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End to Innocence: The Abduction and Murder of the Grimes Sisters

·1 hr 17 min·4 clips

Leonard Prescott thought two bodies under a bridge were mannequins before realizing something was wrong.

1. True Crime Brewery covers the 1957 abduction and murders of Barbara and Patricia Grimes in Chicago and Willow Springs, Illinois. 2. Hosts Jill and Dick narrate the case and explain their beer pairing with Goose Island’s Lolita, brewed in Chicago. 3. The episode asks how two sisters who went to see Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender disappeared, generated dozens of sightings, and still left the case unresolved. 4. Barbara Grimes was 15 and Patricia Grimes was 13, and both came from McKinley Park, a working-class Chicago neighborhood. 5. Joseph and Loretta Grimes had seven children, divorced in 1951, and lived on limited money that sometimes meant no heat or electricity. 6. Patricia was a seventh grader who liked a girlfriend party, while Barbara was a sophomore at Kelly High School and worked at Wolf Furniture House on Archer Avenue. 7. On December 28, 1956, the girls left home after dinner with $2.50, a bus-fare reminder, and permission to watch Love Me Tender twice. 8. Loretta sent Teresa and Joey to the bus stop around midnight, and police alerts went out after the sisters failed to return. 9. Chicago newspapers, St. Maurice Parish School, and Joseph Grimes’s truck-driving coworkers helped circulate flyers and a $1,000 church reward. 10. The episode details the girls’ clothing, including Patricia’s blue jeans and yellow sweater and Barbara’s gray tweed skirt and yellow blouse. 11. The hosts contrast the case with the 1955 murders of Bobby Peterson and the Schuessler brothers, another Chicago-area child-killing investigation. 12. That earlier case involved a bowling-alley trail, a later informant, and a 1990s identification of Kenneth Hansen. 13. The Grimes case produced many contradictory sightings, including buses, restaurants, hotels, a railroad conductor, and a call asking, “Is Sandra there?” 14. The episode notes that Loretta Grimes rejected the runaway theory because Barbara had given her a $20 paycheck and a $5 Christmas bonus. 15. Ann Landers received an unsigned letter that described the sisters being pushed into a car, but the tip went nowhere. 16. An anonymous ransom-demand scam sent Loretta to Milwaukee, and police later traced the letters to a mental patient in an Illinois hospital. 17. When the bodies were found, more than 150 police searched the area, but by then footprints, bystanders, and earlier handling had ruined the scene. 18. The autopsy section says three pathologists could not agree on the time or cause of death and ultimately could not rule out other explanations. 19. Jill and Dick use a conversational, barroom-style format with back-and-forth reactions, Chicago details, and frequent side comments. 20. Listeners who like midcentury true crime, forensic uncertainty, and Chicago history will get the most from it.

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