In Jackson, the crossroads of Michigan, a family also comes to a crossroads. A mystery illness and a bizarre discovery. In this house of nightmares, nothing is as it seems. One police officer follows his gut instincts and discovers the abomination that was supposed to stay hidden.
Along the Grand River, about 75 miles from Detroit, Jackson lies in central southern Michigan. It’s an affordable working-class, commercial, and manufacturing hub known as a cool place to live, and it’s got history. The Republican Party can trace some of its early roots to Jackson and the 1854 anti-slavery rally. The Jackson Railway Station is one of the oldest and greatest American railway stations, known as the crossroads of Michigan. But some of Jackson’s history is something its residents would prefer to forget.
Officer Wayne Bazard is only four months on the police force when he makes a call to a rural township north of Jackson.
“They went to church quite frequently, and they didn’t come to church, and so the daughter and the son became worried.”
“They had thought that it was a gas leak or something of that nature, so they called 911.”
“He went inside and cleared the house, and obviously was a homicide.”
And soon, a gruesome discovery is made that will alter Wayne Bazard’s life forever. A gang of juvenile males has descended on the home. They had heard that the couple had a lot of money.
“The husband was right near his recliner in the living room. He had obviously been stabbed multiple times in the back of the neck with kitchen knives still sticking out.”
“It’s apparent that the female victim has attempted to barricade herself in the bathroom, and again, the knives were sticking out of the back of her neck.”
A rookie cop is initiated into the reality of violent crime and the trauma it inflicts.
“That one, I had a little PTSD, obviously. I’d never been exposed to that before.”
Four years later, Bazard will be instrumental in a case so bizarre and macabre that it will eclipse that horrific rookie discovery and shape the town of Jackson to its core.
Kevin Lloyd Arts, known by his nickname Kip, is the owner and head chef of the popular restaurant Kip’s Pizza Taco House. Patricia Anne Powers, known as Patty, when she meets Kip, she has one daughter from a former abusive marriage.
“When Kip and Patty meet, things start to change for the better for both of them.”
And after Patty’s bad marriage, her family is delighted to see Patty happy again. The two wed and operate the restaurant together. Kip is the chef, and Patty is head waitress and runs front of house. Their restaurant and home are attached, so they never have far to go and are always together. Time passes in much the same way, and after being together for 12 years, friends and family say they’ve never seen a couple so happy.
The couple decide to throw a big roast barbecue for the people they love, and having access to their own commercial kitchen, Kip and Patty are ideally situated to host. But immediately after the barbecue, Kip begins experiencing severe headaches. Patty wants Kip to see a doctor and have it checked out, but without health insurance, Kip is reluctant, but Patty convinces him. The doctor has shocking news: Kip has a large blood clot on the right side of his brain and will need emergency brain surgery.
On June 29th, 1999, Kip is admitted to hospital in Jackson to remove the blood clot in his brain. Patty has no choice but to shut the restaurant while Kip, the restaurant’s chef, is incapacitated. Kip and Patty do not have health insurance; big hospital bills are looming, and without the daily income that she and Kip rely on, compounded by not knowing when the restaurant will be able to reopen, Patty decides she needs some quick cash, so Patty sells their car, a Lincoln. The blood clot is successfully removed from Kip’s head. After the surgery, Kip is a changed man.
When he is released on July 2nd, his father, Lloyd Arts, notes that his son appears dazed and childlike. But without medical insurance, the tab is growing by the hour. The concern over Kip’s condition grows as Kip’s father notes his son doesn’t know what color his clothes are. But Kip is in the care of Patty, his loving wife. Kip will have some much-needed time at home to rest and recuperate. Patty is left entirely alone to care for Kip in their combined home and restaurant, which is usually bustling with customers. It’s been a punishing period of worry, and Patty is overcome by exhaustion until she senses something is terribly wrong, and the exhausted woman has only seconds to react.
Jackson, Michigan, population 33,534, living in a diversified commercial and manufacturing center with ties to the auto industry. The cost of living is low, the air quality is good, with a small-town feel. It’s an ideal place to run a nice little restaurant. But on this night, these restaurant owners are vulnerable and alone, and the unthinkable is happening. Patty has been nursing her husband, Kip, who’s just had emergency brain surgery to remove a blood clot.
