The Hand in the Window: The Survivor

Speaker 1 This is Deborah Roberts. I'm here with another weekly episode of our latest series from 2020 and ABC Audio, The Hand in the Window.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Hi, I'm Dylan, your friend and jeweler at Shane Company. As a customer service specialist, I love helping couples find their dream engagement ring.
And guess what?

Speaker 2 I just got engaged, so it was fun to create one myself. First, my fiancé tried on a bunch of ring styles and she was drawn to a classic diamond pave setting.

Speaker 2 Then we looked at different diamond shapes from pear to oval to cushion. She fell in love with a princess cut.

Speaker 2 At Shane Company, you can create a one-of-a-kind ring and get it in days, not weeks, because a friend wants you to have a magical holiday proposal. Shane Company, your friend and jeweler.

Speaker 3 Fall in Ashland, Ohio is former Detective Kim Major's favorite time of the year. The maple and oak leaves turn blazing orange and deep red, and the county fair comes to town.

Speaker 5 The whole community goes. The rides, the food, it's just a wonderful time for families.
It's a good time.

Speaker 3 The fair runs for a week every September. There's livestock shows, high school band parades, and funnel cake of plenty.

Speaker 3 As a child growing up in Ashland County, Major used to breed rabbits that were judged at the fair.

Speaker 3 And in September of 2016, as an Ashland police detective, Major was set to return to the fair, only this time alongside her colleagues, to staff a police information booth.

Speaker 5 So we were really happy about it. It lets people actually see us as human and come up and interact with us.
We give out little things to the kids.

Speaker 3 A few days before the fair, the logistics of the booth were weighing on Detective Major's mind right when she woke up. There was a lot to organize, but that was days away.

Speaker 3 On this morning, she had an 8 a.m. station shift, so she jumped in the shower.

Speaker 5 And I could hear my phone on the counter, and I got two phone calls, and then I could hear a text alert. So I'm like, okay, somebody's trying to reach me.

Speaker 3 Major ran through the usual mental list. Her husband, Dan, was at home.
So were her three kids. If it was an emergency, it wasn't about them.
Still, someone clearly wanted to reach her.

Speaker 5 So I stepped out of the shower, cut it short, went over to the counter, and I looked down, and I can see that it's my captain.

Speaker 3 Ashland's police captain, David Lay, call me, his text read, ASAP.

Speaker 5 And I called him back, and he said,

Speaker 5 well, he gruffed at me and said, two calls in a text. And I I said I was in the shower I'm on my way what is it and he said

Speaker 5 there's been a kidnapping we've rescued the woman I need you to come in and interview her

Speaker 3 it was September 13th 2016 the morning of Jane Doe's frantic 911 call

Speaker 3 Whatever had happened to this woman, the Ashland Police Department needed Kim Major to get to the bottom of it. Major was the only female detective in Ashland and a skilled interviewer.

Speaker 3 Detective Major didn't know it then, but this case would come to represent a defining moment in her career, one that would taint her love of fall.

Speaker 3 The fall colors and county fair would soon come to remind Detective Major of the year her town was turned upside down.

Speaker 3 From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm John Quinones,

Speaker 3 and this is The Hand in the Window,

Speaker 3 Episode 2,

Speaker 3 The Survivor.

Speaker 3 Depending on who you ask, the first county fair in Ashland was sometime around 1850. Back then, the fair was a place for farmers to show off their cattle and for young people to meet and dance.

Speaker 3 And while the county fair has remained pretty consistent, Ashland itself has survived multiple reinventions over the years.

Speaker 3 Like many small towns in the Midwest, Ashland has ridden a kind of boom and bust roller coaster.

Speaker 3 By the end of the 1800s, Ashland was perhaps best known for a water pump. the Myers pump.
It was made in town in a factory that employed hundreds.

