The Hand in the Window: Inside a Serial Killer's Capture

On September 11, 2016, law enforcement in Ashland, Ohio, responded to a 911 call that would unravel one of the region's darkest criminal cases. A woman who had been kidnapped called emergency services using her captor's own phone while he slept. Officers arrived to find two bodies in the house at 363 Covert Court. By day's end, Shawn Michael Grate—born August 8, 1976—was in custody, and investigators were beginning to piece together a decade of violence that had claimed five lives.

Grate's criminal history spanned a brutal ten-year period from 2006 to 2016. He murdered victims through strangulation and torture, kidnapping, assault, and rape. Among his confirmed victims were Stacey Stanley, 43, and Elizabeth Griffin, 29—both strangled in the Ashland house where he was arrested. Candice Cunningham, 29, had endured a five-year on-and-off relationship with Grate marked by abuse. She was tortured for approximately three days before being killed; her body was later discovered behind a burned house in Richland County. A fifth victim's identity remains less publicly detailed, though Grate eventually confessed to attacking six women and killing five—sparing only the woman whose 911 call led to his arrest.

Upon arrest, Grate led police directly to Cunningham's remains and admitted to his crimes with chilling candor. Yet when cases proceeded through the courts, his defense pleaded not guilty despite these confessions. The Ashland County prosecutor pursued the death penalty aggressively. On May 7, 2018, Grate was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder for Stanley and Griffin, kidnapping, and assault—and sentenced to death. In subsequent proceedings across Richland and Marion counties, he pleaded guilty to additional murders. As of November 2024, Grate remains on death row.