Comedy Of Horrors - Washington Township, Michigan

This week, in Washington Township, Michigan, when an angry wife storms out into the night, a tale from the babysitter and a suspicious husband turn into a hunt for a body and possibly the worst getaway vehicle of all time. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of Small Town Murder. This is a wild story. I mean, this is a wild story featuring a person whose picture is just as insane as their actions. It's crazy stuff. We'll get into all that and more. First of all, head over to shutupandgivememurder.com, get your tickets for 2026. Every live show is available for purchase right now. I'm going to read the Just the Cities off, and you can check the dates over at shutupandgivememurder.com. These are in order of appearance, though. Nashville, Durham, Atlanta, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Denver, Buffalo, Royal Oak, Michigan, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown, and Boston. Those are the places. Any places that we obviously are not going, that we haven't been in a couple years, people have already messaged us. I know you hate here. No, no, no, no. That's not it at all. We've tried everything. We really tried. Our recording schedule is pretty deep, so they have to line up very specifically these live show dates. If there's not availability when we're available, then we can't do it. That's the problem. Just because we want to be somewhere doesn't mean that everything's available. What's available has to match up with a time frame, but b, it has to make sense just for accommodations and ability. For everything. Be able to get there. It's so hard. Thank you for everyone who's bought tickets so far. I think Salt Lake City is sold out. Buffalo is selling very fast. There's a few of them that are selling very fast already. So get in there and get your tickets right now. Shut up and give me murder.com. Also get yourself Patreon. My goodness. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports gets you everything that we put out. First of all, ad free, number one. Crime in Sports, your stupid opinion, small town murder, all ad free. But the bonus material, that's what you want to look at. Hundreds of bonus episodes. You've never heard before immediately upon subscription. And then you get new ones every other week. One Crime in Sports, one small town murder. And you get it all this week for Crime in Sports. We're going to talk about a crazy Australian cricketer guy. All they have to say is Australia and cricket. It's going to be funny. So there you go. We'll figure that out. Then for small town murder, it is Charles Starkweather part two. Which is, if you heard the first one, it's amazing. It's him and his girlfriend, his 13 year old girlfriend. And they're differing sides of the story basically. And it is wild stuff. We'll get into that. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the show as well. So get in there and do that. That said, disclaimer time, this is a comedy show, number one. We're comedians. We're going to make jokes. But this is also a murder show. And all the facts are completely real. Nobody, we don't embellish anything to make it funny or anything like that. That's none of that ridiculous stuff because you don't have to. There's crazy enough stuff going on to make fun of. And you go, well, how do you make jokes about murder very easily? The way we do it, we never make fun of the victim or the victim's family. Why is that James? Because we're assholes. But we're not scumbags. It's real simple. That's how it works. There's plenty to make fun of. We make fun of the murder. We make fun of some small town just because who cares? You know what I mean? We're all from somewhere that deserves to be made fun of. We all make fun of wherever we're from over there. So why not? So that said, though, I think it's time, if you, well, number one, if you think true crime and comedy should never go together, we might not be for you. But for everyone else that wants to hear a crazy story and have a good time, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back. Let me say here, let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. What do you say? Let's go on a trip, shall we? We have to. We are going on a trip to Michigan this week. What a place. Here we go, Washington Township, Michigan. Oh, you know, the lakes, the trees, the potholes. It's all beautiful. It's all very lovely. This is in southeastern Michigan. It's about 40 minutes outside of Detroit. So it's a, it's a burb, basically. Right there. We got about an hour 40 to Lansing, if you want to go to the Capitol to complain about the water supply. Sure. That's the way you do it right there. And the potholes. And about two hours. Government funding for them. For your pothole problem. Yeah. And about two hours to Coldwater, Michigan. Our last Michigan episode, episode 614, the Jeepers Creepers Murder. If you remember that one, that had the two most murdery looking people who've ever lived. As the, the couple involved. That was a mess. Oh my goodness. This is in Macomb County, area code 248. Really go back and listen to that Jeepers Creepers one, two, do yourself a favor. And a little bit of history of this town that we'll find out. Area code here 248, by the way. Little bit of history. The apparently this town was originally an orchard or a series of orchards. Apples I imagine. Yeah. It was Westview orchards, all different fruit actually. They had a bunch of peaches too. They grow here. Oh really? And this is a festival denoting the importance of the peaches that we'll get to. So yeah, they started it. They wanted it to be named after George Washington. Right. It was organized in 1827. And they had a meeting at a guy's house. And when it came time to choose the name, one guy who presided over the meeting said, I move, we name the town in honor of the father of our country. And that was that. And they all, everybody. Father of this town, father of this country. Unanimous. They all agreed. Never been here before. Everybody was like, no, no, he knows nothing about this place. Wouldn't care about it if he knew. Well, he was dead by now. But yeah, long dead. Couldn't drag a horse and carriage through this place. No. Break it. Two money potholes. That's the problem. Even then, too many potholes. 1827 is the year of organization. It's also home to the historic octagon house, which again, another town with an octagon house. Boy, boy do they love them. Built by a guy named Lauren Andrus. Took two years to make an octagon. Two years. Two years to build. Well, I assume there was just one construction crew came in and they were like, what? They looked at the plans and they were like, we're not doing this. And then another one came in and they got halfway done and they're like, this is ridiculous. We can't finish it. So they had to get somebody else in. Every three months they get a side up. Yeah. One of those things. We'll find out though, we've never been to this town, so we need to find out what other people think about it. What's there? With some reviews. Let's dive into those here. Here is five stars. The first thing is within walking distance of my house. Everything. Everything. That's awesome. The Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China. It's all within walking distance right there. The Domino's Pizza. It's all there. Yeah. And the Walmart. They got hot and reddies over at the Little Caesars. Everything is within walking distance. It used to be rural when we moved in. And that's the thing. It went from orchards to slowly knocking the orchards down, building sub-developments and housing and all that kind of thing. Everything's there. And everything, everything's within walking distance. We fought having all the big box stores coming to our town, but now I actually like the convenience. I'm glad I lost that argument. I'm glad I complained and yelled and put signs on my lawn and now I don't care. Our area has mom and pop stores slash restaurants and bigger chain stores slash restaurants. It's the perfect mix. Mix. Mix it up. Mix it up. Here's four stars. I love the area. Sure. Great. It's quiet and there isn't much going on. However, it can get boring because of that and it takes a while to get anywhere interesting. Not to mention I can't get good internet at my house because the cable refuses to come out to us. But I love the area. How far out are you? It's only 40 minutes from a major metropolitan area. What are we doing? They've drawn a line in the sand and it is 20 minutes outside of Detroit. Yeah. It ends there. Wow. The internet we do get is basically dial up but with Wi-Fi. Okay. Wow. The speed of that. Three stars. The Romeo Family Diner is an all right restaurant. Romeo? Romeo Family Diner is an all right restaurant. It is a pretty unique restaurant because it's not part of a chain and it is pretty popular around here. Teenagers can get a job here. Usually on weekends or evenings. It has regulars come in just about every day so it's a pretty satisfying restaurant. That's a review of the town. Okay. It's okay. The internet sucks. But we got a Romeo. We got a Romeo. We got the Romeo. Three stars and this one brace yourselves. This might shock you everybody. All right. Because you know places you hear about. If I say the Bayou you think hot and sticky. Sure. If you think of Michigan you think obviously tropical paradise. So these people are very surprised by quote cold and winter too much snow. That's their review. In Michigan. Is that right? It's Michigan you idiot. Yeah. What do you want? Say again. God damn it. What are you looking for? And then finally three stars. Maybe my favorite review of all time because you cannot argue with it. Some of these reviews obviously you could have a difference of opinion. Yeah. I mean everybody knows that Corona commercial was filmed in Michigan. So I can understand the confusion. This person here three stars they are right and there's no way of arguing quote not sure what future will bring. Not sure. Argue with that. I dare you. I dare you. Challenge that person. Challenge niche user. I dare you. That's their name on there. Okay. People in this town. It's a good size. Not a huge metropolis. Good sampling to know something. A good suburb. Yeah. Yeah. It is a few more guys than women here which is odd for a town of over a thousand people. You gotta be strong here. It's about 50.5% men about 49.5% women. Median age here 43.9 so a little above the national average which is about 38. Family here. You move out here with the wife and kids or husband and kids or whatever you want to do if you're a woman man I don't know but you're going out here and you're settling down and you're that's it. You're gonna go play in the yard. 58% married. Low divorce rate. Low children that are with single parents type of thing. It's just very much family units in the suburbs outside of Detroit. This in this town it is 89.3% white 2% black 1.1% Asian 4.7% Hispanic. Religion in this town it's 43% religious and looking at all the stats here. Catholic is the highest one which I'm surprised in the Midwest. But there you go. Catholics as we know are the Baptists of the North. Of the North. They're there. They're gonna be everywhere. Let's see unemployment rate here is low actually compared to the rest of the country. Yeah there's a lot of jobs around here to have apparently. The median household income here is high as well. Which we get in these kind of outer suburbs or kind of inner suburbs a little bit here. This here it's 89,466 dollars a year which is about 20,000 over the national average. Not bad. Median home cost here is also slightly above the national average. 387,700 dollars. So good money. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. Kind of you know leafy properties. Big yards that kind of thing. It's family. Better big. Yeah. For that kind of money. Well you know what maybe we've convinced you to move here. Despite the snow, despite the potholes. You want to go to the internet connection. Romeo's diner. We have for you the Washington Township Michigan real estate report. The average two bedroom rental here, 1400 bucks a month which is above the national average a bit. Yeah. Here is house number one, three bedroom, two bath, 1,056 square feet and it's a trailer. Let's be realistic. It's a trailer. It's what it is. It's like a single wide trailer. The listing calls it a well maintained three bedroom two bath home built in 2013. Built is like I quotes. Yeah. Is that when it was parked? That's when that's when they spot welded it. The final piece is in place and shipped it on over to your fucking to your lock number. So this is $40,000 for this though. Wow. I don't think it includes land though. I think no way. I have to pay. And it's there's like a walk-in closet which is weird for a thousand square foot trailer strange. Here's second house. Here's a three bedroom two bath 16163 square feet on 0.56 acres. It is just kind of your standard family home. You know what I mean? You got a couple of kids. There's a couple of bedrooms for them. There you go. 329,900 bucks. That's the most average house you can think of. And then house number three is a gigantic it looks like a museum. This house. It's crazy inside. Two bedrooms, seven bath, T-Ball for each and every beehull and then some 6085 square feet a monster house tons of like marble everywhere and like it's wild looking. It looks like the lobby of a nice hotel. That's what this place looks like. It's wild. Three million dollars though. Ha. Three 28,000 person town dollars. Yeah. How do you do that? I don't know who is moving there. I mean someone who works in Detroit doesn't mind driving 40 minutes I guess. That's all I can imagine. I don't even know where that money is in Detroit for crazy. Or it's remote. I mean you got to just be able just to be at home. The president of GM lives there. It's all I can imagine. Yeah. Anyway, things to do here. This Romeo thing must have a. To get a hold on this town. Yeah, the title. There's a Romeo diner. This is the Romeo Peach Festival. Oh. That's why I think they grow peaches here based on this. I'm looking at the schedule and it's a big into pageants. That's what this all these festivals around here. Like it looks I looked at like people who will be appearing here at this festival. The 2025 peach queen of Romeo, Olivia Lynn, who's an 18 year old from Washington township and she is the 2025 peach queen. So. Can you get her autograph? Yep. She's the valedictorian of Romeo High School also. 2025's Lil Miss Peach Blossom also will be there. Who is four years old. When are we going to stop this? Is it coming soon? No. I'll tell you right now. Nope. They're going to keep doing it. And the 2025 Mr. Peachy King also who is five years old and Mr. Peachy King. He's going to be entering kindergarten in the fall. So that's good news. It literally says that. I don't know what's going on there. Oh, shit. Then there's going to be some performances at seven o'clock on the Friday night. They're going to have open mic night at Romeo Gold Studios. So you know that'll be great. Then from seven to 11 at the old Masonic Lounge. We have Dirty Mike and the Boys. That's the band. Dirty Mike and the Boys? And not Dirty M-I-K-E, Dirty M-I-C. Dirty Mike and the Boys. The new relatives and a quote special guest. So we'll all be waiting with bated breath to find out who that is. Then the next day, the Saturday, that was the Friday. It's there's all day long. We got music two o'clock. Casual smile will be playing. That's easy listening. If you didn't think that just from the name at five p.m. the jukebox junkies will be playing. Sure. That they play shit from the 60s and 50s. Easy listening. And then at eight thirty, parallel fifth will be playing, which is party music. And then at the Masonic Lounge, because that's at the Romeo Lions Clubhouse. Then if you go over to the Mason, you can club hop this night. You go over to the Masonic Lounge and check out mass dispute with a special guest. Dirty Mike and the Boys is the best one. Dirty Mike and the Boys. Did you see the other guys, the movie? No. There was there was a team of homeless people called Dirty Mike and the Boys who were having orgies in Will Ferrell's car. Oh, perfect. That's what that that's what that references from. I got it. OK. No, but it's Dirty M.I.C. Wonderful. There's also the Blossom Time Festival, all right, which is the oldest and largest multi-community festival in Michigan. And guess what their big event is? Is it judging somebody? It is the Miss Blossom Time pageant. That's the one. Judging a gal on her lips. Oh, yeah. Well, they also have a Mr. Blossom Time. Oh, the judge guy. There's also a Miss Teen Blossom Time, a Miss Junior Teen Blossom Time. Hey, these girls just starting puberty. Let's put them on a stage and have grown men judge them. Perfect. Then Miss Junior Teen Blossom Time, which is even younger people. Oh, and Bud and Bud Princess as well, which is like four year olds. So anyway, crime rate in this town, what we are interested in. They stop judging boys when they're about to end their kindergarten and then they wait to judge them until they're men. Is that what this is? But we'll judge girls all the time. We'll judge girls. Yeah, we got to judge like the, you know, the eight to 11 year olds. And then we got to judge like the 11 to 14 year olds. Then after that, you know, they're growing into themselves. You got to have a different category for them. You can't have some chick with a C cup competing with an 11 year old. That ain't fair. You know what I mean? Jimmy, we'll have no boys in those. How are we supposed to? We're going to be distracted by this teen girl's huge rack. You know what I mean? We can't have that. I think I picture that's literally what people are saying, because I don't know what else you want. Well, judge boys when they're cute and then we'll wait until their bureau and ready to really, really go in. Totally. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in. Property crime is about one quarter under the national average. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about one quarter beneath the national average as well. How about that? It's a safe suburb. That's why people live here with their families. That said, let's talk about one of the most awful murders we've ever talked about. This is terrible. Okay. Let us talk about a lady first here, Tara Lynn Distramp. Now she is born June 28th, 1972. Tara is she grew up in Perkins, which is in the southwest corner of the UP in Perkins, Michigan. Yeah, the upper peninsula. You know, she's her family, not a lot of money in the UP. There still is. And there really wasn't back in the day in the 70s. It's not a it's not a luscious place to be. No, and there's not a lot of industry up there, things like that. And in the 70s, too, when the economy was shit, it was even worse. So it was hard. But I guess her family was doing pretty well. Very well. Her father, Gerald, who never went by Gerald. He went by Dusty. Yeah, Dusty. Oh, that's right there, man. What Dusty? He's just Dusty Distramp here. Everybody likes Dusty. Dusty's a real real chatterbox is what Dusty is. He likes to talk to everybody's real friendly guy. He has a good job. He's got full benefits and a decent living he's making at a wastewater treatment operator is what he does at the Sawyer Air Force Base. Oh, so that's good. He's a civilian contractor at an Air Force Base. So his checks are going to clear. That's what that means. All the time. That's yeah, they got to have that. I mean, wastewater treatment needs to be done at an Air Force Base, period. It'll always have to be done. All day. That's it. So at this point here, when Tara was about two years old and she's got a younger sister named Alicia, who's a year younger than her. When Tara was two, Alicia is about one. The whole family bought a 28 acre farm. Nice. Yeah. So it's it's interesting. It's not a not a farm that you can support a family on the output of the farm. Oh, yeah, it's not that it's considered more of a hobby farm. They call it. Oh, we just do this for fun. We like to do this. And you know, you might sell a little bit, but it's not. It doesn't. You can't sustain it on itself, basically. Wow. It's with money. So her mother here, Tara's mother, Mary stayed home with the girls and they make vegetables in the garden and they had chicken coops and, you know, tons of animals and stuff like that. And that was that would supplement the income. So they would do a tap the maple trees to get syrup to like they really work in it. They had kittens and dogs and rabbits and all that. Sounds like a fun life for a little kid running around with all sorts of animals and all kinds of shit like that here. So, yeah, they had their own. They also got like chores assigned to them young farm kids. Tara's sister, Alicia said, we had old MacDonald's farm to a tee, which you already knew she said that because we did the show live. Just funny. Yeah. Yeah. She said, we had everything. Horses, you know, sheep, cows, pigs, goats, guineas. Hey, fuck you. How's that? Pigs are the. They don't say just guineas. We just had some guineas. Hey, Vinny, they want to talk to you. They want to see how we treat you. How's it going? No, no, they bring us sausage and peppers on a weekend. It's not bad. You know what I mean? They got some peppers and eggs this morning. They brought me it's all right on this farm. You know, they bad, you know, also rabbits, hens, chickens, turkeys, geese, you name it. We had it. She said, Tara and I growing up, we had a list of things that we had to accomplish in the day. And if the list wasn't done when my dad got home, there were consequences to be paid. Farm shit. Yeah. It's not deluding the beatings, but we'll talk about his, his, we'll talk about dad and his, kind of his personality because it's an interesting guy from what we find out here. Well, I mean, any farm, someone comes home, the chores aren't done. There's consequences. You got more chores to do. Yeah. More chores. You're not going out tonight or whatever. I mean, that doesn't matter when you're six, I'm sure. But. But not. So Tara loved making the maple syrup. That was her favorite thing. Really. She is known Tara as a real talkative little kid. Yeah. Real talkative. Yeah. She's, I guess, just like her dad, everybody says, always chit chat and all that kind of thing. They said, even when she was an infant, she would always say hi to everybody and she's just very friendly. Do we know what dad did? He waste water management. Oh, okay. That was, okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. That's, he says the air force base. Yeah. So in elementary school, she can't ever shut up basically. Yeah. Her teachers would, she'd get report cards with all good grades, but it would be written talks too much. That's to shut the fuck up basically. She talks a lot. She's real smart, cute kid, smiley, friendly. So the teacher said, you can't get mad at her really. Cause she's not being contributing. She's not being a dick or anything, but she's not trying to cause you trouble. She can't help it. But God damn it. If this kid could just dial it back 20% that'd be terrific. So it would be frustrating. Um, when she's a teenager, she gets into the, uh, 4-H scene over here, the 4-H club here, she started, both the girls started raising sheep for the state fair. Wow. Like, yeah, real sheep to show off to people. Show goats. Show sheep. Um, Tara was raising cows, pigs, rabbits, chickens and sheep, which is pretty cool. Her parents were the 4-H group leaders. Wow. So you can't get more like just ingrained in everything, the farm and the town and the school and 4-H and your parents are doing this. This is some real small town America shit here. Yeah. Um, her parents got her, her own Apalusa, which is a horse, right? It's a horse. Yeah. And she'd spend hours brushing the horse and riding the horse. And she's a teenage girl with a horse. I mean, what? It's awesome. Remember when you were a kid, all those, like in sixth grade, all those kids who had like horses on their folders, all those girls, they didn't have horses. 