Girly Chew Hossencraft’s story is truly heartbreaking and bizarre. Girly Chew was a lovely young woman, who died at the hands of her whacked-out conspiracy-buff husband and his equally disturbed mistress. Though her husband and his mistress have been convicted of her murder, her body has yet to be found.
From Malaysia originally, Girly moved to the US for better opportunities in 1992. She thought she found it when she met Diazien Hossencrofft at the San Diego Aquarium. Diazien Hossencroft was extremely charming and handsome. He told her he was a thoracic surgeon and a research doctor who specialized in genetics. He claimed to hold degrees from Cornell and the University of Tokyo. She went back to Malaysia, but continued to talk to Hossencrofft, who eventually asked her to marry him and move with him to Albuquerque, NM.
The two made a home together. They tried to have children, but could not for an unknown reason. Chew worked at a bank, while Hossencrofft started a medical research project, attempting to change people’s cells from carbon-based to silicon-based. Many people sunk their life savings into this supposedly scientific alchemy.
Then Diazien supposedly got leukemia. He was witnessed getting transfusions and coughing up blood, so this part of the story might be true. However, it’s hard to believe anything Hossencroftt said, as things later came to light about his character. Chew took care of him and supported him. However, some people who were friends with the family thought his stories were a little too wild and they began to suspect he was a liar and fraudster.
Diazien showed up one day with a little baby boy, Dmitri. He told Chew he had created the baby in a test tube and now they would raise the child. Chew was glad to become a mother, as she had wanted a family, but she was suspicious of her husband now. With some digging, she learned his real name was Armand Chavez, he was from Houston, and his doctorate was fake. Plus, he was a cheater. His “business trips” were really fronts for his affairs with many women. One of those women happened to be the mother of their new little boy, a Japanese woman living in Canada.
Hossencrofft began to abuse Chew. By 1998, she was very unhappy and told people that he was plotting to kill her. In 1999, she moved out and filed for divorce, after she had caught Diazien loosening the wheel nuts on her tires. She also claimed she had found evidence he had been expelled from medical school for submitting doctored transcripts from his college in California. His elaborate medical research project was one of his many cons.
I say many because Hossencrofft had a habit of swindling people. He was quite good at it, actually. He swindled heiress Joy Hinson out of thousands to treat her breast cancer, for instance. People believed he was a doctor and put their lives and money in his hands because he was so convincing.
Sick of the deceit, infidelity, and abuse, Chew told her coworkers at the bank that she feared for her life. She also was heartbroken that she had to leave behind her adopted son, whom she loved with all of her heart. As she began to battle for custody, the abuse escalated. The custody battle is actually the reason Diazien cites for killing Chew.
Diazien wasted no time in finding a new woman to replace Chew with. Actually, three women, including a woman in South Carolina. He also began to date a woman named Julie McGuire from Aztec, NM. He boasted to McGuire that he had a serum she could inject that would make her years younger, for which she paid him $2,500. I’m not sure how she fell for that, considering that Diazien also told her that he was part alien and part human and that he was over a century old. McGuire thankfully developed some doubts about her new fiancee and did some digging and learned he was still married to Chew. He hadn’t disclosed that to her on the dating site where they had met.
Diazien spitefully put his son up for adoption to hurt Chew. That adoption only lasted two weeks. Then, after Chew’s disappearance, another family adopted little Dmitri and took him to Alaska, not knowing his history. Eventually, they learned more about Hossencrofft and linked it to Dmitri’s cold nature.
The Disappearance
The night of September 9, neighbors spotted Hossencrofft careen up to his house in Chew’s car. He was wearing all black and had smeared some type of black substance on himself. His debit card purchases have been traced from that day, and they are in the general vicinity of Chew’s workplace and her apartment. Another member of Hossencrofft’s UFO Club spotted him earlier that day with Linda Henning and Bill Miller, two other members of the same club, using Walkie Talkies. All of this weird behavior became explained the next day.
Chew didn’t show up for work on September 10, 1999, which was not like her at all. Her coworkers knew she had a tough time with Diazien, so they reported her missing. Cops did a welfare check on Chew’s apartment and did not find her there, but they did find lots of blood that someone had tried to clean up using bleach. Apparently, luminol made the place light up like a “Christmas tree.” They took cuts from her carpet and combed it, from which they discovered more blood, glitter, and cat hair, which seemed strange, given Chew didn’t have a cat. Then they checked Diazien’s house and found it empty.
Somewhere outside of Magdalena, a road crew member found some bloody women’s clothes, a tarp, and duct tape with long black hairs stuck to it. He turned it in to the police. They believed it might have to do with Chew’s disappearance and later discovered the garments were indeed Chew’s clothes. They also found traces of art sand and glitter on the tarp. Chew’s purse was found discarded on a street in Magdalena; her wallet, meanwhile, was found at an intersection in Albuquerque.
