Chicago is a city that has had it’s fair share of unusual tragedy and murder. From H.H. Holmes Murder Castle discovered in 1886, to the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929 and so on and so forth. However it wasn’t until the mid 50’s that Chicago truly lost it’s innocence.
It was December 28th 1956. Sisters Barbara (15) and Patricia Grimes (12) left their home in McKinley Park to make the one and half mile trek to Brighton Theater, where they went to see a screening of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”. Both girls were described by their mother, Loretta as “inseparable” and huge Elvis fans, as most teenage girls were. At the request of their mother, the girls were due home, at the latest, by midnight, should they opt to view the second screening of the film.
We know from an eye witness, Dorothy Weinert, that the sisters did indeed make it to the theater. Dorothy was a school friend of Patricia’s, and claimed she saw both girls there and in good spirits. When Dorothy left the theater around 9:30 pm, both Grimes Sisters were still there, awaiting the second showing of the film.
When the two girls did not arrive home by 11:45 that night, their mother, Loretta, sent their older sister, Theresa (17) and bother, Joey (14) to wait by the bus stop nearest to their house. Theresa and Joey watched as three buses came and went without producing either sister. They eventually returned home without their siblings and Loretta promptly filed a missing persons report by 2:15 the morning of the December 19th, implementing one of the largest missing persons search in Cook County history. 300,000 would be interrogated, with 2 ultimately being charged with the girls’ disappearance and then dropped due to how these “confessions” were obtained.
Despite the massive investigation into the girls’ disappearances, some of the lead investigators thought perhaps, they simply ran away. A theory that both, Loretta and her husband, denied vehemently. Some even suggested the girls’ made their way to Nashville for an upcoming Elvis concert. (Which seems odd, given they only had $2.50 between them and nothing but the clothes on their backs). As you can imagine, without their bodies, and no credible leads to follow, rumors abound as to what happened to the sisters. Nearly a month later, that all changed.
January 22, 1957 a construction worker by the name of Leonard Prescott was traveling down German-Church Rd in unincorporated Willow Springs, when he spotted something “flesh colored” behind the guard rails. Later, disturbed by what he had seen, Prescott returned to the area with his wife, Marie. To their horror, it was the frozen, nude bodies of Patricia and Barbara Grimes. They lay just over the guardrail just ten feet from the incline of Devil’s Creek. Joseph Grimes, their father, was called out to positively identify the girls on scene. With Joseph’s verification that it was indeed his girls, over 160 police officers as well as local volunteers descended upon the forest in search of nearby clues. A move that would be heavily criticized later due to possible evidence being trampled upon by those who were untrained and searching the area.
Three experienced forensic pathologists performed a 5 hour autopsy on each girl. oddly enough, none of them could draw any real conclusions as to the girls’ deaths. Their toxicology reports came back negative, and the ice pick like wounds found on Patricia’s chest were superficial. Other wounds found on the girls were listed as”rodents”. The official autopsy reports states “Cause of Death Murder, Secondary Shock, exposure to low temperatures”.
On January 28th, 1957 Barbara and Patricia Grimes were laid to rest at Holy Sepulchre Catholic Cemetery. Their mother Loretta, passed away in 1989 at the age of 83, never knowing who killed her daughters. And here we are,62 years later, with the same questions and still no answers. It remains one of Chicago’s most infamous unsolved murder cases. However, it’s not without it’s unsavory suspects. I’ll go over some of the more likely candidates.
The Grimes’ murders were one of what they called The Big Three in Chicago at the time. There was the Schuessler/Peterson boys murders on October 18th 1955 in Robinson Woods Forest Preserve. And the murder of Judith May Anderson who was found in multiple oil drums in the Montrose Harbor in August of 1957. While the Schuessler/Peterson Case is presumed solved, Judith May Anderson’s is not. I only bring these two cases up due to the fact that some believe the crimes were committed by the same perpetrator. I personally, don’t feel that they’re linked.
Silas Jayne — Jayne was the owner of a stables near Woodstock, Illinois. An alcoholic and rough spoken man, who had the reputation as being a bully, was known to have boasted on having molested many young girls that came to his stables unchaperoned. While he may have been capable of the Grimes’ deaths (although I’ve never read of any evidence linking him to the crime). The Schuessler/Peterson murders seemed to be the work of Jayne’s employee, Kenneth Hanson. Hanson, was known to prey on young boys and also boasted that HE was the one that committed the murders.
In the unsolved case of Judith May Anderson, a man by the name of Barry Zander Cook was the prime suspect. Cook had a history of assault against women, and on October of 1958 gave a full confession to the murder of a woman by the name of Margaret Gallahger, whom he murdered while she sunbathed. Detective Charles Fitzgerald, who was on the Anderson case,eventually retrieved bullets found in the Cook home, that matched those that were found in Judith May Anderson’s skull. Despite some damning evidence against him, Cook was never charged with Anderson’s murder.
Charles LeRoy Melquist, was convicted of the 1958 murder of Bonnie Lee Scott. Scott’s body was foumd dumped over guardrails at 95th and LaGrange Rd, just 3 miles from where Patricia and Barbara were found. He was never formally charged, as again, there was no evidence to support this. However he was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the death of Scott, but only served 8. He died in 2010.
Lore and Legend. As I’m sure a lot of you know, Chicago is Resurrection Mary Territory, and Mary’s stomping ground was only about 4 blocks from the Grimes Sisters’ home. And while I couldn’t find any ghostly sightings of the sisters’ reported, I did find strange reports of a phantom car being heard on German-Church Rd. Stories of people hearing a car speed to a halt, only to take off shortly thereafter. If the sisters were still alive when they were dumped over the guardrail that may be enough for a residual haunting. But why the car? Why the nameless, faceless killer? Why does he get to relive that moment in death as he did in life, while the sisters remain silent in the Earth?
