The Case of Richard Craft

Tonight we’re going to be talking about a crazy case, but it’s also a famous case. A movie was based on this case – I’ll tell you which movie at the end. Speaking of the end, you’ll want to stick around for that. I’m serious, don’t start listening and leave in the middle; you’re going to miss a doozie of an ending. I think this case closely rivals our last one, the Case of Katherine Knight episode #35. If you haven’t listened to that one, OMGod you NEED to listen to it. Just click on “Listen” in our website’s menu, www.murderandlove.com, and look for episode #35.

Today’s case is the case of Richard Craft and Helle Craft.

Helle Lorck Nielson was born on July 7, 1947 in Denmark. If you don’t know where Denmark is, it’s in Northern Europe right across the North Sea from the UK. It also shared a southern border to Germany. For those of you who are new to the show, I used to live in Germany. I LOVED Germany. Such a beautiful country with friendly people. In Denmark their official language is Danish, but they are also taught English from a young age. Something we should do in the United States. Really teach like Spanish or French as a second language. And I’m not talking about the bs, half butt way they teach us in school. 

BUT ANYWAY

She was an only child who lived with her parents in a small village north of Denmark. She was a very outgoing child who was always happy and vibrant. She loved going to school and made friends very easily. Going into adulthood, these traits didn’t change. Helle also had a love of learning languages; they came easy to her and she learned them quickly. When she was a teenager, she taught herself French and English. Although she wasn’t fluent in German, Norwegian, and Swedish, she did understand them.

After she finished highschool, she went to college in England and then worked as an au pair in France. For those of you who don’t know what an au pair is, according to aupairworld.com, “An au pair is a young adult aged 18 to 30 who travels to a foreign country for a defined period of time to live with a host family. The au pair supports the host family with childcare and light housework while learning the language and culture of the host country.” 

In 1967, when Helle was 20, she got a job as a flight attendant with Capital Airways. She really enjoyed the traveling and exploring new places so when she heard that Pan Am Airways was looking for flight attendants in the Copenhagen, Denmark area, she decided to apply for the job. Who remembers Pan Am? Honestly, the name sounds familiar, but I can’t 100% remember it.

Out of 200 people in her applying group, she and 7 other people were accepted. The company then sent her to Miami for training to work with the company. While she was in Miami, she did very well in her course – as we can expect of her – and she lived in a small motel near the airport. This motel was a frequent spot for the airline employees – the pilots and the flight attendants. Because the living conditions were co-ed, lots of – let’s call it – “liaisons” would happen at that motel. The single flight attendants liked the pilots and saw them as either someone to have a good time with while they were on layover or a prospect for a future spouse. I don’t know anyone in that profession, but I did think of being a flight attendant at one point in my life. Basically for the same reason as Helle – to be able to travel without having to pay a ton of money for it. But then I heard that you barely get any sleep, you barely get to see friends and family, the customer service portion of it which I don’t think my temper would survive people’s plane entitlement, and then the promiscuous atmosphere that I was told about. Don’t shoot the messenger; I’m just relaying what I was told. 

Anyway, on May 24, 1969, when she was 22 years old she met a pilot in training for Eastern Airlines named Richard Crafts.

Richard Crafts was born in New York City on December 20, 1937 and was 10 years older than Helle. He was the youngest of three children; he had two older sisters. His father, whose name was John Crafts, was a successful businessman in Manhattan and always wanted to move his family to the suburbs. So, as soon as he was able to, he bought a large home in Darien, Connecticut and moved his family there. Richard attended private school, but was not that academically good in school. Which is fine, everyone learns differently, but schools tend to teach everyone the exact same way. However, I still don’t fully put that on the schools; it’s the parents who should be supplementing the child’s learning. He went to college for a short time, probably because he felt it was expected of him, but soon dropped out and, in 1956 at the age of 19, unexpectedly joined the Marines. What’s their slogan? “The few, the brave, the Marines.” or “The few, the proud, the Marines.” I think it’s the brave right? Anyway, when I say “unexpected” I meant that his family didn’t expect him to join the military at all. 

