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[Assistant] Right, cause that's the thing, essentially, if you're not convinced, then the question on your mind is like, well, is this another life lost in this case? Like, is this it?


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[Assistant] And unfortunately I don't think they ever did. I think that this family was left with more questions than they probably had even in the beginning of the tragedy that happened.


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[Assistant] So in January of 1995, this is where things get a little bit complicated. There's a lot of legal jargon here, but I did my best to kinda, I looked into it myself and I was like, I am not quite sure what that means. So then I kept looking into it and I broke it down in an ash way for you.


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[Assistant] In January 1995, Jacob Beard appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.


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[Assistant] Among other things, the appeal cited the refusal to admit key pieces of the defense's case, like Franklin's confession, the result of Beard's polygraph test.


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[Assistant] Now the appeals also cited numerous errors supposedly committed during the trial. Those, uh, errors were


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[Assistant] His role in the crime was supposed to be determined in what's known as a castagar hearing.


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[Assistant] Well, and that never occurred. Now a castigar hearing is based, is excuse me, a hearing based on a 1972 Supreme Court case and essentially it states that a witness who is compelled to testify after they've been given immunity but then is later prosecuted has a right to this hearing where the state has quote,


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[Assistant] To determine whether any prosecution evidence had been developed from leads Beard provided after being granted limited immunity.


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[Assistant] Because if he provided those leads that like led to him, it would fuck things up from my understanding. It wouldn't necessarily be derived purely.


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[Assistant] The judge in that case ruled that the evidence was properly obtained.


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[Assistant] He wrote that quote, the state had not violated, excuse me, violated the use of immunity agreement and entered to with beard.


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[Assistant] But again, the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's conviction.


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[Assistant] With no additional errors to claim in the trial, Beard's lawyer filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.


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[Assistant] Now, that is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.


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[Assistant] So the argument there was that certain evidence, mainly the sworn deposition from Joseph Paul Franklin's confessions, was barred at Jake Beard's original trial.


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[Assistant] Now the petition also included the earlier testimony from Arnold Cutlip.


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[Assistant] Beard's defense attorney Stephen Framer was arguing that this was crucial evidence that should never have been withheld from the jury, and that with this evidence, his client could likely be proven innocent.


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[Assistant] So basically saying I have evidence here and it wasn't allowed and that's why we should retry this.


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[Assistant] So in a statement to the press, Stephen Framer indicated his intent to request a retrial saying Franklin certainly has the resume to have done what he's, uh, done what he says he's done. So talking about that original confession.


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[Assistant] The serial killer's confession that we weren't so sure about. Yeah, I don't know about that one. But again, all I have to go on is very little information, so. Right. And it's valid to bring up in that trial. Of course it is. I would say. Because it's a valid argument to be like, well, multiple people have confessed to this, so look at these people also doing the same. Yeah.


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[Assistant] And he also talked about the seriously questionable sources that the prosecutors used as evidence for their conviction, specifically Pee Wee Walton, who, like I said earlier, only accused Jacob Beard after he had been wildly intimidated, which is a new legal term that I made look it up.


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[Assistant] Bremer told the press, quote, he didn't remember anything about this until he was beaten by state police. Talking about Arnold Cutlip.


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[Assistant] Now, in January of 1999, the writ of habeas corpus was granted and Beard's conviction was vacated with orders for yet another new trial. Wow.


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[Assistant] Now Jacob Beard's new trial began in May 2000, this time in Braxton County, because there had been so much press coverage and public awareness in Pocahontas County, that he was never going to get a fair trial there.


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[Assistant] Now in this trial, he actually testified on his own behalf, admitting he couldn't remember his actions the night of June 25th, 1980, but he maintained that he had never met and definitely did not kill Vicki and Nancy.


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[Assistant] And this time his confession was entered into evidence.


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[Assistant] Now when it came time for the prosecution's case, the most damning evidence they still had


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[Assistant] Were the two calls that Jacob Beard had placed to the Durian home, Vicki's family home.


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[Assistant] I actually forgot that that was him. I don't blame you. Glad you brought that back around. Now that had actually gone a long way in his original trial to convince the jury that he was guilty.


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[Assistant] But he didn't, he didn't say it's weird that he called them in my opinion. But wasn't he just saying, I have a daughter and it bothers me?


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[Assistant] That's the thing, because I can't tell. I think I would feel differently if he had been like calling them and heavy breathing on the other line or hanging up like a creep. Exactly, like harassing them. I mean, he did refuse to identify himself, which was strange.


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[Assistant] But maybe it was like him just being freaked out because he was under those animals.


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[Assistant] I will say that Nancy's sister Cathy wasn't so sure.


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[Assistant] Again, just going back to the prosecution's main case here again was those two phone calls that he made to the Durian family. In his defense, Beard said he read an article in 1982 about how the murders remained unsolved and as a father himself, he was sympathetic. He told the jury, I was sorry the police hadn't followed up the way many people in the area thought they should.


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[Assistant] When you hear that, you're like, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I don't know if you necessarily need to like call a grieving family. No, I do not agree with your methods here, sir, but- But okay, if you're saying it's pure-


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[Assistant] Correct. Correct. Now the jury deliberated for less than three hours this time and came back and acquitted.


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[Assistant] Jacob Beard on all charges on May 31st.


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[Assistant] A year later, Jacob Beard filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit against the Pocahontas County Police Department, and in January 2003, the county agreed to settle the case, awarding him $2 million. Wow. Yeah. I will say I saw $2 million in some sources and $1.3 million.


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[Assistant] I don't, I just don't know how to feel about any of this. Neither do I. I'm just going to say okay. I know that Cathy, Nancy's sister, didn't love that he was awarded that money because again she still wasn't convinced that


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[Assistant] So the Rainbow family continues to hold annual gatherings around the United States. Actually, incidents of violent crime remain low at the gatherings, but murders continue to occasionally take place at the events, with the last murder as recent as 2021. I'm gonna look into some of those and potentially update if it's got enough for a full case.


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[Assistant] Interesting. Very interesting. And sadly, as of today, the murders of Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero remain unsolved. That's awful. That's honestly the biggest.


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[Assistant] And I blame the investigators on this case. You can't intimidate people into confessing because it muddies the waters.


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[Assistant] Like you don't need to beat it out of them. I really hope that like someday there's some form of


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[Assistant] I want someone to talk, somebody to make a real confession, like you just said, actual meat.


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[Assistant] But now there's so much information out about the case. Exactly. It's so muddled.


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[Assistant] I just feel bad for their families, like their brothers and sisters, just not having any idea what happened.


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[Assistant] So that is a very unfortunate case. That's a sad one. It is. I mean, they're all sad, but that one's just like, you don't get that sense of like, at least we know who did it. Yeah, no justice and just a very layered case, layered with tragedy.


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[Assistant] The paperback of The Butcher and the Wren is coming out.


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[Assistant] To a proposal, I always wonder when they continue I'm like,


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[Assistant] Cause it seems like more of a taken by surprise kind of thing. Right.


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[Assistant] You were sitting like that because you were in a comfortable position and you weren't thinking something like that was going to happen. Maybe.


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[Assistant] And then just went on to get married and have two kids. And went about his day to day life. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and just being like, fuck that. Also leaving them with that kind of trauma too.


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[Assistant] Knowing this man was just walking around living his life for 15 years.


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[Assistant] And everybody was like, not only are we not gonna give up for Jennifer's case, but like, we're gonna get Dolly in there. It was like, we're not letting Dolly


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[Assistant] I love that they just fucked him into a corner. Oh, in two. And we're like, what are you gonna do now, Bart? And there was nothing he could do.


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[Assistant] Dexter? Oh, I was like- I will listen to that. Alright, I'm on a Stephen King binge recently.


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[Assistant] So it's got a chapter of the sequel in it. That's cool.


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[Assistant] No, I'm just kidding. Oh. I was trying to make it seem like we were just gonna be like hanging out talking about the book. In New York.


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[Assistant] I feel like it's just a bunch of like, um, barbs from trolls.


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[Assistant] There's a bunch of barbs being like, let's rock! We have the rock strings!


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[Assistant] You know, he's thinking of possibilities. He's thinking about the future.


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[Assistant] Bobby Mackie's, oh, I couldn't say it. Bobby Mackie's Music World. I almost said Magic World. Why do I want to say Magic?


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[Assistant] It's the crystals. That was rough. It took me three times and I still didn't say it right. Maybe the fourth term is the charm? I'm not meant to. I won't try again.


