Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - Helle Crafts: The Woodchipper Murder That Made Connecticut Legal History (ft. Annie Elise)

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Before Helle Crafts disappeared, she told four different people the exact same thing: "If anything happens to me, do not believe it is an accident." On November 18th, 1986, the 39-year-old Pan Am flight attendant and mother of three walked into her Newtown, Connecticut home... and was never seen again. Her husband Richard told police she'd gone to Denmark for a family emergency. Then he said she'd run off with another man. Morgan, Kaelyn, and special guest Annie Elise of 10 to Life trace all 10 clues... from the chest freezer Richard bought five days before Helle vanished, to the 2,660 strands of blonde hair found in a pile of wood chips, to the tooth fragment that made this the first no-body murder conviction in Connecticut history. Follow Annie Elise on YouTube at @_annieelise and find her shows Serialously with Annie Elise and 10 to Life wherever you get your podcasts. And here is a link with more information about the Dulos case that is referenced in this episode: https://abcnews.com/US/connecticut-mystery-timeline-disappearance-mom-jennifer-dulos/story?id=63500830 If you or someone you know is in an abusive situation, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. Safety planning resources are available at womenslaw.org. Head over to our Clues YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@CluesPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Clues to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.  🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals including Crime House 24/7, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding Episode Sponsors: Go to https://www.LiquidIV.com and get 20% off your first purchase with code CLUES at checkout. Get started now at https://www.HelloAlma.com/CLUES Sign up for your $1-per-month trial today at https://www.Shopify.com/CLUES To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi listeners, it's Carter Roy, host of murder true crime stories. I want to let you know that Crime House Plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four-part limited series on the Crimes That Built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's Missing Children Movement. Follow murder, true crime stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, or you can binge all of them right now, add free with Crimehouse Plus. To join, go to CrimehousePlus.com, or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts,

tap Try Free at the top of this show's page. This is Crime House. A Connecticut wife and mother of three stopped showing up to her job as a flight attendant, but her car is found at an airport, making it seem to be. like she took a sudden, unplanned trip. Helicrafts seemingly vanishes. Her friends and coworkers really start to worry, especially when they can't get a clear answer

as to where she went. What follows is a disturbing investigation. Hi guys, welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. I'm Kailin Moore, and I'll be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files for these cases.

And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm the one who's diving into the Reddit forums and anything else I can find online to talk about the lesser known details and pull out the threads that just don't add up. And today we have a special guest, our first ever club with Miss Annie Elise. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you guys for having me. No, thank you so much for coming.

We're so excited for this one. We were just saying that it was like hard for us to find a case that you haven't covered already. I'm excited. I got my marker ready. Let's go. I know. Annie's got some big jobs today. Don't forget to share your thoughts on social.

Want ad-free listening and early access to clues. and the rest of the crimehouse lineup, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus and get at least two bonus episodes from across Crimehouse every month. To join, go to CrimehousePlus.com, or if you listen on Apple Podcast, tap, try free at the top of the clues page.

Now let's get into Helicraft's case and the clues that defined it. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment.

Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. Before we start, Annie, I'm so glad you're here because you cover so much recent true crime. Yes. Have you watched the crash documentary? Okay. We are going to go off course if I start talking about this right now. I know, I saw your case file. And I literally release like two deep dives this week because there's so much in the police report that they didn't include. There's like fights that they got into that weren't in the documentary. Like there was like the police were called for domestic. The dad in the hospital says to the sergeant, she did this intentionally. Yet that never makes it in. And that's like in the police file. Yes. Oh my God. She there's videos of her on Snapchat speeding over 95 miles per hour and like bragging about it. And it's crazy. If you don't know what

we're talking about the crass is a documentary about McKenzie Shurrilla where the question at the core of it is did she crash this car intentionally and kill her boyfriend and her friend, her new friend, as her mom said. I know. Crazy. But it's wild. It's a wild case. And yeah, Annie goes into, if there's, like, more that the documentary didn't show.

It's wild. It's one that I'm still thinking about. Obviously, she did it on purpose. 1,000 percent. There's not a doubt in my mind. But do you think it was premeditated? Some people think so because in her GPS, which it also didn't show in the Netflix documentary, she did a dry run, what they call a dry run three days earlier.

It's a route not near her home since she would never have any reason to be there And she drove three days ahead of it It's two nickels have I had two nails Yeah no that's crazy I keep seeing all the TikToks from other girls That were in prison with her Oh yeah

And I'm like oh my God I need to get on this I know it's a wild one I'm excited to get into this case You've got a big job today Okay You're taking the botched board off our hands A lot of pressure Annie has no idea

She hasn't been prepped for this So all of the botches All of the Sherlock moment and we're doing something a little different today. All of the side eyes are going to be at Annie's discretion. This is a high pressure job. I know. And I feel like I side-eye everything.

No, please. Mark it as much as you want, please. This one especially. Oh, there's a man involved? Side-eye. I'm just kidding. Oh, he was the husband. Mark.

You will see. There's going to be a lot of side-eyes today. All right. Shall we jump into it? Let's do it. If you're watching the video on YouTube, you're going to see some pictures, some images that will help you visualize the case. And if you're listening, you can find all that same stuff on our social sets at Clues Podcast on Instagram. All right. So this case starts

on November 18, 1986. 36. 39-year-old Helicraft starts her day in Frankfurt, Germany. She lives in Newtown, Connecticut, but her job as a Pan Am flight attendant takes her all over the world, similar to Morgan's previous life. Last night, she left New York City on a flight to Frankfurt. She's headed back home to the States today. And thanks to the time change, she's going to be back home in time for dinner. So she's in a good mood when her shift starts at 11.15 a.m. Especially because she's working with her close friends and neighbors Trudy Horvath and Rita Bonanno. Pan Am assigns crews through something called bidding.

Morgan, maybe you're familiar with this. I think it's similar to what they do today. But it gives senior flight attendants more control over their schedules. Trudy, Rita, and Hela like to bid together so that way they can end up on the same flights. just chat in the back with some friends. Really fun. During their meal break on return flights, they get a chance to catch up while they do this. And Hela, it seems like, was venting about her husband during this time.

48-year-old Richard Crafts. Trudy and Rita both knew Hela was going through a really rough patch in her marriage at the time. They think that she and Richard need to take a break from each other, but they make it clear that they're going to be there for her no matter what. True friends. By the time they all land in New York, Hela is ready to change the subject, though. So as Trudy offers to drive her and Rita home to Newtown, Hela talks about the things that she is looking forward to. She has Thanksgiving plans coming up, Christmas shopping, a family ski trip in January, and Rita gets dropped off at around 6.45 p.m.

Then, Trudy drives Hela home, reaching her house at around 7 p.m. Hela grabs her bags and she heads inside. Trudy's already running late. Their flight landed an hour behind schedule, so she drives off without waiting to see if Hela makes it inside. Trudy's last glimpse of Hela is actually from behind, rolling her luggage up the driveway with some gifts for the kids piled on top. After that, Trudy never sees her friend again. Let's take a little rewind, though. I want to talk a little bit more about Hela. She was born Hela Nielsen in Charlottinland, Denmark on July 5, 1947.

Her parents were middle class. Her mom was a secretary and her dad owned a gas station, but they wanted bigger things for their only child, especially after surviving World War II, which, Hella's father during that, Ebe Nelson fought with the Danish resistance movement. After surviving the war, Eib didn't want his daughter to have to depend on anyone else to save her. So he made sure that she had everything she needed to climb the social ladder. Like an excellent education, fluency in three languages, even horseback riding lessons. It reminds me of that TikTok trend like showing my daughter, Paris, so she's not impressed when your dusty son takes her traveling. It's kind of that.

Like he showed her like this beautiful life. Meanwhile, Ella's mother, Lees, taught her about fashion, poised, the importance of having a career. She believes that women should always have their own money, which, I mean, if you think about it, this is like the 40s and 50s when she's being raised. Yeah. It's kind of like a progressive idea at the time. I mean, women in the U.S. couldn't even have their own credit cards until, what, like 71? Yeah.

Is that right? Let me fact check. That is crazy. Yeah. I mean, the 40s is really like the introduction of women into the workforce. Yeah. But, like, the idea of having your own money wasn't even really a thing. Yeah.

So the fact that her mom was, like, pushing that. That's pretty remarkable. I'm seeing in 1974. It came with the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. That is so crazy to me. Yeah. Just, I mean, that's like our parents' generation and our grandparents. It's like, it's crazy how close that is.

The more you know. Yeah. And Hela really took that to heart having your own money. In 1967, 20-year-old Hela started working as a flight attendant for Pan Am, the now-defunct airline. this was one of the most prestigious jobs that women could have at the time. I don't know if you've heard much of it. We've covered this before, like being a Pan Am flight attendant. You had to be like five foot nine under 130 pounds.

