It was December 28, 1956, in Brighton Park, a working-class neighborhood on Chicago's south side. The holiday season was in full swing, but for two teenage sisters, the real excitement was the chance to see their idol on the big screen.
Barbara Grimes, 15, and Patricia Grimes, who would turn 13 in just three days, were devoted Elvis Presley fans. They had already seen his debut film "Love Me Tender" ten times and were eager for viewing number eleven. After receiving permission from their mother, Lorretta, the girls left home at 7:30 p.m. with $2.50 to cover tickets, concessions, and possibly staying for a second showing.
The Grimes family wasn't wealthy. Lorretta and Joseph had divorced in 1951, and Lorretta worked outside the home while raising six children. Though money was tight, allowing the girls this small pleasure seemed harmless enough.
At the Brighton Theater, about 1½ miles from their home, Barbara and Patricia were spotted by a friend, Dorothy Weinert, who was there with her own sister. As Dorothy left after the first showing, she saw the Grimes sisters in the concession line, suggesting they had decided to stay for the second screening. According to Dorothy, they were alone and appeared perfectly fine—just two teenagers enjoying a night at the movies.
Lorretta expected her daughters home by 11:45 p.m. if they stayed for the second showing. When midnight came and went with no sign of the girls, her concern grew. She sent an older daughter and son to wait at the bus stop, but after three buses arrived without Barbara and Patricia, they returned home empty-handed.
Growing increasingly worried, Lorretta called around to their friends, hoping someone might know where they had gone after the movie. No one did. At 2:00 a.m., she called the police to report her daughters missing.
A City-Wide Search
What followed was one of the largest missing persons searches in Cook County history up to that time. A dedicated task force was created, with hundreds of officers deputized to search for the missing sisters full-time. By the time the investigation concluded, authorities had questioned an astonishing 300,000 people, with 2,000 subjected to further interrogation.
The case quickly captured public attention. Reported sightings began flooding in from across the city:
- Two teenage boys claimed to have seen the girls around 11:30 p.m. on December 28, just blocks from their home, laughing and jumping in and out of doorways.
- Another teenage boy reported seeing them getting into a dark-colored Mercury with two men—one in the front seat and one in the back.
- Some witnesses placed the girls on the north side asking for directions.
- Others reported seeing them getting off a CTA bus at 11:05 p.m. the night they disappeared.
- One account had them browsing records at a Kresge's five-and-dime store.
When the FBI became involved after Lorretta received ransom notes, the story went national. One note sent her to Milwaukee on January 12, accompanied by FBI agents, to wait in a church with $1,000 ransom money. Another directed her to leave money at Chicago's LaSalle Street Station. Both proved to be cruel hoaxes.
The national attention spawned a theory that the girls had voluntarily traveled to Nashville—perhaps to be closer to Elvis. One woman claimed she had met them at a Nashville bus station and even taken them to an employment agency. The clerk there identified them from photographs. But Lorretta didn't believe her daughters would have left with nothing but $2.50 and the clothes on their backs.
As the search continued, Elvis Presley himself made radio and television appeals, asking the girls, if they were "good Elvis fans," to return home and ease their mother's worries.
Chicago Sun-Times advice columnist Ann Landers published a letter from someone claiming to have witnessed the sisters being forced into a car:
"Outside the show we all got to talking and we exchanged phone numbers. When we got to the street where we turned off, we said goodbye and we ran across the street. Then Betty forgot something she had to tell Barbara and we ran back to the corner... A man about 22 or 25 was talking to them. He pushed Barbara in the back seat of the car and Pat in the front seat. We got part of the license number as the car drove by us. The first four numbers were 2184. Betty thinks there were three or four numbers after that..."
Police could not trace a vehicle from this partial license plate, and the anonymous letter writer was never identified.
A Grim Discovery
The second week of January brought heavy snow followed by severe cold and then a thaw. On January 22, nearly a month after the girls disappeared, Leonard Prescott was driving on German Church Road in unincorporated Willow Springs when he spotted something flesh-colored off the side of the road. Initially thinking it was a mannequin, he returned with his wife for a closer look. To their horror, they discovered the naked bodies of two girls sprawled in the snow—one face down, the other face up and partially covering the first body.
Joseph Grimes identified the bodies as his daughters but broke down before a formal identification could be completed. A family member later confirmed they were indeed Barbara and Patricia. The location where they were found was far from their neighborhood, almost at the western boundary of Cook County.
Barbara had extensive bruising on her face, while Patricia had puncture marks on her chest that resembled ice pick wounds. There was no obvious cause of death such as stabbing, strangulation, or gunshot. Medical examiners determined that Barbara had had sexual intercourse before her death, but there were no signs of forcible assault.
Investigators believed the bodies had been there for some time but had been preserved by the cold weather and recent snowfall. Some of the wounds were attributed to animal predation. The official cause of death was listed as murder, secondary shock due to cold temperatures, with the date of death estimated as December 28 or 29—suggesting the girls may have died the very night they disappeared.
Suspects and False Confessions
With the bodies found, the focus shifted to identifying suspects. Three individuals drew particular attention:
Walter Kranz, 53, became the primary suspect after he called police with what he claimed was a dream vision about where the bodies would be found. Indeed, the location was about a mile from the park he had mentioned. Kranz was also suspected of writing one of the ransom notes. Despite repeated questioning, he maintained that his only knowledge came from being psychic. Without evidence linking him directly to the crime, police eventually had to release him.
Edward "Bennie" Bedwell, a drifter in his twenties who worked part-time as a dishwasher and affected an Elvis-like appearance, became a suspect when his employer reported seeing him with two girls resembling the Grimes sisters in the early morning of December 30. One of the girls had reportedly been staggering. They sat listening to the jukebox before leaving in a car. A waitress claimed one girl had mentioned they were sisters, and a patron corroborated the story.
