In the second half of June 1989, three young women vanished from their apartments in Johnson County, Kansas, the fast-growing suburbs on the Kansas side of Kansas City. Joan Butler, 24, disappeared from Overland Park on June 18. Eight days later her case was joined by that of two roommates in Lenexa, Christine Rusch and Theresa Brown, both 22. In each case the women's bank accounts were drained within hours and days. Within days police had a single suspect: Richard Grissom Jr., a 28-year-old painting contractor on parole, whose business gave him keys to apartment complexes across the area.
Grissom was arrested at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on July 7, 1989. None of the women has ever been found. In November 1990 a Johnson County jury convicted him of three counts of first-degree murder in what the Associated Press later called the county's first murder trial without a victim's body. The case rested on circumstantial evidence, and in 1992 the Kansas Supreme Court upheld it, ruling that the women's deaths could be proved without their bodies. More than three decades later he has still not said what happened to the women.
The two sets of disappearances were separate events. Joan Butler was last seen in the early morning of June 18, 1989, and was taken from her apartment in Overland Park. Christine Rusch and Theresa Brown were last seen on the night of June 25 and the morning of June 26, 1989, and were taken from the apartment they shared in Lenexa.
Grissom first came to the attention of the law in 1977, when he was 16. In that year, according to Lenexa police as reported by the University Daily Kansan in 1989, a juvenile court judge ruled that he had killed Hazel Meeker, a 72-year-old woman of Lansing, in Leavenworth County, Kansas, by strangling her and striking her with an iron railroad spike. Because he was a juvenile, the case was heard in juvenile court and was not a criminal conviction. The Lawrence Journal-World reported in 2010 that he was dealt with as a juvenile and served three years.
Little has been published about Hazel Meeker's life beyond this single event.
By 1989 Grissom was, in the words of the Associated Press, a career criminal. He was on parole for burglary and theft when the three women disappeared. Former Johnson County district attorney Paul Morrison, who prosecuted him, later described him as highly intelligent and adaptable, a man who "could sell ice to Eskimos."
He owned a small painting and maintenance company, which the Kansas Supreme Court record names as Apex, a painting and cleaning business. It worked for large apartment complexes, and the AP reported that it gave him access to hundreds of apartments. In May 1989 he hired a man named Marcelais Thibodo, who later became a key prosecution witness; a brown Toyota Corolla that Grissom drove was registered in Thibodo's name. Grissom also rented a storage locker in Stanley, in southern Johnson County, under the name "Randy Rodriguez." A handwriting expert later testified that it was highly probable he had filled out the rental form.
He spent much of his free time in Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas. In the spring of 1989 he met a University of Kansas student at a Lawrence bar and the two began spending time together, playing tennis and racquetball. Students who knew him there told the University Daily Kansan in August 1989 that he had seemed an ordinary, likable man. One called him a very good dancer with a commanding presence. Another said the worst thing she would have said about him was that he was boring. They did not know the name he went by was not his own.
Joan Marie Butler grew up in Wichita, where her father, Ralph Butler, sold television advertising and her mother, Jada, was a florist who often left fresh flowers in her daughters' rooms; Joan's favorites were roses. She graduated from Bishop Carroll High School in 1983 and went to the University of Kansas, her father's school. "There's something magical about KU," he told the Kansan in 1989, "and also it's the school that Dad graduated from."
At KU she lived in Corbin Hall, joined Delta Delta Delta, and later moved out of the sorority house because she needed quiet to study. By her junior year she had settled on advertising and was selling ads for the student newspaper. As a senior she worked on a student team that produced a campaign for the Payless Cashways chain; her professor, Larry Johnson, called her a superb student and the plan one of the best the department had produced. She interned at the Valentine-Radford agency in Kansas City, Missouri, and graduated in 1987. She and her father enjoyed long arguments about the business, she from the agency side and he from television sales.
By June 1989 she was working as a media buyer for a Kansas City advertising firm, with a part-time job at a cheese shop on the Country Club Plaza, the AP reported. She had moved from Wichita to an apartment at Comanche Place in Overland Park the previous fall. Her siblings were Tim, Julie and Chris; Julie and Chris were later students at KU.
On June 11, 1989, Butler's Honda was wrecked, and the next day she rented a maroon Chevrolet Corsica. In the early hours of Sunday, June 18, she left a friend's apartment at about 4 a.m. and drove home. Her clothes from that night were later found in her bedroom; the AP reported that her black dress had been neatly hung up.