Speaker 3 Farmland was swapped for factory buildings as more manufacturing moved in. The town population boomed to 20,000.
By the 1970s, Ashland was a production capital for all sorts of things.

Speaker 3 Balloons, golf balls, surgical equipment. But it didn't last.
Ashland is right in the center of the rust belt.

Speaker 3 And when manufacturing declined, the population didn't grow bigger, but factory jobs became fewer. Production moved elsewhere, and squatters took over what were once busy factory floors.

Speaker 3 Twenty years ago, the red brick pump factory was sold off to a local Christian charity. The charity now owned a large patch of downtown Ashland, including some vacant land and two old houses.

Speaker 3 These houses, clad in yellow siding, were on 4th Street, right across the street from from a laundromat. Empty and abandoned, the houses sat decaying for years.

Speaker 3 Until one September day, a 911 call was made from inside one of those houses. It was the call that ultimately put the spotlight back on Ashland.

Speaker 3 I wanted to ask Kim Major about the aftermath of that call, the minutes and hours after Jane Doe was brought into the Ashland Police Department. What happens when you arrive at the station?

Speaker 5 When I arrive,

Speaker 5 the first thing I noticed is her appearance.

Speaker 3 Jane Doe, as she would later be called by the police and the press to keep her real name from the public, was sitting in an empty interview room.

Speaker 3 She was in her mid-30s, thin and wearing a tank top and shorts.

Speaker 3 Her appearance told the detective a story. She had been beaten with cuts and bruises all over her face and body.
Major knew she needed medical attention.

Speaker 3 Her brown hair was greasy, which told the detective that she hadn't showered in several days. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and her face was streaked with tears.

Speaker 5 The second thing I noticed was

Speaker 6 the scent of

Speaker 5 not her, but I could smell the scent of her perpetrator. It's testosterone.

Speaker 5 I work sex offenses. I could smell him on her, his sweat.

Speaker 3 You could smell him.

Speaker 5 I could.

Speaker 3 Early in her career, Major worked for Ashland County in the Children and Families Department. For three years, she investigated horrific abuse cases.
Then she joined the Ashland Police Department.

Speaker 3 That was more than 20 years ago. Since then, Major has been assigned to many of Ashland's sexual assault cases, adults and children.
She had become the go-to for cases like Jane Doe's.

Speaker 3 She'd even been drafted by neighboring counties to help them with their cases. And after meeting Kim Major, I can see why.
Out of uniform, she doesn't look like a typical police officer.

Speaker 3 With long hair and flowy clothes, she could be a high school art teacher. She's soft-spoken, gentle, no sharp corners.
Her soft approach was at once empathetic and disarming.

Speaker 3 It made her good at what she did.

Speaker 3 When it came to Jane Doe, Detective Major immediately had a plan. First, they would need to relocate to a more comfortable space.

Speaker 3 She got Jane to follow her out of the interview room and down the hall.

Speaker 5 My office is where I conduct a lot of victim interviews. I have my just my personal space set up to be conducive for those interviews.

Speaker 3 Why is that important?

Speaker 5 Because sometimes I'm trying to talk to somebody about the most intimate, difficult, heinous thing in their entire life. And I try to create an environment so that I can peel away that onion.

Speaker 5 Just get him to talk to me.

Speaker 3 In Major's office, there were tangible objects lying around in different shapes and textures, like a fidget spinner and a heart-shaped ornament.

Speaker 3 Major knew that when people kept their hands busy, it was easier for them to say what was going on inside their heads. Major offered Jane Doe a seat and settled in across from her.

Speaker 3 Up close, Major noticed more injuries on Jane, scratches, some beginning to fade, some raw and new.

Speaker 3 The man Jane said had kidnapped and assaulted her was also being brought to the station. He would be questioned next.

Speaker 3 Jane's account of what she said he had done to her would determine the potential charges that could be brought against him.

Speaker 3 What did you learn about Jane?

Speaker 5 I learned that she eats her noon meal at what we call the Kroc Center.