Yeah, like gorgeous. They would weigh them. Young. They would weigh them. I just know from the movie, catch me if you can. And I'm all lining up and walking and like being like these bombshell women. Yeah. They were actually forced to retire at 32, whether they were married or not.

and they had to remain single. If they got married, they were expected to quit up until 1968. Then rules changed a little bit and they stopped weighing them and banning marriage. I feel like this is kind of the New Age bottle service in Vegas, though, because they weigh those girls. Yes, I have friends who used to do it. They weigh them. You have to look a certain way. Get your hair done.

Your nails have to be done all the time. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, yeah, I guess it is like, at the time, flying wasn't as accessible to everyone. So maybe it was a lot of businessmen. And you're like providing a service and an experience for businessmen. And it's like it was more expensive back then than it is now. But still, wild to think about.

So the name Pan Am meant luxury. First class passengers dined on chef prepared multi-course meals, complete with caviar. Again, it being like a whole experience for the passengers. And Hella really wanted to be a part of the whole Pan Am experience. So in the spring of 1969, when Pan Am came to Denmark on a recruitment trip, 21-year-old Hela was eager to apply. She was competing against 200 other women. Just eight of them were offered spots on Pan Am's Miami-based training program, and Hela was one of them.

In Miami, she instantly became the instructor's favorite. She had the exact look that they wanted, tall, slim, blonde, perfect posture, high cheekbones. She also had an amazing personality. She was outgoing, cheerful. She was very calming, which you want on an airplane. And she just nailed it right off the bat. But she didn't just catch the eyes of her instructors. Local pilots knew where the Pan Am trainees stayed and they would come by to ask them out.

And on May 24, 1969, one of those pilots was 31-year-old Richard Crafts. Richard was a marine veteran who had flown helicopters and secret CIA missions in Laos. And after leaving the military, he transitioned to commercial flying, starting with Eastern Airlines in 1968. Eastern was not anything like Pan Am, but a pilot's uniform was still enough to attract attention. By being a pilot, which is kind of like the same reputation some of them have today, like he became a notorious womanizer. When he first spotted Hela, he was just thinking about having a fling. I mean, you've like landed so many different places. I feel like you always hear about pilots, like having families in other places, whatever.

He was engaged at the time. Can I start the board? Yeah. Can start it? Let's do a side eye. I think that is a big side eye. Yep. he was actually juggling a couple of other women at the time.

Okay. Now, Margaret again. Thank you. But I will say it seemed like hella maybe didn't mind that much because she wasn't looking to settle down immediately. I mean, she'd just got into America. She's still pretty young. And plus, she was planning on moving to New York.

She wanted to move to Manhattan after training. And so she wanted to be single while she was there and just like enjoy her life there. So it seems like she and Richard were maybe on the same page about commitment. They were still very attracted to each other. They fell into this on-again-off-again relationship, and that lasted years. And people in both of their lives seemed pretty skeptical about it. Hellas friends thought Richard was too old, not attractive enough, and too much of a playboy for someone like her.

And they were very open about telling her this. I love that. I tell kitchen strays, I like it. He's just not attractive enough for you. Richard's friends didn't seem to think he actually liked Hella that much. He didn't want to leave his other relationships for her, and he never talked about missing her when he was away. A dick.

I know. I know. But over time, Hela fell in love and she did decide that she wanted to marry Richard after all. And lucky for her, his previous engagement had apparently ended. And then, on top of all of this, Hela found out that she was pregnant. She wanted to have the baby, but Richard demanded that she terminate this pregnancy. Side eye.

Sorry. A man demanding that you do something with your body, side eye. Tragically, like she did end up like terminating this pregnancy because of his influence. But it happened again in the summer of 1975. She went ahead and she scheduled another termination. But before she went through with it this time, Richard seemed to have a change of heart. And in like a turn of events, he actually ended up proposing to her. The couple married on November 29th, 1975.

He was almost 38 at the time. She was 28. And they settled down together in Newtown, Connecticut. it. Hela was four months pregnant when they did, and she gave birth to a baby boy in the spring of 1976. And three years later on, there was another son, and two years after that, she had a daughter. Raising three kids while both parents traveled for work meant that they lived mostly separate lives. They hired a live in nanny, and they had to stagger their schedules in order to see the kids. Neighbors said that they rarely saw the couple together. But when people asked Hela about

Richard, she would always sing his praises. She said that he was a genius. She called him a star tennis player and expert horsemen. And even later when Hela became unhappy in their marriage, she avoided bad-mouthing Richard to anyone but her closest friends like she was doing on the plane that day. I mean, they had gotten through rough patches before, which kind of brings us back to November 18, 1986, on the last night that anyone outside of her household saw 39-year-old Hela alive. Around that time, there was a major snowstorm that happened overnight from the 18th to the 19th, and some parts of Newtown got five inches of snow. Hela's friend and coworker Rita lost power at her house, and she lived pretty close to the crafts,

so she ended up calling them midday on November 19th just to check in on how they were doing. Richard answered, and he said that Hela was out in the middle of the snowstorm. She's out. He didn't explain anything further, didn't say anything else about it, even though Rita thought that it was kind of strange, but he said that they had power at their house, and he even invited Rita over if she needed a shower. Rita declined and she simply asked Richard to just have Hela call her back if she could. But the evening passed and there was no word from Hela. Rita called again the next morning, November 20th.

And this time their nanny, Marie answered. Marie said Hela must be on a flight because her bags were gone. But Rita works with Hela. She knows her schedule. She knows that she was not scheduled to work that day. In fact, she actually couldn't work that day because flight attendants have to take a mandatory 48-hour break after long-range. flights, like the Frankfurt to New York trip that they had just done together, which maybe is a side eye for me at this because, like, I don't know, everyone has a different answer as to what's going

up. And Rita really starts to worry after this. If there was one thing that she knew about Hela, it was how much she cherished the time with her kids. It would have been completely out of character for Hela to spend her 40-hour rest period away from her home. Rita shared that concern with Marie, and Marie must have told Richard that because a few hours later, Richard called back, and he had an explanation for this. He said that, oh, he had finally heard from Hela. There was a family emergency. Her mother, Lise, was really sick, and Hela had taken off on the first flight available to Denmark early that morning on the 19th with a layover in London.

He said that she was in such a panic. She forgot to tell anyone, including Richard, and she had only realized her mistake when she got to London and then contacted him. Richard and the nanny. And the nanny. And the nanny. who's taking care of the kids with them. Doesn't tell anyone just leaves the house immediately. But Rita, after hearing this, feels at least a little bit more reassured,

but there's still, like, part of the story that just doesn't add up to her. It doesn't really sound like the conscientious mother that she knew, the working professional that was, like, very on top of things that she knew. So Rita tried calling Hela's mom using a number that Richard had given her. And the person who answered only spoke Danish, Rita did not, so she couldn't figure out who she was talking to even if it actually was Hela's mom. And there was another immediate problem that arose. Rita and Hela were scheduled for a Pan Am continuing education class on November 21st.

And another flight to Frankfurt again on the 22nd, so the two following days after this. Hella hadn't requested emergency leave. And if she missed those things, she could be terminated from her job. So concerned, Rita decided to talk to Trudy, their other friend. and Trudy told her to hold off on calling the police because they had no actual evidence that any crime had committed, even though it was starting to sound really, really strange. If Hela was having maybe an affair or if she had like quietly left Richard and didn't tell them, the last thing that they wanted as friends was like the cops tracking her down.

And there was also the Richard factor. He had become a part-time officer with the Southbury Police Department after Eastern Airlines cut pilots pay by about 20%. He had also done a brief stint as a Newtown cop before that. So Rita figured that Richard probably had friends in the force. And if police found Hela, of course they're going to tell. Yeah, they would notify him. Exactly. Immediately tell him where she was, whether she wanted him to know that or not.

So while Rita continued to worry, she looked forward to her scheduled Frankfurt flight that Saturday, thinking that Hela would be back by then and would have an explanation and then everyone would feel better. But when she got to the airport, she found something that called everything into question. Hi, listeners, it's Carter Roy, host of Murder True Crime Stories. I want to let you know that Crime House Plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four-part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement.

Follow murder true crime stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, or you can binge all of them right now add free with Crimehouse Plus. To join, go to CrimehousePlus.com, or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of this show's page. This show is sponsored by Liquid Ivy. Summer is here. A lot of us are going to be outside, in the heat, sweating, and we really need to prioritize our hydration.

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firecracker, orange vanilla dream, so many more too. And you can do the sugar-free versions, which I love. Stay hydrated while you're on the go this summer with Liquid Ivy. Tear, pour, live more. Go to Liquidive.com and get 20% off your first purchase with code clues at checkout. That's 20% off your first purchase with code Clues at Liquidive.com. On Saturday, November 22nd, Hela's friend. Rita drove from Newtown to JFK for their Frankfurt flight, the one that they were supposed to work together. And I think I'm assuming they're all on the same line. So when they bid their schedules, they're all in the same lines. So they'll have all the same flights for like a whole month.

