Police remain tight-lipped, although a retired detective who is a family friend says Jimmy Grimes "fell victim probably to one type of predator. This person got in the car with him; this person's intent when he got in the car was probably to rob him."

11:27 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 26, 2003

BY RANDAL EDGAR
Journal Staff Writer

He was a go-get-'em cop who thrived on action. Working undercover for his department and others, he helped nab drug dealers and users, dozens of them, with his uncanny ability to blend in.

Even as a 20-year-old security guard, he'd shown a flair for taking risks, jumping a man who held a woman at gunpoint.

He died under mysterious circumstances, at age 33, his body found in the front seat of a car in a downtown Providence parking lot.

That occurred seven years ago tomorrow and his family still waits for answers.

Journal photo / Kris Craig FRUSTRATED: Ann-Marie Grenier, sister of slain Cumberland police detective Jimmy Grimes, and Ellen Grimes, his mother, hold up a photo of him. Grimes was found dead in a Providence parking lot in 1996 and the case is unsolved.

The murder of Jimmy Grimes, the hometown boy who was a rising star in the Cumberland Police Department, remains unsolved.

Whether the Providence Police or the attorney general's office have made progress or pinpointed suspects, they aren't saying. The attorney general's office last week referred questions to the police, and the police said only that the investigation is ongoing.

What is known is that the case has long been marked by an almost eerie silence, and that has only fed the desire of Jimmy's family to know what happened.

"When do the victim's rights, and the family's rights, come in?" his sister, Ann-Marie Grenier, asked recently.

To people who knew him, Jimmy Grimes was an outgoing guy who looked out for his family, made folks laugh, and had ambitions to move up through Cumberland's ranks.

Hired in 1990, he soon worked his way into detectives. As fellow officers tell it, he had a knack for looking and sounding the part, blending in one day in casual clothes, looking comfortable the next day in a suit as he headed to court.

His outgoing demeanor was evident during his last hours, on Sunday, Aug. 25, 1996.

He spent much of the day attending a police union picnic at the Lusitania Club in Cumberland. A police dispatcher took him home, but later that night, he was back at the Lusitania. The bartender said at the time that Jimmy's pager went off at about 11:30 p.m. He then made a call to the Providence YMCA, according to family members who saw his phone records. Then he left the club, driving a rented car.

A few hours later, Providence Police received a 911 call. Two men walking past a parking lot on Mathewson Street saw a man in the front seat of a green Mercury Sable, his left leg hanging out the open door on the driver's side. It was Jimmy.

At first, the police thought he might have died of natural causes because there was no obvious sign of injury. Even then-Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. was quoted as saying the initial evidence provided "no reason to classify it as a homicide."

But a day later the medical examiner ruled it a homicide, saying only that Jimmy had died of unspecified injuries suffered from an assault.

What wasn't acknowledged at the time was the discovery by police of a video tape of the lot where Jimmy's body was found. Family disclosed the existence of the tape four years after the murder.

Family members have reported that the tape shows Jimmy's rented car pulling into the lot shortly before 1 a.m. on Aug. 26. A man sits next to him. Jimmy parks, and extends one foot to the pavement, and then the man next to him reaches over and snaps his neck. The man grabs the keys from the ignition and drops them by a rear tire as he walks quickly from the car, according to family members who watched the video.

Hundreds of police officers, firefighters and local officials came to Jimmy's funeral at St. John Vianney Church in Cumberland. There, Cumberland Police Sgt. William Meehan recalled how Jimmy had kept his cool during a drug sting that almost went bad. When one of the dealers started yelling at Jimmy, he just yelled back, and soon the dealers were apologizing. They completed the sale.

"We realized instantly that there was something special about this James Grimes," Meehan said.

Grenier says that within a year, the family became frustrated with the investigation. Normally, when a police officer is killed, there is an all-out push to make an arrest. In her brother's case, there seemed to be silence, punctuated only by comments that while Jimmy was a police officer, he was not on duty when he was killed. There were questions about his lifestyle.

Grenier said the family rejects those comments.

"You can't try to put a round peg in a square hole," she said in a recent interview. "We feel certain that he was responding as an officer on the night he was murdered."

The family asked a friend, Ronald Pennington, to look into the case. As a detective sergeant with Woonsocket Police, Pennington led the investigation that eventually solved the 1982 murder of Doreen Picard.

Pennington, who had retired from the Woonsocket Police Department, agreed to help, and checked numerous leads, passing information on to Providence Police.

He declined to discuss details of the case during a recent interview, but he said there is no escaping that the killer left few clues.

"The crime was a crime of opportunity," Pennington said. "He fell victim probably to one type of predator. This person got in the car with him; this person's intent when he got in the car was probably to rob him."

The crime is difficult to solve, Pennington said, because the killer apparently is not boasting or confiding in anyone about what he did.

And even if the killer left physical evidence that could link him to scene, judges want solid evidence before they approve a warrant, he said.

Asked for his thoughts on the investigation, Pennington said the Providence Police seemed to be doing the right things when he was involved.

"They're always working on it," he said. "Maybe it's not on the forefront, but you're always working on things . . You work them until there's nothing to work."

At the Cumberland Police station, where Jimmy's picture hangs in the community room, officers still wonder what happened. Chief Anthony J. Silva, appointed four months after Jimmy's death, never worked with him. But he knew Jimmy from the Rhode Island Municipal Police Academy, where Silva taught police ethics and police operations for 14 years.

"You remember those people in class who are always asking the right questions," he said. "Jimmy was one of those. He had that burning desire in his belly to want to be the best he could."

Silva said he is hopeful the case will eventually be solved, providing Jimmy's parents and family with the answers they seek.

"Someone is out there with that information," he said. "One of these days, that someone might have the urge to speak out."

Determined to find answers, Ann-Marie Grenier has made it her job among family members to keep pushing. She stays in contact with Providence Police and the attorney general's office to see whether anything's new. From her home in Maine, she called The Journal after learning of the paper's ongoing series on unsolved murders to urge that her brother's death be the topic of a story.

She has chased down forensics experts, including Robert H. Goldberg, of Marietta, Ga. Goldberg says he is willing to help if the police will let him.

"I looked into the case and attempted to contact some officials, and that's as far as it's gone," he said last week.

Grenier said she can't understand why police haven't said yes.

"If we genuinely want answers for this, it's time to accept the help."

COLD CASE CONTACT: Anyone with information regarding the Grimes murder may call the Providence Police Department's detective division, at (401) 243-6406.