48 Hours - The Snapchat Clue
Episode Date: November 6, 2022When his parents disappear, Chandler Halderson’s social media helps investigators unravel the case. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/pr...ivacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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ConstantContact.ca My name is Adam Duxter. I am a local news reporter and in the summer of 2021 I was working as a multimedia journalist for WISC News 3. News 3 Now in Madison, Wisconsin.
Madison is not New York City.
It's not L.A. where there's news happening all the time.
A missing person, especially a husband and wife, that would be news.
The Dean County Sheriff's Office shared this photo of Bart and Krista Halderson.
Instead, spending today interviewing neighbors.
There are too many unanswered questions.
You know, cars go off the road.
Things happen.
You know, there's a storm or there's a crash,
or X, Y, Z. You just don't know.
My boss was calling her or emailing her or texting her.
I was doing the same. I was texting Bart.
And there was just never any response.
I met Krista through work at Zimbrick Body Shop and then I met her husband through her
obviously and then they just did anything for anybody, even people they didn't know.
So I'm on the Krista side.
We are related through my dad's side of the family And we mostly saw each other in Wisconsin at our family cottage
cabin during summers and family reunions. They both gave 100% to raising their boys.
Mitchell was a little more outgoing, very easygoing. Chandler was a little more sensitive,
a little quieter. Her whole goal for her being a mom was,
and I'm quoting her, she said, I want my children to be the best men they can be.
The biggest concern for me was just figuring out where they are.
Police say the couple had planned to go to their cabin in Langlade County.
Our investigation began on July 7th when Chandler reported his parents missing.
We knew exactly what Chandler had told us.
We knew that his two parents were gone.
They had left for the Fourth of July weekend, supposedly to go to their cabin in northern Wisconsin.
I've never been assigned to a case where a couple is gone.
I've never been assigned to a case where a couple is gone.
We ask even more questions to try to get a story and get a timeline of when did the Haldersons go missing?
And everything was just happening so fast in those first couple of days.
When we first got the email saying that Bart and Krista were missing,
it didn't compute. Like, what do you mean they're missing?
Like, they went up to the cabin and it didn't come back.
Huh? Did you think
possibly they'd been in a car accident
and just hadn't been found?
I thought about that. Or I did
think about the boat.
Did something happen out on the lake?
All these stories are
swirling around and not making any sense.
And it's, you know, taking
weirder and weirder turns.
And we needed to search this area
because of how remote it is and what it is
and the access to water to see if we could find any evidence.
No way I would have ever, ever guessed
what was about to be revealed, never.
Nobody saw this coming. I'm going to go. Bart and Krista Halderson had everything a couple could want.
A beautiful home in Windsor, Wisconsin, and two sons they adored.
24-year-old Mitchell, who worked in tech, and 23-year-old Chandler, a college student living at home.
Chandler had big ambitions.
He talked of getting his IT degree, of his promising internship at an insurance company,
and was especially excited about a new job he landed at SpaceX,
founded by one of the richest people in the world, Elon Musk.
Everything seemed to be going well for the Haldersons.
So on Friday morning, July 2nd, when Krista just didn't show up at the office,
Dan Croninger remembers becoming concerned. How unusual was it for, number one, for Krista not
to show up for work, not to call and just not show up. How unusual. Extremely unusual.
Dan and Chris had not only worked together, they were close friends.
So when she hadn't said anything to me, I was like, well, that's kind of weird.
It wasn't something that she would ever do.
Dan says he texted and called her several times, but got no response.
Later that afternoon, Ian and his girlfriend drove over to the Holderson home.
A neighbor's security camera shows them arriving.
You know, knocked on the door, didn't hear anything, peered through the window.
The only thing that seemed weird was there was a coffee table on its side.
You looked through the door, it was kind of off to the right over by, they had a fireplace over there.
Then, Dan says, he walked over to the right over by, they had a fireplace over there. Then Dan says he walked over to the garage window.
I looked in, both cars were there.
I was like, why are both cars here?
And I was starting to go around the back of the house
and then Chandler came out the side door
and he came out in a towel saying,
oh, I just got out of the shower.
You know, hey, what's going on?