When she got there, she parked in the Pan Am employee lot. And that's when Rita found our first clue. Hela's Toyota Tersel was parked there. It definitely wasn't there when they landed on November 18th. I mean, Trudy had drove them home. And so she knew Hela was at home. That's the whole reason she needed a ride, which meant that someone else had drove Hela's car to the airport after the last time she had seen her, after that snowstorm on the 18th and 19th. And that did fit the timeline that Richard had given Rita for Hela's emergency departure. So maybe Hela was the one that had driven it there. Maybe she had actually taken a flight to Denmark. That's when Rita called in a favor at Pan Am and quietly got.

Hela a 48-hour emergency leave, even though company policy said only Hela or her spouse could make that request. What a good friend. Wow. I know. I know. Honestly. Like secretly calling in like, hey.

Because she doesn't want her to get terminated. That's so nice. Yeah. Well, and missing continuing education is such a big deal. Like you need that to prove you're still competent. Otherwise, like you can't even take scheduled flights. I feel like there's so many cases we cover. You too probably.

where the female friends are paying such close attention and are just kind of like on it from the start. Because we're the ones who watched your crime. I know. Yes. Literally. Literally. And so we know what to look out for like when things feel weird. I don't know. I feel like it's not everyone. Talking with your friends and gossip is so powerful. I say like gossip like lightly. But it is that village. Like everyone's in tune with each other. Everyone knows what's going on. So the minute something's off. Yes. Side eye. And there's one thing Rita did know too that if Richard, or Hela didn't contact Pan Am with an update after the 48-hour period that she had gotten, Hela could still be fired. So the clock is ticking on all of this. Rita ends up taking that flight to Frankfurt without Hela and gets back on Monday, November 24th, and there is still no word from Hela. It was Thanksgiving week, and she knew her friend had big plans to host Richard's family. She was even going to cook two turkeys because of how many people she was hosting.

Even Marie. Hela's live-in nanny was starting to think something was seriously wrong. The next day, Marie actually stopped by Rita's house. She was buying eggs from her backyard chickens. And Marie told Rita and her husband that strange things had been happening at the craft's house around the time that Hela disappeared. Her story is our second clue. On the night of November 18th, Marie was originally scheduled to work at the house, but Richard came home early. and gave her the night off. Bye. Get out of here. Instead of resting, she picked up a shift at a local

McDonald's where she worked part-time. Richard let her take Hela's Toyota there, which was normal. She was always welcome to borrow it if Hela was flying. And when Marie got home at around 2 a.m., that's when the snowstorm had started. But Richard's truck wasn't there. The kids were asleep in their bed, but dad's not home. Just left the kids. We're going to bring this marker out and do another little side-eye. where are you when your kids are sleeping? But when Marie woke up at 6am the next morning, she noticed that Hela's car was now gone, and Richard's truck was back.

And Richard was there, but no sign of Hela. Now, the power was out from the storm, which is interesting because Richard did tell Rita that it was on if she wanted to come over and take a shower. Right. But Richard did end up driving Marie and the kids to his sister's house in Westport, which is about 40 miles away.

Then he said he was heading home to wait for the power to come back on. Richard told Marie that Hella would drive separately and meet them in Westport, but she never showed up. Later, Richard then told Marie that Hella had gone to Denmark to care for her mother. But as the days passed without any word from Hella, Marie started to notice things that she just couldn't ignore anymore. You might want to get your marker warm. You might want to get her ready because Marie said that,

an address book where she kept all contacts of Hela's friends in case of emergency suddenly went missing. There was a dark stain on the master bedroom carpet. Okay, let's give that one a little mark. It hadn't been there before. Yep. When she asked Richard about it, he said that he spilled kerosene. Oh, okay, because that's casual. Why do you have kerosene? It's not home alone? What are you doing? Are you at your mind? Setting booby traps? Yeah, come on. Instead of asking Marie to clean it like he normally would, he ripped up the entire carpet and threw it away. I feel like I need to start like doing a five-tall. We're just going to go one more, okay?

And then there's this timeline problem we have, right? If Richard didn't know where Hela was until she called from London, why did he tell Marie she'd be joining them later in Westport? Marie started to just think and hope that like, maybe I'm being paranoid. There's nothing going on here. It's fine. Maybe they're dealing with something in private. But when Hela missed Thanksgiving without calling her kids.

Mary knew there was clearly a much bigger problem. So the day after Thanksgiving was Friday, November 28th. Not only had Hela missed the holiday, but she also missed a scheduled flight to Zurich that day. It was now the second one in a row. Two more, and she was going to lose her job. So by now, word had already spread, and all of Hela's friends were comparing notes and they started working together. After 17 years with P&M, she knew a lot of people. Remember, she's also a very likable person.

She has a ton of friends there. Flight attendants are close. Yeah. They are a close-knit community. Well, because we were talking about this, too. Like, the clientele on planes is so mean. Sometimes I feel like you almost trauma bond. Like my mom's worked inside of an airport for 40 years.

Oh, my gosh. There's other women that have worked there that long, too. They're so close. They're like best, best friends. Yeah. So a lot of her friends, too, start suspecting that now it looks like foul play. Something was really not feeling right. Especially because the more they start talking to each other and sharing what they know,

something chilling emerged. And that's that Hela had given three of them. the exact same warning before she disappeared. Quote, if something happens to me, don't assume it was an accident. Wow. Hella had said this to Rita on their second to last flight together, and she had also said it to at least two other friends. And now that they all knew, Rita felt more obligated than ever to find her,

but even still the group was hesitating to call the police. They didn't have any evidence of a crime, so they figured investigators would hear about the unhappy marriage and just write the whole thing off as a wife who had run out on her husband. And remember, I wonder, too, if they're thinking about the fact that, like, Richard is also working with the police. So that's probably also another reason why they're still hesitating. Yeah, it would be extremely scary. Yeah.

Yeah. There was also the fact, too, that Rita and Trudy knew something that the others didn't know. And that was that Hela had recently caught Richard having an affair. Is that a side eye, a red flag? What is it? I'm going to do a side eye. It's like a big old mark. I'm going to run out of space.

So now I'm going to start doing the five total. The whole board, it's going to get even worse. Hela had been seriously thinking about divorce, and she had already consulted a lawyer, but she kept it quiet because the kids, she didn't want the kids to find out. She had hired a PI, though, who had gotten pictures of Richard with his mistress, and she had other issues with Richard as well. He made three times Hela's salary, but he was really not willing to spend money on the family or, like, help her out ever. And that, my friends, that is financial abuse. Let's go ahead and give that another mark of a side eye. He was so cheap.

He wouldn't contribute to a family ski vacation that they were all going to take together. So Hela had to pay for herself, like had to pay for Richard to come as well. And the kids noticed this, and they felt so bad they gave some of their Christmas money to their mom to help her pay for the vacation. And they're little. Can you imagine them like bringing their piggy banks to mom and be like, we just want to go on the station? Oh my God. And meanwhile, the dad. is making three times as much money.

And just cheating and being like a loser. Yes. And also like, I mean, one thing we found too is he would brag all the time about how good of a father he was. He always told everyone he was involved. But Hella claimed that she had to force him to show up to their youngest child's fifth birthday party. Oh my God. Force him to show up to the fifth birthday party. So was Hella afraid of how Richard would respond to the divorce?

Is that why she warned her friends? They still weren't totally sure, which is why they just. decided to keep investigating a little bit more on their own. A fellow flight attendant who understood Danish managed to get the right number for Hela's mother, Lees, and when they spoke, Lees was pretty surprised that they were asking if Hela was with her. She said, Hela's next visit wasn't until April, and Lise didn't sound like she was needing emergency care. She didn't sound sick at all, really. The flight attendant played it off as a misunderstanding, but now they for sure knew that

Hella was not in Denmark. Even with that, though, they still decided to not go to the police because, again, they were starting to really freak out that something bad had happened and that Richard was involved and that the police would maybe cover for him. But Rita did have this other resource and it was one that Richard didn't know about. You see, Rita and Hela shared a safety deposit box, just the two of them, one that Richard had no idea about. A few months before her disappearance, Hela had stashed something in there that she didn't want Richard to find, which is clue number three for us, a receipt for her divorce lawyer's retainer. Wow.

So on December 1st, nearly two weeks after Hela disappeared, her friends contacted her lawyer for help. Which already, how much does this remind you of the Susan Powell case that we just covered? The safety deposit box with the note. And the kids are involved and the dad is just like so not interested. That gut feeling that. that both Hela and Susan must have had that gut feeling that like I need to make sure people know. Yeah. And write a note and have the secret box.

