Dick the Chipper

Dr. Lee

At our New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, we have monthly dinner meetings, many of which feature guest speakers with special expertise. Years ago, when the story I am about to tell was recent history, our lecturer was Dr. Henry Chang-yu Lee, then Chief Forensic Pathologist for the State of Connecticut, now a renowned consultant and superhero in his field.  Dr. Lee’s presentation was unforgettable, and not just because he described a gory crime while were finishing our dessert of vanilla ice cream with blood-red raspberry sauce.  What sticks in my mind is the brilliance of how Dr. Lee developed his evidence, and the fact that he had us laughing out loud as he told us about it.

The case is generally known as the Wood-chipper murder.  My husband David came along to that meeting, interested because he had spent part of his childhood in Connecticut, not far from the scene of this crime.  David nicknamed the perpetrator “Dick the Chipper,” and so I have always thought of him since.

Here is the case Dr. Lee solved and proved, even though no body was ever found.

Richard Crafts was an airline pilot married to a Danish-born former flight attendant—Helle Crafts, nee’ Lorck Nielsen.   They had three children.  Richard served as a volunteer special constable on the local police force in Newtown, Connecticut where they lived.  In the fall of 1986, when Helle had it up to her neck with Richard’s extramarital affairs and overbearing control of her and the children, she hired a private detective and told her husband that she was going to sue him for divorce.

Helle disappeared on November 19^th of that year.

Richard variously told people that she had gone to Denmark to visit her family or that she was vacationing in the Canary Islands with a friend.  Her close friends didn’t buy it.  They knew she had been unhappy, as did the PI.  Richard’s own sister told the police how devoted Helle was to her children and that she doubted Helle would have abandoned them.  On top of which, Helle had said to her closest friend, “If something happens to me, don’t think it was an accident.”  They all, including the PI, entreated the police to investigate, but as usual with missing persons cases, the cops waited a while.

It wasn’t until December 25^th that the police got a search warrant and went into the Crafts’ house.  They found many clues.  Pieces of the carpet were missing from the master bedroom, including from a spot where the nanny testified she had seen a grapefruit-sized blood stain.  Richard’s credit card statements, recovered from the premises showed that, at the time his wife disappeared, he had bought new bed sheets and a comforter, a freezer that was nowhere on the property, and had paid $900 to rent a wood-chipper. The PI found the receipt for a chain saw among Helle’s papers.

The ensuing investigation turned up more damning evidence.  There had been a terrible snow and sleet storm the night of Helle’s disappearance.  Yet during that blizzard, a rented truck pulling a wood-chipper was seen beside a local road overlooking a river and again a little later that night, near the shore of a local lake.  The lake, according to Dr. Lee’s presentation to MWA-NY, was a favorite place for the county’s criminals to stash evidence.   Police dragged the lake and found the chainsaw.  Dr. Lee explained to us how they identified it as Richard Crafts’.  The receipt had the serial number, which had been filed off the saw itself.  But the FBI was able to retrieve the number with their advanced imaging methods.  Near the place where the chipper was seen, they found human remains: a tooth that belonged to Helle and also blonde hairs and fingernails that matched her blood-type.  A toenail was covered in pink nail polished that matched what she had used.

But they still had no actual corpse.

A first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, thanks to one hold out.  The defense could claim that any of the pieces of Helle that had been recovered could have been removed from her person and still have left her alive.

Dr. Lee and his team went back to work on the physical evidence.  As I recall, he told us there were more than 100,000 tiny bits.  And then EUREKA!  One miniscule bone fragment, seen under a microscope, was identifiable as coming from the inside of a human skull.  He showed a slide of it and pointed out the telltale markings.  One could not remove such a part from a living person.  Bingo!

The state issued a death certificate based on this evidence and retried Richard Crafts.  He was found guilty of first-degree murder.  During sentencing, his sister asked the court to give him the maximum punishment.  He was sentenced to 50 years in state prison.

He’s still there.

The movie "Fargo" was inspired by the Wood-chipper murder.

Annamaria - Monday

I'm Off To Greece.

This is my final States-based post for six-months. I’m off to Mykonos on Tuesday.  I know, you’re all crying for me. Don’t worry, for I shall persevere…in the face of constant challenges of the sort expressed in the photo at the top of this post.

I’ll arrive on Mykonos in the middle of Easter week. This year Eastern and Western Easter fall on the same day, both during Passover. Yippee, we’re closing in on World Peace.

Last Monday I got to say goodbye to Washington & Jefferson College where I’d taught mystery writing during the frozen month of January.

I was invited back for a springtime address to the English Department. What a great bunch of folks. Some of my students even showed up, and others stopped me on the campus to say Hi. I guess it pays to be an easy grader.:)

It beats a wanted poster.

One of my students really surprised me. She’s a freshman and unbeknownst to me a rising opera star.  She was one of a dozen singers awarded a coveted position this summer in EPCASO (Ezio Pinza Council for American Singers of Opera—and you think governments are big on acronyms). In its 32^nd year, EPACSO’s website describes itself as a month-long Summer Opera Program with concentrated study and training in voice, repertoire, and language for singers. The program is specifically designed for those singers whose abilities indicate a realistic possibility for a career in opera.

Ezio Pinza (1892-1957)

Well done, Jesse!  And after that buildup how can I not share with you a sample of her singing.  Undoubtedly it was my mysterious teaching that made her the star she is today.

