Limb from Limb. George Hunter
The visitor, Stephen Grant, was alone. Hughes beckoned him into the cement-block cubicle, apologizing for the messy, wet office. Stephen said he didn’t mind and took a seat. He then pulled out a notebook and consulted it for a moment before commencing his story.
In a jittery voice, the pale, dark-haired, wide-eyed visitor told Hughes he hadn’t heard from his thirty-four-year-old wife, Tara, since the previous Friday night, when she stormed out of their Washington Township home following an argument.
Stephen explained that his wife was an executive with Washington Group International, a construction and engineering company with branches throughout the world. Tara worked in the company’s San Juan, Puerto Rico, office and returned home weekends, her husband said.
The veteran cop took notice of a gash on Stephen’s nose. The inch-long scabbed wound immediately aroused his instincts.
“I was concerned about the scratch—plus, he had waited five days to report his wife missing,” Hughes said. “And he kept looking at his notebook, like he was trying to keep his story straight.”
Macomb County over the past decade has gone from the sparsely populated, semirural home of Michigan’s last remaining military base to one of Metro Detroit’s most prosperous and fast-growing bedroom communities. Still, the missing persons there tend to be drug addicts who drop out for a few days, or ice fishermen who inadvertently float out toward Canada on giant Lake St. Clair—not prosperous businesswomen from the upscale enclave of Washington Township.
“Something wasn’t right here,” Hughes recalled.
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The slim thirty-seven-year-old six-footer told Hughes he was a stay-at-home dad who labored a few hours a week in his father William Grant’s small tool-and-die shop, making ball bearings, while his wife worked in Puerto Rico during the week. Stephen said he worked around the house most of the time and took care of the couple’s two children—six-year-old Lindsey and four-year-old Ian. He did have help, he added, from a nineteen-year-old live-in German au pair.
Hughes didn’t have to ask many questions; Stephen volunteered most of the necessary information without any prompting.
“He was rambling, and his eyes were really bugging out,” Hughes said. “He was talking really fast. I just kept quiet and let him talk. I was listening real close to what this guy was saying.”
Stephen freely admitted he was irked by his wife’s long absences. He told Hughes an argument about her frequent travel had broken out the night of February 9 when Tara phoned from Newark International Airport to tell him her flight home was delayed because of a huge snowfall that had hammered the East Coast the previous day. Tara also announced she would be returning to Puerto Rico on Sunday, a day earlier than usual, to prepare for a presentation. That’s what started the altercation, Stephen said.
“He said they argued about her travel schedule while she was in the Newark airport,” Hughes said. “He said they kept arguing and hanging up on each other, and then calling each other back and arguing again, the whole time she was heading home.
“I figured he was pretty hot when she got home, and I figured some kind of fight must have happened, because of the scratch on his nose,” Hughes said. “But I didn’t want to confront him with the scratch just yet. I wanted to just sit back and let him talk.”
Stephen obliged. He told the officer he had argued with his wife for about twenty minutes after she arrived home from Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Then, he said, Tara made a call from her cell phone before abruptly leaving the house and riding away in a black sedan.
Stephen said he heard his wife say, “I’ll be out in a minute” before she walked away. He told Hughes the car that picked her up may have been from an airport limousine service, he claimed, she frequently hired.
According to Stephen, his wife’s last words before walking out the door were a reminder that he needed to deliver her white 2002 Isuzu Trooper to the dealership Monday for a dent repair.
Less than ten minutes after Tara left, Stephen said, he heard someone enter the house. He told Hughes he thought it was his wife returning, and he hollered, “What the hell are you doing home? Get out!”
His angry shout startled the couple’s au pair, Verena Dierkes, a slender teen with long blond hair who was letting herself into the kitchen through the garage after a night of dancing with friends.
Stephen said he explained to the German girl, who’d taken a job with the Grants in August, that he’d just had an argument with Tara. After a brief conversation, the au pair went directly to her room, Stephen told Hughes.
The sheriff’s deputy voiced the question that would occur to dozens of investigators and observers over the ensuing weeks. “I asked why he waited five days to report his wife missing,” Hughes said. “He said Tara’s boss told him to wait.”
Stephen told Hughes he left several messages on Tara’s cell phone on Saturday and Sunday, but he got no response. On Monday morning, Stephen said, he contacted Tara’s Washington Group boss, Lou Troendle, in Puerto Rico, but learned she hadn’t reported for work. Stephen said Troendle then told him to hold off calling the police.
“He said they were supposed to have some big meeting with everyone before going to the police,” Hughes said. “It didn’t make sense.”
That Tuesday, Stephen said, he telephoned Tara’s sister, Alicia Standerfer, and her mother, Mary Destrampe, but he said neither woman in the close-knit family circle had heard from his wife. By now, Stephen said, he told his sister-in-law he was so frantic that he would be happy to find out if Tara was with a guy in a motel, according to Hughes’s report. Stephen further stated that he believes Lou and Tara’s mother were not being truthful regarding Tara.
“I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you call us to your house to report your wife missing? She was last seen at your house—instead of that, you come into the lobby,’” Hughes recalled.
Stephen explained that his sister had a friend, a Sterling Heights police officer, who had advised him to come into police headquarters to make the report. Stephen then earnestly pointed to his notebook and said, “If you want his name, here’s his name right here.”
“I’m thinking, ‘Why is he trying to provide me with so many alibis from people he’s spoken to, and showing me their phone numbers?’” Hughes said. “It sounded like a guy who was looking for a way out.”
Stephen further aroused Hughes’s suspicions when, less than ten minutes into the interview, he named himself as a suspect. “He said, ‘I talked to my father, and he said the first person who is always suspected in these cases is the husband.’ I thought that was a really strange thing to say,” Hughes said. “He sounded like a guy who had done something wrong, and was trying to get out of it. But I had to hear his whole story. I wanted to try to stay neutral.”
Stephen offered Hughes a bizarre theory about what may have happened to his wife. “He said Washington Group demilitarized chemical weapons, and he said her immediate boss was in charge of that,” Hughes said. “He came in with the story that his wife was kidnapped by terrorists, and that she may have been exposed to nerve gas. I’m thinking to myself, ‘This guy has been watching too much TV.’”
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Hughes continued jotting notes for his report while Stephen meandered on with his tale, consulting his own spiral-bound ledger as he bounced from subject to subject. The veteran officer, who has been married for twenty-three years and has two sons, was surprised when Stephen began talking about Tara’s alleged infidelities.
“He said his family thought his wife was having an affair with Lou, her boss,” Hughes said. “He said they worked closely together, and that he was a little suspicious of that. But at first he didn’t believe she was cheating.”
Stephen later changed his story, telling Hughes he was concerned Tara was having an affair with Troendle, her group boss.