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Gregory McKnight Sentenced to Death for Murdering Kenyon College Student Emily Murray

The judge also gave him 15 years to life for killing Gregory Julious, whose remains were found on the same rural Vinton County property as Murray's body.

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Illustration of a brick county courthouse on a quiet street in the hills of rural Appalachian Ohio. Not an actual scene from the case.

Emily Murray's parents asked that no one be put to death in her name. On October 25, 2002, an Ohio judge sentenced the man who killed her, Gregory McKnight, to death.

Vinton County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey L. Simmons imposed the sentence in McArthur, following the recommendation of a jury of eight women and four men. McKnight, 25, received the maximum on every charge: death for the aggravated murder of Murray, 15 years to life for the murder of Gregory Julious, and consecutive terms for kidnapping Murray and for stealing her car. The jury had found him guilty on October 10. Before the sentencing, Murray's parents said in a statement that "Emily would regard it as a tragedy and an abomination if another human being were put to death in her name."

Julious disappeared first. On May 12, 2000, he was at the Chillicothe home he shared with his girlfriend with McKnight; within the hour both men were gone, and she never saw Julious again. Murray, a 20-year-old junior at Kenyon College in Gambier, disappeared on November 3, 2000, after finishing her last shift as a waitress at the Pirate's Cove restaurant, where McKnight worked in the kitchen.

On December 9, 2000, Vinton County deputies went to McKnight's trailer to serve an unrelated indictment and found Murray's car parked behind it. Inside, they found her body wrapped in a carpet in a spare bedroom. Searchers on the property then found skeletal remains, which a forensic dentist identified as Julious's. Both had been shot. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld McKnight's convictions and death sentence in 2005.

Kenyon College reported that the judge delivered the sentence on October 25, 2002, while Ohio prison records list its effective date as October 30.

Sources