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Speaker 1: I don't know stories of things we simply don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways, the podcast. I'm Devin joined as usual by
Speaker 1: also known as Squinty Quincy McGhee over there. Yeah, oh sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm now going by squirrel. Oh, Squinty and squirrel. Just
Speaker 1: to case you're wondering, I'm I'm just messing with Devin
Speaker 1: by squinting, and it really hard suspiciously calling you squinty.
Speaker 1: You didn't give that away at all. Yeah, Today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about mystery, not cooking. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a mystery that was suggested in two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: by Hunter and then by literally every single one of
Speaker 1: you since then. So what was that very beginning all
Speaker 1: the time ago. Yeah, world, it's true and yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so we're going to talk about the disappearance and subsequent
Speaker 1: murder of the Grimes sisters this year, this year, this week.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can do it all year. I mean
Speaker 1: we are doing it this year. It is happening this year.
Speaker 1: Sorry to be a good episode, you guys, just getting
Speaker 1: ready for it. So if you don't know, quick overview
Speaker 1: is that on December nineteen fifty six, Barbara and Patricia Grimes,
Speaker 1: who are aged fifteen and thirteen, respectively, disappeared, and then
Speaker 1: they were found dead on January nineteen fifty seven in
Speaker 1: a shallow ditch on the side of the road near Chicago. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is two Chicago shows in a row for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually to Silas Jane episodes in a row in
Speaker 1: a row. Yeah, you know. Oh, we'll get those ratings up. Guys,
Speaker 1: got a pump it. Let's back up a little bit.
Speaker 1: Give a little contexts about Chicago. When Chicago founded, well,
Speaker 1: Chicago was founded in when Columbus sailed the ocean blow right,
Speaker 1: that's how that. Okay, No, for seriously, the Grime sisters
Speaker 1: lived with their mom, their older brother and sister, and
Speaker 1: their younger siblings. There were a lot of siblings, and frankly,
Speaker 1: I've never seen exactly how many kids were in this family,
Speaker 1: but they were one of there were two of many.
Speaker 1: There were at least five. I think there were at
Speaker 1: least five to Yeah, and they were you know, working
Speaker 1: class neighborhood called McKinley Park, which is kind of south
Speaker 1: and west of downtown Chicago. It's not a suburb, it's
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of Chicago. I get. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: take for granted that people understand how big cities work.
Speaker 1: But I us. It's possible that they don't. It's that,
Speaker 1: you know, most of them have kind of neighborhoods within,
Speaker 1: have their own names, and you can even just google
Speaker 1: like McKinley Park, Illinois and it comes up. I did
Speaker 1: it today. Yeah, and it's probably the address officially probably
Speaker 1: is Chicago. It is in Chicago. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: that going on right here. Yeah, solidly in Chicago. It's
Speaker 1: about halfway to Midway Airport on m I ninety. It's
Speaker 1: not on MY ninety, but in that sort of way
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with the Chicago area at all. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the girls who were predictably for the time into the
Speaker 1: King Mr Elvis Presley himself, Yeah and um. On the
Speaker 1: night of their disappearance, the girls were attending a double
Speaker 1: feature showing of the Elvis film Love Me Tender, And
Speaker 1: apparently who cares what the second film was, because it
Speaker 1: was Loved Me Tender. I think the second was the
Speaker 1: Elvis this film Loved Me to Death. I don't think so. No,
Speaker 1: it was a movie where Elvis played the serial killer.
Speaker 1: I can't remember now. I don't know. I'm not an
Speaker 1: aficionatto of Elvis films, and may surprise you to know,
Speaker 1: given that I was not a teenage girl in the fifties,
Speaker 1: which is weird. It is weird that I wasn't. It's true.
Speaker 1: This was actually their fifteenth viewing of this film, apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of times. You know, young people I've
Speaker 1: noticed have a much bigger tolerance for repetition. Yeah, better
Speaker 1: capacity typically, though you you observed that in younger people
Speaker 1: are in single digits of the age. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to watch Thomas the Train again kind of repetition,
Speaker 1: not go to the movie theater. Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the time, it's the equivalent. Baby. Well, I was going
Speaker 1: to say, it's you know, fifteen and thirteen is a
Speaker 1: time of certain sexual awakenings. And you know, when you've
Speaker 1: got Elvis in this love film, I can understand how
Speaker 1: maybe that would be and you do a lot, and
Speaker 1: maybe that was just a good way for them to
Speaker 1: get out of the house. That's exactly what I was
Speaker 1: going to say. So they I think they walk to
Speaker 1: the theater. Every report says they got to Nobody knows
Speaker 1: how they got to the theater, but they only had
Speaker 1: two dollars and fifteen cents on them. Although if you
Speaker 1: see on some web pages two dollars and yeah, either way,
Speaker 1: it's like about twenty three dollars adjusted for inflation today's money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously this is keeping in mind also that you know,
Speaker 1: the cost of film, even adjusted for inflation, has gone
Speaker 1: up quite dramatically. You know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I don't want to date myself too much, but movies
Speaker 1: in general, even first round ones, were not as exorbitantly expensive,
Speaker 1: even adjusted for you know, yeah, I personally blame Michael Bay. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a Star Wars actually Star Wars. Actually they
Speaker 1: actually bumped ticket prices for the original Star Wars and
Speaker 1: and and every movie after that was yes, what Yeah,
Speaker 1: so twenty three dollars was not nothing, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't a ton of money, especially for both of them.
Speaker 1: It was about enough for them to for their film. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of three dollars. So the two fifteen is
Speaker 1: enough for them to pay for their movie tickets, they're
Speaker 1: double feature tickets, get some popcorn for themselves, and then
Speaker 1: catch the bus home. Um, but probably not enough for
Speaker 1: them to have also taken the bus there. But maybe
Speaker 1: the movie started. It was like a seven o'clock start
Speaker 1: or something like that, wasn't it. It was a seven
Speaker 1: thirty start, and then there was the intermission at yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the then the double feature ended at like
Speaker 1: eleven eleven thirty ish, which is is late um night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think it probably was. It was, you know, December.
Speaker 1: They were probably on break. Yeah, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to imagine sitting through a double feature today. I did
Speaker 1: it all the time as a kid. I So the
Speaker 1: last time I saw double feature was on my sixth
Speaker 1: For my sixteenth birthday, my mom and I took a
Speaker 1: road trip and we were went to a drive in
Speaker 1: and we saw a double double feature of Finding Nemo
Speaker 1: and Pirates of Caribbean. So if that ages me, there
Speaker 1: you go dates me. Now, you know exactly how land
Speaker 1: because nobody knew until this moment exactly how old I was.
Speaker 1: I am super old. Yeah. Yeah, Okay, So they the
Speaker 1: girls did arrive safely at the movie theater, sure we
Speaker 1: know that for sure. They actually were seated in front
Speaker 1: of a friend, Dorothy and her younger sister. Dorothy reports
Speaker 1: the girls were enjoying the film. They got popcorn around
Speaker 1: at intermission time, you know, let's all go to the
Speaker 1: lobby to know that they were enjoying the film. Yes, suspiciously.
Speaker 1: All she could see was the back of their heads.
Speaker 1: I presumed they were enjoying it together, all of them.
Speaker 1: And then their mother, her name was Loretta, had been
Speaker 1: told by the girls, we're just gonna go see the one,
Speaker 1: the first movie, and then we'll come straight home. But she,
Speaker 1: being their mother, knew better and said they're gonna stay
Speaker 1: for the whole thing, So she was expecting them home
Speaker 1: around eleven. Girl. Also, I think you just get caught
Speaker 1: up in it, you know, you just, um, you think,
Speaker 1: oh my friends are here, it's upcorn, and you think
Speaker 1: my ask just doesn't quite hurt enough. Yes, it through
Speaker 1: another one. Yeah, but midnight rolled around, and um, the
Speaker 1: girls still weren't home, and so Loretta started to get
Speaker 1: worried and sent her two elder children to wait at
Speaker 1: the bus stop for the girls. And apparently three busses
Speaker 1: went past, none of them carrying the sisters. So at
Speaker 1: about two fifteen am, Luretta called the cops and reported
Speaker 1: the girls missing. From there, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: reported sightings, and we're just gonna go ahead and talk
Speaker 1: about all of them. Yeah, I'm not sure how credible.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are not very credible, but we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about all of them anyway. Well, what
Speaker 1: the hell? Yeah, why not? Yeah, got to fill this
Speaker 1: episode with Yeah, frankly, after this, well, let's tend to
Speaker 1: roll the credits. Just kid, I'm just kidding. There's a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about here. So that night, quote unquote
Speaker 1: numerous people. It's never or I've never seen how many
Speaker 1: people other than their friends that they sat in front of. Well,
Speaker 1: numerous people reported seeing them on a c T A bus.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, sorry, and I was still back in the
Speaker 1: theater in Chicago Transit Authority. Yep, heading east, which would
Speaker 1: have been the opposite. It would have been heading home
Speaker 1: for them, Yeah, kind of home. Yeah, so that's probably accurate. Yep.
