The Setup Murder of Kristil Krug

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Speaker 7 My name is John O'Hare. I am a police officer with the Broomfield Police Department.

Speaker 8 Officer, how did this case begin for you?

Speaker 7 On December 14th of 2023,

Speaker 7 I was dispatched to a welfare check at the Krug household.

Speaker 9 Broomfield Dispatchers Meeting.

Speaker 10 Hi there. My name is Dan Krug.

Speaker 7 Dan Krug was calling and asked that we check check on his wife, Christie.

Speaker 8 My wife isn't responding to text messages or phone calls.

Speaker 7 Said that he had not been able to reach her for about three hours.

Speaker 8 We've had threats against us. We have both been targeted by a stalker.

Speaker 7 Dan said that...

Speaker 7 This alleged stalker had made threats to both him and his wife, Christie.

Speaker 9 Which is why I'm

Speaker 8 nervous that she's not answering me.

Speaker 7 The first thing I did was walk right to the front door, kind of peek inside. Everything looked orderly, quiet.
I gave it a wild knock.

Speaker 7 My thinking at the time was it's very possible she's not even home. So I wanted to see if I could peek into the garage.

Speaker 7 Quickly realized that I'm not tall enough to see in those windows.

Speaker 7 I went back to my patrol car and I pulled it into the driveway so that I could get my push bumper close to the garage and use it as a step-up. I stepped up on it, looked in the window.

Speaker 7 I immediately see Chris Deele apparently lifeless. She had some type of wound to the head.

Speaker 13 151, send medical.

Speaker 7 I got a female down in the garage.

Speaker 2 Roadfield, please!

Speaker 2 Roadfield, please!

Speaker 7 immediately, I just checked for any signs of life at that point.

Speaker 8 Does she have a pulse?

Speaker 14 She does not.

Speaker 15 151.

Speaker 7 I immediately started CPR.

Speaker 7 There was a stab wound on her chest.

Speaker 13 Send the next unit emergent, please.

Speaker 7 As the paramedics arrived, I opened the garage door and a woman came up, and I believe this woman was Christie's mother.

Speaker 9 I arrived.

Speaker 13 I need you to stay out, please.

Speaker 16 I said, that's my daughter.

Speaker 11 She came running up to me and said, Christie is dead.

Speaker 16 It's just shocking.

Speaker 16 You don't want that to be your reality.

Speaker 5 Oh my God, this can't be true. This can't be true, can it?

Speaker 17 It was chaos.

Speaker 17 I heard screaming coming from the top of the hill.

Speaker 5 My house.

Speaker 18 Hey, stay back, stay back, stay back, stay back.

Speaker 13 This is my house. I understand.

Speaker 9 They see a man come running down the hill.

Speaker 17 This is Dan.

Speaker 17 This is her husband.

Speaker 17 This man just lost his wife.

Speaker 17 And he is beside himself.

Speaker 17 I'm with Dan and he's on the floor and he's crying.

Speaker 17 They all just kind of said, I can't believe this happened. He did it.
The stalker did it.

Speaker 21 We were on heightened alert. We were very, very concerned for Dan's safety.

Speaker 8 This is after Chris Steele was murdered. You're worried that Dan may be next in this stalker's sights.

Speaker 21 Correct. We thought Dan Krug was next.

Speaker 20 The community was very alarmed.

Speaker 21 There's a killer out there, and we're going to go after him.

Speaker 11 Peter Van Sand reports the set-up murder of Christiel Krug.

Speaker 17 It's a weird feeling standing there when somebody's being told, I'm sorry, but your loved one has died.

Speaker 8 Victims advocate Heather Aates is trained to comfort those in emotional agony, like Dan Krug, who dashed home from work and learned his wife, Christie, had been found murdered in their garage in suburban Broomfield, Colorado, on December 14th, 2023.

Speaker 17 This man has been going through a stalking case with his wife. He's being stalked as well, and now she's gone.

Speaker 8 As investigators searched the crime scene for clues,

Speaker 8 Heather drove Dan to the police station. An officer's body camera recorded the ride.

Speaker 17 He was crouched over to the side of the passenger door, and it was very much...

