Date of Crime:	January 23rd, 1957
Gender:	Female
Race:	White
Age:	18 & 24
Location:	German Church Rd & County Line Rd. Willow Springs
Information:	The bodies of Patricia Grimes and Barbara Grimes were found in a wooded area near old rural German Church Road. the girls had been reported missing to Chicago Police on 12/28/56. Their decomposing bodies were found nearly a month later.

Barbara and Patricia Grimes

www.cookcountysheriff.org

 

[Gunther Toody]

Did the pathologists say that Patricia had been sexually assaulted? If not, I can't help thinking of a suspect from Chicago's north suburbs (William Thoresen III) who was a suspect in the Judith Mae Anderson murder (8 months after the Grimes murders) and the Valerie Percy case (1966) and who now has been considered to have emerged as Zodiac in the late sixties in the Bay Area.

The pathologists stated that there was no sexual assault on either girl. However, the autopsy team wanted to do the postmortem away from the eyes of police and in private, after which they would give a report to the police agencies of their findings.

Inexplicably, the entire vaginal area of both girls was removed. If there was no sexual assault, what would be the reason? My guess is that both girls were raped, possibly numerous times resulting in physical damage to the pubic area, and the pathologists did not want information to get out about such a condition.

The bodies, of course, would be turned over to an undertaker, risking exposure of such injuries if steps were not taken.

Harry Glos, arrived at his conclusions of sexual assault and physical beating after the slide samples taken at the postmortem were examined by the Crime Lab of the Chicago Police Department. While visiting the lab on Feb. 7th, 1957, Glos was shown slide samples allegedly taken from Barbara's vaginal area, indicating the presence of sperm cells.

The girls both showed extensive facial bruising.

 

[Gunther Toody]

A 4 part series on the Grimes sister's murder is being aired on WGN Chicago.

Sisters’ killings blamed for Chicago’s loss of innocence

It’s one of the oldest and most infamous cold cases in Cook County. The evening of Dec. 28, 1956, two sisters left their home in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. Barbara and Patricia Gri…

wgntv.com

 

[watcher9]

The special premieres on Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. CT on WGN-TV, the WGN9+ app on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV and online at wgntv.com. An encore presentation will be aired on Nov. 20 at 4:30 p.m. CT on all WGN-TV platforms.

Grimes sisters killings: Infamous Chicago cold case revived

A half-hour true crime special airing on Chicago’s NewsNation affiliate WGN-TV revives one of Chicago’s oldest and most infamous cold cases.

www.newsnationnow.com

 

[Ciriii57]

@Gunther Toody hi there, it's been a good number of years since you had presented your findings to the cold case department, did anything ever come of it? Any new leads? Anything at all you can tell us about?

 

[Richard]

Barbara Jeanne Grimes
BIRTH 5 May 1941
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA
DEATH 28 Dec 1956 (aged 15)
Cook County, Illinois, USA
BURIAL Holy Sepulchre Cemetery Alsip, Cook County, Illinois, USA
Section 37, Lot 21, Block 8, Grave 4



Patricia Kathleen Grimes
BIRTH 31 Dec 1943
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA
DEATH 28 Dec 1956 (aged 12)
Willow Springs, Cook County, Illinois, USA
BURIAL
Holy Sepulchre Cemetery
Alsip, Cook County, Illinois, USA
Section 37, Lot 21, Block 8, Grave 5

LINKS:

Barbara Jeanne Grimes (1941-1956) - Find a Grave...

She was 15 years old when she was found along German Church Road. Patricia and Barbara both are buried alongside each other. The case remains unsolved.

www.findagrave.com

Patricia Kathleen Grimes (1943-1956) - Find a...

She was 13 years old when found along German Church Road. Barbara and Patricia are buried alongside each other in the southeastern part of that section.

www.findagrave.com

 

[Tricia]

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[Betty P]

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Cold Case File: BARBARA and PATRICIA GRIMES​

Name:	Barbara and Patricia Grimes
Date of Crime:	January 23rd, 1957
Gender:	Female
Race:	White
Age:	18 & 24
Location:	German Church Rd & County Line Rd. Willow Springs
Information:	The bodies of Patricia Grimes and Barbara Grimes were found in a wooded area near old rural German Church Road. the girls had been reported missing to Chicago Police on 12/28/56. Their decomposing bodies were found nearly a month later.