I was like, oh, we're just looking for Bart and Krista.
And he said, oh yeah, they went,
had to go up north this morning for an emergency up at the cabin.
Dan says he was relieved to know that Bart and Krista were at the family cabin.
Over the holiday weekend, he kept in touch with Chandler to see if he had heard from his mom and
dad. But he said, yeah, they don't have very good service up there. So you kind of have to wait till
the clouds clear before they get a message.
On Sunday, July 4th, Dan says Chandler called him and said he was bored and needed something to do.
So Dan invited him over to watch the fireworks and asked Chandler about his parents.
He mentioned that he talked to them and they're going to be back Monday.
All right, when he said that he had talked to them,
did he say he talked to both his parents or just his mom?
What did he say? Do you remember?
I don't think he was specific.
I mean, I was asking about his mom
because I knew she had a doctor's appointment coming up
that she really wanted to be at.
I think it had been rescheduled before.
But Krista didn't show up for work on Monday.
And again on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, July 7th, when there was still no word, Krista didn't show up for work on Monday and again on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, July 7th, when there was still no word, Dan knew something was wrong.
Now she's missed her appointment.
So now it's all out concern.
Right.
You know something's happened to her now.
Right, right.
Dan pushed Chandler to file a missing persons report that morning.
Chandler Halderson walked into one of our precincts to report his parents missing. Detectives Sabrina Sims and Brian Shunk with the Dane County Sheriff's
Office would lead the team to track down the missing couple. We had a lot of detectives Detectives assisting us with the caseload.
Their first stop, the Halderson home on Oak Spring Circle Drive.
So when you first got there, who was home?
It was just Chandler.
We're inside the house with him, and detectives are getting information outside,
and so we're either getting, you know, phone calls or text messages of, you know, hey, maybe ask about this.
We're walking around the house with him.
He's pointing out things at the house, things that were missing that his parents took when they traveled to the cabin. While deputies began interviewing neighbors and friends, Barbie Townsend, Krista's first cousin who lives in Southern California, knew only what she had seen on the news, that the Halderson's 23-year-old son Chandler had gone to the police telling them his parents were missing.
What does that mean? What does missing mean? And that they had gone up to our cabin, family cottage, and didn't return.
cabin, family cottage, and didn't return. Bart and Krista had not mentioned to co-workers or their older son Mitchell that they had been planning to go to the cabin that weekend. But according
to Chandler, another couple, who he didn't know, picked up his parents and drove them there.
The cabin was a remote, rustic lakeside retreat and a treasured family heirloom.
rustic lakeside retreat and a treasured family heirloom. Barbie and Krista's grandparents built it in the 1940s. You know, you start to think of crazy things because our cabin's up in the woods.
And so that's, we were worried that, are they being held hostage somewhere? Are they tied up
somewhere? The day after Chandler reported them missing, his brother Mitchell and his fiancée drove three hours up north to see if he could find any sign of his parents.
Why would they not call? Why wouldn't there be a text or something?
You know, your mind just starts to go down really murky trails because you're trying to figure out what's going on.
Hi there.
Hi there.
Are you guys, um...
The Halderson.
Okay, you are affiliated with them? Yes. The police met
Mitchell and his fiance at the cabin. Maybe we could just take a walk around and see you would
know the property probably better than we would. Prepared for the worst.
Sheriff's office anybody inside? Now it's your presence, bring yourselves down.
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When the Holdersons disappeared, it stunned everyone who knew them.
Barbie Townsend said neither her cousin Krista nor her husband Bart would just leave on a whim.
He was more structured.
She was the more nurturing, you know, indulging mom.
It was a wonderful combination.
She worked as a customer service representative for an auto body shop and loved art projects. He was a managing director for an international accounting firm and enjoyed woodworking.
They were 100% about the family. He was very involved in the scouting and all the things they did.
The Haldersons worked together on Father's Day in June 2021, less than a month before Bart disappeared.
Mitchell is smiling, and Chandler, who had a mild concussion from a fall, is wearing a neck brace.
Investigators, anxious to find out what had happened to Bart and Krista Halderson,
asked deputies from the Langley County Sheriff's Office to help Mitchell,
who brought along his fiancée, search the family's cabin,
a three-hour drive north of the family home.
