Tara and Stephen Grant

WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.480 --> 00:00:03.359
Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina. And if there's one thing we've learned

2
00:00:03.399 --> 00:00:06.599
in over twenty years of marriage,
some days you'll feel like killing your husband,

3
00:00:06.799 --> 00:00:10.839
and some days you'll feel like killing
your wife. Welcome to love,

4
00:00:10.919 --> 00:00:31.719
Mary Kill Hey Tina, Hey Rich. That's sound funny, helium in the

5
00:00:31.800 --> 00:00:35.920
room, That's what it sounded like. That's very strange. There's just something

6
00:00:35.960 --> 00:00:42.320
in my throat. I thought you
were just extra energetic today. I'll be

7
00:00:42.399 --> 00:00:44.719
honest, I am not, but
I'm going to fake it till I make

8
00:00:44.759 --> 00:00:48.399
it. It's such a weird day. I feel like we're in a really

9
00:00:48.399 --> 00:00:52.600
weirdwilight zone. I know, I
know, it's like a lot of breaking

10
00:00:52.679 --> 00:00:58.000
news. Nat O'Connor passed away,
which I'm really sad about too. Yeah,

11
00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:03.159
there's this UF or not UF and
we're not like conspiracy theorist people,

12
00:01:03.239 --> 00:01:07.959
but it's like it's real data.
It's it's kind of freaky, like yeah,

13
00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:11.040
really freaky. Yeah. Through my
whole life, I was always like

14
00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:15.920
very skeptical about UFOs and stuff like
it just didn't like theoretically, it seems

15
00:01:15.959 --> 00:01:19.560
like so hard to imagine someone could
fly from light years away to our little

16
00:01:19.560 --> 00:01:23.959
planet. But yeah, it's like
there's stuff happening that's kind of real.

17
00:01:25.319 --> 00:01:30.400
Yeah, and then we had this
huge major storm. Yeah, we thought

18
00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:34.439
it was a tornado warning, but
it was the sirens went off, but

19
00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:38.239
I guess the storm was bad enough
where the winds were eighty mile per hour

20
00:01:38.359 --> 00:01:42.040
sustained winds. So yeah, it
seems like every time we record lately,

21
00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:44.280
we have a thunderstorm. There's just
been a lot of storms this summer.

22
00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:47.319
It's kind of weird. Yeah.
Yeah, we started out a little anyone

23
00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:51.519
never mind, no one cares.
I Can I just say something about Shenado

24
00:01:51.519 --> 00:01:53.680
O'Connor real quick, because yeah,
yeah, it's like super sad. And

25
00:01:55.799 --> 00:01:59.359
when her first album came out,
which was not her famous album, like

26
00:01:59.359 --> 00:02:02.079
her second Albu was the one where
she became really famous. But I was

27
00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:07.040
obsessed with her first album. I
listened to it like every day for months

28
00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:10.560
and months, and just such an
incredible voice and incredible talent. I think

29
00:02:10.639 --> 00:02:15.840
some of the controversial things have overshared
her music sadly, and for sure,

30
00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:19.439
Like I was just listening to the
news and they were talking so glowingly about

31
00:02:19.439 --> 00:02:23.800
her, and it's say it to
people when they're alive. Yeah, yeah,

32
00:02:23.879 --> 00:02:27.919
I love you and I love our
listeners, and just keep on telling

33
00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:30.800
people that you care about them while
they're here, not talk lowingly when they're

34
00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:34.759
not here. Yeah, agreed,
Well I love you too, and I

35
00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:38.159
also love her. That was delayed. Well, you had you were going,

36
00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:39.759
you kept going, you had some
things to say. I feel your

37
00:02:39.800 --> 00:02:46.520
love on a daily basis. I
appreciate that. Gosh, we should have

38
00:02:46.599 --> 00:02:53.319
warned the listeners get a barf bucket. Anyway, you are presenting a case

39
00:02:53.319 --> 00:02:55.400
today, and I'm so excited.
It's a Michigan case. We haven't done

40
00:02:55.400 --> 00:02:59.919
a Michigan. You used to accuse
me of only wanting to do Michigan case

41
00:03:00.199 --> 00:03:01.680
is, so I stopped doing them
for a while. You are a very

42
00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:05.719
proud Michigander. I really am.
I love Michigan. I do too.

43
00:03:05.759 --> 00:03:08.599
It's a great state. Yeah,
I definitely very much transplant. I think

44
00:03:08.639 --> 00:03:13.199
people know probably know that, but
I am. I have lived in Michigan

45
00:03:13.240 --> 00:03:15.639
more than I have lived anywhere else, but I was born in Chicago.

46
00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:20.240
Yeah, it's a great state.
I mean, Illinois is a good state

47
00:03:20.280 --> 00:03:23.280
too, LANDA. Lincoln, Yeah, Illinois is a good state too.

48
00:03:23.719 --> 00:03:27.599
So yes, today, the case
I'm going to talk about it's pretty well

49
00:03:27.639 --> 00:03:30.599
known. It was. It was
in the news a lot in when it

50
00:03:30.639 --> 00:03:35.599
happened, and our locally a lot. Yeah, it made the national news

51
00:03:35.599 --> 00:03:38.719
pretty heavily. Mind if I have
the snack that you brought me, Yeah,

52
00:03:38.759 --> 00:03:44.639
I'll just try it while you're talking. I'll just like this, Okay,

53
00:03:45.159 --> 00:03:49.680
I know it's gonna melts. It's
a it's a frozen kind of treat

54
00:03:49.719 --> 00:03:53.960
that I made. So the case
I'm going to talk about today is Stephen

55
00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:57.680
and Tara Grant, which happened in
two thousand and seven, and it actually

56
00:03:57.719 --> 00:04:01.000
happened right near where I grew up, so it's kind of very I didn't

57
00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:04.560
live there at the time, but
it's very close to where I grew up,

58
00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:09.159
So yeah, the area. Yeah, I listened to the I think

59
00:04:09.319 --> 00:04:13.120
I listened to the Dateline episode recently
and that's when I was like, Hey,

60
00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:15.879
maybe you want to do this case. When they talked about Stony Park

61
00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:18.360
Metro Park, I was like,
Oh my gosh, that's just part of

62
00:04:18.360 --> 00:04:20.600
who you are. Yeah, for
sure, we'll get into all that.

63
00:04:20.680 --> 00:04:25.920
But yeah, today's snack that I
brought. Because we're doing a Michigan case,

64
00:04:25.959 --> 00:04:29.519
of course, I had to do
a local Michigan thing. And so

65
00:04:29.560 --> 00:04:33.120
what I made for you today is
what's called a Boston cooler, which I

66
00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:40.279
know we're not doing a Boston rich
You're like my straight man. I know.

67
00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:42.519
It's a weird thing. It's a
it's called the Boston cooler, but

68
00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:46.360
it's a Michigan thing. And basically
all it is is Warners, which if

69
00:04:46.399 --> 00:04:50.199
you don't know what Warners is,
it's a ginger ale that was made in

70
00:04:50.399 --> 00:04:55.199
the Detroit area. I think you
can get it most places now. But

71
00:04:55.240 --> 00:04:59.680
it's really different than like out of
Canada Dry or other ginger ales. It's

72
00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:02.879
much sweeter, it's really good.
I think you brought it before, Yes,

73
00:05:03.199 --> 00:05:06.639
I have. You're right. So
it's burners and vanilla ice cream and

74
00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:12.600
it's basically blended together in a little
kind of milkshake. So I famously really

75
00:05:12.600 --> 00:05:15.399
dislike Burners, but we always try
to keep it in the house because,

76
00:05:15.720 --> 00:05:20.519
in my opinion, Wurners is like
super gingery. It's like really struggled compared

77
00:05:20.600 --> 00:05:24.839
to like a Canada Dry. And
I don't like it, but I keep

78
00:05:24.839 --> 00:05:28.399
it in the house because it's really
good for you know, stomach when you

79
00:05:28.439 --> 00:05:30.120
have it when someone has a stomach
ache. Yeah, you are going to

80
00:05:30.199 --> 00:05:33.199
be surprised. I actually like this, like it good. Yeah, I

81
00:05:33.199 --> 00:05:38.800
don't hate it. Are you going
to elaborate on the whole, Well,

82
00:05:38.839 --> 00:05:41.879
there's not much to elaborate on.
Well you used to, like you've had

83
00:05:41.879 --> 00:05:47.000
these sense as long as I've made
me one. Yeah, But normally you

84
00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:51.199
would just put a cannon. You
would put a couple of scoops of wurners

85
00:05:51.240 --> 00:05:55.000
and a mug or a copper or
whatever, and then you would pour the

86
00:05:55.120 --> 00:06:00.240
urners over it, right, But
this time you you blended it. Yeah.

87
00:06:00.279 --> 00:06:01.959
Technically, if you don't blend it, it's just called the burner's float,

88
00:06:02.079 --> 00:06:05.839
like a root beer float or whatever. But yeah, a true Boston

89
00:06:05.879 --> 00:06:12.319
cooler is blended. So yeah,
it's it's not the burners isn't as like

90
00:06:12.680 --> 00:06:16.120
harsh as it normally is. So
I should also mention I used Hudsonville ice

91
00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:23.439
cream, which is also a Michigan
ice cream. Michigan paying you. Even

92
00:06:23.519 --> 00:06:27.879
the Michigan Board of Tourism any we
actually do talk about Michigan a lot.

93
00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:32.519
And if you've never been to like
Macina Island or we say up north meaning

94
00:06:32.639 --> 00:06:38.079
like Traverse City, and those are
just wonderful places. And if you go,

95
00:06:38.519 --> 00:06:42.439
so Michigan, there's up north,
but then there's the up so it's

96
00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:45.959
kind of it's kind of confusing.
It is a little confusing. We talked

97
00:06:45.959 --> 00:06:48.839
about this before. Yeah, but
the up is actually belong it's attached to

98
00:06:48.920 --> 00:06:53.600
Wisconsin. We don't how to go
there. Again. There are two peninsulas,

99
00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:56.800
which is why our slogan used to
be, if you seek a pleasant

100
00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:00.600
peninsula, look around you. Yeah, that's like the worst slogan. All

101
00:07:00.680 --> 00:07:10.959
right, well, why don't you
dive right in. On Wednesday, February

102
00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:15.439
fourteenth, two thousand seven, thirty
seven year old Stephen Grant walked into the

103
00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:18.759
Macomb County, Michigan Sheriff's Department to
report his wife, Tara, thirty four

104
00:07:18.959 --> 00:07:23.519
missing. He said that he and
Tara had gotten into a fight when she

105
00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:27.680
came home from a business trip on
Friday night, nearly five full days earlier,

106
00:07:28.079 --> 00:07:30.160
and that she had left. The
fight, he said, was about

107
00:07:30.160 --> 00:07:35.160
Tara's frequent business travel. She was
a successful executive at an engineering firm and

108
00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:40.199
was working on a project for her
company in Puerto Rico, so she had

109
00:07:40.240 --> 00:07:43.800
to travel there pretty much every week, leaving Steve to take care of their

110
00:07:43.879 --> 00:07:48.040
kids. Six year old Lindsay and
four year old Ian with help from Verena,

111
00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:54.319
Their nineteen year old live in Opere
from Germany. Stephen told police he

112
00:07:54.399 --> 00:07:59.519
wasn't sure he actually wanted Tara back, and that he had contacted an attorney

113
00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:03.480
about for a divorce. Who goes
to the police station and says, I

114
00:08:03.480 --> 00:08:05.759
don't need her bath, but I
should probably report her missing. Yeah,

115
00:08:05.879 --> 00:08:09.839
Stephen is. He is one of
a kind, as you'll see soon.

116
00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:15.360
However, Stephen was all over the
Detroit media and then the national media,

117
00:08:15.439 --> 00:08:20.079
crying and begging for Terra's safe return. If anybody knows just to just say

118
00:08:20.120 --> 00:08:26.279
something, just tell us to call
me, call the police, call somebody.

119
00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:31.960
That's Stephen. He sounds sounds like
a little snake, like a little

120
00:08:31.960 --> 00:08:35.200
worm. He sounds I hate him. Yeah, he sounds like a weasel,

121
00:08:35.240 --> 00:08:41.559
doesn't he? I think a weasel
is too kinds cute? Yeah,

122
00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:46.480
fair enough, fair enough? It
just so in since here. Yeah,

123
00:08:46.519 --> 00:08:50.480
So before we get too far into
that situation, let's talk about how we

124
00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:54.480
got to this point. So Stephen
Grant was born in nineteen seventy and grew

125
00:08:54.559 --> 00:08:58.840
up in Sterling Heights, Michigan.
His parents were Alan, Susan and He

126
00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:03.519
had a sister, Alley, who
was three years older. The neighborhood they

127
00:09:03.559 --> 00:09:07.440
lived in was typical of the Detroit
suburbs in those days, blue collar,

128
00:09:07.639 --> 00:09:11.159
working class, lots of autoworkers,
not a lot of diversity. His dad,

129
00:09:11.159 --> 00:09:15.720
al had his own small business.
He ran a small machine shop that

130
00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:20.039
supplied tools and bearings to the auto
industry. Stephen was described as energetic,

131
00:09:20.159 --> 00:09:24.759
curious, fun loving, and a
rule breaker. He would borrow his mom's

132
00:09:24.799 --> 00:09:28.559
car before he had a license without
telling her. He liked to play around

133
00:09:28.559 --> 00:09:33.000
with fireworks and explosives. One time
he made what was essentially a pipe bomb

134
00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:37.399
that he blew up in the backyard, leaving a small crater. When his

135
00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:39.320
dad came home and saw the whole, he called the police, saying that

136
00:09:39.360 --> 00:09:43.360
someone had set off a bomb in
his backyard. Yeah, Stephen lied to

137
00:09:43.399 --> 00:09:46.519
the police, and he said that
he saw two strange men in the yard.

