Book summary “A Slaying in the Suburbs”: summary

Introduction

You often look to true crime stories to understand how normal suburban lives can conceal catastrophic violence. You want to know what drives a seemingly devoted husband to commit murder and orchestrate a chilling cover-up behind closed doors. Steve Miller explores this dark reality in A Slaying in the Suburbs by examining the shocking death of Tara Grant in Washington Township.

A seemingly normal suburban family is shattered when a high-profile murder and meticulous cover-up expose dark marital secrets and deep-seated deception.

The book traces the tragedy across five distinct phases.

• How a sudden disappearance in a quiet neighborhood leads to a gruesome discovery
• The early lives and ambitions of Stephen and Tara Grant
• Their intense courtship, demanding careers, and growing domestic friction
• The secret affairs and final argument that led to murder
• The grotesque dismemberment and the relentless police investigation that followed

1. The Disappearance and Discovery

The Missing Persons Report

Tara Grant worked as an international business executive for Washington Group International. She commuted weekly to San Juan, Puerto Rico, leaving her family home in Washington Township.

Tara Grant's sudden disappearance in February 2007 led to a chilling discovery inside the family's garage.

Tara arrived at Detroit Metro Airport at a little after 9 P.M. on February 9, 2007. She placed a final cell phone call to Stephen at 9:47 P.M. that lasted eighteen minutes, and had no further activity on her cell phone or credit cards.

Stephen Grant filed a missing-persons report five days later on Valentine's Day. The home was located thirty miles from Detroit Metro Airport.

The Search and Breakthrough

Macomb County Sheriff's deputies blocked Stephen Grant's Jeep Commander near 28 Mile Road and Van Dyke Avenue on a Friday afternoon. Deputy Tony Szalkowski and Captain Tony Wickersham managed the detention while media trucks and news helicopters surrounded the Carriage Hills subdivision home three weeks after Tara's disappearance.

Stephen met his friend Mike Zanlungo after leaving his home. He confessed that police were going to examine his computer and discover flirtatious email communications between him and the family's teenage au pair, Verena Dierkes.

Detective Sergeant Brian Kozlowski pulled back a black mesh tarp in the garage and tore open layers of trash bags to find a clear bag containing a woman's torso clad in Isaac Mizrahi slacks and an Ann Taylor blouse.

Stephen Grant embarked on a frantic journey across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan while contemplating suicide. He drove through Lansing, East Lansing, Mt. Pleasant, and eventually reached Wilderness State Park, where he abandoned his vehicle and walked into the freezing forest.

U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Robert Kornexl piloted a rescue helicopter out of Traverse City with a three-man crew, using searchlights and tracking Stephen's footprints and discarded items in the snow.

2. Early Lives and Backgrounds

Stephen and Tara came from distinct backgrounds marked by youthful rebellion, fierce ambition, and a drive to escape small-town limitations.

Stephen's Troubled Youth

Stephen Grant displayed a persistent pattern of thrill-seeking behavior, explosive-making, and minor criminality during his youth. You find that he constantly sought excitement by engaging in risky pranks and stealing items just for the thrill of escaping. He also manufactured homemade explosives from components found in his father's garage.

Stephen packed a long copper tube with gunpowder and buckshot, detonating it in his backyard to create a massive hole while initially blaming it on lurkers. The hole measured eight inches in diameter and six inches deep. He also attempted to steal a seventy-five-dollar remote-control airplane from Circus World.

Stephen transitioned from community college and odd jobs into a political internship through his persuasive communication skills. He attended Macomb Community College from 1988 through the spring of 1991. He was pulled over during a 1989 traffic stop while driving seventy in a forty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit zone.

Despite not completing his degree at Michigan State University, Stephen leveraged his conversational ability and youthful energy to secure an internship and staff position working for state Senator Jack Faxon. Stephen worked as a legislative aide answering phones in state Senator Jack Faxon's office across from the state capitol until the senator retired in 1994.

