Murder of Helle Crafts

Murder of Helle Crafts

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Danish flight attendant murdered by her husband, airline pilot Richard Crafts

Helle CraftsBornDiedNationalityOccupationKnown forSpouse(s)Children

Helle Crafts

Helle Lorck Nielsen (1947-07-05)July 5, 1947 Charlottenlund, Denmark

November 19, 1986(1986-11-19) (aged 39) Newtown, Connecticut, U.S.

Danish

Flight attendant

Murder victim

Richard Crafts

3

Helle Crafts (English: /ˈhɛlə ˈkræfts/ (listen); born Helle Lorck Nielsen, July 4, 1947 – November 19, 1986) was a Danish flight attendant who was murdered by her husband, American airline pilot Richard Crafts. Her death led to the state of Connecticut's first murder conviction without the victim's body.[1]

Contents

• 1Disappearance
• 2Investigation
• 3In popular culture
• 4See also
• 5References
• 6Bibliography

Disappearance[edit]

Helle Nielsen married Richard Crafts in 1979 and settled with him in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. Helle continued working as a flight attendant while raising their three children. By 1985, she had learned that Crafts had engaged in several affairs. In September 1986, Helle met with a divorce attorney and hired a private investigator, Keith Mayo, who snapped photos of Crafts kissing another flight attendant outside her New Jersey home.

On November 18, 1986, friends dropped Helle off at the couple's Newtown residence after she had worked a long flight from Frankfurt, West Germany. She was never seen again. That night, a snowstorm hit the area. The next morning, Crafts said he was taking Helle and their children to his sister's house in Westport. When he arrived, Helle was not with him.

Over the next few weeks, Crafts gave Helle's friends a variety of stories as to why they were unable to reach her: that she was visiting her mother in Denmark, that she was visiting the Canary Islands with a friend, or that he simply did not know her whereabouts. Helle's friends were aware that Crafts had a volatile temper and grew concerned; Helle had told some of them, "If something happens to me, don't think it was an accident."[2] She was not reported missing until December 1.

Investigation[edit]

Mayo became convinced that Crafts was involved in Helle's disappearance. However, because Crafts had been a volunteer constable in Newtown and was a part-time police officer in neighboring Southbury, Mayo was unable to persuade local police to investigate him for murder. The county prosecutor eventually referred the case to the Connecticut State Police. On December 26, while Crafts was vacationing with his children in Florida, troopers searched his home. Inside, they found pieces of carpet taken from the master bedroom floor. The family's nanny recalled that a dark, grapefruit-sized stain had appeared in an area of the carpet, which was later missing. There was also a blood smear on the side of the bed. The forensic investigation was led by Henry Lee, who at the time was an investigator for the state police.[1]

Crafts' credit card records showed several unusual purchases around the time Helle vanished, including a freezer that was not found in the house, bed sheets, and a comforter, as well as the rental of a woodchipper. Among papers provided to a private investigator by Crafts was a receipt for a chainsaw, which was later found in Lake Zoar covered in hair and blood which matched Helle's DNA.[1] The key piece of evidence was provided by Joseph Hine, a local man who worked for the town of Southbury and drove a town snowplow in the winter. On the night of November 18, hours after Helle had been last seen, Hine was plowing the roads during the snowstorm when he noticed a rental truck, with a woodchipper attached, parked close to the shore of Lake Zoar.

It was only after the search of Crafts' house that Hine reported what he had seen. He led detectives to the location, where they examined the water's edge and found many small pieces of metal and some 3 ounces (85 g) of human tissue, including the crown of a tooth, a fingernail covered in pink nail polish, bone chips, 2,660 bleached-blonde human hairs, and O type blood, which was the same type as Helle's. This led the police to conclude the remains had likely been fed through the woodchipper Crafts had been seen towing. Investigators concluded that Crafts struck Helle in the head with something blunt at least twice, staining the carpet with blood, then kept her body in the freezer for hours until she was frozen solid. He then cut her apart with the chainsaw, and then put the pieces through the woodchipper, probably projecting her fragmented remains into the truck and then shoveling them out onto the shore.

A prosecution for homicide requires an official determination of the death of the alleged victim; typically this is done by identification of a body – which was not available in this case. With the help of a forensic dentist, the tooth crown found on the water's edge was positively matched to Helle's dental records. On this evidence, the Connecticut State Medical Examiner's Office issued a death certificate on January 13, 1987; Crafts was immediately arrested. In preparation for trial, state medical examiner H. Wayne Carver obtained a pig carcass that was fed through a woodchipper. The shape of, and marks on, the pig's bone chips after this process were similar to the shape of Helle's bone fragments, strengthening the hypothesis that Crafts had used a woodchipper to dispose of his wife's body.[3]

Crafts' trial began in May 1988 in New London, where it was moved due to extensive local publicity, and ended in July with a hung jury when a single juror refused to vote for guilt, walked out of the deliberations and refused to return. A second trial in Norwalk ended in a guilty verdict on November 21, 1989. Crafts was sentenced to serve 50 years in prison.[2][4] Crafts, as of January 2020, has been released from prison and is at a halfway house in New Haven.

In popular culture[edit]

The special edition DVD of the 1996 film Fargo contains a statement that the film was inspired by the Crafts case.[5]

In "The Good Doctor", an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the investigation into the missing wife of a plastic surgeon leads to a successful conviction without a corpse, under the theory that the body was dissolved in sulfuric acid in the bathtub, and the bones dumped out of the husband's single-engine aircraft.

The opening episode of Forensic Files was about Helle's murder.[6]

See also[edit]

• Connecticut portal
• Law portal

• Crime in Connecticut
• List of murder convictions without a body
• Uxoricide

References[edit]

1. ^ Jump up to: a b c The Woodchipper Wife Killer. Crime Stories. 2008. .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration{color:#555}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration span{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/12px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:12px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output code.cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#33aa33;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}
2. ^ Jump up to: a b Gado, Mark. The Woodchipper Murder Case Chapter 13 – A Verdict Arrives. truTV Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods. Time Warner. Archived from the original on 2013-03-10. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
3. ^ Altimari, Dave (May 23, 2013). "Chief State Medical Examiner Carver Retires". Hartford Courant. Retrieved July 14, 2018.
4. ^ "Sentence". The New York Times. 1990-01-09. Retrieved 13 March 2011.
5. ^ Gado, Mark (1986-11-18). "All about the Woodchipper Murder Case". Crimelibrary.com. Archived from the original on 2008-05-12. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
6. ^ "The Disappearance of Helle Crafts" – via www.imdb.com.

Bibliography[edit]

• The Woodchipper Murder by Arthur Herzog

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Categories:

• 1947 births
• 1986 deaths
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• Murder in Connecticut
• Deaths by person in the United States
• People murdered in Connecticut
• Danish murder victims
• Deaths by beating in the United States
• Crimes in Connecticut
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