January 9, 1990
'Wood chipper' killer gets 50 years
Author: Mark Zaretsky
Richard B. Crafts was sentenced Monday to 50 years in prison for the "absolutely horrendous and barbaric" 1986 crime of murdering his wife, Helle, and using a wood chipper to get rid of the body.
The sentence is 10 years short of the maximum allowed by state law.
"This murder was intentional. This murder probably was premeditated. The defendent showed no remorse," Judge Martin L. Nigro said before handing down the sentence.
"Helle Crafts had a right to live and that right was denied her by the defendant," Nigro said. " . . . In effect, what he has done by the murder of Helle Crafts is to murder the childhood of his children."
Crafts, 52, did not receive the maximum sentence because he had never been arrested before, Nigro said.
Public Defender Gerard Smyth said Crafts will appeal the conviction and will go before the state's sentence review board.
If appeals are unsuccessful, Crafts must serve at least two-thirds of the sentence, or 33 years, Smyth said.
Nigro set Crafts' appeal bond at $1 million. Crafts never was able to raise the $750,000 bond set after his arrest.
Crafts is being held at the Community Correctional Center at Bridgeport. Smyth said he thought Crafts may be transferred to Connecticut Correctional Institution at Somers, the state's maximum security prison.
Crafts was accused of killing Helle Crafts, 39, on Nov. 18 or 19, 1986, and disposing of her body along the shores of Lake Zoar in Southbury with a chain saw and a rented wood chipper.
Helle Crafts, a Danish-born Pan Am flight attendant, was last seen on Nov. 18, 1986, when a friend and co-worker dropped her off at home after returning from a flight from Frankfurt to Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Crafts was arrested after the state's acting medical examiner declared his wife dead on the basis of less than three ounces of body parts, hair and clothing scraps found along the banks of Lake Zoar.
A jury convicted him of murder Nov. 21 after a second trial that spanned 2 1/2 months. It was the first time in Connecticut history that someone had been convicted of murder - or even tried for it - without a body having been found.
In pre-sentencing presentations, the prosecution portrayed Crafts, a former Eastern Airlines pilot, as arrogant, heartless and obsessed with power. The defense painted him as a likeable loner, "your average guy living in the suburbs."
In sentencing Crafts, Nigro rejected defense motions to either dismiss the case or order a new trial because of various alleged legal errors and the possibility that Crafts' phone conversations may have been illegally-taped by state police in the Southbury barracks.
Crafts, speaking in his own defense, told Nigro he felt he has been miscast by media reports portraying him as cold, calculating and unemotional.
"A great deal has been said about my apparent lack of emotions - `He has ice water in his veins,' " Crafts said. "I have feelings just like everyone else."
Crafts' eyes filled with tears before the sentencing as his sister, Suzanne Bird, pleaded for leniency, saying her brother always fulfilled his family obligations and "cried at daddy's funeral right along with the rest of us."
It was one of few times Crafts showed emotion during the three-year legal odyssey that began with his arrest on Jan. 13, 1987.
When Crafts' other sister, Karen Rodgers, urged Nigro to lock her brother up for as long as possible, the rift the case cleaved in the Crafts family became evident. Rodgers has custody of the three Crafts children.
"The children should have the security of knowing they are safe for the rest of their lives," Rodgers said, adding that she and her husband, David, "can never fill the void left by the loss of their mother."
Crafts told the judge his children, "are the most important thing in the world to me. I love them. I want them to know I love them. I don't think that, even though our relationship is physically interrupted, that it will ever be interrupted in spirit."
Across the Atlantic in Hoersholm, Denmark, Helle Crafts' 71-year-old mother, Elisabeth Nielsen, greeted news of the sentencing with relief.
"I feel that justice has been done in the United States," she said, speaking in Danish to a reporter for Ekstra Bladet, Denmark's largest newspaper. "It is, of course, a great relief for me that it is all over now and that I now can put all these awful things behind me."
Prosecutor Walter Flanagan said he was "very satisfied" with the sentence, which he called "a very appropriate conclusion to a very complicated matter."
Crafts' first trial in New London ended in a mistrial on July 15, 1988 after a 3 1/2-month trial and a state record 17 days of jury deliberations.
Juror Warren Maskell, who for days had been the lone holdout for acquittal, walked out of the jury room and refused to return.