Grimes Sisters/German Church Rd.

I feel that this thread should be prefaced with a cautionary

desecration advisory for those of you not familiar with this haunted

site and the details surrounding the tragic murder of the Grimes

sisters and may find it upsetting...I assure you it is not intended to

sensationalize the events that have propagated this legend, the

continued paranormal activity reported there or exploit the plight of

the family that owned the property as a consequence of their front yard

being the location of a horrible discovery near the end of their

driveway...I report the facts as I understand them by the research I

have conducted, witnesses I have interviewed, stories I remember from

my youth and my own journeys to the “House On German Church Road”

starting as a child in the mid 70's ...

The lot at the corner of
German Church and County Line Roads is still vacant today... the tiny

swimming pool bath house is the sole structure remaining aside from the

pile of rubble where the house stood and was finally razed in what was

almost an effort erase the enigma associated with this property ...a

plot of land that is surrounded by upscale housing in what is

considered one of the most affluent areas in the U.S. yet remains

conspicuous by it’s continued vacancy...I remember this area growing up

in the Chicago suburbs as being a place where pristine snow covered

fields were the choice destination of snowmobilers and countless acres

of paths, trails and even an abandon prison farm provided those of us

with dirt bikes as much adventure as our gas tanks would permit ...

At
the farthest reaches of one of these prairie pathways that now has

succumbed to the forces of progress and the bulldozer’s blade long ago

was an old house that someone had left furnished complete with a

vintage ‘55 Buick the basement garage ...Some contend that the woman

that lived in the house was so distraught by the bodies being

discovered at the edge of her property that she was institutionalized

following a PTSD related breakdown and her husband moved across the

street leaving the home in stasis in the event that she returned to him

(and evidently their children as the discarded toys I remember strewn

about the abandon house implied) ...

Some theorize the house
became haunted following the murders, and as this became a popular

Halloween and thrill seeking destination for kids back then, the

paranormal activity alleged to occur at this site was also confounded

by irrepressible imaginations of those that mustered up the courage to

visit this site that was legendary even back in the 70's ...I can

remember the house before it was set ablaze by vandals but never went

inside although I did in fact explore the basement garage that sat

below the charred remains of the house and became a makeshift crypt for

the family Buick ... Being the precocious prepubescent that I was, I of

course was often the first to venture undaunted into these places as my

friends hung back waiting for me to test the waters as point man ...the

apprehension I experienced at this location in particular was always

tangible as I made my way up the gravel driveway stepping over the

chain hanging between two rusted posts, leaving my friends and the

relative visible safety of German Church Road behind ...the expression

that surely would have belied my feigned nonchalance as I marched

defiantly up the ascending and curving gravel grade beyond the sight of

my co adventures was likely one of rapidly diminishing confidence...as

the house came into site I was stopped n my tracks by the sound of a

sort of whimpering coming from a indeterminate direction ...needless to

say my friends didn’t wait for an explanation when they saw me

uncharacteristically running down the hill at a hastened pace...I told

them I heard someone talking and quickly retreated without notice ...it

would be several years before I returned to the site that by then had

been claimed by vandalism and arson ...

Some of the stories that
are on the net I can collaborate as far as what rumors where filtered

down to us from older siblings ...many contend that they would often

spot a gaunt looking man wandering the grounds that some believed to be

the property owner, while some of the more spectacular claims made

included the spectral sightings of the sisters lying just as they were

left on the side of the road, discarded like refuse on that cold

January night...some claim to see girls consistent with the age of the

sisters peering over the guardrail as they speed along that still

wooded stretch of road and often there are reports of the two being

spotted solemnly wondering between the tombstones in the nearby

cemetery behind the Lutheran Church that is the street’s namesake and a

stones throw from the cul-de-sac where the bodies were discovered

...they reports vary but most claim they are spotted from a distance

and vanish behind the tombstones when someone approaches thus

disappearing completely when the inquiring church elder, attendee or

maintenance guy got too close ....

