[dramatic music]
Narrator: In ohio, one of the most feared
Serial killers in recent memory
Is shawn grate.
- I was the first one to call him a serial killer.
- Shawn likes to have power and control over women.
Narrator: He preyed on vulnerable women,
Subjecting them to abduction, battery, rape, and murder.
- There was drugs involved,
There was rape, sexual assault.
- Shawn filmed the rapes.
Narrator: One woman knows his past better than anyone.
- You realize that this person that you grew up with,
This person that you've known from birth,
Is now a killer.
Narrator: She blamed herself for the killings.
- I felt partially responsible for shawn's actions.
Could I have loved him more?
Narrator: What barbara didn't know
Was that she was living with a serial killer.
♪ ♪
September 13, 2016.
Ashland county, ohio.
[suspenseful music]
It's a quiet fall evening when ashland county
Emergency services receives a chilling call.
[line rings]
Narrator: Ashland police officers
Are quickly dispatched.
They arrive at the address
And are forced to break in.
[glass shatters]
[door banging]
Narrator: The officers enter, detain the suspect,
And rescue the woman.
But who is she?
Why did this happen?
And who is shawn grate?
Local reporters soon get word of the incident.
- We learned about the case when jane doe called police.
This lady was trying to escape her captor
Who was in the same room with her.
It sounded serious enough
That we sent a reporter over to check it out.
[pensive music]
Narrator: Local resident barbara charter
Is on a work break and checking social media
When she sees a breaking news story
About the abduction.
- I was scrolling through facebook.
Drinking my coffee. It was a normal day.
And I happen to see a story about an abduction
Coming out of ashland, ohio.
Well, that made me stop,
Because my parents had lived in ashland.
I was just curious. I opened up the link to it.
And as I scrolled through,
I noticed it said "shawn grate."
And I thought, "no, this can't be right."
Then I continued to scroll
And I zoomed in on the picture,
And I just couldn't believe it.
I was shocked.
And that's when I realized it was my brother.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Shawn grate is arrested.
He is questioned about the abducted woman, jane doe,
A pseudonym used to protect her identity,
By ashland police captain david lay.
Narrator: Grate says he befriended jane doe
At a local christian community center.
He then took her to a house he was squatting in.
She was held captive for three days
Before making the 911 call.
Narrator: After hearing grate's confession
To the abduction, assault, and rape of jane doe,
Captain lay is briefed by the arresting officers
On a conversation they had had with grate.
Narrator: Detectives are shocked by this answer.
Has grate confessed to murder?
And who is elizabeth?
Detective kim mager is now brought in
To question grate further.
- I've known kim for more than 20 years.
She's worked with a number of--
A number of sex offender cases.
Yeah, she's very good at her job.
- Shawn was much more comfortable
Talking with kim mager
Than he was with the male interrogator.
He seemed to develop a rapport with kim.
- We have a female detective.
She's at the top of her game.
And she is used to being in control
Of the people that she interviews
In sexual assault cases.
We've got shawn grate.
This was a guy who is used to being
In control of his victims.
So we got the clash of the titans here.
Narrator: After further questioning,
Grate reveals the terrifying truth.
Narrator: Grate makes a deadly confession.
He now tells mager that elizabeth's body is located
In the closet in the house where he held jane doe.
Narrator: Grate's grim confession
Prompts mager to alert police officers.
They return to grate's house and perform a thorough search.
[indistinct radio chatter]
They find two decomposing corpses--
One in a closet,
Another in the basement,
Just as grate had described.
- Once the details started coming out
That there were two bodies in the house,
We knew it was not gonna be obviously a one-day story.
It was gonna be something that we would have
To keep following.
Narrator: But who are these women referred to by grate
As stacey and elizabeth?
Police search the missing persons database
And find a match.
29-year-old elizabeth griffith
Had disappeared on August 16, 2016,
One month before grate's arrest.
- Elizabeth lived in ashland.
She had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic,
And I think she was described as almost childlike,
Elizabeth griffith was.
She had missed some appointments.
That's how elizabeth was reported missing.
