Fred Grabbe

This is not your standard, spouse on spouse crime. In addition to that this case brings up a few other questions. First, what are the odds of someone knowing, or being related to more than one person who has been murdered, and secondly, can criminal behavior or mindset be inherited? Of course there are the cases where siblings work together on a crime, but we have also seen them where different siblings commit different crimes and spends time in prison. But, what about a grandson of a murderer becoming a potential murderer? Is it nature verses nurture? Is it just a rare coincidence? I do recall this question being asked at one point concerning a father and son who both had committed crimes in which they had earned the death penalty for several decades apart.

Fred and Charlotte Grabbe were first married sometime in the late 1950's or early 1960's. In 1961 they would divorce but they would remarry a year later. By 1981 the couple had two grown children, twenty-two year old Jeffrey and twenty-one year old Jennie. In April of that year Charlotte once again filed for divorce and this time vowed to family and friends there would not be a reconciliation. It was said that Fred had been very abusive to his family over the years but especially so to his wife and son. To add to this Fred had engaged in several affairs over the years and it was said that Charlotte had learned of his latest involving a woman named Vicki McCalister and that was the last straw for her.

The family owned an 800 acre farm in Marshall Illinois, just over the state border from Terre Haute Indiana. It was Charlotte's money that had basically bought the farm and she did much of the work on the farm so it was assumed that she would continue owning and running the farm. Upon their separation Fred did not go far. He moved out of the main house but into a cabin on the farm. Sometime after she filed for the divorce Charlotte had also filed battery charges against Fred saying he had beat her one evening when she went to the cabin so they could discuss some furniture the two had shared. Reports are a bit unclear about where Jeff and his wife Cindy were living at the time of the separation. Some indicate that they had a home on the farm and regardless if that was true or not, the couple moved in with Charlotte after Fred moved out. It was said that the family still feared Fred so Charlotte, Jeff and Cindy had vowed that if any of them would not be home before dark and had not contacted one of the others that they would immediately begin looking for them. They held true to their promise when Charlotte failed to return home on the evening of July 24, 1981. Her daughter Jennie helped her brother and sister-in-law in the search for Charlotte who had gone to work out in the fields that day. Inside the shed where the tractor that Charlotte would have used they found not only the tractor but Charlotte's lunch and some headache medication that she carried with her at all times. They knew something was wrong and reported her missing.

Of course Fred was interviewed but he claimed to know nothing about Charlotte's disappearance. A few days after she had disappeared Charlotte's car was found just over the state line in Terre Haute Indiana. A friend of Charlotte's told investigators that on the day she disappeared she had seen Fred driving his truck down the road and Charlotte's car was following but it was not Charlotte driving. Law enforcement officers were convinced the woman the friend described was Vicki McCalister.

As time went on there seemed to be no proof that a murder had occurred, let alone that Fred was involved. Jeff and Cindy Grabbe moved out of the main farm house and into their own home. Jennie was now married to Everett “Darrell” Livvix. The Livvix family put up a $25,000 reward and hired a private investigator named Charles Pierson to look into Charlotte's case. By August 1984 Fred was no longer seeing Vicki McCalister and Pierson tracked her down in Terre Haute. She told Pierson a story that she would later relate to the police.

According to Vicki McCalister she had seen Fred Grabbe attack his wife in the shed where the tractor was stored on July 24, 1981. According to McCalister, Fred had hit her on the head and killed her and then placed her body into a 55 gallon drum. The drum was then placed in the back of Fred's truck and taken to the edge of the Wabash River where Fred had doused the inside of the drum with diesel fuel and had started a fire. Sometime that evening Grabbe and McCalister had heard his children looking for Vicki so they left the area with the drum and then returned the following evening to finish the burning. She stated that when he was done he threw most of the contents of the drum in the river in one area and threw the head in another area. Police had trouble verifying this story and called in some forensic experts. McCalister took the experts to the tree in which she claimed the drum had been placed under while it was burning. It was determined by the experts that the roots, as well as other areas of the tree had been damaged by the presence of petroleum. They determined that by the examination of the tree rings that this damage had occurred sometime in the summer of 1981, consistent with McCalister's story, and the time of Charlotte's disappearance. Fred was promptly arrested and would claim he was innocent.

In 1985 Fred Grabbe went on trial for the murder of his wife despite the fact that a body had not been found. Aside from testimony from McCalister and the experts, Fred's son Jeff, also testified against him. It is not exactly clear the process that was taken in trial or exactly who said what but in the end the jury convicted him. He was given a sentence of “natural life.”

Just after his trial his girlfriend at the time, Barbara Graham was caught attempting to help him escape. In fact, in the process shots were fired and a deputy was injured with a gunshot wound to the leg. The escape was foiled and Graham herself would be sentenced to sixteen years in prison. Also after his trial both the main farm house on the farm in Marshall, as well as Jeff and Cindy Grabbe's homes were destroyed by arson. Illinois police believed that despite being behind bars at the time, Fred had been the mastermind behind the fires but could never prove anything enough to garner arrests. They also believed that the fire to Jeff's home was in retaliation to the fact that he had testified against his father at his trial. As far as the farm house also being involved and being a separate fire the idea was that Fred would know that he would never live in the home again and apparently he did not want anyone else living in the home.

In 1987 the Illinois courts overturned Fred's conviction. They stated that the jury had been given “faulty instructions” although I was not able to determine what those instructions had entailed. So, in March of 1988, seven years after Charlotte had disappeared and presumed to be murdered Fred Grabbe went on trial again. In the mean time Jeff had expressed to people that his father had repeatedly threatened him since the murder. It is unclear if any of these threats occurred after the trial and if they were reported to law enforcement.

In February of 1988 Jeff was in California on what has been described as a business trip. While there he disappeared. On March 22, 1988, six days before his father's second trial was to begin his body was found in the Pacific Ocean. It was said that he had been shot twice in the head and once in the chest. His body had been weighted down by an anchor but that it had eventually floated to the surface. Obviously this meant that Jeff would not be available to testify against his father. His wife Cindy however took his place. California authorities would later claim that Jeff's death had been a result of a money laundering scheme he was involved with and that he had “cheated” his partners and that they had murdered him. There was little available information regarding all of this however and despite California authorities allegedly all but laughing at the idea that Fred Grabbe could have been behind the murder it was said that Illinois authorities were not so sure. Despite Jeff being unable to testify at his father's trial, he was again convicted of murdering his wife and this time was sentenced to seventy-five years. Despite that sentence according to the Illinois Department of Corrections his “projected” parole date is in October of 2022.

Jennie and her husband, Darrell Livvix divorced in 1999 and their two sons remained living with their father. In 2013 their son Everett “Adam” was under indictment in Israel for trying to blow up “Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.” It was said that Adam had an extensive criminal history in the United States in Indiana, Illinois and Texas and it was believed he had been in Israel as he had ran from drug charges he was facing in Texas. I did not do an extensive search into his crimes nor what the outcome of his cases may have been. I can say that he is not a current inmate in prisons in any of those three states or in the federal system.

There were a few other interesting tidbits in the Livvix family. First was the fact that Darrell's father, Everett “Albert” had been murdered in 1975. He had been found dead in a field near his home with two gunshot wounds. It was theorized that he may have caught someone killing one of his calves and they had killed him. It is unclear if the murder was solved or anyone was held responsible. The second interesting fact is that Darrell had been previously married before Jennie and had other children. He had daughter named Laura who would go on to marry Tony George, the former long time CEO of the Indianapolis 500.