Speaker 17 I'm comforting Dan by rubbing his back.

Speaker 8 Dan and Chris Deele had been married for 16 years. The couple, both 43, had three young children.
What did he say in the car?

Speaker 17 In the car, he was pretty focused on the kids. He was very adamant about wanting to be the one to tell his children.

Speaker 8 Under the command of Broomfield Police Chief Ania Hempelman, investigators were doing everything in their power to find the killer.

Speaker 21 We immediately started doing interviews, talking to neighbors, canvassing.

Speaker 8 Several hours had passed since Dan Krug's emotional ride to the police station. He had settled down and he told detectives there was nothing out of the ordinary that morning.

Speaker 12 Mornings are

Speaker 12 very routine in the house.

Speaker 8 He said they got the kids to school and Christie seemed fine when he left for his job at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Speaker 12 While I was driving,

Speaker 12 my phone dinged.

Speaker 8 Dan said Christie texted him, asking if he could pick up one of the kids after school. But when he texted back and asked what time, he said Christie never responded.

Speaker 12 And that was weird.

Speaker 8 So weird, so out of character for Christie, Dan called police and asked them to check on her.

Speaker 13 I got a female down in the garage.

Speaker 11 There are not words that can describe what you feel as a parent at that point.

Speaker 9 It's probably

Speaker 16 some parents' worst nightmare.

Speaker 4 These are some memories, aren't they?

Speaker 8 Christie's parents, Lars and Linda Grimsrood.

Speaker 11 She was an engineer. She had incredible skills in math, sciences, chemistry, physics, but she also had the talents in the arts.

Speaker 16 She loved to just get out and live life.

Speaker 8 Throughout her life, Christie spent countless hours working with her dad on classic muscle cars in his colorful garage.

Speaker 11 We'd work on the cars, we'd race the cars. Christie always felt very comfortable coming over here.
If we needed to talk or whatever, this is where we would sit and just enjoy each other's company.

Speaker 8 But those fun, casual conversations suddenly turned disturbing in the fall of 2023, when Christie first told her father that she was living with intense fear.

Speaker 11 She sat here and told me that she was being stalked, and that just shocked me when I asked her, well, have you talked to the police?

Speaker 8 Christie had called the police and met with Broomfield detective Andrew Martinez.

Speaker 24 She came into the interview room and just kind of took over and

Speaker 24 just told me everything without hesitation.

Speaker 8 Their conversation was recorded.

Speaker 25 I keep trying to remind myself this is intending to be terrorizing. This is intending to scare me.

Speaker 8 Christie told Martinez that on October 2nd, 2023, she received an unsettling text from someone named Anthony, who said he would be coming to the area and asked if Christie wanted to hook up.

Speaker 8 And how does she respond to that?

Speaker 24 She did not respond.

Speaker 8 The following day, Christie told Martinez she got more texts from Anthony that included obscenities and said, you should kill yourself. Don't waste my time.

Speaker 8 Somebody who wants to hook up now is saying, go kill yourself. How do you interpret that second text?

Speaker 24 It's a pretty extreme reaction to not getting a response.

Speaker 8 Christie told Martinez she knew an Anthony from her past, Anthony Holland, a boyfriend she dated for about a year after high school and into college. The two broke up in the fall of 2000.

Speaker 8 Lars and Linda say back then, Anthony made a good impression.

Speaker 16 Very friendly, very courteous. He always had good manners.

Speaker 8 In 2002, out of the blue, Anthony contacted Christie.

Speaker 8 According to Christie, Anthony never seemed to take no for an answer, contacting her again in 2005, 2010, and 2016 via Facebook.

Speaker 25 He's like, we'll meant to be together. I said, this is really creepy for me.
You need to stop.

Speaker 8 Christie deleted Facebook and thought she'd heard the last of Anthony Holland.

Speaker 8 But then came the text in 2023.

Speaker 25 Like, this was alarming. He's never said this kind of stuff to me before.

Speaker 8 Over the next two months, Christie said she received alarming message after message through text and email.

