48 Hours - The Setup Murder Of Kristil Krug

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

A stalker sends menacing messages to a young mother before she is murdered. The investigation reveals a sinister setup. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My name is John O'Hare. I am a police officer with the Broomfield Police Department. Officer, how did this case begin for you? On December 14th of 2023, I was dispatched to a welfare check at the Krug household. Brumfield Dispatchez meeting. Hi there. My name is Dan Kroog. Dan Kroog was calling and asked that we check on his wife, Kirstiel. My wife isn't responsible. responding to text messages or phone calls.

Said that he had not been able to reach her for about three hours. We've had threats against us. We have both been targeted by a stalker. Dan said that this alleged stalker had made threats to both him and his wife, Christine. Which is why I'm nervous that she's not answering me. The first thing I did was walk right to the front door. Kind of peek inside, everything looked orderly, quiet.

I gave it a wild knock. My thinking at the time was it's very possible she's not even home, so I wanted to see if I could peek into the garage. Quickly realized that I'm not tall enough to see in those windows. I went back to my patrol car and I pulled it into the driveway so that I could get my push bumper close to the garage and use it as a step up. as a step up. I stepped up on it and looked in the window. I immediately see Kristiel apparently lifeless. She had some type of wound to the head.

151. Send medical. I got a female down in the garage. Roanfield police! Roadfield! Immediately I just checked for any signs of life at that point. Does she have a pulse? She does not. 151. I immediately started CPR. There was a stab wound on her chest. emergent, please. As the paramedics arrived, I opened the garage door, and a woman came up, and I believe this woman was Christel's mother. I arrived. I need you to stay out, please. I said, that's my daughter. She came around enough to me and said Christel is dead. It's just shocking.

You don't want that to be your reality. Oh, my God. This can't be true. This can't be true, can it? It was chaos. I heard screaming coming from the top of the hill. Hey, stay back, stay back, stay back, stay back. This is my house. I understand. They see a man come running down the hill. This is Dan.

This is her husband. This man just lost his wife. And he is beside himself. I'm with Dan and he's on the floor and he's crying. They all just kind of said, I can't believe this happened, he did it. The stalker did it. We were on heightened alert.

We were very, very concerned for Dan's safety. This is after Christel was murdered. You're worried that Dan may be next in this stalker's sights. Correct. We thought Dan Krug was next. The community was very alarmed. Is this a murder scene? There was a killer out there,

and we're going to go after him. Peter Van Sangell reports, the set up murder of the of Christiel Krug. It's a weird feeling standing there when somebody's being told, I'm sorry, but your loved one has died. Victim's advocate Heather Aates is trained

to comfort those in emotional agony, like Dan Krug, who dashed home from work and learned his wife, Christiel, had been found murdered in their garage in suburban Broomfield, Colorado on December 14, 2023. This man has been going to be going through a stalking case with his wife. He's being stalked as well, and now she's gone.

As investigators searched the crime scene for clues, Heather drove Dan to the police station, an officer's body camera recorded the ride. He was crouched over to the side of the passenger door, and it was very much, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I'm comforting Dan by rubbing his back. Dan and Christel had been married for 16 years.

The couple, both 43, had three young children. What did he say in the car? In the car, he was pretty focused on the kids. He was very adamant about wanting to be the one to tell his children. Under the command of Broomfield Police Chief, Ania Hempleman, investigators were doing everything in their power to find the killer. We immediately started doing interviews, talking to neighbors, canvassing. Several hours had passed since Dan Krug's emotional ride to the police station.

He had settled down, and he told detectives there was nothing out of the ordinary that morning. Mornings are very routine in the house. He said they got the kids to school, and Christiel seemed fine when he left for his job at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. While I was driving, my phone dinged. Dan said Christel texted him, asking if he could pick up one of the kids after school. But when he texted back and asked what time, he said Christel never responded. And that was weird.

