The Phantom

Transcript

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Speaker 25 Tonight, on the 3000th episode of Dateline.

Speaker 26 This is really creepy for me.

Speaker 27 She said, Mom, I'm being stalked.

Speaker 26 It has definitely made me like paranoid everywhere I go.

Speaker 27 My heart just sunk. She's totally being terrorized.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 So that went from inappropriate to threatening pretty quickly.

Speaker 30 Within 24 hours, Christie was frantic.

Speaker 31 She was fiercely protective of her family.

Speaker 25 I'm panic, and I'm doing a good job. I'm protecting my wife.

Speaker 25 Repel police!

Speaker 32 We have someone out there who's just committed a homicide.

Speaker 3 Our number one suspect was this person who's been stalking her.

Speaker 27 This guy's a phantom.

Speaker 31 It's terrifying.

Speaker 32 He fooled everyone.

Speaker 28 The only thing we could do now is to make it right by finding the killer.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Phantom.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 It was December 14, 2023.

Speaker 29 Getting dispatched to a welfare check is pretty common.

Speaker 25 So common that John O'Hare of the Broomfield, Colorado Police, his body cam recording, literally whistled while while he worked.

Speaker 25 He peeked into windows, ignored that yapping dog,

Speaker 25 knocked on their front door.

Speaker 29 Everything appeared completely silent. Nobody in the yard or in the area.

Speaker 25 This time, just to be sure, the officer wanted a look inside the garage.

Speaker 25 Because if a car was there,

Speaker 25 someone might be home after all.

Speaker 25 He pulled his cruiser up to the doors and climbed up on the bumper.

Speaker 29 Tried to see if I could see in the small windows that are at the top of the big garage doors there.

Speaker 25 That's when he saw it.

Speaker 25 151, 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.

Speaker 25 Repel police!

Speaker 25 And then a murder investigation, a hunt for a killer who knew how to hide and how to play everyone, police included.

Speaker 25 You were on the wrong path the whole time. Yeah.
Because somebody wanted you on the wrong path the whole time.

Speaker 28 I felt like a puppet.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 28 Broomfield has a lot of property crime where burglaries into people's open garages are unfortunately very common.

Speaker 25 Broomfield detective Andrew Martinez says it did seem to be property crime reported by the owner of that house, Dan Krug.

Speaker 29 As I came down, the door was open.

Speaker 28 Dan reported an intruder into their open garage door.

Speaker 25 As he's pulling in.

Speaker 28 As he's pulling in, yes.

Speaker 35 I saw someone, I think it was a guy, but it was so fast. Yeah.

Speaker 34 Blue jeans, gray shirt, run out,

Speaker 34 jump over my gate, and take off that way.

Speaker 25 He couldn't identify that person. He could not.

Speaker 28 And patrol officers responded, checked the area, and they couldn't find anybody that matched the description that Dan said.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 34 I watched the garage door closing.

Speaker 34 Not necessarily closed.

Speaker 25 Okay.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 34 We realized the spare key that we keep in the garage isn't there.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 When you can, I'm probably. I'm going home detail when I'm done with it.
Okay, got it.

Speaker 25 Christie's parents, Lars and Linda Grimsrood, said Christie was more annoyed than scared by what had just happened.

Speaker 25 So

Speaker 25 tell me about Dan coming home and seeing somebody running out of the garage. How did you hear about that?

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 29 She didn't see it as a real threat.

Speaker 25 Nothing to worry about. Until a month later, when Broomfield Police received another call from the Krugs.

Speaker 36 Can you spell your first name?

Speaker 3 Just make sure I know it's right.

Speaker 37 No problem. It's Chris Steele.
It's spelled K-R-I-S-T-I-L.

Speaker 25 This time, a garage break-in was the least of their worries.

Speaker 37 Today, I got an email that is very threatening.

Speaker 25 Someone was watching this family. The investigation that followed would confound everyone.

Speaker 25 Police start following her and Dan, thinking, like, okay, we're going to see this guy. And they don't.

Speaker 27 This guy's a phantom.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 31 It's terrifying.

Speaker 32 It's now a homicide. It's all hands on deck.

Speaker 25 This says planned, attempted, and executed murder. Yes.

Speaker 27 You wanted an alibi, obviously. But why did it have to be me?

Speaker 25 It had been more than a month since the burglary at their home.

Speaker 34 I saw someone.

Speaker 35 I think it was a guy, but it was so fast.

Speaker 25 Now, the Krugs were contacting Broomfield, Colorado police again.

Speaker 25 This time, Dan's wife, Christie, was the one reporting a much more serious problem.

Speaker 26 I have never dealt with this kind of level in an online version.

Speaker 25 Christie told Detective Andrew Martinez she was being stalked.

Speaker 28 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,

Speaker 28 and she was very well prepared.

Speaker 25 He was not the first to have that reaction.

Speaker 31 She had the best of all personalities.

Speaker 25 This is Christie's sister, Jenna Erickson.

Speaker 31 She was so smart, and her brain would just work in a way that is kind of unfathomable.

Speaker 25 Jenna was eight years old and Christie 16 when Jenna's mom married Christie's dad. She idolized her new big sister.

Speaker 31 She would give me just the most honest, best advice and never judged me, never made me feel silly.

Speaker 25 Christie's parents, Lars and Linda, say even as a child, she was intuitive, curious, and compassionate.