Speaker 8 They included threats to her and Dan, including this disturbing photo of Dan getting out of his car at work, which prompted Christie to first come forward and call police.

Speaker 8 A few days later, this text to her. Saw you at dentist.
See you soon. That suggests he might be surveilling them both, right? Correct.

Speaker 25 This now is escalating.

Speaker 24 The harassment is just constant, and she's just believing that every corner presents some sort of danger for her.

Speaker 8 To gather evidence and locate Anthony Holland, Detective Martinez was required to file search warrants with the phone and email companies. A slow process.
Getting that information takes time.

Speaker 8 Sometimes those companies are reluctant or they slow walk getting that information to you, correct? Yes. Christie had been searching for Holland on her own.

Speaker 8 She hired a private investigator and eventually located him living in Utah, about 500 miles away. Christie shared her discovery with Detective Martinez, who chose not to contact Holland.

Speaker 24 I explained to Christiel that we wanted to gather as much evidence as possible and ideally obtain an arrest warrant so when law enforcement does go to Anthony's door, we can take him into custody and not have to walk away.

Speaker 8 But Laura says Christie had been losing patience with the investigation.

Speaker 11 She made the comment that she felt they had abandoned her, that they weren't doing things aggressively enough.

Speaker 8 Christie had taken steps to protect herself and her family, including installing security cameras.

Speaker 11 And she was scared. I said, Well, this sounds serious enough that you need to start carrying.
You'll use one of my guns for right now.

Speaker 8 Is this the very gun that you're doing?

Speaker 11 That is the actual gun that she initially then carried.

Speaker 8 Dan was also interviewed. The threats were taking a toll on him as well.

Speaker 12 I went to the

Speaker 12 grocery store briefly on Tuesday,

Speaker 12 and someone behind me dropped a can and I panicked. So what am I doing? I'm panicking.

Speaker 12 And I'm doing a

Speaker 12 lot of protecting my wife.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 I'm not doing good.

Speaker 8 Dan told Martinez the stalker had a nickname.

Speaker 12 We call him Kickman.

Speaker 8 Where'd that name come from?

Speaker 24 Kickman, Dan had told me it was because the suspect email that was initially contacting Christiel was ahollandkicks at gmail.com.

Speaker 8 As the weeks went by and Martinez's investigation continued, Lars and Linda say the constant threats were ruining their daughter's life.

Speaker 16 It was just heartbreaking. She was just in tears.
She was just like, what am I going to do? How am I going to live?

Speaker 8 Did she feel she was being hunted down by Anthony? Yes.

Speaker 8 Christiel also shared her fears with siblings Jenna Erickson and Josh Adamson.

Speaker 26 She was terrified.

Speaker 8 Did she ever express to either of you the fear that

Speaker 8 this man, I think, is going to kill me? Yes.

Speaker 26 She said it's either going to be me or him that's dead, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it's not me.

Speaker 1 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually actually getting a direct line to the big man up north.

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Speaker 8 When Christie Krug was found dead in her garage, Detective Martinez had only one suspect in mind.

Speaker 24 My initial assumption was that Anthony Holland had gone to her home and murdered her.

Speaker 8 Within hours, local police descended on Holland's home in Eagle Mountain, near Salt Lake City.

Speaker 8 So you're alone in the house.

Speaker 11 What do you hear?

Speaker 22 Pounding at the door. Like,

Speaker 8 yeah. Big time.

Speaker 22 So I go to the door. I see like eight cops.

Speaker 28 I had no idea what was going on.

Speaker 8 Where's your ID at? Is there my room?

Speaker 11 Have you ever heard of the name Crystal Krug?

Speaker 22 They asked me if I knew Crystal Krug

Speaker 22 and I told them I did know her.

Speaker 23 She was my very first girlfriend ever.

Speaker 13 When was the last time you talked to Crystal?

Speaker 8 Has it been a minute?

Speaker 23 It's been a minute, yeah.

Speaker 8 When was the last time you had reached out to Christie?

Speaker 22 It was around 2014, 2016.

Speaker 8 Anthony says he'd reached out to Christie on Facebook years before. What are you thinking?

Speaker 22 Why would they come all the way here to ask me about Christie? I thought it was for that message where I said I missed her.

