WEBVTT - Hell and Gone Murder Line: Gloria Kowalewicz 0:00:46.550 --> 0:00:47.290 School of Humans. 0:00:49.300 --> 0:00:53.060 Helen Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:56.640 an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward, 0:00:57.020 --> 0:01:00.220 and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by 0:01:00.300 --> 0:01:04.740 law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, 0:01:05.060 --> 0:01:08.140 their statements should not be considered evidence and point to 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:12.440 the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases. We 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.230 remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty 0:01:16.270 --> 0:01:19.290 in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is 0:01:19.350 --> 0:01:22.330 intended to state or imply that anyone who has not 0:01:22.370 --> 0:01:25.570 been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. 0:01:26.310 --> 0:01:37.140 Thanks for listening. On November 12, 1960, eight-year-old Gloria Kovalevich 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.200 was getting ready for church. Church was a big deal 0:01:41.320 --> 0:01:44.710 in this family. and little Gloria had just celebrated her 0:01:44.810 --> 0:01:49.590 Holy Communion a couple of weeks earlier. Gloria lived in Bridgeport, 0:01:49.870 --> 0:01:53.400 on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. The family was 0:01:53.460 --> 0:01:57.600 working class, and they were regulars at the nearby Catholic church, St. 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:00.900 Mary of Mount Carmel, and their faith was a huge 0:02:00.980 --> 0:02:04.910 part of their weekly routine. Gloria had gotten up early 0:02:04.940 --> 0:02:07.570 that day to go to church and receive the sacrament, 0:02:08.070 --> 0:02:11.410 which a nun had told her classmates to do daily, 0:02:11.920 --> 0:02:14.800 in order to get used to the ritual. So Gloria 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:18.080 had followed that same route from her home to her 0:02:18.140 --> 0:02:22.290 church for early morning mass every single day for two weeks, 0:02:22.950 --> 0:02:26.390 which might become important later when police were trying to 0:02:26.430 --> 0:02:30.410 figure out if someone had been stalking her. That Saturday 0:02:30.450 --> 0:02:32.670 was the last day that she would follow that routine. 0:02:33.330 --> 0:02:36.460 She left her home just after 8 a.m., but instead 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.400 of riding with her family because the car was being used, 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.590 Gloria walked. the just over three blocks on her own. 0:02:44.610 --> 0:02:47.570 She was wearing a pink and brown checkered dress and 0:02:47.650 --> 0:02:52.400 carrying a white communion purse over her shoulder. Her mother, Esther, 0:02:52.620 --> 0:02:56.340 waved goodbye to her and watched Gloria walk north before 0:02:56.420 --> 0:03:00.940 turning east and going out of sight. Gloria knew that 0:03:01.020 --> 0:03:04.090 route well, but on that morning, she never made it 0:03:04.170 --> 0:03:08.920 to morning mass. And by that afternoon, her parents and 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:13.480 the entire neighborhood were in a state of panic. This 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.660 was not a place where an eight-year-old girl vanished into 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:21.100 thin air. This was a quiet suburb. The Chicago Police 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.630 Department was immediately on alert, and they launched a massive, 0:03:24.850 --> 0:03:30.730 immediate citywide manhunt. hundreds of officers and neighbors and volunteers, 0:03:31.190 --> 0:03:34.670 including the Boy Scouts, fanned out across the South Side. 0:03:35.430 --> 0:03:39.550 They searched alleyways, they knocked on doors, peered into abandoned buildings, 0:03:40.070 --> 0:03:43.700 and combed through the industrial lots bordering the city's canals. 