[tense music]
Shawn met elizabeth griffith at the local community center.
Elizabeth seemed to be someone
Who could be taken advantage of
Because of her mental health issues.
Narrator: But what about the other body
Found in the basement?
Who is stacey?
- Shawn grate is an evil serial killer.
- She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- There were three other bodies.
- Secrets can remain secrets for a very long time.
[dramatic music]
Narrator: Shawn grate has just revealed to ashland police
The location of two murdered women.
Narrator: Law enforcement have recovered two female bodies
From a house in ashland.
Fingerprint analysis of the corpse in the basement
Identifies the victim as 43-year-old stacey stanley.
- Stacey stanley, shawn's second victim,
You know, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You know, she had a flat tire and shawn helped her with it.
Narrator: Grate met stacey outside a gas station
On September 8, 2016,
Just one week before the abduction of jane doe.
- Stacey stanley found herself
On the side of the road with a busted tire,
In an area that she knew very little about,
At night.
This gave shawn grate the opportunity
To approach her and ask her if he could help.
- Stacey stanley was vulnerable at that moment.
She was in a part of town that she didn't know
And she had a flat tire.
So along comes grate
Being the good guy to help her with her car,
And now the predator has found his next victim.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Grate lures stacey back to the house,
Located less than a minute
From where her vehicle broke down.
He now attempts to rape her.
- I know with stacey stanley, he forced her into oral sex.
He made videos of himself raping stacey stanley.
That was very disturbing.
- Videotaping a sexual assault
Compounds the injury for the victim
Because it memorializes the rape.
And then grate can relive the assault
Over and over again for whatever satisfaction
That gives him.
- [indistinct[
- This is what every homicide detective should do.
Once you've got that confession,
Then the next step is to have them
Demonstrate what they did.
A defense attorney hates seeing those kinds of interviews.
Narrator: After strangling stacey to death,
Grate dumps her body in the basement
Of the house where he imprisoned jane doe.
- Stacey stanley was found in the basement
Under bags of trash, and, I mean, that's just--
To take away someone's dignity that way
Is really hard to take.
- He preyed on women.
Vulnerable women.
Mentally ill, drug addict,
Disabled women.
He would kidnap them,
And then he would sexually abuse them
And torture them, not just for hours,
But sometimes for days
Before killing them.
Narrator: But what twisted psychological forces
Drive someone to rape and kill so savagely?
There is one woman who may hold the answer.
Shawn grate's half sister, barbara.
Barbara grew up with shawn in a small town
Near ashland, in marion county.
Ever since shawn's arrest,
Barbara has been trying to understand
What motivated her brother to kill.
- So this is the neighborhood where shawn and I grew up.
I haven't been back here for years.
But then after shawn was arrested,
I took a trip back
And drove through the old neighborhood
And just tried to wrap my brain around what happened
Or where--what went wrong.
And right there's the house.
Yup, that's the house we grew up.
My brother and I laid those tiles down
That are in the driveway.
♪ ♪
We had the typical suburban family,
Two parents in the home,
Three kids, a new home.
We grew up in what we thought was
A nurturing, normal household.
Our parents divorced.
So after that, it changed.
We went from, you know, a two-parent home
To a single mom.
My mom worked and I took on the responsibilities
Of her role as the caretaker
And taking care of my brothers.
Narrator: Aged just 12 years old,
Barbara suddenly had to deal with adult responsibilities
And take on the role of mother
To her younger half brother, shawn.
- My mom had gotten a job as a bartender downtown.
So she was gone through the day
Or through the evening.
She also ran with the people that she served.
And so on the weekends, she wouldn't be home.
She would take off on a Friday
And then she wouldn't return until Sunday afternoon
And would leave me responsible
For my brothers for that entire weekend.
Narrator: Although barbara was doing her best
To bring up the family,
Shawn began to display troubling behavior
From an early age.
- Growing up with shawn was difficult.
My parents had caught shawn
Playing with a cigarette lighter.
So they had hid it from him.
The next night, he climbed and found a cigarette lighter
And went into the bedroom and set his bedroom on fire.
And that was at the age of three.
