There are hundreds of missing people in Ohio. You can see them listed on a website sponsored by the state’s attorney general, the faces of men, women and children, classified as runaways, the lost, the injured, the “endangered,” many of whom, if the past is any guide, may never be found.

Stacey Stanley had not appeared on the list yet, perhaps because she had been missing only since Sept. 8.

Stanley, 43, was a heroin addict. She had been struggling with it for years, her uncle Argil Stanley told People. About six months ago, she made another effort to conquer her demons, and she appeared to be having some success.

“She had been off of the stuff the last six months and was living with her sister, going to work every day,” Stanley said. “She was sober and was taking care of herself. She had reclaimed her life.”

In that respect, her story is not unlike that of thousands, particularly in the Rust Belt states, which have been plagued with addiction and overdoses.

Then, on the night of Sept. 8, her son Kory said, she went out for coffee.

“She never made it home that night,” Kory told Fox 8 Cleveland.

According to the missing-person notice issued for Stacey Stanley, she was last spotted with a flat tire on her 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse, at the BP station on East Main Street in Ashland, Ohio, about 80 miles from Columbus.

Police released Wednesday the 911 call they received from a woman who was being held against her will in Ashland, Ohio. (WCPO)

The Ashland Police Department pleaded with the public on its Facebook page, posting her picture and saying:

Could u just help us by putting this out there for us we need all the help we can get please her name is Stacey Stanley but also goes by Stacey hicks lives in Greenwich Ohio but last seen in Ashland Ohio she has hazel eyes purplish black hair about 5′ 5″ around 175 pounds we located her car but not her.

While friends and relatives were combing Ashland looking for her, another woman disappeared.

The woman, who has not been named by police, had been out walking with a man she would later identify as Shawn Grate. It’s unclear how she knew him or why she was walking with him.

He took her to an abandoned house in a desolate neighborhood of Ashland, where he tied her up and forced her to engage in sexual activity, she told police.

Police released Wednesday the 911 call they received from a woman who was being held against her will in Ashland, Ohio. (WCPO)

Tuesday, she managed to loosen the ties that bound her, and she slipped over to a telephone in the bedroom. While the man slept, she called 911, whispering and clearly terrified about disturbing the man in the bed in the same room, a bed where she had moments before been lying captive.

“I’ve been kidnapped,” she told the responder, her voice quavering.

“Who abducted you?

“Shawn Grate,” the voice responded.

“Where’s he at now?”

“Sleeping in the bedroom. … I’m in the bedroom with him.”

“I’m scared,” she said.

When asked whether she was bleeding, the woman said, “Not anymore.” When asked whether he was armed, she said he had a Taser.

The 7 a.m. 911 call, punctuated by long silences, seemed like an eternity. (You can listen to portions here. Her name has been redacted by police.)

According to Fox 8 Cleveland, it lasted 19 minutes. The woman’s call to the Sheriff’s Department in Ashland had to be transferred to a regional call center 20 miles away.

The Ashland Police Chief told Fox 8 that five minutes passed before police were dispatched. Officers didn’t have an exact address, so that second dispatcher had to gather information about the house and the suspect.

All she was able to tell them, according to a tape of the 911 call, was that it was near a laundromat in Ashland. They found her in a nearby house on Covert Court.



Laundromat near house where woman was held. (Google Street View)

The woman’s rescue is also heard on the tape, with an officer yelling to her, “Hurry up, hurry up, get out here.”

Finally, “Okay, they have her,” the dispatcher said.

Grate, who was taken into custody, had kidnapped the woman, forcing her to engage in sexual activity since Sunday, according to court documents cited by local news outlets.

But that was not the end of the story.

When police searched the house, they found two bodies, both of them women.

One of them has now been identified as that of Stacey Stanley, the woman last seen Sept. 8.

And police say Grate, described in some reports as homeless and on his Facebook page, as of Aug. 8, as a new maintenance man at a Holiday Inn, then led them to a second house in nearby Mansfield that had burned down in June.

(Ashland County Sheriff’s Department)

There, after combing through the debris Wednesday, authorities found the remains of another person in a ravine behind the property.

That body has yet to be identified, and will for the time being join a list, also on the attorney general’s website, of John Does and Jane Does classified simply as “unidentified remains.”

Thursday night, at a vigil for Stacey Stanley, her uncle said he believes his niece died for a reason, according to the Mansfield News-Journal.

The family likes to think that their search led the captor in the abandoned house in Ashland to sleepless nights, which made him fall fast asleep.

And that allowed the captive woman to place that long, frightening call to 911.

Perhaps.

“It is a sad situation, especially the way she died,” Argil Stanley said of Stacey. “She was beaten to death. The cops said she was unrecognizable from the beating,” he told People.

Grate, 40, has been charged with abduction and two counts of murder and is being held in the Ashland County jail, the Ashland Times-Gazette reported. Further charges are expected.

According to WAVE 3 News in Cleveland, Grate has a long history with the law, including arrests in incidents of domestic violence, marijuana possession and theft.

He has not yet filed a plea.

In his last Facebook post, Grate shared a large image. “Let’s see,” it said, “if we can find 1 million who are unashamed to say with us Jesus watches over me.”

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