Murder of Tara Lynn Grant

Tara Lynn Grant (born June 1972) was a Michigan State University graduate and a rising consultant for Washington Group International, based out of the company's downtown Detroit office. She was the principal wage earner in her household in Macomb County, Michigan, where she lived with her husband Stephen Grant and their two young children; the family also employed an au pair from Germany.

On 14 February 2007, Stephen Grant contacted the Macomb County Sheriff's Office to report that Tara had been missing for five days. He claimed that on the night of 9 February he overheard her arranging to meet someone and saw her leave in a car with an unknown driver. Over the following weeks he made numerous public and media appearances, at times accusing law enforcement of harassing him, and was separately arrested for driving with a suspended license. Investigators described him as uncooperative during the early stages of the search, though he agreed to a polygraph administered by a non-police examiner.

On 2 March 2007, police executing a search warrant at the Grant home found a dismembered human torso in the garage, believed to be Tara's remains. An "open murder" warrant was issued for Stephen Grant, who had already left the area. Two days later, after police traced a cell phone call he made to his sister, he was located in Wilderness State Park in northern Michigan, where he had spent a night outdoors in freezing conditions after reportedly intending to take his own life. He was hospitalized for hypothermia, and while there gave police a detailed confession, later reported publicly by Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel.

According to the confession, Grant strangled his wife on the night of 9 February following an argument in which he accused her of spending too much time with a co-worker; their two children were asleep in the home at the time. He later dismembered her body at his father's tool and die shop, distributed some remains at a nearby metro park, and then retrieved and hid the torso in the family garage after learning police intended to search the park. On 6 March 2007, Grant was formally charged with first-degree premeditated murder and with mutilation/disinterment of a body. In April 2007, prosecutors publicly released the full transcript of his confession, in which he also disclosed an affair with the family's 19-year-old au pair.

The case drew extensive national media coverage, including features on Larry King Live and Court TV. On 21 December 2007, a jury convicted Stephen Grant of second-degree murder; he was sentenced on 21 February 2008 to a minimum of 50 years in prison. His conviction and sentence were upheld on state appeal in March 2010 and again when a federal judge denied his habeas corpus petition in March 2015, rejecting claims that his confession was improperly obtained and that pretrial publicity had prevented a fair trial.

Tara's sister, Alicia Standerfer, was authorized to represent her estate and filed a wrongful death civil suit against Stephen Grant; she and her husband subsequently raised the two Grant children. In June 2008, Stephen Grant's father died by suicide in Capac, Michigan. The case has since been the subject of at least two books and multiple television documentary features.