Case file 0027

Helle Crafts: A Murder Proved Through Circumstantial Evidence

A mistrial was followed by a conviction that Connecticut’s highest court upheld.

The murder prosecution of Richard Crafts did not end with its first jury. That trial resulted in a mistrial because jurors could not agree. A second trial produced a guilty verdict for killing his wife, Helle Crafts, and a fifty-year sentence. In July 1993, Connecticut's Supreme Court affirmed the judgment. ^[S1]

What the appellate court considered

The court described a case built largely on circumstantial evidence. The prosecution presented the couple's marital difficulties and Richard's conduct during the fall and winter of 1986–87. Helle had contacted a lawyer about divorce, hired a private investigator and told others about her plans. Richard maintained that he had not killed her and did not know where she was. ^[S1]

The appellate question was whether the evidence could support the conviction, not whether the case had produced a familiar television-style eyewitness. Circumstantial evidence is evidence from which a conclusion is drawn; calling it circumstantial does not mean calling it nonexistent.

Two different jury outcomes

A jury's inability to agree in the first trial did not become an acquittal. The retrial and subsequent affirmation were separate procedural events. Omitting the first would simplify the history; stopping at it would misstate the outcome.

A sentence is not a current-location report

In January 2020, the Newtown Bee reported that Crafts had moved from a halfway house to a veterans' shelter as part of a transition out of custody. The report described his earlier conviction and sentence; it did not announce that the conviction had been overturned. ^[S2]

Helle's case therefore has both a sustained murder judgment and a later custody history. Neither should be substituted for the other.