The Unsolved Case of the Grimes Sisters

The disappearance of the Grimes sisters is said to be one of the biggest missing persons cases in the history of Chicago. To this day, it is still one of the most infamous cold cases, with detectives still pulling out the file now and again to put their skills to the test. Due to the numerous sightings of the girls before they were found, it is particularly frustrating that it is still unknown as to who did the crime and why. This is one of my favorite cases, and there is a TL;DR at the bottom for those who are interested.

On December 28, 1956, Patricia (12) and Barbara (15) Grimes left their house to watch ‘Love Me Tender’ for about the dozenth time at a Brighton Theater. The sisters were inseparable, and had often been seen around town, listening to Elvis records, hanging out with friends, and sometimes outside bars trying to finesse some locals out of a few drinks. The sisters left their house around 7:30 PM, with the promise of returning home by midnight. The girls had planned to watch both showings of the Elvis film, but still would have plenty of time to return home by bus or foot since they only lived about a mile away.

Dorothy Weinhart, a friend and classmate of Patricia’s, sat with her sister behind the Grimes sisters for the first showing. She left during intermission, but being the devoted Elvis fans that they were, Patricia and Barbara stayed for the second showing after getting a bit of popcorn and wishing the Weinhart sisters a good night. A young man named Roger Menard reported also sitting behind the Grimes sisters, just a few seats down from Dorothy. He stayed for the second showing as well. Roger recalls leaving behind the sisters, and watching them walk down Archer Avenue, denying rides from a couple of cars while walking home. Roger was only behind them for a short time before he turned down a different street towards his house.

A little after midnight, the sisters’ mother was starting to get worried. She sent her 17 year old daughter and 14 year old son to the closest bus stop to look for the girls. While they did that, she called the parents of the sisters’ friends, but none of them had seen her that night. Around 2 AM, the daughter and son returned, informing her that they had seen three buses pass, but not a single sister was found. It was at this time that the mother called the Chicago police and opened a missing persons report.

Later that morning, December 29th, a local search team consisting of hundreds of volunteers combed through Cook County. Thousands of flyers littered the streets and mailboxes, and a sizable amount of cash was raised as a reward for the safe return of the missing girls after receiving a ransom note. Police officers had been assigned to the case, joining together with colleagues from other suburbs to search for the girls 24/7. Over 300,000 people had been seated in the cold interrogation chair, but this yielded very little information. Elvis Presley himself even made an announcement on the local radio on January 19, 1957, imploring any Presley fans who were out and about to “go home and ease [their] mother’s worries.” This was done due to the theory that the girls may have run away from home to try to see Elvis in person or staying at a boyfriend’s house to emulate a more “rock n roll” lifestyle. This theory was supported by the numerous sightings of the girls at various locations around town. Unfortunately, due to this theory, the case was not treated as seriously as it should’ve been until a week had passed with no leads to where the sisters could be.

In the 25 days after the sisters were last seen by their mother, several unconfirmed witness reports came forward. Numerous people said they witnessed the girls alighting a bus around 11 PM on Western Avenue, about halfway home. The witnesses were all able to describe the driver of the bus at that time. It is unknown as to why the sisters would wait until halfway home to board the bus. Around 11:30 PM, two young men had seen the sisters hiding behind doorways, jumping around, laughing, and just generally messing around. They were two blocks from home at this point. A security guard recalled having a conversation with the girls who had been asking for directions, about 12 hours after the girls had left the theater. He remembered this conversation in particular because the girls had both been “rude and abrupt.” A classmate of the girls then saw Patricia Grimes in the evening of December 29th with two unidentified girls, walking past the restaurant that she was in. A cashier at Clark Theater followed that up with witnessing both girls later around midnight. A railroad conductor thought he saw the sisters on a train at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center searching for a Terry and Larry. A restaurant owner and a hotel owner both recall seeing the two girls, one so drunk she could barely walk without staggering, in the company of an official suspect named Edward Bedwell, who looked a bit like Elvis. Edward had allegedly checked the girls into the Claremont hotel on December 30, 5:40 AM. Other people report seeing the girls in the company of a man resembling Elvis as well. A week later, another hotel owner denied the girls a room due to their age. On January 3rd, three employees saw two girls who they believe to be the Grimes come into their store and listen to Elvis records. A woman spotted the sisters, looking “bedraggled and tired” in a bathroom in Nashville, Tennessee. She walked with them to an employment agency. A clerk at this agency testified that the girls had filled out the applications using the surname “Grimes.” In the early hours of January 14th, the mother of one of Patricia’s classmate received two anonymous phone calls. The first time, the caller hung up shortly after the mother answered. The second time, the caller asked for the mother’s daughter by name, but hung up before the daughter could answer the phone. The mother swears it was Patricia’s voice.

