ASHLAND — Tuesday’s testimony in the capital murder case against accused serial killer Shawn Grate included a misidentification in Ashland County Common Pleas Court.
A hiccup arrived when the state’s last witness of the day, Wayne Bright, was unable to correctly identify Grate from the witness stand.
Bright, a grain farmer and a friend of the Stanley family, was one of the last people to see Stacey Stanley alive. Ashland County Prosecutor Chris Tunnell was attempting to argue that Bright saw Stanley with Grate that night.
Bright testified that when he arrived at the BP station on East Main Street on Sept. 8 to help her change a flat tire, he saw Stanley with a stranger she identified as Shawn.
But when Ashland County Prosecutor Chris Tunnell asked Bright to point out Grate in the courtroom, Bright identified assistant prosecutor Michael McNamara rather than the defendant.
The state’s table where McNamara was seated was visibly marked “plaintiff,” and Grate was seated between his two attorneys at a table marked “defendant.”
Tunnell laughed off the misidentification, as though it were not of great concern.
Earlier in the afternoon, Stanley’s son, Kory Stanley, took the witness stand and identified the tattooed arm of one of the two deceased women found inside 363 Covert Court Sept. 13, 2016 as his mother’s arm.
Grate was found sleeping inside the same house on the same day, according to prior testimony from Ashland Police Sgt. James Cox, who was one of the first officers at the scene.
Evidence at the scene
Jurors in the case spent Tuesday morning viewing pictures taken in, and evidence collected from, the Covert Court house. BCI Special Agent George (Ed) Staley described for the court each photo and piece of evidence.
Homemade sexual devices were found throughout the house, including in the upstairs bedroom where Griffith’s body was found, in the downstairs bedroom where Grate was sleeping, and in the basement where Stanley’s body was found. Makeup, cigarettes, air fresheners and razors were also found in various places in the house. There were also a set of brass knuckles and two stun guns — one in the downstairs bedroom and one in the basement. Bags of pills were found on a night stand.
Agents also found fly pupae and maggots in the areas where both bodies were found.
“That’s part of the process of decomposition,” Staley said.
He referred to the odor of the decomposition as “deplorable” and said he could smell it around the second floor closet as well as in the basement as soon as he opened the door.
Staley described, and a photo depicted, how Griffith’s body was found in the closet with her legs upward and her head toward the back of the closet. She had cloth binding on her ankles and wrists, and the bindings were similar to those found on both beds in the house and on a chair in the downstairs bedroom closet.
The closet was sealed with black tape and then obstructed with clothes and stuffed animals.
Women’s underwear and a bottle of lotion were found under the upstairs sofa bed. Under and around the downstairs bed were three sexual devices and an open container of Vaseline.
Stanley’s body was found under a blanket beneath a pile of trash bags. A binding was found on her neck. A purse beside her contained checks with the name “Stacey Hicks,” which was Stanley’s name before a divorce.
A debit card with the same name was found under the mattress of the upstairs bed, in a wallet that also contained Grate’s ID and social security card. Stanley’s Ohio Directions card was found under the bed.
Jane Doe’s apartment
In addition to documenting the evidence at the Covert Court house, Staley also executed a search warrant at an apartment on Mathews Avenue in the Stoney Creek apartment complex. Though he did not know who the apartment belonged to, the state’s evidence list indicates it was the apartment of Jane Doe, whom Grate allegedly held kidnapped, raped and assaulted before she escaped her ties and called 9-1-1.
Photos depicted Bible verses on the door of the apartment, including one from Psalm 34 that read “Those who look to the Lord are radiant; Their faces are never covered with shame.”
Tunnell had described Jane Doe in his opening arguments as deeply religious and as someone who did not believe in sex outside of marriage.
The apartment was well maintained and much more orderly than the Covert Court house, with the exception of an area under the couch where miscellaneous items like plastic bags, phone books and shoes were kept.