He didn't get in trouble for that.
There was always an excuse for his behavior,
And there was no consequences to that behavior.
He was able to act the way that he was.
I feel that that's where that sense of entitlement started.
- Setting a fire at such a young age
Is a cry for attention.
Grate had a lot of anger,
And he may have been angry with his mother.
So he projected that anger onto his victims.
Narrator: But it wasn't simply anger behind shawn's rage.
He had other issues.
- Shawn didn't speak until he was four.
And then he did fail kindergarten.
Shawn was diagnosed with a learning disability,
And that's when kids--
They started making fun of him.
Narrator: Despite shawn's learning disability
And behavioral problems,
There was one thing he did excel at:
Baseball.
- Shawn was a phenomenal baseball player.
His goal was that he would pursue that as an adult.
However, one night, throwing a pitch
And his arm broke
From the shoulder blade down to the elbow.
Once that happened,
He knew that he was never able to play baseball.
After, he didn't know what to do with himself,
I think he was completely lost.
- Dashing a hope of playing baseball
At the age of 17 would have been crushing.
It could have affected his self-esteem
And made him feel angry.
- We all heard from our mother
That we wouldn't amount for much.
When I was older, my mom was disappointed with me
Because I had moved up in a company.
And I was proud of myself.
And, you know--and I was telling her about it,
And her words to me was-- [scoffs]
"do you think you're smarter than the rest of us?
"is that what it is? Is that, you know--
Do you think you're better than the rest of us?"
So my reaction was,
"well, what did you expect me to do with my life?"
And she was like, "I just wanted you
To be a housewife."
That was her goal for me.
She did the same thing with shawn.
He was always told that,
"you have a learning disability."
And I think that that's when the reality
Of that shawn was not gonna move forward in life,
And I think that was a huge turnaround for him.
- If grate's own mother told him
He wasn't ever gonna amount to much,
Then he probably started to believe it.
He saw no future for himself.
Narrator: Detective kim mager has interrogated
Shawn grate for several hours.
To her astonishment,
He now makes yet one more startling confession.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Narrator: Shawn grate is in custody for abduction.
Incredibly, over the course of a few short hours,
He confesses to murdering three women.
He names his third victim as candice.
Narrator: Law enforcement search the database
For missing persons
Matching candice's name and description.
There is no match.
Could grate be lying?
Detective kim mager probes further.
[ominous music]
Narrator: Grate gives the location of the body,
Approximately 12 miles from ashland.
He now takes the detectives to the site.
Narrator: Police recover the body.
And an autopsy confirms it is a 29-year-old female,
Candice cunningham.
- Candice had been strangled
In a burned-out, derelict house,
And then her body had been disposed of in the woods.
- Once the details started coming out,
It was kind of hard to believe.
We got a story on our website
And just updated it throughout the day.
- I was standing in the middle of a craft show
And I remember getting a phone call from my daughter
Telling me there was a third body.
I was standing there, and it was just raw emotions,
Like standing naked in the middle of a crowd
And everybody staring at you.
And nobody knew who I was, but in my mind,
I felt like everybody knew who I was.
First person I called was my mother.
I tried calling her and I didn't get any answer.
My mom called back, and she left a message
And said, "lose my number
And don't ever call me again."
♪ ♪
Narrator: As police investigate the murder
Of candice cunningham,
More details of shawn's past relationship
With her emerge.
♪ ♪
- Summer of 2016,
Shawn was in mansfield.
He had a relationship with candice cunningham.
Mansfield has a lot of abandoned homes
And dilapidated homes.
There are a lot of places in mansfield
Where somebody can squat.
- Candice and shawn dated for a few months in 2016
Right before he killed her.
But she had told family members
That shawn treated her much better
Than other people did,
Didn't treat her like a drug addict.
Narrator: By the time shawn was in his late teens,
He was getting into drugs
And hanging out with the wrong crowd.
It's a pattern that would continue into adult life.
- Shawn's lifestyle at the time was drifting
From person to person.
He didn't want to work.
He wanted people to take care of him.
