15 year old Barbara Grimes and her 13 year old sister Patricia were huge Elvis fans, as many young girls were back in 1956. On the night of December 28th, 1956, the girls went to the theater near their McKinley Park, Chicago-area home to see Elvis' latest flick, Love Me Tender. The girls never returned home. Some folks assumed the girls had high-tailed it to Nashville in pursuit of Elvis. Rumors started to spread about the girls' activities, too. Sightings were reported left and right. Friends saw the girls at the theater, and people reported seeing them on the bus home, only to get off halfway through their ride. Two boys saw them a few minutes later, walking together and laughing just two blocks from home. A security guard reported seeing the girls on the morning of the 29th when they stopped to ask him for directions. A classmate spotted them walking with two unknown girls later that evening. Additionally, two employees at the Claremont Hotel said the girls checked into a room on the 30th. But those rumors all came to a halt three weeks later when a construction worker found their naked and frozen bodies dumped on the side of the road. Barbara had superficial stab wounds on her chest, but it wasn't immediately obvious what had killed them. The autopsy reported that the girls had likely died five hours after leaving home to see the movie on December 28th. After the girls went missing, a series of bizarre phone calls were made. On January 14 (a week before the bodies were discovered), Patricia's classmate Sandra's mother received a call at home around midnight. When she answered, the caller hung up. Another call came in, and a quiet voice asked for Sandra but soon hung up. Sandra's mother swore that the voice belonged to Patricia. The next day, local police received a call from an anonymous person claiming that, in a dream, he saw that the girls were dead, their bodies disposed in Santa Fe Park. Cops brushed him off, but seven days later, the bodies were discovered as described about a mile from the park. When the girls were found by Leonard Prescott, he initially thought he had found discarded mannequins since the bodies were so rigid yet in good condition. There had been a snowstorm recently, followed by a rapid thaw that left the bodies exposed at the embankment of Devil's Creek. It was later noted that the stab wounds on Barbara's chest were likely from an ice pick and that she had blunt force trauma to the head and face. Patricia's face was also bruised. Toxicology reports came out negative for alcohol and drugs. The bodies were clean and lacked obvious fatal injuries. There was, however, evidence that Barbara had engaged in sexual activity around the time of her disappearance, and it seemed likely that Patricia had also been sexually assaulted. One coroner who worked the case felt that the bodies must've been dumped a while back and covered by snowfall, even though there wasn't enough snow to cover the bodies until January 7th. While the girls were still missing, their beloved Elvis received word of their disappearance and, on January 19th, issued a public plea for the girls to return home. In lieu of this, Ann Landers (a popular Chicago Sun-Times advice columnist) got a letter from a young girl saying she saw the sisters get forced into a car by a young man the night they disappeared. She even gave a partial license plate number. However, nothing ever came of this lead. Searching for a suspect was going to be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The suspect list in the Grimes murders is small and murky. At the top of this short list sits Edward Lee 'Bennie' Bedwell, a 21 year old drifter with limited literacy hailing from Tennessee. He was tall and bore a mild resemblance to Elvis. Bedwell held a job at a skeevy Chicago restaurant in December of '56. The owners reported seeing him and another man with two girls who fit the descriptions of Patricia and Barbara early on December 30th. Bedwell was arrested and questioned for three days. He admitted in a signed confession that he and another man (William Cole Willingham) were with the girls between December 30th and January 7th. According to this statement, the girls had been willing to go with them until they refused sex, which was when the men beat and threw them into a ditch.
Loretta Grimes (mother of the girls) called this an outright "lie" and said that her girls wouldn't engage in the behaviors (like drinking alcohol) claimed by Bedwell. Tox reports backed up Loretta's statement since it did not indicate any signs of alcohol or hot dogs, which Bedwell said the girls had consumed. Willingham eventually confessed to being with the girls until December 30th but not to killing them. Bedwell later recanted his statement. Max Fleig was another suspect on the radar in 1957. Fleig was 17 and confessed to the crime in an unofficial polygraph but was not able to be charged due to Illinois laws preventing juveniles from taking polygraphs. The police had coaxed Fleig into taking the polygraph, and there was never any evidence to connect him with the murders. However, Fleig was later imprisoned for killing a woman in an unrelated event. Finally, we have Walter Kranz, the 53 year old "psychic" caller. Handwriting experts thought he might have written a ransom note delivered to Loretta, but Kranz continually denied his involvement and was released due to a lack of evidence. Sadly, Loretta died at 83 in 1989 never knowing the identity of who killed her daughters. There was, strangely enough, a man who called Loretta a year after the girls were found, bragging about how he had killed 15 year old Bonnie Leigh Scott from Addison, Illinois. Her body had been found nude and disposed of over a guard rail near Palos Hills. According to Loretta, this was the same taunting voice that had called her shortly after her daughters' bodies were found to brag about how he had undressed their corpses. Loretta said she would "never forget that voice" and likely never did. It was also recently suggested that another girl, 14 at the time, had been abducted alongside the Grimes sisters but managed to escape. She never spoke out publicly in fear of her life. Regardless of whether or not this is true, someone out there knows who killed Barbara and Patricia Grimes. Someone has knowledge that could help identify a killer and allow the Grimes girls' living siblings some peace of mind.
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