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John Quinones
As a 911 dispatcher for more than two decades, Sarah Miller has made a career out of staying calm under pressure.
Sarah Miller
I've worked three different locations.
John Quinones
Do you like it?
Sarah Miller
Yeah. I was made to be a dispatcher.
John Quinones
Sarah says she's good at multitasking, which she says is a requirement for the job.
Sarah Miller
We usually have six to eight screens, depending on what center you're at.
John Quinones
When Sarah starts a shift, she logs into all those computers and then she waits.
Sarah Miller
You never know when the call will come in or what kind of call it's going to be.
John Quinones
In September 2016, Sarah was working the overnight shift in Ashland, Ohio, a rural town about 60 miles southwest of Cleveland. Just before 7am the sun was rising over Ashland's cornfields, marshes, and woods. Sarah was about to clock out when one more call came in.
Commercial Announcer
9, 1, 1.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
What is the address to your emergency?
Sarah Miller
At first, I couldn't hear. It was real quiet. She was whispering.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
What is it? Fourth. Fourth Street Laundromat.
John Quinones
The fourth Street Laundromat. There were just five laundromats in Ashland. The one on fourth street was near the center of town, a few blocks from Ashland's main street with its brewery, restaurants, bank, and dairy Queen. Police identify the caller as Jane Doe. To protect her privacy, she said she'd been abducted and that the man holding her captive was sleeping nearby.
Sarah Miller
My reaction was to find out where she was at first to get her out of there.
John Quinones
Jane Doe said she was in a house by the fourth Street Laundromat.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
You don't know what color the house is? No. Please hurry. And you think it's a yellow house? I think so. Does he own the house? No. He broke in. Does anybody actually live there? I think you've been abandoned.
John Quinones
A yellow abandoned house by the laundromat. Sarah Miller told another dispatcher to send police officers to the area. The precinct was about five minutes away by car. Sarah knew if those officers were going to find Jane Doe quickly, they needed to get more information.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Does he have a weapon? He's got a taser.
John Quinones
He's got a taser. Sarah could hear that the caller's breathing was getting heavier and heavier. She was clearly afraid, but Sarah knew that she could not panic.
Sarah Miller
Good dispatchers train not to react to emotions. You have to stay calm.
John Quinones
You have to remain calm.
Sarah Miller
Yes, you have to stay, stay calm and think straight.
John Quinones
Sarah had been trained to handle all calls the same way, but this call was anything but routine. In fact, it would become the first step in an investigation that would reveal sinister and shocking crimes from ABC Audio in 2020. I'm John Quinones and this is the Hand in the window. Episode 1 Covert Court Dispatcher Sarah Miller needed to keep Jane Doe on the line. You had a lot of questions right away.
Sarah Miller
I have to get information for the officers. If he was to wake up, kill her and escape, I wouldn't know what his name is, what he looked like, anything. I knew he was sleeping, so I asked her more questions, trying to get as much as I could before he woke up.
John Quinones
Sarah asked, what does the kidnapper look like? Jane Doe said, he was white, about 6ft tall and around 175 pounds with brown hair. Sarah tried to learn more about Jane Doe's circumstances. What was the layout of the house? The where was she within it? Jane Doe told Sarah that she and her kidnapper had entered the house through a side door which opened into the kitchen. She was calling from a bedroom on the first floor. Sarah asked, is there any way you can escape?
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
I don't know without waking him and I'm scared.
John Quinones
Jane Doe was worried about waking her kidnapper. He'd put a chair against the bedroom door so that it would make noise if the door were opened. Sarah asked, was there a bathroom in the house? Could that be a way to escape?
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
If he told me to go to the bathroom, he would do something to you? Yeah, because he had me tied up. Are you tied up now? Well, I. Yeah, but I kind of freed myself. Is he in the same room with you? Yes. Is it his phone you have?
John Quinones
Yes. She was in the same room as the kidnapper? Yes. She was calling on his phone. Jane Doe took a deep, pained breath and asked, are they on the way?
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
We have officers returning. Please send. Enough. If you're worried you don't have to talk. You can just set the phone down. Okay. I just need to hear if the officer is finding or not.
John Quinones
Jane Doe whispered, okay. At this point, she'd been on the line with 911 for six minutes.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Do you need an ambulance? Are you bleeding from anywhere? How are you bleeding from. You don't have to talk if you don't need to.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
Okay.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Welcome up. Shut the phone down.
