Barbara and Patricia Grimes

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1:55All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

2:15Today, I'm discussing the case of Barbara and Patricia Grimes. On December 28, 1956, on the south side of Chicago, 12-year-old Patricia Grimes and her 15-year-old sister Barbara left their home to go to the Brighton Theater to watch Elvis Presley's movie Love Me Tender for the 11th time. Several witnesses, including some of their classmates, saw them at the theater before they seemingly vanished. Despite the Grimes sisters being the subjects of one of the largest, most expensive, and most labor-intensive manhunts in Cook County history, and even with a personal plea from Elvis Presley himself, they were never seen alive again.

2:56This is the case of Barbara and Patricia Grimes. In 1956, Barbara Jean and Patricia Kathleen Grimes, described by their mother as being as good as gold, lived in a modest home located at 3634 Damon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. They lived there with their mother, Loretta, their 17-year-old sister, Teresa, and their two brothers, 14-year-old Joseph and 11-year-old James. They did have an older sister, Shirley, who was married and lived with her husband. They also had another older sister, Leona, who tragically passed away in 1954 at 26 years old. Their parents, Loretta and Joseph, got divorced in 1951.

3:37And Loretta worked extremely hard to provide for her family. She worked two jobs. One as a dining room matron at Bridewell Prison, and the second for a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm. Barbara was 15 in 1956, was a sophomore at Thomas Kelly Prep High School, and worked part-time in a furniture store. She was a quiet and reserved girl with an interest in art, who would most often let her sister Patricia take the lead in most situations. Patricia was 12 years old in 1956, and attended St. Maurice's Catholic School. She was physically larger than her big sister, and was also known for having a big personality.

4:18She was extremely outgoing. Of course, around this time, there was a rather new but very popular musical artist dominating the airwaves named Elvis Presley. And both girls were huge Elvis fans. A classmate of Patricia's said that she told her that she once skipped school to go to Memphis to visit Graceland. But her mom, Loretta, maintained that this never happened. Either way, they were huge Elvis fans. And in November 1956, his debut film, Love Me Tender, hit theaters. This is really in the height of what is now called Elvis mania. He was all over TV, and his first single, Heartbreak Hotel, hit number one on the Billboard singles chart.

5:01So, of course, Barbara and Patricia had to see his first movie. And they did. Ten times. But as superfans, they weren't just gonna stop at ten. On Friday, December 28, 1956, they went to see it again. The Brighton Theater was about a mile and a half from their home, and it's believed but not entirely confirmed that they took the bus there around 7.30 p.m. They had$2.50 for tickets, concessions, and bus fare. They were seen at the theater by their classmate Dorothy Weinert, who was there with her sister. They actually sat right behind the Grimes sisters. Now, Brighton Theater was showing a double feature of the film, and Dorothy and her sister left during intermission But they saw the Grimes sisters getting back in line for concessions, which led Dorothy to believe that they'd stayed for the double feature And this is confirmed by another teenager named Roger Menard He says he was also sitting behind the Grimes sisters during both screenings, and left at the same time as they did The sisters were expected home at about 11.45 p.m., and at midnight, their mom sent two of the Grime siblings to wait for them at the bus stop.

6:12But when multiple buses came and went and there was still no sighting of them, the siblings went back home. Loretta began to call friends of the sisters and ask if they'd seen them, but no one had. For obvious reasons, Loretta was immediately concerned and contacted police at 2.15 a.m. That same day, a large-scale city search began, one of the largest in Cook County history. Barbara had last been seen wearing black ballerina shoes, a gray tweed skirt, a yellow blouse, a gray coat, white bobby socks, and a gray headscarf. Patricia was last seen wearing black shoes, a yellow sweater, a black jacket with a white stripe on the sleeves, blue jeans, and a white headscarf.

6:56An official task force of hundreds of officers was formed, along with hundreds of local volunteers. They went door-to-door, canvassing the area, questioning locals, and dredging rivers and canals in search of the sisters. Their case was almost immediately front-page news, and it really can't be overstated how much the community rallied together. See, the community had just suffered a horrific blow about 15 months prior. In what would turn out to be an eerily similar case, in October of 1955, three boys, 13-year-old John Schuessler, 11-year-old Anton Schuessler Jr., and 14-year-old Robert Peterson went missing after going to see a movie at the Loop Theater.

