The After Show: He's Right Behind You

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hi there everybody.

Deborah Roberts here and welcome to 2020 The After Show.

Today we are going to be taking you to the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, to the scene of just a chilling crime.

A mom of three found dead in her garage, fatally stabbed.

And at first it seemed like the killer was somebody that they knew, an old flame of hers from decades ago, but he turned out actually to to be much closer to home.

This is a story that I reported on, and I still think about it.

It was featured on our most recent episode called He's Right Behind You.

It was a case that actually spanned a few years, and one of our producers, Jonathan Balthaser, was all over this story.

Hey, John.

Hi, Deborah.

And our editor, Rob Ferrari, who I never see outside the edit room.

He's sitting in a dark room.

But Rob, you're here, and thank you for coming to talk about

the program.

Because what's so fun about this podcast or interesting about this podcast is we get a chance to kind of loosen up a little bit and bring the listeners and our viewers of 2020 into our stories and how we report them, how you help edit them and tell these stories.

But you and I have known each other, and you reminded me much longer than I remember that we know each other.

Long time ago, yeah, we worked together.

That was at Leftheim Live, Capman Stories Studios, long time with Dana Reeves.

My first job at ABC.

Yeah, Will Reeves' mom, by the way, who

works here at ABC.

And you're an editor that I've worked with for years here in 2020.

And I have to say, you're so talented.

And you bring such vision and creativity to these stories, which is so important.

And you have to find what viewers don't necessarily always know and our listeners don't is you kind of bring it all to life when we, when John goes out in the field and we shoot these stories, you have to find the appropriate music.

You've got to sort of help convey the mood and the feeling of what we're doing.

We come back with hours and hours of footage.

A lot of footage.

And you actually get a chance to see much more about the lives of these folks that we cover than I do, which I think must be intriguing because it really helps you understand the story, right?

You get into it, I guess, more emotionally.

You know, you're sifting through the material.

We got a lot of photos from the family of Christie as an infant, uh you know child young adult adult you know um and you go through those and you see it and she always with the smile on even when she was studying there's photos of her studying and she's got this smile on she's with her dad her brother and and you do kind of get this sense of like who she is and then as you're putting it like you said into the cut itself adding the music and listening to what your questions you're asking, trying to put the right photo in the right spot.

The question that always goes through my mind doing a lot of these is why?

Why would someone do that to this woman whom you've had a chance to see as a child?

Yeah, and that's the thing, you know, when you see them as, you know, little babies,

you know, if we get home videos sometimes on shows, and you really get a sense of who they are, you know, in a little swimming pool.

you know, the baby in a swimming pool on a chair.

I mean, and everyone, I think, can relate to that.

Yeah, of course.

And then, like I said, you start to think, why would someone do this?

And you just get, yeah, you do.

There are times I was telling Jonathan, you get very emotional on shows

just watching this and learning who they are.

And it comes through in your editing.

And in this story, in particular,

Jonathan, we call you JB, so I'll just go by JB and that'll make it a little easier here.

But you and I have worked on numerous stories together.

You've done the podcast before.

But this particular story, Christie Krug out in Colorado, I remember when you came to me about this story.

Tell the listeners a little bit about her and what it was that sort of struck you when you first learned about the story.

Well, one of the unique things about this story is the Broomfield PD actually provided hours and hours of footage including footage of Christie so you got to know her as she was right leading right up to her death.

So you really start to, I feel like, get to know her very well as she was.

And then, of course, you interviewed Christie's parents, Lars and Linda, extensively.

And the more time I spent with both of them, the more I was impressed with what a dynamic person Christie was.

She was a scientist.

She had a scientific brain, but she was also a fabulous dancer.

We spoke to a friend who described her dancing like she moved like water.

And then her father would just tell us about she was into models, sailing, art.

She worked with her father repairing cards and just she was a true Renaissance woman.

So many hobbies, but then a mother at heart.

I mean, her children, her world really revolved around her children.

And, you know, that engineering brain, we talked a little bit about that in the story, about how that factored into, you know, leading up to this crime.

But, Rob, how do you start?

Because sometimes when we are starting these pieces, they literally start off with a lot of picture and music just to draw you in.

So, how do you kind of decide what to do?

You kind of, you know, you start out with the script, you know, Jonathan gives you a script,

and then you start to, you watch it down just raw, And then you start to get your beats and your feels of emotion through it and how you want to start.

And me personally, I usually will, you know, pick my first track of music to set the tone.

And then you start, you know, just going through footage and footage and footage.

Yeah.