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.280 Gloria's shocking disappearance made the local news, and parents in 0:03:49.300 --> 0:03:53.700 the area and their children were terrified. But it wasn't 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:57.580 until 64 years later that they got an answer. one 0:03:57.620 --> 0:04:01.800 that involved a decorated homicide detective who was also a 0:04:01.860 --> 0:04:07.290 child killer. I'm Katherine Townsend. Over the past eight years 0:04:07.390 --> 0:04:10.450 of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've 0:04:10.490 --> 0:04:12.930 learned that there is no such thing as a small 0:04:12.990 --> 0:04:16.830 town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of 0:04:16.890 --> 0:04:19.750 messages from people all around the country asking for help 0:04:19.810 --> 0:04:23.570 with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and 0:04:23.610 --> 0:04:26.510 their communities. If you have a case you'd like me 0:04:26.550 --> 0:04:28.720 and my team to look into, you can reach out 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:30.780 to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. 0:04:30.820 --> 0:04:32.480 That's 678-744-6145. Or you can send us a message on 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.180 Instagram at hellandgonepod. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. 0:05:31.470 --> 0:05:34.370 The entire south side of Chicago was in a panic. 0:05:34.910 --> 0:05:38.950 after eight-year-old Gloria seemed to vanish into thin air while 0:05:38.990 --> 0:05:43.130 walking to morning mass at her church. However, just a 0:05:43.170 --> 0:05:46.270 few hours later, the search for the missing little girl 0:05:46.790 --> 0:05:50.830 came to a horrifying end. A driver for a laundry 0:05:50.870 --> 0:05:53.810 company was in McKinley Park on his lunch break and 0:05:53.870 --> 0:05:57.410 stopped along 104th Avenue, which was in a wooded area 0:05:57.450 --> 0:06:01.690 of Palos Park, more than 15 miles southwest of Gloria's home. 0:06:02.660 --> 0:06:05.220 The driver was eating his lunch at a picnic table 0:06:05.660 --> 0:06:09.010 when he saw something colored that caught his eye. It 0:06:09.050 --> 0:06:13.250 was Gloria's pink and brown checkered dress. Then he found 0:06:13.390 --> 0:06:17.890 Gloria's small, lifeless body dumped in a ditch. He could 0:06:17.970 --> 0:06:21.410 see that her head was badly damaged and misshapen and 0:06:21.430 --> 0:06:24.860 that she was covered with blood. After checking her pulse 0:06:25.140 --> 0:06:28.060 and realizing that she was dead, he drove to the 0:06:28.100 --> 0:06:32.470 nearest town and called the Cook County Sheriff's Office. Gloria 0:06:32.510 --> 0:06:36.100 had been fatally shot twice in the head with what 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:40.480 police believed to be a Colt. 45 weapon. That murder 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:45.000 weapon was never found, but police did find a single bullet. 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.620 Gloria's clothing was torn and strewn around near her body. 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:54.240 Investigators found her coat and the little white communion purse 0:06:54.460 --> 0:06:57.410 she had so proudly carried when she set off for church. 0:06:58.390 --> 0:07:03.160 Later that day, Her father, Edward, identified Gloria's body. And 0:07:03.380 --> 0:07:06.700 once the autopsy was complete, the acts of the case 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:11.560 got more brutal for Gloria's parents. They learned that Gloria 0:07:11.580 --> 0:07:16.060 had been beaten and fatally shot. Initial media reports said 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.720 that they did not believe that Gloria had been sexually assaulted. However, 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:25.100 this later changed. Police noted that Gloria was wearing her 0:07:25.180 --> 0:07:28.920 underwear when she was found. but her blue leotard, the 0:07:29.020 --> 0:07:32.040 one that she wore under her dress, had been taken 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:36.380 off and placed under her. The brutality of the crime 0:07:36.580 --> 0:07:40.560 shocked even the most hardened homicide detectives on the Chicago force. 0:07:41.300 --> 0:07:46.120 This case made local and eventually national news, and headlines 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:49.500 talked about catching the sex maniac who was responsible for 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:54.360 the killing. The Chicago Police Department was the investigating agency. 0:07:55.130 --> 0:08:00.130 And police did have one lead. Witnesses told police that 0:08:00.170 --> 0:08:03.250 a girl who looked like Gloria was seen with a 0:08:03.290 --> 0:08:07.350 man roughly 25 to 40 years old shortly after she 0:08:07.390 --> 0:08:11.600 left her home. So police were looking for an adult male. 