A Farm Family Suffers Brutality in Secret
(Forensic Files, “The Root of All Evil”)
Updated on June 30, 2022
From the outside, life at Fred and Charlotte Grabbe’s country mansion must have looked enviable. The couple had a cheerleading daughter who got straight A’s, a handsome football-playing son, and a prosperous 800-acre farm near Marshall, Illinois.
Acquaintances described Fred, who was 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds with blue eyes, as outgoing and friendly.
Charlotte was a foot shorter than Fred and less than half his weight. She had a simple, elegant style and a pretty face with birdlike features.
Floodgates open. But Charlotte didn’t act like a delicate flower. On the last day of her life, she was driving a tractor and cultivating soybean fields.
And Fred didn’t treat her like she was made of china either. In fact, he physically abused her up until the day he suffocated her with his meaty hands and incinerated her body.
He had four years of freedom before authorities, who never recovered Charlotte’s remains, could put together a case against him. Fortunately, a private detective tracked down Fred’s young ex-girlfriend and she spilled everything she knew about what happened to Charlotte Grabbe.
Hulking heartthrob. Vickie McCalister was mad at Fred because he jilted her and replaced her with another blond woman in her 20s. Barbara Graham was so crazy about Fred that she attempted to break him out of jail.
For this week, I searched for Fred Grabbe’s whereabouts today and any clues as to how this violent tub of lard managed to snag girlfriends despite his horrible past and why Charlotte Grabbe married him in the first place.
I also looked for an epilogue for the Grabbes’ daughter, Jennie, who guarded many of the worst family secrets until long after Forensic Files produced “The Root of All Evil” in 2001.
It started in Indiana. So let’s get going on a recap of the episode along with extra information culled from online research:
Fred Grabbe came into the world on June 2, 1939, in West Terre Haute, Indiana, the son of Inez and Chester Grabbe. Before turning to farming, Fred co-owned an agricultural implement store and worked in coal-mining and oil-drilling.
Charlotte Sue Gore was also born in Indiana, on Jan. 31, 1942, the daughter of Melvin and Margaret Gore.
Margaret died young, leaving Charlotte motherless at age 7.
‘I do’ to a sex criminal. According to Jennie, Charlotte and Fred’s marriage didn’t just end in a horror show: It began that way, too.
At age 15, Charlotte went out on a date with 19-year-old Fred and he raped her, according to an interview Jennie gave to a radio show in 2015.
Charlotte became pregnant.
It was 1957, long before anyone had heard the term “date rape” and Charlotte, with no female role model to guide her, probably didn’t know what else to do but marry the man who impregnated her.
Bucolic life. The couple had son Jeffrey Leon on Sept. 1, 1958, and daughter Jennie the following year.
Charlotte caught Fred cheating on her and divorced him in 1961. He must have turned on the charm because she gave him another chance. They did have two small kids together and he hadn’t metamorphosed into a walking sea cow yet. They remarried in 1962.
The family lived in Canada for a while and eventually moved to Clark County, Illinois, in an area rich with corn and soybean fields.
Teenage mom. Charlotte lost her father in 1974 and, thanks in part to family assets she inherited, the Grabbes were able to own and operate a successful farm.
Jennie would later say that her mother did a good job of raising her and her brother, but Charlotte was so young that sometimes she seemed more like a sister.
Father’s fury. There were some good times. The Grabbes’ daughter-in-law, Cindy Pancake, told Forensic Files that Fred could be a fun-loving and warm host.
But the unpleasant events were memorable, too.
He had fits of rage over practically nothing, usually directed at Charlotte or Jeff, and sometimes they included physical abuse, according to Jennie.
Secrets and lies. Jennie told Forensic Files that she witnessed her dad bashing her brother’s head into the fender of a pickup truck.
“My brother was hospitalized one time and we were told to make up stories…tell the doctor he fell out of the hayloft,” she recalled on the Stop Child Abuse Now internet radio show.
By 1981, Charlotte, 39, had endured enough and asked for another divorce. Fred, 42, had started cheating on her again, with 24-year-old bartender Vickie Jane McCalister.
Hard work and dedication. Fred moved out of the main house, into a cabin on the Grabbes’ property.
For Fred, a permanent split would mean freedom to continue sleeping around — but he wanted to hold onto Charlotte and not divide up the family assets.
On July 24, 1981, Charlotte left the house to do work in the soybean fields.
Her children never saw her again.
Alleged car chase. Charlotte had told the kids to come look for her if she didn’t get back by 4:30 p.m. that day. Jennie and Jeff called the sheriff right away.
Fred explained to the law officers that he and Charlotte argued in the toolshed that day. He got in his truck, and she chased him in her green Ford LTD and eventually drove off toward the interstate, Fred claimed.
But witnesses said it was a curly haired blond woman following Fred in Charlotte’s car.
Grave words. Police found Charlotte’s purse, uneaten lunch, and migraine medicine in the toolshed.
