911 emergency. >> has the jury reached a verdict? >> we the jury find the defendant -- she was brilliant at business. he stayed home with the kids. great dad. called him mr. mom. >> they were the people next door. >> so on valentine's day, he goes to the police and to the media. she had vanished. >> please call the police, call me. call someone. >> he seemed absolutely distraught. this was a grieving husband right out of central casting. >> he buried his head in my shoulder and he was crying. >> but soon out popped the secret. a teenage nanny and a lover's triangle.

>> the first thing he did was text the au pair saying you owe me a kiss. >> what had happened in the bedroom? >> i said stop. just stop it. >> what was hidden out in the garage? >> nobody knows the hell that was going on in that house. >> the valentine's day mystery. >> thanks for joining us. i'm chris hansen. this case centers around a man who was not what he seemed. at first glance he and his wife looked to be a model of the modern family. she traveled the world for business while he stayed home with the kids. it was what happened inside that home that launched a valentine's day mystery. here's dennis murphy. >> you know, she has been missing for a week now, seven days. >> no one has seen or heard from tara grant in more than a week. >> as of today, tara grant has been missing for 18 days. >> the county sheriff's department says it will do an all-out search for tara this weekend. >> loving dad. successful mom.

beautiful family. they were the people next door. >> if anybody knows, just -- just say something. >> this is a court-ordered search warrant. >> should you be a suspect in this investigation? >> i don't know. >> i saw an empty shell. in all honesty, i saw an animal. >> the sheriff confirms numerous body parts are found. >> i had never seen violence like this. >> north of detroit's seamless sprawl of strip malls and subdivisions is a 4,500-acre woodland preserve. in winter, a bare forest that still belongs to the deer, coyote and occasional trail walkers like sheila werner. >> on that particular day it was about 40 degrees. and i decided that i was going to walk through the woods.

>> what she spotted that last day of february tucked under a tree looked like more than litter. a one gallon ziploc bag. >> because there was snow on the ground, it stood out like a sore thumb. there was bright red blood in the bag. >> sheila picked up the bag. she thought the sheriff's office might want to know about it, what with all the coverage on the news about that missing woman. the story of tara grant, the vanished wife and mother, had become as regular a fixture on the detroit news stations as sports and weather. >> if anybody knows, just say something. just tell us. call, call me, call the police, call somebody. >> the missing woman's husband, stephen grant, on the local news, made almost daily, teary, on the verge of angry appeals to his wife of more than ten years to come home. if not for him, then for their two young children, a girl 6 and a boy 4. >> please, call anybody. call the police.

call me. call emma. call someone. >> the family lived in a comfortable home northeast of detroit. tara was the breadwinner, thriving in a six-figure management position with an international construction and engineering firm. the most recent job site was in puerto rico. she'd been commuting between detroit and san juan for five months. stephen grant worked in his father's smalltime two-man machine shop and looked after the kids while tara was on the road. he prided himself on being a mr. mom at home and a soccer dad on the field. according to newspaper reporter amber hunt. >> he took them to all their appointments and soccer games and appreciated getting the accolades for that. >> and from the time he walked into the macomb county sheriff's office on valentine's day, 2007, to report his wife missing, his story never changed. as he gave the spare details of her disappearance to the desk sergeant in the lobby, he may not have noticed the huge

plainclothes detective walking by. but that officer remembered stephen grant because of the fragment of conversation he overheard. >> and i heard him actually say, she's been gone for five days now. >> detective brian kozlowski was still wondering why the guy had waited five days to report his wife missing when his desk phone rang and sure enough, he'd been assigned the case. his lieutenant sounding urgent. >> i want you to get on it immediately. >> by now detective kozlowski had the report from the desk officer who had taken down the husband's story. this story. after a week-long business trip grant said, his wife, tara, had come home the previous friday night, february 9th. no sooner had she unpacked her bag when she announced she'd be going back to puerto rico early, sunday rather than monday. grant cried foul. she needed to be home more and traveling for her job less. >> the argument ensued. according to mr. grant. and he last heard her on a phone saying i'll be out in a minute.

