00:00:00
[Music] hey weirdos I'm Alina and I'm Ash and this is [Music] morbid and it's morbid in the
00:00:22
morning it is and my brain is also not functioning on any kind of high frequency right now so I AP at a time
00:00:31
she's a little Wily today I said my child's name wrong while I was just talking about her I like I put like all
00:00:38
the names into one yeah that was interesting I liked that though yeah I'm just not I'm not with it I'm not with it
00:00:44
get with it I'm trying to get with it maybe we should get you a pumpi imagine [ __ ] 8 a.m. pump
00:00:53
drinking a pump at .m. honestly goals Lisa vender pump is that you oh my Lord uh yeah I don't do I don't think I have
00:01:03
anything exciting to talk about maybe because my brain isn't working so yeah um I don't know um the actor strike is
00:01:11
over that's exciting so now we'll get TV yay I'm just excited about stranger things season five hell yeah brothers so
00:01:20
countown to my wedding is on again again everybody was very concerned that me and
00:01:24
Drew didn't get married in October like we said we were going to but you know family things happen you move things and
00:01:30
yeah now we're getting married at another time there you go that I'm not telling I'll never
00:01:35
tell yep we're almost there folks so close I'm about to be CL a whole ass wife youel it's true yep um but before
00:01:44
that uh we're going to talk about some Terrible Things yeah that's our job so that's what we do and we're here to do
00:01:52
it uh this particular one that I'm going to talk about is from the 50s shut up uh
00:01:59
I will not not shut up shut up it's like in Princess or not Princess Diaries it's
00:02:04
like in Mean Girls and she's like I didn't say anything I didn't say anything um I was just going to say that
00:02:08
my case this week is also from the 50s or my next one I guess it'll be next week who knows well I don't know when
00:02:15
any of these come out it'll be out of time by the time this comes out Ash could be married I have no idea about
00:02:20
any concept yeah just nodded so congratulations on getting married thank you so much it was such a great time
00:02:28
with you there yeah so we're 50s today and this is unsolved technically oh technically
00:02:38
that tells me it should have been solved there's someone who's an interesting suspect who unfortunately we can't
00:02:45
really get anymore but oh there was someone that they followed we'll get there but it's it's
00:02:52
technically unsolved I really think it has the potential to be closed ah at some point okay can we do like a little
00:02:59
exm maybe yeah there you go I think I I would like to see this close because this is a really really sad story and
00:03:10
the I her their parents especially their mother I feel like carried guilt that she didn't need to carry oh that's
00:03:17
terrible and I hate that she had it on her and that she like felt that way and like oh it just I can't fathom it so
00:03:24
let's get into this horrible horrible tale okay so the murder of the Grim sisters and the investigation that
00:03:32
followed is still one of Chicago's most notorious cold cases and it is one of the most costly and labor intensive
00:03:40
searches in the state's history wow um despite all of the hard work put into search for this killer the investigation
00:03:47
was ultimately hitting dead end after dead end partially because of bad leads at times that were chased a little too
00:03:54
far and also some well-intended but very misguided attempts to withhold evidence
00:04:01
that allowed this killer to still go unpunished to this day wow um and it left generations of people wondering
00:04:09
what the hell happened to Barbara and Patricia Grimes oh I think I know this one it's really sad yeah uh and we'll
00:04:17
get to it but there is some withholding of information from the press and the public that obviously that is very
00:04:23
important sometimes and obviously that can push a case forward sometimes I fully support that yeah in this case the
00:04:29
reasoning behind it was like and then it actually ended up kind of hurting in the
00:04:35
end um which was obviously not the intent of the people who did it but it didn't work out well in the end so
00:04:42
Barbara Grimes was born May 5th 1941 and Patricia Grimes was born December 31st 1943 a couple years later in a New
00:04:51
Year's baby yeah so they were both born and grew up in Chicago Illinois and were
00:04:56
the third and fourth of what would be seven children born to Joseph and Loretta Grimes wow that's a lot of kids
00:05:02
Joseph and Loretta had married very young uh they actually married when they were both 17 years old oh were they just
00:05:07
like in love they were just in love and then when they were 19 they had their first child a daughter
00:05:13
Shirley like such cute names I know it's really cute like Loretta Shirley Patricia you know Barbara since they
00:05:20
married so young they didn't really get a chance to pursue a formal education yeah that makes and they kind of started
00:05:26
a family quick so they definitely struggled in the beginning yeah and and I mean with that many children yeah and
00:05:31
they relied on welfare they kind of went without basic needs a lot like heat and
00:05:35
electricity electricity in the beginning um eventually though that the struggle was only for a little while and they got
00:05:42
through it but during the struggling time as we know that can be tough yeah definely they they have all these kids
00:05:49
that they keep having and the struggle is getting worse the burden the financial burden is becoming harder but
00:05:57
eventually Joseph did manage to find work as a truck driver and by the late 1940s he was making around $80 per week
00:06:05
which now would be about $950 per week okay um so that was a stable salary and it did help relieve
00:06:13
that Financial pressure that was happening especially having six children and one on the way at that moment so at
00:06:19
that moment he had six children and one on the way that's a lot of pressure unfortunately the couple had not
00:06:25
weathered the struggling time as well as they had hoped and in December 1951 they
00:06:31
filed for divorce oh that's sad now luckily for the entire family including the kids Joseph and Loretta's divorce
00:06:38
was pretty uncomplicated they very much agreed on it mutually there wasn't a lot
00:06:44
of fighting it wasn't a lot of upheaval and nastiness it was like they still respect that this wasn't working with
00:06:53
too much happened and once the papers had been signed and the divorce was official they went their separate ways
00:06:59
Barbara Patricia and three of their five siblings remained in the custody of their mother and Joseph moved to an
00:07:05
apartment not far away they still saw their father everything was chill hunky dory yeah now the only problem was
00:07:12
without the income of Joseph's job although he did pay $35 per week in child support uh from his $80 a week
00:07:20
salary so a good junk um Loretta was forced to find work and luckily she quickly did she um got work as a file
00:07:26
clerk for Park Davis Pharmaceuticals um unfortunately it wasn't enough to really
00:07:32
take care of every I mean again they have seven kids that's a lot um so they did have to rely on welfare still some
00:07:38
social supports from time to time she worked a lot of hours but despite that she prided herself and everyone said it
00:07:47
including like everybody the whole family said it that she was an amazing mother to her kids and she did the best
00:07:52
she could while she was at home to be there whenever she could that's incredible to have that much pressure on
00:07:58
you of like staying AF financially working all these hours and then to still be a great mom when you're home
00:08:04
present and do whatever you could to be there for them like that's amazing Loretta was killing it yeah so by all
00:08:10
accounts Barbara and Patricia in particular were smart polite very well-liked girls in their neighborhood
00:08:17
in their whole Community really at school Barbara ended up having a a part-time job at 15 years old when she
00:08:23
was only a sophomore at Kelly High high school and she actually ended up working
00:08:27
at Wolf Furniture house um and she ended up doing that to help her mom make ends
00:08:32
meet so she immediately was like I want to help cuz she respected her mom a lot yeah now her younger sister Patricia was
00:08:40
described as super friendly a little more outgoing than Barbara and more energetic energetic than Barbara uh
00:08:46
Barbara and Patricia were also described as seemingly Inseparable and they were said to often walk places hand in hand
00:08:54
oh my God that's so sweet now Barbara is 15 Patricia is 13 so they're pretty close in age pretty close in age uh the
00:09:02
two girls had a lot of interests in common uh but like many of their peers at the time what they were really
00:09:07
passionate about was Elvis Presley oh Elvis baby Elvis Presley now in 1956 Presley was only a handful of years into
00:09:18
what would be what we all know an iconic career you say yeah he had a pretty iconic Elvis huh yeah you know now as
00:09:27
devoted Elvis fans Barbara and Patricia would often spend their afternoons at the local record store listening to his
00:09:34
singles they would find anywhere that had a jukebox around town just to hear his music over and over again and at
00:09:41
home they their whole bedroom was covered in pictures of him that they cut out of magazines you could also get them
