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[Music] [Music] hi awful weather out there you uh want to go inside the diner no
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i don't want anyone to see me like this you're not gonna like these it's what you thought on a dark
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rainy day in the fall of 1986 helicrafts learned from a private investigator that her husband was having an affair
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is that your husband yes that's richard shortly after this meeting hella crafts disappeared this
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is the story of how forensic science solved the puzzle [Music] [Music] i first met helicrafts in the fall of
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1986. she came in to see me and was discussing the possibility of a divorce from her husband she was very concerned
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about what was happening at that time she was also concerned about potential violence shall we say
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by all accounts 39-year-old heller kraft was a caring mother of three young children
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in an unhappy marriage she strongly suspected the affair she felt she knew who the individual was
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but she really wanted some confirmation so we talked about hiring a detective to
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prove that in fact yes he was involved with another woman at that time it was a typical scenario of husband is
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never home constantly lying about his whereabouts and she had enough when helicraft hired
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detective keith mayo she provided an important lead a long distance number she saw on the phone bills
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but didn't recognize i met with her several days after we had caught richard with his girlfriend and there
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were many photos of uh affection between the two of them her kissing him and holding his hand and
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rubbing his back those types of photos she just broke down she cried for at least five or ten minutes just
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sobbing hella and richard kraft had been married for 12 years they both work for the airlines hela as
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a flight attendant for pan am richard a pilot for eastern airlines he was also a part-time policeman
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i would describe him as he was very cold you know when he looked at you he had a
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very cold stare their relationship was not a close one and friends say richard sometimes hit hella dearest
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mother here i am again in london i have said to richard i want to be divorced i no longer trust in richard huggs
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hella after hella filed for divorce she confided in friends on her flight crew i want to tell you something
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i told my lawyer if anything ever happens to me don't think it was an accident it was an
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accident and that's an unusual comment to get from a client on november 18 1986 heller returned from a european flight
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assignment and was dropped off at home by her best friend it was the last time anyone saw her
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a few days later helen missed her next flight assignment she didn't call in so friends called the crafts home
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richard said she went to denmark to visit her sick mother later he told a different story that
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hella was on vacation with a friend all which proved not to be true and when this all came together one started
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talking to the next to the next there was a collective sense of panic in short time
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the friends were basically telling me that she had disappeared and that she was not the type of
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individual who would do this she had three small children so i called keith mayo i immediately
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told diane that i thought we should go over to the newtown police department to report her missing
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and they just turned a deaf ear on us so mayo launched his own investigation in this home video the craft's live in
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nanny talks about some mysterious dark stains she noticed on the carpet shortly after hella disappeared and the
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inside the bedroom door was a spot a black spot yeah how big would you say it was that
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how about that big yeah did it look like a stain it looked like it was stained but it
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hadn't been there before the fact that there was new carpet in the bed master bedroom and richard
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ripped up the carpet and wouldn't give the nanny an explanation as to why also suspicious a large freezer
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missing from the garage and credit card receipt showed that richard had rented a commercial
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wood chipper right after hella disappeared had something happened to hella inside the
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house and was her husband involved police asked richard kraft to take a lie detector test
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did you kill your wife no do you know your wife's whereabouts no did you have anyone kill your wife no
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showed very little reaction at all there was nothing that either my partner saw or i saw that indicated that he was
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lying with helicraft still missing and no leads connecticut state police called in
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their secret weapon forensic expert dr henry lee dr henry lee is the director of the
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connecticut state police forensics laboratory and one of the world's most respected
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forensic experts he accompanied police as they searched the craft's home we start exam some piece of physical
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evidence and found some tiny clue on the mattress dr lee discovered five tiny stains so small
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they could barely be seen could they hold the key to the disappearance of helicrafts
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and orthotolodine solution on the mattress fibers turned blue it was blood a species test proved it
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was human blood but was it hellas an antigen test revealed type o positive the same type as hella crafts
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and microscopic analysis revealed it was circulation blood and not menstrual if a circulation blood