Sarah Miller
When you have a high stress situation and you think someone's in danger if they set the phone down, I can still hear what's going on. I can still tell the officers what I can hear. And that puts her in less danger than if he catches her with the phone.
John Quinones
But you didn't want her to hang up?
Sarah Miller
No, no, because then I might not have got her back Because I can't call his phone back or he'd have woke up.
John Quinones
And then the line goes silent for what seems like. Must have seemed like, yes, forever. Almost four minutes passed without Sarah hearing anything from the caller.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Are you still there?
John Quinones
No response. Another minute passed.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Are you still there? How much longer? What?
John Quinones
12 minutes into the call. Fearing for her life, Jane Doe desperately wanted to know how much longer her kidnapper had been shifting in his sleep, starting to stir. Jane Doe would later say that her kidnapper had alarms going off on his phone every five minutes to keep him awake. Jane Doe had gotten to his phone, turned the volume all the way down, and that's when he finally dozed off.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Are there any officers outside? Okay, they're in the area.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
The Ashland police division is a smaller police division. We have about 32 officers, 33 if you count the chief.
John Quinones
Kurt dorsey was one of the officers who was dispatched to help Jane Doe. He had just started his shift to that morning.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
We were actually sitting in roll call when the call came out. So we immediately get up and go to our cars and start to drive towards the area of the call.
John Quinones
At that point, Officer Dorsey had been on the force for about eight years. Initially, he wasn't even convinced the call was real.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
This wasn't a call that we typically got in Ashland.
John Quinones
I've covered countless stories for 2020, but this case, it really struck a chord with me because it happened not far from where, as a teenager, I once picked tomatoes with my family as a migrant farm worker. Who would have thought way back then that this kid who only dreamed of someday becoming a journalist, would one day be back here to report on such a shocking crime? Ashland is a town of less than 20,000 people. It's best known for farming, the local Christian university, an annual hot air balloon festival, and a popular county fair. On Friday nights, people gather to watch high school football games under the bright lights. Ashland is also a deeply religious place. The town itself has dozens of churches, and it's surrounded by amish country. One police officer told us that Ashland is the kind of place where police have time to respond to small complaints and nuisances like a bat flying around in someone's house. That September morning in 2016, as officers drove to find Jane Doe, they kept their sirens off. They didn't want to risk waking up her kidnapper.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
When we got out of the cars, we didn't really have a game plan.
John Quinones
The laundromat Jane Doe mentioned was at the Corner of East 4th street and Covert court. When officers arrived there, they discovered two nearly identical houses right next to each other. Both houses were two stories with pale yellow siding, green window frames, and front porches.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
When the call came in, I was pretty calm at first, but when we got to the set of houses, I started to get kind of nervous and a little bit afraid, actually. There was really no time to formulate any kind of plan. We just started looking.
John Quinones
Officers didn't know which house to target. Jane Doe's description of a yellow abandoned house didn't narrow things down. Both houses fit that description.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
I began to look through windows and.
John Quinones
See if we can see anything inside. The houses seemed empty, so there wasn't.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
Much by looking through the windows that told us anything.
John Quinones
While officers scoped out the two houses, Sarah Miller was still on the line with Jane Doe. She asked again if there was any. Any way for Jane to escape. Jane Doe said she was standing right by the bedroom door.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Can you open it? I'm afraid without making noise.
John Quinones
She was afraid of making noise.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
You can get out. You need to get out.
John Quinones
Jane Doe said her kidnapper was strong. The officers needed to be right there to help her escape. And as far as she could see and hear from inside the bedroom, they weren't. Officer Dorsey started pulling on the doors to both houses to see if any of them would open, but no such luck.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
All the doors were locked in both houses.
John Quinones
If the officers decided to just barge into one of the houses, they could wake up the kidnapper and put the caller's life at risk. But then Sarah Miller heard this from Jane Doe.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
She heard the side door open.
John Quinones
Jane Doe took a big risk. She pushed the chair blocking the bedroom door out of the way and rushed to the side door of the house. Big curtains blocked the bedroom windows, but there was also a window in the side door.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Yeah, I'm looking out at the town. I'll come back. She said, hurry, hurry. She said to hurry up and come back.
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Officer Kurt Dorsey
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Jane Doe / 911 Caller
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Jane Doe / 911 Caller
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Jane Doe / 911 Caller
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Sarah Miller
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Commercial Announcer
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Jane Doe / 911 Caller
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John Quinones
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Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Let's light him on fire.
