On September 13, 2016, Ashland police received a phone call from a woman. The woman was whispering that she had been kidnapped and was tied up right next to her sleeping captor. She tried to describe the house she was in and the man holding her; the best thing she knew was that the house was next to the Fourth Street laundromat.

"Is there a way to get out of the building?" asked the 911 operator.

"I don't know how to do it without waking him up, and I'm scared," the woman replied.

Ashland County Sheriff's OfficeBetween 2006 and 2016, Shawn Grate brutally raped and murdered at least five women in northern Ohio and was sentenced to death in 2018.

As the 911 operator continued to help the woman escape, she accidentally knocked over her captor's taser, which woke the man up.

"No. Oh (curse). Oh (curse), I woke him up," the woman hissed.

The line went silent for a brief moment, and "Jane Doe" faced the danger of becoming the sixth victim of serial killer Shawn Grate. Eventually, authorities succeeded, and the woman's rescue and Shawn Grate's arrest ended the bloody reign of one of modern history's most depraved killers.

Growing Up, Shawn Grate Was Known as a Charming Kid - With a Dark Side

Mansfield News JournalShawn Grate was described as friendly and charming by his peers.

Born on August 8, 1976, in Marion, Ohio, Shawn Grate had a normal childhood. As a young boy, Grate was especially loved by girls. He was charming and always had a smile on his face, which helped to temporarily hide the anger, jealousy, and simmering violence inside him.

By the time he turned 18, he was arrested for choking his then-girlfriend. A few years later, he was arrested for breaking into his 17-year-old girlfriend's house and choking her. Just eight months after that incident, he broke into her home again, hid under the couch, and waited to attack at the right moment. This time he had a butcher knife.

Still, Shawn Grate's charm and apparent friendliness were attractive to women, and he had three children with three different women. However, his ex-wife Amber Nicole Bowman remembers him saying, "If I can't see my daughter, no one can."

By the mid-20s, Grate's behavior became more erratic. According to an ex-girlfriend, he would enter deep periods of depression, sometimes unable to get off the couch.

Grate's Morally Depraved Violations Begin

YouTubeGrate with his ex-wife Christina Hildreth.

Eventually, Shawn Grate moved on and started dating Christina Hildreth. Initially, the couple was happy and peaceful, but Grate couldn't hide his true face for long. He became violent, controlling, and jealous, while also showing cold and indifferent sides towards his unstable girlfriend.

At one point, Grate hit his partner multiple times in the face and tightly held her by the throat - an important detail because strangulation was Grate's preferred method of murder.

Grate was arrested for the assault and sentenced to 180 days in jail.

This was not just a problem related to romantic relationships. When Grate was denied credit he requested from a friend, he sent a threatening message to his former buddy: "Meet the other me."

After that, Grate began roaming around the city of Mansfield, moving from woman to woman, taking advantage of their goodwill and generosity. Instead of working, Grate saw women as opportunities. During this time, he met his first two victims, Rebekah Leicy and Candice Cunningham.

Rebekah was a sex worker - and her body was found in March 2015, her death recorded as an overdose. However, her untimely death was far from accidental.

Candice Cunningham was living with Shawn Grate in Mansfield before she went missing in 2015. At that time, police found nothing. However, there was one person who knew exactly where Cunningham was: Grate. He eventually led police to the body lying behind a burned house in Richland County on the day he was arrested.

Shawn Grate's Hate-Fueled Violence Escalates to a New Level of Depravity

YouTubeShawn Grate's hideout - and the place where several dead bodies were concealed.

Shawn Grate's violence and depravity escalated another notch with his next victim. The woman's name has not been disclosed by the police; she is referred to as Jane Doe.

Doe recognized Grate while playing badminton in the apartment complex, but after gaining her trust, he turned into a violent monster, as he did with other women. He trapped her in her apartment and subjected her to days of torture and rape.

The woman, bound and tied to the bed, stated that she was sexually assaulted "in every imaginable way."

On the first night of Doe's captivity, Grate barely slept and did not give her a chance to escape. After a day of relentless torture and assaults, Grate finally passed out. His phone was right next to him, ringing, but the captor seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep and did not notice the phone ringing.

Jane Doe saw this as an opportunity to escape and carefully crawled over her sleeping captor to grab the phone and call 911, still partially bound.

She spoke as quietly as possible to avoid waking him. "I've been kidnapped," she whispered. The operator asked if she could escape, and she said she couldn't because she was afraid of waking her attacker.

Suddenly, the silent woman said, "Oh, s**t," and the line fell silent for a brief moment. The operator could guess what the woman locked in the room was experiencing with her violent rapist.

After what seemed like an eternity, the woman picked up the phone again; she shocked Grate with a stun gun and woke him up. Fortunately, Grate sat up in bed and looked down at the floor, then lay back down, unaware that his victim was directing the police on the line.

When the police arrived at the property, they encountered more bodies than they expected: Shawn Grate had ruthlessly killed women who trusted him, and some were decomposing in the house where he had been hiding.

How Grate Was Finally Caught and Sent to Death Row

YouTubeRebekah Leicy was Shawn Grate's known fourth victim.

Shawn Grate was subsequently arrested and taken in for questioning. The bodies of Stacey Stanley and Elizabeth Griffith were found in the house. Both women had been strangled to death. The web of manipulation and murder that Grate had woven throughout most of his adulthood began to unravel suddenly.

After his arrest, Grate was initially reluctant to provide any information to the police, often remaining silent and showing inconsistencies in his answers. However, under continuous interrogation, he confessed to a list of his crimes. Grate showed the police the body of Cunningham in a burned house in Richland County. He said he strangled Rebekah Leicy because she stole 4 dollars from him in the bar.

Ashland County PoliceThe burned house where Grate left Candice Cunningham's body.

Shawn Grate also claims to have killed another woman found dead in Marion County in 2007. He told the police he thought her name was Dana. The victim was identified in June 2019 by DNA as Dana Nicole Lowrey, who was 23 years old. Lowrey had two young daughters under the age of 5 before her death.

Before sentencing, Grate expressed his fear of facing the death penalty. "I want to survive all this," he told the police officers. Coldly, he said, "I wish I could do many things, but I know I can't handle this."

On June 1, 2018, Shawn Grate was sentenced to death. Today, he awaits execution in Ohio.