Any crime involving child
victimization is heinous and abhorrent, but here is something even more

sinister when the act of aggression is that of a sadistic, sexually

predatory nature ...the only possible reasoning for those that believe

there is a higher power allowing this type of atrocity to occur without

intervention is that it reminds us not to take our little ones for

granted and perhaps hug them a little tighter before they leave to go

out with friends or to the movies...it at least provides us with an

added incentive for reiterating to our kids just how important it is to

avoid situations and scenarios where they could become yet another of

the many missing, exploited or worse in an endlessly growing

statistic...Loretta Grimes must have replayed those last few moments

that she saw her daughters alive during the guilt stages of her

grieving ...it is natural for parents to blame themselves or attribute

the fate of their child to a discretionary failure or momentary lapse

in judgment ... perhaps if more perennial recitations pertaining to the

inherent dangers of “strangers” were added to dinner table

conversations the child would have not have been so easily lured into

the state of comprised security that lead to such tragic consequences

...anyone who is a parent has at some point abdicated authority in

favor of being a “pal” to their child or as a means of exhibiting

trust, but there was not nearly the frequency of these sort of crimes

back in 1957 ...the similarities between the Grimes Sisters and the

Schuessler-Peterson murders involving the discovery of three young boys

murdered and dumped naked in a ditch on the city’s northwest side less

than two years before in ‘55 seemed to mark the end of the assumption

that the relative safety of a “good neighborhood” would shield children

from the most insidious of transgressions ...crimes of this nature are

not that of an aberrant, uncontrollable urge or perverted passion, but

that of anger, violence and degradation as all predatory crimes are,

but when the object of this unconscionable act is a child, the veil of

darkness associated with the crime scene, the surviving relatives, even

the investigating law enforcement personnel can linger on indefinitely

...I have heard reports from other “sensitives” that they can still

feel the preponderance of residual evil emanating blocks away from the

property where the Gacy house once stood ...a small plot of land that

also stood vacant for an while following it’s demolition and excavation

of 27 young men and boys back in the 70's ...The Grimes murder remains

unsolved and the term”cold case” is the worst of puns in this instance,

yet is still refereed to as such albeit the fact that it is presumed

the girls likely died from prolonged exposure and hypothermia and not

as the direct result of the brutal injuries they sustained at the hands

of a monster ...

This became a national headline story that even
prompted Elvis Presley to issue a statement urging the girls to return

home if the were in fact runaways as contended by police during those

agonizing weeks while they were missing between December 28th, 1956 and

January 22nd 1957 ...Patricia (13) and Barbara (15) Grimes departed

their home on the 3600 block of south Damen Avenue that ironically was

only a few doors up from a home on the 4100 block where one of the

reputed “Resurrection Mary” candidates (Mary Bregovy) resided until

she was fatally injured in a car accident in the mid 30's...

“Love
Me Tender” enjoyed an extended run at the Brighton theater on Chicago’s

south side and as Barbara and Patti were fanatical Elvis fans, this

would have been their 11th viewing of that film and what they pledged

to be the last ...they were spotted in line getting popcorn around 9:30

pm and then again at 11:00 pm at a bus stop ...what happened next is

purely speculation to this day ...Loretta Grimes grew anxious when

11:45 pm arrived and her daughters failed to return ...she promptly

dispatched her 17 year old daughter (Theresa) and 14 year old son

(Joey) to the Hoyne Ave. bus stop where three late service scheduled

stops failed to produce their siblings ...

The month of them
missing was already a media circus and reporters camped in front of the

grimes home hoping to catch a glimpse of the distraught family members

or get a highly coveted exclusive interview or photo...the ensuing

nightmare that followed was an endless stream of alleged sightings from

all over the Chicago-land area by train conductors, motel clerks,

mysterious calls to the homes of classmates in the middle of the night

and even claims of visionary dreams ...

At one point Loretta
received a ransom note demanding $1,000 to be delivered to a downtown

Milwaukee Catholic church that left the poor woman waiting in a parking

lot with the money and the promise of the girls safe return that never

came to fruition... as if the depravity of robbing a woman of her

children was not enough, a scheme to extort money from her only added

insult to the open wound of an injury...the ransom note was eventually

traced to a mental patient...then there was the call from a man

claiming to have had a “dream” that the girls would be found near 81st

and Wolf roads in what was then a park in southwest suburban Willow

Springs and when the girls where discovered less than a mile away the

prognosticator was identified as a 53 year old Walter Kranz; a steam

fitter working part time as liquor store clerk where the call was

traced ....he was questioned extensively as a person of interest and

later released after he was said to have been interrogated numerous

times at the Englewood police station and administered a polygraph

test, the results of which were unspecified... nor was it disclosed if

he was later released because of lack of sufficient evidence to detain

him or if he was exonerated of the crimes through a substantiated alibi

and the results of the lie detector test... Walter Kranz and Rolando

Cruz are in my opinion perhaps the most visceral and salient examples

as to why so many do not come forward with psychic visions that may

assist in a murder/missing person(s) investigation as the fear of

implication by over zealous, skeptical, unscrupulous or pressured

investigators/prosecutors may name them as a suspect, offender or

accompli by association...

