Latest / Hell and Gone: Murder Line / Hell and Gone Murder Line: Gloria Kowalewicz

Transcript

Hell and Gone Murder Line: Gloria Kowalewicz · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:46
Speaker 1: School of Humans.
0:49
Speaker 2: Helen Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in
0:53
Speaker 2: an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward,
0:57
Speaker 2: and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by
1:00
Speaker 2: law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members,
1:05
Speaker 2: their statements should not be considered evidence and point to
1:08
Speaker 2: the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases. We
1:12
Speaker 2: remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty
1:16
Speaker 2: in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is
1:19
Speaker 2: intended to state or imply that anyone who has not
1:22
Speaker 2: been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
1:26
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. On November 12, 1960, eight-year-old Gloria Kovalevich
1:37
Speaker 1: was getting ready for church. Church was a big deal
1:41
Speaker 1: in this family. and little Gloria had just celebrated her
1:44
Speaker 1: Holy Communion a couple of weeks earlier. Gloria lived in Bridgeport,
1:49
Speaker 1: on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. The family was
1:53
Speaker 1: working class, and they were regulars at the nearby Catholic church, St.
1:57
Speaker 1: Mary of Mount Carmel, and their faith was a huge
2:00
Speaker 1: part of their weekly routine. Gloria had gotten up early
2:04
Speaker 1: that day to go to church and receive the sacrament,
2:08
Speaker 1: which a nun had told her classmates to do daily,
2:11
Speaker 1: in order to get used to the ritual. So Gloria
2:14
Speaker 1: had followed that same route from her home to her
2:18
Speaker 1: church for early morning mass every single day for two weeks,
2:22
Speaker 1: which might become important later when police were trying to
2:26
Speaker 1: figure out if someone had been stalking her. That Saturday
2:30
Speaker 1: was the last day that she would follow that routine.
2:33
Speaker 1: She left her home just after 8 a.m., but instead
2:36
Speaker 1: of riding with her family because the car was being used,
2:39
Speaker 1: Gloria walked. the just over three blocks on her own.
2:44
Speaker 1: She was wearing a pink and brown checkered dress and
2:47
Speaker 1: carrying a white communion purse over her shoulder. Her mother, Esther,
2:52
Speaker 1: waved goodbye to her and watched Gloria walk north before
2:56
Speaker 1: turning east and going out of sight. Gloria knew that
3:01
Speaker 1: route well, but on that morning, she never made it
3:04
Speaker 1: to morning mass. And by that afternoon, her parents and
3:08
Speaker 1: the entire neighborhood were in a state of panic. This
3:13
Speaker 1: was not a place where an eight-year-old girl vanished into
3:16
Speaker 1: thin air. This was a quiet suburb. The Chicago Police
3:21
Speaker 1: Department was immediately on alert, and they launched a massive,
3:24
Speaker 1: immediate citywide manhunt. hundreds of officers and neighbors and volunteers,
3:31
Speaker 1: including the Boy Scouts, fanned out across the South Side.
3:35
Speaker 1: They searched alleyways, they knocked on doors, peered into abandoned buildings,
3:40
Speaker 1: and combed through the industrial lots bordering the city's canals.
3:45
Speaker 1: Gloria's shocking disappearance made the local news, and parents in
3:49
Speaker 1: the area and their children were terrified. But it wasn't
3:53
Speaker 1: until 64 years later that they got an answer. one
3:57
Speaker 1: that involved a decorated homicide detective who was also a
4:01
Speaker 1: child killer. I'm Katherine Townsend. Over the past eight years
4:07
Speaker 1: of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've
4:10
Speaker 1: learned that there is no such thing as a small
4:12
Speaker 1: town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of
4:16
Speaker 1: messages from people all around the country asking for help
4:19
Speaker 1: with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and
4:23
Speaker 1: their communities. If you have a case you'd like me
4:26
Speaker 1: and my team to look into, you can reach out
4:28
Speaker 1: to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
4:30
Speaker 1: That's 678-744-6145. Or you can send us a message on
4:32
Speaker 1: Instagram at hellandgonepod. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line.
5:31
Speaker 1: The entire south side of Chicago was in a panic.