While in the Marines, he worked in aviation and became pretty good at flying helicopters. He was also trained on working with “fixed wing aircrafts.” According to educaling.com “A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift caused by the vehicle’s forward airspeed and the shape of the wings.” All that to basically say, this time of aircraft is like the commercial planes we usually fly in. He also became a certified pilot. In 1958 at 21 years old, he pcs-ed to Korea and then Japan. PCS, by the way, stands for permanent change of station. Good Lord, this episode is becoming the Encyclopedia Britannica! (add british music here and start talking in british accent for one sentence) While he was there, he flew for Air America which was a recognized branch of the CIA. He flew missions in Southeast Asia in countries such as Laos and Vietnam. While on a mission over Laos, he was injured, but he still stayed in Asia and worked missions until 1966 when he was 29 and he came back to the US. Once back home, he flew, as a civilian, for a number of small companies until he finally secured a pilot job with Eastern in 1968. At that time, Eastern was one of the United State’s largest airlines, which means he was hired for some serious money.

In 1969 when he was 32, he’d proposed to his girlfriend at the time and gotten engaged. Then one day, while he was in Miami, he met a pretty little blonde woman who was 22 years old, from Denmark and named Helle. 

Although he informed Helle that he was engaged to be married, she didn’t mind and wanted to start a fling with him. Throughout some years, they maintained an on and off relationship – although he continued sleeping around with other women – more than just his fiance. Helle’s friends didn’t like him and some of them even openly showed their dislike of him. They constantly tried to get her to leave him because they couldn’t understand why she was into him. She was hot. She could have any guy she wanted, but she chose this cheating sack of diseased rhinoceros pizzle.

Then, in 1975 Helle got pregnant by Richard and by November, they got married in New Hampshire.

In 1976, they bought a house in Newtown, Connecticut. This house was a $250,000, one-level ranch on a two-acre piece of land. Over the next few years, they had 3 children in total while Helle had stopped working and worked as a homekeeper and mother. Richard, on the other hand, kept working as a pilot and was rarely ever home. After their third child was born, they hired a 19 year old au pair whose name was Dawn Marie Thomas, and Helle went back to work as a flight attendant. When Helle went back to work, this added income boosted their combined income to more than $125,000 a year – in the 70’s/80’s. Can you imagine how rich they were?! 

Richard had a passion and that passion was gun collecting. He had shotguns, handguns, .44 caliber revolvers, 9mm automatics, .357 magnums, crossbows, high-powered rifles, semi automatic weapons, grenades, and a freak ton load of ammo! I mean – what a hobby. And then when he was home, he would spend hours cleaning, polishing, and organizing his arsenal. Then, whenever there was a gun show in Jersey or Connecticut, he would go to find out what he could get to add to his collection.

Helle, on the other hand, didn’t agree with Richard’s passion. She didn’t understand why he had so many pieces and why he would spend so much time away from his family when he was supposed to be home from a job that already took him away from his family. Aside from that, there were still other troubles in the marriage. Helle would be around her friends with bruises on her face, but she would never tell them where the bruises came from. Also, Richard would come home from work and just leave and stay gone for days at a time without letting Helle know where he was going and when he was coming back. Whenever he did come back, he never told her where he had been. He was also in control of all of the money and, because of this, he made Helle pay for all of the household bills and expenses while he went ahead and spent his money on whatever he wanted to. Other than guns and trips, he also liked to spend his money on landscaping equipment like lawn mowers and tractors. One time he even spent $25,000 on a backhoe and never even used it. Instead he would just buy them and leave them in the front yard to rust and break. I mean – why though?