7:39This was less than 10 miles away from Brighton Theater, and they were unfortunately found two days later brutally murdered in a ditch in Robinson Woods Forest. Their murderer, Kenneth Hansen, would not be convicted until 1995, so when the public gets wind of the Grimes sisters' case, it naturally caused panic and many Chicago residents. Despite the large-scale efforts to find the Grimes sisters, they were not found. However, a large number of sightings would be reported to the police, and several anonymous hoax callers got involved with the case as well. On January 1st, 1957, an anonymous caller told the police that Patricia's body could be found in an alley behind the Brighton Theater.

8:22Police searched the area but found nothing, and assume that this was a prank. On January 14, 1957, an anonymous caller phoned the house of a classmate of Patricia Grimes, Sandra Tolston, twice. The first call was silent. The second, which came 15 minutes later, was a seemingly frightened young girl asking, quote, is that you, Sandra? Is Sandra there? End quote. Then they hung up. Sandra's mother was sure that this was Patricia, but that's never been confirmed. The week after the sisters went missing, another classmate of Patricia's also received an anonymous call. Catherine picked up the phone, and it was a man who said, quote, we rented a cottage, and Patricia took her clothes off, but her sister wouldn't.

9:10What are you going to do about it? Call the police? End quote. And when Catherine said yes, the man hung up. Catherine told her mom, who then called the police, who believed this call to be a hoax. But sightings of the sisters were coming in in droves as well. On December 29, 1956, a classmate of Patricia named Catherine Borak said she saw Patricia walk by with two other girls while she was eating at a restaurant on South Archer Avenue. Roger Menard, the boy who claimed he sat behind the sisters at Brighton Theatre, said he exited the theatre at the same time as the sisters. and he saw a late model green Buick pull up to them, and they kept walking.

9:53He says he also saw a black Mercury with two boys in it pull up to the girls, but once again, they kept walking. Two teenage boys claim that they saw the girls walking two blocks from their home around 11.30pm on December 28th. A security guard named Jack Franklin claimed that he'd given the sisters directions on the morning of December 29th, and he remembered them because they were rude to him. A friend of the girls, Judy Burrow, claims to have seen them later in the day walking along Archer Avenue, and a train conductor claims to have seen them that same day as well. He says that they were on his train near the Great Lakes Training Center looking for two sailors named Larry and Terry.

10:37There were a ton of sightings in this case, but most of them contradicted each other. The media attention in this case was definitely a double-edged sword. It was front-page news, and everyone claimed to have seen them, from trains to local record stores and hotels, getting in cars with young men who resembled Elvis, and even as far as Tennessee, the home of Elvis. And it didn't take long before their mother received the first of nine ransom notes for the girls. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. Money is this invisible thread that ties us all together. It's something everyone has to deal with.

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12:37No judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. On January 7th, 1957, Loretta received the first of nine ransom notes. These letters were postmarked from Chicago, and they said that the girls would be released when the ransom was paid. First, they wanted$1 ,000, and then they kept upping the amounts until$5 ,000. and each letter told Loretta to make the payment in different locations in Milwaukee. FBI agents actually attended all of these meetings, but then the letters were tied to a patient who was writing the ransom notes for fun from a Veterans Administration hospital in Downey, Illinois.

13:25On January 15, 1957, yet another anonymous caller phoned police and told them that Patricia and Barbara's bodies could be found in Santa Fe Park. They were able to trace this call to 6108 Halstead Street. This led them to a bar, where it was discovered that a man named William Kranz and another man had used the phone booth at the same time the call was placed to police. William Kranz was arrested and taken into custody for this. Kranz was a 53-year-old steam fitter, a veteran, and was divorced with three kids. After his arrest, Kranz was given two lie detector tests. The technician administering the test said Kranz, quote, gave unsatisfactory answers to many questions, end quote.

14:12During the first test, Kranz said that he didn't make the phone call, but in the second test, he admitted he did, and said that his reasoning was that he had a dream revealing the location of the girls' bodies to him, and that he was a psychic. He denied killing the girls in both tests, and denied any involvement at all, and really, without evidence to prove otherwise, he was released. The man who was with him at the time of the phone call was 38-year-old Stanley Sirwix. He was also arrested and given a lie detector test. The test showed that he had no knowledge of the crime, so he was also released.

14:49At this point, law enforcement has a ton of leads that don't really seem to go anywhere, but they do have a theory that really is a tale as old as time in true crime. They thought the girls ran away willingly. So while their disappearance did garner significant media attention and allegedly 300 ,000 people were questioned, it was still being treated internally as some girls who ran off with their boyfriends willingly. And like with any investigation in the public eye, police received an overwhelming amount of people claiming they'd seen the girls. But instead of being skeptical or considering the fact that they were alone in all of these sightings, to them, this confirmed what they thought they already knew, that the girls chose to be missing.

