Épisodes

  • Unidentified: Benjaman Kyle
    Jan 13 2026

    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, shelters, and media appearances — while remaining legally nonexistent. He was known first as “Burger King Doe,” and later by the name he chose for himself: Benjaman Kyle


    This episode is not a whodunit. There is no suspect board and no clean resolution. Instead, it follows what happens when someone survives a catastrophic break from identity — and enters systems built to process data, not people.


    We trace Benjaman’s story from the morning he was found, through years of institutional limbo, public doubt, and failed attempts at identification. We examine how assumptions about homelessness, trauma, and credibility shaped the way he was treated — and how the longer his case remained unsolved, the more suspicion shifted onto him rather than the circumstances that failed him.


    Eventually, DNA genealogy does what fingerprints, media exposure, and public appeals could not. In 2015, Benjaman Kyle is identified as William Burgess Powell. But knowing his name does not restore his memories, nor does it explain how he ended up behind that dumpster in the first place.


    Because this case is not really about amnesia.

    It’s about identity.

    About verification.

    About how easily someone can slip out of the structures meant to protect them — and how quietly it can happen.



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    36 min
  • Joyce Carol Vincent: Unmissed in North London
    Dec 30 2025

    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 — thirty-eight years old — had been dead for more than two years.


    This is not a whodunit. There is no suspect board, no dramatic reveal, and no confirmed crime. What happened to Joyce is something quieter — and in many ways, more disturbing. This episode examines how someone can die in one of the largest cities in the world and not be noticed. Not for days. Not for weeks. But for years.


    In this episode of The Grimes Files, we walk through the scene exactly as it was found, then rewind to Joyce herself — a professional, socially active woman with friends, family, and plans for the future. We trace the changes in her life, including her experience with domestic violence, her withdrawal from her support systems, and the housing placement meant to keep her safe.


    From there, we lay out the systems failure piece by piece: housing benefits, utility practices, assumptions made by neighbors, and the quiet efficiency of bureaucracy that allowed a person to become invisible in plain sight. We examine what is known — and what cannot be known — about Joyce’s death, including the open verdict, the medical possibilities, and the limits of speculation.


    This is not a story about a killer. It’s a story about absence. About how responsibility gets diffused. About how “someone else will notice” becomes no one noticing at all.


    Joyce Carol Vincent wasn’t missing.

    She was unmissed.


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    Content note: This episode discusses domestic violence, death, and advanced decomposition (non-graphic).



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    34 min
  • Missing: Patricia Vaughan Pt. 5 - When Silence Breaks
    Dec 16 2025

    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, into one of the earliest known survivor accounts connected to Doug Sager, and into the disturbing discovery along Route 259 that reignited this case.


    This episode includes:


    • Major factual corrections about Patty’s background and identifying details
    • Why so many locals say they never even heard Patty’s name until now
    • An early survivor account that predates Patty—showing Doug’s pattern years earlier
    • A clear breakdown of what’s confirmed (and what is not) regarding the bones, plate, and ongoing testing
    • A witness who lived beside Doug’s former land—and what he learned about the chicken houses tied to multiple accounts



    Content warning


    This episode includes discussion of sexual assault, coercion, grooming, violence, and traumatic experiences. Listener discretion advised.



    Help keep this investigation independent


    If you want to support records requests, travel, forensic consultation, and ongoing reporting, you can donate here:

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    Join the case community


    Facebook Group (Missing: Patricia Vaughan): https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1RyvCFadui/



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    Linktree: https://linktr.ee/TheGrimesFiles


    TikTok / Instagram / updates and documents are posted as this case develops.



    Tips, leads, and witness outreach


    If you worked with Doug Sager, knew him, trucked alongside him, or you have information about Patty Vaughan—or any woman you believe may be connected—reach out. Confidentiality respected.

    Contact: joeyg@mcwgp.com



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    51 min
  • Paul Merhige: The Thanksgiving Massacre
    Dec 2 2025

    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 untreated mental decline, deep resentment, and quiet fixation turned into one of the most devastating family massacres in recent American history.


    We take you from Paul’s early struggles and escalating obsession, to the days of preparation leading up to Thanksgiving 2009, where he shaved his entire body, bought ammunition, mapped out his escape, and waited for a moment when his entire family would be gathered under one roof.


    Inside the Sitton home that night, we walk through the moments of calm before the violence: the conversations, the TV humming in the living room, the kids falling asleep, and six-year-old Makayla Sitton joyfully playing piano for her cousin one final time. And then, we follow the horror minute-by-minute as Paul retrieved a handgun from his car and opened fire—killing his twin sister Carla, his cousin Lisa Knight and her unborn child, and young Makayla, while wounding others who tried desperately to hide or flee.


    From there, we cover Paul’s calculated escape, the multi-state manhunt, the media frenzy, and the break that came when a motel employee recognized him after seeing the case featured on America’s Most Wanted. His quiet arrest, days later in the Florida Keys, shocked even seasoned investigators.