In 1982, Richard decided that he now also wanted to work as an auxiliary police officer in his town. Auxiliary cops are not members of the regular police force and they have limited police powers, like they can’t arrest anyone and aren’t even classified as “conservators of the peace”. So, what do they do? they can direct traffic, help control the chaos during a natural or manmade disaster, do desk work or lock up the office – you know stuff like that. They made about $12.00/ hr. Now, I’m not saying anything is wrong with that; everyone has dreams in life no matter if it aligns with what we may think of as a “valuable dream.” But what I AM saying in the case of Richard is that, you already have a high paying job; so does your wife. Your work keeps you away from your family – from your children – most of the time. Why are you trying to add something that you clearly don’t need to be doing, to your list? None of it makes sense to me. Now, remember I said auxiliary cops made $12/hr? Well, Richard wasn’t getting paid. He worked for free – so I guess volunteered and he liked hanging around the station whether he was working or not and would also sometimes take police calls even though he wasn’t allowed to do it. 

In 1984, when Richard was 47, he was diagnosed with colon cancer and given a 2% chance to survive.  This came as a shock to him and his wife, but Helle stood by his side.

In 1986, Richard got a part time job as a police officer in the neighboring town of Southbury for $7/hr. He paid for additional police trainings and bought himself a 1985 Ford Crown Victoria and spruced it up with radios, antennas, a siren, and even police lights. By that time, even the cops are looking at him sideways because, along with all of this, he took his job even more seriously than the other cops did. Not to say they weren’t serious about their job, it’s just that he was like obsessed with it or something. 

While he’s still a pilot, working as a police officer, going to gun shows, and being MIA with his family, he STILL found time for other women. How did he find the freaking time?! I run a podcast, have a business, have one child, and a husband and I barely have time for myself let alone being able to find time to cheat.

Helle was aware of Richard’s infidelity, and would always ask him to stop. He would promise to and then she would catch him cheating again. This was from day one of their marriage. In 1985, Helle had reached her boiling point of their marriage with the infidelity, his lack of time for their family, and the utter disrespect that Richard threw at their family. By September of 1986, she went to a divorce attorney. The attorney advised her to get proof of the infidelity in the marriage so she hired a private investigator. I wonder why. Does it make the divorce process easier if you have proof of infidelity? So anyway she hired Keith Mayo who took the job and investigated Richard. It didn’t take long for him to have something to report on. He took pictures of Richard kissing another flight attendant in New Jersey. Guess he was over at a gun show huh?

On November 18, 1986 two months after she met with the divorce lawyer, Helle came back from working a long flight from Frankfurt, Germany. Her friends dropped her off at her house and she went inside. That night, there was a huge snowstorm – it snowed up to 10″ of snow! OMGod can you imagine?! Where I live, we don’t get snow that high, but I would like to experience that at some point in life. If your area gets that amount of snow, let me know in the comments below if you still like snow. Most people who’ve grown up with snow, just take it for granted and are tired of it. Let me know if I’m right or wrong.

At 6am the next day, Richard woke Dawn, the au pair, up and told her that Helle was already driving to his sister’s house in Westport and that he and the kids would start heading down to meet her there. Dawn, who was bleary eyed because she had worked at her second job at McDonald’s until 2am, asked him why she was going today being that the snow storm had caused power outages and driving issues on the road. Richard didn’t answer. Instead he asked her to help him get the kids ready to leave. He woke them up at 6:30am and everyone piled in the car and left. (This included Dawn by the way) When Richard dropped them off at his sister’s house, Dawn noticed that Helle wasn’t there AND after dropping them off, Richard booked a u-ie and left. He came back later, at 7pm, but Helle never showed up. Dawn asked Richard when Helle was gonna come and he said he didn’t know. When she awoke the next day and still didn’t see Helle at the sister’s house she asked Richard again what was going on. This time he said that Helle was actually in Denmark with her sick mother. Umm…that’s not what you told me YESTERDAY. It’s not like a week passed by; it’s only been like 6 hours dude.

