Suspect in killings of 4 women a ‘charmer’
ASHLAND: An occasional drifter linked to the slayings of at least four women in little over a decade could always find a place to stay and someone to give him a lift. Even with little money to his name and a string of arrests in his past, Shawn Grate was magnetic enough to make friends with almost anyone.
“He just had this way about him that he could draw people in,” said Tim Denis, who struck up a friendship with Mr Grate that fell apart nearly two years ago after he wouldn’t give him a loan.
That night Mr Denis got a string of angry texts from Mr Grate, ending with a warning that still gives him chills: “Meet the other me.”
Mr Grate, described by those who know him as a charmer with a dark side, has been charged with killing two women whose bodies were found in a vacant home two weeks ago after another woman called 911 and said she was being held inside one of its bedrooms.
Once in custody, authorities say he told them he had killed another woman earlier this summer and a fourth woman sometime around 2005. Police now are looking at whether Mr Grate was involved in the disappearance or death of a fifth woman over a year ago. Investigators also want to know if there could be more victims from his past, a period when Mr Grate, 40, piled up a long list of arrests, was married for about a year and started a business making handcrafted wood signs that he sold at craft fairs.
Mr Grate has pleaded not guilty in the killings of the two women and abduction in Ashland and was arraigned on Thursday. Messages seeking comment have been left with his lawyers.
His legal trouble began a year after Mr Grate graduated high school, spending four years in prison on a burglary charge from 1996 after violating his probation.
But most of his trouble centered on his treatment of women, with past charges including domestic violence, aggravated menacing and failing to pay child support. He has two children.
His former wife, who he had a daughter with, filed a protection order against Mr Grate after they divorced in 2012. “I have been estranged from my ex-husband for four years and he is not a part of our lives,” Amber Grate said in a statement. After his marriage ended, he moved from place to place in Ashland and Mansfield. He sometimes lived with women he had met or squatted in abandoned homes.
The home where the two bodies were found was thought to be vacant. Both women were strangled, according to preliminary autopsy reports. Authorities have not said how he met the women.