Lessons Learned from the Woodchipper Murder
Regina Brown and her husband paid close attention to this Newtown crime.
Regina Brown Day recap
In honor of Regina Brown Day, I gave two talks in Newtown, Connecticut: one at the Senior Center and one at the Library in partnership with Newtown Allies for Change. I want to thank everyone who came out to remember the cautionary tale of Regina Brown’s disappearance in the wake of the Woodchipper murder.
Remember, Richard Crafts was convicted in the Woodchipper murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing his wife, Helle Crafts. Regina’s husband, Willis Brown, was never arrested.
When I give a talk about these cases, I always poll the audience ahead of the presentation with three questions:
Who has heard of the Woodchipper murder case?
Who has heard of Regina Brown?
Who knew Regina Brown?
On March 26, 2025, everyone at both talks raised their hand about the Woodchipper murder. How could they not? It’s been almost 40 years, and that case has been ingrained into popular true crime culture. The movie “Fargo” featured a famous scene with a woodchipper.
People tell me that Richard Crafts got the idea from the movie. I have to correct them and say that the movie was eight years after the Newtown murder. Since then, the woodchipper incident from the film has been a recurring theme in the Fargo TV series launched in 2014 with 5 seasons in 10 years.
My theory is that Crafts got the idea from a Danbury man, who, six months earlier, put a German Shepherd Dog through a woodchipper because he was barking too much.
Aside from the ubiquitous media coverage causing a change of venue for two trials, the Woodchipper Murder was featured in the first episode of the first season of “Forensic Files,” which has been in syndication for decades and seen by millions. At the time in Connecticut, the Crafts case was the first murder trial to be televised gavel to gavel. It not only gave TV stations tons of B-roll for daily reporting but also to emerging tabloid television shows like “A Current Affair.”
When I asked, “Who has heard of Regina Brown?” I got two very different responses. Nearly two-thirds of the audience at the Senior Center raised their hands. This made sense as many in attendance lived in Newtown at the time or were old enough to remember the original reporting in Connecticut and Rhode Island during the late 1980s.
When I asked the same question at the library talk, maybe two people raised their hands out of a few dozen. Many were Newtown residents, but most lived in town for less than 20 years. This shows how quickly past events, and especially news coverage, disappear from a town’s culture unless it's something horrific like the Woodchipper Murder or, unfortunately, the Sandy Hook School Shooting.
No one at the library raised their hand that knew Regina Brown, but two people at the Senior Center did. One of them approached me afterward, told me how they knew her, and almost with tears in their eyes, said, “I knew Willis was going to kill her.”
When I hear chilling stories like these, I realize there is more information about her, and I have an urge to find it. I also got a call from a family member of someone who attended one of the talks to tell me a story from a friend quoting Willis Brown. During a card game Willis attended, they were discussing the Woodchipper Murder, and he supposedly said, “He got it all wrong; he should have thrown her body out of a plane and into the ocean.”
When I heard this, it reminded me that Willis Brown paid close attention to the Woodchipper Murder case. But so did Regina Brown.
Subtle similarities
There are many similarities in these two cases besides both victims being flight attendants married to pilots and mothers of three young children amidst a divorce. But right before Regina Brown disappeared on March 26, more came into focus.
The Woodchipper Murder defendant Richard Crafts’s probable cause hearing was about to get underway at Danbury Superior Court. Instead of grand jury indictments, we have probable cause hearings in Connecticut. These hearings are heard by a judge rather than a jury. The State’s Attorney presents his case with witnesses and evidence to the judge to prove that a crime has been committed and that the accused is the one who most likely committed it.
Judge Howard Moraghan presided over the hearing, which began on March 10. Early in the proceedings, State’s Attorney Walter Flanagan called Helle Crafts’s divorce attorney, Dianne Anderson, to the stand. Anderson testified that Helle was fearful of her husband and told Anderson, “If anything happens to me, don’t assume it’s an accident.”
According to her attorney, Helle’s fear was based on one incident of physical violence nine years ago and about the loaded guns kept in the house. Meanwhile, Regina Brown had been a victim of repeated domestic violence for more than three years. She documented at least eight incidents of abuse while testifying in court to get a restraining order against her husband, who had previously been arrested for assault against her.
We know Willis had been terrorizing Regina by bringing over newspaper clippings, including articles I wrote about the Woodchipper Murder. He told her things like, “I will do even worse things to you and the children so that no one will ever find you.” She shared these words with her friends and attorney like Helle Crafts did.
When state police searched Regina Brown’s house six weeks after she disappeared, the news clippings were found in the kitchen drawer. Regina’s pleas mimicked Helle Crafts’s when she told a friend shortly before disappearing: “If anything happens to me, assume that Willis will have done to me what he said he would do.”
Other tidbits released to the public included Helle Crafts’s car going missing from her home, just like Regina Brown’s car. Both vehicles were found in New York City days after they disappeared.
Body parts
Richard Crafts’s defense attorney, Daniel Sagarin, cross-examined witnesses until the introduction of human remains evidence. At this point, the state did not produce the forensic experts who collected and analyzed the partial human remains listed on Helle Crafts’s death certificate. Instead, they put into evidence their written reports. Sagarin objected to this since a written report could not be cross-examined in court, which makes it less objective to the judge.
Under state law, expert witnesses at probable cause hearings can admit their written findings into evidence instead of appearing for testimony. Less than two days into the hearing, on March 12, Sagarin decided to waive his client’s right to the probable cause hearing and go directly to trial based on this exception in the law.
The last witness at the hearing spoke of the piles of wood chips he saw along the shores of Lake Zoar, where police found tiny bits of human remains in various places. Another takeaway from this public disclosure is that having too many body parts, even small ones, leaves too much discoverable evidence of murder in not-so-deep water.