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[Assistant] And you know what's scary? It immediately made me think of him try, the other guy trying to induce a miscarriage with Pearl.


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[Assistant] You're such a dick. It's like some force in Carl's like, it's me, I'm the force. It's me.


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[Assistant] I mean, I think we're taking that, like, pregnancy thing to a- Yeah, that! To a, um, speculative place, but, right. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if it's-


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[Assistant] Evil. Well, when you think about it, when you told me the Pearl Brian story, it's like, they did, they killed her by decapitating her. She died getting her head sawed off. That is the most evil shit you can possibly imagine. Absolutely. And she was pregnant.


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[Assistant] But yeah. Yeah, the Pearl Brian one really shocked me. I mean, that's brutal.


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[Assistant] We can unseal it. And I'm like, who is, are there descendants of Pearl that would be like, you know, they deserve to have that done. I know. I need to find this out. Let's find out. Figure it out.


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[Assistant] Imagine. Fucking 8am. Just drinking a pump teeny at 8am. Honestly? Goals. Lisa Vanderpump, is that you? Oh my lord.


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[Assistant] Uh, yeaah, I don't do, I don't think I have anything exciting to talk about, maybe because my brain isn't working, so. Yeaah, uhm, I don't know.


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[Assistant] Yep, we're almost there, folks. So close, I'm about to be a whole ass wife-ual. It's true. Yup. Uhm, but before that...


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[Assistant] We're gonna talk about some terrible things. Yeah, that's our job. So that's what we do, and we're gonna do it.


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[Assistant] Uh, this particular one that I'm going to talk about is from the 50s. Shut up. Uh, I will not shut up. Shut up. It's like in Princess, or not Princess Diaries, it's like in Mean Girls when she's like, I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything.


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[Assistant] Unsolved, technically? Oh, technically. That tells me it should have been solved. There's someone who's an interesting suspect who...


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, we can't really get anymore, but, uh.


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[Assistant] Yeah, there you go. I think I would like to see this close because


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[Assistant] Their parents, especially their mother, I feel like carried guilt.


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[Assistant] I just, I can't fathom it. So, let's get into this horrible, horrible tale. Okay.


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[Assistant] So the murder of the Grimes sisters and the investigation that followed is still one of Chicago's most notorious cold cases. And it is one of the most costly and labor intensive searches in the state's history. Wow.


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[Assistant] Uhm, despite all of the hard work put in to search for this killer, the investigation was ultimately hitting dead end after dead end.


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[Assistant] Partially because of bad leads at times that were chased a little too far. And also some well intended, but very misguided attempts to withhold evidence.


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[Assistant] Allowed this killer to still go unpunished to this day.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and it left generations of people wondering.


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[Assistant] What the hell happened to Barbara and Patricia Grimes?


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[Assistant] Obviously that is very important sometimes, and obviously that can push a case forward. Sometimes I fully support that. Yeaah. In this case, the reasoning behind it...


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[Assistant] Was like uuuh, and then it actually ended up kind of hurting. Oh no.


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[Assistant] Uhm, which was obviously not the intent of the people who did it, but it didn't work out well in the end.


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[Assistant] So Barbara Grimes was born May 5th, 1941, and Patricia Grimes was born December 31st, 1943, a couple years later. Hmm, and a New Year's baby. Yeaah. So they were both born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and were the third and fourth of what would be seven children born to Joseph and Loretta Grimes.


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[Assistant] Wow, that's a lot of kids. Joseph and Loretta had married very young. Uh, they actually married when they were both 17 years old.


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[Assistant] Um, eventually though, the struggle was only for a little while and they got through it. But...


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[Assistant] During the struggling time, as we know, that can be tough. Yea, definitely. They have all these kids that they keep having, and the struggle is getting worse, the burden, the financial burden is becoming harder.


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[Assistant] But eventually Joseph did manage to find work as a truck driver and by the late 1940s he was making around $80 per week, which now would be about $950 per week. Okay.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so that was a stable salary and it did help relieve that financial pressure that was happening, especially having six children and one on the way at that moment. So at that moment he had six children and one on the way. That's a lot of pressure. Unfortunately, the couple had not weathered the struggling time as well as they had hoped.


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[Assistant] And in December 1951 they filed for divorce. Oh, that's sad. Now luckily for the entire family, including the kids, Joseph and Loretta's divorce was pretty uncomplicated.


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[Assistant] And once the papers had been signed and the divorce was official, they went their separate ways.


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[Assistant] And Joseph moved to an apartment not far away. They still saw their father. Everything was... Chunky-dory. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Now, the only problem was without the income of Joseph's job, although he did pay $35 per week in child support.


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[Assistant] Take care of every, I mean, again, they have seven kids, that's a lot.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so they did have to rely on welfare still, some social supports from time to time. She worked a lot of hours, but despite that...


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[Assistant] She prided herself and everyone said it, including like everybody, the whole family said it.


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[Assistant] Barbara and Patricia in particular were smart, polite, very well-liked girls in their neighborhood, in their whole community really, at school.


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[Assistant] Barbara ended up having a part-time job at 15 years old when she was only a sophomore at Kelly High School.


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[Assistant] And she actually ended up working at Wolf Furniture House, um, and she ended up doing that to help her mom make ends meet. So she immediately was like, I want to help.


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[Assistant] Cause she respected her mom a lot. Yeaah. Now her younger sister Patricia was described as super friendly, a little more outgoing than Barbara, and more energetic, energetic than Barbara.


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[Assistant] Uh, Barbara and Patricia were also described as seemingly inseparable.


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[Assistant] And they were said to often walk places hand in hand. 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.


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[Assistant] Uh, the two girls had a lot of interests in common, uh, but like many of their peers at the time, what they were really passionate about was Elvis Presley.


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[Assistant] Elvis baby. Elvis Presley. Now in 1956, Presley was only a handful of years into what would be, what we all know, an iconic career.


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[Assistant] Yeah, he had a pretty iconic career. Elvis, huh? Yeah, you know? Now, as devoted Elvis fans, Barbara and Patricia would often spend their afternoons at the local record store, listening to his singles. I love it. They would find anywhere that had a jukebox around town just to hear his music over and over again.


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[Assistant] You could also get them at the five and dime store so they had purchased them whenever they could. So cool. And in the fall, uh, by the fall of 1956, they joined his fan club and were eagerly awaiting their membership cards. Oh, I love it. That's so much fun. Isn't that adorable? It's just like, I remember a time when it was like,


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[Assistant] Magazines like Teen Beat magazines and like Tiger Beat and all that shit. You could like send away for stuff. They had like...


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[Assistant] So on November 15th, 1956, um, Elvis Presley's first feature film, Love Me Tender, was released in theaters across the country.


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[Assistant] Uhm, it was something, if you were a devoted Elvis fan, you were going to see that movie a million times. It was just happening.


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[Assistant] And as dedicated Presley fans, Barbara and Patricia.


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[Assistant] Got their opening night, and by Christmas they had seen the film.


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[Assistant] Like dozens of times. I love that so much. They'd seen it a ton. But Barbara and Patricia just couldn't get enough of it. And on December 28th...


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[Assistant] My birthday. Ah, and a couple days before one of their birthdays. Yep. Uhm, on December 28th, Barbara and Patricia convinced their mother to allow them to go to the movies to see the film again. Like, for the hundred thousandth time.


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[Assistant] Now early that week, Barbara had come down with a bad cough and was taking cold medicine for a few days. So Loretta was like a little reluctant because she was like, I don't know, you've had a cough, it's the winter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But eventually, they begged and begged, and she gave in, and let them go. Probably just wanted to make them happy, of course. And they promised they would be home before midnight, and she was like, okay, as long as you promise, then you can go.


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[Assistant] Now when she agreed to let the girls go, Loretta gave them explicit instructions to be home by 1145.


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[Assistant] This gave them enough time to watch two movies that evening. So when 11.45pm came and went, and no one came home,


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[Assistant] Loretta immediately began to get anxious and sent the two, her two other children, Teresa and Joey.


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[Assistant] To the nearest bus stop to wait for them hoping that they maybe just got the late bus.


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[Assistant] And 15 year old Barbara and 13 year old Patricia did not get off those buses. And you just think of one.


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[Assistant] Insanity handed. She, they didn't get off, and Loretta's just panicking. Fully, I bet. So, when she learned that the girl still hadn't returned, she immediately called the local police precinct around 12, 30 a.m. and sent Teresa and Joey back to the corner to meet the officer.