Speaker 22 That's the only thing I could think of because I was like, I haven't contacted her since then.

Speaker 8 They didn't tell you that Christie Krug had been murdered.

Speaker 22 No, they did not tell me.

Speaker 8 Police were there to gather information from their suspect, not give it.

Speaker 24 They asked me where I was that day.

Speaker 9 Can I prove where I was?

Speaker 8 Anthony had made a purchase just hours earlier at a coal store near his home.

Speaker 11 What'd you buy?

Speaker 8 A.M.

Speaker 8 Turns out that was one of the most important purchases you have ever made.

Speaker 22 Because it was my alibi.

Speaker 22 Because there's no way I could have made it from

Speaker 22 Colorado back to Utah to buy the sweatshirt. It was an eight-hour drive.

Speaker 8 Anthony also showed police some of his employment records. They proved he'd been in Utah all along, never traveling to Colorado as the messages from Christie's stalker led cops to believe.

Speaker 22 I had a bunch of receipts for my work.

Speaker 22 showing the days that I worked, and they took those, took my receipt from Kohl's, and went to the squad car and made a phone call, came back in, and told me I was free to go.

Speaker 8 Back in Colorado, Dan was still face to face with investigators. He told them his theory of the crime.

Speaker 29 So, in my brain, the story that I have is someone came to the door.

Speaker 29 Maybe she went outside outside to get a package

Speaker 29 and they must have come in.

Speaker 9 And she's she's a fighter. She's

Speaker 9 she is

Speaker 9 strong.

Speaker 9 She would have fought.

Speaker 8 Earlier in the interview, Dan requested he tell the children what had happened to their mother.

Speaker 12 You kids do not know yet.

Speaker 12 Okay?

Speaker 12 They're here.

Speaker 12 Arrive in the hall.

Speaker 9 I

Speaker 12 should have tricked you. You want to tell them?

Speaker 12 I just don't know.

Speaker 24 Watching their response is just

Speaker 24 heartbreaking.

Speaker 8 Investigators were working every angle. They checked those security cameras Christiel had installed on the house.

Speaker 24 The doorbell camera, the side camera, and the side house camera were all manually turned off.

Speaker 8 Except for that one NES camera near the garage, police canvassed Dan and Christie's neighbors in search of anything their home security cameras might have recorded.

Speaker 27 I saw you at a ring doorbell camera.

Speaker 19 Do you mind looking reviewing that camera?

Speaker 2 Oh goodness, absolutely.

Speaker 1 If possible, you guys can review the last three to five hours.

Speaker 8 They also enlisted Randy Pilak, a digital forensic examiner with the Broomfield Police Department, to take a closer look at those disturbing messages to Christiel.

Speaker 14 I think it was probably four hours, five hours after the murder was reported to us.

Speaker 8 Now that the stalking case had become a murder investigation, Pylak was able to file new expedited requests for information.

Speaker 8 He quickly discovered that messages from two accounts used to harass Christie had been sent from the same location.

Speaker 14 Both came back to the same IP address. That IP address was the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment,

Speaker 14 which is where Dan worked.

Speaker 8 The messages to Christie threatening her, threatening her husband, had been sent using the Wi-Fi system at Dan's office.

Speaker 8 For the first time, detectives believed Christie's stalker could be sitting right in front of them. Could he be her killer as well?

Speaker 24 The entire air was just kind of evacuated out of our investigations room, and we realize that we need to focus on Dan and where he's been and what he's been doing.

Speaker 8 Martinez, along with Detective Jennifer King Sullivan, confronted Dan.

Speaker 30 Who do you think killed her?

Speaker 9 I think it's Kigman.

Speaker 29 I think it's Anthony.

Speaker 11 What if I told you that

Speaker 29 we had already spoken with Anthony and there's no way that he was in town today?

Speaker 29 And I have nothing.

Speaker 29 And I'm

Speaker 9 terrified to bring my children home.

Speaker 30 What are you terrified of?

Speaker 18 If it wasn't him, who was it?