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:13.400 That's pretty much all they knew, but that is a 0:08:13.580 --> 0:08:17.760 wide range of ages. Really, the police had very little 0:08:17.780 --> 0:08:22.880 to go on. This was before DNA testing or security cameras. However, 0:08:23.460 --> 0:08:27.890 The technicians from the Chicago Police Crime Laboratory meticulously examined 0:08:27.910 --> 0:08:32.030 this scene. And while they were examining Gloria's clothing, they 0:08:32.150 --> 0:08:36.590 focused on something. The strap of that small, white communion purse. 0:08:37.350 --> 0:08:42.540 And they found something vital. A single, distinct, latent fingerprint. 0:08:43.680 --> 0:08:46.460 It was just a partial print, left behind in the 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.360 frantic moments when the killer grabbed or discarded the bag. 0:08:50.500 --> 0:08:54.270 Even in 1960, a fingerprint was a powerful tool, but 0:08:54.910 --> 0:08:57.290 only if you have a suspect to match it against. 0:08:57.970 --> 0:09:00.990 Back then, detectives did not get a match, so the 0:09:01.030 --> 0:09:05.970 print was cataloged and filed away. Detectives interviewed hundreds of 0:09:06.010 --> 0:09:09.660 people and seemed to mainly focus on the usual suspects, 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.280 like sex offenders living near the area, transients passing through, 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:18.770 but also on people like delivery men and neighbors. They 0:09:18.870 --> 0:09:23.780 followed thousands of leads across Cook County and beyond. But 0:09:24.060 --> 0:09:26.930 as the months bled into years, the leads dried up. 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.640 The case file kept getting bigger. But Gloria's case slowly 0:09:31.700 --> 0:09:36.470 went cold. Years passed and the world moved on. Many 0:09:36.500 --> 0:09:40.850 of the original detectives on the case retired. But preserved 0:09:40.930 --> 0:09:44.510 in an evidence bag was that white communion purse with 0:09:44.550 --> 0:09:49.170 the single fingerprint on the strap. Then, in 2010, there 0:09:49.210 --> 0:09:52.460 was a break in the case. Cold case investigators with 0:09:52.470 --> 0:09:55.960 the Chicago Police Department pulled Gloria's file out to take 0:09:55.980 --> 0:09:59.980 another look. By now, there was DNA testing and the 0:10:00.020 --> 0:10:05.100 CODIS database. So police sent Gloria's preserved clothing, her leotard 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:10.180 and coat, to a specialized forensic laboratory. Using advanced techniques 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:15.280 that required only microscopic amounts of biological material, forensic scientists 0:10:15.380 --> 0:10:19.680 were able to successfully extract a male DNA profile from 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:23.840 the fabric of Gloria's clothes. The DNA profile came from 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:28.360 semen that was found on Gloria's coat. This must have 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.230 been a parent's nightmare to hear because the initial report 0:10:32.310 --> 0:10:35.290 said that Gloria had not been sexually assaulted, but the 0:10:35.350 --> 0:10:38.610 semen on the coat seemed to confirm that either pre- 0:10:38.730 --> 0:10:42.890 or post-mortem, there was a sexual component to this crime. 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:49.280 The semen was a massive breakthrough because now detectives had DNA, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.260 and for the first time in half a century, the 0:10:52.300 --> 0:10:56.980 killer had a genetic signature. But when investigators ran that 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.770 DNA profile through CODIS, the national database that houses the 0:11:00.790 --> 0:11:04.550 DNA of convicted offenders across the United States, the system 0:11:04.610 --> 0:11:10.440 returned a frustrating result. No match. The killer's DNA was 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:16.780 not in the system. This tells investigators one of two things. 0:11:17.680 --> 0:11:21.170 Either the killer managed to avoid a felony conviction for 0:11:21.190 --> 0:11:24.690 the rest of his life, or he died before the 0:11:24.730 --> 0:11:30.600 modern DNA databases were established. The case stalled again for years. 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:36.200 with the genetic profile locked into a vault. Until 2024, 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:41.600 the FBI's forensic genetic genealogy team entered the narrative. 62 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:46.530 years after Gloria's brutal murder, investigators finally had a break 0:11:46.550 --> 0:11:50.010 in the case. They had matched the DNA to a suspect, 0:11:51.150 --> 0:11:56.790 Thomas F. McInerney Jr. But Thomas McInerney Jr. wasn't just 0:11:56.810 --> 0:12:01.380 your average suspect. He was a police officer And he 0:12:01.420 --> 0:12:05.260 had been working and living near Gloria's neighborhood before she 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:25.550 was kidnapped. Genetic genealogy doesn't have to rely on criminal databases. 