1 The Abduction
Nineteen minutes. Nineteen heart-stirring minutes. That’s how long it took our officers to locate the female victim now waiting for me in the interview room. My stomach still tightens every time I hear the nail-biting 911 recording that ended in her rescue.
My name is Kim Mager, and in the fall of 2016, I was a detective with the Ashland Police Division in Ashland, Ohio. I’d been with the department for twenty-three years, and for much of my tenure, I was one of the only women on the small, thirty-member force. Being a lone female wasn’t always easy. I don’t care how tough you are, as a woman, you have a constant awareness of the physicality of law enforcement.
But I knew I had other skills that made me a good cop. For one, I was a good shot. I grew up in rural America, and my father taught me to shoot a gun beginning when I was four; by eight, I was regularly accompanying him hunting for small game like rabbits and squirrels.
I grew up in the country, where the farm culture and lifestyle required hard physical work, mostly outside, in good weather and bad. If you had a big piece of property or any farm animals, like we did, it was what you did. Everyone helped, whether it was tending the gardens or keeping the woodpile stocked for the wood-burning stove, with the biggest kids carrying several logs at a time and the little kids carrying one or even just the kindling sticks. But everyone participated, boys and girls. Those were the rules.
We lived in the middle of nowhere, and we had a driveway that was at least a couple of hundred feet long. When it snowed, even us kids would chip in to shovel out the truck, followed by Dad, plowing the driveway. In the spring and summer, my sister, Tamra, and I were tasked with helping water and tend to our family’s vast vegetable garden. We didn’t have a hose that stretched to the field, so we carried buckets of water to get that job done. We were always lifting water, hay, or feed for the animals.
We had horses, chickens, and a couple of cows, and their food came in fifty- to one-hundred-pound bags that we had to carry.
Like most country people, we’d get up early in the mornings because there was work to do. Disrespect wasn’t tolerated in my household, so I always had to watch what I said and how I said it. My father was strict, so I learned to present my points respectfully. I didn’t know it then, but this would be a skill that I’d rely on later.
Early on in my law enforcement career, I watched how veteran detectives at the department like Dennis Evans and Tom Lattanzi used their communication skills to deescalate tense and sometimes life-threatening situations and also to gain confessions. I was a young officer, and that made an impression on me. I’m not saying good communications skills always work. I’ve had a few run-ins where it didn’t matter what I said or how genuine I was.
Being mindful and thinking before I open my mouth is a skill that has served me well throughout my life and in my law enforcement career. And I have worked to hone it, beginning in the early days when I was an investigator for the Ashland County Department of Job and Family Services, working with families who were often going through a rough patch or children who came from hard places.
I’ve never passed up on training to improve my verbal skills. Through my work with children and families, I learned that communication can often be the key to progress and breakthroughs. With practice, my interviewing skills improved over the years, too. I was often tasked with interviewing suspects in some crime or another, and I had to learn how to type a personality and establish a rapport with a person, then get them to open up. I became proficient at securing confessions.
As a female detective investigating sex crimes, I feel that danger is always there like some dark shadow following me around. I have a bad habit of getting intensely focused on my work—sometimes to the point that I fail to even consider potential risks to my safety. I’ll barge into a halfway house or interview a potential offender in his or her home without thinking about waiting for backup. In hindsight, it seems I sometimes put myself in harm’s way rather than risk that someone else gets hurt because I didn’t get an offender off the street. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been yelled at by other officers who’ve been worried about me. Sometimes I can see them trying to quietly back me up, without getting in the way of an investigation.
One time I was investigating a case, and I peered out a window only to see one of our uniformed officers hiding behind a tree a few feet away. He flashed me the thumbs-up, signaling that he was there for me if and when needed. I should be more grateful for their quiet care.
Fortunately, I am married to an incredible man with Southern roots with lots of brothers and a sister and a deep well of goodwill and love of family. Dan gets it, and he doesn’t worry about things that other people worry about. He is hardworking, tough inside and out, and the most active father our children could ask for. He treats me with respect and compassion; he is my pillar. Both of us know that being in law enforcement can be brutal for both husband and wife; fortunately, with God’s grace, we survived. Being a police officer was challenging. Perhaps all of it was in preparation for what I was about to encounter?
Never in my life could I have imagined that one day I would find myself playing the role of a real-life Clarice Starling seated across the table from Ashland, Ohio’s version of Silence of the Lambs’ villain Hannibal Lecter. My perpetrator wasn’t a cannibal, but he was a prolific serial killer.
Little did I know that when I woke up that Tuesday morning to prepare for my 8:00 a.m. shift, I was about to come face-to-face with one of the most malevolent men I’d ever met.
* * *
The sun had not yet risen that mid-September morning in 2016 when the desperate call came into the Wooster-Ashland Regional Dispatch Center.
“Nine-one-one, what is the address of your emergency?” Dispatcher Sarah Miller responded.
A long silence ensued, followed by a whispered utterance. “By the Fourth Street laundromat.”
“What is it?”
Again silence.
“What’s the problem?”
“I’ve been abducted,” the caller claimed.