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[Assistant] The officer immediately put out an alert for the sisters, but


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[Assistant] Now, although the investigation into Barbara and Patricia's disappearance officially began on the morning of December 29th,


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[Assistant] It didn't really get into high gear until it hit the Chicago newspapers on Monday morning, December 31st. Which also happened to be Patricia's birthday. Right.


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[Assistant] Now, it was by then that the investigators had talked to the staff of the theater.


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[Assistant] They'd gone door to door speaking to people, they'd searched neighborhoods, garages, alleys, abandoned buildings, everywhere in between. They found no trace of Barbara and Patricia.


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[Assistant] Obviously any child going missing or multiple children going missing is alarming for the residents of Chicago.


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[Assistant] But this disappearance started really setting everyone's minds going because it definitely reminded them of the disappearance of three local boys whose bodies were discovered on a rural road outside the city a little over one year earlier. It was very similar.


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[Assistant] We actually talked about these boys, John and Anton Schusler and Robert Peterson in one of our Spooky Forests episodes. Because there's all these stories about the place where they were found. This certain forest has a lot of activity.


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[Assistant] Now the first tip finally came in on the afternoon of December 31st when Jack Franklin, who was a security guard with the Admiral Corporation,


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[Assistant] So many people say they saw these girls when they had already been dead.


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[Assistant] I remember that being reported, like I've heard this case told a few times. And it's not like one or two people. It's a lot. Lots of people. That's interesting.


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[Assistant] It's very, it's weird. And do you believe some of them? I don't know. I mean, eyewitnesses to me are very... It's, it's shaky. Dodgy, yeah. But so many people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, now according to Franklin, he said quote, it was their rudeness that made him remember them.


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[Assistant] And he said, one said to the other, I wonder where the bus stops. And Franklin heard them, so he said, you just missed the bus. And one of them looked over and said, oh shut up. And then the two continued walking towards the bus stop.


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[Assistant] That doesn't sound like them from how they've been described. Exactly. And again, this was very troubling because he was sure it was the girls. Yeah. And then...


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[Assistant] This is troubling because the three boys that we mentioned who were murdered in October 1955 were last seen in the same area before their bodies were found a few days later. Interesting. So this was concerning to everybody, like oh shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the same day, 15 year old Dorothy Fisher told police she'd seen Barbara and Patricia in the theater that night, the evening that they had gone. So they're thinking they made it to the movie. Yeah. And she said they had spoken with briefly together and then they left the theater. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, she said the girls, uh, apparently the girls were also seen that evening around 11pm by a bus driver who picked them up at the stop near the movie theater. Okay. Uhm, but they were, but this bus stop driver reported that they got off at Western Avenue, which was nowhere near the Grimes' home. So, and why would they get off there when they promised they'd be home? That's the thing.


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[Assistant] Now despite all the witnesses reporting that the girls were alone when they were seen, detectives had initially theorized that the girls had just run off for quote, a date with sailors. That's random.


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[Assistant] Saying he would be home for the holidays. Okay. Just one month earlier, in fact, both girls had come home from a movie with two sailors they had met at the theater.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. So this wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. And yes, these sailors are men.


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[Assistant] And they came home with these men? I think these sailors brought them home. Okay. From the theater.


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[Assistant] Alright. Same reaction, indeed. Alright. I said, huh? You would hope.


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[Assistant] And did Loretta ever comment that, like, she, like, did she ever confirm that she had, like, met these sailors or? I think we, we find out who those sailors are and I think they, uhm, they were able to, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clear them. Yeah, but not much is known about them.


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[Assistant] But tips kept coming in and the next day one of their school friends said they had seen Barbara and Patricia in her neighborhood on Saturday afternoon.


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[Assistant] And a passenger on the train said they'd seen them board his Milwaukee bound train on Sunday afternoon.


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[Assistant] So two days after they've gotten their second. So now we're seeing somebody has seen them at the theater.


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[Assistant] Somebody has seen them on a bus driver has said they dropped them off somewhere far away from their home that night.


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[Assistant] Then someone else is saying they saw them the next morning. And then a school friend is saying they saw them the next afternoon. And then somebody else is saying they saw them Sunday.


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[Assistant] Okay. So now we're seeing them all three days and we have multiple people saying it. Right. Very strange. Very.


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[Assistant] Now, according to this passenger on the train that said they got off, uhm, that Milwaukee bound train,


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[Assistant] Uhm, he said that the girls got on at the Edison Court Station, which is just two stops away from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.


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[Assistant] Which further supported their belief that they'd met up with Patricia's sailor friend.


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[Assistant] Now based on this information, detectives began looking into the sailors that had brought them home the previous month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, since it was all looking a little crazy here now with the possibility of, you know, fucking adult men being involved here, the case did get assigned to a task force led by chief of detectives, Patrick Dealey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This task force had actually been put together a few months earlier to investigate the murders of those three local boys. Right. In October.


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[Assistant] 40 officers were assigned to the case, uhm, and they were from the, or 40 officers from the Brighton Park precinct were assigned to the case. Got it. And several of these were from the juvenile bureau, which was put together to investigate sex crimes and homicides.


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[Assistant] Now meanwhile, the students at Saint Maurice, where Patricia attended school,


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[Assistant] Uhm, and the clergy and parishioners at the family's church had collected enough money to offer a thousand dollar reward for any information for their safe return. So the whole community is on this. It's a huge search.


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[Assistant] Now unfortunately, weeks passed and it seemed like they had just vanished. Wow.


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[Assistant] I like literally almost tear up hearing that. It's just like, I can't fathom the depths of her despair here.


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[Assistant] Uhm, she insisted to media and police that the girls didn't have boyfriends and neither one of them were the type to run away and they never had run away. Great.


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[Assistant] Reporters even suggested to her, like in, which I was like, cool, reporters, like, you're saying this to a devastated mother. What did they say?


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[Assistant] They were like, oh, do you think they ran off to Tennessee to see Elvis at Graceland?


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[Assistant] Fun. Like, not the time. Yeah. Like, what the fuck? And by January 19th, Elvis Presley himself made a statement. Wow. He released it from his home in Graceland and said, quote, if you're good Presley fans, you'll go home and ease your mother's worries. Thanks, Elvis. That's helpful. Yeah. Everyone's really helpful here, I can see.


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[Assistant] Now horrifically, all of those hopes and prayers fell away just a few days later, on January 22, 1957.


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[Assistant] When the bodies of Barbara and Patricia Grimes were discovered.


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[Assistant] Off County Line Road in nearby Will Springs Illinois. And that's almost a month after they disappeared.


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[Assistant] That day, Leonard Prescott was on his way to the grocery store outside Willow Springs and was traveling on German Shore Church Road.


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[Assistant] When he saw what he thought were mannequins. He said he thought they were store mannequins.


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[Assistant] So he didn't stop initially, but he said he went grocery shopping and then on his way home he was like,


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[Assistant] It really bothered me the whole way home. I couldn't, he was like, you know.


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[Assistant] And even though he had convinced himself those were just store mannequins, he was like, I just need to confirm this because I can't. Just go about my day.


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[Assistant] So he and his wife Marie actually went back to the spot that afternoon and when they reached the embankment, Marie Prescott screamed. Oh god. Because it was clearly the sight of the nude bodies of two girls lying in that ditch, barely covered by a layer of snow.


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[Assistant] And the Prescott's 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 dummies lying alongside the road on German Church Road. I told him that I would immediately go over there. He should show me the spot.


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[Assistant] Now when they reached the scene, McKay confirmed what the Prescott's had suspected that these were the bodies of the, of two girls. Uhm, someone had obviously dumped the bodies of two girls along the side of the road and


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[Assistant] He was strongly suspecting that these were Patricia and Barbara Grimes.


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[Assistant] McKay radioed the sheriff's station and stayed on scene until all the officers arrived. Now, the discovery of the Grimes sisters brought a heartbreaking end to a weeks long search that had been underway right from December 28th.


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[Assistant] But no questions were answered here. Like, more questions were asked. The bodies were covered in snow.


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[Assistant] Which indicated they had been there since the last snowfall, which was on January 9th.


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[Assistant] Oh wow. This was January 22nd. Wow. So they had been there since January 9th. At the very least.


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[Assistant] And they had only become visible when the snow began to melt a few days earlier. Now at the time, German Church Road was a, was not traveled a lot. It was in, uhm, it was in an unincorporated town.