0:12:26.090 --> 0:12:30.750 It uses consumer DNA databases. So the same platforms millions 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:33.880 of everyday people use to trace their family trees, look 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:37.700 up their ancestry and find distant cousins, to find potential 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:42.580 familial DNA links. The FBI took the unknown male DNA 0:12:42.620 --> 0:12:47.500 profile from Gloria's clothing and uploaded it to these genealogical databases. 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:52.180 And the system found matches, but they weren't direct hits. 0:12:52.820 --> 0:12:56.690 The database found potential distant relatives, This would be things 0:12:56.750 --> 0:13:00.630 like third cousins, second cousins once removed, or great nieces. 0:13:01.770 --> 0:13:05.040 An FBI genealogist sat down with a blank piece of 0:13:05.100 --> 0:13:09.820 paper and started to construct a massive, multi-generational family tree. 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.900 Then the FBI worked backward to find a common ancestor. 0:13:14.460 --> 0:13:17.520 And then they built the tree forward, tracing every male 0:13:17.560 --> 0:13:21.460 descendant who would have been alive, adult, and in Chicago 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:25.570 in November of 1960. So this was a combination of 0:13:25.630 --> 0:13:29.890 the most cutting edge digital technology available, but also a 0:13:30.170 --> 0:13:33.860 lot of old school detective work because it involves digging 0:13:33.900 --> 0:13:38.040 through birth certificates, marriage licenses, death notices, census records, and 0:13:38.100 --> 0:13:43.710 military draft cards. Slowly, the genealogy team eliminates individuals who 0:13:43.750 --> 0:13:47.930 are overseas, individuals who are too young, or individuals who 0:13:47.970 --> 0:13:51.590 are incarcerated elsewhere. This was the same technology, by the way, 0:13:51.670 --> 0:13:54.850 that was used to catch Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, 0:13:55.510 --> 0:13:59.600 after almost four decades in California. Joseph was also a 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:05.840 former police officer. Eventually, the branches converged on one specific 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:11.000 family line. And within that family line, investigators isolated a 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:16.300 prime suspect, a man named Thomas F. McInerney Jr., And 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:20.220 investigators discovered that not only was Thomas a police officer, 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.300 he was a highly decorated police officer who had been 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.020 on the beat as a rookie cop when Gloria was 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:32.310 kidnapped and murdered. Thomas McInerney Jr. joined the Chicago Police 0:14:32.330 --> 0:14:35.630 Department in 1959, so he had been on the force 0:14:35.670 --> 0:14:39.890 for a year in November of 1960. when Gloria Kovalevich 0:14:40.230 --> 0:14:44.440 was killed. And over the years, not only did Thomas 0:14:44.540 --> 0:14:48.060 fly under the radar, he was promoted. He became a 0:14:48.100 --> 0:14:51.500 detective and rose through the ranks of the Violent Crimes 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:55.520 and Homicide Division of the Chicago Police Department. He spent 0:14:55.620 --> 0:14:59.640 nearly 30 years investigating the exact types of crimes he 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:03.480 was now accused of committing. He sat in on interrogations 0:15:03.540 --> 0:15:06.800 of hundreds of suspects and talked to grieving families who 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.580 were victims of violent crime. He investigated hundreds of murders. 