The authorities drilled open Charlotte’s bank safe deposit box and found a handwritten note Charlotte left, with the instructions to read it upon her death.
It was a voice from the grave (Sandra Duyst, Russ Stager) accusing Fred of stealing some farm equipment and declaring that she was afraid of Fred as well as his business associate Dale Kessler.
Iffy alibi. Kessler told police that Fred was with him the night Charlotte disappeared.
But when questioned by a grand jury about his whereabouts, Fred took the Fifth Amendment.
Jennie, married by now, posted a $25,000 reward for help solving the case, but it went cold for four years.
Terror in the toolshed. In 1984, she and husband Darrel Livvix, who operated a plastics plant, hired a private investigator named Charles Pierson to look for Charlotte.
Pierson found Vickie McCalister in Indiana. She was bitter about the way Fred treated her and wanted the $25,000 reward. She spilled an absolutely revolting story about what really happened the day Charlotte disappeared on July 24, 1981.
While Vickie was hiding behind a tractor, Charlotte and Fred argued in the toolshed. He attacked her. As a sadistic exercise, he repeatedly choked her until she passed out, waited until she came to, and choked her again.
Spotlight on tree experts. Fred finally strangled her to death and severely abused her corpse. Vickie then helped Fred burn the body with diesel fuel in a trash barrel under a maple tree on the banks of the Wabash River.
He threw her remains into the water.
Vickie admitted that she was the one seen driving Charlotte’s vehicle the day she died. She had abandoned the car in Terre Haute.
Obviously, the account from a woman scorned — the holy grail for prosecutors — provided a huge break in the case. But investigators still had no trace of a body, so they had to dig deeply to find forensic evidence.
Ring of truth. Russ Carlson, a consulting arborist (a refreshing departure from the usual blood splatter expert) who Forensic Files viewers may remember from his appearance on the show, and two University of Illinois scientists cut several branches from the maple tree at the site where Vickie said she and Fred burned the body.
The experts found that the 1981 growth rings that faced the river showed a developmental slowdown consistent with exposure to diesel fuel. Further testing revealed evidence of petroleum products in the tree. And the only branches affected by the fuel were those directly above the spot where Vickie said she and Fred had placed the burn barrel.
In 1985, police finally arrested Fred Grabbe. His lawyers succeeded in getting him a change of venue to Vermilion County — after a phone survey revealed that 98 percent of Clark County residents had heard of Fred Grabbe, according to the Mattoon Journal Gazette.
Eyewitness account. Comments from the survey included, “I went to school with Fred Grabbe. Then he was real nice but now it’s another story” and “I hope they electrocute him.”
Vickie got immunity for testifying about the murder and, for the first time, Jennie and Jeff heard the story of the way their mother died.
The motive was money — most of their wealth sprang from Charlotte’s inheritance and Fred wanted to retain it. Vickie McCalister admitted she participated in the murder cover-up.
Son intimidated. McCalister testified that Charlotte wasn’t Fred’s first homicide victim. He told her that, at 14, he had murdered someone for killing his dog (hate to defend Fred Grabbe, but that’s a mitigating factor) and later had killed two women over a union dispute, according to court papers filed in 1986.
Jennie would later say that as a child, she witnessed Fred kill a man after a bar fight.
Jeff Grabbe also testified about the physical abuse Fred had inflicted upon family members and said that Fred had threatened to hurt him if he didn’t clam up about his mother’s disappearance.
But Fred Grabbe had some people on his side, too. Paulina Kessler, wife of Dale Kessler, claimed she spotted someone who looked like Charlotte Grabbe in a shopping mall a year after she disappeared, the Decatur Herald and Review reported.
Ridiculous attempt. Fred’s defense lawyer argued that Vickie McCalister made up the murder story to collect the reward.
Regardless, a jury convicted Fred of first-degree murder on June 24, 1985, and he got a sentence of life without parole.
But the drama didn’t stop after the guilty verdict. While authorities were still holding Fred in the Clark County lockup, Barbara Graham — the woman Fred had dumped Vickie McCalister for — shot Deputy Mike Davidson in the leg and fired off four more bullets in an attempt to blast Fred out of jail.
It’s not clear what Barbara’s long-term plan was. Where could the towering Fred ever hide?
Hairy situation. And why did the 26-year-old Graham, whom the Chicago Tribune described as a mother of three, find Fred so alluring? And ditto with Vickie McCalister?
Well, first off, as many who knew Fred explained, when he kept his id in check, he was pleasant, lively company. His daughter said he was a classic Jekyll and Hyde who sometimes seemed like “the nicest person you could meet.”
There’s also the money factor. The Tribune story mentioned that Barbara Graham enjoyed showing off a fur coat Fred bought her prior to the first trial, so maybe she hoped for more expensive gifts in exchange for her gun moll services.
Hope it was worth it. For all we know, Fred promised each girlfriend she would someday become the lady of the household at the spacious Southfork-like main residence on the farm.