Like I can't even imagine that visceral feeling. Just. And also the second guessing yourself too, because I remember in the Susan case, like she was always second guessing if it was like as bad as she thought it was. And like even here all the friends are like, maybe it's not so bad. Yeah. Because I can go into protection mode. You're in denial a little bit and you just try to rationalize it. Yeah.

And I mean, when you're. getting abused when you're the victim of abuse, like that is what your brain starts to do. Yes, yes. So three of Hela's friends reached out to her divorce attorney, Diane Anderson, first thing that morning. It turned out that Hela had given Diane the same warning that she'd given her friends that, if anything happens to me, don't believe it was an accident. Diane understood why Hela's friends were wary of the police. She had seen plenty of women dismissed or ignored by law enforcement. Remember, I mean, it still happens today. This was the 80s. I just feel like the further back in time you go the worse it gets, not that it's any better necessarily now. And she did know that unhappily married women who disappeared were sometimes fleeing for their own safety.

Another huge part of this. Thankfully, Diane knew someone who could help. And that was a 34-year-old private investigator and a former cop named Keith Mayo. Keith was already familiar with this case. While Hela paid Diane that retainer, Diane had spent some of the money on hiring Keith to prove that Richard was cheating. And he was. They figured that out. So in early October, about six weeks before Hela disappeared, Keith followed Richard to New Jersey on multiple occasions, always to the same address. He photographed Richard leaving a woman's home clearly after spending the night with her. And Keith showed Hela the photos and it destroyed her. Yeah, he said she saw them and she basically just cried for like 10 minutes straight. And when you see these photos, there's no mistaking it. I mean, the two of them are. are very intimate.

This woman is hugging him in the parking lot very openly. It's clear what was going on. Yeah. And even though Hela had kind of come to accept the occasional one-night stand that he would have while traveling for work, which also is just like horrible as a wife to have to just like come to terms with that, that your husband's doing that, she felt like this was different because he was leaving his family during his free time now to spend nights with this woman. And at the time, Hela still wasn't sure if she wanted to go through with the divorce because, again, they have young kids. It's going to just like rip apart their family. So Keith left it alone until he got a call from Diane on December 1st, telling him that Hela had disappeared. So Diane caught Keith up on everything since his surveillance gig had technically ended.

When Keith left the house in early October, Hela still hadn't told Richard that she knew about the affair or that she had spoken to a lawyer. she had asked Diane to hold off on filing the paperwork and she was first going to ask Richard about counseling. She just seems so desperate to like try to make this work. And I see this a lot on too I takes. Like people will stay in relationships that maybe aren't the best for them, especially when young kids are involved. Because then how do you split custody? Right. And then you have to deal with like not having your kids 100% of the time or making sure they're safe.

And when you have a other parent who you're forcing to come to a. fifth birthday party. Yeah. What is life for your kids going to look like if you're splitting custody? Well, especially if he was already financially abusive and in control of the finances, I'm sure that there was a fear, too, that if they were to divorce, he was probably going to be very unwilling to help financially as well. And you're trying to keep your family together. He earned more. It's difficult. Well, I wonder, too, actually, I just thought of this. Like, if that was part of the financial abuse of, because her mom was like, you have to have your own money. So she clearly had her own money, but he's like not paying for anything.

So he's draining her of her resources. So if they got divorced, she wouldn't have anything. And he would have all of the money that he had been saving. Exactly. That's really scary and sad. So on October 14th, 1986, almost a month before she disappeared, Hela told Diane that she was ready to file for divorce. And she must have told Richard the same day because he had called Diane's office that

very afternoon trying to find out what her grounds for divorce. were. Diane wasn't available, but he pressed her secretary for information. By November 12th, which was a few days before she vanished, Hela was ready to formally serve Richard with the divorce papers. But the sheriff made three attempts, and Richard dodged all of those attempts. And the last attempt was on November 15th. Three days later, Hela disappeared. When Keith Mayo heard this, his heart sank. A woman disappearing right after trying to serve her husband divorce papers was not a good sign, albeit a pretty common one, Keith knew that now they really, really did have to get the police involved. Because if he started investigating a serious crime without notifying the authorities that someone was missing, he could face legal trouble himself.

So at around 9.30 in the morning on December 1st, 13 days after Hela went missing, Keith contacted the Newtown Chief of Police and he asked for a meeting so that they could file a missing person's report. And the chief said that they couldn't spare anyone until 4.30 p.m. that day, but Diane felt like this couldn't wait. So together, Keith and Diane hatched a plan. Keith drove to one of Marie, who's the nanny, one of her part-time jobs at a local consignment store, and he convinced her to come along with them so that she could give her story directly to the police, just as someone who's, like, more involved and, like, knows the day-to-day of the couple even more. Yeah, add more weight to it. Literally. Keith was sure that any detective who heard Marie's account would immediately open an investigation.

However, that's not what happened. According to Keith, the detective assigned to this case, Harry Noroyan made a comparison comparing Hela to a stray dog. Oh, okay. Is it too early to do botch? No, yeah. Thank you. All right. Let's go ahead and do that. That's botched. Yeah. I'm sorry. She's been missing for two weeks and you're still not concerned. She's a stray dog. Yeah. Yeah. He said that she would come. come home on her own when she got tired, which I don't even know what to make of that statement at all. It's been two weeks. She has a job and three kids.

Yes. I know. And it's unfortunate too because, like, this is the exact reason they didn't want to go to the police. And it's just like proving that it was not like a safe place to go. And Detective Noroyan does deny this completely. But like, obviously big botch of true. He said that if he seemed unimpressed, it was because Keith was been. making dramatic accusations and pressuring him to draw conclusions before actually investigating.

Also, if I seem unimpressed. Right. Sorry if I seemed unimpressed that this mom of three and successful flight attendant is missing for two weeks. Yeah. What? I mean, we talk about it too now that like the rules around missing persons just change. And it used to be you couldn't even investigate until like days had passed. So like, again, I don't even know what it was in the 80s necessarily. But it's just like the response that is like.

the most frustrating part. Keith definitely felt like they, quote, just turned a deaf ear on them. At least Rita and Trudy were able to give statements to the police. So at least they, like, had that on file. But both came away with the same really bad feeling. Like the detective saw them as idle housewives with nothing better to do than maybe invent suburban murder plots. All that to say, the day ended and there was no progress made in the investigation. Despite all of that, though, police did end up starting their investigation on a decision. 2nd by talking to Richard, which again is 14 days since Hela went missing on November 18th. His response is our fourth clue. By this point, Richard knew that all of Hela's friends had spoken to her mother, Lise,

who confirmed Hela was not in Denmark. So now Richard changed his story. He said he'd made up the Denmark trip to avoid embarrassing himself and Hela. He claimed the truth was that Hela, had actually left him for a new boyfriend and she hadn't given Richard any way to reach her. So what is this, the third story now? And she left her kids over Thanksgiving.

Yeah, got it. She left two turkeys. Which, like, that's the most projecting thing I've ever heard because he's the one leaving during his time with the kids to, like, go be with someone else. And now he's saying that's what she's doing. Yeah, very frustrated. The detective on this case, Detective Noroyan,

found this story to be believable, especially after Richard volunteered entirely on his own without being prompted or asked to take a polygraph test. And I'm sure they're thinking he's a cop. Like he would truly, he must be smarter enough to not murder his wife. Yeah, yeah, if he's a cop. And he's so helpful in the investigation. He's coming in and doing interviews and he wants to do polygraph.

And the weight that they gave polygraphs back then, I mean, polygraphs were everything. Yes. They were bulletproof. I mean, this was before DNA. Like there was like very few tools that they could use compared to what we have now. Yeah. So they do end up scheduling the polygraph on December 3rd the following day. And Richard passed with flying colors.

That's eerie. I know. It shocked everyone. All of Hela's team, lawyer, P.I. Keith, all of her friends. And they wonder for a second if maybe we are being paranoid. Like he passed. With everything Hela had been going through, falling for someone new wasn't hard to imagine. most of her friends would have been thrilled for her,

but there was one thing nobody could get passed. She would never leave her kids behind. It didn't matter how many polygraphs Richard passed. Hellas friends knew that she would never abandon her children. So as Keith turned the situation over in his mind, something about Richard's background dawned on him. Richard had at one point worked for the CIA. A 1985 report confirmed that CIA had admitted,

had administered polygraphs to all job applicants since the early 1950s. They even ran their own polygraphy school. Keith felt that they probably trained undercover operatives like Richard to beat the polygraph. That makes total sense. Yes. Yeah, because I mean, they even say that now, like, if you can control your breathing and your stress response, like you can beat it. Yeah, that's why you can bring him into court because it's, yeah. It's like take a beta blocker.

