ASHLAND, Ohio -- Closing arguments will be held Monday as attorneys wrap up their case in the trial of accused serial killer Shawn Grate.

Grate is already facing decades in prison after pleading guilty to some of his charges. He did not plead guilty to the aggravated murder charges, so he could still face the death penalty if convicted.

He is accused of killing 29-year-old Elizabeth Griffith and 43-year-old Stacey Stanley.

Grate was arrested in September 2016 after police found the women's remains in what was supposed to be a vacant Ashland home, where another woman said she had been held captive.

Once in custody, Grate, 41, told police that he had killed two other women but he has not been charged in those killings. Police also looked into whether he was connected to the 2015 death of a fifth woman. </s> The case of suspected serial killer Shawn Grate went to a jury Monday after the prosecution gave its closing arguments and the defense waived their right to present one — as they did at the start of the trial.

Grate, 41, is charged with 23 counts, including the aggravated murder of Elizabeth Griffith, 29, and Stacey Stanley, 43, as well as the kidnapping and sexual assault of a woman who escaped from captivity and made the 911 call that led to Grate's arrest.

He pleaded guilty to 15 of the charges, including robbery and kidnapping — but eight charges remained, including aggravated murder.

If convicted, Grate could receive the death penalty or life without parole. The minimum sentence Grate already faces for his guilty pleas is 50 to 72 years behind bars.

Prosecutor Chris Tunnell began his closing arguments by replaying audio tapes of Grate being questioned by investigators and showing the jury pictures of the women when their bodies were found in an abandoned house in Ashland, Ohio. Both women were strangled, according to the autopsy.

In the audio recordings, Grate said he would "use" his victims and make it so they "won't have to cry anymore."

"This is not a spur of the moment killing," said Tunnell. "Take a broad view of the evidence. What do you know of this victim? Listen to what he says. Look at what he did."

Defense counsel Robert and Rolf Whitney filed a motion in 2016 asserting claims that Grate is not guilty by reason of insanity. Judge Ron Forsthoefel said the evaluations detected nothing to support his plea of "not guilty by reason of insanity."

Though this case concerned only the deaths of Griffith, Stanley and the rape and kidnap of Jane Doe, Grate has been linked to the deaths of at least three other women in neighboring counties.

The deaths include one unnamed woman killed around 2005, Rebekah Leicy in 2015, and Candice Cunningham in 2016. He is not being charged on these counts in this trial but is under investigation in connection with the deaths. </s> A jury has found Shawn Grate guilty in the aggravated murders of two women in Ashland County.

Shawn Grate was found guilty on all charges in the deaths of 29-year-old Elizabeth Griffith and 43-year-old Stacey Stanley.

He was arrested in September 2016 after police found the women's remains in what was supposed to be a vacant Ashland home, where another woman said she had been held captive.

The woman said she was lured into the house and raped repeatedly by Grate.

Once in custody, Grate, 41, told police that he had killed two other women but he has not been charged in those killings. Police also looked into whether he was connected to the 2015 death of a fifth woman.

Last week, Grate pleaded guilty to 15 counts that included rape and abuse of a corpse.

With the guilty conviction, Grate could be sentenced to death.

Previous Coverage: </s> Serial killer Stephen Port will spend the rest of his life in prison after being sentenced to a whole life term for the murder of four men.

The 41-year-old chef was found guilty of a total of 22 offences against 11 men including the four murders, four rapes, 10 counts of administering a substance and four sex assaults.

Port met his victims using online dating services including Grindr and plied them with drinks spiked with fatal amounts of the drug GHB to rape them while they were unconscious, before dumping their bodies near his east London flat.

After killing the men, he embarked upon an elaborate cover-up operation. He disposed of their mobile phones, repeatedly lied to police and planted a fake suicide note in the hand of one of his victims, taking the blame for the death of another.

Mr Justice Openshaw gave Port the whole-life sentence after he was found guilty of all four murders after a trial at the Old Bailey.