Speaker 1: But they may or may not have gotten off that
Speaker 1: bus at Western Avenue at eleven o five pm, which
Speaker 1: was only about halfway to their house on the bus.
Speaker 1: Two teenage boys reported that they were driving in a
Speaker 1: neighborhood and saw the two girls at about eleven thirty
Speaker 1: heading east on thirty five Avenue in good spirits, jumping
Speaker 1: out of doorways at each other and giggling that which
Speaker 1: that would have been about two blocks from their house.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they that I'm I'm happy to accept
Speaker 1: that they almost made it home then almost made it home. However,
Speaker 1: an L train conductor said that he saw the girls
Speaker 1: get off a train at the glen View stop that night.
Speaker 1: Glen View is a suburb of Chicago to the north
Speaker 1: near Palatine, which, of course you might remember Palatine from
Speaker 1: a recent episode. And um, it's about twenty miles northeast
Speaker 1: of their home in McKinley Park. So that one I'm
Speaker 1: a little questioning there. I was gonna say, we should
Speaker 1: stop for just a quick second here because we're going
Speaker 1: to have a little bit of this going on, and
Speaker 1: just say, we've got two girls, fifteen and thirteen, their
Speaker 1: teenage girls. They're of average height, one's got short hair,
Speaker 1: one's got longer hair. They're blonde. Were they blonde? Light
Speaker 1: brown hair? It's always hard to tell because they're black
Speaker 1: and white photos. So I was never sure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they're, but they're you know, there's it's not as
Speaker 1: if they have any crazy distinguishing, you know, unique features
Speaker 1: about them. They look like most young teenage girls all
Speaker 1: the time exactly, which is why I think of all
Speaker 1: of these sidings were not necessarily which is why I
Speaker 1: wanted to point that out. I would agree with that.
Speaker 1: And they were kind of short. Barbara was the oldest.
Speaker 1: She was five ft one I heard, and Patricia was
Speaker 1: five ft three, even though she was two years younger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Barbara was tremendous. Yeah, no, I mean my height. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also the night of a security guard claimed that two
Speaker 1: girls asked him for directions. Well, I guess it was
Speaker 1: like early in the morning on the twenty nine, It
Speaker 1: was about two am. He said that the girls asked
Speaker 1: him for directions, and he was stationed at Central and
Speaker 1: Lawrence at the bus station there, which is about fifteen
Speaker 1: miles away from their home at McKinley Park. On the
Speaker 1: evening of December twenty nine, classmate of Patricia reported seeing
Speaker 1: Patricia and two unidentified girls, neither of whom wore Barbara
Speaker 1: walked past the diner that she was having dinner at.
Speaker 1: The diner was Ian McKinley Park, And UM, I don't
Speaker 1: really know what time that was. I presumed dinner ish time.
Speaker 1: That question. It's hard to say. By the way, she
Speaker 1: reports that immediately that evening, I believe so. Yeah, although
Speaker 1: I don't think she you know, turned to her parents
Speaker 1: or anything and said, look, I don't know if she
Speaker 1: push her parents or what, but she did report that
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. On December, at two days after the disappearance,
Speaker 1: at five forty am, the owner of a restaurant called
Speaker 1: the D n L claimed to have seen both girls
Speaker 1: with one of his dishwashers named Benny Bedwell. Reports are
Speaker 1: that Patricia was appeared to be drunk or sick. Um.
Speaker 1: She was so kind of messed up and disoriented that
Speaker 1: she wasn't able to walk without help. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: sick or drunk. She needs She was staggering and kind
Speaker 1: of needed help walking. A clerk at the Claremont Hotel
Speaker 1: claimed that the girls briefly stayed at his hotel. There's
Speaker 1: no dates associated with the stay, but I presume it
Speaker 1: was before the New Year. And I also wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find the location of the Claremont Hotel. As far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, the Claremont Hotel is like a
Speaker 1: chain today today, and the only one that comes up
Speaker 1: when you Google is in California, So I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it wasn't the one in California, but I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find any historic data about where it was. It's
Speaker 1: a little weird. You know, your clerk at a hotel
Speaker 1: and these two young girls come up and want to
Speaker 1: want a room. It's well funny you should say that,
Speaker 1: because we'll talk about that in a second. But I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to do these chronologically, so pause on that
Speaker 1: comment for a second. On January one, there were reports
Speaker 1: that the girls were on a C T A train
Speaker 1: on Demon Avenue. Demon runs north south pretty much the
Speaker 1: whole length of Chicago, so I'm I'm not totally sure
Speaker 1: where where hand me a dart. On January second, a
Speaker 1: hotel clerk at the Unity Hotel said he refused two
Speaker 1: girls notching their description a room because they were too young.
Speaker 1: And this hotel clerk is reported picked the girls out
Speaker 1: of a photo, like identified them from a photo and said,
Speaker 1: those are the two girls that I denied to. Of course,
Speaker 1: their photos had already been put published in the paper. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. On January three, three employees say the girls
Speaker 1: were in their department store listening to Elvis albums. It
Speaker 1: was a Krusky department store, which are now called kmarts.
Speaker 1: You know, actually, Untell, you research the story for us.
Speaker 1: I did not know that kmart had evolved. I didn't either.
Speaker 1: I didn't either, And Steve found the location of that.
Speaker 1: I in my research wasn't able to find. The closest
Speaker 1: one I could find was in Michigan. But that is wrong.
Speaker 1: So it's do you remember what the it's downtown, downtown,
Speaker 1: downtown Chicago. Yeah, it's about a mile and half northeast
Speaker 1: of where the south and the north legs of the
Speaker 1: Chicago River meet, makes sense, So it's kind of in
Speaker 1: that city city center area. Yeah, downtown, Yeah. Yeah. There
Speaker 1: was a report in Nashville of the girls from a
Speaker 1: woman who said that she met them at a bus
Speaker 1: station and went with them to a state employment agency
Speaker 1: as they were looking for work. She recalled them having
Speaker 1: used the name Grimes and apparently was able to identify
Speaker 1: them from their photos. But again, the photos we're circulating
Speaker 1: nationwide at this point, but nobody at the state employee
Speaker 1: agency recalled meeting them. Apparently, No, it's just this one woman.
Speaker 1: And then on January fourteen, Patricia's friend Sandra's parents got
Speaker 1: to phone calls around midnight. I'm not sure if it
Speaker 1: was the midnight the four teen, their midnight, I don't
Speaker 1: know which it does not that it really matters that much.
Speaker 1: But the first call was just silence, and then the
Speaker 1: second one was placed about fifteen minutes later with a
Speaker 1: quote frightened and depressed unquote voice on the other end
Speaker 1: asking is that you Sandra? Is Sandra there? But the
Speaker 1: caller hung up before Sandra's mother could get Sandra. Um.
Speaker 1: But the mom is pretty sure that it was Patricia calling. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's all the sightings. So I suspect there's a
Speaker 1: lot of power of suggestion in a lot of these settings.
Speaker 1: I would say that's true. Yeah, and the vast majority
Speaker 1: of them, probably, if not all of them. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not unusual, No, especially when like a nationwide hunt is
Speaker 1: one on January twenty second, nineteen fifty seven, so almost
Speaker 1: a month after the girls did Yeah, almost a month. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. Okay. Uh. Leonard Prescott, who was a local
Speaker 1: construction worker guy, was driving along German Church Road, which
Speaker 1: is like two hundred feet away from being in Willow Springs, Illinois.
Speaker 1: And Willow Springs is a small village that's like west
Speaker 1: of Chicago, which I'm sure as part of Chicago today.
