Last week it was reported that Shawn Grate, 40, was charged with two counts of murder and one count of kidnapping and is set to face life in prison.
Now, local police have linked the Ohio man to the deaths of at least five women.
He was discovered after a woman he kidnaped managed to free herself from where she was tied up and called police while he slept.
Thankfully when police arrived the kidnapped woman was unharmed, however they found two bodies inside the house and a third body buried in nearby Mansfield, Ohio.
Stacey Stanley, 43, was a recovering drug addict whom Grate beat to death and the second was 29-year-old Elizabeth Griffith who went missing a month earlier.
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Grate led police to the third body, identified as 29-year-old Candice Cunningham who was never reported missing.
According to The Washington Post he told authorities about a fourth victim Rebekah Leicy, who he claimed to have strangled in 2015. Police originally thought she died from an overdose.
He also opened up about the first woman he ever killed in Marion County almost a decade ago.
The woman, who is yet to be identified, was found in 2007, burnt and near a dump with no identification and no missing report filed against her. Grate told authorities that she was 26 and sold magazine subscriptions to his mother. One day she failed to deliver them, which upset his mother and subsequently him as well.
Marion County Sheriff Tim Bailey the lead investigator said Grate ran into the woman a year later and convinced her to get in his car, as he wanted to purchase some magazines. Grate then drove her to his home, stabbed her to death and concealed her in his basement before moving the body to the dump where “he set the body on fire.”
Bailey said, “he’s obviously a serial killer,” and noted that “when you start in 2003 or 2004 and you’re still doing it in 2016, there’s got to be something in between. It’s hard to believe that others aren’t out there”
Grate has pleaded not guilty to his two murder charges and one kidnapping charge. He is yet to be charged in connection with the other cases despite his alleged confessions.