A neighbor heard a loud thump at about 4 or 5 that morning. A witness later saw a brown Toyota parked across the street. At 5:59 a.m. someone used her card at a Capitol Federal Savings cash machine to withdraw $300, the daily limit. At 3:45 a.m. on June 19 another $300 was taken at a different branch, and at 2:14 a.m. on June 20 a third $300 withdrawal at another branch emptied the account.
Joan missed Father's Day with her family and did not arrive at work on Monday, June 19. Her supervisor went to her apartment that day, and her father asked the manager to let him in. Overland Park police said she was reported missing as of June 18.
On Sunday, June 25, a University of Kansas student recognized Joan Butler's maroon Corsica, which had been described in news reports, near his apartment at Trailridge Apartments in Lawrence. A Lawrence police officer arrived as a man was opening the trunk. The man talked the officer into following him into an apartment so he could get identification, and once inside he jumped out of a window and ran. The officer had been face to face with Richard Grissom.
Inside the Corsica, police found a wallet holding identification cards with Grissom's photograph under several names, a Crosman air pellet pistol and a fingerprint later identified as his. Specks of blood in the trunk were later linked to Joan Butler by DNA testing that compared them with her parents' blood. A genetics expert told the jury that the blood was highly likely to have come from a child of the Butlers.
That night Thibodo picked Grissom up. According to Thibodo's testimony, Grissom told him he thought the student he had been seeing had called the police, and admitted to stealing from a bank account. The two drove to Grissom's apartment in Lenexa and packed it up. Grissom then told Thibodo he was going to California and asked him to tell no one.
Julie Butler later said that she could not stop thinking about the fact that the two Lenexa women vanished only hours after Grissom escaped from police in Lawrence.
Christine Rusch and Theresa Brown were both 22 and shared an apartment at Trafalgar Square Apartments in Lenexa, a complex that Grissom's company had painted. They had been born on the same day. Christine had graduated from Shawnee Mission South High School and worked in retail marketing for the optics company her father, David Rusch, owned in North Kansas City. Theresa had been a cheerleader and prom queen at Camdenton High School in Missouri. She worked as a dental assistant and planned to become a dental hygienist. Her boyfriend was a Johnson County sheriff's deputy, and she was close to her sister, with whom she was due to have lunch on June 26.
Thibodo testified that in mid-May 1989 Grissom introduced him to the two women at a pool party at Trafalgar Square; they talked for about five minutes. About two weeks later, he said, Grissom took him to the women's apartment while they were out and let himself in with a key, saying he needed to check the ceiling for water damage. There was none. Thibodo said Grissom went through the closets, drawers and a jewelry box.
Christine Rusch spent most of Sunday, June 25, with a friend and went to a club that evening. Between midnight and 12:30 a.m. she left, telling a friend she had to work in the morning, and drove off alone in her white 1985 Dodge Colt. Theresa Brown called her sister on Sunday morning in good spirits and spent the day with her boyfriend. She left him at about 6 a.m. on Monday, June 26.
Between 7:58 and 8:43 a.m. that Monday, four checks totaling $2,400 were cashed on Christine's account at four branches of Metcalf State Bank. A customer at the first branch noticed a white woman driving and a Black man in the passenger seat. At about 8:45 a.m. Christine called her workplace, said she was ill, and asked that her father be told she would be in later. A caller also told Theresa's workplace that she was sick. The AP later reported that no friend, relative or co-worker heard from either woman again.
That day a woman who looked much like Theresa Brown rented a unit at a storage facility in Raytown, Missouri, signing the agreement "Christine Rusch." She was with a man who resembled Grissom. The signature was a forgery. That evening Christine was photographed at cash machines in Raytown and Belton, Missouri, using Theresa's card. Christine's driver's license was later found in Kansas City, Missouri, and her credit cards and papers in a ditch in southern Johnson County. Her car turned up at a motel near the women's apartment, with blue paint on it that matched a post at the Raytown storage facility.
Lenexa police said the roommates were reported missing on June 27 and that foul play was suspected as of June 26.
On June 26, the day the roommates vanished, police searched the Corsica in Lawrence. A day later Grissom's Toyota was found abandoned at an apartment complex in Grandview, Missouri. Inside were keys to the Rusch and Brown apartment, to Joan Butler's apartment and to the house of Christine's parents, along with Christine's rings, a credit card and the women's identification cards. There were also forged and blank birth certificates, official seals and knives.
The Johnson County investigation drew in dozens of officers from both sides of the state line. The Kansas City Crime Commission offered an $18,000 reward for information about the three women. For almost three weeks, the AP later wrote, fear gripped the area. Searchers worked through woods and farm fields, around Longview Lake and near Lawrence, and drained ponds.
