Shawn Grate
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| “ | I really would like to stay alive through all this. I would have loved to have been able to do a lot, but I know I wouldn't have been able to get away with it. | „ |
| ~ Grate while awaiting sentencing. |
Shawn Michael Grate (born 8 August 1976) is an American serial killer on death row responsible for the murders of at least five women.
Biography edit
Grate was born in Marion, Ohio, on 8 August 1976. He was well-liked and known for his ability to charm and seduce girls. However, it soon became apparent that he was violent and unstable, as he was arrested for choking his girlfriend. A few years later, he was arrested again for breaking into his now ex-girlfriend's house with a knife. When he was an adult, he dated a woman named Christina Hildreth until he was arrested for pummelling and choking her, for which he was sentenced to 180 days in prison.
After his release Grate moved to the city of Mansfield, where he killed at least four women: Candice Cunningham, his girlfriend who disappeared in 2015 and whose body he later lead police to, sex worker Rebekah Leicy, who he strangled to death in March 2015 for allegedly stealing $4 from him, and Stacey Stanley and Elizabeth Griffith, who were strangled to death in his house.
On 12 September 2016, Grate abducted an unidentified woman and tied her to his bed, where he tortured and sexually assaulted her in "every way imaginable" all night and for a sizable portion of 13 September, only stopping when he passed out due to exhaustion. However, while he was unconscious the woman managed to grab his phone and called the police. Police arrived, freed the woman, arrested Grate and found the dead bodies of Stacey Stanley and Elizabeth Griffith in his house.
When asked about the bodies, Grate immediately confessed to those murders, and the murders of Leicy and Cunningham, leading police to the burned-out house where he had hidden Cunningham's body. He also confessed to killing a woman whose name he couldn't remember in 2007. DNA analysis determined that this woman was 23-year-old Dana Nicole Lowrey.
Grate was given multiple different trials for his crimes. On 7 May 2018, Grate was convicted of the murders of Stacey Stanley and Elizabeth Griffith and sentenced to death. He later pleaded guilty to the murders of Leicy and Cunningham and received two consecutive life sentences, and Dana Lowrey, receiving yet another life sentence. He is awaiting execution at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution (where fellow serial killer Anthony Kirkland is also sitting on death row), and is scheduled to be executed on March 19, 2025.