Speaker 27 She loved to talk and loved to have a good, I wouldn't say argument, it was a discussion.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 29 She could take her bicycle apart and put it back together again.

Speaker 25 During college, Christie met her intellectual soulmate online.

Speaker 25 Dan Krug was a poli-sci major with dreams of a career in academia.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 31 And I was happy at the time because I knew she was going to be really happy.

Speaker 25 No question that when he asked, she was going to say yes. Yeah.

Speaker 25 They married in 2007. Christie became a biomedical engineer and a performer.

Speaker 30 Christie was a phenomenal dancer.

Speaker 25 Her friend and fellow dancer, Jennifer Juskolka.

Speaker 30 She had these gorgeous high arches and hyperextended legs, something that I was very, very jealous of.

Speaker 27 She moved like water.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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?

Speaker 28 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

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 Almost a month after those text messages, Christie received an email from an ahollandkicks at gmail.com.

Speaker 25 It contained a photo of her husband Dan, apparently recent, apparently taken at his work, and apparently without Dan's knowledge.

Speaker 26 That day, there's snow on the ground. My husband had only gone into work on that Tuesday for

Speaker 26 Halloween. My husband has a camera in his car.
He did not see anybody

Speaker 26 and then unfortunately lost all the video because he didn't save it. So

Speaker 26 I don't have any video evidence.

Speaker 28 That photo came with a comment about his slow driving, implying that whoever was sending this email was actively following Dan.

Speaker 25 It's certainly escalating.

Speaker 28 Absolutely. That's what prompted Christie to notify police.

Speaker 25 Then she told Martinez what came next.

Speaker 26 I got a really strange strange text message from somebody saying

Speaker 25 Christie's phone began receiving sexual text messages and crude photos.

Speaker 26 Are you still looking for men?

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 26 I was like, okay, I don't think this is Anthony.

Speaker 28 She's receiving numerous text messages from all sorts of different unknown numbers.

Speaker 28 These unknown phone numbers are all of men, many of which are sending photos of themselves in sexually explicit poses.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 28 The ad was basically asking for multiple sexual partners on her birthday, which was coming up at the end of November.

Speaker 25 She also wanted to make sure the detective knew about that break-in at their garage.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 25 All of it triggered her organizational instincts as an engineer.

Speaker 26 I did a timeline for you.

Speaker 25 Christiel called it her stalker log.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 No, I just always heard her document everything.

Speaker 25 She doesn't come off as some like helpless victim. She's like completely in control.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 Christie's log detailed her relationship with Anthony, starting with the year they met, 1999, when she graduated high school.

Speaker 26 Okay, and in this timeline, we dated summer of 99. Okay.
Very briefly.

Speaker 25 Christie headed off to college.

Speaker 26 Like there was a breakup somewhere here, like in the fall, so I did this.

Speaker 25 Just before her sophomore year, she broke things off with Anthony. About a year later, Christie met Dan.

Speaker 25 And in the years that followed, Anthony would still reach out from time to time on social media.

Speaker 26 Just like little teeny things. It's like, oh, hey, how you doing?

Speaker 25 Christie said it left her a little creeped out.

Speaker 26 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?

Speaker 28 She initially responded just saying, I'm doing well, but

Speaker 28 I'm not interested in re-engaging in a relationship.

Speaker 25 For seven years, Anthony went silent. No DMs, no posts, no contact.
No hostility, no threats.

Speaker 28 There was no hostility and no threats during those times.

Speaker 25 And then suddenly, here he is back and

Speaker 25 really hitting the gas.

Speaker 28 Immediately escalated, AS.

Speaker 26 I don't want to bait him. I don't want to reach out or bait him.

Speaker 25 She had already hired a private investigator to find Anthony and serve him a restraining order.

Speaker 25 The PI's report showed possible addresses for Anthony in both Utah and Idaho. Now, Christie was asking what police could do.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 29 We find it hard to believe that they flat couldn't find Anthony Holland.

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Speaker 26 What?

Speaker 18 Do you think I should have shot?

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 25 Christie's parents remembered back when she started dating Anthony.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 25 Could you tell that he was seriously interested in her? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 29 And he was a good guy. But the two of them had,

Speaker 29 I think, significantly different

Speaker 29 life expectations and goals.

Speaker 25 They also remembered how things ended.

Speaker 27 She said that it was a tough breakup and it wasn't a real easy thing for her to walk away, but

Speaker 25 she did. Yeah.

Speaker 25 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?

Speaker 25 Two days after her meeting with Detective Martinez, Christie received this text, saw you at dentist.

Speaker 28 Alluding to the person being outside in their own car watching Christie

Speaker 47 and the

Speaker 28 The stalker talks about a sexual act

Speaker 28 while he's in the parking lot.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 That's the same garage that had been broken into nearly two months earlier.

Speaker 38 The in-person stuff that's scaring the crap out of me and why I want this policy?

Speaker 25 That saw-you-at dentist text made Christie think her stalker had planted something on her car.

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 18 He's really on the street to know when I'm leaving.

Speaker 28 We put Christie's car on a lift.

Speaker 28 We checked that car top to bottom, front to back, and we couldn't find anything on her car.

Speaker 25 As the officer was leaving, Christie told him how worried she was.