4-H and you don't have some sort of wildlife. What are you doing? What are you doing? Why? Why are you bothering? That's awesome. She's riding a horse to the 4-H meetings. So do they have meetings? What do they do? I guess, yeah. They said the parents, the parents were the group leaders. So they got on a meeting. Yeah, the group. So she would do all of that. Um, in 1990, when she was almost 18, she won the award for the grand champion market hog. She brought up the nicest hog in the county. Yeah. That's right. And then, uh, fortunately for that hog, a spider saved its life, which was pretty impressive. It was good. Nobody, he was some pig. What do you want? Yeah. So the 4-H club got Tara into shooting as well. She's a good shot, old Tara. Oh yeah. Um, she was competing in tournaments around the state, bringing home all sorts of trophies for her shooting prowess. Yeah. Um, yeah, they took the, her team took the state title one year. The club's four member team took the state title with Tara as the leader of the group. Hey everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about the best holiday gift. There is an aura frame. AuraFrames.com. Oh my God. It's the gift that keeps on giving because they're going to have it displayed right there in the most prominent place in their house with all the pictures on it. Of all the family stuff, all the gatherings. Trust me, I've gotten two this year because I've got so many other people. You have an aunt. 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That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code smalltownmurder. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply. Now back to the show. Not bad. Everything she does, she does it well, huh? Yeah, she's an achiever. That's what she does. And we'll find out with her job and kind of how she gets into that. She's an achiever. That's just all there is to it. Every Christmas Eve, they had a big family tradition. Dusty took the girls out with a group of his friends and a bunch of dogs to go rabbit hunting in the snow. Come on, kids. Let's go kill the most adorable thing we can find in the woods. What do you say, guys? I know people kill rabbits and eat them all the time, but it's just funny. If I can't, my daughter was like nine. If I said, we're going to go murder rabbits now, we're going to go kill rabbits. Even if they're delicious or whatever, she would have not been okay with that, really. Even if I said hunt, I don't even need to pollute. No. They'll know. Yeah. But if I said we're going to go rabbit hunting, why? Why do we do it? We're going to go hunt them to pet them? Why else would we do this? My daughter felt bad about a fish when we went fishing. She didn't want to take the fish because she said the fish have families and they do all that. And then I said, well, you love steak and hamburgers. And she said, well, she was six. I love children logic. She said, well, cows want to be delicious for us. I was like, wow, you could, at six, you could twist your logic to get there, huh? They literally eat foods on purpose to be nutritious for us. They understand what's going on. They go, I'm going to be so marveled. They go, I'm going to be so marveled and tender. This is going to be awesome. So they would do that every time. And Alicia would, she and Alicia were both very good at this. Tara also hunted ducks and duck season, deer and deer season. She's a good shot. That's the thing about rabbits. They are fast as fuck. Oh, yeah, they're hard. They're going to get a cat. They're hard. So, yeah, Tara was known for being able to do very good with bringing deer down with a single shot. So you don't have to chase them and all that. So that's a good shot, putting it right where you want it. Long head. Yeah. Now, Dusty isn't perfect either. No. No. Apparently Dusty known for having a bit of a temper. Short temper. And being a little verbally aggressive with mom. Yeah. Yeah. So he would yell and all that kind of shit. I mean, I don't know. He's a UP farm guy. I don't know if that's normal or what. And shit filter. He's not going to be a... Yeah. Yeah. And Tara was, she always was upset that her mother would take it passively. Like, why don't you fight back? You know what I mean? Yell back at him. What the fuck? Tara wouldn't take this shit. So, yeah, she wrote later on in a diary about how it was painful, that aspect of her childhood. And, you know, it's tough. She vowed that that was never going to happen to her. She would take no shit. She said, no, I'm never going to have a guy that's going to talk to me like that. And if he is, I'll take him in the woods and hunt him, apparently. You know? Well, that's part of the 4-H credo, too. I'll give him a two-minute head start. Yeah. It'll be like surviving the game or whatever that's all we're going to do here. Ice tea and ruck-er-how. Let's go, fuckers. Get going. Move. You got yourself 10 minutes. But the 4-H credo is just like how to live a healthy life and health is part of it. It's like the main thing. Is it? Is that one of the H's? Yeah, health. Is it? I don't have no idea. I thought it was like horses, hay. No clue. Horses, ends, hillbillies. And hay. Perfect. Yeah, that's the 4-H to me. That's honestly what I thought. You know, hillbillies. Maybe I added that one on my own. But the rest of it, I thought that's what it was like. Horses and hay. I'm going to guess. I know that health is one heart, hands, head. Bingo, got all four. That's all four of them. What does that have to do with cows and shit, though? What does that have to do with cows? It's how to be a well-rounded person while taking care of your farm. That could be a hit. The hands part is like your larger skills. So it's like therapy for the farm? It's to keep you from fucking shooting a man that yells at your mom. 4-H better help, I guess. This is wild. What's happening here? Wow, I was way off. I thought they just did farm shit. I didn't realize this was such a... It's an indoctrination of keeping children in the farm life, I think. I think so. I think so. I don't know. Honestly, there was not really 4-H. I don't know when it started. It's all rural shit, but it's like a club to teach kids, to keep kids really in the... It was like in a farm stuff. Yeah, yeah. That kind of shit. It's community engagement via the farm. That sounds nice. I don't know when it started or why it started. It feels like it started because farm work ain't fun for kids. It's remote and lonely, I would imagine. So yeah, it's probably a way to get these kids together to have some sort of social scene I would think, right? Yeah. Otherwise you're just sitting on a farm being weird. I think it's mostly kids that do it. I can't imagine it's... That's when they start having weird sexual dalliances with farm animals. You gotta get it together. So Tara in high school played varsity basketball and ran track. So she's an athlete, mid-peninsular high she went to. There's only 275 kids in the entire school. She was also a cheerleader as well. Wow. She's got a lot going on in this kid. No shit. This is an addition to all of her farm work and everything else. Wow. So her and her sister Alicia were both cheerleaders. They both had big, giant hair. Their friend and fellow cheerleader said those were the days, the higher your hair, the better. This is the late 80s. So I mean this is the peak of a valley girl shit in the big hair and everything like that. All he says is the closer to God you are. They had apparently all of them had this giant hair and the one girl said, we called it the wall. All of us had this big wall. All of us together created a wall. If you remember like 89, all the girls had like the bangs that were down in the front but they had a big puff in the back. A push. Behind them, the big thing. A push up before it went over. Yeah. And then there was a little bit of bangs under it. They would push the bangs down and have a big pop thing up there. She also, she sounds like, I don't know how she can do all of that. She was also first clarinet in the school band. But there's only 234 kids. She could have been playing a plastic recorder and they wouldn't have known the goddamn difference at that. How many kids out of 234 farm kids know how to play the goddamn clarinet? So I don't know. But she took lessons for years. So she did that. She was also a good pianist as well. Nice. So this girl has some roundedness to her. This is wild. Yeah. That is a lot. And on top of all of that, which I'm exhausted already, in high school I had time to smoke some weed, chase some girls, play some basketball here and there, that kind of stuff. Very little time for actual work, school work and definitely no time for clarinets and apple forage clubs. Yeah. Course brushing and maple syrup, tap, tree tapping and all this type of shit. On top of all this, cheerleading, she also has a part time job too. How? I don't know. I don't know when she has time to work this job. Where's she working? At a shoe store. And she liked the, she liked working at the shoe store. Really? And she liked, she thinking of herself as she thought she could be a good businesswoman. She thought she was good at sales and could be a good businesswoman. She in her senior class, there was 44 in the class of 1990 in the school, she wrote that one of her goals was quote, to make enough money to buy everything I want, live in a big house with a jaguar parked in the garage. Oh, she wants a jag, all right. So she's not saying I want to have a big farm and I want to do that. I want a big house with a jaguar, which is not farm goals, you know. And jaguar maintenance money, that's what I want. Because yeah, I need money to pay for that shitty English electrical system in that car. Yeah, they're not old enough. In 1990. Now they're fine, because like they're not even, they're fine. I don't know, they're fine. They're beautiful. Back then, they were known for being very temperamental still at the time. So in college, Dusty and Mary weren't ready for her to go off to a big school for college. They wanted her to spend two years at the community college at home before going off, which also is a more economical way to do it, because you can get all of your- Get your pre-rex out the way. All that out the way and pay, it's the same credits, but you're just going to pay way less money for them. A tenth of the money. Yeah, but I mean part of it is going to be on your own and social and that's part of the college experience too, but they want her to stay around, you know, they're farm kids, they're not used to having them gone. So she attends the Bay Denoc Community College. So she goes there for a little while and then she ends up though transferring to Michigan State, which is where she wants to be. That's where she wanted to go to begin with, but they said stay here. So she studied marketing and loves marketing. So 92 is when she transfers to MSU and begins a business degree or a business administration degree. Is that the MBA? That would be a masters of business administration, I think. I'm not mistaken. So I think it's a postgraduate thing. So she ends up there and, you know, she's hanging out in college and for the first time, she's living out of a small town, she's off the farm, she's tons of kids and she's kind of- No 4-H, no FFA. No, none of that shit. God damn the city. God damn the city. No clarinet lessons, none of this shit. So she, you know, spreads her wings a little bit. And she meets a guy that she likes. Yeah, he's into political science. He likes politics. Marketing and politics. His poof, man. Talk about full of shit between the two of them. Not that- Don't listen to a word they got to say. No, if a couple comes up, I've been marketing, he's in politics. He goes, Jesus Christ, guys, please. You're both about to lie to me? So you're going to sell me M-way? What are we talking about here? You're going to try to recruit me for a multi-level marketing? So Stephen is his name, Stephen Grant, and this guy's picture is amazing. It's his fucking eyes. Oh boy. I can't wait to show everybody on social media this guy's picture because we did this for a live show when you put his picture up, a thousand people laugh immediately. Right away. He's so intense. You don't have to say anything. Just say Stephen Grant picture and a thousand people laugh. You're funny looking. It's just the way it is. And it's just, there's nothing really that stands out about his face and his hair and his ears and his nose. It's just these- His facial expressions. Fucking crazy eyes. They're so big. His facial expressions are always weird. Every one of them is weird. I've seen 20 different pictures, they're all weird. Almost like he's- He never looks normal. Surgically had his eyelids removed. It's just to be- He's one of those guys that you can see the whites of his eyes way too much around his eye. It's really, really crazy. So much white. It's strange shit. Yeah. It's to the point where if there was like, let's say there was a picture with 25 people in it, your eyes would immediately be drawn to him with his big stupid eyes. They're so weird. You don't have those eyes. So but he's handsome, he's tall, he's like an athletic guy. He had just graduated from MSU. He's like two years older than her. Now Grant is a friend of one of Tara's roommates. That's how they met. You know, in college you meet people like that. Oh yeah. And he immediately began pursuing her. He liked her. He thought she was hot shit. He was a huge partier and womanizer is what he's known for around. He's a college kid. And he's already graduated but he's still hanging out at college and hanging out at college parties. Yeah. Why is that? Except- Why are you still here? Yeah. You like college girls and booze. College pussy, that's why you're here. Yep. He's got a girlfriend at this point but basically he's known as someone who, he'll go to a party and cheat with any girl he can find. He doesn't know, he's no fidelity whatsoever. He tells friends that he's an atheist and he's going to hell anyway so he might as well enjoy the ride. Wait, that's not how it works. That's not, and first of all, I'm not aware, I'm not aware of cheating on a girlfriend as a, even in the most religious circles as a hell bound thing. It's not your wife or you know, you didn't like suffocate your grandma. This is college. If you're an atheist then you don't believe that shit exists, man. That's the other thing. Stupid. I'm an atheist, I'm going to hell. That's, you are confused, sir. You're confused, how shit, I don't think you're an atheist, I'm going to say that. Yeah, I think you're very religious to be honest. Based on that statement, you're at least agnostic, we're going to bump you up to, certainly not atheist. Yeah, right. Borderline Christian. Yeah, I mean, you're almost there. So he and Tara meet at a party, and this was just, I guess there was apartment complexes that had parties all the time and all the kids would get together. So he told her that he graduated from college and he was taking an aim at a career in politics. He's not running for shit with those eyes, I'll tell you that much. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, he's, with the womanizing, he's certainly qualified. He's qualified there, but you look at his eyes and he looks like he's, his eyes look like he has not seen a woman in 20 years and he just saw a giant paratits. That's what his eyes look like. Yes, but all the time. So you can't do that. He, he takes a temporary job as an aide in the Lansing office of a state senator named Jack Faxon, who was out of a Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. He just wanted to get his foot in the door, get some experience to move up and that's how you do it in politics. Farmington Hills is beautiful. That's the rich place. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Grant was thinking, you know, if I do this right, if this guy gets reelected, I'm going to end up, you know, probably a paid staff member at that point. He also loves to party because he hangs out at college but doesn't have any actual schoolwork to do. So all he does is party and try to hook up with chicks. That's all he does. Which is interesting. Now, Steven and Tara date a couple of times. Tara likes him. He's good looking. She thinks anyway. Confident and all that kind of shit, but the relationship doesn't really go anywhere. They remain kind of just buddies that run into each other at parties and stuff like that and know each other, but they don't really hook up or have any kind of romantic thing going on. That is until 1994 in August. Because grandmother dies. Oh no. Which obviously makes you horny, clearly. No, it doesn't. But somehow this is going to spark a relationship. Really? Yeah, the family unites for the funeral and Steven showed up. He spent the entire day driving up from Lansing to and surprised Tara and he called her to say at her parents' house to say, hey, I'm in town where the funeral is. I'm going to come to the funeral home if you don't mind. Which that's a long drive to go. Hey, I'm coming if you don't mind. No, turn back around and drive back down. So yeah, he's there. So Tara said, yeah, sure, come to the funeral home. He came to the funeral home. Tara's there with her boyfriend. Oh. Yeah. So Steven's like, okay, this is interesting. But Steven and Tara are, they have a good back and forth that pisses the boyfriend off of obviously. So he's going to act jealous and he's probably some small town dipshit goober or something. So, you know, he didn't go to college with her and all that kind of stuff. So she probably looked at him as, you know, just kind of the local guy who gets jealous and who knows. But either way, she is impressed that Steven drove all the way from Lansing to be here. She's very impressed. She said, huh, maybe I underestimated this cat here. Maybe he's just, you know, maybe he's a, that kind of guy, you know, any kind of guy you can depend on who will drive hours to your grandmother's funeral on spec. Without asking, is there a guy there? That's what I mean. Not even asking. Hey, not saying like then we can go out to dinner later. Just I wanted to go pay my respects and make sure you're okay. That's nice. So Grant was invited. Steven gets invited out that night to the family dinner. Okay. I said, you bring him along too. Family doesn't like him at all. No. They don't like him. No, they do not like him. You know, Alicia despised him, the sister. Couldn't stand him. She was disgusted by the fact that Tara was like liking this guy and laughing at his jokes and shit like that. Not into him at all. She said he was, the way she put it was he was entirely too worldly. What does that mean? Meaning he's been around too much. Oh, got it. He works for a politician. He's doing, he's a little too fast for her as the way she played basically. Um, but it doesn't matter if Tara likes him, Tara likes him. So after dinner, he got back on his car and his car and drove home and that was that. So Tara's sister said she was never into Steven at all. Alicia said absolutely not. She said he was a guy who bellowed when he talked. He's always has a lot to say and always a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. And at a dinner table of, you know, a family after a funeral, you don't really need that. So Alicia said also he always had to have the last word no matter what. So that's her impression. But I mean, there's a lot of siblings that don't like their siblings, husband's wives, girlfriends, boyfriends. That's just, that's, that kind of comes with the territory here. So after a few months of dating, they go back down and start dating here. She moves in with him. So this comes out of nowhere. No one expects this