The Phantom

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Tonight, on the 3000th episode of Dateline.

This is really creepy for me.

She said, Mom, I'm being stalked.

It has definitely made me like paranoid everywhere I go.

My heart just sunk.

She's totally being terrorized.

There was two text messages from an unknown phone number.

The first was requesting a sexual relationship.

A follow-up text told her that she should kill herself.

So that went from inappropriate to threatening pretty quickly.

Within 24 hours, Christie was frantic.

She was fiercely protective of her family.

I'm panic, and I'm doing a good job.

I'm protecting my wife.

Repel police!

We have someone out there who's just committed a homicide.

Our number one suspect was this person who's been stalking her.

This guy's a phantom.

It's terrifying.

He fooled everyone.

The only thing we could do now is to make it right by finding the killer.

A terrifying string of messages ends in murder, and the tables are turned as investigators stalk a stalker.

I'm Lester Holt, and this is the season premiere of Dateline.

Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Phantom.

Every day in America, police officers are sent to homes like this one for something called a welfare check.

In these cases, odds are no one's home.

You come and you go.

It was December 14, 2023.

Getting dispatched to a welfare check is pretty common.

So common that John O'Hare of the Broomfield, Colorado Police, his body cam recording, literally whistled while while he worked.

He peeked into windows, ignored that yapping dog,

knocked on their front door.

Everything appeared completely silent.

Nobody in the yard or in the area.

This time, just to be sure, the officer wanted a look inside the garage.

Because if a car was there,

someone might be home after all.

He pulled his cruiser up to the doors and climbed up on the bumper.

Tried to see if I could see in the small windows that are at the top of the big garage doors there.

That's when he saw it.

151, send medical at 110.

I need a four-sentry.

A body on the floor and a pool of blood.

In that instant, a routine check became a crime scene.

Repel police!

And then a murder investigation, a hunt for a killer who knew how to hide and how to play everyone, police included.

You were on the wrong path the whole time.

Yeah.

Because somebody wanted you on the wrong path the whole time.

I felt like a puppet.

To understand what happened here, you need to go back in time three months.

to September 2023, to this same house and this same garage in Broomfield, Colorado.

It's a bedroom community about halfway between Denver and Boulder.

And it's not exactly Murderville, USA, but it does have its share of problems common to suburbia.

Broomfield has a lot of property crime where burglaries into people's open garages are unfortunately very common.

Broomfield detective Andrew Martinez says it did seem to be property crime reported by the owner of that house, Dan Krug.

As I came down, the door was open.

Dan reported an intruder into their open garage door.

As he's pulling in.

As he's pulling in, yes.

I saw someone, I think it was a guy, but it was so fast.

Yeah.

Blue jeans, gray shirt, run out,

jump over my gate, and take off that way.

He couldn't identify that person.

He could not.

And patrol officers responded, checked the area, and they couldn't find anybody that matched the description that Dan said.

Dan Krug lived here with his wife Christie and their three school-aged children.

Dan told the officer he'd gone out that afternoon to run an errand and thought he'd closed the garage door behind him.

I watched the garage door closing.

Not necessarily closed.

Okay.

He said his kids were inside the house when he left and didn't hear anything strange.

And he didn't didn't think anything had been stolen.

That is, until Christie came home.

We realized the spare key that we keep in the garage isn't there.

Okay.

Where was that?

Kept at a toolbox.

Got it.

Okay.

The officer took the report, and that was it.

He did say changing the locks might be a good next step.

When you can, I'm probably.

I'm going home detail when I'm done with it.

Okay, got it.

Christie's parents, Lars and Linda Grimsrood, said Christie was more annoyed than scared by what had just happened.

So

tell me about Dan coming home and seeing somebody running out of the garage.

How did you hear about that?

Well, my daughter, she told me, she said that Dan left the garage.

She was very angry.

She said Dan left the garage door open.

I don't think she thought there was danger.

She didn't see it as a real threat.

Nothing to worry about.

Until a month later, when Broomfield Police received another call from the Krugs.

Can you spell your first name?

Just make sure I know it's right.

No problem.

It's Chris Steele.

It's spelled K-R-I-S-T-I-L.

This time, a garage break-in was the least of their worries.

Today, I got an email that is very threatening.

Someone was watching this family.

The investigation that followed would confound everyone.

Police start following her and Dan, thinking, like, okay, we're going to see this guy.

And they don't.

This guy's a phantom.

Yeah.

It's terrifying.

It's now a homicide.

It's all hands on deck.

This says planned, attempted, and executed murder.

Yes.

You wanted an alibi, obviously.

But why did it have to be me?

It had been more than a month since the burglary at their home.

I saw someone.

I think it was a guy, but it was so fast.

Now, the Krugs were contacting Broomfield, Colorado police again.

This time, Dan's wife, Christie, was the one reporting a much more serious problem.

I have never dealt with this kind of level in an online version.

Christie told Detective Andrew Martinez she was being stalked.

When Christie came in, she just kind of filled the whole room with her presence.

You could tell that she was just very intelligent, kind,

and she was very well prepared.

He was not the first to have that reaction.

She had the best of all personalities.

This is Christie's sister, Jenna Erickson.

She was so smart, and her brain would just work in a way that is kind of unfathomable.

Jenna was eight years old and Christie 16 when Jenna's mom married Christie's dad.

She idolized her new big sister.

She would give me just the most honest, best advice and never judged me, never made me feel silly.

Christie's parents, Lars and Linda, say even as a child, she was intuitive, curious, and compassionate.

She loved to talk and loved to have a good, I wouldn't say argument, it was a discussion.

She always had this scientific engineering type of approach to things where things needed to be logical.

She learned how to use tools at a very young age.

She could take her bicycle apart and put it back together again.

During college, Christie met her intellectual soulmate online.

Dan Krug was a poli-sci major with dreams of a career in academia.

I remember when Dan came over and my mom and I were there and he was looking for my dad.

And that's when it kind of hit me like, oh, this is real.

Like this is going to be the guy.

And I was happy at the time because I knew she was going to be really happy.

No question that when he asked, she was going to say yes.

Yeah.

They married in 2007.

Christie became a biomedical engineer and a performer.

Christie was a phenomenal dancer.

Her friend and fellow dancer, Jennifer Juskolka.

She had these gorgeous high arches and hyperextended legs, something that I was very, very jealous of.

She moved like water.

Anything that I'd advise.

In some ways, Christie was a living, breathing contradiction.

Detective Martinez could tell she was in fear and oddly also in control.

as she told him about the stalking.

It's just, it's a lot, lot, and it has definitely made me like hairdoing everywhere I go, unfortunately.

So I can completely understand that.

Like almost everything else, stalking has gone digital in this age of smartphones and social media.

Christie's nightmare began with a text from a number she did not recognize.

Hi, Christie, it's Anthony.

Hope it's okay I looked you up.

I go to Boulder every few weeks and thought we could hook up.

You game?

The first text message was on october 2nd of 2023 when christie didn't respond the following day on october 3rd a follow-up text message came and basically

commented on her body and told her that she should kill herself so that went from inappropriate to scary and threatening pretty quickly absolutely within 24 hours christie was pretty sure she knew who was behind this She believed it was Jack Anthony Holland, an ex-boyfriend of hers.