Evidence from other places was also gathered. In the Stanley storage locker, police found mainly painting supplies and an orange shag carpet. Thibodo said that when he went there on June 28 the lock was missing; he found a roll of duct tape and a pair of sunglasses, threw the tape onto the roof because he was "concerned about Richard," and later gave the sunglasses to police. A friend of Christine's said they looked like hers. Head hair on the carpet was indistinguishable from hair from Christine's surroundings, and more than 100 hairs on the duct tape were somewhat consistent with hers, though the analyst could not make an exact match. Hair consistent with Grissom's was found in Christine's car, in the women's bedding and on the carpet.
Grissom was traced to Texas, where a former girlfriend lived, Morrison said in 2010. The AP reported that he had tried to persuade another young woman to meet him at the airport. On July 7, 1989, he was arrested at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He had $2,037 in cash and a stolen Pontiac Grand Am. FBI specialist Mike Napier was among the officers who arrested him.
Napier and a Leawood police detective then questioned him for about eight hours. The interview was not recorded, and Napier took no notes; the detective later supported his account in court. According to the Kansas Supreme Court's summary of the evidence, Grissom denied knowing Joan Butler or ever being in her apartment. He said Thibodo had given him her rental car and that he had made the three $300 withdrawals and agreed to give Thibodo 40 percent. He said he knew Christine Rusch from painting at Trafalgar Square, and that he and Thibodo had kept keys to the roommates' apartment for "future use," which he would not explain.
At first he said he could not have killed anyone and that the women were not dead. Later he said they "probably" were dead by then, and he said, "You will dig them up." When urged to tell everything, he asked, "What is in it for me?" and asked that the prosecutor be told he "could give them the whole package." He named Thibodo and another man as people involved. He said that "everything happened in Kansas and nothing would be found in Missouri," and, according to the detective, specified Johnson County. He never confessed to harming any of the women. The AP reported in 2009 that his court-appointed lawyer then cut off contact.
On August 16, 1989, Johnson County prosecutors charged Grissom with three counts of first-degree murder, one count of aggravated kidnapping, four counts of aggravated robbery and two counts of aggravated burglary. Bond was set at $1 million. The district attorney would not say what evidence supported the murder charges, and no bodies had been found.
Grissom fought extradition from Texas. On August 7 a Dallas judge had ordered him returned to Kansas, and his court-appointed lawyer appealed, arguing that he was being held unlawfully. In October 1989 a Texas appeals court ruled that he should be sent back. By December he was in the Johnson County jail in Olathe, with bond set at $1.3 million.
In March 1990, after a preliminary hearing, a Johnson County judge ruled that the evidence tied Grissom to the three kidnappings and killings, and he was ordered to stand trial. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In June 1990 his public defender argued for moving the trial, saying that coverage had made a fair trial in Johnson County impossible. The news director of KCTV in Kansas City testified that his station had aired more than 200 stories about Grissom since June 1989, and a Wichita station reported 105 in about two months of 1989. Morrison answered that a county of 340,000 people could still produce a fair jury. Judge William Gray kept the trial in Olathe.
The defense team changed that summer. The Johnson County public defender who had represented Grissom since November 1989 withdrew because of a conflict of interest, after prosecutors said a county jail inmate represented by his office might testify. A Sedgwick County public defender appointed in his place declined the conditions of the appointment, and in July 1990 Gray appointed Thomas J. Erker, an Overland Park lawyer. Kevin Moriarty joined him.
In September 1990 Gray ruled that evidence from Grissom's apartment and storage locker could be used, finding that he had abandoned both and so had no reasonable expectation of privacy in them.
The trial began in October 1990. Because of the publicity, a jury pool of 600 was summoned, and the jury was sequestered, the first time that had happened in Johnson County. Over about ten days of testimony the state called more than 100 witnesses and offered about 200 exhibits. The defense called none.
Thibodo described the pool party, the visit to the roommates' empty apartment, the night of Grissom's flight and the duct tape at the storage locker. Bank records, surveillance photographs, the storage rental in Raytown, the keys in the Toyota, the hair evidence and the blood in the Corsica trunk filled in the rest. The jury also heard evidence of an attack on June 11, 1989, at an apartment complex in Kansas City, Missouri, where a man armed with what was later identified as a Crosman pellet pistol tried to force a woman out of her apartment. She escaped. A receipt for a similar pellet gun, bought about ten hours earlier, was found in Grissom's apartment, and a master key tagged with that complex's name was in his Toyota. The court allowed this evidence under the Kansas rule on other crimes.