So weird, so out of character for Christel, Dan called police and asked them to check on her. I got a female down in the garage. are not words that can describe but what you feel as a parent at that point. It's probably some parent's worst nightmare. These are some memories, aren't they? Christel's parents, Lars and Linda Grims Rood. She was an engineer.

She had incredible skills in math, sciences, chemistry, physics, but she also had the talents in the arts. She loved to just get out and live life. Throughout her life, Christel spent countless hours working with her dad on classic muscle cars in his colorful garage. We'd work on the cars, we'd raise the cars. Christel always felt very comfortable coming over here if we needed to talk or whatever. This is where we would sit and just enjoy each other's company.

But those fun, casual conversations suddenly turned disturbing in the fall of 2023. When Christel first told her father that she was not. living with intense fear. She sat here and told me that she was being stalked, and that just shocked me when I asked her, well, have you talked to the police? Christiel had called the police and met with Broomefield Detective Andrew Martinez. She came into the interview room and just kind of took over and just told me everything without hesitation.

Their conversation was recorded. I keep trying to remind myself, this is intending to be terrorizing. This is intending to scare me. Christel told Martinez that on October 2nd, 2023, she received an unsettling text from someone named Anthony, who said he would be coming to the area and asked if Christel wanted to hook up. And how does she respond to that? She did not respond. The following day, Christel told Martinez she got more texts from Anthony that included obscenities and said,

you should kill yourself, don't waste my time. Somebody who wants to hook up now is saying, go kill yourself. How do you interpret that second text? It's a pretty extreme reaction to not getting a response. Christel told Martinez she knew an Anthony from her past. Anthony Holland, a boyfriend she dated for about a year after high school and into college. The two broke up in the fall of 2000. Lars and Linda say back then Anthony made a good impression.

Very friendly, very courteous. He always had good manners. In 2002, out of the blue, Anthony contacted Christiel. According to Christiel, Anthony never seemed to take no for an answer, contacting her again in 2005, 2010, and 2016 via Facebook. He's like, we're meant to be together. I said, this is really creepy for me. You need to stop.

Christiel deleted Facebook and thought she'd heard the last of Anthony Holland. But then came the text in 2023. Like this was alarming. He's never said this kind of stuff to me before. Over the next two months, Cristille said she received alarming message after message through text and email. They included threats to her and Dan, including this disturbing photo of Dan,

getting out of his car at work, which prompted Christiel to first come forward and call police. A few days later, this text to her saw you at dentist, see you soon. That suggests he might be surveilling them both, right? Correct. This now is escalating.

The harassment is just constant, and she's just believing that every corner presents some sort of danger for her. To gather evidence and look at her, locate Anthony Holland, Detective Martinez was required to file search warrants with the phone and email companies, a slow process. Getting that information takes time. Sometimes those companies are reluctant or they slow walk getting that information to you, correct? Yes. Christiel had been searching for Holland on her own. She hired a private investigator and eventually

located him living in Utah, about 500 miles away. Christel shared her description. She shared her discovery with Detective Martinez, who chose not to contact Holland. I explained to Christel that we wanted to gather as much evidence as possible and ideally obtain an arrest warrant so when law enforcement does go to Anthony's door, we can take him into custody and not have to walk away. But Laris says Christel had been losing patience with the investigation. She made the comment that she felt they had abandoned her, that they weren't doing things aggressively enough.

Christiel had taken steps to protect herself and her family, including installing security cameras. She was scared. I said, well, this sounds serious enough that you need to start carrying. You'll use one of my guns for right now. Is this the very gun that she took wear? That is the actual gun that she initially then carried. Dan was also interviewed.

The threats were taking a toll on him as well. I went to the grocery store briefly on Tuesday, and someone behind me dropped, came. And I'm panicked. So what am I doing? I'm panicking. And I'm doing a fucking thought of protecting my wife. So I'm not doing good.

Dan told Martinez, the stalker had a nickname. name. We call him Kickman. Where'd that name come from? Kickman, Dan, had told me because the suspect email that was initially contacting Christiel was A. Holland Kicks at gmail.com. As the weeks went by and Martinez's investigation continued, Lars and Linda say the constant threats were ruining their daughter's life. It was just heartbreaking. She was just in tears. She was just like, what am I going to do? How am I going to live? Did she feel she was being hunted down by Anthony? Yes.

Christiel also shared her fears with siblings Jenna Erickson and Josh Adamson. She was terrified. Did she ever express to either of you the fear that this man, I think, is going to kill me? Yes. She said it's either going to be me or him that's dead, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it's not me. When Christiel Krug was found dead in her garage, Detective Martinez had only one suspect in mind. My initial assumption was that Anthony Holland had gone to her home and murdered her.

Within hours, local police descended on Holland's home in Eagle Mountain near Salt Lake City. So you were alone in the house. What do you hear? Pounding out the door. Like, big time. Big time. So I go to the door, I see like eight cops. I had no idea what was going on.

Where's your idea? It's in my room. Have you ever heard of the name Crystal Krug? They asked me if I knew Crystal Krug, and I told him I did know her. She was my very first girlfriend ever. When's the last time you talked to Crystal? Has it been a minute? It's been a minute, yeah.

When was the last time you had reached out to Christel? It was around 2014-2016. Anthony says he'd reached out to Christel on Facebook years before. What are you thinking? Why would they come all the way here to ask me about Christel? I thought it was for that message where I said I missed her. That's the only thing I could think of because I was like I haven't contacted her since then. They didn't tell you that Cristiel Crew had been murdered.

No, they did not tell me. Police were there to gather information from their suspect, not give it. They asked me, where I was that day? Can I prove where I was? Anthony had made a purchase just hours earlier at a coal store near his home. What'd you buy? The sweatshirt, this one right here. And he still had the receipt. The purchase was made at 12.16 p.m.

Investigators say Christiel was attacked around 8 a.m. Turns out that was one of the first of the first of the first of the first. most important purchases you have ever made. Because it was my alibi. Because there's no way I could have made it from Colorado back to Utah to buy the sweatshirt. It was an eight-hour drive. Anthony also showed police some of his employment records. They proved he'd been in Utah all along, never traveling to Colorado as the messages from

Kristiel's stalker led cops to believe. I had a bunch of receipts for my work showing the days that I worked. And they took those, took my receipt from Coles, and went to the squad car and made a phone call, came back in and told me I was free to go. Back in Colorado, Dan was still face-to-face with investigators. He told them his theory of the crime. So in my brain, the story that I have is someone came to the door.

Maybe she went outside to get a package and they must have come in. And she's a fighter. She's, she is strong. She would have fought. Earlier in the interview, Dan requested he tell the children what had happened to their mother. Your kids do not know yet. Okay. Are they here?

They're right in the hall. You want to tell them? You want to tell them? I just don't know. Okay. Watching their response is just heartbreaking. Investigators were working every angle. They checked those security cameras Christiel had installed on the house.

The doorbell camera, the side camera, and the side house camera were all manually turned off. Except for that one nest camera near the garage. Police canvassed Dan and Christel's neighbors in search of anything their home security cameras might have recorded. I saw you had a ring doorbell camera. Do you mind looking reviewing that camera? Oh goodness, absolutely.

If possible, you guys can review the last three to five hours. They also enlisted Randy Pylak, a digital forensic examiner with the Groomfield Police Department, department to take a closer look at those disturbing messages to Christiel. I think it was probably four hours, five hours after the murder was reported to us. Now that the stalking case had become a murder investigation, Pylak was able to file new expedited requests for information. He quickly discovered that messages from two accounts used to harass Christel

had been sent from the same location. Both came back to the same IP address. That IP address was the Colorado Department of Public Health Environment, which is where Dan worked. The messages to Christel threatening her, threatening her husband, had been sent using the Wi-Fi system at Dan's office. For the first time, detectives believed Kristiel's stalker could be sitting right in front of them. Could he be her killer as well? The entire air was just kind of evacuated out of our investigations room, and we realized that we need to focus on Dan and where he's been and what he's been doing. Martinez, along with Detective Jennifer King Sullivan, confronted Dan.