138
00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:52.679
Likely story, right. It sounds
something very much like what would have

139
00:09:52.720 --> 00:10:01.159
happened in your house, if it's
possible. Stephen also alike to shoplift just

140
00:10:01.240 --> 00:10:03.000
for the fun of it. Sometimes
he would get caught, but he was

141
00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:07.720
pretty good at talking his way out
of trouble, even if some people found

142
00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:11.440
him to be an annoying know it
all. After high school, he went

143
00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:15.080
to Macomb Community College for three years, but he never declared a major,

144
00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:18.200
so he didn't actually end up with
any type of degree. He then enrolled

145
00:10:18.200 --> 00:10:22.720
at Michigan State University, first with
plans to be a teacher, but when

146
00:10:22.799 --> 00:10:28.320
his application to the School of Education
was rejected, he majored in history and

147
00:10:28.399 --> 00:10:33.000
he started thinking about law school.
He had various jobs during college, at

148
00:10:33.039 --> 00:10:37.120
one point working for State Senator Jack
Facson as an intern, which got him

149
00:10:37.159 --> 00:10:43.600
interested in going into politics. He
had a reputation among Factson's staff as the

150
00:10:43.639 --> 00:10:48.440
young kid who was always hustling.
But when Faxson's term ended in nineteen ninety

151
00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:52.080
four, Stephen was out of a
job. He had one serious relationship while

152
00:10:52.159 --> 00:10:56.320
in college with a girl named Dina
Hardy. People thought they might end up

153
00:10:56.320 --> 00:11:00.879
getting married, but they ended up
breaking up after dating for about two years.

154
00:11:01.759 --> 00:11:05.320
All right, let's talk about Tara. Tara Distramp was born in nineteen

155
00:11:05.399 --> 00:11:09.559
seventy two, the first child of
Mary and Gerald. Three years later,

156
00:11:09.639 --> 00:11:13.639
her sister, Alicia was born.
Tara grew up in the small town of

157
00:11:13.679 --> 00:11:18.559
Perkins, Michigan, which is in
the Upper Peninsula, about twenty miles north

158
00:11:18.600 --> 00:11:22.159
of Escanaba. It's fun to say, it is fun to say. Yeah,

159
00:11:22.279 --> 00:11:26.559
very small, small town, rural
upbringing. Everything the pasties, lots

160
00:11:26.600 --> 00:11:33.720
of pasties up there. A pasty
is like a I know, it's like

161
00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:37.759
a pastry filled with meat and potatoes
and vegetables and a little gravy kind of.

162
00:11:39.039 --> 00:11:41.600
It's like a pot pie, but
in a in a pastry pocket like

163
00:11:41.639 --> 00:11:50.080
a cow. Very popular if you
go up North Lake every feet yep,

164
00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:54.759
yep. So Tara's upbringing it was
very rural, as you might expect.

165
00:11:54.960 --> 00:11:58.120
She helped to tend to the family's
goats, chickens, and cows. Every

166
00:11:58.200 --> 00:12:01.480
year, the family would collects syrup
from the maple trees in their yard and

167
00:12:01.639 --> 00:12:05.840
sell it from a little roadside stand. Yeah, it sounds very idyllic,

168
00:12:05.879 --> 00:12:09.639
doesn't it. Well, not if
you're a teenager. No, no,

169
00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:13.240
Well, Tara was very active.
She loved to spend time outdoors. She

170
00:12:13.279 --> 00:12:18.399
went skeet shooting and hunting for rabbit
or deer with her dad, and riding

171
00:12:18.399 --> 00:12:24.000
horses. She was a cheerleader in
high school and also played clarinet in the

172
00:12:24.039 --> 00:12:28.519
band. Was the band I don't
know but it must have been pretty small.

173
00:12:28.600 --> 00:12:31.799
Well, it was probably pretty small, because yeah, I was going

174
00:12:31.840 --> 00:12:35.000
to say she graduated in nineteen ninety
third in her class, but that was

175
00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:39.799
out of forty students. So yeah, I'm sure the band was probably maybe

176
00:12:39.840 --> 00:12:41.399
everyone had to be in the band. Maybe it was a requirement. Could

177
00:12:41.399 --> 00:12:48.159
be. Tara had a type a
personality. She was ambitious and determined and

178
00:12:48.399 --> 00:12:52.120
was confident that she could achieve anything
she set her mind to. She also

179
00:12:52.159 --> 00:12:54.879
had a temper and she didn't shy
away from an argument. At times,

180
00:12:54.879 --> 00:13:01.960
people nicknamed her terror or Terrible Terrible. She wanted more from life than her

181
00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:07.039
small town upbringing could offer. After
high school, she went to the local

182
00:13:07.080 --> 00:13:11.679
community college in Escanaba while working and
saving her money. During this time,

183
00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:15.919
she met and dated a guy named
Pete Branchow, but it didn't work out

184
00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:18.600
because Pete had plans to join the
Navy and go to flight training school.

185
00:13:20.159 --> 00:13:24.320
Tara was heartbroken when that relationship ended. I think she always considered Pete to

186
00:13:24.360 --> 00:13:28.840
be the one who got away.
After two years of community college, she

187
00:13:28.919 --> 00:13:35.279
transferred to Michigan State University to study
business administration. Tara dated a few guys

188
00:13:35.360 --> 00:13:39.679
during her time at MSU, but
nothing really serious. She didn't like boring

189
00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:41.720
guys. She wanted someone who was
a bit more of a bad boy,

190
00:13:41.799 --> 00:13:48.159
someone maybe a little dangerous. During
the summer of nineteen ninety four, Tara

191
00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:52.200
was on her way to completing her
business degree with honors when she met Stephen

192
00:13:52.279 --> 00:13:56.600
Grant through some mutual friends. Tara
wasn't super interested at first, partly because

193
00:13:56.840 --> 00:14:01.080
she was still in and on again
off again relationship with another guy, but

194
00:14:01.159 --> 00:14:07.039
Stephen persisted and she finally agreed to
a date. On their first date,

195
00:14:07.120 --> 00:14:11.120
he took her to Detroit and gave
her a tour of the city. Growing

196
00:14:11.200 --> 00:14:13.559
up in a small town far away
from the big city, Tara always thought

197
00:14:13.559 --> 00:14:18.320
of Detroit as a scary place,
but Stephen showed her that there were some

198
00:14:18.440 --> 00:14:22.519
nice areas. He took her for
a drive through Gross Point to look at

199
00:14:22.559 --> 00:14:26.440
the mansions. They had lunch at
Fishbones, which is a really good restaurant

200
00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:30.759
in the Greektown area of Detroit,
and then they went to the Detroit Institute

201
00:14:30.799 --> 00:14:37.600
of Arts, which is a really
beautiful You have been approximately fifty times about

202
00:14:37.639 --> 00:14:41.399
that. That might be a underestimate. That's one of those places that,

203
00:14:41.519 --> 00:14:43.919
like, you know, if it's
Father's Day or birthday or something, and

204
00:14:43.960 --> 00:14:48.320
we're like, well, what are
we going to do the DA Why not?

205
00:14:48.559 --> 00:14:54.720
Oh, it's a lovely place.
I'm sure that Stephen probably seemed very

206
00:14:54.759 --> 00:14:58.080
worldly and confident to Tara. She
was intrigued by the fact that he worked

207
00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:01.919
for a state senator and he was
talking about law school. It was enough

208
00:15:01.919 --> 00:15:05.159
to maybe make her think that this
was someone who had his ship together,

209
00:15:05.519 --> 00:15:09.399
had ambitions like she did, and
was going places. Was he still at

210
00:15:09.480 --> 00:15:15.480
MSU? He was up there,
but I think he maybe had dropped out

211
00:15:15.480 --> 00:15:18.080
of school by the time they met. So it turned out she was wrong

212
00:15:18.120 --> 00:15:22.639
about all of that, though very
wrong. They went on a few dates,

213
00:15:22.679 --> 00:15:26.919
but it still wasn't serious. In
fact, Tara was still seeing the

214
00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:30.720
other guy as well. But a
few weeks after her first date with Stephen,

215
00:15:30.919 --> 00:15:33.320
Tara's grandmother passed away and she went
back up north for the funeral.

216
00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:39.000
Stephen surprised her by showing up unannounced
at the funeral home to support her.

217
00:15:39.519 --> 00:15:41.960
Tara hadn't even told her family about
Stephen, so they were really surprised.

218
00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:46.360
Tara's friends and family were all a
buzz, like, who's this mysterious stranger

219
00:15:46.399 --> 00:15:50.879
who just drove six hours to be
here. After an awkward dinner with Tara

220
00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:54.799
and her family, Stephen headed back
to Lansing. The next day, Tara

221
00:15:54.879 --> 00:15:58.759
did two things. First, she
called the other guy and officially ended things

222
00:15:58.799 --> 00:16:03.600
with him. Second, she called
Stephen and told him that she was in

223
00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:10.759
love with him. After that,
things started moving quickly. Tara graduated and

224
00:16:10.840 --> 00:16:15.200
got a job with an engineering services
firm called Washington Group International. They moved

225
00:16:15.240 --> 00:16:19.639
to Auburn Hills, which is a
suburb north of Detroit. Stephen proposed to

226
00:16:19.720 --> 00:16:25.240
Tara on the steps of the Detroit
Institute of Arts, and they got married

227
00:16:25.320 --> 00:16:29.840
in Escanaba in September of nineteen ninety
six. How long, so they'd been

228
00:16:29.919 --> 00:16:33.639
dating for two wish years, Yeah, right around two years. At the

229
00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:37.159
wedding, Steven struck a lot of
Tara's friends and family as kind of a

230
00:16:37.240 --> 00:16:41.679
jerk. He was bossy and he
ordered people around. Not everyone thought that,

231
00:16:41.759 --> 00:16:45.039
but there was definitely an impression that
he looked down on sort of the

232
00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:49.639
small town folk, like he was
better than them. After the honeymoon,

233
00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:55.639
Stephen and Tara settled into married life. Stephen struggled to find work he had

234
00:16:55.720 --> 00:16:57.840
dropped out of MSU when he went
to work for the state senator and never

235
00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:02.600
finished his degree. He ended up
going to work for his dad at his

236
00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:07.400
machine shop in Mount Clemmens. On
the other hand, Tara was quickly identified

237
00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:11.240
as a rising star at Washington Group. She was focused, smart, hardworking,

238
00:17:11.319 --> 00:17:15.880
and a natural leader. In nineteen
ninety seven, Stephen and Tara bought

239
00:17:15.920 --> 00:17:19.359
their first house in Utica, Michigan, which is about three miles from where

240
00:17:19.359 --> 00:17:25.519
I grew up. One of their
neighbors from that time described Tara as funny,

241
00:17:25.759 --> 00:17:29.759
intelligent, and beautiful, always with
something nice to say. Stephen,

242
00:17:29.799 --> 00:17:33.079
on the other hand, I believe
him to be one of the most arrogant

243
00:17:33.119 --> 00:17:36.240
people I've ever met. The neighbor
said, pretty arrogant for a guy who

244
00:17:36.279 --> 00:17:40.759
couldn't find a job, right,
yeah. Daughter Lindsay was born in two

245
00:17:40.759 --> 00:17:44.839
thousand. A few months later,
they moved to a larger home in Washington

246
00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:48.440
Township, which is right near where
I went to high school. One of

247
00:17:48.440 --> 00:17:52.079
the best things about where they lived
is that right nearby there is a park

248
00:17:52.200 --> 00:17:56.200
called Stoney Creek, which we mentioned
at the top of the show. It's

249
00:17:56.200 --> 00:18:00.559
a really incredible metropark. There's like
four thousand acres beauty, full lake,

250
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.559
paved trail around the lake for walking
or biking. There's a nature center or

251
00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:10.279
a golf course, sandy beaches,
fishing, boating, snowboarding, sledding,

252
00:18:10.839 --> 00:18:12.839
playgrounds. It's just there's tons to
do there. It's a beautiful place,

253
00:18:12.839 --> 00:18:18.039
and I think that was a key
reason why Stephen and Tara chose that area.

254
00:18:18.160 --> 00:18:22.160
And I'll just say I spent like
many hours there as a young lad.

255
00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:26.160
I practically lived at Stony Creek.
Yeah. My episode is like when

256
00:18:26.160 --> 00:18:30.160
we first started dating, and whenever
we go in to like see your mom

257
00:18:30.279 --> 00:18:32.759
or the city or whatever, you'd
be like, and this is where I

258
00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:34.960
ate lunch, and this is where
I pluff a flat. It was.

259
00:18:36.599 --> 00:18:40.519
It's captivating. It's a tour down
memory lane. But I would ride my

260
00:18:40.599 --> 00:18:44.279
bike up there like all the time, and just yeah, it was just

261
00:18:44.559 --> 00:18:49.119
a beautiful place. I've probably been
there, I don't know once that I

262
00:18:49.160 --> 00:18:53.039
remember. Really, Yeah, we
should go back. We should. We

263
00:18:53.039 --> 00:18:59.799
should do some biking and fishing and
hunting and playgrounding and sledding all right.