Almost a month after those text messages, Christie received an email from an ahollandkicks at gmail.com.

It contained a photo of her husband Dan, apparently recent, apparently taken at his work, and apparently without Dan's knowledge.

That day, there's snow on the ground.

My husband had only gone into work on that Tuesday for

Halloween.

My husband has a camera in his car.

He did not see anybody

and then unfortunately lost all the video because he didn't save it.

So

I don't have any video evidence.

That photo came with a comment about his slow driving, implying that whoever was sending this email was actively following Dan.

It's certainly escalating.

Absolutely.

That's what prompted Christie to notify police.

Then she told Martinez what came next.

I got a really strange strange text message from somebody saying

Christie's phone began receiving sexual text messages and crude photos.

Are you still looking for men?

And

I was like, okay, I don't think this is Anthony.

She's receiving numerous text messages from all sorts of different unknown numbers.

These unknown phone numbers are all of men, many of which are sending photos of themselves in sexually explicit poses.

Christine had already done some sleuthing of her own.

She discovered this ad online.

It included her phone number.

She was convinced Anthony had posted it.

The ad was basically asking for multiple sexual partners on her birthday, which was coming up at the end of November.

She also wanted to make sure the detective knew about that break-in at their garage.

My husband caught somebody going through our garage, like he came home with rush shorts up, and he caught somebody running out of our garage.

All of it triggered her organizational instincts as an engineer.

I did a timeline for you.

Christiel called it her stalker log.

All I did was I was like, oh, we're going to create a stalker log.

We're going to monitor this.

I'm going to go see what information I can have.

No, I just always heard her document everything.

She doesn't come off as some like helpless victim.

She's like completely in control.

The stalker log was detailed and complete.

It included everything from dates, times, locations, her feelings about it, what needed to be done that potentially follow-up points that we could do.

Christie's log detailed her relationship with Anthony, starting with the year they met, 1999, when she graduated high school.

Okay, and in this timeline, we dated summer of 99.

Okay.

Very briefly.

Christie headed off to college.

Like there was a breakup somewhere here, like in the fall, so I did this.

Just before her sophomore year, she broke things off with Anthony.

About a year later, Christie met Dan.

And in the years that followed, Anthony would still reach out from time to time on social media.

Just like little teeny things.

It's like, oh, hey, how you doing?

Christie said it left her a little creeped out.

To keep sending snippets of like saying he thought our relationship was like the notebook and that we'd always end up together.

I'm like, whoa, this is getting really weird, right?

She initially responded just saying, I'm doing well, but

I'm not interested in re-engaging in a relationship.

For seven years, Anthony went silent.

No DMs, no posts, no contact.

No hostility, no threats.

There was no hostility and no threats during those times.

And then suddenly, here he is back and

really hitting the gas.

Immediately escalated, AS.

I don't want to bait him.

I don't want to reach out or bait him.

She had already hired a private investigator to find Anthony and serve him a restraining order.

The PI's report showed possible addresses for Anthony in both Utah and Idaho.

Now, Christie was asking what police could do.

When Christie leaves that day, I'm believing that this is a very real issue and there are credible threats and we need to get on top of this quickly.

Detective Martinez needed to know who was stalking Christie Krug.

The first step would be finding Anthony Holland and that would be easier said than done.

We find it hard to believe that they flat couldn't find Anthony Holland.

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Eligible patients can access custom formulated GLP-1 medications at an affordable fixed price.

Delivered to their door monthly.

Take our free eligibility quiz at joinmochi.com and use code AUDIOFORTY at checkout for $40 off your first month of membership.

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Eligible GLP-1 patients typically lose one to two pounds per week in their first six months with Mochi when combined with a healthy lifestyle.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit-Down podcast.

On this week's episode, I get together with Oscar winner Killian Murphy to discuss the impact of the billion-dollar Oppenheimer movie on his life and his extraordinary new Netflix film, Steve.

You can get our conversation for free wherever you download your podcasts.

What?

Do you think I should have shot?

When Christie Krug told her family she was being stalked and that her old boyfriend Anthony Holland was behind it.

Her sister wanted to help.

Jenna is a lawyer.

She had called me to ask if I could help her get a restraining order and kind of what that process would look like and what she needed to do to get her ducks in a row.

Christie's parents remembered back when she started dating Anthony.

A nice enough individual.

He had good manners, but I just don't think he was a match for her.

That was my mother's opinion of him.

Could you tell that he was seriously interested in her?

Oh, yeah.

And he was a good guy.

But the two of them had,

I think, significantly different

life expectations and goals.

They also remembered how things ended.

She said that it was a tough breakup and it wasn't a real easy thing for her to walk away, but

she did.

Yeah.

She moved on.

Anthony apparently did not.

Now, 23 years after that breakup, why would he try to insert himself back into her life in the most aggressive way?

Two days after her meeting with Detective Martinez, Christie received this text, saw you at dentist.

Alluding to the person being outside in their own car watching Christie

and the

The stalker talks about a sexual act

while he's in the parking lot.

Which is essentially a live communication with her while she's at the dentist.

Correct.

An officer headed over to the house and Christie talked with him in the garage.

That's the same garage that had been broken into nearly two months earlier.

The in-person stuff that's scaring the crap out of me and why I want this policy?

That saw-you-at dentist text made Christie think her stalker had planted something on her car.

I can only assume a tracker based on the fact that he could show up there, and I don't see vehicles in the road.

So he's like stationed out like on corners.

He's really on the street to know when I'm leaving.

We put Christie's car on a lift.

We checked that car top to bottom, front to back, and we couldn't find anything on her car.

As the officer was leaving, Christie told him how worried she was.

I'm live streaming my location all the time to my girl.

Okay.

So that he knows anytime I'm leaving the house also.

So like everyone knows where I'm going to be from now on.

Okay.

Anyway,

I'm doing what I can.

I'm a little bit of a sitting deck right now.

I arranged for some undercover officers to follow her around, kind of to sit outside of her home to see if there was any weird cars or anything like that.

We weren't able to identify anybody.

You didn't see anyone following her?

We did not.

Nobody approaching her car after she leaves it.

Nobody walking 25 steps behind her.

No, nothing.

Her parents assumed officers would confront Anthony right away.

I wanted to go talk to Detective Martinez to find out, why can't you solve, why can't you find out if this is Anthony or not?

Like Christiel, Martinez found addresses for Anthony in Utah and Idaho.

There were no recent ones in Colorado.

Before getting another jurisdiction involved and banging on any doors, He wanted digital proof that Anthony was the one sending those messages.

That

is fairly standard police procedure.

It would be, I think, foolish of any detective to go talk to somebody that they don't even know that is actually the person.

They can just close the door in our face, and that is the end of our case of getting any sort of credible statement or admission.

Because if you walk into his house and say,

I know you've been doing this, if you don't have any proof, that might be the end of it.

If I don't have any proof or I haven't developed a case with probable cause, then I just walk away.

And And he says, if you have any further questions, talk to my lawyer, and that's that.

That is that.

To get the evidence he needed, Martinez wrote search warrants for Verizon, TextNow, and Google.