It’s not unusual for Patty’s family to talk to her every day, so after the surgery, when no one has been able to get a hold of Patty or Kip in 2 days, they become concerned. Patty’s sister, Cynthia, decides to pay them a visit and check things out herself. Much to her surprise, since Kip is there recuperating from major surgery, no one answers her knock. But as she’s about to leave, Kip answers the door. Kip tells Cynthia something that shocks her: that he and Patty got into a fight and Patty took off in their Lincoln to visit someone. But Cynthia knows that Patty sold the car. With Kip’s odd demeanor and his lie about the car, Cynthia believes that something is very wrong.
Alarm bells are going off for the family because of the lie about the car, but was it a lie or was it just confusion? They know he hasn’t been himself recently because of the recent brain surgery, and if an accident happened in the home, he probably wouldn’t be able to deal with it on his own. They also know that the doctors ordered him to stop taking his medication cold turkey essentially prior to the surgery, so they don’t want to see him get himself into trouble because of a chemical imbalance that was essentially not his fault.
“He’s not taking his medication, so things aren’t the same for him right now.”
In addition to the facts, the family has extra concerns. Dark undercurrents to the marriage exist that only those who are close to Patty know. Kip and Patty have had marital problems in the past, but for the moment, they just want Patty located. Patty’s family contacts the police. They were concerned about her whereabouts and felt that she may be injured or hurt inside of the restaurant someplace.
“We had called the brother’s house and made contact with Kip’s sister-in-law and said, ‘We’d like to meet Kip at the restaurant.’”
“So Kip was sitting in the vehicle in the front of the restaurant by the front door, so I made contact with him sitting in the car and I just said, ‘Hey, you know, I’m here to make sure that Patricia’s okay.’”
“So he reluctantly went to the front door of the restaurant to let me in. When he started to put the key into the door his hands were shaking and then he said, ‘I can’t do this,’ and he turned around and he went back and sat in the car.”
“So I went back over to him and I said, ‘Let’s just look in the restaurant. She’s not here, right?’”
“’Nope, she’s not here.’”
“’Okay, let’s just look in the restaurant, make sure she’s okay, that she’s not here, and then we can get out of your hair, they’ll leave, you can go to your brother’s house.’”
“Reluctantly he got out of the vehicle, and again his hands were shaking, but he opened up the front door and I followed him into the restaurant.”
The men enter the restaurant, but Kip does not turn on the lights. Bazard looks for the body of Patty. Still in darkness, Kip leads the officer into the kitchen area.
“When I walked into the kitchen area, I noticed there were some paper towels that had been sitting on the floor. It looked like it had dried meat blood in it, kind of stuff you would if you were, you know, to open up a package of raw hamburger—that’s what it kind of looked like to me. And then next to it was a large garbage can which had some of the same type thing in it. Well, the restaurant had been closed a couple of weeks, I had known that, so I thought that was kind of strange, but maybe not out of the ordinary for a restaurant.”
Officer Bazard has one last look for Patty, but he sees no sign of her. Kip’s family take him into their care until Patty comes back. Patty’s family talks to Bazard, and the more they tell him, the more concerned he is for her safety. Bazard consults with Detective Tom Fiero about events at Kip’s restaurant.
“And I told him my concerns and what my feelings were, and I told him, ‘I think we need to go back in and look a little more closely inside the restaurant.’”
Officer Bazard arranges with Kip to meet at the restaurant at an arranged time later that day for further inspection. Then Officer Bazard and Fiero get an idea to return to the restaurant before the arranged time so they can look around before Kip gets there. But when they arrive early, the officers get a big surprise: they’re not the only ones who have arrived early.
“He was carrying a cardboard box, and then turned and walked away from us to the front of the building and disappeared around the front of the building.”
Kip doesn’t know it, but whatever he’s come back early to do is now being observed by police. They learn that Kip has come back early to tidy up the kitchen—it was never properly cleaned after the big pig roast he and Patty had hosted before his emergency surgery. His demeanor had totally changed; he was a lot more open, a lot more friendly than he was the previous time. Kip agrees that Officer Bazard can look around. Bazard moves methodically toward the kitchen area.
“So what I immediately noticed inside the kitchen was a large pan, a stainless steel-like baking pan, and it had cooked-on meat all over the inside of it, and I thought, ‘Well, it could be part of a pig roast, I don’t know.’”
In front of the washer-dryer area, Bazard sees foam littering the floor.
“Inside of the dryer, it looked like there was foam or something in there. So I looked in there and it was just chunks of foam. It was like somebody had stuck a pillow or something in there and it, and it disintegrated inside the dryer.”
During his search, Bazard finds a purse. Then he realizes he may be able to confirm it belongs to Patty. Bazard sees that Patty’s sister, Cynthia, has arrived outside, and she may recognize the handbag.
