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00:28Transcription by CastingWords
00:31Hi.
00:32Hi.
00:33Awful weather out there.
00:35You want to go inside the diner?
00:39No.
00:40I don't want anyone to see me like this.
00:45You're not going to like these.
00:52It's what you thought.
00:55On a dark, rainy day in the fall of 1986,
00:58Hela Crafts learned from a private investigator
01:02that her husband was having an affair.
01:06Is that your husband?
01:07Yes.
01:09That's Richard.
01:12Shortly after this meeting,
01:15Hela Crafts disappeared.
01:16This is the story of how forensic science solved the puzzle.
01:22Hela Crafts
01:29Hello.
01:53I first met Helicrafts in the fall of 1986.
01:57She came in to see me and was discussing the possibility of a divorce from her husband.
02:03She was very concerned about what was happening at that time.
02:07She was also concerned about potential violence, shall we say.
02:14By all accounts, 39-year-old Helicrafts was a caring mother of three young children in
02:20an unhappy marriage.
02:22She strongly suspected the affair.
02:24She felt she knew who the individual was, but she really wanted some confirmation.
02:30So we talked about hiring a detective to prove that, in fact, yes, he was involved with another
02:35woman at that time.
02:36It was a typical scenario of husband is never home, constantly lying about his whereabouts.
02:46And she had had enough.
02:48When Helicrafts hired Detective Keith Mayo, she provided an important lead, a long distance
02:54number she saw on the phone bills but didn't recognize.
02:58I met with her several days after we had caught Richard with his girlfriend.
03:06And there were many photos of affection between the two of them.
03:11Her kissing him and holding his hand and rubbing his back.
03:16Those types of photos.
03:19Richard.
03:19Richard.
03:20She just broke down.
03:22She cried for at least five or ten minutes, just sobbing.
03:28Hela and Richard Crafts had been married for 12 years.
03:32They both worked for the airlines.
03:34Hela as a flight attendant for Pan Am, Richard a pilot for Eastern Airlines.
03:39He was also a part-time policeman.
03:42I would describe him as, uh, he was very cold.
03:45You know, when he looked at you, he had a very cold stare.
03:48Their relationship was not a close one.
03:51And friends say Richard sometimes hit Hela.
03:55Dearest mother, here I am again in London.
03:58I have said to Richard, I want to be divorced.
04:02I no longer trust in Richard.
04:05Hugs, Hela.
04:08After Hela filed for divorce, she confided in friends on her flight crew.
04:13I want to tell you something I told my lawyer.
04:16If anything ever happens to me, don't think it was an accident.
04:21I should not assume it was an accident.
04:22And that's an unusual comment to get from a client.
04:25On November 18th, 1986, Hela returned from a European flight assignment
04:30and was dropped off at home by her best friend.
04:33It was the last time anyone saw her.
04:37A few days later, Hela missed her next flight assignment.
04:41She didn't call in.
04:42So friends called the crafts home.
04:45Richard said she went to Denmark to visit her sick mother.
04:49Later, he told a different story.
04:51That Hela was on vacation with a friend.
04:54All which proved not to be true.
04:56And when this all came together, one started talking to the next to the next.
05:00There was a collective sense of panic in short time.
05:04The friends were basically telling me that she had disappeared.
05:07And that she was not the type of individual who would do this.
05:12She had three small children.
05:13So I called Keith Mayo.
05:15I immediately told Diane that I thought we should go over to the Newtown Police Department to report her missing.
05:21And they just turned a deaf ear on us.
05:25So Mayo launched his own investigation.
05:28In this home video, the crafts live in Nanny talks about some mysterious dark stain she noticed on the carpet
05:36shortly after Hela disappeared.
05:51The fact that there was new carpet in the master bedroom and Richard ripped up the carpet and wouldn't give
05:58the nanny an explanation as to why.
06:00Also suspicious, a large freezer missing from the garage.
06:05And credit card receipt showed that Richard had rented a commercial wood chipper right after Hela disappeared.
