In November 1986, Helle Crafts, a flight attendant residing in Newton, Connecticut, is reported missing, and police suspect her pilot husband, Richard, of foul play. A snowplow driver thinks that he saw the suspect using a wood chipper near a river at 4:20 a.m. in the middle of a snowstorm, shortly before he reported his wife as missing. In a small eddy downstream, police find fragments of what would be identified as human bone, a fingernail, a tooth, and a few strands of hair. This was Connecticut's first murder conviction without a body.