“So now I knew that she hadn’t left because she didn’t leave her purse here.”
“So I thought at this point, I’m outside already, I’m going to go find out where this box was that Kip was carrying. There was a dumpster and I opened up the dumpster, thinking it was going to be in there and it was empty. So I thought, ‘Well, where in the world could he have put that box?’ So the only other place he could have put it was the neighbor’s house on the front porch. I saw the box sitting there.”
“And when I opened up the box, there was a clear plastic bag, and then inside the clear plastic bag, I can clearly see a human head, which had appeared to be, you know, cooked. So at that point, I knew I had found Patty and that she was no longer missing.”
Bazard calls for more units to come and lock down the crime scene.
“I immediately went back and made contact with the detective and I called him away from Kip.”
“I said, ‘I found her. She’s in that box that he was carrying.’”
“He goes, ‘Are you sure? They had a pig roast here? And you sure that’s not what it is?’”
“’I know, I’m positive that’s what it is.’”
“There was still hair, the skin looked like it was crispy. You could still see her eyes clearly, and you could still see the skin, but it still had some… You could tell it was a human face, obviously. It looked like it had been cooked.”
The officers take Kip into custody. Crime scene investigators use Luminol to detect if there is any human blood within a scene. Luminol interacts with the iron in hemoglobin and gives off a blue hue which indicates that there is blood present. Even though a victim’s blood may have tried to been cleaned up by the perpetrator, Luminol will indicate that there is blood even though if it wasn’t visually present by our eyes. It makes the invisible visible when it comes to blood.
And the garbage can glowed in the center of the room, almost to the point where it would light the room up. When Luminol was used in this case, it showed that there was blood present in multiple locations: the locations within the carpet in front of the couch and present on the kitchen floor and the kitchen counter. And there was enough blue hue within that kitchen to make it glow. It’s likely that Kip kills his wife, Patty, while she’s lying on the couch, hitting her in the head with a hammer.
“The importance of you trying to find out the patterns of blood and that’s when we they rely on blood pattern and splatter specialists within police departments to determine where the victim sustained all of their injuries and then how the victim was moved from that location and suspected to have been taken into the kitchen where a lot more blood was located through the Luminol.”
The fact that all of the blood and the blue glow from that Luminol indicates that there was a very morbid and graphic scene and that the victim ended up being dismembered within that kitchen area. When you come present onto a scene where there is suspected to be a deceased body and there is Luminol that is glowing and blood patterns that are present, why would an individual take the time to wash items in a washing machine? That would be a red flag, thinking that they were using items and trying to get rid of some of the evidence that were present on those items. So that all would have to be captured by the forensic identification team and gone through to see what type of evidence he was trying to destroy on those items.
Kip dismembers Patty’s body and bakes the bones and boils and cooks the remainder in the oven for what is estimated to be about 40 hours. Investigators find several axes that are suspected to have been used to chop Patty’s body into pieces.
“When a body has been found to be dismembered, an autopsy by a forensic pathologist occurs to make sure for example that the bag of bones and flesh that were found are actually human and they do match the dismembered head that the police found. So the DNA and all of that needs to match to make sure that we don’t have more than one body at a scene and more than one victim.”
Rumors spread that the newly dubbed “deep-fried killer” Kip has served his wife to restaurant patrons, but this horrific and bizarre case is about to get even stranger. Two weeks prior, body parts of another woman are found in several locations in Ann Arbor. Thomas Craft of Swanton, Ohio, faces trial for aggravated murder and dismemberment of his wife, Lynette. Is it possible that Kip has another life that no one is aware of? Is he, in fact, a copycat killer?
A call about a missing family member leads Jackson, Michigan officers to an unspeakable discovery. Kip Arts has murdered and dismembered his wife and attempted to dispose of her by cutting her into small pieces and breaking down the body by cooking her. Is Kip a copycat killer, inspired by the recent Thomas Craft killing and dismemberment of his wife, Lynette? The Craft murder is another seemingly happy couple with hidden undercurrents to their marriage. In June of 1999, just prior to Patty’s murder, pieces of Lynette Craft’s body were discovered. The feet were discovered in a garbage bin outside a fast-food restaurant, and a severed head was located in a landfill. This occurred in the very nearby Ann Arbor, Michigan, and likely Kip would have heard the story and the details in the news. So it raised the question whether this may have been a copycat of some kind. At the end of the day, however, no clear association was ever made between the two cases.