Another of my students received a grant for this summer to study the habits of European-based mystery writers, of which Cara, Yrsa, and I are included as targets.  Savvy kids in my class.

And on Wednesday night I said adieux to my Mykonos After Midnight book tour with a MWA-NY panel titled “Mysteries in Translation” at the New York Public Library.  Annamaria, Chris Pavone, and I were the panelists, moderated by Shizuka Obate.

Later, Annamaria, Chris and I joined friends in a spontaneous dash over to a nearby Greek restaurant and a great fun time in a warm-up for my coming week.

Now it’s on to finishing up farm work, packing, and writing. Yes, finally, after five months of everything but writing…or so it seemed…the time has come to turn to Andreas Kaldis #7 for 2015. Assuming I can come up with an idea.

But that’s why I return to Greece, folks. For inspiration.  And it never fails.

Bye-bye for now. Yiasu!

Jeff—Saturday

Edgar Night

Tonight is Edgar night, the night when Mystery Writers of America throws a gala function and announces the winners of its prestigious Edgar Awards for the best mysteries of 2011.  As you probably know, Death of the Mantis has been shortlisted for the Edgar for best paperback original of 2011.  Just being shortlisted was a huge deal for us and not one we expected.  We didn't even check the announcement when it came out; we were only alerted by generous congratulations from Leighton!  We were blown away.

Stan is going to be there tonight, but unfortunately I couldn't get away from commitments in South Africa - including the Knysna Literary Festival which is taking place this weekend and features a mystery writing event with myself and South African mystery writers Mike Nicol and Margie Orford.  So when the announcement is made tonight, I'll be trying to sleep. (It'll probably be about 3am here.)  But I'm feeling the same butterflies all the other finalists are feeling tonight...

Certificate of nomination

Death of the Mantis was a special book for us.  Of course they are all special, but this was the book were we tried to paint our story on the poignant backdrop of a dying culture.  If the book wins tonight, it is the Bushman people and their extraordinary lives that have made it so.

So here once again is the story of the Bushman people and the way it led to tonight...

The Bushmen have been nomadic peoples – there are many different groups with a variety of languages - for hundreds of thousands of years. As other population groups crowded them, they moved into the arid regions of southern Africa and developed a very successful if spartan lifestyle. They would dig for water and suck it out of the ground through straws or use Tsama melons for fluid. Sharing was a survival strategy. They moved with the seasons, following game which they hunted using bows and poisoned arrows. The poisons make a story in themselves, ranging from snake venom, through extraordinary desert plants, to an extraction of the larva of a beetle which is so poisonous there is no known antidote.  Their ancestors left amazing rock art.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century. (There’s some pretty sickening stuff in the years we’re skipping over, including a period when the Bushmen where hunted like animals.) Now things in Botswana are very different. Much of the Kalahari is declared as the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Diamond mining drives the economy. Bushmen numbers have declined.

And how you interpret the situation depends on your perspective. Here is my superficial summary of the way some of the Bushman leaders see it, and how support groups like Survival International see it:
The Bushmen have always lived in the Kalahari. Fences and private land ownership – which is alien to them – interfere with their nomadic behaviours, and rules concerning hunting force them near starvation. Their culture is not respected and is being destroyed by the change in environment and legal constraints with which they don’t agree. In order to keep the Kalahari for tourism and – according to some - for diamond mining, the Bushmen are being forced out of the Kalahari game reserve and into settlements little better than concentration camps on the verges of the land they once regarded as their own. Yes, there is some compensation, but this is soon frittered away leaving nothing. Financial investing is completely beyond their ken.

And here is how the Botswana government sees it:
The government has an obligation to provide appropriate infrastructure for all its citizens. This includes proper schools (Botswana has a policy that schools should be within walking distance from where people live), health care at least at a primary level, water and sanitation. Furthermore the Kalahari is remote and inaccessible, an ecological treasure that must be preserved. Discrimination on race is forbidden by the constitution; if the Bushmen live there, how are other population groups to be prevented from living and hunting there? And now the Bushmen hunt with guns rather than bows and arrows. Their nomadic behaviour has changed to informal settlements where water has to be supplied by road, rather than found in depressions or melons. Crudely put, the traditional culture is already dead; only the inconvenience remains. Thus a group of planned settlements set up in appropriate places with schools and services is the way to go. Appropriate compensation is paid to the people who have to move. They have a new and better life ahead.
In the wide gap between these two viewpoints is a variety of groups trying to negotiate a scenario which would bring the two sides closer together. Among these is Ditshwanelo, an amazing human rights organisation led by the equally amazing Alice Mogwe. (Ditshwanelo is a Setswana word meaning variously: obligations, merits, duties.) Nevertheless, with such extreme perspectives, and the muscle behind each side, it was almost inevitable that the matter would end in the Botswana High Court.

One of the three judges was the remarkable Unity Dow – first woman High Court judge in Botswana, member of the Kenyan Constitutional court, novelist. Broadly, the judges ruled in favour of the Bushmen. In the judgement, Dow said that the case was ‘ultimately about a people demanding dignity and respect. It is a people saying in essence: "Our way of life may be different, but it is worthy of respect. We may be changing and getting closer to your way of life, but give us a chance to decide what we want to carry with us into the future”.’

Michael - Edgar Night