True Crime All The Time - Richard Crafts

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Richard Crafts seemingly had a great life. He was a successful airline pilot with a great wife and three children. But, by 1986, his wife Helle had hired a divorce attorney and a private investigator to track his infidelity. Before Richard was served with divorce papers, Helle disappeared. Richard very quickly became the center of police attention when they found he had rented a woodchipper and the found fragments of Helle's remains.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss Richard Crafts who committed what many people refer to as "The Woodchipper" murder. Over thirty years later, this is still considered one of Connecticut's most gruesome murder cases. The details are horrifying but the clues that the authorities uncovered that led them to Richard are fascinating. You can support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 209 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And with me as always is my partner in True Crime, Mike Gibson, Gibby. How are you? Hey man, I'm doing better, man. Yeah, I like that. I love to hear that. I like the fact that you're in studio. It's all amazing. Trying to get there, man. How are you? I'm doing well. Yeah. I'm doing very well. My daughter is home early. Yeah. And I think we'll be here through the Thanksgiving holiday. So that's awesome. Yeah. Probably have at least a week with her. What's that stuff on your face, man?

Got a new beard. Yeah. Got a new one? Well, it's a new one. Yeah. I just say, beard. I bought it. Yeah.

It's a stick on. Yeah. Now, I grew a beard for you. Oh, yeah. In honor of you. And I thought, you know what? I'm not going to shave until Gibby comes back. Yeah.

Well, then it became November. Right. And I thought, this is the month where, you know, a lot of guys don't shave. So I'm just going to let it ride. Just going to see how long you can go. Yep. All right. And we'll see how it goes.

Yeah. wife is about 50-50 on it. Well, you know what? To be honest with you. Just tell her to hang out for a little bit longer. Because that always works. Yeah. Maybe not say it that way. Yeah, maybe not. All right, buddy, we got some new Patreon supporter shoutouts. Let's give those. We had Ginger Wilson. Hey, Ginger. Stephanie. Stephanie. Stephanie. Abby Yinger. Hey, Yinger. Trudy Canner. Canner. Like, just be canner about it. Sure. Yeah. That's not, I don't know what that means, but I'll go with it. I'm just making it up. Annie Shiren Brew.

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Yeah. Tani Talbot. What's happening in Tani? Marlene Stewart. Hey, Marlene. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac.

And Justin Hickman jumped out of our highest level. Hey, thank you, Isaac. And Justin Yoder did as well. The good old Yoder, man. Yeah. So that's really, really cool. And then if we go back into the Volk, Gibbs. Okay.

This week, we selected Jenny Murray. Hey, our good friend Jenny. Yep. So Jenny got the vault this week. It's awesome. She's been with us a very long time. Yes, she has. We appreciate that new support as well as the continued Patreon support. We had some amazing PayPal donations. Lucas Zulist. Zulis. Sue Lewis. Sue Lewis. Hey, Sue. Susanna Elliott. What's happened in Susanna? And Jordan Savage made a pretty sizable donation. That's awesome, Jordan. Thank you. Thanks to all of you as well. So Gibbs right now, we have. We have a brand new episode of Unsolved Out. We're talking about the disappearance of Suzanne Morfew in Colorado. This is a very current case.

Yeah, it's active. She disappeared in May of this year. Right. So a little different for us, a little newer than what we normally do. But it's a very interesting case with, you know, a lot of back and forth and, you know, some of the people believe this and others believe that. So we'll dive into all of that stuff. I definitely want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving who celebrates it.

And if you don't, we wish you a happy Thursday, Thursday, exactly. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time? Let's do it. We are talking about the story of Richard Crafts and the murder of his wife, Hella, Crafts. A lot of times you'll see this referred to as the Woodchipper murder. And it's also been cited by the Cohen brothers as part of their inspiration for the movie Fargo. Pretty gruesome inspiration. Yeah.

I mean, you know, that movie, I can't remember when it came out, but what, it's got to be 25 years old, give or take? Oh, man, I can't even remember. Nineties, wouldn't you think? At least 20 years old, right? Yeah. It won an Academy Award. I think it gets very high marks. Yeah.

But it's still one of those movies that people are divided on. A lot of people really love it. And then you've got some people that just like, oh, that is not my cup of tea at all. I enjoyed it. Yeah, I did too. But again. But I understand where you. Yeah.

Yeah. That's kind of my quirky humor zone. So let's head to New England to find out the details behind one of Connecticut's most gruesome murders. Richard Kraft met Hela Nielsen in the spring of 1969. Hella was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1947. We got a big contingent of listeners in Denmark. We do. We really do.

She was extremely intelligent. Love to learn. She was fluent in a number of languages. Just like me. Very, very much like you. Yeah. She attended college in England. as did you and later lived in France and worked as an opair, as I know you did as well.

I mean, that opair job I had, that was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you were what, Tiger's O'Pair before his wife jumped in, his later to be wife. Yeah. I know it was a good gig. He paid me good, too. At the age of 20, Hela landed a job in France as a flight attendant.

And that was a job that took her all over the world, as it is for a lot of flight attendants, you know, especially if you're on those international routes. I mean, man, you are really going all over. And she later got a job with Pan Am back in Denmark. Pan Am, you know, pretty big back in the day. I mean, even Leo worked for him. Exactly. And then all of a sudden, no more Pan Am. But my assumption is she partlaid her experience with what was probably a small. smaller airline in France into a bigger job with Pan Am. But it was that job with Pan Am that took her to Miami, Florida for classes. And that's where she met Richard Kraft. Now, Richard was born in New York City, the son of a successful businessman. He grew up in an affluent area of Connecticut.

He graduated from Darien High School in 1955. I think he dabbled a little bit in college. but it wasn't for him. He ended up joining the Marines in 1956. And that's where he learned to fly. It was as a Marine. Yeah. He flew helicopters in Korea.

I think he was in Okinawa for a bit. There are some reports that he flew some clandestine missions for the CIA in Laos and Vietnam with Air America. Wow. So he definitely was experienced. Yeah, yeah, not just with helicopters. I think by that time when he was with America, that's when he started flying planes. That's where he got his real experience.

