This Day in History: Barbara and Patricia Grimes—aged 15 and 12, disappeared on this day in 1956. The two sisters went to see the Elvis Presley film Love Me Tender at the Brighton Park theater at around 7:30 p.m. They were big Elvis fans so they stayed for the second screening of Love Me Tender, which meant that they would be getting back home at around 11:45 p.m.
"They disappeared while traveling from the Brighton park movie theater to their home at McKinley park which was about a mile and a half in distance. Their disappearance initiated one of the largest missing persons investigations in the history of Chicago. A city wide search was in place for these 2 girls. Rivers and canals were searched, door-to-door searches, and flyers were being put out looking for these young girls. Many teenagers said that they saw the 2 girls get in a car driven by a young man that looked like Elvis Presley." Source
The girls' nude bodies were discovered alongside a deserted road in Willow Springs on January 22, 1957.
Although the sisters' autopsy reports concluded they had been murdered within five hours of their last confirmed sighting, and that both girls had died of secondary shock, numerous individuals attested to having seen the girls alive in the weeks between the night of December 28 and the subsequent discovery of their bodies.
The murder of the Grimes sisters has been described by authors as a crime that "shattered the innocence" of Chicago. This case is also acknowledged as one of the most labor-intensive missing person and murder investigations in Cook County, and remains one of Chicago's most infamous cold cases.
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