Speaker 3 There are 26 Kroc Centers scattered across the country. They're run by the Salvation Army and provide a mix of community services.

Speaker 3 In Ashland, they offer a free lunch to any county resident who wants one.

Speaker 3 It was there at the Kroc Center, Jane said, that she met a man named Sean Great.

Speaker 5 She explained that

Speaker 5 she would take walks with him, that they had played badminton outside.

Speaker 3 According to Jane Doe, in addition to playing badminton together that summer, she and Sean Grate went on hikes and played tennis.

Speaker 3 He'd walk her home from the Croc Center, and they'd sit on her front doorstep talking. Jane said that Gray also once took her on a long walk to a fort that he'd made in the woods far outside of town.

Speaker 3 He was good-looking and friendly. He had at one point expressed a romantic interest in Jane, but she had insisted that they stay platonic, just friends.

Speaker 3 She told Detective Major that she believed in saving herself for marriage.

Speaker 5 This is a woman who is so strong in her Christian faith that no man's phone number is in her phone. Not one.
No man crosses the threshold of her door.

Speaker 3 Jane's faith permeated every aspect of her life.

Speaker 5 She paints scenes from the Bible that are on her walls. She sings.
She sang the Bible, playing her guitar.

Speaker 5 She's so

Speaker 6 wholesome.

Speaker 5 She's so strong in what she believes in. It's incredible.

Speaker 3 Jane told Major that she had felt safe. with Sean Great.

Speaker 3 Major asked her how she'd ended up at the Yellow House. Jane described how, on Sunday, the 11th of September, Great had asked to see her.
He had some clothes to give her, he said.

Speaker 3 He asked her to come to his house, a building opposite the laundromat on Culvert Court in downtown Ashland.

Speaker 5 So she walked to the place where he was staying, and he told her, you know, can you come in? I want to give you these clothes.

Speaker 5 And she said it was against her better judgment to walk through the door because it's unlike her.

Speaker 5 But she did.

Speaker 3 The house had boarded up windows, so it was dark inside. When Jane entered the house, she noticed that it was messy, with clothing scattered around.

Speaker 3 There was a strange smell, which Sean said was the result of food he had forgotten to throw away. Jane said that Sean took her through a small kitchen to his bedroom.

Speaker 3 He sat down on his bed and invited her to join him and read scripture together, which they had done before.

Speaker 5 So she sat down to read the Bible.

Speaker 5 And as she's reading, he began to pace, and she could see that. And she asked him, like, what's wrong with you?

Speaker 5 And he kept pacing,

Speaker 5 and then he charged towards her.

Speaker 5 grabbed the Bible from her hands, ripped it from her hands, and she said something to the effect of, you took my Bible, like, what are you doing?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 he attacked her.

Speaker 5 And then what did he do to her?

Speaker 5 Sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 5 Her words were every way imaginable.

Speaker 3 Jane Doe told Detective Major that Sean had tied her to the bed frame and that he assaulted her repeatedly from Sunday until early Tuesday morning.

Speaker 3 She said he would come and go from the house, but he left her restrained so she couldn't escape.

Speaker 3 The entire time she was kidnapped, Jane said she didn't see Great fall asleep until early Tuesday morning.

Speaker 3 He was so exhausted that he slept deeply and didn't hear Jane wriggling free of her restraints, finding his phone, and calling 911.

Speaker 3 By the time Jane was rescued, she had been trapped in the yellow house for about 40 hours.

Speaker 3 One aspect of their interview that jumped out immediately to Detective Major was that, without prompting, Jane mentioned something

Speaker 3 interesting.

Speaker 3 A person who had recently gone missing in Ashland. And then Jane brings up Elizabeth Griffith.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 7 To protect your brand, all the content your company creates needs to be on-brand. Meet Adobe Express, the quick and easy app that empowers marketing, HR, and sales teams to make on-brand content.

