Lou Grant, Producer of WJM-TV’s 6 o’clock news was arrested today by local authorities for the murder of anchorman Ted Baxter.

Baxter’s disappearance last winter became front page headlines.  Many speculated that perhaps he had run off with long-time girlfriend Georgette Franklin or that he had taken a job at MSNBC.  The truth was much more sinister.

Shortly before 9 AM on the morning of December 20th, Baxter was murdered in his home by Lou Grant.  Baxter had discovered that Grant was having an illicit sexual affair with his subordinate Mary Richards and planned to blackmail Grant. He had apparently asked Grant to meet him at his place where he was to present Grant with evidence of his affair.

However, Grant had found out that Baxter knew.  Deeply in debt and unwilling to lose his job Grant agreed to the meeting but with the intention of killing Baxter.

As lover Mary Richards waited in his car Grant stabbed Baxter repeatedly.  He and Richards then cut Baxter’s body into pieces.  The head was cut off and boiled in the apartment. The rest of the body parts were disposed of in separate locations throughout Minneapolis.  An arm was found in the Metrodome.  Baxter’s left leg and torso were buried under home plate at the Twins’ new stadium.  Baxter’s penis was discovered in a bird feeder downtown.

Authorities were at first stymied in their attempts to find the killer until Mary Richards, perhaps distraught over what she had taken part in, turned herself in to authorities and agreed to give evidence against Grant in exchange for immunity.

“At first we didn’t believe her story” said a policeman.  “She was incoherent and kept muttering ‘Oh Mr. Grant!'”  

The police quickly came to believe her after she told them of the locations of Baxter’s body parts that she and Grant had buried over a period of days.

Grant’s lawyers are expected to plead innocent, stating that their client acted out of fear of an “irrational and cocaine-addicted Baxter.”

Unless Grant accepts a plea bargain the trial is expected to start in February of 2011.  Colleagues at WJM were shocked by the arrest.

“I never suspected a thing” said news writer Murray Slaughter.  “Well, I did once notice Lou was covered in blood.  And he did have a blood-encrusted knife in his office and a bloody severed foot he said was Ted’s.  But other than that I would never have suspected him.  I blame Richards.  She must have put him up to it.”

(434)