Kukla’s sister, Lauren Russell, showed up at the narrow, dilapidated trailer more than ten hours later to take her sister to dinner. She found the trailer dark, though the front door swung ajar, despite the winter chill. As Russell ascended the trailer’s front steps, she spotted Kukla through the open door. Her sibling was pacing the trailer’s living room in circles.
Kukla met her sister at the door and told her she’d just killed her children. Russell, afraid for the safety of her own children, who were still waiting in the car, immediately ran back to her vehicle, drove away, and called police from her cell phone. “I think my sister may have harmed her children,” Russell told the 911 dispatcher at 6:18 P.M. “She said she killed them. She said she was going to the deep ends of Hell.”
Macomb sheriff’s sergeant Lori Misch, who responded to the call, found Kukla sitting on her front porch, smoking a cigarette. Kukla told the sergeant she was waiting for a hearse made of bones to take her to Hades.
“That had to be the toughest case I’ve ever worked on,” Hackel said. “I’ve seen some pretty bad things, but nothing prepares you for a case like that. As a human being, something like that can be difficult to deal with.”
Two weeks after the Kukla atrocity, Hackel, a gaunt, media-friendly, second-generation lawman, would find his department embroiled in yet another bizarre domestic homicide case.
And within a year, the paths of Jennifer Kukla and Stephen Grant would cross in a perverse twist of fate that made headlines.
For the time being, though, Stephen was still just a suburban husband who claimed to be searching for his wife.
7
Stephen returned home from the police station that frigid Wednesday afternoon to the family’s two-story Colonial in the Carriage Hills subdivision. With its taupe bricks, gray siding, green shutters, and general 1980s tract house design, the $242,000 property wasn’t the fanciest setup in elite Washington Township. But the sweeping, snow-covered lawn was unbroken by any sidewalk and the rear lot was scenic with full-grown trees. The house also featured granite-topped kitchen counters, a fireplace-warmed den, and a wine cellar in the basement.
Washington Township, a onetime farming village, was on the northern fringe of Metropolitan Detroit’s more prosperous suburbs. Nearby Romeo is the hometown of Bob Ritchie, a Ford dealer’s son who gained fame as rapper Kid Rock; while a few miles to the west, Rochester Hills preened itself as the teen-years home of international pop icon Madonna.
Median household income in Washington Township was last figured in 2000 at a hefty $71,823. Its population had more than doubled since 1990 as professionals and executives became increasingly willing to trade longer commutes for a more pastoral home life. Unlike the grid-style layouts of Detroit’s older suburbs, this ex-urban enclave was noteworthy for large lots, curvy roads, and the camouflage provided by mature trees and shrubs.
One of the community’s greatest assets was nearby Stony Creek Metropark, a forty-four-hundred-acre nature preserve forever protected from developers. Residents and visitors enjoy hiking, skiing, and boating in the park, which is maintained by the Huron-Clinton Metroparks, a consortium of thirteen communities located along the namesake Huron and Clinton Rivers in southeastern Michigan.
It was a peaceful suburban existence that seemed farther than it really was from the crowds, crime, and decay of larger nearby cities. Tara and Stephen Grant had purchased their home on Westridge Street for $48,400 down and a $193,600 loan in 2001. It was their second house.
Now, on February 14, his errand at the police station finished, Stephen wheeled his Jeep Commander up the long driveway and into the two-car garage. Verena, the au pair, was home with Ian. Lindsey, a first grader, was still in school.
8
When Lieutenant Darga summoned her staff into her office to brief them about the case, she named Kozlowski lead detective. Kozlowski had a reputation as a tough, tenacious investigator. The hulking sergeant was an imposing presence whose size, shaved head, and bushy goatee gave him the air of a professional wrestler. He’d cut his teeth on the narcotics beat, after hiring on at the sheriff’s office in 1990 as a corrections officer (CO) in the “Hackel Hilton”—otherwise known as the Macomb County Jail.
The Macomb County Sheriff’s Office, which dates back to 1818, was growing as quickly as the county around it. Mark Hackel’s father, William Hackel, had been sheriff from 1977 to 2000, when he was forced to resign after being charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
A twenty-six-year-old woman told police the elder Hackel forced himself on her while she visited him in his room at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mount Pleasant, during a Michigan Sheriffs’ Association conference. Hackel, who maintained the sex was consensual, was convicted and served five years in prison before being released in 2005.
A three-person panel picked William Hackel’s longtime friend and undersheriff Ronald Tuscany as the acting sheriff until the term was over. Mark Hackel, then an inspector, beat out eight candidates in the 2000 election for his father’s former seat.
During his tenure, the younger Hackel had brought the department into the twenty-first century, implementing a cyber task force that investigated computer crimes, along with K-9 and motorcycle units to patrol the fast-growing county.
9
Darga decided she wanted two detectives on the Grant case full-time, so she appointed Sergeant Pam McLean as co-lead investigator. McLean, thirty-nine, was a seventeen-year veteran. The mother of three was working on several cases on February 14, including helping out with the Jennifer Kukla double filicide investigation.
Briefed by Hughes, Kozlowski and McLean made several phone calls that afternoon. Some of the calls were to Tara’s Washington Group colleagues, including Lou Troendle. Tara’s boss told police her itinerary called for her to leave Detroit Metropolitan Airport—about an hour’s drive south of the Grant home—on Monday, February 12.
Kozlowski took note that Troendle’s story called into question Stephen’s claim that he’d argued with his wife because she said she was flying back to Puerto Rico on Sunday. Troendle also told Kozlowski he’d worked with Tara for ten years, knew her family and work habits, and felt it was “extremely unbelievable” that she’d disappear of her own volition. The articulate civil engineer told the detective he was very concerned about Tara.
Kozlowski and McLean also got in touch with the missing woman’s family in Ohio, including her mother, Mary, and her only sibling, Alicia. As time wore on, Alicia—whose fair skin, high cheekbones, and wide smile resembled those of her missing sister—would emerge as the family spokeswoman and champion of her sister’s children.
Alicia told police that Stephen had called her the previous day to tell her Tara was missing. He left a message on her phone saying, “Can you call me when you get a minute? It’s no big deal.”
When Alicia talked to Stephen a few minutes later, he sounded strangely calm, given the circumstances, she told police. During their conversation, Stephen said something about his wife that floored Alicia.
“He said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she was shacked up in a motel with some guy somewhere.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could he say something like that? I told him, ‘My sister could be anywhere. She could be lying dead somewhere in the slums of Detroit, for all we know,’” Alicia recounted.
Tara’s mother and sister both confirmed to investigators they hadn’t heard from Tara since Friday, February 9.
Even more ominous: Washington Group security chief Joe Herrity came up empty when he tapped records for Tara’s corporate e-mail, her company cell phone, and her American Express charge card account. No activity was recorded on any of these since February 9, Kozlowski wrote in his report.
“We