They Call It Murder

Transcription

[music playing] -Hi. How's the weather out there? You want to go inside the diner. -No. I don't want anyone to see me like this. -You're not going to like these. -It's what you thought. NARRATOR: On a dark, rainy day in the fall of 1986 Helle Crafts learned from a private investigator that her husband was having an affair. -Is that your husband? -Yes. That's Richard. NARRATOR: Shortly after this meeting, Helle Crafts disappeared. This is the story of how forensic science solved the puzzle. [music playing] DIANNE M. ANDERSON: Crafts in the fall of 1986. She came in to see me and was discussing the possibility of a divorce from her husband. She was very concerned about what was happening at that time. She was also concerned about potential violence, shall we say. NARRATOR: By all accounts, 39-year-old Helle Crafts was a caring mother of three young children in an unhappy marriage. DIANNE M. ANDERSON: She strongly suspected the affair. She felt she knew who the individual was. But she really wanted some confirmation. So we talked about hiring a detective to prove that, in fact, yes he was involved with another woman at that time. KEITH MAYO: It was a typical scenario of husband is never home, constantly lying about his whereabouts. And she'd had enough. NARRATOR: When Helle Crafts hired Detective Keith Mayo, she provided an important lead, a long distance number she saw on the phone bills but didn't recognize. KEITH MAYO: I met with her several days after we had caught Richard with his girlfriend. And there were many photos of affection between the two of them. Her kissing him and holding his hand and rubbing his back, those types of photos. -Yes. That's Richard. KEITH MAYO: She just broke down. She cried for at least five or 10 minutes, just sobbing. NARRATOR: Helle and Richard Crafts had been married for 12 years. They both worked for the airlines. Helle as a flight attendant for Pan Am, Richard a pilot for Eastern Airlines. He was also a part-time policeman. KEITH MAYO: I would describe him as, he was very cold. When he looked at you, he had a very cold stare. NARRATOR: Their relationship was not a close one. And friends say Richard sometimes hit Helle. -Dearest Mother. Here I am again in London. I've said to Richard. I want to be divorced. I no longer trust in Richard. Hugs. Helle. NARRATOR: After Helle filed for divorce, she confided in friends on her flight crew. -I want to tell you something I told my lawyer. If anything ever happens to me, don't think it-- DIANNE M. ANDERSON: Don't assume it was an accident. - --was an accident. DIANNE M. ANDERSON: and that's an unusual comment to get from a client. NARRATOR: On November -Thanks for the ride. NARRATOR: 18, 1986 Helle returned from a European flight assignment and was dropped off at home by her best friend. It was the last time anyone saw her. A few days later Helle missed her next flight assignment. She didn't call in. So friends called the Crafts' home. Richard said she went to Denmark to visit her sick mother. Later he told a different story, that Helle was on vacation with a friend. PATRICK O'NEILL: All which proved not be true. And when this all came together, one started talking to the next, to the next. There was a collective sense of panic in short time. DIANNE M. ANDERSON: The friends were basically telling me that she had disappeared. And that she was not the type of individual who would do this. She had three small children. So I called Keith May. KEITH MAYO: I immediately told Dianne that I thought we should go over to the Newtown Police Department to report her missing. And they just turned a deaf ear on us. NARRATOR: So Mayo launched his own investigation. In this home video, the Crafts' live-in nanny talks about some mysterious, dark stain she noticed on the carpet shortly after Helle disappeared. KEITH MAYO: In the inside of the bedroom door there was a spot, a black spot? -Yeah. -How big would you say it was? -About this big. -About that big? -Yeah. -Did it look like a stain? -It looked like a stain. But it hadn't been there before. KEITH MAYO: The fact that there was new carpet in the master bedroom, and Richard ripped up the carpet and wouldn't give the nanny an explanation as to why. NARRATOR: Also suspicious, a large freezer missing from the garage. And credit card receipts showed that Richard had rented a commercial wood chipper right after Helle disappeared. Had something happened to Helle inside the house? And was her husband involved? Police asked Richard Crafts to take a lie detector test. -Did you kill your wife? -No. -Do you know your wife's whereabouts? -No. -Did you have anyone kill your wife? -No. JOSEPH PALOMBIZIO: He showed very little reaction all. There was nothing that either my partner saw or I saw that indicated he was lying. NARRATOR: With Helle Crafts still missing and no leads, Connecticut State Police called in their secret weapon. Forensic expert, Dr. Henry Lee. Dr. Henry Lee is the director of the Connecticut State Police Forensics Laboratory. And one of the world's most respected forensic experts. He accompanied police as they search the Crafts' home. HENRY LEE, PHD: We start exam some piece of physical evidence and found some tiny clue. NARRATOR: On the mattress, Dr. Lee discovered five tiny stains so small they could barely be seen. Could they hold the key to the disappearance of Helle Crafts? An orthotolidine solution on the mattress fibers turned blue. It was blood. A species test proved it was human blood. But was it Helle's? An antigen test revealed type O positive, the same type as Helle Crafts. And microscopic analysis revealed it was circulation blood and not menstrual. HENRY LEE, PHD: It was circulation blood now which means a blood vessel has to be injured to create such a pattern. NARRATOR: Dr. Lee studied the angle and intensity of the blood's impact. He concluded the blood hit the mattress at an angle of 10 degrees meaning it came from an individual leaning over the bed or kneeling. The blood was moving through the air at medium velocity consistent with an injury caused by a blunt object. And there was a six inch blood smear on the side of the mattress. The bathroom towels had been washed recently. But Dr. Lee tested them with an orthotolidine solution. The blue areas proved the towels had been soaked with blood. HENRY LEE, PHD: The next issue, of course, a human body cannot just vanish in the air. A body has to be someplace. NARRATOR: But there was no body, no weapon, and no witnesses. Police needed more to go on. So they looked for any unusual events that might somehow be connected to Helle Crafts' disappearance. It led to a important break. It snowed the week of Helle's disappearance. A snow plow driver reported seeing a wood chipper on a bridge about 3:30 in the morning. A man briefly appeared wearing an orange poncho. He saw the same wood chipper again on River Road about an hour later. MARTY OHRADAN: I said well, take this man to the location, to the exact location, where he saw the wood chipper. NARRATOR: It was here where the Housatonic River runs into Lake Zoar. Police searched the river bank. All they found were a few mounds of wood chips. But when they took a closer look, they found a piece of an envelope. It was mail addressed to Ms. Helle L. Crafts. MARTY OHRADAN: They were just laying there, you know. And I thought, good Lord, you know. When-- I didn't even think too much about how the chipper came into play. At that point, until we started finding a lot of hair. That was when I remarked to my boss, you know, I said, you know, if he did what I think hi did, it's time for me to retire. NARRATOR: Police spent days sifting through dirt and debris along the river bank. In addition to the letter and blond hair, they also discovered a few blue fibers, a gray piece of metal, what looks to be some tiny bone fragments, and another piece of evidence, which just appeared. MARTY OHRADAN: The sun had melted the snow away from this wall, And right against the wall, laying right on top of the leaves, a painted fingernail. NARRATOR: Divers explored the bottom of the river and found pieces of a chain saw. Even more unusual, the serial number had been scratched off. Everything was taken to the state police forensic laboratory in Meriden, Connecticut. HENRY LEE, PHD: Because any investigation involves so many specialty area, that's when we start calling in forensic team. NARRATOR: By now the story was front page news around the world. Richard Crafts was a suspect. But he maintained his innocence saying he didn't kill his wife. He didn't know her whereabouts and that he had passed a lie detector test. But the forensics might tell a different story. When Dr. Lee convened the first meeting of his forensic team, he knew they faced a difficult task. H. WAYNE CARVER, MD: They need either that piece of paper for me that says somebody's dead, or occasionally a huge pile of evidence, to convince them. HENRY LEE, PHD: To identify the individual become a scientific challenge. NARRATOR: They began by examining every notch of the chainsaw and found some human hair, tissue, and a minute piece of fiber. ELAINE PAGLIARO: In size it was barely visible with the naked eye on the cutting edge of the chain. NARRATOR: The fiber was a bluish-green cotton, the same color as Helle's favorite cotton night shirt. And it matched other blue fibers found at the river. But since the serial number was scratched away, it was impossible to tell who owned the chain saw or was it? ELAINE PAGLIARO: By using a particular chemical solution, that will eat away the upper layers of the metal that have been altered by the water or by some physical attempts to alter the serial number. NARRATOR: It worked. The serial number on the chainsaw 592-1616. It matched the warranty card sent in by Richard B. Crafts. Next, forensic experts wanted to find out whose hair was on the chain saw and at the river. Every one of the 2,660 hairs was examined under a microscope. ELAINE PAGLIARO: A lot of the hairs had been but, but not cut with scissors. NARRATOR: Did it belong to Helle Crafts? HENRY LEE, PHD: So we'll have to find some new hair to compare. Basically, we use her hairbrush. ELAINE PAGLIARO: There was a characteristic that is somewhat unusual, forehead hair. And that's a ridge that was present in the head hair. NARRATOR: They concluded that the hairs found on the chain saw and at the river were microscopically similar to the hair from Helle's hairbrush. Next, they turned their attention to the fingernail with the bright, red nail polish. A chemist compared it to a bottle of Helle's fingernail polish found in her home analyzing the various organic compounds. These graphs show that the polish on the fingernail, found at the river, is the same as polish taken from the bottle found on Helle's nightstand. Good forensic work determined that the fingernail polish and the hair were both similar to Helle's. But they couldn't prove she was dead. ALBERT B HARPER, PHD: I received a phone call from Dr. Lee asking me if I would come and take a look at these little pieces of, what he thought to be, bone. And wanted me to see if I could identify them in any way. NARRATOR: Dr. Lee suspected that the bones found at the river had gone through the wood chipper Crafts had rented. So Dr. Lee got the same machine and ran a test. This is actual footage. A pig was put through the chipper since their skin and bones are similar to humans. Dr. Lee noticed that the chipper produced a unique signature type of cut. One that match the cutting pattern on the debris found at the river. ALBERT B HARPER, PHD: What I was presented were these very, very tiny, literally millimeter size fragments, of bone. And among some of these fragments, it was possible to see that some of the fragments, indeed, dean came from a human. NARRATOR: Under spectrograph Dr. Harper noticed tiny grooves in the bones. The grooves told a story. They were formed by blood vessels inside the top of the skull. Something only humans have. They also identified skull fragments from the side of the head. And these were the most important from a forensic point of view. -So if the fracture is beveling outwards, then the forced came from the inside. I mean it was a whole lot of force. So we don't know if that's what killed her. We don't know if she was dead before it happened. We certainly knew she was dead afterwards. So now we know a human being is dead. The next question is who? NARRATOR: Dr. Harper froze some of the bone fragments with liquid nitrogen, then ground them to a fine powder. Tests revealed the bones came from an individual with type O positive blood, Helle Crafts' blood type. Finally Dr. Lee turned his attention to the gray piece of metal believed to be a crown to a tooth. GUS KARAZULAS, DDS: But there was no human remains on that crown. So that couldn't be used as a form of identification. NARRATOR: They needed more. So Dr. Lee asked Dr. Karazulas himself to go to the river where he searched for five days. Then a break. GUS KARAZULAS, DDS:I'd been at the crime scene for maybe eight hours. I slipped and fell into the brook. And I had a pale. And I was picking evidence up. And I clean my hand off in this pale that I was collecting evidence in. When I came into the tent, I put all the contents of the pale down. I washed my hand. And I looked down. And there was a tooth. NARRATOR: But was it Helle Crafts'? GUS KARAZULAS, DDS: And I was able to match all the years of different x-rays, I imagine it was from 1986 back to 1982. So I have no doubt in my mind that the tooth I found came from Helle Crafts' mouth. NARRATOR: Finally, the forensic team had an actual match. GUS KARAZULAS, DDS: And they say, Helle Crafts' teeth are in this pile. And they were knocked out of her head violently. And we have a human head going through violent injury in the same pile. So we said, that means Helle Crafts is dead. Period. NARRATOR: Based on the forensic evidence, Richard Crafts was arrested and charged in the murder of his wife. What happened to Helle Crafts? Based on the forensic evidence, a reasonable scenario can be pieced together. -Hey. Thanks for the ride. NARRATOR: On November 18, Helle Crafts returned from her flight to Germany around 7:00 PM. She put the children to bed around 8. The nanny had the night off and wasn't expected home until midnight. Before going to bed, Helle changed into her favorite blue night shirt, looked through her mail, stuff it into her pocket-- -Well, if you choose not to believe me, Helle. There's nothing more that I can say. NARRATOR: And began changing the sheets. -No. I don't believe you. You know, I can't take this any more. Why don't you just get out. -No. You get out. -You get out. Leave me alone. NARRATOR: Then it happened quickly. [music playing] NARRATOR: Using the police flashlight, the first blow knocked her to the ground. The second produced the blood splatter hitting the mattress at a 10 degree angle. While falling, her head grazed the side of the mattress leaving the blood smear. He wrapped the body in the bed covers, carried her through the house into the garage, and placed the body into a freezer. Richard tried to clean up the blood with some towels, which were later washed. But traces of blood remained on the towels, later discovered by Dr. Lee. Marie Thomas, the nanny arrived home around 2 AM and went right to bed. At daybreak, Crafts took the children and the nanny to hi sister's house saying their mother had left earlier. -Marie. Hurry up. NARRATOR: He then rented the largest commercial wood chipper he could find and a U-Haul truck using his credit card. By night time, Helle's body was completely frozen. Crafts transported the remains, along with a chainsaw and some wood, to the river. The snow plow driver spotted the wood chipper on a bridge around 3:30 in the morning. And again, near the river, an hour later. Using his chainsaw, Crafts dismembered Helle's frozen body and put the pieces through the chipper along with some wood. Since the body was frozen, it produced little, if any, blood splatter. Most of the debris blew into the river. Only a few pieces fell short landing on the bank. The mail Helle placed in her night shirt pocket passed through the chipper virtually untouched. Before leaving, Crafts took apart the chain saw, scratched the serial number off, and threw the pieces into the river. How close was the brutal murder of Helle Crafts to the perfect crime? MARTY OHRADAN: Boy. Damn close. Damn close. JOSEPH PALOMBIZIO: If that person truly believed they're not going to be caught and there's no fear or threat to them, they could get by a polygraph test. HENRY LEE, PHD: The key to solving this case so-called teamwork. Assembling good team, work together. -Amazing. You know, the human body writes so much of it's history in itself.