Police in Marion County say a man charged with killing two women and kidnapping another near Mansfield has confessed to an unsolved murder.
Marion County Sheriff Tim Bailey says Shawn Grate admitted killing a woman, thought to be around the age of 26 at the time, near Marion some time between 2003 and 2005.
Police say Grate said the woman was selling magazines, but some magazines purchased by Grate’s mother were never delivered.
Grate reportedly told police he later saw the woman, talked her into getting into his car, drove her to a residence south of the city, stabbed her, and dumped her body on Victory Road.
Police say Grate, 40, admitted to revisiting the body about a year later and setting it on fire in an effort to destroy evidence.
Sheriff Bailey says the woman remains unidentified and police are asking for the public’s help.
The break in the Marion case comes after Grate was charged with killing Stacey Stanley and a second unidentified woman whose body was found in an Ashland home last week.
Ashland County Prosecutor Christopher Tunnell has said officials are working to identify another body of a woman found in a house in neighboring Richland County.
Grate was arrested last Tuesday after a woman called 911 and said she had been tied up but had partly freed herself in a bedroom while her captor slept in the same room.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report