When they got inside, it was dark.
There were no signs of Krista and Bart.
They also checked a shed.
The canoe was there.
It was obvious no one had been to the cabin in a very long time.
They're believed to be with another couple.
Someone else, at least.
Okay.
When Mitchell was with the police searching the family's cabin,
Chandler was on his own hunt throughout the neighborhood. Here he is, seen on video doorbell
cameras, going door to door, asking homeowners if they had seen or heard from his parents.
It's kind of difficult to track him down.
Adam Duxter, now with the CBS station WCCO in Minneapolis,
worked in Madison, Wisconsin at the time.
He immediately started calling his sources.
So we're waiting to hear back from the sheriff's office.
And my boss at the time, he was like,
well, you can't just sit around. You know, you got to go start shooting something. And so,
packed my gear in my car and drove out there to their street in Windsor.
He knocked on the Halderson's front door. The missing couple's son Chandler answered.
And so, I'm like, if you'd be willing, I'd love to do a quick interview. And he was like, yeah, I'll do that. But I don't want you to film me.
I don't want to be shown, but you can record my voice. So my last message I got from them,
they were going to White Lake for the 4th of July. And then that, their plan, or from to my knowledge,
they were going to Langlade County to a cabin, their cabin.
At the time, I got the sense that he was in shock.
This is someone who's roughly my age.
And so I'm thinking, like, yeah, if my parents just went missing,
he probably hasn't slept.
He's probably really nervous.
Alex Gravatt knew Chandler well.
I was roommates with Chandler for a little while. I called him Chaz.
The two friends shared an apartment from 2019 to 2020.
We grew up together and we played soccer together, did Cub Scouts together, and just hung out together.
He was a great swimmer, so I know that the swim team really got along with him.
Alex says his friend Chandler, who went by the name Chaz, could be a playful guy.
He was a goon, a hooligan in a lot of senses.
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, I mean, he would, so he would play pranks,
and he would make lots of jokes or poke fun at people.
Alex described Chaz as popular with women.
College student Catherine Mallander, known as Cat, was his longtime girlfriend.
He was a relatively attractive guy.
I mean, he looked good. He had great hair. He kept up on appearances.
According to Alex, when they were roommates, Chaz often bragged to friends about hooking up with different women behind Kat's back.
When she found out about it... She grilled him. She was like, are you seeing other people? And he just kept denying it.
But Kat remained suspicious and began tracking her boyfriend on social media.
Alex says Chaz became more secretive and moved back home with his parents.
And now those parents were missing.
Detective Shunk and Sims began follow-up interviews.
At that point, you know, what do we really have?
We don't know what we have.
Then they got a tip they desperately needed.
From the owner of a farm outside town. We received information
from someone that, yes, Chandler had been out to my property over Fourth of July weekend.
The owner was a friend of Chandler's girlfriend, Kat. The owner said she was with the couple at
her farm on July 4th. She told deputies she was surprised to see Chandler again the very next day,
and this time he was alone. And I saw him coming from the wood line. His car was parked,
backed up to the field. So of course, right from that interview, well, we want to go search that
property. As deputies began searching, detectives wanted to know why Chandler had never mentioned he had gone back to the farm by himself.
Police picked up Chandler and took him to the station.
What's going on?
Detective Brian Shunk asked him to once again describe the last time he had seen his parents.
It's Thursday morning.
I wake up. What time do you wake up?
Six.
Chandler said his dad Bart was at home working and that later he had dinner with
both parents.
That's where they told me while we were eating it they were going to go with their
friends and I was like, oh, cool.
And they said they were going to the cabin.
Yeah.
We're going up north.
While detectives questioned Chandler, deputies were out searching the farm and made a discovery that quickly changed the tone of the interview.
Listen to me.
This is the only chance you're going to have to tell us the truth.
Okay.
Okay.
What we...
Listen, listen.
I can't tell you what we know,
but we know you're not telling us the truth.
You need to tell the truth.
There's...
Listen, listen.
You need to tell the truth about what happened
and just tell us why it happened.