You know, listening to the interviews.

um you know replacing bites moving bites talking with the producer bytes being like um this is the interviews that you do you know can we add this can we add that this is too you know too much um and then you just start weaving it together and trying to bring out that emotion in the entire piece of

drama, of tension, of happiness, of sadness.

When she was a child,

you try and keep the music a little upbeat and stuff.

And then there could be a dark turn.

You bring that down and you go into

what photos, what footage.

And like Jonathan said, there was a ton of footage from Broomfield Police.

And to go through all of that is just, it's amazing because you're picking out the little nuggets.

You get the script, but you just kind of fill in, oh, this will work with that.

And then you build out these scenes and stuff.

That will help tell the story.

That'll help tell it.

Well, let's talk about the story, JB, because this woman is living her life out in the suburbs of Colorado, as we said, and she's suddenly found dead in her garage.

And the first question is, who would want to kill her?

But there had been some talk about a former boyfriend that she dated when she was a teenager, Anthony Holland.

And, you know, she had every reason to believe that he was stalking her.

She got these.

I think

threatening messages.

Yeah, so talk about that because she got, in the story, we talk about she got another one and then she got another one.

And it was sort of out of the blue.

He had reached out to her years ago.

And then, you know, he sort of like regretted that they broke up.

But then she was, you know, very clear, like, I've got a family now.

I'm moving on.

And then suddenly he appears again in her life.

It started as innocuous and she kind of ignored it and they got more and more threatening.

And then eventually a photo was sent to her of her husband Dan going into work.

And she really freaked out.

But she was very proactive about it.

She contacted the police and they brought her in.

And this is some of this video that I was talking about.

You see her coming into the Broomfield Police and they are going through.

She brings in this stalker log and it's

created herself.

She's a spreadsheet.

Every message at every time,

from texting, from emails, from whatever kind of source.

And the detectives are amazed.

You're doing our job for us.

And she says, okay, well, help me.

I don't know what to do.

I mean,

this guy says he's my ex-boyfriend,

but I can't, I'm terrified.

Yeah.

And we have to talk about the whole notion.

And we hear so much about stalking in our society today.

And it's a very hard thing to prove.

It's a hard thing for police to be able to track down.

So they suggested that she try to protect herself.

She and her husband set up cameras in the home.

He seemed to be very much involved too in terms of like making sure they were okay.

She even got a firearm.

She's proactive, yeah.

She trained herself in firearms.

She read these books these detectives gave her.

She set up, you know, a buddy system.

So when she was alone as infrequently as possible.

So she was ready.

She was prepared.

So it was all the more shocking to everyone when she was discovered dead in her in her basement.

Yeah, after she had done all this.

In Garage, excuse me.

After she had done all these things to protect herself, and one of the things we showed in the piece was that she even got an attractive purse that, you know, could conceal a gun that one of her relatives had sold.

And we talked about that and how that tells you the extent to which she was really very nervous about her life.

But she thought there was a danger outside her home.

And of course, in our piece, you find out the danger was really lurking inside her home.

Anthony was not stalking her.

It was her husband, Dan Krug, who had actually turned the tables to try to make it look like that.

So when he gets to the scene after she is found,

you know, initially police just see him as a distraught husband before anything else goes awry.

Let's take a listen to a clip from that.

And we see a man running down the street.

He ducks into the first level of cram seam tape and runs towards the house and is yelling, that's my house, that's my house.

Hey, stay back, stay back, stay back, stay back.

This is my house.

I understand it.

And just runs into the arms of one of Christie's family.

And we realize that that was Dan, that that was her husband.

That's the husband.

They kind of embraced him in a hug.

Dan is almost hurtled over with his hands on his stomach, bent over.

So I placed my hand on his back and his shoulder just so he knew I was there, that somebody was there.

This man right now has just lost his everything.

He's lost his wife, he's lost the mother to his children, and now he has to do everything.

And that was

heavy.

What was your reaction to his reaction?

When I was going through that footage and cutting it in,

I just felt horrible for this guy.

I was like, you know, he called the police.

He did all the right things.

He called the police.

They were being stalked.

And he goes home and finds that.

And I found him very realistic.

Like, I didn't, you know, to think that he was acting then.

Yeah, but then JB, he goes in for a police interview and they begin to have some questions, don't they?

Yeah.

I do like to nerd out on an interview, interrogation, police review, just because it's such a fascinating way to see how people are reacting in these high-pressure situations and the way it unravels.

When Dan first comes in, he's a victim and police are

treating him as such.

And it's fascinating watching his reaction then.

At the beginning, he can barely speak.

He's giving one-word answers.

