"I've been abducted:" Whispered 911 call leads to discovery of three bodies
ASHLAND, Ohio -- Officials have released a 911 call of an Ashland County, Ohio woman who told dispatchers she had been abducted, leading to the arrest of her captor and the discovery of three bodies.
Officials found the woman safe in an abandoned home after her call Tuesday and arrested her alleged captor Shawn Grate before discovering two bodies in the home. Officials say Grate later led them to a third body in neighboring Richland County.
The woman said in the call obtained by CBS affiliate WOIO that she had been tied up, but partly freed herself in a bedroom to make the call from her captor’s phone while he was asleep in the same room. She is heard whispering to a dispatcher, terrified that she will wake him up.
“I’ve been abducted,” the woman said in the call, begging, “Please hurry.”
The woman said she was afraid to leave because “the bedroom is closed and he made it so it would make noise.” She said the man could “catch me, and he’s strong.”
When asked if she was bleeding, the woman said, “Not anymore.”
Ashland police said officers found the woman and Shawn Grate at a home that was supposed to be unoccupied. Investigators also found the remains of two other people, Chief David Marcelli said.
Police confirmed Wednesday that one of the bodies was that of 43-year-old Stacey Stanley, of Greenwich, Ohio, who had been reported missing from Huron County. Stanley’s son said that she had been missing since Sept. 8 when she told him that she got a flat tire.
Bruce Wilkinson, pastor and director of Pump House Ministries, which owns the home and one next to it, said the properties had been vacant since March and were in the process of being renovated. He said they were padlocked and checked weekly.
The coroner hasn’t determined Stacey Stanley’s cause of death or identified the second body, Ashland police said in a statement.
Grate, 40, also led investigators to a third person’s remains at a property near Mansfield in neighboring Richland County, police said.
Grate confessed that he had killed a woman in June at a house that was destroyed by fire that month, Richland County Prosecutor Bambi Couch Page told the Mansfield News Journal.
Authorities checked the Mansfield-area site Tuesday and found decomposed remains down a ravine in a wooded area behind the house. The remains weren’t immediately identified.
Grate remains jailed on an abduction charge. It was not immediately clear if he has an attorney. An announcement on possible additional charges was expected Thursday.
Record show Grate, who is homeless, has a long criminal record and served time in prison on a burglary charge beginning in 1997. A decision on additional charges was expected to be announced Thursday.
In the 911 call, the woman gives the dispatcher Grate’s name and said she had been walking with him to “his place” when he abducted her. She said he had known him for about a month and a half.
The woman’s rescue is also heard on the tape, with an officer yelling to her, “Hurry up, hurry up, get out here.”