Moriarty told the jury that the state's case was a house of cards built from small pieces of evidence that did not add up. Morrison told the jurors that Grissom's guiding question was "What's in it for me?" and pointed to his attempt to bargain during the FBI interview. He later compared the case to a puzzle whose pieces mean little up close but together make a picture. "We were able to show that he was in a cycle," he said in 2010. "About every week, he was trying to kill someone."
The jury began deliberating on a Saturday morning and reached its verdicts on Sunday afternoon, November 4, 1990, after about 12 hours. It found Grissom, then 29, guilty of the three murders and of eight of the nine other charges. It acquitted him only of burglarizing the apartment of one of Joan Butler's neighbors. He showed no reaction as Gray read each verdict.
Family members and investigators in the courtroom wept. Ralph Butler thanked the jurors, the prosecutors and the investigators, who Morrison estimated had put about 15,000 hours into the case. David Rusch said the families could not bring the women back but called the verdict a lasting victory. Julie Butler said she was relieved but that there was still no closure while Joan had not been found. Moriarty said Grissom had told him he was innocent.
Judge Gray imposed the maximum sentences and ordered them to run one after another. Grissom received a life term for each of the three murders and for the aggravated kidnapping, 15 to 60 years for each robbery and aggravated burglary count, and one year for theft. The Kansan described the total in 1992 as four life terms plus 90 to 360 years. The AP reported in 2009 that he would not be eligible for parole until 2093.
In January 1992 the state's appellate defenders filed a 141-page brief in the Kansas Supreme Court. Steven Zinn argued that because the women had never been found, the state had never proved that they were dead, let alone that Grissom had killed them. Ralph Butler, told of the appeal by Morrison, said what surprised him was how soon it came after Christmas.
The court decided State v. Grissom in November 1992, in an opinion by Justice Bob Abbott (251 Kan. 851, 840 P.2d 1142). It upheld the murder and kidnapping convictions and the life sentences on every point that mattered to the verdict.
On the central question, the court held that the deaths could be proved by circumstantial evidence. The three women had kept in close contact with family and friends, were seen as responsible people, and were never heard from again; there were no signs of forced entry, and Grissom held keys to their homes. Together with the rest of the evidence, the court said, this was enough to show both that they had been killed by criminal means and that he was the killer. It also rejected the argument that the case belonged in Missouri: the abductions and related acts took place in Kansas and were part of the killings, which gave Kansas jurisdiction.
The court found the evidence sufficient for premeditated murder, robbery, aggravated burglary and aggravated kidnapping. It held that the four robberies, carried out at different times and places, were separate crimes, and that the kidnapping and murder convictions did not duplicate each other. It upheld the search of the Toyota on the ground that Grissom had abandoned the car while evading police. It found a problem only with the sentencing on six counts, the four robberies and two aggravated burglaries, and sent those back to Johnson County District Court for resentencing. The outcome of that resentencing has not been reported.
Grissom has spent his sentence in the Kansas prison system. Morrison said in 2010 that he was a serious escape risk and was moved about every nine months, and that his charm had won him goodwill with guards.
In October 2015, at El Dorado Correctional Facility, he handed a female corrections officer a sexually explicit note. He admitted writing it but said she had asked for it, which she denied. He was found guilty of undue familiarity with staff, a prison disciplinary offense, and given 30 days in administrative segregation and a $20 fine. He challenged the decision in a habeas petition, and in August 2017 the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of that petition in Grissom v. Heimgartner, an unpublished ruling.
He has not been released on parole and, under the sentence reported by the AP, is not eligible until 2093. No parole hearing for him has been reported. He has not responded to reporters' written requests for comment.
Grissom has never told anyone where the women are. In August 1999 a team searched a field southeast of the Clinton Lake dam, near Lawrence. The site was chosen because a witness had written down the license tag of a vehicle seen there around the time of the killings; the tag was stolen and was later found in Grissom's possession. The search found nothing, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.
Pat Hinkle, the Lenexa police lieutenant who led the Rusch and Brown investigation and who had visited Grissom in prison, called him a typical con man who "won't say anything unless there's something to be gained for him." Morrison doubted that he would ever reveal the locations. One theory placed the women near the Clinton Lake dam; Morrison's own view, given in 2010, was that they might be in a landfill, which would make them very hard to find.
The families said they did not expect answers. David Rusch said in 2009 that Grissom would talk only if it helped him, and that any account he gave would be "just another piped-up jail story." Ralph Butler doubted his daughter's remains would ever be found and said he did not want any details. Theresa's mother, Bobby Brown, said she watched the news for reports of human remains. "I'd like to have someplace to lay flowers on Memorial Day," she said. Mike Napier, by then retired from the FBI, said Grissom's only claim to fame was that people were still interested in what happened to the women, and called him a coward who hid behind them.
