Helle Crafts: The Wood Chipper Murder

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In this episode, we delve into the chilling case of Helle Crafts, a wealthy Connecticut woman who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1986.  Her husband, Richard Crafts, claimed that she had gone to visit her sick mother in Denmark.  But as investigators dug deeper, they uncovered a twisted web of lies, deceit, and betrayal that would lead to the infamous “wood chipper murder” case.

Our episode takes place in Newtown, Connecticut which was purchased from the Pohtatuck Native American tribe in 1705.  The Newtown area and Connecticut in general hold a lot of history when it comes to the founding of the United States of America.  Newtown is also the birthplace of the game Scrabble developed by James Brunot.  Unfortunately, Newtown is recognized for the Sandy Hook School shootings in December 2012, when Adam Lanza killed 20 school children, and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School before committing suicide.

A more recent news story connected with Fairfield County, which Newtown is a part of is the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos, a mother of five, in 2019.  Dulos has never been found.  Her husband and his girlfriend were arrested for capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder in 2020, but Fotis Dulos committed suicide twenty-one days after he was charged and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis’s trial is scheduled for late spring or early summer of 2023. 

This episode centers around the disappearance and murder of another mother in Fairfield County, Helle Crafts.

Denmark

Helle Crafts was born Helle Lorck Nielson on July 4, 1947, in Denmark.  Helle is described as an outgoing vibrant child who made friends easily and these traits seemed to follow her into adulthood.  Helle attended college in England and then worked as an au pair in France until she decided to apply for a job as an airline stewardess for Capital Airways.  She was a natural fit with her trim figure and engaging smile.  She loved flying between France, Brussels, Germany, and Africa.  

With some experience under her belt, Helle applied with Pan American Airlines which was looking for airline stewardesses in the Copenhagen area.  Helle was selected with seven others out of a field of 200 applicants.  She was sent to Miami for training.  Not surprisingly she finished first in her class.  It was on May 24, 1969, twenty-two-year-old Helle met thirty-one-year-old airplane pilot Richard Crafts. 

New York

Richard Crafts stood 5’8’’ tall with a medium frame with dark brown unkempt hair.  He didn’t fit the mold of the typical airplane pilot at the time, but it worked for him as he didn’t seem to lack in female companionship which was almost exclusively flight attendants.  

Richard Crafts was born on December 20, 1937, and was the youngest of three children (two older sisters).  Richard graduated from Darien High School in Connecticut and joined the Marines in 1956.  Richard was trained and became a certified pilot by the late 1950s.  There is some indication that while in the military Richard may have flown for Air America until 1966 as part of CIA missions into Southeast Asia.  

In 1968, after leaving the military Richard flew for Eastern Airlines.  

Starting Out

When Richard and Helle met he was already engaged to another woman but that didn’t seem to stop them from seeing one another. People who knew the couple were surprised that they dated as they often would get into arguments even in public.  Surprises were in store for everyone when in 1975 the couple married after Helle became pregnant with the first of the couple’s three children.  In 1976, the couple moved into a one-level ranch house in Newtown.  

After the birth of her third child, Helle wanted to return to work.  She hired a 19-year-old live-in au pair, Dawn Marie Thomas.  With two incomes now coming in, the Crafts were in the top 5% of wage earners in the United States in the 1980s.  Richard managed the family’s finances and would often spend large amounts of money on firearms and lawn equipment. At one point, Richard Craft had enough firearms to arm fifty individuals.  He purchased tractors and mowers that were often deemed eyesores in the family’s yard.  As the grounds and house often appeared in disrepair.

Wanna Be

In 1982, Richard Craft, along with being a full-time airplane pilot, was also employed as an auxiliary police officer for Newtown.  This was an unpaid position but Richard seemed to take it seriously.  In 1985, Richard bought a Ford Crown Victoria, the same type of vehicle that the Connecticut State Police used and he outfitted it with multiple radios, antennas, and police lights and sirens.  

In 1986, Richard was hired as a part-time police officer for the nearby town of Southbury at $7 an hour.  He paid for his own training seminars on police investigation techniques.  

Needless to say, Richard was not home often between his flying assignments and his part-time job.  He would often pack a bag and leave home for several days without telling Helle where he was going or even when he would return.  

Deterioration

The Craft marriage was on life support by the summer of 1986.  It was reported that Helle had been seen at times sporting bruises on her face.  She would often tell friends about how Richard treated her, especially during her first pregnancy.  Helle had stayed for the sake of her children, but she openly told friends that she wanted a divorce.  That summer Helle had enough and retained divorce attorney Diane Anderson.  Diane recommended hiring a private investigator to document Helle’s belief that Richard was having an affair.