264
00:18:59.839 --> 00:19:03.240
In two thousand and two, their
son Ian was born. The family was

265
00:19:03.319 --> 00:19:08.000
busy and active both Stephen and Tara. When she wasn't traveling, volunteered for

266
00:19:08.039 --> 00:19:12.119
field trips and other school activities.
They biked, they ran, they went

267
00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:15.559
up north for vacations. They had
a boat for a while. They would

268
00:19:15.559 --> 00:19:19.759
go skating and indoor rock climbing in
the winter. Stephen was a really good

269
00:19:19.799 --> 00:19:23.920
cook, and he also became very
active in their subdivision, serving on the

270
00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:29.480
board and eventually becoming president. Tara, on the other hand, continued to

271
00:19:29.559 --> 00:19:33.759
accelerate at her career. She moved
up the ranks at Washington Group. She

272
00:19:33.839 --> 00:19:37.119
had to travel a lot, which
meant that Stephen played more of a lead

273
00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:41.640
role when it came to parenting,
driving the kids around their activities while Tara

274
00:19:41.759 --> 00:19:45.519
was out of town, which is
also a very important job. It is

275
00:19:45.759 --> 00:19:48.480
why do you think Stephen couldn't find
steady work. Was he just not willing

276
00:19:48.519 --> 00:19:52.200
to take an entry level position because
of his arrogance. It just seems to

277
00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:56.319
me like Stephen was somebody who was
kind of scattered, like he was.

278
00:19:56.640 --> 00:19:57.599
You had, you know, one
day, He's like, I'm going to

279
00:19:57.640 --> 00:20:00.640
be a teacher. The next day, I'm gonna be lawyer. The next

280
00:20:00.720 --> 00:20:02.680
day, I'm gonna do this,
I'm gonna do that. He just seems

281
00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:06.759
like somebody who had lots of ideas
but not really maybe a lot of focus.

282
00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:11.920
So with the situation with Tara traveling
and having kind of a growing career,

283
00:20:11.319 --> 00:20:15.279
Stephen wasn't happy about that situation.
From the beginning. It felt like,

284
00:20:15.319 --> 00:20:18.640
you know, her career was flourishing. But he, like I said,

285
00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:22.119
he kind of had big ideas and
he you know, it just wasn't

286
00:20:22.119 --> 00:20:25.880
how he envisioned his life playing out. And I think this was definitely a

287
00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:30.599
source in their marriage of tension,
even if they never showed signs of marital

288
00:20:30.680 --> 00:20:34.079
problems to any of their friends or
family. When Tara spoke to family members

289
00:20:34.119 --> 00:20:38.039
like her sister Alicia, she mostly
talked about her work, her busy travel

290
00:20:38.119 --> 00:20:42.200
schedule, the kids, but not
so much about Stephen or their marriage.

291
00:20:44.440 --> 00:20:47.960
In two thousand and four, during
a family trip up north, Tara ran

292
00:20:48.039 --> 00:20:52.640
into Pete's mom. Do you remember
Pete? How can I forget Pete?

293
00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:55.640
Here's one that got away, the
one that got away? Yes, from

294
00:20:55.680 --> 00:21:00.680
her community college days. And apparently
it got Tara thinking again about Pete,

295
00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:03.279
and she later reached out to him. The two ended up talking on the

296
00:21:03.279 --> 00:21:07.440
phone a few times and emailing each
other. Oh danger red flag yes,

297
00:21:07.559 --> 00:21:12.640
and overtime, as you might imagine, the conversations became more flirtatious, and

298
00:21:12.799 --> 00:21:18.680
eventually Pete and Tara planned to meet
up over the holidays. Tara lied to

299
00:21:18.680 --> 00:21:22.720
Stephen and told him that she had
to travel for work, canceling the plans

300
00:21:22.799 --> 00:21:25.519
that they had made together as a
family, so that she could hook up

301
00:21:25.559 --> 00:21:29.880
with Pete. But then Pete,
who wasn't married but was seeing someone,

302
00:21:29.960 --> 00:21:34.839
actually decided to cancel, so the
meetup never actually happened. Pete and Tara

303
00:21:34.960 --> 00:21:40.200
continued talking though over the next few
weeks, until one day in January of

304
00:21:40.200 --> 00:21:44.240
two thousand and five, Stephen happened
to find a love note that Tara had

305
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:49.200
written to Pete. Stephen confronted Tara, who confessed to rekindling things with their

306
00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:53.160
old flame. Stephen told Tara that
he wanted her to leave, which she

307
00:21:53.240 --> 00:21:57.279
did, and he also demanded that
she give him Pete's phone number, which

308
00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:02.920
she also did. He called I
will never give you my ex phone,

309
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:07.240
just kidding I would. I don't
have any ex boyfriends. Oh, I

310
00:22:07.279 --> 00:22:11.480
don't have any ex boyfriends. Stephen
actually called Pete the next day, and

311
00:22:11.559 --> 00:22:15.400
he threatened to put a bullet in
his head. If he continued talking to

312
00:22:15.480 --> 00:22:18.400
Tara. Pete sent Tara an email
letting her know that Stephen had called and

313
00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:22.880
threatened him, and that was the
last communication the two of them ever had.

314
00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:26.359
Tara returned home after a week and
patched things up with Stephen at least

315
00:22:26.359 --> 00:22:33.960
temporarily. Was Stephen faithful up until
that point? He was? OK.

316
00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:38.440
We will talk more about that though, coming up all right later in two

317
00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:41.359
thousand and five, Tara, I
should say, as far as I know,

318
00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:45.440
right, he seems like the kind
of guy that might not be.

319
00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:48.559
Yeah, as far as I know, he was faithful, But that does

320
00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:52.720
not mean that there couldn't be something
that I don't know there. Later in

321
00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:56.960
two thousand and five, Tara attended
a Landmark Forum conference in Phoenix. Do

322
00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:00.440
you know what the Landmark Forum is? Does it have some going to do

323
00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:06.599
with land and marking l or nothing
to do with either of those? But

324
00:23:06.680 --> 00:23:08.519
you know what ST is or you
know what S is? Yeah? I

325
00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:11.720
think we talked about it in at
at least a couple Yeah, yes,

326
00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:17.119
Susan and Felix Polk was the one. I remember, ye Holy featured well

327
00:23:17.119 --> 00:23:19.279
in the eighties when ST was becoming
it was like a self help thing.

328
00:23:19.720 --> 00:23:23.000
It was becoming controversial though, and
people were starting to label it as a

329
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:27.720
cult. It was very immersive.
Yes, yes, so the founder,

330
00:23:27.880 --> 00:23:32.519
Werner Erhard, who was known as
the father of self help, He actually

331
00:23:32.519 --> 00:23:36.920
repackaged UST and turned it into Landmark
Worldwide, which is it's sort of like

332
00:23:36.960 --> 00:23:40.839
a kinder, gentler version of AST. I guess it'd be curious to read

333
00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:42.559
more about that. Yeah, and
it's still around today. You could go

334
00:23:42.640 --> 00:23:48.200
to a you could go to a
Landmark forum now, okay, I'll see

335
00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:55.799
you later, not right now.
So Tara returned from the conference energized and

336
00:23:55.960 --> 00:24:00.079
wanting to work on her relationships.
She wrote heartfelt letters to those close to

337
00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:02.799
her. So I want to read
part of the letter she wrote to Stephens,

338
00:24:02.799 --> 00:24:04.519
so that you can kind of get
a better idea of the dynamics in

339
00:24:04.519 --> 00:24:08.880
their relationship. I have not been
present in much of our marriage. I

340
00:24:08.920 --> 00:24:12.839
have further invalidated you by always needing
to make you wrong for me to be

341
00:24:12.960 --> 00:24:17.960
right, and dominating you to avoid
being dominated, and in doing so,

342
00:24:18.039 --> 00:24:21.799
not really loving you at all.
These actions have not allowed me to see

343
00:24:21.799 --> 00:24:25.000
you and hear you for what you
really are, someone who loves me.

344
00:24:25.119 --> 00:24:30.119
Unconditionally the impact of this has essentially
been pushing away the one person who has

345
00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:33.680
fully committed to me to love me
unconditionally. What became very clear to me

346
00:24:34.079 --> 00:24:37.839
is that you have been the only
committed party in this marriage. You have

347
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:42.079
made the efforts to change, and
I have simply created more stories. I

348
00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:45.119
love you for the human being you
are and for not giving up on me

349
00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:51.279
and supporting me in the possibility I
have created for myself. Love Tara.

350
00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:55.920
What do you think of Tara's note
that was word salad seems like a lot

351
00:24:55.920 --> 00:24:59.039
of words, and I'm not really
sure what the meeting was. Yeah,

352
00:24:59.079 --> 00:25:02.720
I'm guessing a lot of the the
words or the terminology came from the self

353
00:25:02.720 --> 00:25:07.480
help seminar heavily influenced by a psychologist
or psychiatry. But I guess the thing

354
00:25:07.519 --> 00:25:11.599
the takeaway from me is that it's
clear she was struggling with their relationship and

355
00:25:11.640 --> 00:25:15.839
the dynamics of their relationship, and
she wanted to try to make things better.

356
00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:19.319
So everything for me goes back to
the Real Housewives, And it seems

357
00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:26.640
like kind of like a move housewife
makes before the marriage, like it gets

358
00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:30.599
better, but then it ends permanently. Yeah, that's what it kind of

359
00:25:30.680 --> 00:25:33.359
like, you know, kind of
like a last ditch effort to acknowledge their

360
00:25:33.400 --> 00:25:38.160
shortcomings. And yeah, I think
it's very perceptive. You have learned so

361
00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:41.880
much from Real Housewives. I think
that Andy Cohen and the Real Housewives really

362
00:25:42.039 --> 00:25:45.079
can change your world. I should
say there were years where I was like,

363
00:25:45.119 --> 00:25:48.640
oh, it's so much misogyny,
and I gave it up, but

364
00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:53.160
then I went back. Yeah,
you always go back anyway. But I

365
00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:57.559
do give her credit for, you
know, looking internally and making an effort,

366
00:25:57.799 --> 00:26:03.000
making an effort and those words.
I'm like, I think I'm better

367
00:26:03.079 --> 00:26:07.279
now. But at certain points I
think that I've taken you for granted.

368
00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:11.519
And it's hard when you're in the
throes of it and you have little kids

369
00:26:11.680 --> 00:26:18.400
and you're so immersed in parenting that
you don't appreciate your partner. Yeah,

370
00:26:18.440 --> 00:26:22.359
for sure. Starting in two thousand
and three, the Grants hired a live

371
00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:26.400
in o pair using a service that
would match college aged girls from Europe with

372
00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.599
families in the US. What can
go wrong there? Yeah. The arrangement

373
00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:33.160
allowed Tara to travel as needed and
Steve to continue working at the machine shop,

374
00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:37.839
but they had trouble finding a stable
O pair, some would come to

375
00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:41.359
the US and end up partying too
much, and some just didn't like the

376
00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:45.720
work. They went through seven of
them over the next four years. Some

377
00:26:45.799 --> 00:26:49.680
of Tara's friends, as you have
so astutely pointed out, questioned the wisdom

378
00:26:49.759 --> 00:26:53.839
of having young college aged girls living
in their home while she was out of

379
00:26:53.839 --> 00:26:59.000
town so much. But they never
said anything to Tara because they knew that

380
00:26:59.079 --> 00:27:03.359
she wouldn't appreciate other people kind of
sticking their nose into her business, and

381
00:27:03.400 --> 00:27:07.119
Tara was trusting by nature. If
she ever had concerns about Stephen being home

382
00:27:07.160 --> 00:27:11.400
alone with any of their O pairs, she never mentioned them to anyone.

383
00:27:11.599 --> 00:27:15.160
In August of two thousand and six, a nineteen year old German girl named

384
00:27:15.319 --> 00:27:21.039
Verena Dirks started as their latest O
pair, and she seemed to be working

385
00:27:21.039 --> 00:27:23.599
out well. She loved the kids, she was conscientious, and she was

386
00:27:23.640 --> 00:27:27.880
a good worker. All right,
So now we're going to talk about the

387
00:27:27.880 --> 00:27:33.720
weeks and the days leading up to
Tara's death. In October of two thousand

388
00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:37.359
and six, Tara's company gave her
responsibility for managing their office in Puerto Rico

389
00:27:37.559 --> 00:27:41.200
as they were bidding on a contract
for a project with the power company there.

390
00:27:41.759 --> 00:27:45.079
This meant that she would be traveling
even more, flying out nearly every

391
00:27:45.079 --> 00:27:48.400
week. Usually she would be home
for the weekend, but not always.

392
00:27:49.359 --> 00:27:52.400
At the end of two thousand and
six, Tara wrote down her goals for

393
00:27:52.559 --> 00:27:56.680
two thousand and seven. Just hearing
this list might make you exhausted, but

394
00:27:56.799 --> 00:28:03.079
I'm going to read it anyway,
if you're all right. Buy piano.

395
00:28:03.119 --> 00:28:07.359
Take two adult vacations Europe September anniversary, Paris, Caribbean end of March.

396
00:28:07.440 --> 00:28:12.519
In April, plan Walt Disney trip
for November. Sit with a financial advisor.

397
00:28:12.559 --> 00:28:18.440
In January. Plan life better That
was a little bit general. Look

398
00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:22.920
into buying a new car Chrysler three
hundred BMW five. Start college savings account

399
00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:29.279
for kids. Get smart about finances, look into stocks other mutual funds.

400
00:28:29.279 --> 00:28:33.920
Steve's retirement plan has no plan.
One weekend night a month is date night.

