The Hand in the Window: Piece by Piece
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Debra Roberts. I'm here with another weekly episode of our latest series from 2020 and ABC Audio, The Hand in the Window. Remember, you can get new episodes early if you follow The Hand in the Window for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app. Now, here's the episode.
To Kim Major, there is nothing more normal than a Friday night football game. That's true now, and it was true back in September 2016.
On Friday night, my husband coaches football. He coached the football game. I actually took my younger kids to the football game.
Major has three kids. At the time, her two youngest were under eight years old. Even they knew something was going on at their mom's job. They noticed her working long hours, coming home after their bedtime. They even saw her on the news. Major had spent three days interviewing Sean Great, hearing his horrific confessions. The weight of it all was seeping into her home life. Major sensed that her family needed a night that felt normal.
I sat there, which was also surreal, seeing all the things around me and the lights and the... People are happy. They're happy, they're cracking the helmets, the band, watching my husband, hearing the whistles, just the whole thing.
Friday night lights.
It's Friday night lights. That's small-town America.
But while the crowd roared and the band played, Major couldn't stop thinking about Great's case and something he kept mentioning in their interviews, specifically the forts that he had built in the woods.
You put her there.
What happened during the Friday night football game in Ashland?
I just recently built a fort.
Did you build that fort there for a reason?
Well, I knew the area.
Great kept bringing up one fort in particular. There was something about this fort that nagged at Major, even when she was off the clock.
I came home early, a little bit earlier, when the game was just ending. I brought my kids home, put them to bed, and then I was sitting in the living room, and my oldest son came in, Corbin.
Corbin Major was 19 at the time. He was getting ready to enter the police academy.
He walks in, and he's like, what's going on, Mom? I said... Sean Gray keeps talking about this fort he built. And my son said, where is it? And I said, well, if you come up out of Mifflin and you take that first left, and my son cut me off and said, and then you take a hard right and there's a gas well up there. And they found a girl there a while back. And this, as a crow flies, is, I don't know, a mile, two miles from my home.
Despite how close it was, Kim Major had never heard of the case her son was talking about. She worked in town, and this was out in the countryside.
So I said, what are you talking about? He said, yeah, there was a woman that died of an overdose, and they dumped her body there.
Corbin grabbed a laptop and brought up news reports about the case. A body had been found in March of the previous year at the base of a tree on a remote county road. Kim Major's son wondered, could Great's Fort and this body be connected?
And he said, where was the fort? I said, right there, right by there. And he's like, get something to write with. What's his target age? And I'm like, what are you doing? And we go through some things and we're talking. By the time we're done, my son said, Mom, he did it.
the town of Ashland was still reeling from the shock and horror of the previous days. But before a semblance of normality could return, all of Sean Great's crimes would have to be uncovered. Only then could the wheels of justice begin to turn. Normal wouldn't come back to Ashland for a long time. From ABC Audio and 2020, I'm John Quinones, and this is The Hand in the Window. Episode 6. Peace by Peace. In March 2015, a maintenance worker was checking gas wells in a wooded area of Ashland County. As the worker was leaving, he saw something through the trees.
How did Kim Major feel after interviewing Shawn Grate?
He thought it might be a discarded Halloween decoration. But as he got closer, he realized it was a body, half naked, resting against a tree. The worker called 911, and investigators soon realized that there were visible tattoos on the body that matched those of a person who had been reported missing, a local woman, 31-year-old Rebecca Lacey.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:01
2
What happened during the Friday night football game in Ashland?
2:01–5:13
3
How did Kim Major feel after interviewing Shawn Grate?
5:13–9:59
4
What was the significance of the fort mentioned by Shawn Grate?
9:59–16:02
5
What led Detective Kim Major to connect Grate with Rebecca Lacey's case?
16:02–35:07
6
What confessions did Shawn Grate make during his interviews?
35:07–36:20