06:13Had something happened to Hela inside the house and was her husband involved?
06:19Police asked Richard Crafts to take a lie detector test.
06:23Did you kill your wife?
06:25No.
06:27Do you know your wife's whereabouts?
06:30No.
06:32Did you have anyone kill your wife?
06:35No.
06:36Showed very little reaction at all.
06:38There was nothing that either my partner saw or I saw that indicated that he was lying.
06:42With Hela Crafts still missing and no leads, Connecticut State Police called in their secret weapon,
06:48forensic expert, Dr. Henry Lee.
06:55Dr. Henry Lee is the director of the Connecticut State Police Forensics Laboratory
07:01and one of the world's most respected forensic experts.
07:04He accompanied police as they searched the craft's home.
07:08We start, examine some piece of physical evidence and find some tiny clue.
07:15On the mattress, Dr. Lee discovered five tiny stains so small they could barely be seen.
07:24Could they hold the key to the disappearance of Hela Crafts?
07:28An orthotolidine solution on the mattress fibers turned blue.
07:33It was blood.
07:35A species test proved it was human blood.
07:39But was it Hela's?
07:40An antigen test revealed type O positive, the same type as Hela Crafts.
07:46And microscopic analysis revealed it was circulation blood and not menstrual.
07:53It was circulation blood, now which means a blood vessel has to be
07:59injured to create such a pattern.
08:02Dr. Lee studied the angle and intensity of the blood's impact.
08:06He concluded the blood hit the mattress at an angle of 10 degrees, meaning it came from an
08:12individual leaning over the bed or kneeling.
08:16The blood was moving through the air at medium velocity, consistent with an injury caused by a
08:22blunt object. And there was a six inch blood smear on the side of the mattress.
08:29The bathroom towels had been washed recently. But Dr. Lee tested them with an orthotolidine solution.
08:36The blue areas proved the towels had been soaked with blood.
08:40The next issue, of course, a human body cannot just vanish in the air.
08:49But there was no body, no weapon, and no witnesses. Police needed more to go on.
09:01So they looked for any unusual events that might somehow be connected to Hela Craft's disappearance.
09:07It led to an important break. It snowed the week of Hela's disappearance. A snowplow driver
09:15reported seeing a wood chipper on a bridge about 3.30 in the morning. A man briefly appeared,
09:22wearing an orange poncho. He saw the same wood chipper again on River Road about an hour later.
09:29I said, well, take this man to the location, to the exact location where he saw the wood chipper.
09:36It was here where the Housatonic River runs into Lake Zoar. Police searched the riverbank. All they found
09:44were a few mounds of wood chips. But when they took a closer look, they found a piece of an
09:50envelope.
09:50It was mail addressed to Miss Hela L. Crafts.
09:56They were just laying there, you know. And I thought, good lord, you know.
10:06I didn't even think too much about how the chipper came into play at that point until we
10:16started finding a lot of hair. That was when I remarked to my boss, you know. I said, you know,
10:24if he did what I think he did, it's time for me to retire. Police spent days sifting through the
10:29dirt
10:30and debris along the riverbank. In addition to the letter and blonde hair, they also discovered a few
10:36blue fibers, a gray piece of metal, what looked to be some tiny bone fragments, and another piece of
10:43evidence which just appeared. The sun had melted the snow away from this wall. And, uh,
10:51right against the wall, laying right on top of the leaves, a painted fingernail. Divers explored the
10:58bottom of the river and found pieces of a chainsaw. Even more unusual, the serial number had been
11:05scratched off. Everything was taken to the State Police Forensic Laboratory in Meriden, Connecticut.
11:11Because any investigation involves so many specialty areas, that's why we started calling in 416.
11:21By now, the story was front page news around the world. Richard Crafts was a suspect,
11:27but he maintained his innocence, saying he didn't kill his wife, he didn't know her whereabouts,
11:33and that he had passed a lie detector test. But the forensics might tell a different story.