Speaker 58 I'm live streaming my location all the time to my girl. Okay.
So that he knows anytime I'm leaving the house also.

Speaker 25 So like everyone knows where I'm going to be from now on. Okay.

Speaker 37 Anyway,

Speaker 58 I'm doing what I can. I'm a little bit of a sitting deck right now.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 You didn't see anyone following her? We did not. Nobody approaching her car after she leaves it.

Speaker 25 Nobody walking 25 steps behind her.

Speaker 28 No, nothing.

Speaker 25 Her parents assumed officers would confront Anthony right away.

Speaker 27 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?

Speaker 25 Like Christiel, Martinez found addresses for Anthony in Utah and Idaho. There were no recent ones in Colorado.

Speaker 25 Before getting another jurisdiction involved and banging on any doors, He wanted digital proof that Anthony was the one sending those messages. That

Speaker 25 is fairly standard police procedure.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 Because if you walk into his house and say,

Speaker 25 I know you've been doing this, if you don't have any proof, that might be the end of it.

Speaker 28 If I don't have any proof or I haven't developed a case with probable cause, then I just walk away.

Speaker 25 And And he says, if you have any further questions, talk to my lawyer, and that's that.

Speaker 28 That is that.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Getting those search warrants approved took several days. Getting results, much longer.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And particularly with things like phone and internet records, that's not always true. No, not at all.

Speaker 28 When we serve a search warrant to any major company,

Speaker 28 unfortunately, it takes time. And a lot of times it takes weeks, if not months, for some companies.

Speaker 25 Christiel first sat down with Detective Martinez on November 7th. He applied for search warrants on the 12th.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 It wasn't Christile.

Speaker 26 My panic level has gone considerably higher.

Speaker 28 Basically, it implies that they belong together and that he will make Dan disappear.

Speaker 26 We have never dealt with like this kind of level.

Speaker 25 The stalker's first text to Christiel was a request to hook up, and the messages that followed were insulting, offensive, creepy.

Speaker 26 I don't think he's done. I think he's going to keep.
I think he's going to keep going.

Speaker 25 How right she was.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I'll get rid of him, and then we can be together. So easy.

Speaker 25 There was no doubt who the him referred to.

Speaker 25 Christie's husband, Dan.

Speaker 25 Okay.

Speaker 28 It was a direct threat towards Dan.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 26 I just wanted to sit down with you and kind of

Speaker 26 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

Speaker 25 log. Is he as spooked as his wife is?

Speaker 28 He is as spooked as his wife is.

Speaker 26 Largely being paranoid for the last few days. As I got all of the details,

Speaker 26 my panic level has gone considerably higher. I have a

Speaker 26 retractable asp steel baton, pepper, gel, spray,

Speaker 26 always in this pocket.

Speaker 25 As he sat there on the couch, Dan pretty much broke down.

Speaker 26 I went to the

Speaker 26 grocery store briefly on Tuesday,

Speaker 25 and someone behind me dropped a can, and I panicked.

Speaker 26 So what am I doing? I'm panicking.

Speaker 26 And I'm doing a s job of protecting my wife.

Speaker 28 Interacting with Dan that day, I felt that Christie was better equipped to defend herself than Dan was to defend Christie.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 The result was less sleep and more stress, and she was starting to visibly fray. Everyone noticed.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Understandable.

Speaker 31 She just looked exhausted, so exhausted.

Speaker 25 Probably because she was not sleeping.

Speaker 31 I think she was just so on point all the time,

Speaker 31 head on a swivel, constantly watching for what was happening.

Speaker 25 Not just worried about herself, also worried about Dan, who the stalker had specifically mentioned. Yes.
And her kids, too.

Speaker 31 She was fiercely protective of her family.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 She started carrying a Sig Sauer 9mm.

Speaker 25 She had a gun on her at all times, even when she was home with her family.

Speaker 29 Yes, it was always in her purse. She had a concealed carry purse specifically designed for that gun.

Speaker 27 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

Speaker 27 she just sat in the parking lot and cried. And she was just so upset.

Speaker 31 And all I could do was hug her.

Speaker 25 Thanksgiving dinner that year was tense. The family gathered inside as police stood watch outside.

Speaker 31 She specifically would seat herself in a way so she could see the front door. She didn't have her back to the door.

Speaker 25 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

Speaker 25 completely changes your life, and that's all you're thinking about. Yeah.

Speaker 25 Christie's cousin, Becky Ivanoff, a former prosecutor in Oregon, offered to help.

Speaker 33 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.

Speaker 33 I'm a very private person, too. And so I understood that this was sensitive for Christie.

Speaker 33 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 30 So Christie's oldest daughter was in two productions of The Nutcracker.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I mean, that ate her up.

Speaker 25 The paranoia and isolation were crushing.

Speaker 27 It was just like she didn't know how this was going to end.

Speaker 29 At one point, she actually said, referring to the stalker, it's going to be me or him. Someone's going to get killed.

Speaker 25 Once again, she turned out to be right. Repel, police!

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And then it was Thursday, December 14th. As daylight broke, those new cameras recorded a bustling family morning.

Speaker 25 That's Dan driving their eldest to the bus stop and returning minutes later. Just before 7 a.m.

Speaker 25 Christele leaves next, taking their younger two kids to school. She returns just before 8.

Speaker 25 Then at 8.24, Dan pulls out, heading off to work about a half hour away.