00:09:47
at the Five and Dime Store so they had purchase them whenever they could so cool and in the fall uh by the fall of
00:09:53
1956 they joined his fan club and were eagerly awaiting their membership cards oh I love it that's so much fun isn't
00:10:00
that adorable it's just like I remember a time when it was like magazines like Teen Beat magazines and like Tiger Beat
00:10:07
and all that [ __ ] you could like send away for stuff they had like fan club mail you send it was wild so on November
00:10:16
15th 1956 um Elvis Presley's first feature film Love Me Tender was released in theaters across the country um it was
00:10:25
something if you were a devoted Elvis fan you were going to see that movie a million times is happening and as
00:10:30
dedicated Presley fans Barbara and Patricia got their opening night and by Christmas they had seen the film a done
00:10:38
of like dozens of times I love that so much um they had seen it a ton but Barbara and Patricia just couldn't get
00:10:44
enough of it and on December 28th my birthday ah and a couple days before one of their birthdays yep um on December
00:10:51
28th Barbara and Patricia convince their mother to allow them to go to the movies
00:10:55
to see the film again like for the hundred thousandth time now early that week Barbara had come down with a bad
00:11:01
cough and was taking cold medicine for a few days so Loretta was like a little reluctant cuz she was like I don't know
00:11:07
you've had a cough it's the winter but eventually They begged and begged and she gave in and let them go probably
00:11:13
just wanted to make them happy of course and they promised they would be home before midnight and she was like okay as
00:11:18
long as you promise oh no then you can go now when she agreed to let the girls go Letta gave them explicit instructions
00:11:25
to be home by 11:45 this gave them enough time to watch two movies that evening so when
00:11:32
11:45 p.m. came and went and no one came home Loretta immediately began to get anxious and sent the two her two other
00:11:40
children Teresa and Joey to the nearest bus stop to wait for them hoping that they maybe just got a late bus yeah but
00:11:47
three buses stopped oh and 15-year-old Barbara and 13-year-old Patricia did not get off those buses and you just think
00:11:53
of one the mother Loretta having to send the kids out to be like and hoping for the best but probably thinking you know
00:11:59
like this isn't right and then those two siblings watching three buses go by just
00:12:04
the increasing worry that was building oh my God I can't even imagine and then these two come home and say unhanded she
00:12:12
they didn't get off and Loretta is just panicking fully I bet so when she learned that the girl still hadn't
00:12:18
returned she immediately called the local police precinct around 12:30 a.m. and sent Teresa and Joey back to the
00:12:24
corner to meet the officer so the kids explained that their sisters were supposed to be home an hour earlier and
00:12:29
hadn't arrived they hadn't heard anything the officer immediately put out an alert for the Sisters but they still
00:12:35
hadn't heard anything a few hours later and so L Loretta called the precinct again to officially report them missing
00:12:42
now although the investigation into Barbara and Patricia's disappearance officially began on the morning of
00:12:47
December 29th it didn't really get into high gear until it hit the Chicago newspapers on Monday morning December
00:12:54
31st oh which also happened to be Patricia's birthday right now it was by then that the investigators had talked
00:13:01
to the staff of the theater they'd gone door Todo speaking to people they'd search neighborhoods garages alleys
00:13:08
abandoned buildings everywhere in between they found no trace of Barbara and Patricia and obviously any child
00:13:17
going missing or multiple children going missing is alarming for the residents of
00:13:21
Chicago but this disappearance started really setting everyone's Minds going because it definitely reminded them of
00:13:29
The Disappearance of three local boys whose bodies were discovered on a roll Road outside the city a little over one
00:13:36
year earlier oh wow it was very similar we actually talked about these boys John
00:13:40
and Anton schler and Robert Peterson in one of our spooky forests episodes oh um
00:13:47
because there's all these stories about the place where they were found um this certain Forest has a lot of activity
00:13:53
yeah that rings a bell it's a really like horrifying story yeah like really horrifying um I mean they were 11 133
00:14:00
and 14 they were found stripped and stacked on top of each other they were bound gagged raped and strangled that's
00:14:08
absolutely horrific the details are really horrifying for that one um and that had already kind of shook everybody
00:14:15
of course but this on top of it is now oh [ __ ] like what's happening is there's
00:14:20
someone out there stealing kids now the first tip finally came in on the afternoon of December 31st when Jack
00:14:27
Franklin who was a security guard with the Admiral Corporation reported to police that he thought he'd seen the
00:14:33
girls a little after 9:30 a.m. on the morning they were reported missing what we will see in this case is so many
00:14:41
people say they saw these girls when they had already been dead I remember that being reported like I've heard this
00:14:48
case told a few times and it's not like one or two people it's a lot lots of people that's interesting it's very it's
00:14:56
weird and do you believe some of them I don't no I mean eyewitnesses to me are very it's it's shaky doy but so many
00:15:05
people yeah that is I it's some kind of phenomenon but I'm also like what is going on here well and I think I like
00:15:12
Styles like girls were all dressing in very similar Styles and had like certain hair styles back then that so maybe that
00:15:19
had something to do with it but it's very strange yeah uh now according to Franklin he said quote it was their
00:15:26
rudess that made him remember them oh I doubt that which they're not described that way yeah I doubt that entirely
00:15:31
Franklin told investigators he had been standing on a sidewalk on Lawrence Avenue Saturday morning and he saw the
00:15:37
two girls pass him and he said one said to the other I wonder where the bus stops yeah and Franklin heard them so he
00:15:44
said you just missed the bus and one of them looked over and said oh shut up and
00:15:48
then the two continued walking towards the bus sh bus stop that doesn't sound like them from how they've been
00:15:53
described exactly and again this was that this was very troubling because he was sure was the girls yeah and then
00:16:00
this is troubling because the three boys that we mentioned who were murdered in October 1955 were last seen in the same
00:16:07
area before their bodies were found a few days later so this was concerning to everybody like oh [ __ ] now the same day
00:16:15
15-year-old dor Dorothy fiser told police she'd seen Barbara and Patricia in the theater that night the evening
00:16:22
that they had gone to the movie so they're thinking they made it to the movie yeah and they she said they had
00:16:26
spoken with briefly together and then they left the theater okay uh she said the girls uh apparently the girls were
00:16:33
also seen that evening around 11:00 p.m. by a bus driver who picked them up at the stop near the movie theater okay um
00:16:40
but they rep but this bus stop driver reported that they got off at Western Avenue which was nowhere near the
00:16:46
grimes's home so and why would they get off there when they promised they'd be home that's the thing now despite all
00:16:51
the witnesses reporting that the girls were alone when they were seen detectives had initially theorized that
00:16:57
the girls had just runoff for quote a date with Sailors that's random sounds random oh but it's it's not cuz when I
00:17:06
first read that I was like H they're 15 and 13 what the [ __ ] are you talking about that came out of nowhere well
00:17:11
apparently a few days earlier Patricia had told friends about a letter she'd received from a sailor acquaintance
00:17:18
saying he would be home for the holidays okay just one month earlier in fact both
00:17:23
girls had come home from a movie with two Sailors they had met at the theater okay so this wasn't entirely out of the
00:17:31
realm of possibility and yes these Sailors are men right and I'm sorry did you say a
00:17:37
year earlier or a month earlier month earlier and they came home with these I think these Sailors brought them home
00:17:44
okay from the theater all right same reaction indeed yes I I said huh you would hope well no
00:17:54
I was going to say you'd hope that they're just like 18 but you know even that's wrong no still 15 and 133 so it's
00:17:58
like oh no I meant the sailors but then I was like yeah they're 15 or that's what I mean like still still doesn't
00:18:03
work unfortunately but yeah that's uh that's that's a whole part of this that's just like oh and did Loretta ever
00:18:11
comment that like she like did she ever confirm that she had like met these Sailors or I think we we find out who
00:18:17
those Sailors are and I think they um they were able to like clear them yeah but not much is known about them but
00:18:25
tips kept coming in and the next day one of their school friends said they had seen barbaraa and Patricia in her
00:18:31
neighborhood on Saturday afternoon and a passenger on the train said they'd seen
