Verena Dierkes: Au Pair, Affair, and Tara Grant’s Murder

Verena Dierkes was the young German au pair living in Stephen and Tara Grant’s Washington Township, Michigan home when Stephen strangled Tara on February 9, 2007. She had begun a sexual relationship with Stephen the night before the killing, hid what she knew for weeks afterward, and eventually became the prosecution’s key witness after Stephen phoned her in the early hours of March 3 and confessed.¹

Who She Was and How She Ended Up in the Grant Home

Dierkes came from Alhausen, Germany. She was 19 or 20 years old when she arrived in the United States to work as a live-in au pair for the Grant family’s two young children, joining the household around August 2006 through an au pair placement agency.²³

The setup made her presence essential. Tara Grant, 34, was an operations manager for Washington Group International and traveled regularly to the company’s office in San Juan, Puerto Rico.⁴ Stephen Grant, 37, ran the home in her absence, with Dierkes helping care for six-year-old Lindsey and four-year-old Ian.

The Affair With Stephen Grant

Dierkes testified that things with Stephen started as flirtation a few months in and escalated from there.³ On February 1, 2007, she said, he told her outright that he wanted to sleep with her. Over the next several days they began sharing a bed for what she described as kissing and cuddling, usually in her room.¹

The night of February 8 was different. Dierkes told the jury she and Grant had oral sex in the bedroom he shared with his wife. The next morning, Lindsey walked in and found them in bed together; Dierkes hid under the covers. Grant told her he loved her, and she testified that she believed she loved him back.⁵¹

The Night Tara Grant Was Killed

Tara flew back from Puerto Rico on February 9. That evening, Dierkes was out with friends at Mr. B’s, a bar in Rochester, while Stephen and Tara were home together. She testified that Stephen bombarded her with calls and texts demanding she come back, including one saying she “owed” him a kiss.¹

She got home between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m. She heard Stephen running down the stairs. He yelled at her, then said he had mistaken her for his wife. He told her he and Tara had fought, that Tara had slapped him, and that Tara had walked out. Dierkes described him sitting in a dining room chair, crying, saying over and over that Tara was gone. Prosecutors later established that Tara was already dead by the time Dierkes came through the door. Stephen had strangled her.¹

That same night, Stephen helped Dierkes delete text messages from her phone to hide the relationship. He told her he did not want a divorce because he did not want his children to go through what he had as a child. She said she slept alone in her own room that night. The next night, roughly 24 hours after the killing and while Tara’s body was in the garage, she slept in Stephen’s bed.²

Weeks of Silence, Then a Confession Call

Stephen did not report Tara missing until February 14, five days after killing her.⁶ For the days before that report and the weeks after, Dierkes kept his secret. She said she believed his story that Tara had left, and she wanted to protect him. Stephen also warned her that if the affair came out, people would assume he had killed his wife to be with her.¹

A Macomb County Sheriff’s detective interviewed Dierkes on February 16. She handed over emails between Tara and a male friend, material Stephen had shown her to point suspicion elsewhere, but she said nothing about the affair. Her agency told her to leave the Grant home on February 13, and by February 17 she was out. She flew back to Germany on February 21. She and Stephen stayed in covert contact by phone and email.²

The break came on March 2. Police searched the Grant home and found Tara’s torso in a container in the garage. Stephen fled. He called Dierkes twice that day, telling her that if investigators found “one drop of blood, he’s screwed.” Then, around 2 a.m. on March 3, while driving north through Michigan, he called her one final time and confessed. She quoted him at trial as saying he was calling to say goodbye because he was going to prison for the rest of his life, and that it was “an accident.”¹

Within hours, Dierkes contacted the lead investigator, Detective Sgt. Brian Kozlowski, and reported the call. Her information, including that Stephen was using a phone in the 989 area code, helped police track him to northern Michigan, where he was found the next morning at Wilderness State Park suffering from hypothermia and frostbite.¹⁷⁸

Her Testimony at Trial

Stephen Grant’s murder trial ran in Macomb County Circuit Court in December 2007 before Judge Diane Druzinski, with Prosecutor Eric Smith seeking a first-degree murder conviction on a premeditation theory.⁹

Dierkes was central to that case. She walked the jury through the whole arc: the flirtation, the sexual encounter the night before the killing, the scene when she came home on February 9, Stephen’s tearful claim that Tara had left, the deleted text messages, and the phone confession on March 3. She acknowledged under questioning that she had loved Stephen and that she had withheld information from investigators for more than two weeks to protect him.¹

Her account gave prosecutors three things at once. It supplied a romantic motive. It placed Stephen in communication with his lover while his wife’s body was in the house. And it produced an admission from Stephen’s own mouth before police caught him.

How the Case Ended

On December 21, 2007, the jury convicted Stephen Grant of second-degree murder, declining to find premeditation. He had already pleaded guilty to mutilating a corpse.¹⁰ At sentencing on February 21, 2008, Judge Druzinski called his conduct “demonic, manipulative, barbaric and dishonest” and sentenced him to 50 to 80 years for the murder plus a concurrent six-to-ten-year term for the mutilation charge, well above the guideline range of 19 to 31 years.¹¹

1
Macomb Daily. Au Pair: I Loved, Trusted Grant
2
Macomb Daily. Au Pair Lied to Police at First
3
RedOrbit. Grant Shared Bed With Au Pair on Night Before His Wife’s Murder
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ClickOnDetroit. Investigators Expand Search for Tara Grant
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Fox News. German Teen Au Pair Says She Had Sex With Accused Killer on Eve of Wife Slaying
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ClickOnDetroit. Timeline of Events Since Tara Grant’s Disappearance
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NBC News. Stephen Grant Murder Case
8
ClickOnDetroit. Officials Find Stephen Grant in Northern Michigan
9
6ABC. Stephen Grant Sentenced to 50 to 80 Years
10
Macomb Daily. Grant Guilty of Second-Degree Murder
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Macomb Daily. Grant Called Demonic, Manipulative, Barbaric