Their records could help uncover the identity of Christie's stalker.

Getting those search warrants approved took several days.

Getting results, much longer.

I think there's an assumption on the part of the public that when you guys write a search warrant, you have the data back that you need pretty quickly.

And particularly with things like phone and internet records, that's not always true.

No, not at all.

When we serve a search warrant to any major company,

unfortunately, it takes time.

And a lot of times it takes weeks, if not months, for some companies.

Christiel first sat down with Detective Martinez on November 7th.

He applied for search warrants on the 12th.

The warrants went to the companies on the 17th of November.

Because the first warrant to Google had a typo, Martinez sent a new one on December 6th.

And then everyone waited.

Everyone except the stalker.

His next message to Christile left little doubt as to what he was planning.

and who he was aiming for.

It wasn't Christile.

My panic level has gone considerably higher.

Basically, it implies that they belong together and that he will make Dan disappear.

We have never dealt with like this kind of level.

The stalker's first text to Christiel was a request to hook up, and the messages that followed were insulting, offensive, creepy.

I don't think he's done.

I think he's going to keep.

I think he's going to keep going.

How right she was.

Six weeks after the first messages, Christie's phone chirped with a new text.

It started off much like the others.

I see you flirting with waiters, almost begging for sex.

Then it turned lethal.

I'll get rid of him, and then we can be together.

So easy.

There was no doubt who the him referred to.

Christie's husband, Dan.

Okay.

It was a direct threat towards Dan.

Basically implies that they belong together and that he will make Dan disappear and makes a comment describing Dan's security guard at the front office of his place of employment, which was a pretty accurate representation of the security guard.

So he's he's there.

He's watching.

Yes.

Now, Christie Stalker was following Dan to and from his job as a financial analyst for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

I just wanted to sit down with you and kind of

one, see how you're doing.

I don't know where to start with that open-ended question.

Christie and I have been looking at her

log.

Is he as spooked as his wife is?

He is as spooked as his wife is.

Largely being paranoid for the last few days.

As I got all of the details,

my panic level has gone considerably higher.

I have a

retractable asp steel baton, pepper, gel, spray,

always in this pocket.

As he sat there on the couch, Dan pretty much broke down.

I went to the

grocery store briefly on Tuesday,

and someone behind me dropped a can, and I panicked.

So what am I doing?

I'm panicking.

And I'm doing a s job of protecting my wife.

Interacting with Dan that day, I felt that Christie was better equipped to defend herself than Dan was to defend Christie.

And that was a problem because Christie was having a very difficult time.

She'd wired up her car in hopes of catching her stalker, but all it recorded was how upset she was.

The result was less sleep and more stress, and she was starting to visibly fray.

Everyone noticed.

So you have to understand that Christie was frantic.

And so our conversation was very jumbled.

It would veer to the right, veer to the left.

She'd go down one tangent and then another.

Understandable.

She just looked exhausted, so exhausted.

Probably because she was not sleeping.

I think she was just so on point all the time,

head on a swivel, constantly watching for what was happening.

Not just worried about herself, also worried about Dan, who the stalker had specifically mentioned.

Yes.

And her kids, too.

She was fiercely protective of her family.

We had conversation almost daily throughout the month of November about where she was, how she was doing, and she basically refused to leave her house because that's where she felt most safe.

She started carrying a Sig Sauer 9mm.

She had a gun on her at all times, even when she was home with her family.

Yes, it was always in her purse.

She had a concealed carry purse specifically designed for that gun.

She felt she had to get a gun.

My heart just sunk.

And I do remember going out to the gun range with her, and

she just sat in the parking lot and cried.

And she was just so upset.

And all I could do was hug her.

Thanksgiving dinner that year was tense.

The family gathered inside as police stood watch outside.

She specifically would seat herself in a way so she could see the front door.

She didn't have her back to the door.

This is crazy.

Yeah.

There's no way.

to look at this and see this as anything but a complete victory for that stalker.

I mean, this this is the desired effect of stalking.

It

completely changes your life, and that's all you're thinking about.

Yeah.

Christie's cousin, Becky Ivanoff, a former prosecutor in Oregon, offered to help.

Because of my background, she knew that I knew how to navigate the court system.

I'd done exclusively domestic violence, which included some stalking prosecution.

Our family is very private.

I'm a very private person, too.

And so I understood that this was sensitive for Christie.

I passed the message that this was not something to be private about, that this was the time to tell literally everyone and to share his photo, to tell everybody that needed to know about this.

Every message, every threat chipped away at Christie's normal life.

She shared what was happening with parents and teachers from her kids' schools, and she paid a price for that too.

So Christie's oldest daughter was in two productions of The Nutcracker.

Because of what was going on and they didn't know where the stalker was, the artistic director and the company asked her to stay away from volunteering and also her daughter's performances.

I mean, that ate her up.

The paranoia and isolation were crushing.

It was just like she didn't know how this was going to end.

At one point, she actually said, referring to the stalker, it's going to be me or him.

Someone's going to get killed.

Once again, she turned out to be right.

Repel, police!

That autumn in Broomfield, Colorado was brutal for Christie, Dan, and their kids.

The stalking started in October and intensified in November.

Christie began carrying a gun.

There were new locks on the doors.

And Dan had installed security cameras all around the house.

Through it all, the family clung to their daily routines.

And then it was Thursday, December 14th.

As daylight broke, those new cameras recorded a bustling family morning.

That's Dan driving their eldest to the bus stop and returning minutes later.

Just before 7 a.m.

Christele leaves next, taking their younger two kids to school.

She returns just before 8.

Then at 8.24, Dan pulls out, heading off to work about a half hour away.

Dan was on the road when at 8.56,

he received a text from Christile, asking him to pick up their daughter after school, because Christie had a meeting with Detective Martinez.

Dan responded 20 minutes later, sure thing, FYI, I forgot my chicken on the counter.

Please put it in the fridge.

When Christie did not message back, Dan called her.

No answer.

For the next three hours, he kept calling.

Finally, at 12.01 p.m., he dialed Broomfield Police and asked for that welfare check.

I don't think this is an emergency, but...

but this feels really weird.

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

Okay.

Dan also called Christie's mom.

He calls me and he says, would you please go check on her and see if she's in the house just not answering the phone?

You live closer?

We all live about 15 minutes.

Linda headed over to her daughter's.

Officer John O'Hare was already there.

151, send medical, and 110.

I need a four-centric.

I got a female down in the garage.

At that point, I rushed around to the front door, kicked the door one time.

Rope help, please!

Officer O'Hare ran through the house and into the garage.

Oh, sh.

So I immediately see her at the base of the steps that lead from the house down into the garage.

It's about three steps there, I believe.

By the time the officer opened the automatic garage doors for EMTs,

garage is open now.

Christiel's mom was just getting there.

And there she is laying on the floor with her legs towards me as I was trying to walk in and the police officer on her doing CPR.

And he was putting up his hand saying, ma'am, you can't come in here.

You can't come in here.

And I'm going, but that's my daughter.

I need to come see her.

And I'm just hoping and praying that she was still alive.

Husband said there was a stalker.