Keith Mayo, a former Connecticut Police Officer now a private investigator was hired.  Helle gave Mayo a box of personal papers that belonged to Richard.  She also handed over phone records that first started her suspicions that Richard was having an affair.  Mayo traced one of the numbers to the home of a stewardess living in the Middletown, New Jersey condominium complex. Mayo captured several photographs of Richard with this stewardess and handed them over to Helle on October 2, 1986.  

Helle asked Richard for a divorce which he was reluctant to agree to.  Richard would make an appointment with the Sheriff’s Office to be served the papers only to not show up.  Helle would tell friends and coworkers including her divorce attorney that if something should happen to her they shouldn’t assume that it was an accident. 

Missing

On November 20, 1986, Helle’s friend and co-worker called Richard and asked where Helle was.  She had been scheduled to work that day and hadn’t shown up which was out of character for her.  Richard told her that Helle took her flight bags and left the previous morning.  He said that she may have flown to Denmark to take care of her sick mother and that her Toyota Tercel should be in the employee parking lot at JFK Airport.  

Helle’s friend checked to see if her car was in fact in the lot and it was.  When she looked inside she could see a pair of boots that Helle had worn when she dropped her off at her house on November 18th upon returning from a flight from Germany.  When her car remained untouched for three days and no one could get ahold of Helle, her friends went to the police and filed a formal missing person’s report.  

Another friend of Helle’s contacted her mother in Denmark.  She inquired if Helle was with her or if she had heard from her.  Mrs. Neilson reported that Helle was not with her and she was not planning on seeing her until April of 87.  She also told Helle’s friend that she was not sick and she had not spoken to her daughter in several weeks.

Friends also reached out to Helle’s attorney and the private investigator relaying their concerns of not having any contact with Helle in over a week.  Her friends felt this was totally out of character with her and they knew how much Helle enjoyed the holidays for her to just take off and leave her children.  

P.I. Mayo on December 1st contacted the Newtown Police Department informing them of Helle’s disappearance and insisting that they investigate her husband Richard. He did not feel that she just left without a trace.  

Interview

On December 4th, Newtown police officers questioned Richard Craft as to his wife’s whereabouts.  Richard told officers that he had last seen Helle on November 19th when she left their home to fly to Denmark to visit her mother but by this time she may be in the Canary Islands with friends.  Initially, it didn’t seem that the Newtown Police were too concerned.  Helle’s marriage was deteriorating and she wanted a divorce.  Maybe she just left to get away and didn’t want anyone to know where she went.

However, over the next few days, police interviewed several family and friends along with Helle’s coworkers.  The picture painted was that Helle was a devoted mother and career woman.  Taking off and not telling anyone was out of character for Helle especially abandoning her children. There were also conflicting explanations Richard was telling others about Helle’s disappearance.  Besides the discovery that Richard was having a long-term affair with a stewardess in New Jersey and Helle wanted a divorce.  

All of this led the police to ask Richard if he would take a polygraph examination which he agreed to.  To the surprise of some of the investigators, Richard’s exam showed no deception.  One examiner stated in his report, “Based on polygraph examination and my numerous conversations with Mr. Crafts, he does not know where his wife is.”

The Nanny

Around this time police interviewed the Craft’s live-in au pair, Dawn Marie Thomas.  She told authorities that Richard Craft woke her up on the morning of November 19th telling her to hurry and get the children ready.  He was driving them over to his sister’s house in Westport due to the power going out overnight.  Thomas asked where Mrs. Craft was as she knew she had returned home the previous night.  Richard told her that Helle had already left for his sister’s house and they would meet her there.  Thomas thought that was odd as visibility was still quite poor.  

When Thomas and the kids were dropped off they discovered that Helle was not at her sister-in-law’s house.  Richard gave no explanation as to where Helle was.  He told them he would pick him up later that day which turned out to be around 7pm that night.  Thomas once again asked where Helle was since she had not seen her all day and Craft told her he didn’t know.  The next day when Helle still had not been around Thomas asked Richard if he knew anything.  It was then he told her that Helle had flown to Denmark to be with her sick mother.

Thomas also informed investigators that she noticed pieces of carpet had been cut out in the master bedroom.  When she asked Richard about the reason for their removal he told her he had spilled kerosene on the rug and needed to get rid of it.

Searching

On December 11th, Newtown detectives interviewed Richard for a second time.  Richard was cooperative, but to detectives he seemed to be guarded and not too concerned about not having any contact with his wife in twenty-three days.  Richard told detectives about removing the carpet in the master bedroom due to a kerosene spill.  He told them that he cut it up in pieces and threw it out in a nearby dump.  Detectives left that interview with more questions than answers but no solid proof, only a belief that Richard was somehow involved with Helle’s disappearance.  