5:34
Speaker 1: after eight-year-old Gloria seemed to vanish into thin air while
5:38
Speaker 1: walking to morning mass at her church. However, just a
5:43
Speaker 1: few hours later, the search for the missing little girl
5:46
Speaker 1: came to a horrifying end. A driver for a laundry
5:50
Speaker 1: company was in McKinley Park on his lunch break and
5:53
Speaker 1: stopped along 104th Avenue, which was in a wooded area
5:57
Speaker 1: of Palos Park, more than 15 miles southwest of Gloria's home.
6:02
Speaker 1: The driver was eating his lunch at a picnic table
6:05
Speaker 1: when he saw something colored that caught his eye. It
6:09
Speaker 1: was Gloria's pink and brown checkered dress. Then he found
6:13
Speaker 1: Gloria's small, lifeless body dumped in a ditch. He could
6:17
Speaker 1: see that her head was badly damaged and misshapen and
6:21
Speaker 1: that she was covered with blood. After checking her pulse
6:25
Speaker 1: and realizing that she was dead, he drove to the
6:28
Speaker 1: nearest town and called the Cook County Sheriff's Office. Gloria
6:32
Speaker 1: had been fatally shot twice in the head with what
6:36
Speaker 1: police believed to be a Colt. 45 weapon. That murder
6:40
Speaker 1: weapon was never found, but police did find a single bullet.
6:46
Speaker 1: Gloria's clothing was torn and strewn around near her body.
6:50
Speaker 1: Investigators found her coat and the little white communion purse
6:54
Speaker 1: she had so proudly carried when she set off for church.
6:58
Speaker 1: Later that day, Her father, Edward, identified Gloria's body. And
7:03
Speaker 1: once the autopsy was complete, the acts of the case
7:07
Speaker 1: got more brutal for Gloria's parents. They learned that Gloria
7:11
Speaker 1: had been beaten and fatally shot. Initial media reports said
7:16
Speaker 1: that they did not believe that Gloria had been sexually assaulted. However,
7:21
Speaker 1: this later changed. Police noted that Gloria was wearing her
7:25
Speaker 1: underwear when she was found. but her blue leotard, the
7:29
Speaker 1: one that she wore under her dress, had been taken
7:32
Speaker 1: off and placed under her. The brutality of the crime
7:36
Speaker 1: shocked even the most hardened homicide detectives on the Chicago force.
7:41
Speaker 1: This case made local and eventually national news, and headlines
7:46
Speaker 1: talked about catching the sex maniac who was responsible for
7:49
Speaker 1: the killing. The Chicago Police Department was the investigating agency.
7:55
Speaker 1: And police did have one lead. Witnesses told police that
8:00
Speaker 1: a girl who looked like Gloria was seen with a
8:03
Speaker 1: man roughly 25 to 40 years old shortly after she
8:07
Speaker 1: left her home. So police were looking for an adult male.
8:11
Speaker 1: That's pretty much all they knew, but that is a
8:13
Speaker 1: wide range of ages. Really, the police had very little
8:17
Speaker 1: to go on. This was before DNA testing or security cameras. However,
8:23
Speaker 1: The technicians from the Chicago Police Crime Laboratory meticulously examined
8:27
Speaker 1: this scene. And while they were examining Gloria's clothing, they
8:32
Speaker 1: focused on something. The strap of that small, white communion purse.
8:37
Speaker 1: And they found something vital. A single, distinct, latent fingerprint.
8:43
Speaker 1: It was just a partial print, left behind in the
8:46
Speaker 1: frantic moments when the killer grabbed or discarded the bag.
8:50
Speaker 1: Even in 1960, a fingerprint was a powerful tool, but
8:54
Speaker 1: only if you have a suspect to match it against.
8:57
Speaker 1: Back then, detectives did not get a match, so the
9:01
Speaker 1: print was cataloged and filed away. Detectives interviewed hundreds of
9:06
Speaker 1: people and seemed to mainly focus on the usual suspects,
9:10
Speaker 1: like sex offenders living near the area, transients passing through,
9:14
Speaker 1: but also on people like delivery men and neighbors. They
9:18
Speaker 1: followed thousands of leads across Cook County and beyond. But
9:24
Speaker 1: as the months bled into years, the leads dried up.