The judge described Port as a “wicked and monstrous” killer and said Port had carried out the murders in order to “satisfy his lust” for sex with unconscious young men.

Port denied all the charges against him but was found guilty of the murders of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor.

Families of the victims cheered and clapped as Port was sent down.

Scotland Yard faces allegations it failed to link Port to all four murders, despite their marked similarities.

It was only after the death of his final victim, Mr Taylor, whose family urged the police to re-examine the previous deaths, that a full investigation was launched.

Commander Stuart Cundy, of the Met’s Specialist Crime and Operations command, said 17 officers are facing investigation into possible misconduct during the case.

Following Port’s conviction, Mr Cundy offered the families personal letters of apology from the police for missing opportunities to catch Port earlier.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission will investigate the police force’s initial response to the murders, and will examine whether “discrimination played any part in actions and decisions”.

The Taylor family has said it is suing the Met Police, saying they believe that if the force had investigated the initial murders they would not have had to fight for a full investigation and Port would have been stopped sooner.

Port’s first victim, Anthony Walgate, 23, was found dead on Cooke Street on 19 June last year. He was a fashion and design student at Middlesex University who was originally from Hull but living in Barnet.

The second victim, Gabriel Kovari, 22, was found by a dog walker near St Margaret's churchyard on 28 August last year. He was originally from Slovakia but lived in Lewisham, south London.

Just under a month later, on 20 September last year, the same dog walker discovered the body of Daniel Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend, Kent, near the same churchyard.

Then on 14 September this year, Jack Taylor, 25, a forklift truck driver from Dagenham, was found dead near the abbey ruins close to North Street.

Following the conviction, the Met Police has appealed for information from any of Port’s other victims.

The force has also said it is reassessing 58 unexplained deaths involving date-rape drugs to make sure foul play has not been missed. Port is not linked to any of them, a spokeswoman said. </s> A STUDENT from Hull could have been one of the victims of serial killer Stephen Port, who was found guilty today of murdering young gay men to fulfil his depraved sexual fantasies.

The 41-year-old chef stalked his victims on dating websites, including Grindr, and plied them with drinks spiked with fatal amounts of date-rape drug GHB to rape them while they were unconscious, the Old Bailey heard.

Port dumped their bodies in or near a graveyard within 500 metres of his flat in Barking, east London, and embarked on an elaborate cover-up.

He disposed of their mobile phones, repeatedly lied to police and planted a fake suicide note in the hand of one of his victims, taking the blame for the death of another.

Port denied all the charges against him but was found guilty of the murders of Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor as well as a range of sexual offences against more men.

Jurors have yet to reach verdicts relating to other charges including those around the death of Port’s first alleged murder victim, Anthony Walgate. 23, originally from Hull and renting a room in Golders Green, north-west London, while studying fashion at Middlesex University.

Mr Walgate occasionally worked as a male escort which is how he came into contact with Port through a website called Sleepyboys.

The student was cautious about the men he met through the site and always told his friends where he was going and showed them a photo of who he was meeting.

He agreed to Port’s offer of £800 for an overnight date and told his friend Ellie Green about it “in case I get killed”. As an extra precaution, he told her he had a small knife but was going to take scissors with him.

He was found dead outside the communal entrance to Port’s block of flats in the early hours of June 19 2014.

Port denies his murder and while jurors found him guilty of administering a substance to Mr Walgate, they are still deliberating on a murder charge.

Mr Justice Openshaw gave the jurors a majority direction on the remaining counts and said he would accept a majority of at least 10 to two.

Mr Taylor’s parents and sisters wept in court as the guilty verdicts were delivered but Port made no reaction.

He was convicted of a total of 16 offences against nine out of 12 alleged victims, including the three murders.

Other charges he was found guilty of included seven counts of administering a substance, three rapes and three sex assaults.

The deaths over 15 months bore striking similarities but police failed to make the link until relatives of his final victim demanded answers, jurors were told.

The court heard that Port had an insatiable desire for boyish-looking men he referred to as Twinks.