Private Eye Keith Mayo was not giving up doing everything he could to find out what happened to his client.  Knowing that carpet had been removed from the master bedroom, Mayo decided to search a dump in Canterbury which is two hours east of Newtown to see if he could find some of those pieces.  For several days he searched and his perseverance paid off.  He found a couple of pieces with what looked like blood stains on them and took them to local authorities.  Those pieces were then sent to the state police crime lab in Meriden which at the time was run by renowned forensic scientist, Dr. Henry Lee.  After testing carpet samples it turned out that none of the stains were positive for blood.

In the News

On December 17th, The Danbury News Times published the first story on Helle’s disappearance.  The headline read,  “Police Seek Missing Newtown Woman.”  Keith Mayo was interviewed and quoted as saying he didn’t think she disappeared on her own and criticized the slow pace of the police investigation.  Mayo’s constant pursuit of answers and bringing more attention to Helle’s disappearance and Helle’s friends’ non-stop campaign of questioning the police about their investigation led to increased media coverage and ultimately the Connecticut Attorney General to become involved and handed over the investigation to the Connecticut State Police.  

Detectives from the Western District Major Crimes Unit started looking at Richard Craft’s activities prior to Helle’s disappearance.  They started by pulling credit card receipts and phone records from the month prior to November 19th.  On the Master Card investigators discovered several purchases of interest.  One was from November 13th, when Richard purchased a large capacity Westinghouse freezer at an appliance store in Danbury in which he paid $375.00 and picked it up on November 17th, the day before Helle returned home from Germany.

Search Warrant

On the afternoon of December 25th investigators executed a search warrant while Richard and the children were in Florida for the holidays.  Dr. Henry Lee was on the scene to oversee the collection of evidence.  When investigators entered the home they were surprised to find the house in disarray. Furniture was strewn about, there were dirty clothes everywhere, dirty dishes, and mattresses on the bare floor of the living room.  Investigators discovered a freezer and searched it.  They would not realize until later that this was not the new freezer that Richard had purchased on November 13th.  

Dr. Lee performed luminol tests on towels found hanging in the bathroom and in areas in the bedroom.  Both tested positive for blood.  In further testing of the towels type O blood would be indicated.  Helle Craft had type O blood.  In all 108 pieces of evidence were collected in the search. Including blood spatter found on the side of the master bedroom mattress. 

The following week investigators found out what a $900 rental charge seen on the examination of the credit card records was.  It turns out it was for a woodchipper, a Brush Bandit that was rented on November 19th along with a U-Haul truck.  

The Break

To investigators there was a horrible feeling around the wood chipper rental that left more questions than answers.  How did all these pieces fit together?  The answer came in the form of Joseph Hines, a snow plow driver who came to the police with what he knew on December 30, 1986.  Hines told them on November 19th that he was out plowing the River Road near the Housatonic River near the steel bridge around 3:00 am when he noticed a U-haul truck parked off the side of the road.  

Hines described the truck as a U-haul that had its lights off, the back rolled up and a large wood chipper attached to the back.  As he passed the U-haul the man walked to the rear of the truck and motioned him to move along as he passed by.  Hines passed by again around 4:00 am and noticed wood chips along the side of the road.  

Investigators would also come to find that around 4:00 am Richard had a conversation with a fellow Southbury officer after Richard had parked the U-haul and woodchipper in a school parking lot.  Richard told the man that he had been cleaning up limbs that had been downed in the November 18th storm.  However, there were no reports of any downed limbs that had been in need of a wood chipper. 

Remains

After Hines pointed to the location where he had seen the woodchipper investigators began to search the river bank along an area known as Lake Zoar.  Investigators found shredded wood chips mingled with other plastic materials.  Searching along the bank investigators found a partially shredded envelope that clearly showed the addressee, “Miss Helle Crafts, 5 Newtown Lane, Newtown, CT.  

Within an hour Dr. Lee’s forensic team was called in to conduct a more thorough search of the area.  After several days of searching investigators recovered 56 bone chips, 2,660 human hairs, one tooth along with a metal crown, half of a toenail with pink toenail polish, and part of a finger.  In all less than 3 ounces of human material.  Now Dr. Lee needed to determine if what they found was Helle.