He just didn't absolutely want
Any responsibilities whatsoever.
He just wanted to live in somebody's house
Until he wore out his welcome.
- Seemingly, john's motivation
For killing candice cunningham was,
She lied to him, supposedly.
- If shawn feels that you're lying to him, then that's--
It's just almost like he just, like--
He turns into another person.
And he can't control that behavior.
- If someone lied to grate, that would trigger anger.
And it's possible that his intolerance of lying
Was rooted in his fundamentalist upbringing.
So long as he went to church and confessed,
Then he would be absolved of his sins.
- We were force-fed religion.
Not only did we go to church on Sunday,
But we went to church Sunday night,
And we went to church on Wednesday.
If the pastor said that television was bad,
We didn't have a television in our home anymore.
I personally think that that is where
This all started for shawn.
So it was, "okay, well, I can behave like this,
"but then I can go to church on Sunday,
And it's gonna be okay."
And that was the message that shawn got.
"as long as I believed in god and I read the bible,
"then it was okay for me to behave this way
And do the things that I do."
Narrator: Over the course of less than 24 hours,
Shawn grate has confessed to the murder of three women.
Incredibly, there were more to come.
- We got to see the evil, dark side of shawn grate.
- He forced her into oral sex.
- Blames it on his hatred towards his mother.
- That was his first killing.
[dramatic music]
Narrator: In less than 24 hours,
Shawn grate has confessed to three murders
And one abduction.
He now gives detective kim mager yet one more name.
[tense music]
Narrator: 31-year-old rebekah leicy
Was from marion county.
She was reported missing February 6, 2015.
- Rebekah leicy was reported missing
Early in the year.
The family was very concerned
Because rebekah was into all the drug culture.
She did a lot of things to support that drug culture.
I don't want to say prostitution,
But that kind of comes to mind.
- Rebekah leicy was a drifter who had run
With the wrong crowd for a long time.
She ended up being a drug addict.
She was involved in prostitution.
- Rebekah leicy sounds like
She may have been a lot like shawn.
You know, kind of a person of the streets.
- Shawn's experience as a grifter
And spending time on the streets,
He definitely honed his ability to spot a vulnerable woman.
- Shawn's path in life was to drift
And have women take care of him.
He would target women with low self-esteem.
Narrator: Three months after rebekah leicy disappeared,
A body is discovered in mifflin,
8 miles from ashland.
- It was early in the spring.
Her body was discovered.
The body was located by an employee
Of a natural gas company.
He sees this body propped up against a tree.
The body was pretty well preserved,
But some animals had gotten to the body.
So we had to rely on--
I believe it was tattoos, dental records,
And dna, of course, to positively identify her.
The initial autopsy report was a unexplained death
With a possible drug overdose,
Due to the culture that she was involved in.
Narrator: In ashland, detective kim mager
Is using all of her interrogation skills
To extract a confession from grate.
- There's always a strategy about approaching
The person in the interview room.
Where we're headed. How we're gonna get there.
She took advantage of everything
He was willing to give her.
- When shawn grate admitted what he had done,
We opened it back up as a full homicide investigation.
He went through the whole thing,
How he'd known rebekah leicy for a while.
He'd met her on the street, and she needed some money,
So she went with him
To a downtown closed business.
And he took her inside the vacant building,
And he was going to pay her for sex.
I believe he said it was $20.
- Rebekah leicy needed some money.
Shawn grate says he'll pay her 20 bucks for some sex,
And they are getting ready to do the deed,
And shawn says he needs to go to the bathroom.
- While he was in the bathroom,
He said he could hear rebekah going through his things,
And when he came out, his money was gone.
- He comes back upstairs. He confronts her about this.
She denies it, says, "no,
That's not what's gonna happen."
They get in an argument.
- He said that he had to fight her like a man.
And they ended up on the floor while he was assaulting her.
And at one point, she was fighting back so hard,
He said he started to strangle her.
- This detective is adept.
She knows what she's doing.
She knows who she's talking to.
He knows this detective is not lying to him.
So he feels completely comfortable
In telling her the truth.
- He described the room where it happened.