John Quinones
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John Quinones
God, I love my job.
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Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Mom talk started as a sisterhood and.
Sarah Miller
That'S gone to flames.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
New secrets and lies are coming out.
John Quinones
This is going to be catastrophic.
Commercial Announcer
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John Quinones
Girls are just putting us through hell. They make everything about themselves.
Sarah Miller
I can't.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Hopefully this doesn't end in a bloodbath.
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John Quinones
Officer Kurt Dorsey was told that Jane Doe had heard him at the side door, that she wanted him to hurry, hurry and come back. Now he knew that this call, as strange as it seemed for Ashland, was real. There was a kidnapped woman fearing for her life inside one of the two houses. Reflecting on that day still makes Dorsey emotional.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
This is like the third time I've talked about it. I was at the second house and I remembered that I had pulled on a door hard and it made a noise that I didn't intend because we're trying to be stealthy, but it sort of slipped out of my hand. So I ran around the house that we were currently at and looked towards the direction of the other house and I saw her hand.
John Quinones
Her hand. Jane Doe had put her hand up against the window of the side door. They knew finally where she was. 911 dispatcher Sarah Miller had been getting updates from the officers on the ground. What a relief. They're there, but it's not over yet. Right. They can't seem to get into.
Sarah Miller
Yeah, he's not awake yet, so they haven't got to him yet. And who knows what kind of weapons he has hidden in the house or so it brings.
John Quinones
You still tear up when you hear this. Tell me why.
Sarah Miller
It just a lot to deal with unhearing things that you've heard.
John Quinones
Once they saw Jane Doe's hand, the officers had to figure out how to get to her without putting her in danger.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
So once I got to the door, it was locked. And we're still trying to be quiet because we were told that he was sleeping.
John Quinones
Officer Dorsey asked dispatcher Sarah Miller to tell Jane Doe to unlock the side door. Sarah and Jane Doe had gone back and forth throughout the whole call. Sarah urging her to escape if she could. Jane Doe saying it was too dangerous Jane Doe had already gotten out of the bedroom. Now she was ready to take another risk as officers stood behind the locked door.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
Once I heard the door unlock, I opened it and she stood there in the doorway fully nude and just looked like she had seen a ghost. The shock on her face was unreal. I'll never forget it. I don't think I've ever felt.
John Quinones
So.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
Much relief to find her.
John Quinones
Jane Doe was frozen in place. The officers gave her a blanket to cover herself and instructed her to leave the house and finally get to safety. 19 minutes into the 911 call, Jane Doe was rescued.
Jane Doe / 911 Caller
Okay, they have her.
John Quinones
Sarah, you helped save that woman's life.
Sarah Miller
She saved herself. I was just doing my job.
John Quinones
Sarah Miller ended up winning Ohio Dispatcher of the Year for her work on this call. The stress of the call and the huge relief she felt when Jane Doe was rescued. It sticks with Sarah. Even after the decades of 911 calls she's handled.
Sarah Miller
The best reward was her getting free. And he's alive and well.
John Quinones
Do you get therapy after something like this?
Sarah Miller
I got God. That's all I need.
John Quinones
God?
Sarah Miller
Yep.
John Quinones
Your faith?
Sarah Miller
Yep.
John Quinones
What is it?
Officer Kurt Dorsey
Teaching.
Sarah Miller
Teaches me to let go.
John Quinones
Do you think God would be proud of you?
Sarah Miller
I hope so. I'll ask him someday.
John Quinones
Officer Kurt Dorsey is also religious. Jane Doe would later say that she sensed a Christian would be sent to rescue her. And her rescue did seem miraculous to Officer Dorsey. So much had to go right for her to make it out alive.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
When I look back at that morning, I think something told me to look at that window. There were two other guys there. They don't recall seeing the hand, and I saw it. I think that a combination of maybe some divine intervention and a good dispatcher led us to. To that house and ultimately that door.
John Quinones
Once Jane Doe was out of the house, officers could turn their attention to the kidnapper. They went back inside the house, weapons drawn, and began moving toward the bedroom.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
I remember when I first. When I first went into the house, it was sort of a mess. Although it was vacant, it looked like it was being lived in. There was a bed, clothing, and things like that inside.