11:41When Dr. Lee convened the first meeting of his forensic team,
11:46he knew they faced a difficult task.
11:49They need either that piece of paper from me that says somebody's dead,
11:55or occasionally a huge pile of evidence to convince them.
11:59To identify the individual becomes a scientific challenge.
12:03They began by examining every notch of the chainsaw,
12:07and found some human hair, tissue, and a minute piece of fiber.
12:13In size, it was barely visible with the naked eye on the cutting edge of the chain.
12:19The fiber was a bluish-green cotton, the same color as Hella's favorite cotton nightshirt.
12:26And it matched other blue fibers found at the river.
12:29But since the serial number was scratched away,
12:33it was impossible to tell who owned the chainsaw, or was it?
12:38By using a particular chemical solution, that will eat away the upper layers of the metal
12:45that have been altered by the water, or by some physical attempts to alter the serial number.
12:51It worked. The serial number on the chainsaw, 5-9-2-1-6-1-6.
13:01It matched the warranty card sent in by Richard B. Crafts.
13:08Next, forensic experts wanted to find out whose hair was on the chainsaw and at the river.
13:15Every one of the 2,660 hairs was examined under a microscope.
13:21A lot of the hairs had been cut, but not cut with the scissors.
13:26Did it belong to Hella Crafts?
13:29So we had to find some known hair to compare.
13:34Basically, we used her hairbrush.
13:36There was a characteristic that is somewhat unusual for head hair,
13:42and that's a ridge that was present in the head hairs.
13:45They concluded that the hairs found on the chainsaw and at the river
13:50were microscopically similar to the hair from Hella's hairbrush.
13:55Next, they turned their attention to the fingernail with the bright red nail polish.
14:01A chemist compared it to a bottle of Hella's fingernail polish found in her home,
14:07analyzing the various organic compounds.
14:10These graphs show that the polish on the fingernail found at the river
14:15is the same as polish taken from the bottle found on Hella's nightstand.
14:20Good forensic work determined that the fingernail polish and the hair were both similar to Hella's,
14:28but they couldn't prove she was dead.
14:31I received a phone call from Dr. Lee asking me if I would come and take a look at
14:37these little pieces of what he thought to be bone.
14:42And he wanted me to see if I could identify them in any way.
14:46Dr. Lee suspected that the bones found that the river had gone through the wood chipper Crafts had rented.
14:53So Dr. Lee got the same machine and ran a test.
14:57This is actual footage.
14:59A pig was put through the chipper since their skin and bones are similar to humans.
15:05Dr. Lee noticed that the chipper produced a unique signature type of cut,
15:11one that matched the cutting pattern on the debris found at the river.
15:16Dr. Lee was presented with these very, very tiny, literally millimeter-sized fragments of bone.
15:25And in amongst some of these fragments, it was possible to see that some of the fragments
15:33indeed came from a human.
15:35Under a spectrograph, Dr. Harper noticed tiny grooves in the bones.
15:41The grooves told a story.
15:43Dr. Lee, they were formed by blood vessels inside the top of the skull,
15:49something only humans have.
15:52They also identified skull fragments from the side of the head.
15:57And these were the most important from a forensic point of view.
16:02Dr. So if the fracture's beveling outwards,
16:04we know the force came from the inside.
16:06We know there's a whole lot of force.
16:07So we didn't know if that's what killed her.
16:11We didn't know if she was dead before it happened.
16:13But we certainly knew she was dead afterwards.
16:17So now we know a human being is dead.
16:21The next question is, who?
16:23Dr. Harper froze some of the bone fragments with liquid nitrogen, then ground them to a fine powder.
16:32Tests revealed the bones came from an individual with type O positive blood,
16:37Hella Kraft's blood type.
16:39Finally, Dr. Lee turned his attention to the gray piece of metal believed to be a crown to a tooth.
16:47But there was no human remains on that crown, so that couldn't be used as a form of identification.
16:51They needed more.