He described the empty business where it happened.
Then he described how he transported her
From the business to the woods.
Narrator: Grate's vagrant lifestyle resulted in him
Often sleeping rough in the woods.
This gave him the knowledge of where to hide a body.
- He was living in the woods
With, like, a tent and some tarp.
At one point, you know, maybe he felt safe in the woods
Because he was hidden from everybody.
Narrator: Shawn grate's half sister barbara
Visits the location
Of rebekah leicy's final resting place.
- This is the site where rebekah's body was found.
It's sad.
I don't know anything about rebekah,
But I do know that she was somebody's daughter.
And it's sad to think that this is where
Her final resting place was here.
And that my brother was the cause of that.
Narrator: Shawn grate has confessed
To four murders and one abduction.
But he has one more secret to reveal.
A secret stretching back nearly ten years.
[dramatic music]
Narrator: Shawn grate has admitted
To brutally murdering four women
And abducting one other.
Now, he drops one more bombshell.
It concerns a cold case
Stretching back over ten years.
Narrator: Detective mager contacts
Nearby marion county police
To inquire if they have any missing persons
By the name of dana.
- So the call came
From the ashland county sheriff's office
That they had apprehended an individual.
His name was shawn grate.
He thought her name was dana
And that he had killed her in marion county.
So we started on a search of trying to identify
This female victim.
Narrator: After an exhaustive search,
A record is found of a woman's body
Discovered in 2007 in marion county.
The body was less than a mile from grate's family home.
Could this be dana?
- In March of 2007,
A citizen was walking along a county road
When he discovered the remains of a human.
The body had been there, we thought, for about a year,
Had decomposed entirely clear down to the bones.
We were able to extract a dna profile
And match the dna with a woman
Who was on the database,
Who was actually dana's aunt.
Narrator: This led them to dna test dana's daughter,
Resulting in a positive genetic match to the body.
Finally, they can find out what happened to her.
- We know that shawn lived in marion county.
He grew up there.
He lived within a mile of where our victim was found.
And so I sent two detectives over immediately.
[tense music]
- Dana lowrey was a 23-year-old woman
Who mysteriously vanished from marion county, ohio,
In 2005.
- Shawn grate had met her
Through her selling magazines.
- Dana was selling magazines.
I believe she was only 23,
So she may have been supporting herself for college.
- Dana supposedly sold a magazine subscription
To grate's mother that never arrived.
And grate's mother complained about it
And said she had been lied to.
Well, that was enough for shawn grate.
- That irritated him and angered him.
So later, he saw dana
Walking down the street in marion.
- He finds dana lowrey,
Approaches her, uses his charm
And charisma to convince her to get in the car with him,
And then he takes her to his grandparents' house.
- While we'll never know for sure
What happened to dana lowrey,
Based upon what we know
Of how grate terrorized his other victims,
It's likely that she was abducted,
Sexually assaulted,
And then killed.
- He had a girlfriend that was coming over
To the grandparents' home.
And the girlfriend had no idea
That there was a girl
That was dead in the house, in the basement.
She helped him clean up blood,
And she had no idea what she was cleaning up.
That was his first killing.
- He then took the body out to this rural county road.
He dumped the body
And removed all of the personal belongings.
And then he was concerned
That there still might be some evidence,
So he went back and he burned the body.
And then he watched the news for--I think he said
Probably a year,
Waiting for something to happen.
But of course, no one found the body.
So when this call came in
From the ashland county sheriff's office,
We got excited.
Narrator: The brutal homicide of dana lowrey in 2005
Had finally been solved.
Grate was charged with multiple murders,
And a date was set
For one of the biggest serial killer trials
In recent history.
- Grate's 2018 trial
Was the most followed serial killer trial
In recent history.
Media from all over the country
And from outside the u.S.
Descended on ashland, ohio.
- I've covered many murder trials,
But I had never dealt with a serial killer like shawn.
It was very powerful, you know, this--
That something like this could happen in a community our size.
- To see your brother walking in
With a bulletproof vest on,
As a sister, it's--
It's heartbreaking to see.