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[Assistant] Okay. Which makes sense. That explains why they hadn't been discovered earlier. No one went down that road. It was like a very seldom traveled road.


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[Assistant] And do they, I might be getting ahead of myself here, but do they think that they had been there the whole time? We'll get to that. Okay.


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[Assistant] Uhm, before the girls were removed from the scene, unfortunately, Joseph Grimes, their father,


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[Assistant] Was taken to the site. Oh god. Where he positively identified them as Barbara and Patricia.


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[Assistant] And as he did so, he just dropped to the ground and burst into inconsolable tears. Yeaah. And I can't even fathom.


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[Assistant] Now, according to Harry Gloss, a representative from the coroner's office, the bodies had been hastily covered with leaves and grass. Barbara's body laid across Patricia.


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[Assistant] Both girls had three puncture wounds in the chest.


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[Assistant] Oh my god. Uh, Barbara's face had bruises that indicated that she had been beaten.


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[Assistant] Uh, there were cans, bottles, and other debris just strewn all around the area, but none of it appeared to be related to the crime scene. It was just a place where people threw trash.


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[Assistant] Now the autopsies were performed a few days later because they had to give the bodies adequate time to thaw out because they had been essentially frozen there. Right.


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[Assistant] But they didn't get a lot of extra information even then, according to all three of the very qualified pathologists who performed the examinations.


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[Assistant] Both Patricia and Barbara's causes of death were shock and exposure. Wow. Which indicates that they were dumped alive. Yeah. And died. From the cold. From the elements.


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[Assistant] But they can't get a lot more than that, which is like horrifying, because they were stabbed three times in the chest.


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[Assistant] One of them at least was beaten and then they were stripped and thrown in the snow? Right.


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[Assistant] Like what the fuck? And did they know had they been assaulted at all? We will get to that. Okay. Uhm.


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[Assistant] They couldn't agree on an exact time of death for either victim.


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[Assistant] All of them agreed that they had likely died the night they went missing. Okay.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and had been in the ditch covered by fresh snow for quite some time. A while.


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[Assistant] Now in their final report, the pathologists also noted that the girl's quote had not been sexually molested. Okay.


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[Assistant] And there were quote, no signs of external violence on the bodies that could have caused the death. Okay.


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[Assistant] For so many people to say they'd seen them around the city. Right.


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[Assistant] That doesn't make any sense. The answer to that, to me, feels like eye witnesses are just notoriously unreliable.


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[Assistant] Uhm, these people were probably just mistaken, I'm assuming, or they wanted to see.


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[Assistant] Was that, and no one was going to become aware of this until much later. The bigger problem was that the pathologists who conducted the examinations


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[Assistant] had been under strict orders from Harry Gloss, who was the representative for the coroner's office.


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[Assistant] That the coroner's office had to withhold certain sensitive information.


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[Assistant] For example, the pathologist report and subsequent news reports clearly stated that neither girl had been sexually molested, which was vague enough to be defensible.


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[Assistant] If challenged, they could at least defend the wording of that, I guess. But it wasn't exactly true.


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[Assistant] In fact when the autopsy was conducted, evidence strongly indicated that Barbara had either been raped


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[Assistant] Or had consensually, but she's 15, so, so engaged in sexual activity near the time of her death. And how are they, how are they able to get away with that because of the wording?


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[Assistant] Because I think it's like sexually molested. Is different than me. And they're saying here that they...


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[Assistant] And you should know that right off the bat, that like it does come off later, that come out later that they were both raped. Well, and that's interesting because they're also like one was laid across the other, just like in that previous case where the three boys were raped and laid across each other. Like it seems to correlate.


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[Assistant] So this is why the coroner's office had done that? Because of that previous case? No. Oh, sorry. They were trying to...


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[Assistant] So they're trying to hold back this point so that they are still looked at as like children deserving of our...


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[Assistant] Well in sympathy. They are no matter what because either way they are not of legal age to consent to anything. But how horrifying is it? It's very 50s. That they had to think that way. That the coroner's office literally was like, we should protect their reputations.


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[Assistant] By not telling the public or the press.


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[Assistant] Everyone- We love patriarchy, huh? Take that in. Take that in. Like-


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[Assistant] And that's the thing, I believe the coroner's office believed they were doing something right here. They had good intentions. They had good intentions. They by no means had bad intentions withholding that.


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[Assistant] But it didn't help later, it actually ended up hurting. Right. And obviously now we know, like now it's like...


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[Assistant] This was the 50s obviously, so it's like, they were looking at it as if we release that, people are going to look at them differently.


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[Assistant] And that's like mind blowing. I'm sure they would have. They are children. And then the other theme is, is


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[Assistant] Like, people need to know this information if this is something they need to worry about is their children going out into the streets, getting abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered. Well, this hindered the investigation, like, big time, because, so we'll get to that for sure, but the discovery was obviously


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[Assistant] She told this to reporters and then she just ran into one of her neighbors home. That's so sad.


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[Assistant] Now, those who knew the family knew that the deaths would be particularly awful. I mean, losing a child, never mind two, is unthinkable.


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[Assistant] In 1954, the couple's 26 year old daughter, Leona, had died after a kidney operation. Oh god. So this was, I mean, they've gone through.


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[Assistant] She did not deserve to have that guilt. But you can understand, I'm 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, sorry Loretta. I know.


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[Assistant] And all had been like, it was, you know, it was rainy or snowy out, so they could be like, oh, you need a ride? Like, that's easy.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and all had last been seen headed to a movie theater.


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[Assistant] All the factors line up. Now once the bodies were removed from the scene, a team of more than 70 men began searching the area for any clues that could lead to the killer. They combed that area all along Devil's Creek where the girls were discovered.


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[Assistant] And the investigators hope to find anything, any physical evidence like clothing, anything in that debris and garbage that they could link to anybody. But, nothing.


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[Assistant] Now at the same time, another team was starting to dig into the leads pouring into the police. They started putting together a possible suspect list, and they started with 53-year-old self-described psychic Walter Krantz.


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[Assistant] He was top of the list because a week earlier he had called the police with an anonymous tip saying the girls would be found in Santa Fe Park. Okay.


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[Assistant] He passed two polygraph tests and after being interviewed for hours and hours, it was determined he had no involvement in the case.


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[Assistant] Now just two days after detectives abandoned that investigation, another suspect, Edward Benny Bedwell, came into view. Now according to a cab driver,


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[Assistant] Who had seen the girl's pictures in the newspaper. He'd seen Barbara and Patricia on the morning of December 30th. In the company of two men.


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[Assistant] Now although he didn't know their names, the cab driver recognized one of the men who he described as having Elvis Presley sideburns and a duck tail haircut.


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[Assistant] Now investigators spoke to the owners of the DNL restaurant, John and Minnie Duros.


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[Assistant] Who confirmed the cab driver's story and identified the one who looked like Elvis as Benny Bedwell.


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[Assistant] And that would have meant that they spent two days with him? Yes. Okay. Now, um, she, they, they confirmed that this was Benny Bedwell because the two, the couple who owned the restaurant said that they had actually occasionally hired him to wash dishes. So they knew him well. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So according to Mini Duros, the group, so it was Benny,


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[Assistant] Who they are saying was Patricia and Barbara Grimes and one other man. Okay. Together.


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[Assistant] Uh, 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 into the booth and put her head on the table.


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[Assistant] So when the others came back and tried to get the girl back outside, Minnie told them to leave her alone.


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[Assistant] She saw the man she identified as Benny Bedwell escorting the girl out of the restaurant.


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[Assistant] Was quote, carrying on with Benny. So she asked them all to leave. Okay.


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[Assistant] Now by the time investigators became aware of Benny Bedwell, there was already three law enforcement agencies pursuing this case together.


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[Assistant] Cook County Sheriff's Department discovered the bodies, and the FBI was following up on the handful of ransom demands that the family had received since the girls went missing. People are so disgusting. Because people are and always will be absolute fucking garbage. Truly. We're garbage, everybody. We're a garbage species. Garbage.


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[Assistant] Now, as is often the case, the famous ego game becomes a problem, and each agency was reluctant to share information with the others and actively withheld shit from each other.


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[Assistant] It's like, guys, we all have a common cause here. Let's figure out what happened to these two children. Seriously, like, shake your dicks around later. Like, there's two children who were fucking raped and murdered, and you can't get your shit together to give some information to another agency, cause they might get credit for it. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Like, I don't know any of your names. I don't know any of your names except the ones that actually did the work. So do the work and we'll know your names for it.


