Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Where they lived , people did not just ” poof” go away living behind two kids and…
a distraught husband.
and their teenage Nanny
their conversations turn sexual .
But this is more than a scandal in Suburbia.
I’s a shocking crime of pation. exposing jaealousy, accusations of infedelity and dirty secrets.
He found somethings on her computer and who snap .
the more Questions detectives strarted asking him the more nervous he became.
the last words that stephen grant says he heard his wife say the day the successful buisnesswoman went missing .
but who was the you she was talking about ? and where did she go ?
A successful executive goes off the grid and her distraught husbans is at la loss .
The family´s beautiful teen nanny in the middle.
The most gruewsome discovery ofall .
Tara Grant was a beautiful and smart smalltown girl with big city dreams .
In the coporate world she kept moving up the ladder , she was a perfectionist.
But according to some ,that perfectionist married her opposit odd and akward stephen grant.
He was the guy that you thought would grow up and rob a liquor store and leave his name tag on and you ‘d see him on the stupidest criminals.
Stephen wasn´t the most popular kid in the world .He wasn’t the best looking, no one thought that he would get someone like Tara.
Snagging Tara was a real coup for stephen.
Tara’s sucess allowed him to have a very succesful life.
they lived in a very nice neighborhood, the drove new cars , their children attended a privat school.
But with those successes came some sacrifies.
Tara was working in San Juan and working monday, through friday
and then she would jump on a privat jet friday afternoon and go back to Detroit and spent the weekend and then back on the plane on monday to her work life.
while Tara was exelling at her job in sun soaked San Juan Puerto Rico.Stephen who had dreamed of working politics.
was holding down the fort at home
as a soccer coach and self-proclaimed mr Mom to their two small children .
Stephen Grant loved taking care of his children, he was extremely present in their day- to-day lives.
They seemed to be making it work
but were they really?
Their public face of this couple seemed lot more normal than what might have been simmering inside those doors.
And what was simmering was heading toward a rapid boil and it was stephens growing resentment that was fanning the flames.
In some level her ascension and his flat lined being left with the kids.in the back of his mind he certainly felt maybe little bit emasculated by that .
So they fought and stephen sought the attention of another
Stephen had a girlfriend before he met Tara and they had reconnected he was looking for someone to make him feel wanted.
Maybe several someones….
It seemed like he was also taking a fancy to the family’s beautiful 18 years old nanny Verena .
The grants had employed a german au pair who lived in their home to take care of their children.
stephen began to talk to her and because she was the only person in the home with him while Tara was working.and then their conversation turned sexual
He told her bluntly that he would like to sleep with her.
was it just flirting or did things become physical.
reportedly a very jelous stephen suspected Tara had someone on the side herself.
He found some things on her computer about a previous relationship and it looked looked like that this relationship had been rekindled.
and he believed an affair with her boss was making Taras weekly island getaways less work more pleasure.
Regardless of their actual or percieved alliances at least for the time been , they were staying together until one nigh twhen it all went to hell….
It is a freezing friday evening in february when Tara arrives home from Puerto Rico and informs stephen, she´s going back on sunday ,
-one day early
They immediatelly began to argue . he told her,”this has to stop you’re gone all the time”
reportedly and angry Tara packs her bags and walks out the front door.
she went down the driveway and got into a like a car service a black car service and left. so Tara leaves.
Hours later stephen tries calling her.and over the next few days stephen calls Tara several times but gets no answer. he also calls her boss in Puerto Rico
and her familym,but they aren’t worried yet .saying ” she’s probably just cooling her jets and she’s just staying away from you because she angry and and you´re hear from her soon “
But after five days of desperately trying to find her on valentines days stephen reports Tara missing.
one of the deputies took a report from him and it was immediately turned over to the detective Bureau,because it just wasn’t adding up .
The intense search is on .
It was a big deal , attractive well-educated Executives didn’t go missing in detroit. suburbs.
WHERE IS TARA GRANT?
did she runaway with a lover or is it something more sinister.
and a desperate stephen goes public with his pain .
stephen:” i hope she knows we here, she…please ,if you see her “
Tara Grant was excited to get home from along buisness trip to see her husband and two kids.but that happy homecoming would be short-lived
jealousluy was starting to creep into her relationship with her husband stephen and then five days later Tara would disappear.
High-powered globe trotting executive and mother of two ,Tara grant is gone.
Her husband stephen Grant’s says after they argued one night she left their suburban home Detroit home and and flew back early to her job in puerto rico and he’s been trying hard to find her for five days.
county sheriffs detectives almost immediately believes something ‘s amiss.
