Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / The Devil Is Good Looking Too
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- 0:13Discretion is advised. This is ten minuted murderer. Often the life stories of
- 0:37serial killers begin with tragic, dysfunctional upbringings, but the beginning of Shawn Michael
- 0:43Great's childhood was perfectly normal. Born in nineteen seventy six in Marion, Ohio,
- 0:49he did struggle in school was held back a grade, but he was
- 0:53also sporty. He was a social kid who got along well with others.
- 0:57Then, as Sean grew older, things began to change. When Shawn was
- 1:03six years old, his parents got a divorce, and five years later,
- 1:07his mother, Teresa, abandoned her two children. She left them behind in
- 1:11Ohio with their father and moved to Kentucky to live with her new boyfriend.
- 1:17Sewn spent his teenage years resenting Theresa for this decision, and he indulged in
- 1:22elaborate fantasies about killing his mother and making her pay for what she had done.
- 1:27While Shawn and his brother were living with their father, Seawan began attending
- 1:33River Valley High School. At first, he continued using sports as an outlet
- 1:38for his feelings and became one of the school's best baseball players until he broke
- 1:44his arm. When the fracture was X rayed, doctors discovered a tumor,
- 1:48which required immediate surgery. After that, Shawn never played baseball again. From
- 1:55that point, Shawn's mental health took a turn. One of his high school
- 1:59girls friends remembered that he went through severe depressive episodes where he would lay on
- 2:05the couch for days. Once the episode was over, he'd continue with his
- 2:08life like nothing ever happened. Despite this, Sewn never had a hard time
- 2:14getting a date. His school friend Amy Smith, said Sean was charming,
- 2:20he was always smiling, and he had those big blue eyes. All the
- 2:23girls liked Sean. Sean might have been considered a heart throb, but he
- 2:29wasn't a good boyfriend. As his relationships progressed, he became more and more
- 2:35jealous and controlling, and after a while, he'd eventually become violent. When
- 2:40he was eighteen years old, he was arrested for the first time after he
- 2:45grabbed a girlfriend by her neck during an argument. His next arrest came the
- 2:50following year, shortly after he graduated from high school, when he was caught
- 2:53breaking into a house. He was charged with a felony burglary and sent to
- 3:00four years in prison, but He ended up being released early. That time
- 3:05behind bars did not change Shawn. If anything, his violent behavior towards women
- 3:10only escalated after he was released in nineteen ninety seven. Two years later,
- 3:15Shawn's girlfriend reported him to the police, saying that he had choked her almost
- 3:20to the point of unconsciousness. The girl was seventeen years old and she was
- 3:24a few months pregnant with Shawn's child. Shawn's adult life continued the same way.
- 3:30He was a ladies man, but he was a menace to the women
- 3:34he dated, often terrorizing his girlfriends and threatening them whenever they stood up to
- 3:38him. If there was one thing that Sean hated more than anything else,
- 3:43it was a woman who told him no. He briefly got married and became
- 3:47a father once again, but only a few months after the wedding, his
- 3:51wife had enough and she filed for divorce. On September thirteenth, twenty sixteen,
- 3:58a nine to one one call came through in Ashland, Ohio. A
- 4:01female caller claimed that she had been kidnapped two days ago, and since then
- 4:06her captiir had kept her tied to a bed, repeatedly raping her to protect
- 4:13the victim's identity. Her name was never released to the public and she was
- 4:16only known by the moniker Jane Doe. And Jane Doe was certain that she
- 4:20knew the identity of the kidnapper. In fact, he was somebody whom she'd
- 4:25been friends with for several months. She told the police that his name was
- 4:29Sean Michael Great and she had been held captive in the abandoned house that he
- 4:33was living in. The police rushed to that address that Jane was calling from,
- 4:40and they were able to save her and apprehend her captor. After her
- 4:44rescue, she revealed more details about her ordeal. She'd met Sean in the
- 4:48summer of twenty sixteen at the local community center and viewed him as an older
- 4:55brother type. The two of them often met up for lunch together or to
- 4:59go on walk where they would talk about the Bible. Jane had been aware
- 5:02that Sean was romantically interested in her, but she dodged his advances and even
- 5:09refused his attempts to get her cell phone number. Then, on the eleventh
- 5:14of September, Sean invited Jane Doe to come over to a house in Ashland,
- 5:17where she began to read the Bible sewn left to go to the kitchen,
- 5:23and when he came back, Jane didn't recognize the man she'd come to
- 5:26view as a friend. His friendly demeanor had vanished, and he grabbed the
- 5:30Bible, saying quote, you're not going anywhere. When Jane continued resisting Sean's
- 5:35sexual advances, he physically overpowered her and tied her to the bed. Throughout
- 5:42the following days, Sean regularly retied Jane Doe into different weird positions. On
- 5:48one occasion, he told her that he'd positioned the ropes so that if she
- 5:51struggled, she would be strangled to death. When Sean fell asleep, Jane
- 5:57was able to free herself from the restraints managed to place that nine to one
- 6:00one call that saved her life. When the police arrived at the abandoned house
- 6:05where Sean kept Jane prisoner, they immediately noticed an unmistakable stench. The entire
- 6:12house was full of piles of trash, surrounded by swarming flies and maggots,
- 6:16But the smell wasn't coming from the trash. It was coming from the two
- 6:20decomposing bodies that Sean had hidden under piles of dirty laundry. Those bodies belonged
- 6:27to two young women, Elizabeth Griffin and Stacy Stanley. Both of them had
- 6:31been strangled to death, and Sean hadn't bothered to dispose of their bodies.