9:27
Speaker 1: The case file kept getting bigger. But Gloria's case slowly
9:31
Speaker 1: went cold. Years passed and the world moved on. Many
9:36
Speaker 1: of the original detectives on the case retired. But preserved
9:40
Speaker 1: in an evidence bag was that white communion purse with
9:44
Speaker 1: the single fingerprint on the strap. Then, in 2010, there
9:49
Speaker 1: was a break in the case. Cold case investigators with
9:52
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police Department pulled Gloria's file out to take
9:55
Speaker 1: another look. By now, there was DNA testing and the
10:00
Speaker 1: CODIS database. So police sent Gloria's preserved clothing, her leotard
10:05
Speaker 1: and coat, to a specialized forensic laboratory. Using advanced techniques
10:10
Speaker 1: that required only microscopic amounts of biological material, forensic scientists
10:15
Speaker 1: were able to successfully extract a male DNA profile from
10:19
Speaker 1: the fabric of Gloria's clothes. The DNA profile came from
10:23
Speaker 1: semen that was found on Gloria's coat. This must have
10:28
Speaker 1: been a parent's nightmare to hear because the initial report
10:32
Speaker 1: said that Gloria had not been sexually assaulted, but the
10:35
Speaker 1: semen on the coat seemed to confirm that either pre-
10:38
Speaker 1: or post-mortem, there was a sexual component to this crime.
10:44
Speaker 1: The semen was a massive breakthrough because now detectives had DNA,
10:49
Speaker 1: and for the first time in half a century, the
10:52
Speaker 1: killer had a genetic signature. But when investigators ran that
10:57
Speaker 1: DNA profile through CODIS, the national database that houses the
11:00
Speaker 1: DNA of convicted offenders across the United States, the system
11:04
Speaker 1: returned a frustrating result. No match. The killer's DNA was
11:10
Speaker 1: not in the system. This tells investigators one of two things.
11:17
Speaker 1: Either the killer managed to avoid a felony conviction for
11:21
Speaker 1: the rest of his life, or he died before the
11:24
Speaker 1: modern DNA databases were established. The case stalled again for years.
11:31
Speaker 1: with the genetic profile locked into a vault. Until 2024,
11:36
Speaker 1: the FBI's forensic genetic genealogy team entered the narrative. 62
11:41
Speaker 1: years after Gloria's brutal murder, investigators finally had a break
11:46
Speaker 1: in the case. They had matched the DNA to a suspect,
11:51
Speaker 1: Thomas F. McInerney Jr. But Thomas McInerney Jr. wasn't just
11:56
Speaker 1: your average suspect. He was a police officer And he
12:01
Speaker 1: had been working and living near Gloria's neighborhood before she
12:05
Speaker 1: was kidnapped. Genetic genealogy doesn't have to rely on criminal databases.
12:26
Speaker 1: It uses consumer DNA databases. So the same platforms millions
12:30
Speaker 1: of everyday people use to trace their family trees, look
12:33
Speaker 1: up their ancestry and find distant cousins, to find potential
12:37
Speaker 1: familial DNA links. The FBI took the unknown male DNA
12:42
Speaker 1: profile from Gloria's clothing and uploaded it to these genealogical databases.
12:48
Speaker 1: And the system found matches, but they weren't direct hits.
12:52
Speaker 1: The database found potential distant relatives, This would be things
12:56
Speaker 1: like third cousins, second cousins once removed, or great nieces.
13:01
Speaker 1: An FBI genealogist sat down with a blank piece of
13:05
Speaker 1: paper and started to construct a massive, multi-generational family tree.
13:10
Speaker 1: Then the FBI worked backward to find a common ancestor.
13:14
Speaker 1: And then they built the tree forward, tracing every male
13:17
Speaker 1: descendant who would have been alive, adult, and in Chicago
13:21
Speaker 1: in November of 1960. So this was a combination of
13:25
Speaker 1: the most cutting edge digital technology available, but also a
13:30
Speaker 1: lot of old school detective work because it involves digging
13:33
Speaker 1: through birth certificates, marriage licenses, death notices, census records, and
13:38
Speaker 1: military draft cards. Slowly, the genealogy team eliminates individuals who
13:43
Speaker 1: are overseas, individuals who are too young, or individuals who
13:47
Speaker 1: are incarcerated elsewhere. This was the same technology, by the way,
13:51
Speaker 1: that was used to catch Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer,
13:55
Speaker 1: after almost four decades in California. Joseph was also a
13:59
Speaker 1: former police officer. Eventually, the branches converged on one specific
14:05
Speaker 1: family line. And within that family line, investigators isolated a
14:11
Speaker 1: prime suspect, a man named Thomas F. McInerney Jr., And
14:16
Speaker 1: investigators discovered that not only was Thomas a police officer,
14:20
Speaker 1: he was a highly decorated police officer who had been
14:24
Speaker 1: on the beat as a rookie cop when Gloria was
14:27
Speaker 1: kidnapped and murdered. Thomas McInerney Jr. joined the Chicago Police
14:32
Speaker 1: Department in 1959, so he had been on the force
14:35
Speaker 1: for a year in November of 1960. when Gloria Kovalevich
14:40
Speaker 1: was killed. And over the years, not only did Thomas
14:44
Speaker 1: fly under the radar, he was promoted. He became a
14:48
Speaker 1: detective and rose through the ranks of the Violent Crimes
14:51
Speaker 1: and Homicide Division of the Chicago Police Department. He spent
14:55
Speaker 1: nearly 30 years investigating the exact types of crimes he
14:59
Speaker 1: was now accused of committing. He sat in on interrogations
15:03
Speaker 1: of hundreds of suspects and talked to grieving families who
15:06
Speaker 1: were victims of violent crime. He investigated hundreds of murders.
15:10
Speaker 1: He had access to crime scenes and evidence, all while
15:14
Speaker 1: carrying this dark, monstrous secret. But the DNA match wasn't
15:19
Speaker 1: enough on its own. It was a powerful lead, but
15:23
Speaker 1: prosecutors need definitive traditional forensic confirmation before a case can
15:28
Speaker 1: be officially closed. But they couldn't just swab Thomas' cheek
15:33
Speaker 1: because they found out that after he retired from the
15:36
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department in 1987, after nearly three decades of service,
15:42
Speaker 1: he collected his pension, packed his bags, and eventually moved
15:46
Speaker 1: away from the cold winters of Illinois to Las Vegas, Nevada.
15:50
Speaker 1: Thomas was married. He had five children and eventually grandchildren.
15:56
Speaker 1: Thomas appeared to live out a quiet, comfortable retirement in
16:00
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, and he died peacefully there in 2006 at
16:04
Speaker 1: the age of 75. But investigators didn't need Thomas because
16:09
Speaker 1: they still had that one piece of evidence that had
16:11
Speaker 1: been sitting in an evidence room for decades, the single
16:15
Speaker 1: latent fingerprint on the strap of Gloria's white communion purse.
16:20
Speaker 1: So detectives pulled Thomas McInerney's archival personnel file from the
16:24
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department records vault. Inside that file was his
16:29
Speaker 1: original 1959 employment application, the paperwork he filled out to
16:34
Speaker 1: become a police officer. Pressed onto that 1959 document were
16:39
Speaker 1: the clear black ink impressions of Thomas McInerney's fingerprints taken
16:45
Speaker 1: the day he joined the force. a senior fingerprint examiner
16:49
Speaker 1: took the latent print from the communion purse and set
16:52
Speaker 1: it side by side with Thomas McInerney's 1959 application print
16:57
Speaker 1: under a high powered comparison microscope and found that the
17:00
Speaker 1: fingerprint on Gloria's purse strap was a perfect match to
17:05
Speaker 1: the fingerprint on Thomas's job application. So after hearing this,
17:09
Speaker 1: the question I had was why didn't they find this
17:13
Speaker 1: match sooner? It turns out that this seemed to be
17:16
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. One, Thomas's fingerprint was done
17:20
Speaker 1: on the old card system and wasn't digitized. And two,
17:24
Speaker 1: even if it had been digitized like many police employment
17:27
Speaker 1: records are today, it would not have shown up in
17:30
Speaker 1: the system because CODIS only tests against people who've been
17:34
Speaker 1: arrested and charged. It's a criminal database, so it doesn't
17:38
Speaker 1: test against people who haven't been arrested. Our system is
17:42
Speaker 1: built to catch known criminals, not police officers, hiding in
17:47
Speaker 1: plain sight. But finally, after 64 years, the Chicago Police
17:53
Speaker 1: Department had found their killer. The next step was to
17:57
Speaker 1: publicly confirm it. So on October 12th, 2026, the Chicago
18:02
Speaker 1: Police Department, flanked by FBI agents and Cook County prosecutors,
18:06
Speaker 1: held a somber press conference. They announced to the world
18:11
Speaker 1: that the murder of Gloria Kovalevich is officially solved. They
18:16
Speaker 1: named Thomas F. McInerney Jr. as her killer. Gloria's brother,
18:22
Speaker 1: Adam Kovalevich, who was just a baby when Gloria was murdered,
18:26
Speaker 1: told reporters that he had mixed feelings. He was very
18:30
Speaker 1: relieved that his sister's killer had been caught, but he
18:34
Speaker 1: considered it a bitter victory because the killer got to
18:37
Speaker 1: live out the rest of his life without ever facing justice.
18:42
Speaker 1: Adam told the Chicago Tribune, quote, In this case, the
18:45
Speaker 1: justice system was outrun by the clock. So this may
18:46
Speaker 1: be the end of Gloria's story, but for this case,
18:48
Speaker 1: it's just the beginnings. In Chicago, a decorated homicide detective
19:14
Speaker 1: was unmasked as a child killer. And he was only
19:16
Speaker 1: 24 years old when Gloria was killed. So what are
19:20
Speaker 1: the chances that in all those years as a young
19:23
Speaker 1: man before joining the force and even afterwards, that this
19:26
Speaker 1: was his only crime? A man does not typically commit
19:30
Speaker 1: a crime as escalation-heavy, brutal, and organized as the abduction
19:35
Speaker 1: and murder of an eight-year-old girl as a one-time occurrence.
19:39
Speaker 1: only to become a law-abiding citizen for the next 40 years.
19:42
Speaker 1: Criminally speaking, that is an extreme rarity. Immediately following the
19:47
Speaker 1: October 2026 press conference, the FBI, the Cook County State's
19:52
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office, and the Chicago Police Department's Cold Case Squad
19:56
Speaker 1: announced a massive, unprecedented joint initiative. They are launching a
20:01
Speaker 1: comprehensive audit of every single violent crime, missing person, and
20:06
Speaker 1: unsolved homicide case that Thomas McInerney Jr. ever handled, investigated,
20:12
Speaker 1: or was in physical proximity to during his three-decade career.
20:17
Speaker 1: They're looking for patterns. They're looking for cases that were
20:20
Speaker 1: abruptly closed, leads that may have been mysteriously buried, evidence
20:25
Speaker 1: that went missing— or investigations where Thomas seemed overly eager
20:29
Speaker 1: to push the blame away from a specific profile. They
20:33
Speaker 1: are asking... a terrifying question. How many other victims are
20:37
Speaker 1: out there? And the answer is that we just don't
20:40
Speaker 1: know yet. Because there are several high-profile child murders that
20:45
Speaker 1: happened in Chicago during the 1950s and during the 1960s, 1970s,
20:48
Speaker 1: and 1980s, Chicago saw a massive influx of unsolved violent crimes.
20:56
Speaker 1: Many of these victims were young women. Some were runaways.
20:59
Speaker 1: Some were children whose cases were brushed aside or classified
21:03
Speaker 1: as low priority during eras of high urban crime rates.
21:08
Speaker 1: This news has just broken, and the investigation into Thomas'
21:11
Speaker 1: criminal history in killing or killings has just started. So
21:16
Speaker 1: we need to look closely at the timeline of Thomas
21:19
Speaker 1: McInerney's assignments. I have been looking back at other unsolved
21:36
Speaker 1: Chicago cases, including one that happened near Thomas' patrol area,
21:41
Speaker 1: the infamous Chicago unsolved double homicide of sisters, 15-year-old Barbara
21:46
Speaker 1: Grimes and her 12-year-old sister, Patricia. They disappeared on December 28th, 1956,
21:53
Speaker 1: after seeing a screening of the Elvis Presley movie, Love
21:56
Speaker 1: Me Tender, at the Brighton Theater. Were there any similarities
22:00
Speaker 1: between what happened to Barbara and Patricia and what happened
22:04
Speaker 1: to little Gloria. Barbara went to public school. Her sister
22:09
Speaker 1: Patricia attended St. Maurice's Catholic School. So the families were
22:13
Speaker 1: both Catholic and involved in the Catholic Church, but so
22:17
Speaker 1: were a lot of other families in that area back then.
22:20
Speaker 1: Another thing that everyone knew about Barbara and Patricia was
22:23
Speaker 1: that they both loved Elvis Presley, and both of them
22:27
Speaker 1: had recently joined Elvis's official fan club. They loved the
22:31
Speaker 1: movie Love Me Tender so much, they had seen it
22:34
Speaker 1: 11 times. On the night they disappeared, Barbara and Patricia
22:39
Speaker 1: left their residence at approximately 7.30 p.m. They were headed
22:43
Speaker 1: to the Brighton Theater. The theater was about a mile
22:46
Speaker 1: and a half away, and it's not clear whether they
22:48
Speaker 1: planned to walk there or take the bus, but there
22:51
Speaker 1: was a bus route that they often took that went
22:54
Speaker 1: straight to the theater. Barbara and Patricia promised their mother
22:58
Speaker 1: that they would come home by midnight. but they never did.
23:03
Speaker 1: They did make it to the movie. A friend of
23:05
Speaker 1: theirs told police she saw them waiting in line to
23:07
Speaker 1: buy popcorn and that they seemed normal and happy. So
23:11
Speaker 1: a big question in their case was, were they like
23:15
Speaker 1: Gloria seen with an older man? A few witnesses told
23:18
Speaker 1: investigators that they had seen the sisters conversing with, then
23:22
Speaker 1: entering a car driven by a young man whose physical
23:26
Speaker 1: appearance had been similar to that of Elvis Presley. This
23:29
Speaker 1: young man, the witnesses said, drove a car that looked
23:32
Speaker 1: like a Mercury. But the early investigation was stalled because
23:37
Speaker 1: police believed that the sisters may have run away from home.
23:42
Speaker 1: Their parents, meanwhile, insisted they would never have gone out
23:45
Speaker 1: and stayed away for that long on their own in
23:48
Speaker 1: the bitter Chicago winter. But after the snow thawed on
23:53
Speaker 1: January 22nd, 1957, a construction worker spotted what he believed
23:57
Speaker 1: were mannequin parts as he drove along a rural country
24:01
Speaker 1: road named German Church Road, approximately 200 feet east of
24:05
Speaker 1: County Line Road, in unincorporated Willow Springs, in an area
24:10
Speaker 1: called Devil's Creek. These were Gloria and Patricia's bodies. The
24:16
Speaker 1: case hit a wall because the pathologists who examined Barbara
24:20
Speaker 1: and Patricia were unable to find a cause of death,
24:23
Speaker 1: and this turned into a huge controversy. The pathologist ultimately
24:28
Speaker 1: determined that the sisters were killed on December 28th, within
24:32
Speaker 1: a few hours of when they were seen at the movie.
24:35
Speaker 1: They found wounds on the bodies that looked like bruising
24:38
Speaker 1: and ice pick stabbings, but the cause of death was
24:41
Speaker 1: ultimately listed as a combination of shock and exposure. The
24:45
Speaker 1: pathologist said the ice pick-like wounds were most likely post-mortem
24:50
Speaker 1: and caused by rats, not the killer. But what happened
24:54
Speaker 1: to Barbara and Patricia? They weren't drugged. Toxicology reports showed
24:59
Speaker 1: no traces of alcohol or drugs or poison. Both of
25:03
Speaker 1: them were naked. And police later stated that there was
25:06
Speaker 1: evidence that Barbara had likely engaged in sexual intercourse before
25:11
Speaker 1: her death. But they couldn't say whether it was consensual
25:15
Speaker 1: or not. Now remember, this was the late 1950s. And
25:19
Speaker 1: this fact proved very controversial at the time So one
25:25
Speaker 1: question that's never really answered is, is the climate that
25:29
Speaker 1: the girls were found in a lucky break because their
25:33
Speaker 1: bodies were preserved better than they otherwise would have been?
25:37
Speaker 1: Or was this extreme cold something that the killer did
25:41
Speaker 1: to cunningly disguise the time of death? It's really interesting
25:45
Speaker 1: because no one could agree on anything in this case,
25:48
Speaker 1: even the time of death. The coroner's office chief's investigator,
25:52
Speaker 1: Harry Gloss, said he disagreed with the time of death.
25:56
Speaker 1: He believed that a thin layer of ice that was
25:58
Speaker 1: encrusted on the young women's bodies indicated that they had
26:01
Speaker 1: most likely been alive for a long time after December 28th.
26:06
Speaker 1: He believed they had been alive until at least January 7th.
26:10
Speaker 1: Harry Gloss believed that they had been abducted and held
26:13
Speaker 1: somewhere else and then sexually assaulted, then beaten and tortured
26:17
Speaker 1: by a sexual predator who had lured them into his
26:20
Speaker 1: vehicle under some sort of pretense. There were allegations made
26:25
Speaker 1: that both girls had been in the habit of spending
26:28
Speaker 1: free time outside bars on 36th Street and Archer Avenue,
26:32
Speaker 1: where they supposedly would get older men to buy alcohol
26:35
Speaker 1: for them. Now, their parents completely denied that this ever happened.
26:40
Speaker 1: Police questioned a man named Edward Benny Bedwell, a 21-year-old
26:45
Speaker 1: former circus worker who was a dishwasher at the time.
26:48
Speaker 1: He was also doing other odd jobs, including factory work.
26:52
Speaker 1: And at first, this seemed to be promising because on
26:55
Speaker 1: January 27th, Benny confessed to killing the sisters, saying that
26:59
Speaker 1: he and an accomplice named Frank had met the girls
27:03
Speaker 1: at a bar on Madison Street on January 7th. He
27:06
Speaker 1: claimed that he and Frank spent the week together with
27:10
Speaker 1: Barbara and Patricia together at various hotels, and that on
27:13
Speaker 1: January 13th, Barbara and Patricia had resisted their advances. and
27:19
Speaker 1: that after that, Benny and Frank knocked them unconscious and
27:23
Speaker 1: dumped them into a ditch while they were still alive.
27:26
Speaker 1: The girl's mother, Loretta, told the Chicago Tribune at the
27:29
Speaker 1: time that her daughters came from a good home and
27:32
Speaker 1: were brought up in religious surroundings. Benny told the Chicago
27:37
Speaker 1: Daily Tribune that he had been intoxicated and stated, quote,
27:41
Speaker 1: if I hadn't been drinking, I wouldn't have done what
27:43
Speaker 1: I did, and what I did, I didn't do intentionally,
27:47
Speaker 1: end quote. However, Benny quickly recanted that confession. He later
27:51
Speaker 1: said the confession had been fake and that he only
27:54
Speaker 1: gave it after days of being held at the police
27:57
Speaker 1: station and pressured. And at any rate, the confession quickly
28:00
Speaker 1: fell apart because it contradicted autopsy timelines. Benny Bedwell had
28:06
Speaker 1: been working on December 28th, the night of the movie,
28:09
Speaker 1: and could prove it with a time card. So the
28:12
Speaker 1: time of death ruling ultimately helped get Benny cleared because
28:16
Speaker 1: he had an alibi. Harry Gloss never gave up on
28:20
Speaker 1: his theory that the sisters had been sexually tortured and
28:23
Speaker 1: that he believed that Benny Bedwell had killed them. He
28:27
Speaker 1: was fired for voicing his opinions, but later deputized by
28:30
Speaker 1: the sheriff at the time. And reportedly, Harry continued working
28:35
Speaker 1: on the case without pay. There was renewed interest in
28:39
Speaker 1: the case many years later, in 2025, when a retired
28:43
Speaker 1: Chicago police detective named James Hennigan created a Facebook page
28:47
Speaker 1: and stated, that he believed that the Grimes sisters' murders
28:52
Speaker 1: may have a possible link to yet another unsolved case,
28:57
Speaker 1: the 1955 triple murder of two brothers, 13-year-old John Schuessler
29:01
Speaker 1: and his brother, 11-year-old Anton, and their friend, 14-year-old Robert Peterson.
29:08
Speaker 1: The three boys were also found naked and in a
29:11
Speaker 1: forest preserve. But for now, James' hunch that the murders
29:15
Speaker 1: of Barbara and Patricia may be connected to the three boys'
29:18
Speaker 1: murders is just a theory. No one was ever arrested
29:22
Speaker 1: or charged in connection with Barbara and Patricia's murders or
29:26
Speaker 1: with the killings of the Schuessler brothers and their friend.
