ASHLAND – A sheriff in central Ohio says a man charged last week with killing two women and kidnapping another also has confessed to killing a woman about 10 years ago.
Columbus television station WBNS 10-TV meanwhile, is reporting that authorities in Richland County have reopened a case that could raise the number of victims attributed to Shawn Grate to five.
The sheriff in Marion County said Monday that Grate, 40, told investigators he killed a woman selling magazines sometime between 2003 and 2005.
According to a report in The Columbus Dispatch, the woman’s skull and bones were discovered in a ditch along Victory Road in rural Marion County on March 10, 2007, and that isn’t far from where the Grate family lived, Bailey said, and is about 50 miles southeast of Ashland, where Grate was arrested last week after a woman called 911 and said she was being held inside a home.
Police then found the remains of two other women. Authorities say Grate later led them to a third body in Richland County.
Grate on Monday appeared in a video bond hearing. His attorney entered not-guilty pleas.