Barbara and Patricia Grimes

www.cookcountysheriff.org

The ages are incorrect there, perhaps the sherriff's dept. made an error that has since been corrected. The girls were age 15 and 12.

 

[Richard]

The ages are incorrect there, perhaps the sherriff's dept. made an error that has since been corrected. The girls were age 15 and 12.

This is correct. They were 15 and 12. The ages of 18 and 24 are clearly a mistake on that website.

Patricia was 12 years old when she went missing on 28 December 1956 - 3 days before her 13th birthday. Their bodies were not found until 23 January 1957, so any reporting done between 31 December and when they were found would have said she was 13 (as seen in her Websleuths thread title.

I have seen other similar cases in which ages are off by a year because of a birthday occurring shortly after someone went missing. Also, some accounts might have only birth year and death year, and this can lead to mis-stating the age.

 

[Richard]

The Brighton Theater, intended destination of the Grimes sisters on 28 December 1956.




Newspaper accounts

...
Fifteen year old Barbara Jeanne Grimes and her thirteen year old sister, Patricia Kathleen Grimes, were two of the six children of Joseph and Loretta Grimes of 3634 S. Damen Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago. Loretta worked as a clerk for the Parke Davis Co. and Joseph was a union truck driver. The couple had been divorced for about 11 years at this point and Joseph was remarried.

At about 7:30pm on the night of December 28, 1956, the girls left their home with $2.50 between them. Their plan was to see the newly released Elvis Presley movie, "Love Me Tender" for the 15th time at the now demolished Brighton Theater on Archer Avenue. They never came home....

....All hope was lost on January 22, 1957 when a man by the name of Leonard Prescott was driving east along German Church Road on his way to the grocery store when he noticed what he thought were two mannequins on the north side of the road just east of County Line Road. He went back to get his wife and returned to the scene to find what turned out to be the bodies of Patricia and her sister Barbara. They reported their findings to the Willow Springs Police Department at 1:30pm that day.

The bodies were unclothed with Barbara, the older but smaller girl lying face down and Patricia lying face up on top of Barbara and perpendicular. There was no obvious cause of death although it appeared as though their faces had been damaged. The damage was later found to be destruction by animals. It was thought that the girls were probably there since the heavy snows of January 9th and 10th and that the recent thaw had revealed them.

Following the discovery, a number of suspects were interviewed and cleared. The most publicized suspect was Edward Lee (Bennie) Bedwell who had gone so far as confessing to the murders however it was later shown that "Bennie" was borderline mentally retarded and that his confession had been coerced by the Cook County Sheriff's Police. He was later cleared by then Cook County State's Attorney Benjamin Adamowski.

The autopsy later revealed that the girls had died within four hours of going missing because the meals that they had eaten that night at home were still in the girls' stomachs. The official finding by the coroner's jury was that they were murdered and the only cause of death they could come up with was "exposure to the elements". Then coroner, Walter McCarron was criticized because there were reports that the autopsies had been flubbed.

The funeral took place on January 28, 1957 and was donated by the Wollschlager Funeral Home. The mass was held at St. Maurice Church where Patricia went to grade school. The funeral was attended by many including Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. Newspaper accounts say that Loretta collapsed several times and was heard sobbing that she was finally with her girls again. Two white closed caskets were each topped with a picture of each girl. The girls were laid to rest at Holy Sepulchre Catholic Cemetery only 10 feet from a sister, Leona Freck, who had died two years earlier.

The case remained unsolved and Loretta Grimes, for many years, volunteered her time at the Bridewell prison not far from where her girls' bodies were discovered. The authorities told her that they would never give up on the case. Loretta passed away in 1989 at the age of 83 without ever knowing how or why her girls died and who had killed them....

More at links below.

LINKS:

30 Of History’s Most Shocking And Mysterious Cold Cases

History was replete with mysteries that send a shiver down anyone’s spine. And some of the most chilling among those mysteries were the brutal murder cases that went cold and unsolved even to this day. Here are 30

trueactivist.com

The Grimes Sisters Murder and Ghost Car of German Church Road

The Grimes Sisters Murders and The Ghost Car of German Church Road

www.hauntdetective.com