Tara's Up-North Ambition

Tara Destrampe grew up in a rural Upper Peninsula environment and used fierce ambition and competition to escape small-town limitations. She was raised in Perkins, Michigan, located twenty miles north of Escanaba near the thirty-thousand-acre Little Bay de Noc and the thirteen thousand population of Escanaba. Her family bought twenty-eight mostly undeveloped acres of property in 1974 for twenty thousand dollars.

Tara combined an outdoorsy, self-reliant upbringing with strict personal fastidiousness and a drive to outperform her peers and sister, setting her sights on higher education downstate. She graduated third in her class of forty at Mid Peninsula School in 1990.

Tara meticulously maintained her appearance, such as measuring her bangs to exact lengths and spraying them vertically in a style known as the wall.

Tara pursued business administration at Michigan State University while navigating demanding relationships with high school and college beaus. She attended a community college and worked in Escanaba retail before transferring to Michigan State University. She focused on marketing, joined a sorority, and eventually moved away from local hometown romances.

Tara maintained an on-again, off-again relationship with her high school sweetheart Jamie Hanson, earning a reputation for having a hot temper that led friends to call her Terror.

3. Courtship and Domestic Realities

Intense romantic gestures gave way to demanding corporate careers, litigious friction, and structured self-reflection.

Tara initially rejected Steve due to his cocksure, boastful persona and urban background. She was eventually won over by his persistence, his tour of Detroit showcasing upscale areas, and his unannounced six-hour drive to attend her grandmother's funeral.

Steve drove six hours to Escanaba for the funeral of Tara's grandmother, Mary Jane Destrampe. He presented himself as her boyfriend and prompted Tara to break up with her other suitor, Jamie Hanson, on the spot. He drove a 1985 Mazda RX-7 sports car during this period of UP innocence.

Career and Ambition

Both Tara and Steve sought lives outside their blue-collar upbringings. They moved to prosperous Detroit suburbs where Tara quickly advanced in the corporate sector while Steve worked in his father's tool-and-die shop.

Steve faced a choice between an initial job offer of $24,000 and working for his father. His father provided an $8,000 salary increase compared to the other offer. Tara started as a Kelly Girl at Morrison-Knudsen, later known as Washington Group International, in Troy. She rapidly moved into a full-time operations manager role, traveling internationally until her salary neared the six-figure mark at $170,000.

Steve exhibited a pattern of contentious behavior when facing legal or financial disputes. He often dragged out settlements and created intense friction over code violations or property issues.

After selling their former house on Cardinal Street without proper permits for a room conversion, a small-claims lawsuit was filed by the buyer Barbara Horn. Horn initially sought $2,317 in small-claims court, resulting in a final lowered total of a $2,000 judgment against the Grants. Steve drew out payments and later confronted a clerk and blocked Horn's vehicle. He also settled for $12,500 after suing Kevin Bilske over a traffic accident.

Personal Growth and Planning

After attending the Landmark Forum in Phoenix in 2005, Tara wrote unsent letters to her parents, sister Alicia, and husband Steve. She acknowledged her need for control, her competition with her sister, and her emotional distance from Steve by trying to remain authentic.

In her letter to Steve, Tara confessed that she had dominated him and pushed him away to avoid being hurt. She admitted she failed to see that he was the only fully committed party in the marriage.

Tara maintained detailed lists of professional, financial, and personal objectives for 2007. She balanced international travel and financial investments with family vacations and therapy goals.

• Sit w/a financial advisor in January
• Plan life better
• Get SMART about finances
• Start a card night
• Keep office organized
• Start doing 15 min. a day meditation
• Start yoga again for my soul

Tara's detailed list for 2007 included buying a piano, taking adult vacations to Paris and the Caribbean, consulting a financial advisor, establishing a 529 college savings account, and attending therapy to stop yelling. She also planned to:

• Write down specifically what I WANT
• Address career ambition by authentically marketing oneself

Due to Tara's extensive travel for Washington Group International, particularly managing projects in San Juan and Europe, the Grants hired a series of au pairs. They employed seven different au pairs over time to manage childcare while Steve balanced work at USG Babbitt and home life.