After the storm passed, everyone went back to the house but Helle still wasn’t home. While cleaning, Dawn noticed a missing piece of carpet in the master bedroom and asked Richard about it. He said that he had spilled kerosene there and they had to have the carpet replaced. I would have been like – yeeaaa but why is a PIECE of the carpet missing? A few days later, the carpet was replaced.

Helle also wasn’t reporting to work or talking to her friends. Whenever they asked Richard where she was he would tell them not to worry, she’ll be back soon, that she was still in Denmark with her mother, that she was visiting a friend in the Canary Islands, etc. Just a bunch of random stories. After they hadn’t heard from her in awhile, and since she had told some of her friends “If something happens to me, don’t think it was an accident,” one of her friends called the police and reported her missing on December 1 – that was 2 weeks.

On December 4, police called Richard in for questioning and to do a lie detector test. He went on down to the station and passed the lie detector test with flying colors. Now, I don’t know if you guys know, but a polygraph test is inadmissible in court; you can’t use it. It’s usually used to help with the investigation. Polygraph tests are not always right; they basically work based on the person’s pulse. So, even if you are not guilty, but you get nervous easily, then it could appear that you are lying. Or if you are guilty as butt hole, but you know how to keep yourself calm, then it could look like you passed. This is one of the reasons the courts don’t go by lie detector tests. After Richard passed the test, one detective wrote in his report, “based on the polygraph examination and my numerous conversations with Mr. Crafts, he does not know where his wife is.” However, other officers didn’t believe Richard, no matter what the test said. Police spoke with Helle’s friends, who constantly called to find out how the investigation was going, and found out that Richard was very abusive to Helle both mentally and physically. They told the police that she frequently had bruises on her face, and who knows what on the parts of her body that they couldn’t see. They also told the police about the statement that Helle made about if Richard said an accident happened, not to believe it. On December 11, detectives asked the Southbury Police Department to send over Officer Crafts (Richard), who was on duty at that time, over for questioning. He came to the Newtown Police Station in full uniform for his interview.

I couldn’t find a video or audio of the interview but here is the transcript:

“Richard, did you know that your wife hired a private investigator?”

“No.”

“Did you know that the P.I. has documented your relationship with a New Jersey woman?”

“No.”

“Why would your wife tell her friends she was afraid for herself regarding serving you divorce paper, and tell them to check on her if something happened?”

“I cannot imagine her saying this, it is completely out of character for her to say this.”

“On November 18th, when Helle came home, when and why did she leave?”

“Those answers are in my statement.”

“What is the story with your bedroom rug? Apparently you removed it, or cut some pieces out of it. Can you explain this to me?”

“All the rugs in the house are being removed and replaced.”

“What was spilled on the rug in your bedroom?”

“Kerosene.”

“Did you cut pieces out of the rug?”

“Yes. Two feet at a time. It’s easier to remove it that way.”

“What did you do with the rug you took out of the bedroom?”

“Dumped bedroom rug in the Newtown landfill one week ago. It was blue in color.”

“Why have you been telling everyone different things about Helle being missing? Like her mother being sick?

“I didn’t want to say my wife was gone and I did not know where she was.”

“Has Helle received any mail since she has been missing?”

“No. She has gotten no letters since she left. She usually gets about two letters a week.”

Police noticed that during the questioning, for a man who had no idea where she was, he sure seemed very calm and uncaring. He gave the investigators a 1 page statement and left the station. 

The private investigator, Keith, was convinced that Richard was involved in Helle’s disappearance. Some background on Keith is that he was a retired police officer – which is what most PI’s are – retired cops. He tried to get the local police department to investigate Richard, but they wouldn’t do it. He started his own investigation, talking with Helle’s friends, reviewed the case, and decided to get his own evidence. He went to the local dump to look for those pieces of the master bedroom rug that were cut out. The crew at the dump told him that Richard’s trash had been sent to the Canterbury dump which was 2 hours away. This was no problem for Keith who got helpers and spend the next couple of days going through the trash at that dump and succeeded in finding a piece of rug that looked almost identical to the rug in the master bedroom. The piece also looked like it had stains of human blood on it. He took this to the state police laboratory in Meriden where Dr. Henry C. Lee worked. He was the country’s foremost leader in forensic science. 