So, you know, I think when he returned to the states in 1966, he pretty quickly got a job as an airline pilot with Eastern airline. And again, we're talking about a lot of airlines that were big back in the day that were either gobbled up or. they're just no longer around. I was just thinking, you know, my grandfather was a pilot for TWA. Yep, that was another big one. Yeah. Pan Am, TWA. Yeah.

I think Eastern was fairly large. I think so, too. Maybe not on the same scale as those two. But it was this job with Eastern that led him to meet Hela in 1969. They were at the time both training in Miami. So Gibbs not really a lot of background in this one, But to me, it is interesting to see how two people with such different backgrounds end up meeting, right? You've got Hela from Denmark.

This guy grew up in Connecticut. She traveled all over the world. He was literally all over the world as well, but with the Marines. And then fate, kismet, chance, whatever you want to call it, draws them together. in Miami, Florida in 1969. At the time they met, Richard was engaged to a woman, but Richard and Hela maintained a relationship

that started then, continued over the years. My assumption is they saw each other when they could. Because as a pilot and a flight attendant, they were flying all over the world. I would think pretty hard to get your schedules to line up. I would think so too, you know. You know, perfectly match that you could be able to maybe down then.

You just luck of the draw got on the same flight. It would have to be, hey, I'm going to be in wherever New York on this date. Oh, I am too. Yeah. I'll have a day lay over here or whatever. My assumption is that's how it went for a number of years. But then in 1975, the two got married after Hella became pregnant. they bought a house in Newtown, Connecticut, and later had two more children.

So Newtown, back then, not very well known. No. Very well known today because of the school shooting. Yeah. So, you know, it's not well known for a good reason, an infamous reason, but it is well known. She eventually hired an au pair to watch the kids and return to Pan Am as a flight attendant. You know, she was described by co-workers as, you know, the type of person that was liked by everyone. She was very personable.

She was very friendly. Richard was making really good money as a pilot. I saw one report Gibbs that said their combined income in the early 80s was somewhere around $125,000. Yeah, that was really good money. That was a lot of money in the early 1980s. It's quite a bit of money today. I mean, you can, you can live very well as a family with an income of $125,000. Now, you're not cruising around on yachts or buying, you know, second home ski places in Aspen, but still still doing a little.

It's very respectable money. Yeah. Your fridge is full. Yeah. And you can buy a lot of things that you want. But in 1980, gosh, you could pretty much buy. probably just about any. They were living very extremely comfortable is the way I would put.

I would have said the same thing. Yeah. Why didn't you? Because you beat me to it. In 1982, Richard became an auxiliary police officer in Newtown, which to me is interesting. You know, here's a guy with a big time job. He's a pilot at Eastern Airlines making a boatload of money. He didn't get paid to do this auxiliary police job.

In fact, he ended up spending a bunch of his own money. He bought a Crown Victoria and kind of decked it out. Yeah. You know, to make it look like a cop car. Maybe it was something he just really wanted to do. He wanted to feel like he was a, you know, police officer important. Well, you know, he was a guy who had collected guns for a long time. He had a very large gun collection.

I got the sense that. he was the type of guy that longed for some power. Yeah. Maybe the kind of power or the kind of feeling that could only come from being in that type of authoritative position. And maybe that's why he did it. Because, you know, like I said, it's a guy that's making a lot of money. He has what has been described by many people as a very stressful job.

It's a lot of responsibility. And it is. I remember growing up near the airport and I would work at the airport or the hotels around the airport where the pilots would come in at nighttime, right? They would stay over. Were you working by the hour at that point? Where is this story heading? Anyway, so they'd be sitting in the bar at the hotel that I would work night shift to clean up afterwards, right? But they'd be in there just shit-faced, drunk, right? Trying to fly out the very next.

Trying to relieve the pressure or... Sometimes they would just get in fights with anybody because they were just so stressed from what they had to do throughout the day. Well, you were literally in the air responsible for, you know, however many hundreds of people are on some of those big planes. And they had that tight, they had a tight time frame.

They had to, you know, make sure they're at this gate by that time and the next gate. but also he has a wife. Yeah. He has three kids at home. It's a lot of responsibility. That's a lot of responsibility as well. But hey, in my free time, I'm going to essentially play police officer. Right.

Because that's what you're doing. You're not getting paid. No. You're just doing it for the fun of it. I guess you don't want to be around your kids. Well, that's what I'm thinking. I think there's a lot of different ways you could look at it. A few years later, he did get hired on as a part-time police officer.

or in a neighboring town. One report said he made about $7 an hour doing this part time. So again, it wasn't for the money. No. He didn't need the money. So I think you have to make the assumption that he was in it for another reason, most likely for the power or the feeling of power that it brought to him. The prestige.

Maybe that too. Yeah. So, you know, I think Gibbs here again, you have to. a couple who on paper, and I say that quite a bit, seemingly have it all, right? They have a family. They have plenty of money. On the outside, it seems like a perfect situation. But we know, and have talked about this in a lot of cases, these types of images can be very deceiving. I guarantee you that everybody listening knows a couple who, you know, you look at them and say, wow, man, I envy them.

They've got everything maybe that I'd like to have. Or they're just really doing well. Yeah. But you have no idea. They could be having knocked down dragouts behind closed doors every night. I remember I used to know this couple. I thought they were just exactly like that. The bee's knees.

Yeah. You know, and then you, you know, get that crushing news that this one or that one or both of them were cheating on each other. You thought, I just thought you guys would never fall apart. Well, and then it all comes out, right? Exactly. All the skeletons in the closet come out and you find out that, you know, whether it's physical altercations or cheating or they were nowhere near this kind of perfect couple or they weren't on the pedestal that we. or everyone put them on. Right.

Yeah. They just had a good facade. Yeah. And again, there are people that, where it is just a facade and there are people that just are truly happy. Yeah. And they are living the life that, that they're kind of portraying. One big problem that the crafts had was that Richard was not faithful. And I'm not sure he ever was.