Cruz was originally convicted of the murder of 11 year old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville
Illinois,
in the neighboring county of Du page when he related dream visions he

had about the killing and he actually served jail time before a new

trial revealed suppression of evidence and criminal misconduct by

county prosecutors and state investigators that ultimately freed Cruz ,

indicted the offending prosecutors and investigators that were later

acquitted and solidified the case against serial killer/rapist/scumbag

Brian Dugan whom now resides on death row following an almost personal

seeming campaign by States Attorney Joe Birkett...a personal seeming

vendetta he continued even after his unsuccessful gubernatorial bid a

few years back that many claimed was at the root of his allegedly

feigned indignation of the botched case that left such an indelible

stain on the County Court system even today...the retrial of Dugan and

ultimate death sentencing last year resurfaced the memories of the

horrid crime and revealed more details pertaining to the officious

misconduct in the Cruz conviction, but I digress ...

When the
gruesome discovery was finally made by a passing motorist and his wife

that January 1957 morning after noticing what appeared to be a couple

of unclothed store mannequins on the side of the road he was horrified

to find that they were indeed human remains ...the pair proceeded

directly to a local police station (assuming Willow Springs as affluent

Burr Ride was unincorporated Hinsdale or Lyons Township back then)

where the wife whom was so beset with emotional trauma following the

discovery that she had to be carried back to the car ...what was to

follow was a crime scene trampled by law enforcement officials from

numerous local, county and state agencies and from numerous surrounding

municipalities ...the FBI’s involvement was never disclosed but many

claim that this investigation was botched the moment the girls left for

the movies that fateful night ....

In a city that was still
reeling from a similar crime a few years earlier that left many in the

Chicago area catatonic in the grip of fear and a killer still at large

in 1958, the consensus among those closely monitoring the investigation

was that assigning Lt. Joseph Morris to head the special police unit

assigned to this case as well, must have seemed like a bad choice ...a

haphazard search of the crime scene and wooded ravine flanking the

banks of Devil’s Creek (much of which remains wooded today ) yielded no

clothing or clues and as Lt. Morris vowed not to make the same mistakes

they did in ‘55, ostensibly it looked to be repeat performance of the

disorganized, poorly orchestrated, uncooperative undertaking that was

the hallmark of the Schuessler-Peterson CSI ...The scene on that day on

the northwest side was apparently an effort that seemed almost

adversarial by the competing factions comprising the assembled task

force of 162 officers from mixed departments and municipal law

enforcement agencies that searched the Robinson Woods for clues after a

lunch breaking salesman spotted the boys along a forest preserve creek

bed that day ...

The autopsy performed on the girls itself was
inconclusive as far as gleaning additional clues or useful forensic

evidence by mid 1950's conventions save for the reluctant admission by

the three experienced pathologists that the older of the sisters

(Barbara) was sexually assaulted ...there was also confirmation of the

injuries the reporters had noticed at the crime scene but claimed that

none of the injuries suffered were life threatening and the girls

likely dies from exposure after being left unconscious on the roadside

the night they vanished on Dec 28th ...the preserved state of the

bodies and the fact that they went unnoticed mere feet from a well

traversed roadside, just beyond the guardrail, was attributed to the

steady snowfall and consistently frigid temperatures that prevailed for

the month they were missing...whether this information was

intentionally deceptive, convoluted or erroneous is unknown as it is

was often a common tactic to intentionally falsify details related to a

crime to help screen out the steady stream of bogus leads and false

confessions...This often accompanies celebrated cases where national

notoriety is a potential and thus a motivation for false confessions by

whack-balls and nut-jobs alike
even when the fame acquired would
be that of a nefarious nature (I feel like I’m describing aspiring

para-celebrities for some reason)...

As the media circus
escalated and the city that was swept with paranoia, suspicion and

conjecture reverted to the panic stricken state it was struggling to

overcome...the investigation intensified and became even more bizarre

and complicated...there was even a Chicago Tribune newspaper sponsored

contest inviting readers to mail in their theories for a $50 prize if

it was posted in the edition that it was featured...but as repulsive as

media sensationalization can be, the outpouring of sympathy from the

community came to the rescue of the now destitute surviving Grimes

family members and rallied to raise the funds required to pay off their

Damen Avenue home ...very little information is available about the

father (Joseph Grimes) aside from being “ a husky truck driver that

broke down and sobbed upon identification of the bodies ...but as

divorce and single motherhood carried with it the stigma of marital

discord and the connotation of infidelity back in those days, this may

be the reason that the father’s role in this ordeal is not mentioned or

largely suppressed ...I have yet to notice a reference to Loretta as a

widow in my research endeavors thus far ...the girls were buried at

Holy Sepultre; the site of “The Miracle Child” and the subject of a few

of my past threads...I will visit their grave sites when I return there

in the early spring ...