I'm not BSing you.
Okay?
So can we do that?
Okay, we're okay.
I'm the lawyer.
Chandler's request for a lawyer ended that interview.
Detective Sims remembers the moment she learned
what deputies told her they had found near that field.
You know, Brian and I were in the command post together,
and I said, what did you say?
You know, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.
They had discovered human remains.
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On Thursday, July 8th, 2021,
in the village of Windsor, Wisconsin,
the community struggled to make sense of the disturbing news.
The remains of an adult male had been found on a farm 20 miles from Barton Krista Halderson's home.
At this point, it's very early in our investigation.
Dane County Sheriff Calvin Barrett warned residents not to jump to conclusions.
I don't want to make any uncorroborated speculations at this time.
The gruesome discovery was made the day after Bart and Krista had been reported missing by their son,
and it was something detectives Brian Shunk and Sabrina Sims had never encountered.
The grass had been matted down,
and they followed it to a trail which led to the discovery of a male torso that was concealed with sticks and twigs.
That was really the moment, right?
It was huge.
I think of other death investigations or homicide cases we've worked, and I don't remember a time that I've worked a dismemberment case and what other evidence was found out
there we found some cutting instruments some that were hidden in a an old oil
drum some scissors pruning shears a broken bow saw and it was all in the
same wooded area
where the Halderson's son Chandler had been seen earlier in the week.
Detective Sims had a pretty good idea who the victim was.
Knowing in my gut that that was most likely Bart Halderson
and his son was seen in that area.
Police turned their full attention to Chandler Halderson.
He was now a person of interest and the prime suspect. While tests were being done to confirm
the victim's identity, detectives arrested Chandler and charged him with lying to them.
The arrest was based on him providing false information in regards to a missing person.
Krista Holderson's cousin, Barbie Townsend.
What did you think?
They arrested him for giving false information
about a missing person.
That was the first day that I started to suspect foul play
from their own son.
I checked my phone phone and I saw that
and it was that he had been arrested and it was pretty wild.
Alex Gravatt, his childhood friend, learned about it on social media.
My eyes got wide. I kind of just sat there for a second reading it. My first thought was if he's
being arrested for giving misinformation to the police, I didn't think that there was really much of a
chance that he wasn't involved somehow. But there's someone who had a hard time imagining
Chandler was involved, his girlfriend Kat. She spoke to police just before his arrest.
You don't think he had anything to do with his mom and dad being unheard from? police just before his parents.
For Christmas, they got him and his brother matching tool sets.
Like, come on.
Okay.
He cooks dinner for them.
They have root beer floats together. They play Mario Kart whenever his parents want to.
But on Saturday, July 10th, 2021, the victim found in the woods was identified as Bart Halderson.
It just changed everything. Like that moment changed everything.
Preliminary autopsy results would reveal Bart had been shot at least two times in the back.
And there was still the troubling question.
Where was Krista?
Krista Holderson remains a missing person, and we continue to ask for citizen involvement.
Krista's coworker, Dan Cronier, ran through all the different possibilities.
Did you at that moment wonder, like, maybe Chris was involved in this, too?
It had definitely crossed my mind.
I start to wonder, well, why is Chandler lying?
Is he covering for himself, or is he covering
for perhaps his mother?
Is she involved?
But the more investigators looked,
it seemed the only person Chandler Halderson
was covering for was himself.
You know, he just lied to everybody.
And in his lies, police started to believe they found a motive for murder.
For months, he had been telling everyone, including his childhood friend, Alex Gravatt,
that he was enrolled at Madison College during the 2021 spring semester.
Did you have any idea he had flunked out? He didn't tell you?
No. It was surprising.
Detectives believe his parents had no idea he wasn't in school.
They say when his parents questioned him about his transcripts, the computer savvy Chandler
Halderson crafted a chain of emails that seemed to come from the college. Chandler creates people
that work for Madison College and communicates via email with them. You know, Bart's on some
of those as well, talking to who he believes is employees of the school. And do any of those people actually exist? No.
In June 2021,
Bart Halderson called Madison College pretending to be Chandler
and got an answer he wasn't expecting.
I don't see that you were admitted in any program.