It seems as though, you know, he just never really left that Playboy pilot lifestyle. behind. Even after he got married in 1975, he reportedly had a string of affairs and really it was his infidelity that led Hela to start thinking that she should end the marriage in 1986. And I've seen some other things that Richard has said that have been, you know, quoted in papers and things. And, you know, the gist of many of it was almost as if he didn't want to marry her. her and he only did so because she became pregnant. Okay. So that's his reasoning behind it.

Yeah, not a good reasoning, but I'm saying he's alluded to that fact in a number of different, um, or it came out in court. Yeah. But that happens. We know that happens.

Sure, that does happen. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've known guys that have married somebody because, per fact that they were, you know,

their girlfriend got pregnant. And sometimes it works out great. Yeah. And sometimes it doesn't. Nope. But again, I think you can say that about everything, right? There is no sure thing. No matter what the situation is where you enter in a relationship or you enter into a marriage,

there's no situation that is going to ensure that it's going to end up perfectly. No. It just doesn't happen. I don't think there's any perfect relationship anyway. No. I think it comes down to about the work put into it. And sometimes there's just some bad apples, man. And sometimes the work doesn't even, can't say.

No, no, because some. bad apples out there. Hell, hired a divorce attorney. So, I mean, I think based on that, she was pretty serious about it,

right? That was more than just talk of, I don't know if I still want to be married. It's thrown down some retainer fee. Yes. It's getting serious. Now, on top of that,

she hired a private detective. So I think that right there tells you something about what she thought was going on. Yeah. And it also, again, tells you how serious she was. She wanted to make sure everything went the way she needed to go get out of that, you know, marriage.

And I think she was definitely right to hire a PI because he uncovered that Richard was involved in a relationship with a woman in New Jersey. So, you know, I think to start out, you know, before we really dive in here, this is important. Helicrafts is talking with a divorce attorney, has a PI who's essentially proved that her suspicions are correct. Right. And we'll find out as we go along that she was ready to serve. She was ready to draw up those papers and have Richard serve. But she never got that chance because on November 18th, 1986, Hela was dropped off at

her house by some friends after she returned home on a flight from Frankfurt, Germany. She was never seen again. And her friends became concerned when she didn't show up for work because that was so far out of the norm for her. She was one of those people that didn't miss work. I think on top of that, she had told some friends that she was planning on serving Richard with divorce papers, but she was scared about what he might do once he got served. I mentioned it. He had a very large gun collection. This is something that she had mentioned to friends as well. well, it was part of the reason why she was extremely fearful.

Okay, he's going to get these papers. Right. He's going to fly into a rage and he has access to all these guns. He's got this little mini armory. Yeah. She told friends that Richard had made comments in the past that marriage was forever. And I think they probably even went further than that saying, you know, you can't get out type of comments. I won't let you out because.

we signed up for this thing and it's forever. Now, I'm going to cheat. Yeah. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do what I have to to get through this. But yeah, we're staying together. We're staying together. Yeah.

Come hell or high water. But the other big thing that she told some of her friends was, hey, check on me. If I don't show up, if something seems out of the ordinary, if something happens to me, come looking for me. Yeah. Okay. You hear that from one of your good friends. you might be a little worried.

Be a little alarming for sure. And I think they were, right? So she doesn't show up for work. It prompted them to call not only the police, but also her attorney. I think later on, Hello's private detective, a guy by the name of Keith Mayo, he also called police. And I think he's actually the one that officially reported her missing. But her friends who called fairly early on were told by the Newtown police,

hey, don't worry, she'll show up. Yeah, she's just out and about doing something. Of course she'll show up. Yeah. She'll surface eventually. Now, Keith Mayo, he later called for an investigation into the handling of Hello's case by police because he said they didn't take any of the calls they received about her disappearance seriously.

And I know, especially in the beginning. beginning, the police took quite a bit of heat. And they should have. And they should have for not taking the cases seriously as many people thought that they should have. In this time frame, you know, we've heard that in other cases, that 70s, 80s. Let's wait and see. Now, a lot of times when we're talking about even kids, which we're always flabbergasted

by. Right. But it definitely did happen with adults because she was an adult. she had the freedom to not come home if she didn't want to, unlike a 12, 13, 14 year old. So I get that in, let's say, the first day. But this is a woman who has three children. Yeah. And, you know, as the days go on, to not start to take that more seriously, I really think that's where the police took the majority of the heat.

At a certain point, you got to say, okay, we've looked at this woman's situation. She's very responsible. She's always home to take care of her three kids. What are the chances that she just up and left and abandoned her three kids? Probably not very likely. The odds are low. This is getting suspicious. We better look into it.

But police did eventually start to investigate her disappearance sometime in December. they interviewed the family's opair, a woman by the name of Don Thomas, who told them that Richard had told her a few different things about where Hela was. He first said she had driven to his sister's house, even though apparently there was a pretty severe winter storm going on at the time. So his thing was she got up early the next morning and drove to his sister's house ahead of them. Now, we're going to load up and we're going to go to my sister's house as well. Right. Later in the morning. And they did that. They got to Richard's sister's house. He dropped off Don Thomas and the kids and didn't return until about 7 p.m.

But his wife was not there. Then later, Don said that Richard told her Hela had gone to Denmark to take care of her ailing mother. But she also said, that Richard would leave notes around the house. You know, one time he left a note that said, hella called. You know, this is days after she's vanished. Right. Don also told investigators that she noticed a large stain on the bedroom carpet.

And when she asked Richard about it, you know, if he needed help cleaning it up, he said, no, he would take care of it and that he spilled some kerosene on the carpet. Now, I don't remember ever. taking kerosene into my bedroom, but okay, maybe you got some kind of special kerosene heater in there, I don't know. You know, back in the 80s, we ran some kerosene heaters in our house, you know? Did you? Did you have a $250,000 house in 1980?

