The Grimes Sisters Murders and the Ghost Car of German Church Road
Chicago is no stranger to murder. In fact, the last word you might use to describe Chicago is "innocent". However, anyone who remembers December 28, 1956 will probably tell you that it is when Chicago lost its innocence, at least when it came to the safety of our children.
Fifteen year old Barbara Jeanne Grimes and her thirteen year old sister, Patricia Kathleen Grimes, were two of the six children of Joseph and Loretta Grimes of 3634 S. Damen Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago. Loretta worked as a clerk for the Parke Davis Co. and Joseph was a union truck driver. The couple had been divorced for about 11 years at this point and Joseph was remarried.
At about 7:30pm on the night of December 28, 1956, the girls left their home with $2.50 between them. Their plan was to see the newly released Elvis Presley movie, "Love Me Tender" for the 15th time at the now demolished Brighton Theater on Archer Avenue. They never came home.
What followed was one of the most labor intensive missing persons cases in Chicago and Cook County history. Thousands of man-hours and hundreds of police officers were being utilized from Chicago as well as neighboring towns such as La Grange, Justice, Bridgeview, Summit, Bedford Park, Willow Springs and the Cook County Forest Preserve Police.
Reports of sightings of the girls started pouring in from as far away as Nashville, Tennessee and Elvis Presley himself was on the radio pleading with the girls to return home. The police initially were of the opinion that the girls had run away but their mother never wavered from her belief that the girls would never do such a thing and that she feared the worst. Their mother could not believe that they would leave home with virtually no money, no change of clothes and leaving all of their Christmas presents behind including a treasured A.M. radio.
At one point the F.B.I. became involved because Loretta had received up to two known ransom notes but both of those leads went nowhere.
All hope was lost on January 22, 1957 when a man by the name of Leonard Prescott was driving east along German Church Road on his way to the grocery store when he noticed what he thought were two mannequins on the north side of the road just east of County Line Road. He went back to get his wife and returned to the scene to find what turned out to be the bodies of Patricia and her sister Barbara. They reported their findings to the Willow Springs Police Department at 1:30pm that day.
The bodies were unclothed with Barbara, the older but smaller girl lying face down and Patricia lying face up on top of Barbara and perpendicular. There was no obvious cause of death although it appeared as though their faces had been damaged. The damage was later found to be destruction by animals. It was thought that the girls were probably there since the heavy snows of January 9th and 10th and that the recent thaw had revealed them.
Following the discovery, a number of suspects were interviewed and cleared. The most publicized suspect was Edward Lee (Bennie) Bedwell who had gone so far as confessing to the murders however it was later shown that "Bennie" was borderline mentally retarded and that his confession had been coerced by the Cook County Sheriff's Police. He was later cleared by then Cook County State's Attorney Benjamin Adamowski.
The autopsy later revealed that the girls had died within four hours of going missing because the meals that they had eaten that night at home were still in the girls' stomachs. The official finding by the coroner's jury was that they were murdered and the only cause of death they could come up with was "exposure to the elements". Then coroner, Walter McCarron was criticized because there were reports that the autopsies had been flubbed.
The funeral took place on January 28, 1957 and was donated by the Wollschlager Funeral Home. The mass was held at St. Maurice Church where Patricia went to grade school. The funeral was attended by many including Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. Newspaper accounts say that Loretta collapsed several times and was heard sobbing that she was finally with her girls again. Two white closed caskets were each topped with a picture of each girl. The girls were laid to rest at Holy Sepulchre Catholic Cemetery only 10 feet from a sister, Leona Freck, who had died two years earlier.
The case remained unsolved and Loretta Grimes, for many years, volunteered her time at the Bridewell prison not far from where her girls' bodies were discovered. The authorities told her that they would never give up on the case. Loretta passed away in 1989 at the age of 83 without ever knowing how or why her girls died and who had killed them.
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to meet with the Chicago and Cook County State's Attorney's Cold Case Units to share some information that I had come across while researching my book, "Chicago's Haunt Detective". I couldn't divulge the details of that conversation in the book or here because the Grimes case is still open and in my opinion, as well as other investigators, very solvable. In fact, I started a facebook group called "Help Solve Chicago's Grimes Sisters' Murder". It is somewhere where people can learn about the facts of the case, share memories and add to the discussion and theories.
There are at least two instances of legend or paranormal activity associated with the Grimes Sisters. One concerns what is sometimes referred to as a residual haunting and is nicknamed, "The Ghost Car of German Church Road" The other concerns a house that existed for a time near the site where the girls bodies were found but burned down sometime in the 1980's I believe. The house, according to persons I have interviewed, was a bi-level ranch style building with a sunken garage. The building used to exist in the northeast corner of what is now considered the Bridle Path Subdivision along Greystone Court in Burr Ridge. Shortly after the girls' bodies were discovered, whoever lived in the house quickly deserted it. According to reports, a brand new vehicle was abandoned in the garage and toys, food, clothes and tools were left in the house. In fact I have been told that dishes were still left on the kitchen table. Whoever was living there left in a hurry and didn't care about leaving anything behind. One theory is that the house was haunted by the spirits of the Grimes girls because their murderer has never been brought to justice. Another story is that a couple lived there and the wife went crazy soon after the murders and they had to have her committed. It is also possible that there were "squatters" living on the property and when the police activity picked up in the area they didn't want to stick around and talk to them. Still one more theory is that the killer himself, or herself, lived there and left to avoid detection by the police. Whatever the reason, the house was abandoned and became a rite of passage for teenagers to venture down the long dark path that led to the house at night. A good friend of mine who is a former police sergeant from Willow Springs told me that he had ventured to the property as a youth with a buddy and when they got close to the house he could see a pale face with dark eyes peering out of window at him. He said that he had never run so fast and so far in his entire life.
I had another individual contact me who stated that he had gone to the house after it was in a very sad state of disrepair and found a live goat tied up in the basement.
Visitors to the house, and also those who have merely been walking along the dark lonely stretch of German Church Road, have also claimed to hear what many call the "Ghost Car of German Church Road" This is more of an audio apparition than a visual one. You hear a car driving along German Church Road and when it sounds like it arrives near the area where the girls' bodies were found, the car slows down and stops. You hear what sounds like a trunk open and a loud thud as though something is being unloaded from the car quickly. You then hear the vehicle drive away quickly from the scene but you never actually see lights or a vehicle itself. The assumption is that what people are hearing is the remnants of the memory of the killer or killers as they were dumping the bodies of the young girls.
Although I had never visited the abandoned house when it still existed or heard any "Ghost Cars" along German Church Road, I have had my own unexplained experiences so I try to keep an open mind about the claims of others. Whether or not any paranormal traces of the murdered Grimes girls exist, I always become hopeful on the anniversary of their disappearance that we may someday be able to solve this horrific crime and help the girls and their memory to rest in peace.
Have you ever been curious about things that you couldn't explain? If so, then this site is for you!
I'm not talking about what supernatural creature is responsible for stealing your socks after a couple of loads of laundry (although it is a little strange as to why this creature only takes one sock from each pair) I'm really talking about the creepy or strange things that most of us have experienced at some point in our lives with the end result being the hair standing up on the back of our necks, or worse yet, a temporary but embarrassing loss of certain crucial bodily functions. If you would choose to just forget about the experience, after years of expensive therapy of course, then you should probably leave this site now!
However, if the experience has caused a thirst to find out the who, what, where, why and how about your experience and the many experiences of others, then you have come to the right place!
Saturday, 14 January 2012 06:49 | Written by Ray Johnson |
Be Sure to tune into www.pararocktv.com on Tuesday January 24, 2012 at Midnight (Eastern Time) 11PM (Central Time) and 9PM (Pacific Time) for my Return Interview with Diana Elkins on Midnight Discovery TV
December 30th falls on a Friday this year but it was a Wednesday on the afternoon of December 30th in 1903 that an audience consisting mostly of women and children filled seats of the Iroquois Theater. It was a matinee performance of the musical "Mr. Bluebeard" and the advertisement for the production during the joyous Christmas season was, "Don't fail to have the children see Mr. Bluebeard".
The Iroquois opened with "Mr. Bluebeard" just a month previous and was hailed as a "fireproof structure". It is odd that someone would have so bold a claim so soon after Chicago was nearly laid to waste in the great fire only 32 years before.
Nobody in the theater had any reason to suspect anything was amiss. There were ushers and five men in city uniforms in the aisles as well as plenty of exits.
The theater was darkened for the song, "Pale Moonlight" as eight chorus girls and eight dashing men in costume strolled across the stage.