Speaker 8 But even as Dan claimed ignorance, the detective saw that his body language told a different story. What were you seeing with Dan?

Speaker 24 He took a defensive posture. He sat back in the couch a little bit.

Speaker 24 He crossed his arms.

Speaker 24 Kind of like,

Speaker 24 I have nothing to explain.

Speaker 30 I think his head is spinning, thinking about what else are they going to find.

Speaker 26 The mystery continues, and

Speaker 9 I ask you to husband.

Speaker 30 If you were watching these facts unfold in front of you in a movie, what would you say happened?

Speaker 30 There has to be someone

Speaker 8 moments after detectives told Dan Krug they had eliminated Anthony Holland as a suspect, Dan calmly insisted he was not the one who who stalked and murdered his wife Christie.

Speaker 8 I loved her.

Speaker 8 There has to be someone else.

Speaker 8 But I don't know who that is.

Speaker 8 Martinez and King Sullivan didn't believe a word of it and were struck by how stoic, how unmoved Dan was.

Speaker 30 He had no reaction and really no explanation.

Speaker 6 Help me make sense of it.

Speaker 29 I don't know. I'm not the one who does this.

Speaker 28 I don't have a narrative or a story that I can offer you.

Speaker 8 Within minutes, Dan Krug had gone from sympathetic victim to murder suspect.

Speaker 9 I get the narrative you're putting together, but it alleges that I would do this to my children.

Speaker 9 I love and adore my children.

Speaker 24 It's a pretty frightening idea that the biggest threat to you and your safety is actually living in the same house as you.

Speaker 24 We need to process you for physical evidence, okay?

Speaker 24 He knows that we're on to him.

Speaker 24 We just didn't have enough evidence at that point to take him into custody.

Speaker 8 On his way out, Dan kept insisting the real killer was still on the loose, and he made a desperate plea.

Speaker 8 They're never gonna get over that.

Speaker 8 I don't care if you capture him, I don't care if you kill him.

Speaker 8 Find him.

Speaker 8 Tell him just as soon as we keep looking.

Speaker 8 When did you find out that Dan was now a person of interest in this case?

Speaker 16 I think at his interview, so that same day when they held him, they held him pretty late.

Speaker 8 An autopsy revealed what happened to Christie.

Speaker 8 She had been attacked from behind with a blunt object.

Speaker 24 Bludgeoned to death in the head and rolled over and then stabbed in the heart.

Speaker 8 With Dan now the prime suspect, the detectives wanted to know more about his relationship with Christie.

Speaker 8 According to Christie's Christie's parents, it wasn't good.

Speaker 16 She said, well, I'm sleeping on the couch, mom.

Speaker 8 But you knew there was trouble in paradise, right?

Speaker 16 Yeah, and especially in those last few months.

Speaker 8 Christie's family says those troubles were caused by Dan's fiery temper. What set him off?

Speaker 11 It could be anything, but it was usually if he was losing control.

Speaker 8 Christie's sister, Jenna Erickson, says she could always tell when Dan was angry.

Speaker 26 His face would get really red when he was getting getting frustrated. I vividly remember seeing his face get red.

Speaker 16 They had a thing where they'd go, okay, walk away. You need to walk away.
And so,

Speaker 16 you know, they were trying to manage it.

Speaker 8 But in the weeks before her death, according to her parents, Christie was getting ready to leave Dan.

Speaker 16 She didn't want to have this marriage anymore.

Speaker 11 She had decided that she needed to get a divorce.

Speaker 8 As the detectives methodically built their case, more evidence was uncovered on Dan and Christie's cell phones by digital forensic expert Randy Pilak, including texts from the morning of the murder.

Speaker 14 So on Christie's phone, we see text messages to Lars, Detective Martinez, and then a text message to Dan.

Speaker 8 The one Dan said he received while driving to work about picking up one of the kids at school. But Pilack discovered those texts had been set on a timer.

Speaker 8 It was a new feature on the phone Christie had. Who do you believe pre-programmed those messages?

Speaker 14 Dan Krug.

Speaker 8 And he did it to do what?

Speaker 8 To

Speaker 14 hide his actions.