No, but we ran some kerosene heaters. So I'm not saying they couldn't have. Yeah. What I am saying is they had what was about a $250,000 house in 1980,000. 80. I don't know if they would have needed a kerosene heater in the bedroom or not. Right. So I never found out anything about that. To me, it seems strange. Um, just knowing what type of house they lived in, but who knows? But beware to spill it, you know? Really, that wasn't the weird part to me. The weird part was I've got it in my bedroom at all, but. Well, because if I got any kind of

liquid in the bedroom, well, there's a chance I could spill it, I guess. Oh, that's true. That's Don later said that Richard removed large pieces of the carpet from a number of different rooms. So Gibbs, I think this talk with Don was enough for police to center their suspicions on Richard Crafts. And I think it should have been. Don's information along with the things that Hela's friends and her PI were saying, it had to make Richard Crafts look like a viable suspect. At a minimum, a person of interest. Yeah, yeah, no doubt about it.

So police did call him in for questioning. And they even asked him to take a lie detector test, which he did and passed. So I think the passing of this lie detector test, it caused kind of a rift, right? Some in law enforcement saw this as proof of his innocence, others did not. Now, this is 1980 something, right? They put a lot more emphasis into light detector test back then, I think much more so than they do today. But everything changed when they got a hold of his credit card purchase history.

They saw that just a few days before his wife's disappearance. Richard had purchased a large freezer and he picked it up the day before she went missing. All right. So maybe something coincidental. Or kind of suspicious. Or something suspicious. But then they saw a $900 charge at a place called Darien's Rennels, which turned out to be for a wood chipper. Now.

All right. So I've got a wood chipper and I've got a freezer. Maybe the man needed to get rid of a large amount of wood. Yeah. You know, maybe another coincidence. but I think once you start to have so many different coincidences, you start to think probably none of them are coincidences. Exactly.

And I'd just like to say the word coincidence. You just want to see if I would say coincidence. I'm trying to get you to say it and you just did. Yeah. Police later learned that he also rented a U-Haul truck, which he used to haul the wood chipper. And later on, they would get the woodchipper from the rental agency. take it in for testing. But one of the big things in the case was when a witness came forward to say that he saw

the wood chipper and the truck on the side of the road as he was plowing snow. And I think he could even put Richard Crafts there, which was huge. Yeah, huge for the case. So this guy was able to lead detectives to the spot where he said he saw Richard, the U-Haul, the wood chipper, and it was just up from the river. It was like very close to the river. So this led authorities to begin a massive search of the riverbanks and the river itself.

Ultimately, they found an envelope with Hela's name on it. Okay, that's a huge fine. Why in the world would an envelope with her name on it be on the muddy riverbank? Right, where they said they saw. Exactly where this guy said, said he saw her husband. Divers found a chainsaw in the river and searchers found some pieces of human remains. I think a lot of it was scattered on, you know, kind of on this muddy riverbank. Right. The serial number had been filed off the chainsaw, but technicians were eventually

able to figure out that it matched a receipt showing Richard had purchased the chainsaw in 1981. Not looking good for Richard, is it? No, not at all. I think the pieces of the puzzle are definitely starting to fall into place. Famed Dr. Henry Lee wrote in his book, Cracking Cases. In the end, our team's efforts eventually led to the discovery of 2,660 strands of blonde hair, 69 slivers of human bone, five droplets of human blood, two teeth, a truncated piece of human skull, three ounces of human tissue, a portion of a human

finger, one fingernail, and one portion of toenail. So Gibbs, this would prove to be the remains of hella craps. That's a huge find right there. It's a huge find, but when you look at it and you really kind of break it down, think about how small of a find it is literally. Figuratively, it's huge, right in the case. But when you look at literally what they found, well, 2,000 hairs is nothing. Five droplets of blood, really? Three ounces of human remains. Do you know what three ounces is? Yeah. It's so little, a couple of teeth. But combined. It's what they needed to move this case forward. It is.

It's also going to be the central issue at trial. So we'll get into that. Investigators got a search warrant for the craft home. They turned everything upside down. They did luminal testing. And they did find some blood in the house. And it proved to be a match to Hell's blood type. They also seized 51 guns, some hand grenades.

Hand grenades. And a crossbow. Hand grenades. Hand grenades. Never know when you need a hand grenade. I get being a gun collector. I've got some guns myself, not 51. That's quite a few.

You know what I don't have? Hand grenades. No. I don't know if anybody should really have a hand grenade. I've never seen where maybe I would use that in a self-defense situation to protect my house because it's kind of hard to know where all that's going to go. You're not the punisher. No, I'm not the punisher.

but as you said, Gives, really not looking good for Richard, right? when all this stuff comes out. Not at all. Richard was arrested on Tuesday, January 12th, 1987 and booked into the Bridgeport Correctional Center on a $750,000 bond. It's healthy. It's healthy. But you also have to look at how much money this guy makes, how much maybe he had in

the bank, and maybe the fact that he travels quite a bit. he's a pilot. He can probably jump on a plane and fly it wherever he wants. Or charter his own plane and get the heck out of Dodge. Yeah. After his arrest, both Eastern Airlines and the Southbury police suspended him, which you can kind of expect would happen. He was charged with murdering his wife, Hella Crats.

In a pretrial hearing in March of 1987, Hela's divorce attorney testified that she had, had disclosed that she was afraid for her life. She also said that her husband, Richard, had been physically abusive on at least one occasion. The evidence that the attorney had been building for the divorce was presented. You know, they had photographs of Richard with another woman. So I think you take all of this, right, along with the physical evidence the authorities had found. And it was definitely enough to send crafts to trial. And by this time, time things were becoming a little bit circus like. You know, the media had really picked up on

this story. Yeah, kind of a three ring circus. Yeah, I mean, when you're talking about, okay, the thought is this man killed his wife, chopped her up and put her in a wood chipper, the media is going to come and cover that because it's sensational. It is. People want to read about that. It's definitely going to be the type of headlines that grab people. pull them into your periodicals. Well, and speaking of headlines, you know, there was some that said wood chip murderer. There was one that said chopped to pieces. You know, those are the things that kind of grab people. Just a little reading on the train into work. For better or for worse. But because of the publicity, the trial was moved to New London, Connecticut. Crafts pleaded not guilty. And he asked for a

jury trial. The trial began in May of 1988. And I've kind of already talked about. So, some of this, but it was a very unusual trial, right? This was the first murder prosecution in the state of Connecticut where they didn't have the body of the victim and gives, we both know from the research that we've done throughout the years for a very long time. You know, it was kind of always thought to have been next to impossible to get a conviction without a body in years prior. Yeah. And I think that's why you had people like the mob, the mafia, who would go to great lengths to ensure that bodies were never recovered. Well, they never would get rid of a body whole, right? They always like to chop the bodies up themselves.

