Hazel Meeker, 72, a female and white neighbor living near the Grissom family in Kansas, was killed on January 27, 1977. That morning, after an argument with his parents, 16-year-old Richard Anthony Grissom Jr. left home, armed himself with a railroad spike, and forced entry into Meeker’s residence. Inside, he attacked her with fatal violence; contemporary and retrospective accounts variously describe Meeker as beaten to death, stabbed, or both, but agree that the assault was brutal and
occurred inside her home.
Police work moved quickly. Footprints tracked through fresh snow around the house led investigators south along nearby railroad tracks and to a nearby trailer park, where officers discovered and apprehended Grissom. Later that day he was tied by evidence to a second break-in in which a handgun was stolen, corroborating his rapid, chaotic flight from the homicide scene. Meeker was discovered by a granddaughter who came to check on her and found the house transformed into a crime scene.
Grissom was arrested that day and processed as a juvenile because of his age; the juvenile court records are sealed, but multiple authoritative retrospectives document that he was committed to a Kansas juvenile facility and released after several years. He later reentered the criminal justice system as an adult and, in 1990, was convicted for a string of 1989 Johnson County murders, for which he remains incarcerated—context that underscores how investigators and courts ultimately identified Meeker’s killer and removed him from the community.