that she's going to move in with him. So he must have quite the rap. He's doing it. Never mind her doing sales. He can do some sales. He's selling. Yeah. He is selling hard. Now the guy he was working for got reelected in the fall, but basically he doesn't get offered a job. Oh, shit. No. So he must have been shitty at his job. Terrible. No one offers him a job. None of the guys, he didn't even like say, I don't have room for you, but this guy, they just drop him. So he gave up his apartment and he moved to Detroit to work in his father's machine shop in Mount Clemens. That's what he's going to do. Tara moves with him. That's not politics at all. No, that is a machine shop where they make ball bearings. That's failure, right? Yeah. If you set out to be in politics and now you're working in a machine shop in Mount Clemens, I would say probably failure. What's the day? Even if working in a machine shop is great and fine, it's not what you wanted to do. It's not what you were trying to do. You went to college for nothing machine shop oriented. Nothing at all. So now you're making ball bearings, which sounds nice. For a guy who seems to like to do things and has shit bubbling. Politics is an adrenaline kind of all that to say, okay, now make the same ball bearings every day forever. That's pretty boring. You're turning metal into a balanced ball, a very small one, over and over and over again. Here's big metal. Make it into smaller pieces of metal, but real smooth like. Make them roll. All right. So September 1996, Steven and Tara are married in a little country church up by her hometown there. Steven had proposed on a bench in front of Detroit's Institute of Arts. So that's nice. Real romantic. Yeah. So at the time of the proposal, he was trying to do something better. He's trying to better himself. Now I don't know what, he works at a machine shop in Mount Clemens. I don't know what he needs all these skills for, but he wants to get himself to be a more cultured person. Like what? How's he? Like fine, he wants to learn about fine wines and learn about like fancy foods and fancy ingredients and he's working at a machine shop. Yeah, who gives a shit? You can't afford to be a foodie at this moment in time. Not like that. Not French wines and shit. But that's what he wants. He wants to learn how to cook fancy foods and all that. And he actually becomes good at it. He knows his wines and he learns how to cook some decent food and he's a good talker. She's a good talker. If you go over to their house, you're going to have a fun night. They're going to make some food. There's going to be some wine. They know how to talk. They know how to bullshit. He's a good time. He's setting himself up to be a really great host. Yeah, yeah, he's trying to be, he said, well, if I can't do what I want for a living, I'm just going to be a general bon vivant of fucking life. You know what I mean? My own mater-D at home. That's it. I'm just going to be this fucking, yeah, I'm going to be this man of the world and live well. During the day I make ball bearings. At night I eat soft cheese. He also affected a way of smoking a cigarette while holding it from underneath it like that. Backwards in the fingers and a slight French accent, just very slight. If someone asked him something, he'd go, mm-hmm, oh, that's just a little very small thing. That's all. Put the cherry on his thumb and forefinger. Yeah, little things like that. So Tara has trouble finding a job and Steven's the one supporting them financially at this point because she's having a hard time finding a job. But then she gets a job with a company called Kelly Services, which provides workers on a temp basis to different businesses and industries. It's a temp company, you know, that sort of thing. Now she's placed in one of her assignments in a local office of a company called Morrison Nudson, which is an engineering firm that built the Hoover Dam and the Trans Atlanta Alaska Pipeline. Not the Trans Atlanta Pipeline. That's a different pipeline. Trans Atlanta. The one that goes off the link. The Trans Atlanta. It's only through Atlanta. It's a very short pipeline. It just goes through all the peach tree streets, all of them, which is all of Atlanta. So the funniest miss spoken thing you've ever done. Just on image of it is amazing. The Trans Atlanta Pipeline is amazing. Yeah. Yes, it is. So now the company is not really doing as well as it was. You know, the Hoover Dam was built in like the fucking 40s. So yeah, time has worn on now. Although I've heard that the concrete is still curing in the middle. Have you heard that? I have heard that. Yeah, there's probably still corpses in there in the concrete in the middle. So many people died. Probably a body size void in a couple spots. A few spots. Yup. That's just putrification is what they call that in the middle of all that concrete. It's not dry. So the company's about to be bought by the Washington Group, which is a giant, big engineering and construction company with worldwide operations and more than 20,000 employees. Wow. So they're about to be bought out. Now Tara sees this happening and wants to latch on permanently with this company because she sees if we get folded into this company, there's going to be room for advancement. So absolutely. Her big thing is she wants to do it and she has great work habits, obviously, as we found out, she can really manage time, obviously, great personality and all that sort of thing. So she ends up being taken on by the company and taken away from the temp company, which is great. And she starts moving her way up the ranks of this company quickly, real quickly. November 2000, she gives birth to their first child. They have a daughter named Lindsay. And then in and she was couldn't be more thrilled. She wants to like have a job, have a career, also be a mom, though. That's a big deal to her. She wants to do all that stuff. Her sister said she was ecstatic. Lindsay was just the sparkle of her eye. Sure. And then two years later, 2003, they have a son named Ian. So yeah, they're building their little family, two kids, a boy, a girl. Each move out to the suburbs to Washington Township. And they're going to live quite the life here. In 2003, after the son was born, Tara was named system. Well, one of the systems managers of this company, which gives her a bump in salary and all that kind of thing. And it gets better from there. By 2006, she became, they offered her the full time posting in Puerto Rico. Oh, yes. Now you go, oh, Christ, Puerto Rico, we live in Detroit. That's going to be tough. But the salary is, and this is in 2006 money, $168,000 a year. I mean, you don't tell them no. You take that. In 2006, if someone offers you $168,000 and do anything, you're doing it. Period. Today, that's incredible money. Then it was much better. Oh, yeah. Today, it's still good, but then it was like, holy shit, you're rich. That's crazy. Or at least, you know, real comfortable at that point. Very well off. So she, uh, the families doesn't want to move to Puerto Rico, though. So that's a problem. So she decides that she can, she can commute. Okay. She can do five days a week in Puerto Rico and then come home on Friday nights, spend the weekends in Detroit with the family or in Washington Township with the family, get back to Puerto Rico on Monday morning. That is her, her goal. Weekends in Detroit, my word. Weekdays in Puerto Rico. She also gets accepted into the program at her company, which is considered pretty a hot shit program. It's geared at those with a shot at the upper, upper management. It's like an upper. Like, yeah, an executive training program. Officer one day. Yeah. Right. You could say, uh, it was called the leap program and it was offered each year to just 15 of the employees in the company. And she's one of them out of 20,000 employees. Yeah. This is a big deal. So she is in on that. Um, now she has a, tries to have a work life balance. She really does, which it's hard, but for that kind of money, it's, that's a tough spot for anybody to be put in because you're thinking, okay, I'm not going to be that great of a parent or partner or anything like that. But at the same time, this is providing for your family and for your family's future. This is college money you're making for your kids. This is, you know, this is big stuff here. And you're making three average people's salaries every year. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's worth giving it a go. And Steven still makes a few bucks on the side at the machine shops. I mean, dad, so he's probably making a decent living. They're doing very well for themselves. And with two small children, you look at, well, fuck, that's part of my responsibility. And that's, that's the, that's why it's hard to be a parent to balance all this. You get it. Yeah. That's everything. Now you're seeing why it's not smart to have a baby at 21 years old. That's why it's hard. Life planning. She wanted her kids to be round, well rounded like she was. Yeah. Um, apparently the elementary school that Lindsay goes to doesn't offer Spanish to first and second graders and she's upset. Really? She wants the kids to learn Spanish when they're six. Yeah. But they don't teach kids that in elementary school. You got to put them in a class. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's when their brain could do it. Right. Exactly. It'd be much easier if you taught them all that shit when they're five, they learn it quickly. So she wanted them to be bilingual though. That way also she'd come down to Puerto Rico, bring the kids down. Sure. She, um, she was also okay and happy because one of the au pairs that they hire because they have to keep hiring a series of au pairs to come in and help with the kids because Steven does his work too and you know, whatever. So one of them was Spanish. So she would tutor the kids as part of her duties. Terrific. Um, Tara is also stays very on top of the household things while she's in Puerto Rico. She would call him to make sure that he had, uh, you know, taking the kids to the ballot to ballet stuff that they were doing. Uh, and also to the actual ballet because they need to learn culture as well. She's got like a chart of what these kids need to know. Yeah. It's Spanish ballet. And also tonight you have the nutcracker to go watch. We got to go watch that. Yeah. She wanted Lindsay to take dance lessons. Wow. And, uh, she also at five years old got Ian to start taking hockey lessons. Is that right? Yeah. That's that, that might be a little, that might be a little much. I mean, she doesn't know it, but like, obviously, but like, you can fuck that kid up. Yeah. Well, putting young girls in dance a lot of the times too. I know there's tons of young girls who did dance, but a lot of times, and you'll know that cause all the girls that you did this with probably did this, a lot of that leads to eating disorders. A lot of the times. Yeah. Somehow there's a correlation, uh, mathematically between those clothes and being able to do the things and, but more of that, it's, it's, um, it's, it's a, uh, kind of not an intrusiveness, but it's, uh, that achiever thing also works with kids brains. When you tell them achieve this and achieve that and dance when you're for and dance with that. But if you're that kind of person that did that naturally, like Tara is, you don't even think about it like that. You're thinking about it as that's what I wanted. That's what I did. Yeah. And I loved it. So, um, Tara started taking golf lessons, by the way. Really? Because a lot of business gets done on the golf course. And she figured that part of that executive program would be, I'm going to take some initiative and do that. She would also plan events. She would like her, like a family event. She'd have like several notebook pages dedicated to things and, uh, lengthy lists of gifts and other shit for birthday presents and Christmas presents and all that and a lot of that too. I'm sure she felt as any parent would guilty for not being there all the time. So you want to give your kids stuff like that. Um, yeah, uh, she in 2007, in early 2007, like January, because she's generous with Steven also, she was already planning the details of a special surprise for him, a combination birthday Christmas present for him in December, which would be a completely lush, luxurious Napa Valley tour. Oh, for all those wines he loves. Yep. Steven can get into all the expensive wines and they can, they could stay in a bunch of real fancy hotels and drink fancy wines and that's going to lead to fancy fucking and it's going to be a fun time. Oh my God. The world moves fast. You work day, even faster. Pitching products. Drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 copilot is your AI assistant for work built into word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize. So you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more at Microsoft.com slash M 365 copilot. Like that. That'll be full of screaming ego. Oh, that's going to feel great. And then anal. Come on. Shit. A cake bread. Yeah. You're great. That's why she needs the cake bread. She's like, oh boy, I better loosen up. So she, Steven has some expensive tastes. Even back then he had a $2,500 mountain bike, which is really pretty expensive if you're not like in competition. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably more than that. Something, something we've never heard of probably. Some shit we never heard of. Grant in 2006, Steven made $18,900 at the machine shop for the year for the year. That's all he made Tara's year and bonus was $28,000. So, man. Yeah. More than he made all year, but I mean, also he's the fucking primary caregiver of the kids. You're right. If you flip, if you flipped them, you wouldn't be going, she only made 19 grand, what a loser. You'd go, oh yeah, she's taking care of the kids. What do you want? I'm such a bitch. I think that sounds more. Yeah. That sounds awesome to me, but to him as like a political science major and a swinging dick on the campus, even when he didn't even go there. This is probably a masculine to him. He probably hates it. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I sometimes you would, he might just be thrilled for his wife. Who knows? You know what I mean? I'd be for her, rooting for her. Yeah. Good for you. So they live in a comfortable home in Washington Township. It's real nice. She's making, you know, almost $200 grand a year commuting between Detroit and San Juan. This is early 2007. That's how it's doing. And Steven, everybody said he prided himself on the Mr. mom thing. She loved it. Yeah. He would be at this, you know, the soccer dad on the field when the kids were doing soccer, he was like one of the coaches and a local newspaper reporter said he took them to all their appointments and soccer games and appreciated getting the accolades for that. Okay. I am a good dad because I mean, that's all he's got. Honestly. Yeah. Either that or I make really smooth ball bearings. What the fuck else is going on? I'm saying there is something about that. I told you, you're a great dad. That feels great. Good. Yeah. Yeah. You're trying to, yeah, that's what I mean. You're trying to do that. So Tara is running this office in Puerto Rico. She's an operations manager by this point. And it's very interesting. She works for the Washington group international, which is based out of Idaho, hires people in Michigan to work in Puerto Rico. It's a very confusing thing here. Makes you worry that that shit's shady, right? It sounds like a lot of places to hide things. Yeah. Exactly. Follow, you're not going to find the queen. I'll tell you that much right now. So February 5th, 2007, there is a letter that Tara wrote. Rotes, she writes. Did I just say that? A letter that I literally looked at my notes and it says, Tara wrote a letter and I wrote and I said a letter that Tara wrote as I'm reading that because I'm a moron. She built that transatlantic pipeline. Wow. So it's all right. It's okay. Tired. My throat hurts. I had my guy. I was at the dentist for three hours yesterday and my mouth opens like I have that dry throat thing going on. It's not good, man. So this is all right. She can wrote all she wants. In this letter, she apologized for always making Steven feel wrong for not loving him as well as she should and for sometimes pushing him away when he was, as the way she put it, quote, the one person who has fully committed to me and to love me unconditionally. She wrote that she wanted them to renew their wedding vows so that she could have a clear mind and an open heart to fully love you for the incredible human being you are. Wow. So you think she feels guilty for having a successful job, but it takes her away from the family as much. Yeah. And I think she's busy and sometimes probably as anybody would feel, you feel like you're kind of, I don't know, you're busy doing stuff and you feel like, oh, I've kind of, I've kind of abandoned this person almost and I need them to make sure that they know that they're part of my life here. But you also feel a little bit guilty of like your boys soccer team wins on Friday and you were on a plane from. Exactly. God knows where. Yeah. All of it. You just feel like you're not a part of it. I'm sure that she has similar feelings about the kids, you know what I mean about? I feel bad and you know, whatever. So she doesn't give him this letter. It's in her notebook. Okay. Okay. So as of 2007, like I said, they had a series of au pairs come in and help them. And 2007 in July and January, February, they have a particular one named Verena Dirks, D I E R K E S. She's a 19 year old tall blonde German girl. Yeah. Yeah, that's who you hire to be at your house while you're gone five days a week. Right. Yeah. Would you that is like basically if you had a wife and you're like, I'm going to be gone five days a week. I hired this shirtless glistening man with tremendous pectoral muscles to help you around the house. He needs to be oiled up every like two, three hours though. He gets dry. So you might make sure you oil him. 20 year old Brent from Malibu. Yeah, here he is. He comes over and they're like, Brent, you don't have a shirt on. And he goes, I don't have any shirts, bro. I don't own it. I don't have any. Yeah, I just don't have any shirts. I do have this oil. Can you get my back on the spot right here? My back feels dry. Feels dry, you know, as he's just rubbing it all over his chest. You can't reach back there. Similar move. That's a tough move. You got to trust your husband. Put it that way. Anyway, kids, get your soccer gear. Yeah. Wow. So she'd been with the grants since August. She really liked Stephen as far as it finds him to be like kind of a fascinating older guy, you know, he's 37. He's smart. He knows wines. He knows politics. Yeah, all that. And also he, he runs long distance. He's in good shape. Also he's six foot tall. Yeah. You know, he's fine. She's only been in the States for a year or two. And she's a pretty girl, still a teenager. She just graduated the year before from a school that catered to top students in her hometown of Osnabruck, Germany. Yeah. Yeah. She's so far as the best au pair they've had in the series of them that they've had here. They work with a company called AuPair in America, which is a London based company with US headquarters in Connecticut. Yeah. That also complies people in Puerto Rico, Michigan and Idaho. Right. It's a UK place that places German students in the United States. And Michigan. Specifically Detroit. Well, but they're based out of Connecticut. Right. Yeah. So don't you got to add that in there too. With headquarters in Connecticut. Yeah. So for a fee of $7,400, the company would screen potential au pairs. That's their hiring fee? That's 2006 money. Wow. That's a lot of money to do that. Now, Verena's contract called for her to be paid $285 a week plus room and board for 45 hours of work a week. That's the deal they make with her. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. But they had to pay like 10 months of salary right up front to get her in there. Yeah. Right. So the contracts are for one year and they can be renewed as well here. Now, February 9th, 2007, it's a Friday. Tara is on her way home from Puerto Rico. Yeah. She's ready to come home from Puerto Rico here. For the weekend, like she always does. She has a layover at Newark Airport, which sounds just brutal. Just in that year? Yeah. That's brutal. That airport was not great back then. No, they've definitely improved it now. It was shitty back then. So she talks to her sister, Alicia, during the layover. Why not? She has extra time. And so for about 40 minutes, they just have, you know, normal shit. Cabin and bullshit and gal talk there. Alicia said she seemed upbeat. You know, she said, was talking about she later plans out to Alicia about returning to Puerto Rico on that Monday, as usual, you know, some plans, maybe for the weekend, what we're going to do with the kids and all that kind of thing. So she arrives back to the Detroit Metro airport and she called her home in Washington Township at one point as well. She calls the house phone and I believe then calls Steven's cell phone, calls her phone too. So they talk on the one way home, got to got it, whatever you want to get out of that. So Tara's sister, Alicia said she spoke with her sister, not only at the airport, but also when they were, when she was on her way home as well. So, and a lot of people, when they're driving, they like to talk on the phone because it keeps them kind of awake and everything like that, especially if you've just traveled, it's been a long week and it's starting. I think it's, she doesn't get home to like nine o'clock at night too. So she said that her sister though seemed to be in a perfectly good mood. She did say that the constant travel gets old and you get tired. Yeah. That sounds like a brutal schedule to do every week. That's just a lot. So Alicia said that her sister told her that her visit that weekend, you know, she's looking forward to it and she'd be going back on Monday. That was that. Now, she gets home apparently, according to Steven, that she's not even unpacked yet when they're talking and he's saying, listen, this is too much. You're on the road too much. You need to be home more. The kids need you. I need you to cut back. I don't care if the income is less. We can do on a lot less. We can get by on a lot less. We don't need all this shit, whatever. So he says that she said, no, mind your business, basically. I'll do what I want. The fight escalated to her repacking her shit. Oh, making a phone call at some point to call for a car service to come get her. And then at 1115 PM, she takes her suitcase and gets into a dark sedan at the end of her driveway. Nice. And says, I'm going, that's it. I'm going back early to Puerto Rico and I'm not putting up with your shit all weekend. Essentially. Yeah. And that's what he said happened. So he said she left and he didn't know if she was going to go right back to Puerto Rico or if maybe she was just going to go to a hotel and cool down or whatever. I've been at Newark for a while. Just hang out at the Newark airport. She had just the anti-ans at the Newark. She said that, uh, he said that, you know, they've had fights before where she would go away and cool off for a minute. And so this was kind of not unheard of that he wouldn't hear from her for a day or two after this. Yeah. But then a few days goes by. Oh, days goes by and apparently, uh, it goes all the way till, uh, the next week. And on Valentine's Day, Stephen decides he's better report her missing because he hasn't heard from her since that night of the ninth. And apparently this is, she missed a work meeting in Puerto Rico. Oh. And so he waits 24 hours after she misses this work meeting and is notified by the work, you know, people, that's when he says, okay, she's, something's wrong here. She's missing. So I don't know why it would take five days and if she missed a meeting, you would call immediately. Wouldn't you? Yeah. If you haven't seen her and she missed a meeting and she should be there and she's not. Where is she then? Is he going with the 24 hours since I last, since she was like, but if he does that, that's the ninth. That's, it makes no sense. He could have still called right now. He could have called a while ago. Um, so it makes no sense. So he ends up going down to the police station to chat about this with the cops, to tell the desk sergeant, yeah, it's, you know, it makes you look more urgent. Yeah. More, more, yeah. If I, if I'm here in your face, you'll actually look for her. Whereas if I call, you might just write it down and it's a slip of paper that gets shuffled off the desk. How urgent this is based on my eyes. Yeah. Unless I'm in front of you. Yeah. Yeah. How large. Fucking yeah. My eyes are. So there's a detective nearby as he's given the desk sergeant the details and the detective is listening because it's pretty entertaining shit. So he's just listening from the side here. Um, so anyway, uh, the guy, the, the detective is a guy named Sergeant Brian Koslowski. Sure. And he is in way before he's supposed to be there today because there's a staff potluck lunch. Oh boy. Oh, yeah. Oh, the old fucking Valentine's Day potluck is down at the police station. Yeah. Why are they doing that at Valentine's Day? I don't know. It's romantic. So he is walking past this and he hears the desk sergeant say how long has your wife been missing and the guy say, Steven say it's been five days. Yeah. So this Koslowski guy actually stepped outside his doorway and looked like this guy just say five days to report his wife missing. What the fuck? He said, I saw he, he popped out of his office and looked at the guy and just kind of stared at him and was like, this guy is out of his fucking mind. And he said, I can't wait to read that report that this dude's taking because something is weird here. Literally, that's what he said. So, uh, but he went to his potluck lunch anyway. He said, I got to do that, but later on I'm going to read that report. So Steven Rambles and, um, he's just talking. He said his wife's been getting home, was getting home late on the ninth. There was a snowstorm on the East coast that delayed flights and that he'd had a couple of beers while he waited for her and that they argued over the phone. About her changing plans because he said what precipitated the fight was, she said she was going to go back to Puerto Rico on Sunday instead of Monday. And that pissed him off because he said, we're going to have one day with your kids. Right. You need to be here more. And she said, don't tell me what to do. Pup, up, up, up. As soon as she got home, the fight resumed. They had had it over the phone earlier. She said they yelled back and forth for maybe 20 minutes. She had made a call on her cell phone, told someone to pick her up and that she'd be out in a minute. He didn't know, but he thought maybe it was the limo service that she uses all the time to get to the airport. I think her company has an account. But she, that was it. The last thing she said to her, she turned around angrily to him and said, don't forget to take my 2002 Azuzu trooper to the dealership Monday to get that dent fixed. And she left. Odd. I'm tired of you. Maintain my car. I'm leaving. Make sure to get my dent fixed. So the au pair of arena, she gets home. He said 10 minutes after Tara left. They almost crossed each other there. So the desk sergeant said, if your wife is missing on the ninth, why are you here today? Yeah. And he said, well, her, her boss had asked him to come. He said he left messages on her cell phone Saturday and Sunday. When he didn't hear from her by Monday, he called her boss, Lou Trundle in Puerto Rico. And yeah, he said that Lou asked him to hold off a bit with the police because he wanted to have a meeting with her boss in Puerto Rico to discuss it first. But like, I don't give a fuck about your company or what you're discussing. My fucking wife is missing. I'm going to find her. What are you talking about? Lou told me not to, Lou told me to wait. Yeah. You work for Lou too? And the cop didn't follow that logic either. He was like, this is okay, but he keeps talking. And now Grant, Stephen keeps consulting a notebook after a while. He's got a notebook here. He said, I guess he wrote down everything that happened in order. He said Tuesday he called Tara's sister, Alicia in Ohio and her mother, Mary, and both of them hadn't heard from Tara either. So Stephen said that he told the sister he'd be happy to find out at this point because he was worried about her. He said, I'd even be happy to find out if she was off with some guy in a motel. Really? Better than her, you know, floating in an ocean somewhere or whatever. So he thought that, you know, he thought that they were all lying to him. He told the cops. He said, I thought that Lou and Tara's mom were both lying to me and that she had something going on. In fact, he said Tara's family had told him in the past that they were worried that Tara and Lou were having an affair. Oh. Now he said he didn't believe it at first, but he's been getting suspicious lately. So Lou told me not to get the cops involved. Lou said, let me talk about this with my people first. All right, hold on. So at that point, you know, he said he's been talking to his dad and his dad told him that the first person the police always suspect in these things is the husband. Right. So he said, I figured I got to be above board and just come down here and tell you everything, which is interesting. Yeah, he's just trying to diffuse a bomb here. See, I realize that you're going to look at me. I know you're looking at me first. Yeah. Also, I'm the last person that saw it. Also, we got an argument, but I didn't do the other thing, but I didn't do anything. I don't know anything about it. He also said that at this point he breaks off from his, my wife is missing and I'm real worried and says also, I know I have a warrant out for an unpaid traffic ticket. He said, Oh, really? They were like, huh? We can handle that another time. What? The cop said, yeah, we'll, we can deal with that. We'll, we'll figure that out. That's fine. But this is, you know, this is pressing. This is important. Yeah. Yeah. So he said they'd been to marriage counseling, but it didn't seem to help. He said he was even thinking of hiring a divorce attorney. Oh, he was. Now, four days earlier before she left members in the fifth, she wrote, was writing him this letter about how she wants to renew with a vows. Yeah. She hasn't loved him the way she wants to. Go to Napa. It's, yeah, we're going to Napa in, in December. It doesn't make any sense at all here. So she didn't talk about marriage problems. He said with him, he, she talked about them with Lou. Oh, Lou. God damn Lou. Fuck, there's always a Lou, isn't there? Still trapped at Lou. That's fucking Lou. He also said that Tara's company, Washington group international, was involved with chemical weapons and Lou was involved in that project. Now he said there's a long shot, but I have two scenarios that are possible here. Maybe she had been exposed to nerve gas. That's a very specific. And now who knows where she is. Yeah. Or, and this one is, it's less farfetched than the nerve gas, but you know what I mean? So this really bears looking into, she's probably been kidnapped by terrorists, I would imagine. He tells a small town police desk sergeant that my wife either has been exposed to nerve gas or has been kidnapped by terrorists, international terrorists mad about her corporate chemical weapon. Have you seen the rock? Perhaps she got one of those green balls shoved in her mouth or, and put me out, maybe she. So ridiculous. Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger and his shenanigans. The, yeah, the desk sergeant is literally trying not to laugh at this point. Yeah. He said later, he said, he was finding this entertaining as fuck. Like he was like, God, I wish all the other cops were listening to this because this is so funny. I'm not going to be able to, I'm not going to be able to tell it like this guy is. You know what I mean? I just can't, I can't tell it like he can. You got to, you got to understand. He said it with these eyes. It was crazy. It's just crazy the whole time. We got to see social media at small town murder on Instagram. You got to see these eyes. So they, the youth said, well, let's call Lou. Yeah. Lou seems to have all the answers here. Yeah. Unlock. He, you know, might know of a terrorist cell that was after her. So Stephen gives him the number in Puerto Rico and this desk sergeant calls Lou right while Stephen's standing there. Oh. He said, because he wanted to see how Stephen would react to shit. Right. Just, you know, because he didn't, he probably didn't expect this to happen right in front of him. So the cop said that Lou seemed genuinely concerned and offering to help in any way he can. He said he was empathetic about, you know, the kids are probably missing their mom and he was also like saying Tara's not taking off on her own. She wouldn't leave her kids. She wouldn't just not show up for work. She's the most responsible person we know here. Yeah. That's crazy. And by the way, I'm not sleeping with her. No, and I didn't bang her at all. Swear to God now. I'm Lou, but I don't bang everybody. You know what I mean? I got my own good mom. Yeah. I got my own thing going on. It's Puerto Rico down here. You know what I mean? There's a lot of beaches. I go down there. There's bikinis walking around. I find myself some ladies. You know what I mean? There's something around. That, you know, all this, the tequila, the rum. Forget about it. Yeah. I live by the motto, you don't shit where you eat. You don't shit where you eat. I know tequila is Mexican and rum is Puerto Rican, but I assume when people come from Michigan, they go, let's get some tequila. Everyone's speaking Spanish. We must have tequila here somewhere. Is Jennifer, I'll drink that. I'll drink that. So he said, while he's jotting down the notes, Steven is standing there smiling at him the whole time. He gets off the phone with Lou and Steven asked him if he wanted to call Tara's parents now. Yeah. And this guy said, no, I'll leave the detectives to do that. He was just calling this guy just to fuck with Steven and see how he reacted. So then Steven brings up the au pair again. And this guy's like, why does he keep bringing up this fucking au pair? So he said, he asked him, are you having some kind of relationship with this au pair? Yeah. And Steven gives him like a, kind of like one of those elbow nudging guy to guy smirks, you know what I mean? And he goes, quote, she'll never tell. What? He was joking. Yeah. You know, like, hey, I'm joking. But this guy, yeah, the desk sergeant's like, that's not really funny right here. We're looking for your wife right now, man. Why are you joking about banging your au pair? You're just joking your way into getting investigated as a kidnapper at this point. This is bad. Because that's a real weird thing to say. And he said, is it all right if we send some detectives over to the house later to talk to you? Because I'm just taking your initial shit. Steven said, sure, no problem. So they send detectives over there. And he said, you know, they talked about the fight. They're going back to Puerto Rico early and all this type of thing. And Steven said, she also said that I could explain to the kids why she's not there in the morning. She left in a car service, Black sedan. She also told me I need to take her truck to Tamaroff on Monday, Saturday, Sunday, no contact. I phoned and left her messages on her mobile phone and sent text messages, no response from her. Because he wrote all this out. He said he called Lou in Puerto Rico on Monday. Lou said, quote, no worries. Tara wasn't in till wasn't due in till later in the day. He said he would tell her to call me or he would call me himself to let me know that she was there. I hadn't heard from him by 7 30 p.m. on Monday the 12th. So I called him. He said he hadn't heard from Tara. And I said I needed to do something. I call the mother-in-law call police something and Lou said, hang on a minute. Oh, let it let it sit. As that was the famous Lou say, no, he said he didn't want me to do anything until Tuesday morning. He said it would only worry them. Okay. So he said Lou called me 9 30 a.m. Tuesday, February 13th saying he hadn't heard from her. She didn't show up for a meeting in Puerto Rico. He then left a message Steven did for Alicia. And called also Mary who he said he said that Mary told him all caps not to call the police. Don't call the cops. She would send a message to Sarah and have her call. Tara. Or Tara, I say Sarah. Yeah, Sarah is my wife. So that happens. That'll come out once in a while. So it's very interesting. So she said he wrote down, Steven did, someone knew where she was. I thought the same thing with Lou as I did with her mom. I told Mary if I heard nothing by 4 p.m. Tuesday the 13th, I was going to the police. I talked with my sister whose friends were the detective and she called him to ask what was the rule for reporting someone missing. He, the detective had told her he should wait till Wednesday the 14th in the morning to report her. That seems pretty arbitrary. Don't know why. Now, the detect, the desk sergeant who took the whole story, his supervisor whose name is Sergeant Larry King, no relation. Faultable marriage Larry King. Oh, that's the guy. The incident was classified as not a crime, other service when it gets filed. That the desk sergeants report here. But they said the stilted language that Steven wrote down in the way he talked, they said who writes the date every time he mentions a day. So they just thought it was weird. Very strange. Also, it seems like something like prepared excuse you make when you call in sick to work is what he said. It was very, very fucking strange. But who knows. Now, while this is going on, another call comes in. This is a Lieutenant Darga. He takes a call from a woman identifying herself as a sergeant at the state police headquarters in Lansing. Oh, she wasn't calling in an official capacity, but as a friend of a woman named Alicia Standifer, who is Tara's sister. Sister of Tara, yeah. And she said that this Tara, Alicia had told her that Tara supposedly missing for five days. And the husband, Steven, is just now getting around to doing something. So can you guys look at this? So while he's at the desk, making that guy suspicious, there's another detective overhearing him talking, being super suspicious about that. Then there's a Lieutenant getting a phone call, making him also super suspicious. Everybody at this department just. Yeah. So then this Lieutenant calls Kazlowski, the guy who originally overheard Steven's talking and said, I want you to get on this thing immediately. And he goes, Oh, is that the guy from the desk? Yeah, I'm interested in that. That sounds awesome. So they go over the report and they said the first thing they noticed in the report was the word au pair. The detective didn't know what that was. Yeah. I mean, he thought it was a couple of things, right? He thought it was a typo. He thought it was supposed to say a pair, like a pair, two of something. And he said, he read that and thought a pair of what? He didn't know what they were talking about. He thought children that she watches, dude, this is all fucked up. Yeah. So he, wow. So anyway, that he reads the report and goes over that, you know, Steven said that he told Tara that the, during an argument that the kids would be disappointed if she went right back to Puerto Rico and everything like that. And also about the, all the family members think that she's having an affair with Lou. Lou says they didn't have an affair. It just seems interesting. And also the fact that he said that he would regard it as good news if he found out Tara was in a hotel with a boyfriend somewhere. Yeah, that's bizarre. He also in the notes wrote quote, Steven further stated he owns a handgun, which is a strange, strange thing that just disclosed at this point in time. It means nothing to nobody. I got one too. Real weird. So at one point he blurted out, which is fucking funny, to the detective, you don't think I did something to my wife, do you? Is that what you're thinking? It's kind of my job. Cause, yeah, Koslowski said, if we thought you were involved with the disappearance of your wife, we'd take you to jail right now. He said, I, this is, I'm not going to bullshit you basically. So don't worry about it. Um, so they said, we're going to come, you mind if you want to come take a lie detector test tomorrow? How about that? And Steven said, sure, no problem. What time? They said 11. And he said, oh yeah, no problem. Yeah. He said, do you mind if we send an evidence tech out tonight? We'd like you to take some quick pictures. And he said, yeah, sure, no problem. So the police visit Steven, um, do the evidence test, you know, tech people are coming here. And, um, you know, he gives the same story because they keep asking him the story over and over. He gives the same, they're trying to figure out if he's, the story is going to slip, basically, because that's how you do things. You watch a murder interrogation, they asked the guy to tell the story 12 times to see where he fucks up. Now the detective Koslowski said, Mr. Grant answered the door and I could tell he was afraid we were there. Whereas he's our complaint and we're here to serve him and help him, but he's afraid of us. Yeah. So they thought that was weird. So Koslowski said that we were trying to establish a reason for her leaving. Was it an argument? Was it something prearranged? You know, and then he gives the story about everything like that. In another room while they're talking to Steven, another detective, Pam McLean, is talking to Verena. Oh. Now Verena said, yes, I was out of the house that night. I didn't see anything that happened. I came home and it was just Steven and the kids here. I was out with my friends. She was out at a bar that night with her friends or a restaurant doing something hanging out. So the detectives put away their notebooks and they asked Steven if he'd come down to the sheriff's office the next day for this lie detector test that he already agreed to, but now they're going to say. And Koslowski said that Steven asked him, quote, do you think I'm going to be in trouble for any of this? Well. Any of what, Steve? Yeah, that's a good question too. Yeah. Any of what? What'd you do to get in trouble? So Koslowski said back, trouble? Meaning what, Steve? Yeah, what kind of trouble could you possibly be in? And he said, you know, I didn't have anything to do with this. And then he started crying. Started sobbing. He said that he started, I mean, heaving. Like a five year old who is just is overtired and you just dashed their hopes of getting the snack they want. Yeah. Tears. His gossers just went out the window. Totally gone. Yeah. Fucking someone stepped on his teddy grams. He's fucked. So he's, they said tears are popping out of his eyes. Like he's going crazy. So they said, okay, we're going to leave you to your tears. Good night. Whatever you're doing. Yeah. See you later. So as they walked down the driveway, McLean and Koslowski walking to their cars, he looks, she looks at Pam McLean, looks at Koslowski and said, he did it. They don't even know what it is yet. But they're like, he did, he did something. Whatever happened, he did that. Yeah. And he said, we just don't know how or where she is, but whatever the fuck reason her gone, it's his fault for sure. And so the detective tells the evidence tech to grab a digital camera, go to Steve's house there, take