When Kim Mager sat across from Shawn Grate, she expected to come face to face with yet another sex offender in her decades-long career.
Mager, a 30-year veteran of the Ashland Police Department in Ohio, didn’t know she was coming face to face with a serial killer, whom she interrogated for 33 hours over eight days.
“When I first spoke with him, I didn’t think his personality was that different from other sex offenders. I’ve interviewed a lot of sex offenders,” the former detective told Fox News Digital. “So he didn’t really stand out to me. A lot of what he said just flowed like a normal conversation. His thought process was just like any other person.”
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Shawn Grate addresses the court before sentencing. (Jason J. Molliet/The News Journal via Imagn)
“But there was a difference,” she added. “When he spoke about his desire, his hunger, everything changed. Those were his words: ‘hunger to kill.'”
Mager is By Lisa Pulitzer To write “Thirsty for Murder: A Serial Killer, a Determined Detective, and the Search for the Confession that Changed a Small Town Forever,” the book details Mager’s journey to track down and capture one of Ohio’s most notorious serial killers.
“I’ve been asked at least 30 times to speak out about this incident and I’ve refused every time,” Mager said. “But then a family member of one of the victims approached me. She came to me in tears and said the victim was being portrayed in a very negative light in the podcast. The family was very upset. She said, ‘Please do something.'”
Detective Kim Mager of the Ashland Police Department testifies during Shawn Grate’s 2018 trial in Ashland County District Court. (Tom E. Puskar/USA Today Network/Imagn)
“I knew I had to get this story out, the right story,” Mager said, “and let people know that what these victims went through could happen to them. … It could have happened to me.”
On September 13, 2016, Mager was in the shower when her phone started ringing. It was the captain on the line. Emergency dispatchers had received a 911 call from a woman who claimed she’d been kidnapped by Grate.
Mager rushed to the police station to question the woman, at which point Grate was tracked down by investigators, arrested and charged.
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Kim Mager’s memoir, “A Hunger to Kill,” is now available in bookstores. (St. Martin’s Press)
According to Mager’s book, Jane Doe’s face, arms, and legs were covered in bruises. Some scratches were fresh, others had just healed. Some of the wounds were blue-purple, others were swollen and red. Her neck and upper body were covered in maroon spots. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was tear-stained.
The jury recommended the death penalty for Shawn Grate, and the judge agreed. (Brian J. Smith/USA Today Network/IMAG)
“I realized the gravity of what happened to her,” Mager said. “It’s as hard as anybody can imagine for a victim to talk about what happened to her. It’s even harder than talking to a suspect. But I had to do everything in my power to get a hold of him.”
Mr Mager, a seasoned specialist in sex offences, was one of the officers handling Mr Grate’s case.
Interviewing Jane Doe was an emotional experience for Kim Meiger, who was determined to get justice. (Jason J. Molliet/USA Today Network/IMAGINE)
“I never knew his name,” Mager admitted. “We didn’t know him.”
Great was known as an affable wanderer who was friendly to everyone he met, but that “nice guy” mask quickly disappeared in the interrogation room.
“My first impression was that he looked physically healthy,” Mager explained. “He was muscular. I noticed his build first before I even made eye contact with him. He also looked like he hadn’t had a shower.”
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Drifter Sean Grate was described as a “nice guy” and a “charming guy”. (Tom E. Puska/USA Today Network/Imagn)
“When our eyes finally met, I immediately noticed his blue eyes, piercing blue eyes,” she said.
She sat alone in an interview room with the suspect, like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.
Mager soon learned there were other victims.
Sean Grate’s final home, 132 West Second Street, is filled with woodworking tools, cigarette butts, stuffed animals and other personal belongings. (Jason J. Molliet/USA Today Network/IMAGINE)
“He’s an opportunist,” she explained, “If he sees an opportunity, he seizes it. … When you look at these victims, they look similar, but they look like two completely different people.”
“Some of these women live religious lives; they believe in God more than most people I know,” she continued. “They’re so strong in their beliefs that they never save a man’s number in their phone. And then there are the women who sometimes sell their bodies. These women all live different lifestyles. There’s no one type of victim, other than the opportunity presented itself or they created it, I don’t know.”
After Grate’s arrest, police discovered the bodies of Stacey Stanley, 43, and Elizabeth Griffith, 29, in a vacant Ashland home where Grate had been living. Grate confessed to the murders.
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A memorial bench for Stacey Stanley and Elizabeth Griffith, victims of serial killer Shawn Grate, has been installed near a playground at New London Recreation Park. (Tom E. Puskar/USA Today Network/Imagn)
Stanley was the unlucky woman, according to Oxygen.com, who said Grate pretended to be trying to fix a flat tire before kidnapping and assaulting her.