Speaker 1: It's not, actually, it's still not. No, it's still a village,
Speaker 1: and it's about twenty miles southwest of McKinley Park down
Speaker 1: or Interstate fifty five. I don't remember what they call
Speaker 1: it in Chicago. We call it, we would call it.
Speaker 1: If Leonard is driving home and spots some naked bodies
Speaker 1: on the side of the road behind the guardrail, he didn't.
Speaker 1: He actually said he thought they were mannequins. At yeah,
Speaker 1: he just saw some like naked like whatever's there human forms,
Speaker 1: And so he kept driving home, and the more he
Speaker 1: thought about it, the more he thought, I should go No,
Speaker 1: I I had better go back and look. So he
Speaker 1: collected his wife, Marie and from home. She wasn't a
Speaker 1: collector's item, no, no, no, ha ha No. He got
Speaker 1: her from home and they both got in the car
Speaker 1: and drove back to where he thought he had seen
Speaker 1: these mannequins. And then somebody had Dniel switcheroo and they
Speaker 1: weren't mannequins. They weren't mannequins anymore. Um No, it was
Speaker 1: their naked bodies. And actually apparently the site of it
Speaker 1: was so horrific to Marie that she fainted on site.
Speaker 1: So they, of course, being good human beings, called the authorities.
Speaker 1: Leonard actually was very wise to do what he did
Speaker 1: by not just stopping. If he if I'm driving along
Speaker 1: and I'm near my home and I think I see
Speaker 1: a couple of naked bodies on the side of the road,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get somebody to find them with so
Speaker 1: that I am not spotted being The person next to said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially because you know these are the pre cell phone days,
Speaker 1: so then you have to like leave to call somebody.
Speaker 1: So if you're spotted standing there and then you leave,
Speaker 1: even if you're going to call the authority, that is
Speaker 1: going to look probably not great. Right, Well, it looks
Speaker 1: a little hanky, But then that's why you don't doddle
Speaker 1: you get that phone call. Yeah. Yeah, So both girls
Speaker 1: were naked and dead. That probably goes without saying. Barbara
Speaker 1: was laid over on her left side with her legs
Speaker 1: slightly drawn up to her body, and Patricia was laying
Speaker 1: on her back covering Barbara's head kind of laying on
Speaker 1: to basically her body was partially on top of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was deemed really likely that they had just
Speaker 1: been dumped there from a passing car. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: just dump there's a bit there's a rail and it
Speaker 1: slopes down kind of it does look that. I'm sure
Speaker 1: the car stopped, but yeah, they were pretty unceremony ceremonious
Speaker 1: about it. It's one of those metal guard rails, you know,
Speaker 1: the ones. It's got two humps in it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's there's the photograph. There's a photograph of it out
Speaker 1: of the web, although it's extremely low res. But you
Speaker 1: can't see it if you really wanted to. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't really need to. We've already described it. We have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know the Wikipedia article at the bottom, you
Speaker 1: know that always says like suggested posts, and one of
Speaker 1: them is murders and one of them is dump jobs,
Speaker 1: which is the thing app like like the accepted nomenclaitcher
Speaker 1: for this, So there you go. Experts disagree heavily on
Speaker 1: the time of death for the Grime sisters. The experienced
Speaker 1: pathologists who performed the initial autopsy said that, due to
Speaker 1: the contents of their stomachs and the likely portions of
Speaker 1: their last known meals, they likely died within twenty four
Speaker 1: hours of their disappearance um but even more likely within
Speaker 1: five hours of leaving the theater, so they would have
Speaker 1: died late December or early December nine. Sounds about right,
Speaker 1: unless unless they're their kidnappers, like fed them the exact
Speaker 1: same you know, which was some eggs, are not egg
Speaker 1: some potato dish and I can't remember what it was now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just some and then they had popcorn, and
Speaker 1: then I think they had a chocolate chip cookie and
Speaker 1: they had popcorn, and yeah, I mean it's not something
Speaker 1: that would have been terrible. I mean, it's not as
Speaker 1: though they had dinner, you know, right then it would
Speaker 1: have been pretty well digested stuff in their stomach or
Speaker 1: their inners, and yeah. Um. But at the time, the
Speaker 1: chief investigator to the coroner's office, whose name was Harry
Speaker 1: gloss Uh, he disagreed adamantly. He was sighting the bodies
Speaker 1: and they were found with a thin layer of ice
Speaker 1: on them, and he argued that the girls would have
Speaker 1: had to have been alive until at least the seventh
Speaker 1: of January, given that only after the seventh there was
Speaker 1: enough snowfall to react with any latent body temperature to
Speaker 1: melt the snow to refreeze into a little sheet of
Speaker 1: ice on their bodies. I kind of questioned his analysis,
Speaker 1: but I actually think that there might be a little
Speaker 1: bit logic to it, and he might have an interesting angle.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you want to talk about
Speaker 1: this now or if this is going to come up
Speaker 1: in theories at all. You always ask that question, like
Speaker 1: I know what you are going to talk about. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can talk about it. I'll just mentioned briefly before
Speaker 1: we talk about it that there also wasn't sufficient snowfall
Speaker 1: or other ring to hide the bodies until after the
Speaker 1: seventh not that that means that they had to have
Speaker 1: died there, except for that maybe because their official cause
Speaker 1: of death was secondary shocked due to exposure. So you know,
Speaker 1: the theory is that they died from exposure after being
Speaker 1: dumped there, and that you know, glosses theory is like, no,
Speaker 1: there would have been no way that nobody saw these
Speaker 1: bodies for a month if they were laying here, and
Speaker 1: also that ice wouldn't have formed on them. So so
Speaker 1: the only the only thing I'm going to say is
Speaker 1: that he makes the assumption that the ice has to
Speaker 1: form because of latent body heat. It is possible that
Speaker 1: the girls died of some of exposure somewhere and some
Speaker 1: creep oh kept him in his basement or something, and
Speaker 1: then well just somewhere. But then they're they're not they're
Speaker 1: not frozen, So they're in his car, they're kind of
Speaker 1: that room temperature, and then when he dumps him outside
Speaker 1: at that point, they're going to have some residual heat
Speaker 1: from the environment they were in prior to being deposited
Speaker 1: over the side of the guard rail. That's the only
Speaker 1: thing is that it's like he just he said they
Speaker 1: had to be alive because of but he might have
Speaker 1: hit on something. He might have just been looking at
Speaker 1: it in the wrong way. Well, there is the reason
Speaker 1: I don't buy that question is that there wasn't actually
Speaker 1: a lot of any decomposition to speak of. So if
Speaker 1: they've been kept around a room temperature for that length
Speaker 1: of time they would have been in, the bodies would
Speaker 1: have been in much much worse shape than they were in,
Speaker 1: which is why I kind of support the theory that
Speaker 1: they were murdered sometimes like right after they disappeared and
Speaker 1: just kept in a deep prieze somewhere like a meat
Speaker 1: locker or something, and then eventually taken out and dumps,
Speaker 1: you know, and probably probably waiting for the first snow
Speaker 1: and then and just saying, hey, this would be an
Speaker 1: opportunity time to dump the bodies because they'd be covered
Speaker 1: with snow for a while. Yeah, but I do have
Speaker 1: that I do agree with Gloss that it's a little
Speaker 1: weird they words. But to Joe's point of somebody keeping
Speaker 1: them in the deep freeze, the bodies were so frozen
Speaker 1: that they had to be taken to the Emmys and
Speaker 1: let's sit around for a while the frost. No, no,
Speaker 1: I don't agree with that. At least a day, I
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, it is just interesting that there was
Speaker 1: that thin layer of ice that formed on their skin.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, for anybody who's thinking this, because
Speaker 1: my first reaction was like, well, yeah, if they were
Speaker 1: kept in a freeze, of course there would be ice
Speaker 1: on their bodies. No, no, yes, there would be ice
Speaker 1: on it. But the ice crystal is not an ice sheet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the ice sheet could have only formed in their
Speaker 1: current positions. And if they were just sumariously dumped, you know,
Speaker 1: they had been transported and dumped somewhere, so to that.
