The Grimes Files

Thirty-six years ago, a routine Saturday morning at a neighborhood bowling alley turned into one of the most brutal unsolved mass murders in American history. On February 10, 1990, two armed men entered Las Cruces Bowl in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Minutes later, five people were dead, three others were critically wounded, and one of the most haunting 911 calls ever recorded was made by a twelve-year...

On May 13, 1990, 30-year-old Debra Kay “Debbie” Connor made a phone call that should have brought her safely home. Standing at a payphone across from Frasu’s Restaurant and Lounge in Hermiston, Oregon, Debbie called her twin brother and asked if she could spend the night at the family home. He agreed and told her he would leave the door unlocked. Before hanging up, Debbie said she had a ride. She...

The Lane Bryant Massacre | The Grimes Files On February 2nd, 2008, a man posing as a delivery driver walked into a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park, Illinois. Over the next thirty-six minutes, six women were bound with duct tape and held inside the store before five were executed just moments before police arrived. The killer vanished almost immediately. Nearly two decades later, the case remains...

On April 18th, 2016, Missy Bevers walked into a church in Midlothian, Texas to teach an early morning fitness class. She never made it out. Before she arrived, someone was already inside the building. Moving through the halls. Opening doors. Breaking glass. Waiting in a space they believed was empty. Within minutes of her entry, Missy encountered that person. The attack was never fully captured. T...

A woman leaves for work. And disappears… in the most ordinary moment of her day. On January 24th, 2006, 24-year-old Jennifer Kesse vanished from her condo complex in Orlando, Florida. There were no signs of forced entry. No obvious struggle inside her home. Everything pointed to a normal morning — until it wasn’t. Hours later, her car was found just over a mile away. A man was seen on surveillance...

Three women vanished from a home in the early hours of the morning. No signs of forced entry. No clear struggle. No confirmed sighting of what actually happened inside that house. At first glance, it looks like nothing happened at all. But when you strip the case down to what actually holds up—the timeline, the scene, the behavior—a very different picture begins to emerge. This wasn’t random. It w...

On March 31, 2006, Brian Shaffer went out with friends in Columbus, Ohio. It was a normal night. Bar hopping, drinks, a crowded city full of people. At 1:55 a.m., Brian is seen on surveillance footage entering the Ugly Tuna Saloona. He never comes back out. There is no footage of him leaving. No confirmed sightings after that moment. No activity on his phone or bank accounts. Inside the bar, there...

In May 2008, residents of an apartment building in Zagreb, Croatia forced open the door to a small attic apartment that had remained closed for decades. Inside, they found human remains. The woman who lived there had never left. Her name was  Hedviga Golik , and investigators believed she had been dead for more than  30 years . For decades, neighbors assumed Hedviga had simply moved away. Some bel...

On the night of May 13, 2008, nineteen-year-old Brandon Swanson left a friend’s house in rural southwestern Minnesota and began driving home. Sometime before 2 a.m., his car went into a ditch. He called his parents for help. He told them he wasn’t hurt. He believed he knew where he was. For nearly an hour, he stayed on the phone while walking through dark farmland toward what he thought were town...

On the morning of June 4, 2010, seven-year-old Kyron Horman walked the halls of his elementary school during a science fair. By the end of the day, he was gone. In this episode, we reconstruct Kyron’s last confirmed movements minute by minute, separating what is  known  from what has been  assumed  over the past fifteen years. We examine how a crowded school, delayed attendance procedures, and gap...

In 1969, Sharon Kinne walked out of a women’s prison outside Mexico City and was not reported missing for nearly twenty one hours. She was serving a thirteen year sentence for murder. By the time anyone acknowledged she was gone, the window to find her had already closed. This episode traces how that moment became possible and what led up to it. It begins in suburban Missouri in 1960 with a husban...

In August 2004, a man was found nearly dead behind a Burger King dumpster in coastal Georgia. He had no identification, no memory of who he was, and no clear explanation for how he got there. Law enforcement treated the discovery as a medical issue, not a crime. The scene wasn’t preserved. The questions stopped early. For more than a decade, that man lived in plain sight — moving through hospitals...

In January 2006, bailiffs arrived at a small bedsit above Wood Green Shopping City in North London. They weren’t there for a welfare check. They weren’t responding to concern. They were there because rent hadn’t been paid — and paperwork had finally caught up. Inside, the television was still on. The heat was running. Christmas presents sat wrapped near a small tree. And Joyce Carol Vincent — thir...