Yeah, or weight them down and make sure that they sank to the bottom of the river. Yeah. I think part of that was because it was kind of always viewed back in the day as extremely difficult. to convict somebody of murder if you couldn't really prove they were dead. Because if you don't have a body, how are you proving that this person is actually dead, not just off somewhere escaping? Yeah, all you need to do is pay a couple witnesses to say, hey, I saw Big Bob down in Atlantic City playing cards, man.

Big Bob? Big Bob. Big Bob, you know. So as this trial got underway, the state contended that Richard Kraft killed killed his wife, Hella, but they conceded that they really were not sure exactly how he did it. You know, there were definite police theories. And most of those centered around him hitting her with something in the bedroom that would have explained the big stain. Then he put her body in the freezer until he could dispose of it. Now, what the state was sure of was that he used a chainsaw.

Yeah. and a wood chipper to dispose of her body. Well, it makes sense. I mean, I don't want to get super graphic, but if you're going to cut something and then put it through a chipper, it's just like if you're going to make some prime rib sandwiches, you're going to freeze that prime rib a little bit before you put it on your slicer because it's going to slice so much easier.

Oh, yeah. And be less messy. I got you. Versus taking it when it's in the raw form. So probably similar premise. Yeah. I don't know how you equate a body with prime rib, but I get the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the thought process behind it.

Yeah. Well, I would think at the very least, you're going to have less blood, right? You're not going to have this flowing, massive amount of blood when you start to cut a body into pieces because it's frozen. The prosecution called more than a hundred witnesses. And they introduced around 650 exhibits during this trial, which, you know, the prosecution, lasted almost two months. I know one thing that they really stressed was that Richard Crafts didn't even report

his wife missing. Those reports kind of came from friends. They came from her private detective. Certainly doesn't help his case. No, I think even if you're going through an issue with your spouse and you're battling or one person says, oh, I'm thinking about getting out of this relationship, you've got three children. and if that person is supposed to come home and doesn't come home,

at some point, if not that night the next day, you really need to call somebody. Right. And the fact that you don't kind of is naturally going to make people think that you either had something to do with it or, man, you're just a really callous SOB and you just didn't give a shit.

Well, then on top of that, you're making up stories that she flew back to, you know, Denmark. Yeah, I mean, you're putting all the, these things together for sure. The defense argued now that HeloCraft was still alive, right? There was no evidence to prove otherwise. They said that she left voluntarily. She left her family.

And it would have been easy for her because of her experience in world travel and the fact that she was fluent in a bunch of different languages. Well, you'd have to believe that she'd want to leave her three kids behind. Yes. You would have to believe. that to believe the defense's theory. Right. But as you always say, you have to pull out all the stops, right, as a defense attorney to try

to create some type of reasonable doubt. What else are you going to do? The state doesn't have a body. So you're going to say, hey, the state hasn't proved that this woman's even dead. How can you convict my client of a murder when they can't prove that a murder occurred? Present the body to us. Now what the prosecution did was they had Dr. Henry Lee testify about the remains that were found that he said were proved to be hella.

He even said that he was able to match the nail polish found on a fingernail to nail polish found in the craft home. That's telling. It's telling, but what does it prove? I think it proves that it could be her, right? because she she has the same nail polish in her home. Sure. But there could be three other women on that street that had that same nail polish that bought it from the same store.

Yeah. And I think that was, that's really what I'm asking is it's, when you say it's telling, I do think it is. But does it prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this is her? Next, they had some odontologists testify that they were able to match the crown on a partial tooth that was found to Hella's dental records. To me, that's, now we're really getting into some more concrete. Yes, a little more definitive maybe.

I think this was a really big key to the case, right? I've already said it. The prosecution had to prove to the jury that Hella Crafts was dead. Without that, it would be very difficult for them to get a conviction. I think the nail polish makes you go, whoa. Really? Interesting. When you have two odontologists saying, this matches that. Yes. And one of them, if I remember correctly, was a famous one, Lowell Levine. I know we've talked about him and other cases. He's a very famous odontologist. I'll go back to that three ounces of what was described as human tissue.

Three ounces gives it's not much at all. This is not a lot of volume. I mean, you think about three ounces. That's just like a couple pieces of steak or chicken in your hand. You know, it's not a lot. No, it's not a lot at all. Hela's divorce attorney testified about getting the divorce papers ready, getting ready to serve them. I think they were due to be served the week after Hela vanished. Don Thomas, the O'Pair, the nanny. She testified about the large thing that she had seen in the home, as well as the way that Richard acted in the days after Hela disappeared. She testified that Richard bought a new freezer for the basement because, as he said, the old one was broken.

Yeah, but Don said, hey, that old one, it was working just fine. Yeah, and this was big because, you know, part of the state theory is that he put her in the old freezer until he was ready to dispose of her body. And then he got rid of the old freezer and replaced it with this new one. The way he got rid of the evidence inside of the old one. Yes. So again, gives, I think when you're looking at most of this evidence presented by the prosecution, you're definitely getting the feeling as though it doesn't look good for this guy.