Starting in October 2006, Tara was gone three weekdays out of each week to San Juan. A nineteen-year-old German teenager named Verena Dierkes assisted with children Lindsey and Ian during these absences.

4. Affairs and the Final Argument

Reconnected ex-lovers, buried email secrets, and an affair with the au pair culminated in a fatal confrontation on the night of February 9, 2007.

You find that marital frustrations often push people toward past attachments. In January 2007, Steve resumed contact with his childhood ex-lover Deena Hardy after thirteen years apart. Steve made annual calls to Deena, but these conversations turned flirtatious. He falsely claimed he was traveling for work and compared marriage vows to speed limits that you could break as long as you avoided detection.

Steve also claimed he monitored your communications using software from an old friend at a computer company. He called Deena in January 2007, and they exchanged emails where Steve suggested he might need a sponge bath if she pursued nursing. He ultimately canceled a planned meeting because he did not want to ruin his kids' lives.

Unraveling Fidelity

You might uncover old messages that destroy your trust. While cleaning an old Dell laptop for au pair Verena Dierkes, Steve accessed Tara's private files. He read 2005 emails between Tara and Pete Brancheau, a man she had nearly been with years prior. Pete recounted how they met in Escanaba in 1991 and reconnected in late 2004 when Tara called him after running into his mother at a fair.

Tara complained to Pete of marital and financial unhappiness. In 2005, Steve found a love note in Tara's car from Pete, leading to a fierce confrontation where Steve threatened Pete over the phone and Tara left the house for a week. That previous forty thousand dollar bonus at work that Tara received had been put straight into their family machine shop by Steve.

Following his discovery of Tara's old emails, Steve began making romantic advances toward nineteen-year-old German au pair Verena Dierkes. Despite her initial hesitation and guilt about Tara, Verena was flattered by his attention. They spent hours talking, and Steve eventually activated text messaging on her phone to facilitate their secret communication before they began a sexual relationship.

On February 1, Steve told Verena he wanted to sleep with her, and by February 7, they spent their first night together sharing a bed. They shared a late-night conversation in her room lasting four hours, finishing at two a.m. on the night of February 1.

The Fatal Night

You face severe tension when business trips bring distant partners back under the same roof. Tara spent her week working in Puerto Rico, staying at a hotel bar and making various calls to family, workmates, and Steve. During her travels, she indicated to her sister Alicia that things were reaching an acrimonious head. On February 9, Tara flew on Continental Flight 476 from Puerto Rico through Newark before taking Flight 2763 to Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Forty-one minutes marked the duration of the phone call between Tara and her sister Alicia on her travel day. Around nine p.m., Tara's plane touched down at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. She drove home on the night of February 9 while speaking with Steve by phone as he coordinated tickets and managed his affair with Verena.

Realizing he could not carry his wife's body, Steve wrapped a brown belt around her neck to drag her down the stairs. He dropped her body into the garage with a loud thud, then concealed her in the back of her Isuzu Trooper under a Jeep cargo liner. Steve dragged Tara's body down the stairs just moments before Verena unlocked the garage door and entered the house at eleven forty-five at night, narrowly avoiding discovery. While doing this, Verena returned home from a night out, prompting Steve to invent a false story that Tara had voluntarily packed a bag, called a car service, and left him.

5. Dismemberment and Cover-Up

Stephen Grant enacted a grotesque disposal plan while police and lawyers began circling his suburban home.

On Sunday, February 11, Grant went to his workplace, USG Babbitt. After struggling with a standard bow saw on frozen flesh, he manufactured saw blades from broken high-carbon steel band saw blades wrapped in cloth. He methodically cut the limbs at the joints and later noted surprise at the thick, syrupy consistency of the minimal blood. He packed the fourteen pieces into a 28-gallon blue Rubbermaid container and shredded her electronics and belongings.