00:18:36
them board his Milwaukee bound train on Sunday afternoon so two days after they've gone so now we're seeing
00:18:43
somebody has seen them at the theater somebody has seen them on a bus driver has said they dropped them off somewhere
00:18:49
far away from their home that night then someone else is saying they saw them the
00:18:53
next morning and then a school friend is saying they saw them the next afternoon
00:18:58
and then then somebody else is saying they saw them Sunday okay so now we're seeing them all three days and we have
00:19:03
multiple people saying it right very strange very now according to this passenger on the train that said they
00:19:11
got off um that Milwaukee bound train um he said that the girls got on at the Edison Court station which is just two
00:19:18
stops away from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center okay which further supported their belief that they met up
00:19:25
with Patricia's sailor friend now based on this information detectives began looking into the sailors that had
00:19:31
brought them home the previous month known only as Terry and Larry Terry and Larry now since it was all looking a
00:19:38
little crazy here now with the possibility of you know [ __ ] adult men being involved here the case did get
00:19:45
assigned to a task force led by Chief of detectives Patrick Dy this task force had actually been put together a few
00:19:52
months earlier to investigate the murders of those three local Boys on octo in October 40 officers were
00:19:58
assigned to the case um and they were from the or 40 officers from the Brighton parked Precinct were assigned
00:20:05
to the case got it and several of these were from the juvenile Bureau which was put together to investigate sex crimes
00:20:11
and homicides now meanwhile the students at St Maurice where Patricia attended School were helping out however they
00:20:20
could they stuffed over 15,000 missing Flyers into mailboxes wow um and the clergy and Parish at the
00:20:28
family's church had collected enough money to offer a $1,000 reward for any information for their safe return so the
00:20:35
whole Community is on this it's a huge search now unfortunately weeks passed and it seemed like they had just
00:20:43
vanished wow Loretta Grimes told reporters I'm waiting here for news hoping and praying if someone is holding
00:20:50
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
00:20:57
like literally almost tear up hearing that it's just like I can't fathom the depths of her despair here um she
00:21:06
insisted to media and police that the girls didn't have boyfriends and neither one of them were the type to run away
00:21:11
and they never had run away right um especially since it was days before Patricia's birthday and there was a
00:21:17
party planned she was like they wouldn't have run away and this was just it's like obviously this was just something
00:21:22
they did went to the movie saw the Elvis movie came home they did this they had done this a million times n out of the
00:21:28
ordinary it wasn't a sudden thing they wanted to see this movie they'd seen it a million times right reporters even
00:21:33
suggested to her like in which I was like cool oh God reporters like you're saying this to a devastated mother what
00:21:41
do they say they were like oh do you think they ran off to Tennessee to see Elvis at
00:21:47
graceand and it's and okay like I get where the thought is coming from like she really cute joke right fun like not
00:21:55
the time yeah like what the [ __ ] and by January 19th Elvis Presley himself made
00:22:02
a statement wow he released it from his home in graceand and said quote if you're good Presley fans you'll go home
00:22:08
and ease your mother's worries thanks Elvis that's helpful yeah everyone's really helpful here I can see thank you
00:22:17
Mr Presley I don't think you needed to make that statement because right now it's not really looking like they're
00:22:23
holding up somewhere and just worrying their mom right sounds like something happened yeah so like maybe let's not
00:22:29
put it on them yeah you know let's put it out there and say like let's get you girls home yeah if you're holding these
00:22:36
girls let them home spin that a different way yeah spin that a little bit different now horrifically all of
00:22:41
those hopes and prayers fell away just a few days later on January 22nd 1957 when the bodies of Barbara and
00:22:49
Patricia Grimes were discovered off County Line Road in nearby will Springs Illinois and that's almost a month after
00:22:56
they disappeared now that day Leonard Prescott was on his way to the grocery store outside Willow
00:23:03
Springs and was traveling on German CH Church Road when he saw what he thought were mannequins he said he thought they
00:23:10
were just store mannequins never he later told told reporters I didn't have a care in the world my wife told me to
00:23:16
go out and get groceries I was going Mighty slow and I noticed these flesh colored things underneath the railing
00:23:22
along the side of the road so he didn't stop initially but he said he went grocery SHO and then on his way home he
00:23:29
was like it really bothered me the whole way home I couldn't I he was like you know he said he had read about the
00:23:35
missing Grim sisters in the papers because everyone in Chicago and Beyond had at this point and even though he had
00:23:41
convinced himself those were just store mannequins he was like I just need to confirm this because I can't just go
00:23:47
about my day so he and his wife Marie actually went back to the spot that afternoon and when they reached the
00:23:53
embankment Marie Prescott screamed oh God because it was clearly the sight of the nude bodies of two girls lying in
00:24:00
that ditch barely covered by a layer of snow Marie began weeping uncontrollably Leonard had to literally carry her back
00:24:08
to the car the absolutely horrified couple just sat there for a while trying to calm themselves once they were able
00:24:15
to speak they drove down the road only about a mile to the Springs Police Department only about a mile away mile
00:24:21
away now Sergeant John McCay was just getting out of his car like showing up at the station and pres the prescotts
00:24:29
got out of their car and came right up to him and McKay said he was all excited he'd seen two what he thought were
00:24:34
dummies lying alongside the road on German Church Road I told him that I would immediately go over there he
00:24:40
should show me the spot now when they reached the scene McKay confirmed what the prescotts had suspected that these
00:24:47
were the bodies of the of two girls um someone had obviously dumped the bodies of two girls along the side of the road
00:24:54
and he was strongly suspecting that these were Patricia and Barbera Grimes right McKay radioed the sheriff station
00:25:01
and stayed on scene until all the officers arrived now the discovery of the Grim sisters brought a heartbreaking
00:25:09
end to a weeks long search that had been underway right from December 28th but no
00:25:15
questions were answered here like that more questions were asked right the bodies were covered in snow which
00:25:22
indicated they had been there since the last snowfall which was on January 9th oh wow this was January 22nd wow so
00:25:29
theyve been there since January 9th at the very least yeah and they had only become visible when the snow began to
00:25:36
melts a few days earlier now at the time German Church Road was a was not traveled a lot it was in um it was in an
00:25:43
unincorporated town oh okay which makes sense that explains why they hadn't been
00:25:49
discovered earlier no one went down that road it was like a very seldom traveled
00:25:53
Road how [ __ ] up is it though that they were a mile away from the police station and nobody knew just under snow
00:25:59
and like the police right on the side of the road too they were not far off the road there's unfortunately crime scene
00:26:04
photos and they're right off the side of the road and do they I might be getting
00:26:09
ahead of myself here but do they think that they had been there the whole time we'll get to that okay um but like yeah
00:26:17
that we we'll definitely get to that but um but unfortunately there was no no clues on
00:26:22
the scene to what the hell happened here um before the girls were removed from the scene unfortunately Joseph Grimes
00:26:29
their father was taken to the site oh God where he positively identified them as barbar and Patricia and as he did so
00:26:38
he just dropped to the ground and burst into inconsolable tears yeah and I can't
00:26:43
even fathom that scene well you don't hear a lot of like parents being pro brought to the crime scene I think it
00:26:50
was the 50s [ __ ] was just like whing back then holy [ __ ] it was very they don't do that now that's the thing like
00:26:57
that's anyway to have to identify your child but at the crime scene or or wherever they were this the dump scene
00:27:03
yeah like that God I can't imagine yeah now according to Harry gloss a representative from the coroner's office
00:27:09
the bodies had been hastily covered with leaves and grass Barber's body laid across Patricia both girls had three
00:27:16
puncture wounds in the chest and quote that appeared to have been made by an ice pick oh my God uh Barbara's face had
00:27:23
bruises that indicated that she had been beaten uh there were hands bottles and other debris just strewn all around the
00:27:30