John Quinones
The house was so dirty that you could see footprints in the layers of the dust on the stairs. Random items like a shopping cart, a clock, and stuffed animals were scattered around. Officer Dorsey went through the kitchen and then turned back into the bedroom.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
And that's where we found the male lying in the bed. And I gave him orders to show his hands, and we ultimately arrested him. At that point, he was handcuffed and he was nude. So I actually assisted him in putting some shorts on at that point. Point. We walked out to one of the patrol cars.
John Quinones
Two of the officers searched the rest of the house, but Officer Dorsey stayed back and waited with the kidnapper. He was tall, with dirty blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Officer Dorsey started to question the kidnapper.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
So you remember I read you Miranda. You understand all that, your Miranda rights and all that. Okay.
John Quinones
Dorsey eased into things. He didn't zero in on Jane Doe's abduction right away.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
So obviously, again, you know, I already told you, you know, you can't crash in an abandoned house. I mean, that's. No, it's just one of those things. I understand that you're homeless. You need a place to crash. It is what it is. But you still can't do it.
John Quinones
The kidnapper spoke quietly and gave brief responses, just a few words at a time. He said he'd been living in the house for about a month without being noticed. Then Officer Dorsey started asking the kidnapper about Jane Doe.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
What happened? That's why we're here, man. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Something obviously went on and we're trying to figure out what in the hell is going on right now.
John Quinones
Yeah, I understand. Again, the kidnapper was responding, but not with any real information.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
Probably. Okay. How did it get out of hand? What do you mean?
Sarah Miller
I don't know.
John Quinones
The other officers came out of the house. That's when Officer Dorsey got a message over the police radio. Bring the kidnapper to the police station.
Officer Kurt Dorsey
I'm going to take you on station and I think they want to talk to you a little bit more.
John Quinones
The kidnapper was still shirtless and only dressed in the shorts that officers had given him. Officer Dorsey put him in a police car and drove him to the station. At the police station, investigators had already begun talking to Jane Doe to get details on what she had been through. When the kidnapper arrived, he would be placed in a room down the hall from her. Who was this man living in an abandoned house who had kidnapped and assaulted Jane Doe? And had he done something like this or worse before? 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 Our supervising producer is Susie Lu. Music and mixing by Evan Viola Special thanks to Katie Dendos Janice Johnston Michelle Margulis Caitlin Schiffer Rachel Walker Annalisa Linder Joseph Diaz Jonathan Balthaser Gail Deutch Gary Wynn, Stephanie McBee, Natalie Cardenas and Samantha Wanderer. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming.
Commercial Announcer
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Sarah Miller
Jeff Bridges why are you still living above our garage?
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Sarah Miller
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John Quinones
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Officer Kurt Dorsey
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Sarah Miller
Jeffrey, you heard them.
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John Quinones
Dude, my work here is done.
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Podcast: The Hand in the Window
Host: John Quinones (ABC News)
Date: November 4, 2025
Theme: The harrowing rescue of a kidnapped woman in rural Ohio, and the initial discovery that links her abductor, Shawn Grate, to a string of disappearances.
This riveting episode details the astonishing 911 rescue of a woman (referred to as Jane Doe) who risked her life to call emergency services while her captor slept nearby. Through first-hand accounts, listeners are taken moment by moment through the dispatcher's calm management, the officers’ unfolding realization, and the eventual capture of a man who would soon be suspected as a serial killer. The story explores heroism, community, faith, and the chilling aftermath as police begin to suspect the full extent of the crimes committed.
| Timestamp | Segment/Content | |------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 00:03 | Introduction to Sarah Miller and the dispatcher role | | 01:10 | Start of Jane Doe’s 911 call | | 04:06 | Sarah Miller's strategy during high-stakes calls | | 09:13 | Officer Dorsey’s first-person account as police respond| | 12:15 | Officers try to identify and locate the correct house | | 16:46 | Jane Doe signals with her hand through the window | | 18:25 | The moment Jane Doe is rescued | | 19:36 | Sarah Miller reflects on the experience and reward | | 20:03 | Discussion of faith and coping after trauma | | 21:49 | Police secure the house, arrest the suspect | | 23:50 | Officer Dorsey interviews the kidnapper |
This episode is a tense, empathetic deep-dive into a singular act of bravery, the composed professionalism of emergency responders, and the chilling beginnings of a larger criminal case. Perfect for true crime listeners intrigued by the intersection of human courage and investigative suspense.