The investigation intensified as the
outcry from the public and governing officials demanded resolution...in

all, it is stated that close to 300,000 people were questioned and up

to 2,000 were seriously interrogated and the interrogative methods

employed back then back were said to make Guantanamo Bay look like and

all inclusive stay at “Sandals”...The search for the killer(s) headed

by Lead Investigator Harry Glos produced a narrowed down list of

unsavory suspects one of which was a drifter from Tennessee named

Edward L. Benny Bedwell who was a dishwasher at a restaurant on west

Madison street where the transient worked periodically for meals ...his

resemblance to Elvis by way of sideburns, duck tail style haircut and

the description of the two girls that claimed to be sisters he was seen

with following the disappearance was enough to subject Bidwell to an

interrogation where civil rights where not as much of an immediate

concern as the extraction of a confession which they where able to

elicit presumably by brute force...but the culpability of Bidwell’s

admission of guilt was scrutinized by the State’s Attorney and ordered

released only to be immediately scooped up and extradited to Florida on

a warrant related to rape charges involving a 13 year old girl there

that bore striking similarities to the Grimes case, but the accuser in

Florida managed to escape after being held captive for several

days...this M.O. and the startling revelation released by the

pathologist confirming that Barbara was in fact molested and the

opposing viewpoint of lead detective Glos that the weather conditions

that created the layer of ice around the still warm bodies of the girls

could have only occurred if they were dropped off over a week later

around January 7th as conditions and cumulative precipitation prior to

that would not have created this ice layer around the bodies...this was

concurrent with a scenario that the sisters were held captive then

murdered, consistent with the Florida allegations...he escaped

conviction on a technicality there and was jailed years later on a

weapons charges, he died shortly after his release in 1986....

Police
Captain Ralph Petaque netted the other of the more likely suspects in

17 year old Max Feig ...details surrounding his implication as “a

person of interest” is unclear but, but through the notoriously

persuasive techniques of he day, the 17 year old voluntarily took a

polygraph examination that was later ruled as inadmissible because it

violated the laws governing juveniles and the administration of lie

detector testing...the results of the polygraph were never disclosed

but not unlike Bidwell there were accusations of a coerced confession

thus necessitating the boy’s release ...he was sent to prison just a

few years later after he was convicted of the violent murder of a young

woman... time passed and hopes where dashed as the Schessler-Peterson

murders were deemed not connected by it’s eventual resolution in 1994

and relationship to the murder of the Brach Candy heiress: Helen

Vorhees Brach...Loretta Grimes died in 1989 and was described as

despondent and spiritually depleted woman ...rumors and theories

continue today, and some of the prospective scenarios have included an

attempt to force the girls into a white slavery/prostitution ring and

even disputed claims that the girls were known to frequent an Archer

avenue tavern where they supposedly would often entice older men into

buying them drinks and this ultimately lead to their demise ...these

allegations are still angrily denied by childhood friends and

acquaintances of the sisters contending that they simply met with foul

play by forced abduction or by consenting to a ride by a stranger with

sinister ulterior motives...as the case grows colder the likelihood of

resolution wanes and closure for the family lessens with each passing

year ...

The vacant property on that corner is like a dark void
amid the contemporary, upscale houses and the wooded, spacious lots,

some of which overlook Devils Creek...from the elevated perspective and

foliage veiled vantage point of the hill where the old house stood, one

can almost imagine how a displaced soul must feel gazing into the

warm, ambient glow of the domiciles below harboring the life energy

that burns as brightly as the illumination provided by the flickering

televisions and interior track lighting visible though the patio

windows ...this feeling is compounded by the cold and darkness adding

to the already fantastical, self imposed mind set...a mid set some of

us that obstinately reject the “ghost hunter” methodology strive to

achieve when we embark on the solo excursions that have become the

preferred mode of investigation for those of us that are reverting to a

scaled down and bare bones technique...a technique that has liberated

us from being burdened and limited by elaborate and yet-to-be-proven

useful gadgetry in favor of an unencumbered, distraction free,

sensibility oriented session ...I feel there is plenty of room for both

investigation types in this field and I am not going to tout one as

more
credible than the other, though I still don’t understand if
some of my counterparts are looking for EMF variables as proof of

paranormal activity or as proof of hallucinations by those that report

it, but hopefully once they decide they will let us know ( lol ) ....

