In “Murder in the Heartland: Last Shift at Pirate’s Cove,” Investigation Discovery tells the story of how 22-year-old college junior Emily Murray was brutally killed in Gambier, Ohio, in November 2000. Within a month of the teen going missing and being killed, the police caught the killer, but they were shocked to learn that she might not have been the only person killed. If you want to know more about the case, like who did it and where they are now, we’ve got you covered. Then, shall we get started?
How Did Emily Murray Die?
Emily Sarah Aberle Murray was born on February 19, 1980, in Sleepy Hollow, New York, to Thomas and Cynthia Murray. She lived most of her life in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where she went to school and did a lot of things, the most important of which were at Christ Episcopal Church and with the Diocese of Ohio’s Youth Ministry. Emily was a good student who had studied in Oxford, England, for a semester and travelled to Italy, New Zealand, and Japan.
Emily was in her third year at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in November 2000. Her family said she had a very kind heart and a joyful, caring spirit that made a difference in many people’s lives. She chose Philosophy as her major because she wanted to be an Episcopal Priest when she grew up. She worked as a server part-time at Pirate’s Cove, a restaurant that was about 100 yards from where she lived at Kenyon College. Luette Frost, who worked with her, said, “Emily was kind, excited, and cared about other people.”
So, it was surprising that she didn’t show up to a party on November 3 after she didn’t come home from working late at the restaurant. Her friends were worried because Emily didn’t leave a message about where she was, which was not like her. They also couldn’t find her Subaru Outback on campus or anywhere nearby. They told the police that she was missing, and they found her dead body in a caravan in a rural area near Ray, Ohio. Emily had been shot once in the head with a powerful gun, and that was all it took for her to die.
Who Killed Emily Murray?
Court records say that Emily Murray quit her job on November 2 and worked at Pirate’s Cove on her last night. Her college friends came to the restaurant to help her celebrate her last night at work. But they all left before she was done with her late-night job. The restaurant’s time cards showed that she left work at 3:07 am, and Nathan Justice, the barmaid at the Pirate’s Cove, was the last person to see her alive. He saw her looking for her keys before 3:30 am.
When Emily didn’t go back to her dorm that night or go to a party that night, her friends started to worry. They called her parents in New York and looked for her on campus and at her job. When they couldn’t find the person, they told Kenyon College Security. The security staff found her wallet in her dorm room. It had her driver’s licences from Ohio and New York, credit cards, and a bank card. According to court documents, her friends also talked to Emily’s coworkers, including Gregory “Greg” B. McKnight.
Since early October 2000, Greg had been working in the kitchen at the Pirate’s Cove restaurant. According to the show, he got along well with his coworkers and often rode with them home to Gambier after work. Greg was also looking out for Emily. He stopped David Kale, one of their coworkers, from hitting on her. But he became a person of interest in the case when police found out he had killed a man in Columbus, Ohio, with a gun before.
Greg was 15 years old when he did the crime in 1992. He was sent to the Circleville Youth Center for a short time. He got out of prison in 1997, and in 1998, he married Kathryn “Kathy” McKnight, who had worked at the Youth Center as a corrections officer. They lived in her mother’s house in Gambier until June 2000, when they bought a caravan in rural Ray, Ohio. According to court documents, Emily’s friend started to worry about Greg when he was very rude to them and wouldn’t tell them anything.
Greg said he left the restaurant at 2:59 a.m. on November 3, but no one who worked there remembered seeing him leave with Emily. Her friends said he laughed at them, and Nathan said Greg told him soon after Emily went missing that he thought she was “probably dead.” More than a month after Emily went missing, the police went to Greg’s trailer to serve him with an indictment that had nothing to do with Emily. Officers found an abandoned Subaru Outback near the trailer when he wasn’t there.
They ran the number plate number and found that it was Emily’s. The police used a search warrant to find blood stains on the carpet near the front door of the trailer. They followed the trail of blood down the hall and found Emily’s body in one of the bedrooms, wrapped in a rug. Investigators thoroughly searched the caravan and found five empty.357 shell casings in a drawer in the living room, seven 9-millimeter bullets in a drawer in the master bedroom, and a roll of bloodstained duct tape in the living room.
Where is Gregory McKnight Now?
The police also searched the property and found human bones, clothing, and a plastic bag in the cistern, the root cellar, and the bag. The person who did it tried, but failed, to burn the bodies and clothes. Greg Julious, who was 20 years old and from Chillicothe, Ohio, and was reported missing on May 12, 2000, was the person whose body parts were found. Greg Julious’s girlfriend, Dana Bostic, found some of the boxer shorts he was wearing when he went missing.
Greg and Kathy were charged with killing two people, but Kathy was let go because there wasn’t enough proof against her. Greg’s trial started on October 1, 2002, and he was found guilty of murder, aggravated murder, kidnapping, aggravated robbery, receiving stolen property, and conspiracy. He got the death penalty for aggravated murder, life in prison for murder, 10 years for kidnapping, 8 years for helping someone else do something wrong, and 1 1/2 years for getting something that was stolen. At the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, the 46-year-old man is still on death row.
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