Flight Attendant Vanished, Investigators Followed a Trail to a Wood Chipper

Helle Crafts vanished from her Connecticut home in 1986. Prosecutors later alleged her husband murdered her and tried to erase the evidence by feeding her dismembered remains through a wood chipper — forcing investigators to build a homicide case with no intact body.

Crafts, 39, was a Denmark-born flight attendant who worked for Pan American World Airways. She was last seen after returning home from an overseas trip to Frankfurt, Germany, according to contemporaneous reporting by The Associated Press. When she failed to report for work a few days later, alarm grew. Her husband, Richard B. Crafts, told authorities she had traveled to visit a friend in the Canary Islands — an explanation investigators later disputed.

Authorities said Richard, a former airline pilot and part-time police officer, had recently purchased a wood chipper, the Associated Press reported. Witnesses later testified they saw a man operating a wood chipper on a bridge between Newtown and Southbury in the days after Helle disappeared. Police later recovered small human remains — including bone fragments, tissue and a fingernail — along the banks of the Housatonic River, according to the AP.

Prosecutors alleged that Richard killed Helle inside their Newtown home on Nov. 18 or 19, 1986, then used a chainsaw to dismember her body and fed the remains through the wood chipper in an attempt to destroy evidence, the AP reported. Even without a complete body, the case went to trial and ultimately produced what was described as the first murder conviction in Connecticut history secured without one.

Richard was arrested in 1987 and tried the following year, but the first trial ended in a mistrial after a juror refused to continue deliberations, according to the AP. A second trial ended with a conviction, and a jury found Richard guilty of murder in November.

At sentencing, the focus shifted to what the judge — and members of Richard’s own family — described as an absence of remorse. Richard told Superior Court Judge Martin L. Nigro that he had been portrayed as emotionally cold, The New York Times reported, while stopping short of taking responsibility for his wife’s death.

“A great deal has been said about my apparent lack of emotion: ‘He has ice water in his veins,’” Richard told the court, according to the Times. “I have feelings like everyone else.”

Family members asked the judge to impose the maximum punishment. Karen Rodgers, Richard’s sister, who had custody of the couple’s three children, said she believed her brother had expressed concern only verbally.

“I am concerned that Mr. Crafts has not publicly nor privately demonstrated any remorse for the murder of his wife,” Rodgers said at sentencing, according to the Times. “I believe he has paid lip service only to the concerns of his children.”

Judge Nigro sentenced Richard to 50 years in prison, rejecting defense motions to overturn the verdict or grant a new trial, the Times reported. Defense attorneys said they planned to appeal, pointing to extensive publicity surrounding the case and questions about police recording practices, while acknowledging they had no direct evidence that Richard’s own conversations had been improperly recorded.

Richard maintained his innocence while serving his sentence in Connecticut state prison. Years later, the case drew renewed attention when he was released earlier than many expected under a now-defunct “good time” credit law that applied to inmates sentenced before 1994, Oxygen reported.