area but none of it appeared to be related to the crime scene it was just a place where people trash now the
00:27:37
autopsies were performed a few days later because they had to give the bodies adequate time to thought out
00:27:42
because they had been essentially Frozen there right um but they didn't get a lot
00:27:46
of extra information even then according to all three of the very qualified Pathologists who perform the
00:27:52
examinations both Patricia and Barbara's causes of death were shock and exposure
00:27:58
wow which indicates that they were dumped alive yeah and died from the cold from the
00:28:06
elements but they can't get a lot more than that which is like horrifying because they were stabbed three times in
00:28:14
the chest right one of them at least was beaten and then they were stripped and thrown in the snow right like what the
00:28:24
[ __ ] and did they know how had they been assaulted at all we will get to that okay um they couldn't agree on an exact
00:28:30
time of death for either victim uh all of them agreed that they had likely died the night they went missing okay um and
00:28:37
had been in the ditch covered by fresh snow for quite some time while now in their final report the Pathologists also
00:28:46
noted that the girls quote had not been sexually molested okay and there were quote no signs of external violence on
00:28:53
the bodies that could have caused the death okay now that's so strange yes now ultimately the autopsy results produced
00:29:02
obviously more questions than answers yet again for one thing if the girls had been killed the night they disappeared
00:29:08
how is it possible for so many people to say they'd seen them around the city right like after their disappearance the
00:29:16
answer to that to me feels like eyewitnesses are just notoriously unreliable um these people are probably
00:29:25
just mistaken I'm assuming or they wanted to see these girls and be part of the hell like they wanted to feel like
00:29:33
they saw them and so they were mistakenly thinking but who knows it's still strange even though you know
00:29:41
eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable we all know that we've seen a million times it is strange how many people were
00:29:48
sure they saw them or interacted with them right you know like classmates from school and that's the thing it's not
00:29:54
just strangers it's people who actually knew them so that's it's very weird um but the remarkably
00:30:01
well-preserved state of the bodies did support the theory that they'd been left packed under snow for quite some time
00:30:07
wow now the bigger problem though was that and and no one was going to become aware of this until much later
00:30:14
the bigger problem was that the Pathologists who conducted the examinations had been under strict
00:30:20
orders from Harry gloss who was the representative for the coroner's office that the coroner's office had to
00:30:26
withhold certain sensitive information okay for example the pathologist report and subsequent news reports clearly
00:30:34
stated that neither girl had been sexually molested which was vague enough to be
00:30:41
defensible if challenged they could at least defend the wording of that I guess but it wasn't exactly true okay in fact
00:30:52
when the autopsy was conducted evidence strongly indicated that Barbara had either been
00:31:01
raped or had consensually but she's 15 so so engaged in sexual activity near the time of her death and how are they
00:31:13
how are they able to get away with that because of the wording because I think it's like sexually molested is different
00:31:19
than and they're saying here that they couldn't determine whether it was forcible or consensual okay later it
00:31:25
will come out they were both raped both of them mhm um and then you should know that
00:31:33
right off the bat that like it does come off later that come out later that they
00:31:36
were both raped well and that's interesting because they're also like one was laid across the other just like
00:31:42
in that previous case where the three boys were raped each and laid across each other like it seems to correlate
00:31:50
now so this is why the coroner's office had done that because of that previous case no oh sorry they were trying to Pro
00:31:59
protect Barbara's Chastity and the image that both the girls were pure okay which is
00:32:12
upsetting because it so they're trying to hold back this point so that they are still looked at as like children
00:32:22
deserving of our well sympathy they are no matter what because either way they are not of legal age to consent to
00:32:32
anything how horrifying is it it's very 50 that they had to think that way that the coroner's office literally was like
00:32:41
we should protect their reputations by not telling the public or the press that any sexual assault
00:32:49
happened because it could be looked at as their fault wow everyone love take that in take that
00:33:00
in like and that's the thing I believe the coroner's office believed they were doing something right here they had good
00:33:09
intentions they had good intentions they're by they by no means had bad intentions withholding that but it
00:33:15
didn't help later it actually ended up hurting right and obviously now we know like now it's like this was the ' 50s
00:33:23
obviously so it's like they were looking at it as if we release that people are going to look at them differently and
00:33:29
that's like mindblowing sure they would up and then the other thing is is like people need to know this information if
00:33:38
this is something they need to worry about is their children going out into the streets getting abducted sexually
00:33:43
assaulted and murdered well this hindered the investigation like big time because so we'll get to that for sure
00:33:48
but the discovery was obviously [ __ ] devastating for the Grimes family particularly poor Loretta who learned of
00:33:56
her daughter's Fates that afternoon as she was on her way to St Maurice's Church oh my God she told reporters I
00:34:04
knew they hadn't run away I knew that something had happened to them I kept telling the police that they wouldn't
00:34:08
run away she told this to reporters and then she just ran into one of her neighbors home that's so sad now those
00:34:16
who knew the family knew that the deaths would be particularly awful I mean losing a child never mind too is
00:34:23
Unthinkable but this was the second time that Joseph Loretta had lost a child in
00:34:29
1954 their the couple's 26-year-old daughter Leona had died after a kidney operation oh God so this was I mean
00:34:38
they've gone through the ringer yeah they lost three of their seven children and later Loretta Grimes would be very
00:34:46
outspoken about how she felt largely responsible for the deaths of her daughters because she gave them
00:34:52
permission to go out that night she could have never ever ever had known that happen poor mother I can't even
00:34:58
imagine feeling that way and she doesn't deserve to feel that she did not deserve
00:35:03
to feel that way she didn't do anything wrong or out of the ordinary especially given the time period in the 50s kids
00:35:10
were going those that 11 13 and 14-year-old the case before this one yeah they were out at 9:30 at night by
00:35:18
themselves it was the the way it was it was just kids got on buses and just came
00:35:22
home and this wasn't even like we've said it already but and they' done that a million times this in the 50s
00:35:29
especially going to the movies going to a diner and playing something on theuk box was the thing to do kids did it all
00:35:36
the time parents let them do it this was not strange that mother did nothing [ __ ] wrong hate that she had to live
00:35:44
with that guilt that's the thing and it's like she's sending them to a public place that's safe that she and together
00:35:50
yeah and like she should have been able to send her kids out to go watch a movie
00:35:53
I just feel so awful for her cuz it's like she did not not deserve to have that guilt but you can understand I'm
00:35:59
sure as a mom why she did absolutely and that's what kills me I'm like I just wish I could like I feel like I'm like
00:36:05
sorry Loretta I know but since the discovery of Barbara and Patricia Grimes was the second set of children like we
00:36:12
talked about found brutally murdered in the Chicago area right many in the press
00:36:16
and public were worried that there was a serial killer of foot abducting and killing children sounds like it in both
00:36:22
cases the victim's bodies have been found nude in or near a forested air and on top of each other M investigators
00:36:29
belied the inclement weather had helped the killer Lure the victims and all had been like it was you know it was rainy
00:36:36
or snowy out so they could be like oh you need a ride like that's easy um and all had last been seen headed to a movie
00:36:43
theater oh the three boys were also they were on their way to a movie theater too
00:36:47
they were going to see like um it was like Disney's like live lion movie or something like that that was out that
00:36:54
year that's strange that they were all head to movies now because of all this and I get it detectives vehemently
00:37:00
pursued the case with the possibility that all five murders could somehow be linked and I get that oh 100% I mean the
00:37:06
the all the factors line up now once the bodies were removed from the scene a team of more than 70 men began searching
00:37:13