she left the house. he looked out the window and a black sedan was leaving. >> the husband agreed to meet the detective and his partner at the grant home the night he reported her missing. five days after he said she'd walked out in a huff. >> mr. grant answered the door. i could tell he was afraid that we were there. where as he's our complainant, we're here to serve him and help him, but he's afraid of us. >> one of the detective's first questions was why grant had waited so long to report his wife missing? the husband replied that they'd had fights before when tara walked out for a day or so, but she would always come back. >> we're immediately trying to establish her reason for leaving. was it an argument, was something prearranged? >> detective kozlowski proceeded to ask grant about the health of his marital relationship, potential lovers and potential enemies. while the other detective, sergeant pam mclean was with the two children and their au pair, a 19-year-old german girl verena durkis, lived in and looked after them because of tara's hectic travel schedule.

>> i talked briefly with her for a few minutes, asked her about the night that miss grant had supposedly left. >> verena, the au pair, said she'd been out of the house the night the fight occurred and didn't see what happened. as the detectives put away their notebooks, they asked if grant would come down to the sheriff's office the following day for a lie detector test. he agreed. >> he asked me, do you think that i'm going to be in trouble for any of this? and i said, trouble meaning what, steve? and he said, you know i didn't have anything to do with this. that's when he showed emotion. he put hands over his mouth and he started to cry. >> here at the sheriff's office, detectives were finding the tara grant trail five days after she reportedly fought with her husband and walked out was growing stone cold. she wasn't using her cell phone or laptop or personal credit cards. she hadn't talked to her family. still, investigators knew that she was a sophisticated international traveler, well equipped to take care of herself on the road. maybe she was just cooling off somewhere after a heated confrontation.

>> hi, this is the cell phone of tara grant. >> the detectives also learned her husband was trying to reach her. because when they retrieved tara's voicemails after the night of the disappearance, they heard steve's angry voice. >> tara, next time i call you pick up your phone. it's absolute [ bleep ] you haven't called me or your kids. i know you're mad. i'm mad. you traveling this much is not right. >> but anxious as he professed to be for help in locating her, stephen grant never did take that lie detector test the next day. he had a lawyer, who advised him to stop talking. stop talking to law enforcement maybe but not the media. >> we appreciate you guys, we appreciate all the people who have been helping. >> amber hunt, crime and courts reporter for the "detroit free press" was surprised that grant was constantly calling newsrooms and reporters on their cells. >> initially you think, oh, well the guy really wants to find his wife. then after a while, hmm, maybe that's not what he was looking

for. >> meanwhile, detective kozlowski and the investigative team watched the live shots and took careful notes. you're thinking we have foul play here? >> absolutely. >> coming up, was it foul play or did she simply walk away? >> he said to me, she's probably shacked up in a hotel around the corner with some guy. >> when "the valentine's day mystery" continues.

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everybody gets into an argument with their spouse. they would say things, i would say things. was it bad? no, not even close. >> according to her husband, steve, tara grant stormed out the door of their suburban detroit home after a fight and hadn't been seen since. it wasn't until days later that tara's sister, alicia, got the news at her home near columbus, ohio, from her mother. >> she said, i had gotten a phone call from steve and tara's missing. he hasn't heard from her in five days.

>> alicia was almost two years younger than her sister. like tara, she had two young kids. and knew that it was ominously unlike her sister to walk out of her life even for a marriage time-out. >> tara would never leave her children and not let us know where she was. she would never miss anything with her employer. in ten years of working for the same company, she didn't miss a day. >> when alicia talked to her brother-in-law steve, it was the 13th of february, the evening before he finally reported tara a missing person on valentine's day. >> the conversation we had started out with him telling the story and it very quickly changed tones. he said to me, you know what, she is probably shacked up in a hotel. >> alicia, in truth, had never been thrilled with her sister's husband. a smug underachiever, she thought, a guy who bellowed when he talked. >> he always had to have the last word. no matter what. >> tara and stephen met at michigan state. a 4-h girl going for a business degree and a suburban detroit boy with an eye on politics.

when they married and kids came along -- >> she was ecstatic. lindsey was the sparkle of her eye. >> alicia and tara had grown up together as farm kids on michigan's rural upper peninsula. >> tara and i growing up, we had a list. we had a list of things we had to accomplish in the day. if the list wasn't done when my dad got home, there were consequences to be paid. >> my husband. >> hi, steve! >> one activity on the list, more fun than chore, was making maple syrup, something tara loved to do. even as an adult. >> she was happy. she was a happy kid. >> the snapshots didn't lie about the confident, chatty, take-charge girl everyone knew was going places. >> she was my leaning post when i had something very, very crucial to talk about, that was life altering, tara was the first person i would call. >> her last call with her big sister came on february 9th. 40 minutes of girl talk. tara was in the newark airport waiting for her connecting flight home. she seemed upbeat. >> mm-hmm.