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now which means a blood vessel has to be injured to create such a pattern dr lee studied the angle and intensity
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of the blood's impact he concluded the blood hit the mattress at an angle of 10 degrees
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meaning it came from an individual leaning over the bed or kneeling the blood was moving through
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the air at medium velocity consistent with an injury caused by a blunt object and there was a six inch blood smear on
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the side of the mattress the bathroom towels had been washed recently but dr lee tested them with an
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orthotolidene solution the blue areas proved the towels had been soaked with blood
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the next issue of course a human body cannot just vanish in the air a body has to be someplace
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but there was nobody no weapon and no witnesses police needed more to go on so they look for any unusual events that
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might somehow be connected to helicraft's disappearance it led to an important break it snowed
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the week of hella's disappearance a snowplow driver reported seeing a wood chipper on a bridge
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about 3 30 in the morning a man briefly appeared wearing an orange poncho he saw the same
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wood chipper again on river road about an hour later i said well take this man to the location to the
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exact location where he saw the wood chipper it was here where the housatonic river
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runs into lake zoar police searched the riverbank all they found were a few mounds of wood chips but when
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they took a closer look they found a piece of an envelope it was mail addressed to ms heller l crafts
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they were just laying there you know and i thought good lord you know we didn't i i didn't even think
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too much about uh how the chipper came came into play at that point until we uh until we
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started finding a lot of a lot of hair that was when i remarked to my boss you know i said you know if he did what
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i think he did it's time for me to retire police spent days sifting through the dirt and debris
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along the riverbank in addition to the letter and blonde hair they also discovered a few blue
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fibers a gray piece of metal what looked to be some tiny bone fragments and another piece of evidence which just
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appeared the sun had melted the snow away from this wall and right against the wall laying right on
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top of the leaves a painted fingernail divers explored the bottom of the river and found
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pieces of a chainsaw even more unusual the serial number had been scratched off everything was taken to the state police
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forensic laboratory in meridian connecticut because any investigation involves so
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many specialty area that's why we start calling in 416. by now the story was front page news
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around the world richard kraft was a suspect but he maintained his innocence saying
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he didn't kill his wife he didn't know her whereabouts and that he had passed a lie detector test
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but the forensics might tell a different story when dr lee convened the first meeting
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of his forensic team he knew they faced a difficult task they need either that piece of paper for me that
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says somebody's dead or occasionally a huge pile of evidence to convince them to identify the individual become a
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scientific challenge they began by examining every notch of the chainsaw and found some human hair tissue
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and a minute piece of fiber in size it was barely visible with the naked eye on the
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cutting edge of the chain the fiber was a bluish green cotton the same color as hella's favorite
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cotton night shirt and it matched other blue fibers found at the river but since the serial number was
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scratched away it was impossible to tell who owned the chainsaw or was it by using a particular chemical
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solution that will eat away the upper layers of the metal that have been altered by
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the water or by some physical attempts to alter the serial number it worked the serial number on the chain
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saw five nine two one six one six it matched the warranty card sent in by richard b crafts
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next forensic experts wanted to find out whose hair was on the chainsaw and at the river every one of the 2660
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hairs was examined under a microscope a lot of the hairs had been cut but not cut with a scissors did it
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belong to heller crafts so we have to find some no hair to compare basically we use our hair brush there
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was a characteristics that that is somewhat unusual for head hair and that's a ridge that was present
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in the head hairs they concluded that the hairs found on the chainsaw and at the river were
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microscopically similar to the hair from hela's hairbrush next they turned their attention to the
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fingernail with the bright red nail polish a chemist compared it to a bottle of hella's
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fingernail polish found in her home analyzing the various organic compounds these graphs show that the polish on the
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fingernail found at the river is the same as polish taken from the bottle found on hella's nightstand good forensic work
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determined that the fingernail polish and the hair were both similar to hellas but they couldn't
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prove she was dead i received a phone call from dr lee asking me if i would come and take a
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look at these little pieces of what he thought to be bone and wanted me to see if i could
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identify them in any way dr lee suspected that the bones found that the river had