a shot of the scratch on his nose and a scratch on his hand and a bruise on his leg. Okay. Steven told him how he got the scratches and said he didn't know how he got the bruise. So anyway, they're Works in a machine shop. That's easy. He could bump into something. Yeah. Who knows? Then they went through Tara's notebooks. One was filled with letters she'd written as part of a training exercise she'd taken part in at a self-improvement seminar in Phoenix four months earlier. Well, that's nice. Corporate thing. One to her parents, one to her sister, and then the one to Steven about renewing their vows. And that caught his eye. She was apologizing for quote, never getting over an old boyfriend named Pete and wrote that she needed to get over Pete so she could get whole with Steven. She wrote that in a letter that that's been, she's had Pete on her mind this whole time. This whole time. It's time to flush Pete out of the system when you got two fucking kids in a house, lady. I mean, you got a six year old and an eight year old. Is that what it is? I don't mean to besmirch a missing woman, but if this was a guy with a notebook going, I just got to get over Tammy like, you know, I should be able to get over my ex-girlfriend Tammy so I can be cool with you. We'd be going, oh, you fucking jackass. Why'd you get married to begin with? So they don't know. And the cop doesn't know what to make of this. Is she having an affair with Pete? Is that what's going on? That's what he's trying to put anything together. Where is Pete? Yeah. Are these notebooks now, do I have a motive for why Steven would have been mad at her? But he didn't, she didn't give that letter to Steven. So who knows? It's weird. Would she not leave Steven and Pete's pissed about it? Who the fuck knows? Either way, when Steven is expected for this lie detector test, instead, they get a fax. A what? It's a fax from a defense lawyer saying, quote, because of the tone of your February 14th interrogation of Mr. Grant at his home, it is my humble opinion that it's necessary for me to provide a buffer between your department and Mr. Grant. Just as Mr. Grant answered all your questions last night, he will continue to answer all of your questions in the future. I believe it's necessary, however, so there are no misunderstandings that all of your future questions be submitted in writing, which will in turn be immediately answered in writing. David Grimm, defense attorney. Send us an email and we'll email you back. Send us your questions in writing and we'll send them back in writing, but you're not going to sit and watch my client's eyes get so huge it freaks everybody out. Watch this fucking, his dead giveaways. Oh, it's his tell, babe. His tell's big. So the detectives are hot on Tara's digital trail now. They said, okay, we got to find this out. They knew she's all, they said, no, she hasn't used her cell phone, laptop, or credit cards since she walked out down that driveway, according to Stephen. That's wild. Hadn't talked to her family, but they also said if she wanted to disappear, she's a pretty sophisticated traveler. Yeah. She would probably know how to do it without leaving a trail. She could buy a burner phone and use cash and, you know, a prepaid debit card. Who knows, you could do anything. They said, maybe she's just cooling off somewhere. There is still hope for that, but, you know, starting to get a little bit weird here. Now Tara's cell phone, like I said, shows no calls to anyone she worked with that weekend. They said if she had a change in travel plans, seems like she would have called someone from work about that and say, I'm coming back a day early. Also the, the black sedan, the call she made, there's no records showing any calls made around that time to any company that sends cars anywhere. Oh. Which is not great. Her last call had been an 18 minute call to Stephen at 947 p.m. on her way home. So someone's for that. Come get me. I'll be right out front. That's not there. Eventually, they found out that in the last year of weekly travel, she had only used that service one time also. Once every other time she drove herself to the airport and back. So Grant had told them, Stephen had told them that she uses that all the time for every week for the airport when she'd only used them once this year. So they're like, why would you lie to us about that? Let's look into Stephen's cell phone records. Why don't we? Who's he calling? Well, around the call that he got from his wife at 947 were four calls to Verena, the au pair. Four calls. Four calls. One starting at 9.08 p.m. and ending at 10.32 p.m. all the various calls, which is interesting. I mean, the cops are looking at this going, I mean, that's not incriminating. He might be asking her to pick up milk. Where'd you put this? Who knows? You know what I mean? It's just, it could be logistical details. No, it takes her kid's information. They look up the records too. All day they're back and forth on the phone with short calls. It's probably about the kids and that sort of thing. They write on the whiteboard the log of the calls that night. Okay. Steve calls Tara one minute, 11 p.m. Tara calls Steve, 11.04 p.m. Five minutes, 11.32 p.m. Steve calls Tara three minutes, 12 p.m. Steve calls, this is starting from early in the day, not p.m. This is a.m. 12 p.m. Steve calls Tara six minutes. Tara checked her voicemail at 12.47 p.m. At one o'clock Tara's flight leaves Puerto Rico. Six, what is it, 4.20 p.m. Tara checks her voicemail. It arrives in Newark at 4.20 p.m. She checks her voicemail immediately. Call Steve at 4.27 p.m. They talk for two minutes. She checks her voicemail again. She checks her voicemail twice in eight minutes. I've never done that in my life. What's she looking for? Then Steve, maybe somebody called while they were on the phone. It went to, she put it to voicemail. Steve calls Tara for six minutes at 4.34 p.m. Tara calls Steve for three minutes at 5.11 p.m. 5.55 p.m. Tara calls Alicia for 42 p.m. That's the Newark layover call. She checks her voicemail after that. Then calls Steve back for one minute at 6.38 p.m. 6.41 p.m. Tara calls Steve for seven minutes. Now we get to 21 p.m. So what is that? 9.08 p.m. Yeah. Or no, it's 9.08 p.m. Steve calls Verena one minute. 9.10 p.m. Tara checks her voicemail. Then she calls Steve for one minute. 8.29 p.m. Steve calls Verena 30 seconds. Tara pays for parking at the airport two minutes later. Steve calls Verena four minutes. Steve calls Tara one minute. Steve calls Tara 18 minutes. This is the last call to be, that's at 9.47 p.m. The last call to either be answered or made by Tara's cell phone is that call. Then 10.07 p.m. Steve calls Verena for two seconds. I don't know what that's about. Missed the call. Then at 10.32 p.m. Steve calls Verena for two minutes. So on Saturday, the next day when she's gone, Steve called Tara's cell phone six times without a response, which is interesting. Very interesting. Here are the, this is 2.17 a.m. This is after she left. Tara, it's Steve. It's after two by now. It's a quarter after two, and I just want to know what the fuck's going on. I think you owe me, at least your kids, at the very least call me. Bye. Just call and let me know what the hell's going on. Your kids, not our kids. No, your kids. 9.29, which is absolutely two, if you've ever been yelled at by a woman, the mother of your children, anything you miss for two minutes, it's going to be your kids at that point. It's just the way people weaponize their children. Either way, I'm just saying. That goes both ways. Either side, anybody. You can use it for anybody. It's wonderful. It shows. It's a wonderful way of being shitty. You can use it for anybody. But it shows a level of frustration with someone when you say it like that. Yes, it does. It definitely does. 9.29 a.m. next morning. Hey, it's me, he says. This is on her voicemail. I'm just trying to find out what's going on this morning. If you're still leaving today, if you're leaving tomorrow, what's going on? If you're planning on coming by, just tell me so I can make plans. Make sure the kids are here because they want to see you. Give me a call. Bye. Then at 11.56 a.m. Hey, I get that you're pissed at me. I just left the house. I have to go to the bank for my dad. Farina's at the house with the kids. Please at least call your kids. It's ridiculous, Tara. It's not right. Just call. Please. So I can talk to you. They didn't get to see you last night. Please. Bye. 6.30 or 6.03 p.m. It's me. You need to call us. Just let us know what's going on. The kids and I would like to talk to you. Please. I just, I don't know what's going on, what the deal is. So just call me. We're here. We're just ordering pizzas for dinner. So we'll be here. I'm just going to have to have it. I think I'm just going to have it delivered, I think. So call us. Bye. Then 11.11 p.m. Hey, I get that you don't want to talk to me, but you don't have to hit the ignore button every single time I call. I was simply calling to let you know that you left your glasses here. If you need me to ship them down there, I just need your FedEx number. Whatever the hell you want me to do with this. I just need to know if you need me to go buy a bottle of wine or if you did. You said you would, but I don't know if you did. You owe your kids a call. Please. They keep asking, please call by then 143 on Sunday afternoon. Tara, next time I call you, pick up your phone. Please do not hit ignore. It's bullshit. It's absolute bullshit that you can't call me or your kids. It's bullshit. Pick up your phone or call the house, call somewhere, call me, call my cell, call the kids. This isn't, uh, this isn't this bad. I know you're mad. I'm mad. This just isn't right. Just call me. Bye. Then Monday morning. Hey, it's me. Once again, if you don't hear back, if I don't hear back from you in 15 minutes, I'm going to call Randy, get loose cell number and find out what the fuck is going on. This is nonsense, Tara. You owe me a phone call. You owe me at least to know what the fuck is going on between us. Please call. So then he called once more Monday and he called once on Tuesday as well. Now they thought the detectives thought it was odd because Wednesday, the 14th is when he came in and he didn't even try to call her that day. Oh yeah. He didn't even give it one last chance before you go. You think before you walk out the door to the police station, you go, one more call. Just to make sure I'm not going down there for nothing. Yeah. Maybe I'm just lazy, but you know, I'm not making a trip for no reason. They said you'd think you would have left a message or two that day, which is fun. Then they find some other shit here. Okay. They find eight emails passed back and forth between Stephen Grant and his old girlfriend. Oh no. Oh yeah. These start Thursday, January 25th, which is 15 days before Tara goes missing, while Tara was in London on business. Oh. Okay. This is fucking amazing. He, I guess they spent a few days going casual back and forth on email. What he'd been up to a long time. No C. Oh wow. You've been doing that. Oh, that's interesting that you do that for work. He doesn't really do much of that. It's only really right away. He sends her an email telling her that he has suspicions that Tara is having an affair with someone he called the geezer. I don't know. I guess that's Lou. I don't know. And then he writes, quote, I hope you keep it the nursing thing. You never know when I might need a sponge bath. If you want to practice, let me know. What? She counters to that email replies, you are married. You shouldn't talk like that. How would you feel if Tara, oh, she spells it T-E-R-A, Tara or Tara, which is her term. That's whenever she says Tara, that's how she writes it. T-E-R-A, like it's making fun of her in some way. How would you feel if she was talking like that to the old geezer? Steven said, I was only being helpful with the offer to be a test subject. I was just being supportive, not dirty. I don't care about being married. I never have. Is that a no conscience thing? What? She said, you have not changed one bit. This is just why we broke up essentially. Don't you worry about being burned eternally by the devil? Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. Why did you get married in the first place? Seemed like a cool thing to do. Okay. Grant says, quote, the answers are in order. No love and no. So not worried about the devil, got married for love, didn't think it was a cool thing to do. He said, I think you misunderstand though. I like being married. I just think of marriage vows like speed limits. Sometimes you have to break them and sometimes you get caught. Whoa. This is a terrible email when your wife's missing. It just is. You just need to keep an eye on the road to avoid detection. And sometimes you get pulled over and blah, blah, blah. And he goes on to that. So sometimes you need a radar detector. You know, sometimes, sometimes someone flashes their bright lights at you a couple times. And that means that you can, you gotta watch out. It's about to get caught. Fucking, this is a smokey out there. There's a bear in the air. So she asks him if he's on his home or work computer. He says he's at work and then complains that the internet access there sucks. He says, my work computer sucks. It's actually the connection. At this site, I have no high speed access. I was using one of the neighbor's connections via wireless until their IT guy saw a slowdown on the download speed and put up a firewall. All caps bastard. Someone put a password. Yeah, stuck a password. The ex-girlfriend said, funny, you are still a little thief. Some things never change. She's not impressed with him. She does not. She doesn't give a fuck about this guy. She's saying you're still the same scumbag I broke up with. You're scamming for pussy and stealing things. And stealing internet. You're a shortcut taker. You're a fucking fence jumper, as we put it back in the day. So he said, quote, she said to him, so what are you doing about the cheating wife? Cheating with an apostrophe there. Also, would you mind changing your email setting? So it includes the thread. Sometimes I forget what I said. Hey, that rhymed. Okay. Then she writes, I'm so freaking bored today. He writes back, don't know yet. The problem is she says things in code. And because of that, I don't know what's actually going on. But he says that I can read Tara's emails though, because of a guy I know. He said, Brian is a vice president at a computer company, and one of his texts helped out a bit, if you know what I mean. Straight up NSA shit, if you get my drift. Actually, he had some software over the counter stuff you can buy at Comp USA that did the trick. It sounds cooler the other way. Yeah, you just bought tracking software that people get for their teenagers. Real NSA shit. Um, he then said, if you're so bored, because she said she's so freaking bored. I'm still in need of some excitement in my life. Wink, wink. He wrote out the words, wink, wink. Holy. Tara flew to London yesterday till Friday night, and I'm all alone with no one to play with. I do want to see you naked. Naked women are always good to see, especially if you haven't seen them in a while. Naked women are always good to see. I love checking out some tits. They're great. He is so desperate. He's saying he's regressing into a college kid. Wink, wink. What are you doing? No, he's a guy who, his game in like junior year of high school through college worked. That game doesn't work on adults though. He didn't, he got married. You have to progress. Yeah, and he's been out of the game for eight years. And now he's going right back to his college game, and these girls are like, you're irresponsible and annoying. Like they're not into that anymore. Did you just say wink, wink? Yeah, they don't want a 37 year old man who steals internet. You know what I'm saying? That's not what they're into. And calls the people bastards. And says, I really want to see a girl naked. Naked girls are good to see. Oh, that's amazing. I like naked girls. And the cops who are reading these thought it was so pathetic. Koslowski said, quote, what a dweeb is what he called him. This guy's a fucking, he has no game. So that said naked girls are good to see. I like to see you naked girls. Wow. That is fucking amazing. This is the biggest thing I've ever heard from a cronam. Later they found an email that he had sent to Tara on February 1st, an email he called Sorry. That was the subject line. And somehow they said he managed to be both apologetic and accusatory at the same time. Wow. While coming up with a cover story of how he could have found out what she was saying to Pete without having planted a bug in her computer. He said, quote, I'm sorry. I keep fucking up and I don't know why. I was not looking for anything on your old computer. I swear what happened was, he literally said what happened was, I was going through documents and settings, quote, unquote, for work related stuff to delete for some reason MSN live kept popping up. Every time I hit X or close, it would come back. He told her the last time he tried to close out the window that popped back up was one of her old emails. Oh, it just picked up a random old email and showed him. The computer just, it just showed me. It just flashed an email. I can't help it. He said, I'm sure that you can figure out my next course of action. Sorry, all caps. You had said when we talked about me getting, taking it to comp USA that you were afraid it might have private info. I took that to mean confidential slash work related, but seeing the log and I wondered what else might be there. So I looked, I loved you, I love you, Tara. And I was hurt by what I read. I know we've gone through this already, but I was not expecting to read what I read. Really. I was simply overwhelmed. I could not even think when you called that night. I really couldn't. So it makes sense that she's saying, I do have to get Pete out of my system. Why should you be writing that letter? He said, I, she's, or he said, I will never this in the writing say anything about him or that situation. Again, I did not and had not thought about it in a long time. Really. I trust that you are true to me, but I do worry, but you must help me out a bit. I know you have to travel for work and I get that. And I'm proud of you for all you've done and earned at this job, but you're on the road a lot and you do drink sometimes too and drink too much when you get out in college. She was a real big part of your two. Yeah. So he's like, it lowers your inhibitions. That's how I fucked you. That's how I fucked you. Now you're in Puerto Rico and it's thought of music play and it's fun down there. He said, I have all people have not. Steel drums and shit. Yeah. I have all people have not pointing the finger about drinking, but when people drink everyone, they sometimes forget who they are for a time and do things that they do not do otherwise. Do I think you have? I do not know. I am only being honest and, but in reality, I can never know except in my heart and the answer is no. I love you. I was just hurt by what I read and had to tell you. So he's been spying on her and he, he busted her talking to an old boyfriend. Yeah. He found something he didn't like and he reacted so poorly that he's somehow apologizing for it. Think about how poorly you have to play that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You overplayed your hand so hard you got to call her and be like, baby, boy did I take that information the wrong direction. And I shouldn't have snooped also and I wasn't really snooping. Listen, if, if I was cheating or doing some shit and Sarah found that shit, I wouldn't be and I said, well, why were you snooping? That would not even be, we would gloss right over that. She'd go, that doesn't matter. Why are you talking to your old girlfriend? That would be the main point of the fucking thing. So it's interesting. Now Steven is not talking to the cops anymore, remember only through his lawyer, but he sure likes talking to the press though. Oh really? He does tons of prep. Please, my wife, she's missing. If anyone knows where she is, please bring her home. Tara, please call me if you're around. And he's on everything. He cried on, he cried with Greta van Susteren. Oh wow. On the record. He went on Nightline and cried. He, he went on MSNBC and cried. So across the political spectrum. He's just crying on. Crying on everybody's shows there. Bipartisan Cryer. They also said that someone from the Nancy Grace show was reaching out. Of course they are. Man, it's a lot. So he tells the press, we appreciate you guys. We appreciate all you've been doing and who's everybody that's been helping. Now Amber Hunt is the crime and courts reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Oh boy. And was surprised that Steven was constantly calling reporters on their cell phones and calling newsrooms. And yeah. She said, initially you think, oh, well the guy really wants to find his wife. Then after a while, hmm, maybe that's not what he's looking for. What is he looking for? Attention in weird ways. And kind of an alibi almost. Info, yeah. Something. So they said that Kozlowski and they're investigating and they're watching his, his press appearances, taking notes and listening to what he says here and all that kind of thing. He said in the media quote, everybody gets into an argument with their spouse. Tara would say things. I would say things. Was it bad? No, not even close. No. February 15th, the next day. All this is happening very quickly. Wow. Alicia arrives in town, sister, and her husband drove five hours to meet with Kozlowski. And yeah. And to also put up missing person posters all over the area. It's at this point too, remember that, that ticket that he had that's warrant for? The cops remember that and they pull him over and they bring him, they arrest