>> did she ever say i've got to turn around and go back to puerto rico on sunday? >> no. in fact, she laid out all of her plans to me. which was to return to puerto rico on that monday. >> now, tara was missing. alicia and her husband drove five hours to detroit to meet with the detective named kozlowski and to paper the metro area with missing person posters. saturday night, the 17th, they made plans to go over to stephen's house for take-out pizza. >> we drove up the driveway and steve came out of the garage and proceeded to hug me. in a very uncomfortable fashion. i tried to pull away and he would not allow me to pull away. he buried his head in my shoulder and he was crying. >> grant's tears became very familiar to tv news watchers, but after a few days in the spotlight, they dried up. he began badmouthing his missing wife in interviews. this one with hank winchester of detroit's nbc affiliate. >> a couple of years ago tara and i did have a problem in our marriage. with -- with -- i don't want to

call it an infidelity but -- but pretty close to an infidelity. >> what's pretty close to infidelity? i don't understand what that means. >> it was going there. >> he started belittling tara as an awol mom. more concerned with her career and frequent flier miles than her family. >> i get that she has to travel for business but too much is too much. and that was too much. >> alicia, meanwhile, felt compelled to speak up for her sister in interviews. portraying tara not as a one-dimensional career woman, but a loving mother who successfully balanced both work and family. >> she was family driven, career driven woman. >> and the more stephen grant appeared on the news playing for sympathy, the more divided public opinion became about him. >> he was a victim or he was evil. and there really wasn't much in between. >> along the way, his poor me image as the spouse possibly cheated on took a big hit.

an old girlfriend of grant leaked recent e-mails she received from stephen two weeks before tara went missing. not so subtle come-ons like, i'm still in need of some excitement in my day, wink, wink. i just think of marriage vows like speed limits. sometimes you have to break them. meanwhile, the agency that placed the young au pair in the grant home became so uncomfortable with one of its girls being in the midst of a publicly messy domestic situation, it pulled verena, the kids' nanny, out of the house against her will. she returned home to germany on february 21st. reporter amber hunt knew why the juicy psycho drama about a suburban family had hit such a nerve. >> they were the people next door. >> nice house, good kids? >> yeah. loving dad, successful mom. beautiful family. >> but could reporters or anyone really find out what was going on under a family's roof? the husband, in particular, was proving difficult to get a fix on. >> the people that we came

across pretty much acknowledged that he was kind of a strange bird. he didn't bring home nearly the amount of money she did. i don't know how that plays into somebody's psyche when you are pretty much left working for your dad and raising the kids. >> unobtrusively, the sheriff's office meanwhile had put surveillance teams on grant, watching his house, studying his demeanor in security cam video from the mini-mart where every morning he bought the local papers full of news about the case. the macomb county detective team had no physical evidence and few leads, yet they had a gut feeling about the husband. his story, including her supposedly making a phone call and leaving in a black sedan, was full of holes. >> the car service didn't work out. nobody picked her up. the credit cards, nothing had been used. so it was pretty much, we're at a dead end. >> with no fresh leads to run down, without the physical evidence they'd need to execute a search warrant at the house,

sheriff mark hackel announced to the public they were going to search the sprawling park out by the grant home over the weekend. >> we realized the public was in tune to this case. they really wanted to know what was going on. we needed their help. >> someone out there listening to the sheriff was a dental hygienist, a person who adopted the narrow two-lane road that passed her house for winter cleanup chores. but her time in the case of the missing tara grant hadn't arrived. not just yet. coming up, cameras are rolling as police make a horrifying discovery inside grant's house. while outside, an escape. how angry are you? >> i'm very. i'm going to get him. i'm going to go find him. >> when "the valentine's day mystery" continues. daddy, come in the water!