Speaker 1: But same time, I mean, you know, I mean we
Speaker 1: have around here we get a little snow and then
Speaker 1: it thaws a little bit and it freezes again, and
Speaker 1: then we'll get that are all the time around here
Speaker 1: freezing about yeah about everywhere? Yeah yeah, yeah, so but
Speaker 1: I still think, yeah, they probably died shortly after they
Speaker 1: were kidnapped and then and as to the cause of death,
Speaker 1: I read one analysis by a guy who claims to
Speaker 1: have been working on the case is a cold case
Speaker 1: for well, I said that one of the things you
Speaker 1: don't hear about is that there was actually bruising on
Speaker 1: both of their cheeks. There was, which is consistent with
Speaker 1: somebody put a clamp in a hand over their faces
Speaker 1: and smothering them to death. Yeah, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of bruising on their bodies, but apparently no obvious fatal wounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, this is just a little bruising on their cheeks,
Speaker 1: which would be consistent with just somebody forcefully holding his
Speaker 1: hand over their face. Yeah, which is totally possible. Barbara's
Speaker 1: body had three puncture wounds in like her chest area
Speaker 1: that were likely from an ice pick, which I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why we're not classifying that as obvious fatal wounds,
Speaker 1: but hey, I'm not a corner so okay. But the
Speaker 1: girls of note, the girls didn't have anything to indicate
Speaker 1: intoxication of any time, including poisoning. The bodies, like I said,
Speaker 1: had some bruising, and they did have rodent bites. It's
Speaker 1: not clear when the rodent bites happened, though most people
Speaker 1: think it probably happened in the time that they were dumped. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it was slight, it was slightly wooded, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna have rats and raccoons and all those little critters
Speaker 1: who were going for the soft bits first. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they did kind of go I was gonna say they
Speaker 1: went for the faces first. And I will also say
Speaker 1: that while neither of the girls reportedly had signs of rape,
Speaker 1: at least Barbara likely had sex around the time of
Speaker 1: her death. Yeah, apparently that was. There was no evidence
Speaker 1: of any forcible rape and either want of them. And
Speaker 1: Barbara did have sperm in her body, so that could
Speaker 1: just meet she had sex with her boyfriend a few
Speaker 1: days before. It's hard to say, yeah, it could have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, yep. And you were thinking necrophilia there for
Speaker 1: a second, weren't you. I was just trying to do
Speaker 1: the math of like how long duced that they can
Speaker 1: live as long as like five days in a woman's body.
Speaker 1: But that's probably that's but I also don't know, But
Speaker 1: I also don't know how, like how you would know
Speaker 1: necessarily how old I mean she died, especially at that time,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, the dating of it, and if she's
Speaker 1: been dumped and sitting there for twenty some days, I
Speaker 1: mean that, especially in the fifties, it becomes very hard
Speaker 1: to get very exact of Oh well, this is was
Speaker 1: obviously two days old before. Yeah, it would be almost impossible.
Speaker 1: I think that they found some, but god knows when
Speaker 1: it got there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In May of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, So five months after their bodies were found,
Speaker 1: Loretta got a call from a man who said that
Speaker 1: he knew who had killed her daughters and that he
Speaker 1: had helped undress them. The caller also told Loretta something
Speaker 1: that she found very startling. Quote, I know something about
Speaker 1: your little girl that no one else knows but you,
Speaker 1: not even the police. That's never been in the papers.
Speaker 1: The smallest girls toes were crossed on both her feet.
Speaker 1: Barbara was the smallest girl, and apparently, yes, her toes
Speaker 1: were crossed on both her It was a deformity, and
Speaker 1: everybody agrees that was not something that anybody other than
Speaker 1: the killer or you know, anybody who knew her personally,
Speaker 1: but like what yeah, but like what a seriously deranged troll,
Speaker 1: Like that's a troll. Yeah, but people like there are
Speaker 1: tons of people like that, and this she got multiple
Speaker 1: callers calling her and taunting her for quite a while.
Speaker 1: It was it wasn't she you know, you hear the
Speaker 1: stuff of I recognized his voice, but there was From
Speaker 1: what I've read in the old newspapers, she can at
Speaker 1: least three distinct weirdos calling her and saying god awful stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this one did stand out because it, I mean,
Speaker 1: this person clearly knew something about her daughter that not
Speaker 1: a lot of people knew. I mean, like realistically, I
Speaker 1: remember in my gym classes, like I couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: if any of my girls that I went to gym
Speaker 1: class with had like weird toes like you're not it's
Speaker 1: one of those. It's one of those deleos. And we
Speaker 1: all know this. We've been to high school or gym class.
Speaker 1: You could go your entire time and nobody would ever notice.
Speaker 1: But if one jerk does notice and they pointed out everybody,
Speaker 1: and everybody's going to be like looking at your toes
Speaker 1: from that on. Yeah, but it does sound like I mean,
Speaker 1: I think this was widely reported, right that, like no
Speaker 1: one knew this, so that was why. And I try,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe I believe the best in people, but
Speaker 1: I believe that if everybody in school knew that she
Speaker 1: had cross toes, at least one of the friends would
Speaker 1: have comported and said no, no, no, everybody in our
Speaker 1: high school knew, like everybody knew about that. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily just say I mean I would if I if
Speaker 1: somebody said and only three people knew about this thing,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, we all knew about it,
Speaker 1: I would tell that person just to like change the scenario.
Speaker 1: Though it's entirely possible, as at our our troll caller
Speaker 1: worked for the emmy's office or worked at the funeral home,
Speaker 1: or a friend of a friend of a friend forgot,
Speaker 1: you know, knew somebody who got drunk and and let's
Speaker 1: slip something that worked in one of those places. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are some very simple, not directly involved ways, and
Speaker 1: not just the high school theory, that that information could
Speaker 1: have slowly seeped out and somebody grabbed it and was
Speaker 1: such a guess, but it's like even weirder to me that,
Speaker 1: like an Emmy would be like, oh yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that double murder case that we found. You know what
Speaker 1: was weird about that that girl had cross toes? You know,
Speaker 1: like that's weird to me too. People people sit around
Speaker 1: and talk about their work and they talk about their case,
Speaker 1: and this is the case. The thing that nobody ever
Speaker 1: talked about was. I mean, it happens. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not supposed to happen, but people are human, and details
Speaker 1: slip that a lot of that stuff gets circulated more
Speaker 1: widely than you think. I mean, her doctor was probably
Speaker 1: where the condition, and who knows, a night janitor might
Speaker 1: have rooted around the people's medical files, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, God knows. Yeah, that's true, especially if they're
Speaker 1: the kind of person to call a woman who just
Speaker 1: had two of her daughters murdered. They're probably not, you know,
Speaker 1: worried about. Yeah, but I do think I think it
Speaker 1: could have been or his accomplice or somebody who just knew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't even maybe he wasn't even there. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that that one call is pretty weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about why that call is weird in
Speaker 1: a little bit. Okay, when we get to theorious crush
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Speaker 1: We won't tell, and we're back. Now, let's talk about theory. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of theories in this one well kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, and one thing, one thing that I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say right off the bat, and
Speaker 1: that's the thing that has bothered me about this case
Speaker 1: and probably why I didn't really want to do it
Speaker 1: for a while, is that there's a lot of theories
Speaker 1: about like who's the murderer and when were they murdered,
Speaker 1: but never like why or what happened to them or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Especially yeah, and especially since it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's likely they were within two blocks of their
Speaker 1: home when they got abducted, Nobody ever talks about was
Speaker 1: it you know, by did they know them? Did they
Speaker 1: willingly go with this person? You would think so too.
