Helle Crafts
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Helle Crafts (July 4, 1947 - November 19, 1986) was a flight attendant who is famous for her brutal death at the hands of her husband, Richard Crafts. Her murder is sometimes called the "Woodchipper Murder" because of the method in which Richard Crafts disposed of her body. Her death brought about the first murder conviction in the state of Connecticut in which a body was never found.[citation needed]
Before her murder, Helle Crafts had known about her husband's affairs with other women and had begun divorce proceedings against him. The night a friend of hers dropped her off at home was the last time anyone saw Helle Crafts alive.
During the next few weeks, friends of Helle tried contacting her, but were told different stories by her husband - some of them were told by Richard that Helle had gone and visited her mother in Denmark. Others were told that she had left and he did not know where she was. Richard also stated that she was in the Canary Islands with her friend Hellen Dixon. Friends grew suspicious and concerned about Helle's safety because they well knew about Richard's aggressiveness and fiery temper - worse yet, they remember Helle once saying that "if something happens to me, don't think it was an accident."[1]
Police eventually obtained a warrant to search the Crafts' premises - they uncovered a few clues: several pieces of carpet from Richard and Helle's bedroom were removed from the floor. The family's nanny also came forward and told police of a dark, grapefruit-sized stain she'd seen on the carpet of the bedroom, but that patch of carpet had apparently been removed. A blood smear was also uncovered on the side of the Crafts' bed. Police found a receipt saying that Richard had made several purchases before the disappearance of Helle. Included in the purchases were a new freezer that was not found in the home, and $900 for the rental of a woodchipper. Later a private investigator hired by Helle Crafts found in papers provided to him by Helle a receipt for a chainsaw that was found in Lake Zoar that forensics experts would determine was covered in hair and blood that matched those of Helle.
A witness eventually came forward and claimed that he'd seen someone with a woodchipper, standing on a bridge over Lake Zoar in Newtown, CT, some time after the night Helle Crafts was last seen. With this new information, police focused their search around that area for many days, and even scanned the icy cold lake for clues - they found many pieces of metal, human hair (all blond), tooth caps, skin, fingernails and O type blood; the same type as Helle Crafts'.
Police theorized that in their bedroom, Crafts first struck Helle unconscious on the head with something blunt, which would explain the blood stains found, then carried her body to the freezer where he left it for some time, took it out on the night he was seen at the river by the witness, chopped her body up into several large portions with the chainsaw and put them through the woodchipper, where the dismembered pieces of Helle Crafts' body were then scattered into the river and the area around it. He also threw the chainsaw in the river and put several tree branches through the woodchipper to conceal anything incriminating, but he was found guilty due to circumstantial evidence that pointed to him as the perpetrator in her disappearance and murder[citation needed].
The pilot episode of Forensic Files documents the investigation.[2] The case also inspired the Coen brothers to write the film Fargo.
[edit] External links
- The Woodchipper Murder on CourtTV
- The Woodchipper Murder on TruTV - Mark Gado
- "The Woodchipper Murder" by Arthur Herzog
[edit] References
- ^ The Woodchipper Murder on TruTV - Mark Gado
- ^ P.Dowling "The Official Forensic Files Casebook", p.10-11 ISBN 0-7434-7949-1