him for the ticket and they bring him in just, just to fuck with him. They deny they're fucking with him. No. They said it was perfectly standard thing to just pull this man over. Standard operating procedure. See, he has a warrant. We arrest him and we keep him for six hours on an unpaid parking ticket. That's totally normal. That's what we do all the time. And then we also ask him questions about other things he might have been involved in, which is interesting. His lawyers pissed. His lawyers said, I thought this was something that went out in the 1950s, what's called a pretext arrest, arresting a person for one purpose, but it's really for another. They really want to question him. Yeah. He also said this lawyer that Steven Grant has gone, quote, above and beyond the call of duty in cooperating with authorities. Is that right? He talked to them once. That's plenty. That's enough. And then refused to do a polygraph. And won't let them come search his house either. He did allow evidence texts to take pictures of his house, but he didn't allow anybody to come in with like Lumenol and shit and really look around. Really search it. He said that he's willing to cooperate, but everything's going to have to be in writing, so there'll be no misunderstandings. Now, is he a suspect? Well, the McComb County Sheriff's Department says, yeah, we did pull him over and we arrested him for an outstanding traffic violation. And yeah, that was the day after he reported his wife missing. And we did sit him down and try to talk to him, but we weren't doing it for that. It's all just serendipity. You know what I mean? So more cops come in here. One cop said, we're not calling him a suspect at this time. We're looking at all the avenues and possibilities. At this point, there's no cooperating with us from him, though. Oh, they also, it's reported to the press that when he's pulled over on February 15th, he was carrying more than $3,000 in cash, which he said was from a paycheck he'd cashed and the rest was to pay his lawyer. Now, a $3,000 paycheck would mean he only gets paid six times a year because he makes $18,000 a year. So he gets paid every other month, that says. But he said that was all to pay his lawyer. So that's why he had cash, because lawyers only take cash. If you can put it in a dirty paper bag that you bought a 40 of crazy horse in, too, that would help. If you could put it in there. They are very expensive, those lawyers, though. That's what they are. Now, Tara's sister says, I've gotten a phone call from Steve and Tara's missing, and he hadn't heard from her in five days because she's talking to the cops as well and to the press, too. She said Tara would never leave her children and not let us know where she was. And she would never miss anything with her employer. In 10 years working for the same company, she didn't miss a day. Not one day. That just tells you from all of our stories, 657 stories, reliability will get you murdered. Because nobody that's ever been murdered when they talk to their job, no one ever says, I mean, she calls in like probably twice a month. I mean, she's always got something wrong with her eyes. She's very undependable, so we didn't think anything. It's always never missed a day ever. She's the one who unlocks the office because we know she'll be there. Save your own life. Take a day off. Wow. And she also says, though, she's standing by her brother-in-law at this point. She says, I'm not saying he did anything, but she wishes she could get past that question of him not taking a polygraph. She said, it's a major roadblock. I just want detectives to get beyond finger pointing. So if he would just take that, then we would know for sure to look somewhere else. She said that her sister's marriage was like any other marriage. It had its ups and downs, but that she kept her private life private. And that's it. She said, I talked to Steve on February 13th evening before he reported her missing. And she said the conversation that we had started out with him telling the story, and it very quickly changed tones. And he said to me, he said, you know what? He said, she's probably shacked up in a hotel. And those were his exact words, shacked up in a hotel around the corner with some guy. And I remember at that instant, I said, Stephen, I said, she could be in the slums of Detroit in serious trouble. There could be black people around, Stephen. Don't you understand? Good Lord, not that. Oh, he's, she could be dead. I mean, you know. Well, it's just around black people. You know, I didn't think it was possible. Jesus Christ. She said, I didn't trust this man. Something was off. I didn't know what. And if you saw his picture, you'd know exactly what quickly. Yeah, that's what's off. Yeah, something's off. So his lawyer says, listen, this is February 17th. Police, you shouldn't even, don't even bother looking anymore. You guys take a break. You guys work hard. I want you to sit down and relax because we hired a private investigator, so he'll figure it out. Oh, that's great. Yeah, they're going to take care of everything. Do PIs generally take jurisdiction over the police? Absolutely. They'll find her. You don't need to worry about it, fellas. Okay. And the lawyer also said that, this is Stephen's lawyer, that Tara was helping shut down the office in Puerto Rico and was about to lay off 50 employees. So she could have been nerve gas, kidnapped by terrorists, overtaken by 50 angry Puerto Ricans. One of the three. It could have been anything. Or being the slums of Detroit murdered by a bunch of black people. It's terrorists, black people are Puerto Ricans though. One of the, or nerve gas. We don't know. Oh yeah. He said, I'm not suggesting anything. I just think it's something worth noting. And so Alicia that night, Saturday night the 17th, she makes plans to go over to Stephen's house for pizza night. Saturday is pizza night. Because remember he called saying we're having pizza too. That's right. It's pizza night. So Alicia said, we drove up the driveway and Steve came out of the garage and proceeded to hug me in a very uncomfortable fashion. Just boner pressed against my hip bone. You know that, that goes. Just hard as a rock. I tried to pull away and he would not allow me to pull away. No. He buried his head. He's like a dog that just came. He turned around and he's fucking facing the other direction. He buried his head in my shoulder and he was crying. Also his tone with the press changes. He said a couple of years ago, Tara and I did have a problem in our marriage with the, I don't want to call it infidelity, but pretty close to an infidelity. Right. A singular one. He's being, by the way, interviewed by Hank Winchester, who's a local reporter. That's the most local reporter name of all time. Hank Winchester, NBC. He says at the beginning and the end of the story. Hi, I'm Hank Winchester. That's him. He said, well, Hank said, what's pretty close to an infidelity? I don't understand what that means. Right. And Stephen said, it was going there. It was going there. It was heading there. He started calling her an AWOL mom that was more concerned about her career and her frequent flyer miles than her family. God dang. He said, I guess that she has to travel for business, but too much is too much. And that was too much. Too much. That's right. Now, Amber Hunt, the reporter, the crime reporter for the Detroit Free Press, said, watching all this, it was weird. She said, he was a victim or he was evil, and there really wasn't much in between. Yeah, you can only be one or the other. Yeah. You're either really sorry for this guy or he's the worst person who's ever lived. Real weird shit here. Now, February 20th, she talks about how Alicia's talking to the press saying, we still know nothing. We have no new leads. We have no new anything. We just want to find Tara. So this is 11 days. She's been disappeared here. Stephen does all this press shit. He's always crying. Please call anybody. Call the police. Call me. Call my in-laws. Just call somebody. Save Tara. Oh, God. He also says, the authorities have called me their number one suspect. This is terrible. February 21st, Verena has gone back to Germany. Oh, she went back. Not of her own. She wanted to stay with the job, but the company, who's a very fancy company, says, you're in the house with a guy who's being investigated for murdering his wife. You're coming home. You gotta go. Yeah. We can't. What if you get murdered then? We get sued, probably. So that's our fault. That's our fault. Yeah. That's our fault. So they pull her out and it's a publicly messy thing. And every time they talk about they have an au pair through this company, it's not good publicity. Oh, yeah, that's bad. So they pull her out of her house against her will, send her back to Germany on February 21st. It's very interesting here. So they go into all this. Amber Hunt, the local reporter, said, the people that we came across pretty much acknowledged that he was kind of a strange bird, meaning Stephen. He didn't bring home nearly the amount of money that she did. So I don't know how that plays into somebody's psyche when you're pretty much left working for your dad and helping raise the kids. The cops are watching Stephen this whole time, by the way, because nothing he said has panned out so far. They want to search the house, but they don't have any new leads. So they decide we can search a park nearby. Right. And this is very fucking interesting because it's a park that she runs in all the time. And so does Stephen. It's a very important thing that this park, because Stephen has mentioned several times how important this park is to them. Like just all the time, oh, we bought the house here because of that park, and we love the park, and we're always at the park, and all this type of shit. So they said, okay, we got to search the park. They also said to the press, quote, he's not a suspect, but his actions are suspect. He's not a suspect, but he sure is sus. He sure is a bit sus. Yeah, February 24th, police conduct a four and a half hour search of the Stony Creek Metro Park and surrounding wooded areas. That's the park where they all run. Yeah, they said it was just a hunch. We just didn't want to sit back. They said because he kept mentioning Stony Creek too much. And as we know from this, people can't help but say that weird thing they shouldn't say. Yeah, they tell them themselves all the time. Yeah, it's fucking crazy. So he said the main reason we bought the house was because that park was there. I mountain bike there. I run out in Stony Creek all the time. We love that park. Those are all quotes. So they were like, we got to do this. So they do. They said that they're going to look around and search this park, and we'll see they're going to have so many people for more than six hours, more than 150 searchers, dogs, even a helicopter above, scoured a three mile grid of the park and found nothing. Nothing. Nothing. They found nothing. February 27, 2007, an exo pair. Yeah, there's that. A young Ukrainian woman named Victoria Prokhoda. She said, hello, I am an exo pair of the grant family, or the family grant, she actually said. Yep, I've been with this family from February 2006 to May 2006. If you have any questions to me, you're welcome to call. My year in US is over and I'm in Ukraine now. I will be glad to help if I can. So they could call her back and she tells the cop about her time with the grants, Stephen in particular. They said, well, what was so wrong with the grants? And she said it wasn't anything in particular. He just struck me as creepy, creepy, too nosy, too interested in what I did after my workday ended and who I was going out with. Am I going on a date? Who's the lucky guy? That sort of thing. He said it was kind of none of his business and he just always kept at it and she didn't like it. She said the real reason she quit though is because she had a feeling every time she was in her bedroom at night. She had a weird feeling. She said she didn't have proof and she never spotted him, but she had one of those feelings that you get when someone's watching you all the time. What the fuck is that? And she said it was, it was actually was sure of it. It wasn't just a feeling. She said every night and that's why she quit. She said, I could always feel he was watching me when I was in my room. Then they thought about the layout of the house and the master bedroom is on the other side of the wall from the au pairs. There's a large closet that they have that shares the wall with the au pairs. So they're wondering, we go back to that house, we better check and look for a peephole. See if this fucking guy is creeping on this chick because that's interesting. February 28th, 2007. It has been almost 20 days, 19 days. Okay. A woman here named Sheila Werner, who's a dental hygienist, decided to go for a walk in the woods by her house. Isn't that nice? Same section of the park that the cops had thoroughly searched. She said, quote, I had no intention of finding anything. Oh, that's some foreshadowing there. Never have intention. As she was walking though, back came up the rise toward the dirt road. She saw one gallon ziploc bag. Yeah. She said, quote, I had a mitten on and I went over and picked up the bag. Why? What's in there? That's a treasure or is it litter? Is it full of blueberries? Why'd you pick that up? That's what I mean. What are you doing? She said, and you could see blood just pooling to the bottom of the bag. I knew about the disappearance of tarot grant, but I had no idea what it could be. So she brought it home with her. Oh, for fuck's sake. Hey, honey, I found a bag of blood I brought at home. She put it on top of her freezer in the garage with the Amazon packages and decided to call the sheriff's office. So they come out and they said they found a ziploc bag with some gloves in it and some metal shavings in it. Oh, that's interesting. I wonder who's around metal shavings at all. So yeah, blood at the bottom. There's also other plastic bags balled up, a pair of latex gloves, and what looks to be metal shaving. Oh, boy. It's, yeah. Interesting. Now he works in a machine shop making ball bearings and they needed to find out if it was human blood. That's a big deal also. They find out it is human blood in there, by the way. The bag also contained four plastic clear garbage bags, one pair of latex gloves, one 7-11 bag and another ziploc bag, and they all had human blood on them. Jesus. And metal shavings and some hairs too. Oh. So they said this gave them probable cause to go to Stephen's house and search it because there's human blood in it. It's by the park. Now they're going to search. So March 2nd, 2007, they get a search warrant that allows them to go in. 5 p.m. Friday, March 2nd. Here they come. They should all arrive. They don't expect to find shit. Nothing. It's been over three weeks. Yeah. There's really nothing in there. Any murderer worth their salt would have cleaned up by now, obviously. So they're like, they have an au pair, they have help. Yeah. And there's a murderer accoutrement in the park. It's probably not here. Exactly. So that's what they did. And all of the press is there. Stephen pulled up as this was going on. And there was a reporter that looked into the camera and said, he's getting out of the car. He's here. And they took him out of the car. They patted him down and he said, they're petting him down. It's right in the view of the camera. Everyone can see it. But he's not under arrest. And they said, at that point, we didn't have probable cause. We were just searching. We have nothing. So, but the crews of the news are getting ready to set up an interview with Stephen. Stephen asked Hank Winchester to come out to the house. Now, Hank said, he wanted me to do the interview in the garage of the house. And I asked him, why the garage? And he said, well, the garage will give you a look into what I saw that day because I was looking out of one of the windows when I saw Tara leave in the town car. But the interview never happened. I was in the garage. So, you know, it's a good place. Yep. Definitely not in the garage, by the way. We'll talk about this. So Stephen, you know, looking back, looking all around, he, you know, leaves the area and he goes out by the reporters because he's not allowed inside the house or anything like that. So, yeah, he's detained by deputies and then allowed to go on there. They search him at first. He's got nothing on him. So, there he goes. About 90 minutes into the search here, Koslowski is just getting tired. You know, he searched for a while. So, him and the other five detectives, they go into the garage just to get out of the way of the, of like the crime scene texts, basically. People just collecting technical shit. They're like, all right, we looked around, we saw all we can see. Let's get out of the fucking way, basically. You know, smoke them if you got them, all right? Sure. So, he's looking around the garage just to see if anything had changed since the first time he was there on the 14th. And he's looking around. He sees a rubber-made tub. He's like, was that there before? And he can't remember, but everything like that. Yeah, there's a tag on the rubber-made bin that says, Boy's clothes. Yeah. You know, it's all the clothes he in it outgrown. And so, casually, he's just bored because he doesn't remember if it was there or not. He goes over to the container, Kosolowski, and tries to pop the lid, and it doesn't want to pop up. So, he really grips it and rips it and pops it off. And there's a big black garbage bag in there. Oh. And he says, dog food. That's right. Yeah. Right. A tub, dog. This makes sense. He said, that's all it is. It's the dog food container. And he was going to put the lid back on, and he said, let me just see what this is. So, he rips over and rips the small hole in the bag. Just so he could see kibble and then feel better about himself. Inside, though, is another black garbage bag. Okay. He rips a hole in that one. There's another black garbage bag. Triple bagged. He rips that. There's another black garbage bag. Quadruple-wrapped dog food? That's not a good thing. No one needs their Okanuba that fucking perfect from. No. So, he rips a hole in that bag, too, and he can see colors inside that one. The light's not good. The hole's small, but he can see a flash of red and some plastic. Not another bag, but he said he doesn't know what it is. He thinks, a deer carcass. He's a hunter. It's fucking, that's what it is. It's a deer carcass. He stuffed them into these garbage bags, and that makes sense. He said, so, wow, this is crazy. He's ripping it up. So, he goes, I go through each bag, ripping them apart with my hands, and I stuck my bare hand in there, and it was moist. No. Oh, ladies. Don't do it. Now I know why that word is so gross. Did he feel around? I saw what I thought was blood and plastic, and then I could see, you know, what was a bra. No. And I don't know if you know this, deer don't generally have any support for their breasts. None. So, this is. There's a swing. And now he's got it all over him. Yeah, he said he looked at his hands, they're red and wet, and he said, what the fuck he screamed? Yeah. Literally, he was like, what the, he said all the other cops were like, they were just bullshit. They weren't even looking around the garage. They heard him and they ran over there and he said, that looks like blood. And there was a shit load of blood. And they said, holy shit. He said, get the fucking Tex, get in here. And they said, by the way, go put cuffs on that asshole outside too. Right. Go put cuffs on that motherfucker. And they open it all up, all, they don't even know what it is, but they know it's something. Yeah. Cuff him before it's too late. Get the evidence, cut the bag open further, and there's a female human torso in there. No head, no arms, no legs. Just the torso. Just a fucking torso. So they were like, oh my God. So he said, an interviewer later asked, did it all click together for you at that moment? No, we considered CPR. No, I'm a moron. Yeah. No, I'm a complete moron who made murder detective by not knowing my ass from a hole in the ground, or not knowing a rubber made dog food container to a corpse. From a corpse. He said, I looked and I said, that's her. And then he said, I left the scene. So they said, cuff his ass, cuff his ass right fucking now. They go out. He's gone. They can't find him. He left. He left. They let him take off. Oh boy. Which is exactly what Chad Daybell did when they were finding corpses in his yard, but they stopped him a hundred yards down the road. They let this asshole go. They have no idea where he is. Wow. And Kuzlowski said, I am very angry at this. He said, I'm going to get this guy. By the way, inside the tub also an extra small shirt from Ann Taylor, a black Gillian and O'Malley bra size unknown and a black V shaped bikini underwear from Victoria's Secret. That's what the corpse was wearing the torso. So Stevens disappeared. Yeah. He has disappeared. Luckily though, he doesn't want to use his car. So he asks a friend of his if he could borrow his car. Yeah. And this guy's like, I don't know if I should let him borrow my car, but he doesn't know how to tell him no. He says, well, it's a company car, so I can't really lend it out. And eventually he says, I mean, you can borrow my truck, I guess. All right. That's mine. You can borrow that. So a few minutes later, he gives him the truck. The truck that Steven is now driving, maybe the most conspicuous getaway vehicle in the history of murder. A eye-searingly fucking yellow, bright yellow Dodge Dakota Sport Quad pickup truck with a big black stripe down the, it's a trend. He's driving a fucking transformer. It's red. And the sport is the ridiculous painted mirrors, painted bumpers. It's all yellow. The extra exhaust too. So you hear him coming from farther away. It's so, Jimmy, it's