Wood Chipping The Wife

In November 1986 Helle Crafts, a Danish-born Pan Am flight attendant, disappeared from her home at Newfield Lane in Newtown, Connecticut. details of the account remain covered until revealed It took a private detective, a snowplough driver and a pile of wood chips on a riverbank to show that she had been killed in her bedroom, cut up with a chainsaw and fed through a rented wood chipper.

Helle Nielsen was born in Copenhagen in 1947 and grew up in a small Danish village. She learned French and English as a teenager and worked as an au pair in France before Pan Am picked her as one of eight stewardess candidates from two hundred. She trained in Miami, finished first in her class and flew all over the world.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He joined the Marines in 1956, learned to fly helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, served in Korea and Japan and flew for Air America, the CIA operation involved in the bombings of Laos. He returned to the United States in 1966 and was flying for Eastern Airlines by 1968.

They met in Miami on 24 May 1969, when she was twenty-two and he was thirty-one and already engaged. In 1975 she became pregnant and they married that November, then bought a single-storey ranch house in Newtown and had three children, Andrew, Thomas and Christina. Helle went back to flying and they hired a young au pair, Dawn Thomas. this part of the story is covered for now Helle began appearing with bruises and told a friend he was abusing her.

In 1982 he became an auxiliary police officer in Newtown, and in 1986 Southbury hired him as a police officer for seven dollars an hour. He bought and outfitted his own police car and turned up at scenes without being called. By the summer of 1986 Helle had hired a divorce lawyer and the private detective Keith Mayo to document his affairs. On 15 November she told her friend Jette Romp that she had found receipts for Christmas presents he had bought with a girlfriend in New Jersey, and that when she asked for a divorce he said marriage was for life.

On 17 November he bought a freezer. On 18 November he rented a wood chipper from Darian Rental Service for $967.50, and a severe snowstorm struck Connecticut. Police believe that in the early hours of the 19th he bludgeoned Helle at the foot of the bed, carried her to the basement and put her in the new freezer, then woke the children and the au pair at 6.30 a.m. and drove them to his sister's house in Westport. Helle was supposed to follow and never arrived. He is thought to have taken the frozen body to a secluded property he owned, cut it up with a chainsaw and returned it to the freezer before running the wrapped pieces through the chipper at Lake Zoar after dark.

At 3.30 a.m. on 21 November the plough driver Joseph Hein saw a U-Haul with a chipper parked on River Road and a man standing by the driver's door; two hours later the box was open, wood chips were inside and on the shoulder, and the truck pulled away. details of the account remain covered until revealed The next day the carpets were gone. He told one friend Helle was in Copenhagen visiting her sick mother, and her mother said she was not there and was not expected until April.

On 1 December Mayo reported her missing. The Newtown police treated it as a marital matter until Mayo wrote to the police commission accusing the detective division of refusing to investigate. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now It was filthy, the carpets were up and a large collection of weapons was catalogued. Luminol showed blood on towels that was O-positive, the same group as Helle.

Mayo sifted the Canterbury dump for days and found a section of the bedroom rug stained with what appeared to be blood. On 30 December the plough driver told police about the chipper, and the rental slip led them to the riverbank, where they found wood chips, shredded paper and mail addressed to Helle Crafts at Newfield Lane, along with 2,660 strands of blond hair, 69 slivers of bone, teeth, a piece of skull, tissue and part of a finger. details of the account remain covered until revealed A forensic odontologist matched a tooth and jaw fragment to Helle's dental x-rays.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now The case inspired the 1989 film The Woodchipper Massacre, the wood chipper scene in Fargo and the pilot of Forensic Files.