Speaker 25 Dan was on the road when at 8.56,

Speaker 25 he received a text from Christile, asking him to pick up their daughter after school, because Christie had a meeting with Detective Martinez.

Speaker 25 Dan responded 20 minutes later, sure thing, FYI, I forgot my chicken on the counter. Please put it in the fridge.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I don't think this is an emergency, but...

Speaker 29 but this feels really weird.

Speaker 60 My wife isn't responding to text messages or phone calls.

Speaker 25 Okay.

Speaker 25 Dan also called Christie's mom.

Speaker 27 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?

Speaker 25 You live closer?

Speaker 27 We all live about 15 minutes.

Speaker 25 Linda headed over to her daughter's. Officer John O'Hare was already there.

Speaker 25 151, send medical, and 110. I need a four-centric.
I got a female down in the garage.

Speaker 29 At that point, I rushed around to the front door, kicked the door one time.

Speaker 25 Rope help, please! Officer O'Hare ran through the house and into the garage.

Speaker 25 Oh, sh.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 25 By the time the officer opened the automatic garage doors for EMTs,

Speaker 25 garage is open now. Christiel's mom was just getting there.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 25 Husband said there was a stalker.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Detective Justin Marshall of the Broomfield Police responded to the scene.

Speaker 28 They were pretty aware that there was some head trauma.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 28 A penetrating stab wound to the upper part of her

Speaker 25 chest,

Speaker 28 And there were no signs of life in that type of injury.

Speaker 25 And that's what killed her, that stab wound.

Speaker 28 Either the blunt force or the stab wound would have been fatal.

Speaker 27 They rolled out the stretcher and I thought, oh, she's going to be okay.

Speaker 25 They're going to do everything for her.

Speaker 27 But then they rolled the stretcher back out without her. And so

Speaker 25 I knew.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 25 Jenna got a call and raced to her sister's house.

Speaker 25 When you're driving there, what are you thinking?

Speaker 31 God, I hope she's at the hospital

Speaker 31 and not there.

Speaker 25 As soon as she pulled up and saw the tape, a part of her knew.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 25 Dan Krug was one of the last to arrive.

Speaker 40 He came from up the street here,

Speaker 28 yelling, that's my house, that's my house.

Speaker 25 Dan was overwhelmed.

Speaker 25 It was the exact outcome Christie had tried so desperately to head off.

Speaker 25 It was also, sadly, one she had predicted.

Speaker 29 It's beyond description what goes through your mind. You're just completely beside yourself.

Speaker 25 A stalking case had led straight to a murder investigation, and detectives knew where to go next.

Speaker 25 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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Speaker 25 Christie Krug was gone, her family huddled behind crime scene tape, a terrible new reality sinking in.

Speaker 31 Shocked, miserable, disbelief, not really knowing what to do, where to go, what to say.

Speaker 29 You don't want to believe it, and you're just absolutely, completely distraught.

Speaker 25 And it changes you forever.

Speaker 29 This is not something that time heals.

Speaker 25 At 43, the organized, clear-headed Christie had done so much to protect herself and her family from this person.

Speaker 25 Cameras at home, police involved, and a handgun literally at her side. None of it was enough to escape the stalker.

Speaker 29 The fact that he actually got to her and actually killed her was just,

Speaker 29 you can't wrap your mind around it.

Speaker 25 Christie's cousin Becky Ivanov received a text from her mother.

Speaker 59 She said, Christie's been killed.

Speaker 33 And my first question was, was it the stalker?

Speaker 32 To hear that she had been murdered was pretty devastating.

Speaker 25 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?

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 25 And possibly a threat to other people who who are still alive.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And investigators set out to find their most obvious suspect, Anthony Holland. Prosecutor Kate Armstrong.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 25 And pretty hard to believe her death's not connected to that.

Speaker 3 Yes, I mean, at that time, our number one suspect was this person who's been stalking her.

Speaker 25 Investigators had addresses for Anthony in Idaho and Utah, all more than 500 miles from Broomfield.

Speaker 25 Broomfield's chief deputy DA Stephanie Fritz thought it unlikely Christie's killer could already be at any of those addresses.

Speaker 25 So that's an eight-hour drive. Correct.

Speaker 25 He's not going to make that drive in that amount of time. No.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 They talked with authorities there.

Speaker 61 We're a few blocks away from where Mr. Holland resides.

Speaker 25 Ray Ormond is a sergeant with the Utah County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 61 We made the joint decision to go make contact at the residence.

Speaker 25 Ormond and his deputies made their approach carefully. They had a warrant for Anthony's arrest on stalking charges.

Speaker 62 I didn't know what we were walking into.

Speaker 62 I didn't want to get my people ambushed by any type of violent encounter.

Speaker 25 Through the windows, they saw someone inside the house. They knocked on the door.

Speaker 61 Mr. Holland answers the door.
We introduce ourselves. We ask him who he is.
He introduces himself as Mr. Holland.

Speaker 25 Anthony was already home.

Speaker 25 How was that possible?

Speaker 61 Once we confirmed it was him, I went back to my vehicle and I had Mr.

Speaker 61 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.

Speaker 25 By the time Ormond got back to the porch, Anthony had invited his man inside. You can stay seated, stay seated.
Yeah.

Speaker 61 And out of an abundance of caution, you know, I advised him of his rights.