But I think you also have to be honest and say, is any of it proving that he killed his wife? Not only that, but proved it beyond a reasonable doubt because that's a big qualifier. It's the job of the prosecution, right? Drive it at home. I don't think really any of these things on its own kind of does that. You're going to have to go with an accumulation of all of it and say, you know, the preponderance of evidence. So much of it points to the fact that he did this. But it's going to be a hard task for the jury. You know, the defense theorized that the envelope had been planted at the river. You know,

they said the case against their client was fabricated. Evidence had been tampered with. Well, I mean, you know, it's not a stretch to say that law enforcement has done that in the past. No, it's not out of the realm of possibility. It has been done. Yeah. Now, Do I think, you know, most detectives or most police agencies fabricate, plant? No, I don't think so. No, yeah, we don't. But you'd be naive to say that it doesn't happen because it's been proven in a number of these wrongful conviction cases.

The defense also did a pretty good job of planning some reasonable doubt about the state's claim that Hela was murdered after she got home from the flight. They actually got the Newtown police chief to say on the stand that Don Thomas, the couple's nanny, had told him she heard hella cough in the middle of the night, which would have been after the time the state said she was most likely murdered. That's a pretty strong moment for the defense team. I think so. A close friend of the couple testified that he was in the master bedroom on November 20th and he

saw no big stain, basically contradicting what Don Thomas had testified to. So that's why I say, I think they did a pretty good job bringing in some witnesses that maybe could have planted some reasonable doubt. But the big thing in this trial is that Richard took the stand in his own defense. He got up there and he denied killing his wife. His defense attorney asked him if he knew whether hello is alive or not. And Richard answered, I certainly hope she is. I believe she is. He testified that he last saw his wife in the early morning hours of November 19, 1986 and said that her last words were, I'm leaving now. He added, she was all right. The last time I saw her that morning of November 19th, 1986. Gibbs, one of the things that all of the paper said about Richard Crafts,

is that he was very calm. Yeah. During his testimony. Calm and collected. Yeah, this was not a guy that was rattled, but he was also not a guy that really got emotional about anything. And if you think about it, there were some things to get emotional about. Sure.

Right. The prosecution is showing pictures of what they claim to be your wife's remains. Right. Now, was he coached? to show any emotion because that would mean that he's saying it's possible that is his wife. You can make that argument. I just don't really think he showed a single ounce of emotion during the entire trial. Now, the defense team did ask him about his infidelity and he admitted to it, but he said

his wife was well aware of it throughout the years. His defense got him to say that he was never in the area. where the bone fragments and hair were found with a U-Haul truck or a wood chipper. And regarding the phone message, where he told Don Thomas that Hella called, he said that was a friend of his wives from Copenhagen, who also just happened to be named Hella. Convenient. It's convenient. Now, that could be a very popular name.

And it is. I know we have several listeners with that name. Yeah, very popular. but it's also a convenient way to explain why you would have made that statement or written that down on a piece of paper. He did acknowledge that he rented the wood chipper, but he said he did so to get rid of some brush, nothing more. Now, the one thing I really had a hard time finding was what the prosecution did in their cross. Because normally, you know, that's one of the things that you like to talk about is okay, it's great to get up there and tell your side of the story, but you are opening yourself up

to cross-examination. Yeah, and I just feel it's never good to put your client up on the stand. I just, like you said, you're really opening yourself up, and that can go bad really quick, because you don't know how the jury's going to interpret what you're saying and how you're acting. Now, I think there's another side of that argument that some people make, and it's that the jury, I shouldn't say every jury, but a lot of juries want to hear the defendant say, I did not do this. And when they don't hear that, there are some folks that feel as though, you know, by choosing not to testify, you're making yourself appear guilty. Now, not every jury, I'm sure, takes it that way, but that's an argument that some people make. But I just don't have, and maybe

it's that they really weren't able to trip him up or there wasn't any big bomb shells during the cross. And that's why there really wasn't that much out there about it. Once the jury got the case, they deliberated for 17 days. I don't know if we've ever had a case where a jury's deliberated for that long. So a long time. 17 days. Yeah. As a defense team, you're feeling pretty good. Oh, yeah. You got to be over the moon. Because normally the thought process is the longer that the jury takes to deliberate, the more split they are, which normally is good for your client. And ultimately, the jury was deadlocked, causing the judge to announce a mistrial. The big issue, as I understand it, was whether or not they believed the state had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the remains found were that of hell.

of crafts proving that she was deceased. I already said that, right? I said that was going to be the hurdle and I think it was. Something else that I found interesting is that they were only given one guilty option and that was murder. Yeah. They were not instructed to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter, but it really came down to one juror. And this one juror said that he could no longer deliberate with an open mind because they had voted so many times and nothing was changing. The judge said that this juror told him, I'm out of here. And I'm not going back in. It was reported that before the mistrial, the vote was 11 to 1 in favor of conviction with this one juror being the loan holdout and the person who refused to continue to deliberate. So was that close?

right? You just had one person who was not convinced. And no matter probably what they tried, he was not going to change his mind. He was dug in. So this is it. I'm done him. And he's like, there's no use to keep voting because I'm not going to change my mind. So the first trial ended in a mistrial on July 15th, 1988. But you know Gibbs. They weren't going to let Richard Crafts go. Definitely they were going to try him again. His second trial began on September 7, 1989. This time moved again to another city because of all the publicity surrounding the case. And we're not going to dive into this trial in any detail because essentially it was pretty

much the same trial. Yeah, they're going to have the same evidence, the same witnesses. The only thing different is going to be the jury this time. Yeah, it was very, very similar in what was presented. Now, I will say the prosecution had the same task to prove to the jury that Hella Kraft was dead and that her husband Richard had killed her and disposed of her body. The defense again contended that the state couldn't prove that Hella was dead, let alone that Richard Kraft had killed her. Now, I do think one difference in this trial, and I don't know how different it was, but I definitely got the feeling that the prosecution spent more time. in the second trial, focusing on the issue of Hela leaving her children, right?

Right. A woman like Hela-Krafts would have never voluntarily left her three children behind. That's going to strike accord with most of the women jurors, because they're going to agree. As a mother, why would they ever leave their kids? Yeah, I don't remember the exact makeup, but I think it was like 11 men. and one woman. Yeah. I think.

