Cold cases measured by what remains missing.
The Grimes Files examines unsolved murders and disappearances through tightly arranged case reconstructions. It favors timelines, police records, surveillance gaps, and the small procedural failures that can define an investigation for years.
PRESS PLAY
The Grimes Files is a true crime series with a narrow, controlled approach to unsolved cases. It does not treat mystery as atmosphere. It treats mystery as a broken sequence. A woman calls for help and no patrol officers search that night. A victim enters a church where someone may already be waiting. A car appears about a mile away, but the person leaving it cannot be identified. Three women vanish from a house that is entered, cleaned, and altered before its evidentiary value is fully understood. A medical student is seen near a bar entrance, then disappears from a building that should have made disappearance difficult. The show returns to those breaks and studies them. Its case work is built from timelines, emergency calls, surveillance, witness movement, scene condition, and the difference between what is often repeated and what is actually confirmed. The tone is grave but not theatrical. Joey Grimes presents the material as a steady reconstruction, often narrowing attention to one hallway, one storefront, one parking lot, one answering machine message, or one missing piece of footage. The episodes cover murders and disappearances including D’Lisa Kelley, Debra Kay Connor, Missy Bevers, Jennifer Kesse, Brian Shaffer, the Springfield Three, the Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre, and the Lane Bryant Massacre. Many episodes also show how early investigative conditions can shape everything that follows. Delayed response, compromised scenes, incomplete video, and discarded evidence become more than details. They become the reason a case remains stalled. The show is careful with uncertainty. It will name the available facts, then draw a hard line around what those facts cannot prove. That restraint gives the series its force. The Grimes Files is best understood as cold case storytelling for people who want pressure, structure, and a clear view of the unanswered record.
Made for: For true crime listeners who prefer sober case reconstruction over personality-led chatter. It suits people drawn to timelines, public records, surveillance questions, and unresolved procedural gaps.
What sets it apart: The series stands out by making absence the center of the story: missing footage, delayed response, altered scenes, and moments the record should contain but does not. Its episodes build around the point where a case stops making sense.
Cold cases. Buried voices. Forgotten victims. I’m Joey Grimes, and this is The Grimes Files: Gone, Not Silent—a true crime podcast exposing cases that never got justice. Season one reopens the 1998 murder of Helen Eskew in Douglasville, Georgia, where silence and fear still surround the truth.
The missing minute matters more than the favorite suspect when you prefer evidence to internet certainty.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A 71-second phone connection anchors a cold case shaped by delay, absence, and an unsolved murder.
Delisa Michelle Kelly's last known recording lasts just over 71 seconds, yet the episode keeps its focus on what those seconds set in motion: family members hearing what sounded like an attack, urgent calls for help, a failed effort to locate her phone, and a murder that still…
A robbery homicide turns into a lasting question about why the gunmen did more than take the money.
The bowling alley case centers on a robbery that kept escalating after the money was already in hand. The gunmen moved the victims into one room, shot them at close range, and set the office on fire before leaving.
A final phone call, an unlocked door, and a family still waiting for answers.
Deborah K. Connor's final contact with her family came from a payphone across from Frazu's Restaurant and Bar in Hermiston, Oregon. She asks her twin brother whether she can stay at the Connor family home, is told the back door will be left unlocked, says she has a ride, and…
A two-minute response window turns an unresolved massacre into a focused question of timing, surveillance, and escape.
The Grimes Files narrows the Lane Bryant massacre to one punishing slice of time: the gap between the 911 call and the arrival of nearby officers.
A quiet church surveillance record becomes a careful study of timing, proximity, and one unanswered encounter.
Murdered: Missy Bevers centers on the uneasy minutes before a routine fitness class, with someone already inside a quiet Midlothian church, moving through halls, opening doors, breaking glass, and waiting.
A missing-persons case defined by a scene handled too early.
The Grimes Files treats the Springfield Three disappearance as a case shaped by a house that should have held answers. Cheryl Levitt, Susie Streeter, and Stacey McCall were gone from East Delmar Street, and the unlocked door, television, purses, keys, cigarettes, and family dog…
A sober missing-child account built around one ordinary morning, a last sighting, and the first hours of the search.
Kyron Horman's account in The Grimes Files stays focused on a single charged morning at Skyline Elementary, where a science fair, a tardy bell, and parents in the hall give the disappearance its unsettling shape.
A headcount delay becomes a study in how accountability can vanish.
The Grimes Files treats Sharon Kinney's disappearance as a study in delay. On December 7, 1969, a women's prison outside Mexico City notices that one inmate does not answer during headcount, yet no one treats it as urgent and nearly 21 hours pass before she is formally reported…
Evidence first, rumors on trial.
Patient interviews for unresolved disappearances.
The Grimes Files examines the disappearance and murder of 24-year-old Dallas mother Delisa Michelle Kelly after a 71-second accidental phone call captured screams and an unidentified man’s voice.
The Grimes Files examines the February 10, 1990 Las Cruces Bowl massacre, when two unidentified men entered a bowling alley office and attacked seven people.
The Grimes Files examines the disappearance and unsolved killing of 30-year-old Deborah K.
The Grimes Files examines the February 2, 2008 Lane Bryant murders in Tinley Park, Illinois, where five women were killed after a gunman controlled the store for roughly 36 minutes.
The Grimes Files examines the April 18, 2016 killing of 45-year-old Missy Bevers inside a church in Midlothian, Texas.
The Grimes Files examines Jennifer Kessie's January 24, 2006 disappearance from Mosaic at Millennia in Orlando, where her normal morning routine ended before her black Chevy Malibu was seen swerving away around 7:40 a.m.
Springfield, Missouri, on June 7th, 1992.
This episode explores the mysterious disappearance of Brian Shaffer, a medical student who vanished from a bar in 2006, analyzing surveillance footage and the building layout to question how he could have left unnoticed.
The episode recounts the discovery of Hedviga Golik's remains in her Zagreb apartment decades after her death, exploring the mystery and urban legend surrounding the case.
A 19-year-old college student goes missing after a car accident, last heard on a 47-minute phone call with his father while walking through rural Minnesota farmland.
The episode opens at Skyline Elementary School during the science fair and stays close to the last confirmed moments, from the 8:45 tardy bell to the goodbye in the hallway, the jacket hung up in the classroom, and the backpack left behind.
On December 7, 1969, a headcount at a women's prison outside Mexico City goes wrong.
A white narrator recounts the 1965 murder of Arthur James Hill in Georgia, explaining his decision to avoid using racial slurs from the original trial and media coverage.
This episode explores the 1982 disappearance of Kelly Bergh Dove, a 20-year-old mother who vanished from her job after calling 911 for help, set against the backdrop of the risks women faced in the early 1980s.
This episode explores two conflicting accounts of what happened to Patty Vaughn after she disappeared in 1982, including a later discovery of human remains.
The host introduces a new active investigation into the 1982 disappearance of 18-year-old Patricia Vaughan, who vanished in West Virginia.