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>> it was just a hunch. we just didn't want to sit back. >> for six hours, more than 150 searchers with sniffer dogs on the ground and a helicopter above scoured a three-mile grid of the park. why? simply because in his nonstop interviews in the media, stephen grant, the missing woman's husband, talked about stony creek a lot. maybe too much. >> the main reason we bought the house is because the park was there. i mountain bike out there. i run out at stony creek all the time. we loved that park. >> but at the end of the long day, the searchers came up empty. the sheriff asked the community to keep its eyes open. >> what we'd like people to do is take a look in some of the wooded areas. if they happen to see something, call us immediately. >> the missing woman's sister, alicia, had gotten a head's up the night before that the sheriff's office was going to be looking for tara's body. at that moment, reality set in. >> i remember getting off the phone and going downstairs to where my children were and just sobbing. with my little son across the room from me, standing there as

startled as he could ever be and i said, bud, mom needs a hug. that little boy came running to me as fast as he could and jumped up in my lap. >> it was four days later on the wednesday after the weekend search when that dental hygienist sheila werner, decided to go for a tromp through the woods less than a mile from her house. a section of the same park the sheriff's office had searched. >> i had no intention of finding anything. >> but as she came up the rise back towards the dirt road, she saw it. a one-gallon ziploc bag. >> i had a mitten on and i went over and i picked up the bag and you could see blood just pooling to the bottom of the bag. i knew about the disappearance of tara grant, but i had no idea what it could be. >> so she brought it home, placed it on top of her freezer in the garage, and called the sheriff's office. >> when the deputy got out there, he found the ziploc bag with some gloves in it, metal shavings and stuff that were concerning. >> metal shavings? grant worked in a machine shop.

that and the determination that it was human blood in the baggie were the findings they needed to get a search warrant. so that gave you probable cause to go to grant's house? >> yes. >> and do a proper search? >> yes. >> two days later at 5:00 p.m. on friday, march 2nd, detectives and crime scene techs from the sheriff's department arrived to process the grant's home but with modest expectations. after all, tara has been missing for three weeks already. but now events tumbled quickly and we can see it in almost documentary realtime, because reporting crews from the nbc station, wdiv-tv are also on the scene. >> he's getting out of the car. he's getting out of the car. >> a camera rolls as grant is taken from his vehicle and patted down. >> they're patting him down. wait, wait. >> significantly, he has not been placed under arrest. >> and at that point we didn't have probable cause to arrest mr. grant. >> the other crew, meanwhile, is getting ready to set up for an interview.

stephen grant has asked reporter hank winchester to come out to the house. >> he wanted me to interview him in the garage of the house. i asked him, why the garage? he said, well, the garage will give you a look into what i saw that day. because i was looking out one of the windows when i saw tara leave in the town car. but the interview never happened. >> never happened. and certainly not in the garage. because, watch this. as technicians inside are methodically searching the house -- >> entering the immediate kitchen. >> outside, that is stephen grant, simply walking away, getting out of dodge, looking back as though he couldn't believe no one was stopping him. what they found in the house 90 minutes later is detective kozlowski's stomach-churning story. by then, he and five other detectives had retreated to the garage to get out from under foot of the csi types working in the house. detective kozlowski eyeballed

the usual garage clutter to see if anything had changed since his first and only visit back on february 14th. >> i saw a green container that i was confident had not been there on the 14th. it looked out of place to me immediately. there was a black garbage bag in it. and i opened up the bag and there was another bag. i went through each bag ripping them apart with my hands. i stuck my bare hand in there and it was moist. and i saw what i thought was blood and plastic. then i could see what was a bra. >> the detectives backed away to let a crime scene tech confirm what no one could quite believe. >> one of the evidence techs opened up the lid, cut the bag further and spread apart the bag. and there was a female human torso. >> your words in court were i think, what the [ bleep ]? >> exactly. >> a plastic bin in the garage containing a female torso, no head, no limbs. did it all click together for you at the moment? it's tara. she's murdered. he dismembered her and left her