It looked as if Christie had been attacked getting into or out of her car.

Her purse lay just inches away.

Inside, the handgun she never had a chance to use.

Detective Justin Marshall of the Broomfield Police responded to the scene.

They were pretty aware that there was some head trauma.

The husband called in to check on her.

Detective Marshall says as EMTs worked to revive Christie, they could tell she'd been struck in the head.

Then they noticed this.

A penetrating stab wound to the upper part of her

chest,

And there were no signs of life in that type of injury.

And that's what killed her, that stab wound.

Either the blunt force or the stab wound would have been fatal.

They rolled out the stretcher and I thought, oh, she's going to be okay.

They're going to do everything for her.

But then they rolled the stretcher back out without her.

And so

I knew.

I ran into Linda inside the police tape and they stopped me from going any further.

And that's when Linda told me he killed her.

She's dead.

Jenna got a call and raced to her sister's house.

When you're driving there, what are you thinking?

God, I hope she's at the hospital

and not there.

As soon as she pulled up and saw the tape, a part of her knew.

And then my stepbrother started walking down towards us.

And I remember him just hugging me.

And I remember him just saying, she's gone.

Dan Krug was one of the last to arrive.

He came from up the street here,

yelling, that's my house, that's my house.

Dan was overwhelmed.

It was the exact outcome Christie had tried so desperately to head off.

It was also, sadly, one she had predicted.

It's beyond description what goes through your mind.

You're just completely beside yourself.

A stalking case had led straight to a murder investigation, and detectives knew where to go next.

It was time to go get Anthony.

They go in thinking this could be a gunfight.

This is a guy who just maybe killed someone.

Cracks.

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If you qualify for debt relief, you may be able to pay back significantly less than what you owe and save thousands of dollars.

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National Debt Relief has already helped bring debt relief to over 550,000 U.S.

consumers, earning thousands of five-star reviews and an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.

You're stronger than your credit card debt.

Take the first step and visit nationaldebtrelief.com to see what debt relief you may qualify for.

That's nationaldebtrelief.com.

Hi, we're Emoji Health, your long-term weight loss solution.

We'll connect you with a board-certified provider to discuss your unique goals.

Eligible patients can access custom formulated GLP-1 medications at an affordable fixed price.

Delivered to their door monthly.

Take our free eligibility quiz at joinmochi.com and use code AUDIOFORTY at checkout for $40 off your first month of membership.

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In Texas, the countdown has begun.

Robert Robertson is scheduled to die.

When the clock hits zero, it's over.

But a growing chorus insists Robert is innocent.

We didn't hear Robert.

We chose to disbelieve him.

I'm on the ground in Texas searching for the truth.

The Last Appeal, a new podcast from Dateline and Lester Holt.

To listen now, find and follow The Last Appeal on Pandora.

Christie Krug was gone, her family huddled behind crime scene tape, a terrible new reality sinking in.

Shocked, miserable, disbelief, not really knowing what to do, where to go, what to say.

You don't want to believe it, and you're just absolutely, completely distraught.

And it changes you forever.

This is not something that time heals.

At 43, the organized, clear-headed Christie had done so much to protect herself and her family from this person.

Cameras at home, police involved, and a handgun literally at her side.

None of it was enough to escape the stalker.

The fact that he actually got to her and actually killed her was just,

you can't wrap your mind around it.

Christie's cousin Becky Ivanov received a text from her mother.

She said, Christie's been killed.

And my first question was, was it the stalker?

To hear that she had been murdered was pretty devastating.

Inea Hempelman is Broomfield's chief of police.

So from an investigative standpoint, what are you able to do now that it's a homicide that you couldn't do when it was a stalking case?

We can elevate some of those warrants.

Before, we didn't have the information that was necessary to elevate the warrants.

And now we have a deceased person.

And possibly a threat to other people who who are still alive.

Well, that was my biggest concern.

The first thing I think is someone is out there who's just committed this crime, and is my community safe.

Once again, detectives reached out to Google, TextNow, and Verizon, asking a second time for information about the source of the stalking messages.

The difference?

Now there was a killer on the loose.

And investigators set out to find their most obvious suspect, Anthony Holland.

Prosecutor Kate Armstrong.

Different police were assigning different individuals to kind of go look into various leads, including the location of the person that we believe to have been stalking her.

And pretty hard to believe her death's not connected to that.

Yes, I mean, at that time, our number one suspect was this person who's been stalking her.

Investigators had addresses for Anthony in Idaho and Utah, all more than 500 miles from Broomfield.

Broomfield's chief deputy DA Stephanie Fritz thought it unlikely Christie's killer could already be at any of those addresses.

So that's an eight-hour drive.

Correct.

He's not going to make that drive in that amount of time.

No.

Investigators also had a possible license plate number for Anthony.

They put out a nationwide alert and got a hit.

Only it wasn't on any roads leading out of Colorado.

It was in north central Utah.

They talked with authorities there.

We're a few blocks away from where Mr.

Holland resides.

Ray Ormond is a sergeant with the Utah County Sheriff's Office.

He was assigned to check out one of Anthony Holland's possible addresses, a friend's house in the town of Eagle Mountain, about 40 miles from Salt Lake City.

We made the joint decision to go make contact at the residence.

Ormond and his deputies made their approach carefully.

They had a warrant for Anthony's arrest on stalking charges.

I didn't know what we were walking into.

I didn't want to get my people ambushed by any type of violent encounter.

Through the windows, they saw someone inside the house.

They knocked on the door.

Mr.

Holland answers the door.

We introduce ourselves.

We ask him who he is.

He introduces himself as Mr.

Holland.

Anthony was already home.

How was that possible?

Once we confirmed it was him, I went back to my vehicle and I had Mr.

Holland stay with my two deputies that were with me on the porch and again contacted the investigators in Colorado, informed them that we were out with Mr.

Holland.

By the time Ormond got back to the porch, Anthony had invited his man inside.

You can stay seated, stay seated.

Yeah.

And out of an abundance of caution, you know, I advised him of his rights.

Then the sergeant got to the point.

Have you ever heard of the name Crystal Krug?

She may have been Grimsrod when you knew her.

Yeah.

And do you know a Daniel Krug?

No.

No?

How do you know Crystal?

She was an ex-girlfriend.

She's an ex-girlfriend?

How long to ex?

Like, how long ago?

Um, 1999.

Oh, so like a long while ago.

She was my very first girlfriend ever.

Oh, okay.

He asked Anthony where he'd been that day.

And we went through the course of his morning.

He'd been out running errands.

He'd been shopping for clothes that morning in American Fork, which is a neighboring city.

And Anthony did have a receipt from that shopping trip.

We confirmed that he had been at the store that morning, that he had been purchasing those items in the department store in American Fork, and that he had been in essentially our area here in Utah County for that entire day.

In Utah and not in Colorado.

It was physically impossible for him to have been there.

Is it conceivable that he's not there, but he's still involved, that he has somebody else do this for him?

Sure.

Investigators had plenty more questions for Anthony Holland.

You did not want to let her go.

This is who Broomfield police had been looking for.

The man they believed stalked, then killed Christie Krug.

Anthony Holland.