Drivers were also brought in to see what could be recovered from the water.  A dive team was able to recover part of a chainsaw with the serial number scratched off along with a saw blade.  Dr. Lee’s lab was able to recover human tissue, hair, bone chips, and fibers that had been stuck to the grease on the blade.  The serial number was recovered in the lab by burning off a layer of metal.  The chainsaw with serial number E5921616 was bought by Richard Craft for $499 from a Newtown hardware store.

The Experts

Dr. Lee brought in several experts in specific fields to help in the identification of the biological material, namely to match it to Helle Crafts.  One of those experts was Albert Harper, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist who was able to identify the wood chips as human due to blood vessels that run inside the top of the skull, something only humans possess. Those human bone chips also came from someone with type O-positive blood.  Helle Crafts blood type.

Dr. Gus Karazulus, DDS, a forensic odontologist was able to match the tooth found by searching through Helle’s dental x-rays from 1982 to 1986.  He confirmed that it belonged to Helle. 

Arrest

On January 11, 1987, an arrest warrant was served on Richard at his home at 9:00 pm.  Police surrounded the Craft residence and called in to have Richard come outside.  Instead, he told the police, “I’m tired, I’ll take care of it in the morning.”  Police continued to call into the house which only seemed to anger Richard who told them not to call back.  It would take until 12:30 am for Richard to finally emerge from the house.  He was arraigned in a Danbury Court and taken to Bridgeport Community Correctional Center.  His bail was set at $750.000.  

First Up

Due to pretrial publicity, Richard’s trial was moved to New London, Connecticut, and began in May 1988.  The prosecution was led by Attorney General Walter Flanagan.  The prosecution’s theory was that Helle had returned from her flight from Germany around 7:00 pm on the evening of November 18th, 1986.  After putting the children to bed around 8:00 pm Richard and Helle were in the master bedroom when an argument broke out and Richard hit Helle with a blunt object to her head.  As she fell to the floor he hit her again and her blood got on the side of the mattress. The nanny had the evening off and would not return home until around midnight.  

Richard rolled Helle up in the rug and placed her in the freezer overnight.  The next morning he got the au pair up early to get the kids ready to take to his sister’s house.  Then he returned home and began the task of cutting up Helle’s frozen body and placing her parts into green plastic bags.  Richard then went out and rented a truck and woodchipper then disposed of Helle’s remains in and around Lake Zoar on November 20, 1986.  

Dr. Henry Lee testified as to the human remains that were found and connected them to the woodchipper that was examined after it had been returned to the rental agency.  He was on the stand for six days testifying to DNA typing, blood grouping, hair comparisons, tool mark comparisons, fabric comparisons, and handwriting analysis.   

The most damaging piece of evidence was the chainsaw and the material that was caught in the blade grease. A receipt for a chainsaw purchased in 1981 by Richard was among the papers Helle had handed over to P.I. Mayo when she first hired him.  The polish found on the toenail matched the pink polish found in Helle’s home and hairs taken from her hairbrush matched the hairs recovered in the chainsaw blade and among the wood chips.  

Statements

Five witnesses gave statements that Helle had made to them in the fall of 1986.  One of Helle’s friends told the jury that Helle told her that if something should happen to her that she shouldn’t assume that it was an accident.  A coworker testified that Helle told her that “her husband would find her wherever she went… (and that) he would have an alibi and well thought out plan.  Another coworker testified that Helle had told her that “if anything ever happens to me please don’t accept it as an accident no matter what he says.”

These statements were allowed in not as hearsay but were offered as Helle’s state of mind.  

Mistrial

After a four-and-a-half-month trial, the case went to the jury that deliberated for 17 days, the longest in Connecticut’s history at the time.  Another first was this was also the first murder trial in Connecticut’s history to be tried without a body.  A jury of ten men and two women were unable to reach a unanimous verdict after one of the male jurors refused to deliberate any more and walked out.  He was the lone holdout and wasn’t going to change his mind.  Superior Court Judge Barry Schaller declared a mistrial.

The second trial took place in Norwalk, Connecticut in September 1989. This trial was almost a replica of the previous trial.  During this trial, as in the previous one, Richard Craft showed little emotion and displayed a low-key calm demeanor at the defense table.  When the case went to the jury of eleven men and one woman it only took them eight hours of deliberation to reach a unanimous verdict of guilty on November 21, 1989, almost three years to the day Helle was murdered.  Richard was sentenced to fifty years in a maximum security prison in January 1990.    

Released

When Richard was sentenced Connecticut Law at the time allowed for a significant reduction in prisoners’ sentences for good behavior. Richard Craft was transferred to Isaiah House, a halfway house in Bridgeport in 2019 after serving thirty-one years of his fifty-year sentence.  He is currently eight-five-years-old.  

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