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[Assistant] But if you're holding shit, we're not going to know shit. Exactly. In fact, on January 24th, when sheriff's department officers arrested Benny Bedwell,


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[Assistant] Chicago police investigators complained to the press that quote, they were not informed of the arrest and said it violated a pledge of cooperation among the various law enforcement agencies.


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[Assistant] So the sheriff's officers eventually tracked Bedwell to the Stargarder Theater.


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[Assistant] A former Burlesque theater turned movie house in downtown Chicago. Interesting. It ran double features all day and night.


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[Assistant] The Chicago police, it turned out, were right to have complained because rather than fill the other law enforcement agencies in on the arrest, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office just went to the press to talk about having a suspect in custody. Going to the press and being like, look, we did it! Instead of telling the other agencies first. Right.


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[Assistant] Now according to their report, 21 year old Bedwell had grown up in central Illinois and taken a job with a traveling circus when he was 18. Oh wow. But he had recently returned to Chicago around the area after a very short stint with the military.


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[Assistant] And at the time of his arrest, he was living at the McCoy Hotel.


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[Assistant] Reporters immediately jumped on the story and started digging in to find more about Benny Bedwell.


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[Assistant] Less than 24 hours after he was arrested, they'd found his mother.


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[Assistant] Ethel Bedwell Bradbury, who was more than happy to talk about her son.


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[Assistant] As far as his mother was concerned, Benny was quote, a lazy, shiftless bum. Just a big lazy boy who didn't like to work.


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[Assistant] She didn't know anything about her son's involvement in the case of the missing Grimes sisters, but she did tell reporters, quote,


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[Assistant] On several occasions Benny had mentioned having a new girlfriend.


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[Assistant] Now in custody, Benny insisted he had never even met the Grimes sisters and certainly didn't kill them.


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[Assistant] He did however admit to being at the DNL restaurant on the evening he was spotted there and he said he was with a friend and two girls. Now according to Bedwell,


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[Assistant] We were only in there a little while when the girls went to the washroom. And he said, when they came out of the washroom, they ducked us. We saw them leave and the other guy said, let's follow them.


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[Assistant] But he said that he refused, and he claimed that the girls


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[Assistant] Well the problem with this was, this wasn't the first statement Benny gave to police. This was the second one. The initial statement he gave...


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[Assistant] He claimed he had been out that day with friends that he referred to as Louis and Frank.


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[Assistant] He said they met up with the girls he identified as being the Grimes sisters. Okay, so first he knows them and then he doesn't. According to Benny, he was driving the car and the girls were in the back with his friends and he heard, quote, the sound of scuffling and he looked back to find the two girls were dead.


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[Assistant] That's his first statement. So he's dri- I want you to picture this. He's driving a car, they're in the back seat, he hears a little bit of scuffling, he looks back, they're dead.


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[Assistant] Doubt it. Benny then said the men stripped the girls' clothing off and forced him to drive out to German Church Road where they dumped the bodies.


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[Assistant] When asked why he told that first story if it wasn't true.


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[Assistant] Benny said, I thought you would let me go if I told you that. I thought you would let me go if I told you I was an accessory to murder. Yea. Let's think about that.


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[Assistant] Seems legit. Let's, let's do some critical thinking here, Benny boy. I don't think he knows how to do that. Now, while the multiple statements from Benny didn't make him look, uh, any less suspicious, the second story he told police about meeting the girls at a theater who weren't the grand sisters.


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[Assistant] That was eventually corroborated by the two young women who were part of the story apparently, whose names Benny said he had forgotten at the time. Their names were Irene Dean and Carole King.


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[Assistant] And the other man in the group was Richard Wittenmeyer. So, boom. Alibi.


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[Assistant] Okay. Like the guy came forward and was like, yep, the girls were like, yep, it was us.


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[Assistant] Do we believe them? So, he had already told multiple stories, which was a red flag, obviously. Yeah. And they tried to corroborate, they were like, that's, that's nice, but let's corroborate this story even further. So they went to the owners of the DNL restaurant and were like,


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[Assistant] No less than eight witnesses claim to have seen the girls in the company of two men.


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[Assistant] Each including in their statement a factor detail that would not have been known to the public. Okay.


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[Assistant] And as they were leaving, she heard one of the girls refer to the other as Petey, which was Patricia's family nickname.


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[Assistant] Oh wow. Also, most of the witnesses indicated or at least implied that the girls looked uncomfortable and looked like they were not exactly with these men slash pigs, like voluntarily.


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[Assistant] Things got more complicated on December 28th, the day after statements were taken from Wittenmeyer, Dean, and King.


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[Assistant] Because now Benny Bedwell made another statement.


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[Assistant] Early that morning, Chicago police arrested a guy named William Willingham Jr., who was a known associate of Bedwell's.


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[Assistant] He admitted knowing Benny, but strenuously denied having anything to do with the Grimes murders and told police, I don't know anything about this and I never went out with those girls.


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[Assistant] That included the Grimes sisters. Right. Now according to Benny now...


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[Assistant] He'd met both girls, Patricia and Barbara Grimes on the evening of January 7th. Nope. At Harold's Club.


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[Assistant] And they were in the presence of a man he referred to as Frank.


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[Assistant] Benny claimed they had a few drinks at the club and then got a room at the Crest Hotel. There he said he quote, went to bed with Patricia. And Frank with Barbara.


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[Assistant] Finally on the 11th or 12th they stopped for gas and to get some lunch with the girls and the girls went to use the bathroom. At a gas station. Uh huh.


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[Assistant] When they got back, both men indicated they wanted to find a place to have sex.


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[Assistant] But both the girls refused, and he said that they both, both the men got violent.


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[Assistant] In a recorded confession, Benny told Sheriff Joseph Loman, I hit Patricia harder than I was aiming to on the chin.


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[Assistant] Okay. Both men, he said, knocked both girls unconscious, like beat them unconscious. And he's one of these men, him and Frank? Frank, yes.


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[Assistant] They immediately thought they had killed the girls, so they drove them up to the little used German church road, stripped them of their clothing, and dumped them behind the guardrail.


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[Assistant] They died of exposure, but like, did they try to get home somehow? Don't worry, we'll get through, we'll talk about that.


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[Assistant] Benny said it wasn't until several days after this that he read about the Grimes sisters in the paper and realized that it was them.


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[Assistant] Benny said when they got back to the city after this whole thing, they departed from each other and he hadn't seen Frank since. Okay.


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[Assistant] Now his statement was read back to him for clarification and Benny identified Barbara and Patricia Grimes from photographs presented to him by the sheriffs, uh, confirming they were the girls he'd been with. Then with his statement having been taken,


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[Assistant] Now along the way, hundreds if not thousands watched and followed the solar deal.


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[Assistant] The press referred to this whole thing as quote, a tragic circus parade at high speed. Which is chilling. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So Sheriff Lowman was immediately convinced of Benny's guilt. Particularly because it seemed to be in line with what they've learned from witnesses in the days prior. And just the fact that he's told about 40 different stories.


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[Assistant] In fact, one of the witnesses who claimed to have seen the girls after they disappeared was Leonard Wass, an employee at a service station not far from where the girls bodies was discovered. According to Wass, all four had stopped at the gas station in early January, he couldn't be certain of the date, and the girls asked to use the restroom.


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[Assistant] As they were leaving, Was claimed the girl he identified as Barbara, quote,


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[Assistant] Oh no. I love that not, not a one person has stepped in to be like, girl, are you okay? Well, that's the thing. Are you all right? Because everything's okay. All these adults are like, yeah, it looked like they were being abducted. It was wild.


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[Assistant] What the fuck, dude? Especially when they're with these, like, two older men. Yeah, like, come on, guys. Wow. Now, there were some people, though, who didn't really buy Benny's confession.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had lied a lot. Well, and like, what number confession is this? And he had told a lot of stories by this point, and although some of his stories seemed like it was being confirmed by witnesses and shit, there was a lot that didn't make a lot of sense. Well, and there is like, you know, confirmation. Like, there's one big thing.


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[Assistant] So, Benny had claimed both, there's a couple of big things actually, Benny had claimed both girls ate hot dogs for lunch at the service station. Okay. The autopsy said, nope. There were no hot dogs in their stomachs. In fact, there was nothing recent in their stomachs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Both girls had light bruising on their faces, but not enough to corroborate a beating that would knock them unconscious.


