COLUMBIA, S.C., Aug. 9 (UPI) -- The man who led South Carolina police to the body of missing teenager Gabrielle Swainson was formally charged Friday with her murder.
The teen, known as Gabbiee, had been missing for almost a year when Freddie Grant, brought from a federal prison in Kentucky, pointed to the spot where he buried her 5 feet deep in a wooded area in Elgin, S.C., The State reported. The body was found late Thursday.
"The monster Freddie Grant took us to a location in Elgin where he buried Gabbiee," Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said. "This has been 357 days of terror that Gabbiee's mother and family have endured and that this community has endured. This is not the way we would have liked to end it."
Lott said Grant only agreed to cooperate after his daughter, Dominique, was charged as an accessory to kidnapping. She was seen in the area in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where Gabbiee's cell phone was found.
Charges against the daughter have been dropped, police said. Her father is already serving a federal sentence on an ammunition charge.
Grant is also a suspect in the disappearance of Adrianna Laster, 28, a Florida woman who had been living with him in Elgin, investigators say. Police now plan to search the woods for her grave.
Gabbiee, an honor student in a magnet science program, lived with her mother in Richland County. She was buried just across the county line in Kershaw County, about a quarter-mile from Grant's home.