So why is this case so baffling? Why has no one served time for the disappearance of the sisters? Because the sisters were found side by side by a guardrail on January 22nd, 1957 after a recent snow thaw. They were frozen and appeared to have been trying to conserve heat before they died. They were completely naked, and covered in small bruises. Despite all the witnesses who had seen the girls, two of the three forensic pathologists agreed that they died within 5 hours of leaving their home back in December. They had about the same stomach contents as what they had eaten before leaving to see the movie and the snacks they consumed there. Though the pathologists disagreed on a few things after the 5 hour autopsy, they all came to the conclusion that the girls had died from shock and exposure. The small bruises that sadly decorated their bodies were determined to have happened after death, most likely due to rats. No alcohol, poison, fatal wounds, or clothing was found, and the bodies were “exceptionally clean.” The three agreed that Barbara had engaged in intercourse before her death, and that there was no proof to show that it may have been without her consent. The third pathologist, however, believes that the girls died closer to January 7th. He found traces of semen in the vaginal swabs of both girls, and found milk in Barbara’s stomach, despite her not having been known to drink milk in her home life.

The main suspect was Edward Bedwell. A Nashville native, Bedwell moved to Chicago weeks before the disappearance of the Grimes after being evicted from his home in Nashville. Bedwell was arrested and subjected to interrogation for three days after the owners of the restaurant he worked in reported having seen him and an acquaintance with two girls resembling the Grimes. After three days of interrogation, he signed a 14 page confession stating that he and his acquaintance (William Willingham) had indeed been in the presence of the sisters on the morning of December 30th, after having denied it the previous days. The signed statement claimed that he and Willingham had taken the willing company of both sisters after finding them on West Madison Street until January 7th, drinking their way up and down skid row. On January 7th, he claimed that they fed the girls hot dogs, beat them profusely after their sexual advances were blocked, then threw them out into the snow bank. The Grimes mother insisted that something was suspicious because the girls would have never gone on West Madison Street. Willingham denied playing any part in the murders, and was adamant that the sisters looked nothing like the Grimes. Bedwell later retracted his confession, stating that the only reason he signed it was under the misinformed thought that he would be let go. This was supported by the lack of alcohol or hot dogs in the girls’ systems, the lack of physical abuse, and having found out that Bedwell had been clocked in at his other place of employment, Ajax Consolidated Company, from 4:19 PM on December 28th to 12:30 AM on December 29th, giving him an alibi during the hours that the abduction likely occurred. He was also said to have been working at the restaurant during the time he allegedly murdered the sisters. Bedwell was released after being bailed out of jail. He was later tried and acquitted for the rape of a 13 year old girl in Florida that very same year.

53 year old Walter Kranz was heavily questioned by the police following a suspicious, anonymous phone call to inform the police on January 15th that he had a psychic vision that the girls were dead and where they could be found. The girls were found a week later within a mile of where he said they could be found. Kranz was adamant that his family is full of psychics and that he had nothing to do with the murder. After a lot of questioning and confirming his handwriting didn’t match the ransom note, he was free to go.

The first suspect, Max Fleig, agreed to take an unofficial polygraph test in which he confessed to murdering the sisters and passed the polygraph. Unfortunately, Fleig was 17, and therefore his polygraph could not be used in court due to him being a minor. He was released on lack of evidence, then was later charged with the murder of an unrelated young woman.

After a month of torment and confusion, it was with heavy hearts that the Grimes family laid the sisters to rest on January 28th, 1957. The town had raised money to help pay for the funeral, which later went towards the family’s expenses when the church graciously waived the fee for such a tragic event. Unfortunately, the Loretta (the mother) still had the case haunt her. In May of that year, she received a chilling phone call. Many hoax callers had called her during the investigation, but this caller mocked her and the police for being unable to find the right person. He claimed he was the true killer, and proved himself by revealing a small intimate detail: he knew that Patricia’s toes were “crossed at the feet.” He laughed, then ended the call. He was unable to be traced. The mother was insistent that the girls knew the killer. Loretta fully believes that the girls would have only accepted a ride from someone they knew. A call was made in September of 1958 that Loretta swears had the same voice. The unknown man boasted that he had committed the next perfect crime, and he again would not be caught, and that the credit would not be given to any of the previous suspects. He claimed responsibility for the murder of a girl that had been found within 10 miles of where the sisters had been found, disposed in a similar fashion. A man by the name of Charles Meliquest had been charged with the murder of the girl, who he had known before killing her. He had also been a suspect in the Grimes case. Unfortunately, he was never questioned about the murder of the sisters, despite the belief of someone who had devoted his time to the case that Meliquest was the real culprit. Meliquest died in 2010. A woman came forward several years after that night in 1956 and stated that she had been abducted as well, but escaped before the sisters were murdered. She claimed the man had a distinctive voice. So far, nothing further has come of it. The brother of the sisters, James, still holds hope that he will one day know who took his sisters’ lives and will be able to have some closure.

TL;DR: Two sisters disappeared on December 28, 1956. Their bodies were found 22 days later, naked. Autopsies report them dying within 5 hours of leaving their home, but witnesses claimed to have seen the girls all the way up to mid January. The case is still unsolved.

EDIT: for those asking about the ransom note, I unfortunately couldn’t find much info on it. All I can find is that at some point, Loretta received a few of them and replied to a couple under the FBI’s suggestion, but they all turned up to be false leads. They then used at least one of them while questioning Walter.