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[Assistant] Okay. Like Benny had described. Yeah. He described it as very violent. Yeah, and he said when they dumped those girls, he thought he had killed them. Right. Also,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did you remember the puncture wounds in the chest? Well, I was just about to ask. Where did you never mention those? No. Where did those come from? Benny never mentioned those.


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[Assistant] Huh. The press immediately pointed out all of this and his confession was now being questioned by everyone. But there are so many things that he did know that do make sense. Well there's also another problem here because the biggest issue that everyone had with his confession was that Benny claimed to have engaged in repeated sexual intercourse with Patricia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But according to the autopsy report that everyone knew about, neither girl was, quote, sexually experienced.


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[Assistant] He said the question and his answer was that that's a question of morals, not science.


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[Assistant] So he was like, I'm not answering that. Like I'm not telling you whether these girls are chased. That's not, that's like opinion. That's not science. I'm here to talk about science. Like let's not put that in your story, asshole. In truth, his refusal again was the direct results of being under strict orders from the coroner's office to protect their reputation and not answer those questions.


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[Assistant] Loretta Grimes on the other hand wasted no time reinforcing what the autopsy had included. She said, our girls came from a good home.


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[Assistant] More than any of the other inconsistencies in Benny's confession, which


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[Assistant] I think the puncture wounds are huge and consistency, he never mentioned them.


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[Assistant] And I think if you stabbed the girls three times with an ice pickaxe, you would mention that in your 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 know.


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[Assistant] But his insistence that he engaged in sex with one or both of these girls was held up by the press, the family, and many others as evidence that he was lying.


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[Assistant] After all, the autopsy report indicated that had not happened, so there was no way he could be telling the truth. Unfortunately, it would be many years before anyone learned that the coroner's office had, out of some misguided sense of decency,


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[Assistant] Basically conspired to suppress certain results to protect them, their innocence.


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[Assistant] Like I said that both girls had been sexually assaulted before their deaths. Right.


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[Assistant] Now despite the many flaws in the case, Lohman remained convinced of Benny Bedwell's guilt. I'm kind of convinced. I'm not. You're not. Okay. And he accepted the confession and he booked the man on murder charges and intended to see the case through to trial.


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[Assistant] Particularly those who had been increasingly anxious over the rising, you know,


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[Assistant] Benny's pro bono lawyer, David Bradshaw, told reporters, the boy in this case is wholly illiterate, doesn't understand what's going on, and has found himself the main object in a case of nationwide interest. Loretta Grimes agreed. Really? Telling reporters, he's changed his story so many times, who wouldn't? He's had no sleep and nothing to eat. She's a consummate mama.


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[Assistant] Yeah, she really is. She's literally like the boy hasn't had anything to eat and he hasn't slept, he's gonna say whatever. Like she's just looking at it like this is a 21 year old. Right.


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[Assistant] Like Loretta, Loretta Grimes is a mama bear.


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[Assistant] That's my girl. She really is. But she didn't agree, she did not agree, she did not think that this was the guy.


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[Assistant] Alright, well I respect how she, whatever she thinks, cause you also have to think like there's some mama instinct happening there.


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[Assistant] Now, Benny's lawyer, David Bradshaw, believed investigators were under intense pressure to solve this case, obviously. And since Benny was their only real suspect, they pursued him despite all the contradictions in his confession.


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[Assistant] No, also Bradshaw believed his client was being scapegoated because the public and many in law enforcement continued to cling to the Grimes sisters' purity. Right. And they refused to believe that the two teenagers had gone anywhere near skid row bars and theaters and that like something could have happened. Yeah. So they, he was like, I think he's just being put up here.


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[Assistant] As like the easy way to understand all of this. And at that point, his lawyer also didn't know about the truth.


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[Assistant] So the more investigators dug into Benny's story, the less likely it seemed he was telling the truth.


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[Assistant] William Willingham, the friend that had been arrested when he was, uhm, had told investigators that he had gone out drinking with Benny around the time the girls went missing. And that he swore the girls were with, uhm, that the girls that they were with were Irene Dean and Carole King. And the results of his polygraph test indicated he was telling the truth.


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[Assistant] Also, when Dean and King were shown photos of Benny Bedwell and William Willington, they again identified them as the men they had been out with at the D&L restaurant among other places. So they were like, that was us. That's interesting.


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[Assistant] A coroner's inquest began on January 30th, 1957, and much of what was learned did little to support Benny's confession.


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[Assistant] It was determined that the girls had most likely been abducted shortly after they left the movie theater, a little after 11.30pm. At that time, Benny Bedwell was known to have been at work.


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[Assistant] The inquest also demonstrated the extent to which so many involved in the case were committed to protecting the quote unquote innocence of Barbara and Patricia.


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[Assistant] At one point while the girl's school friend Dorothy Weiner was testifying that she saw both of them buying popcorn and a candy bar at the movie, Loretta jumped up out of her chair and started calling the girl a liar.


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[Assistant] Because she said she had only given them money for movies, and she said she insisted that she gave her money for the bus ride, the ticket for the movies, and one popcorn.


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[Assistant] So because of how sensitive everything was, just because this school friend had said that these girls had an additional 30 cents, many interpreted it as that they must have been dishonest or they'd done something immoral to get that 30 cents.


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[Assistant] Wow. So that's why Loretta jumped up and 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 insane.


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[Assistant] Now after three days of testimony, Betty Bedwell once again recanted his 14 page confession, saying he had only confessed because he was threatened and beaten by police. Oh wow.


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[Assistant] In fact, he again said he had never met or seen the Grimes sisters and only knew the case through the newspapers.


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[Assistant] That was starting to show that he was probably innocent. He was probably, like, innocent of this, I should say.


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[Assistant] While the incrust was in its third day, the lab and toxicology reports came back and found that both girls most likely died December 28th, the night they disappeared.


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[Assistant] Also, there was no alcohol in either of the girls' systems and the contents of their stomachs turned up particles of fish and potatoes on those later reports, not hot dogs. Okay.


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[Assistant] Bedwell had only claimed that they'd eaten hot dogs and that was in January.


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[Assistant] Now a few days later on February 6th, a bail bondsman named Morris Brown put up the $20,000 bail for Bedwell's release.


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[Assistant] He believed him innocent, so Benny was released from custody. Wow.


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[Assistant] When Benny Bedwell got out of jail and was seemingly exonerated by the findings of the autopsy in the coroner's inquest, investigators were just back to square one.


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[Assistant] Detectives and deputies from the Chicago Police Department and Cook County Sheriff's Department returned to German Church Road.


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[Assistant] And the theater where the girls had gone the night they disappeared. But they couldn't find anything else to help them.


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[Assistant] Investigators revisited their previous suspects. They found a couple that seemed promising at some point, but then they would go nowhere.


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[Assistant] The most promising of these suspects was 17-year-old Max Flieg.


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[Assistant] There's little known about Max Flieg, but he was picked up by police shortly after the bodies were discovered and was convinced by Captain Ralph Pataki to take a polygraph test.


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[Assistant] According to author Troy Taylor, Max failed the polygraph exam and confessed to the murders, but quote, because the test was illegal and inadmissible, the police were forced to let him go. Cause he was coerced into taking it. Gotcha. Now, as the month and years went by, there would be other suspects. People would confess to it again. None of them were strong enough to get a conviction.


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[Assistant] In late 1962, Alfred Lawless, an Illinois prisoner about to be released from jail on a drunken disorderly charge,


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[Assistant] He told, so according to him, he had met the girls at the theater the night they disappeared, and he murdered them a few hours later.


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[Assistant] He said, 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 girls.


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[Assistant] His story was surprisingly detailed, but all the information he provided no matter how small the detail had been reported by the press.


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[Assistant] Those doubts only grew when Lawless began confessing to other crimes, including the murder of a man in Jamestown, Kentucky, 15 years earlier, in which Lawless got many of the details wrong. So I think he was just...


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, the leads began to dry up and slowly but surely, it seems like the story kinda disappeared. First from the press, then from the public's memory.


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[Assistant] And after years of inaction, the case had gone cold and was shelved by all law enforcement agencies. That's awful.


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[Assistant] Now, the Grimes Sisters cold case had sat on a shelf for more than 50 years.


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[Assistant] And two years into his research, he was contacted by a woman.


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[Assistant] Who claimed she had been with Barbara and Patricia the night they disappeared.


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[Assistant] But she was too scared to go to the police in 1957 to tell them what she knew.


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[Assistant] According to this anonymous woman, she left the theater with the sisters when they were offered and accepted a ride from a man in his early twenties.