The
latest trips to this complicated site incorporated both a night and a

following day visit ...The night visit was relatively sedate save for

the uncharacteristic apprehension I had to scale the steep embankment

beyond the guardrails where the old house once sat and prime corner lot

real estate remains devoid of development...looking up over the summit

of the grade, the skeletal tree tops where clearly visible by the ever

present orange glow provided by the nearby network of highways and the

close proximity to the city and this is often visible when I experiment

with the longer exposure and high ISO camera settings ...the elevated

expanse of this plot of land that still
haunts my memories remains
in the state of stoic stasis I remember from the spring of ‘08...the

usual tactic of photographic distraction served as an adequate shield

when the growing anxiety from the sudden energy shift I felt caught me

off guard as I made my way into a clearing for a better landscape shot

...I did not feel the compulsion to retreat that I have in some of my

past escapades but the comfort level here was “tolerable” at best...

The
weather was not as limiting or physically debilitating as my recent

freezing, predawn voyage to Peabody Estate, but the prolonged

glove-less exposure quickly rendered my fingers to a stinging,

inoperable numbness that made the trek back to the Jeep parked a

quarter of a block away a welcome intermission to the nearby Trinity

Cemetery stage of the visit that is endemic to the lore associated with

the legend of this site...

The still-warm engine thawed my
frigid digits as I splayed my hands in front of the dashboard vents

...the ride to the cemetery was brief but elongated by the continuation

of
my “warm up” session...and as I sat in the church parking lot
facing the darkness beyond the line of tall evergreens that bordered

the parking lot and the cemetery, I realized that it was more of a

matter of procrastination than a reprieve from the cold that kept me in

the car ...the hesitation was quickly replaced by an adrenaline rush

exhilaration that solitary expeditions to night darkened cemeteries

often provide by way of aesthetic creepiness alone ...I look forward to

analyzing these photos from the night visit, but the return I made the

following afternoon revealed a startling discovery that the route I

took along the muddied banks of “Devil’s Creek“ on my ‘08 previous trip

must have denied me ...The commencement of the day trip was academic

retracing the steps from the night before, starting at that infamous

forested stretch of German Church Road where the bubbling trickle of

the creek can be heard from the spotted unfrozen patches below the

steep drop protected by the iron rails on both sides of the road ...the

surreal beauty of this rural oasis will be forever tainted by the

residual imprint of unspeakable brutality that robbed those poor young

souls of their lives ...lives they barely had a chance to experience by

an act so heinous that this area along “Devil’s Creek” is said to be

indelibly cursed ...

The rubble from the demolition of the
house, the still-standing bathhouse, the rust hinged, wooden gates are

all still there as the light of day confirmed this just as I remember

them ...I noticed what appeared to be a monolithic stone structure

perched on a jutting promontory above the shore of the creek from the

vantage point behind the bathhouse where the creek gently curves east

before it resumes is southerly flow back under the road where I started

...as I drew closer easing my way down the snow covered slope, the

outline of an underlying structure built into the side of the hill

became visible ...it appeared to be a hut or shack of sorts fashioned

out of cobblestone and flagstone to form fit a hollowed out space dug

from beneath an overhanging cliff ...they fortified this space with an

stone cemented arch ceiling that still supports a tree and partially

exposed root system above ...sort of a stone cottage/cave complete with

windows, a door-less front entrance, a fireplace, shelves and stone

slabs benches ...the charred remnant of a fire, pop cans and a few

other items left behind hinted at recent activity ...activity that

evidently included pot smoking ...At first I surmised that this was

likely the result of surplus landscaping or construction materials from

the new subdivision as the back yards of some of the new houses end at

the creek bed...and although this structure seems to be on the property

of the abandoned lot on the other side, it isn’t unfathomable that

this was the collective efforts of the new neighborhood’s fathers to

make a sort of playhouse for their kids while forming new friendships

etc ...yet closer inspection lead me to conclude that this concave

cottage likely predates the new subdivision by a considerable margin,

but I stand undecided at the present pending inspection from some of my

more construction savvy cohorts ..Devil’s Creek winds for a

considerable distance and is flanked by woods on both sides all the way

to the next major thoroughfare north and for an indeterminate distance

south until it undoubtedly terminates as a tributary to the Des Plaines

River as the Google Earth renderings are inconclusive ...there many

rumors and hearsay associated with how this tiny stream earned it’s

name, but that is for another thread ....




-R.I.P. Barbara and Patricia-

Here are the unedited (compressed) photos from my 2 early February 2010 visits ( 187 total)
http://s994.photobucket.com/albums/af68/HafhandNation2/Grimes%20Sis...

http://i994.photobucket.com/albums/af68/HafhandNation2/grimesmurder...

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