While waiting for the results, Keith also found Helle’s car parked at Kennedy International Airport. He kept hounding the local police to look more into Richard. Helle’s friends also hounded the police. By this time, the press had picked up the story and even they questioned why the Newtown Police were dragging their feet on the case. Because of all of this pressure and criticism, the county prosecutor finally referred the case to the Connecticut State Police.

In the meantime, Dr. Lee got back with his findings on the rug sample and reported that, “After four hours of back-breaking work carried out on the carpet, none of the stains tested positive for blood.”

By this time the Western District Major Crimes Unit had the case and started looking more at Richard’s activities immediately after Helle disappeared. They looked at his phone records, at his credit card purchases, and at his activities. On his credit card bills, they found that on November 13, he bought a large freezer for $375 and picked it up on November 17. They also saw that he rented a wood chipper for $900 from a place called Darien Rentals. Other things that were on his bill were sheets and a new comforter set. Keith also provided investigators with a receipt for a chainsaw.

Police discovered that Richard had taken his kids to Florida for the holidays so they decided to request a search warrant. On December 26, they were granted the warrant and entered the home. Dr. Henry Lee was present at the warrant so that he could oversee the collection of evidence. When they entered the house, they saw that the house was dirty. Dirty clothes were everywhere, furniture was all over the place, the kitchen was filthy. In the living room, there were mattresses on the floor as well as boxes of toys, clothes, and just household things. All of the carpets had been pulled up and thrown away. As they continued searching the house, they found a freezer, but nothing was inside of it. They did find a lot of weapons, but we all know where those came from; however, police tagged and bagged all of them just in case. Dr. Lee did a luminol test at various locations in the house and some places tested positive for the presence of blood like on the side of the bed (and in the lab they found that some of the towels tested positive as well.)

On December 30, detectives searched out a utility man, Joseph Hine, who was plowing snow on River Road on the day of the storm. Smart move! I don’t know if I would have thought to do that. Anyway, they brought him in for questioning and he said he saw the woodchipper and a U-Haul truck parked on the side of the road in the middle of the night. He remembered this because he thought it was weird that these were out here and there was a man who motioned him around the truck on that night. Investigators asked Joseph if he would take them to the location of this incident and he did; he took them to Lake Zoar.

When police searched the water’s edge, they found small pieces of metal and about 3 ounces of human tissue like a crown of a tooth, a pink painted fingernail, bone chips, a human toe, a piece of a finger, bleached blonde human hair, and O-type blood  – the same type of blood that they found in the house and the same type of blood as Helle’s blood type. They also found the chainsaw, which was in the water, that had traces of blonde human hair.

At the end of the search, Dr. Lee said, “Our team’s efforts at Lake Zoar eventually led to the discovery of 2,660 strands of blond hair, 69 slivers of human bone, 5 droplets of human blood, 2 teeth, a truncated piece of human skull, 3 ounces of human tissue, a portion of human finger, 1 fingernail, and 1 portion of toenail.” 

By this time, investigators had worked out a scenario of how Richard killed his wife. Helle was probably making the bed  and they surmised that Richard smashed her in the back of her head with something hard at the foot of her bed – they thought that maybe he used his police flashlight. He then carried her body down to the basement, to the new freezer, and put her in it. Then he went and woke Dawn up and told her the whole spiel about going to his sister’s house. When he came back to the house, he took Helle’s body to a secluded piece of property that he owned in Newtown, and used the chainsaw on the body to have smaller, more manageable pieces. He then put these pieces back in the freezer. The next night, Richard took the body pieces out to Lake Zoar, along with the woodchipper, and ran them through it. Then, he ran fresh wood through the chipper to get rid of the gruesome evidence. 