Speaker 7 Now everyone can edit reports, resize ads, and translate text.

Speaker 7 Brand kits and locked templates make following design guidelines a breeze and generative AI that's safe for business, lets people create confidently, help your teams make pro-looking content.

Speaker 7 Learn more at adobe.com slash express.

Speaker 8 Some people think nature is like this, but actually, it's like this.

Speaker 8 Mother Nature is not all sunshine and rainbows. Nature can be hotter than a sauna and colder than an Arctic skinny dip.

Speaker 8 That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia, engineered for whatever.

Speaker 10 This episode is brought to you by Cars.com. On Cars.com, you can shop over 2 million cars.

Speaker 10 That means over 2 million new car possibilities, like making space for your growing family, becoming the type of person who takes spontaneous weekend camping trips, or upgrading your commute.

Speaker 10 Wherever life takes you next, or whoever you're looking to be, there's a car for that on cars.com. Visit cars.com to discover your next possibility.

Speaker 6 Hey, welcome into Walgreens. Hi there.

Speaker 5 All right, hon, I'll grab the gift wrap,

Speaker 5 cards, and, oh, those stuffed animals the girls want.

Speaker 11 Great, and I'll grab the string lights and some.

Speaker 12 How about I grab some cough drops? This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

Speaker 5 I'm fine, honey.

Speaker 11 Well, just in case, you know what they say. Tis the season.

Speaker 12 This is Help Staying Healthy Through the Holidays.

Speaker 4 Walgreens.

Speaker 13 With new gentler-scented Clorox disinfecting wipes, clean finally smells as good as it feels on everything from lamps to ceiling fans.

Speaker 3 Even on your kids' toy shark.

Speaker 3 Oh, ouch.

Speaker 13 Clorox disinfecting wipes now available in

Speaker 13 ooh, crisp lemon. Find it on Amazon.
Clorox clean feels good.

Speaker 14 Every story you love,

Speaker 9 every invention that moves you,

Speaker 9 every idea you wished was yours, all began as nothing.

Speaker 9 Just a blank page with a blinking cursor.

Speaker 3 Asking a simple question

Speaker 13 what do you see great ideas start on Mac

Speaker 3 find out more on apple.com slash Mac

Speaker 3 Elizabeth Griffith was a local 29 year old With her round face and close cropped blonde hair, she was recognized all over Ashland.

Speaker 5 Elizabeth was known in our town. She, I know where her apartment was.
I had had contact with her. I think we all had.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth was familiar to many of the police officers in Ashland. She often called the department with complaints about her neighbors.

Speaker 6 Yeah, she very much got the title Girl Who Cried Wolf because

Speaker 6 she would call them about anything and everything.

Speaker 3 This is Jessica Anderson, one of Elizabeth Griffith's friends. They had met at a drop-in center called LifeWorks, which offered mental health services in Ashland.
Jessica worked there.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth was a client.

Speaker 6 We couldn't understand it. Like, if she wasn't calling us at LifeWorks, she was calling the police department.

Speaker 6 If we didn't answer her question, she would call the police department and ask them the question. Like, I heard it's going to snow today.
Is there any chance that the roads will be closed?

Speaker 6 Don't know, Elizabeth. Just started snowing.

Speaker 3 LifeWorks, like the Croc Center, was another social support center for residents of Ashland.

Speaker 6 So if they were struggling with addictions or with mental health, we would address those issues and have a group about it and help them deal with it.

Speaker 6 You know, we didn't just single out one person and say, well, this person's going through this.

Speaker 3 Jessica says LifeWorks was also a place for people to pick up skills and build community.

Speaker 6 We would have cooking classes. We would have art classes.

Speaker 6 We had a dancing class one time.

Speaker 3 By 2016, Jessica had been involved in LifeWorks for years, working her way up from volunteer to assistant director. She had known Elizabeth Griffith for all that time.