Instead, Barbara Graham got a 16-year prison sentence for her futile crime. Vicky McCalister evaded any punishment for her role in Charlotte Grabbe’s murder, but she had to change her identity and flee the area out of fear of reprisal by Fred.
Her worry was well-placed. In 1985, while Fred was securely locked in jail, a fire destroyed the Grabbes’ main house as well as a small abode that Jeff Grabbe was building on the property. Illinois police found evidence of arson but couldn’t prove that Fred, from his cell, had directed any of his associates to set the buildings aflame.
Money problems. Two years later in 1987, more bad news befell the Grabbe children. Fred won a new trial on appeal because of faulty instructions given to the jury.
In March 1988, before he had a chance to testify against his father again, Jeff Grabbe went missing.
Jennie told the Herald and Review that her brother hadn’t worked since their mother died and that he was probably evading creditors, according to a story by reporter Jeffrey Raymond, who covered the case extensively.
Another watery grave. Jeff Grabbe did have a rather dicey reputation. The Herald and Review story noted that he had allegedly been seen trying to break into a local appliance store, but the authorities never pressed charges. “He’s not what you call one of our real troublemakers,” Detective Burt Bennett of the Marshall Police Department told the Herald and Review.
According to his wife, Cindy, Jeff was a financier and had gone to California to seek a loan for a client. She and Jeff had been talking on the phone every day because their baby son had pneumonia, and Jeff suddenly stopped calling.
On March 21, 1998, a boater discovered a corpse in the Pacific Ocean 1.5 miles off Seal Beach.
Died with his boots on. Clearly, this was no accidental drowning. Someone had shot the victim three times, tied an anchor to him, and thrown him fully clothed into the Ocean.
FBI-trained forensic sculptor Marilyn Droz would later comment that she could tell the victim was “at least middle class” because of his expensive snakeskin boots.
The water had rendered the face unrecognizable, but a reconstructive clay bust and dental records enabled a positive ID of Jeffrey Grabbe on May 24, 1988. A theory sprang up that one of Fred Grabbe’s reprobate associates — perhaps the same person who torched the houses — had put out a hit on Jeff.
As John O’Brien reported in the Chicago Tribune:
“Seal Beach police say the killing appears to be drug-related… [Detectives] scoff at the notion that Fred Grabbe, safe in a cell in Downstate Illinois, had anything to do with it. On the other hand, Seal Beach police don’t know Fred Grabbe.”
The monster grieves. In addition to Cindy, who worked as an elementary school teacher, Jeff left behind sons Lucas, 5, and Nicholas, 9 months.
According to defense lawyer Frederick Cohn, Fred Grabbe cried “like a baby” in Coles County jail after hearing the news of his son’s death, the Herald and Review reported in a June 2, 1988.
His sorrow might have been real. Police concluded that Jeff was killed because he tried to double-cross some of his own business associates in a $7 million money-laundering scheme, the LA Times reported on Nov. 18, 1988.
More to the story. At Fred Grabbe’s second trial, the judge refused to allow a record of Jeff’s testimony, but his widow took the stand for the prosecution.
In April 1988, Fred was found guilty again and got 75 years in prison.
Jennie said she eventually forgave her father even though he never said he was sorry.
Fred actually had a lot more things to atone for than either of the juries ever heard.
Coping with trauma. By the time Jennie was 5, Fred had begun sexually abusing her, according to her interview on Stop Child Abuse, a show hosted by William “Bill” Murray III, who survived molestation by priests and went on to found the National Association of Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse in California.
“I would disassociate — count tiles on the ceiling,” Jennie said. “Some things I didn’t remember until I was 30 years old.”
Jennie also said that she took comfort from playing music and having dogs and horses growing up.
Solace attained. She was popular, and the classmates who elected her to the Homecoming Queen’s court and listened to her sing “Evergreen” in a school show had no idea the upbeat girl lived in a den of depravity at home.
Today known as Jennie Woolverton, she married three times, had five children, and said she ultimately found peace and healing with the help of a Christian group.
In an unfortunate and bizarre tangential note, Jennie’s son Adam Livvix made headlines in 2014, when he allegedly plotted to bomb Muslim holy sites in Israel.
Not loving the cuisine? But that’s a lot to process and this post is already pretty long, so I’ll try to cover the Adam Livvix story in a future post.
In the meantime, let’s get to Fred. Today, he resides in Dixon Correctional Center in Illinois. He’s lost an inch of his height, standing 6’3, and some weight, at 254 pounds.
His profile also mentioned that he’s missing at least one finger from his right hand. My guess would be a farm-equipment accident — it’s hard to imagine even the toughest fellow inmate holding Fred down and slicing off body parts.
And speaking of horrors, Grabbe won parole and exited prison on July 22, 2022. (Thanks to readers RTH and Dennis L. for the tip.)
That’s all for the post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