In fact, and there's one part that we didn't include in the show, but they're asking what he does for a living.

And he just goes,

money, money.

Like, and he does finance stuff.

But, and some of the people who are going to be talking about it.

But he's giving the the impression that he's maybe

distracted.

He's so traumatized.

He seems like he's in shock, like genuine shock.

Yeah, as the interview progresses, there's active investigations going on.

The police are looking and find Jack Anthony Holland.

The guy that they think is responsible for the crime suspect, and they discover that he is in Utah.

There is absolutely no way he could have done this.

So at some point, the police come back and then they read him as Miranda writes.

Now

they don't kind of go after him immediately.

The interview continues for a long time, but it's really just fascinating to watch how he goes from this sort of crumpled traumatic mess to then as he starts to understand that he's, they're starting to look at him a little more, he becomes much more withdrawn and kind of he starts rolling his eyes and gets a little bit more

dramatic and just withdrawn.

Defensive posture.

Defensive posture.

Exactly.

And then begins to suggest that all wasn't great in the marriage and that Christie might have been having an affair.

Yep.

He starts throwing out sort of insinuations that, oh, Christie's been going, she leaves early, she comes home late, she won't tell me where she's going.

Kind of just trying to throw out alternate theories as to, well, if it wasn't Jack Anthony Holland, maybe she's having an affair and maybe

that affair partner has killed her.

And the cop, one of the detectives, really challenges him on that and says, why would her affair partner kill her?

Wouldn't you be the...

And he kind of, it shot him?

That's when he starts to get more involved in

realize he doesn't have as many yeah, he didn't have much to add to that.

Well, when we come back, we're going to hear more about how police were able to figure out that the stalker and the killer was not Chris Steele's long-ago boyfriend, but actually her husband, Dan, and how they used Dan's own actions against himself.

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We are back now with Rob Ferrari, our editor here at 2020, and Jonathan Malthaser, a producer who covered the Christie Cru case, a case that I think people will be talking about for a long time, a mom of three just outside of Denver, Colorado,

who was killed.

JB, let's talk about what I think intrigues viewers, good good old-fashioned police work.

I mean, yes, you talk about the interrogation video.

They see things.

It gives them a sort of a sense that something may not be right.

But the Broomfield Police did a quick investigation that started to reveal things.

Yeah, they were on top of that.

You know,

the entire house looked orderly.

There was no robbery.

And that's when they start to really get into the digital forensics almost immediately.

They immediately, police and investigators become suspicious when they realize that the cameras are the door ring camera, the cameras have been shut off,

about the same time Dan would have gone to work.

And so they start to look at him suspiciously.

And then they realize that he stopped at a construction area five minutes from their house.

And so they that's where they think he may have discarded the

murder weapons, which they never found, but it was an act of construction site in this big area.

But that was a very suspicious thing that they keyed in on quickly as well.

But Detective Randy Pilack was really fascinating because he's a digital forensics guy, and he was a very interesting character, too, just to talk to.

He's the kind of guy who's behind the scenes.

I mean, at the end of the day,

mild manner.

Maybe thought it was a little strange to be talking on television because that's not what he does.

But he really jumped in right away and was able to help figure out

the computer and

put Dan basically in the middle of all of this.

Tell us about that.

This is one of the pieces of evidence that they found while Dan was still in his interview with police.

He was able to trace back the IP address where these messages had been sent to Christie

back to Dan's office.

Well, he told me all about this, so let's just take a listen to a clip of that.

And it's just digital work on the computer.

A lot of digital work, a lot of specialized software and programs.

Detective Randy Pilack is a digital forensics expert at the Broomfield Police Department.

We were able to find inconsistencies with events that happened the morning of December 14th.

Christiel comes home, there's a period of inactivity on the phone, and then suddenly her phone then logs into Google Home, takes several security cameras offline, except for the driveway, and then there's a scheduled send message that goes to Dan later.

A scheduled message?

How does that work?

There was the ability to schedule a text message in the future.

So all you have to do is hold the button down and it gives you a prompt for when you want this text message to go out.

What is that saying to you?

Dan was building his alibi that he's going to get this text message saying, hey, I got a text from her while she had been alive.

I got this text from her.

He also programmed her phone to send false confession messages to her brother and to a detective about committing an affair, an affair that she never had.

That was important for me to receive to kind of put the pieces in place for Dan's alibi.

So, Dan was pretty clever, right?

Dan was savvy, but Detective Pilak was more savvy.

Savvier.

Yeah, I mean,

his big alibi, Dan's alibi, was that he received a message from Christie's phone after he's seen

leaving work while he's on his way to work or at the office.

