When a Flight Attendant Vanished, Investigators Followed a Trail to a Wood Chipper By Christina Coulter

Helle Crafts disappeared from her Connecticut home in 1986, and prosecutors later alleged her husband killed her and fed her dismembered body through a wood chipper — leaving investigators to prove a murder without a body.

The 39-year-old flight attendant, who was born in Denmark and worked for Pan American World Airways, 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 days later, concern mounted. Her husband, Richard B. Crafts, told authorities she had gone to visit a friend in the Canary Islands, an explanation investigators later challenged.

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 vanished. Police subsequently recovered small human remains — including bone fragments, tissue and a fingernail — along the banks of the Housatonic River, according to the AP.

Prosecutors said that Richard killed Helle inside their Newtown home on Nov. 18 or 19, 1986, then dismembered her body with a chainsaw and fed the remains through the wood chipper in an effort to destroy evidence, the AP reported. Despite the absence of an intact body, the case moved forward and resulted in the first murder conviction in Connecticut history secured without one.

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

At his sentencing, attention turned to what the judge and members of Richard’s own family described as a lack of remorse. Addressing Superior Court Judge Martin L. Nigro, Richard said he had been unfairly portrayed as emotionally cold, The New York Times reported, while stopping short of acknowledging 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 urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence. Karen Rodgers, Richard’s sister, who had custody of the couple’s three children, said she believed her brother had shown concern only in words.

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

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

Richard continued to maintain his innocence while serving his sentence in Connecticut state prison. Decades later, the case resurfaced 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.