401
00:28:34.559 --> 00:28:40.039
Become a better communicator to Steve.
Stop being angry, therapy if needed,

402
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:45.519
stop yelling, Start doing fifteen minute
a day meditation. Start yoga again

403
00:28:45.559 --> 00:28:49.119
for my soul. Have once a
month girls night with Lindsay. Get reconnected

404
00:28:49.160 --> 00:28:55.640
with family, start exercising again.
Revise and stick to budget, track spending

405
00:28:55.640 --> 00:29:00.559
on computer, file and box,
old bills, receipts, keep office organized,

406
00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:03.960
start a card night plan, dinners
out with friends or parties at house,

407
00:29:04.519 --> 00:29:08.680
plan once a month, kids date
night. Look at balanced activities for

408
00:29:08.799 --> 00:29:15.119
kids, music, foreign language,
Spanish sports, no more than two soccer,

409
00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:19.440
swim, gymnastics, baseball, football, yoga, karate. That's a

410
00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:23.480
lot. That is a lot Terra
sounds like she might be a type a

411
00:29:23.599 --> 00:29:26.880
personality, Yes, but that's a
lot. That makes me a little sad

412
00:29:27.039 --> 00:29:33.799
because she obviously is trying hard to
make herself and her life better and she

413
00:29:33.839 --> 00:29:37.960
that's that's way too much. Should
just bite off if you want to change,

414
00:29:38.319 --> 00:29:42.680
pick one thing at a time,
not four thousand. Yeah, that's

415
00:29:42.799 --> 00:29:47.559
a lot to start to try to
think about for the course of a year.

416
00:29:47.759 --> 00:29:51.880
Yeah. So she traveled like every
week, like Monday through Fright,

417
00:29:51.920 --> 00:29:55.440
that's pretty much, especially after she
got assigned to the Puerto Rico office.

418
00:29:55.519 --> 00:29:57.759
How long is the flight from the
US to Puerto Rico. Oh, gosh,

419
00:29:57.759 --> 00:30:02.759
I don't know. It's probably four
or five hours total with connections.

420
00:30:02.880 --> 00:30:07.400
Yeah. So it turns out that
Tara was not the only one keeping in

421
00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:11.079
touch with an old flame. Steven
had also kept in touch over the years

422
00:30:11.079 --> 00:30:15.680
with Dina Hardy, which was his
serious girlfriend from college. Steve would call

423
00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:18.680
her up maybe once a year or
so to check in, but more just

424
00:30:18.759 --> 00:30:23.240
as a friend. But that January, Steven's tone toward Dina changed and became

425
00:30:23.279 --> 00:30:30.079
more flirtatious, and he started calling
and emailing her more frequently. On January

426
00:30:30.119 --> 00:30:33.519
twenty fifth, in an email to
Dina, he said quote, I like

427
00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:37.559
being married. I just think of
marriage vows like speed limits. Sometimes you

428
00:30:37.599 --> 00:30:40.079
have to break them. Oh boy, you just need to keep an eye

429
00:30:40.119 --> 00:30:45.759
on the road to avoid detection.
Un that's horrible. Yeah, So he

430
00:30:45.839 --> 00:30:49.599
and Dina made plans to meet on
January thirtieth. Dina was living with a

431
00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:52.559
guy at the time, but she
was still interested in hooking up. I

432
00:30:52.599 --> 00:30:57.079
guess maybe to add some excitement to
her life. However, Stephen actually canceled

433
00:30:57.079 --> 00:31:00.880
before the date came. I don't
know if he had a a pang of

434
00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:04.480
conscience or why he canceled, but
he did. On the thirtieth though,

435
00:31:04.839 --> 00:31:10.079
Tara was in Puerto Rico and Stephen
was setting up an old laptop for Verena

436
00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:15.119
to use when he came across some
old emails between Tara and Pete. Even

437
00:31:15.160 --> 00:31:18.480
though he already knew about what had
happened with Tara and Pete and it had

438
00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:22.720
been two years ago, this kind
of set him off on a downward spiral.

439
00:31:22.599 --> 00:31:26.200
Verena came home while Stephen was looking
at the emails, and he asked

440
00:31:26.279 --> 00:31:30.720
her to read them. She did, and she was embarrassed because they were

441
00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:34.440
obviously personal and not meant for her. Stephen asked Verena what she would do

442
00:31:34.480 --> 00:31:38.319
in his situation, and she said
he should talk to Tara about it.

443
00:31:40.440 --> 00:31:42.799
Over the next couple of days,
Stephen talked to Tara over the phone a

444
00:31:42.799 --> 00:31:48.279
few times and brought up the old
relationship again. He wrote her an email

445
00:31:48.400 --> 00:31:52.519
on February first, which said,
in part, I will never say anything

446
00:31:52.559 --> 00:31:56.440
about him or that situation again.
I did not and had not thought about

447
00:31:56.440 --> 00:31:59.759
it in a long time. Really, I trust that you are true to

448
00:31:59.759 --> 00:32:01.440
me, but I do worry.
You are on the road a lot,

449
00:32:01.599 --> 00:32:06.920
and you do drink sometimes too much
when you go out. I have all

450
00:32:06.920 --> 00:32:09.599
people am not pointing fingers about the
drinking, but when people drink, they

451
00:32:09.640 --> 00:32:14.960
sometimes forget who they are for a
time and do things they might not otherwise

452
00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.759
do. Stephen apparently did not see
the irony of getting jealous over something that

453
00:32:19.759 --> 00:32:22.359
Tara did two years earlier, when
at the same time he was flirting with

454
00:32:22.359 --> 00:32:27.799
his old girlfriend. Even worse,
he started pursuing their nineteen year old oh

455
00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:31.960
pair. Verena shocked. That night, the thirtieth of January, Stephen was

456
00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:36.920
talking to Verena and he said something
like, I'd like to tell you something,

457
00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:39.519
but maybe I should just keep my
mouth shut. This, of course

458
00:32:39.559 --> 00:32:44.160
made Verena curious, and so she
begged him to tell her. He finally

459
00:32:44.200 --> 00:32:46.480
said, well, okay, you're
beautiful. I want to sleep with you.

460
00:32:47.519 --> 00:32:52.039
Verena blushed and tried to laugh it
off and changed the subject. She

461
00:32:52.160 --> 00:32:54.640
was a little bit creeped out,
but also she was intrigued. But really,

462
00:32:54.720 --> 00:32:59.720
you think about that situation, like, Verena's nineteen and he's thirty seven,

463
00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:04.119
and she works for him, and
she works for him, but I

464
00:33:04.160 --> 00:33:07.000
mean they're together every night, the
kids go to about at a certain time

465
00:33:07.400 --> 00:33:10.680
and they probably just end up.
You know, I'm not excusing it at

466
00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:14.880
all, but you just watched TV
together or hang out together. So it's

467
00:33:15.240 --> 00:33:21.640
it's a weird situation, very weird. So that conversation led to Stephen and

468
00:33:21.799 --> 00:33:25.680
Verena talking more frequently, sometimes until
late at night, and Stephen would continually

469
00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:30.599
tell her how beautiful she was.
Tara came home that weekend. On Sunday,

470
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:36.799
Stephen, Tara, the kids,
and Verena all watched the Indiana Indianapolis

471
00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:42.240
Colts beat the lowly Chicago Bears in
Super Bowl forty one. Sorry I had

472
00:33:42.319 --> 00:33:45.920
to add that. Verena thought that
Stephen and Tara had worked out whatever issues

473
00:33:45.960 --> 00:33:50.440
they were having, as they seemed
to be getting along fine. But then

474
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:52.559
when Verena went back to her room
that night, she had an email from

475
00:33:52.559 --> 00:33:57.240
Stephen that said, for what I'm
thinking now, I would definitely go to

476
00:33:57.279 --> 00:34:01.200
Hell. Just thought i'd let you
know an email. Yeah, she replied

477
00:34:01.240 --> 00:34:05.039
by saying, you know you're going
to Hell anyway, so it doesn't matter.

478
00:34:05.119 --> 00:34:07.920
What were you thinking about? He
replied saying something about looking at her

479
00:34:07.960 --> 00:34:14.079
cleavage while they were on the couch
watching the Super Bowl Nice. On Tuesday

480
00:34:14.199 --> 00:34:17.719
the sixth, Tara flew back to
Puerto Rico. As that week went on,

481
00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:22.639
Stephen and Verena sent more flirtatious texts, had more late night talks,

482
00:34:22.719 --> 00:34:27.719
They messed around and spent the night
in the same bed both Wednesday and Thursday

483
00:34:27.800 --> 00:34:30.800
night. On Friday morning, Lindsay, who was six at that point,

484
00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:36.239
came into Stephen and Tara's bedroom,
asking where Verena was because she wasn't in

485
00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:40.079
her own room. Verena quickly ducked
under the covers while Stephen distracted his daughter.

486
00:34:42.400 --> 00:34:45.079
On Friday the ninth, Tara flew
home from Puerto Rico. She had

487
00:34:45.079 --> 00:34:50.000
a connection in Newark during which she
talked to her sister Alicia on the phone

488
00:34:50.039 --> 00:34:52.880
for about forty minutes. She also
talked to Stephen a few times during the

489
00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:57.719
day. He later said that they
talked about her travel schedule, with him

490
00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:01.880
urging her to try and reduce her
travel. Tara touched down in Detroit about

491
00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:07.519
nine pm. She called Stephen again
on her way home, and according to

492
00:35:07.559 --> 00:35:12.159
Stephen, they bickered about her travel
schedule again. After that call ended,

493
00:35:12.360 --> 00:35:16.320
Stephen called Verena, who was out
at mister Bee's and Rochester been there many

494
00:35:16.360 --> 00:35:20.920
times. Verena didn't take the call
because she was with her friends, but

495
00:35:21.039 --> 00:35:23.599
he left a voice message. It
kills me to say that, but Tara

496
00:35:23.679 --> 00:35:28.039
will be home in five minutes,
so you can't call anymore or send any

497
00:35:28.079 --> 00:35:31.239
text messages, but I will send
you another text message to tell you that

498
00:35:31.320 --> 00:35:35.480
again. Don't forget to give me
a kiss. When you come home.

499
00:35:35.960 --> 00:35:37.920
Make a noise and I will come
downstairs so that I get my kiss.

500
00:35:38.159 --> 00:35:42.119
I will leave you a note on
your bed. God, And then he

501
00:35:42.159 --> 00:35:46.800
texted her you owe me a kiss. I know it's so gross. Tara

502
00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:52.280
arrived home around ten thirty pm,
according to what Stephen told the police much

503
00:35:52.400 --> 00:35:55.559
later after he was arrested. They
started arguing after she said she had to

504
00:35:55.599 --> 00:36:00.480
fly back to Puerto Rico a day
earlier than normal. Can I say that's

505
00:36:00.519 --> 00:36:04.280
really annoying to me that he's giving
her such a hard time about her travel

506
00:36:04.360 --> 00:36:07.599
schedule. Yeah, like I know
that he I understand him wanting her home,

507
00:36:07.639 --> 00:36:12.000
but there's nothing she can do about
it, right. I know a

508
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:15.199
lot. I've traveled a lot for
work, and you've always been incredibly supportive,

509
00:36:15.239 --> 00:36:16.320
and oh, I don't I think
that there were times though, I

510
00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:22.119
remember when I think our firstborn,
you were traveling like a lot. Yeah,

511
00:36:22.159 --> 00:36:25.000
I think. Yet we're working on
some major project, and I think

512
00:36:25.039 --> 00:36:29.960
it was it was hard, Yeah, especially when there was like snowstorms and

513
00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.840
you'd have to be out shoveling the
driveway was well, I remember why,

514
00:36:34.840 --> 00:36:37.840
I was really pregnant with time and
there is yeah, but I mean that's

515
00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:42.159
all fine, but it's just hard
because she was working, she was providing

516
00:36:42.159 --> 00:36:45.599
for the family, and it sounds
like they had a nice, nice lifestyle

517
00:36:45.760 --> 00:36:50.559
and there's nothing she could do about
it, right exactly, So they're arguing,

518
00:36:50.920 --> 00:36:53.000
and again, according to Stephen,
he grabbed her wrist, then she

519
00:36:53.159 --> 00:36:57.000
slapped him, and then he pushed
her down and she hit her head on

520
00:36:57.039 --> 00:37:00.960
the floor. She then said something
like that, I'm going to take the

521
00:37:00.039 --> 00:37:02.840
kids. You're going to be homeless. You're a piece of shit. So

522
00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:07.880
this is Stevens. This is yeah, we don't have Tara's account, unfortunately,

523
00:37:07.960 --> 00:37:12.079
but this is what Steven said happened. And I think at that point

524
00:37:12.119 --> 00:37:15.159
when she said, you know,
basically told him she was going to take

525
00:37:15.199 --> 00:37:17.800
the kids and that he was a
piece of shit. He then choked her

526
00:37:17.880 --> 00:37:22.840
until she stopped moving, and he
covered her face with a piece of clothing

527
00:37:22.880 --> 00:37:27.400
so that he didn't have to look
at her while he killed her. He

528
00:37:27.440 --> 00:37:30.920
then started panicking, realizing what he
had done and that Verena could be returning

529
00:37:30.960 --> 00:37:35.840
home at any time. He wrapped
a belt around Tara's neck and he used

530
00:37:35.840 --> 00:37:37.920
that to drag her body downstairs,
and then he put it in the back

531
00:37:37.960 --> 00:37:43.679
of her truck. When Verena came
home from mister Bees around eleven forty five,

532
00:37:44.360 --> 00:37:47.119
she opened the garage door and saw
Tara's car in the garage. She

533
00:37:47.199 --> 00:37:52.039
parked in the driveway and walked through
the garage into the house. Stephen came

534
00:37:52.079 --> 00:37:54.559
rushing down the stairs in his pajamas
and shouted, what the fuck are you

535
00:37:54.599 --> 00:37:59.559
doing here. Verena was like,
huh, and Steven said, oh,

536
00:37:59.599 --> 00:38:01.559
sorry, I thought you were Tara. Is she still out there? Verina

537
00:38:01.679 --> 00:38:04.800
was like, what do you mean? Her car is in the garage?