in the garage? >> once i said that's her. i actually just left the scene. >> that's when the detective got his second shock of the night. he discovered stephen grant had fled and had an hour and a half lead on him. how angry are you? >> i'm very angry and i'm going to get him. >> this guy is taking a walk on you. >> yes. i'm going to go find him. >> stephen grant was on the run. the manhunt was on. coming up, on the run to where? could someone else now be in danger? >> my phone rang about 11:00 p.m. it was sheriff hackel. he said, alicia, do you feel like steve would ever harm you? >> when "the valentine's day mystery" continues. [ designer ] enough of just covering up my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. i decided enough is enough. ♪ [ spa lady ] i started enbrel. it's clinically proven to provide clearer skin. [ rv guy ] enbrel may not work for everyone --

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hard in new hampshire ahead of tuesday's primary. they'll have a chance to go head to head in two separate debates. and president obama touted the drop in unemployment in his radio address. he said there are a lot of people that are still hurting but we are starting to rebound. more news later. we'll see you in an hour. i've never seen violence like this. >> the detective had found the missing tara grant. but only a part of her. just the woman's torso in a plastic storage bin inside the garage of the home she shared with her husband and two children. alicia, tara's sister, returned to her home in ohio by the time the awful discovery was made. >> my phone rang about 11:00 p.m. and it was sheriff hackel. he said, alicia, do you feel like steve would ever harm you? >> the sheriff didn't tell alicia that they found her sister, but he was concerned for her well-being because grant was on the loose.

he insisted she come back to michigan immediately. >> i said, mark, it's 11:00. you want us to drive to michigan? we have two small children. he said yes. >> for your safety? >> for your safety. >> at the sheriff's office, the next morning, alicia heard the incomprehensible news. her sister not only murdered, but dismembered. then she had to tell her parents that their first born was gone. >> i don't even know what i said other than, tara's dead. tara's dead. >> stephen grant had simply walked away from his home before detective kozlowski had discovered the torso. now a day later, the investigators were getting some good clues on his whereabouts. information pinging off cell phone towers told them the cell phone grant was using was headed north. they'd learned he was in a yellow dodge dakota truck borrowed from an unsuspecting

break. the detective's desk phone rang. >> i recognized it right away as being an international call. >> at the other end was a voice saying this is verena durkas. verena, the grants' former au pair, calling from her home in germany. >> she was crying. i had the sense to reach for my recorder and record the conversation. >> everything he said was a lie and i believed everything. >> and for the next 30 minutes, what a story she had to tell. verena, in the middle of the night for her, was saying grant had just called her and confessed to killing his wife. >> he told me it was an accident. he said she slapped me and she yelled at me. and i pushed her back and she banged her head and was dead. >> the 19-year-old verena swore to the detective that she always believed stephen's story that his wife had walked out. she had no idea, she said, that he actually killed tara. the detective told verena he believed her. but he gently confronted her

about stories told to him by the au pair's friends in the detroit area. rumors about her and grant. >> is there anything you want to tell me about your relationship with steve? >> there is nothing. >> are you absolutely certain about that, verena? >> yes. >> gradually the cop coaxed the truth out of the teenager, bit by bit. challenged on that point, verena admitted a little more. >> we kissed, but that's all. >> then after further probing admitted a lot more. she'd had oral sex with her employer. >> it was just one time and it was before that happened to tara. it was before the february the 9th. >> okay, was it mutual oral sex or just him? >> it was just him. >> was kozlowski hearing motivation for the murder? did stephen grant kill his wife so he could be with the cute young nanny who was so good with the children? meanwhile, the intense manhunt

for grant was still very much ongoing. and verena provided the detective a solid lead. she told him grant's call to her had registered on her caller i.d. as coming from the 989 area code. a big chunk of northern michigan. verena was certain he intended to kill himself. in yet another call from grant that night, this one to his sister near detroit, he even gave the name of the remote cabins where he intended to take his life. the sister called the detective. >> so i basically googled it, and it showed up wagashantz state cabins in wilderness state park in northern michigan. >> quickly, police found the abandoned yellow truck, followed the footprints in the snow and there under a tree at 6:30 sunday morning was the dead-tired stephen grant, suffering from hypothermia, but very much alive. do you think he was trying to kill himself? >> i personally think it entered his mind. but when it really came down to it, he lacked the courage to do it. >> a coast guard rescue