Griffiths was said to have been suffering from poor mental health and had been missing.
According to the outlet, Grate confessed to killing his girlfriend, 29-year-old Candace Cunningham. He led authorities to a wooded area about 12 miles from Ashland, where he dumped her body. He also confessed to killing 31-year-old Rebecca Lacy, who had a drug problem and was reported missing in February 2015.
Robert Reissy and Cindy Tilton look at a photo of their daughter, Rebecca Reissy, after serial killer Shawn Grate pleaded guilty to her murder. (Jason J. Molliet/The News Journal/Imagine)
The outlet reported that Grate also admitted to killing 23-year-old Dana Lowry, who disappeared in 2005. Lowry’s body was found less than a mile from Grate’s home in 2007. She was selling magazines at the time. Reports said she was believed to be Grate’s first victim.
Lisa Zenner said Shawn Grate approached her daughter a few weeks before the couple’s bodies were discovered. (Brian J. Smith – USA Today Network)
Doe said she met Grate in the summer of 2016. The two talked about the Bible, went on long walks and played tennis, according to the Mansfield News Journal. Grate implied he wanted something more than just friends, but Doe said Grate rejected his advances, explaining that his beliefs precluded premarital sex. Grate told Doe he would respect her decision.
That was a lie.
Grate held Doe captive and sexually assaulted her “in every way imaginable,” before Doe escaped while Grate was asleep and called police.
Grate told Mager he wanted to know what prompted him to commit murder.
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Dana Nicole Lowry’s remains were discovered in 2007. She had gone missing in 2005. (Sarah Volpenhain/Marion Starr/Immergun)
“He asked me why I did it because I didn’t know,” Mager explained. “As I went through his childhood, he came up with different events that had happened in his life, but he couldn’t pinpoint any one of them that was the cause. … He kept asking me, ‘Why did you do this? Why do you think you did this?'”
“He talked a lot about his relationship with his family,” Mager continued. “He talked about the promiscuity of his mother, who allegedly abandoned him. He also described an incident when he was 4 years old. … He said he was on the couch watching a stick-it-yourself cartoon. But he wanted some cereal and needed his mother’s help. He knocked on her bedroom door, but she didn’t answer. He knocked again, but there was no response.”
In this photo, Shawn Grate sits at the defense table with his attorneys Robert and Rolf Whitney. (Tom E. Puskar/USA Today Network/Imagn)
“He said he knew she was in the bedroom with someone. He wanted some cereal so he started banging on the door. The door finally opened and there was a stranger, a man he didn’t know. He said he ran back into the bedroom, but the man followed him and sat on his bed. The man said something like, ‘What’s wrong, dude?’ He said he became frustrated with the whole situation and started punching and attacking the man.”
The Ashland County Sheriff’s Office investigated the south side of the county road where Rebecca Lacy’s body was discovered in 2015. Her cause of death was initially ruled a drug overdose, but police later linked her death to Shawn Grate. (Times Gazette/USA Today Network/IMAG)
Grate claims he was close with his father growing up and that they bonded over baseball, but an injury damaged his pitching arm and prevented him from playing alongside his father.
“He talks about how the special relationship he had with his father was lost,” Mager said. “He said he felt like he was separated from his father from that moment on. … He spoke many times about feeling abandoned.”
Mager acknowledged that Grate had “appeared remorseful”, but said it remained to be seen whether this was genuine.
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Shawn Grate, who killed at least five women across three Ohio counties, was convicted in 2018 of the murders of Stacey Stanley, 43, and Elizabeth Griffith, 29. (Tom E. Puskar-USA Today Network/Imagn)
Mager helped extract confessions from Grate to five murders, a kidnapping and multiple sexual assaults across Ohio. He was dubbed the “Ladykiller” by the press because of his looks and charm. He is currently on death row for the murders of two women in Ashland County. He is also serving three life sentences.
Mager hopes the victims will not be forgotten.
“They were daughters, mothers, sisters and friends,” she said. “Stacey Stanley loved cooking and loved her family. Candace Cunningham was always so happy and giggly. Rebecca Lacey was described by many as a loyal friend. Elizabeth Griffith was always determined to do the right thing and found joy in the little things. Dana Lawrie was also a hard-working person who always tried to do the right thing.”
Work is underway to demolish the building on Covert Court where Sean Grate murdered two women in August 2016. (Jason J. Molliet/USA Today Network/IMAGINE)
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“None of these women should have had to go through this.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