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gone through the wood chipper crafts had rented so dr lee got the same machine and ran a
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test this is actual footage a pig was put through the chipper since their skin and bones are
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similar to humans dr lee noticed that the chipper produced a unique signature type of cut
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one that matched the cutting pattern on the debris found at the river what i was presented
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with was these very very tiny uh literally millimeter size fragments of bone and
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in amongst some of these fragments it was possible to see that some of the fragments
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indeed came from a human under a spectrograph dr harper noticed tiny grooves in the
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bones the grooves told the story they were formed by blood vessels inside the top of the skull
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something only humans have they also identified skull fragments from the side of the head
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and these were the most important from a forensic point of view so if the fracture is beveling outwards
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another force came from the inside we know is a whole lot of force so we didn't know if that's what killed
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her we didn't know if she was dead before it happened we certainly knew she's dead
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afterwards okay so now we know a human being is dead the next question is who dr harper froze
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some of the bone fragments with liquid nitrogen then ground them to a fine powder
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tests revealed the bones came from an individual with type o positive blood helicraft's blood type
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finally dr lee turned his attention to the gray piece of metal believed to be a crown to a tooth but there was no
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human remains on that crown so that couldn't be used as a form of identification they needed more
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so dr lee asked dr carrasulis himself to go to the river where he searched for five days then
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a break i'd been at the crime scene for maybe eight hours i slipped and fell into the brook
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and i had a pail and i was picking evidence up and i cleaned my hand off in this pail that i was collecting evidence
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in when i came into the tent i put all the contents of the pail down i washed my hand and i looked down
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and there was the tooth but was it hella crafts and i was able to match all the years of different x-rays i
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imagine it was from 1986 back to 1982 so i had no doubt in my mind that the tooth i found
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came from helicraft's mouth finally the forensic team had an actual match and they say helicraft's teeth are in
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this pile and they were knocked out of her head violently and we have a human head going through
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violent entering the same palace so we said that means helicraft is dead period based on the forensic evidence
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richard kraft was arrested and charged in the murder of his wife what happened to hella crafts based on
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the forensic evidence a reasonable scenario can be pieced together thanks for the ride on november 18th
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hella crafts returned from her flight to germany around 7pm she put the children to bed
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around eight the nanny had the night off and wasn't expected home until midnight before going to bed
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hella changed into her favorite blue night shirt looked through her mail you know i can't take this anymore why
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don't you just get out no don't get out you get out leave me alone then it happened quickly
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using a police flashlight the first blow knocked her to the ground the second produced the blood splatter
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hitting the mattress at a 10 degree angle while falling her head grazed the side
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of the mattress leaving the blood smear he wrapped the body in the bed covers carried her through the house into the
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garage and placed the body into a freezer [Music] richard tried to clean up the blood with
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some towels which were later washed but traces of blood remained on the towels later discovered by dr lee marie thomas
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the nanny arrived home around 2am and went right to bed at daybreak kraft took the children and
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the nanny to his sister's house saying their mother had left earlier marie hurry up he then rented the largest
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commercial wood chipper he could find and a u-haul truck using his credit card by night time hella's body was
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completely frozen crafts transported the remains along with a chainsaw and some wood to the river
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the snow plow driver spotted the wood chipper on a bridge around 3 30 in the morning and again
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near the river an hour later using his chainsaw crafts dismembered hella's frozen body and put the pieces
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through the chipper along with some wood since the body was frozen it produced little if any blood splatter
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most of the debris blew into the river only a few pieces fell short landing on the bank
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the male hela placed in her night shirt pocket passed through the chipper virtually untouched before leaving
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crafts took apart the chainsaw scratched the serial number off and threw the pieces into the river
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how close was the brutal murder of helicrafts to the perfect crime boy damn close damn close
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if that person truly believes they're not going to be caught and there's no fear or threat to them
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they could get by a polygraph test the key solving this case is so called teamwork
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assembling good team and work together amazing yeah the human body writes so much of its history in itself
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[Music] ah [Music] you