Delores Ray Griffin-Jones was thirty-three years old when she was last seen October 24, 1975 at home, 744 Hillcrest in Romeoville, Illinois, a suburb in Will County, Illinois.
Police report shows Delores child calls law enforcement often for an update to see if her remains have been found. The Chicago Sun-Times Reporter Stefano Esposito later stated the child then, thirteen years old is Sheila Hensen. 2012 she stated that Frank had been physically abuse to Delores for several years She remembers going to school that day. Frank had left for work that day prior to the children. Delores was left home alone that day. She was last seen / heard from between 10:30AM – 11:00AM. When her daughter returned home from school the house doors were all locked. Delores never locked the doors but that day the front & back door & garage door were all locked. After several minutes of the daughter banging on the door Frank answered. He told her he had left work early that day and came home. Frank told her that Delores and Frank had an argument and Delores had left them. She had never left the children alone with Frank before. They went to stay at the neighbor’s house for the night. Frank also left the residence for the night.
Chicago Sun Times reports that when her father showed up the next day, his pant leg and shoes were caked in fresh mud, taking off his clothes, went in to the garage and burned them.
Her daughter opened the refrigerator door and Delores’ wedding rings fell off the top of it. Delores had three silver wedding rings. Also while inside of her house she noticed Delores’ purse was laying on a table. She said her mother never left home without her purse or wedding rings.
When Frank returned home the next day she remembered that Frank’s clothes and shoes were covered in mud. Frank them then took his clothes and shoes off and piled them in the backyard. Frank used some type of accelerant to set his clothes and shoes on fire. After Frank burnt his clothes he took a shower. She said from that day forward Frank refused to sleep in his bedroom. Frank and Delores’ bedroom had a trap door that lead to the crawl space. She said several people kept calling and asking Frank if he heard from Delores. Delores’ family members pressured Frank into filing a police report with the Romeoville PD. On 10/25/75 he did. He said Delores had left him and the children after they had an argument.
12/1/75 Frank filed a stolen vehicle report with Romeoville PD. The vehicle was later recovered in Elgin. 1974 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Gold & White. Several clothes of Delores were found. Delores was a mother of 3. Frank reported Delores called him at his work 1030AM to say she was leaving him and he left work immediately went straight home and she was gone. Then later she called him from Red’s Lounge at 22nd / Leavitt in Chicago. He went there with all his money. He saw his wife with a man dressed in military uniform. All 3 left the bar got in man’s car 1973 Blue Buick or Olds with Kansas plates. Frank left the Monte Carlo at the lounge. He said the guy pulled a gun and took $580 hit him got him out of the car on Damn & I55. His car was also stolen. Frank went to CPD to report it then hitchhiked home.
Frank once took someone to “search” for Delores. They got in the car and Frank drove them to an unknown body of water In Romeoville. They exited the car and stood by the side of the body of water. Neither one of them said anything and they stood there for several minutes. Then they drove back home. Frank had a girlfriend move in to the residence shortly after Delores disappeared.
Frank is said to have committed suicide about 6 months after Delores went missing. Chicago Sun Times reports that he was the prime suspect (and still is), with the police pressuring him to take the polygraph exam.
When a report in 2019 came out that Delores’ remains were confirmed to be hers, I contacted the leading Detective and spoke to him personally. He told me that they had gotten information from the family that her husband had ties to Michigan they combed over unsolved and unidentified cases, linking one, which DNA confirmed to be that of Delores. I of course thanked him for his persistence and let him know that there are many people like me that would personally like to thank him for what he did for Delores and her family. While there may never be justice in our world, Delores can be in peace. He stated that Her remains were being sent to Kentucky to be with her family, now confirmed to be her daughter Henson.
Chicago Sun-Times reports that in 2017, a sheriff’s detective called Ryan from Monroe County, Michigan, on Lake Erie. He said they’d retrieved the body of a woman with red hair from a lagoon the day after Henson’s mother went missing. The face, badly beaten, had characteristics that seemed similar to the missing woman. And, like Henson’s mother, the woman had been wearing a silver wedding band.
Chicago Sun Times says her daughter now knows “her mother was strangled, stabbed and beaten almost beyond recognition then dumped Delores’ body in a lagoon near Lake Erie” in Michigan.
Chicago Sun-Times reported some of Henson’s memories.
““Dad told a story once about his mother,” Henson says. “She said, ‘Come here, I want to show you something.’ She put his hand in a dresser drawer and closed it really fast and broke his hand.”
When his rages began, Henson says she’d shut herself and her two younger siblings in her bedroom closet and wait in the darkness, whispering prayers that when they came out, sometimes hours later, their mother still would be alive.
“Once, he took a huge butcher’s knife, and he actually drew blood on her neck,” Henson says.
When she summoned the courage to demand he leave her mother alone, she says he beat her, too.”
Forty-four years after Delores was murdered by her husband, with their persistence and help by law enforcement who never gave up, her children were finally able to bring her home and give her a proper resting place.