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[Assistant] Johnson came across a report from Loretta Grimes about one of the anonymous calls she received about the time the girls went missing.


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[Assistant] Cause remember, people have always been and will always be fucking garbage. So she was getting a ton of anonymous phone calls while she was grieving her children missing. Again, garbage. We're garbage. Like what goes through people's heads?


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[Assistant] Now, unlike the previous ransom calls and harassment, this caller seemed to know things about the case that other people didn't. He claimed, quote, he was the one who undressed the girls, and then he hung up the phone. That poor fucking woman. That's so sick.


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[Assistant] A little over a year later, Loretta received another call from an anonymous man who told her he quote, got away with another one.


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[Assistant] And he said this time, the police would not be able to pin this one on Benny Bedwell.


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[Assistant] The next day, after this call, police found the decapitated body of 15 year old Bonnie Lee Scott in nearby Addison. Oh my whole entire body.


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[Assistant] Only about three miles from where Barbara and Patricia's bodies were discovered. Oh, that, nope.


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[Assistant] Eventually, police arrested 23-year-old Charles Melquest for that murder, and he quickly confessed. He said, I'm sorry about it all. I don't care what happens to me.


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[Assistant] He was convicted of the murder of Scott, but only served eight years in prison due to what he says were his connections to the Chicago machine.


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[Assistant] But John, that retired detective that was looking into this case and found all this, he believed that Charles Melquest could be the murderer in the Grimes case, but Teller, who he was connected to, who was the lead investigator in the Grimes case, had connections to the Chicago machine,


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[Assistant] Now unfortunately, Charles Melquesta died in 2010.


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[Assistant] Oh, how strange that it was the same year that the author decided. Yeah. Wow. But at the time of his arrest, he was considered a strong suspect in the Grimes case, and Johnson believes he could very well be the man who killed Barbara and Patricia Grimes. We'll never know. As of now, the case remains open.


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[Assistant] And Johnson hopes new information can be found to link Malquest definitively to the case and finally solve the heartbreaking murders of Patricia and Barbara Grimes.


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[Assistant] I think Charles Melquest is the guy. Really? I think he's the guy. Wow. And unfortunately we're not gonna be able to...


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[Assistant] I think the fact that this kind of shit happens, these are...


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[Assistant] A 13-year-old and a 15-year-old girl, both abducted from movie theater.


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[Assistant] Found naked, raped, stabbed, beaten, and murdered on the side of the road, and people are calling this family and pranking them.


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[Assistant] Look in the fucking mirror. What the fuck is wrong with you?


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[Assistant] You have to be truly deranged. Like you have to be a deranged, just feral fucking animal to do that shit. Like it makes me so angry. It's just, you can't even fathom it. And that these people going through what they went through and her having that guilt that she was living with that she did not deserve to have, but she's a mother.


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[Assistant] That guilt she had and to be having to deal with fucking pigs calling her and pranking her? And saying disgusting things. And saying disgusting shit like, man, you deserve what you get. Society, man. But. It's rough.


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[Assistant] I think Charles Melquest is a great...


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[Assistant] Great suspect for this. I really do believe he is. The fact that he got eight years for decapitating a young girl.


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[Assistant] That poor girl's family, can you imagine being in the trial or in the courtroom for sentencing and you find out the man that decapitated your child gets 8 years? And he's 23? I mean, that's nothing. Yeah. Nothing.


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[Assistant] To find out and start digging into what his life was after that. I mean he lived until 2010.


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[Assistant] Keep us updated man. I know, I'm like, I'm like, you know what?


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[Assistant] Please, Ray Johnson, please let me know what the fuck is going on if you're listening. Let's get together. Let's squad up, Ray. Uh, but yeaah, this is horrific.


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[Assistant] Horrific tale. It doesn't have the ending that you're really looking for, but it's got


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[Assistant] Something at the end that you feel like there's, there's something to work with. Yeah, what an interesting case all around though, just all the eyewitnesses afterwards and then the many stories and the people that were so convinced that they saw Benny with him didn't. So convinced. Perhaps. Yeah, it's really, it's fucked up. It is. It's really fucked up and I hope the Grimes family was able to


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[Assistant] Well, with that, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. I got nothing. Yeah, don't.


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[Assistant] Well, it's a listener tale. I fucking love listener tales, and for some reason I feel like we haven't done a listener tale in so long. Thank you.


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[Assistant] It like felt different, like not in a bad way. But it felt like we didn't do them forever. Yeah, it did feel that way. Very strange. Very, very strange. Here we are, here we are, back in action, just Ash and Elaine. Just Ash and Elaine. Doing some listener tells. I have a new nickname. Yeah, just call, I don't think I've ever called you Elaine in my life. No you have not.


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[Assistant] No one has. Cause Elaine is an entirely different name. Yea, and it's just taking away the uh. Yea, you might as well just say it.


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[Assistant] We did. We had a discussion. Want to start with the best, so of course here I am. First is the worst, second is the best. Just saying. Mikey is the one with the hairy chest.


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[Assistant] He was just so immersed in work and he's like, what? He had his headphones on and he's like, excuse me. I'm the worst, Alina's the best, and you're the one with the hairy chest. Yeah.


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[Assistant] I would say one more time for the people in the back, but uh, it's a hard no for me. That's a great title.


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[Assistant] Fan-fucking-tastic. I love that. Let me zoom into this because now that I'm 27 I am geriatric. Oh my god.


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[Assistant] Hey weirdos, I'll shorten, I'll shorten, I'm already off to a good start. I'll shorten this diatribe with the assurance that I have written before, so I know you are already aware of how much I worship at the feet of my podcast princesses every


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[Assistant] Welcome to the inner sanctum, affectionately known as Esmerelda Tafelmeyer. Esmerelda Tafelmeyer, obviously. Hell yeaah. Distant cousin of the illustrious, illustrious, thank you, illustrious Anastasia


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[Assistant] Beaverhausen? Beaverhausen. Insert Will and Grace reference here. Did you watch Will and Grace? I did.


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[Assistant] As you can tell with me swallowing a burp in the middle of my job. Anyways, that was a purposefully, uh, yes, yeah, purposeful-


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[Assistant] And to the oversized mug of coffee I've already heated re-heated 32 times today because working parent.


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[Assistant] Okay, promise may be too strong a word, but I digress. I'd say feel free to edit for brevity, but let's face it, if you've already read through the appetizer, I highly doubt you'll shorten the dessert.


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[Assistant] This tale is a lengthy one, coming in at around 16 minutes. Yes, I timed it. But I am a fast reader and talker, so maybe more like 16? No I'm not, because never be sorry.


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[Assistant] Okay, everybody, I'm putting my hair up, so a little backstory. When I was little, I used to hear my name being called sometimes faintly, sometimes right in my ear, but no one was ever there. I had a not so imaginary friend named Bobby until my mother, destroyer of dreams, decided to evict him.


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[Assistant] That sounds like beautiful. I know. But as far as Mommy Dearest was concerned, if she couldn't see it, it did not exist.


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[Assistant] I am too. Because I was the decidedly awkward child, both socially and physically, I didn't really have many real life friends. Kids in school called me a know-it-all. I was. Hello and diagnosed ASD and ADHD. I also hear that, so don't worry. Own it. Oh, I've never said that to you.


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[Assistant] So my schedule was always wide open, making me readily available for chores and peer tutoring and being my mother's favorite victim of opportunity. Which brings me to my story. I'm sorry.


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[Assistant] My tale begins in May of 1989. I was 11 years old and my parents said they were going to the movies. They couldn't find a babysitter. And my friendless ass was just disappointing my social climbing mother by walling on the grass with a book instead of a boyfriend. So I guess she figured I was the next best thing.


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[Assistant] This would be my first time being home alone with my 6 year old sister. I'm sorry, but 11 years old babysitting a 6 year old is way too young. That feels young. That feels way too young to be home by yourself.


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[Assistant] At the time, my uncle, my mother's brother, often couch-surfed at our house. A street soldier for the mob, he had a bit of a checkered past, and was frequent- and a frequent guest of the state, if you know you know. Since my sister and I were so young, if Popo came looking for- I thought you called him Popo.


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[Assistant] If the po-po came looking for him, my mom would say they were special security escorting him to some government effect. Wow!


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[Assistant] If he was sentenced to time, my mom would call these stays off at college. Wow. Much to my mother's chagrin, the nerdy book room that I was felt so impressed with my uncle's dedication to higher learning, I would often brag about his staunch commitment to academia.


