A 911 caller to the Newtown Police Department delineated finding human remains in a wooded area off of Edmond Road in Newtown, Connecticut on October 13, 2023 at 2:38 P.M.. Police officers responded to the area and met with the eyewitness to confirm the presence of the human remains.
The Newtown Police, with the assistance of the Connecticut State Police Western District Major Crime Squad and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, are in the process of investigating this incident and working to identify the remains. When contacted, the Newtown Police Department was unable to release any specifics regarding the case other than preliminary investigation. It did not indicate any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances. The Police Department Facebook page stated that no further information was planned to be released at any given time pertaining to the case.
Many things have been theorized about this incredulous incident:.
“I've heard that the body was found with its limbs chopped off and its head severed with bones scattered all over the place, and that there was a gun found next to it,” stated Clare Csaszar, a NHS Freshman.
“[It] could have been a drop-off murder. Plus, it is around Halloween, so who knows?” Natalie Delcampo, another NHS Freshman, speculated about what could have actually happened with these peculiar human remains.
Sentiments like this are just the beginning in the discovery process as local and state authorities piece this puzzle together. Enigmas like these are nothing new for the Newtown community, as one of the States most infamous calamities occurred just about 37 years ago and is known as the Notorious Woodchipper Murder (A.K.A The Crafts Murder).
This was a gruesome and shocking crime that thrust the state of Connecticut into the national headlines and ultimately became the inspiration of the award-winning 1997 movie, Fargo, as well as many other movies and TV shows.
Helle Crafts was a Danish air stewardess for Pan American. Richard Crafts was a pilot for Eastern Airlines. This was how the future couple met. They married in 1979 before settling down in Newtown, Connecticut, where they had three children.
The relationship was rocky from the beginning with Richard cheating on Helle even before they were married. When asked why he had married Helle, Richard unromantically replied: “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.”
On the 18th of November, 1986, Helle Crafts landed in New York after attending a flight from Frankfurt in Germany. She and two other stewardesses drove to Newtown and pulled up outside Helle’s home which was the last time anybody saw her alive.
As it turned out, Helle had recently discovered that her husband had once again been having an affair behind her back. After discovering phone calls to an unknown number, she decided to hire a private detective to watch her husband and to confirm her fears. As he handed Helle photographs that corroborated her fears of infidelity, she wept.
Mrs. Craft filed for divorce shortly before her disappearance and expressed fear for her life to her friends. Helle’s divorce lawyer said she told them “that if anything happened to her, we should not believe that it was an accident.” She also divulged to her lawyer that Richard “had a lot of guns in the house,” and that he had physically abused her in the past. Despite the fact that Richard was cheating on Helle, she decided to obtain a no-fault divorce as opposed to charging her husband with adultery.
Following her disappearance, Richard gave varying reports as to where Helle was. First of all, he told Helle’s friends that she was on another flight. Helle’s co-workers were immediately suspicious due to the regulations that restricted her from flying again so soon without having a proper rest period. Then Richard changed his story and said that she was in Denmark visiting her sick mother. This lie soon crumbled when her mother said no such arrangement had been made and that she wasn’t sick. He then told concerned friends that she was in Florida or the Canary Islands visiting with a friend; coming up with blatant lies every chance he got.
Just days after her disappearance, Richard dismantled and redecorated their bedroom and purchased a new freezer; an odd thing to do when your wife is missing. One of Helle’s co-workers, Rita Buonanno, had become increasingly worried about her friend and ultimately reported her missing on the 1st of December – two weeks after she went missing. The fact that her husband had not even reported her missing set off alarm bells.
Investigators considered something sinister had happened to Helle and zoned in on Richard who had been acting very peculiarly. The following month, they discovered that he had rented a 2700-pound wood chipper and a U-Haul truck shortly before Helle disappeared. He told the rental service that he had cut down some trees at his property.
Highway worker, Joseph Heinz, soon came forward to inform police that he had seen Richard parked at the side of the road alongside the Southbury Shore of Lake Zoar with the wood chipper in tow at around 3AM a day or two after Helle disappeared. He said he recalled the day very clearly as it was the date that he was called to work to plow roads during the season’s first snow.
Police uncovered clumps of scattered wood chips under layers of dead leaves. Among the wood chips, they found something much more sinister: a human thumb, a fingertip with the nail attached, strands of blonde hair, a big toe, bone fragments, material from underwear, a mailing label with Helle Crafts name on it and a crowned tooth with a piece of jawbone attached. An anthropology expert determined that the bone fragments belonged to a human and a forensic odontologist was able to identify the tooth as belonging to Helle Crafts.
In addition, they uncovered a submerged chainsaw in the Housatonic River which had intertwined blonde hairs within it. Investigators were also able to retrieve a bloodstained carpet from inside the home. Inside the rented U-Haul van, they also found a clump of tissue-like material that tested positive for human blood.
Helle Crafts was pronounced dead after this news was discovered and Richard was arrested when he arrived home from a ski trip.
From the hair intertwined in the chainsaw to the bloodstained carpet inside Richard’s home, the jury found that Richard was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison but got out 20 years early for good behavior.
The notorious “Wood Chipper Murder Case” was the first case in which somebody was convicted of murder with no body in the history of the state of Connecticut.
It still remains to be seen if the human remains found on Edmond Road will be as well known as the Richard Craft Murder Conviction.
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