the area for any clues that could lead to the killer they combed that area all along Devil's Creek where the girls were
00:37:19
discovered and the investigators hope to find anything any physical evidence like
00:37:24
clothing anything in that debris garbage that they could link to anybody but nothing nothing now at the same time
00:37:33
another team was starting to dig into the leads pouring pouring into the police they started putting together a
00:37:38
possible suspect list and they started with 53-year-old self-described psychic Walter CR he was top of the list because
00:37:47
a week earlier he had called the police with an anonymous tip saying the girls would be found in Santa Fe Park okay he
00:37:54
refused to give his name when he called but he said said he quote unquote dreamed of seeing the bodies there okay
00:38:00
police were able to trace the number back to CR obviously and he immediately became their number one suspect oh but
00:38:07
he passed two polygraph test and tests and after being interviewed for hours and hours it was determined he was had
00:38:13
no involvement in the case now just two days after detectives abandoned that investigation another suspect Edward
00:38:21
Benny Bedwell came into view now according to a cab driver who had seen the girls pictures in the newspaper he'd
00:38:29
seen Barbara and Patricia on the morning of December 30th in the company of two men at the DNL restaurant in Chicago
00:38:37
Skid Row neighborhood okay now although he didn't know their names the cab driver recognized one of the men who he
00:38:43
described as having Elvis Presley sideburns and a ducktail haircut now investigator spoke to the
00:38:50
owners of the DNL restaurant John and mini duros who confirmed the cab driver story
00:38:57
and identified the one who looked like Elvis as Benny Bedwell and that would have meant that they spent two days with
00:39:03
him yes okay now um she they confirmed that this was Benny Bedwell because the two the couple who owned the restaurant
00:39:11
said that they had actually occasionally hired him to wash dishes so they knew him well yeah so according to mini duros
00:39:18
the group so it was Benny who they are saying was Patricia and Barbara Grimes and one other man okay together she said
00:39:26
the group had come into the restaurant early that morning and sat in a booth and she told investigators the older of
00:39:31
the two girls was in bad shape she looked sick or sick or drugged and she had been sick yeah she had been sick uh
00:39:40
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
00:39:46
into the booth and put her head on the table so when the others came back and tried to get the girl back outside
00:39:53
Minnie told them to leave her alone but but the three persisted and Minnie became distracted by another customer
00:40:00
and when she looked back at the table she saw the man she identified as Benny Bedwell escorting the girl out of the
00:40:06
restaurant okay according to duros the group came back later that afternoon and the taller girl whom she believed to be
00:40:13
Barbara was quote carrying on with Benny so she asked them all to leave okay now
00:40:19
by the time investigators became aware of Benny Bedwell there was already three law enforcement agencies pursuing this
00:40:25
case together but not together independent of one another okay Chicago Police had taken
00:40:31
the initial missing persons report Cook County Sheriff's Department discovered the bodies and the FBI was following up
00:40:38
on the handful of Ransom demands that the family family had received since the girls went missing people are so
00:40:44
disgusting because people are and always will be absolute [ __ ] garbage truly we're garbage everybody we are garbage
00:40:51
species garbage now as is often the case the famous ego game becomes a problem and
00:40:58
each agency was reluctant to share information with the others and actively withheld [ __ ] from each other it's like
00:41:05
guys we all have a common cause here let's figure out what happened to these two children seriously like shake your
00:41:10
dicks around later like there's two children who were [ __ ] raped and murdered and you can't get your [ __ ]
00:41:18
together to give some information to another agency cuz they might get credit for it yeah like I don't know any of
00:41:24
your names that's the I don't know any of your names except the ones that actually did the work so do the work and
00:41:30
we'll know your names for it but if you're holding [ __ ] we're not going to know [ __ ] exactly in fact on January
00:41:36
24th when Sheriff's Department officers arrested Benny Bedwell Chicago Police investigators complained to the press
00:41:43
that quote they were not informed of the arrest and said it violated a pledge of
00:41:48
cooperation among the various law enforcement agencies so they didn't even tell the other agencies that they
00:41:53
arrested the guy well it's like that's exciting news like hey we might have this guy here and these the other
00:41:59
agencies are are wasting time like pursuing others when you got guy right tail is old as [ __ ] time
00:42:08
imagine not being able to put your egos aside for the sake of solving the abductions possible rape and murders of
00:42:14
two young girls like imagine that no so the sheriff's officers eventually tracked Bedwell to the starer theater a
00:42:22
former burlesque theater turned Movie House and downtown Chicago interesting it ran double features all day and night
00:42:30
the Chicago Police it turned out were right to have complained because rather than fill the other law enforcement
00:42:36
agencies in on the arrest a spokesperson for the sheriff's office just went to the pr press to talk about having a cust
00:42:42
a suspect in custody going to the press and being like look we did it instead of
00:42:45
telling the other agencies first right now according to their report 21y old Bedwell had grown up in Central Illinois
00:42:52
and taken a d a job with a traveling circus when he was 18 oh wow but he had recently returned to Chicago around the
00:42:59
area after a very short stint with the military and at the time of his arrest he was living at the McCoy Hotel okay
00:43:07
now reporters immediately jumped on the story and started digging in to find more about Benny Bedwell less than 24
00:43:14
hours after he was arrested they had found his mother Ethel Bedwell Bradberry who was more than happy to talk about
00:43:21
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 [ __ ]
00:43:29
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
00:43:36
mother was concerned Benny was quote a lazy shiftless bum just a big lazy boy who didn't like to work gross she didn't
00:43:44
know anything about her son's involvement in the case of the missing Grim sisters but she did tell reporters
00:43:48
quote on several occasions Benny had mentioned having a new girlfriend now in custody Benny insist
00:43:56
he had never even met the Grimes sisters and certainly didn't kill them he did however admit to being at the DNL
00:44:02
restaurant on the evening he was spotted there and he said he was with a friend and two girls now according to Bedwell
00:44:09
they were not the Grim sisters he said he had met the two girls and their male companion at the movies that day and the
00:44:14
two had gone to a bar near the theater left when the bartender refused to serve the two underage girls because he loves
00:44:21
under girls gross uh after that they went to another bar nearby where they each had three drinks and he said we
00:44:28
were only in there a little while when the girls went to the washroom and he said when they came out of the washroom
00:44:33
they ducked us we saw them leave and the other guy said let's follow them but he
00:44:38
said that he refused and he claimed that the girls like they got away and he said
00:44:42
they ran into the girls a few days later and they ignored him I bet so now the weird story Benny
00:44:50
well the problem with this was this wasn't the first statement Benny gave to police this was the second one the
00:44:56
initial statement he gave he claimed he had been out that day with friends that he referred to as Louie and Frank he
00:45:02
said they met up with the girls he identified as being the Grim sisters okay so first he knows them and then he
00:45:08
doesn't according to Benny he was driving the car and the girls were in the back with his friends and he heard
00:45:13
quote the sound of scuffling and he looked back to find the two girls were dead that's his first statement so he's
00:45:21
D I want you to Picture This he's driving a car they in the back seat he hears a little bit of scuffling he looks
00:45:27
back they're dead doubt it Benny then said the men strip the girl's clothing off and forced him to drive out to
00:45:35
German Church Road where they dumped the bodies when asked why he told that first
00:45:41
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
00:45:47
if I told you I was an accessory to murder yeah let let's think about that crit seems legit let's let's do some
00:45:54
critical thinking there Benny boy think he knows how to do that now while the multiple statements from Benny didn't
00:46:00
make him look uh any less suspicious the second story he told police about meeting the girls at a theater who
00:46:06
weren't the grand the grand sisters that was eventually corroborated by the two young women who were part of the story
00:46:13
apparently whose names Benny said he had forgotten at the time their names were Irene Dean and Carol
00:46:20