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.360 He had access to crime scenes and evidence, all while 0:15:14.420 --> 0:15:19.200 carrying this dark, monstrous secret. But the DNA match wasn't 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.860 enough on its own. It was a powerful lead, but 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:28.410 prosecutors need definitive traditional forensic confirmation before a case can 0:15:28.430 --> 0:15:32.650 be officially closed. But they couldn't just swab Thomas' cheek 0:15:33.350 --> 0:15:36.590 because they found out that after he retired from the 0:15:36.630 --> 0:15:41.730 Chicago Police Department in 1987, after nearly three decades of service, 0:15:42.300 --> 0:15:46.280 he collected his pension, packed his bags, and eventually moved 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:50.000 away from the cold winters of Illinois to Las Vegas, Nevada. 0:15:50.900 --> 0:15:55.020 Thomas was married. He had five children and eventually grandchildren. 0:15:56.310 --> 0:16:00.010 Thomas appeared to live out a quiet, comfortable retirement in 0:16:00.050 --> 0:16:04.780 Las Vegas, and he died peacefully there in 2006 at 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:09.300 the age of 75. But investigators didn't need Thomas because 0:16:09.580 --> 0:16:11.880 they still had that one piece of evidence that had 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.000 been sitting in an evidence room for decades, the single 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:19.350 latent fingerprint on the strap of Gloria's white communion purse. 0:16:20.290 --> 0:16:24.870 So detectives pulled Thomas McInerney's archival personnel file from the 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:29.440 Chicago Police Department records vault. Inside that file was his 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:34.340 original 1959 employment application, the paperwork he filled out to 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:39.700 become a police officer. Pressed onto that 1959 document were 0:16:39.740 --> 0:16:45.070 the clear black ink impressions of Thomas McInerney's fingerprints taken 0:16:45.250 --> 0:16:49.380 the day he joined the force. a senior fingerprint examiner 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.620 took the latent print from the communion purse and set 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:57.220 it side by side with Thomas McInerney's 1959 application print 0:16:57.380 --> 0:17:00.860 under a high powered comparison microscope and found that the 0:17:00.970 --> 0:17:05.150 fingerprint on Gloria's purse strap was a perfect match to 0:17:05.190 --> 0:17:09.830 the fingerprint on Thomas's job application. So after hearing this, 0:17:09.890 --> 0:17:13.030 the question I had was why didn't they find this 0:17:13.110 --> 0:17:16.250 match sooner? It turns out that this seemed to be 0:17:16.310 --> 0:17:20.570 for a couple of reasons. One, Thomas's fingerprint was done 0:17:20.670 --> 0:17:23.890 on the old card system and wasn't digitized. And two, 0:17:24.570 --> 0:17:27.510 even if it had been digitized like many police employment 0:17:27.550 --> 0:17:30.190 records are today, it would not have shown up in 0:17:30.210 --> 0:17:34.700 the system because CODIS only tests against people who've been 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.760 arrested and charged. It's a criminal database, so it doesn't 0:17:38.820 --> 0:17:42.840 test against people who haven't been arrested. Our system is 0:17:42.900 --> 0:17:47.850 built to catch known criminals, not police officers, hiding in 0:17:47.890 --> 0:17:53.820 plain sight. But finally, after 64 years, the Chicago Police 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.300 Department had found their killer. The next step was to 0:17:57.360 --> 0:18:02.050 publicly confirm it. So on October 12th, 2026, the Chicago 0:18:02.110 --> 0:18:06.270 Police Department, flanked by FBI agents and Cook County prosecutors, 0:18:06.730 --> 0:18:11.010 held a somber press conference. They announced to the world 0:18:11.540 --> 0:18:16.140 that the murder of Gloria Kovalevich is officially solved. They 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:21.770 named Thomas F. McInerney Jr. as her killer. Gloria's brother, 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.710 Adam Kovalevich, who was just a baby when Gloria was murdered, 0:18:26.330 --> 0:18:30.190 told reporters that he had mixed feelings. He was very 0:18:30.270 --> 0:18:34.090 relieved that his sister's killer had been caught, but he 0:18:34.130 --> 0:18:37.390 considered it a bitter victory because the killer got to 0:18:37.450 --> 0:18:40.650 live out the rest of his life without ever facing justice. 