“Who abducted you?”
After several whispered attempts, Miller was finally able to decipher a name. “Shawn Grate?” she repeated.
“Yes,” came the breathy confirmation.
“Where’s he at now?”
In a voice so low that Miller could barely hear her, the woman explained how her abductor was next to her in bed. He had fallen asleep, and she had somehow managed to get hold of his cell phone, which he kept on a table next to the bed.
“What’s the number you are calling from?” the dispatcher asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the address?”
“I don’t know.”
The only information the woman could provide was that she was being held in one of the two yellow houses across from the Fourth Street laundromat, a low-slung, barn-red building marked by an old Pepsi billboard–style sign that sat on the corner of Fourth Street and Covert Court. It was a busy place, with locals doing their weekly wash, and neighborhood kids playing in nearby parking lots.
The place had a negative association for me. Several years earlier, an eight-year-old boy failed to come home from school, and we were out looking for him. I found the child near that laundromat. When he got in the back seat of my patrol car, I could see his eyes in the rearview mirror. He appeared to show evidence of trauma. It’s hard to put into words, but I could see it. I stopped the vehicle, got out, opened the back door, and knelt beside him. I asked where he’d been, and he didn’t want to tell me. After several minutes of building a rapport, he explained that he had been in the laundromat and that an adult man had sexually assaulted him in the restroom.
We eventually tracked down the suspect, who confessed during an interrogation. He was arrested and charged.
I don’t want to, but every time I pass those houses, which are directly in front of the laundromat, I remember that little boy. Now, I don’t just think about that precious child. The man my colleagues were about to encounter and arrest inside one of those houses changed all that for me.
“Does he own the house?” Dispatcher Miller asked our distraught caller.
“No, he broke in.”
“Does he have a weapon?”
“He’s got a Taser … Please hurry!”
“Okay, stay on the phone with me,” Miller advised, hoping to keep the caller calm and talking until officers could reach her. Miller had been on the job long enough to know the importance of maintaining a cool demeanor and getting as much relevant information as possible.
I was not yet on station that morning when central dispatch contacted the Ashland Police Division, where three fellow officers—Officer Curt Dorsey, Lieutenant Tim Shreffler, and Sergeant Jim Cox—were in the middle of a shift briefing. Roll call was cut short when the three were dispatched to the scene.
Dorsey had joined the force eight years earlier in 2006; the two other men were seasoned veterans with more than four decades of law enforcement experience between them. So, as the “rookie” of the group, Dorsey knew he would be the one doing the grunt work once on scene.
There was no sign of life at either of the yellow, two-story colonials when our officers arrived at the location that morning. There were no cars parked in either driveway, and no lights or sounds coming from either place. At first glance, Officer Dorsey and the others wondered if perhaps the dispatcher had made a mistake. Until recently, the Ashland Police Division had used Ashland County 911 dispatching operations. But the city had just transitioned that operation over to a new regional dispatch center that serviced several law enforcement agencies in multiple jurisdictions and counties. Perhaps the dispatcher had been mistaken. Lots of places had their own Fourth Street. And this place was in the middle of town, with lots of passersby. It made little sense the suspect would be holding a woman against her will there.
Further complicating matters was the fact that the caller could not provide an exact address. It was unclear which house she might be in; the pair of wood-framed houses with the wood front porches stood side by side and looked nearly identical. The two structures dated back to the 1800s and had once been occupied by supervisors who worked at the old F. E. Myers & Bro. Company plant—a now-defunct factory complex in the center of Ashland that had once provided good, steady work for some 850 people, nearly a tenth of Ashland’s population at that time.
In its heyday, Ashland, once known as Uniontown, was a prosperous manufacturing hub with nearly fifty factories producing a variety of items that were shipped all over the country. Its founder, Francis E. Myers, was a local boy who left his father’s farm in the late 1800s to work as a salesperson, peddling tools and hardware to area farmers. Eventually, he and his brother Philip started their own company, F. E. Myers & Bro., which they operated from the basement of a rented building in the center of Ashland. Soon, two more brothers joined the company and constructed their own building to manufacture the pumps.
At the time, there were forty-eight factories operating in Ashland, but F. E. Myers held the title of the city’s biggest manufacturer. By 1915, they expanded their facilities with a new complex of four- and five-story redbrick buildings that covered several city blocks and spanned twelve acres in the Fourth Street area. Those buildings still stand, but the operations have long ceased.
Beginning in the 1960s, companies began to shut down manufacturing operations in the States and move them overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs. The city of Ashland was one of many communities throughout America’s heartland that fell on hard times as a result. Thousands of area residents lost their jobs as one plant after another closed. F. E. Myers was sold to a local competitor, and its operations were eventually moved to a new plant outside the city.
Over the years, the complex was sold a couple of times and eventually donated to a local nonprofit Christian entity, Pump House Ministries, run by local pastors Bruce Wilkinson and his wife, Marylou. Wilkinson had only wanted the building that had once housed the pump factory, but he agreed to take the other properties as part of the deal.