Speaker 25 Then the sergeant got to the point. Have you ever heard of the name Crystal Krug?

Speaker 62 She may have been Grimsrod when you knew her. Yeah.

Speaker 62 And do you know a Daniel Krug?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 62 No?

Speaker 25 How do you know Crystal? She was an ex-girlfriend.

Speaker 62 She's an ex-girlfriend?

Speaker 62 How long to ex? Like, how long ago?

Speaker 25 Um, 1999. Oh, so like a long while ago.
She was my very first girlfriend ever. Oh, okay.

Speaker 25 He asked Anthony where he'd been that day.

Speaker 61 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.

Speaker 25 And Anthony did have a receipt from that shopping trip.

Speaker 61 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.

Speaker 25 In Utah and not in Colorado.

Speaker 3 It was physically impossible for him to have been there.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 You did not want to let her go.

Speaker 25 This is who Broomfield police had been looking for.

Speaker 25 The man they believed stalked, then killed Christie Krug.

Speaker 25 Anthony Holland.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 They asked me if I knew Christie Krug, and I said, yes, I know her. And that was it.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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,

Speaker 25 starting with when they began dating just after she graduated from high school.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I haven't cried that hard

Speaker 25 until my mom died. She was the one that got away.

Speaker 25 Yep. I always say that to people.
You blame yourself for that. Yep,

Speaker 25 I do.

Speaker 25 Christie finished college and became an engineer, wife, and mom.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 You did not want to let her go? No.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Just in 2004 and 2016, and we became friends on Facebook. I got a little drunk, and I left her a message saying that

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 That was the last time you had any contact with Christie.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And so I didn't have her email. I didn't, I couldn't get through to Facebook.

Speaker 25 Like, I was done.

Speaker 25 It was over.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Or her? No. Ever been to their house? No.
Or the neighborhood? No.

Speaker 25 I had no idea where she lives.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 They just told him detectives would be in touch. And they left.

Speaker 61 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.

Speaker 25 At that point, Colorado police were left without any legal basis to arrest Anthony Holland.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 He's not the kind of person who has access to private aircraft.

Speaker 63 No, Anthony Holland did not have access to personal aircraft.

Speaker 25 And I'm guessing law law enforcement checked every flight manifest.

Speaker 63 They did check to see if there was any indication, and there was none that he flew.

Speaker 25 Anthony Holland couldn't have been in the garage, but he could still be the stalker. He could be, yes.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 3 Yes, he definitely did. Since they broke up 20 years ago, he was reaching out to her.

Speaker 25 Possible he had somebody working with him?

Speaker 63 At that point, anything is possible.

Speaker 25 Possible, but a long shot.

Speaker 25 Investigators knew there was a problem with the idea that Anthony Holland might have hired a hitman after stalking Christiel.

Speaker 3 That's not common in these kinds of cases.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I have control. Exactly.

Speaker 64 Yes.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 64 Yes.

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Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 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.

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Speaker 25 A murder investigation that once seemed so close to being solved was now back at square one.

Speaker 25 The day of her murder, Christie's grief-stricken family members spent their afternoon in interview rooms at the police station.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 65 You hadn't heard from her messaged her today at all.

Speaker 65 I tried to call her. I have that log here.

Speaker 25 Christile's sister, Jenna, did not hold back her frustrations with police.

Speaker 65 I just think that the long work could have been done, and this wouldn't have happened.

Speaker 65 She did everything right. She reported everything.
She kept copies of everything. She called you guys.

Speaker 25 Dan came in to talk with investigators and took a seat on the same couch he had occupied just a month before.

Speaker 28 I arrived at the police department and immediately went to go speak with Dan.

Speaker 28 It's not your fault.

Speaker 26 I'm super detected.

Speaker 25 So how's Dan doing at that point?

Speaker 28 Dan is not doing well. He's very emotional, distraught.
He's stuttering. He's crying.
He's just borderline hyperventilating in some points.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 26 Dan, when did you leave the house today?

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 26 Approximate.

Speaker 26 They.

Speaker 26 I was late leaving.

Speaker 26 She told me that I had to go because she had a meeting. She was rushing me.

Speaker 3 We actually had kind of a live feed camera of him in his room up in the room that we were working in.

Speaker 25 Prosecutors Kate Armstrong and Stephanie Fritz were at the Broomfield Police Department alongside detectives as information came in from other investigators.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 25 One of those steps was to go back to the companies they'd served with search warrants.

Speaker 25 Detective Martinez had been waiting nearly a month for the digital information that would tell him for sure where those stalking messages originated.

Speaker 25 Search warrants to Google, Verizon, and TextNow had gone unanswered.

Speaker 25 Only now, when detectives reached out again, citing urgent circumstances, did the companies respond almost immediately, turning over the requested information within an hour.

Speaker 25 And suddenly, the spotlight shifts.

Speaker 64 Yes.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 The data showed Christie Krug's stalker had been using the Wi-Fi

Speaker 25 at Dan Krug's office.

Speaker 28 The email that was used, the phone number that was used,

Speaker 28 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,

Speaker 28 The realization that I was on the wrong path the entire time trying to track down Anthony.

Speaker 25 You were on on the wrong path the whole time. Yeah.
Because somebody wanted you on the wrong path the whole time.

Speaker 29 I felt like a puppet.

Speaker 25 Had Dan Krug been lying from the beginning?

Speaker 34 I saw someone.

Speaker 35 I think it was a guy.

Speaker 25 Had he sat back and watched as his wife compiled a stalker log for police?

Speaker 26 I just always had her document everything.

Speaker 25 Was he the true architect of her suffering?

Speaker 58 I'm doing what I can with a little bit of a sitting back right now.

Speaker 25 And then did he put on a big show?

Speaker 25 Sitting on that blue couch pretending to be in fear for Christie's life and also for his own.

Speaker 26 So what am I doing?

Speaker 25 I'm panicking. Detective Martinez was convinced the answer to all of that was yes.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 3 I would say the tone of his interview shifted.

Speaker 26 What if I told you that

Speaker 26 we had already spoken with Anthony and there's no way that he was in town today?

Speaker 26 That I have nothing.

Speaker 26 And I'm

Speaker 26 terrified to bring my children home.

Speaker 25 Now, Martinez hit Dan with that new digital information.

Speaker 26 The Gmail account that you guys initially received with the photo of you in it

Speaker 26 and the phone number, those originated through their IP addresses at your office.

Speaker 26 Doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 25 What did make sense, said Dan, was that perhaps perhaps the stalker accessed the building's Wi-Fi.

Speaker 26 There's public Wi-Fi access throughout the entire facility. And we literally post the passwords in every single meeting room.

Speaker 25 Detective Martinez persisted.

Speaker 26 Things are certainly pointing in one direction right now.

Speaker 28 I had just laid out the facts, like, we know where Anthony is. We know the IP addresses.

Speaker 28 Everything's pointing to you.

Speaker 25 Dan watched the skies of suspicion turn suddenly darker.

Speaker 28 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,

Speaker 25 Oh, yes, you heard that right.

Speaker 25 Even when confronted with the evidence, Dan didn't get mad. He didn't yell or even raise his voice.
He just seemed annoyed.

Speaker 26 You have your theory.

Speaker 26 It is wrong.

Speaker 25 That's when Dan decided it was time to stop talking.

Speaker 26 Is this the point where

Speaker 26 I'll make whatever that checklist is? I say, I'll have an attorney.

Speaker 25 Police collected his clothes for processing.

Speaker 26 Taken

Speaker 26 socks, shoes, pants, shirt.

Speaker 25 He was not arrested. Detectives gave Dan a change of clothes and let him leave.
Prosecutor Stephanie Fritz.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 63 No, we don't have evidence that Dan is the murderer.

Speaker 38 We have suspicions.

Speaker 25 It turns out investigators were not alone in their suspicions.

Speaker 31 He was very upset, but there were no tears.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Police confronted Dan Krug.

Speaker 25 They did not arrest him.

Speaker 63 We don't have any evidence that Dan is the murderer the night he walks out of the police station.

Speaker 25 As Dan left, he had these parting words for Detective Martinez.

Speaker 25 I don't care if you capture him. I don't care if you kill him.

Speaker 25 Find him.

Speaker 25 Dan joined Chris Steele's stunned family.

Speaker 31 And we were all spending time together, just holding each other, crying, whatever people needed.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 31 When he got to the house, he was very meek and shriveled.

Speaker 29 Did you talk to him that night?

Speaker 31 I did.

Speaker 27 I hugged him.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 25 Did he also say to you, I'm so sorry you lost your sister? No.

Speaker 25 No. I can't imagine what you're going through.
No. She loved you so much?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 25 It was all about him. It was.

Speaker 25 And that was Dan? Or that seemed weird?

Speaker 31 It seemed very weird.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And Christie's family knew she and Dan were not getting along. Something her mom, Linda, had mentioned to police.

Speaker 65 Last year,

Speaker 65 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.

Speaker 65 Because I don't know.

Speaker 25 Linda knew only what Christie had shared and what she saw with her own eyes over the years.

Speaker 27 I think the best way to describe it is that I always had an uneasy feeling with Dan.

Speaker 27 But I loved my daughter. She loved him.
And I would see them together and they seemed very happy.

Speaker 25 And that made you happy. Yeah.

Speaker 25 That happiness appeared to last for years.

Speaker 25 It was recently. that her family saw the relationship deteriorate.

Speaker 31 They weren't as connected and with each other as much as before.

Speaker 27 They were constantly arguing that last year.

Speaker 25 Christie's dad, Lars, says Dan's arrogance did not help.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And at some point, Christie says, that plan I had to stick around until the kids are out of the house.

Speaker 25 Not going to work. I'm not going to be able to do that.
What'd she tell you?

Speaker 27 She's had enough. She says I'm done with them.

Speaker 27 So I think, on some level, you know,

Speaker 27 she needed to go.

Speaker 25 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,

Speaker 25 Christie's family had a completely different impression.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 25 He just didn't take it seriously.

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 31 I know she told me specifically that he felt like she was blowing it out of proportion, that it wasn't as serious.

Speaker 25 Something else had always bothered Sister Jenna. It was that photo the stalker took of Dan.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 31 So it just made me think like there's got to be something else going on closer to home potentially.

Speaker 25 A marriage headed south. A controlling husband who seemed indifferent to his wife's fear.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 25 He's very emotional and shouting and seems to be overwrought.

Speaker 31 Except there were no tears.

Speaker 31 At least when I was there. He was very upset.