In that pile was a black box containing jewelry and what appeared to be geode-type rocks. The box matched the description Tunnell gave Monday in his opening statements of a box he said Grate retrieved from a fort in the woods and gave to Jane Doe.
Griffith’s disappearance
The state called four witnesses to testify about Elizabeth Griffith’s personality and behavior as well as her disappearance in August 2016.
Witnesses included Tina Swartz, Griffith’s counselor from Appleseed Community Mental Health Center, who reported her missing Sept. 7, 2016; Ashland Police officer Kody Hying, who responded to the missing person call; Rebecca Taylor, a former Ashland Public Transit driver who gave Griffith a ride on the day of her disappearance; and Cindy Swanger, a peer-to-peer counselor who spoke with Griffith by phone that day.
Taylor described Griffith as friendly, outgoing, and willing to help people whenever she could. Taylor said Griffith was “in good spirits” when Taylor picked her up at Aldi on the morning of Aug. 16 and drove her to Dor Lo Pizza, near Swanger’s residence.
Swanger testified that when Griffith called her Aug. 16, she seemed anxious as though she needed to talk about something. Swanger was unable to talk to her at the time because she was on her way out, and told Griffith she could not come over. That was the last time she heard from Griffith.
Prior to that, Swanger noticed Griffith seemed excited, as though she had met someone.
“Elizabeth was like a family member to me — a younger sister,” Swanger said. “She would call me anytime, day or night, it didn’t matter.”
Swanger said when she stopped hearing from Griffith, she called her repeatedly, called other people looking for her and went on search parties, to no avail.
Swartz said Griffith was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and would sometimes hear voices and see things.
Griffith frequently became upset and called Appleseed’s crisis hotline, Swartz said, usually about things such as religious ideas or frustrations about things people had said to her.
Griffith did not express suicidal thoughts when she was Swartz’s client, but her case file showed she previously did. Swartz took over Griffith’s case after Griffith was hospitalized after having poured kerosene on her head and lit her hair on fire.
Swartz described Griffith as a very regimented person. That fact triggered concern when she stopped attending her appointments and stopped doing things she regularly did, like contacting her payee for money around the first of the month.
After conferring with others at Appleseed and learning no one had heard from Griffith in weeks, Swartz went to Griffith’s apartment and found a neighbor who also had not seen her in weeks. She then contacted police Sept. 7.
Stanley’s disappearance
Kory Stanley described his mother as a great person who was loving and caring toward her animals and her kids. She was also a great cook, he said. She lived in a trailer park in Greenwich with her two dogs and a cat. She was recovering from a drug addiction and had been clean since January, he said, adding that she seemed to be doing better than ever just before she disappeared.
Kory Stanley had plans to have dinner with Stacey Stanley on Sept. 8 in Sandusky, but the two ended up cancelling.
Kory Stanley got a call from his mother a couple hours later, and she said she had a flat tire at the BP station in Ashland, where she had gone to get her nails done.
After calling around to try to find someone who could help his mother change her tire — she had a spare tire but no tools — he called her to tell her Wayne Bright was on his way.
Stacey Stanley told her son on that phone call that she was not alone, and he expressed concern for her safety.
Bright testified that he arrived at BP to find Stacey Stanley with a man who she introduced as Shawn.
After the tire was fixed, Bright left the station, and Stacey Stanley told Kory Stanley she was going to have a cup of coffee and head home.
Two days later, after he had not heard from and couldn’t find his mother, Kory Stanley and his family filed a missing person report in Huron County, where she lived.
The next day, police in Ashland found Stacey Stanley’s car on 9th Street.
When the car was found, Kory Stanley said, he noticed the seat was moved way back in the car, not where it would have been if his mother was driving. The car also contained cigarettes that were not her brand. Oddly, her ID was in the car without the rest of her wallet and purse.
A search party of about 50 family members and friends kept looking for Stacey Stanley until Sept. 13, when Ashland police notified them about the bodies found in the Covert Court house.