29:29
Speaker 1: Could Thomas have been a suspect in those cases? The
29:33
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department has said there is no evidence that
29:36
Speaker 1: Thomas knew Gloria and that they have not found evidence
29:39
Speaker 1: so far of other connections to crimes. But according to
29:44
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police Department's cold case review, Thomas' parents lived
29:48
Speaker 1: just a few blocks away from Gloria's home in West Englewood.
29:52
Speaker 1: And his early patrol assignments went through the neighborhood, Brighton Park,
29:57
Speaker 1: where the theater the two sisters visited was. Thomas McInerney
30:03
Speaker 1: was on the force from 1959 to 1987. For 28 years,
30:09
Speaker 1: he had access to police files, investigative tactics, radio calls,
30:13
Speaker 1: and crime scenes. He knew exactly how detectives track killers
30:18
Speaker 1: because he was one. He knew what mistakes caught people
30:22
Speaker 1: and what forensic pit to avoid he also had the
30:26
Speaker 1: ultimate cover a badge that deflected suspicion away from him
30:30
Speaker 1: and onto anyone else think about the power dynamic if
30:35
Speaker 1: a child saw something suspicious in chicago in the 1960s
30:38
Speaker 1: or 1970s who did they look for a police officer
30:43
Speaker 1: If a predator is wearing the uniform, the entire concept
30:47
Speaker 1: of community safety is inverted. Immediately following the October 2026
30:54
Speaker 1: press conference, when the Chicago Police Department cold case squad
30:58
Speaker 1: announced this massive joint initiative with the FBI and others,
31:01
Speaker 1: they said that they were launching an audit. So what
31:05
Speaker 1: does this mean? This means that they're looking for patterns.
31:10
Speaker 1: Thomas was promoted to detective in 1964, which meant he
31:14
Speaker 1: was directly investigating homicide and sex crimes, and he continued
31:19
Speaker 1: to work in an official capacity after he relocated to
31:22
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. Thomas McInerney worked extensively as an investigator for
31:27
Speaker 1: the Federal Public Defender's Office in Las Vegas and in Reno,
31:32
Speaker 1: which meant that his jurisdiction there covered Washoe County and
31:35
Speaker 1: the surrounding rural northern counties, as well as Clark County,
31:40
Speaker 1: and downtown Las Vegas. He received accolades for that work.
31:44
Speaker 1: He was actually named Outstanding Federal Defender Investigator in 2003,
31:48
Speaker 1: before retiring from that position in 2004. Did Thomas's pattern
31:55
Speaker 1: follow him out to the desert? Police are asking any
31:59
Speaker 1: family member of someone who went missing or was the
32:02
Speaker 1: victim of an unsolved violent crime in the Chicago area
32:06
Speaker 1: between 1959 and 1987 to look back at their paperwork
32:10
Speaker 1: and see if the name Thomas McInerney is on there.
32:14
Speaker 1: Or if you remember him being involved or if you
32:16
Speaker 1: remember a Chicago detective matching his description who injected himself
32:20
Speaker 1: into an investigation. At this point, no one knows how
32:24
Speaker 1: many more families could be out there. Gloria Kovalevich finally
32:30
Speaker 1: has her answers. Now it's time to find out how
32:34
Speaker 1: many more secrets Detective Thomas McInerney could be hiding. He
32:40
Speaker 1: may be dead, but are there any other bodies out there?
32:44
Speaker 1: And if so, where are they buried? I'm Katherine Townsend.
32:49
Speaker 1: This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder
32:54
Speaker 1: Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast.
32:57
Speaker 1: It's written and narrated by me, Katherine Townsend, and produced
33:01
Speaker 1: by Edelise Perez. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
33:04
Speaker 1: research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Kammer
33:09
Speaker 1: mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by
33:11
Speaker 1: Ben Salib, executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L.C. Crowley.
33:17
Speaker 1: Listen to Hell and Gone ad-free by subscribing to the
33:20
Speaker 1: iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you
33:24
Speaker 1: are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case,
33:27
Speaker 1: you can follow the show on Instagram at hellandgonepod. If
33:31
Speaker 1: you have a case you'd like me and my team
33:33
Speaker 1: to look into, you can reach out to us at
33:35
Speaker 1: our Hell and Gone murder line at 678-744-6145.
33:37
Speaker 2: That's 678-744-6145.
33:50
Speaker 1: School of Humans.