Richard Crafts, an airline pilot, killed his wife and tried to conceal the remains by chopping them up. Failing, he was convicted of murder.
In The Woodchipper Murder the Newtown, Connecticut police listed Helle Crafts disappearance as routine, but a private detective and a sheriff suspected murder with a dreadful machine.
Even though the Newtown, Connecticut, police listed Helle Crafts' disappearance as a routine missing person case, Keith Mayo, a private investigator, knew the Danish-born mother of three hadn't skipped town nine days before Thanksgiving. Rita Buonanno remembers the words exactly: "If anything happens to me don't think it was an accident." Helle Crafts was last seen on November 18, 1986.
In the style of a brilliant detective novel, Arthur Herzog skillfully re-creates the hour-by-hour circumstantial details that inform this grisly true-crime narrative. We observe dispassionate Richard Crafts as he buys a truck with a pintle hook for towing heavy equipment, promised for delivery before November 18. A day later he reserves a Badger Brush Bandit wood chipper.
word count: 58424 which is equivalent to 233 standard pages of text