Speaker 6 The first time I met Elizabeth was at Lifeworks, and

Speaker 6 she was coming down the hallway and I was coming opposite of her.

Speaker 6 And she was like, hey, you're new here. And I was like, yeah.

Speaker 6 And she was like, you want to be my friend? And I was like,

Speaker 6 sure,

Speaker 6 let's be friends.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth had a lot of friends, people she'd met at Lifeworks and at her church, where she was a regular and enthusiastic attendee.

Speaker 3 Though she was popular, Jessica said there were also difficult parts of Elizabeth's personality. Jessica said she could be confrontational.

Speaker 6 She had this thing about when she was at LifeWorks, if people were eating, she would sit beside them and stare at them until they would say something to her, and then she would ask them if she could have the rest of their food.

Speaker 6 And if you didn't give it to her, then she had a problem with you.

Speaker 3 According to court documents, Elizabeth suffered from mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, and mania. She didn't have a job and relied heavily on local services.

Speaker 3 She had a caseworker who helped her manage her budget, and she rented a small apartment in town.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth Griffith and Jane Doe shared some key similarities. First, they lived in the same apartment complex.
Second, they both had a strong connection to their faith.

Speaker 3 And third, they both regularly went for a midday meal at the Croc Center. Jane said they knew each other.

Speaker 3 In her interview, Jane Doe told Detective Major that she'd seen Elizabeth earlier that summer while Jane was spending time with her new friend, Sean Great.

Speaker 5 She said that one day while she was playing badminton with Sean Great, that Elizabeth Griffith walked up and was kind of pouring out her life story.

Speaker 5 And she said she told Elizabeth Griffith, You can't be telling everybody everything about you. You're going to make yourself a victim.

Speaker 3 She warned her not to talk to strangers, not to give up too much information.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 3 Hearing about that chance meeting earlier in the summer would not have meant much to Detective Major, were it not for one key detail.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth had since gone missing.

Speaker 3 No one had seen Elizabeth Griffith for four weeks. And just before she disappeared, she'd been telling people, including her friend Jessica from Lifeworks, that there was a new man in her life.

Speaker 6 She had come in a couple times and talked about this new guy that she had met.

Speaker 6 We didn't know his name or anything about him,

Speaker 6 just that they were talking and they had gone on a couple dates.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth told Jessica Anderson that this man wasn't her boyfriend yet. Elizabeth said she wanted him to be, but that he wasn't sure.

Speaker 6 We just thought she was talking more stories. We had no idea that it was an actual person, you know.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we, I mean, it was Elizabeth. We never,

Speaker 6 she would say stuff all the time and we would never believe her.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I mean, I guess we could, we should have taken her more serious.

Speaker 6 In late August 2016 Elizabeth's case manager called the LifeWorks office she often called for Elizabeth so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary and she had asked if we had seen Elizabeth lately and so we kept a daily member login and so I looked back and I was like well she hasn't been here in like a week we haven't seen her She was like, well, I haven't heard from her and we had a meeting and she missed it and she's not at home and I can't find her.

Speaker 3 The case manager, who usually spoke with Elizabeth a few times a week, was getting worried. The last time they talked, Elizabeth was, in the case manager's words, pretty excited about something.

Speaker 3 They planned to talk soon. Elizabeth was last seen near a supermarket on the outskirts of Ashland on the morning of August 16th.
By the time she was reported missing, it was September 7th.

Speaker 3 In a Facebook post on September 9th, Ashland police shared grainy security camera images. They showed Elizabeth wearing a bright pink t-shirt on the last day she was seen.

Speaker 5 She hadn't showed up to appointments. We didn't know if she had taken off or did she meet somebody online and leave.
The whole department was looking for her. Couldn't find her.

Speaker 3 Now, a week after Elizabeth Griffith was reported missing, Jane Doe brought her name up in Detective Kim Major's office. Major had a new thought.

