The snow was beginning to thaw on the outskirts of Chicago when a trucker spotted what he thought were two discarded mannequins on the side of a deserted road.
A closer inspection revealed he had discovered the frozen, naked bodies of Barbara and Patricia Grimes – two sisters, 15 and 12, who vanished three weeks earlier after attending the new Elvis film, Love Me Tender.
The girls’ disappearance – between Christmas and New Year in 1957 – sparked one of the largest missing persons investigations in US history.
Now, almost seven decades later, a former police officer believes he might finally have the answers to crack the horrifying unsolved case.
Raymond Johnson, a former detective with West Chicago PD, told the Daily Mail an overlooked suspect is the key and compelling links could hold the proof.
The last confirmed sighting of Barbara and Patricia came on December 28, 1956, at the Brighton Park Theatre after a friend spotted them waiting in line to buy popcorn during an intermission for the Elvis double-feature at around 9.30pm.
Numerous tipsters claimed to have seen the missing siblings in the days after. One woman claimed to have crossed paths with them at a bus station in Nashville; others believed the Elvis-mad teens had run off to Memphis to visit Graceland.
The King of Rock even issued a radio plea to the girls, urging them: ‘If you are good Presley fans, you’ll go home and ease your mother’s worries.’
But their mom, Loretta, knew something was gravely wrong. She repeatedly told the police and press her daughters would never have taken off without warning.
Barbara Grimes, 15 (left), and her sister Patricia Grimes, 12, vanished from Southwest Chicago in December 1957
Her instinct proved devastatingly correct. On January 22, the sisters were found in a thin layer of ice on a wooded embankment, their stiff, pale bodies most likely having been buried for some time beneath a blanket of snow that had recently melted.
Barbara was lying on her side, legs drawn towards her torso. She had three puncture wounds resembling those that might be inflicted by an ice pick evenly spaced in her chest, and possible blunt force trauma to the face and head.
Patricia was lying on her back, her body concealing Barbara’s head, with marks resembling bruises all over her face and body.
But the horrifying discovery would yield few answers. Conflicting autopsy reports, false confessions, and police infighting soon tied investigators into a knot they’re still working to unravel 68 years later.
However, after decades of dead ends, a few threads have begun to loosen – and Johnson believes he’s close to untying the truth.
The former cop began looking into the puzzling killings in 2010 while writing a book about the Windy City’s storied criminal history.
The thesis of Johnson’s investigation rests on Charles Melquist, an Army veteran and stone worker from Villa Park, who was convicted of murdering 15-year-old Bonnie Leigh Scott 18 months after Barbara and Patricia were killed and a few miles from where they were found.
Bonnie Leigh vanished from near her home in Addison, Illinois, in September 1958. Her nude and decapitated remains were discovered by a Boy Scout hiking in the Argonne Woods two months later. As with the Grimes girls, the body was found not far from the roadside.
The girls had gone to see Elvis in Love Me Tender. It would be their dozenth time watching the movie
In the Grimes case, investigators theorized the siblings had been murdered in an unknown location before being dumped near the incline of an embankment known as Devil’s Creek.
Three pathologists conducted autopsies but disagreed on almost everything, from the nature of the injuries, the presence or absence of sexual assault and even the estimated time of their deaths.
Their official cause of death was listed as secondary shock due to exposure to the elements, or hypothermia, but other forensic experts and law enforcement officials who scrutinized the findings believed there were signs of violence.
After offering a series of false leads to investigators on the Bonnie Leigh case, Melquist confessed to asphyxiating her with a satin pillow, stripping her, driving out to the Argonne Woods and then rolling the body over a guardrail before dragging it 15ft into a thicket before leaving.
He told police that he returned to the crime scene weeks later, overcome with ‘an urge’ to decapitate the teenager’s body with a hunting knife. Melquist, then 23, subsequently threw the head around 20 yards away and began slashing her torso.
Johnson suggested to the Daily Mail that the three marks present on Barbara’s chest could have been inflicted post-mortem, noting they were not very deep and evenly spaced in a straight line.
When police arrested Melquist, they found a three-pronged garden fork in the trunk of his car – a tool that Johnson believes might offer an explanation for the injuries.
Aside from the seeming similarities between the crime scenes and the manner in which the bodies were disposed of, Johnson said a particularly compelling clue tying the crimes together came in the form of an anonymous caller.
The Grimes family was taunted with fake ransom notes and hoax calls in the days and weeks after the girls vanished but there was one that always stood out to Loretta.
It came in May 1957 when a man identified himself as her daughters’ killer, saying: ‘I know something about your little girl that no one else knows, not even the police. The smallest girl’s toes were crossed at the feet.’