Tracking Down Linda Henning and Diazien Hossencrofft
Looking into adoption records, investigators discovered Diazien’s son’s real mother, a Japanese-Canadian woman. Diazien had manipulated this woman into giving up the child. On the adoption papers, Diazien listed a Linda Henning as an emergency contact. Henning was a fashion designer from Albuquerque who had met Diazien at a UFO conference. Apparently, it had been love at first sight, because Henning and Hossencrofft were engaged within six weeks of meeting.
Henning had been a lingerie model and then became a very successful businesswoman in the Albuquerque fashion industry. But she started to change shortly before meeting Hossencrofft, talking about reptilian aliens and cryogenics and other weird things. She started attending UFO conferences and thus met and became enamored with Dr. Hossencrofft. She told people that he was just so smart and she would become furious if anyone challenged the weird things he told her. Her personality changed from warm and friendly to hostile and paranoid. People noticed that she began to isolate herself, making her life all about Hossencrofft. Hossencrofft even left her for someone else in South Carolina, but she continued to date him and protect him from police.
When investigators found Henning, she claimed that Hossencrofft had cancer so she was taking care of him, hence why she was his emergency contact. She denied having any involvement in Chew’s murder. She also wouldn’t tell police where Hossencrofft was. He was not with her, that’s all she knew.
Police finally captured the psychopath in South Carolina, living with another one of his fiancees. They couldn’t arrest him for murder, since there was no body. But they were able to trace several threatening phone calls back to him, which he had been making to witnesses for their silence. That is what they initially arrested him for. Police extradited him back to Albuquerque. That’s around when Henning tearfully admitted that they were engaged and had been together the night of September 9, when Chew disappeared.
Apparently, also on September 9, Hossencrofft’s fiancee from South Carolina flew into the Sunport. She had sex with Hossencrofft at Hossencrofft’s house and then at her hotel. I guess he had a very busy night, between his two lovers and murdering his wife. There is still a significant gap in the evening of the 9th before meeting his fiancee for sex, where Hossencrofft and Henning’s activities seemed to center around the area of Chew’s apartment based on their debit card purchases. This is most likely when the murder happened.
A search warrant of Henning’s home uncovered a blood-stained Ninja sword in her garage, which Hossencrofft had purchased a day before Chew went missing at Winrock Center. There was glitter and art sand in Linda’s garage floor that matched the glitter and art sand found on the bloody tarp wrapped around Chew’s clothing. It was believed that Chew had been transported to Henning’s house and probably laid on the tarp on Henning’s garage floor before being taken to her final resting place. Finally, police noticed six cats living in the house, which explained the cat hair found in Chew’s apartment carpet. DNA tests confirmed it was both Chew’s and Henning’s blood all over Chew’s apartment, and Henning’s hair was on the duct tape found near Magdalena. Interestingly enough, the blood on the ninja sword handle matched Diazien, not Henning. Diazien claimed this was part of a Japanese tradition and he put his blood on the sword and gave it to Henning as a parting gift.
Under pressure, Henning confessed that Hossencrofft had convinced her to kill Chew because she was a “reptilian alien queen.” Henning said her purpose in life was to slay these reptile queens, which she drew pictures of in court. She said no one would ever find Chew’s body because she had eaten her and drank her blood. Now, however, she has changed her story to claim that she is totally innocent of the crime.
Convictions
Ultimately, the sick pair were put before a grand jury in 2002, along with an accomplice named Bill Miller who Diazien associated with through his UFO club. Miller had spent the ninth of September, 1999, surveilling Chew with Diazien. Somehow police figured out that Bill Miller had come into the apartment and possibly broken up a violent struggle between Henning and Chew. Miller helped subdue Chew and then transported her somewhere and killed her.
Linda Henning was the first woman in New Mexican history tried for the death sentence. She did not seem rattled by the trial or remorseful for what she had done. Her bizarre behavior painted a picture of her poor mental health and her brainwashing by Hossencrofft.
Hossencrofft then took the witness stand and claimed Henning had nothing to do with the crime, she was just a woman who liked to dance naked and worship acorns. He admitted that he was the mastermind, but the violence was all Bill Miller, whom he described as an idiot. He even claimed that he had planted Henning’s blood at the crime scene to frame her, which was possible, considering he possessed 17 vials of human blood at his home in Albuquerque, some of which was Henning’s. According to Hossencrofft, he would drug Henning with lorazepam and then take her blood without her knowledge.
Chillingly, he described how Chew knew she would die. “She knew she was going to be hunted like the dog she was, and yes, she ran like a scared rabbit in an open field. She knew.” He stated that since Chew’s lawyers seemed to be convincing the judge to award Chew custody of their son Dmitri, he killed her. “So they make the choice; they took my son from me. And I make the choice to take her life. It’s as simple as that.” The jury found his unhinged behavior disturbing and psychopathic, and they dismissed him as an incredible witness.