Yeah, you mean beta blocker. Give me one out of hand and I'll pass every single polygraph. You get me. But you think about it, though, he's a pilot flying for the CIA. If it goes down and he's captured, he would need those techniques. Yes, of course. And I mean, like, I'm sorry, if he was in the CIA and what the 60s, like all of the crazy mind control stuff that they were doing at the time, like they were really training people how to control their minds and doing like tons of acid at the same time. And so if Richard knew he could pass, basically, it would explain why he had volunteered to take one so quickly. So in Keith's mind, this polygraph meant nothing.

And like you were saying, Morgan, like, they put so much weight on polygraphs back then. So for Keith to say that, like, the polygraph doesn't mean anything is kind of a big deal. By this point, Hela's friends had formally hired Keith, and they knew that he needed to find something that would make police take this case more seriously asap. So he started looking into this new boyfriend story. He couldn't find any sign of an affair during Hela's marriage, just a few old flames from before she had met Richard. but as he looked deeper at the relationship between Hela and Richard, he found a dark story and one that could possibly explain why Hela was so afraid to leave him. This episode is brought to you by Alma.

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Get started now at helloalma.com slash clues. That's helloalma.com slash C-L-U-E-S. In December, 1986, Keith started digging into the craft's marriage. What he found is our fifth clue, the side of Hela's life that she didn't really talk about. And a pretty substantial history of abuse. Again, trigger warning here for domestic violence and talks of abuse. From her lawyer, Diane, Keith learned that Richard had a pretty large gun collection. Hella had shown her photos of it.

Richard was always buying himself new guns. Even when there was no money for home repairs, he would just keep buying guns. Some of which he kept loaded at all times. But it quickly became clear. Hella wasn't just scared because of the guns. She was scared because she knew exactly how dangerous. Richard could be. As word spread that Hela was missing, multiple people came forward to back this up. A former next door neighbor had once seen Hela with a black eye. She tried to pass it off as walking

into a cabinet door, but the neighbor kept pressing her. Under that pressure, Hela did finally admit that Richard had punched her. Another couple told a story about a dinner party nine years earlier in 1977. Mid-meal, Richard popped a pimple on Hela's nose without a couple. asking. Just leaned over and... Okay. Popped. Hella had given him like a subtle stop-it kick under the table and he responded by punching her in the face. Wow. In front of everyone. Wow. Hard enough that she fell to the ground. In front of everyone too, because they always say like you never know what's happening behind, like it's always worse behind closed doors. And so if he's doing that in front of people and has no shame, what's he doing behind closed doors? Literally. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what's even

worse is Richard and Hela were trying for their second baby at this time. But that's also a thing too. It's like when you're pregnant, like that's when like the violence can get worse too because you're just more of a victim. Yeah. It just keeps getting worse as truth about Hela's first abortion comes out. And this was shared only with her closest friends. And it was known that Richard had actually beaten her until she agreed to terminate. Okay, we need something stronger for side eye. Like what are we going to, I don't even know what to say. Yeah.

Wow. Yes. Yes. It turns out he was violent with children too. He was once caught hitting a friend's toddler. Who the fuck is this guy? Literally. Wow. Richard controlled Hella financially.

I mean, we talked about that quite a bit. And if Hela wanted anything for the kids, she was paying for it out of her own salary. Richard wouldn't even let her take on any debt. When she needed a new car, it had to be cash from her. savings. Wow. But yeah, it's a thing again of like making her drain her savings. So that she's more reliant on him and then she's stuck. She's cornered, isolated. Meanwhile, he's buying everything. All of this heavy equipment, he buys a backhoe, a tractor. And just eight days before Hella disappeared, he bought himself a dump truck. Were they doing any home improvements? He claimed he

needed it for future home building projects on a vacant lot that they owned. Project was not even planned yet, though. Okay. So he's just like buying toys, buying guns, cheating, hitting model citizen. Absolute degenerate. I think we've said this before, but like some people deserve like a little bit of medieval torture. Oh yeah. Not just a little bit. Yeah. Come on. Let's come on. Come on. Stick them in that brazen bowl for a little while. Quartering? What? Yeah. He's a horseman. To some people, it basically just seemed that Richard enjoyed tormenting Hella and his kids and everyone in his life, but mostly her. She was definitely the main target in all of this.

Jeez. I mean, so this is clearly an abusive relationship. I think that's putting it lately. More and more people were coming forward to say that they had urged Hela to leave long before she started this divorce process. But we know that it takes like, what, seven times or something? On average, seven attempts to leave. Yeah, yeah.

Really hard to leave those relationships. And leaving is the scariest and most dangerous time. Yes. And she had kids. Like, it was very hard for her to leave her children. There was one odd thing, though. Unlike a lot of abuse of partners, Richard hadn't exploded when Hela told him

that she wanted a divorce on October 14th, a little over a month before she disappeared. According to Hela's lawyer, Richard had said when she asked for divorce, quote, anything you want, dear. But then why was he calling the divorce lawyer asking what are her grounds for getting a divorce? I think the gears started just turning in his head

and he was like, I'm playing the long game on this. in a very, like, demented and scary way. He did keep dodging the process servers, but that was an evasive thing to do, not an explosive thing. It also seemed like he had been trying to push her away. The couple also kept living together, probably because their opposite schedules

meant that they rarely had to even see each other. And Tella possibly didn't want to move out and have it caused problems over their custody battle that they were going to have later on. But Keith knew that if he wanted police to investigate Richard further, he needed more than just a history of abuse. Police would think that Hela had every reason to leave on her own accord. So he drove to JFK and he looked over Hela's Toyota after a friend gave him a spare key.

And he tried not to disturb anything in case the police finally decided to confiscate it for evidence. They hadn't yet at that point. It was still sitting there. Let's go ahead and add another tally to the botch board there. I know. It's like she's been missing for weeks. You're letting her vehicle just sit there where it could have evidence, a snowstorm that wipes. away of it. Like, I know. I know it's crazy because, I mean, we're going to get to it, but there's, like, some really cool investigative stuff that happens in this case, but it's such a slow, frustrating start. It doesn't seem like he found anything in the car, though, but he didn't stop there. He also verified that Hela hadn't used her Pan Am travel perks to book any flights anywhere. There were no large withdrawals from her bank account. Like, none of the stuff you would expect someone who was, like, going to leave on their own accord to do. So then Keith took it a step further, and he got permission.

to dig up a local landfill. He started on December 15th with rented equipment that he had and a couple helpers he could get together. And on December 16th, he found something. A rug whose color and texture matched the carpet Richard had removed from their house. And it had a stain on it like Richard described, but it didn't look like kerosene. It looked like blood.

Then Keith asked the state police to come pick up the rug for forensic testing instead of the Newtown Police Department, which was a great call because the Newtown Police Department weren't doing a great job. So he just got the state police involved. The jurisdictional fight that followed was dramatic enough to catch the attention of local papers. The first ever media report on Ella's disappearance ran the following day. That's December 17th. That's almost a month after she went missing at this point. A month.

I know. And with the press coverage now in the mix, the state police agreed that they were going to test the rug. On December 19th, state's attorney, Walter Flanagan had the state major crime squad take over forensics on the case, and at that point, things finally started moving. But the state lab called on Monday to say that the rug wasn't actually from the craft's house. Richard had removed a section of wall-to-wall carpet, and what Keith found was an entire rug. It was just an area rug. Even so, Keith had accomplished exactly what hell his friends had hired him to do.

He got the police seriously investigating this case, and now it was finally in full swing. Within their first couple of days on the case, the state major crime squad found their first big lead, which is clue number six for us, Richard's suspicious purchases. Unlike Keith, a private investigator, state police can get those search warrants, they can pull Richard's financial records, and when they did, they noticed that there was a charge on his visa from November 19th, the day after hell it was last seen. Don't tell me it's cleaning supplies. Richard claimed he was home all afternoon, waiting for the power to come back on,

but there was a $300 charge at a department store. Detectives found out that he had bought betting. Looking back further, purchases got even more suspicious. November 13th, five days before Hela's disappearance, Richard bought a chest freezer. Okay, so premeditation. He paid for it on the 13th, but picked it up on the 17th while Hela was on her final outbound flight to Frankfurt.

November 18th, the same day Hela was last seen, Richard rented a wood chipper from a local equipment company. A wood chipper, like something that you literally put like a tree trunk in. A commercial grade. Commercial grade wood chipper. So obviously he was not taking the divorce well, not whatever you want dear. He was plotting and skiing. He rented the woodchipper three days later on November 21st and then rented it again on December 3rd and 4th.

Detectives wanted to know why. Why did Richard need a wood chipper so urgently? and on the day his wife disappeared no less. So they decided it was now time to search his house. On December 23rd, state attorney Walter Flanagan made a call. He booted the Newtown Police Department off the case entirely. Get him out of here. State police got a search warrant and worked over Christmas to execute it.