Most people who knew Kip and Patricia both said how nice people they were and, uh, the Kip was a really nice guy, and they couldn’t believe that that it had happened. Over the course of their 12-year marriage, countless people would have gone through the doors of their taco restaurant. Many of them recounted the fact that it was a peaceful and enjoyable place to eat, and they all commented about the love that Kip seemed to have for his wife. Often, investigators will go to the people who are closest to the victim to see if there are any underlying secrets.
Investigators speak to the family of Patty Arts, and the picture of this harmonious marriage comes into clearer focus. In the distant past, while in a rage, Kip tries to smother Patty. Kip seeks help, and with medication, the couple find a way to stay together. But neither are happy. Kip is often suspicious of Patty. There is ongoing marital tension because of Kip’s use of marijuana and alcohol. When Kip returns home from the crisis of emergency brain surgery, Patty expects to be caring for him and nursing him back to health, but his behavior is largely unchanged.
Patty is angered and concerned that post-surgery Kip will not alter his marijuana and alcohol habits despite the stress and worry she and the whole family have experienced. His paranoia about Patty’s phone use continues. When Kip and Patty throw the pig roast, it’s a major source of conflict between the couple. Kip is furious about the expense, but to make matters worse, the corn they purchase is infested with bugs, and Kip and Patty argue. The party is a success, but behind the scenes, it’s a far different story. By the end of the night, their kitchen has become infested by bugs, and Patty uses bug spray to try to fumigate the room, and this enrages Kip.
Immediately after the fumigating incident, Kip learns about the large blood clot on the right side of his brain. At first, the couple are afraid, then fear turns to blame. Kip is convinced that his exposure to the bug spray triggers his blood clot, and it’s all Patty’s fault. The violent marriage stories are just a prelude to the strange and horrific end to Patty Arts’ life. Kip claims that when he is left alone in Patty’s care after his brain surgery, he has an unnerving belief that Patty has become a threat. She leaves him in bed and lies down on the couch, but Kip gets up and pursues her. He finds a hammer and raises it. The jury will hear that on the night of the murder, Kip saw the devil staring back at him; he didn’t kill his wife, Patty, he killed the devil.
Police discover Patty Arts murdered and dismembered and her body cooked by her husband, Kip, in their restaurant. Their marriage seems like a good one, but close family members reveal that the relationship can veer from dysfunction to violence. Evidence clearly establishes that Kip kills and dismembers his wife and goes to great lengths to cover his tracks. At trial, defense maintains that the defendant is mentally insane and not responsible for his actions.
“In order for a finding of not guilty by reason of, uh, insanity or by mental disorder to be rendered, uh, the defense has to show that mental illness profoundly affects the accused’s reasoning process. So in this case, because there’s evidence that Kip recently had brain surgery, that could be a fairly compelling argument.”
Kip regularly takes anti-depressants to treat his depression and stress and is told by his doctor to stop taking his medication at the time of his surgery. Defense argues that because Kip isn’t allowed to taper off his medication, this results in dangerous mood swings. The prosecution does its best to minimize this theory, but there’s no way to know how the jury will swing.
“I’m obviously not a doctor, so I don’t know what kind of effect that’s going to have on people. But I do think that whether he was temporarily insane—obviously, he was insane to do what he did.”
Numerous family members and friends see Kip after surgery. Descriptions range from “dazed,” “dopey,” and “childlike” to conscious of what’s occurring. The defense calls a team of medical experts who testify that Kip lacked the capacity to appreciate the nature, quality, and wrongfulness of his conduct and has an impaired ability to think in a logical and rational manner. The defense stresses to the jury that Kip killed her because he believed she was the devil, or says he killed her because he believed she was the devil, is relevant to their argument of not guilty by reason of insanity because it could potentially be evidence of psychosis.
The prosecution shows evidence that in 1992, Patty consults a divorce lawyer due to physical and emotional abuse in the marriage. Although they found a way to continue on together, the problems never stop. The marital tension due to Kip’s alcohol and marijuana use is ongoing. Evidence shows that less than one year before, Kip speaks to a David Whiting because he wants Patty to come up missing. Kip asks if Whiting knows anyone who could do it. Kip tells Patty’s son-in-law about how Patty can push his buttons and asks him if he ever feels like killing his own wife. Kip speculates on how much it would cost to hire a killer. In the 1980s, it is shown that Kip has a conversation with a friend about the capture of a serial killer. During the conversation, Kip says that he can commit a perfect murder by cutting the victim up, boiling the meat so that the corpse will not stink, and then throwing the meat into a dumpster like all restaurants do.