Speaker 1: But I'm just gonna go ahead and like start off
Speaker 1: by saying that frustrates me more than anything on this case,
Speaker 1: that there's no nobody seems to care about that. They
Speaker 1: just seemed to care about who did it. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna talking about the first theory, um, And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna I'm just gonna toss it in here because you'll
Speaker 1: see it everywhere. Obviously it's a bad theory, but it
Speaker 1: was the prevailing theory until January, um, and that was
Speaker 1: that the girls had just run away. You remember there
Speaker 1: was that one sighting quote unquote sighting in Nashville in
Speaker 1: the record store No Nashville. Uh yeah, So there was
Speaker 1: a very popular theory at the time that the girls
Speaker 1: had actually run away to just go either live with
Speaker 1: Elvis or like him or emulate his lifestyle. So they
Speaker 1: had reportedly run off to Tennessee to live like Elvis
Speaker 1: when he got bored with him and murdered him. Maybe, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good theory, Joe. I like that theory. It's not
Speaker 1: out a good theory. Um. So I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: what the people thought the motive was but apparently that
Speaker 1: was a big theory. It was such a big theory,
Speaker 1: in fact, that Graceland at the time released a statement
Speaker 1: on the nineteenth of January unfortunate timing that says, if
Speaker 1: you are good Presley fans, you'll go home and ease
Speaker 1: your mother's worries. I had heard even that, and of
Speaker 1: course this is again time goes by and things get
Speaker 1: twisted up. I heard Elvis himself one on the radio
Speaker 1: and actually pled with the girls to go home. I've
Speaker 1: not seen that. I suspect that's not true, but maybe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say about that. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: like Joe's idea that the king did ye. Those girls
Speaker 1: did not look like small pills, so I don't know
Speaker 1: why he would have done that. Okay, so next theory
Speaker 1: is murder. Yeah, well maybe they ran away, but obviously
Speaker 1: something foiled their plans and murdered them instead. Yeah, something,
Speaker 1: something or someone someone. We're going to go in my
Speaker 1: estimation least likely to most likely it is how I
Speaker 1: have arranged these Yeah, and again we don't know they
Speaker 1: were kidnapped to be raped, or just somebody just wanted
Speaker 1: to kill people. For Yeah, yeah, so we'll we'll address
Speaker 1: that a little bit as we go through this. My
Speaker 1: I think least likely, Yeah, Walter Krantz, you don't think
Speaker 1: Elvis is at least likely? We just did him, didn't we. Ha.
Speaker 1: Krantz was a fifty three year old man who called
Speaker 1: the police on January fift to report that he had
Speaker 1: a dream that the bodies of the girls were in
Speaker 1: the Santa Fe Park, which was about a mile and
Speaker 1: a half from where they were actually found. And also
Speaker 1: they were discovered like a week later, so you know,
Speaker 1: he called them a week before and said the girls
Speaker 1: are here, and they found them a mile and a
Speaker 1: half away a week later. So the police thought, uh,
Speaker 1: this is suspicious. But Krantz told the police that he
Speaker 1: should listen to them because psychic powers ran in his family.
Speaker 1: There you go. The police, apparently, like really seriously did
Speaker 1: interrogate him a number of times. Well, hell yeah, I
Speaker 1: was really psychic. He should have seen that. Should have
Speaker 1: seen it coming. I'm not psyching, and I would have
Speaker 1: seen it. Yeah, yeah, I was. Even if I had
Speaker 1: had that dream, I would have kept my mouth shut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, he was just trying to be helpful. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but actually it's it's a it's a known fact though
Speaker 1: that actually killers do sometimes, actually quite often try to
Speaker 1: insert themselves in investigation. Yeah, it's almost like Joe is
Speaker 1: trying to insert himself in the narrative of killers inserting
Speaker 1: themselves into stories. Exactly. I'm always trying to just horn
Speaker 1: in on your narrative here. I've actually seen him in
Speaker 1: the bookstore writing his name into the text on the stories,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I'm actually trying to assert my body right
Speaker 1: into the bookshelves. It does. Yeah, by the way, just
Speaker 1: so you don't get the wrong idea, we're talking like
Speaker 1: head first, so you know, the police interrogated him and
Speaker 1: will ultimately decide. But now he's just got he's just
Speaker 1: comes from a family of psychics. He just knew, so
Speaker 1: he just happened to guess location and call them and
Speaker 1: he wasn't involved at all. So I agree with them,
Speaker 1: actually shut and actually he might have been right, and
Speaker 1: maybe the bodies were down there, and maybe the groundskeepers
Speaker 1: there didn't want to deal with it and they moved bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. Next is Silas Jane remember him, good old side,
Speaker 1: Remember Silent? I talked about silence New context of the
Speaker 1: Indiana dude. Yeah, disappearances literally three weeks ago. Yeah, talked
Speaker 1: about Silence Jane. He's not really good suspect, unfortunately for
Speaker 1: this one. And I'm honestly not even really sure how
Speaker 1: he's connected to the case other than being kind of
Speaker 1: a hugely disgusting human pile of trash. It was very subtle,
Speaker 1: thank you, Yeah, um, sorry, Silence, if you're listening, I
Speaker 1: guess I don't know what you want for me, Steve.
Speaker 1: It's usually it's kind of through this really tenuous connection
Speaker 1: with Kenneth Hansen, um who The connection to Silas Jane
Speaker 1: and Kenneth Hansen is not tenuous, but the connection with
Speaker 1: Hansen in this case is tenuous, and that Hanson isn't
Speaker 1: even named as a suspect. It's just Silas Jane. But
Speaker 1: Hanson was a pedophile and they were both connected to
Speaker 1: the Peterson slush shirt case. We went through this pronunciation
Speaker 1: conundrum before, and I don't think even Silence Jane actually
Speaker 1: had much to do with those murders. Hands well know
Speaker 1: that the murders supposedly took place at his stable, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't there when that right, And I think that
Speaker 1: what people are saying is that it could be a
Speaker 1: similar situation because I remember something about you know, approaching
Speaker 1: the girls to see horses. Is what is how people
Speaker 1: equate this, except that typically for a guy like Hansen,
Speaker 1: there's there's predilection towards young boys or young girls. So
Speaker 1: it's weird that he would be literally really playing both
Speaker 1: sides of the Yes, that's the weird part about him.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was him, although it's it's a
Speaker 1: funny story about it though. It's like, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: comes to here and says, hey, I'm murdered three young
Speaker 1: boys and you on your property, and silence Jane is
Speaker 1: says saying okay, and Rady a watch of the police.
Speaker 1: He just says, okay, get rid of the bodies. That
Speaker 1: he burned his stable down. You have to cover any evidence.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's there's a true friend. It doesn't rat
Speaker 1: you out. Yeah, well, I was gonna say silence. Jane
Speaker 1: had a lot to hide in his life, so this
Speaker 1: it wasn't, you know, burning down his stable was kind
Speaker 1: of like, oh great, I'll get rid of all the
Speaker 1: other evidence. Yeah, I guess some insurance money's no problem. Perfect.
Speaker 1: The other reason I don't like Kenneth Hanson as a
Speaker 1: suspect is his m O was to approach like usually
Speaker 1: young men, young boys, not even men. And we're talking
Speaker 1: like and talking about like in the context, hey do
Speaker 1: you want to go see some beautiful thoroughbred racehorses? Or hey,
Speaker 1: would you like some employment? Whatever? Those are usually his
Speaker 1: his things. So approaching the girls at eleven o'clock on
Speaker 1: a winter night and say you want to job? I mean, what,
Speaker 1: what the hell? That's not the I agree it's it's
Speaker 1: not a good theory. So let's move on, um to
Speaker 1: Benny Bedwell. Yes, it sounds familiar, right. We were talking
Speaker 1: about fightings. Yea. Yeah. He was the dishwasher that was
Speaker 1: reportedly seen with the girls a few days after their disappearance.
Speaker 1: You know when um, when Patricia was just so drunk
Speaker 1: she couldn't walk. Yeah. Yeah. Benny's real name was Edward
Speaker 1: Lee Bedwell. He was just called Benny Um and he
Speaker 1: was twenty one years old at the time of the disappearance.
Speaker 1: He was reportedly illiterate or even maybe borderline mentally retarded,
Speaker 1: and he was a drifter from Tennessee who apparently slightly
Speaker 1: resembled Elvis. I don't see the resemblance. But I do
Speaker 1: see he was attractive. He was an attractive young man,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he looks like the King. He
Speaker 1: looked like the King in the way that like most
Speaker 1: dudes from that age look kind of like the King. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all wore their hair and the clothes and kind
Speaker 1: of had the affected face, you know, and the and
Speaker 1: they died, they all had black hair. You know. By
Speaker 1: the way, is it just me or does Elvis half
Speaker 1: the time looked like he had just had botox? You
Speaker 1: ever not said his face is always rather slack in
Speaker 1: the early years of home kind of kind of mobile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of botox. I was gonna say, it's almost
Speaker 1: like he did a lot of drugs or something that could.
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen that old Willie Nelson. He always
Speaker 1: looked like a robot to me. I saw him on
Speaker 1: TV show second and I thought, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: he's not real. He's not put a mannequin. There as
Speaker 1: the only the only part of this that's moving at all.