I could be wrong about that. I'm, I'm, I think some of the men might feel the same way, you know. Yeah. I mean, I would feel that way about my wife. Yeah. If you asked me that question, I would say, there's no way. There's no way in hell that my wife would ever leave her two daughters behind. I don't care what is going on.

I don't care if she hates me to the moon and back. Right. She ain't leaving without those two girls. Exactly. It just ain't going to happen. But again in this trial, Richard Kraft showed no emotion. You know, he just sat very calmly through the entire thing. The jury got the case on November 20th.

And this time it only took them about eight hours to unanimously find Richard Kraft guilty of the murder of his wife. He didn't show any emotion as the verdict was read, nor did he show any emotion in January in 1990 when the judge sentenced him to 50 years in prison. And one thing I found very interesting was that Richard's own sister, who, you know, by this time was taking care of his three children, she asked the judge to give him the maximum. So I think that right there tells you what his own sister thought about his guilt. And I think a lot of it came from how he treated his children.

Because a lot of times in these cases that we profile, you know, your family sticks up for you in a lot of instances. So, you know, to kind of hear that that this guy's own sister was asking the judge to give him the maximum, to me, it really tells me something. Either she already hated him for another reason or she had viewed all the evidence. She had interacted with him. And based on all of that, she knew that this guy. guy was guilty. She's like, you can never be around these kids again. Yeah. So Richard Crafts at the age of 53 was sent off to prison to serve out really gives what should have been the remainder of his days. But that was not to be. You know, his defense team did appeal. And in 1993, the Connecticut state Supreme Court upheld his conviction saying that he indeed did receive a fair trial. Now, the vote was four to one, there was one justice who dissented stating that he believed Kraft should receive a new trial because he didn't think that the jury should have been allowed to hear from Hellas' friends regarding different things that she told them about being afraid of Richard. And I thought that too

as I was kind of, you know, going through the research, there seemed to be a lot of hearsay evidence. And typically they would not allow that. There seems to have been a lot of hearsay evidence that was allowed to be introduced at trial. The justice even said it. You know, this type of testimony does not allow the defendant to confront or cross-examine her statement. And that's usually why it's kept out, right? If you tell Joe Smith that I did something, but you're not at trial. It's not coming out of your mouth.

Right. It's coming out of the mouth of Joe Smith. Yeah. Well, that doesn't allow me to cross-examine you and say, hey, Mike Gibson, why did you say that? Right. You can't do it. So I think that's why a lot of, in a lot of states, you know, that type of hearsay evidence just doesn't make it in. Yeah.

It's not fair to the defendant. Yeah. No, I agree. So he lost his bid at his appeal to the Connecticut State Supreme Court. but Richard Crafts was released from prison to a halfway house in January of this year. Pretty recent. Yeah, it's this year. But as recent as you can get.

And I mean, imagine, you know, what he's what he's being released into. It's not really part of the story. But, you know, January, boom, right after that is when COVID and everything started to hit. You're on lockdown again, buddy. Well, so he was 82 years old. Yeah. I think he probably, he's either coming up on a birthday. I can't remember where his birthday is.

He served 32 years in prison, not quite the 50 that he was given. Right. He did get credit for the three years that he was locked up between his arrest and his sentencing because he was never able to make that bail, that $750,000 bail. But crafts really benefited from timing because if he had been sentenced in later years, he would have died in prison. But at the time, he qualified for what was known as good time. Right.

Or good behavior time where good behavior was rewarded with them basically shaving years, right, off of your sentence. I couldn't find much more on him after he got out. But the Hartford current reported that his sentence was due to be finished in June. And so I'm assuming at this point, Gibbs, he's a free man. Working at a grocery store. Well, you know, it does remind me a little bit of Brooksie. Yeah. From Shawshank Redemption, I have no idea what a guy does at the age of 82 after spending 35 years of his life locked up.

I just don't know. Welcome to Walmart. These carts have been sanitized. Welcome to Walmart. Okay. You might get away. You might get away with that part, but the rest of the world around you has changed so much. It's moving so fast.

It's a whole different. It is. I don't know how people catch up and learn to cope. We've done it, but over 35 years. It would be like, Brooks, you want to either go back in or end your life. Go away. Yeah. But let's not forget.

This is the guy who killed. his wife so it's not like I'm getting all misty-eyed about it or anything. He does have some kids out there. I don't know how they felt about it. And I never did find anything about that. My assumption is they don't, it's not like they're wanting to give interviews and say, you know, hey, yeah, this was my dad. Yeah, he's living with us now. I didn't find anything about that. I mean, I think he's damn lucky that he got out at all because, you know, And you can say 35 years is no joke, but when you look at this case, right, as we wrap up this case, it's extremely gruesome.

You have a man who killed his wife, put her body in a freezer, then cut her up with a chainsaw and put the pieces through a rented wood chipper. Man, you know, he was really trying to get away with this. Yeah, he was. And he had to have thought about it at least a little bit ahead of. the time because some of these purchases and these things happened, you know, a little bit in advance. He bought a new freezer disposed of the old one that most likely contained some damning

evidence. Yeah. He cut out big pieces of the carpet. And I think he replaced a lot of it. I just don't understand how a husband could, number one, murder his wife and the mother of his three children, right? That's one. but then two cut her body up with a chainsaw and put the pieces in a wood chipper.

You really have to hate that person. That adds a whole other element on top of murder to me. Because again, I know people snap. I know things like that happen. You got the rage. There's rage. You do things when you're seeing red. Okay.

You still have to pay the price for that. Right. But the second piece, that's not rage. I'm really trying to get away with this. That's calculated. That's calculated. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison. But this is also, again, the mother of my three children, the woman that I'm supposed

to love, how could you cut that person up and then scatter her into a million pieces on the river bank? on the river. Yeah. And I just can't even imagine it. You have to have zero feelings at that point, right? To be able to do something like that. You have to definitely be as cold as you somebody could ever be. Yeah.