538
00:38:05.039 --> 00:38:08.320
Where is she? Stephen then started
to cry, and he told the story

539
00:38:08.360 --> 00:38:13.159
that he would end up repeating over
and over again to the police, family,

540
00:38:13.360 --> 00:38:16.400
friends, and the media over the
next couple of weeks. The first

541
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:20.320
part of the story was true.
He and Tara had gotten into an argument

542
00:38:20.320 --> 00:38:22.519
when she got home, but then
he said that he told her that she

543
00:38:22.559 --> 00:38:25.960
should just leave and go back to
Puerto Rico. Now, he said that.

544
00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:30.519
Tara then made a phone call,
unpacked her bag, packed a new

545
00:38:30.559 --> 00:38:34.400
bag, and then a black Sedan
showed up in the driveway, She gave

546
00:38:34.440 --> 00:38:37.559
the kids a kiss, and then
she left in the black car. Step

547
00:38:37.639 --> 00:38:40.599
Wait, what time is it?
Oh? It was like eleven five and

548
00:38:40.679 --> 00:38:44.320
she gave the kids. Okay,
I guess she could have kissed her sleeping

549
00:38:44.639 --> 00:38:47.079
Yeah, yeah, I think that
was the So that sounds really familiar.

550
00:38:49.000 --> 00:38:52.719
Why it sounds like the Anna and
Brian Walsh story. Oh yeah, because

551
00:38:52.719 --> 00:38:55.239
she disappeared allegedly in a right share. Yeah, I guess it does.

552
00:38:57.360 --> 00:39:00.400
Stephen told Verena that she needed to
delete, eat all the texts between the

553
00:39:00.400 --> 00:39:05.159
two of them because he and Tara
were probably going to get divorced and the

554
00:39:05.199 --> 00:39:08.719
texts would come up in the battle
for custody. A little after two am,

555
00:39:08.760 --> 00:39:15.639
Stephen called Tara's cell phone and he
left a message. I think after

556
00:39:15.719 --> 00:39:34.920
two might help going on? I
think you'll kids least next question? Okay,

557
00:39:36.159 --> 00:39:45.079
right, at least let me know
what else going on. Steven's playing

558
00:39:45.119 --> 00:39:51.440
the part of the angry husband whose
wife left him. Very strange, I

559
00:39:51.599 --> 00:39:54.400
know, because he wouldn't would he
have called that suit? Like, would

560
00:39:54.440 --> 00:39:57.400
you have called if we had just
had a fight and you know, I

561
00:39:57.559 --> 00:40:00.880
was probably spend the night, would
you call me at two am. Maybe,

562
00:40:00.920 --> 00:40:02.159
I mean you would probably wait till
the morning. If I did call

563
00:40:02.199 --> 00:40:05.559
you at two am, it would
be more to try to work things out,

564
00:40:05.679 --> 00:40:07.239
rather than like, where where the
fuck are you? You owe me

565
00:40:07.280 --> 00:40:10.519
an explanation type of thing. Yeah, me and the kid's an explanation to

566
00:40:10.599 --> 00:40:16.079
two am. Yeah. On Saturday, Stephen ran errands like any other Saturday,

567
00:40:16.159 --> 00:40:20.280
while Tara's body remained in the garage
in the back of her truck.

568
00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:23.920
He called Tara's cell phone a few
more times and left more messages. He

569
00:40:24.079 --> 00:40:29.320
and Verena slept together again that night. Just a warning, this next part

570
00:40:29.519 --> 00:40:34.719
is pretty disturbing. Stephen decided that
the best way to hide Tara's body would

571
00:40:34.760 --> 00:40:38.519
be to dismember it. On Sunday
morning, he drove Tara's truck to his

572
00:40:38.679 --> 00:40:43.239
dad's shop, took her body in, put it on a tarp, and,

573
00:40:43.440 --> 00:40:45.480
using a hack saw blade from the
shop, he cut Tara's body into

574
00:40:45.519 --> 00:40:51.360
fourteen pieces. Oh my god,
yeah, I don't know how you'd do

575
00:40:51.480 --> 00:40:55.440
something like that. He wrapped each
body part in black plastic garbage bags and

576
00:40:55.599 --> 00:41:00.840
put them all into a large rubber
made container. He at the container back

577
00:41:00.920 --> 00:41:04.079
in the truck, cleaned up the
shop and drove back home, leaving the

578
00:41:04.199 --> 00:41:07.440
container in the back of Tara's truck
in the garage. How do you do

579
00:41:07.639 --> 00:41:10.880
something like that and then continue on
with your life and your day and go

580
00:41:12.239 --> 00:41:15.239
and look at your children when you
go home, and I know, it's

581
00:41:15.280 --> 00:41:19.639
baffling, and yeah, and to
that point. The next thing he did

582
00:41:19.760 --> 00:41:22.360
after he got home was he took
his kids out to Meyer to pick up

583
00:41:22.400 --> 00:41:24.800
some groceries. So just like you
know, taking the kids out. And

584
00:41:24.880 --> 00:41:28.599
he told the kids at that point
that mom was mad at him, but

585
00:41:28.719 --> 00:41:32.159
not to worry that she would be
back. That night, Stephen watched Desperate

586
00:41:32.239 --> 00:41:37.800
Housewives with Verena, a show that
Verina usually watched with Tara, and the

587
00:41:37.880 --> 00:41:42.280
two again spent the night together in
the same bed. He got up at

588
00:41:42.280 --> 00:41:45.960
three am that Monday morning and he
made the short drive to a wooded area

589
00:41:46.159 --> 00:41:51.239
on the north side of Stony Creek
Metropark. He brought a sled with him,

590
00:41:51.840 --> 00:41:54.199
put Tara's body parts on the sled
and pulled them out into the woods,

591
00:41:54.840 --> 00:41:59.199
burying the torso in the snow in
one place, and then burying the

592
00:41:59.280 --> 00:42:04.039
rest of the body parts under snow
in another location. He also discarded a

593
00:42:04.119 --> 00:42:09.320
ziplock bag that contained rubber gloves that
he had used when dismembering Tara's body after

594
00:42:09.440 --> 00:42:13.519
He's just a really bad idea.
I mean, the whole thing is the

595
00:42:13.559 --> 00:42:16.559
whole thing. It's just because snow
melts pretty quickly. Yeah, I don't

596
00:42:16.599 --> 00:42:20.199
know what he was thinking, if
this was just a temporary thing, or

597
00:42:20.280 --> 00:42:23.360
what his thought was. After he
was finished hiding the body parts, he

598
00:42:23.519 --> 00:42:30.360
called Tara's cell phone and left another
message once again. It's quarter to seven.

599
00:42:30.639 --> 00:42:32.719
I'm gonna tell you this back in
fifteen minutes. I'm a call Randy

600
00:42:34.199 --> 00:42:38.639
get loose cell number and was going
on this is non seting, Tara.

601
00:42:39.320 --> 00:42:45.320
You owe me a phone call.
You owe me to let me know what

602
00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:53.000
going on between us. Please call. He's repugnant. Academy Award performance.

603
00:42:53.079 --> 00:42:58.840
There did that go in the blue
profile? What? Oh? You know

604
00:42:59.000 --> 00:43:06.239
what? No, so you never
saved your bloopers. I know, really

605
00:43:06.320 --> 00:43:09.920
unfair, Tara, It really isn't
it really is. I know there wasn't

606
00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:13.960
even a good blooper though. I'm
going to file a complaint with our HR

607
00:43:14.039 --> 00:43:17.559
departmentship and you were going to feel
the repercussions of that for a long time.

608
00:43:19.119 --> 00:43:24.480
I'm scared. I am president of
the oh, the human resources department.

609
00:43:24.599 --> 00:43:30.400
Here all right, back to the
story he got. Stephen got home

610
00:43:30.760 --> 00:43:32.960
before the kids got up for school, and then after they went to school,

611
00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:37.159
he decided that he had done a
terrible job of hiding Tara's remains,

612
00:43:37.280 --> 00:43:39.880
and so he went back out,
you don't say, unburied all the parts,

613
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:45.280
took them further out and reburied them
in the snow again. After that,

614
00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:47.679
he called Tara's boss, Lou,
at his office and asked him if

615
00:43:47.719 --> 00:43:51.880
Tara had arrived in Puerto Rico.
Of course, Lu said no, he

616
00:43:51.960 --> 00:43:55.000
hadn't heard from her. Stephen told
Lou the same story he had told Verena

617
00:43:55.079 --> 00:43:59.079
about the fight that they had had
and Tara leaving in a black sedan.

618
00:44:00.119 --> 00:44:04.639
On Tuesday the thirteenth, Stephen went
to work and he called Tara's mom from

619
00:44:04.719 --> 00:44:07.199
there. He told her about the
fight and asked if she had talked to

620
00:44:07.239 --> 00:44:12.039
Tara. She said no, and
then she called Tara's sister, Alicia,

621
00:44:12.639 --> 00:44:15.880
who called Stephen right away and lit
into him, telling him he was a

622
00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.800
terrible husband and there was no way
that Tara would abandon her kids and not

623
00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:22.639
let her family know where she was
she told Stephen he needed to go to

624
00:44:22.719 --> 00:44:29.119
the police station and report her missing. On Tuesday afternoon, one more time,

625
00:44:29.199 --> 00:44:31.880
he went back out and moved the
body parts again. This time,

626
00:44:31.960 --> 00:44:36.639
he took the parts out of the
plastic bags and scattered them around, hoping

627
00:44:36.679 --> 00:44:39.519
that they would be eaten by scavengers. Can I just just for a second,

628
00:44:39.559 --> 00:44:45.159
if you don't live in a snowy
area, so snow does melt really

629
00:44:45.320 --> 00:44:49.920
fast, and even if the temperature
is below freezing and it's a sunny day,

630
00:44:50.119 --> 00:44:52.400
snow still melts. Yeah, right, Like if you get I don't

631
00:44:52.400 --> 00:44:55.440
know how many inches of snow there
were, but if you have eight inches

632
00:44:55.480 --> 00:45:00.480
of snow on the ground and you
have somewhat sunny day, two or three

633
00:45:00.559 --> 00:45:04.679
inches of the snow would melt,
you know, right, Yeah, Yeah,

634
00:45:04.760 --> 00:45:07.920
this is yeah, just a really
his whole plan here was just not

635
00:45:07.840 --> 00:45:13.519
very smart. I don't think he's
a very smart guy. Apparently he's yeah,

636
00:45:13.639 --> 00:45:17.880
horrible. On Wednesday, Valentine's Day, nearly five days after he killed

637
00:45:17.960 --> 00:45:22.280
Tara, Stephen walked into the Macomb
County Sheriff's department to report or missing.

638
00:45:23.079 --> 00:45:27.679
He told the police basically the same
story he'd been telling everyone else, but

639
00:45:27.880 --> 00:45:31.559
Also he added some editorial commentary about
how the kids really wouldn't miss her because

640
00:45:31.679 --> 00:45:36.159
he was more involved in their lives, and also that he wasn't really sure

641
00:45:36.199 --> 00:45:38.199
he wanted her back, and that
he was probably going to file for divorce.

642
00:45:38.880 --> 00:45:44.840
What a guy. That evening,
detective Sergeant Brian Kozlowski and Sergeant Pam

643
00:45:44.960 --> 00:45:49.559
McClain came by the Grants home and
talked to both Stephen and Verena. They

644
00:45:49.639 --> 00:45:52.679
noted that Steven had a scratch on
his nose. He said that he had

645
00:45:52.719 --> 00:45:57.400
gotten a metal shaving caught under his
safety glasses at his dad's shop. They

646
00:45:57.440 --> 00:46:00.639
asked Stephen if there were any extramarital
affairs, and Stephen said that Tara had

647
00:46:00.679 --> 00:46:04.920
been involved with someone in the past, but that was over just Tara.

