Tools are a wondrous thing, aren’t they? Tools come in all forms, from hammers to screwdrivers to jackhammers. As far as I know, there is a tool for every single purpose. Some of them are more specific than others. For instance.
How much wood could a wood chip chip, if a wood chip, could chip wood?
Oh, the old wood chipper. You know the things. They look like a contraption from a Dr. Seuss book or something. And when you put a big hunk of wood into them, they miraculously grind it down into little, teensy-weensy bits.
I get the fact that these are useful tools in the tree-cutting industry. They help to clear away the remains of the fallen trees. But. These things are dangerous.
I couldn’t find any recent statistics at the CDC, but I did locate this:
• According to a 2018 study in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 113 people died in wood chipper-related incidents between 1982 and 2016. All decedents were male.
• During 1982 – 2016, an estimated 7,042 injuries resulted from working with chippers, an average of 207 per year.
It is no wonder that these woodchippers have been in the scenes of a horror movie or two.
But every so often, someone takes these horrors to a different level.
Such was the case in 1987. That is when a man named Richard Crafts, from Connecticut, was accused and later found guilty of murdering his wife and disposing of her body in a woodchipper.
Richard’s wife’s name was Helle Crafts. She was a Pan Am flight attendant, mostly flying those friendly skies. Anyway, Helle had vanished on November 18, 1986. Although her body was never found, authorities did find enough evidence to convict her husband of murder. And I bet you can guess where they found that evidence.
Following her disappearance, friends immediately suspected Richard Crafts because his answers about his wife’s whereabouts had been so evasive. When police got involved, this guy’s version of his story began to crumble.
Richard claimed he had not left the house on November 19. But whoops. Credit card records showed he had purchased new sheets, and comforter, and those sorts of things. They also found out that he had bought a chest freezer and rented a woodchipper in the days right before Helle’s disappearance.
What a guy.
But hang on. It gets worse.
A witness then came forward, saying that he had seen a wood chipper near the Housatonic River. A search of the Craft house revealed a blood smear on the mattress that turned out to be consistent with Helle’s blood type.
Next the detectives also found an envelope addressed to Helle near the river. Divers found a chain saw and serrated cutting bar, which had human hair and tissue embedded in the teeth. This led to a search for further evidence.
Piece by piece they put the case together. Literally. Thawing the snow and sifting the soil, detectives found 2,660 hairs, one fingernail, one toenail, two teeth, one tooth cap, and five droplets of blood. From this microscopic evidence, doctors were able to prove that Richard Crafts had disposed of his wife’s body with a wood chipper near the river. The most important evidence was that the toothcap matched Helle’s dental records.
Richard Crafts was arrested on January 13, 1987.
In 1989 he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Crafts was released from prison in 2019. I imagine, parole.
My dad taught me that I should always take care of my tools, and only use a tool for its intended purpose. Clearly, Richard Craft’s dad did not teach him the same lesson.
Lesson learned?
Take care of your tools. Stay out of prison.
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“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
— Abraham Lincoln
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“A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. He that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the wellbeing of mankind.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
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“A tool is anything that can be used to achieve a desired end.”
— Charles Platt
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Hey Good Chippy. Well. Chippy gone bad.