helicopter was called to the scene to reel in grant and deliver him to a hospital. he may have been exhausted, but stephen grant still hadn't tired of talking about himself. he was about to tell everything. coming up, a strange confession caught on tape. >> and then i drank more whisky and then i just told myself, look, if you don't do this, you're going to prison for the rest of your life. >> when the "valentine's day mystery" continues. ins and a bus rider. the "i'll sleep when it's done" academic. for 80 years, we've been inspired by you. and we've been honored to walk with you to help you get where you want to be. ♪ because your moment is now. let nothing stand in your way. learn more at keller.edu.

search teams went back to stony creek park the day after tara grant's torso had been discovered in a bin in the family garage. >> when they started walking through that field, there were some pretty gruesome discoveries. >> not far from where the hiker had come upon the bloody ziploc bag, they began finding blood, hair, and dismembered body parts scattered about.

under fallen tree limbs, down in hollows. grant had cut his wife into 14 pieces. police found 11 parts marked by the red dots in this aerial photo, but they never did recover all of the remains. animals had gotten there first, they said. with his client in custody and the man's wife in pieces, stephen grant's lawyer announced he was no longer representing mr. mom. grant himself was in a northern michigan hospital under guard recovering from exposure when he asked if he could talk to detective kozlowski. the detective got on the line and after a few seconds, grant made a surprising proposal. >> come up, we'll talk. >> come on up, we'll talk? >> yep, me and you. >> five hours later kozlowski and detective mclean, the two who made the original house call on grant, were mirandizing the husband in his hospital bed, after pressing record on their tape machine. >> do you, in fact, understand that you are, in fact, under arrest right now? >> right.

>> for the murder of your wife, tara? >> yes. >> as though shooting the breeze over coffee in a diner, grant told the detectives it started with a fight in the master bedroom on friday, february 9th. tara saying she was going back to puerto rico early. grant angrily accusing her of not spending enough time at home. >> i said, i have to do my job. it's none of your business. she started to turn around and i grabbed her wrist. i said stop it. you're not going anywhere. i said we're going to finish this conversation and she slapped me. after that i don't really remember what happened. she fell and she banged the back of her head on the floor. and then she said something like, that's it. i'm going to take the kids and you're going to be [ bleep ] homeless. you're a piece of [ bleep ]. and i choked her. >> in the bathroom? >> on the carpet. she started to get up when i put my hand on her neck. just grabbed her neck and choked her.

>> were you looking in her face? >> no, i covered her face up. >> what did you cover her face up with? >> gray underwear or a gray t-shirt. >> how did you know she had died? >> when she stopped moving. and i was worried. i was really worried. >> the two children, grant said, were in their rooms down the hall from their murdered mother. the au pair was out. authorities would say later grant text messaged her, you owe me a kiss, and left a note reading the same on her pillow. grant said he returned to his wife's body, tied a belt around the neck and dragged the corpse down the stairs and out to the garage. he was going to hide the body in back of tara's isuzu trooper. >> i dropped her. she was too hard to pick up. the belt broke and she fell. it was the most disgusting noise. it sounded like dropping a watermelon on the cement. >> he went back upstairs only to hear the front door opening. verena.

he told the teenager the story for the first time about a fight and tara leaving in a black sedan. >> i kept thinking, you have a body in the garage. what the hell do i do with the body? i killed my wife. i was thinking my life was over. >> for the next day, the body of tara grant lay inside the isuzu in the garage. the day after that, sunday, he had a plan. grant drove the suv and tara's remains to his father's grungy machine shop where the two of them made ball bearings. he backed the truck in and set down plastic bags. >> so i looked around the shop for something. looking for a hacksaw or something. >> through trial and error he found that the blade of a broken hacksaw worked best. he started with the hands. >> that's when i threw up. then i threw up again. then i drank more whiskey. i told myself, look, if you don't do this, you're going to prison for the rest of your lie.