And so, it's the question is: How would Christie have texted him?

You know, he's already, how would he have killed her if you know, once he's already left?

And Detective Pilak discovered that there were no um

inputs on the phone uh when the message went out meaning it was a it was a scheduled send so dan had scheduled a message on christie's own phone to himself to make it seem like

he was it was giving it was happening at the time it was the burner phone too which was interesting yeah with the locations yeah he was with the burner phone sending messages and his phone was there and then the burner phone from what i understand also if um he had register his email address

six months prior.

And that's the other thing you realize, six months ago, this guy was doing his phone.

He was in the planning stages.

So Dan thought he was savvy.

He bought the burner phone with

a gift card.

But as they researched back, they found Dan's own email address registered to the code.

To the gift card.

But there's always something.

It seemed like he had his T's crossed and dotted the I's.

But they were able to sort of unravel this and sort of connect the dots.

And that's what was so fascinating about this, I think, that the police investigation really sort of zeroed in on this tech part of it.

But then there is the family, and we talk about this all the time on this podcast: that at the core of these stories, there are victims, people who are hurting.

And the family here really, really are still reeling from this.

So we're going to come back and talk more about that.

So stay with us.

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I am back now with JB and Rob talking about the Christie Krug case, one that I think people not only in the Colorado area, but really all over the country who may have followed this case are still talking about.

And for me, what was really,

I guess, something that will stick with me and just sort of an emotional part of the story was talking to the family.

Because this is a young woman who was loved dearly by, you know, her mother and her father.

And she has three children now who are motherless.

JB, what I thought was remarkable, not only their loss, but the betrayal.

I mean, you know, they have this son-in-law, Christie Krug's father and mom.

They wanted to be careful how they characterize their feelings about him because they, you know, Christie left behind three children, and they don't want these three children to feel so horrible about their family life and their father.

Yeah, I mean, this was obviously devastating to Christie's parents, Lars, and Linda.

And they've wanted, I think they wanted to tell their story, but also be protective of the kids.

I mean, and it's like, as you said, it's such a tragedy for them to lose their mother.

And now their father

is a convicted murderer.

But they were able to share some interesting details about the kids.

gave a statement to us saying that they're they're living with Christie's brother and his wife, that they're very loved by the family.

And I spent some time with Lars.

He told me this really touching story that didn't make end of the piece, but

Christie did models like I talked about, and she would do models with her father, and she built a sailboat.

She built sailboat models, and there was one that Lars had purchased for her that they didn't get to complete.

And one of Christie's daughters found it.

And she said, I'd like to.

And now Lars

and his granddaughter are working on this model boat together.

And he says their granddaughter has kind of the same engineering capacity and skills with tools that her mother had.

So it was a really sweet story.

Yeah, I think for us,

the goal is always not only to just tell these stories, and sometimes they're very chilling stories, but maybe if there is some kind of a redeeming moment there for the family or something that they have been able to find to help them go on.

And Dan was convicted, as you said.

He maintains his innocence.

And yeah.

And, you know, the family now is trying to go on.

Rob, what were you left with?

I mean, what stood out for you in this story?

Because you edit so many of these stories, and many times they have similar themes.

What stood out for you in this one?

What stood out with me was thinking you could get away with this in this day and age with the digital forensics and everything.

You really wonder, and like I said before,

first, why would you do it?

That always sticks.

And then with all the shows, as an editor, you want to hope that you honored the deceased to show her in a light of like, this is what's gone from the world now.

Yeah.

You know, that, you know, her kids are going to miss and people that just knew her are going to miss.

And you try and bring that through with the editing too, to honor the deceased.

Well, you did a terrific job doing that this time, and you always do.

Thank you.

Rob, this was fascinating to hear from you.

It's great to see you outside of the dark edit room.

We're always a legendary editor, Rob.

Exactly.

Well, you did a fabulous job on the story, helping us bring it to life and to help shine a light on this woman, Rob.

And JB, as always, you just do a fabulous job producing.

Great working with you, Deborah.

You too.

Well, that does it for us today on the after-show.

You can stream this 2020 episode.

It's called He's Right Behind You and it is on Disney Plus and Hulu.

The 2020 After Show is produced by Susie Liu, Nora Ritchie, Emily Schutz, Sasha Oslanian, and Trevor Hastings of ABC Audio with Joseph Diaz, Brian Mazurski, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020.

Theme music by Evan Viola.

Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020.

Josh Cohen, the director of podcasting at ABC Audio.

Laura Mayer is the executive producer.

I'm John Quinonez.

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