Speaker 1: It's just his lips there are just like, well, there's
Speaker 1: the hand that's got the joint back and forth, and
Speaker 1: that is definitely not so Benny, Oh yeah, back to
Speaker 1: my sorry. The theory goes that the sisters were with
Speaker 1: Benny and another man on the seventh and then after
Speaker 1: January January, after seven days of drinking and feeding the
Speaker 1: girl's hot dogs. That's a quote, a direct quote of
Speaker 1: what the police alleged, um Benny did, and then they
Speaker 1: quote beat the girls to death unquote after the girls
Speaker 1: refused further sexual advances, and then dumped their bodies on
Speaker 1: the seventh. They know, they were drinking and having a
Speaker 1: good time partying with the girls for seven days, and
Speaker 1: then after the girls were like, oh wait, we don't
Speaker 1: want to do this anymore, they got mad and beat
Speaker 1: them to death and then dumped their bodies. There are
Speaker 1: a number of problems with this theory. First off, the
Speaker 1: police did manage to get as signed confession from Benny
Speaker 1: that said, yes, this is exactly what happened. I fed
Speaker 1: them hot dogs and everything, but he was, as previously mentioned,
Speaker 1: illiterate and claims he was coerced, which I think is
Speaker 1: highly likely. He was very stand at the time. Oh yeah, yeah. Second,
Speaker 1: there was like no evidence of the girls being beaten
Speaker 1: to death. Um They're autopsies provided no evidence that they'd
Speaker 1: have hot dogs or even alcohol. And third, Benny had
Speaker 1: actually been clocked into work and like seen at work,
Speaker 1: Uh not dishwashing, but another job that he was working.
Speaker 1: Um when the girls were likely abducted. Gloss, You remember
Speaker 1: Harry Gloss. Yeah, well, he was in a medical examiner.
Speaker 1: He was an investigator for the medical examiner. He was
Speaker 1: sure it was Benny. Um. And he insisted that there
Speaker 1: had been evidence of extreme sexual violence and abuse as
Speaker 1: well as intoxication or as well as intoxicins so drugs
Speaker 1: and alcohol, both in both Barbara and Patricia's systems, and
Speaker 1: that that that evidence was being withheld for their mother's
Speaker 1: well being or benefit or something like that could have
Speaker 1: been with hell, just because the police like to withhold
Speaker 1: certain bits of evidence to just Yeah, but I don't
Speaker 1: think to the detriment of the narrative of you know,
Speaker 1: if they have if they have a suspect and custody
Speaker 1: and his story, his story matches, they're not going to
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, that didn't happen. We're not saying
Speaker 1: this because we're protecting the family's honor. Yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: going to do that. Yeah, it was actually um close.
Speaker 1: They said, Okay, you know you're lying to retract your story.
Speaker 1: You're dragging this innocent man's name through the mud, and
Speaker 1: Close said no, I'm not going to, and so they
Speaker 1: fired him. Yeah, and I agree. I don't think Benny
Speaker 1: did it. I think he was an easy card scapegoat. Um.
Speaker 1: I think he was just a guy who happened to
Speaker 1: be the unfortunate landing block of some people. Well they,
Speaker 1: I'm sure police who cleaned up their act a lot
Speaker 1: since those days, at least hopefully so. But that that
Speaker 1: kind of thing of like, you know, just badgering somebody
Speaker 1: until he finally breaks down and agrees to sign something,
Speaker 1: and they have sneaky ways of doing that, like and
Speaker 1: I've heard all kinds of stories about well, all right,
Speaker 1: so we're going to write out a statement of what
Speaker 1: you said here. This is not a confession. It's just
Speaker 1: a statement, so you need to sign it. And the
Speaker 1: course of him being illiterate, like you say, well, and
Speaker 1: they could have literally they could have said, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is just um, this is just a receipt for your stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean like if he was so illiterate
Speaker 1: that he literally didn't you know, it was just like
Speaker 1: scribbles on a page. And I don't know how illiterate
Speaker 1: he was. You know, there's definitely a spectrum of illiteracy.
Speaker 1: But literally he could have been looking at something. They
Speaker 1: could have told him it was different, and he just said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll sign it. It's also a known thing that people
Speaker 1: will admit to things that they didn't do because they
Speaker 1: are sound like they're admitting too, because they've been inadvertently
Speaker 1: given clues of what to say. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: a direct leading Okay, so now say you took her
Speaker 1: down the street, and then it's not that direct, but
Speaker 1: they you know, investigators, but accidentally, I mean, it happens accidentally.
Speaker 1: Well but even in this case, the story they were
Speaker 1: leading him to had no evidence to back it up.
Speaker 1: So like, what's going on. That's a hard thing. So
Speaker 1: I think, Benny, that's pretty well safe. Yeah, I agree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well this is disappointing. Okay, next, next suspect theory theory
Speaker 1: suspect suspect exactly, That's what I would call. It is
Speaker 1: Max Fleeg, which is German for volume, is it? So
Speaker 1: I don't speak Germany. Max was seventeen years old at
Speaker 1: the time of the disappearance. I've heard about Max. One
Speaker 1: of the things I've never heard about him. Is how
Speaker 1: exactly he came to be a suspect to begin with?
Speaker 1: What he did? What else got him in trouble, I
Speaker 1: think is what is what's got him. Yeah, as a suspect,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that, although he failed a polygraph
Speaker 1: test then reportedly admitted to kidnapping and murdering the girls. Um,
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure how he grabbed the interest of
Speaker 1: the police initially. I think he may have just been
Speaker 1: a local deviant, especially given what happened later in his life,
Speaker 1: just one of the usual suspects. Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: the police had to have known this, so I don't
Speaker 1: know why they did it. But it was at the
Speaker 1: time illegal to give a polygraph test to a miner.
Speaker 1: But he was a miner, So I don't know why
Speaker 1: they did that, but they did, and so they had
Speaker 1: to let him go and you know, get rid of
Speaker 1: all of the quote unquote evidence that they had collected
Speaker 1: during that time. Well they had no evidence. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: literally no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to link Max to
Speaker 1: this case. Max might have done it, He might have.
Speaker 1: He was later convicted and imprisoned for the murder of
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old girl who rebuffed his advances and
Speaker 1: he just tossed her body into a suff Hello, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no he didn't. He's not the one who suffocated someone
Speaker 1: with a pillow. He choked her. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of similar things, but there was a bunch of
Speaker 1: really skeezing air who else this particular area of Chicago
Speaker 1: at the times? Yeah, I get them a little mixed up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easy to do. I think of this suspects so far,
Speaker 1: Max is the strongest. Well that's good because we're going
Speaker 1: down the list of least likely to most likely. So
Speaker 1: it's good that you think that he's more likely than
Speaker 1: the others. But I think I might have a couple
Speaker 1: that maybe even more likely real. Next, he's a guy
Speaker 1: named Charles Melquist. He looks a bit like Elvis too,
Speaker 1: or like this character from LazyTown that I don't really
Speaker 1: want to talk about. How I know what a character
Speaker 1: from LazyTown looks like? What LazyTown is just I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about it. It's not a video game,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to talk about it. Googling LazyTown
Speaker 1: right now. A year after the Grime sisters were found,
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old girl named Bonnie Lee Scott was
Speaker 1: found naked tossed on the side of the road a
Speaker 1: few miles from where the Grimes sisters had been found,
Speaker 1: and on November six, nineteen, Loretta Grimes got a second
Speaker 1: call from a man she identified as the same caller
Speaker 1: who knew that Barbara had the cross toes, and the
Speaker 1: caller told Loretta, I committed another perfect crime. This is
Speaker 1: another one those cops won't solve, and they're not going
Speaker 1: to hook it on Bedwell or Barry Cook. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that. We have Benny Bedwell, Barry Cook we
Speaker 1: haven't heard about yet. Most people link this call to
Speaker 1: mal Quist because he admitted to murdering Um Scott, and
Speaker 1: the murders are pretty similar. Um. I'm not clear on
Speaker 1: the timing of this because it's possible that milk Wist
Speaker 1: wasn't custody when the second call was placed. The stories
Speaker 1: of the murder charge and the second call to Lauretta
Speaker 1: are side by side on the November nine issue of
Speaker 1: The Chicago Trip. This is why I don't entirely trust
Speaker 1: the story. I would agree with that Malquist suffocated Scott
Speaker 1: with a pillow in his car, when she rebuked his
Speaker 1: sexual advances and then stripped her body naked and dumped
Speaker 1: her on the side of the road, just you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, a couple of miles away from the
Speaker 1: where the Grimes were dumped. Some investors say it's possible,
Speaker 1: as Joe was mentioning that the Grime sisters were suffocated
Speaker 1: and that's how they died, either by pillow or by
Speaker 1: hand and then dumped so or frozen and dumped. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it would make sense if maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking as sexual deviant, we're saying like maybe Patricia, wait,
Speaker 1: which one was the one that had had sex Barbara?