and i kept cutting her up. >> he then drove back to the house, his wife's dismembered body in the back of the suv and he joined verena and the kids for a nice sunday afternoon. >> i tried to make things normal as possible for everybody. and i continuously flirted with verene because i thought that was the only way i was going to get through this. >> that's sunday night he loaded the kids' plastic red sled in the isuzu and at 3:00 a.m. drove off looking for a place to dispose of his wife's pieces. he ended up at stony creek park near some big overhead power lines. he popped the hatch and dumped the body parts on to the kids' sled. he pulled the last of tara up through the snow to the open field. >> and as soon as i started going, it was like keystone cops, the sled took off, and now i'm chasing after this sled that has a body on it, down a hill. finally got stopped when it fell

over and it broke. the pieces fell all over the place. >> okay. >> so tara's torso, i took and i buried in the snow. and then the pieces, i put on the sled then i buried that in the snow. >> but grant was unhappy with his predawn work. >> i'd done a very, very bad job of hiding anything. it's right there in the open. >> 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. >> hands, feet, tara's head, everything. >> a one-gallon ziploc bag stuffed with all the plastic wrap he left by a tree near the road, and he was done. until he heard more than a week later, the sheriff announced a search of stony creek park. >> i thought, they're going to find that torso i buried in the snow. >> so on that very saturday

morning, mere hours before the sheriff's search, grant went back to the park at dawn to recover his wife's torso. >> i had to dig it out of the ground. it was frozen in the ground. >> how did you carry it? >> threw it over my shoulder and carried it. >> it. no longer tara. a wife. a human. just "it." merely a problem to be dealt with. >> i've covered crime my entire career, and it's hard to shake some of these details. >> details like grant using his kids' red sled. this red sled from an old home video, to transport his wife's body parts. >> just like a kid. >> grant returned to the car with tara's dismembered body. he shoved it into plastic garbage bags and drove once more to his father's machine shop. he then hid the torso behind boxes in the loft space between the ceiling. but he worried that the remains would thaw and start to smell. five days later he stashed the torso in a green plastic container, drove it back to the

garage in his home and hoped for the best. >> and i kept thinking, i can't believe i got away with this. >> how do you keep from going for this guy? just throttling him? >> i guess i should be credited for that. because there's more than one time i would have liked to have done that. >> the case had turned very personal for this tough-guy detective. do you ever wake up at night and you are back in the garage putting your hand in the tub? >> you see the green tub, i can see that almost every day. i'll take it to bed with me every night. >> grant signed a written version of his confession, but the case wasn't over. because grant later pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder. he was going to trial for strangling and dismembering his wife, but stephen grant wasn't down for the count yet. not by a long shot. coming up -- >> there's not an ounce of remorse. in all honesty, i saw an animal >> would justice be served? new details tumble out in court.

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and confession -- >> david, did you kill your wife? >> stephen grant who couldn't get enough of the tv cameras faced them one more time. in a perp walk, a perp role, actually. later that day for an arraignment in a hospital wheelchair and wearing not the conventional institutional jump suit, but old-timey prisoner stripes, selected personally by the sheriff for maximum humiliation. >> i saw an empty shell. in all honesty, i saw an animal. >> more than anything, tara's sister, alicia, wanted that animal she saw locked up for the rest of his life. but only a first degree murder conviction could guarantee no chance at parole.

>> he's never going to get out. second-degree, there is that possibility. >> so that's what was at stake when the murder trial of stephen grant began here in the courtroom ten months after his arrest. would he get life in prison, meaning exactly that? or would the jury find him guilty of murder in the second degree leaving the door open for him to walk free at some future date? despite his legally airtight confession, grant had pleaded not guilty. >> you strip it all down, it's a domestic violence murder. somebody has to speak for tara and that was our job. >> the macomb county prosecutor, erik smith, never for a minute believed grant's story he and tara had a fight about her traveling so much. >> it was about sex. it was about stephen grant wanting to replace his wife with his au pair. something that was really telling in this entire case, the first thing he did after murdering his wife was pick up the cell phone and text the au pair saying, you owe me a kiss. >> the judge wouldn't permit

cameras in the courtroom as the prosecutor argued their case for premeditation, a requirement for grant to be sent to prison without the possibility of parole. he introduced evidence. there were grant's recent steamy e-mails to the old flame all but asking for a fresh hook-up. then, him changing erotic targets from the former girlfriend to the chirp's au pair, verena, the german teen fresh out of high school. and in a moment of high theater, they called a blockbuster witness, verena, now a brunette. >> people flew over to germany to try to track this woman down. she was having nothing of it. we really thought she would just keep her distance. >> set the scene, amber. we had no cameras, of course. >> i saw her just shoot these looks at him. they were scowls. it seemed like she was really there to say, you messed me up for some time. and i'm here to make sure you get what's coming to you.