But to me, one of the big fascinations with this case, and I mentioned it, right, is the first time in Connecticut that the state was able to prosecute. It was also the first time they were able to get a conviction without having the body of the victim. And I think, you know, really that's where the testimony of Dr. Henry Lee and the odontologists and Loll

Levine came up huge. Because I think without that, without them being able to articulate to the jury how they were so confident that they could peg these remains as belonging to hell of crafts, I just don't know how you could convict someone. They certainly added credibility. And they added credibility. Now, of course, we know what Dr. Henry Lee went on to do and, you know, some of the high profile cases that he's been involved with.

But that's it, Gibbs, for the case of Richard Crafts, the murder of Helicrafts. We've got some voicemails. You want to check those out? Let's hear them. Hey, guys. This is Danielle from California. You know, Danny, California. I'm just calling this.

I'm super excited. I just got to Larry Mornos and I have been waiting for it since I started this podcast in like, I don't know, September 7th. Anyways, my boyfriend shipped out today. I had to drop them off at the airport. So you guys kept me company all the way home. And I just wanted to say thanks. And I'm super excited. I finally got to hear the 200 and I'm catching up.

So thanks to heap. And keep everything going the same way. And you're doing great. And keep your own time ticking, guys. Bye. Well, she's binging through fast. Yeah, yeah, she really is. And so she'll hear this pretty quickly.

Yeah. And maybe she already, or maybe she'll hear it this Sunday because, you know, we're always a little behind on the, on the voicemails. But so boyfriend shipping out, appreciate his service. Absolutely. For sure. And we appreciate you listening. Yeah.

Hey, guys. I love the show. I'm just calling from Victoria, BC, Canada. And I'm calling because I'm listening to your podcast. I actually realized that I know a murderer. In 2017, a man named Andrew Berry murdered his two daughters, Aubrey and Chloe, who were four and six years old at the time, on Christmas Day. And, you know, I'll never forget the day that I saw his face on the front page of the newspaper. And, yeah, I worked at a corner store in the neighborhood, and they would all come in together, the three of them.

So I knew Chloe and Aubrey as well, as well as Andrew. I had a couple conversations with Andrew. Never really thought he seemed like weird guy or anything. Anyways, love the show. And, yeah. It's definitely strange. I've been there myself, you know, when you... Oh, that's right.

Yeah. I mean, you knew someone that turned out to be a murderer. Yeah, I knew two people, you know, so it's... I don't know what that says about you, but... Well, you know. Yeah, I do think it's strange. I've never been in that position. But, you know, hearing him talk about it, okay, they're coming in.

to the store. You're talking with these people. You're getting a sense of them. There's no clue that this guy is a murderer that he's going to end up, you know, killing his two daughters. So, you know, really the question for me is how many of us go through our daily lives interacting with people, meeting people, seeing people. Right. We don't know what they're, what they've done or what they may do. They could be sitting right across from you at this very moment. Could be. They could each be sitting across from one another. That's true. Hi, my name is Abby. I've been listening for about a year now. I finally became a squirted through Patreon. I'm going back and listening to old episodes now, and I'm listening to the

Paul Asser of Rhodes ones right now. And I'm calling because at about minute, 50, and 30 seconds, you're talking about hair left behind at the scene. And then it goes to a commercial break. And when it does the commercial break, I was like, oh, God, it's going to be for Madison. And it was anyway, I thought it was pretty funny. So thanks for all your great show stuff and keep your own time picking. Thank you. Bye. So a little unfortunate timing.

And I don't know if I've talked about this, Gibbs. You know, some of the commercials or some of the advertisements that we do, they're kind of stitched in later on. Yeah. And they can be put into any of the episodes going all the way back. There's just a placeholder for them. Exactly. So, you know, you're probably not thinking at the time when you put that placeholder in, boy, I hope we don't get a hair care product here. It's just.

But we've had that happen with other, you know, advertisement as well. We have some, you know, unfortunate way it got placed, but. Yeah, just a really bad coincidence. There are some advertisements that are baked in. They're built into the episode and they never leave. And then there are some that kind of flow in and out depending on. timing and things like that. Yeah. Hey. I'm on Arthur Shawcross and I just got to the point where Mike you tell Gibby, he made one of the best comments he's made of all time about how Arthur may have done the

whole thing with the broom to himself. Just really hit me that. He's probably right. He probably did that with a broom to himself. And in order to make it seem culpable or make himself a victim, he associates his mom with it. It made a lot of sense. So I want to give a shout out to Gibby for, again, making an awesome, awesome deduction.

Anyway, I love you guys. Thank you for providing good entertainment full from education. And you guys, you guys, keep your own time ticking. Keep doing what you're doing. And, yeah, I will, again, keep waiting for every release coming out. Thanks, bye. There's no doubt why my third nickname is Sherlock. Sherlock.

Yeah. Because why? because you didn't think I was going to ask you a question why you always got to go so deep why you got to go deep man my headphones just fell off my head on that one right off that I got so cracked up yeah but I kind of that's been a long time ago Arthur Shawcross been a long time ago some of that you and I have had to block out oh because it was nightmarish but I do remember what he's talking about I don't remember exactly what you said but I remember it got a lot of traction.

Yeah. That it was. Brilliant. Something that people really latched on to and they thought, man, Gibby really was spot on there. Sherlock-ish. Sherlockian. Sherlockian.

Nice. We got milk bag Gibbs. Yeah, what we get? So I found out that her good friend Elizabeth Gunnaka sent the I pause my true crime podcast to be here. Oh. That was from last week. That's, yeah.

I found out that was her. Angela Perpingen sent you a Starblin. sent you a Starbucks gift card. Yeah, I appreciate that. To use while you're on the mend. Yeah. And then Donna Padawano sent us some amazing red velvet cupcakes from a great local bakery here in Dayton.

They were amazing. Tasty, tasty. They were very good. So we appreciate all of that. That's it, buddy. That's it. For another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gabby.

Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.