0:18:42.070 --> 0:18:45.440 Adam told the Chicago Tribune, quote, In this case, the 0:18:45.460 --> 0:18:46.900 justice system was outrun by the clock. So this may 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:48.740 be the end of Gloria's story, but for this case, 0:18:48.760 --> 0:19:13.890 it's just the beginnings. In Chicago, a decorated homicide detective 0:19:14.050 --> 0:19:16.970 was unmasked as a child killer. And he was only 0:19:16.970 --> 0:19:20.840 24 years old when Gloria was killed. So what are 0:19:20.850 --> 0:19:23.220 the chances that in all those years as a young 0:19:23.260 --> 0:19:26.700 man before joining the force and even afterwards, that this 0:19:26.780 --> 0:19:30.620 was his only crime? A man does not typically commit 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:35.460 a crime as escalation-heavy, brutal, and organized as the abduction 0:19:35.510 --> 0:19:38.410 and murder of an eight-year-old girl as a one-time occurrence. 0:19:39.070 --> 0:19:42.130 only to become a law-abiding citizen for the next 40 years. 0:19:42.990 --> 0:19:47.590 Criminally speaking, that is an extreme rarity. Immediately following the 0:19:47.670 --> 0:19:51.950 October 2026 press conference, the FBI, the Cook County State's 0:19:52.010 --> 0:19:55.670 Attorney's Office, and the Chicago Police Department's Cold Case Squad 0:19:56.190 --> 0:20:01.460 announced a massive, unprecedented joint initiative. They are launching a 0:20:01.580 --> 0:20:06.080 comprehensive audit of every single violent crime, missing person, and 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:12.090 unsolved homicide case that Thomas McInerney Jr. ever handled, investigated, 0:20:12.710 --> 0:20:16.590 or was in physical proximity to during his three-decade career. 0:20:17.590 --> 0:20:20.710 They're looking for patterns. They're looking for cases that were 0:20:20.730 --> 0:20:25.130 abruptly closed, leads that may have been mysteriously buried, evidence 0:20:25.150 --> 0:20:29.510 that went missing— or investigations where Thomas seemed overly eager 0:20:29.590 --> 0:20:33.030 to push the blame away from a specific profile. They 0:20:33.070 --> 0:20:36.960 are asking... a terrifying question. How many other victims are 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.240 out there? And the answer is that we just don't 0:20:40.260 --> 0:20:45.320 know yet. Because there are several high-profile child murders that 0:20:45.360 --> 0:20:47.770 happened in Chicago during the 1950s and during the 1960s, 1970s, 0:20:48.260 --> 0:20:55.370 and 1980s, Chicago saw a massive influx of unsolved violent crimes. 0:20:56.230 --> 0:20:59.430 Many of these victims were young women. Some were runaways. 0:20:59.910 --> 0:21:03.620 Some were children whose cases were brushed aside or classified 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.220 as low priority during eras of high urban crime rates. 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.880 This news has just broken, and the investigation into Thomas' 0:21:11.940 --> 0:21:15.920 criminal history in killing or killings has just started. So 0:21:16.360 --> 0:21:19.680 we need to look closely at the timeline of Thomas 0:21:19.740 --> 0:21:36.860 McInerney's assignments. I have been looking back at other unsolved 0:21:36.900 --> 0:21:41.140 Chicago cases, including one that happened near Thomas' patrol area, 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:46.340 the infamous Chicago unsolved double homicide of sisters, 15-year-old Barbara 0:21:46.360 --> 0:21:53.300 Grimes and her 12-year-old sister, Patricia. They disappeared on December 28th, 1956, 0:21:53.300 --> 0:21:56.040 after seeing a screening of the Elvis Presley movie, Love 0:21:56.060 --> 0:22:00.650 Me Tender, at the Brighton Theater. Were there any similarities 0:22:00.750 --> 0:22:04.520 between what happened to Barbara and Patricia and what happened 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:08.940 to little Gloria. Barbara went to public school. Her sister 0:22:09.020 --> 0:22:13.480 Patricia attended St. Maurice's Catholic School. So the families were 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:17.060 both Catholic and involved in the Catholic Church, but so 0:22:17.100 --> 0:22:19.420 were a lot of other families in that area back then. 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:23.760 Another thing that everyone knew about Barbara and Patricia was 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:26.980 that they both loved Elvis Presley, and both of them 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:31.610 had recently joined Elvis's official fan club. They loved the 0:22:31.650 --> 0:22:34.410 movie Love Me Tender so much, they had seen it 0:22:34.410 --> 0:22:39.170 11 times. On the night they disappeared, Barbara and Patricia 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:42.980 left their residence at approximately 7.30 p.m. They were headed 0:22:43.020 --> 0:22:46.100 to the Brighton Theater. The theater was about a mile 0:22:46.140 --> 0:22:48.580 and a half away, and it's not