Speaker 3 Clearly, Elizabeth and Jane had something else in common. They both knew Sean great.

Speaker 3 Detective Major wasn't sure yet how much weight to give this coincidence. After all, Ashland isn't exactly a big place.

Speaker 5 I mean, there's been time periods where I can roll down the road, and if I see someone I don't recognize, I do a double take.

Speaker 5 So I didn't find that odd at all that Jane Doe knew Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 Because this is the kind of town where everybody knows everybody, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, everybody knows everybody.

Speaker 3 Major asked Jane if she thought Sean had attacked others. Jane said she couldn't say for sure, but that Sean had mentioned other women going off on him.

Speaker 3 He had scratches on his face that he said were from fights with mental women. There was a lot she wanted to ask Jane, but Major had run out of time.

Speaker 3 She needed to keep the interview short and send Jane for treatment for her visible and invisible wounds. Whatever questions were left would have to be answered later.

Speaker 3 As Major sent Jane for medical treatment, she thought her role in the story was over.

Speaker 5 When I finished my interview with Jane Doe, I stood up. At that point, I was told my sole purpose was going to be to interview her.

Speaker 3 But while she had been talking to Jane Doe, Kim Major's captain had been questioning Sean Great, the man that Jane said had kidnapped her.

Speaker 3 And Great was not being as cooperative as they would have liked.

Speaker 5 And when I stepped out of my office, my captain said,

Speaker 5 listen, I need you to go in and talk to him about what Jane Doe told you because you know what she just said. We don't know what she said.

Speaker 5 Can you go in and see if you can nail down the facts regarding that, see if it parallels what he's saying happened? He told me that he was having a little difficulty with Sean Great,

Speaker 5 that he got upset or got angry. And he said, The last thing he said before I walked in was,

Speaker 5 And while you're in there, see if he knows anything about the missing girls.

Speaker 3 girls more than one

Speaker 3 captain lay wasn't talking about elizabeth or jane there was yet another missing woman in ashland and now captain lay was asking major to find out was sean great the missing link between all three

Speaker 5 this might be your moment

Speaker 5 to do the right thing to do the right thing sean the right thing the right is to tell us where she is.

Speaker 3 The Hand in the Window is a production of ABC Audio and 2020. Hosted by me, John Quinones.
Produced by Madeline Wood, Camille Peterson, Kiara Powell. Edited by Gianna Palmer.

Speaker 3 Our supervising producer is Susie Liu. Music and mixing by Evan Viola.

Speaker 3 Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnston, Michelle Margulis, Caitlin Schiffer, Rachel Walker, Annalisa Linder, Joseph Diaz, Jonathan Balfaser, Gail Deutsch, Gary Wynn, Stephanie McBee, Natalie Cardenas, and Samantha Wanderer.

Speaker 3 Josh Cohen is our Director of Podcast Programming.

Speaker 9 Audiences and top critics are celebrating. Rental Family is the perfect feel-good movie of the year.

Speaker 4 What do you need me for? We need a talking white guy.

Speaker 9 Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser delivers a masterful performance.

Speaker 2 This girl needs a father.

Speaker 6 I hate you.

Speaker 14 She hates me.

Speaker 8 It's we're being apparent.

Speaker 9 Yes. In this tender and funny film about the importance of connection.

Speaker 6 This is amazing.

Speaker 4 It's cool, but it's fake. Sometimes it's okay to pretend.

Speaker 9 Rental Family, only in theaters Friday. Ready to PG PG13.
May be inappropriate for children under 13.

Speaker 14 Coming to Disney Plus and Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.

Speaker 3 Jonas, brother, you got it.

Speaker 14 It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 14 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.

Speaker 9 If they can only make it home.

Speaker 3 What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No.

Speaker 12 We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 5 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 9 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right?

Speaker 14 A very Jonas Christmas movie, now streaming on Disney Plus and Mulu with a TVPGDL.