Jailed Husband: 'I Just Kept Cutting Her'
April 13, 2007 — -- From a hospital bed, a frostbitten Stephen Grant talked to police for hours -- recounting the grisly details of wife Tara's brutal murder.
According to police reports and documents released today, Grant told investigators how he strangled his wife, dismembered her body and then scattered her remains in the woods.
In transcripts of what police say was a two-hour confession, Grant said a fight over his wife's frequent travel for work sparked the deadly argument. When Tara started to walk away, Grant said he grabbed her wrist and she slapped him. Grant allegedly hit her back, knocking his wife to the floor and then choking her with a piece of clothing.
"She finally grabbed my hand at one point, but it was too late then and I couldn't stop," he said, according to the police report. "I knew I was going to prison. I panicked."
The brutal struggle allegedly took place while the couple's 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter slept in bedrooms nearby.
After Tara Grant stopped breathing, her husband said he tied a belt around her neck and used it to drag her body down the stairs and into the garage. The belt eventually broke, slamming Tara's head against the concrete floor. Grant told police it sounded like "dropping a watermelon on the cement." He managed to put her body into the back of an SUV.
Two days later, Grant drove the body to his father's tool and die shop, where he says he dismembered it with a hacksaw blade. He said he was drinking whiskey, and got so distraught he threw up.
According to the documents, Grant said, "I just told myself, 'Look, if you don't do this, you're going to prison for the rest of your life.' And I just kept cutting her."
Grant says he used his children's red plastic sled to carry his wife's remains into the woods, where he scattered them and buried her torso in the snow.
Days later, when police announced they would search that wooded area, Grant says he retrieved the torso and stored it in a plastic container in his garage. Investigators eventually found it there, leading to Grant's arrest.
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