When they first got to the house ,stephen was very nervous ,he was very fidgety,he was trying to be overly cooperative.
and the more questions detectives started asking him the more nervous he became.
But beeing nervous dosen’t make someone guilty and Tara is just missing,so detectives also look at others,wondering if an other lover is connected to her disappearance or what about the nanny the couple had been close in days leading up to Tara’s vanishing.
Stephen Grant and Verena Dierkes
Their relationship had began approximately ,four to six weeks prior to Taras disappearance and it was escalating quickly.
the children were home sleeping the night their mother disappeared
But Verena was out .
As the investigation continues ,detectives are watching stephen
they set up surveillance on him ,they knew that something wasn’t right and they believe that he had something to do with it.
In the meantime stephen is busy playing the distraught husband. becoming a regular on the evening news.
stephen: call anybody ,call the police, call me .please.
Are people bying it?
It wasn’t Oscar- worthy performance
this guy who is now the star of the stephen Grant show
Detectives are watching and closing in,chipping away at stephen’s implausible story.
They found out that she wasn’t back in Puerto Rico, they had checked all the airlines . her passporthad not been used .
investigators knew her credit card had been used and the cellphone records showed when her last call was made.
Then investigators catch a break
when a women walking through a local park , sees a baggie tucked into a tree filled with some questionable items.
Gloves,the metal shavings and blood , investigtors later learned that it was in fact her’s blood.
police arranged to have the rest of the park searched at the same time staying on stephen.
at this point in time stephen had become somewhat uncooperative with the investigators. all of their questions they had or anything had to go directly through an anthorney ,
he had refused to takea polygraph for the investigators they had later learned that he had takena privat polygraph and it came back as inconclusive.
Three weeks after tara went missing ,detectives get a search warrant for the Grant’s house. a knock at the door brings a team of investigators.
stephen was there in the beginning of the search when de detectives got there.
then stephen asks if he can take the dog for a walk.
He was then free to leave ,he was not being detained by investigators at thtat time.
as stephen walks out of the house and into the cold winter night …
The case take a gruesome turn in the garage.
A bag with a lot of plastic in there. detectives cut open the plastic .
Inside the bag were remains of tara grant , at least part of her. her torso from the neck to the top of her thighs face up.
she had on her bra ,panties and part of the slacks she had been wearing , Tara Grant was dead and part of her was in her own garage .
Investigators first thought of feeling was- we got him!
but did stephen act alone? and where is the rest of Tara ?
and where is stephen?
The FBI swarming the state setting up a dragnet a full -on search on him .
and he buys a gun . is he going out in a blaze of glory?
The conclusion of the story . In public he played the role of the grieving husband looking for his missing wife .
but police says behind closed doors stephen grant was a calculating killer who not only murdered his wife and mother of their two children.
he also dismembered her body . but before he could be brought to justice Grant himself was now missing .
Grant is on the run.his wife Tara Grant had been missing for the last three weeks
but that all changed when a search of the family home…
yelds the most gruesome of discoverires
her torso. found in a bin right next to a tub of her kids toys
Grant knew the investigators were going to find it ,and that´s when he went on the run .
the manhunt for stephen Grant is on.
a suicidal stephen borrows a car from a friend and heads north into the fridgid michigan night.
he makes this meandering trip all over the state.of michigan until he remember that he and tara used to camp at the wildnerness state park
as he makes his way there stephen arms himself with alcohol,pills, razorblades and something else.
he purches a toygun, thinking that if he had a gun in his hand and he aimed at the police they would shoot him .
After driving for hours, a desperate stephen makes som final cals and writes his two young children godbye letters.
he knew he wasn’t going to win ,he was right ,
his vehicle is located up at the park and he was found outlined underneath a tree ,he had extrerme hypothermia semi-consious
he was seeing people and talking to trees and he was in pretty bad shape.
he was airlifted, taken to the local hospital .
once macombs county sheriff’s detectives arrive they
placed stephen Grant under arrest . but he wants to talk .
audio recording hospital .
detective: 7. 45 p, northen michigan hospital,interview with stephen grant.
Little do detectives knows the extent of the savage secret stephens been hiding.
audio recording from hospital
detective:okay ,go on to february 9th…friday
Stephen says it all started in their bedroom when tara was unpacking from her work trip and he was naked,getting ready for bed .
A fight about Tara´s busy work and travel schedule ensues, the argument quickly escalates ,Tara slaps him across the face then stephen hits her .
audio recording from hospital
stephen: she fell, i know she banged the …back of her head…on the floor ,and then…she said something like …” that’s it, i’m gonna take the kids ….your´re gonna be*****…homeless ,you´re a piece of *****.”
