Dateline: Devil's Bathtub - What happened to Craig Rideout? Disturbing details of the 2016 homicide, revisited

NBC’s Dateline episode titled Devil’s Bathtub narrates the tragic events surrounding the homicide of Craig Rideout in 2016. His body was found on a roadside in Yates County on July 21, 2016. After the investigation, it was found out that his own family: his sons, his estranged wife, Laura, and her boyfriend, were the ones who committed the heinous crime.

As per IMDb, the synopsis of the Dateline episode reads:

"Craig and Laura Rideout appeared happy but, after a contentious separation revealed an ugly secret, one of them would soon be dead. Clues pointed to four possible killers and left investigators wondering if this murder was all in the family."

The three members of the family were later charged and sentenced for the crime that they had committed on July 25, 2017, with Laura’s boyfriend, Paul Tucci, being found not guilty of the crime.

More on this in our story.

Dateline: Devil's Bathtub - What happened to Craig Rideout? Disturbing details explored

As mentioned on Dateline, Craig was a computer programmer and was married to Laura in 1993 until she filed for divorce in 2014. They had seven children together, of whom five were either living on their own or with their mother. The divorce became a custody battle as Craig did not give up on the youngest two children, who were 12 and 6 at the time.

This became a huge problem within the family as Laura wanted to move to a different place with Paul and take the two children with her, which created disputes within the family and might have been the reason behind the heinous crime..

As per Dateline, it was Craig’s sister, Robbyn, who first got suspicious after not being able to contact her brother in July. She called him and then his workplace, who informed her that Craig had mailed them to take a day off. She then visited his house, where she found Laura cleaning the kitchen.

She called 911 about something bad happening to her brother, but they initially refused, as they would have needed a search warrant to look into the house. Later, they found his body dumped in Yates County with his face disfigured to hide his identity. Craig was identified using dental records, and the cause of death was also revealed to be strangulation and a bludgeoned face with a hammer.

As reported by Dateline, the investigators did not have to look far to find the culprit, as they used cellphone tower signals to trace Craig’s phone, which helped them in procuring the surveillance footage of Craig’s and Paul’s vehicles, which were headed in the direction of the crime scene.

Aside from that, they also found trash bags with gloves, bottles of drain cleaner, and blood-soaked clothes, among other things, resulting in the arrest of Craig’s sons, Alexander and Colin.

Dateline: Devil's Bathtub - The trial and conviction in the Craig Rideout homicide

As revealed in Dateline, Laura, Paul, Alexander, and Colin went on trial for Craig’s murder in 2017. Crucial evidence, such as the blood-soaked clothes of the perpetrators, helped the investigators identify who committed the crime, which they found belonged to Laura and her son, Colin.

The other son, Alexander, received imprisonment for tampering with evidence and was released from prison in 2021, while Paul Tucci was found not guilty of any of the crimes and was let go.

The Dateline episode is brought by Andrea Canning, who interviewed family members of Craig, prosecutors, and investigators, among others, to report on the tragic incident.

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Also Read: Dateline: The House in the Woods – Who was Kelley Stage Clayton and what happened to her? Details of the 2015 murder, explored

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