The families stayed in touch, and the Brown and Rusch families gathered every year to mark the birthday Theresa and Christine shared. The Butlers funded a scholarship at the University of Kansas, Joan's school, and the Browns one through Theresa's high school in Camdenton.
Ralph Butler also turned to the legislature. He lobbied for the Kansas "Hard 40" law, which allows a judge to require a person sentenced to life for first-degree murder to serve at least 40 years before becoming eligible for parole. The Butlers backed it rather than a death penalty bill, the Kansan reported in 1992, because they did not think a death penalty would pass. At the time of the crimes, the AP noted, Missouri had the death penalty and Kansas did not.
By 2009 Theresa's father, Harold Brown, had died, and Christine's mother, Judy Rusch, died that year, both without learning where their daughters were.
A former FBI agent, Dan Mitrione, wrote a book on the case, Suddenly Gone, published by Addicus Books.
Proven by a final jury verdict: the first-degree murders of Joan Butler, Christine Rusch and Theresa Brown, the aggravated kidnapping of Christine Rusch, four robberies, two aggravated burglaries and a theft. How, when and where each woman died was never established, and none of their bodies has been found.
Ruled by a juvenile court in 1977, not a criminal conviction: the killing of Hazel Meeker in Lansing.
Never charged: the death of Terri Maness, 25, who was found dead in her Wichita apartment in early June 1989, about two weeks before Joan Butler disappeared. Grissom had known her, and police named him as a suspect in 1989. In 2010 the Lawrence Journal-World, reporting Morrison's talk, wrote that he is believed to have killed her first. He has never been charged with or convicted of her death, and it is not counted among the killings proven against him.
Admitted at trial as evidence but not charged in Kansas: the June 11, 1989, attack on a woman in Kansas City, Missouri, who escaped.
Grissom's own account: in the Dallas interview he denied killing anyone, blamed Thibodo and another man, and said everything had happened in Kansas. The jury did not accept his account of Thibodo's role, and no one else was charged. He has maintained his innocence, according to his trial lawyer.
Details that vary between sources: Theresa Brown's age is given as 22 in most sources and 23 in the Kansan's verdict report; some 1992 reports misdate the trial to 1989; and the accounts disagree on whether Joan Butler was last seen leaving a friend's place in Kansas City or near the Country Club Plaza.
1977: A juvenile court rules that Grissom, 16, killed Hazel Meeker, 72, in Lansing, Kansas.
Spring 1989: On parole for burglary and theft, he runs a painting and cleaning business with access to apartment complexes.
May 1989: Hires Marcelais Thibodo; meets Christine Rusch and Theresa Brown at a pool party at Trafalgar Square Apartments.
Early June 1989: Terri Maness, 25, is found dead in Wichita; Grissom later named as a suspect, never charged.
June 11, 1989: Armed attack on a woman in Kansas City, Missouri, who escapes. Joan Butler's car is wrecked; she rents a Chevrolet Corsica the next day.
June 18, 1989: Joan Butler, 24, disappears from her Overland Park apartment; withdrawals follow on June 18, 19 and 20.
June 25, 1989: Grissom flees a Lawrence police officer at Joan Butler's rental car. That night Christine Rusch leaves a club alone.
June 26, 1989: Theresa Brown leaves her boyfriend at about 6 a.m.; $2,400 in checks are cashed on Christine's account; the roommates are not heard from again.
June 27, 1989: The roommates are reported missing; Grissom's Toyota is found in Grandview, Missouri, with keys to all three women's homes.
July 7, 1989: Arrested at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport; questioned for about eight hours.
August 16, 1989: Charged with three counts of first-degree murder and other crimes.
October 1989: A Texas appeals court rules that he should be extradited to Kansas.
December 1989: Held in the Johnson County jail in Olathe.
1990: Preliminary hearing; not-guilty pleas; change of venue refused; defense team changes in July.
October 1990: Trial opens in Olathe before a sequestered jury.
November 4, 1990: Convicted of three murders and eight related charges.
November 1990: Sentenced to four consecutive life terms and further consecutive terms.
January 1992: Appeal filed in the Kansas Supreme Court.
November 1992: The Kansas Supreme Court affirms the convictions and orders resentencing on six counts.
August 1999: A search near the Clinton Lake dam finds nothing.
October 2015: Disciplined at El Dorado Correctional Facility over a note to a corrections officer.
August 2017: The Kansas Court of Appeals rejects his challenge to that discipline.
The women have not been found, and Grissom is not eligible for parole before 2093.