ASHLAND – For nearly two years, the pair of boarded up yellow houses on Covert Court in Ashland have stood as a symbol of suffering and loss.
A small crowd gathered Tuesday to watch as the first of the houses was reduced to rubble.
The crew from Simonson Construction, which volunteered to perform the demolition at no cost, started with 363 Covert Court.
It was there that a woman called 9-1-1 on Sept. 13, 2016 to report she had been kidnapped and raped. Her abductor– the now convicted murderer Shawn Grate– was arrested that morning, and the bodies of Stacey Stanley and Elizabeth Griffith were found in the house later that day.
Grate eventually confessed not only to the two murders in the Covert Court house but also to two in Richland County and one in Marion County.
After Grate was convicted of all Ashland County charges in May and was sentenced June 1 to death, Ashland County Prosecutor Chris Tunnell gave the City of Ashland, which now owns the properties, permission to tear down the houses.
“Knock this S.O.B. down,” Tunnell said as he awaited demolition Tuesday.
The work of the excavator revealed portions of the house, room by room, starting with the upstairs bedroom where Grate had put Griffith’s body a closet. Gradually, pieces of the house were discarded into dumpsters.
Ashland Police Detective Kim Mager searched for words to describe how she felt.
“I feel the emotion, but it’s difficult to find the words,” she said. “I think it’s because the house is so tangible. Something you see becomes so symbolic. I think all the officers and the people here are all feeling the same thing, from every different perspective. It’s just overwhelming.”
Edna Boals, who lives in a nearby apartment, spent much of the morning in tears. She knew Grate prior to his arrest, and she recalled how he would ask her to go places with him. Once he invited her into the woods, saying they would go to see kittens. She refused.
Boals also knew Griffith.
“Elizabeth wouldn’t hurt nobody,” Boals said through her tears. “I want those houses down because I’ve got a bad heart and I take take this anymore. Take these houses down and put something else up.”
Pearl Ropp, a cousin of Stanley, said she came Tuesday hoping for some sense of closure.
Nathan Clark remembered walking between the two houses frequently on his way to Fourth Street Laundromat, where he and his siblings would play the claw machine.
“It’s crazy to think that a murderer was in there,” he said.
It was just too close to home.
Ashlander Nancy Wasen took pictures. She didn’t know the victims well, but she thinks of them all the time. In recent weeks, she has made a habit of placing flowers on the doorstep of 363 Covert Court.
“Somebody has to care,” she said.
Wasen is lobbying the city to allow some sort of memorial at the site in memory of Stanley and Griffith.
“I just think those girls shouldn’t be forgotten,” she said.
