ISTR hearing a story on NPR a year or so before Fargo was released that involved a man who killed his wife and disposed of her body with a wood chipper. I think this happened in Michigan. I’m not sure, but I think the slush was sprayed into a lake; although it might have been that the lake was frozen and the remains were left on the snow. Again IIRC, DNA evidence was used to prove the body bits were from the man’s wife.
Does anyone recall this?
This it?
Got it in one. Well done An Gadaí, and from a different continent as well.
Personal note - when my mother visited me in Connecticut we tried to find time to visit the bridge where the chipping occurred - my mother is a crime buff.
That does sound like it, though I thought the incident took place in the '90s.
That story was always popular with the other pilots.
Apparently one of his major undoings was that he thoroughtly cleaned the chipper when he was done. It came back looking so different from how chippers usually do that it aroused some curiosity among the rental place staff. He’d have done better to run a couple trees through it after the cleanup.
As is typical in aviation, most of us vowed to learn from his bad experience & do better ourselves if the circumstance ever arose.
BTW, An Gadaí: How did you find that so quickly?
LSLGuy: Would that pilots who rent were so meticulous!
Dammit, you beat me to it. Yes, it does make the pilot circuit of stories.
He used the ole chipper-on-a-bridge-during-a-rain-storm technique. :smack:
I believe the fragment of fingernail they found had a bit of polish on it that matched polish at her home. For some reson I just remember bits and pieces of the story.
Ah… ah… ::gurgling sounds of pain::
That was inspired.
I googled “He disposed of her body in a wood chipper” and it was amongst the first few links.
They featured this story on one episode of Discovery’s The New Detectives. I believe the episode was “Absent Witness” which according to the TV listings will replay on 11/19 at 3 PM on the Investigation Discovery channel, if anyone’s interested.
I always wonder when I read stuff like this if the police are just bluffing. You know saying they have the DNA evidence and then getting the guy to confess.
It’s like with Jeffrey Dahmer. His first victim was when he was in his late teens and he killed the guy and cut him up. He crushed the bones with a hammers and anvils till he got them relatively even and scattered them around a tree.
Then years later the cops were able to come up with fragments. Of course it’s totally possible but probably expensive. I would think the cops would attempt to bluff it first.
I also wonder if Carl Hiaasen was inspired by the story, as well as the “Fargo” screenwriter. He put a murder victim through a wood chipper in “Skin Tight”, published in 1989.
(Given that it’s Hiaasen, with his penchant for stuff like that, it could easily be coincidence. You gotta love any novel that opens with someone stabbing an intruder to death with a stuffed spearfish.)
There’s more detail about the Richard Crafts’ case at this webpage. The forensic scientist, Henry Lee, is quoted as saying, “Our team’s efforts at Lake Zoar eventually led to the discovery of 2,660 strands of blond hair, 69 slivers of human bone, 5 droplets of human blood, 2 teeth, a truncated piece of human skull, 3 ounces of human tissue, a portion of human finger, 1 fingernail, and 1 portion of toe nail.”
And if anyone is interested in the gruesome details, apparently he first froze the body, cut it up with a chainsaw, re-froze it and then used the wood chipper.
Did you Google that answer?
[Moderating]
Keep this kind of crap out out GQ. So what if he did? If you have an issue with another poster, take it to The Pit. Additional attempts to bait other posters may result in a warning.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
My sister was called for Jury duty on the Craft case. She was dismissed because at the time she was a fulltime student. I remember the news shows in CT at that time, many people were completely taken aback by the vicious nature of the crime. It seams CT has it’s share of brutal crimes, just a year or two ago the man from Cheshire was witness to his wife and daughters being raped and murdered during a home invasion of his affluent neighborhood home. Terrible, juts terrible.
To generalize from two incidents over 18 years in a state of 3.5 million to this is a bit of a stretch, I’d say. I have no idea how one would generate a Brutal Crimes Index for any state or determine a normalized Expected Rate of Brutal Crimes.
I think the Cheshire case is no more brutal than a number of home invasions that have happened in Hartford or Bridgeport, but the location (wealthy suburb) and family (doctor and attractive daughters) generated disproportionate media coverage. Given realities of American sensibilities, the fact that the victims were white instead of black or Hispanic probably also contributed to higher media coverage.
I’ve always felt sorry for the 3 kids in this story, left without parents. Poor Chip, Twig, and Nick.
Remember to clean up properly.
If you don’t, you will get caught if you let the chips fall where they may …