Volume 4 · Chapter 4
Mr. Mom Killer
Stephen Grant
Victim: Tara Grant
Case at a glance
- When
- February 2007
- Where
- Washington Township and Stoney Creek Metropark, Michigan
- Perpetrator
- Stephen Grant
- Victim
- Tara Grant
- Outcome
- Convicted of second-degree murder in December 2007; sentenced to at least 50 years
The case
Tara Grant was a senior executive whose job sent her around the world. Her husband, Stephen, stayed home in Washington Township, Michigan, and looked after their two children. On February 9, 2007, after an argument in their bedroom, he strangled her.
What followed was calculated. Grant took her body to his father’s tool and die shop and dismembered it. He used a sled to haul her remains into Stoney Creek Metropark, more than 4,000 acres of woods, and scattered them there, later moving her torso to a plastic tub in the family garage. Meanwhile he reported her missing and talked to reporters about how worried he was.
The story unravelled when evidence turned up in the park at the end of February. Grant fled north before police could arrest him and was found in the snow at Wilderness State Park, badly hypothermic after trying to take his own life. He survived. In December 2007 he was convicted of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to at least 50 years in prison.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 4 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 4 on AmazonCase photographs
7 photos
Where it happened
Why this case
“The performance is what I remember most. For weeks Stephen Grant played the frightened husband for the cameras, and plenty of people believed him. Most of us have met someone who seemed perfectly normal right up until the moment they weren’t.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