Speaker 8 Pylak says the messages were pre-programmed before Dan left the house.

Speaker 14 And we believe Christie is deceased.

Speaker 8 That for him then would establish an alibi that, well, I had already left and my wife is alive, right? She's texting me.

Speaker 24 Correct.

Speaker 8 All while Dan casually arrived at work.

Speaker 8 Pylak discovered more damning evidence from Dan's phone. Internet searches like, what happens when you're knocked unconscious? Do people really go unconscious when hit in the head?

Speaker 8 And how hard for head trauma to go unconscious?

Speaker 14 All searches were the day before the murder. It was rather damning.

Speaker 8 Just two days after Chris Steele had been murdered, detectives Martinez and King Sullivan felt they had enough evidence to charge Dan Krug with stalking and murdering his wife.

Speaker 30 We begin following him.

Speaker 28 Cutting up to the stop sign now.

Speaker 8 How many cars are we talking about?

Speaker 20 Probably eight cars.

Speaker 30 We're like, that's him. He's alone in the car.

Speaker 13 Hey, be ready to pop that once he gets it in the park.

Speaker 30 We follow him all the way to the grocery store.

Speaker 30 We wait for him to park.

Speaker 30 We quickly converge on his car.

Speaker 30 Show us your hands.

Speaker 9 Show us your hands.

Speaker 2 Hands on your face.

Speaker 30 Hands on your face. So we surround him,

Speaker 30 pull him out of his car, and tell him he's being arrested for the murder of his wife.

Speaker 24 I asked him just one question.

Speaker 28 Do you want me to tell your kids that you killed their mother, or do you want somebody else to?

Speaker 8 That's quite a line.

Speaker 8 That goes back to when he said he wanted to tell his kids that their mother was

Speaker 8 dead.

Speaker 24 After I asked that question, he he just said that he wanted to speak with his attorney and then looked away from me. All right.

Speaker 2 Good luck.

Speaker 24 And I shut the door and he went to the county jail.

Speaker 2 You get one leg up and then kind of swing around.

Speaker 11 I felt a huge relief and they got him. It felt like a burden had been lifted that he had been arrested.

Speaker 8 And soon, Christie's family would come face to face with the man detectives say murdered her.

Speaker 11 He looked right at me and smiled at me.

Speaker 8 And here, for the first time, Dan's side of the story.

Speaker 28 Welcome to Radio Rental.

Speaker 28 The scariest stories you've ever heard in your life.

Speaker 5 All told by real

Speaker 5 people.

Speaker 28 And off we go.

Speaker 31 This wasn't a human being that I saw.

Speaker 28 There's something here in this house. Something not of this world.

Speaker 4 There was a woman moving through the hall. I stepped back and I was completely alone.

Speaker 28 Radio Rental is available now. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 8 When Deputy District Attorneys Kate Armstrong and Stephanie Fritz were assigned to prosecute Daniel Krug,

Speaker 8 they say they were struck by his downright stupidity in believing he could get away with murdering his wife by impersonating her ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 32 The audacity with which he thought he could manipulate not only his family, his loved ones, but also the police department.

Speaker 8 And some of this is sophisticated, is it not?

Speaker 21 It's sophisticated, but not too sophisticated because we were able to figure it out.

Speaker 8 The trial began in April 2025.

Speaker 11 When he first came in, he smiled at me like he was saying, hey, thanks for being here for me. I believe my facial expression made it very clear that I was not on his side.

Speaker 8 The prosecution laid out Christie's final hours of life for the jury.

Speaker 32 On December 14th of 2023, Christie Krug started her day like any other day. She took her younger two children to school.
And when she returned, Christie pulled back into her garage.

Speaker 32 She gets out of the car when she is attacked from behind.

Speaker 8 And did she ever see him approaching, do you think? Or was this an ambush?

Speaker 21 It was an ambush. She had two or three skull fractures as she's laying on the floor bleeding.
He pushes her over, gets over her, and stabs her just above her heart.

Speaker 8 And why do you suppose he had to do that vicious last stab?

Speaker 21 I think it was rage. I think it was control and power that he wanted to exert over Christie.