so yellow. You can see this shit from space. It's insane. So that's what he's, that's what he's on the road in is that. So that's fucking crazy. Now they call Alicia, the sister who's in Ohio, and they go, listen, weird question for you. They don't tell her, we found your sister's torso, but they go, weird question for you. Do you feel like Steve would ever harm you? Harm. Define her. I mean, she said, I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. And they said, we'd like you to come right now back to Michigan so we could protect you. And she said, it's 11 o'clock at night. You want us to drive to Michigan with my kids? And he said, yeah, we think he's might come there and kill you. So yeah, he should probably come with us. So the next morning, that's when they told Alicia when she got there, that Tara was dead. This is when all this is going on. Verena decides to make a phone call from Germany. She makes a German phone call and detective Kosolowski said, I recognized it right away as being an international call. The other end, it's Verena. She was crying. And Kosolowski said, I had the sense to reach for my recorder and record the conversation. And there is audio from this conversation that we're not going to play here, but I will pretend to be a 19 year old German girl. I'll tell you that much. Let's go. Yeah. She says, quote, and this is after a bunch of back and forth and prodding, quote, everything he said was a lie. Everything. And I believed everything. That's what she said for the next 30 minutes. She tells a story. He said, she said, quote, he told me it was an accident. Uh-oh. He said, she smacked me and she yelled at me and I pushed her back and she banged her head and she was dead. Yeah. That's it. Just that's all. That's what she said. She said that she'd always believed the story that the wife had walked out. She said she had no idea that he'd actually killed Tara and that the detective told Verena that he believed her. So they said also, you know, she had been confronted by rumors and stories about, from the au pair's friends and everything say, I've heard from your friends that you two are a little closer than you should be. Yeah. Anything you want to tell me about your relationship with Steve. And she said, is that just nothing? Nothing. Is that just nothing? So they said, you're absolutely certain about that Verena and she says, yes. So eventually though, he gets a little more and she says, we liked each other. Yes, we did. We liked each other more than we should. And it started about four weeks ago. Uh-oh. How did it start? I don't know. It was just talking. I don't know what. Maybe because Tara was always gone and then it was just happened. But it was never physical, never. On that I swear. Okay. So he goes, blah, blah, blah, back and forth. And he goes, I don't believe you. And she's like, okay, there's more. Is there more? She says, we kissed, but that's all. Little more going on. And she said, okay, fine, oral sex we had. Oh boy. She said, but it was just one time. And it was before that happened to Tara. It was before this is a February 9th. And they said, okay, was it mutual oral sex or just him? And she said, it was just him. That means he only gave it to her. Wait, what? Not the other way around. Yes, I have the details of how the shit started. Oh wow. Apparently at one point, this is how it started. A friend of the family named Michelle was coming by with her kids. Steve told Verena that Michelle's girl was going to play with his girl, and Michelle's boy was going to play with his boy. That's how it works. They're about the same age. And then he smirked and he said, quote, and you and Michelle can play. God, I'd love to see that. Oh, Jesus. 19 year old foreigner, man, come on. You know what? Pete, America has a shitty enough reputation as us being perverts and assholes. You're going to make it worse. Maybe you could go down on that girl for me. Yeah, she laughed though. She thought it was funny. She said she thought Steve was funny and it made him feel good that she laughed. So she liked it. And so Tara was in London on business, which is when he was emailing that ex-girlfriend. And they were talking in the house and all this type of shit. And he and Verena were talking about all this bullshit. They found each other fascinating, obviously. And Verena said, he told her that he wanted to kiss her. And she said, oh, I can't believe you said that. And they kept talking for another 20 minutes. And then the next night or the night after, she was in a room getting ready for bed and he came to the doorway and said, you're so beautiful. I want to sleep with you. And she laughed and they started talking and they talked for four hours before going to bed and set in their separate bedrooms at 2 a.m. Steven, you're not a teenager. Yeah. You dip shit. He really still thinks he's in college. He really does. It's the only game he has. It's the same guy. That's some shit that would have worked with 19-year-olds. He's like, hey, my audience, this is my crowd. I sat here for four hours. I earned a blow job. Yeah, this is like a comic who finds a dumb crowd that'll laugh at their shit jokes. And they're like, oh, they're idiots. They love this. I can tell them. I can just tell them shit they've already heard five times from other people. Then one day she was on the computer typing an email to her brother when she heard Steven behind her say, quote, I'm going to take a shower. You want to join me? Oh, Jesus. And so she was getting more and more intrigued. She said no at the time. But then another night after she went to bed, he texted her from another room in the house and said, quote, I want to have sex with you. Which he was. You're tired of beating around the bush. I tried. Maybe you're German. You don't get nuance. I don't know what it is. You Germans, I hear you're real straightforward. So tell you what, see this thing I got? I want to stick it inside you. Any hole. I don't care. You understand what being in the shower with me means? Here's what it is. I want to have sex with you. Want to have sex with you. She typed no. Yeah. Okay. That was that. Then on February 7th, after she went into her room for the night, he stuck his head in and said, good night. I love you. Then he came out in and sat down on her bed. He said, I won't repeat those three little words again, but I am falling in love with you. So they hugged and cuddled for a few minutes. Then Steven stood up, took her by the hand, pulled her up to her feet, led her to his room, where he leaned her back on the bed, pulled down her underwear, and gave her oral sex. Wow. Fucking went down on her. So, and he didn't even want anything else. He said, that's all I wanted to do. Yeah, that's it. Just doing that for you. I'm good. That's for you. Now you know I love you. Go to bed. There you go. Go to bed. Now I'm up for a real good fucking coming soon here. I'm setting the trap. I'm going to tug like crazy in here about this. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I'll be tugging. Oh, I'll be tugging. So about 11.30 on the night of the 9th is when Verena pulled her car into the driveway. She walked into the side door and she heard someone coming down the stairs. And she was like, oh, what's going on? And it's Steven and he says, what the fuck are you still doing here? Go, just go, he yells. Then he realizes it's Verena and apologizes. And he said, is Tara still out there? And she said, no, where is she? She's not outside. And then Steven starts crying and said, Tara got home an hour earlier, unpacked her bag. We had a big fight. She took off. OK. That's how it is. Then after that, she goes in her room and there's a note on her pillow that says, you owe me a kiss. She goes into his room. He's on the bed naked. Oh, boy. Which is how he sleeps. He's always naked when he sleeps. She gets into bed with him holding him and consoling him. Before the night's over, she goes back to her room there and Steven gets up before her and all that kind of shit. And she didn't see Tara the next morning. OK. And he also said, this is her quote, he said he's sorry for what he told me. You know, what I told you that Tara left. I didn't know what happened. I believe everything he said. I believed everything. And he said he wanted me to call the kids to tell them he loved them and he's sorry for what he did. So I don't know where he was, but it was like goodbye. Because that's why she's calling now. Because she's saying he just called me in Germany and told me this shit. Oh, wow. She said he was crying. And it was everything he said. He said he didn't want to go to prison. I don't think he wanted to go to prison. I think he's going to kill himself. So that's the idea. He said, what happened when you came home? And then she explained again that, you know, what the fuck and all that kind of shit. He called her while he's on the run. While he's on the run. She said the next morning she woke up and, you know, had the kids were up early and she was talking to the kids. And Stephen had woke her up because he had to leave and that was that. Then they said, has he done anything out of the ordinary? And she said, well, he did it. He confessed. He told me. He told me this morning that it was an accident. He said it was an accident. He said she smacked me and yelled at me and I pushed her back and banged her head on the, and she was dead. So that's it. So they're looking for Stephen. They have some pretty good clues. They have information pinging off cell towers left and fucking right. They know he's headed north. And Verena knows the area code he called from and that is in northwestern Michigan. So they know where they're, they know the vicinity of where he's headed and it's north. Yeah. He really glazed over how he killed her because she fell and hit her head. Usually your arms and head don't pop off when that happens. No. Well, we'll find out because we're going to have a full description of it. Oil point. He stops at a Myers department store. He goes in and picks up a box of razor blades and some over-the-counter sleeping pills. These Sylvia Plath collection is where he got that from. What the fuck is that? Jesus Christ. Lay in a bathtub and open these up after a whole bunch of sleeping pills. Oh, wow. That is something. If you buy just those two items together. Red lights should go off. Someone should have to hit a button under the counter like one of those cop, but it's just like mental health counselors come out everywhere to make sure you're all right. So that's really weird. He headed down the road. He bought a phone that needs 48 hours to activate the phone so he couldn't use that. He's just an idiot. He's a fucking idiot. He also, he has a red plastic cap gun and he uses a black Sharpie to paint the gun black because he's thinking if I change my mind about the sleeping pills and the blades, I can maybe get a cop to shoot me if I pull this gun out on him. So he's got my cop. Yeah. Yeah, that's easy. So he's thinking about that. Then he thinks, hey, I'm in a bright fucking yellow transformer car. Maybe I should trade this. And then he said, I kept seeing yellow trucks though. So I started saying, maybe this is a popular color of truck and never mind. Maybe I'm blended in. Fuck it. I'll keep the truck. And I don't know how to steal a car anyway, so never mind. But you always see the vehicle that you're in fucking everywhere. Exactly. You never see. You'll see it repeatedly. So then he takes out his notepad with lined paper and he writes Lindsay and Ian as kids. I know that you don't understand yet what's happened to mom and I. When you get a little older, Aunt Kelly can explain better. For now though, just know that I love you both more than anything in the world because I don't want to put anyone through any more suffering. I've decided to end my life. I know that it hurts to lose me now after mom getting taken from you, but it is better in all caps. Now no one has to go through what happened between mom and I over the past few years. Things are getting worse and worse between us and ended up with a physical fight where I hit mom and she ended up hurt very badly. I was afraid of losing you too, so I ended mom's life in a panic. I am sorry. He writes that in his notebook. So what happened? He's using the wrong mom and I by the way, but it doesn't matter. No, I, yes, because that would be, I was just going to say, I don't, people, thank you, because people would go, oh, Jesus, I'm a Dramar Nazi, but yeah, think about what has happened to I. Does that make sense to you? No, that's how you worked that. It's a problem to me. So anyway, I'm so glad you said that. He's making himself a victim. Granted, he's writing this out that he's about to commit suicide, but you're not a victim, dude. No, not even a little bit. So he crumples the page up and doesn't like what he wrote, so he tosses it in the front floor board of the Dodge. Maybe it was the mom and the thing. Gets up. Maybe. He's like, ah, that's wrong. I can't cross that out. And you're suicide? No, you can't have crossouts. Why didn't I buy white out when I bought those sleeping pills? That would have really helped a lot. So he gets out of the truck. He's up in some fucking, he's up in like this cabin wilderness area with a bunch of these cabins, and he just gets out and starts running into a snowstorm, which seems unwise. He's totally like Jack Nicholson's shining action, right? So anyway, and Verena has called, they find his getaway vehicle up there, because they know where he is. So they find the getaway vehicle. It's the Wagashan State Cabins in Wilderness State Park in Northern Michigan. And they go, okay, well, there's his truck. That's good, but where's he? Oh, thankfully it's snowing, so there are footprints going wherever the fuck he's going, getting into the woods. That's a painful ass suicide. Well, yeah, well, and he's running. He's a runner, a long distance runner, so they see the way the feet are paced, he's running in the snow. I guess it's a way to keep warm too. So they get a tracking dog and they do all that, but they just follow the footprints really. They let all the air out of the tires of the truck, just in case he like circles back and gets out of there. It's now turning into a blizzard outside, 35 mile an hour winds, it's 14 degrees, and fucking super deep snow getting deeper by the minute. This is not good. They end up finally finding him dead tired, we don't know if he's full of sleeping pills or not, but tired, suffering from hypothermia, but alive, sitting under a tree, just gave up. Jack Nicholson in the shining, just you would have found. Amazing. Icicles hanging off him if he came later. So the Koslowski said, I personally think he was going to end his life, but when it really came down to it, he lacked the courage to do it. He couldn't do it. No, he couldn't limp either even on his frostbitten feet, so they had to carry him pretty much. They got him out of the woods, put him on a sled, and had to tow him by snowmobile to the edge of the lake. This is a hilarious sight. Wear a helicopter, picked him up a Coast Guard helicopter, picked him up and dangled him around, and fucking 35 mile an hour winds as they brought him up. That must have been hilarious. After V on the back of a snowmobile sled, they blocked him out of the road. Oh man. Now Grant is talking to these guys, talking about what might happen to him back at the county jail in Macomb. And the one cop said, dude, if you did what we think you did, you're going to have superstar status, is what he said. Like, don't worry about it. You'll be fine. People will be more curious. So they get him back to the hospital room and all this, and they said, Steve, do you want anything from Wendy's? We're all hungry. We're going to Wendy's. And he said, sure, a single cheeseburger and a medium frosty. What a pussy. Really? The cop said, quote, dude, where you're going, this might be your last chance for fast food. You might want to think about a value meal. Think about the whole order. He said, even if you get second degree, you're going to be gone a long time. Get the large, Frosty. I'll for the large fry too. Shit, get some hot nugs. Come on. Come on. Yeah, those spicy nugs are fucking good. They're not bad, yeah. So it's at this point, by the way, that his lawyer quits. I'm not your lawyer anymore. He might give up. Yeah, he quit. He's like, oh, I'm fucked now. I was dependent. An innocent guy. So Kozlowski races up there to talk to him. OK. And they are going to talk right away. He says, you do understand that you are, in fact, under arrest right now. For sure, yeah. He said, I kind of figured that. Yeah. It's for the murder of your wife, Tara. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you. So they bullshit back and forth. They talk about what happened. We started a fight in the master bedroom. I accused her of not spending enough time at home. And so in the middle of unpacking, she goes downstairs for something, comes back up, stands in the bedroom doorway, and she tells him she's thinking of leaving on Sunday, going back to Puerto Rico. She says, he says it's not OK. She said, well, I need to go on Sunday. Lou's going Sunday, so I need to go too. It's important. He said, you don't need to go down there with Lou. You spend too much time with fucking Lou already. You don't spend enough time with us. You're only going down there because Lou's going. And they went back and forth about Lou and why she has to travel so much and why she wants to hang out with Lou. And he said he thought he was fighting for his family, but she always acted like he was whining. Oh. Finally, she said, fuck off. I've got to do what I have to do in my job, and it's none of your business. So he said, are you fucking him? And she said, fuck off and slapped him. Yeah. So Stephen said he hit her back and hit her in the side of the neck. And he said he can't remember if it was an open hand or a fist, but it was hard enough that she fell back and banged her head against the floor in front of the bedroom TV. He said, then she screamed, that's it. I'm going to take the kids. You're going to be fucking homeless. You're a piece of shit. And he said, you hit me first. And she said, it doesn't matter. I'm calling the police. I'm going to ruin your life. Your life is over. She's yelling that if a man hits a woman, he's going to jail. And then she gets the kids in the house and everything. So screw you. You'll never see your kids again. He's saying, she's saying all this stuff. You're doing, and she's just berating him and berating him and berating him. So much stranger Michael Bolton song, but yeah. Yeah. When a man strangles a woman. Yeah. Yeah. So he says she thinks she's sitting. He falls to his knees and thinking she's going to shut the fuck up. He said he's going to shut her up. He locks his hands around her neck and starts choking her. She doesn't really fight back. And he thinks, oh shit, I'm going to go to prison for choking her. She's going to tell the cops I choked her. I mean, if she didn't like getting smacked, she's sure not going to like getting choked. She's going to eat this part. So he has to keep choking her, keeping her from talking. So he grabs her hands. She grabs his hands, scratching the back of one of them. He knows he can't stop. He's got to choke her till he stops moving. He said, I just kept squeezing, squeezing, squeezing and wouldn't let go. He said he held her long enough to be able to, he had to cover her face up with a gray t-shirt or gray underwear that were hanging around. So he didn't look at her. He didn't want to look at her. So she said her body relaxes. He lets go and walks downstairs and starts crying. He grabs his phone and texts Verena to not come home. She's out with friends in a bar and restaurant in Royal Oak, which we will be in March, May 30th, by the way, if you want tickets for that. They'd been texting back and forth all day and whatever. So he goes back upstairs to move her. He wants to get it out of the bedroom, obviously, her body. He's texting Verena also while this is all going on. Holy shit. By the way, he's naked, by the way, at this point, because he was ready for sleep. He sleeps naked, which is weird. If you have like a 19-year-old in the house that isn't part of your shit. So what he did is he wraps a belt around her neck and cinches it tight and tugs on the belt, leans back awkwardly, hoisting her body up so only her feet drag as he pulls. His elbows are high and bent outward and she's thumping down the steps. He then drags her out the side door into the garage, races back upstairs to check on the kids, make sure they're sleeping, that they haven't been awakened by the screaming or the thumping. They both have their eyes closed or lying there motionless. So he goes, okay, they're asleep. He goes back down the hall, gets a piece of paper, writes a note, you owe me a kiss, puts an ovarina's pillow. Heads back to the garage, drags Tara over to her white Azuzu trooper. Barely enough room here between the car and the garage door to do this, but apparently, I guess he's trying to do it. He yanks her up off the ground, straining to get her high enough to wrestle her into the back of the trooper. But the belt snaps in half and her body falls. Her head slams into the concrete. He said it was the most disgusting, like it sounded like dropping a watermelon on cement. There was no movement, there was no nothing. I knew then that I had killed her. I didn't know what to do. You were going to put an alive person in your trunk? Right, yeah. Would you drug an alive person in the belt? Is it Billy Bats? Yeah. So yeah, the only thing I could do, think to do was hide her. So he gets her into the trooper, gets her on her side, one leg pulled up. Marina's coming home soon. If she pulls her car into the garage, Tara's got a silver blouse on. The garage door opens with headlights on you while you're standing there