Who do you think killed her? I think he's kicking him. I think it's Anthony. What if I told you better? We had already spoken with Anthony, and there's no way that he was in town today. And I have nothing. Terrified to bring my children home. You're already terrified of?

If it wasn't him, I was it. But even as Dan claimed ignorance, the detective saw that his body language told a different story. What were you seen with Dan? He took a defensive posture. He sat back in the couch a little bit. He crossed his arms. Kind of like, I have nothing to explain. I think his head is spinning, thinking about what else are they going to find.

The mystery continues and... I ask you that's going to find. If you were watching these facts unfold in front of you in a movie, what would you say happened? There has to be some of the worst. Moments after detectives told Dan Kroog, they had eliminated Anthony Holland as a suspect. Dan calmly insisted he was not the one who stalked and murdered. his wife, Christile. I loved her.

There has to be so good. Martinez and King Sullivan didn't believe a word of it, and were struck by how stoic, how unmoved Dan was. He had no reaction and really no explanation. Help me make sense of it. I don't know. I'm not the one who does this. I don't have a narrative or a story that I can offer. Within minutes, Dan Krug had gone from sympathetic victim to murder suspect.

I get an inherited if you're putting together, but it alleges that I would do this to my children. I love that door my chintry. It's a pretty frightening idea that the biggest threat to you and your safety is actually living in the same house as you. We need to process you for physical evidence, okay? He knows that we're on to him. We just didn't have enough evidence at that point to take him into custody. On his way out, Dan kept insisting

the real killer was still on the loose, and he made a desperate plea. My best mother-hikers, mother, for Christmas. When did you find out that Dan was now a person of interest in this case. I think at his interview, so that same day when they held him, they held him pretty late. An autopsy revealed what happened to Christel. She had been attacked from behind with a blunt object.

Bludgeoned to death in the head and rolled over and then stabbed in the heart. With Dan, now the prime suspect, the detectives wanted to know more about his relationship with Christel. According to Christiel's parents, it wasn't good. She said, well, I'm sleeping on the couch, Mom. But you knew there was trouble in paradise, right? Yeah, and especially in those last few months. Christiel's family says those troubles were caused by Dan's fiery temper. What set him off?

It could be anything, but it was usually if he was losing control. Christel's sister, Jenna Erickson, says she could always tell when Dan was angry. His face would get really red when he was getting frustrated. I vividly remember seeing his face get red. They had a thing where they'd go, okay, walk away. You need to walk away. And so, you know, they were trying to manage it. But in the weeks before her death, according to her parents,

Kristiel was getting ready to leave Dan. She didn't want to have this marriage anymore. She had decided that she needed to get a divorce. As the detectives methodically built their case, more evidence was uncovered on Dan and Christiel's cell phones by digital forensic expert Randy Pylak, including texts from the morning of the murder. So on Christiel's phone, we see text messages to Lars, Detective Martinez,

and then a text message to Dan. The one Dan said he received while driving to work about picking up one of the kids at school. But Pylak discovered those texts had been set on a timer. It was a new feature on the phone Christiel had. Who do you believe pre-programmed those messages? Dan Kruhe. And he did it to do what?

To hide his actions. Pilak says the messages were pre-programmed before Dan left the house. And we believe Christel was deceased. That for him then would establish an alibi that, Well, I had already left and my wife is alive, right? She's texting me. Correct. All while Dan casually arrived at work.

Pylak discovered more damning evidence from Dan's phone. Internet searches like, what happens when you're knocked unconscious? Do people really go unconscious when hit in the head? And how hard for head trauma to go unconscious? All searches were the day before the murder. it was rather damning. Just two days after Christel had been murdered, detectives Martinez and King Sullivan

felt they had enough evidence to charge Dan Krug with stalking and murdering his wife. We begin following him. Cut up to the stop sign now. How many cars are we talking about? Probably eight cars. We're like, that's him. He's alone in the car.

Hey, be ready to pop that once he gets it in the park. We follow him all the way. to the grocery store. Pulling into King Super's parking lot. We wait for him to park. We quickly converge on his car. Go, go, go, go, go. Show us your hands.

Show us your hands. Hand on your face. Hands on your face! So we surround him, pull him out of his car, and tell him he's being arrested for the murder of his wife. I asked him just one question.

Do you want me to tell your kids that you killed their mother or do you want somebody else to? That's quite a line. That goes back to when he said he wanted to tell his kids that their mother was dead. After I asked that question, he just said that he wanted to speak with his attorney and then looked away from me. All right. Good luck.

And I shut the door and he went to the county jail. You get one leg up and then kind of swing around. I felt a huge relief. They got him. It felt like a burden had been living. that he had been arrested. And soon, Christine's family would come face to face

with the man detectives say murdered her. He looked right at me and smiled at me. And here, for the first time, Dan's side of the story. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding, horrors, hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me and Kailan Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey

through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious, check out Heart Starts Pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay curious. When Deputy District attorneys Kate Armstrong and Stephanie Fritz were assigned to prosecute Daniel Krug, they say they were struck by his downright stupidity in believing he could get away with murdering his wife by impersonating her ex-boyfriend.

The audacity with which he thought he could manipulate not only his family, his loved ones, but also the police department. And some of this is sophisticated, is it not? It's sophisticated, but not too sophisticated, because we were able to figure it up. The trial began in April 2025. When he first came in, he smiled at me. like he was saying, hey, thanks for being here for me. I believe my facial expression made it very clear that I was not on his side.

The prosecution laid out Christel's final hours of life for the jury. On December 14th of 2023, Christiel Krug started her day like any other day. She took her younger two children to school. And when she returned, Christel pulled back into her garage. She gets out of the car when she is attacked from behind. And did she ever see him approaching, do you think? Or was this an ambush?

It was an ambush. She had two or three skull fractures. As she's laying on the floor bleeding, he pushes her over, gets over her and stabs her just above her heart. And why do you suppose he had to do that vicious last stab? I think it was rage. I think it was control and power that he wanted to exert. over Christio. Dan had been losing that control for a long time, say prosecutors.

Their theory of the crime is that Dan sent Christio those disturbing messages in an attempt to drive her closer to him and not leave, hoping she'd see him as her heroic protector. It was not working. The stalking was not leaving her back to him. I think it then turned to, I'm still losing her. kind of that if I can't have you, nobody can. The prosecution says that in the last days of her life, Christiel had begun to suspect that her stalker was possibly her husband.

We know from Dan's own interview that she confronted him and said, I can't rule you out as the stalker. She said that right to my face, that she wanted to know if it was me. And I told her. He felt the walls closing in. Closing in. going to lose Christale anyway. He was going to be exposed as the stalker. So he did that last

fatal act and murdered her. Prosecutors say Dan tried to outsmart investigators, pre-programming those text messages on Christel's phone before he left the house, assuming he wouldn't be caught. Were we not able to discover that that was a delayed send text, it would have appeared as though Cristille was still alive when he left the house. At trial, the long list of digital evidence against Dan was laid out. The threatening texts, the emails, the internet searches. Also included that photograph of Dan arriving at his office, attached to a menacing email seemingly sent by Anthony Holland to Christel.

But there was one problem, according to the state's digital expert. Who took this picture, do you believe? Dan, Dan, took this picture. Pylak discovered that the phone, which snapped that photo, was in selfie mode using a timer. A fact that Kate Armstrong reminded the jury about in her closing argument. That's when the judge allowed cameras into the courtroom. The phone was propped on the back of this vehicle next to him.

The defendant took this photograph and then he sent it to his wife. We respectfully disagree. with the prosecution in this case. Defense attorney Philip Geigel argued the murder investigation was poor. The blunt object used on Christel's head and the knife used to stab her were never recovered by police.