Speaker 8 Dan had been losing that control for a long time, say prosecutors.

Speaker 8 Their theory of the crime is that Dan sent Christie those disturbing messages in an attempt to drive her closer to him and not leave, hoping she'd see him as her heroic protector.

Speaker 32 It was not working. The stalking was not leaving her back to him.
I think it then turned to, I'm still losing her, kind of, if I can't have you, nobody can.

Speaker 8 The prosecution says that in the last days of her life, Christie had begun to suspect that her stalker was possibly her husband.

Speaker 21 We know from Dan's own interview that she confronted him and said, I can't rule you out as the stalker.

Speaker 12 She said that right to my face,

Speaker 12 that she wanted to know if it was me.

Speaker 12 And I told her.

Speaker 7 He felt the walls closing in.

Speaker 21 Closing in. He was going to lose Chris Steele anyway.
He was going to be exposed as the stalker. So he did that last fatal act and murdered her.

Speaker 8 Prosecutors say Dan tried to outsmart investigators, pre-programming those text messages on Chris Steele's phone before he left the house, assuming he wouldn't be caught.

Speaker 32 Were we not able to discover that that was a delayed send text, it would have appeared as though Christie was still alive when he left the house.

Speaker 8 At trial, the long list of digital evidence against Dan was laid out. The threatening texts, the emails, the internet searches.

Speaker 8 Also included that photograph of Dan arriving at his office, attached to a menacing email seemingly sent by Anthony Holland to Christile.

Speaker 8 But there was one problem, according to the state's digital expert. Who took this picture, do you believe?

Speaker 14 Dan, Dan took this picture.

Speaker 8 Pylak discovered that the phone which snapped that photo was in selfie mode using a timer.

Speaker 8 A fact that Kate Armstrong reminded the jury about in her closing argument. That's when the judge allowed cameras into the courtroom.

Speaker 32 The phone was propped on the back of this vehicle next to him. The defendant took this photograph and then he sent it to his wife.

Speaker 19 We respectfully disagree with the prosecution in this case.

Speaker 8 Defense attorney Philip Geigel argued the murder investigation was poor. The blunt object used on Christie's head and the knife used to stab her were never recovered by police.

Speaker 8 The defense also zeroed in on the fact that Christie's phone was not tested for fingerprints or DNA.

Speaker 19 Why not the phone? The prosecution wants to believe, well, you know, there may not be a lot to be found there.

Speaker 8 Well, you won't know if you won't try, but Geigel said other forensic tests supported his claim that Dan is innocent.

Speaker 19 They submitted the chest swabs, and you know whose DNA wasn't there. The person who lived in the house, the person who ate in the kitchen with them, the person who shared the living room.

Speaker 9 That idiot right there.

Speaker 19 There is absolutely no physical evidence on Mr. Krug's clothing.
There's no blood found on that car inside or out. It's searched three times.

Speaker 8 In week three of the trial, the jurors began deliberations. After a day and a half, verdicts were reached.

Speaker 20 Please rise for the jury.

Speaker 8 Judge Priscilla Lowe read the verdicts.

Speaker 20 We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.

Speaker 20 We the jury find the defendant guilty of count number two, stalking, extreme emotional distress.

Speaker 8 Krug was also found guilty of stalking with credible threat and criminal impersonation.

Speaker 11 Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.

Speaker 11 And at that point, I think I started breathing again.

Speaker 8 Krug was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on the murder charge and an additional nine and a half years for the stalking and impersonation counts.

Speaker 8 But right after his conviction, in a video call from jail,

Speaker 8 Daniel Krug told his family that the jury got it wrong, saying the real killer remained at large and that his children could be the next targets.

Speaker 9 I need

Speaker 9 them

Speaker 28 safe.

Speaker 10 I don't know where

Speaker 5 or who

Speaker 10 did this, where he is or who he is.

Speaker 10 I need my children out of Colorado.

Speaker 8 As Daniel Krug began serving his life sentence, he continued making video calls to his parents and brother in the days immediately after his conviction.

Speaker 8 The man who viciously murdered his wife, terrorized his own children, and lied to everyone was seeking sympathy from his side of the family.