Port trawled the internet for pornography involving inert young men being “raped” by older men.

Many of the victims’ relatives sat through harrowing evidence which included home videos of Port allegedly enacting his drug rape obsession.

Mr Walgate, 23, was found dead in the communal hall of Port’s flat in Cooke Street after he called 999 anonymously in the early hours of June 19 2014.

When police tracked him down, Port lied to distance himself from the fashion student and occasional male escort.

He later claimed he “panicked” over the death of the young man he had engaged for sex through the Sleepyboys website.

Port was later jailed for perverting the course of justice over Mr Walgate’s death.

The second man to die was 22-year-old Slovakian Mr Kovari, who was staying on Port’s sofa as a temporary flatmate.

After killing him, Port spoke to his older sister Sharon on the phone and confessed he had a body in his bed.

But rather than going to police, he dragged the body to Barking Abbey graveyard where it was discovered by a dog walker.

Port constructed a complex web of deceit, telling his neighbour that Mr Kovari died of an infection in Spain.

Over months, he posed on Facebook as an American student to probe Mr Kovari’s grief-stricken Spanish boyfriend and divert suspicion by suggesting the victim had gone off to a sex party with “Dan”.

Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC told jurors that the misinformation was to “lay the groundwork” for implicating his third victim, Daniel Whitworth.

Three weeks after the Slovakian was found dead, the same dog walker stumbled across the body of Mr Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend, on September 20, 2014.

In his hand, was a suicide note taking the blame for Mr Kovari’s death, saying: “We was having some fun at a mate’s place and I got carried away and gave him another shot of G.”

It added a plea not to “blame the guy I was with last night”.

Police treated Mr Whitworth’s death “at face value” and no efforts were made to verify the sham note which turned out to be in Port’s handwriting.

Mr Taylor, 25, died within hours of hooking up with Port on Grindr in the early hours of September 13, 2015.

After murdering him, Port got rid of his mobile and deleted their communication on the dating app.

Just after 1pm the next day, Mr Taylor’s body was found by a refuse collector with a needle and syringe in his pocket.

Initially, his death was treated as “non-suspicious”.

But CCTV footage from Barking Station emerged linking him to Port, whose DNA was found on a bottle of GHB also planted in Mr Taylor’s pocket.

Giving evidence, Port denied all the charges and claimed he had left Mr Taylor “very much” alive after having “rampant” sex outside.

On why he lied to police, Port said: “The truth sounded like a lie, so I lied to make it sound like the truth.”

However, the prosecution rejected his explanations as absurd, ridiculous and cruel to the families who deserved to know the truth. </s> Serial killer Stephen Port has been found guilty of murdering three young gay men to fulfil his sexual fantasies. 



The 41-year-old chef contacted his victims on dating websites, including Grindr, and plied them with drinks spiked with fatal amounts of the date-rape drug GHB to rape them while they were unconscious, the Old Bailey heard. 



Port dumped their bodies in or near a graveyard within 500 metres of his flat in Barking, east London.

Port denied all the charges against him but was found guilty of the murders of Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor as well as a range of sexual offences against other men. 



Jurors have yet to reach verdicts relating to other charges, including those around the death of Port’s first alleged murder victim, Anthony Walgate. 



Mr Justice Openshaw gave the jurors a majority direction on the remaining counts and said he would accept a majority of at least 10 to two. He sent the jury of 10 women and two men back out to continue deliberating.

Taylor’s parents and sisters wept in court as the guilty verdicts were delivered but Port made no reaction. 



He was convicted of a total of 16 offences against nine out of 12 alleged victims, including the three murders. Other charges of which he was found guilty included seven counts of administering a substance, three rapes and three sex assaults. </s> (Reuters) - An Indiana man was charged on Monday with sexually assaulting and murdering an 8-year-old girl in 1988, police said, a day after they said he had confessed to the crime.

John Miller, 59, of Grabill, Indiana, appeared briefly in court in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to face charges of murdering April Tinsley, officials said.