clear whether they 0:22:48.620 --> 0:22:51.660 planned to walk there or take the bus, but there 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.580 was a bus route that they often took that went 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:58.500 straight to the theater. Barbara and Patricia promised their mother 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.990 that they would come home by midnight. but they never did. 0:23:03.070 --> 0:23:05.210 They did make it to the movie. A friend of 0:23:05.250 --> 0:23:07.690 theirs told police she saw them waiting in line to 0:23:07.730 --> 0:23:11.590 buy popcorn and that they seemed normal and happy. So 0:23:11.630 --> 0:23:15.130 a big question in their case was, were they like 0:23:15.190 --> 0:23:18.800 Gloria seen with an older man? A few witnesses told 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:22.740 investigators that they had seen the sisters conversing with, then 0:23:22.980 --> 0:23:25.980 entering a car driven by a young man whose physical 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.250 appearance had been similar to that of Elvis Presley. This 0:23:29.330 --> 0:23:32.770 young man, the witnesses said, drove a car that looked 0:23:32.790 --> 0:23:37.090 like a Mercury. But the early investigation was stalled because 0:23:37.550 --> 0:23:41.430 police believed that the sisters may have run away from home. 0:23:42.110 --> 0:23:45.730 Their parents, meanwhile, insisted they would never have gone out 0:23:45.870 --> 0:23:48.600 and stayed away for that long on their own in 0:23:48.610 --> 0:23:53.000 the bitter Chicago winter. But after the snow thawed on 0:23:53.060 --> 0:23:57.940 January 22nd, 1957, a construction worker spotted what he believed 0:23:57.980 --> 0:24:01.290 were mannequin parts as he drove along a rural country 0:24:01.350 --> 0:24:05.930 road named German Church Road, approximately 200 feet east of 0:24:05.990 --> 0:24:10.580 County Line Road, in unincorporated Willow Springs, in an area 0:24:10.780 --> 0:24:16.580 called Devil's Creek. These were Gloria and Patricia's bodies. The 0:24:16.620 --> 0:24:20.280 case hit a wall because the pathologists who examined Barbara 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:23.000 and Patricia were unable to find a cause of death, 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:28.140 and this turned into a huge controversy. The pathologist ultimately 0:24:28.200 --> 0:24:32.360 determined that the sisters were killed on December 28th, within 0:24:32.420 --> 0:24:34.320 a few hours of when they were seen at the movie. 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:38.030 They found wounds on the bodies that looked like bruising 0:24:38.140 --> 0:24:40.890 and ice pick stabbings, but the cause of death was 0:24:41.010 --> 0:24:45.850 ultimately listed as a combination of shock and exposure. The 0:24:45.870 --> 0:24:50.220 pathologist said the ice pick-like wounds were most likely post-mortem 0:24:50.740 --> 0:24:54.460 and caused by rats, not the killer. But what happened 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:59.160 to Barbara and Patricia? They weren't drugged. Toxicology reports showed 0:24:59.290 --> 0:25:03.050 no traces of alcohol or drugs or poison. Both of 0:25:03.110 --> 0:25:06.470 them were naked. And police later stated that there was 0:25:06.610 --> 0:25:11.190 evidence that Barbara had likely engaged in sexual intercourse before 0:25:11.230 --> 0:25:14.940 her death. But they couldn't say whether it was consensual 0:25:15.220 --> 0:25:19.820 or not. Now remember, this was the late 1950s. And 0:25:19.960 --> 0:25:25.270 this fact proved very controversial at the time So one 0:25:25.390 --> 0:25:29.490 question that's never really answered is, is the climate that 0:25:29.530 --> 0:25:33.010 the girls were found in a lucky break because their 0:25:33.070 --> 0:25:36.320 bodies were preserved better than they otherwise would have been? 0:25:37.080 --> 0:25:41.040 Or was this extreme cold something that the killer did 0:25:41.140 --> 0:25:45.400 to cunningly disguise the time of death? It's really interesting 0:25:45.440 --> 0:25:47.980 because no one could agree on anything in this case, 0:25:48.440 --> 0:25:52.340 even the time of death. The coroner's office chief's investigator, 0:25:52.560 --> 0:25:55.590 Harry Gloss, said he disagreed with the time of death. 