with a naked, with your wife's corpse in the back of her Azuzu trooper. You're wearing a shirt like a disco ball. It's going to get some attention. Unbelievable, yeah. So he doesn't know what to do, so he looks around the garage. He'd taken the liner out of his black 2006 Jeep commander to wash it, and it's sitting there on the side on top of a storage bin. He grabs it, wedges it on top of her body, and closes the door. Said, okay, it's hidden for now. Turns off the light, goes inside. Just then he hears the click of the garage door system, and it is... Marina. Marina. That's when he says, oh, I have a plan. He says, what the fuck are you doing here? Why don't you just go pretending he thinks it's Tara? That would mean he thinks she's alive at that point. He said, I was thinking as fast as I could. My brain was going a mile a minute. I kept thinking, we've got a body in the garage. I don't know who the fuck we is in this one. You have a body in the garage, sir. What the hell do I do with a body? So he goes upstairs, talks to Marina. Marina asks him about a scratch on the nose, which is a nick that Tara had inflicted while he was strangling her. He said, Tara slapped me. Then he calls Tara a whore and said that she popped him one good. Oh boy. Marina goes to bed. He thinks, I think she bought that. I did it. I think that's good. He also calls a friend named Brian, gets his voicemail, and says, quote, the shits hit the fan. He then goes to sleep, wakes up the next day. He said, he'll get up in the morning and go hide the body. Okay, that's what he's going to do. He's going to get up late Saturday night while everyone's away, but it's really cold. He didn't know what to do. He had to figure something out. Hide the party, hide the body, hide parts of it. What do we do here? So he loads up a big green rubber made storage bin and some garbage bags and a big sheet of plastic. That's the boys clothes one here. Steve thinks about buying more plastic tarps, but he's worried someone's going to worried someone's going to see him buying big sheets of plastic, which looks like you're about to be dexter. He then gets her, he said he needs to get her smaller is the problem. She's too big. Then so smaller than she is with a leg and an arm jutting out in opposite directions. So he loads up his big bow saw too and drives to his father's shop. Bow saw puts down a tarp, put shit on the floor, all this stuff. He spreads out the tarp, gets Tara out of the back and her body's frozen from rigor and the cold. It's been sitting in a cold garage. One arm jutting out one way, one leg the other way. And this guy's saying, what do you want from me? Impossible to get a good balanced grip. He doesn't know what to do. He's slipping. Finally gets her out of the truck, pulls her down on the tarp, grabs some pieces of steel, weighs down the corners of the tarp. Now he's like, what am I going to cut with? So he gets the bow saw and starts cutting a wrist. It's a small thing. Try to see how it works. It doesn't work well. She's so hard. It's like trying to saw through steel, he says. The bow saw is good for saplings, but not for human arms apparently. So he panicked. Oh yeah, he washes his hands, goes to the trooper, pulls out a pint of booze he brought from home and starts drinking. Okay, so now he's like, all right, I have to make all of her stuff disappear and her body. I'm going to say she went back to Puerto Rico. So he gets her briefcase and gets all the papers inside, including documents, business cards, puts it all through the shop shredder, and pours the pieces into a large paper bag. He's like, okay, now I can do this. Goes back to the body, takes her laptop over to the band saw in the shop and cuts it into pieces. The disk drive, something shatters into a million pieces that hurl themselves around the shop. And now he's like, fuck, now I got to clean that up. Also a silver piece of steel pokes him in the finger. He pulls it out with a tweezer and he's bleeding. He's like, fuck, now there's blood here. Now I'm really fucked. I'm getting this worse. So he takes all the shredded shit and takes it out to the cardboard box. He needs a better tool. He's looking for a hacksaw, something small but tough and sharp. He sees the band saw and says, ah, fuck, that would be fine, but he can't use the band saw. It's going to be too much of a mess. Yeah, that'll be ugly. So he'd seen a band saw flinging wood chips and metal chips all around and he doesn't want that to happen. So he's like, okay. He said, I remember my dad making a make-do hacksaw out of pieces of a broken band saw. The band saw blades are carbon steel with 10 teeth per inch, perfect cutting tools. So he takes an old used saw blade, breaks it in two, snaps off another piece, wraps it around the end in a blue towel to give him a grip and start sawing. He just, just the blade. Just the blade. Like he's in prison with a shank. Good Christ. This is fucking insane. He cuts off one of her hands. Ah, Jesus. It works pretty easily. Starts hacking on the other wrist, but the saw blade's already getting dull. Yeah. So he grabs a new blade and breaks that into pieces and it works a lot better. After both hands are cut off, he takes off her forearms, then moves up to her shoulders, laying the body parts down on the tarp as he works. He's not whole arm. The arm is in fucking multiple pieces. Wow. He says the lack of blood surprises him and makes it easier to do, but he still throws up and drinks whiskey and throws up again. He says, look, if you don't do this, you're going to prison for the rest of your life. Real stern talk with himself. Yeah, he did. How's it talking to? He can't get her pants off, so he rips the pant leg up to the waistband and starts in on her legs. The cloth keeps getting caught in the teeth of the blade. Right. So now he has a collection of body parts on the tarp. He puts one of them into the plastic bins that he's brought from home, but they're the cheap ones too thin for this. So he looks around the shop and finds some industrial bags with much thicker ply, put several parts into them, and stuffs them into the big rubber made bin marked girls clothes. Holy shit. All that's left on the tarp now is her torso. And there's a lot of blood that's congealed in the torso like thick syrupy thinks, and he throws newspapers on the blood and wraps the torso and blood in the papers and tarp and fits them into the rubber made on top of the other stuff. Wow. This is, he says, he did a good job, he thinks. Either I think I did good. I mean, the, yeah. He said, then it'll be really, this is genius. I'll call Tara's cell phone, say and pick up your phone. It's fucked up. You won't call me. Yeah. That'll be cool. I can do that, right? That seems normal. This is his fucking plan. So then it gets worse. Okay. That gets worse. This is, I'm going to read all that he did from there. Okay. So he's got his wife cut into many, many, many pieces at this point. And now he doesn't know what to do with them is the problem. So he drives back to the house with her in there, puts her in the back of the SUV, has a nice Sunday afternoon with the kids and Verena. He said, I tried to make things as normal as possible for everybody. I even continuously flirted with Verena because I thought it was the only way I would get through this. Then that Sunday night, 3am, he loads up a kids plastic red sled in the Azuzu and drives off looking for a place to dump the parts. He ends up at Stony Creek Park. Yeah. He couldn't help but give himself away by talking about that park constantly. Near some big overhead power lines. He dumped all the parts onto the kids sled. He pulled Tara through the snow to the open fields. And this is a quote from him. Quote, as soon as I started going, it was like keystone cops. The sled took off and now I'm chasing after this sled that as my wife's cut up body parts on it down a hill. Oh, Jesus. Now, if this was in a fucking, a Coen Brothers movie, it would be hilarious. But this is insanity, man. This is some Fargo shit. This is what would happen in Fargo. This is crazy. And he said, fine. He just took off and he had to chase it. Chase it down a hill. Finally, it stopped when it fell over and broke. So now all of these pieces are all falling all over the place. Yeah. So Tara's torso, I took it and buried in the snow. Then the pieces I put on the sled and buried that in the snow. But he didn't think it was very good. He said, I'd done a very bad job of hiding anything. It's right there in the open. So the next day, Tuesday at dusk, he returned to the park, retrieved all the body parts wrapped in clear plastic bags, cut them open and scattered the remains here and there under fallen trees. He said, and I quote, the hands, the feet, Tara's head, everything. All of Tara. He just rolled ahead. The hands. Wow. He left a one gallon ziploc bag stuffed with all the plastic wrapped by a tree near the road, and he was good. But then he heard more than a week later that the sheriff was going to search the park. So he said, I thought I'm screwed. They're going to find it because the torso at this point still buried in the snow. So that morning, hours before the search, he went back to the park to recover the torso. He had to get there ahead of the cops. Imagine if they showed up while he's carrying a torso out of the woods. He said, I had to dig it out. It was frozen in the ground. He said, how'd you carry it out? He said, I threw it over my shoulder and carried it. That's it. He said that that's what he did. Wow. That's insane. He said he returned to the car with the body, shoved it into plastic garbage bags, drove once again to his father's machine shop, hid the torso behind the boxes in a loft space beneath the ceiling. But he worried that the remains would start to thaw and smell. So five days later, he went and got a green plastic container, put the torso in that, drove it back to his garage, put it in there, crossed his fingers and said, I hope they think it's fucking dog food. I did great. He said, and I kept thinking, quote, I got away with this. I can't believe I got away with this. What the fuck are you thinking? You have cops all over you. You didn't get away with shit. Yeah, cops all over the place. Just because nobody saw you do what you did doesn't mean you got away. Koslowski was asked, how do you keep from just going for this guy and throttling him at this point? And he said, I guess I should be credited for that because there's more than one time I would have liked to have done just that. That is a lot. Wow. So yeah, this green tub. Meanwhile, back at the park, search teams are finding this and they said, we started finding some pretty gruesome discoveries. They found out, by the way, he had cut his wife into 14 pieces. They found 11 parts marked by, they marked them on this map, but they never found all the parts. Animals had gotten there first. So in the interrogation room here, so they said, okay, that puts us now. He said, can I ask what I found? Like the piece, Stephen Granson there, he goes, can I ask what you found? What pieces you could find? Then he said, maybe I can help. Maybe I can help you find them. So they were talking about what parts to find and they told Alicia about all this. And she said, when she read the transcript of the confession, she said, the devil is what came to mind. It is nothing more than the devil's work. So he's arraigned. And by the way, they gave him this old timey black and white striped jump suit. He's in a wheelchair with literally fuzzy bunny slippers. And the sheriff said he got the prisoner's stripes. He selected it personally for maximum humiliation for Steve. He wanted to fuck him good. So anyway, the trial comes along. Come on, come on, man. What are you doing? The prosecutor said, have you ever wondered what goes through the mind of a man who's just murdered his wife? He said, sex. That's what's going through this guy's mind. They have so much evidence. They have his confession. They have, Verena flies in from Germany. Even though she had said she wasn't going to, she still flies in, tells all about the confession, all about him fucking going down on her. They play a four-hour confession tape of him dryly giving that recitation of everything. Closing arguments, the prosecutor said, come on, we think, right? He said it takes about four minutes to kill a person by strangling them. He said they should be unconscious after 15 seconds. He got the loudest ticking 60 minutes alarm clock he could ever get and put it on the jury box and played it. After 15 seconds, he said she's unconscious now, then let it tick for three minutes and 45 seconds and said she's finally dead. That's how long he had to change his mind. The verdict comes in. This is first or second degree murder now, just like the Brian Walsh guy in Massachusetts just got thing, just got done with his wife. The jury deliberates for three days. They find him guilty of second degree murder. Is that right? Not even first. They just didn't want to say it was premeditated. There was a split in the jury that said they, premeditation, they weren't positive about it, which is crazy. The prosecutor said, I wanted first degree murder, but what I want more than anything is to make sure that Steven's off the streets. So during the sentencing, there's victim impact here. They bring in Alicia. They bring in all of Tara's relatives saying what a nice woman she is and how wonderful she is and how her children now have no fucking parents. The judge says, you sir may fuck off 50 to 80 years in prison. First parole hearing at 87 years old. First time. First time. The first time they see it. Yeah. The judge exceeded the state's sentencing guidelines and handed down this sentence. Yeah. It was 15, the defense asked for 15 to 25. He got 50 to 80 plus six to 10 for mutilation of the body as well. The district judge later on called his actions demonic, manipulative, barbaric, and dishonest, if that's all not enough for you. He's also a liar. And he lies a lot. The kids have been doing amazing things. The kids are doing well. They were raised by Alicia. They're doing really nice kids that are really into honoring the memory of their mother and also fighting against domestic violence as well. Both Lindsay and Ian, they have, they do all sorts of things with domestic violence, awareness and everything like that. He appeals a bunch of times, but it does not matter. You're fucked, mister. Denied. Keep on keeping on. There's been several books about this. One a slaying in the suburbs, the Tara Grant murder by Andrea Billips and Steve Miller. Another one called limb from limb. Jesus Christ. Written by Detroit news crime reporter George Hunter who covered it from the beginning. And then the book that I got some of this stuff on some background. Anyway, blood in the snow. Listen to this title. It's so long. Blood in the snow, the true story of a stay home dad, his high powered wife and the jealousy that drove him to murder. Limb from limb. Just put the whole book on the cover. Why don't you? What do we need to read it for? Stephen is not eligible for parole for a fuck of a long time. And obviously, I don't think Stephen does well in prison. Let's just put it that way with his bunny slippers and his stupid eyes. So there you go. That is Washington Township, Michigan. That's a goddamn insane story. It's one of the craziest we've ever told. So thank you for listening to that very quickly. Head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets for live shows. Going to read the cities again very quickly. Nashville, first stop. That's February 21st. Everything else, no dates. Durham, Atlanta, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, which is sold out. Denver, Buffalo, Royal Oak, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Tarry Town, Boston. Get your tickets right now. Shut up and give me murder.com. They make tremendous holiday gifts. Also follow us on social media at small town murder on Instagram at small town pot on Facebook. Get yourself Patreon. $5 a month or above. You get everything we put out ad free. You get hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard immediately upon subscription. New ones every other week this week. Charles Stark, Weather Part Two. Listen to him and his girlfriend argue about who actually did all this shit. And we're going to talk about a crazy Australian cricket guy for us. Prime in sports, which is hilarious because we don't know shit about cricket. It's very funny. So check that out. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you're going to shout out at the end of the show, which is right now. Jimmy hit me with the names of the best people in the fucking world who keep this show going. It would never ever ever move our body parts around from place to place until the cops found them. Hit me with them right now. This week's executive producers are Chris Zoja, Melissa Warburton, Gary Howard and Dallas. Peyton Meadows. Thank you Peyton. That's another one that all the time is in here. Peyton Meadows, Luzaskos, Janice Hill. They're always around. Can't thank you guys enough. Jesse Lambert. Jesse Lambert is coming to see us in Minneapolis. Terrific. Just found out right now. Merry Christmas. September 19th. There we go. Just found out. We just broke the news. Oh my goodness. There you go Jesse. You're coming motherfucker. Happy birthday. We ruined. We'll see you then. Merry Christmas. We ruined Christmas. We'll see you then motherfucker. Cam Keshwara. Cam you're the best. Thanks Cam. Him and his dad. They're good people. Hooter Stumpfucking Orville Pigdicker. Good people. James I don't know if you know. Always good people. Yeah it's obvious. Amanda Berry gave us a bunch of fucking inheritance money. That was very sweet Amanda. Thank you. Wow thank you so much. Very kind of you. I wonder if it's the one that was... I don't think it's that Amanda Berry right? I don't know. Isn't that her name from Cleveland? Isn't that her name? I don't remember. I think it was Amanda Berry. Yeah I'm hoping nobody else dies. Thank you. Other producer. Yeah oh yes. Christ. She's been through a lot this year is the point. Other producers this week. Thank you very much. Mama Jojo Tinkler. Oh yeah obviously. The Tinkler. The Tank. The Tanks. Happy hour checking in on Marrero Louisiana. He's back home. Steffi with no last name. Levi Wickert. Jesse... Nope Jessica Solarchik. Neo the Prophet. Demetra C. Caroline Cavalcanti. Rayer Jeans. Claudia with no last name. L. Renee Robertson Hansen. Gemma with no last name. Patrick O'Cain. Is that not a fucking hockey player? Oh that's just... Cain. Cain. It's regular Cain. He's the guy got accused of a lot of rape. But I don't think he got away. Not really. He got a lot of money. I think it was... Like he's a large mouth pat. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. I don't think they landed him in the boat. Riggled off the hook is what he did. Amos with no last name. The best college football podcast. I don't know which one that is. But it's the best one. Joe with no last name. Brian Woodleaf. Sandra Blackburn. Civ with no last name. Kathleen McCaffrey. Katie Byrne. Nick Monaco. Princess Debbie. Lex Watkins. Susan Correll. Corielle. Jenna with no last name. Tyler with no last name. Steven Taylor. Chris with no last name. Julie Martinez. Hayes. Dave Emily. Chris and Storm. Oh that's his pop. Andrea LJ. Danielle Pepper. Jen Bodeeker. Bo Decker. Jason Gavin. Lauren Rushing. Ted with no last name. Emily Evans. Courtney Chermack. Pig Snatchers. That's fascinating. Matt Waters. Alicia Sideshow. Alley Wotherspoon. I don't know what that means. Per Dia dude. What's a per Dia? Per Diem? No. Trying to say per Diem? Perhaps he thinks that. I don't think he gets one. No. Because he said per Dia. I'm sorry. Karen Ruzi. Kevin Kruger. Becky Smith. Emma Kohler. John Gettys. Like Ann. Ron with no last name. Casey Marshall. Jake B. Shasty. Chase Ziegler. Danielle Husband. Pickles McGraw. Jacob Moran. Jay. Pickles McGraw. I'm just gonna move along. And we move along. Like that's somebody's real name. JD with no last name. That's like a dog name. Travis Finn. Ash P. Logan Kramer. Jesse Reinback. BGM. Deidra with no last name. Rachel no last name. Christine with no last name. Lisa. Lisa Lu. Lizzy Lu. Keely Keela. Keelya Lewis. Kim with no last name. Bocephus Ray Ray. That's fascinating. We'll talk about it later. Tim Smart. It doesn't matter. Adam Harms. Dennis with no last name. David Boutel. Nicole Raffle. She's a raffler. Heather Grove. Alexandria Holder. Tila Haley. Tila Hale. Tayela. Jennifer Russell. Jess with no last name. Kiki with no last name. Aquila with no last name. Jennifer Loudermilk. Carl Turchin. Shelley Gehran. Okay. Michelle Legg. Tiffany Jungy. Junji. Jigu. Papa Bear. Angela Lopez. Thomas Roundtree. Amanda Waski. Joseph Fitman. Manders Ganderberg. John Ron. Badbrains88. Ashton with no last name. Glen Reed. Catherine McKeithan. Kim Bird Allen with no last name. Eric Price. Jake Haggadorn. Haggadorn. Annie B. Holly with no last name. Jenny Mansell. Carrie Ann. Dennis Wallace. Mindy Megalori. What is this? Ryan Staples. Benjamin Scorvan. Ian Fleming. Joshua Estel. Kenzie G. Vagina Whisperer. Sasha Connors. Johnny Loves Tammy. And the guy who wrote James Bond. They both giving us money this time. That's great. Wilma Dickfit. Probably not. Eden Ray. Kathleen Edinger. And everybody that's seen a live show this year. Because you support this show as well. And every patron. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much everybody for all that you do for us. You wonderful, fantastic bastards. We can't tell you how much we appreciate it. Keep coming back and seeing us. Head over to shut up and give me murder.com for your tickets. And follow us on social media. Drop down menus. Take you where you want to go. So keep coming back. Keep seeing us. Tell your friends. And until next week everybody. It's been our pleasure. Bye. you