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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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.

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🔗 All links, episode sources, and updates:

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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.

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 the time police arrived, Kelly was gone. Her purse sat on the counter. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray. No robbery. No forced entry. No struggle. Just absence.

Forty years later, Kelly’s disappearance remains one of the Valley’s most haunting mysteries. And her story doesn’t exist in isolation. Just weeks earlier, in neighboring West Virginia, another young woman — Patty Vaughan — also vanished. The same highways, the same culture of night-shift gas stations, and a landscape where women working alone were left vulnerable.

This episode steps back from the Patty Vaughan series to widen the lens: to understand Kelly’s story, the danger of that era, and how the echoes of 1982 still shape the search for answers today.

This isn’t just a podcast. It’s an investigation. And if you’re listening, you’re part of it now.

Harrisonburg Police Department — (540) 434-4436

Crime Solvers of Harrisonburg & Rockingham County — (540) 574-5050

Text tips: Send “HPD” plus your message to CRIMES (274637)

For information on the disappearance of Patty Vaughan in Hardy County, WV: contact the Hardy County Sheriff’s Office or the West Virginia State Police

Even the smallest detail could matter.

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, we examine how silence and protection allowed Doug’s violence to escalate — from broken marriages and a manslaughter conviction to the disappearance of an eighteen-year-old girl and years of abuse that scarred those closest to him.

Ellen, his second wife, offers the clearest window into what happened behind closed doors: captivity, manipulation, sexual violence, and the constant threat that disobedience meant death. Patty didn’t survive to tell her story. Ellen did. And through her words, we see how Doug perfected the silence that kept him hidden for decades.

This isn’t just Doug’s story. It’s the story of his survivors, and of the voices that can no longer speak.

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 across human remains in the wilderness near Judy Gap. Could they belong to Patty? Or was there another victim hidden in those same mountains?

This episode unravels the competing stories, the silence that lasted for thirteen years, and the chilling discovery that raised even more questions. Two stories. Two endings. Only one can be true.

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 years, whispers have haunted the mountains of West Virginia. Family members claim Doug killed her in his home and hid her body on his property. Investigators suspect he may be tied to multiple unsolved murders along the I‑81 corridor—but no one has ever been charged.

In this episode, The Grimes Files retraces Patty’s final days, explores chilling family confessions, and exposes a pattern of predatory behavior that went unpunished for decades.

Listen to uncover the truth—and help bring Patty home.

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’s trailer. As new interviews surfaced, another name entered the picture—a teenager with a quiet presence and a history of break-ins, including Helen’s.

In this episode, we examine how two suspects ended up at the center of the same crime. We trace their stories, the contradictions in their timelines, and the details investigators had right in front of them. What emerges is a case that feels less like a mystery—and more like a missed opportunity.

Two confessions. Two sets of prints. Zero charges.

Twenty-seven years later, we’re asking why.