The defense also zeroed in on the fact that Christel's phone was not tested for fingerprints or DNA. Why not the phone? The prosecution wants to be, well, you know, there may not be a lot to be found there. Well, you won't know if you won't try, Geigel said other forensic tests supported his claim that Dan is innocent. They submitted the chest swabs, and you know whose DNA wasn't there.

The person who lived in the house, the person who ate in the kitchen with them, the person who shared the living room, that idiot right there. There is absolutely no physical evidence on Mr. Krug's clothing. There's no blood found out on that car inside or out. It searched three times. In week three of the trial, the jurors began deliberations. After a day and a half, verdicts were reached. Please rise for the jury.

Judge Priscilla Lowe read the verdicts. We the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. We the jury find the defendant guilty of count number two, stalking, extreme emotional distress. Krug was also found guilty of stalking with credible threat, and criminal impersonation. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. And at that point, I think I started breathing again. Krug was later sentenced to life in prison

without the possibility of parole on the murder charge and an additional nine and a half years for the stalking and impersonation counts. But right after his conviction, in a video call from jail... How are you? Ah, been better. Daniel Krug told his family that the jury got it wrong, saying the real killer remained at large and that his children could be the next targets. I need them safe. I don't know where or who did this. Where he is or who he is. I need my children out of Colorado.

As Daniel Kroog began serving his life sentence, he continued making video calls to his parents and brother in the days immediately after his conviction. The man who viciously murdered his wife, terrorized his own children, and lied to everyone, was seeking sympathy from his side of the family. I'm probably sleeping like 16 hours a day because of the depression. I sleep, I read, and I cry. That's about it. Okay. Despite overwhelming digital evidence against him, Krug fell back to his old ways,

lying to his loved ones, now claiming he was wrongly convicted. They never produced a single piece, hard. His brother Jeremy gave Kroog a much-needed reality check that the foundation of the family's loyalty had started to crack. Support is dwindling. You know, mom and dad want to believe you very much. I want to believe you very much.

There's a lot that's come out. And as imaginative as I can be with finding explanations and ways to theorize how that, you know, this or that could have been the reality, some of it is beyond even my creativity. The case that ended with a murder had begun with stalking and criminal impersonation of Anthony Holland, which begs the question, what if Detective Martinez had acted on the information Christiel and the private investigator had uncovered? They should have found me right away. They should have found me.

They should have came to my house. They should have approached me. They should have talked to me. But Detective Martinez chose not to call, telling us he didn't have enough evidence to do so and was concerned a phone call could exacerbate the situation. Is this something where you've kicked yourself about this? This case has haunted me since it occurred. And the outcome of this case has haunted me for the past two years.

And if you could get in a time machine, perhaps you make that call today. Absolutely. And Christel's parents sympathize with Martinez and believe their daughter was doomed no matter what the outcome. of his investigation. Inevitably, I think he was going to kill her. When someone sets their mind to do something like that, and that's what the plan was, I don't think that would have stopped the murder from happening.

Christel's death has left a hole in the lives of those who experienced her love and joy for life. I've had lots of other girlfriends, and I've never been in love with anybody else like her. She was the love of your life. Yeah. Jenna hopes her sister Christiel's story will serve as a cautionary tale. If it can help just one other person who's in a dangerous situation like she was in,

that it gives them the strength to make a move because it can escalate and it can escalate really, really fast. What was lost when she was taken from us? Her light, you know? Light. That's a tough one to talk about because there's so much. I wanted to jump out of that car and say, hey, bye. Laura still passes his time restoring parts for vintage cars. That father-daughter hobby is now being passed down to Christiel's children.

They're in here. They run that same electric screwdriver and they can tear a carburetor apart. So in that way you're honoring her memory, aren't you? Well, that's the whole idea. Yeah, that's the whole idea. She would get such a kick out of seeing the kids doing the stuff that she was involved in. I look at my grandkids and I find a moment of peace because I see her.