Body of SC woman missing for 13 years found in sandpit. Suspect to be charged, mayor says

The last time her neighbors saw Adriana Laster it was 2011 and she walking to church on Kelly Street in Elgin, South Carolina. Then she vanished without a trace.

For more than a decade, authorities believed the man she lived with was behind the disappearance of the 28-year-old mother. But without a body, the case went nowhere.

Now, authorities say that they have used DNA to positively identify remains found in a Richland County sand mine as belonging to Laster.

“This is about closure to the family, to finally know where she is and what happened,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said. “This is a case about justice.”

Lott and Richland County Coroner Naida Rutherford announced the discovery of Laster’s remains at a news conference Friday.

Grant has not yet been charged in Laster’s disappearance and death, but Elgin Mayor Melissa Emmons said her town’s police department plans to charge him with her killing. The department has had warrants prepared for Grant for more than two years.

On Friday afternoon, a missing person poster for Laster that has hung in the lobby of the Elgin Town Hall was finally taken down.

Lott said he was “very confident” that Grant, who was the prime suspect in Laster’s disappearance from the start, was involved.

The sheriff also said he believed Grant was also responsible for another death, however he declined to provide specifics. “We’re not going to stop until we find every victim that Freddie Grant had,” Lott said.

Laster, originally from Florida, was living with Grant in his home at the time of her disappearance on Labor Day weekend 2011. Grant was believed to be the last person to see her alive.

In 2013, Grant admitted to abducting and murdering 15-year-old Gabrielle “Gabiee” Swainson. As part of a plea deal, Grant directed authorities to Swainson’s body in a patch of woods near where he lived in Elgin. Following the discovery of Swainson’s body 357 days after she was abducted, there was a glimmer of hope that Laster might also be found. But the search turned up no leads.

For over a decade, investigators with the Elgin Police Department continued to work the case. A vigil for Laster was held in 2022 and there were flyers all over the town, Emmon said. But there were no breaks in the case until a week ago, on Jan. 12, when her body was finally discovered after a quarry employee dumped a load of sand out from the bucket of an excavator and saw human remains. The land where Laster was buried has been owned by Tri-D Materials since 2018.

The body was buried near Grant’s home and in the same area where authorities found Swainson. There were similarities in both the burial site and the method of the disposal, Lott said.

The identification of the fragmentary skeletal remains was made by DNA at the Richland County Sheriff’ Department’s crime lab.

Since the discovery, teams from the Richland County Coroner’s Office, assisted by the Kershaw and Richland sheriff’s departments, the Elgin Police Department, the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology and the Department of Natural Resources have been painstakingly searching the quarry for more of her remains.

Working through cold weather and storms that swept the Midlands, they have been working to unearth more remains, using everything from excavators and conveyor belts to toiling with hand trowels, Rutherford, the coroner, said.

Laster’s remains were damaged and dispersed by the heavy machinery operating in the quarry, Rutherford said. So far, authorities have not been able to determine a cause of death and have no evidence that Grant dismembered her body.

“That requires a complete set of human remains and we just don’t have that currently,” Rutherford said. But before she asked for a moment of silence for Laster, the coroner pledged that the work to find more remains would go on.

On Thursday, Grant was transferred from a medium security prison to Lieber Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison run by the South Carolina Department of Corrections. Grant was interviewed by law enforcement investigators following the discovery of Laster’s remains, but as he had for the last decade, he said that he didn’t know anything, Lott said.

Laster is survived by a daughter, Crystal Laster, who lives in Florida. Laster’s family was notified by the case’s longtime investigator, who happened to be in Florida visiting family of her own when the remains were identified, Emmons said.

Grant had an extensive criminal record dating back at least 25 years. He was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a weapon following Swainson’s disappearance. He was sentenced to 30 years in state prison for Swainson’s murder following his 2013 plea deal.

Asked if he would support the death penalty in this case, Lott said, “I’d love to see him dead... he’s a monster.” But in reflecting on Grant’s previous plea deal, added, “maybe that’s a good enough punishment for him, to sit in a jail cell for the rest of his life.”

Gabbiee Swainson

The discovery of Laster’s remains brought up some very bad memories, Lott said. Grant was a “monster that continues to haunt this community.”

Grant was already suspected in Laster’s disappearance when he was arrested and charged with kidnapping and murdering Swainson. Grant abducted Swainson, who was watching TV in her pajamas, from mother’s home in northeast Columbia near the Village at Sandhill mall on Aug. 12, 2012. Her mother returned home to find no sign of her daughter except for a bloodstain on her bed.

It was something out of a nightmare, Lott said at the time.

The disappearance of the junior varsity cheerleader, who earned good grades, mentored other students and played guitar and sang at her church, soon gained national attention.

Investigators were puzzled when they found no evidence of forced entry at the home, but suspicion soon fell on Grant, who was acquainted with Swainson’s mother, Elvia, had performed some work on the Swainson’s home and had an extensive criminal record. Swainson’s cellphone was tracked to Grant’s home. Inside, they found a key to the Swainson house on a lanyard, which he had previously told the Swainsons he had lost. Blood was also found on a scrap of duct tape near his house.

Grant was a “very bold” person and even once ran for city council, Emmons said. While neighbors described him as a church-goer, his criminal history includes aggravated assault, battery, criminal domestic violence, multiple charges for cocaine and weapons violations in Florida and South Carolina. Grant ran a lawn care company and also worked as a trucker, neighbors told The State at the time.

Grant initially denied knowing anything about Swainson’s disappearance. But in 2013, law enforcement officers found Swainson’s mobile phone near a Myrtle Beach Piggly Wiggly. Cell tower records showed a phone belonging to Grant’s daughter, Dominique Grant, in the area.

She was arrested and charged with being an accessory after the fact to a felony. Almost a year after Swainson disappeared, Grant cut a deal with authorities. In exchange for charges being dropped against his daughter and a 30-year sentence for him, Grant agreed to plead guilty and led investigators to the burial site.

More than 2,000 people turned out for Swainson’s funeral.

“We had to make a deal with a monster, and we did,” Lott said.