Over the last few weeks, rumors have torn through Hardy County—bones in a backyard, a surgical plate, and whispers that eighteen-year-old Patricia “Patty” Vaughan may have finally been found. But rumors aren’t answers. In Episode 5, Joey Grimes corrects the record—publicly and personally—then follows the evidence and testimony where it actually leads: into the silence that swallowed Patty’s name,...

On Thanksgiving night in 2009, the Sitton family gathered in Jupiter, Florida for a warm, ordinary holiday—full of food, laughter, piano music, and the kind of comfort only family can create. But sitting quietly among them was a man who hadn’t come to reconnect. He had come with a plan. This episode of  The Grimes Files  tells the full, chilling story of Paul Michael Merhige—how a lifetime of untr...

From 1983 to 1995, women were vanishing along America’s highways—pulled from truck stops, gas stations, on-ramps, and interstate corridors stretching from Tennessee to West Virginia. Their bodies appeared miles from where they were taken, often strangled, discarded, and left unidentified for decades. The press called them the Redhead Murders. Later, law enforcement whispered about another pattern:...

Once a year, the archive doors open. This Halloween, The Grimes Files presents a chilling anthology of real stories that blur the line between truth and terror. From a 1950s Hollywood murder born out of jealousy and disguise… to a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood hiding secrets behind its gates… to the haunting mystery of a young woman known only as “Orange Socks.” Each case in The Halloween Files...

On a quiet Friday night in 1965, six friends stopped for gas in Villa Rica, Georgia. Moments later, nine gunshots shattered the stillness. Twenty-seven-year-old Arthur James Hill lay dying beside his car—shot by a white service-station attendant named Buner Lee Green. Green claimed self-defense. An all-white jury believed him. Their deliberation took just twenty-two minutes. Nearly sixty years lat...

This isn’t just a story from the highway — it’s what happens when silence hides the truth. In this episode of  The Grimes Files , Joey Grimes traces the violent trail of long-haul trucker Doug Sager, whose life on the road stretched from the mountains of West Virginia to the Deep South. Behind the wheel of his rig, Doug carried more than freight — he carried the kind of darkness that left fear, si...

In June 1982, twenty-year-old Kelly Bergh Dove vanished from her overnight shift at the Imperial gas station on South Main Street in Harrisonburg, Virginia. A wife. A mother. A middle child who had already faced more than most her age. That night, she called 911 not once, not twice, but three times — each call sharper and more urgent than the last. Her final words:  “Please hurry, he’s back.” By t...

Patty Vaughan didn’t just vanish — she disappeared into the orbit of a man. To understand her fate, we have to understand his life. This episode traces the story of Galen Douglas Sager, from his childhood in the small mountain town of Mathias, West Virginia, to the tragedies and violence that followed him into adulthood. Through survivor testimony, family accounts, and records still being gathered...

In 1982, Patty Vaughan vanished in the mountains of West Virginia. For more than a decade, the only story anyone heard was Doug Sager’s: that he dropped her at a truck stop along I-81 and never saw her again. But inside Doug’s own family, another story began to surface. His nephew, Ralph, claimed Patty never left at all—that he saw her body in the downstairs shower. Decades later, hikers stumbled...

At 18 years old, Patricia “Patty” Vaughan ran away from her home in Connecticut to escape abuse. She and a friend hitchhiked south, eventually ending up in rural Mathias, West Virginia, where Patty moved in with long‑haul truck driver Galen “Doug” Sager. Not long after arriving, Patty was last seen with a black eye. Her friend left. Patty stayed. And she was never seen again. For more than 40 year...

One week after Helen Eskew was found murdered in her home, a neighbor told police something shocking: a man had confessed. His name was known. His record was violent. His connection to Helen undeniable. But what followed wasn’t an arrest. It wasn’t even a search warrant. Instead, the case began to drift—despite multiple burglary reports, named suspects, and fingerprints collected from inside Helen...

On October 14, 1998, 12-year-old Miranda Eskew came home from school to find her mother, Helen, bludgeoned to death on the bedroom floor. There were no signs of forced entry. No one heard a scream. And the killer may have only been steps away. In the premiere episode of The Grimes Files, we dive deep into the chilling, unsolved murder of Helen Eskew—an ordinary waitress living in a small Georgia t...