15:34But their mom, Loretta, was adamant that they would have never run away. She pointed out that Patricia had her 13th birthday planned the day after they disappeared, and that the girls had Christmas gifts that they were excited about, portable radios to be exact, which I imagine enabled them to have even more time to listen to Elvis. Loretta pleaded for their return, asking for anyone who may be holding them against their will to release them, stating that she would, quote, forgive them from the bottom of her heart, end quote. And though she did not believe they'd run away, she asked that if they had, they come home.

16:11And she wasn't the only one to make a public plea. This case was so huge that Elvis' estate commented on the case. In a televised statement, they said, quote, If you are good Elvis Presley fans, you'll go home and ease your mother's worries. It feels like this would be the breaking point in this case. To have the estate of arguably the largest pop star in the U.S., if not the world, shedding light on the case and asking the girls to come home is insane. But the girls did not return home. On January 19, 1957, after the Elvis plea, an anonymous letter was sent to the Chicago Sun-Times advice columnist Ann Landers.

16:55While this letter was never proven to be anything more than a hoax, I think its contents are pretty interesting nonetheless. The letter, allegedly written by a girl who had seen the Grimes sisters at the Brighton Theater the night of December 28th, said, quote, A man about 22 or 25 pushed Barbara in the backseat of the car, and Pat in the front seat. We got part of the license plate number as the car drove by us. The first four numbers were 2184. End quote. Unfortunately, investigation into this letter didn't provide any new leads. But then the girls were found. And to the surprise of no one in their family, they hadn't run away.

17:39On Tuesday, January 22nd, 1957, nearly a month after they'd gone missing, A construction worker named Leonard Prescott was traveling east along German Church Road in Willow Springs near the county line. This is about 17 miles from the girls' home and the theater. He was on his way to get groceries when he saw what he thought were mannequins on the side of the road just before the culvert leading to Devil's Creek. He didn't get out of his car, but instead he drove home and told his wife Marie what he'd seen. And something just didn't sit right with either of them. Marie specifically insisted that they go back and take another look just in case.

18:18And when they did, they realized what Leonard had believed to be mannequins were the nude bodies of two young girls. They didn't know it yet, but it was Barbara and Patricia Grimes. From here, Marie and Leonard told the Willow Springs Police Department what they saw. While police did immediately go out to the scene, it took a few hours for them to secure it. several people walked through the area, potentially destroying evidence, and this was highly criticized later. But this is what they found. Patricia and Barbara were nude, and their remains were frozen. Barbara was lying on her left side with her knees slightly bent, and Patricia was lying face up across her at a perpendicular angle, creating a T.

19:04Their father was given the task of identifying their bodies, after which he broke down and cried, quote, I tried to tell police my daughters didn't run away, but they wouldn't listen to me, end quote. He was so distraught that another relative had to make the formal identification of the girls. Their autopsies were conducted the following day by three pathologists, Dr. Jerry Kearns, Dr. Edwin Hirsch, and Dr. A.C. Webb. Following a five-hour-long autopsy on each girl, the pathologist came to the conclusion that the girls had been murdered, but they did disagree on the method. One of the doctors told the courier that the deaths were brutal homicides, end quote.

19:48Those girls could not have died naturally, end quote. Dr. Jerry Kearns told the Chicago Tribune, quote, this is one of the roughest cases I've ever seen in my years with the coroner's office. The murderer in this case was diabolically clever. He used a method which we are unable to detect. Perhaps he is a person trained in chemistry and with a knowledge of unusual poisons. End quote. Barbara had a bruised face, and Patricia had three small wounds the size of pinpricks in her breast. Their bodies were otherwise free of obvious wounds, and both sisters had unremarkable toxicology reports. It was noted that Barbara had likely engaged in sexual intercourse shortly before her death.

20:33though it's unclear if it was consensual. By eliminating other options, all the experts agreed that their cause of death was secondary shock slash exposure to cold. Though they couldn't agree on a date of death, several factors, including analyzing their stomach contents, led them to believe that Barbara and Patricia had died the same night they went missing, within five hours of their last confirmed sighting. Now, these findings were pretty controversial, even within law enforcement. Harry Gloss, the chief investigator for the Cook County Coroner's Office, disagreed. Instead, he believed that the girls had been subjected to violence, and even that they were held captive and sexually assaulted.