He agreed to sit down and tell me his side of the story.

And we started with those deputies banging on his door and holding that warrant for his arrest.

There was a lot of police officers.

And there was cars everywhere.

And I'm like, geez, I must be in trouble.

I had no idea what was going on.

You say to them, what are you guys doing here?

Yeah, and they wouldn't tell me.

They asked me if I knew Christie Krug, and I said, yes, I know her.

And that was it.

They didn't say, when did you last speak with her?

When did you last get contact with her?

No, they took me to my room and they took a bunch of evidence.

Anthony told me the same story he gave Sergeant Ormond and those deputies.

He was shopping in Utah that morning and nowhere near the crime scene.

I asked Anthony about his relationship with Christie,

starting with when they began dating just after she graduated from high school.

Well, we both worked at JCPenney.

She worked in the department in the front.

I was package pickup.

He was 17.

She was 18.

What was so great about her?

She was very smart, which I really looked up to.

First love?

Yeah, my first love, yeah.

He does admit he and Christie were headed in different directions.

The breakup was hard on both of us.

We both held each other and just cried when we broke up.

I haven't cried that hard

until my mom died.

She was the one that got away.

Yep.

I always say that to people.

You blame yourself for that.

Yep,

I do.

Christie finished college and became an engineer, wife, and mom.

Anthony's life didn't go as well.

I went down the wrong path after that.

drugs didn't go to school started partying hanging out i still worked all the time so I had money to support my habit.

What got you back on the right path?

I just was sick of how I was living, but I was like, I don't want to live this way anymore.

He went back to school for a while and kept working.

And he says Christie was never far from his thoughts.

Thought about her all the time, especially when I got drunk.

I would really think about her.

You did not want to let her go?

No.

No, I struggled with that.

Feels like you were pining for Christie for a very long time.

Well, I dated lots of other women throughout the time.

None of them were like her, and I think I was searching for something like that.

You reached out to her a few times over the years.

Just in 2004 and 2016, and we became friends on Facebook.

I got a little drunk, and I left her a message saying that

I apologized to her for all the things that I did when we were together, and then she stopped talking to me.

Christie blocked him on Facebook.

It was 2016.

That was the last time you had any contact with Christie.

Social email, phone calls, anything.

Yep.

I couldn't, I was blocked, couldn't remember emails.

It was too long ago, so I mean, and I didn't have it saved.

And so I didn't have her email.

I didn't, I couldn't get through to Facebook.

Like, I was done.

It was over.

Anthony insisted he was not Christie's stalker.

You weren't in touch with her at all in 2023.

No.

You didn't send her texts?

Nope.

You didn't send her emails?

Nope.

You didn't take out an ad in her name?

No.

I never did any of that.

I was just doing my own thing in Utah.

Doing his own thing, he says, and leaving the Krug family completely alone.

Did Christie ever tell you anything about Dan, her husband?

No.

You didn't threaten him.

You weren't following him.

No.

Or her?

No.

Ever been to their house?

No.

Or the neighborhood?

No.

I had no idea where she lives.

Anthony says by 2023, he had finally moved on.

And he says he would have told those deputies that.

Except, they never asked.

They didn't even tell him Christie was dead.

They just told him detectives would be in touch.

And they left.

I heard back from Colorado that they were not going to extradite him on the warrant and that they just wanted us to get good contact information from him.

At that point, Colorado police were left without any legal basis to arrest Anthony Holland.

And says prosecutor Stephanie Fritz, they had zero proof he was either Christie's stalker or her killer, since he was provably 500 miles away at the time of the murder.

He's not the kind of person who has access to private aircraft.

No, Anthony Holland did not have access to personal aircraft.

And I'm guessing law law enforcement checked every flight manifest.

They did check to see if there was any indication, and there was none that he flew.

Anthony Holland couldn't have been in the garage, but he could still be the stalker.

He could be, yes.

And that wouldn't be 100% out of character in the sense that he tried pretty hard to reestablish a relationship with Chris Steele years earlier, and that definitely was him.

Yes, he definitely did.

Since they broke up 20 years ago, he was reaching out to her.

Possible he had somebody working with him?

At that point, anything is possible.

Possible, but a long shot.

Investigators knew there was a problem with the idea that Anthony Holland might have hired a hitman after stalking Christiel.

That's not common in these kinds of cases.

Prosecutor Kate Armstrong points out stalking is an intensely personal crime.

Because the idea of stalking is not, I've hired someone to watch you.

It's I'm watching you.

I'm here all the time.

I have control.

Exactly.

Yes.

So unlikely that you're going to find somebody else to do your dirty work.

Yes.

Their investigation into Christiel's murder was about to start all over.

And suddenly the spotlight shifts.

Yes.

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I'm Julio Vaquero, anchor of Noticias Telemundo.

You can watch Daidline, the heat true crime series on Telemundo.

And now, you can listen to Daidline as a podcast.

Stories of love and betrayal, of secrets revealed, of the men and women who stand between evil and justice.

Every twist and turn can now be heard in Spanish, with new mysteries arriving every week.

Just search Titline en Español, wherever you get your podcasts, and start listening.

A murder investigation that once seemed so close to being solved was now back at square one.

The day of her murder, Christie's grief-stricken family members spent their afternoon in interview rooms at the police station.

They were pretty effective about splitting us up so that we didn't talk a whole lot amongst ourselves anymore than what we already had at the scene.

You hadn't heard from her messaged her today at all.

I tried to call her.

I have that log here.

Christile's sister, Jenna, did not hold back her frustrations with police.

I just think that the long work could have been done, and this wouldn't have happened.

She did everything right.

She reported everything.

She kept copies of everything.

She called you guys.

Dan came in to talk with investigators and took a seat on the same couch he had occupied just a month before.

I arrived at the police department and immediately went to go speak with Dan.

It's not your fault.

I'm super detected.

So how's Dan doing at that point?

Dan is not doing well.

He's very emotional, distraught.

He's stuttering.

He's crying.

He's just borderline hyperventilating in some points.

He was simultaneously mourning his late wife while trying to help police solve her murder as he went through what he could recall from that morning.

Dan, when did you leave the house today?

Yes.

Approximate.

They.

They.

I was late leaving.

She told me that I had to go because she had a meeting.

She was rushing me.

We actually had kind of a live feed camera of him in his room up in the room that we were working in.

Prosecutors Kate Armstrong and Stephanie Fritz were at the Broomfield Police Department alongside detectives as information came in from other investigators.

We had a pretty good handle on kind of all of the different leads and investigatory steps that were being taken at that point in time.

One of those steps was to go back to the companies they'd served with search warrants.

Detective Martinez had been waiting nearly a month for the digital information that would tell him for sure where those stalking messages originated.

Search warrants to Google, Verizon, and TextNow had gone unanswered.

Only now, when detectives reached out again, citing urgent circumstances, did the companies respond almost immediately, turning over the requested information within an hour.

And suddenly, the spotlight shifts.

Yes.

The reason?

The data finally provided by those companies showed the stalker was not operating from Utah, where Anthony Holland lived, and not from some random corner of Colorado.

The data showed Christie Krug's stalker had been using the Wi-Fi

at Dan Krug's office.