    Finally, we explore the courtroom aftermath: Paul’s guilty plea, the decision to remove the death penalty, the heartbreaking victim impact statements, and the seven consecutive life sentences that ensure he will never walk free again. We look at how the Sitton, Knight, and Merhige families have carried their grief forward, honoring the memories of Makayla, Lisa, Carla, and Baby Knight while navigating the lifelong aftershocks of trauma.


    This is the full story of a Thanksgiving that became a nightmare—and a family whose strength, faith, and commitment to remembrance refuse to let their loved ones be defined only by the violence that took them.



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    Help keep The Grimes Files independent and investigative.

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    Credits


    Hosted, written, and produced by Joey Grimes.

    Thank you for listening and supporting independent true crime journalism.



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    47 min
  • Truck Stop Killers: Redhead Murders and I-81 Strangler
    Nov 17 2025

    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: the I-81 Strangler.


    But these weren’t isolated series.


    They were a network of predators using the interstate system as their hunting ground.


    In this episode, we break down the victims, the trucking routes, the law enforcement failures, and the long-haul drivers tied to multiple states and multiple murders—including Jerry Leon Johns, Henry Wise, Sean Patrick Goble, and Warren Luther Alexander. We look at the survivors who escaped, the victims who still have no names, and the cases that overlap in terrifying ways.


    And we connect this landscape directly to the disappearance of Patty Vaughan in 1982—because the world she vanished into wasn’t random. It was already full of men who knew how easy it was to make a woman disappear along America’s highways.


    This is Truck Stop Killers.


    Follow & Contact


    Stay updated on the investigation:

    @thegrimesfiles on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.


    Submit tips (confidential):

    @thegrimesfiles or joeyg@mcwgp.com


    Support the Investigation


    Every donation helps fund travel, records, FOIA requests, interviews, and boots-on-the-ground work.

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    53 min
  • The Halloween Files 2025
    Nov 4 2025

    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 2025 unearths a different kind of darkness — the kind that lingers in quiet suburbs, behind bedroom windows, or down lonely country roads. Together, they form a portrait of what fear really looks like when it’s rooted in reality.


    Step inside the evidence room. Turn off the lights. And remember — every file you’re about to hear is true.


    👁️‍🗨️ Written, narrated, and produced by Joey Grimes.

    🎧 A Grimes Files Special Presentation


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    58 min
  • The Death of Arthur James Hill (1965)
    Oct 20 2025

    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 later, The Grimes Files reopens the case — the shooting, the trial, and the silence that followed.

    Using original court records, FBI and Department of Justice files, and firsthand accounts, host Joey Grimes uncovers how a small Georgia town buried a civil-rights killing in plain sight — and how the same men who defended the shooter later stood on courthouse steps at a Ku Klux Klan rally.

    This is the story of Arthur James Hill:

    Unarmed. Unmarked. But not forgotten.


    🔎

    In This Episode


    Rare DOJ and FBI files obtained under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act

    The 1965 shooting, the biased trial, and the all-white jury’s 22-minute verdict

    The segregationist attorney who helped free the shooter — and later spoke at a Klan rally

    What happened when the FBI reopened the case decades later


    🎙️ The Grimes Files — The Death of Arthur James Hill (1965)

    🕯️ True crime. Real history.


    💰 Support future investigations

    Every donation helps fund new case research, archival access, and travel costs.

    Donate here👉 https://app.redcircle.com/shows/cef31eb2-a731-4b09-b2e4-f6b293fd4f4a/sponsor


    🔗 All links, episode sources, and updates:

    https://linktr.ee/thegrimesfiles




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    53 min
  • Missing: Patricia Vaughan Pt. 4 - Doug On The Road
    Oct 6 2025

    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, silence, and unanswered questions scattered across America’s highways.


    Through survivor testimony and firsthand accounts, we revisit the stories of the women whose lives crossed paths with Doug — including Ellen, who endured years of abuse; Peaches, a woman who never came home from a Mississippi motel; and a survivor in New Jersey who couldn’t speak until she was shown proof that Doug was dead. Their stories connect through time, geography, and the interstates that defined the 1980s trucking world.


    As Joey digs deeper, the investigation leads to a truck stop that no longer exists — the Panhandler Truck Stop and Restaurant near Martinsburg, West Virginia — where witnesses remembered a young woman found strangled in 1985. The records are gone, the site bulldozed, but the silence remains. From there, the story threads into the Redhead Murders and the unsolved killings that haunted I-81 and I-95, the same routes Doug drove every week.


    This episode is about more than one man — it’s about the women who vanished, the ones who survived, and the investigators still trying to connect the dots before the last traces of evidence fade away.


    Because the files may be gone, but the stories aren’t.


    If you’d like to help keep these investigations going, you can support The Grimes Files directly through this link.

    https://app.redcircle.com/shows/cef31eb2-a731-4b09-b2e4-f6b293fd4f4a/donations

    Every donation helps fund records requests, interviews, and outreach to families still waiting for answers.


    If you have information about Patty Vaughan, Doug Sager, or any of the women who disappeared along his routes, please reach out. Even the smallest detail could help bring answers.


    If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, help is available. In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.

    If you are thinking about suicide, dial 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

    You are not alone.



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    37 min