Widow of Slain Tennessee Autobody Shop Owner Offers Record Reward To Break The Silence
By Robert Riggs
A billboard towers above a pasture fence in rural Tennessee, its message blunt and unflinching: “I WAS MURDERED HERE ON 4-19-21. HELP ME GET JUSTICE.”
Beneath the haunting plea is a promise—ONE MILLION DOLLAR REWARD for the truth.
Since the $25 million bounty on Osama bin Laden, few rewards have reached this level—yet a grieving widow in rural Tennessee is offering $1 million of her own money to find her husband’s killer.”
In Giles County, where shotgun silence once fell over 22 acres of Jim and Dawn Grimes’ dream home, that reward now slices through the quiet like a siren.
Four years after Jim Grimes was ambushed outside his barn, his widow refuses to let the case fade. She’s keeping the pressure on—and the reward offer front and center—for the one person who knows what happened that night.
I interviewed Dawn Grimes on my True Crime Reporter® Podcast inside her late husband’s study. His portrait still watches from the wall. “He was bigger than life,” she told me. “He loved his family, loved God, loved his community. He did everything he could to make things better every day.”
Murder in Pastoral Paradise
The Grimes property sits in Lynnville, Tennessee—an hour south of Nashville near the Alabama state line. It’s the kind of place that draws city escapees with its peace, pastures, and forest. But peace didn’t protect Jim Grimes.
On April 19, 2021, the 63-year-old businessman followed his evening routine. He put on his headlamp and walked toward the barn to feed the animals. He didn’t know someone was waiting in the dark.
“So we have a very specific routine,” Dawn explained. “He followed it exactly. This person sat and watched him feed, go up the hill, feed the wildlife, come around the barn—and when he reached down to shut off the water, they shot him.”
She was inside the house when she heard what she thought was an explosion. She ran toward the light from Jim’s headlamp. “I knew something was wrong,” she said. “He was lying there struggling to breathe, and I kept asking—what happened?”
The Killer Had Been There Before
Lieutenant Shane Hunter of the Giles County Sheriff’s Department arrived to find no signs of struggle or robbery. Only one thing was clear—this wasn’t random.
“You could see the barn from the road,” Hunter told me. “But getting to that spot undetected in the pitch dark? You had to know the layout.”
I walked the property myself for the True Crime Reporter® podcast. Dense woods pressed in on all sides. Electric fences crisscrossed the terrain. I stumbled through low visibility, tripped on brush and sinkholes. Whoever committed this murder knew exactly where to go—and how to disappear.
Investigator Luke Tyson, the lead on the case, pointed out that the killer avoided every wildlife trail camera, maneuvered around electrified fences, and picked the one dark spot not covered by floodlights to ambush Grimes as he was turning off the water for his animals.
Tyson says robbery was not a motive. Grimes still had his wallet, cell phone, fifty dollars in his cell phone case, and jewelry.
Homicide inquiries routinely focus on the spouse in such cases, but investigators cleared Dawn Grimes early in the investigation.
“I learned that they were both well-liked in the community, and you can just tell by the way she talks about him that she really loved him, and he really loved her. Their children say the same thing they did. They just don’t understand how this could have happened,” said Tyson.
No Motive No Enemies
Jim Grimes was known throughout Giles County as a generous, civic-minded man. He ran two auto body shops and an auto repair business, served on the board of a food pantry, and volunteered with the Boys & Girls Club. He gave freely, even repainting a stranger’s vandalized car at his own expense.
Investigators for the Giles County Sheriff’s office have interviewed over 200 people—family, friends, employees, even former workers he let go. No one had a negative word. No one appeared to have a reason. Not even the employees he had fired.
“I’ve been doing this for 27 years, and this is probably one of the most difficult cases I’ve worked when it’s relating to a victim, because you could not find anybody that had a bad word to say about him,” said Lt. Hunter.
Digital Dead Ends
Lt. Jeff Perkins tried to find a digital trail. But the rural topography sabotaged the effort. “The cell towers in that area are lined up. Useless for triangulation,” Perkins explained. “We checked. Nothing pinged near the barn. It was the perfect dead zone.”
When that failed, Perkins wrote a custom computer program to scan phone records of more than 6,000 customers, looking for anyone who might have been nearby that night. He came up empty.
Trail cams missed the killer. The shotgun shell was never found. No fingerprints, no eyewitnesses, no forensic evidence. Just one gaping hole in the chest of a good man.
Cold Case Devoid Of Evidence
Then Sheriff Kyle Helton brought in one of the nation’s foremost experts on unsolved homicides: legendary cold case investigator Joe Kennedy from the Carolinas Cold Case Coalition.
Now retired, Kennedy made his mark as a Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), where he founded the federal government’s first cold case unit.
He didn’t just work the toughest cases—he helped write the playbook. I interviewed Kennedy in 2023 for a two-part series on True Crime Reporter®.
Kennedy invited me to report on the Grimes case, hoping that renewed attention—and the one-million-dollar reward—might flush out new leads, or shake loose a long-held secret.
He believes there are probably three or four murder suspects. “It’s just getting to that right suspect,” Kennedy told me as we left the crime scene. “And that’s the hard part about cold cases, which is how we narrow down that pool of suspects? And that’s the million-dollar question in this one.”
Kennedy and I know from experience that perpetrators can’t seem to keep secrets. It may be showing off while under the influence in a bar or bragging to a cellmate. “In the vast majority of successfully closed cold cases, the suspect, for any number of reasons, told someone they did it, said Kennedy. It’s that first sign of their attempts to cope with what they’ve done. It’s a coping mechanism.”
A Family That Won’t Forget
Back on Buford Station Road, Dawn Grimes keeps vigil.
A long banner along the front fence reads, “WE WILL NEVER FORGET – WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP.” Now, it’s joined by a towering billboard with Jim’s photo and a plea for justice—and a million-dollar promise for the person who can bring the killer in.
“Every day I wonder—are they coming after me? My grandchildren? Someone else in the community?” Dawn said. “You don’t do something like this to another human being. Please. Help us.
Dedicated And Determined To Get Their Man
Four years have passed. Sheriff’s investigators still burn through leads. Joe Kennedy told me he was impressed—small-town investigators who put in hours that a big city department would never do.
“This department hasn’t stopped,” he said. “They’ve sacrificed birthdays, holidays. They’ve overturned every stone. I believe they’ll solve this.”
So does Lt. Shane Hunter. “One day, we’ll knock on their door,” he said. “We’re not letting this go.”
The Time To Talk Is Now
Someone knows who killed Jim Grimes. Someone was told. Someone overheard. Someone has a secret—and $1 million says it’s time to speak.
If you know anything, call 931-638-2358 or 800-TBI-FIND. Information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the killer of Jim Grimes will be eligible to collect the ONE MILLION DOLLAR REWARD.
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