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[Assistant] Secretly, I knew they were probably just jealous of his intellectual.


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[Assistant] Fucking amateurs, am I right? You are right. But anyway, back to the night in question. I love you. You're so much fun.


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[Assistant] To make my 2x4 of a prepubescent body create the moves I was watching Madge effortlessly perform, whilst probably actually looking like I was having a seizure.


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[Assistant] Over my bird bone of a shoulder, just as my bedroom door was opening and my uncle peeked his head into the room. To his credit, he didn't laugh at me. He just waved and walked back out into the hallway, presumably to lay on the couch and watch some inappropriate programming of his own.


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[Assistant] That would have been popular in that era and waited for my parents to come home and hopefully pay me for my superior babysitting skills.


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[Assistant] My mom was not pleased that the TV was still on and semi-loudly adonished me for not being in bed yet.


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[Assistant] I apologized and silently seethed that this would definitely dash my dreams of being financially compensated for my efforts and warned her not to talk too loudly because my uncle was sleeping on the couch.


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[Assistant] Ladies, when I say I should have just yes-mammed my way under the covers and shut the fuck up, I mean I should have yes-mammed my way under the covers and shut the fuck up.


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[Assistant] My mother stood uh, stock still, a look of absolute rage on her face. Oh no, I don't like this at all.


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[Assistant] Where she had really gone that evening, but that joking about her brother being in the house during her brother's funeral wake.


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[Assistant] Was neither amusing nor acceptable. Oh wow.


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[Assistant] That just like breaks my heart. Yeah, and what a way to tell you that your uncle's passed. Yeah. What did size have to do with seeing people nobody else could see? Ha ha. It's true.


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[Assistant] So yea, I now knew for sure I could see dead people, especially that particular dead person. Over the next ten years, he would turn up in my living room, my hallway, my bathroom mirror, which TBH scared the ever loving shit out of me. We had a little chat after that, wherein I heartily encouraged him to move on. Yea, don't show up in mirrors, man. Nah.


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[Assistant] But overall, I accepted it. I chatted out loud while doing dishes and vacuuming, and one day, he just seemed to have taken my advice and left, as one does when one is deceased.


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[Assistant] Or so I thought. Fast forward a few months and I was working through a mind numbing divorce. Oh my god, I'm sorry.


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[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, I know. Today, me is smarter, but yesterdecade me was young and dumb and full of romantic ideas. No, I get it. I get it. And don't call yourself an idiot. You're not. You're not. You're very smart.


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[Assistant] Reluctantly, I agreed. My mom was, uh, not the best company, but back then she liked people to believe that she was a great cook, so she'd order for...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Upon entering the dining room, I noticed that she'd hung a photo of my late uncle up on the wall. Before I could even explain who it was, my older daughter exclaimed, It's Teddy! Oh my goodness! I'm sorry, what? No darling, it is most assuredly not Teddy! But there it was, the sudden realization that his name was something similar enough to that.


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[Assistant] Yeah, cause it sounds like he knew that like you needed protection or like something to make you happy, you know?


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[Assistant] Shortly after this enlightening occasion, I moved again, this time to a lake community. My Nana passed away and sightings of my uncle became rarer.


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[Assistant] One day, I emptied my kitchen counter in order to deep clean the formica for Micah.


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[Assistant] So yeah, placing the last item on the kitchen table, I grabbed a rag and some bleach and turned back to the just cleaned off countertop to find it no longer cleared.


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[Assistant] In a straight line from one end of the counter to the other was a series of dimes. They say that dimes are used by like the dead to communicate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was still early days for the interwebs, so I asked Jeeves if you know, you know. Also, if you've listened to that Megan Thee Stallion song, love that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now this thing wasn't teetering on the edge of the table. It was dead center of it. And none of the other items were on the floor. So even if it had somehow slid across the surface, it could not have averted all the other items without pushing them down as well. No. This thing was clearly lifted and dropped onto the floor. I hurriedly collected the dimes back out of my bag.


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[Assistant] After that, for the better part of a decade, I experienced nothing odd of the ordinary.


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[Assistant] My older daughter did, but we worked through her fears, and while hers never completely went away, she did learn how to manage it well. I joked to myself that while I was maybe a failed medium, she was an accomplished small. That's really cute.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I kinda love that you took your mom's, uh, like, insult. Insult and made it a nice, nice like memory for you. It made it a nice. It made it a nice. You made it nice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the course of several years, she would tell me about impending storms and natural disasters, people who were, who would soon be pregnant, and if she saw anyone we knew who had messages for us, our Nana, our grandfather, friends who left too soon, etc, etc. Nothing terribly scary, just random info.


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[Assistant] My younger daughter also developed a limited ability to see a deceased friend visited her room.


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[Assistant] Excuse me, to see. A deceased friend visited her in her room, but by the next...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sorry, but by the time the next kiddo in line was born, the trait seemed to have died out of the bloodline.


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[Assistant] Things had so completely settled down that I never even thought to tell my now husband about any of it until we were pregnant with my youngest child.


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[Assistant] Shortly after finding out he was a boy, we were trying to, we were trying out different names. For some reason, it was really nagging at me to name this one after my uncle. The poll was so strong, I even dreamed about it.


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[Assistant] He went on to correct me telling me that of course he had been. The interior was blue and the blanket we had on his seat was blue velvet. Wow. Electricity shot through my body. I remembered that ride.


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[Assistant] It was an extended family vacation. Everyone had been there. But it happened when I was four years old.


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[Assistant] We'd taken to Florida with that family member when I was around six years old. He eventually dropped it.


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[Assistant] But later on he asked if he could get new Mickey ears with his name stitched onto them like he used to have.


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[Assistant] Now I already warned you that I'm a Disney adult, so yes, my kid already had several sets of Mickey ears, but they were all themed ears, like R2D2 and Toy Story. None were just regular ears.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He rolled his eyes at me and said that he did too in fact have a pair with his name on them and then calmly pointed to a photograph of my Nana and said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back when she was my mom, remember? Woaaaaah. He said, you were a baby and we all went to Disney World and she said we should all get ears with our names on them.


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[Assistant] Now ladies, I have no personal knowledge of these years, however,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do have personal knowledge of photographs of a family vacation to Disney when I was a baby. A vacation my uncle attended


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[Assistant] A vacation wherein my Nana bought everyone ears with their names on them so we could take a family portrait with them.


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[Assistant] I have to assume that this was what my son was referring to. Again, I'm sorry, what? This is wild. It's wild, but it's also so fucking cool. Oh, it's so cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other strange things have been my son's ability to identify photos of people who passed long before he was born.


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[Assistant] Random memories that he could not have, and knowledge of events that predate his birth.


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[Assistant] When my grandfather passed away a few years ago, my son told me not to worry because Pop Pop was hanging out with Joe full on last name now.


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[Assistant] Come again? Joe was my grandfather's best friend. Joe died long before my son was born. I have no photos of Joe.


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[Assistant] And since I no longer had any relationship with my mother anymore,


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[Assistant] Uhm, you didn't even have to give me that pronunciation because I fucking love pasta-ficial. Oh, I love pasta-ficial as well. And he asked if she could make it like when he was little. I never made pasta-ficial, y'all.


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[Assistant] When I clarified once again, he said, Oh yeah, I meant when I used to be little. The other time, when she was my mom. I sadly informed him that the recipe was lost when she passed away, and he calmly informed me that it was in the green box. What the fuck? What green box? I was perplexed.


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[Assistant] Later on I mentioned it to my husband who suggested he may have been talking about a green box we had recently come across when going through some of my grandfather's belongings.


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[Assistant] Sure enough, I went downstairs, opened the box, and what did I find? Spoiler alert, I make pasta for Julien now.


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[Assistant] These days my son does not remember as much as he used to about when he was being raised by my Nana. Whether one chooses to believe that it's true or not is completely up to themselves. I for one am a believer. Make me too.


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[Assistant] And I think it gives me a unique perspective on life and death. Definitely. I don't claim to know where we go, but I know for a fact that one way or the other, we do go on.


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[Assistant] On the upshot, at least I know to keep an eye on my son to keep him from repeating his last life's mistakes. But on the other hand, it's more of a smidgen weird to think that I am currently raising someone who knows more about my childhood than I do.


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[Assistant] And that, my morbid mistresses, is my long ass story of being a mediocre- I just burped through that, I'm so sorry.


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[Assistant] Don't forget to keep an open mind and to keep it weird, but not so weird that. Take it away, Ash.