- 6:36He'd just hidden them pretty badly and then gone on a hunt for his next
- 6:42victims. Seawan was then indicted for two counts of aggravated murder for Elizabeth and
- 6:47Stacy's death, as well as the sexual assault and abduction of Jane Doe,
- 6:54and lesser counts of tampering with evidence and breaking and entering. The defense filed
- 6:58a not guilty plea by reason of insanity. Meanwhile, the prosecution announced that
- 7:02they would be pushing for the death penalty. By his twenty eighteen trial,
- 7:09Shawn hadn't just confessed to the charges he was facing, He'd also claimed to
- 7:13have killed three other women. After Seawn revealed details about the additional murders to
- 7:18local news stations, the defense and prosecution joined forces to request a gag order
- 7:25that would prevent him from talking to the media throughout the trial. Shawn showed
- 7:30absolutely no remorse. The following month, he was found guilty of both murders
- 7:34and sentenced to death. In March twenty nineteen, Shawn pleaded guilty to murdering
- 7:41two other women, Rebecca Lacey in twenty fifteen and Candace Cuttingham in twenty sixteen.
- 7:47He had dated Candace for several months and even lived with her for a
- 7:50while, and throughout their relationship he admitted to fantasizing about murdering her. Rebecca
- 7:57Lacey was also someone that Shawn knew personally, although he wasn't as close with
- 8:01her as he was with Candace, and all of his victims were killed in
- 8:05the same fashion. Strangled to death. Seawn gave investigators directions to Candace's body,
- 8:11which was found behind a burnt house in Madison Township. Rebecca's body had
- 8:16been found in twenty fifteen in a patch of woodland in Ashland County. Before
- 8:22Shawn's confession, Rebecca's death was believed to be an accidental overdose. Now police
- 8:28knew that Sean had killed her over a petty dispute. She allegedly had stolen
- 8:33four dollars from him and paid for it with her life. In September that
- 8:39same year, Seawn pleaded guilty to a fifth murder, a woman whose unidentified
- 8:45body had been found in Marion County in two thousand and six. Shawn's confession
- 8:48eventually led to the woman being identified as Dana Lowry, a twenty three year
- 8:54old mother of two. Shortly after his original trial, Shawn's attorney appealed him
- 9:00death sentence, but in twenty twenty the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed this appeal and
- 9:05upheld the sentence. As of October twenty twenty three, his execution is scheduled
- 9:11for the nineteenth of March twenty twenty five. At Shawn's second trial, the
- 9:18family friend of one of his victims addressed him directly, saying, quote,
- 9:22you will die with a needle in your arm, with no more notoriety than
- 9:26a junkie who overdoses in an alley. You will die, you will burn,
- 9:31and you will be completely forgotten. Shawn's mother, Teresa, was approached
- 9:35by the media countless times after her son's arrest. Finally, she agreed to
- 9:41give one interview with The Daily Mail. She shared that she believed time behind
- 9:46bars had changed Sean into someone she didn't recognize, but she also believed that
- 9:50he had spent his life using his charming nature to get what he wanted.
- 9:56Quote. Yes, he's good looking, she said, but the devil good
- 10:00looking too. That's ten Minute Murder for today brief and binge able true crime.
- 10:18I'm Joe, I'm the host, and I really appreciate you taking the
- 10:22time out of your day to listen to this episode. If you're brand new,
- 10:26I'm super excited that you're here. Hope you enjoyed the episode, and
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- 10:41pictures of what we talk about here on the podcast, and it's never gross
- 10:45or graphic stuff. Ratings and reviews help the show grow, so please do
- 10:48that. And finally, this is the first episode I'm doing in the month
- 10:52of November. Halloween just happened, and I need to ask a question,
- 10:58do we not do Halloween anymore? I bought a bucket of candy and was
- 11:03all ready for the trick or treaters. I don't We're not doing it anymore.
- 11:07I guess there were like three kids, and at one point I made
- 11:11the executive decision to just not get my hopes up anymore, turned off the
- 11:15porch light, and I enjoyed the kit Kats and Snickers bars myself. I
- 11:18don't know, maybe I'm missing something somewhere. There might have been a news
- 11:24release that it was happening on a different day and I just wasn't paying attention
- 11:26to it. But three tricker treaters for an entire bucket of candy that I
- 11:31had, and I do the good stuff too. I wanted to be the
- 11:33house that has the full size bars, the ones when like I was a
- 11:37kid, I'd go back and say, Hey, go to this house.
- 11:39They've got the full size stuff over there. They're not messing around. I
- 11:41wanted to be that house. But three trick or treaters. Anyway, that's
- 11:46your episode for today. Thank you so much for listening to ten minute Murder.