DNA evidence and records on publicly accessible genealogical websites helped investigators track down the suspect, the Fort Wayne police department said in a court filing on Sunday. That followed a pattern similar to that used to track down the “Golden State Killer” in California earlier this year.

Tinsley’s mother reported her missing from her family home on April 1, 1988. Investigators found her body three days later, about 20 miles (32 km) away.

Miller was being held at the Allen County Jail on Monday after being preliminarily charged with murder, child molestation and confinement of someone under 14 years old, jail records showed.

Police asked Miller at his residence before his arrest if he had any idea why the police wanted to talk with him. Miller replied, “April Tinsley,” according to the affidavit.

Police say Miller confessed to raping and then choking April Tinsley to death in April 1988 at his mobile home.

The arrest affidavit said that police, using outside labs, compared DNA evidence with information on genealogical websites, which narrowed the search to Miller and his brother.

Earlier this month, police began to watch Miller, and took three used condoms from his trash earlier this month, it said.

It was not clear from court records whether Miller had retained an attorney. Calls on Monday to the prosecutor’s office were not immediately returned.

According to court papers, police in 1990 discovered writing on a barn wall near Fort Wayne that said: “I kill 8 year old April M Tinsley did you find her other shoe haha I will kill agin’.” </s> Making a Murderer subject Brendan Dassey has suffered yet another blow in his bid for freedom after an appeals court blocked his release from prison.

He had been given the green light for release by a lower court earlier this week with a judge rejecting the state's claim the 26-year-old, who was convicted of murder a decade ago, posed a risk.

But now a federal court has granted an emergency motion to stay that order, according to Buzzfeed .

In August, Judge Duffin overturned Dassey's conviction for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach after finding "significant doubts as to the reliability of [his] confession".

The 90-page ruling that Dassey's constitutional rights had been violated during and in the lead up to his trial in 2007 over the murder.

Photographer Halbach went missing on Halloween 2005, with police confirming her charred remains had been discovered in a burn pit on the Avery Salvage Yard in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin ten days later, along with her Toyota RAV4, mobile phone and car keys.

Dassey confessed to helping his uncle Steven Avery rape and murder of Halbach during an unsupervised interview with two investigators in March 2006.

He was found guilty of the first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse of Teresa Halbach after a nine day trial in 2007.

His conviction, chronicled on the Netflix series Making A Murderer alongside that of his uncle, Steven Avery, attracted worldwide attention and even led to requests to President Obama for the pair to be pardoned. </s> July 16 (UPI) -- Indiana authorities have arrested a man they believe is responsible for a 30-year-old cold murder case, which included the sexual assault and death of an 8-year-old girl.

Suspect John D. Miller was taken into custody Sunday at his Grabill, Ind., home by Fort Wayne Police Department and Indiana State Police, court documents said.

Prosecutors say DNA evidence connects him to the 1988 death of April Tinsley, a young girl found dead three days after her family reported her missing.

Court documents say when asked by police Sunday if he knew why they were at his home, Miller answered, "April Tinsley."

Miller was arrested on charges of suspicion of murder, child molesting and confinement. He is scheduled to appear in Allen County Court Monday.

Tinsley was abducted April 1, 1988, while walking in her Fort Wayne neighborhood. Three days later, a jogger found her body along a country road 20 miles away. Police said she'd been raped, but were not able to track down a suspect through DNA.

Police said the killer scrawled a message on a barn door two years later, threatening to kill again. In 2004, he again left threatening notes, nude photos and condoms on bicycles belonging to three girls.

Authorities said DNA testing this year finally led them to Miller. Court documents say he admitted to the girl's death.

The arrest came the same day the Investigation Discovery Channel was scheduled to broadcast an episode of On the Case With Paula Zahn about the Tinsley case.
Indiana accused serial killer Shawn Grate is convicted of two murders. He has previously confessed to, but not been charged with, two more murders and entered guilty pleas to crimes including rape.