Speaker 1: Maybe Barbara was like you know what, Okay, fine, yes
Speaker 1: we'll have sex. It's you know, not rape, or she
Speaker 1: I don't know she was dating him, or like I
Speaker 1: don't know something. And then he was like, all right, Patricia,
Speaker 1: it's your turn, and she was like no, and then
Speaker 1: he just you know, flew into a rage and killed
Speaker 1: them both. I don't know. The problem I really have
Speaker 1: with this is that mal Quest actually wanted to be
Speaker 1: given the electric chair for murdering Scott. He he seemed
Speaker 1: really remorseful, and if he really did like want to
Speaker 1: be given the death penalty. Why would you not just say, oh,
Speaker 1: also I killed two other girls to really just cement
Speaker 1: your sentence. The problem with mil Quist is that he yes,
Speaker 1: he did smother Scott, but he also he smothered her,
Speaker 1: he dumped her body. He then came back later on
Speaker 1: and cut her head off. Did he clearly mutilated the
Speaker 1: body two or three times the same? Yeah, which is weird.
Speaker 1: And yet for the crime sisters there, other than what
Speaker 1: the local animal population did to their bodies, we don't
Speaker 1: really I mean, cutting the head off is pretty severe.
Speaker 1: It is, and I'm sure that the idea was cut
Speaker 1: the head off and we'll take it, we'll hide it,
Speaker 1: and I'll never be able to figure out who it was.
Speaker 1: Stupid thought process of a nut job. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if he was going to do that once you think again,
Speaker 1: you would think that he would have said, oh, I'd
Speaker 1: better take their heads, so I better go back for
Speaker 1: their Well, there's some escalation there, right, and especially if,
Speaker 1: especially if you've done it before and left their heads on,
Speaker 1: or maybe you did it before and you thought the
Speaker 1: local rodents, would you know, rightly kind of mess them
Speaker 1: up and it didn't happen enough so the next time
Speaker 1: you think, I know, I'll take the head. But if
Speaker 1: we're going to say escalation, then it seems like going
Speaker 1: for two right out of the gate, going from two
Speaker 1: to one. You know too, taking on two girls is
Speaker 1: even if they're teenage girls, so much bigger task than
Speaker 1: taking on one teenage girl. You guys remember three weeks
Speaker 1: ago when we were talking about, like how maybe a
Speaker 1: serial killer killed the three women in the Indiana Dunes,
Speaker 1: And I was like, why would you do three as
Speaker 1: your first try? And your guys were like, because why not?
Speaker 1: Because there are three of them, they're just right there.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think there's that same idea. You know,
Speaker 1: it could just be that, well, they were two girls
Speaker 1: together or and maybe the problem is that we know
Speaker 1: too much of the quote unquote standard pattern that we're
Speaker 1: falling prey to that. But it just seems weird that
Speaker 1: he would pick up these two girls and go for
Speaker 1: it and then and then suddenly, you know, months later,
Speaker 1: just go after one and severely mutilate the body. It
Speaker 1: just seems very different to me. Well, I think crime
Speaker 1: of an opportunity. There are times, yeah, there's that, I mean,
Speaker 1: like that, like the look Indiana dudes thing, It's like,
Speaker 1: this is a beautiful opportunity. Even if there are three
Speaker 1: of them. Was so what they're at my mercy because
Speaker 1: I got him on a boat down the lake. There's
Speaker 1: no witnesses. It's a little different than trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: abduct somebody off the streets, you know, into your car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I don't know, it's it's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: I think Scott was dating milk West at the time
Speaker 1: when he murdered her, So that wasn't an abduction. Do
Speaker 1: you remember how old was he was, like twenty three
Speaker 1: or twenty five. It was a completely different world. I
Speaker 1: forget that there's you know, a fifteen year old girl
Speaker 1: dating twenty year old guys, totally normal. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was normal, It just wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't as frowned upon it still happens today. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not as I still think it's weird. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: but but you know, so who's to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe Barbara was seeing him, or maybe you know, maybe
Speaker 1: one of them knew him, And yeah, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not insane to think. And also, if are walking home
Speaker 1: in the middle of winter and it's cold and it's late,
Speaker 1: and somebody they know drives up and says, do you
Speaker 1: guys want to ride? And they say, sure, it's just
Speaker 1: a couple of blocks, we'll take a ride from that cute,
Speaker 1: hunky college boy. And then oops, it turns out he's
Speaker 1: a psychopath and murders them. Happens. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly an abduction. I mean, it is an abduction,
Speaker 1: but it's not like this huge Yeah. Well, and that
Speaker 1: brings me to something that we talked about before. When
Speaker 1: you were talking about the timeline. There was a sighting
Speaker 1: of the girls having gotten off of the bus early,
Speaker 1: and what you were just saying of like getting getting
Speaker 1: a picking up, thumbing a ride in some way or
Speaker 1: shape or form. I had been wondering why would they
Speaker 1: get off of the bus, except that you said, I
Speaker 1: think the timing was about twenty minutes before they should
Speaker 1: have arrived at home, if I remember that correctly, A
Speaker 1: ballpark girty to forty minut Okay, so I don't know
Speaker 1: how much time. I think you guys have spent a
Speaker 1: fair amount of time on buses in public transportation. And
Speaker 1: what made me think about why would they get off
Speaker 1: of the bus. Is if they had to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. You know what I've done that, I've I've
Speaker 1: gotten on the bus, and fifteen minutes later, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I have half an hour till I have to get there.
Speaker 1: I'm getting off of this next stop. I will find
Speaker 1: someplace that's open, I will use their restroom, and I
Speaker 1: will get back on the next bus that comes by. Well, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's far enough that it's a half
Speaker 1: hour ride, I'm willing to wait to the twenty minutes
Speaker 1: to have relieved my bladder, so that that's That was
Speaker 1: one of the things I thought when we were talking
Speaker 1: about or there or there was somebody creepy, or maybe
Speaker 1: they were riding the bus with somebody they knew, maybe
Speaker 1: there was some place along the way to stop and
Speaker 1: get ice cream or god knows what ye or maybe
Speaker 1: the bus just rereaked of yearn and or maybe they
Speaker 1: didn't have to be home. I remember, you know, being
Speaker 1: a teenager and knowing like, Okay, this is when I
Speaker 1: have to be home, and I'm enjoying myself not being
Speaker 1: home around the four or five other kids and my
Speaker 1: single mom. You know who I'm sure is lovely and giving,
Speaker 1: but also like your teenager, so like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it was as simple as it's a nice night out.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of snow, it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: We don't need to be home for another half hour.
Speaker 1: Let's just get off and walk absolutely all right, Um,
Speaker 1: last suspect, final suspectin suspect final answer, final answer, M
Speaker 1: Barry Cook. Yeah, Berry, I don't know some you know
Speaker 1: that's that's a different barrier. That's very white. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: never mind, does it look anything like very good? He doesn't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Marry Cook actually served time in prison, not for the
Speaker 1: grimes murders Dy, not for the Silas Jane connected murder
Speaker 1: of three boys Peterson Swissler murder, nor the murder of
Speaker 1: Margaret Gallagher, nor the murder of Judith May Anderson, though
Speaker 1: he is likely connected to all of those things. He
Speaker 1: spent nine years in the Joliet jail, and he was
Speaker 1: released on September twenty in eighteen sixty seven. He has
Speaker 1: since married and has kids, so you will see a
Speaker 1: lot of blogs and articles online who refused to name him. Currently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they think that like the kids should be spared. Fifty
Speaker 1: years later, it is. That's true. Cook was actually never
Speaker 1: ever convicted of any crimes. But trial, how did he
Speaker 1: how did he wind up in prison if he was
Speaker 1: not convicted of it? He was, he was sentenced. He
Speaker 1: pled guilty to this. He wasn't ever convicted of any
Speaker 1: of the murders. He wasn't you know, anything like that.
