ASHLAND – Over the course of several hours of recorded interviews with police detectives, accused serial killer Shawn Grate confessed to a majority of the crimes for which he is on trial — including rape and murder.
Jurors in Grate’s capital murder trial followed along with transcripts as they listened to the recordings in Ashland County Common Pleas Court Friday.
The day ended with the prosecutor playing a video of Grate demonstrating on Ashland Police Detective Brian Evans how he strangled his victims. The video was taken in an interview room at the Ashland County Jail two days after Grate’s arrest, on Sept. 15, 2016, according to testimony from Detective Kim Mager, who recorded the video.
Grate’s first admission came in an interview with Capt. David Lay at the police department on the morning of his arrest. He said he abducted, raped, tied down and punched the woman who eventually escaped and called 9-1-1. Ashland Source is referring to her as Jane Doe.
Grate told Lay he abducted the woman and held her against her will because he cared about her, and because he wanted her to relax and spend time with him.
Lay asked Grate several times if he knew anything about the whereabouts of Elizabeth Griffith, who had been reported missing. Grate told Lay that Griffith was “set free” and that he had “helped her find peace.”
Lay testified that Grate was sobbing during the interview as he was talking about Griffith.
Throughout the interview, Grate changed facts in his story and periodically asked Lay about what police already knew.
“He was being deceptive, seeing what I knew,” Lay testified.
A short time later on Sept. 13, 2016, Mager began to interview Grate. That’s when the floodgates opened.
Mager repeatedly told Grate she noticed that he had a conscience and wanted to do the right thing. She urged him to do the right thing by telling the truth.
“I want to find her,” Mager said of Griffith, “Will you help me?”
She asked Grate several times to take her to Griffith’s body, and eventually he told her it was in the house at 363 Covert Court, the same house where he was arrested. Grate told Mager the body was in an upstairs closet underneath a pile of clothes, which is consistent with what investigators later found.
While Mager was interviewing Grate for the first time, neither of the two bodies had been found in the Covert Court house.
At one point in the interview, Grate asked Mager, “How many people before I get the lethal injection?”
Later that day, Mager asked Grate what happened leading to Griffith’s death, and he admitted he strangled Griffith.
“I just reached out and just choked her and said, ‘Is this what you want?'” he said.
Grate said Griffith fought back and “got all serious,” so he choked her again, this time to death.
Mager asked Grate if there were any other women in the house, and he told her there was one in the basement. He said the woman’s name was Stacey and that he met her at the gas station.
Grate said he forced (Stacey) Stanley to give him oral sex and that afterward she maced him. Shortly thereafter, he said, he killed her in the downstairs bedroom and then put her body in the basement, underneath a pile of trash.
Ashland County Prosecutor Chris Tunnell stopped the recording and asked Mager whether the bodies of the two women had been found by the time Grate made the confessions, and Mager testified they had not.
Later on Sept. 13, Grate admitted to taking Stanley’s car, entering Jane Doe’s apartment with her keys to take items and breaking into three trailers at Charles Mill Lake Park campground.
On Sept. 15, Mager interviewed Grate again. This time, she asked him about the makeshift sexual devices found in the Covert Court house and the trailers. He replied that he never used them on any women but instead used them on himself to relieve stress.
Asking Grate whether he used a sexual device that investigators found next to the upstairs closet on Griffith, Mager suggested evidence might be found on the device. Grate replied he had not used the object on her sexually but had used it to open her mouth to let flies in to speed the decomposition process.
Later on Sept. 15, Grate admitted to threatening to kill Jane Doe. He also said he put makeup on her to cover up dark bruises on her face from the assault.
At another point that day, Grate told Mager and Evans where his fort was located in a wooded area in Mifflin.
In the final interview the jury heard before the court recessed for the weekend, Grate agreed to describe and demonstrate the manner in which he strangled both Griffith and Stanley.
Evans asked Grate whether he would like to use a stuffed animal for the demonstration, and Grate suggested that he demonstrate on Evans instead.
Grate appeared to smile and laugh in the courtroom as he heard himself make that suggestion on the audio recording, and Mager testified that Grate also seemed jovial during that interview.
Grate consented to being recorded on video as he demonstrated, and the video was also shown in court. The video depicted Grate grabbing Evans’ neck from the front, then turning him around and locking him in a chokehold.
“I just clenched on and did not let go,” Grate said.
Grate faces 23 felony charges, including four counts of aggravated murder, four counts of kidnapping, two counts of gross abuse of a corpse, four counts of burglary, tampering with evidence, four counts of rape, aggravated robbery, unauthorized use of a vehicle and tampering with evidence.
His trial continues at 9 a.m. Monday in Ashland County Common Pleas Court.