0:25:56.060 --> 0:25:58.500 He believed that a thin layer of ice that was 0:25:58.560 --> 0:26:01.900 encrusted on the young women's bodies indicated that they had 0:26:01.980 --> 0:26:05.900 most likely been alive for a long time after December 28th. 0:26:06.620 --> 0:26:09.530 He believed they had been alive until at least January 7th. 0:26:10.480 --> 0:26:13.130 Harry Gloss believed that they had been abducted and held 0:26:13.210 --> 0:26:17.870 somewhere else and then sexually assaulted, then beaten and tortured 0:26:17.910 --> 0:26:20.570 by a sexual predator who had lured them into his 0:26:20.630 --> 0:26:25.330 vehicle under some sort of pretense. There were allegations made 0:26:25.750 --> 0:26:28.490 that both girls had been in the habit of spending 0:26:28.570 --> 0:26:32.410 free time outside bars on 36th Street and Archer Avenue, 0:26:32.910 --> 0:26:35.670 where they supposedly would get older men to buy alcohol 0:26:35.690 --> 0:26:39.810 for them. Now, their parents completely denied that this ever happened. 0:26:40.830 --> 0:26:45.240 Police questioned a man named Edward Benny Bedwell, a 21-year-old 0:26:45.400 --> 0:26:48.120 former circus worker who was a dishwasher at the time. 0:26:48.580 --> 0:26:51.420 He was also doing other odd jobs, including factory work. 0:26:52.290 --> 0:26:55.370 And at first, this seemed to be promising because on 0:26:55.430 --> 0:26:59.890 January 27th, Benny confessed to killing the sisters, saying that 0:26:59.990 --> 0:27:03.190 he and an accomplice named Frank had met the girls 0:27:03.290 --> 0:27:06.350 at a bar on Madison Street on January 7th. He 0:27:06.450 --> 0:27:10.000 claimed that he and Frank spent the week together with 0:27:10.130 --> 0:27:13.680 Barbara and Patricia together at various hotels, and that on 0:27:13.740 --> 0:27:19.190 January 13th, Barbara and Patricia had resisted their advances. and 0:27:19.230 --> 0:27:23.030 that after that, Benny and Frank knocked them unconscious and 0:27:23.090 --> 0:27:25.430 dumped them into a ditch while they were still alive. 0:27:26.510 --> 0:27:29.670 The girl's mother, Loretta, told the Chicago Tribune at the 0:27:29.710 --> 0:27:32.920 time that her daughters came from a good home and 0:27:32.940 --> 0:27:37.220 were brought up in religious surroundings. Benny told the Chicago 0:27:37.260 --> 0:27:41.020 Daily Tribune that he had been intoxicated and stated, quote, 0:27:41.520 --> 0:27:43.780 if I hadn't been drinking, I wouldn't have done what 0:27:43.840 --> 0:27:46.800 I did, and what I did, I didn't do intentionally, 0:27:47.160 --> 0:27:51.900 end quote. However, Benny quickly recanted that confession. He later 0:27:51.960 --> 0:27:54.460 said the confession had been fake and that he only 0:27:54.520 --> 0:27:57.000 gave it after days of being held at the police 0:27:57.020 --> 0:28:00.720 station and pressured. And at any rate, the confession quickly 0:28:00.780 --> 0:28:06.570 fell apart because it contradicted autopsy timelines. Benny Bedwell had 0:28:06.610 --> 0:28:09.390 been working on December 28th, the night of the movie, 0:28:09.710 --> 0:28:12.210 and could prove it with a time card. So the 0:28:12.290 --> 0:28:16.190 time of death ruling ultimately helped get Benny cleared because 0:28:16.370 --> 0:28:20.430 he had an alibi. Harry Gloss never gave up on 0:28:20.470 --> 0:28:23.770 his theory that the sisters had been sexually tortured and 0:28:23.790 --> 0:28:26.970 that he believed that Benny Bedwell had killed them. He 0:28:27.010 --> 0:28:30.920 was fired for voicing his opinions, but later deputized by 0:28:30.960 --> 0:28:35.000 the sheriff at the time. And reportedly, Harry continued working 0:28:35.040 --> 0:28:39.260 on the case without pay. There was renewed interest in 0:28:39.280 --> 0:28:43.240 the case many years later, in 2025, when a retired 0:28:43.340 --> 0:28:47.480 Chicago police detective named James Hennigan created a Facebook page 0:28:47.640 --> 0:28:51.560 and stated, that he believed that the Grimes sisters' murders 0:28:52.060 --> 0:28:56.820 may have a possible link to yet another unsolved case, 0:28:57.040 --> 0:29:01.470 the 1955 triple murder of two brothers, 13-year-old John Schuessler 0:29:01.870 --> 0:29:07.350 and his brother, 11-year-old Anton, and their friend, 14-year-old Robert Peterson. 0:29:08.210 --> 0:29:11.500 The three boys were also found naked and in a 0:29:11.540 --> 0:29:15.780 forest preserve. But for now, James' hunch that the murders 0:29:15.840 --> 0:29:18.780 of Barbara and Patricia may be connected to the three boys' 0:29:18.820 --> 0:29:22.510 murders is just a theory. No one was ever arrested 0:29:22.590 --> 0:29:25.970 or charged in connection with Barbara and Patricia's murders or 0:29:26.190 --> 0:29:28.610 with the killings of the Schuessler brothers and their friend. 0:29:29.650 --> 0:29:33.590 Could Thomas have been a suspect in those cases? The 0:29:33.630 --> 0:29:36.700 Chicago Police Department has said there is no evidence that 0:29:36.760 --> 0:29:39.640 Thomas knew Gloria and that they have not found evidence 0:29:39.680 --> 0:29:44.500