Grant used an industrial machine to shred Tara's briefcase and laptop, shattering the hard drive and accidentally injuring his finger with glass before hiding the remains.

You must follow specific steps to complete this process:

• Cut limbs at the joints: the elbow, the wrist, the shoulder, the knee, the ankle, and the neck.
• Wrap the body parts in thick forty-gallon plastic garbage bags.
• Place the bags into a twenty-eight-gallon container, adding rags and blades, and jam with newspaper to prevent shifting.

Driving a red plastic sled and transporting the container to a wooded area near Stony Creek Metropark, Grant initially dumped the remains into a snowdrift. He later returned to unwrap the body parts and leave them under tree falls to encourage animal scavenging. He discarded the computer bag, purse, shredded electronics, and saw blades in various apartment complex Dumpsters and near his workplace.

Grant used a red plastic sled to haul the container up an incline near Inwood Road, where the sled accidentally slid away from him down a ravine into the woods. He drove a total of 21 miles to scatter the trail of evidence over 4 miles from the Grant house.

Law Enforcement Scrutiny

Grant officially reported his wife missing on Wednesday, February 14, telling Deputy William Hughes a detailed false story about an argument over family issues and Tara leaving in a private car service. He editorialized that he did not care if she ever returned and mentioned consulting a divorce attorney during the 90 minutes of questioning. Detective Sergeant Brian Kozlowski and Sergeant Pam McLean visited the Westridge home 5 days after Tara vanished, observing the tidy interior and inconsistencies in Grant's statements regarding dates and injuries without seizing the family computer. Sensing police suspicion, Grant retained David Griem, a prominent defense attorney and former top trial attorney in the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office from 1973 to 1979 who maintained an office in the Guardian Building. Griem immediately shielded Grant from police polygraphs, further interrogations, and home searches without written communication.

Frustrated by Griem's legal buffer, officers stopped Grant's vehicle for failing to use a turn signal because he was driving on a suspended license. Three squad cars pulled him over, arresting him and holding him for 6 hours at the station in an unsuccessful attempt to elicit a confession. Meanwhile, Deena Hardy reported her past email correspondence with Grant to the press after reading about the disappearance online. The 30-year friendship and past relationship with Deena revealed flippant attitudes toward marriage and fidelity, transforming public perception against Grant while Sheriff Mark Hackel and Tara's sister Alicia utilized media appearances to cast doubt on his innocence.

10 Key Ideas

1. Tara Grant's sudden disappearance from her Washington Township home in February 2007 initiated a high-profile true crime investigation into a suburban family's dark marital secrets.
2. Investigators discovered Tara's torso hidden inside a trash bag in the family garage while her husband Stephen fled north toward Wilderness State Park to evade authorities.
3. Stephen Grant's troubled youth was characterized by thrill-seeking behavior, explosive-making, minor criminality, and an ability to secure political internships through persuasion.
4. Tara Destrampe used a fierce, self-reliant ambition to escape her rural Upper Peninsula upbringing, eventually advancing to a lucrative international business career.
5. Despite initial resistance, Tara married Steve after he traveled six hours for her grandmother's funeral, but their marriage soon faced litigious friction and growing domestic strain.
6. Tara's participation in the Landmark Forum and her detailed 2007 goals contrasted sharply with the reality of her demanding travel schedule and the hiring of au pairs.
7. Marital frustrations and unearthed email secrets about past relationships pushed Steve toward infidelity, culminating in a sexual relationship with the family's teenage au pair, Verena Dierkes.
8. A fatal confrontation on the night of February 9, 2007, resulted in Steve strangling Tara with a belt just moments before Verena returned home.
9. Steve enacted a gruesome disposal plan by using handmade saw blades to dismember Tara's body before hiding her remains in a container near Stony Creek Metropark.
10. Law enforcement scrutiny intensified after Stephen filed a false missing-persons report and retained defense attorney David Griem, while media appearances by family and associates quickly turned public opinion against him.