She recalled that he laughed and then hung up the phone.
Their mother Loretta Grimes received two chilling calls from an anonymous man which a retired detectives believes are tied to the killings
Charles Melquist, who was convicted of murdering 15-year-old Bonnie Lee Scott in 1958, is Raymond Johnson’s leading suspect. Melquist died in 2010
The detail of Patricia’s toes being crossed was not shared with the public and is something only the girls’ killer could have known, Johnson said.
Almost 18 months later, on the day that Bonnie Leigh’s body was found but before she had been publicly identified, Loretta received another anonymous call.
‘I’ve got away with another one,’ said the man on the other end of the phone. ‘I’ve committed another perfect crime… This is another one those cops won’t solve.’
He then laughed and hung up.
Loretta remained convinced until her death in 1989 that the same person was responsible for both of the calls. ‘I’ll never forget that voice,’ she told the media.
Johnson believes that Melquist was the caller – and the killer in both cases.
Melquist was eventually convicted of murdering Bonnie Leigh and sentenced to 99 years in prison but served only eight, which the retired detective puts down to his alleged ties to the Chicago mob.
He said Melquist was never rigorously questioned in connection with the Grimes murders, and went on to marry and have children after his release.
The Grimes sisters’ disappearance sparked one of the largest missing person investigations in US history
They were found discarded near the incline of an embankment known as Devil’s Creek
When Johnson began breathing down Melquist’s neck in 2010, the former detective approached the Cook County State Attorney’s Office about obtaining a DNA warrant to test his prime suspect against any evidence found at the crime scene.
The state attorney was interested in the idea, he said, but within 30 days of that request being made, Melquist passed away from unknown causes, aged 73.
In the years since, Johnson has uncovered other leads that he is convinced connect Melquist to the crime, including a notebook found in his apartment containing the names of girls from the Grimes family’s neighborhood.
He said Melquist also had a disturbing history of choking women unconscious so he could sexually assault them, some of whom were left with blotches over their faces from petechiae, or red spots caused when small capillaries burst during asphyxiation.
Johnson believes the unusual bruising found on the bodies of the Grimes sisters could have been caused by a similar method.
He doesn’t believe, however, that Melquist acted alone.
According to him, Melquist had ties to organized crime and was known to infiltrate groups of local teens, recruiting them as baby-faced drug dealers.
One of the prevailing theories in the case is that the girls might have accepted a ride with some boys from a neighborhood gang while making their way home from the movie theater.
A local man claimed to have seen Barbara talking to a carload of teenagers on the night she disappeared while Patricia stood watching nearby
Johnson believes the youths might have either willingly or unsuspectingly helped lure the Grimes sisters to their deaths, and thinks he has identified them.
If Johnson’s thinking is correct, at least two of the youths are still alive today. The Daily Mail is choosing not to name them at this time.
Robin Cox, whose mother, Marlene Pribl, lived near the Grimeses and was friends with one of the boys, told the Daily Mail he was a wannabe mobster with a reputation for torturing and killing animals.
While the Grimes girls were still missing, the youth reportedly told Marlene he had picked up Barbara and Patricia on the night they disappeared, threatened them with a knife, and ordered them to undress, before kicking them out of the car near Willow Springs as part of a prank.
According to Cox, Marlene, then 19, was told by the boy that when he and the others drove back around to pick the girls up, they were gone.
An anonymous caller told Loretta that Patricia’s toes were crossed when she was found dead, a detail that was never made public
Loretta Grimes is seen being comforted by another of her daughters. She maintained until her death that the mystery caller killed Barbara and Patricia
The last confirmed sighting of the girls was not long after they left the Brighton Theater on December 28, 1957
The youth then warned her that if she told anyone, he would ‘come and kill her and her whole family’. Terrified, she never said a word for decades.
Johnson is urging the Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) to investigate the surviving gang members before it’s too late.
One of them allegedly spoke with CBS in 2018, declining to comment and sharing only: ‘It’s all in the past. That’s all I can say.’
In a statement, CCSO declined to answer a series of questions posed by the Daily Mail about the status and direction of their inquiries
‘While we cannot comment on details of the investigation, the Grimes sisters’ case remains open and ongoing,’ said Matt Walberg, the office’s director of communications.
‘Despite significant challenges the case presents due to the passage of time and less sophisticated law enforcement practices common in the late 1950s, Sheriff’s Police detectives will continue to pursue information that may lead to identifying the individual or individuals responsible for their deaths.’
Johnson thinks the key to solving the case rests in exhuming the girls’ bodies, believing that the DNA of the killer might still be lingering beneath their fingernails.
Anyone with information about the case is encouraged to contact Sheriff’s Police detectives at 708-865-4896.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .