Helle Crafts - The Woodchipper Murder - Part 2

0:00Today we continue on with last episode's story of Hella Crafts. Today we're talking about Part 2, and if you've yet to listen to Part 1, we recommend you do so before joining us in this episode. But if you are ready, then let's sit down and let's begin with Part 2 now. My name's Ben. I'm Nicole and you're listening to Wicked and Grim. A True Crime Podcast. So have you been struggling with the Antissa

1:03patient from last episode? What did that just remind me of? Rocky Horror Picture Show. Okay. Okay. That just like brought me back some more than I wasn't sure. Patient. Okay, there we go. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a long week. Let's just say that. Yeah, have you thought about the story much at all? You were pretty angry with me when we left off last episode. So I'm assuming one of two things happened. You have thought about it lots, or two, you're just repressing it and you're blocking it out. Probably the latter, because also I had a super busy week. So I just like kind of was hunkering down. Also, it didn't even matter that we skipped in time then. That's what you're saying. You're just it's okay. I can do this more often, more more part 2s. Oh gosh. More breaking it up. Okay, I don't actually mind two partners. But because you get to learn more of the story and that's true. I don't know. You know, it's a bit of a deeper dive. But the waiting does kind of suck. But this time I was quite busy

2:05that I didn't really notice the gap. But usually you do. I do more. Yes. Okay. I was expecting a little bit more flak today. That's why I was bringing this up. So I'm glad you were distracted. I guess that's what I'm going to say. Well, I wasn't bitchin' at yet. Was I? Well, typical stuff, but nothing to do with the podcast. Oh my. He was as soon as we stopped last episode. I was on your case though. Yeah, you were. I was asking 50 million questions and he didn't really spill any of the beans. Nothing. So. So you're ready though? I'm ready. I'm going to spill the beans now. I would love that. Okay. All would love that. All right. Well, I'm going to start with a bit of a recap from the last episode in part 1. And in part 1, we learned about Hella Crafts. She was a Danish born flight attendant who came to the United States and built a career with Pan Am. She met a pilot named Richard Crafts in 1969 and the two eventually married and settled in the Newtown, Connecticut where they raised three children. But by 1986 their marriage was falling apart.

3:06Friends described Richard as repeatedly having infidelity issues and allegations of physical abuse had started to surface. So hella decided she wanted a divorce. She hired a private investigator named Keith Mayo who confirmed Richard was seeing another woman and as Hella prepared to leave the marriage, she even warned people that were close to her if anything happened to her. They shouldn't simply assume that it was an accident. Then on November 18, 1986, Hella returned home from Europe during a very powerful snow storm. Another flight attendant drove her to her family home at five Newfield Lane where Hella went inside and was never seen again. In the days that followed Richard claimed that she had gone to Denmark to care for her sick mother. He even suggested that she might have traveled to the Canary Islands and even at other times he was just like I have no idea where she went. But Hella never went to Denmark. Her mother wasn't sick and her car and belongings just remained behind at the airport. As Hella's friends pushed for investigation,

4:10more troubling details began to emerge too. The family's Livin Nanny described a very mysterious dark stain in the master bedroom and carpeting that had later been removed. Investigators learned that Richard had purchased a large new deep freezer shortly before Hella disappeared too. Only for it to vanish and then just two days after Hella was last seen, he apparently rented a commercial woodchipper and a truck, despite investigators finding little storm damage on the property to explain why he needed these things. By Christmas, police were ready to take a much closer look. Now with Richard and children away in Florida, investigators obtained a search warrant for the home on five Newfield Lane. And on December 25, 1986, that's when they entered the home to begin their search. And that is where we left off. What a sketchy mofo. Yeah. Any questions before we move on? Nope. That just brought it all back and just a wave of shit. A wave of shit. A wave of nausea.

5:13Oh right. I mean, I would assume that if it's a wave of shit, that would that would induce nausea, for sure. Well, if you're ready for the secondary wave of shit, let's keep going. Let's do it. It was on December 25, 1986, when Richard crafts and his three children were away in Florida for Christmas and investigators arrived at his home on five Newfield Lane. The search there involved Connecticut State Police Investigators and Forensic personnel, including Dr. Henry Lee. He then was the director of the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory. With the search warrant in hand, investigators entered the house through the rear window and began documenting everything they found. Now, they quickly noticed that the interior of the home seemed to be a little on the disturbed side of things. And I mean, things like furniture appeared to have been moved in sections of carpeting. The reported ones had been torn up. Investigators even found indications that items had been burned in the fireplace recently.

6:15Now, none of those things, of course, independently established that anyone had been harmed there, but police were examining the house as a potential crime scene. So those were the kind of details that they were looking for. As they searched the garage too, that's where they found a large deep freezer. However, investigators determined that this was not the recently purchased one that they were trying to locate. The one Richard had picked up on November 17th, well, it was still missing. Now, police collected numerous items from the house, including Richard's firearms, towels, washcloths, different fibers and portions of bedding, different things to try and match anything or test for any sort of substance. But it was the master bedroom that produced the most significant discovery. Dr. Lee examined the mattress very closely. And in doing so, notice several extremely small discolourations. In total, there were five tiny droplets, little spots. They were easy to overlook, but enough for samples to be collected and tested. They were tested with orthotolidine

7:20at the scene, which is a chemical test used to detect the possible presence of blood. And the reaction was positive. The stains were then subject to further testing as well. And they were found to be human blood. Investigators were able to determine that the blood that they had found was type O positive. And hella was type O positive. Now, this was in 1986, before DNA profiling could provide the kind of individual identification that would, you know, become common in later homicide investigations. And today, so the blood type, therefore, couldn't prove that the stains specifically belong to hella. Millions of people share the same blood type. What investigators could say was that this blood of a human was O positive blood. And it had been found on the mattress where hella slapped. And that hella's blood was consistent with it. But of course, blood can get on a mattress in dozens of different ways. A simple scratch in the middle of the night, for example, could cause

8:22something like this. So, Dr. Lee wanted to know more than whose blood it might have been. He examined the size, shape, placement, and direction of the stains to determine how the blood had actually gotten onto the mattress in the first place. Now, the five spots were small and even had directional characteristics, which meant they weren't simply smears onto the fabric. Laboratory examination led Dr. Lee to conclude that the samples present were also not that of menstrual blood, which, of course, can happen on mattresses as well. So from their angles on how these things would have gotten on the mattress rather than smearing or anything, Dr. Lee concluded that the person shedding the blood had likely been to position close to the edge of the bed and not on it, possibly leaning or kneeling near the mattress when the blood was then deposited. And ultimately, he classified the pattern as a medium velocity impact blood spatter, which meant the blood was consistent

9:25with blood being projected after a person was struck with a blunt object. That's quite a lot of detail that he's able to figure out just from that. And I'm assuming each spot, it all happened at one time, basically. I don't know if they're able to determine that, but I think they can assume that by the fact that they're all going in the same production. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Now outside of those, there was actually one other bit of blood found on the mattress as well, but this one was different and it was much larger. It was approximately six inches long and it seemed to be a smear that was different from the five small impact stains. Rather than droplets being projected onto the surface, this mark suggested that someone had already been wet with blood and then made contact with a mattress and moved across it, causing a spread or a smear in this six inch long pattern of blood. Now they tested it and it too was human blood and

10:25it too was typo positive. And again, not menstrual. Hello was positive. And in fact, the bedroom was not the only place where investigators found indications of blood. Now among the items taken from the house were towels and washcloths. These were recently washed and laboratory testing never the last detected blood on some of them. And Dr. Lee interpreted the findings as indicating that at least some of the towels had previously been soaked or heavily contaminated with blood before going through the laundry. For investigators, that was particularly important. Washing fabric could remove visible stains, but it did not necessarily remove every single microscopic trace that was left behind. So now they felt they had physical evidence inside the craft's home that could not explain simply why hella had chose to leave. Seem like there was more

11:26to the story, but still there were limits to what this evidence they found could establish. The typo positive blood could not be individually identified as hella's. The blood stain pattern could indicate how blood had been deposited, but they could not identify who caused the injury or exactly what object had been used either. Either in this missing freezer, it was still missing. And the discarded bedroom carpet had produced no blood evidence. Most importantly, investigators still had not found hella herself. Okay, I have two questions before you continue here. Shoot. So I think last episode you had said that he purchased new bedding too, right? That was shown on receipts or something? Yes, there was reports of him purchasing new bedding. Okay. And then he had also, I'm not making this up right, like there was, he had abused her prior to or something. There was reports of it. There was allegations of it. I don't think that there's any evidence of it. Okay. So there are people who claimed that hella told them

12:31that there was abuse going on. There was people saying that they had seen bruises. So there's second hand reports, but I don't think there's anything beyond that. So some of this blood could have potentially been even from that? I mean, theoretically, yeah. But I mean, I think we all know where this is going, but I just wanted to like clarify that. So I mean, but if you're going down that route, theoretically, I mean, you could have a scratch on your finger. Maybe you got a paper cut from reading a book and it hurt and you flick your hand, go, ah, and as you're flicking your hand, couple of droplets of blood could fling from that too. Theoretically, if you're going down that path. But I feel like for the blood to be on the mattress at this incident, it almost had to go through the bedding first since he replaced the bedding. So it would have been like quite a quite a bit more blood than say if you just cut your finger and did that. I mean, possibly. Now, as far as what I'm aware, though, the blood is

13:31actually on the side of the mattress. So maybe there's the sheets are on the bed and that portion was exposed and it didn't have to go through. Okay. So there's a lot of scenarios and I mean, we could spend hours trying to stipulate, but we do know that it's type of positive. We do know hell is type of positive, which I honestly feel like you can just assume. Yes. We do know that there is both spatter and a smear on the mattress, which is two separate, at least ways of transferring it, but not necessarily separate incidents, considering that they're really relatively close together, probably the same incident. But yeah, anyways, after this, investigators turn their attention away from the house and they began trying to reconstruct Richard's movements during the day surrounding hell's disappearance, particularly what he had done with the rental truck and the woodchipper that he rented. And that inquiry eventually led them to the man who had been working through the

14:32November snowstorm. His name was Joseph Hein. The woodchipper had been rented on November 20th, 1986, while crews across the region were still cleaning up damage from the snowstorm. And Joseph Hein was on the highway. He was a worker who'd been cleaning roads during that storm. See, Joseph Shift had taken him through the area and he was around the he'll sonic river and lake Zor near the boundary between Newton and Southbury. And late on November 20th and into the early morning hours, that followed road conditions were very poor. Snow had fallen, debris had left crews working it unusual hours and traffic was extremely light because of it. And at approximately 330am, Joseph encountered something unusual near the steel bridge crossing the water. There was a rental style truck towing a woodchipper. The equipment was autumn off at that hour in conditions for Joseph to remember it. And as he approached with his snow plow, he saw a man at the truck in the

15:35chipper and he directed him around the equipment. Joseph continued on his way, thinking it was odd, but not much more than just that. Then roughly two hours later, his route brought him back through the area again. The truck and woodchipper were still nearby. This time though, it was along the river road, close to the heustonic river and lake Zor. And Joseph recalled seeing a man wearing a distinctive orange hooded parca or poncho near the machine. Investigators brought Joseph back to the area so he could show them where he remembered seeing this equipment. The location was relatively secluded. The river flowed to the area into Lake Zor with wooded shoreline and steep banks surrounding portions of the water. If someone had been operating machinery in this area during the middle of the night, there would have been relatively very few people around to ever notice. So police began searching the area. And near the shoreline, they found piles of woodchips

16:37and debris. That is so bizarre. I would be incredibly creeped out if I just stumbled upon someone in the middle of the night who had a, what does this call that? Woodchipper? A woodchipper and was just out and about like in a secluded area. I don't know. I just think I would be so freaked out. But the thing is why would you be freaked out? Why would you make that assumption? Because that seems super suspicious. I can't say I've ever seen a woodchipper, you know, in a secluded area with someone operating it in the middle of the night in the dark. But here's the thing with this though. In today's age, we've been conditioned to be suspicious of such things, right? Of everything. Yeah. Have you heard tales of someone going into a woodchipper before, murder-wise, discarding a body or anything like that? Have you ever had a conversation? There you go. Yeah. In 1986, that was not so much the fable going around. I guess. So yeah.

17:40In fact, if I may be so bold as to potentially give away some of the story, a lot of that sort of fable, a lot of that hearsay, what you hear today comes from this story. Hmm. Comes from this stuff that happened in the 80s and the 90s and that's why we're afraid of everything. But that whole idea of the woodchipper, you know, evidence or body or anything that you've heard of in any sort of horror movie or true crime documentary, any of that sort of stuff, it most of it flows back to this story. This is one of the ones that actually generated that whole idea in the first place. Okay. So the guy passing by thought this was odd, but it wasn't like his mind didn't go to a true crime sort of thing. Or definitely not. No. Or a crime of sort. No, he's like, what's this guy doing out here with a woodchipper? That's kind of fucked up and then he continued home. Basically, he's just like, that's an odd hour to be chipping some woods out in the book, like some trio in the bush, who knows. Yeah. So yeah. So for him, it wasn't odd. Now at first,

18:43this pile of wood chips and debris and stuff is exactly what anyone might have expected to find around where a woodchipper was spotted in the woods. But investigators nevertheless began examining the material extremely closely, searching through the chips and the surrounding ground piece by piece. And then they found something that did not belong there. Mixed in amongst the debris was some shredded male. And one of those pieces was a near intact envelope. I would say at least 70% still intact, but torn up quite a bit. And it was an envelope bearing the name and address of hella crafts. The discovery immediately connected the area to the missing person and the search became far more intensive. The scene was cordoned off and investigators began recovering additional material from among the wood chips. There were chunks that they found and strands of blonde hair, pieces of blue green fabric that appeared in the debris and there were small fragments that look

19:45like bone that were even collected. Small pieces of what appeared to be flesh. Oh no. And even a piece of small metal was found. Searches also recovered would appear to be parts of a human fingernail. Still painted though chipped with bright colored polish still attached to it. Seriously? Yes. Oh my gosh. Each item was carefully collected for laboratory examination. Now the location presented investigators with an enormous forensic challenge though. They were not searching a bedroom or a vehicle where evidence could be contained within a few square meters. They were working along a riverbank after a major snowstorm surrounded by mud, vegetation, wood chips, debris. You know, all this sort of thing plus its rape aside moving water, which is very capable of carrying away additional evidence. Much of the ground had been covered by snow.

20:46And the sun that was coming out and it was melting the snow and washing things away, it was a horrendous situation to try and find evidence in. No kidding. This is just terrible though. Yeah. Now police established a major search operation along the shoreline. Investigators and forensic personnel sifted through material by hand looking for anything that might distinguish ordinary wood and debris from possible human remains. And the water itself also had to be searched too. Divers entered both the nearby river and lake while investigators worked the banks. At points, the water level was even manipulated with the assistance of a nearby dam to make portions of the area more searchable and more accessible. And by the time the material was catalogued, it included 2,660 strands of blonde or light colored hair, several pieces of human tissue, portions of fingernail and toenail, dental material, and upwards of 60 different tiny bone fragments.

21:50And some of those fragments were unmistakably human. Now this is actually why I'd kind of jumped ahead a little bit and said, you know, this is kind of the case where a lot of that wood chipper fable comes from is because my next little bit was talking about what they found. And with what they found, it's kind of unmistakable. What had happened. Honestly, a living nightmare. Yeah. And I can, how would you even begin to like investigate this? Really? I don't know. It would be a nightmare as you put it. Yeah. Now, Dr. Albert B. Harper, a specialist in the examination of bone, studied the material on hand, portions showed anatomical characteristics associated with the human skull, including grooves created by blood vessels. While other pieces displayed damage suggesting they had been subject to a tremendous mechanized force, such as, for example, a wood chipper.

22:51Now the fragments were so small that ordinary blood typing presented a harsh challenge. So Dr. Harper froze portions in liquid nitrogen, making the material brittle enough to grind into a fine powder for testing. And they luckily got a result. The blood was typo positive, just like hella crafts. As with the mattress blood, though, the blood did not individually identify hella. It was consistent with her blood type. Now the hair provided another comparison. Investigators obtained known samples from hella's hairbrush and examined them microscopically against the thousands of hairs recovered near the river. Hella's hair had been bleached or died and it gave examiners additional characteristics to compare against. And their covered hairs showed microscopic similarities to the known samples as well, including an unusual ridge and some displayed signs of severe

23:52traumatic damage. Now again, this was before routine forensic DNA testing. So an examiner could say that the hairs were microscopically consistent with hella's, but not that each strand had been scientifically proven to come from her. Gosh, I feel like at this point it's like they have enough. Well, there's more. Investigators also focused on examining the painted fingernail recovered from the debris. See, there was a bottle of bright red nail polish that had been found on hella's nightstand at Newfield Lane. And the chemical comparison found the nail polish on the recovered nail to be consistent with a polish in that bottle. And as for the fibers, the fibers were identified as a bluish green cotton. And according to Don Marie Thomas, the crafts family live in Nanny, the color of these fibers was consistent with the one of hella's favorite cotton night shirt, which was a loose shirt she regularly worked to bed. Then there was the dental evidence. Among the debris recovered from the wood chip pile had been a small gray piece of metal.

24:57What initially looked like an unremarkable scrap piece of metal turned out to be dental material, including a crown. Connecticut forensic dentist Dr. Constantine P. Gus Carrizulis was brought in to examine the dental evidence and also joined investigators as they continued searching the river area. He spent several days there. And during one of the searches, Dr. Carrizulis slipped while carrying a pale of evidence and after getting back to his feet, he actually spotted another tooth laying amongst the debris. Now, Dr. Carrizulis had multiple pieces of dental evidence at this point to work with. And he compared them against hella's dental x-rays dating from 1982 through 1986, looking for features that could establish whether the teeth belonged to her. In his opinion, there was no doubt that one of the recovered teeth was hella's lower left by Cusbit. Now, dental expert Dr. Lovell Levine independently examined the evidence as well and agreed with this

25:58identification. That gave investigators something considerably stronger than a shared blood type or microscopic hair comparison. A portion of hella's dental anatomy had been recovered from the area where Richard's dent rented a woodchipper and had reportedly been seen. Now, while searching the waters, divers also found something else. They located a steel chainsaw. And when I mean steel, I mean the brand STI-HL. There, in the water, it laid with some other components, including the chain. The saw had been dismantled and discarded under the water. But not only that, someone had attempted to destroy its identity, the serial number had been deliberately filed and scratched away. Now, despite its time under the water, there was still some biological material that remained trapped in the grease on the saw and laboratory examination detected human tissue, hair, and blue, green cotton fibers. Those fibers were consistent in color with the same type of garment

27:04associated with hella. Investigators then attempted to recover the destroyed serial number. And using chemical restoration techniques, they were able to bring the original numbers back from the metal beneath the filed surface. The serial number was 5921616. And records traced that number back to a steel chainsaw purchased and registered to Richard B. Crafts. Oh, okay, this is a lot. It also is just enough to make you kind of just feel completely ill. It's pretty disgusting to say the least. Like, this is, this is, he has kids with her. Three. That's correct. So I, I don't know, I just can't believe someone can could do that and let alone think that they're going to get away with this too. I know. It's absolutely horrendous. And in all honesty, not to say that he's lucky, but as far as his side goes, he kind of lucked out with

28:08this storm in a bit of a situation because what was he going to do without a storm? Yeah, I guess so. He might have gotten caught. More evidence may not have been washed away. It was ultimately for him almost the perfect cover, almost perfect storm. Well, honestly, even if that guy didn't see him with the woodchipper. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't know. And also, no matter how much time they spend there, there's probably just debris that's going to be left behind to unfortunately, right? Oh, definitely. That they're not going to be ever recover. Oh, yeah. No, like even thinking like how much had been washed away in the water alone, just that alone. And you cannot recover 100% of anything that's been chipped up onto the ground. No, you're not getting every single piece. It's impossible. No one deserves that. That is unreal. Now, finding all of this evidence, all these things was still not enough for investigators, though. They wanted to know whether a woodchipper could actually create the distinctive damage

29:11seen on the recovered material. So, Dr. Lee obtained the same type of machine that Richard had rented and conducted an experiment using a pig carcass. The animal was passed through the chipper, allowing Dr. Lee and the other forensic specialists to examine the resulting damage. And as it turned out, the machine produces very recognizable cutting and fragmentation patterns, patterns that were then compared to the marks and damage on the material recovered. And it supported the conclusion that the recovered remains had been subject to the same kind of powerful, mechanical shredding produced by the commercial chipper. By this point, investigators no longer needed to locate an intact body to demonstrate that hella was dead. They had recovered human bone, tissue, thousands of hair, all consistent with her type, oh, positive blood, a painted fingernail, dental remains, identifying hella. They had also recovered Richard's chains off

30:16from beneath the water, with human remains still trapped in the grease on it. The evidence may have been fragmented very literally, but it was enough for investigators to say they believed they knew what had happened to her. Investigators could now reconstruct a very likely sequence of events for hella craft's death, although important parts of it could never be proven with clarity. There were no witnesses to this murder. Her intact body was never found other than just pieces. There was no conventional autopsy and the object used to initiate or inflict the initial injuries on her was never found, but what followed was the scenario investigators and prosecutors developed from the blood evidence, the missing freezer, Richard's purchases and rental, and the human remains recovered near Lake Zor. They believed hella was killed inside five new field lane, sometime after she returned home from Frankfurt on the evening of November 18, 1986,

31:18and before Dom Marie Thomas woke up the following morning. The strongest evidence placing violence inside the home came from the master bedroom. Dr. Henry Lee's examination had revealed five tiny spots of human o-type, positive blood on the mattress. Their size and pattern led him to classify them as medium velocity impact spatter, consistent with blood projected during a blunt force assault. The larger smear nearby indicated contact with something already covered in blood. Investigators believed hella had been struck in or beside the bed, one theory focuses on a heavy police style flashlight as a possible weapon, and Richard had access to that type of equipment through his police work. And the shape and force required to produce the suspected hand injury made it a possibility, but the actual weapon was unfortunately never recovered, and the evidence could not establish that a flashlight like this was specifically used.

32:22So that portion only remains a theory. What could be established was the fragments recovered at Lake Zor, including portions of a human skull and all the other debris, including dental. Investigators believed Richard, after striking her in the master bedroom, used a large freezer he had purchased on November 13, and collected on November 17, one day before hella came home. Their theory was that hella's body was placed inside the freezer, and she was allowed to freeze solid. The freezer would have made a body considerably easier to cut apart, while also reducing the amount of blood that would be released during dismemberment. That newly purchased freezer was also never recovered. It was never found. The prosecution believed Richard subsequently removed hella's frozen body and dismembered it with the steel chainsaw. But unlike the suspected

33:22murder weapon, the chainsaw could be directly tied to Richard. Its serial number had been deliberately destroyed, but forensic specialists restored it and traced the saw back to Richard. Human tissue, hair, blue-green cotton fibers remained trapped in its grease on the chainsaw, despite it being submerged in water. They were still there. Then they believed on November 20, Richard rented a truck and a commercial woodchipper, and transported hella's dismembered remains to Lake Zore and the Houstonic River area, and fed them through the machine. That explained why investigators had found so little. Rather than an intact body, the shoreline contained only tiny pieces, fragments, bones, pieces of tissue, fingernails, toenails, dental, all of it remained in pieces on that shore. That's all that hella was reduced to, with who knows how much of her washing away in the waters. Hella's male and pieces of blue-green fabric have been shredded among the same debris,

34:25and investigators believed the river and surrounding terrain were intended to take away much of the evidence. Now at some point during the investigation, Richard allegedly made a remark that would become particularly chilling in light of what police had found. See, according to his brother-in-law, Richard had said, quote, let them dive. There's no body. It's gone. End quotes. I have to keep lowering my eyebrows because this is just so, everything that you're saying is just so shocking to me. You're just getting just permalines in your forehead right now? Yeah, this is giving me, this case is giving me wrinkles. Rightfully so. If there's a case you're going to get wrinkles on, this is definitely one of them. It's just so unbelievable that, because, yeah, look, she has kids and loved ones. Yep. They don't even have anything to lay to rest. Yep. I can't argue. You're right. It's just devastating. It's so freaking sad.

35:29I mean, he was technically right, saying there's no body. It's gone. He's technically true. There was no body, at least in that conventional sense. But there was at least enough left behind for them to, I don't mean to... His confidence got the best of him there. He thought that he did a spikenspan job. Yes. And everything would have gone down the river or whatever. For sure. But here, no, there was evidence left behind, buddy. Yeah. And I don't mean this in a joking way when I say this. I mean this in an actual way. So there's not a double in Tundra in what I'm about to say. There was enough left behind for investigators to piece together. Now, by January 1987, investigators believe the evidence established that hella had not abandoned her children. She had not secretly returned to Denmark or disappeared voluntarily. They believed she had been murdered, dismembered, deliberately reduced to fragments in an attempt to prevent anyone for proving that she was dead.

36:32So police obtained a rest warrant. And that around midnight, on January 13, 1987, officers surround the craftsman. Richard's children were inside with him, making police reluctant to force a confrontation. But they were outside and demanding him to come out. He initially remained in the house while officers waited outside, but eventually, he did surrender. Richard was taken into custody and processed through Connecticut state police troop A in Southbury before appearing in Danbury, superior court that morning. He was charged with murdering his wife and the bond was set at $750,000. But proving that whole case to a jury would be a matter all on its own entirely. See, Richard crafts remained in custody as prosecutors prepared to do something Connecticut had never successfully done before. And that is obtain a murder conviction

37:32without ever recovering the victim's body as a whole. The trial began in New London in southeastern Connecticut in May of 1988, and the prosecution's case was enormous to say the least. Over approximately 53 days, jurors heard from roughly 100 witnesses and were presented with hundreds of exhibits. There was of course no eye witness to Hell's Murder and no confession. Instead, prosecutors built the case piece by piece. Don Marie Thomas was there, and she took the stand describing the stains in the bedroom and the disappearance of the newly purchased freezer. Joseph Hain was also there to testify about the truck in the woodchipper that he had seen near Lake Zor that night of the storm. Dr. Henry Lee explained the blood evidence and the forensic testing. Dr. Albert Harper testified about the human bone fragments while Dr. Gus Carrizulus and Dr. Loa Levine attressed the dental evidence linking the recovered remains to Hella. All in all, prosecutors agreed that the evidence formed a single coherent story. Ella had been murdered

38:38in her bedroom, then frozen, and dismembered and put through the rented woodchipper before what remained scattered near the lake. Zor. The defense challenged a case built almost entirely on circumstantial and forensic evidence. And after closing arguments, the jury began deliberating. They deliberated for 17 days in total. Oh gosh, I thought it was going to be like quick. 17 days. And eventually the jury announced that it could not reach an unanimous decision. There was a split 11 to 1 decision in favor of a conviction with one juror refusing to join the others. And on July 15, 1988, the judge declared a mistrial. So Richard Kraft's would be tried again. The second trial was moved to Norwalk and began on September 7, 1989. Prosecutor Walter Flanagan once again presented the forensic chain linking Richard to Hella's death

39:42and disposal. This jury, however, reached a decision much faster. After approximately eight hours of deliberation on November 21, 1989, Richard Kraft's was found guilty of the murder of Hella Kraft's. Okay, yeah, that's what I expected. Hella at that moment had been legally declared a victim of a homicide, even though investigators had recovered only tiny portions of her remains. Richard, however, continued to maintain his innocence. On January 9, 1990, he appeared before the judge for sentencing. Hella's family asked the court for the maximum punishment and Richard's sister, Karen Rogers. She said that her brother had shown no remorse. Richard addressed the judge and complained about the way that he'd been portrayed, including descriptions of him as a cold and unemotional individual. And he maintained he was innocent. The judge ultimately sentenced him

40:44to 50 years in prison. Okay, I like that. That is that is a good length of a sentence right there. Richard's attorney, Thomas E. Farber, continued challenging the conviction. And in fact, the case eventually reached the Connecticut Supreme Court, where the defense argued several issues, including whether the evidence had been sufficient to prove murder, and whether Hella's statements expressing her fear of Richard should have been admitted. But in 1993, the court upheld the conviction in a four to one decision. The majority concluded that Hella's statements could be used in part to counter Richard's suggestion that she had voluntarily disappeared. Justice Robert Burden, however, disagreed with the majority on that issue, arguing that some of Hella's statements should not have been allowed as evidence, but it did not matter because the conviction stood. Hella's three children had meanwhile lost their parents. Their mother was dead, their father was imprisoned for killing her, and they soon went to live under the care of Karen Rogers. Now because Richard's crime occurred

41:50under Connecticut's older sentencing and good time credit laws, he became eligible for release before serving the entirety of that 50 year sentence. Of course. In late 2019, at the age of 82, Richard was released from prison and transferred to the Isaiah House, a halfway house in Bridgeport, where he remained under supervision while finishing the final portion of his sentence. On January 29, 2020, he was allowed to move from that halfway house to a veteran's shelter, also in Bridgeport. By then, after more than three decades behind bars, his sentence was nearing its expiration, and he was expected to become completely free later that year. Through it all, Richard Kraft continued to maintain that innocence, and as far as I can find, he is still alive today. If he is, you'd be 88 years old. I just need to say, I almost feel like the veteran's status should be taken away when someone is this much of a monster. I agree, actually.

42:55You think of that as kind of like honor, right? And something to be proud of. It just bothered me actually a little bit there. It's like you're smearing the good name. You know what I mean? Now the investigation became an important case in the development of forensic science. It demonstrated how a homicide could be established through hundreds of individual limited pieces of evidence, whether it be microscopic blood stain, hairs, fibers, bone fragments, dental X-rays, chemical restoration of a serial number, the list goes on. But more often than not, the case is often more described much more simply as something such as the woodchipper murder. But that nickname can obscure what investigators actually accomplished in it. Richard had apparently been correct about one thing when he reportedly said there's nobody it's gone. There was nobody, at least no one tacked one. There were pieces, though. And investigators were able to establish what Richard had apparently tried to make impossible

43:57to prove. He tried to make it impossible to determine if hella craft was murdered. But they found that she was. And in 1989, Richard crafts became the first person in Connecticut successfully convicted of murder in a case where the victim's body had never been recovered as a whole. Now in the decade since hella's murder, the case has remained one of the most infamous in Connecticut history. In large part because of the horrifying method Richard was accused of using to dispose of hella's remains. And for another familiar one with the 1996 film called Fargo. The image of a body disappearing into a woodchipper is probably an immediately recognizable one if you've seen this movie. The Cohen Brothers cult classic film famously features a scene in which a killer feeds the remains of one of their victims through a woodchipper in the middle of a snowy landscape. And because hella the crafts was murdered in Connecticut during the snowstorm and her remains were believed to have been fed through a woodchipper, the similarities have led to wide

