Search teams went back to Stony Creek Park the day after Tara Grant's torso had been discovered in a bin in the family garage.

Sheriff Hackel: Boy! When they started walking through that field, there were some pretty gruesome discoveries.

Not far from where the hiker had come upon the bloody Ziploc bag, they began finding blood, hair and dismembered body parts scattered about, under fallen tree limbs, down in hollows. Grant had cut his wife into 14 pieces. Police found 11 parts marked by the red dots in this aerial photo. But they never did recover all the remains. Animals had gotten there first, they said.

With his client in custody and the man's wife in pieces, Stephen Grant's lawyer announced he was no longer representing "Mr. Mom."

Grant himself was in a northern Michigan hospital, under guard, recovering from exposure when he asked if he could talk to detective Kozlowski.

The detective got on the line and after a few seconds, Grant made a surprising proposal.

(phone call)

Stephen Grant: Come up, we'll talk ...

Kozlowski: Come on up, we'll talk?

Grant: Yup. Me and you.

Dennis Murphy: I mean, here's his lawyers walked off the case. You don't know how long you're going to have this window of opportunity with him.

Kozlowski: Exactly.

Dennis Murphy: Are you breaking speed limits to get up there?

Kozlowski: Absolutely.

Five-hours later, Kozlowski and Detective McLean--the two who'd made the original house call on Grant -- were Mirandizing the husband in his hospital bed after pressing record on their tape machine.

Kozlowski: You do in fact understand that you are in fact under arrest right now?

Grant: Right.

Kozlowski: For the murder of your wife, Tara?

Grant: Yes.

Watch the broadcast 'Valentine's Day Mystery' videos   Part 1: Wife goes missing   2: Detectives are thinking foul play   3: Police make gruesome discovery   4: The manhunt was on   5: Grant: 'And I choked her'   6: DA: 'It was about sex'

As though shooting the breeze over coffee in a diner, Grant told the detectives it started with a fight in the master bedroom on Friday, Feb. 9. Tara saying she was going back to Puerto Rico early, Grant angrily accusing her of not spending enough time at home.

(Stephen Grant on police video)

She said, “I got to do what I have to do in my job and it's none of your business.” So she started to turn around and I grabbed her wrist ... “Just stop,” I said, “you're not going anywhere.” And I said, “We're going to finish this conversation” and she slapped me ... and after that I don't really remember what happened ... she fell. I know that she banged the back of her head on the floor, and then she said something like 'That's it. I'm going to take the kids. You're going to be f- - - ing homeless. You're a piece of - - - -.” and I choked her...

Kozlowski: In the bathroom?

Grant: On the carpet ... She had started to get back up when I put my hand on her neck  ... I grabbed her neck and choked her.

Det. Mclean: Were you looking at her face?

Grant: No, I covered her face up.

Det. Mclean: What'd you cover her face up with?

Grant: Gray underwear or a gray t-shirt...

Kozlowski: How did you know that she had died?

Grant: When she stopped moving... and I was worried. I was really worried.

The two children, Grant said, were in their rooms down the hall from their murdered mother. The au pair was out. Authorities would say later, Grant text messaged her, “You owe me a kiss" and left a note reading the same on her pillow.

Grant said he returned to his wife's body, tied a belt around her neck and dragged the corpse down the stairs and out to the garage. He was going to hide the body in the back of Tara’s Isuzu trooper.

(Grant police tape)

And I dropped her. She was too hard to pick up and the belt ... Broke and she fell. It was the most disgusting noise. It just sounded like dropping a watermelon on the cement.

He went back upstairs only to hear the front door opening. Verena. He told the teenager the story for the first time about a fight and Tara leaving in a black sedan.

(Grant police tape)

And I kept thinking we've got a body in this garage. What the hell do I do with the body? And thinking I killed my wife. I was thinking my life was over.

For the next day the body of Tara Grant lay inside the Isuzu in the garage.