16:54Dr. Lee asked Dr. Karazoulos himself to go to the river where he searched for five days, then a break.
17:02Dr. I'd been at the crime scene for maybe eight hours.
17:05I slipped and fell into the brook and I had a pail and I was picking evidence up.
17:10And I cleaned my hand off in this pail that I was collecting evidence in.
17:13When I came into the tent, I put all the contents of the pail down.
17:18I washed my hand and I looked down and there was the tooth.
17:21But was it Hella Kraft's?
17:23Dr. And I was able to match all the years of different x-rays. I imagine it was from 1986
17:30back to 1982.
17:32So I had no doubt in my mind that the tooth I found came from Hella Kraft's mouth.
17:38Finally, the forensic team had an actual match.
17:42Dr. And they say, Hella Kraft's teeth are in this pail.
17:47And they were knocked out of her head violently.
17:49And we have a human head going through violent injury in the same pail.
17:53So we said, that means Hella Kraft is dead. Period.
17:59Based on the forensic evidence, Richard Kraft was arrested and charged in the murder of his wife.
18:08What happened to Hella Kraft's?
18:11Based on the forensic evidence, a reasonable scenario can be pieced together.
18:18Thanks for the ride.
18:19On November 18th, Hella Kraft's returned from her flight to Germany around 7 pm.
18:25She put the children to bed around 8. The nanny had the night off and wasn't expected home until midnight.
18:34Before going to bed, Hella changed into her favorite blue nightshirt, looked through her mail,
18:40stuffed it into her pocket, and began changing sheets.
18:44I don't believe you. You know, I can't take this anymore. Why don't you just get out?
18:48No, you get out.
18:50You get out. Leave me alone.
18:52Then it happened quickly.
19:13Using a police flashlight, the first blow knocked her to the ground, the second produced the blood splatter, hitting the
19:20mattress at a 10 degree angle.
19:23While falling, her head grazed the side of the mattress, leaving the blood smear.
19:29He wrapped the body in the bed covers,
19:34carried her through the house into the garage,
19:38and placed the body into a freezer.
19:48Richard tried to clean up the blood with some towels which were later washed, but traces of blood remained on
19:54the towels, later discovered by Dr. Lee.
19:57Marie Thomas, the nanny, arrived home around 2 a.m. and went right to bed.
20:04At daybreak, Crafts took the children and the nanny to his sister's house, saying their mother had left earlier.
20:12Marie, hurry up!
20:13He then rented the largest commercial wood chipper he could find, and a U-Haul truck, using his credit card.
20:21By night time, Hela's body was completely frozen.
20:26Crafts transported the remains, along with a chainsaw and some wood, to the river.
20:33The snow plow driver spotted the wood chipper on a bridge around 3.30 in the morning, and again, near
20:41the river, an hour later.
20:44Using his chainsaw, Crafts dismembered Hela's frozen body, and put the pieces through the chipper along with some wood.
20:53Since the body was frozen, it produced little, if any, blood splatter.
20:58Most of the debris blew into the river.
21:01Only a few pieces fell short, landing on the bank.
21:05The mail Hela placed in her nightshirt pocket passed through the chipper, virtually untouched.
21:13Before leaving, Crafts took apart the chainsaw, scratched the serial number off, and threw the pieces into the river.
21:23How close was the brutal murder of Hela Crafts to the perfect crime?
21:29Boy, damn close.
21:33Damn close.
21:35And if that person truly believes they're not going to be caught, and there's no fear or threat to them,
21:39they could get by a polygraph test.
21:42The key, solving this case, is so-called teamwork.
21:47Assembling a good team, and work together.
21:51Amazing.
21:53Yeah.
21:53The human body writes so much of its history in itself.
22:14In Christ, like how else?
22:15Or is six right?
22:25Though there's a piece of our family and a whole family,
22:25Can I stop my place from the map?
22:26enormity.
22:26I do.ORY
22:26ils Things
22:26Andika, Metal
22:26That way. For
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