Speaker 10 I'm probably sleeping like 16 hours a day because of the depression.

Speaker 10 I sleep, I read, and I cry. That's about it.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 8 Despite overwhelming digital evidence against him, Krug fell back to his old ways, lying to his loved ones, ones, now claiming he was wrongly convicted.

Speaker 2 They never produced a single piece of hard

Speaker 2 evidence.

Speaker 8 His brother Jeremy gave Krug a much-needed reality check that the foundation of the family's loyalty had started to crack.

Speaker 23 Support is dwindling.

Speaker 33 You know, mom and dad want to believe you very much. I want to believe you very much.
There's a lot that's come out.

Speaker 33 And

Speaker 2 as

Speaker 33 imaginative as I can be with finding explanations and ways to theorize how this or that could have been the reality,

Speaker 33 some of it is beyond even my creativity.

Speaker 8 The case that ended with a murder had begun with stalking and criminal impersonation of Anthony Holland, Which begs the question, what if Detective Martinez had acted on the information Christiel and the private investigator had uncovered?

Speaker 22 They should have found me right away. They should have found me, they should have came to my house, they should have approached me, they should have talked to me.

Speaker 8 But Detective Martinez chose not to call, telling us he didn't have enough evidence to do so and was concerned a phone call could exacerbate the situation.

Speaker 8 Is this something where you've kicked yourself about this?

Speaker 24 This case has haunted me since it occurred. And the outcome of this case has haunted me for the past two years.

Speaker 8 And if you could get in a time machine, perhaps you would make that call today.

Speaker 9 Absolutely.

Speaker 8 And Christie's parents sympathize with Martinez and believe their daughter was doomed no matter what the outcome of his investigation.

Speaker 11 Inevitably, I think he was going to kill her.

Speaker 11 When someone sets their mind to do something like that and that's what the plan was, I don't think that would have stopped the murder from happening.

Speaker 8 Christie's death has left a hole in the lives of those who experienced her love and joy for life.

Speaker 9 I've had lots of other girlfriends, and I've never been in love with anybody else like her.

Speaker 8 She was the love of your life.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Jenna hopes her sister Christie's story will serve as a cautionary tale.

Speaker 26 If it can help just one other person who's in a dangerous situation like she was in, that it gives them the strength to make a move because it can escalate and it can escalate really, really fast.

Speaker 8 What was lost when she was taken from us?

Speaker 9 Her light, you know?

Speaker 16 Her light.

Speaker 10 That's a tough one to talk about because

Speaker 11 there's so much.

Speaker 11 I wanted to jump out of that car and say, hey, papa.

Speaker 8 Laura still passes his time restoring parts for vintage cars. That father-daughter hobby is now being passed down to Christie's children.

Speaker 11 They're in here, they run that same electric screwdriver, and they can tear a carburetor apart.

Speaker 8 So, in that way, you're honoring her memory, aren't you?

Speaker 9 Well, that's the whole idea.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah, that's the whole idea.

Speaker 11 She would get such a kick out of seeing the kids doing the stuff that she was involved in.

Speaker 16 I look at my grandkids, and I find a moment of peace because I see her.

Speaker 15 Tu mereces tis fruit favorites for menos. Ya sell na Bic Mac, McNuggets, or a sausage, egg, and cheese, McCriddles, pie tuento hocomo un meal ya horra.
Oof, nava comodarto un gustaso por tam poco.

Speaker 15 Los extra value meals están del regreso.

Speaker 18 Gana por la mañana con el extra value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, yun cafe aliente pequeño por solos se dolaris. Bara ba ba ba.
Preses y participación pueden varía.

Speaker 18 Los prees de la promosión pueden serminos que los de las comidas.

Speaker 31 Sunday, count on the NFL on CBS delivering some holiday cheer. Featuring teams firmly in the playoff race.

Speaker 31 The Steelers look to wrap up the AFC North with a win over the Browns or a colossal matchup in Carolina between two first-place squads when the Seahawks pay a visit to the Panthers.

Speaker 31 It all begins at noon Eastern with the NFL today. You can always count on Sundays with the NFL on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus.