The True Crime Story That Inspired “Fargo”: The Wood Chipper Murder of Hele Crafts
A snowplow driver spotted a man pulling a wood chipper through the snow near the lake during a blizzard. Unknown to the driver, the man was Richard, disposing of his wife’s frozen body parts to conceal his crime.
(As heard on the #WeirdDarkness episode: “BEFORE THEY LOCKED THEIR DOORS: The True Story of the Shell Lake Murders”)
On the surface, Richard Crafts seemed to have everything anyone could want. He lived in a nice house in Newtown, Connecticut, with his wife Helle and their three children. As an airline pilot, he made good money – $125,000 a year. But beneath this perfect picture, dark secrets were brewing that would lead to one of the most shocking murders in Connecticut history.
Richard and Helle met while working in the airline industry. Richard was a pilot, and Helle was a flight attendant for Pan Am Airlines. They got married in 1979 and settled down to start their family. However, Richard’s past wasn’t as simple as it appeared. Before becoming an airline pilot, he had worked for Air America, a secret airline run by the CIA. During this time, he flew dangerous missions and developed a fascination with weapons. By 1986, he had collected an arsenal of guns in his basement, including machine guns, rifles, and even grenade launchers.
While Richard flew planes for Eastern Airlines, Helle continued working as a flight attendant. Her job meant she was often away from home, flying to places all around the world. Richard used this time alone to date other women behind his wife’s back. He thought he was being careful, but Helle started to suspect something wasn’t right.
Worried about her husband’s behavior, Helle hired a private detective named Keith Mayo to follow Richard. It didn’t take long for Mayo to catch Richard in the act. He took photos of Richard kissing another flight attendant named Nancy Dodd at her home in New Jersey. When Helle saw the pictures, she knew her marriage was over. She wanted a divorce.
But Helle was scared. She knew her husband had a bad temper, and she had told her friend Rita Buonanno, “If Richard ever found out what I was doing, he’d kill me.” She also confided in another friend, Gertrude Horvath, saying, “I know he’s up to something. I just don’t know what.”
Richard was furious about the divorce. He knew it would cost him a lot of money, and he was already having financial problems. Instead of accepting the end of his marriage, he started making strange purchases. First, he bought a huge freezer chest that could hold 200 pounds. Then he bought a new chainsaw. Finally, he rented something unusual from a company called Bush Bandit: a massive wood chipper that weighed over 4,000 pounds.
On November 18, 1986, Helle returned home from a long flight from Frankfurt, Germany. A big snowstorm was moving into Connecticut that night. Richard was waiting for her. Police later determined that he hit her twice in the head, killing her almost instantly. But what he did next would shock everyone.
Richard took his wife’s body into the woods behind their house. Using the chainsaw he had bought, he cut her body into smaller pieces. He stored these pieces in the freezer he had purchased. Then, in the middle of the snowstorm, he drove to Lake Zoar with the wood chipper he had rented.
A snowplow driver working that night saw something strange: a man pulling a wood chipper through the snow near the lake. It seemed like a weird thing to be doing during a blizzard, but the driver had no idea he was witnessing part of a terrible crime. Richard was feeding his wife’s frozen body parts through the wood chipper, hoping to destroy all evidence of what he had done.
When Helle didn’t show up for work, her friends became worried. Richard told everyone that Helle had flown to Denmark because her mother was sick. But Rita Buonanno, remembering Helle’s fears about Richard, didn’t believe this story. She called Helle’s mother in Denmark and discovered she had never been sick at all.
The police started investigating, but at first, they didn’t have much to go on. Richard seemed to have thought of everything. However, he had made some mistakes. When investigators searched Lake Zoar, they found a chainsaw at the bottom with its serial number scratched off. They also found tiny pieces of evidence scattered along the shore – small bits of bone, teeth, and blonde hair mixed in with wood chips.
This is where Dr. Henry Lee entered the story. Dr. Lee was a forensic scientist – someone who uses science to solve crimes. In the late 1980s, this was still a new way of solving murders. Dr. Lee and his team carefully collected thousands of tiny pieces of evidence. They found drops of Helle’s blood in the Crafts’s home. They discovered that one of the tooth fragments had a dental crown that had been put in by a dentist in Denmark – just like the kind Helle had.
Dr. Lee brought in many experts to help solve the case. A wood expert studied the marks on the wood chips. A rope expert analyzed rope fibers they found. They studied the bones and pieces of fabric. It was like putting together a puzzle with thousands of tiny pieces. Even though they only found about an ounce of remains – less than 1/1000th of Helle’s body – it was enough to prove what had happened.
Richard Crafts went on trial for murder in 1989. This was unusual because it was Connecticut’s first murder trial without having a complete body as evidence. The first trial ended in a mistrial when one of the jurors suddenly quit. But in the second trial, all the scientific evidence Dr. Lee and his team had collected helped convince the jury that Richard was guilty.
On November 21, 1989, Richard Crafts was found guilty of murdering his wife. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison. He showed no sadness or regret for what he had done, leading people to say he had “ice water in his veins.”
The Crafts case changed how murders are investigated. It showed that even without a body, scientific evidence could help solve crimes. Dr. Lee went on to work on other famous cases, including the JonBenet Ramsey case and the O.J. Simpson trial. The story even inspired the movie “Fargo,” where the filmmakers included a scene with a wood chipper based on this real-life crime.
Richard Crafts thought he had committed the perfect crime. He believed that by destroying his wife’s body, he could get away with murder. But he was wrong. Thanks to careful police work, new scientific methods, and dedicated investigators like Dr. Henry Lee, the truth came out. The case showed that no matter how clever criminals think they are, science and dedication can help bring them to justice.
Helle Crafts’s murder led to changes in how crimes are solved, helping make sure other criminals can’t escape justice, even when they try to destroy all the evidence.
SOURCES: “Wood Chipper Murder of Hele Crafts”: https://casetext.com/case/state-v-crafts,https://crimelibrary.org/notorious_murders/family/woodchipper_murder/12.html, https://www.mrpalermo.com/uploads/9/8/9/6/9896107/woodchipper_case_study.pdf, https://morbidology.com/the-wood-chipper-murder-helle-crafts, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19920223/1477398/this-job-is-murder-and-renowned-forensic-expert-excels-at-it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Helle_Crafts
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