The physician’s assistant who treats Kip has yet more damning comments. He reports that post-surgery, Kip is still angry about the bug spray and he still blames Patty for his brain surgery. Kip is also furious about the way Patty babies him post-surgery. The prosecution is able to call a competing team of medical experts.
“So the defense is calling their experts to try to prove that Kip was insane at the time of the incident, and what the prosecution’s experts are going to testify to is that, in fact, he was capable of reason and that his actions were deliberate.”
The head of neuropsychology at the hospital assesses Kip and finds that Kip is able to converse in a logical, rational manner.
“Can it be proven without a shadow of a doubt that Kip is in possession of his faculties?”
So the prosecution tries to show that there was both evidence of tension in the marriage leading to a potential motive as well as evidence of premeditation, and that Kip was not insane at the time of the murder.
“Now, the prosecution is going to argue that Kip’s method of disposing of the body shows evidence of premeditation, shows evidence of forethought, and a level of reasoning that’s not consistent with a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity.”
No one questions that Kip committed the crime, but the defense has made a compelling argument for Kip’s diminished mental state. The fact is he’s had emergency brain surgery mere days before the murder. Will the jury find him not responsible and not guilty due to insanity? There is no doubt that Patty Arts was bludgeoned to death, dismembered, and cooked by her husband in their commercial kitchen, but was her murderer mentally insane at the time and therefore not culpable? Jurors disagreed with the defense arguments and on March 15th, 2001, Kevin Lloyd “Kip” Arts is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole by Jackson County Circuit Judge Edward J. Grant.
“Whether he knew what he was doing was right or wrong, I believe he knew what he was doing was wrong. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have tried to cover it up over a two-day period, cleaning the restaurant. To the naked eye, you would never have known there was anything amiss. To the average person, it would have looked like any other restaurant kitchen that had been closed.”
Kip’s family believes that ultimately justice wasn’t served in this case. Kip’s father will never forget the moment where Kip couldn’t even describe the color of his own clothes. They will probably always believe that he was in a confused and psychotic state and that the only reason he did what he did was because he was hallucinating. Kip’s taco house was one of those places everybody liked to go eat, and, uh, the Patty and Kip were very well-liked. And then the other part was the rumor about whether he was feeding Patty to the patrons. But yeah, so it’s a small town, so everybody knew about it; uh, was big news for Jackson for quite some time.
Kip serves his sentence at Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian, Michigan, but he makes an appeal.
“So in this case, Arts attempted to appeal his conviction based on what we would call ‘fresh evidence,’ so evidence that wasn’t available at the time of the original trial and that could potentially have an impact on the verdict at that trial had it been available at the time. And in this situation, what Arts tries to argue is that he was a victim of marijuana psychosis at the time of the murder. So while there was evidence of his marijuana use presented at the original trial, there was no evidence presented about whether or not he was experiencing psychosis because of his use.”
And in the end, this appeal is unsuccessful. The family taco business is no longer a restaurant, and it’s got to be a relief for the residents of the community to know that those bad associations with that establishment no longer have to be relived every day.
“If it would have been another day, he probably would have gotten away with it. There is a definite level of satisfaction knowing that your investigation has ultimately put the person responsible in prison, and Kip is now serving time behind bars.”
Patty’s family and friends mourn the loss of a lovely person and they are relieved that Kevin Arts is behind bars for the rest of his life. Not a day goes by that Wayne Bazard isn’t grateful that he had listened to his instincts when he had made a routine follow-up about Patty Arts.
“And I just didn’t ignore the gut feeling, cuz a lot of people will try to talk themselves out of those gut feelings, but they’re there for a reason. So, and I tell people, I do a lot of training, and I tell people you got to pay attention to those red flags or those gut feelings because sometimes that’s your mind telling you there’s something wrong and you need to pay attention to it.”
“We’re grateful for individuals within this profession that do work in this field and work on a hunch, and he had the ability to go back into that scene and say, ‘Something doesn’t feel right and I need to take another look.’”
“There is no amount of training, there is no amount of counseling, there is no amount of resources that can prepare you to see another human being endure what this poor lady had, and the graphic nature, the morbid and the extent to which he tried to eliminate her body—nothing prepares you to see that, to visualize it, and to endure it.”
“The persistence of her sister in being worried and wanting answers. I’m glad that the professionals that were involved were able to positively identify the deceased and were able to give loved ones closure and have justice served in this manner.”
After a distinguished 26-year career, Wayne Bazard is now retired from the force and runs his own private investigation business. Like many other fellow officers, there are moments from his career that will haunt him all of his life, but he knows that he has made a difference to the victims of the crime in his community of Jackson, Michigan.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