The email that was used, the phone number that was used,

all of those things are coming back to one place, and that's Dan's work.

It was just kind of like an earth-shattering moment of like,

The realization that I was on the wrong path the entire time trying to track down Anthony.

You were on on the wrong path the whole time.

Yeah.

Because somebody wanted you on the wrong path the whole time.

I felt like a puppet.

Had Dan Krug been lying from the beginning?

I saw someone.

I think it was a guy.

Had he sat back and watched as his wife compiled a stalker log for police?

I just always had her document everything.

Was he the true architect of her suffering?

I'm doing what I can with a little bit of a sitting back right now.

And then did he put on a big show?

Sitting on that blue couch pretending to be in fear for Christie's life and also for his own.

So what am I doing?

I'm panicking.

Detective Martinez was convinced the answer to all of that was yes.

And knowing that Dan had fooled me, had fooled her, it was a really tough moment to be able to process that in such a short amount of time and then immediately get back to work.

Back to work and back to Dan, who was literally still sitting at the police station at the exact moment all that new digital data came in, just hours after the murder.

I would say the tone of his interview shifted.

What if I told you that

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

That I have nothing.

And I'm

terrified to bring my children home.

Now, Martinez hit Dan with that new digital information.

The Gmail account that you guys initially received with the photo of you in it

and the phone number, those originated through their IP addresses at your office.

Doesn't make any sense.

What did make sense, said Dan, was that perhaps perhaps the stalker accessed the building's Wi-Fi.

There's public Wi-Fi access throughout the entire facility.

And we literally post the passwords in every single meeting room.

Detective Martinez persisted.

Things are certainly pointing in one direction right now.

I had just laid out the facts, like, we know where Anthony is.

We know the IP addresses.

Everything's pointing to you.

Dan watched the skies of suspicion turn suddenly darker.

You could see his demeanor change, his body language changed.

He immediately withdraws and tucks his knees back, crosses his arms, rolls his eyes very sardonically, and then says,

Oh, yes, you heard that right.

Even when confronted with the evidence, Dan didn't get mad.

He didn't yell or even raise his voice.

He just seemed annoyed.

You have your theory.

It is wrong.

That's when Dan decided it was time to stop talking.

Is this the point where

I'll make whatever that checklist is?

I say, I'll have an attorney.

Police collected his clothes for processing.

Taken

socks, shoes, pants, shirt.

He was not arrested.

Detectives gave Dan a change of clothes and let him leave.

Prosecutor Stephanie Fritz.

You're starting to get evidence that Dan is involved in the stalking, but you have essentially no evidence at that point that Dan's involved in the murder.

No, we don't have evidence that Dan is the murderer.

We have suspicions.

It turns out investigators were not alone in their suspicions.

He was very upset, but there were no tears.

The Christie Krug murder case had turned inside out when investigators learned some of the messages from her stalker came from her husband's office.

Police confronted Dan Krug.

They did not arrest him.

We don't have any evidence that Dan is the murderer the night he walks out of the police station.

As Dan left, he had these parting words for Detective Martinez.

I don't care if you capture him.

I don't care if you kill him.

Find him.

Dan joined Chris Steele's stunned family.

And we were all spending time together, just holding each other, crying, whatever people needed.

Investigators were not yet sharing the head-snapping news about the stalking messages.

So none of those present realized Dan was suddenly at the top of the suspect list.

When he got to the house, he was very meek and shriveled.

Did you talk to him that night?

I did.

I hugged him.

I told him how sorry I was, and he asked me to help him find an attorney.

That it's always the husband, and he needs help finding an attorney.

Did he also say to you, I'm so sorry you lost your sister?

No.

No.

I can't imagine what you're going through.

No.

She loved you so much?

No.

It was all about him.

It was.

And that was Dan?

Or that seemed weird?

It seemed very weird.

To the family, the idea that Dan might need an attorney was not weird.

Husbands are always looked at, especially when a marriage is on the rocks.

And Christie's family knew she and Dan were not getting along.

Something her mom, Linda, had mentioned to police.

Last year,

her husband and her were not good terms.

I don't know the whole story, and I don't want to paint it as horrible.

Because I don't know.

Linda knew only what Christie had shared and what she saw with her own eyes over the years.

I think the best way to describe it is that I always had an uneasy feeling with Dan.

But I loved my daughter.

She loved him.

And I would see them together and they seemed very happy.

And that made you happy.

Yeah.

That happiness appeared to last for years.

It was recently.

that her family saw the relationship deteriorate.

They weren't as connected and with each other as much as before.

They were constantly arguing that last year.

Christie's dad, Lars, says Dan's arrogance did not help.

He always made sure that you knew that he was the smartest guy in the room.

He always needed to be in charge, in control, or at least feel like he was in control.

If it didn't have an adverse impact, you know, she would, in the interest of her relationship and everything, she would forfeit that control to him.

Christie told her parents she and Dan were likely headed for divorce, but said she planned to stay married until their youngest, who was not yet 10, was grown.

And at some point, Christie says, that plan I had to stick around until the kids are out of the house.

Not going to work.

I'm not going to be able to do that.

What'd she tell you?

She's had enough.

She says I'm done with them.

So I think, on some level, you know,

she needed to go.

Hanging over that simmering marital tension were the escalating messages coming from Christie's stalker.

And even though Dan at least acted the part of a concerned husband for Detective Martinez,

Christie's family had a completely different impression.

I did ask him, I said, are you doing okay?

And how are you?

And he goes, oh, I'm just fine.

And he rolls his eyes and says, she's just making a big deal out of this.

He just didn't take it seriously.

No.

I know she told me specifically that he felt like she was blowing it out of proportion, that it wasn't as serious.

Something else had always bothered Sister Jenna.

It was that photo the stalker took of Dan.

I mean, if that person was that close to take that picture, like they're there.

It's not, you can't zoom that far and have that good of quality.

So it just made me think like there's got to be something else going on closer to home potentially.

A marriage headed south.

A controlling husband who seemed indifferent to his wife's fear.

Jenna says she was thinking about all of that, even as she wept behind the crime scene tape.

I've seen the video of Dan arriving.

Yeah.

He's very emotional and shouting and seems to be overwrought.

Except there were no tears.

At least when I was there.

He was very upset.

He was

attempting to make himself sick, but there were no tears.

You think that was all an act?

I think it was fake.

Right there at the crime scene, Jenna couldn't help but say the quiet part out loud.

I remember hugging Linda, and I don't know why it came out, but I remember just saying, like, did he kill her?

Like, did Dan kill her?

And I remember Linda telling me, like, I don't know

investigators thought they did know now they had to prove it and maybe all those cameras at the house would help

just not in the way you might think

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The guy thought he had a good thing going, a good job, and two lovers.

That is, until this triangle got complicated and somebody had to go.

I'm Josh Mankowitz, and this is Deadly Engagement, an all-new podcast from Dateline.

It's a story that's sure to keep you guessing as lovers turn on each other in a desperate bid to avoid prison.

Listen to all episodes now, wherever you get your podcasts.

If the entire stalking campaign had been an elaborate deceit created by Dan Krug and ending in murder, the next question was why?

