The Woodchipper Murder

By: Arthur Herzog

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Synopsis: Even though the Newtown, Connecticut, police listed Helle Crafts's disappearance as a routine missing-person case, Keith Mayo, a private investigator, knew the Danish-born mother of three hadn't skipped town nine days before Thanksgiving. He had been concerned for Helle's safety a month earlier when he had provided his client, an attractive thirty-nine-year-old Pan Am flight attendant, conclusive evidence of her husband's extramarital activities. An Eastern Airlines pilot and part-time policeman, Richard stood by his story that Helle had flown abroad on November 19 to visit her suddenly stricken mother. Richard was caught up in a succession of lies. A friend telephoned Denmark to learn that Helle's mother was healthy and unaware of Helle's whereabouts. More disturbing was the news, reported by the Craftses' baby-sitter, that a dark stain "the size of a grapefruit" had been noticed on the master bedroom rug soon after Helle's disappearance; now rug was gone. Mayo seized upon a single clue, and when it led to a remote landfill from which he unearthed a stained rug, he had the evidence necessary to bring the state police into the case. In the style of a brilliant detective novel, Arthur Herzog skillfully re-creates the hour-by-hour circumstantial details that inform this grisly true-crime narrative.