Update On The Tara Grant Case

I wrote about the Tara Grant case when she first went missing.  Those entries can be found in the Missing Person category linked on the right.  At one point, I planned on following the Grant case from beginning to end.  I lost interest quickly, because  it turned out to be another selfish narcissistic POS husband who killed his wife because he was an insecure inadequate idiot.

This idiot not only took her dismembered body to a state park near their home and then brought parts back a few days later and stored them in a tote in the garage, he also fled and ended up wandering in the cold in the upper lower peninsula.  He was then hospitalized for exposure.  While in the hospital he gave a full and detailed confession.  In case there was any doubt about his character, he was having an affair with the families very young forgien nanny.  Atta boy.

Jury selection for his trial has started this week.

Obviously, this guy is a real genius.  He confessed.  He is planning on going to trial.  I'm not a criminal defense attorney so I couldn't tell you the grand reasoning behind Grant not just taking a plea to second degree or even manslaughter.  I am sure there must be a reason he chose to go to trial, though.  This, after all, is Michigan.  He will be found guilty of premeditated first degree murder and he will be sentenced to life without parole.  That's just the way we Michigan folks dispense justice.

There has been some activity on the case between Grant's indictment and now.  His sister battled his late wife's sister for custody of the two minor children.  Grant relinquished his legal rights to the children.  The children are with their maternal aunt in Ohio pending a likely permanent placement there next year.  His sister's motives for custody seemed murky to me, while Tara's sister seemed to truly be concerned for the children's well-being.

His court appointed defense attorney, Stephen Rabaut, has requested he be excused from defending Grant. The prosecution also requested that Mr. Rabuat be held in contempt for violating the gag order Mr. Rabaut himself had requested.  Mr. Rabuat recently conducted an interview with WXYZ, Channel 7, after his request to be excused from the case was denied. (Note: Don't you love defense attorneys? Their sense of logic is so delightfully skewered.)  Both motions were denied, although the judge was not too pleased and it was obvious.

Mr. Rabuat's name may be familiar to Michigan crime buffs.  I recognized it because he was former Warren District Judge Susan Chrzanowski's attorney during the Michael Fletcher case.  (Fletcher was the attorney who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife LeAnn.  He was having an affair with Chrzanowski, a sitting judge at the time.  She was feeding him cases during the affair.)

Anyway.  Jury selection is going on right now for the Grant trial and is expected to take at least two weeks.  It has been difficult to find anyone in Macomb county let alone anywhere else who isn't acquainted with the case.  Indeed, some potential jurors had even read parts or all of the transcript of Grant's four hour confession.  It was posted online.  The jury waiting room has a television to help pass the time and even though it was not supposed to be tuned to the news, a live clip was viewed, filmed right outside that very courthouse.

I am sure Grant, being the narcissistic piece of vile human excrement he is, enjoys all this brouhaha and seeing his mug on the news and in the paper.  It's really not much of a mystery as the the outcome of the trial and the whole thing is a farce played out for Mr. Grant's benefit.

Comments

[ronni]

It's strange, isn't it, that so many of these cases of husbands killing wives have so much in common, and yet, a few stand out due to some strange circumstance...Stephen Grant, in this one, emerged as a much more notable character than his wife. I think the total craziness of dismembering her body and schlepping the pieces all over, only to wind up with the largest one back in his own garage gave the case an element of sick humour. I apologize for that, because I know that Tara's family is not laughing, but someday, somebody will write a book about this case, and the book will be as funny as "Arsenic and Old Lace."