Speaker 1: He pled guilty to rape and assault to rape. Um.
Speaker 1: And he was sentenced to one to fourteen years in
Speaker 1: Statesville prison. Um. And he was released early for good behavior.
Speaker 1: Statesville doesn't sound like a real place. Statesville sounds like
Speaker 1: the Sims or something. Yeah. Yeah, it's like cookie Ville,
Speaker 1: minimum minimum security, orphanage. Yeah. Um. But apparently Barry Cook
Speaker 1: passed a lie detector test for the Grimes murders and
Speaker 1: the Peterson Schlussler murders, so the police decided he was
Speaker 1: not guilty of the CRIMEA So there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's um. Well, I think wait, wait, wait you you
Speaker 1: just like dropped him and walked away like he was
Speaker 1: a bad microphone, Like wait, why why is he the
Speaker 1: last on your least to most likely suspect list? Well,
Speaker 1: because he was awful. I mean he I think he
Speaker 1: definitely was involved in all of those murders. In some way,
Speaker 1: I think he was a serial killer and he just
Speaker 1: managed to not get caught. He got caught for like
Speaker 1: rape charges, but he was a violent sexual deviant who
Speaker 1: has a long history of being very closely connected to
Speaker 1: a number of cases that are all very similar to
Speaker 1: each other. They all, most of them except for the
Speaker 1: one with the silas Jane one. You know, they're all
Speaker 1: young women, like thirteen to fifteen years old. They were
Speaker 1: all suffcated and dumped naked on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: Somehow he managed to go straight and or either that
Speaker 1: he was just really good. He got back out of prison,
Speaker 1: has had a family to continue to kill. Yes, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I have no idea they see. That's that's
Speaker 1: why that's why I'm asking, Because I don't know the
Speaker 1: fact that this guy is I'm going to use your term,
Speaker 1: linked to all of these other murders but never caught,
Speaker 1: and yet he was investigated. It smacks a little strange
Speaker 1: as if he is the usual suspect. It's almost like
Speaker 1: gloss is that it's almost as if somebody similar to
Speaker 1: him and said, you know that Barry Cook, he he's
Speaker 1: a bad apple. We got to get that guy. We've
Speaker 1: got to get him for something. And hey, we've got
Speaker 1: a dead girl. Bring Barry Cook in. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna put him in the line. Enough, she didn't
Speaker 1: pick him out. Oh another dead girl. Bring Barry Cook in.
Speaker 1: You know, he's the most wanted of the local places.
Speaker 1: The trick is that with all of these murder I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the Grimes sisters, there's no evidence. There was
Speaker 1: no evidence on their bodies, right, There's nothing to link anybody,
Speaker 1: which is why you can't really say Berry Cook was
Speaker 1: not actually seriously linked too much of anything, because there
Speaker 1: wasn't any evidence in any of them, which almost, you know,
Speaker 1: in my mind, almost speaks more than if there was evidence.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, if there was evidence, that speaks a lot.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's equally suspicious that there happened
Speaker 1: to be no evidence on any of these bodies. But
Speaker 1: I do agree that it is. It does seem odd
Speaker 1: that he managed to spend some time in jail, like
Speaker 1: nine years in jail, and then you know, get out
Speaker 1: and get married and have kids and lead an otherwise
Speaker 1: normal life. Yeah, as far as we know, well as
Speaker 1: far as not well, yeah, I mean, but if he
Speaker 1: was out still hunting around and and you know, slumming
Speaker 1: a little bit, going out bucks. It's I've had a
Speaker 1: couple of drinks, let's go kill a girl. There should
Speaker 1: have been more bodies dropping. Well, this is not something
Speaker 1: you should say, but maybe he picked up some good
Speaker 1: tips in his stay at Juliet good point. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I've never understood what it was that he
Speaker 1: did to initially become a suspect in this. I totally
Speaker 1: agree to then, because it's never listed. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's never it's never said. It's just again because people
Speaker 1: are trying to protect him and his family. I will know.
Speaker 1: What I mean is that I've never seen which case
Speaker 1: he first showed up in to then be able to
Speaker 1: try and link him backwards in time, in other words,
Speaker 1: to build the timeline of, oh, he was hauled in
Speaker 1: for stealing the governor's car or something like that, and
Speaker 1: and that's when they said, you're on the bad track, boy,
Speaker 1: you gotta clean up like I did. I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to build the timeline of him out. And
Speaker 1: I've never tried a little bit. It's a tricky thing
Speaker 1: because you know, if you're gonna like do a crime,
Speaker 1: like this, which can be opportunity or can be something
Speaker 1: you know, very planned or whatever. No matter what, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them are going to look about
Speaker 1: the same. You're gonna abduct a girl, maybe rape or
Speaker 1: maybe not, but in the in the in the interim,
Speaker 1: wind up strangling or dumping or by the side of
Speaker 1: the road somewhere. So that's the same. M Oh, they
Speaker 1: look a lot alike. And you could say, wow, these
Speaker 1: must have been committed by the same guy. Well not
Speaker 1: necessarily at all, different people, very similar to acts that
Speaker 1: can appear. But I will also say that we are
Speaker 1: talking about Chicago and it doesn't have like no crime,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't. I mean, you know, just because heard
Speaker 1: of them doesn't mean yeah. But we can also say
Speaker 1: it at that time in Chicago there were a lot
Speaker 1: of people moving through that area who could have been
Speaker 1: almost like, who is the truck driver that was leaving
Speaker 1: prostitutes across the interstate system of this country and the
Speaker 1: happy happy face killer. No, not that one. No, this
Speaker 1: was like fifteen or twenty years ago, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember who it is. It doesn't matter something. It was
Speaker 1: actually a truck driver who killed people all around the
Speaker 1: interstate Highway system. There was a happy face killer. Well no,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking you're just thinking of the smiley face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also a happy face killer. But but my point
Speaker 1: is is that there were people flowing through Chicago. Ever,
Speaker 1: no pun intended, so not the major shipping have of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'll just finished by saying
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't dr Hodel. No, I don't think it
Speaker 1: was dr Hodel either. I do suspect it was probably
Speaker 1: somebody in you mm hmm. I suspect that. Other than that,
Speaker 1: I don't a clue. Yeah, so many good suspects. But
Speaker 1: I also I think they probably did die in the
Speaker 1: NY timeline of you know, twenty four hours after disappearance,
Speaker 1: and then they were held you know somewhere captain captain
Speaker 1: an ice box somewhere. Yeah that well yeah, that's uh well, guys,
Speaker 1: hang on, listen, we think who can we hang this on? Okay,
Speaker 1: forget it. I don't have nothing. You want to wind
Speaker 1: it up? I do? Okay, ready, sure, okay, you can
Speaker 1: find some links to our research. We'll probably throw at
Speaker 1: least one old timey news article in there. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of me the YEP that will be found
Speaker 1: on our website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can listen to us there. You can also listen
Speaker 1: to us on iTunes or you can stream us or whatever.
Speaker 1: If you can subscribe if you haven't already, and if
Speaker 1: you can on Rate and Review always best. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: can find us on social media if you want to
Speaker 1: have a conversation. Where on Facebook, We've got a page
Speaker 1: in a group, so like the page and join the group. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter. We are thinking Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: Lots of so much fun stuff there. We also have
Speaker 1: a subreddit and it's just Thinking Sideways. You can email
Speaker 1: us as well. We are Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. You can buy merchandise if you won't. Um,
Speaker 1: we have some pretty cool stuff. There's links on the sidebar,
Speaker 1: you know, mugs, stuff like that. Um sure, Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: Murder Kit that's perfect, and Thinking Sideways Serial Killers Manual. Huh.
Speaker 1: That show has been working on for the last thirty
Speaker 1: years of it's written in very tight handwritten scripts, so
Speaker 1: it's a little hard read. A lot of stuff, a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff those five pages. Yeah, that's true, all
Speaker 1: of that, all of that having been said, um, I
Speaker 1: think we're going to get out of here alright, well
Speaker 1: until next week our REVOI. So we have got to
Speaker 1: work on that guardrail for the state that you can't
Speaker 1: pitch a body over. I don't think it's gonna really
Speaker 1: need to happen that. I don't think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: They'll just go to us. They'll just go to a
Speaker 1: road that doesn't have guardrails. Bye, guys,