King and the other man in the group was Richard witm so boom Alibi okay like the guy came forward and
00:46:29
was like yep the girls were like yep it was us do we believe them so he had already told multiple stories which was
00:46:37
a red flag obviously yeah and they tried to cooporate they were like that's that's nice but let's corroborate this
00:46:42
story even further so they went to the owners of the DNL restaurant and were like were were these the girls like do
00:46:48
you recognize these girls the owners of the DNL restaurant swore that Dean and King were not the girls that they had
00:46:55
seen any with I wonder if somebody intimidated those girls this was further suspect because there were many other
00:47:01
Witnesses who told investigators they had also seen Barbara and Patricia Grimes with Benny on or around the time
00:47:07
they went missing oh yeah so there you go now in fact between the night they went missing in the week that followed
00:47:13
no less than eight Witnesses claimed to have seen the girls in the company of two men each including in their
00:47:20
statement a fact or detail that would not have been known to the public okay a [ __ ] like there you go like for
00:47:29
example a waitress at Mount pendos restaurant told detective she'd seen the girls in the restaurant with two men and
00:47:35
as they were leaving she heard one of the girls refer to the other as Petey which was Patricia's family nickname oh
00:47:44
wow also most of the witnesses indicated or at least implied that the girls looked uncomfortable and looked like
00:47:51
they were not exactly with these men SL pigs like arily right things got more complicated on December 28th the day
00:48:00
after statements were taken from Whitten Meer Dean and King because now Benny Bedwell made another statement early
00:48:08
that morning Chicago police arrested a guy named William Willingham Jr who was a known associate of bedw Wells they'd
00:48:15
picked up on a disorderly contuct charge okay when they showed Willingham a photo
00:48:19
of Benny Bedwell he admitted knowing Benny but strenuously denied having anything to do with Grimes murders and
00:48:26
told police I don't know anything about this and I never went out with those girls and it's like oh that sounds a
00:48:33
little Su think th do protest too much correct but when Benny was informed about willingham's arrest he recanted
00:48:41
his previous story about being ditched by the girls at the movies okay that one and returned to another version of his
00:48:48
initial statement that included the Grim sisters right now according to Benny now
00:48:53
he'd met both girls Patricia and and Barbara Grimes on the evening of January 7th nope at Harold's Harold's club and
00:49:01
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
00:49:08
got a room at the Crest Hotel there he said he quote went to bed with Patricia with FR and Frank with
00:49:16
Barbara Benny claimed all four of them spent several days drinking and driving and stopping at random bars and Friends
00:49:22
Apartments where they kept drinking heavily finally on the 11th or 12th they stopped for gas and to get some lunch
00:49:28
with the girls and the girls went to use the bathroom at a gas station uhhuh when
00:49:33
they got back both men indicated they wanted to find a place to have sex but both the girls refused and he said that
00:49:41
they both both the men got violent okay in a recorded confession Benny told Sheriff Joseph lman I hit Patricia
00:49:49
harder than I was aiming to on the chin okay both men he said knocked both girl girls unconscious like beat them
00:49:57
unconscious and he's one of these men him and Frank Frank yes they immediately thought they had killed the girls so
00:50:03
they drove them up to the little used German Church Road stripped them of their clothing and dumped them behind
00:50:08
the guardrail the sheriff asked whether they knew the girls were dead or not and
00:50:13
Benny said they didn't move anyway I didn't know the girls were dead I figured they would come too and go for
00:50:17
help I didn't do it intentionally well and then that makes sense because they believed that they had died of exposure
00:50:23
so he beat them unconscious and then left them there and that because I was say in my head I was like they died of
00:50:30
exposure but like did they try to get home somehow or well don't worry we'll get through we'll talk about that so
00:50:38
Benny said it wasn't until several days after this that he read about the Grim sisters in the paper and realized that
00:50:44
it was them he claimed neither one of them had mentioned running away from home and never mentioned they were being
00:50:49
looked for they also said he also said he only met Frank a couple of times didn't know his last name Benny said
00:50:56
when they got back to the city after this whole thing they departed from each other and had he hadn't seen Frank since
00:51:01
okay now his statement was read back to him for clarification and Benny identified Barbara and Patricia Grimes
00:51:07
from photographs presented to him by the sheriffs uh confirming they were the girls he'd been with then with his
00:51:14
statement having been taken Benny guided investigators on a 50m tour of where he
00:51:19
and Frank had taken the girls ending at the site on German Church Road where the
00:51:24
bodies were found okay now along the way hundreds if not thousands watched and followed this whole ordeal the Press
00:51:32
referred to this whole thing as quote a tragic circus parade at high speed which is chilling yeah so Sheriff
00:51:40
lman was a immediately convinced of Benny's guilt particularly because it seemed to be in line with what they've
00:51:46
learned from Witnesses in the days prior and just the fact that he's told about 40 different stories in fact one of the
00:51:52
witnesses who claimed to have seen the girls after they disappeared appeared was Leonard was an employee at a service
00:51:58
station not far from where the girl's bodies was discovered according to was all four had stopped at the gas station
00:52:05
in early January he couldn't be certain of the date and the girls asked to use the restroom boom as they were leaving
00:52:12
was claimed the girl he identified as Barbara quote gave him a strange look which he interpreted as her desire not
00:52:19
to get back in the car oh no I love that not not a one person has stepped in to be like girl are you okay well that's
00:52:26
the thing are you all right is everything okay all these adults are like yeah it looked like they were being
00:52:31
abducted it was wild and it's like I don't know [ __ ] faces why don't you go ask that child if they're okay what the
00:52:38
[ __ ] is wrong with you and it's like clearly they looked young enough that you would go ask them because at one
00:52:43
place they weren't served cuz they looked so young it's never a bad thing to just be like you all right yeah do
00:52:49
you need help yeah like what the [ __ ] dude especially when they're with these like two older men come come on guys wow
00:52:56
now there were some people though who didn't really buy Benny's confession he had lied a lot well and like what number
00:53:05
confession is this and he had told a lot of stories by this point and although some of his stories seemed like it was
00:53:09
being confirmed by Witnesses and [ __ ] there was a lot that didn't make a lot of sense well and there is like you know
00:53:15
confirmation like there's one big thing so Benny had claimed both there's a couple of big things actually Benny had
00:53:21
claimed both girls ate hot dogs for lunch at the service station okay the autopsy said nope there were no hot dogs
00:53:28
in their stomachs in fact there was nothing recent in their stomachs interesting both girls had light
00:53:34
bruising on their faces but not enough to corroborate a beating that would knock them
00:53:39
unconscious okay like Benny had described he described it as very violent yeah and he said when they dump
00:53:44
when they dumped those girls thought they he had killed them right also did you remember the puncture wounds in the
00:53:49
chest I was just about to ask where did he never mentioned those no where did those come from
00:53:56
Benny never mentioned this huh the Press immediately pointed out all of this and
00:54:01
his confession was now being questioned by everyone but there are so many things
00:54:05
that he did know that do make sense well there's also another problem here because the biggest issue that everyone
00:54:11
had with his confession was that Benny claimed to have engaged in repeated sexual intercourse with Patricia but
00:54:18
according to the autopsy report that everyone knew about neither girl was quote sexually experienced meaning
00:54:25
neither had engaged with in sexual intercourse because remember they were withholding that information right so
00:54:31
now the public is hearing this confession involving that and they're saying well it can't be true but it is
00:54:36
in fact when reporters asked one of the Pathologists whether the girls were chased gross he refused to answer the
00:54:43
question because again remember the coroners are being told you're not allowed to say it right he said the
00:54:49
question and his answer was that that's a question of morals not science so he was like I'm not answering that like I'm
00:54:55
not telling you whether these girls are chased that's not that's like opinion that's not science I'm here to talk
00:55:00
about science like let's not put that in your story [ __ ] in truth his refusal again was the direct results of being
