Murder of Helle Crafts
Danish flight attendant murdered by her husband, airline pilot Richard Crafts
Helle Crafts (English: ; born Helle Lorck Nielsen; July 7, 1947 – November 19, 1986) was a Danish flight attendant who was murdered by her husband, Eastern Air Lines pilot Richard Crafts. Her death led to the state of Connecticut's first murder conviction without the victim's body.
Disappearance
Helle Nielsen married Richard Crafts in 1975 and settled with him in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. Helle continued working as a flight attendant while raising their three children. In 1986, Helle began to suspect that Richard was engaged in extramarital sexual activity, and confronted him about suspicious long-distance phone calls, which angered Richard. Helle met with a divorce attorney and hired a private investigator, Keith Mayo, who snapped photos of Richard kissing another flight attendant outside her New Jersey residence.
On November 18, 1986, friends dropped Helle off at the couple's Newtown residence after she had worked a long flight from Frankfurt, West Germany. She was never seen again. That night, a snowstorm hit the area. The next morning, Richard said he was taking Helle and their children to his sister's house in Westport.
The public source identifies “Murder of Helle Crafts” as danish flight attendant murdered by her husband, airline pilot Richard Crafts. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Murder, Helle and Crafts.
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This entry incorporates text from “Murder of Helle Crafts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.