I think his derangement may have been just another one of his cons. He knew he could get out of things if he appeared criminally insane, instead of just criminal. But people at the trial agreed that what Hossencrofft did to Chew was pure premeditated murder, cold and calculated, not the work of a lunatic acting on a passionate impulse.
The jury found Henning guilty of murder. She was sentenced to 73 years in prison. While she was spared the death sentence, she is paying for her crime. I do think she needs mental health treatment, but I’m glad she’s off our streets. I do wonder what mental illness she suffered that made her so malleable to Hossencrofft’s brainwashing.
Bill Miller was given a year of probation for tampering with evidence. He may have been more involved in the crime than that, yet he wasn’t given any prison time at all. He has not disclosed the location of the body. He is currently free in Albuquerque.
Hossencrofft only got 61 years for the murder. He pled guilty to escape life. He also made a deal where he would tell investigators where Chew was buried in exchange for a move to Wyoming State Penitentiary. That’s when he told investigators that Bill Miller had buried Chew along I40, near the Rio Grande.
Sickeningly enough, in 2020, Hossencrofft wrote a 400-page appeal to the judge to vacate his life sentence. He claims that the investigation was unfair and that police colluded with prosecutors to suppress important evidence that would have exonerated him and Henning. He also claims that he was forced into the plea bargain and that his attorneys failed him. His gift for manipulation shines, because the judge actually allowed for further investigation into the “global connections” that Hossencrofft claims may have played a hand in Chew’s death.
The Search for Chew’s Body
After receiving Hossencrofft’s tip, investigators searched along the I40 corridor. But they didn’t find a body. Yet Hossencrofft was still moved to Wyoming for some reason.
To this day, Chew has not been found. Who knows where she is, but I imagine it is probably somewhere in the vicinity of Magdalena, maybe in the Magdalena mountains. That area is very remote and it took 7 years to find the bones of Helen Torres Chavez in those mountains, and even longer for them to be identified as Chavez’s. If Chew was buried out there, she may never been uncovered.
It is also entirely possible that Henning did eat Chew. She was entirely unhinged and I’m glad she is paying for what she did and also safely locked away in prison. But even if she ate Chew, where are the bones?
A final possibility is that Hossencrofft was quite conniving. He may have had Bill Miller dispose of the tarp and other evidence outside of Magdalena. Then they stashed the body in another place to mislead investigators.
I feel terrible that Chew had to endure 7 years of suffering and mind games at the hands of Hossencrofft. After all that, as she tried to get away and make a life for herself, Hossencrofft stole her life from her. She just wanted to be loved and to thrive in the US. Instead, she had to meet a cold-blooded psychopath who killed her out of rage that she was about to be awarded custody of Dmitri.
Dmitri Hossencrofft
Chew’s little boy was adopted out at the age of 3. He had a total of thirteen caregivers, though who they are beyond Chew and his adoptive mother is unclear. He went to live with his adoptive family in Alaska, and his adoptive mother, Melissa Miles-Lindberg, claims that he was cold and unreceptive to affection. Now he won’t speak to his adoptive mother and has her blocked on Facebook. Last she could see on Facebook, though, he had a good job and a girlfriend.
Dmitri began asking questions about his dad when he was fourteen. He said his only memory was his dad feeding him in a high chair and then leaving him in it, supposedly for a long period of time. He didn’t remember Chew at all, nor any of the other women who cared for him early in life. I don’t doubt that Hossencrofft was cruel and abusive to the little boy. I hope he experienced kindness with his female caregivers.
At first, Melissa Miles-Lindberg didn’t know much about Hossencrofft. She told Dmitri what she could. Then she found out the heinous crime that Hossencrofft had committed. She and her son read the book September Sacrifice, which details this horrific saga. She claims Dmitri expressed no emotional reaction to the book.
Maybe Dmitri inherited his father’s psychopathy. But it seems more likely he was just taught to have a very avoidant attachment style due to bad experiences and constant turmoil when he was a young boy. I hope that he has found happiness and is living well. Please note that his name was changed with adoption so he no longer goes by Dmitri Hossencrofft.
His mother did write a book about his life and her experiences raising him. It is entitled Mommy No. 13: A Child of a Murderer and His Adoptive Mother. Dmitri evidently told his mother this book was “syrupy.” But it might be a good read for someone struggling with bonding with an adopted child, or even someone who just wants to find out more about the aftermath of this murder, which is more far-reaching than one might think.
https://www.krqe.com/news/crime/convicted-wife-killer-calls-to-vacate-sentence/
https://www.abqjournal.com/2376852/young-boy-was-another-victim-in-bizarre-murder.html