Richard was out of town. He had taken the kids to Florida for holiday. So with this chance that he's gone, they can really get in there and investigate. Our seventh clue is what they found. inside the craft's home. Dr. Henry Lee, the same forensic scientist who examined Keese landfill rug, came along for the December 26th search. But he was now looking for evidence in a house that Richard had five weeks to clean and cover up. As you can imagine, not easy. However,

Richard did miss some spots. On Richard's mattress cover, Dr. Lee found tiny spots that tested positive for blood. There were laundered towels and washcloths, and they applied a chemical still bright with signs that there were human blood on these towels. Wow. Detectives also seized Richard's gun collection for ballistics comparison, along with a crossbow, hunting knife, several hand grenades. Okay, who just needs hand grenades? That's what I'm saying. You live in the nicest part of Connecticut. What are you doing with hand grenades? I can understand guns. I get people, you know, and everybody's in different

But like I understand some people wanting guns for protection. Grenades? Yes. Like, are you for real? For what purpose? Right. Now, a lot of them were disabled from his Marine Corps days. Oh, so like memorabilia.

Memorabilia. Okay, okay. But one of them was still alive. You have young kids in the house. And like a crossbowl. Who do you think you are? Yeah, literally. Medieval torturer.

He's bailiff. Keep the guns loaded all the time with kids in the house. Like, yeah. Insane. I know. Insane it freaks me out. They did catalog a bunch of other items as well. Richards, pickup truck, carpet samples, trash bags, mail, his flight log, and a note that was addressed to Hela in case she came home while he was away with the kids.

What the note say, do we know? We do not know. Detactives did get the impression, though, that it was really meant for them to see a cover story. Right. But they couldn't prove it. Not yet, at least. It kind of gives me the Scott Peterson voicemail vibes that he left for a lady. I'm like, miss you, honey. Miss you. I'm going to go pick up some stuff.

And meanwhile, he for sure had just murdered her. Yeah. I know. It's like the like predictability. Yeah. Or just like you, the ego it takes to be like, I'll leave a couple voicemails and no one will think it's me. Like just really crazy. Yeah.

So I mean, at this point they really couldn't prove much of anything. Even searching the craft's house for two days leaving on December 28th. They had the blood spots, but they're. There's still no proof that a crime had happened necessarily. And without DNA testing, which was still at this point years away, they couldn't even be sure that it was Hela's blood. They did match it to Hela's blood type, though. O positive. 37% of people have O positive blood, though.

So, I mean, it still isn't necessarily hers. Without a body or any proof that Hela had been harmed, they were not anywhere near being able to arrest anyone. And if they couldn't get more evidence, they would have to give rich. Richard's guns back to him and let him go. So state detectives were trying to get really anxious. Richard was a Marine veteran and a pilot. If he figured out major crime suspected him of a murder before they were ready to arrest, he could just run away.

Easily. Easily. Or worse, do something to the kids, take them all out, look at like the Powell case. Literally. Yes. That's exactly what I was thinking. Because clearly he's capable of freaking out in the moment and doing horrible things. So you just don't want to give all the guns back to him.

Right. So looking for any lead they could find, detectives stopped by the Southbury Police Department where Richard worked part-time. And they asked if anyone remembered anything odd around the time of Ella's disappearance. Maybe they were thinking everyone would be like super tight-lipped because they had worked with this guy and their cops, whatever. They just weren't necessarily expecting much. They're just trying to cover their bases. But they end up getting a lot. Which brings us to our eighth clue, a string of sightings.

Buried in Southbury PD's records was a November 20th report mentioning Richard Crafts. Around 4 a.m., 33 hours after Hela was last seen, a Southbury constable spotted Richard in a local school parking lot. Richard had worked patrol that night. He finished his shift around 2 a.m., but he was still in uniform and was seeing moving equipment from his cruiser into a U-Haul that was towing a woodchipper. Okay. The constable spotted him, stopped to ask what's going on, offer any help. I mean, he kind of assumed Richard had parked at the school because the police lot was full when his shift had ended. This wasn't unusual for them, apparently.

So he let Richard know that the lot had cleared up, offered to help move the cruiser, and then give him a ride back to the U-Haul once the cruiser was parked. The constable assumed Richard would then head straight home. But at 4.30 a.m., the constable spotted the U. Hall and would be a. chipper again, but in a different parking lot. Richard wasn't around, so Constable didn't stop again, but he did note it in his report. At the time, he had no idea that Richard's wife hella was missing. Now, state detectives thought this was extremely important, so they start looking into other potential sightings of Richard and that wood chipper, and they struck gold. On December 30th, They located a utility worker named Joseph Hine.

Joseph had been out driving a snowplow sometime around November 20th or 21st when he spotted a man with a woodchipper on River Road in Southbury next to the Hussatonic River. He thought it was odd. I mean, it's the middle of the night. What is this U-Haul woodchipper combo doing out here? But he didn't stop. He did, however, note that the man's body language was confident directing truble. traffic like a cop. Wow.

You just look like you're jumping ready to say something over there. My eyes are like bulging out of my head. I'm so mad at this point. Like, can you imagine just seeing someone with a woodchipper by a river at like two in the morning? I wouldn't stop. I know. So true. The fact that even he was like, I'm not getting involved with this is some nefarious stuff.

Yeah, literally. But like, oh my God. And then for him to be like directing traffic. It's just like that ego thing again. Totally. No one's ever going to catch me. I can do whatever I want. The audacity.

Yeah, the audacity. Joseph did end up making another pass with his snowplow. At that point, the chipper was gone. But he did notice that there were piles of woodchips near an old culvert. Joseph actually, when investigators get a hold of him, he remembers exactly where this is. And he was happy to take them exactly to the location. Detectives were shocked to find that the woodchip pile was still there

when they arrived that afternoon. but wood wasn't the only thing in the pile. The items among the wood is clue number nine for us. And warning, this next part is pretty disturbing. One of the first things detective found was a piece of an envelope from the American Cancer Society addressed to hella crafts. Little nicks in the paper were consistent with going through a wood chipper.

There were return address labels. Similarly, Nicked, also addressed to Hela. And when they continued to dig deeper, they started finding blonde hair. Wow. Detectives bagged as much of the chips as they could, documented the scene thoroughly, and brought everything back to the police facility

for careful examination on January 2nd, 1987. Meanwhile, another team seized the woodchipper from the rental facility, and Dr. Lee searched the trunk of Richards, Southbury Police Cruiser, which crazed me that they didn't do those things sooner. When they finished sorting the woodchips, they had 2,660 strands of blonde hair and tiny bone fragments.

Oh my God. Which matched hair and other evidence found in the cruiser's trunk. One fragment appeared to be part of a human skull, which in the Forensic Files show I watched, they talked about how they knew it was a human skull because of like the blood vessel pops that you can see in a human skull. Like humans are the only ones that have that apparently. they also in this pile of woodchips find tiny blue fibers that appeared to be from clothing, but there was still one more place that investigators needed to look for even more evidence, the water itself.

The Housatonic River, where that utility worker had seen the wood chipper parked near. The detectives figured that Richard had probably positioned the chipper on the riverbank to just direct most of the material to shoot out and just go in the river. They hadn't found nearly enough human tissue on the shore in those wood chip piles to account for a full body. That was actually one of the things that I was going to bring up was because initially they were like, well, it could be part of a body, but it also, it's not necessarily evidence that someone died. Because you could throw like someone's whole arm in there and it's not proof that like the person is dead. So it kind of was a big deal when they found the skull bone. They were like, oh, you can't live without your skull.

Right. Like this now feels like a murder. I guess you're right. Even the hair could be explained away. If it's a mannequin, if it's a doll, it's whatever. Yeah, because they're not DNA testing it too. Right. No.

Yeah. Well, and something with the hair, too, that they noted is it had weird, like, cut marks on it, not necessarily from a haircut, but there were, like, breaks in the hair strands that weren't typical for them to see. So they were like, well, maybe it got shard off. Like, we don't know exactly how this hair is here. Like, beyond going through it. A good chipper.

Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. They showed on a microscope in the forensic files app, and it just, like, it was unusual to them, but like clearly not a haircut, but no definitive way to be like, oh, well, she's dead. Yeah. Yeah. So they needed to make sure that they found enough evidence.

So they actually bring in a Navy certified diving team to search the Hussetonic River on January 5th. Getting them in the water had taken a few days for safety. Police needed the water level to be a little lower. which required them to get permission to restrict flow of water from an upstream dam. So, like, they are kind of going a little Sherlocky here and doing some pretty serious search efforts. They actually continued their search for two weeks since divers could only go in for short periods of time. I mean, the water at this point, this time of year is dangerously cold. But they did uncover a bunch of items, which are our 10th clues.