Bennie was arrested and questioned for three days before confessing to the murders. He claimed the girls had been with him and an accomplice named "Frank" for a week. According to his confession, they had taken the girls to bars and fed them hot dogs, but when their sexual advances were refused, they beat the girls, knocked them unconscious, and dumped their bodies beyond the guard rail on German Church Road on January 13.
However, Bennie recanted at a hearing on January 31, stating he had made the confession due to police coercion. His story was contradicted by forensic evidence showing the girls' stomach contents matched their last meal at home and indicated death within five hours of leaving home on December 28. Additionally, employment records showed Bennie was at work on January 13 at the purported time of the murder. With the case against him collapsing, he was released on bond on February 6, and all charges were dropped in March.
Lorretta Grimes had been outraged by Bennie's claims about her daughters carousing in bars and categorically refused to believe it.
Max Fleig, 17, was the third significant suspect. With a juvenile record of violence, he had admitted to beating women who resisted his attempts at rape. Despite Illinois law prohibiting polygraphs for minors, he was persuaded to take an unofficial test, during which he allegedly confessed to the murders. Without evidence tying him to the case, he too had to be released. The following year, Fleig confessed to the beating death of 14-year-old Mary Lou Wagner.
Internal Controversy and Strange Phone Calls
The investigation was marred by internal controversy. Harry Glos, a chief investigator in the coroner's office, publicly disagreed with the established timeline. He observed a thin film of ice on the bodies, which he believed could only have formed if they were warm when dumped—suggesting death around January 7, not December 28.
Glos also stated his belief that both girls had been beaten and repeatedly molested, details he claimed had been omitted from reports out of respect for the victims and their mother. When he refused to retract these statements, Glos was fired from the coroner's office. However, the sheriff in charge of the case agreed with his assessment and hired him to work without pay on their team. Accusations of political motivations and grandstanding flew from both sides.
In May, months after the funeral, Lorretta received a disturbing phone call. A man's voice taunted her, claiming to be the killer and mocking the police for trying to pin the crime on Bennie Bedwell. What made this call particularly chilling was that the caller mentioned something not publicly known: "The smallest girl's toes were crossed at the feet!" He then laughed before hanging up.
Even more disturbing, after another teenage girl's murder in 1958, Lorretta received another call from what she believed was the same distinctive voice, now claiming he had "gotten away with another one."
Possible Connections to Other Crimes
Two other crimes from the same era have sometimes been suggested as connected to the Grimes case:
In October 1955, three young boys—John Schuessler, 13, his brother Anton, 11, and Robert Peterson, 13—went missing after leaving a downtown Chicago movie theater. Their bodies were found in a forest preserve north of the city, beaten, strangled, and naked. While the timing and some details seemed similar to the Grimes case, the violent manner of death differed. The Schuessler-Peterson murders were finally solved in 1995, with stable hand Kenneth Hansen convicted of the crimes.
More intriguing is the case of Bonnie Leigh Scott, a 15-year-old who disappeared on September 22, 1958, from suburban Addison. On November 15, Boy Scouts discovered her nude, decapitated body near a guard rail in a forest preserve less than ten miles from where the Grimes sisters had been found. Charles LeRoy Melquist, a sometime boyfriend of Bonnie's, eventually confessed to her murder.
The day after Bonnie's body was found, Lorretta Grimes received the phone call mentioned earlier, with the caller claiming to have "gotten away with another one." While this suggests a potential link between the cases, Melquist was never questioned about the Grimes murders at his attorney's insistence. He served only 11 years of a 99-year sentence before being released, later marrying and having children.
A Case That Still Haunts Chicago
The Grimes parents died without ever seeing justice for their daughters—Joseph on June 19, 1965, and Lorretta on December 8, 1989, at age 83. All are buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.
The murder of Barbara and Patricia Grimes remains officially unsolved and is still an open case with law enforcement. At this late date, it's difficult to imagine what evidence might emerge to finally solve the mystery. But in an age when advanced DNA techniques and genealogical databases have cracked decades-old cold cases, perhaps there's still hope for answers.
Chicago newspapers at the time made the most of the sensational case. The Tribune invited readers to send in their personal theories, offering $50 for any they chose to publish. The Sun-Times accompanied Lorretta on a shopping trip and ran photos of models wearing clothing similar to what the sisters had on when they disappeared, hoping readers might recognize the items.
Beyond the media circus and failed investigations, the case of Barbara and Patricia Grimes stands as a sobering reminder of innocence lost. Two young girls, excited to see their idol on the big screen, never returned home—leaving behind a family devastated by grief and a mystery that has spanned generations.
In the decades since their deaths, much has changed in the world of criminal investigation. Modern forensic techniques, DNA analysis, comprehensive databases, and sophisticated psychological profiling might have led to different outcomes had they been available in 1956. Yet the core of the tragedy remains the same: two young lives cut short, a family torn apart, and justice still elusive after all these years.
The story of the Grimes sisters continues to resonate because it represents one of our deepest fears—that evil can strike randomly, taking away those we love without warning or explanation. Until the day this case is solved—if that day ever comes—their story will remain one of Chicago's most haunting unsolved mysteries.
Sources
Murder of the Grimes Sisters, Wikipedia
Death and the Maidens
Grimes Sisters: The Unsolved Murders of Chicago's 1950s Teens
The Grimes Sisters: An Unsolved Cold Case
The Grimes Sisters
Find a Grave: Barbara Jeanne Grimes
Find a Grave: Patricia Kathleen Grimes