Wife Killer Flirted in Jail With Mom Who Murdered Kids

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. – A man who killed and dismembered his wife carried on sexually suggestive and supportive jailhouse correspondence with a woman convicted of fatally stabbing her young daughters, according to letters released Tuesday.

Stephen Grant wrote more than a dozen letters to Jennifer Kukla while both were at the Macomb County Jail. The letters were among about 20 released to media outlets that filed Freedom of Information Act requests seeking them.

Grant also wrote two letters to another inmate and four to a woman named Sarah, though Kukla said those were in response to letters she had written to him using that name.

Grant told Kukla he wished they could arrange "a rendezvous in the closet one of these days." That statement was punctuated by a smiley face.

He also wrote that the "chats" with Kukla helped to keep him sane and said he missed his son, daughter and wife, Tara. Grant wrote the letters while he awaited trial for strangling and mutilating Tara Grant.

"I have to tell you that you are the first person to ask if I miss Tara and the answer is Yes," he wrote.

Kukla turned over the letters to authorities in November and told them they were passed underneath doorways and on food carts. She said she wrote to him because she and other inmates wanted to know what he would say about his crime.

Kukla last September was found guilty of first-degree murder but mentally ill in the deaths of 8-year-old Alexandra and 5-year-old Ashley. She received a mandatory life sentence in October.

Police on Feb. 4, 2007 discovered the bodies of her daughters and the family's three pet Pomeranians in their mobile home in Macomb Township, about 25 miles north of Detroit.

Officers testified during her trial that Kukla said she heard the voice of the devil telling her to kill the girls and the dogs.

Tara Grant last was seen Feb. 9, 2007. Stephen Grant reported her missing Feb. 14 and insisted he had nothing to do with her disappearance. But as police searched the couple's Macomb County home on March 2, he fled.

Body parts were found in their garage and a nearby park. He was captured March 4 in a snowbound state park more than 200 miles north of their suburban Detroit home.

Grant confessed to killing her, was convicted of second-degree murder in December and faces up to life in prison when he's sentenced Feb. 21.

Macomb County prosecutors on Tuesday also released eight increasingly irate, expletive-filled voicemails Grant left his wife for two days after she last was seen alive. The messages were played for the jury during his trial.