Christie's family had long felt Dan tried to control her.

Now, after learning about a strained marriage heading for divorce, that idea of control was becoming central to the theory investigators were developing.

They suspected Dan was trying to generate fear to make Christie change her mind about leaving him.

On the stocking was to control Christie to bring her closer to him.

Make her afraid and want to be with Dan more.

Correct.

If that was Dan's motive, it had been a failure.

Christie was determined to end their marriage sooner than she'd originally planned.

She went from wanting to be separated to wanting to be divorced in the timeframe of that case.

And once it turns to divorce, now that it's to control her, he's lost power.

And so it's the ultimate form of control of the murder.

Prosecutors believe Dan must have felt time was running out and that he was about to be exposed.

The police are getting closer.

He knows search warrants are out.

And when those search warrants come back, he's going to be found out.

He's got to know that.

He's got to know that.

This is a motive I have not seen before, which is, I'm going to make you afraid.

I'm going to make you want to be with me again.

And then if that plot gets found out, then I'm going to have to kill you.

This is the most unique case that I've ever been involved with.

Investigators traced the burner phone first used to text Christie and learned it had been purchased at a store in Broomfield using a gift card.

That card was registered to Dan Krug.

To prosecutor Kate Armstrong, it was more evidence that the stalking had been an elaborate hoax, with Anthony Holland as the perfect fall guy.

Anthony Holland's sort of undying love for Christie, which he'd expressed again and again over the years, that was kind of like a gift to Dan in planning this.

And it was very believable, especially to Chris Steele, that it would be Anthony and that Anthony would be popping back up.

At the house, investigators went over all the video from the morning of the murder, the cars and people coming and going.

They noticed something curious.

Four cameras were recording that morning.

Then, right around the time of the murder, Detective Marshall says, something changed.

The doorbell camera was covered with a piece of like blue painter's tape.

The house had at least three other cameras, which almost covered 360 degrees around the house.

Only one of those was operational during the time of

when we arrived.

Because the others were broken?

They were turned off, intentionally turned off.

The only video they had was from the camera above the garage.

It showed Dan leaving just before 8.30 a.m.

It's his alibi.

It shows when he leaves the house.

And that was important because of that text message Dan received from Christie 30 minutes later, asking him about after-school pickup.

It looks as if Christie has sent texts after Dan is provably out of the house.

I don't know how you shatter.

Right.

And there was Dan, waving to the guard as he arrived at the office.

Dan's alibi and the timing of that text from Christie certainly complicated the investigation.

So did a lack of physical evidence connecting Dan to the actual murder.

Prosecutors needed more, and they got it.

A breakthrough piece of evidence was handed to them by none other than Dan himself.

It happened as he sat on that couch talking with detectives.

Dan allowed you to search his phone, gave you consent.

Correct.

And gave you his password.

Yes.

I think an attorney might have told him not to do that.

Yes.

Dan might be rethinking that decision because on that phone, they found this.

The day before the homicide, Dan had searched a number of different things related to head trauma, how hard you have to hit someone for them to be unconscious, how long someone needs to be unconscious to become brain dead, all a variety of those kinds of searches.

Remember, before she was stabbed, Christie was struck in the back of the head.

Learning about Dan's searches is what took prosecutors from stalking to murder.

A team was assembled,

including Officer O'Hare, who had discovered Christie's body.

I got word that he had gotten into his vehicle and left the house and was headed in the direction where I was.

He pulled his cruiser behind Dan.

Dan then pulled into a grocery store parking lot, so I initiated my lights.

Hands on your face!

Dan Krug was arrested on his way to his daughter's dance performance.

I don't remember how I found it out.

I probably heard it from my dad, but I remember feeling shocked, but also not shocked, if that makes sense.

As she processed the news that her son-in-law was her daughter's accused killer, Linda went over the events of that awful morning, how Dan asked her to go check on Christie.

He wants you to find your daughter's body.

Yeah.

Yeah, pure, pure evil.

Absolutely.

What a cruel thing to do.

I mean, you wanted an alibi, obviously, but why did it have to be me?

Cruel could also describe how the stalking campaign terrorized Christie in the last months of her life.

It's heartbreaking to think about everything that she went through because

I don't think anybody knows the full extent of it, but knowing what we know now, it's just unimaginable.

Dan Krug pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and stalking.

Prosecutors knew the physical evidence against Dan was thin, and the crazy motive they offered might be hard for a jury to wrap its head around.

Perhaps this woman's story would be the final piece of the puzzle.

Suddenly, Dan Krug's past was stalking him.

In the spring of 2025, Dan Krug entered a courtroom to face trial on charges he had stalked and murdered his wife Christie.

By that time, Dan's hair had turned gray and his former in-laws had turned against him.

Christie's family attended every day of court.

Did he know you were there?

The very, very first hearing, Dan walked in the room and made eye contact with all of us and smiled.

Because like what, he thinks you're there to stick up for him.

Yeah, I think he thought we were there for him.

And apparently the look on my face, after he saw me, he never looked at me me again, ever.

Prosecutors laid out the digital evidence pointing to Dan as Christie's stalker, the burner phone he bought, the messages from his office Wi-Fi, and Broomfield police did a digital analysis of that photo of Dan outside his office, the one that bothered Jenna.

It showed the photo had been taken in selfie mode, likely on a timer.

Prosecutors called Anthony Holland as a witness, the man they said Dan intended to frame.

Dan is right there, the guy who tried to frame you for stalking and was probably fine with you going down for murder.

Oh, yeah, he was fine with it.

As I was leaving, I stared him down and he didn't look at me.

He just looked straight like this.

Didn't want to face you.

He couldn't even look me in the face.

No.

He's trying to frame you for murder, and he couldn't even look at me.

You're unquestionably a victim here, along with Christie and her kids and her family.

Yeah, I feel for those kids, man.

How could someone do that?

It's horrible.

It's just pure evil.

Prosecutors showed the jury the searches on Dan's phone about head injuries made the day before Christie's murder.

And on the day of the murder, they argued, Dan tried to cover his tracks by leaving only the camera above the garage working as he drove away.

They also argued he was the one who covered the doorbell camera.

Because in a kitchen drawer, investigators found blue painter's tape.

The role in the drawer was a forensic fit to that tape on the doorbell.

Like a jigsaw puzzle.

Yes.

The tears lined up astonishingly perfectly.

Much harder for the prosecution to explain was that text message Dan received from Christie.

after he had already left the house.

If we had believed that Christie was alive at 8.56 when those texts go out to Dan, that would mean that

she was alive at least half an hour after he left the house.

So, how to prove Christie was already dead by then?

Well, a careful analysis of her phone showed it wasn't active at the time the text was sent.

Essentially, for a layperson, the gist of how we were able to determine that was that Christie's phone, the screen was not illuminated.

Prosecutors think Dan fabricated his alibi by using Christie's phone to schedule a text to be sent after he was already out of the house.

Stephanie Fritz told the jury the real story was that after Dan returned home from dropping the kids and before he left for work, he ambushed Christie in the garage.

First, he hit her in the back of the head.

She didn't even see him coming.

He did not even give her a fighting chance.

She said Dan then turned his dying wife onto her back.

