Philadelphia Inquirer
Friday, April 26, 2002

Ex-friend relives life with Graves

By Linda K. Harris, Leonard N. Fleming and Thomas Ginsberg,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

AP -- Troy Graves, 29, in a Fort Collins (Colo.) Police Department photograph.

A clearer picture of accused Center City rapist Troy Graves emerged yesterday. It was a jarring portrait.

A former live-in girlfriend told of his habit of taking long walks alone after midnight. His father-in-law talked about how Graves kept his alleged double life from his new wife. And his brother, like his mother before him, apologized to the parents of slain student Shannon Schieber.

The girlfriend, Cheri Ward, 28, said Graves would leave their home to go up on the roof of their apartment building on Pine Street in Center City.

"I thought that was odd. I thought he was peeping or something," she said during an interview last night.

On another occasion, Graves was caught spying on the couple's roommate while the woman was taking a shower.

At first, Ward said, Graves denied that he had been peeping. Later, Graves came into their bedroom and said: "I did something bad."

Ward said the couple, who lived together in the early '90s, then split, and Graves went to live with his mother in South Carolina.

After the flyers with police sketches of the Center City rapist began appearing around Rittenhouse Square and other downtown neighborhoods, Ward said she began to suspect that her former boyfriend may have been the man responsible for six sexual assaults and one murder during a two-year spree.

She even went so far as to discuss her suspicions with her friends. They told her, she said, "it couldn't be him" and "Troy isn't like that."

In the end, Ward never went to the police because she also had doubts, she said.

Earlier this week, after police had arrested Graves in Fort Collins, Colo., and authorities had positively linked the onetime Center City resident to the rapist, Ward said a friend called her and - before telling her - asked her if she was sitting down.

"I said, 'It's Troy, isn't it?' "

She said she was mad at herself for failing to act on her suspicions.

Also convinced that Graves is responsible for Schieber's strangulation is the 29-year-old suspect's only brother, Marc Graves, 36, of Bristol.

Just as their mother did earlier this week, Marc Graves expressed his condolences and apologies to the rape victims and to the Schieber family.

"On behalf of my family, my sincerest apologies to Shannon's family, and all the victims that are nameless because of the circumstances," Marc Graves said yesterday.

Schieber was killed inside her Center City apartment on May 7, 1998.

Graves, a onetime Center City resident now in the Air Force, was arrested early Tuesday morning in connection with a string of rapes in Fort Collins, Colo. The following day, after it was learned that the DNA collected from the Fort Collins rapes matched that left behind by the Center City rapist, authorities said Graves would be charged with the assaults of five women between 1997 and 1999, and with Schieber's slaying.

Schieber's father, Sylvester, was told yesterday of Marc Graves' message.

"We have no vindictive hatred toward them. Our attitude right now, given everything that has happened, is that I would much rather be in our position than theirs," he said. "The thought of finding out your child had killed someone, I don't know how you would deal with that."

In March of last year, while he was stationed at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., Graves married Amy Wade, a video producer in Fort Collins.

Her father, Glen D. Wade, said yesterday that his daughter was in seclusion at the recommendation of Fort Collins police.

Wade, of Lake Mary, Fla., said he learned about the marriage only this week, along with the news of his son-in-law's arrest.

The charges lodged against Graves have been a "total, total, devastating revelation" to his daughter, Wade said.

"She had absolutely no inkling, not one inkling of a clue. And that's what's making it so hard. She hasn't gone through an evolution of absorbing it in a few days," Wade said. "It all hit immediately."

Wade said that his daughter, an amateur pianist who will turn 26 in June, had explained that the couple needed to get married for financial reasons, and she was planning to include her parents in a full wedding ceremony later. He said he did not know how or when the couple met.

Late Monday night, his daughter accompanied her husband to the Fort Collins Police Department after officers called and asked him to come in for questioning.

"Then they were separated, and everything started happening," Wade said. "She was with the police most of the night. They were interrogating her most of the night."

Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, said that once Colorado officials receive an arrest warrant naming Graves, he will be charged in that state as a fugitive from justice.

Philadelphia prosecutors will then ask Gov. Schweiker's office to issue a governor's warrant and send it to Colorado Gov. Bill Owens.