21:16He thought the investigators were withholding this information to protect the reputation of the girls. He also believed that the ice on their bodies meant that they'd been alive until at least January 7th. He thought that was the first day their body heat would react to the snow to create ice. Now, Gloss was actually fired because he wouldn't let up on these claims. Officials did maintain their position that there was no corruption here, but I do think it's worth noting that the sheriff agreed with Gloss' conclusions, and even deputized him so he could keep working on the case, though without pay.

21:51The area where the girls' bodies were found was thoroughly searched by law enforcement, including by a task force of 200 people, but none of the girls' clothing or personal effects were ever found. This and an overall lack of physical evidence has fueled controversy over whether the girls were murdered where they were found or murdered somewhere else and then dumped at that final location. But despite these differences in opinion, it wouldn't take long for investigators to make an arrest in the case.

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22:50News that the girls' remains had been found spread quickly. And the day after their autopsies, January 24th, 1957, the owner of D &L Restaurant, which was located about 5 miles from the Brighton Theater, John Duros, called police and informed them that around 5.40am on December 30th, he'd seen the Grimes sisters looking sick or intoxicated walking with a dishwasher that had been employed in his restaurant, Edward Benny Bedwell. This claim was backed up by his wife Minnie and a patron of the restaurant named Renee Eccles, and Bedwell was subsequently arrested. When he was arrested, 21-year-old Bedwell was taken to the warden's office.

23:32There, he was questioned by the sheriff, undersheriff, and a police captain without his attorney present for nearly three days. His attorney, David Bradshaw, was furious and told the Chicago Tribune, quote, it is apparent to me after talking with Bedwell that the law enforcement agencies of Cook County have in their possession a young man who is wholly illiterate. He cannot read or write except his own name, and that only recently. They have a purported confession. In reading over newspaper accounts of this purported confession, it is apparent to me that there are many discrepancies of major proportions, end quote.

24:12Bedwell also allegedly told Bradshaw that he'd had little to no sleep for five days prior to the confession, and in order for him to sign the confession, police had offered him, quote, the opportunity to ride in a Cadillac automobile for the first time in his life, and to spend a night in a motel with two television sets, end quote. Bedwell initially claimed that Duros was mistaken, that the girls he was with were not the grime sisters, but after three days of interrogation, he changed his story. Despite his lawyer claiming that he was illiterate, Bedwell apparently claimed in his 14-page written confession that he and an accomplice named Frank met the girls at Harold's Club on West Madison Street, and that they hung out with the girls in bars and hotels for six days prior to their murder.

25:01He claimed that on January 7th, he and Frank gave the girls hot dogs before the girls rejected their sexual advances, So he and Frank beat them to death and threw their bodies in a ditch where they were later found. While the police were ready to throw Bedwell behind bars after this confession, the problem was that none of this information matched the evidence or the autopsies. The Grimes sisters had not been beaten to death, nor did they have hot dogs in their stomachs. Bedwell was also able to prove that he was at work during the times that the girls were thought to have been abducted and killed.

25:38It was also proven that he was working on the day he claims he murdered the girls. So he had solid alibis for the day that the girls were killed, as well as the day that he said that he killed them. As far as Frank, his alleged accomplice, while he was a real man named William C. Willingham, police found him in Bradwell Prison, where he was serving a 30-day sentence for disorderly conduct. He said that he knew Bedwell, and had hung out with him in the past, but he wasn't with Bedwell on the night of the girls' murder, and he was never with the sisters. He said that he was at work on the day Bedwell claimed he and Frank had met the girls at Harold's Club on West Madison, and he did offer to take a polygraph test.

26:20In addition to that, two teenage girls, Irene Dean and Carol King, would also come forward to tell investigators that they were the girls Duros had seen with Bedwell on the morning of December 30th. Despite all the evidence that this was a false confession, law enforcement took Bedwell on this macabre reenactment tour of the alleged crimes. Thousands of Chicago residents came out of their homes to leer at the spectacle, and the Chicago Tribune described it as, quote, a tragic circus parade at high speed, end quote. In the end, Loretta Grimes never believed Bedwell's confession, stating, quote,

27:19Loretta was also seen hugging Bedwell's mom and telling her that she did not believe her son was guilty. And Bedwell was freed on a$20 ,000 bond in early February 1957, After that, all charges were dropped against him the following month, though he was immediately rearrested and extradited to Florida, where he was facing charges of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl. So while most people do believe that his confession was false, some people still wonder if it could have been him. But while law enforcement was focused on Bedwell, the Grimes family buried Barbara and Patricia. Their wake began on January 25, 1957 at St.