648
00:46:05.119 --> 00:46:08.039
Yeah, he didn't mention anything about
Verena and him. Of course, the

649
00:46:08.159 --> 00:46:13.840
detectives immediately thought that Stephen was acting
strangely, very jittery, and very high

650
00:46:13.920 --> 00:46:15.840
strung. Do you think it's a
little weird that he went to the police

651
00:46:15.840 --> 00:46:20.760
station instead of calling them, Yeah, kind of like most people just call

652
00:46:20.960 --> 00:46:23.159
and then the police station says,
yeah, you should come in or we'll

653
00:46:23.199 --> 00:46:27.440
send someone to your house. Right
yeah, I think that is a little

654
00:46:27.440 --> 00:46:30.239
bit weird. He was very I
mean, obviously he was trying to delay

655
00:46:30.320 --> 00:46:34.239
things as much as possible, and
he was very leisurely about the whole thing,

656
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:36.880
like, Oh, I'll just waltz
in here on my lunch break or

657
00:46:36.920 --> 00:46:42.480
whatever. Detectives talked to Tara's boss
and they got access to her work email,

658
00:46:42.639 --> 00:46:45.960
her credit card, and her cell
phone records. They saw that there

659
00:46:45.039 --> 00:46:50.039
was no activity on any of them
since Friday night. They also checked with

660
00:46:50.119 --> 00:46:52.440
all the black car services in the
area and no one had a record of

661
00:46:52.480 --> 00:46:58.039
a pickup that night at the Grant's
home. After the conversation with the police,

662
00:46:58.239 --> 00:47:02.360
Stephen retained the services of a local
attorney, David Greem. Greem immediately

663
00:47:02.440 --> 00:47:07.760
sent a facts to Detective Kaslowski,
saying that people still use them once in

664
00:47:07.840 --> 00:47:12.280
a while. He said that due
to the tone of the interview with Stephen,

665
00:47:12.519 --> 00:47:15.599
that any further questions for his client
should be submitted in writing to Greem

666
00:47:15.679 --> 00:47:21.880
and that Stephen would respond in writing. Farina's O pair agency made her leave

667
00:47:21.960 --> 00:47:25.519
the Grant home on the seventeenth because
of everything that was going on. The

668
00:47:25.599 --> 00:47:30.840
police interviewed her again before she left
to go back to Germany. They asked

669
00:47:30.880 --> 00:47:32.760
her point blank if she and Steven
had been having an affair, and she

670
00:47:34.039 --> 00:47:37.639
lied again and denied it. After
a few days, the story came out

671
00:47:37.719 --> 00:47:42.519
in the local press. While Stephen
wouldn't talk to the police, the media

672
00:47:42.599 --> 00:47:45.559
didn't have a hard time at all
getting in to talk. In fact,

673
00:47:45.639 --> 00:47:49.800
it seemed like he was loving the
attention. Any reporter who called him.

674
00:47:49.840 --> 00:47:53.400
He was happy to talk to.
The Macomb County sheriff also started doing regular

675
00:47:53.679 --> 00:47:59.400
news interviews, and then TERA's sister
Alicia did as well, appearing on the

676
00:47:59.519 --> 00:48:04.639
early Good Morning America, Greta Van
Suster and Show, and Nancy Grace's Show,

677
00:48:04.679 --> 00:48:08.599
among others. Both the sheriff and
Elise Elisha were not too subtle in

678
00:48:08.679 --> 00:48:14.719
pointing the finger at Stephen. Steven's
old girlfriend, Dina, who he had

679
00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:19.119
been planning to meet about a week
before Tara went missing, decided that she

680
00:48:19.199 --> 00:48:22.760
should probably share her and Steven's email
exchanges with the police, just in case

681
00:48:22.840 --> 00:48:28.199
they might be relevant. Those quickly
leaked to the press, including the one

682
00:48:28.400 --> 00:48:32.559
where Stephen made the comment about marriage
vows being like speed limits. Public opinion

683
00:48:32.599 --> 00:48:36.880
about Steven had been mixed up until
this time, but now it was turning

684
00:48:36.920 --> 00:48:39.960
against him. He explained away the
emails, though by saying it was just

685
00:48:40.119 --> 00:48:47.880
two old lovers joking around innocently.
Detectives noticed that Stephen had mentioned Stoney Creek,

686
00:48:49.000 --> 00:48:52.400
the metropark near their home, quite
a bit during his TV interviews.

687
00:48:52.920 --> 00:48:55.039
He would talk about how that was
one reason they bought the house, and

688
00:48:55.280 --> 00:48:59.719
how he liked to go running there. So on a hunch, they decided

689
00:48:59.719 --> 00:49:04.159
to organize a search of the park
on Thursday. They think they were probably

690
00:49:04.199 --> 00:49:07.920
like, what kind of moron would
would bury a body in the snow at

691
00:49:07.920 --> 00:49:13.719
a metro park where people are cross
country skiing and running trail running and whatever.

692
00:49:13.880 --> 00:49:16.599
But then they probably also thought,
well Stephen were talking about so on

693
00:49:16.760 --> 00:49:21.440
Thursday, the twenty second, they
announced that they were organizing the search that

694
00:49:21.519 --> 00:49:25.039
would take place in two days on
Saturday. Steven of course started freaking out,

695
00:49:25.559 --> 00:49:30.199
especially worried that they would find Terra's
torso, because he didn't think that

696
00:49:30.320 --> 00:49:34.280
was hidden very well. The search
was scheduled to start at eight am on

697
00:49:34.400 --> 00:49:38.119
Saturday. At five am, Stephen
jogged the two miles from his house to

698
00:49:38.159 --> 00:49:42.360
where he had left the torso.
He tried to carry it home, but

699
00:49:42.440 --> 00:49:45.480
it was too heavy, and so
he ran back home, got the car,

700
00:49:45.639 --> 00:49:47.480
and then picked it up less than
a half an hour before the search

701
00:49:47.559 --> 00:49:52.760
actually started. The search of the
park started at eight am on the twenty

702
00:49:52.840 --> 00:49:57.320
fourth. It lasted four and a
half hours, but they didn't find anything.

703
00:49:58.079 --> 00:50:01.119
It is a big park and the
location where Stephen had scattered Tara's remains

704
00:50:01.360 --> 00:50:05.960
was on the far kind of north
side of the park, which was apparently

705
00:50:06.039 --> 00:50:08.119
an area that they just didn't get
to. So it was just the police

706
00:50:08.119 --> 00:50:13.199
searching, not the public, I
think so. Yeah. That afternoon,

707
00:50:13.320 --> 00:50:17.000
Stephen drove back to his dad's shop
with Tara's torso he put it up on

708
00:50:17.159 --> 00:50:21.760
top of a loft inside the shop, above an office, hidden among a

709
00:50:21.800 --> 00:50:27.119
bunch of old parts and equipment.
Shortly after the Stony Creek searched, the

710
00:50:27.159 --> 00:50:31.039
police found out about Steven's affair with
Verena. Although Verena had denied it to

711
00:50:31.119 --> 00:50:36.119
the police, she had told a
friend of hers, a fellow opere who

712
00:50:36.199 --> 00:50:40.920
the police also spoke with. Verena's
friend spilled the beans if there had been

713
00:50:40.960 --> 00:50:45.599
any doubt before. Now the police
were sure that Stephen had killed Tara,

714
00:50:45.800 --> 00:50:50.559
but they still had no body and
no real evidence a break in the case

715
00:50:50.679 --> 00:50:53.679
finally came on February twenty eighth,
over two weeks after Tara went missing.

716
00:50:54.599 --> 00:50:59.960
Sheila Werner, a dental technician in
her early thirties who lived near Stony Creek,

717
00:51:00.719 --> 00:51:04.280
was taking a little hike and she
was getting some fresh air. She

718
00:51:04.440 --> 00:51:09.079
was picking up some trash when she
came across a transparent gallon sized ziploc bag.

719
00:51:09.840 --> 00:51:15.039
Inside the bag were other plastic bags
and a pair of rubber gloves turned

720
00:51:15.079 --> 00:51:19.880
inside out, and there was some
red liquid pulled up at the bottom of

721
00:51:19.920 --> 00:51:22.360
the bag that looked like it might
be blood. At first, she thought

722
00:51:22.400 --> 00:51:25.400
maybe it was left there by a
hunter, but then she remembered the story

723
00:51:25.480 --> 00:51:29.960
about the missing woman that had been
all over the news, along with the

724
00:51:30.440 --> 00:51:34.559
search of Stony Creek from a few
days earlier. She took the bag home,

725
00:51:35.079 --> 00:51:37.679
set it in her garage, and
called the police. An officer came

726
00:51:37.679 --> 00:51:42.320
out and examined the bag, noting
that there were also what looked like dog

727
00:51:42.440 --> 00:51:45.320
hairs and a few metal shavings in
the bag. The dog hairs were a

728
00:51:45.400 --> 00:51:50.519
similar color to Steven's dog, and
the machine shop where he worked had metal

729
00:51:50.599 --> 00:51:54.719
shavings all over the place. How
did dog ears get in there? That's

730
00:51:54.800 --> 00:51:59.679
a good question. Dog hairs get
everywhere? You know that? Yeah?

731
00:52:00.199 --> 00:52:05.400
Because he never so officers. They
sent out a new team to search the

732
00:52:05.519 --> 00:52:08.440
area around where the bag was found, but once again they came up empty.

733
00:52:09.400 --> 00:52:14.679
They sent the bag to the Michigan
State Crime Lab, which came back

734
00:52:14.719 --> 00:52:17.320
a day later to confirm that the
red liquid in the bag was human blood.

735
00:52:19.400 --> 00:52:22.920
The police decided they now had enough
evidence to ask a judge for a

736
00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:27.880
search warrant, both for the Grant
home and for the machine shop. While

737
00:52:27.960 --> 00:52:31.559
the search warrant request was in process
without Stephen knowing about it, he decided

738
00:52:31.599 --> 00:52:37.079
that his latest hiding place for Terra's
torso, his dad's machine shop, might

739
00:52:37.159 --> 00:52:40.079
not be the best location because it
tended to get hot inside the shop.

740
00:52:40.679 --> 00:52:44.920
So on March first, he went
back and picked up Terra's torso again,

741
00:52:45.599 --> 00:52:49.920
this time putting it in a storage
container that had contained children's clothing for a

742
00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:53.119
garage sale, drove it back home
and put the container in his garage.

743
00:52:54.119 --> 00:52:58.719
The next day, March second,
Stephen gave another interview to the press.

744
00:52:59.320 --> 00:53:01.400
At this point, he was getting
cocky, thinking that he had gotten away

745
00:53:01.440 --> 00:53:07.039
with murder. He decided to use
the opportunity to criticize Tara as a mother,

746
00:53:07.239 --> 00:53:09.519
saying quote, I was a better
mom than Tara was. There's no

747
00:53:09.599 --> 00:53:13.280
other way to put it. I
was the mom in the house. She

748
00:53:13.480 --> 00:53:15.679
was gone all the time. If
the kids needed someone to take them the

749
00:53:15.760 --> 00:53:21.239
swimming or school or soccer practice,
I took them. Some of her family

750
00:53:21.360 --> 00:53:23.159
is said in the media how much
she loved her kids and how she would

751
00:53:23.199 --> 00:53:27.800
try to fly back in order to
attend all their functions. But that's not

752
00:53:27.960 --> 00:53:30.760
true. I can't recall one time
when she did that. To be honest,

753
00:53:30.880 --> 00:53:34.239
as weird as it sounds for me
to say this, I was the

754
00:53:34.320 --> 00:53:37.480
perfect mom, not Tara. Oh, he's disgusting. It's a horrible,

755
00:53:37.679 --> 00:53:44.159
disgusting human being. Did he say
that too? It was a news interview.

756
00:53:45.679 --> 00:53:49.039
On his way home from that interview, police officers pulled him over and

757
00:53:49.159 --> 00:53:52.320
let him know that they had a
search warrant for his home. At this

758
00:53:52.440 --> 00:53:54.559
point, I think he realized that
it was over. It was only a

759
00:53:54.679 --> 00:54:00.239
matter of time before they would find
Terra's Torso Steve and let the officers into

760
00:54:00.239 --> 00:54:02.920
the house, and then he took
his dog and he went for a walk

761
00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:07.320
down the road while the officers started
their search. Shockingly, the police just

762
00:54:07.440 --> 00:54:14.199
let him walk off without anyone following
him. While the investigators were searching Stephen's

763
00:54:14.280 --> 00:54:17.400
house, Detective Koslowski and some of
the other officers were hanging out in the

764
00:54:17.480 --> 00:54:22.559
garage, staying out of the way
but also trying to keep warm. About

765
00:54:22.639 --> 00:54:27.719
ninety minutes after the search started,
Koslowski was poking around the garage and he

766
00:54:27.840 --> 00:54:32.159
noticed the green plastic storage container labeled
kid's clothes. He thought it looked out

767
00:54:32.199 --> 00:54:35.880
a place, and he was pretty
sure it hadn't been there in their initial

768
00:54:35.960 --> 00:54:38.639
search of the house that day,
the day that Stephen reported Tara missing,

769
00:54:39.000 --> 00:54:43.679
just two weeks earlier. He opened
it up and, to his horror,

770
00:54:43.880 --> 00:54:50.639
discovered Tara's Torso it was a shocking
discovery because really all they were expecting to

771
00:54:50.760 --> 00:54:57.239
find during their search of the house
was getting access to Stephen's computer. Immediately,

772
00:54:57.280 --> 00:55:00.559
they started looking around to see where
Stephen was, but he was long

773
00:55:00.639 --> 00:55:04.880
gone. Again, it's kind of
crazy that they lost track of him while

774
00:55:04.920 --> 00:55:07.440
they were searching his house. That's
not normal police procedure. Normally, you

775
00:55:07.440 --> 00:55:12.760
would offer them to the suspect to
sit in the back of a police card

776
00:55:12.800 --> 00:55:15.559
to stay warm or whatever, but
they just kind of let him walk off.

