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 grant s former au pair, calling from her home in germany. she was crying. i decided 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 about
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.