The day after that, Sunday, he had a plan. Grant drove the SUV and Tara’s remains to his father's grungy machine shop where the two of them made ball bearings.

He backed the truck in and set down plastic bags.

(Grant police tape)

So I looked around the shop ... I was looking for something. I was looking for a hacksaw or something.

Through trial and error, he found that the blade of a broken hacksaw worked best. He started with the hands.

(Grant police tape)

At some point I threw up. And I threw up again. And then I drank some more whiskey. And then I just told myself, 'look if you don't do this you're going to prison for the rest of your life.' ... and I kept cutting her up.

He then drove back to the house -- his wife's dismembered body in the back of the SUV -- and joined Verena and the kids for a nice Sunday afternoon.

(Grant police tape)

I tried to make things as normal as possible for everybody. And I continuously flirted with Verena because I thought that was the only way I was going to be able to get through this ...

That Sunday night he loaded the kids' plastic red sled in the Isuzu and at 3 am Monday drove off looking for a place to dispose of his wife's pieces.

He ended up at Stony Creek Park, near some big overhead power lines. He popped the hatch and dumped the body parts onto the kids' sled.

He pulled the last of Tara up through the snow to the open fields.

(Grant police tape)

And as soon as I started going it was like “Keystone Kops.” The sled took off and now I’m chasing after this sled that has my wife's cut-up body in it down a hill ... finally got it stopped when it fell over and it broke. So now all these pieces are now fallen all over the place.

Kozlowski: OK.

Grant: So Tara’s torso I took and I buried in the snow. And then the pieces I put on the sled and I buried that in the snow.

But Grant was unhappy with his pre-dawn work.

(Grant police tape)

I'd done a very very bad job of hiding anything. It's right there in the open.

Tuesday at dusk, he returned to the park, retrieved all the body parts wrapped in clear plastic bags, cut them open and scattered the remains here and there under fallen trees.

(Grant police tape)

The hands, feet, Tara’s head, everything.

He left a one gallon Ziploc bag stuffed with all the plastic wrap by a tree near the road.

And he was done.

Until he heard, more than a week later, the sheriff announce a search of Stony Creek Park.

(Grant police tape)

And I thought I’m screwed. They're going to find that-- because that torso at this point still is buried in the snow.

So on that very Saturday morning, mere hours before the sheriff's search, Grant went back to the park at dawn to recover his wife's torso.

(Grant police tape)

I had to dig it out. It was frozen in the ground...

McLean: How did you carry it?

Grant: I threw it over my shoulder and carried it.

"It" -- no longer Tara, a wife, a human. Just "it," merely a problem to be dealt with.

Amber Hunt: I’ve covered crime my entire career and it's hard to shake some of these details.

Details like Grant using his kids' red sled -- this red sled from an old home video -- to transport his wife's body parts, and his being tickled by that same sled running away stacked with pieces of Tara.

Amber Hunt: To describe it like “Keystone Kops” is just so flippant. It's your wife. She might be in multiple parts at that point, but you should still recognize that that's your wife.

Grant returned to the car with Tara’s dismembered body. He shoved it into plastic garbage bags and drove once more to his father's machine shop. He then hid the torso behind boxes in the loft space beneath the ceiling.

But he worried that the remains would thaw and start to smell. So five days later, he stashed the torso in a green plastic container, drove it back to the garage in his home and hoped for the best.

(Grant police tape)

And I kept thinking, 'I got away with this. I can't believe I got away with this.'

Dennis Murphy: Look, how do you keep from just going for this guy, just throttling him?

Kozlowski: I guess I should be credited for that cause there's more than one time I would've liked to have done that.

The case had turned very personal for this tough-guy detective.

Dennis Murphy: Do you ever wake up at night and you're back in the garage putting your hand in the tub?

Brian Kozlowski: You see that green tub. I can see that almost every day. I'll take it to bed with me every night.

Grant signed a written version of his confession, but the case wasn't over because Grant later pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder.

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