The ministry had already made some progress, converting one of the sturdy, old brick buildings into a small catering and events center that was used primarily for weddings. They also opened a men’s shelter, an emergency food pantry for the needy, and the Revival Thrift Store, which would play a minor role in the unfolding case, in particular the donation drop box outside the establishment.
As for the two old, yellow colonials across from the laundromat, somebody had tried to upgrade them years ago by adding a layer of cheap vinyl siding to cover up the peeling paint on the original clapboard. But the structures were still in serious disrepair, and it would have cost tens of thousands to make them habitable again—money that the charity simply didn’t have. Pump House Ministries had plans to renovate them someday and turn them into housing for the homeless.
Neighborhood kids liked to hang out in the crumbling factory structures. Our officers have searched them countless times for trespassing complaints. But I never saw any activity at the two yellow houses, which now stood boarded up and vacant. Or at least that’s what everybody—including my fellow officers and I—had assumed.
Dispatcher Miller was in radio contact with our three officers as they circled the two structures on foot, looking for any indication that something was amiss. The entry doors on both houses were locked, and after peering in the windows, the officers determined that the one to the north was obviously empty; the walls on the first level had been gutted in preparation for a remodeling. They had no way of knowing if the upstairs had been gutted, too, and it was impossible for them to determine if anyone was up there without breaking in and physically searching the structure.
The officers had been on scene for just a few minutes when they learned from the dispatcher that the alleged perpetrator was asleep in the bed next to her and that even the slightest noise could wake him. Doing so would risk putting the victim in great danger—and perhaps lead to a hostage/barricade situation or further violence.
They tried to be as stealthy and quiet as possible, peering in windows, and hoping they might see something that could help them determine in which house the woman was being held. Minutes were ticking by, and still they hadn’t found any sign of the female caller or anyone else in either of the houses.
The three were ready to head back to their cruisers when Officer Dorsey was suddenly overcome with a sense that something was off. Dorsey, like many in our small community, is a devout Christian and lives his life honorably. As a believer myself, I appreciate his deep commitment to his faith, so I understood when he later confided what he thought happened in that moment. He believed that God was sending him a message, telling him to turn back, that he was needed and should not give up the search.
Following his gut, Dorsey decided to retry a rear door he’d seen during his first pass of the home to the left. But there was a problem: there was no stoop or landing to get up to the door. The ground level was significantly below the door, meaning that there was no way to look inside or make any kind of quiet entry. The door didn’t have a typical landing, so it made the option of kicking it in more difficult.
There was a flimsy storm door there, and he was able to pull it open without much noise. But the wood entry door was locked solid and wouldn’t budge. He stood and listened for any sign of life inside but didn’t hear a thing. He was just starting to circle back toward the house on the north when the dispatcher radioed.
“The victim says she hears you at a side door,” Miller said.
Dorsey stopped dead in his tracks and immediately went back to the side door, with Lieutenant Shreffler and Sergeant Cox arriving shortly thereafter. He was just starting to reach up for the doorknob when he saw it—a woman’s outstretched hand flat against the windowpane. It was quite literally like something out of a horror movie, only this time, it was all too real. His heart skipped a beat as he realized he’d found the 911 caller. He hesitated, contemplating if he should try to break the door down to get to the woman or if that would make the situation even worse.
Dorsey got on the radio with the dispatcher, asking Miller if she could convince the caller to unlock and open the door. He knew it was a lot to ask of someone who feared for her life, but it seemed like their best option. Miller agreed and asked the caller if she could help.
“Ma’am, are you still with me?” Miller asked.
Throughout the call, the dispatcher had managed to maintain a cool demeanor, aware that losing the element of surprise could greatly elevate the risk of further harm to the victim and potentially the responding officers, as well. She explained that a uniformed officer was now at the side door but was unable to get inside without the potential for a good deal of noise and delay.
“Do you think you can unlock the door?” she asked.
But the woman was reluctant, terrified that her abductor would wake up and come after her. She resisted time and again, but Miller kept at it, coaxing her along, encouraging her to help free herself. Finally, the dispatcher managed to convince the woman to act, gently cajoling her as she slowly unlocked the door and looked down at Dorsey.
The young officer was taken aback at the sight before him. The slender brunette was completely nude, with part of a restraint hanging from one arm. She looked to be in her mid- to late thirties and had extensive bruises on her arms and legs. What he saw in the woman’s eyes was her terror. There was no question in his mind that this was a true abduction, and that the woman—whom we will call Jane Doe to protect her identity—had been through hell. He would later tell me that her frightened stare was something he will never forget.
Dorsey wanted to get Jane out of the house and away from any danger as quickly as possible. Mindful to avoid any noise, he waved his arm and motioned for her to walk toward him.
But she was petrified with fear. She stood frozen in place, staring straight ahead, uncertain what to do next. The officer quietly asked her to come through the door, but again, she stiffened, unable or unwilling to move.
Dorsey could hear his colleagues approaching behind him as he remained focused on the woman standing in front of him. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. Please walk to me, and I will get you out of here.”
Copyright © 2024 by Kim Mager