777
00:55:16.800 --> 00:55:21.280
Stephen had a ninety minute head start
by the time that the police found

778
00:55:21.400 --> 00:55:24.800
Terra's torso he had called a friend
who came to pick him up, and

779
00:55:24.840 --> 00:55:28.760
then he asked the friend if he
could borrow his pickup truck to go see

780
00:55:28.800 --> 00:55:31.800
his kids, who were staying with
his sister. Stephen drove to see his

781
00:55:31.920 --> 00:55:36.199
sister and his kids, and he
left the dog there, and then he

782
00:55:36.360 --> 00:55:39.400
took off with a bottle of viking
In in his pocket. He started driving

783
00:55:39.519 --> 00:55:44.320
north, making a few stops along
the way to buy some whiskey, some

784
00:55:44.559 --> 00:55:49.840
razor blades, Taylan LPM, a
black plastic toy gun, a burner,

785
00:55:49.920 --> 00:55:53.800
phone, a notepad, and a
few other things. Apparently he had decided

786
00:55:53.840 --> 00:55:58.400
he was going to commit suicide,
but wasn't sure exactly how he wanted to

787
00:55:58.480 --> 00:56:02.960
do it. The toy gun was
for a suicide by cops scenario. He

788
00:56:04.079 --> 00:56:07.239
kept driving north on the back roads, drinking whiskey and taking the occasional vikut

789
00:56:07.360 --> 00:56:12.360
in. At one thirty am,
he called his attorney, David Greem and

790
00:56:12.480 --> 00:56:15.679
told him that he was planning to
kill himself. Coincidentally, Greem had been

791
00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:20.000
trying to reach Stephen earlier in the
day to tell him that he was dropping

792
00:56:20.079 --> 00:56:22.880
him as a client. He had
been tired of Stephen talking to the media

793
00:56:23.480 --> 00:56:28.000
and finding out that he had been
having an affair with his Opare was the

794
00:56:28.119 --> 00:56:34.239
last straw for Greem, but with
Stephen rambling drunkenly about suicide, Greem decided

795
00:56:34.320 --> 00:56:37.199
that now wasn't the time to drop
his client and instead tried to talk him

796
00:56:37.239 --> 00:56:42.039
down. When Stephen hung up,
Gream was convinced that he was going to

797
00:56:42.159 --> 00:56:45.639
kill himself, and he decided that
even though he was technically still Grant's attorney,

798
00:56:46.039 --> 00:56:51.599
he had a duty to call the
police. Stephen also called Verena at

799
00:56:51.639 --> 00:56:55.159
one point to tell her goodbye and
to ask her to pass a message along

800
00:56:55.239 --> 00:56:59.599
to his kids. Tell them they
have to be strong, tell them they

801
00:56:59.639 --> 00:57:02.000
have to be good and live,
and tell them I'm sorry for everything I

802
00:57:02.159 --> 00:57:07.800
did kids, you know. And
it's just kind of like, I don't

803
00:57:07.800 --> 00:57:10.360
know the fact that he would think
that his kids would want to take,

804
00:57:10.519 --> 00:57:15.320
you know, life lessons from him, who you know, killed their mom,

805
00:57:15.440 --> 00:57:17.159
and as if they'd want to hear
it from their opere who had an

806
00:57:17.199 --> 00:57:22.840
affair with their dad, right Stephen
also admitted to Verena on that call that

807
00:57:22.960 --> 00:57:28.039
he had killed Tara, although he
made it sound like an accident. As

808
00:57:28.079 --> 00:57:36.000
soon as she hung up with Stephen, she called the police the next and

809
00:57:36.159 --> 00:57:39.960
hematically and I pushed her back if
she sank her head and was said.

810
00:57:42.159 --> 00:57:45.719
So. Finally Verena came clean and
told the truth, which was good.

811
00:57:45.800 --> 00:57:47.920
But I think up until that time
I don't think she believed that Stephen had

812
00:57:49.000 --> 00:57:52.079
killed Tara. By that point,
she was in Germany. Correct. Correct.

813
00:57:52.360 --> 00:57:55.960
The final call that Stephen made was
to his sister Kelly to say goodbye

814
00:57:57.000 --> 00:58:00.679
to her. He told her that
he was at Wilderness State Park, which

815
00:58:00.760 --> 00:58:02.920
is a spot that he and Tara
had vacationed many times, and so I

816
00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:06.920
guess he decided that this would be
the best place to end his life.

817
00:58:07.000 --> 00:58:09.880
How far away He's ninety minutes away
from his house. No, No,

818
00:58:10.039 --> 00:58:13.360
much more than that. He was
about three hundred miles away. This is

819
00:58:13.639 --> 00:58:20.079
way way up north in the Lower
Peninsula. So his sister also contacted the

820
00:58:20.119 --> 00:58:22.559
police immediately after their call ended,
and so they were starting to narrow in

821
00:58:22.679 --> 00:58:27.320
on where he was. After that
call, he wrote a short note to

822
00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:30.559
his kids, and then he wandered
off into the park, intending to walk

823
00:58:30.679 --> 00:58:35.039
until he passed out from the cold
and froze to death. By now they

824
00:58:35.079 --> 00:58:37.320
were narrowing in on him. They
were using a helicopter and a searchlight to

825
00:58:37.400 --> 00:58:42.800
look for him in Wilderness State Park. Eventually they found his tracks and they

826
00:58:43.000 --> 00:58:45.840
found him lying under a pine tree, apparently waiting to die. So I

827
00:58:46.000 --> 00:58:52.679
think I remember this, Yeah,
this happening, and the live footage.

828
00:58:52.880 --> 00:58:54.840
Yeah, maybe not live, but
it was. I think I think this

829
00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:59.599
actually went on for more than twenty
four hours, like after they found Tara's

830
00:58:59.639 --> 00:59:02.159
torus. It was more than twenty
four hours before they found him, So

831
00:59:02.239 --> 00:59:08.000
it was like it was like the
OJ fleemo. Yeah. Yeah. Stephen

832
00:59:08.119 --> 00:59:12.079
was taken to the hospital in Potoski, where they hooked him up to an

833
00:59:12.079 --> 00:59:16.360
idea great city. They hooked him
up with a warming solution to get his

834
00:59:16.400 --> 00:59:21.480
body temperature up, and they put
some frostbite boots on his feet. Eventually

835
00:59:21.559 --> 00:59:25.000
he started becoming alert and aware of
his situation. He told the police officer

836
00:59:25.119 --> 00:59:28.920
that was keeping watch on him that
he wanted to talk to his lawyer.

837
00:59:29.679 --> 00:59:32.400
The officer informed him that his lawyer
it actually fired him as a client that

838
00:59:32.519 --> 00:59:37.519
morning, so I guess David Green
after he called the police, he was

839
00:59:37.559 --> 00:59:39.679
like, yeah, I'm just going
to announce that I'm not his lawyer anymore.

840
00:59:39.880 --> 00:59:45.000
Good move. Yeah. So finally
Stephen asked the officer to call Detective

841
00:59:45.039 --> 00:59:49.280
Koslowski and tell him that if he
if he would make the trip up to

842
00:59:49.320 --> 00:59:52.320
the hospital, Stephen would tell him
everything. And that's exactly what happened.

843
00:59:52.719 --> 00:59:59.679
Stephen confessed to the whole thing,
now having a more specific location where he

844
00:59:59.760 --> 01:00:04.079
had scattered the other body parts.
Police sent a hundred officers out to search

845
01:00:04.159 --> 01:00:08.480
the area again officers, I know, and they finally found most of Tara's

846
01:00:08.519 --> 01:00:15.159
remains. A few were never found, most likely eaten by scavengers. I

847
01:00:15.280 --> 01:00:20.519
know. It's horrible. Stephen was
arraigned on March sixth, and he pleaded

848
01:00:20.599 --> 01:00:24.119
not guilty. Jury selection for the
trial began eight months later in November.

849
01:00:24.920 --> 01:00:30.199
Really, the only question was whether
the jury would find him guilty of premeditated

850
01:00:30.320 --> 01:00:34.679
first degree murder, as the prosecutors
were pushing for, or for a lesser

851
01:00:34.840 --> 01:00:39.280
charge of second degree murder or maybe
manslaughter, which could mean that Stephen would

852
01:00:39.320 --> 01:00:45.239
possibly be paroled someday. In addition
to murder, Stephen was charged with dismemberment

853
01:00:45.280 --> 01:00:50.840
of a corpse. Before the trial
began, he changed his plea to guilty

854
01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:53.760
of that charge, which meant that
he would definitely get at least ten years,

855
01:00:54.519 --> 01:00:58.880
But by Michigan law, that ten
year sentence would be served concurrent with

856
01:00:58.960 --> 01:01:01.719
any other sentence he got, and
so it was kind of irrelevant unless for

857
01:01:01.800 --> 01:01:06.480
some shocking reason, he was found
not guilty of any murder charges. I'm

858
01:01:06.480 --> 01:01:08.920
not sure how I feel about these
concurrent sentences. I know, it really

859
01:01:09.159 --> 01:01:14.360
doesn't make a lot of sense.
I don't think so. The prosecution argued

860
01:01:14.400 --> 01:01:17.320
that Stephen had fallen in love with
Verena and decided to kill Tara so that

861
01:01:17.400 --> 01:01:21.639
he could be with her. He
had the opportunity to weigh the pros and

862
01:01:21.760 --> 01:01:24.320
cons, especially during the five minutes
or so that he was strangling her,

863
01:01:24.800 --> 01:01:29.199
so that's why they argued it should
be first degree murder. I always think

864
01:01:29.239 --> 01:01:32.519
about this in strangling cases. But
can you imagine strangling someone for five That's

865
01:01:32.559 --> 01:01:39.000
such a long time to really think
about what you're doing and yep, yeah,

866
01:01:39.559 --> 01:01:43.800
stop what you're doing, and you
know, right, you've got you

867
01:01:43.920 --> 01:01:47.320
have plenty of time to consider it
and change your change your mind. Well,

868
01:01:47.400 --> 01:01:50.679
did you think that I might have
to get a job. Now,

869
01:01:51.760 --> 01:01:54.440
I don't know what he was thinking. Really, it's just horrible the whole

870
01:01:54.480 --> 01:01:59.679
thing. The defense focused on the
lack of evidence that he had planned anything

871
01:01:59.760 --> 01:02:04.199
in advance. He didn't buy anything
before the murder to help him dismember Tara's

872
01:02:04.239 --> 01:02:07.960
body, and in his confession he
talked about how he lost it and he

873
01:02:07.519 --> 01:02:13.320
claimed that Tara slapped him first,
which then escalated the argument. They claimed

874
01:02:13.360 --> 01:02:17.880
that was evidence that it wasn't premeditated
and warranted a manslaughter verdict. The trial

875
01:02:17.960 --> 01:02:22.519
concluded on December eighteenth, and the
jury deliberated for sixteen hours. What do

876
01:02:22.599 --> 01:02:31.000
you think first degree secondary manslaughter or
not guilty? I think second degree,

877
01:02:31.920 --> 01:02:36.679
But in my own personal like if
I were making the laws, if you

878
01:02:36.800 --> 01:02:42.760
dismember someone, I just think that's
you should get first degree. Yeah,

879
01:02:42.800 --> 01:02:46.679
it's like an aggravating circumstance or something
like that. Right, you were correct.

880
01:02:46.760 --> 01:02:51.599
It was second degree murder, which
in Michigan law is an unplanned but

881
01:02:51.800 --> 01:02:57.119
intentional killing, or any death caused
by reckless disregard for human life. Off

882
01:02:57.159 --> 01:03:00.519
the top of your head, do
you know the difference in sentencing between first

883
01:03:00.559 --> 01:03:04.360
and second degree. Yes, well, first degree would be automatic life without

884
01:03:04.440 --> 01:03:08.920
parole. Second degree, the guidelines
are nineteen to forty years, and the

885
01:03:09.039 --> 01:03:15.480
prosecution actually asked the judge to make
an exception and go beyond those guidelines because

886
01:03:15.519 --> 01:03:20.199
of, like you said, the
circumstances and the dismemberment and everything. Their

887
01:03:20.239 --> 01:03:24.719
recommendation was fifty to eighty years,
while Steven's defense recommended fifteen to twenty years.

888
01:03:25.199 --> 01:03:30.760
Sentencing is so confusing because we've done
so many different stories in so many

889
01:03:30.800 --> 01:03:37.960
different states and countries. Now I
get really confused sometimes because life doesn't really

890
01:03:37.039 --> 01:03:42.559
mean natural life, and then there's
time off for good behavior, which isn't

891
01:03:42.679 --> 01:03:45.400
part of this. It's very confused, it is, and every state is

892
01:03:45.480 --> 01:03:49.159
different, and I just think it's
funny too. Like his defense recommended fifteen

893
01:03:49.159 --> 01:03:51.639
to twenty years, so the judge
would be like, oh, okay,

894
01:03:52.119 --> 01:03:53.920
sure, now I like the fifty
to eighty for him. I like that

895
01:03:54.000 --> 01:03:57.239
a lot. Well, the judge
agreed with you, because the judge,

896
01:03:57.360 --> 01:04:02.360
noting how barbaric and evil Even's actions
were, sentenced him to fifty to eighty

897
01:04:02.440 --> 01:04:08.440
years minus time served. So it
is possible that Stephen Grant will be paroled,

898
01:04:08.559 --> 01:04:11.800
but not until the year twenty fifty
eight, when he would be eighty

899
01:04:11.880 --> 01:04:15.360
eight years old. All right,
So just a few notes on things that

900
01:04:15.480 --> 01:04:20.199
have happened since the trial. Tara's
sister, Alicia, fought to get custody

901
01:04:20.320 --> 01:04:26.800
of Lindsay and Ian against Steven's wishes, but she won. She also filed

902
01:04:26.840 --> 01:04:30.800
a wrongful death lawsuit against Stephen to
ensure that he could never profit from his

903
01:04:30.920 --> 01:04:35.440
crime, and she won that lawsuit
as well. Stephen's parents and his sister

904
01:04:35.559 --> 01:04:40.599
all had good relationships with the kids
before Tara was killed, and they actually

905
01:04:40.599 --> 01:04:45.239
wanted visitation rights, but Alicia fought
against that. When Stephen was on trial,

906
01:04:45.639 --> 01:04:50.079
was his family present supporting him?
I think his sister was the main

907
01:04:50.239 --> 01:04:53.880
person that supported him. I'm not
sure about the others. I know his

908
01:04:54.000 --> 01:04:57.639
dad did not attend the trial.
I'm not sure about his mom. His

909
01:04:57.800 --> 01:05:00.400
sister, from what I understand,
she's still sees him in prison. She's

910
01:05:00.440 --> 01:05:03.199
been like, obviously she doesn't approve
of what he did, but she has

911
01:05:03.239 --> 01:05:06.360
still sort of been there for him. Yeah, So the kids had a

912
01:05:06.440 --> 01:05:12.679
few supervised visits with Steven's family,
but then Alicia would tell them that she

913
01:05:12.800 --> 01:05:15.280
had to check schedules and she stopped
calling them back. It ended up in

914
01:05:15.400 --> 01:05:19.159
court and Alicia was actually found in
contempt. But I don't think anything changed

915
01:05:19.199 --> 01:05:24.400
after that. So I don't know
that there's any relationship really between the kids

916
01:05:24.559 --> 01:05:29.079
and you know, Tara or Steven's
side of the family. That's such a

917
01:05:29.119 --> 01:05:32.000
tricky situation. I see both sides
for sure, but I know that it

918
01:05:32.079 --> 01:05:35.800
takes a village to raise kids,
and the more love a child has in

919
01:05:35.880 --> 01:05:41.760
their life, yeah, that the
better off they are. It's but I

920
01:05:41.880 --> 01:05:45.559
understand Alicia's point of view of not
wanting to expose the kids too possible,

921
01:05:45.639 --> 01:05:50.039
like, oh, your dad is
innocent, or you know any pro Stephen

922
01:05:50.079 --> 01:05:53.599
talk. Do they see their dad
or did they talk to their dad?