In rage, stephen does the unthinkable
audio recording from hospital
stephen:i shocked her ,i grabbed …her neck and choked her. she finally grabbed my hand …at one point…but it was too late then.i couldn’t stop it…and i knew i was going to prison.i panicked.
stephen continues to strangle Tara, she was looking into his eyes and he grabbed a piece of clothing and putting it over her face. so he didn’t have to see her while he was killing her.
after more then four minutes of callously choking the life out of his wife .
Tara Grant is dead.
Then with their small children sleeping just a feet away….
audio recording from hospital
stephen: i wrap a belt , around her neck i think it was my brown…leather belt. i knew i couldn’t carry her …so i wrapped that around her neck and i used it to.. to basically pullh er down the stairs.
stephen still naked drags tara body into the freezing cold garage where he struggles getting her into her back of her own truck.
audio recording from hospital
stephen :i dropped her.it was the most disgusting noise..it just sounded like….dropping a watermelon on the cement.i knew then that i had killed her.
Stephen eventually gets her into the SUV. shot the door and went back into his house.
moments later the familys nanny Verena with whom he had a flirtation walks in the door.
stephen quickly dresses then tells her the story he’s concocted that he and Tara fought and she walked out on him .
He wanted the nanny feel sorry for him at this point, he was playing that ” oh,my wife has left me ” card.
Then stephen begins a plan to cover his tracks . he began to do thinhs lake call his wife ‘s cellphone and leave messages
knowing of course that her body was in the family garage
The next day ,stephen ‘´s scheme takes a grisly turn. after saying goodbye to his kids he drives Tara’s car with her body in the back
to his father’s machine shop. he llays out a bounch of tarps on the floor and he removes her body and places her on top of it and he begins to dismember her .
audio recording from hospital
stephen : i cut tara’s hands off…and i cut to the next joint and the next joint …and the same with her legs and at some point i threw up…um , and i threw up again.
A shockingly barbaric act.
audio recording from hospital
stephen:and then i just told mself….look if youdon’t do this …you’re going to prison for the rest of your life and i kept cutting her.
When stephen finishes, he wraps the body part in plastic and fills a large plastic bin to the brim with Tara .
audio recording from hospital
stephen: i put everything…i think i put some newspaper … in there ,cause at one point…there was some blood.it was real thick like, like syrup .
investigator: so you had tara´s….entire body in one …
stephen: in one rubbermaid container.
Earliy the next morning , stephen grabs hes kids sled and heads out into snowy,stoney creek park , while standing on a hill stephen puts the bin on top of the sled but before he knows it…
audio recording from hospital
stephen : it was like keystone cops. the sled took off and im chasing after the sled… that has my wife´s ….cut body in it…down the hill.and i finally got it stopped …when it fell over and it broke…and all these pieces have now….fallen all over the place.
stephen eventually gathers Tara’s mutilated body parts an buries them around the park.he was hoping that the wildlife and within the park would eat the remains and therefore just leave bones which would t hen make it a little easier to avoid detection .
not that ,that would be her final resting place….
He moved her multiple times to multiple locations.
audio recording from hospital
stephen: i did a very ,very bad job….of hiding anything.it’s right there in the open.
The way he was giving up his confesssion, it was as if he was just telling a story . he would laugh, he would joke ,he showed no remorse .
Detectives also learn from stephen what led to their big break.finding Taras torso in the family garage.
Turns out ,when stephen heard there was going to be a large- scale search of the park ,he panicked afraid the poorly hidden Torso would be easily found .
He first removed it from the park then took it to his father’s machine shop and he put it on top of the office area .it remained there for approximately a day at which time
he moved it because he was afraid it was going to start smelling.and then that’s when he took it to his garage.
But it was also when detectives showed up with that search warrant.
the timing was just right fortunately for the investigators, he had just moved her Torso back therre the night before.
Investigators would eventually locate most of Tara’s remains but not all.
it believed there were 14 parts , but they only recovered 11 .
And they’d also find some of the saw blades stephen used.
investigetors recovered some where taras flesh still on them .
detectives now know stephen Grant did this despicable act all by himself.
the nanny . had nothing to do with it.
9 months after Grant is arrested for the brutal slaying of his wife the case goes to trial.
and after three weeks of testimony stephen grant is found guilty of second -degree murder and mutilation of a corps
He is sentenced to 50 to 80 years .
While justice has technically been served ,no amount of punishment can replace what’s been lost .
a couple of footnotes on this story .
six months after the trial stephen’s father would commit suicide, reportws were he was seeking visitation rights at the time for his grandchildren
those two kids went on to live with Tara’s sister . every year they attended Tara’s walk which raises money for domestic abuse programs.