To confirm this story, Dr. Lee used a pig carcass as a test subject. Him and a group of investigators put the pig carcass through the wood chipper and its remains bore an eerie similarity to the remains that were found of Helle.

By the way, when the investigation at the Lake started, one of Richard’s brothers in law said that Richard had made a comment that said, “Let them dive. There’s no body. It’s gone.” This is an alleged comment so take it with a grain of salt.

A forensic dentist researched the tooth crown that was found at the Lake and it turned out it was positively matched with Helle’s dental records. The Connecticut State Medical Examiner’s Office issued a death certificate for Helle Craft on January 13, 1987.

On January 13, 1987 police put out an arrest warrant for Richard Crafts and at around 9pm that same night, police went to his house to arrest him. When they arrived, they surrounded the house and called Richard on the phone to come outside and surrender. He replied with, “I’m tired. I’ll take care of it in the morning.” Cops were like nooo come outside now so Richard yelled at them, “Don’t call me back!” and hung up the phone. After HOURS of back and forth calls, Richard finally came out at 12:30am and was taken to the Bridgeport jail. His bail was set at only $750,000, which he could have paid in his sleep. 

The trial was moved to New London, Connecticut and started in May of 1988. The prosecution, led by State Attorney Walter Flanagan, put witnesses to the stand, this included Helle’s mother. When she was asked the last time she saw her daughter, she said it had been months. The medical examiner gave the evidence they found at the lake, and even her friends gave their testimonies. They even called Keith, Dr. Lee, and even the manufacturer of the wood chipper.

Even though there was a mountain of evidence against Richard, when it came time for the jury to deliberate, on June 23, 1988, it took two weeks for them to try to reach a verdict. One juror said not guilty and wouldn’t change their mind. Why? WTF?! So, on July 15, the trial ended in a hung jury. A hung jury! After 100 witnesses, 650 exhibits, and a 53 day trial – it all ended in a mistrial. I know they didn’t give out that one juror’s name. I didn’t even search for it. All I know is that it was a guy. This guy would have gotten all kinds of crap in the mail. 

But Richard wasn’t home free. Another trial started on September 7, 1989 in Norwalk Connecticut and they basically brought forth the same things as the first trial. On November 20, when it went to the jury, this time it only took 8 hours to reach a unanimous verdict. This go around, Richard was found guilty of murder. When the verdict was announced, Richard showed absolutely no emotion. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison with the earliest release date of August 2021. 

And that is the case of Richard Craft and Helle Craft. Helle is dead and Richard is serving 50 years in prison at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum security facility. While in jail, he had been issued two disciplinary tickets for possession of contraband. So what did you think of that case – 

Oh wait

ACTUALLY, Richard is out of prison – 20 years early because of “statutory good time.” This is basically good behavior and working jobs in the jail that allows huge chunks of time to be taken off of your sentence. So as of January 2020 he’s out and in a halfway house in New Haven

As for the children, they lived off of Richard’s pension funds for a bit, but that money ran out long ago. Deborah Grover, who was the state-appointed attorney in charge of disbursing his pension fund said that she’s lost touch with the children once they became adults.

Keith Mayo died in 1999 from severe injuries he’d sustained during a car accident.

Also, when Richard was asked why he married Helle in the first place, he answered with, “Helle was pregnant at the time we were married. We knew she was pregnant. It was far too advanced for a doctor to perform an abortion and we decided to get married.”

Another reminder; remember he was diagnosed with colon cancer with a 2% chance of surviving. Well, he survived.

Finally, as an FYI, this case was the inspiration for the 1996 movie Fargo.

And THAT is the case of Richard Craft and Helle Craft. Helle is dead and Richard isn’t even in prison any more.

NOW, what do you think of that story?

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