He He didn't need to stab her.

She would have died anyway.

But he goes in for that one final fatal blow and it was deep.

Prosecutors knew the story they were telling a jury about Dan Krug and his elaborate stalking plot was an unusual one.

And they had one more witness to wrap up their case.

After hearing about Dan's arrest, a woman contacted police with an astonishing tale.

And what she expressed to Detective Marshall was that she had dated Daniel Krug about 20 years prior.

Even after all this time, she said she was still terrified of Dan.

So much so that she asked us not to reveal her identity.

It made me feel watched.

So I was just constantly on guard.

The woman dated Dan for a little more than a year in high school and college until she broke it off in the fall of 2000.

She says soon after, she began receiving weird messages and phone calls from someone she did not know.

He had created a fake person.

He had created a number of fake people.

Fake people who were trying to push her back into Dan's arms.

They talked about Dan a lot, told her to cherish her friendship with Dan.

Other characters that he had created through email also were kind of trying to sabotage her new relationships, and then they got very sexual and explicit.

And I've carried that with me to this day.

Just

small things, you know, I worry all the time.

Back then, she reported it to campus police.

After a three-month investigation, the messages were traced to an IP address at Dan's College on the East Coast.

The woman got a temporary restraining order against Dan, but he was never charged with any crime.

It was eerie how similar it was to what had now happened to Christie.

On the stand, the woman told Dan's jury her story.

We sat there and we even looked at some of the jury while they were listening to this, and they were in shock.

It was jaw-dropping.

That took a lot of courage for her to be.

Oh, unbelievable.

We are so thankful that she

had that courage.

Using a cache of digital evidence, prosecutors had made a strong case suggesting Dan Krug and no one else was behind the stalking of his own wife.

So much now hinged on the jury believing Dan was not just Christie's stalker, but also her murderer.

And in that regard, prosecutors were missing something big, and Dan's attorneys knew it.

Juries like DNA.

They do.

You didn't have any DNA.

We did not.

Dan Krug was staring at a possible life sentence.

His defense attorneys implored jurors to focus their attention.

on all the evidence the prosecution did not have.

There is absolutely no physical evidence on Mr.

Krug's clothing.

There's no blood found on that car inside or out.

Juries like DNA.

They do.

You didn't have any DNA.

We did not.

You can't pick up the murder weapon and show it to the jury.

You can't even tell the jury what it was.

Yes.

The evidence in this case says something far different than what the prosecution has told you.

The defense argued Dan's internet searches were not about killing Christie.

saying he made them after having lunch with a colleague who the defense said struggled with a head injury.

He can't hear.

He struggles with speech.

He struggles with walking.

He uses a wheelchair.

And immediately after that,

we have a search for head injuries.

The defense warned jurors to be wary of the evidence prosecutors did have.

We know the physical evidence.

And there is an enormous disconnect between that and the circumstantial picture

the prosecution wants you to believe.

In closing, the defense argued that if police couldn't figure out that Dan was Christie's stalker,

how could they be trusted when they said Dan was her killer?

They sort of suggested that Detective Martinez is at fault here because he didn't figure out it was Dan soon enough.

Yes.

Right?

Which is an odd defense.

It is an odd defense.

I don't, I mean, I think the stalking evidence was so clear that it was Dan that they didn't have much else.

I'm telling you, Mr.

Krug

did not kill his wife.

He did not commit these crimes.

Period.

After seven days of testimony, the jury got the case.

So I'm a defense attorney, so my brain works a little bit differently than a prosecutor's, and so I'd be lying if I say I wasn't nervous.

No verdict after day one

or the morning of day two.

And then finally.

Please rise for the jury.

When the jury came in, I was desperately trying to make eye contact with somebody and not one of the jurors would look at me.

And I was right in front of them.

And that might be a bad sign.

It made me really nervous.

Because if they're avoiding you, maybe they're about to set him free.

Yeah.

I remember grabbing my

family attorney's hand next to me, and we just held hands.

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

guilty of murder stalking and criminal impersonation

guilty guilty guilty guilty on each one of them and bang and that was it you look at dan during that time oh we were watching him not not not a flinch not an emotion

nothing like he knew it was coming or like he didn't care i don't know he wore those masks very well

since Christie's murder, her family has a mission led by cousin Becky, the former prosecutor.

They want to change the speed with which communications companies respond to stalking investigations.

In Christie's case, it was not fast enough.

We don't know what would have happened if Christie had had the information earlier that this wasn't Anthony Holland and that this was actually Dan.

But she would have understood the calls coming from inside the house.

Christie was carrying a handgun.

He knew he had to take her from behind in order to kill her.

If she had known that it was Dan, he never would have had the opportunity to take her from behind.

And she could have safety planned in a way that could have saved her life.

All three companies still had the original search warrants submitted by Detective Martinez in their systems when Christie was killed.

And eventually, all three did respond to those.

Except, Google and Verizon took weeks.

TextNow took nearly three months.

None of that came in time to save Christie.

To her family, the quick response of those same companies to the urgent requests on the day of the murder proves it is possible to turn over data almost immediately.

So we know there's a structure.

It's just a matter of having companies prioritize those responses.

The family is advocating advocating for legislation requiring companies to respond to warrants in stalking cases within 48 hours.

They want to call it Christie's Law.

She marshaled the support of law enforcement.

She tracked every single contact.

Law enforcement wrote search warrants, issued those search warrants.

And she's dead.

And she still got killed.

So I want to see not just state-based legislation, but federal legislation that requires these communication companies to respond within 48 hours when they've received subpoenas or search warrants pursuant to stalking or domestic violence investigations.

This legislation is homicide prevention.

When asked about their response to Christiel's case, Google and Verizon told us they receive thousands of law enforcement requests each month.

And neither company said stalking cases automatically receive any special attention.

Google says requests are prioritized based on numerous factors, while Verizon says their usual policy is first in, first out.

Verizon added that they generally do not know the nature of the investigations behind police requests, and both companies say they rely on law enforcement to let them know what's an emergency.

TextNow did not respond to our questions.

Dan Krug was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Christiele's children are with her family.

What do you want them to know about their mom?

She loved her.

She loved them.

She loved them.

She wanted to protect them and she wanted them to be happy.

I think the most important thing about Christie is

that her memory lives on and we don't stop talking about her.

Christie's kids are not the only children who will grow up without her.

And right this minute you're pregnant.

And now I'm pregnant.

And she would have been thrilled.

Oh, she would have been over the moon.

She would have been the best aunt.

And now my kids just get memories and they don't get to make their own.

And it's really hard to talk about her.

But the stories and who she was

is just really important to keep her alive however we can.

That's all for this edition of Dateline.

And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.

Josh Mankiewicz and I will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you again next Friday at 9:8th Central.

I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Good night

in Texas.

The the countdown has begun.

Robert Robertson is scheduled to die.

When the clock hits zero, it's over.

But a growing chorus insists Robert is innocent.

We didn't hear Robert.

We chose to disbelieve him.

I'm on the ground in Texas searching for the truth.

The Last Appeal, a new podcast from Dateline and Lester Holt.

To listen now, find and follow The Last Appeal on Pandora.