00:55:07
under strict orders from the coroner's office to protect their reputation and ant not answer those questions Loretta
00:55:13
Grimes on the other hand wasted no time reinforcing what the autopsy had included she said our girls came from a
00:55:19
good home and were brought up in religious surroundings he's not right she said of Benny Bedwell and she
00:55:26
insisted that he was lying she said I want to see my girl's clothing before I believe anything even then I won't
00:55:31
believe what Bedwell says about their being in bars yeah which I don't blame her no of course not more than any of
00:55:37
the other inconsistencies in Benny's confession which I think the puncture wounds are huge inconsistency he never
00:55:44
mentioned them and I think if you stabbed the girls three times with an ice picky she would mention that in your
00:55:50
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
00:55:56
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
00:56:04
many others as evidence that he was lying after all the autopsy report indicated that had not happened so there
00:56:11
was no way he could be telling the truth unfortunately it would be many years before anyone learned that the coroner's
00:56:18
office had out of some misguided sense of decency com basically conspired to suppress certain results to protect yeah
00:56:26
them their innocence this is so and in truth several members of the sheriff's department had seen the autopsy slides
00:56:34
and years later would confirm like I said that both girls had been sexually assaulted before their deaths right now
00:56:41
despite the many flaws in the case lman remained convinced of Benny bedwell's guilt I'm kind of convinced I'm not
00:56:48
you're not okay and they he accepted the confession and he booked the man on murder charges and intended to see the
00:56:55
case through to trial so the announcement of Benny bedwell's confession and the impending indictment
00:57:00
brought some comfort to the people of Chicago yeah particularly those who had been increasingly anxious over the
00:57:06
rising you know instances of children being abducted and raped and murdered in the city and the surrounding areas but
00:57:13
for others Benny seemed like a scapegoat in the case that multiple law enforcement agencies had failed to solve
00:57:20
okay Benny's pro bono lawyer David Bradshaw told reporters the boy in this case is wholly illiterate doesn't
00:57:27
understand what's going on and has found himself the main object in a case of Nationwide interest Loretta Grimes
00:57:33
agreed really telling reporters he's changed his story so many times who wouldn't he's had no sleep and nothing
00:57:40
to eat she's a consumate mama yeah she really is she's literally like The Boy hasn't had anything to eat and he hasn't
00:57:46
slept he's going to say whatever like she's just looking at it this is a 21-year-old like Loretta Loretta Grimes
00:57:53
is a a mama there like that's my girl she really is but she didn't AG she did not agree she did not think that this
00:58:00
was the guy all right well I respect how she whatever she thinks cuz you also have to think like there's some mama in
00:58:06
inct happening there now Benny's lawyer David Bradshaw believed investigators were under intense pressure to solve
00:58:13
this case obviously and since Benny was their only real suspect they pursued him
00:58:19
despite all the contradictions in his confession and it's like okay I understand pursuing him like based some
00:58:25
things he was saying but don't do it exclusively at the expense of finding other people I think it reminds me of
00:58:31
something uh the West Memphis 3 it reminds me of um like when they just went forward with Jesse muscelli even
00:58:38
though there was several contradictions in his confession they just corrected them that confession is one of the
00:58:43
saddest things you will ever hear about in your life now also Bradshaw believed his client was being scapegoated because
00:58:49
the public and many in law enforcement continued to cling to the Grim sister's purity right and they refused to believe
00:58:56
that the two teenagers had gone anywhere near skid R bars and theaters and that like something could have happened yeah
00:59:02
so they he was like I think he's just being put up here as like the easy way to understand all of this and at that
00:59:08
point his lawyer also didn't know about the truth it's like yeah so the more investigators dug into Benny's Story the
00:59:16
less likely it seemed he was telling the truth William Willingham the friend that
00:59:20
had been arrested when he was y um had told investigators that he had gone out drinking with Benny around the time the
00:59:26
girls went missing and that he swore the girls were with her um the the girls that they were with were Irene Dean and
00:59:33
Carol King and the results of his polygraph test indicated he was telling the truth oh interesting also when Dean
00:59:40
and King were shown photos of Benny Bedwell and William Willington yeah they again identified them as the men they
00:59:47
had been out with at the DNL restaurant among other places so they were like that was us that's interesting a
00:59:53
Coroner's in Quest began on January 30th 1957 and much of what was learned did little to support Benny's confession it
01:00:02
was determined that the girls had most likely been abducted shortly after they left the movie theater a little after
01:00:07
11:30 p.m. at that time Benny Bedwell was known to have been at work oh the inquest also demonstrated the extent to
01:00:16
which so many involved in the case were committed to protecting the quote unquote innocence of Barbara and
01:00:21
Patricia uhhuh at one point while the girl's school friend Dorothy Wier was testifying that she saw both of them
01:00:27
buying popcorn in a candy bar at the movie Loretta jumped up out of her chair and started calling the girl a liar
01:00:35
because she said she had only given them money for movies and she said she insisted that she gave her money for the
01:00:42
bus ride the ticket for the movies and one popcorn so because of how sensitive everything was just because this school
01:00:50
friend had said that these girls had an additional 30 cents many interpreted it as that they must
01:00:57
have been dishonest or they' done something immoral to get that 30 cents wow so that's why Loretta jumped up and
01:01:04
was like no no no no no no like this is No I gave them this amount but that's how ridiculous it had gotten that's
01:01:11
insane now after three days of testimony Betty Bedwell once again recanted his 14-page confession saying he had only
01:01:19
confessed because he was threatened and beaten by police oh wow in fact he again
01:01:25
said he had never met or seen the Grim sisters and only knew the case through the newspapers Benny had so many had
01:01:31
told so many conflicting stories by this point that it would have been reasonable
01:01:35
for anyone to be skeptical of this latest one at that point I mean come on but now the in the coroner's
01:01:42
inquest that was starting to show that he was probably innocent he was probably like innocent of this I should say well
01:01:49
the inquest was in its Third Day the lab and toxicology reports came back and found that both girls most likely died
01:01:57
December 28th the night they disappeared wow also there was no alcohol in either
01:02:02
of the girls systems and the contents of their stomachs turned up particles of fish and potatoes on those later reports
01:02:10
not hot dogs okay um Bedwell had only claimed that they had eaten hot dogs and that was in January and do you have any
01:02:17
idea if Loretta said like they had fish and potato I'm assuming that's what they
01:02:21
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
01:02:26
that's what they had for din they were going to a later movie yeah and they that movie was later and they weren't
01:02:31
concerned about these they weren't using it as part of the investigation so I'm assuming that was from home it also just
01:02:35
sounds like a family day it does now a few days later on February 6th a baale bondsman named Morris Brown put up the
01:02:42
$20,000 bail for bedwell's release he believed him innocent so Benny was released from custody wow now when Benny
01:02:51
Bedwell got out of jail and was seemingly EX exonerated by the findings of the autopsy in the coroners in
01:02:57
inquest investigators were just back to square one square square one yeah detectives and deputies from the Chicago
01:03:04
Police Department and Cook County Sheriff's Department returned to German Church Road and the theater where the
01:03:10
girls had gone the night they disappeared but they couldn't find anything else to help them investigators
01:03:16
Revisited their previous suspects they found a couple that seemed promising at some point but then they would go
01:03:22
nowhere the most promising of the suspects was 17-year-old Matt Max flee um there's little known about Max flee
01:03:30
but he was picked up by police shortly after the bodies were discovered and was convinced by captain Ralph [ __ ] to take
01:03:37
a polygraph test according to author Troy Taylor Max failed the polygraph exam and confessed to the murders but
01:03:46
quote because the test was illegal and inadmissible the police were forced to let him go because he was coerced into
01:03:51
taking it yeah gotcha now as the month and years went by there would be other suspects people would confess to it