I see that little boy riding his bike
And playing baseball.
That's who I see.
- He had 23 counts.
Multiple counts of aggravated murder.
He pleaded to 15 of the counts
Related to jane doe and to the rape counts.
- If shawn grate had any redeeming qualities,
It was that he decided to plead guilty to the murders.
And it prevented the families seeing these videos
That he had made of these sexual assaults.
- He spared the jurors from having to see that.
Narrator: When it came to stacey stanley's sentencing,
Her son curtis spoke directly to grate.
- My name is curtis stanley. I'm stacey's son.
You know, I've been waiting a long time to see you, man.
That was a great woman you killed.
She meant a lot to me
And my brother and everybody else.
Just standing up here and looking at you,
That's hard enough for me to do.
- There's a catharsis that happens
With these victims' families when they're able to--
Given that opportunity,
To face the person that ended their loved one's life.
- During the sentencing phase, the victims were able
To give impact statements.
Shawn, I don't believe, showed much emotion,
If at all.
He was pretty stoic.
Narrator: Day four of the trial.
Jane doe, the woman who effectively ended
Grate's killing spree, faced her abductor
And gave her testimony.
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
Narrator: Ashland county courthouse, ohio.
Shawn grate is on trial for multiple murder.
It's the biggest serial killer case in recent memory.
Jane doe, the woman whose testimony
Could help convict him,
Has taken the stand.
- Listening to jane doe testify
Had to have been so chilling for that courtroom.
Because the murder victims probably went through
Exactly what jane doe described.
And for her, it was so courageous
To get on the stand and face the man
Who traumatized her.
- The true hero of this whole story
Is the jane doe.
I mean, I don't even know if I would have been able
To have the courage that she had
To do what she did.
Narrator: Jane doe's brave testimony,
Coupled with grate's own confession,
Is enough to convict him.
But will he be sentenced to death?
Barbara charter, shawn's half sister,
Now appeals to the court.
During the sentencing hearing, I was there for shawn,
Just to let him know that he wasn't by himself,
That he wasn't alone.
He didn't have the nurturing that he needed,
And I wanted to just address that
And just get a little bit of his story out,
To humanize him a little bit.
♪ ♪
Narrator: But no amount of humanizing
Could dissuade the judge from handing down
The ultimate punishment.
- The defendant was found guilty.
We therefore unanimously find
That the sentence of death should be imposed
Upon shawn m. Grate.
- He was found guilty of all counts,
And jurors, they made the recommendation
That shawn should get the death penalty.
- When I heard that sentence handed down,
My first response to that has been relief,
That this person will never hurt another person--
Another innocent person ever again.
- I am a firm believer of the death penalty,
And it's hard.
Your moral compass just kind of just goes all over the place
Because you believe in the death penalty,
But I can't go back and say "oh, well,
"I don't believe in it now
Because now my brother's on death row."
Do I believe that he's where he belongs?
I absolutely do believe he's where he belongs.
[somber music]
Narrator: On the final day of the trial,
Grate addressed the court and asked for forgiveness.
Narrator: Families of the victims gathered
Outside the courthouse
To both remember their loved ones
And to celebrate the death sentence.
- I remember outside the courtroom,
After shawn was sentenced to death,
The family members and friends,
They released purple and yellow balloons.
Those were the colors that stacey liked.
That was pretty powerful.
- Relief,
Gratitude,
And joy for the victims' families
That, again, we have some sense of justice here
That's been served
And a sense of peace for them
As they go on with their lives.
- It does make you wonder
How much further he would have gone
If he had continued to get away with it.
Are there other victims we don't know about?
- This has completely changed my life.
♪ ♪
My trust in people is no longer there.
So I definitely have trust issues.
I don't go out in public
'cause I'm so afraid that somebody is gonna know
Or somebody is gonna find out.
And they're gonna question me about it.
So just lived in seclusion.
But I'm tired of living behind those four walls.
Our family didn't do this.
That was shawn's decision.
You know, he gets to hide behind prison walls,
But we have to live our lives,
And we have to continue to live our lives.
And it's not fair.
♪ ♪