Willow Springs

So all of this rolls out literally along that road.

And we have some of the most famous ghost stories along that road down in the Willow Springs area, Justice, towards Lamont, including, of course, the famous story of Resurrection Mary, you know, Chicago's most famous ghost.

And she has been seen, gosh, going on 100 years now, along Archer Avenue, tied very closely to Resurrection Cemetery, where many believe that she's buried.

And it is one of the most famous ghost stories in the world that happens right there along Archer Avenue that's been told by generations.

So with more on this and

this and other items and things that are going on in Chicago with crime, let's welcome back to the program former Chicago police superintendent, currently the police chief of Willow Springs, former NYPD, former police chief of Newark, New Jersey.

His resume goes on and on.

He also ran for mayor, I should say.

All right.

Well, let's go back to

our guest, Garry McCarthy, former superintendent, former police chief of Willow Springs.

Yes.

There is a stretch of Archer Avenue southwest of Chicago where, for generations, people have known the story before they ever drive the road at night.

It runs past Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois, and farther southwest toward Willow Springs, where one of the area's most famous dance halls once stood.

Today the surroundings have changed considerably, but when the story began circulating in the 1930s, this was a different landscape.

The city thinned out along Archer Avenue, giving way to cemeteries, scattered buildings, stretches of open land, and long sections of road that could feel very isolated after dark.

Somewhere along that road, according to the legend, a young woman died.

No one has ever conclusively established her identity, which is important because Resurrection Mary's story has been retold so many times that legend and history have become intertwined.

The most familiar version says she was a young woman who loved to dance and had spent an evening at the O. Henry Ballroom in Willow Springs.

Sometime during the night, she left the ballroom and began walking along Archer Avenue in a white or light-colored party dress.

Their parents, meanwhile, insisted they would never have gone out and stayed away for that long on their own in the bitter Chicago winter.

But after the snow thawed on January 22nd, 1957, a construction worker spotted what he believed were mannequin parts as he drove along a rural country road named German Church Road, approximately 200 feet east of County Line Road in unincorporated Willow Springs in an area called Devil's Creek.

These were Gloria and Patricia's bodies.

The case hit a wall because the pathologists who examined Barbara and Patricia were unable to find a cause of death, and this turned into a huge controversy.

After an exhausting month of loose threads and dead ends, the search stalled out.

Then, on January 22, 1957, a man named Leonard Prescott spotted what he thought were two mannequins on German Church Road in Willow Springs, Illinois.

He did not approach them but instead ran home to get his wife.

Together, the Prescotts inched closer and found the naked bodies of Barbara and Patricia Grimes, positioned awkwardly, with Barbara lying face down and Patricia lying face up on top of her sister.

Their faces had been damaged by neighborhood animals.

At 1.30 p.m., the Willow Springs Police Department learned of the discovery.

They immediately deduced that the sisters had probably been on the side of the road since the snowfall two weeks prior.

Flurries of suspects were apprehended, the most publicized of which was Edward Lee Bedwell.

Though he recited the story with ease, Jake himself had no comment on his brother's refusing to express either credulity or disbelief.

Claire and Mark Rudnicki, friends, neighbors, and former St. Joseph parishioners, told Andrzejczyk that Resurrection Mary could be traced to the 1940s, when a young Polish girl crashed near Resurrection Cemetery at around 1.20 a.m. after she took the family car to visit her boyfriend in Willow Springs.

According to this version of the story, the girl was buried in a term grave at Resurrection.

Appropriately, Andrzejczyk wonders why a couple that well off enough to own a car in the 1940s would need to bury their daughter in a term grave.

Relatives and friends followed the grim parade for three blocks to the doors of St. Joseph's in Summit, where Anna had made her first Holy Communion only a year before.

Between the band and the priest walked a terrified Mary Nagody, a friend of Anna's who had been pressed into service as a wreath bearer.

On summer vacation, Nagody was weeding on an asparagus farm in Willow Springs when she had a visitor.

It was Gus Norkus, Anna's father, asking her to participate in the funeral since Mary had made her first communion with Anna, and because she owned a white dress.