923
01:05:54.079 --> 01:05:56.519
I don't believe so, as far
as I know, they did not see

924
01:05:56.559 --> 01:06:00.760
their dad. About six months after
the trial ended, Stephen's dad al called

925
01:06:00.800 --> 01:06:05.400
the Saint Clair County Sheriff's office saying
he wanted to report a suicide. The

926
01:06:05.519 --> 01:06:10.079
dispatcher asked it who it was,
and he said me and hung up.

927
01:06:11.280 --> 01:06:14.679
Police rushed to his home just in
time to hear a gunshot in the garage,

928
01:06:14.920 --> 01:06:17.760
and al Grant was dead at age
sixty six. That is devastating.

929
01:06:17.920 --> 01:06:20.840
I know, it is so sad, so sad, And yeah, it's

930
01:06:20.880 --> 01:06:25.039
just you think about, like you
kill someone, how many other people are

931
01:06:25.079 --> 01:06:29.239
affected besides just the person you've killed
too, like all family and your own

932
01:06:29.320 --> 01:06:31.840
family, like I'm sure it just
it just joys like so many lives and

933
01:06:33.000 --> 01:06:39.519
don't don't do it. Yeah.
Lindsay and Ian Standerfer, which is the

934
01:06:39.639 --> 01:06:43.239
last name that they've adopted in their
new family with Alicia and her husband,

935
01:06:43.719 --> 01:06:46.880
are now twenty two and twenty years
old, respectively. As of a couple

936
01:06:46.920 --> 01:06:49.840
of years ago, at least,
Lindsay, who looks very much like her

937
01:06:49.880 --> 01:06:57.000
mother, was studying pediatric psychology at
Ohio State University. She credits therapy as

938
01:06:57.079 --> 01:07:00.079
making a huge difference in her life
after everything that happened. I'm not sure

939
01:07:00.119 --> 01:07:03.400
if she's still working on her degree
or if maybe she's finished. But I

940
01:07:03.480 --> 01:07:08.639
also discovered that she is a tattoo
artist in her town of Chillicothe, Ohio,

941
01:07:09.119 --> 01:07:14.119
and it looks like she does some
amazing work. Ian is attending college

942
01:07:14.119 --> 01:07:17.920
at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Neither of them has any desire to

943
01:07:18.000 --> 01:07:24.960
see or speak to Stephen Grant.
Understandable every year Lindsay and Ian come back

944
01:07:25.800 --> 01:07:29.800
to Michigan for Tara's Walk, which
is an event put on by an organization

945
01:07:29.920 --> 01:07:34.159
called Turning Point to honor Tara's memory
and to benefit victims of domestic violence.

946
01:07:35.320 --> 01:07:40.519
Yeah, it seems like both kids
have grown up to be good, upstanding,

947
01:07:40.920 --> 01:07:44.320
you know, they've they've done everything
possible that they can to turn what

948
01:07:44.519 --> 01:07:47.320
happened into a positive and help other
people, which is just it's amazing,

949
01:07:47.519 --> 01:07:51.079
super admirable and amazing. Yeah.
I credit to their mom. Yeah,

950
01:07:51.360 --> 01:07:57.239
yeah, for sure. So that
is it. That's the story of Tara

951
01:07:57.360 --> 01:08:05.920
Grant and Stephen. Well, that
was horrible. Thank you scrooning my day.

952
01:08:06.960 --> 01:08:11.159
It's a horrible story. He's a
horrible human being and he's still in

953
01:08:11.280 --> 01:08:15.840
prison and yeah, he's hopefully you're
gonna rot there, I hope. So

954
01:08:17.159 --> 01:08:20.640
do you have any idea how much
money did Tara make? I do not

955
01:08:20.800 --> 01:08:23.640
know how much she made, but
it must have been a fair much.

956
01:08:23.680 --> 01:08:27.119
Sure she was doing pretty well because
yeah, she was definitely at an executive

957
01:08:27.199 --> 01:08:30.920
level in her company. I'm just
wondering, like we've had so many stories

958
01:08:31.840 --> 01:08:38.000
about like the if the women,
woman is the bread winner and the spouse,

959
01:08:38.159 --> 01:08:40.960
just not like can handle it.
Yeah, Yeah, like Anna and

960
01:08:41.039 --> 01:08:44.800
Brian Walsh. And I know there's
others too that I can't think of off

961
01:08:44.800 --> 01:08:46.640
the top of my head, but
yeah, a common theme, It is

962
01:08:46.720 --> 01:08:50.079
a common theme. Yeah. I
don't know why men become so insecure if

963
01:08:50.239 --> 01:08:54.079
they're not the primary breadwinner. I
think, and I don't get it at

964
01:08:54.119 --> 01:08:56.479
all. I mean, I know, I know we're in a situation where

965
01:08:56.560 --> 01:08:59.920
I'm the primary breadwinner. But I've
I always look at us as a team,

966
01:09:00.359 --> 01:09:02.520
right, as like we're we make
decisions together and we do what's best

967
01:09:02.560 --> 01:09:05.840
for the family. It's not about
me or you or who's you know,

968
01:09:06.319 --> 01:09:12.880
Well, You've always been exceedingly kind
and generous in that aspect aspect. But

969
01:09:12.960 --> 01:09:15.720
we do have we I'm not bragging, but we have a very good partnership,

970
01:09:16.039 --> 01:09:21.560
and I think we have both respected
and understood what we bring to the

971
01:09:21.640 --> 01:09:25.760
table. Yeah. I just I
just don't understand that mindset of like,

972
01:09:26.600 --> 01:09:29.560
you know, oh, she's the
breadwinner, I'm I must be a loser

973
01:09:29.720 --> 01:09:32.279
or something like that, like raising
kids is a hugely important job, like

974
01:09:32.399 --> 01:09:38.560
that's you know, when he did
work. Yeah, but I'm sure I

975
01:09:38.720 --> 01:09:44.520
just think he'd visions of visions of
grandeur of you know, doing doing other

976
01:09:44.640 --> 01:09:48.439
things, I guess, and I
don't know. Well, yeah, any

977
01:09:48.520 --> 01:09:54.560
update on Verina. No, I
think Varina kind of went underground, like

978
01:09:54.600 --> 01:09:57.479
I don't think she wanted a lot
of publicity, So I do not know

979
01:09:57.600 --> 01:10:00.399
anything about what Verina. What happened
to Verna? Did you watch the Daylin

980
01:10:00.439 --> 01:10:05.600
episode? I did? It was
Verina. I thought Verna was featured in

981
01:10:05.680 --> 01:10:10.560
it, not as an adult or
not the current version of Verena. I

982
01:10:10.640 --> 01:10:14.640
think they had some stuff from when
she was nineteen. I should probably stop

983
01:10:14.720 --> 01:10:18.600
listening to the dateline as I'm falling
asleep, which people have told me that

984
01:10:18.680 --> 01:10:23.119
they listened to us while they're going
to sleep, which I guess that's a

985
01:10:23.159 --> 01:10:34.119
country Sweet Dreams listeners come up with
our ASMR episode, that's a good idea.

986
01:10:34.159 --> 01:10:38.199
I kind of like that that idea. People say we have nice voices,

987
01:10:38.239 --> 01:10:40.520
and I don't. I don't.
I think you have a love I

988
01:10:41.319 --> 01:10:44.479
think I have a screechy I don't
know. I think it's horrible, but

989
01:10:44.560 --> 01:10:47.479
I appreciate the compliment. Yeah,
any thinking of compliments. Oh, I

990
01:10:47.560 --> 01:10:51.760
was just gonna say thank you to
our lovely listeners. And I think that

991
01:10:51.880 --> 01:10:57.840
you and I are just both very
grateful people. I think because things have

992
01:10:58.039 --> 01:11:01.600
not always been the easiest for either
of us, and I think that makes

993
01:11:01.640 --> 01:11:05.960
you were grateful and appreciative of things
in your life. And I guess I

994
01:11:05.960 --> 01:11:10.399
wouldn't change a lot of things that
have happened because that makes us, like

995
01:11:10.520 --> 01:11:13.600
I said, exceedingly grateful. So
we are exceedingly grateful to all of you

996
01:11:13.760 --> 01:11:16.039
for putting up with us, for
listening and supporting us. It means everything.

997
01:11:16.319 --> 01:11:19.960
Yeah, it really does. Thank
you and following us. You good

998
01:11:20.039 --> 01:11:25.880
job on this horrible story. Oh
thanks. I appreciate that you're working really

999
01:11:25.920 --> 01:11:28.920
hard, so I do appreciate you
too. And I'm not surely I say

1000
01:11:28.960 --> 01:11:32.039
this every time you put together really
nicely put together. I don't know how

1001
01:11:32.079 --> 01:11:34.000
you do it. I don't know
how you find the time. You're working

1002
01:11:34.079 --> 01:11:36.560
really hard on you know, a
lot of different things. So I'm going

1003
01:11:36.640 --> 01:11:41.079
to have a hard time finding more
Michigan cases to cover. But I don't

1004
01:11:41.079 --> 01:11:44.560
think you will. I don't think
you will. We'll see. But anyway,

1005
01:11:44.600 --> 01:11:47.520
follow us on Instagram or Facebook at
love Mary Kill or on Twitter at

1006
01:11:47.640 --> 01:11:51.600
LMK pod. Hey we're on threads
or on threads. I am going to

1007
01:11:51.600 --> 01:11:58.359
be honest with our our listener friends. I'm a little overwhelmed right now with

1008
01:11:59.159 --> 01:12:01.319
social media. I haven't been doing
as much as I could because sometimes I'm

1009
01:12:01.319 --> 01:12:04.600
just like, it's a lot and
there's only so many hours in the day.

1010
01:12:04.960 --> 01:12:09.760
Yeah, social media is like I
don't know, I hate social media

1011
01:12:09.920 --> 01:12:13.600
like in general. Yeah, so
yeah, like my personal social media,

1012
01:12:13.680 --> 01:12:15.920
I've I just I don't really go
on it. They're very much so.

1013
01:12:16.720 --> 01:12:20.239
But yeah, I always reach out
to us because I love to my favorite

1014
01:12:20.319 --> 01:12:25.399
Yeah, my favorite thing is talking
to you all, y'all. I didn't

1015
01:12:25.439 --> 01:12:29.159
say that very good. All y'all. I'm not very southern, but yeah,

1016
01:12:29.239 --> 01:12:30.560
and you could do that on social
media, or you can email us

1017
01:12:30.600 --> 01:12:33.520
at love Mary Kill at gmail dot
com. What are we going to do

1018
01:12:33.600 --> 01:12:38.239
with the rest of our day?
I don't know what should do. We're

1019
01:12:38.279 --> 01:12:44.359
true crime in maybe I had some
ideas. I'm working on a new case

1020
01:12:44.439 --> 01:12:47.920
and there's seven days of trial video
that I have to watch. Are you

1021
01:12:47.920 --> 01:12:51.520
gonna watch it in real time?
You gotta go to the trial? It's

1022
01:12:51.640 --> 01:12:56.720
night, I am. It's hard. It's hard to know when we talk

1023
01:12:56.720 --> 01:12:58.920
about this a lot, but when
to cut it off because I'm working on

1024
01:12:59.039 --> 01:13:02.000
a case now, and I,
like, you always say, what's the

1025
01:13:02.279 --> 01:13:10.359
phrase, the business school term finishing
returns? Yeah, I always just stretch

1026
01:13:10.399 --> 01:13:15.039
it because I'm like, yeah,
so I am working on three cases and

1027
01:13:15.159 --> 01:13:18.399
I think one I'm almost done with. That's a lot, but maybe some

1028
01:13:18.520 --> 01:13:23.680
pickleball later. Oh yeah, we
should play some pickleball. And I think

1029
01:13:23.720 --> 01:13:28.159
we might see a movie tomorrow.
Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, Yeah cool, look

1030
01:13:28.199 --> 01:13:32.079
forward to that. All right,
Well, until next time, don't kill

1031
01:13:32.079 --> 01:14:13.000
your husband and don't kill your wife. Be the b of the