>> verena in a confident voice, recounted how her employer became suddenly flirtatious at the end of january, stealing kisses, actually exposing himself to her until finally the night before tara is murdered, he gets her into his bed. >> no one can ever tell me that it's a coincidence that the night before he murders his wife, he has sexual relations with his au pair. >> the defense throughout, meanwhile, answered the accusation by asking, where are the signs that grant plotted out this crime? where's the to-do list of carrying out a murder? a defense expert witness says this case is about a man snapping during a physical confrontation. therefore, the defense argued he should be found guilty of no more than second-degree murder. >> tara's torso i took and buried in the snow. >> yet, when the jury heard all three hours of grant's passionless recollection of his murder and dismemberment, how could that we anything but first degree murder? when you hear it, there's a remoteness from the things he's

talking about, isn't there? >> yes. there's no remorse. there's not an ounce of remorse. >> in his closing argument, the prosecutor brought the jury back to the bedroom as the murder occurred. the medical examiner had testified that tara likely went unconscious after 15 seconds of strangulation. but then, it probably took another three minutes and 45 seconds of grant choking her before she actually died. prosecutor smith took out a stopwatch and set it ticking for four minutes. plenty of time, he said, to think about going through with the murder and just as significantly, plenty of time to make the conscious choice to stop. that, he told the jury, also constituted premeditation. >> when i said tara grant is now unconscious, those next three minutes and 45 seconds were an eternity. stephen grant had the opportunity to choose life or death. he chose death. >> the jury went out to deliberate and stayed out.

confounding all courtroom betting for a fast verdict. three days later they returned. >> second degree murder. >> stephen grant guilty of second degree murder. >> guilty of murder in the second degree. after a split jury tussle, they'd finally been persuaded by the defense's argument against premeditation. the defendant in full-panic mode during and after the killing, his rational self as it were, no longer at the wheel. >> the jury has spoken. >> i wanted first degree murder. >> the defendant has been convicted of murder. >> but what i wanted more than anything was to make sure steve grant would be off the streets and be off the streets for a long time. >> two months later in her sentencing of grant on february 21st, the judge ensured just that. grant will be in prison for the next 50 to 80 years. >> today, justice was served. nothing will bring back tara grant, but also nothing will bring back stephen grant. >> grant's first opportunity for

a parole hearing won't come until he's 87 years old. the judge had far exceeded the state's sentencing guidelines and handed down a virtual life sentence, citing among other reasons, the depravity of grant's psychological damage to his young children. >> they'll never have to see their father. they'll never have to experience his hurtful ways, his abusive ways any more. >> there had been yet another shocking disclosure. in her victim impact statement, tara's sister told the courts this past christmas day, days after the trial ended, her 7-year-old niece spilled a long-kept secret. >> hearing lindsey describe detail by detail by detail, you know, what she saw that night was unbelievable. i don't think anything could have prepared me for hearing those words come out of her mouth. >> both lindsey and her young brother ian had watched their father murder their mother that awful night. they heard her final groan.

nightmares, understandably, roam both children's minds, the court was told. with time, counseling and a new supportive home life, there's hope for them. alicia and her husband, eric, recently adopted their niece and nephew. blending them with their own two children. tara's kids now call their aunt and uncle mom and dad. >> there was a part of me that felt like i was dishonoring my sister by allowing them to call me mom. it was really my husband that said, you know what, this is the best thing for them. >> her children will be the legacy of tara? >> i believe so. how could they not? lindsey's a spitting image of her mom, right down to the curly hair and her personality. i think oh my gosh, this is tara. that's tara. >> you can find out more information about the grant case on our website. logon to dateline.msnbc.com. that's all for now. i'm chris hansen for ann curry and all