Ep. 119 | The Murder of Helle Crafts

In November 1986, Helle Crafts was reported missing. Danish flight attendant and mother of three, Helle had been planning to leave her husband after discovering he'd been having an affair.

What followed was one of the most gruesome and forensically groundbreaking murder investigations in American history. Because there was no body. There was no crime scene. There was, however, a rented woodchipper, a freezer purchased just days before Helle vanished, and a witness who spotted a man feeding something into a chipper on the banks of the Housatonic River in the dead of a blizzard.

Investigators ultimately recovered bone fragments, a fingernail, strands of blonde hair, and a single crown from Helle's tooth — enough to piece together what Richard Crafts had done to his wife, and enough to put him away. He became the first person in Connecticut history to be convicted of murder without a body.

This is the story of Helle Crafts — and the case that changed forensic investigation forever.

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