Speaker 31 He was

Speaker 31 attempting to make himself sick, but there were no tears.

Speaker 25 You think that was all an act?

Speaker 31 I think it was fake.

Speaker 25 Right there at the crime scene, Jenna couldn't help but say the quiet part out loud.

Speaker 31 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?

Speaker 31 And I remember Linda telling me, like, I don't know

Speaker 25 investigators thought they did know now they had to prove it and maybe all those cameras at the house would help

Speaker 25 just not in the way you might think

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Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I'm Josh Mankowitz, and this is Deadly Engagement, an all-new podcast from Dateline.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 If the entire stalking campaign had been an elaborate deceit created by Dan Krug and ending in murder, the next question was why?

Speaker 25 Christie's family had long felt Dan tried to control her.

Speaker 25 Now, after learning about a strained marriage heading for divorce, that idea of control was becoming central to the theory investigators were developing.

Speaker 25 They suspected Dan was trying to generate fear to make Christie change her mind about leaving him.

Speaker 63 On the stocking was to control Christie to bring her closer to him.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 63 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.

Speaker 63 And so it's the ultimate form of control of the murder.

Speaker 25 Prosecutors believe Dan must have felt time was running out and that he was about to be exposed.

Speaker 3 The police are getting closer. He knows search warrants are out.

Speaker 25 And when those search warrants come back, he's going to be found out. He's got to know that.

Speaker 3 He's got to know that.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And then if that plot gets found out, then I'm going to have to kill you.

Speaker 28 This is the most unique case that I've ever been involved with.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 To prosecutor Kate Armstrong, it was more evidence that the stalking had been an elaborate hoax, with Anthony Holland as the perfect fall guy.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 3 And it was very believable, especially to Chris Steele, that it would be Anthony and that Anthony would be popping back up.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Four cameras were recording that morning. Then, right around the time of the murder, Detective Marshall says, something changed.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 28 Only one of those was operational during the time of

Speaker 39 when we arrived.

Speaker 25 Because the others were broken?

Speaker 39 They were turned off, intentionally turned off.

Speaker 25 The only video they had was from the camera above the garage.

Speaker 25 It showed Dan leaving just before 8.30 a.m.

Speaker 39 It's his alibi.

Speaker 28 It shows when he leaves the house.

Speaker 25 And that was important because of that text message Dan received from Christie 30 minutes later, asking him about after-school pickup.

Speaker 25 It looks as if Christie has sent texts after Dan is provably out of the house.

Speaker 25 I don't know how you shatter. Right.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I think an attorney might have told him not to do that. Yes.

Speaker 25 Dan might be rethinking that decision because on that phone, they found this.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 A team was assembled,

Speaker 25 including Officer O'Hare, who had discovered Christie's body.

Speaker 29 I got word that he had gotten into his vehicle and left the house and was headed in the direction where I was.

Speaker 25 He pulled his cruiser behind Dan.

Speaker 29 Dan then pulled into a grocery store parking lot, so I initiated my lights.

Speaker 29 Hands on your face!

Speaker 25 Dan Krug was arrested on his way to his daughter's dance performance.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 He wants you to find your daughter's body. Yeah.

Speaker 29 Yeah, pure, pure evil.

Speaker 25 Absolutely. What a cruel thing to do.

Speaker 27 I mean, you wanted an alibi, obviously, but why did it have to be me?

Speaker 25 Cruel could also describe how the stalking campaign terrorized Christie in the last months of her life.

Speaker 31 It's heartbreaking to think about everything that she went through because

Speaker 31 I don't think anybody knows the full extent of it, but knowing what we know now, it's just unimaginable.

Speaker 25 Dan Krug pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and stalking.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Perhaps this woman's story would be the final piece of the puzzle.

Speaker 25 Suddenly, Dan Krug's past was stalking him.

Speaker 25 In the spring of 2025, Dan Krug entered a courtroom to face trial on charges he had stalked and murdered his wife Christie.

Speaker 25 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?

Speaker 31 The very, very first hearing, Dan walked in the room and made eye contact with all of us and smiled.

Speaker 25 Because like what, he thinks you're there to stick up for him.

Speaker 31 Yeah, I think he thought we were there for him.

Speaker 29 And apparently the look on my face, after he saw me, he never looked at me me again, ever.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 It showed the photo had been taken in selfie mode, likely on a timer.

Speaker 25 Prosecutors called Anthony Holland as a witness, the man they said Dan intended to frame.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 How could someone do that? It's horrible.

Speaker 25 It's just pure evil.

Speaker 25 Prosecutors showed the jury the searches on Dan's phone about head injuries made the day before Christie's murder.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 They also argued he was the one who covered the doorbell camera. Because in a kitchen drawer, investigators found blue painter's tape.

Speaker 28 The role in the drawer was a forensic fit to that tape on the doorbell.

Speaker 25 Like a jigsaw puzzle. Yes.

Speaker 28 The tears lined up astonishingly perfectly.

Speaker 25 Much harder for the prosecution to explain was that text message Dan received from Christie.

Speaker 25 after he had already left the house.

Speaker 3 If we had believed that Christie was alive at 8.56 when those texts go out to Dan, that would mean that

Speaker 3 she was alive at least half an hour after he left the house.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 3 Essentially, for a layperson, the gist of how we were able to determine that was that Christie's phone, the screen was not illuminated.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 First, he hit her in the back of the head.