Among the first fines were a chain from a steel brand chainsaw. It did have the serial number filed off. Detectives remembered seeing two chainsaws at Richard's house but hadn't seized them because at the time they were focused on murder weapons, not potential dismemberment tools. But forensic investigators were able to use a chemical solution to recover the filed off serial number. Wow. And essentially the solution ate through the layers of metal up top that were scratched to then get to the deeper portions of metal that still had the numbers edged in it. That's pretty smart.

Little Sherlocky. Yeah, so interesting. Little Sherlocky. They were able to then use that serial number they recovered and match it with a warranty card that Richard had previously filled out. Wow. So without a doubt, this is his chainsaw. Also, they noticed that the cutting edge of the chain had. small amounts of tissue and some blue fiber in it, similar to that of what they found in the

woodchip pile. As the dive continued, they also found a piece of a human toe, a piece of a human finger with fingernail polish on it. They did end up testing the fingernail polish. They got a bottle from Hela's house that was found on her nightstand, and they compared organic compounds in it. They found that it was a match. It was the same. That's a smart move too, because you don't often hear it, even in like dismemberment cases where they'll go to the lengths. I mean, nowadays it's DNA testing, it's fingerprints, but like back then to be able to like, oh, what nail polish brand is this? Does she have this?

What are they the same compounds? What is it? Yeah. All right. I know. And that's why the state police needed to handle it and not in Newtown. Exactly. And as their search continues, they were able to find a partial tooth that still had a crown

attached to it. And how they found this when you hear the detective tell his story about how he found it, He's like, yeah, I was just kind of like in the marsh. I'd been out for eight hours. I fell. I went to clean my handoff in this pale that I had been collecting evidence in. And as I cleaned my hand off, I saw a tooth. Wow. Like just like total luck accident to find. Now, again, pre-DNA. But they were able to show Hela's dentist this tooth. And she had seen her dentist shortly before her disappearance. Her dentist was certain by looking at her recent x-rays that the tooth did belong to Hela. And this next part is a little gross, so skip ahead a couple times if you don't want to hear this. I will say detectives did do a lot to compare the tissue and kind of like make sure that this was tissue that had gone through a wood chipper. They actually put a pig through the same wood chipper. A pig carcass.

A pig carcass. The pig was not alive. Well, no, I don't think I'm going to just take a like a live pig and put it through. I just want the listeners to know that, like, it was a pig carcase. Yeah, and it was frozen. And they essentially did that just to compare the marks that this chipper would leave on the tissue because pigs are so similar to humans. Just to be able to compare the tissue and be like, without a doubt, this tissue went through the wood chipper that Richard had rented. Here's how we know.

Like, they were not leaving any of this up to interpretation. So they did do a lot with the technology they had to ensure. they had enough to make an arrest. And I mentioned it being a pig carcass too, because that was actually a question that came up during this investigation was, was she dead when she went through? Right. Did they ever look in the U-Haul? No mention of the U-Haul that I saw. Yeah.

Because I wonder if that's where the dismemberment happened. And, like, he shut the back door thing down or what happened there? A lot of people speculated that he went to that vacant lot. And that's where he did it. Yeah. But obviously, like, he did have that chest freezer as well. the freezer was never able to be recovered. They never found it.

They never found the freezer. So they don't know how much of Hela was processed in this wood chipper. Like it's just horrific to even say this out loud. I know. It's just like, well, and what would he have done with that? Either throw it in the river, but I would imagine they'd find it.

You can't put that through a wood chipper. I know. I didn't come across any mentions of like cement. Or like a storage unit they couldn't find that somewhere. I know. I mean, he did own a backhoe. He owned the like the tools to be able to be able to. dig holes and do this, but like, did he have a trailer for the backhoe? I mean, he owned a dump

truck. That could haul a backhoe if he had a trailer. Like, he had the resources. Yep. To cover his tracks. So from there, things move really fast, at least for the murder case. So Richard was arrested on January 13th, 1987, and he was charged with first degree murder. We have some additional context because I'm from Connecticut, so I love talking about Connecticut state law. But at the time, this wasn't a death penalty offense in Connecticut. So capital punishment was reserved for serial killers, hitmen, repeat offenders, and cop killers. And in the 80s, that was just Michael Ross in Connecticut. He was the last person executed in Connecticut, who's a serial killer in the 80s. Otherwise, the maximum for a single murder conviction was just 60 years.

Connecticut's special circumstances that elevate to capital murder include killing a law enforcement officer, a firefighter, a corrections employee, murder for hire, a previous murder conviction, killing while serving a life sentence, murder committed during a kidnapping or rape, killing two or more people in a single transaction, or killing a victim under the age of 16, which is So let me make sure I'm understanding this, right? You can serve capital punishment or face capital punishment if you kill a cop, but if you're a cop that kill someone else, you don't. That is correct, Annie. Great observation. That makes me feel safe. You did not hear that wrong. Yeah, okay. At least we don't have capital punishment in that again anymore. So, but like back

in the day, that's what it was. So the prosecution was going to go for the maximum sentence. Again, just 60 years. So, I mean, if you're 20 years old, you can still get out by the time you're 80. So Richard was held on a $750,000 bail. He couldn't pay that. And on March 26, 1987, 49-year-old Richard entered a not guilty plea, requested a trial by jury through his defense attorney. It took almost another year to get to trial, which given the severity of the charges and the unusual nature of the evidence, that was pretty fast. And actually, I mean, this is something that is still talked about a lot in Connecticut. This was like a huge, huge, huge Connecticut case.

And so even when I was reading this, I was like, I wonder how they even found a jury. Like, that was probably hard to do is to find a jury because like everyone knew about this case. And if Richard were convicted, it was going to be the first successful nobody homicide prosecution in Connecticut state history. Jury selection began on March 14, 1988, and courtroom testimony took 54 days with hundreds of, of exhibits and over 100 witnesses. So the prosecution's theory was simple and very disturbing. They said that Richard had most likely killed Hela out of rage after learning that she had hired a P.I. to expose his affair, plan to divorce him, and intended to fight for custody

of their children. After 17 years of physical financial and emotional abuse, Richard was used to doing whatever he wanted to Hela. And with no body, exactly how he killed her remained unknown, but blood that was found on the mattress and the stain Marie saw on the carpet suggested that it was a blunt force attack that had taken place in the bedroom. I know at one point they were saying that, oh, she probably was like looking at the mail and had put the mail in her shirt pocket, and that's why the male also ended up in the woodchipper pile. He then most likely took her to a nearby vacant lot that they owned with no close neighbors, and that's possibly where he dismembered her with a chainsaw. To prevent identification, he ran her

head, arms, and legs through the rented wood chipper, and the rest of her body most likely went into the chest freezer that he bought that November, the one that was never found. Afterwards, the prosecution said Richard returned the wood chipper, got rid of that bloodstained carpet, drove Hela's Toyota to JFK. I guess thinking everyone would assume she got on a flight, even though there was no record of that. And what was his plan? She was going to get on a flight and never return? Literally.

Oh, what's your grand plan in all of this? I know, because it wasn't until like three stories later that he came up with the boyfriend. theory. So it's like, he just like really didn't think this all the way through. After that, he just went on with his life confident that because they would never recover the body, there would be no case. Because I guess too, like there had never been a case in Connecticut where nobody was found and someone still went to jail for it. So he probably was just very confident that he wouldn't be an exception to that. I think a lot of people at that time, because I've heard this come up in other cases where it's like, nobody, no case. Like they thought that they would be able to get away with it. Yeah. I mean, just insane. Of course, the defense tells a very different story. Richard's lead defense attorney summed up the case in one line. Quote, I don't know if she's dead, and I didn't kill her. Oh, okay.

They argued the tooth fragment couldn't be conclusively identified as Hellas, nor could anything else recovered from the woodchips or the river. They even suggested Hela had staged her own disappearance to frame Richard and escape the marriage. Richard even took the stand himself, and to those onlookers, he appeared to be a good witness, calm, composed, presenting as a loving husband who still hoped his wife would come home. He denied all of the domestic abuse allegations. He did admit to cheating, but argued that was a reason for Hella to leave him, not a good reason for him to kill her.

While Richard hoped he'd created enough reasonable doubt, the prosecution hoped that they could convince a jury to convict without a body again, first time in state history. Neither side ended up getting what they wanted, though, on July 15, 1988, after deliberating for 17 days, the jury told the judge that they were stuck at 11-1 in favor of conviction. Who was the one? Who was the one? Name names. The holdout refused to budge saying that his fellow jurors were becoming abusive, trying to pressure him into changing his mind.