45:02spread claims that her murder helped inspire that scene. The connection had never been definitively confirmed by the Cohen Brothers, though. And Fargo, the movie itself famously plays with the idea of being based on a true story despite being a fictional film. Still, the parallels between the film and the case are rather difficult to ignore. And hella's murder has remained closely associated with the movie ever since. But unlike the movie Fargo, what happened to hella crafts was not fictional. Behind the woodchipper, the forensic breakthroughs in the case that would become known around the world, there was a real 39 year old mother of three who had decided to leave a marriage as she no longer wanted to be in. And that's the story of the murder of hella crafts. Oh wow, that one is a lot. That one's a lot to take in. Because, okay, I was trying to rack my brain like what exactly did she do to him? Just that she wanted to leave or she wanted a divorce, right? She wanted a divorce,

46:08she caught him cheating and there was a gas hole that was cheating. He was and there's allegations of abuse. So I'm not saying that don't get me wrong, I'm not I'm not arguing with you. I'm just trying to say that there's there's more reasons for her to cheat. It's to leave. Sorry. Yeah. It's that and these other things. So, okay, yeah, like she literally did nothing wrong. No, nothing. She was the complete son of a bitch that did a lot of shit wrong. Oh yeah, he was a total douche can and then doesn't let her leave. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. That is just so gross. He didn't even let her serve the papers. And in part one, we were discussing how she was trying to serve the papers and her in her attorney were pretty sure that he was aware and he was dodging them whenever possible. Papers never even got served. But yeah, I like the fact that he did this to his children too. I just will never understand. Yeah. I kind of hope they have no relationship with him once. So,

47:09ever. I hope so too. I really do. I hope that his time in prison was hell. I hope this planet is rid of him at this point. I hope that his freedom was minimal when he was released. And I hope everyone around him was disgusted with him. Because I know I'm disgusted with him. Well, yeah, it's pretty freaking disgusting what he did. Yeah. Also, where the hell is that freezer? Did he just like sell that on marketplace and someone has it in their garage? Because that's also disgusting. I mean, I doubt he sold it on marketplace like 80s, but he could have sold it somewhere. Yes. Or not even that. They don't even get you. No internet. The newspaper. I don't know. Newspaper or something. But then that would have been very traced. Garage sales. He could have went to a scrapyard, a junkyard, who knows he could have just dumped it somewhere hard to say. Geez. Yeah. If there's ever been a douche canoe, this is the douche canoe. Oh, there's a lot of douche can do as we talk. This is like he's up there. Really pretty up on that list. Definitely. Definitely. I think we

48:16should watch the movie Fargo here soon. I know. I don't know if I've seen that. Oh, you got to watch. Okay. You know what? Here's the thing. Every October. Well, not every October. I'm pretty sure we've done it for a few years now, though. We've done at least two a list on Patreon of Halloween movies to watch. I think Fargo is going to be the first one on that list. Oh, dang. So if you want to see more of the movies that we put out, you can go ahead and join Patreon. You can get the rest of it. But I'm going to put the first one out there for free and very. I'm assuming that's a super scary movie, right? Oh, no. Oh, no, it's it's kind of like actually it's kind of comical. Oh, okay. It's there's a bit of comedy in it and it's a thriller. It's a comedy thriller. See, I'm not I like comedy thriller. I'm not a super. I'm not into scary movie movies. I'd rather just listen to real life shit, which is worse. But yeah, I don't love like the jump scare. Oh, no

49:16jump scares. No, if you can watch true crime documentaries and you can see crime scene photos, then you can watch this movie because it's very in your face. It's very blunt. Blood, that sort of stuff. It happens, but it's yeah, it's just very dry, I guess you could say with some comedy. Kind of mixed it. It's it's such a unique movie. It's hard to describe. Okay. And you know, I just I just feel like I wish there was something we could do for this lady for hella. Yeah, like I don't know. I just wish we could like cheers or do something. Well, we can definitely cheers. Well, I don't know. I just feel like her life. She just deserved way better. Oh, she deserved way better. Yeah. This one's going to Iseman's going to live on for with me for a while. And rightfully so. Anyways, with that, hopefully you guys enjoyed part two. Hopefully the weight in between part one and part two was not too long. If you want to check out the description of this podcast, you can go ahead and see links like to Patreon where you can go

50:18ahead and join us for our whole October of different Halloween movies to watch and Halloween week that is coming up to plus a bunch of other exclusive and cool things that happen over there. But if you just want to be here, listen with us like you are right now. We appreciate the hell out of that too. You're amazing. We get to do this because of you. So thank you. And of course, as always, until next time. Stay wicked.