01:03:59
again none of them were strong enough to get a conviction in late 1962 Alfred Lawless an Illinois prisoner about to be
01:04:07
released from jail on a drunk and disorderly charge claimed that he had killed the Grimes sisters quote six
01:04:13
years ago today I killed Barbara and Patricia Grimes and I've been running what ever since he told so according to
01:04:19
him he had met the girls at the theater The Night They disappeared and he murdered them a few hours later he said
01:04:25
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
01:04:31
girls okay but like Benny's confession years before his story was surprisingly detailed but all the information he
01:04:39
provided no matter how small the detail had been reported by the Press so there you go so investigators were like I
01:04:45
don't know about that those delts only grew when Lawless began confessing to other crimes including the murder of a
01:04:51
man in Jamestown Kentucky 15 years earlier in which Lawless got many of the details wrong so I think he was just
01:04:59
going through off the deep end in fact when they started to take a closer look at his story there were more than a few
01:05:04
important discrepancies and investigators were like no he's not a viable suspect now in time unfortunately the
01:05:12
leads began to dry up and slowly but surely it seems like the story kind of disappeared first from the Press then
01:05:18
from The public's memory and after years of inaction the case had gone cold and was shelv by all law enforcement um
01:05:25
agencies that's awful now the Grim sisters cold Cas case had sat on a shelf for more than 50 years when it was
01:05:34
rediscovered by a retired West police officer Ray Johnson let's go in 2010 Johnson began going over old newspaper
01:05:42
articles and revie viewing the evidence in the case uh for a book he hoped to write he told reporters I thought nobody
01:05:49
should give up on this case and two years into his research he contact he was contacted by by a woman who claimed
01:05:56
she had been with Barbara and Patricia the night they disappeared but she was too scared to go to the police in 1957
01:06:02
to tell them what she knew according to this Anonymous woman she left the theater with the sisters when they were
01:06:07
offered and accepted a ride from a man in his early 20s but this woman became uncomfortable and had jumped out of the
01:06:15
car when it slowed down and left the sisters in the car oh now eventually Johnson came across a report from
01:06:23
Loretta grime about one of the anonymous calls she received about the time the girls went missing cuz remember people
01:06:30
have always been and will always be [ __ ] garbage so she was getting a ton of Anonymous phone calls while she was
01:06:36
grieving her children missing again garbage we're garbage like what goes through people's heads now unlike the
01:06:43
previous Ransom calls in harassment this caller seemed to know things about the case that people other people didn't he
01:06:49
claimed quote he was the one who who undressed the girl oh and then he hung up the phone that poor [ __ ] woman
01:06:57
that's so sick a little over a year later Loretta received another call from an anonymous man who told her he quote
01:07:04
got away with another one and he said this time the police would not be able to pin this one on Benny
01:07:10
Bedwell the next day after this call police found the decapitated body of 15-year-old Bonnie Lee Scott in nearby
01:07:18
Addison oh my whole entire body only about 3 miles from where Barbara and Patricia his bodies were discovered oh
01:07:26
that mhm nope eventually police arrested 23-year-old Charles's mquest for that murder and he quickly confessed he said
01:07:36
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 8 years
01:07:44
in prison due to what he says were his connections to the Chicago machine wow the murder of Bonnie Lee
01:07:52
Scott bears many similarities to the Grim sister's case but there's no real connection that they could pull on
01:08:00
mquest had connections to Sheldon teller who had been one of the lead investigators on the Grimes case but Jon
01:08:07
that retired detective that was looking into this case and found all this he believed that Charles mquest could be
01:08:13
the murderer in the Grimes case but teller who he was connected to who was the lead investigator on the Grimes case
01:08:20
had connections to the Chicago machine and helped Quest skirt the charges that's also why he got such a light
01:08:28
sentence for the other murder and got away with [ __ ] wow is that is the machine like the mob the mob yeah it now
01:08:35
unfortunately Charles mquest died in 2010 oh how strange that was the same year that the author decided yeah wow
01:08:43
but at the time of his arrest he was considered a strong suspect in the crimes case and Johnson believes he
01:08:49
could very well be the man who killed Barbara and Patricia Grimes we'll never know as of now the case remains open and
01:08:56
Johnson hopes new information can be found to link mquest definitively to the case and finally solve the heartbreaking
01:09:03
murders of Patricia and Barbara Grimes I think Charles mquest is the guy really I
01:09:09
think he's the guy wow and unfortunately we're not going to be able to fully get the justice and maybe
01:09:19
someday you never know and unfortunately Loretta Grimes has passed away at this point say so but it's like but they I'm
01:09:26
sure maybe they have live living siblings or six like I'm hoping something can I just want this family to
01:09:33
have like the closure yeah you know and I really do believe I think the fact that this kind of [ __ ] happens these are
01:09:42
a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old girl both abducted from movie theater found naked raped stabbed beaten and murdered
01:09:53
on the side of the road and people are calling this family and pranking them it's look in the [ __ ] mirror what the
01:10:01
[ __ ] is wrong with you a a laundry list of things all I can hope is that Karma
01:10:07
like just bites them in the ass I hope Karma chews on their ass like Jesus people are
01:10:15
so [ __ ] anytime I hear about that [ __ ] I'm like you got to be especially when
01:10:20
it's a child involved I'm like the you have to be truly deranged like you have to be a deranged just feral [ __ ]
01:10:28
animal to do that [ __ ] like it makes me so angry it's just you can't even fathom
01:10:33
it and that these people going through what they went through and her having that guilt that she was living with that
01:10:37
she did not deserve to have but she's a mother that guilt she had and to be having to deal with [ __ ] pigs calling
01:10:44
her and pranking her and saying disgusting saying disgusting [ __ ] like man you deserve what you get Society man
01:10:52
but it's rough I think Charles mquest is a great great suspect for this I really
01:10:59
do believe he is the fact that he got 8 years for decapitating a young girl that
01:11:06
poor girl his connection imagine being in the in the trial or in the courtroom for sentencing and you find out the man
01:11:14
that decapitated your child gets 8 years I and he's 23 I mean that's nothing yeah
01:11:22
nothing yeah going to be a young guy just walking out of there and I'd be interested to see or to hear I would
01:11:28
love to follow what the rest of his life was there's no way that man stopped what
01:11:32
he was doing yeah so it's like somebody needs to and I'm hoping who knows maybe Johnson there is working on it is
01:11:39
piecing together what that guy was doing because I would love to find out and start digging into what his life was
01:11:48
after that I mean he lived until 2010 yeah so I would like to to know what happened there and I hope that
01:11:54
somebody's looking into it and I'm like can I help cuz it would you would imagine that he would have gotten out of
01:12:00
jail sometime in like the late 60s early 70s I think so to be honest I'm probably
01:12:04
going to start trying to dig into this guy's life because it's bothering me and I'm like and I know this like retired
01:12:09
police detective is probably on that [ __ ] but I'm like I'm I'm just going to do this for my own personal well-being
01:12:15
because I need to [ __ ] know what this guy was doing yeah I mean maybe we can do like some kind of followup yeah I
01:12:19
would love to if and who knows if you'll find enough ify yeah keep us updated man
01:12:25
I know I'm like I'm I'm like you know what please Ray Johnson please let me know what the [ __ ] is going on if you're
01:12:32
listening let's get together let's squat up right uh but yeah this is a horrific
01:12:39
horrific tale yeah that's really devastating it doesn't have the ending that you're really looking for but it's
01:12:45
got something at the end that you feel like there's there's something to work with yeah what an interesting case all
01:12:52
around though just all the eyewitness es afterwards and then the many stories and
01:12:56
the people that were so convinced that they saw Benny with him perhaps yeah it's really it's [ __ ]
01:13:03
up it is it's really [ __ ] up and I hope the Grimes family was able to to move past it I not move past it but you
01:13:10
know move forward yeah yeah well with that we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep
01:13:17
it I got nothing yeah don't don't be this don't call people who are going through through things and prank them
01:13:24
you pieces of [ __ ] there you go don't keep it that weird don't do [Music] that