And so the judge declared a mistrial. But Richard wasn't just going free. After this, the state immediately decided that they were going to try them again. Trial number two began on September 7, 1989. After another nine-week marathon, there was hundreds of exhibits and over 100 witnesses again. The main difference, though, is that this time the prosecution leaned harder on Hela's devotion to her kids to counter the faked her own death theory. Witnesses testified that Hela would have never. ever left her children behind and that her refusal to leave probably cost her her life.

She hired Keith when she could have just filed a no-fault divorce because she wanted proof of Richard's affair for an impending custody battle, they said. The prosecution also sharpened its motive argument saying that it wasn't just the threat of divorce. It was that Hela had humiliated Richard by having him followed and identifying this girlfriend that he had. And this time, the jury was convinced. And on November 22nd, 1989, after just three days.

of deliberating, they returned a guilty verdict on counts of first-degree murder. On January 8th, 1990, Richard was sentenced to 50 years in prison, so not the maximum 60, which was interesting. His own sister gave a victim impact statement at his sentencing asking the judge for the maximum. His own sister. His own sister. He was 52 years old at the time, so I mean, 102 years old.

Between his age and the fact that he was himself a colon cancer survivor, everyone in the court room expected that even though it wasn't the max 50 years would end up being a life sentence. And yet, year after year, Richard got a clean bill of health from prison doctors. And in January of 2020, the Connecticut Department of Corrections announced that they had moved 82-year-old Richard from a halfway house to a homeless shelter with full release coming later that year. What? No further information has been released about his whereabouts after he transitioned to

the shelter. but there's also been no obituary published. And so... He's on the streets. At the time of this recording, at 88 years old, it does appear that he is out there somewhere on the streets. Have they said whether or not he's tried to make contact with his children who are grown now? They haven't said anything, really.

Kids are very, very private at this point. I mean, aunt raised them. And the aunt did get a lot of donations from friends in order to help with that. But I think from the point he was convicted, everyone kind of cut him off. So, like, in my head, I'm like, I actually think he's dead, but who would write an obituary for someone? Yeah, nobody cares about him enough to write about it.

No, that's so true. That's true. Yeah. Obituaries cost money. Yeah. Like, they're not cheap. Pay per word. And you do it if you care about somebody and you, like, want to pay your respects.

Like, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Where? Don't see it? No.

No, that's a really good point. I didn't even think about that. One of the investigators in this is Henry Lee. He comes up a lot, actually, in older stories. he was like a very famous Connecticut investigator, specifically blood spatter analysis and blood. He did like the staircase. He was on the John Bonnet Ramsey trial O.J. Simpson he testified at. He comes up a lot, especially in the staircase episode we did.

He like we used a ketchup packet. Yeah, he was like filling his mouth with ketchup and like spitting it at to like show the jury how blood spatter actually works. This was like his first big case though that kind of like spearheaded his whole trajectory into doing bigger cases. But he was like very famously had a scandal where he lied about blood evidence and had two teenagers put in jail for 30 years for a crime they didn't commit. So he lost his license. He actually died two months ago. Wow. He was 87 years old.

But I was surprised that like after all that came out that he was kind of like lying about some of the blood analysis that they didn't try to overturn. I mean, maybe they did try to get an appeal after that saying I guess that like the blood evidence was like not usable. I would be curious how many cases that he. you as a witness or worked on ended up in appeals. Yeah. I know, I know. I'm going to have to do a deep dive. My uncle worked for him for a time. Yeah, which I didn't realize because I was telling him about some of the cases we covered and he was like, oh, he used to work for Dr. Henry. That's insane. That's pretty crazy. I think he was like an intern. I don't think it was anything. But still, that's pretty wild. I know. I know. He just would like look at case files

all day and like call witnesses and stuff. I didn't know you were from Connecticut. I want to talk to you after this about the Dullos case. Which one? Fodestoulos and his missing wife, Jennifer. That's like more recent. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you covered that one? Yes, it's wild and they still haven't found her.

Oh, my gosh. I know. We'll make sure we link that episode in the description. Oh, my gosh. You guys need to cover it. There are a lot of clues. It's very good. You guys should definitely do it.

Making a note of that. Yeah. I know. I will say one more thing that's interesting that happened after this. Shortly after Richard's conviction, the Newtown police officers did request an internal review of their own work. Good. They thought it would clear them of any misconduct. Seven years after Kraft's arrest, the Newtown Police Commission officially denied that request, though. They simply said it was too

late at this point. So that was kind of interesting. Wait, but that's interesting that like the police officers requested an internal review and then the police commission said no. Yeah. So it's like, I know. I will like, I will say like I kind of find that redeemable where I'm like, they wanted to see like where they went wrong. Right. Learned from their mistakes. I mean, hopefully. Yeah. To call an inquiry into yourself, like, that's a big risk. So, that is somewhat redeemable on their side. I know, because I was thinking, like, Newtown is a really, really nice town in Connecticut. It's in Fairfield County, the richest county in Connecticut. It's like right next to New York. Not a lot of crime like this happened there. No. And so they were probably, to some extent, not prepared. No, I think in the

research we had, the police department itself was like very new. It was like 15 years old or something like that at this point in time. Yeah. So not a lot of experience, not a lot of these cases happening. I mean, again, that detective did deny saying it. But like their first thought was like, oh, she'll come home. Like this stray dog analogy. So I know that's wild. Yeah. Newtown's where Sandy Hook happened too. So like just another, I don't know. It's just like, wow, crazy. Two big, big Connecticut cases. Yeah.

So we like to end these episodes with like a little bit of like an activism section, basically. Sometimes we'll highlight like a charity that helped the investigation that you can look into. And for today, because, you know, we're covering another case that unfortunately deals with domestic violence, we wanted to highlight resources from women's law.org for anyone who might be navigating that situation. they provide an abundance of steps that those in abusive situations can take to ensure they have a safe exit plan. So you can learn more about them. You can find these tips at women's law.org, which also offers an email hotline for legal questions about domestic violence, sexual assault, also stalking. For child custody issues related to domestic violence, the legal resource center on violence against women specializes in interstate custody cases for survivors.

And their website is LRCVAW.org. And as always, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-safe. That's 1-800-7-9-7-233. You can also text start to 8-8-7-88 or visit the hotline.org for a live chat. And before we do our final segment of the day, we just wanted to thank Annie for coming and joining us. Thanks for having me. It's always so great having your perspective, too, because you cover so many cases and you're just like, you have such a breadth of knowledge. Oh, thank you.

And thanks for having me. So, so amazing having you here. Do you have any favorite episodes that you can think of that we'd be good to send people to? I don't know. I just did the McKenzie's Chirilla deep dive, so that's out there. And lately I've been doing a lot more current events. So talking about like everything that's breaking, what's going on out there, things that, you know, people are talking about in the news. Amazing.

We'll be sure to put some links in the description. Yeah, where can people find you? So I have a podcast called Serialistly and another one called Tend Up to Life, both True Crime. and new episodes every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Awesome. Three a week is absolutely insane. I'm a sadist. I know.

I know. Insane. But here, this is now what you guys do when you're having your clues, blues, and you need a little bit more content to get you through the week. Check out Annie's stuff. I got you back. On that note, we're going to highlight our missing person of the week. Today we're going to highlight the case of April Pennington.

April went missing in Uncasville, Connecticut on May 29, 1996. April was 5'2 and 100 pounds at the time of her disappearance. She was last seen leaving her family residence on Orchard Drive in Montville, Connecticut during the early morning hours of May 29, 1996. She climbed through her brother's window and planned to meet friends, but she never returned home. April was picked up by a 15-year-old classmate, Patrick J., PJ, Elaine, and a 30-year-old man, George Michael Leniart. There were many conflicting stories from these boys on what happened that night and where April vanished to. Her body has not been recovered, but foul play is suspected in her case due to the circumstances involved.

If you have any information regarding April's whereabouts, you can contact the Connecticut State Police at 860-848-650. And that is all we have for this week's episode. Once again, thank you to Annie for joining us. And now we want to hear from you guys. Any thoughts, theories, feedback, anything we love hearing from you all. We read the comments all the time. Yeah. Absolutely.

If you have a favorite Annie episode, please also put that in the comments. So other clues listeners can go and check it out. There's one that I listened to, and I'm trying to recall the case, but it was so insane. You're reporting on it, and you just had so many clips, and I was just like, I couldn't get enough. It got me hooked. So I'm going to go rack my brain and figure out which one that is. And Annie and I have an episode together that we did too. And we read, like, Reddit stories that basically felt like the beginnings of true crime.

Documentaries, just people with, like, my mother-in-law tried to kill me, just like wild stuff. So there's so many of them. That's a fun one to listen to us. There's so many of them. At Crime House, we really value your support. So again, share your thoughts on social media. And remember to rate, review, follow, and subscribe. To Clues to help others discover our show.

And don't forget, for early access, add free access. Subscribe to Crimehouse Plus at crimehouse.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the clues page. Thank you guys. Bye. Bye.