Speaker 66 She didn't even see him coming. He did not even give her a fighting chance.

Speaker 25 She said Dan then turned his dying wife onto her back.

Speaker 33 He He didn't need to stab her.

Speaker 38 She would have died anyway.

Speaker 38 But he goes in for that one final fatal blow and it was deep.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 After hearing about Dan's arrest, a woman contacted police with an astonishing tale.

Speaker 3 And what she expressed to Detective Marshall was that she had dated Daniel Krug about 20 years prior.

Speaker 25 Even after all this time, she said she was still terrified of Dan.

Speaker 25 So much so that she asked us not to reveal her identity.

Speaker 65 It made me feel watched.

Speaker 65 So I was just constantly on guard.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 She says soon after, she began receiving weird messages and phone calls from someone she did not know. He had created a fake person.

Speaker 11 He had created a number of fake people.

Speaker 25 Fake people who were trying to push her back into Dan's arms.

Speaker 3 They talked about Dan a lot, told her to cherish her friendship with Dan.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 65 And I've carried that with me to this day.

Speaker 65 Just

Speaker 65 small things, you know, I worry all the time.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 The woman got a temporary restraining order against Dan, but he was never charged with any crime.

Speaker 3 It was eerie how similar it was to what had now happened to Christie.

Speaker 25 On the stand, the woman told Dan's jury her story.

Speaker 29 We sat there and we even looked at some of the jury while they were listening to this, and they were in shock.

Speaker 25 It was jaw-dropping. That took a lot of courage for her to be.

Speaker 29 Oh, unbelievable. We are so thankful that she

Speaker 29 had that courage.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Juries like DNA. They do.
You didn't have any DNA. We did not.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 67 There is absolutely no physical evidence on Mr. Krug's clothing.
There's no blood found on that car inside or out.

Speaker 25 Juries like DNA. They do.
You didn't have any DNA.

Speaker 30 We did not.

Speaker 25 You can't pick up the murder weapon and show it to the jury. You can't even tell the jury what it was.

Speaker 64 Yes.

Speaker 67 The evidence in this case says something far different than what the prosecution has told you.

Speaker 25 The defense argued Dan's internet searches were not about killing Christie.

Speaker 25 saying he made them after having lunch with a colleague who the defense said struggled with a head injury.

Speaker 67 He can't hear. He struggles with speech.
He struggles with walking.

Speaker 67 He uses a wheelchair. And immediately after that,

Speaker 67 we have a search for head injuries.

Speaker 25 The defense warned jurors to be wary of the evidence prosecutors did have.

Speaker 67 We know the physical evidence.

Speaker 67 And there is an enormous disconnect between that and the circumstantial picture

Speaker 67 the prosecution wants you to believe.

Speaker 25 In closing, the defense argued that if police couldn't figure out that Dan was Christie's stalker,

Speaker 25 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?

Speaker 25 Which is an odd defense.

Speaker 38 It is an odd defense.

Speaker 63 I don't, I mean, I think the stalking evidence was so clear that it was Dan that they didn't have much else.

Speaker 67 I'm telling you, Mr. Krug

Speaker 67 did not kill his wife. He did not commit these crimes.

Speaker 67 Period.

Speaker 25 After seven days of testimony, the jury got the case.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 25 No verdict after day one

Speaker 25 or the morning of day two.

Speaker 25 And then finally.

Speaker 59 Please rise for the jury.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 25 And that might be a bad sign.

Speaker 31 It made me really nervous.

Speaker 25 Because if they're avoiding you, maybe they're about to set him free. Yeah.

Speaker 31 I remember grabbing my

Speaker 31 family attorney's hand next to me, and we just held hands.

Speaker 59 We, the jury, find find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree

Speaker 25 guilty of murder stalking and criminal impersonation

Speaker 29 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

Speaker 25 nothing like he knew it was coming or like he didn't care i don't know he wore those masks very well

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 But she would have understood the calls coming from inside the house.

Speaker 33 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.

Speaker 33 And she could have safety planned in a way that could have saved her life.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Except, Google and Verizon took weeks. TextNow took nearly three months.
None of that came in time to save Christie.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 33 So we know there's a structure. It's just a matter of having companies prioritize those responses.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 33 She marshaled the support of law enforcement. She tracked every single contact.
Law enforcement wrote search warrants, issued those search warrants.

Speaker 25 And she's dead.

Speaker 33 And she still got killed.

Speaker 33 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.

Speaker 33 This legislation is homicide prevention.

Speaker 25 When asked about their response to Christiel's case, Google and Verizon told us they receive thousands of law enforcement requests each month.

Speaker 25 And neither company said stalking cases automatically receive any special attention.

Speaker 25 Google says requests are prioritized based on numerous factors, while Verizon says their usual policy is first in, first out.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 TextNow did not respond to our questions.

Speaker 25 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?

Speaker 25 She loved her. She loved them.

Speaker 27 She loved them. She wanted to protect them and she wanted them to be happy.

Speaker 31 I think the most important thing about Christie is

Speaker 31 that her memory lives on and we don't stop talking about her.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 31 And it's really hard to talk about her.

Speaker 31 But the stories and who she was

Speaker 31 is just really important to keep her alive however we can.

Speaker 25 That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

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