Suddenly the spot light that gave the pale moonlight effect sparked and lit a fire in the curtain near the rigging. Theater groups and the musicians were accustomed to the occasional spark and small fire and did not miss a beat in the production. Surely someone would extinguish the fire before it got out of hand. The fire, however, had a different plan in store. It spread quickly in the upper part of the rigging and spread from curtain to curtain. The audience had now noticed that there was a problem and some started to stand in anticipation of making a quick exit. Eddie Foy, a comedian and lead actor in the play, came to the front of center stage and urged audience members to remain calm. It was then that the lines that held the hundreds of pounds of scenery gave way and the heavy timbers crashed to the now empty stage.
The call was put out to lower the fire curtain. The fire curtain was meant as a last resort and made of asbestos. The idea being that whatever fire was on the stage would and could be extinguished quickly although the show would more than likely need to be rescheduled. The problem was that the fire curtain had seemingly been hung up on something and never descended. Meanwhile the performers had opened a rear door of the theater in a very successful escape attempt which unfortunately and unwittingly had sealed the fate of the audience. Anyone who has ever seen the movie "Backdraft" could envision the seething wall of flame that exploded out into the already terrified audience members. At first it appeared as though the entire production company had escaped safely but it was later discovered that Nellie Reed, the leader of the "Flying Ballet" died of her injuries at Cook County Hospital.
There was a mad dash to the exits and initially the ushers who were now fleeing themselves, had attempted to keep people from leaving in an attempt to keep everyone calm but it was all lost! By some accounts half of the doors leading to safety were blocked and audience members began smashing through the doors. Miraculously almost everyone on the first floor made it to safety save the few who were trampled. The poor souls in the upper balcony and gallery areas were not so fortunate. Doors leading to fire escapes were locked or soon blocked by the mass of humanity all trying to fight for their lives. Stairways leading to exits converged on each other creating a deadly bottleneck of carnage. Some managed to make it to the fire escape in the alley behind the theater only to have flames explode out the windows underneath turning the fire escape itself into virtual roasting spit.
Facing scorching flames from both behind and below, people threw themselves off of the upper levels of the fire escape only to meet instant death as the slammed into the cold pavement below. As morbid as it sounds the first hapless souls that leapt or were pushed to their deaths by frantic audience members behind them formed a human cushion of corpses in the alley which allowed others to escape with their lives.
Across the alley from the theater were the offices of the schools of law and dentistry of NorthWestern University. This was also the old Tremont House. Workmen who were cleaning up after a small fire themselves saw the calamity unfolding across the alley and by some miracle were able to lower planks from their window to the edge of the fire escape. The boards became extremely slippery and many who first attempted to traverse the bridge met with death below. Although a valiant effort few individuals successfully crawled across the "alley of death". Much later the fire department would lay ladders across and managed to move roughly 100 bodies out of the theater in this manner.
It is hard to believe, but in the matter of fifteen minutes it was all over. By the time the fire department had arrived the fire had consumed all that it could and was folding in on itself. It became a mad dash to find survivors in the charred twisted mass of humanity that brought even hardened firefighters and policemen to tears.
The Bishop Samuel Fallows of the Reformed Episcopal Church became a hero of the fire in that he happened to be walking down Randolph St. at the time of the fire and the firemen had allowed him in to help. Bishop Fallows was also a former Brigadier General with the Union Army during the civil war and he later commented that in all of the carnage of the civil war he did not behold anything so terrible as what befell him that December 30th.
The aftermath of the fire was significant with the official death toll at 602 making it one of the worst theater disasters in history. For comparison the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed 17,450 buildings but only 250 to 300 people were killed.
The scene that met the first responders was unimaginable. Locked doors, iron-gated stairways, no on-site fire alarm, standing room only crowd, lack of firefighting equipment, grossly inadequate "fireproof curtain" and nailed down skylight vents all contributed to the mass of humanity piled at times 10 feet high next to exits that were not exits at all. Bodies were not just piled up where the individuals fell but twisted and mangled together as individuals fought to their last breath. It took every ounce of energy the firefighters had, and then some, to pry the bodies apart from each other in an attempt to locate possible survivors. One couple had grasped each other so tightly in death that they had to be carried out together. Most were burned beyond recognition with the exception of the children who were the first trampled and were found most times face down or covered by the bodies of their mothers in a futile last attempt at saving their children. Though a morbid thought the children's faces were mostly spared because of this and aided in later identification.
John R. Thompson's restaurant was just east and adjacent to the theater. At 3:00pm that day it was a restaurant. At 3:20pm is was a makeshift hospital to attend to the severely injured and dying. At 4:00pm it was a morgue and by 7:30pm it was a restaurant again except for the sweeping up of charred remains of human flesh, pieces of skull and human hair. John R. Thompson's young daughter Ruth only 7 years old was attending the theater and was thrown back into the theater twice by the panicking crowd. She escaped by running back into the fire, over the stage and through a rear stage exit into the alley. She appeared in the restaurant passing by the dead and dying without a scratch on her and asked her father how her grandparents were. She saw her grandfather weeping over the body of her grandmother but John Thompson considered himself the luckiest man alive!
Bushels full of women's purses and valuables were collected by the police and if you can believe it looters were actively attempting to steal the valuables of the victims before they had all been extracted from the burning death trap. Carts of every type were pressed into service as ambulances and hearses and victims were collected outside the theater, in a saloon annex across the street, taken to the women's emergency room at the Marshall Field's store and those that could walk or be dragged were taken to physician offices at the Masonic Temple.
Identification of all of the bodies took several days and to make matters worse there were actually individuals trying to claim bodies of individuals and misrepresenting the bodies as relatives in order to profit from false insurance claims. One actually went so far as having a body buried as a relative only to have the body exhumed and proven otherwise by the police. The body was identified by the actual relative because of the victim's "webbed toes".
The city of Chicago was again in the news for another fire and the owners and managers of the theater as well as city officials up to and including Mayor Carter Harrison were on the "Hot Seat" (no pun intended, honestly!)
By New Years day the Coroner’s Jury was hard at work and 12 members of the Theater company were under arrest for manslaughter. They were; William Carlton, stage manager, William Plunkett, assistant stage manager, Frank Polin, electrician, Frank Jandrow, carpenter, Max Mazzanovich, carpenter, Fred Pigeon (alias Nolan), carpenter, Edward Engle, stagehand, Thomas McQueen, stage hand, William Stack, actor, Samuel Bell, actor, Victor Bozart, actor, and Edward Wines, actor. Arrest Warrants for theater managers Will J. Davis and Harry J. Powers as well as City Inspector George Williams on the charge of manslaughter were sworn out by Arthur E. Hull of 244 Oakwood Boulevard. Mr. Hull had lost his wife, three children and a maid in the fire. The Warrants were served by Chicago Police on January 2nd.
The Coroner's Jury later determined that the following persons be held to a Grand Jury for criminal proceedings stemming from Gross Neglect to Neglect of Duty: Mayor Harrison, Building Commissioner George Williams, Building Inspector Edward Loughlin, Fire Marshal William H. Musham, Iroquois Fireman, William Sallers, Electric Light Operator, William McMullen, and Stage Carpenter, James Cummings
By far the greatest shame of the entire story is that fact that with all of the gross neglect, shoddy design and overall indifference to the safety of the theater patrons not a single person ever was successfully prosecuted for any wrong doing although the legal cases went on for almost four years.
The theater was rebuilt and re-opened as the "Vaudeville" theater and later the Colonial Theater until the Colonial shut its doors on May 17, 1924 and was demolished on May 26th to make way for a 21 floor Masonic Temple including a 5,000 seat auditorium which is now the Ford Center for the Performing Arts at 24 W. Randolph Street.
Of course with any tragedy of this nature there are stories associated with paranormal activity surrounding the site of the ill-fated "Iroquois". I have heard stories of people having a sense of doom or depression when walking through "Death Alley" behind the theater. I have personally walked down the alley and had experienced a "sad" or "melancholy" feeling but then again I had already known the story of the fire and probably felt more of a feeling of remorse or respect for the sheer number of lives cut so short during a normally festive holiday season.
I had recently spoke with Adam Selzer of Chicago Unbelievable and Dale Kacmarek of the Ghost Research Society briefly about the Iroquois shortly before a roundtable discussion of The Resurrection Mary Legend. Adam had said that during one visit many years ago to the theater when it was closed he recalled hearing the voice of a little girl giggling in the basement of the theater. I asked him if he knew if any parts of the old Iroquois remain and he believed that there is one basement wall remaining from the old building.
Although I have yet to contact the Theater, I plan on doing so for an upcoming book I am writing on haunted Chicago architecture.
In the meantime, I have located the name of one victim that was not originally included in the memorials surrounding the theater and plan on helping to add her name to the Iroquois memorial site. Her name is Emma Bartlett and she was 13 years old at the time of her death. Her mother and younger brother Arthur were also killed in the fire but were included. I currently live in Brookfield, IL and if you believe in coincidences, Emma lived in West Grossdale in 1903 which is now the Congress Park neighborhood of Brookfield less than a mile from where I live!
Friday, 27 January 2012 07:06 | 
Written by Ray Johnson | 
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