Limb from Limb. George Hunter
In a decision that would prove controversial, deputies decided not to follow him. “We had undercover officers watching him, but they were told to back off because the news crew was there,” Hackel said. “We didn’t want our undercover people on the TV news.”
As Stephen walked away, a Channel 4 cameraman still had him in sight, but the waning daylight and blustery snowstorm camouflaged the suspect. Even as the videotape reels spun, Stephen and his dog disappeared from view.
By now, there were about fifteen police officers and evidence technicians milling around the Grant house. McLean was among them. “We were hoping maybe we’d find a clue on the home computer,” McLean said. “I wasn’t expecting to find much more than that.”
Stephen trudged east through his subdivision with Bentley in tow. When he got out of sight of the police and news crews, he used his cell phone to call his friend Michael Zanlungo, who lived two miles away.
“He told me the police had executed a search warrant and had impounded his Jeep,” Zanlungo said. “He asked me to pick him up at a crossroads near his house. I didn’t understand why.”
Zanlungo, also known as Mike, had been friends with Stephen since the Grants had arrived in Washington Township four years earlier. After the phone call, he got into the company car he’d brought home that night and met Stephen at the agreed-to location.
Stephen and his dog jumped into the car. Before Zanlungo had driven far, he noticed Stephen was acting strangely.
“He was very nervous,” Zanlungo said. “He was sweating and looking over his shoulder. He asked, ‘Are we being followed? That Taurus is following us.’ I said, ‘What’s going on? You’re not acting like an innocent person.’”
They drove east on 28 Mile Road, Stephen growing more paranoid by the minute. He said he wanted to see Lindsey and Ian, and Zanlungo offered to lend him his personal vehicle, a Dodge Dakota pickup.
“I was in a company car,” he explained. “I didn’t want to loan him the company car because I knew he had a bad driving record.”
Zanlungo said he drove back to his house and gave Stephen the keys to his yellow truck. “He put the dog in the truck and drove away.”
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As a team of five evidence technicians—two from the sheriff’s office and three from the state police—searched the four-bedroom home, Kozlowski and McLean cooled their heels in the garage with a group of about eight other detectives.
“We were trying to stay out of the way of the evidence techs,” Kozlowski said. “So we hung around the garage, just talking about the case. As I was standing there, my eye went to this green container—something about it seemed out of place.” The container, which stood along the wall next to a bucket full of toys, was marked Boys Clothes.
“I walked over and tried to open the top, but it was hard to get open,” Kozlowski said. “When I finally got the top open, there was a black garbage bag inside. I touched it. It was soft. It gave to my pressure. I almost closed the bag and dismissed it as a bag of salt or something, but I decided to tear open the bag.”
When he ripped a hole in the plastic bag, he caught a glimpse of flesh and blood. His initial fleeting thought was It’s a deer carcass. Then his gaze settled on a swatch of black fabric—a bra.
Kozlowski’s coworkers were surprised to see the unflappable detective suddenly jump away from the container and yell, “What the fuck!”
The detectives gathered around the bin as Kozlowski peeled away the garbage bag to reveal a female torso—dismembered.
“It was weird, very surreal,” McLean said. “We were almost in shock—we couldn’t believe what we were looking at. By that time, we’d already come to the realization that Tara was gone, so that part of it wasn’t that much of a surprise. But finding the torso…it was a huge shock.”
Still, a surge of triumph tempered the horror inside the Rubbermaid tub. “There was also a sense of elation—we got him,” McLean said. “We’d been working day and night. We’d sacrificed our personal lives. This is the kind of case that just takes over your life. All along, we knew he did it, but we weren’t sure if we were ever going to be able to charge him. And when we found the torso, we’re thinking, ‘We got him! We got him!’”
The stunned detectives hollered for evidence techs to secure the garage. “Then we switched our focus to finding Stephen,” McLean said.
Meanwhile, Hackel was busy fielding phone calls from reporters who saw Channel 4’s live report on the search of the Grant home. The sheriff insisted that Stephen was not under arrest. “He’s not even a suspect at this point,” he told reporters.
It was a hectic evening, the sheriff recalled, but it was about to take a bizarre turn. “I’m in the office trying to do damage control with the media, thinking this night has become a nightmare already,” Hackel said.
His cell phone rang again. This time it wasn’t a reporter—it was the chief of staff, Captain Rick Kalm, calling from the Grant home.
“He said in a soft tone, ‘We got her,’” Hackel said.
“I said, ‘What do you mean?’
“He says, ‘We found her in the house.’
“I said, ‘Rick, you have got to be kidding me.’ Then he told me, ‘Actually, it’s a woman’s torso.’
“When he said that, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up,” Hackel recalled.
The sheriff hopped in his car and made the twenty-minute drive to the Westridge domicile.
“I looked inside the container and saw leaves and twigs, and I told Rick, ‘He picked this body up from a wooded area and brought it back here. I’ll bet it was Stony Creek.’” The sheriff ordered another search of the park. It would begin at daybreak.
Sergeant Mark Grammatico was asked to remove Tara’s torso from the Grant home while detectives rushed to find Stephen. Grammatico ferried the plastic bin to the parking lot of a nearby shopping center, turning it over to Bill Robinette, of the Macomb County Medical Examiner’s Office.
After peeling away four black plastic garbage bags and one clear bag, Robinette, a medical examiner (ME), inventoried the clothing left on the body: a black Gilligan & O’Malley bra, an extra-small gray or silver Ann Taylor shirt—torn, black Victoria’s Secret v-string underwear, and the remnants of Isaac Mizrahi dress slacks, size 6.
Hackel called a press conference for nine o’clock Friday night, March 2, but he decided to hold off informing the media about the grisly discovery in the Grant garage. He merely confirmed that police had obtained a warrant to search the home, and didn’t say much else.
“I didn’t want Tara’s family to hear about it on the news,” he later said. “That would have been pretty gruesome. How would you like it if you were that person sitting at home and someone called you to tell you they heard on the news that your sister’s torso had been found?”
With Stephen on the lam, Hackel was worried about the safety of Alicia and her family. He also was concerned about Deena Hardy, the ex-girlfriend who had provided the salacious e-mails. “We didn’t know if he was going to try to get revenge on Deena for releasing those e-mails,” Hackel said. “And there was also a possibility he might drive to Ohio and cause harm to Alicia or Mrs. Destrampe. We had no idea what his state of mind was at that point.
“I called and talked to Erik [Standerfer],” Hackel said. “I told him we had information to lead us to believe there was foul play, and that they needed to come up here as soon as possible. That’s all I said. I didn’t want to tell them what happened over the telephone. Erik pretty much knew at that point that Tara was dead, but he didn’t have any of the details. This was about eleven-thirty