Trouble on the Hill

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

It's at the heart of everything holy, the core of the message, a single phrase: Love thy neighbor. To which we might add, woe to him or her who learns to hate instead - as you're about to discover. 

Once upon a time, in a paradise by the golden Pacific, up a quiet private road among the canyons of Carmel, lived three fine people.  And they were bright and loved and likeable and accomplished. The idealistic engineer. The crusading defense attorney. The caring nurse. Who could imagine what these three neighbors were capable of?  Love thy neighbor? There would be blood.

911 call:

John Kenney: Get off my property.

Elizabeth Grimes: Don't tell me to get off your property.

John Kenney: I will tell you to get off it.

Elizabeth Grimes: You're on my property every time you back up.

John Kenney: Get off this property.

Elizabeth Grimes: Please send the sheriff. Hurry.

The private driveway was leafy, secluded, quiet. Over a bridge it went, then wound past and under the old oak and sycamore up the side of the canyon. And here, second from the top, were two - call them grown-up hippies - two soul mates: Mel and Elizabeth.  The Grimes. It was kismet that they found one another after two failed marriages each, and Mel who brought Elizabeth up here to his uniquely funky utopia, love among the rustling leaves, to the tune of wild birds and wind chimes.

Tom Ellington-Wills: And they were just really happy.  It was crazy.  It was-- seeing them together constantly, always holding hands.

Tom Ellington-Wills is Elizabeth's son. He instantly liked his mother's new suitor when she introduced them.

Tom Ellington-Wills: He was just a really cool, mellow guy.  You know?  And-- and had a real good head on his shoulders.

Mel grew up on a surf board in the Monterey Bay, became a defense attorney.  Ran marathons, got involved with the Monterey blues festival.  

Tom Ellington-Wills: My mom was a paralegal at a-- at a law firm that was directly next door to his law firm.  He would-- constantly ask my mom out on a date. And he said, "Hey, I've got two tickets to the Santana concert.  Do you want to go?" And my mom loves Santana, so she really couldn't say no at that point.  So they went.  And they were together since that-- since that date.

Within a year, they got married.

Tom Ellington-Wills: You know, they truly lived each day.  Were always gone; were always on vacation, doin'-- doin' things like that. I was definitely jealous, goin' to (laughs) school, always finding out that they were going somewhere like Costa Rica or somewhere in the Caribbean, or goin' to Hawaii.

Elizabeth and Mel, and up here on their private hillside they dressed their overgrown love nest in bits of whimsy.

Tom Ellington-Wills: Our house was the funkiest house, I think, I'd ever seen. 

They planted discarded surfboards, upended to grow like flowers among the odd mismatched sculptures, the signs, the bird houses, those wind chimes… the carcass of a small ancient sailboat. An unbuttoned labor of love, in a way, and influenced, though not always tastefully, by those who's need for mel's legal services was as urgent as their wallets were empty.

Tom Ellington-Wills: "Hey, I can't afford to pay your legal f-- fee, but can I build a deck?  Or can I build a-- you know, whatever?  Can I do s-- you know, what--

Keith Morrison: And that would be okay with him?

Tom Ellington-Wills: "How can I work it out?"  And he'd be like, "Sure, no problem.  I could use a deck off this end of the house.  Or, you know, a-- a free-standing unit over here; one bedroom over here."  I mean, the house, the way it's laid out was really funky. 

Keith Morrison: So this is not a straight-laced or-- or-- a strictly ordered guy?

Tom Ellington-Wills: Yeah.  No, not at all.  He was a cruiser.

Mel had been cruising freestyle ten years up here when his new neighbor moved in. Seemed friendly enough.  And certainly he was an impressive man, the neighbor: His name was John Kenney, a 65-year-old oil exploration scientist with a PhD from MIT.  A Korean War vet, a former college professor, a world traveling consultant. Kenney soon fit right in, joined a local church, befriended downhill neighbors, and got involved in local conservation efforts.

Video   'It really shattered the safety that we felt' Friend Elyse Battey remembers the day of the Grimes murders, and shares memories of Elizabeth. Dateline NBC

Segolene Kenney: He just loves Carmel Valley. And when you see-- wild spaces like that, you want to preserve them.

Segolene Kenney is John Kenney's daughter. Though you can probably tell from her accent that she is not a California girl. Fascinating, isn't it, how fate can dictate the shape of a life. And that is part of our story, too.

It was serendipity as much as anything that produced the conditions, the distance, the isolation without which none of this would have happened. John Kenney happened to be at a conference in New York years ago. He met a woman there, a doctor, a European doctor, and since John Kenney could do his work anywhere, that's how he became John Kenney of Nancy, France.

Here in this ancient city, Kenney and his wife Marie-Helen - the gynecologist - raised their two adopted daughters.  Who, in their way, adored him.

Segolene Kenney: Well, my father is a wonderful man.  He has risen us the best way he could. He's tender.  He is calm.  He's funny.

As the girls grew through their teenage years in France with their mother, Kenney divided his time between Nancy and his little piece of American paradise, his house in Carmel Valley. With its wonderful view, its essential serenity.

Segolene Kenney: He is a peaceful man.

And right down to the sorted sizes of the logs for the fireplace, its perfect order. Yes, that order. At the end of the road, at the top of the hill, order and chaos were about meet.

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