You said the IT degree is in there, right?
No, those are just classes.
You might have just took the classes but not be in the program.
Bart learned that not only had his son been lying about that IT degree,
but there was no internship with an insurance company either.
And remember that big job with SpaceX?
Turns out that was just another elaborate lie.
The delusional reality that he concocted, that is shocking to me.
According to detectives, Bart was planning to meet at the college with his son on Thursday, July 1st.
He did the college with his son on Thursday, July 1st.
Around 2 p.m., Bart, who was working from home, sent his son this text.
I'm ready whenever you are.
That text is believed to be the last message Bart sent.
Seven days later, Bart's remains were found.
Investigators got a search warrant for the Halderson home.
No weapon was found there, but a shell casing was discovered in the basement.
And several areas inside the house tested positive for blood.
Chandler, middle initial M, last name Halderson, age 23 of Windsor, is now being charged with first degree homicide, hiding a corpse and mutilating a corpse.
On July 15th, 2021, Chandler Halderson was formally charged with his father's murder.
Chandler is currently being held in the Dane County Jail.
I mean, I don't know what else to say.
Like, how could you do that to your father?
But where was his mother, Krista?
Chandler Halderson had lawyered up and wasn't talking.
But someone very close to him was. She had communicated with him that whole weekend.
That loyal girlfriend, Catherine Mallender, had a potentially damning piece of evidence about her boyfriend on the social media app Snapchat.
She actually consented to a download of her phone.
So that was a breakthrough.
How do you feel about allowing people to track you on social media apps? So that was a breakthrough.
How do you feel about allowing people to track you on social media apps?
Chat now with Erin Moriarty on Twitter.
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Chandler Halderson was charged with his father's murder,
but his mother's whereabouts were still unknown.
Lead detectives Sabrina Sims and Brian Shunk knew if Krista was alive, they needed to find her fast.
At that point, we were hoping for the best. It was one of those things where we just needed to push on.
It was one of those things where we just needed to push on.
Detectives turned to Halderson's girlfriend for help.
She had given them permission to download information from her phone.
Chandler had lied to her before and had cheated on her before.
And so she, you know, would track his location.
Kat had convinced Halderson to let her track his movements using Snapchat, the popular social media app, which allows users to send messages and share their location in real time.
And that was an agreement that, yes, you will have your locations on so I can see where you're going.
Detectives were most intrigued by messages posted early on the morning of July 1st,
the day Chandler Halderson and his father were supposed to meet with Madison College officials.
Halderson, whose online name was Chazzle Dazzle, messaged Kat at 7.30 a.m.
I hardly slept.
I'm sorry, B. Why?
I don't know.
Stuff hasn't really been going well for me lately, so I'm trying to plan for the next thing to, expletive, me over.
B, it's gonna be okay. Yeah, I just had a great future planned, and it's falling apart.
According to detectives, the tone of those messages worried Kat. So two days later, when Kat checked Snapchat and noticed her boyfriend's avatar, that's Hubby on her screen,
indicated that he was nearly 25 miles from home, Kat saved the image to her phone.
It was a Snapchat screenshot of Chandler almost nine in the morning out by the Wisconsin River.
Detectives Sims and Shunk took us to that location on the river where they had hoped to find Krista.
So where are we exactly? What would you call this area?
It's the Wisconsin State Lower Riverway.
It's the Wisconsin State Lower Riverway.
And it's a familiar place to the former high school swimmer Chandler Halderson,
close to his favorite swimming hole.
This is him at the same place in a photo taken a year earlier, holding a large knife.
Law enforcement throughout Dane County searched the wooded area.
And how long was he here?
45 minutes, I believe.
Just keep in mind in July, but it was definitely far thicker than what you're seeing here now.
Still no sign of Krista Halderson.
But search teams refused to give up.
Let's go hit one more area.
And that was where they ended up discovering the remains.
And what exactly did they find there?
They ended up finding two legs cut into different sections.
DNA tests confirmed it was Krista Halderson. The concerned son who had reported his mom and dad missing
was now charged with both of their murders. Alderson, the concerned son who had reported his mom and dad missing,
was now charged with both of their murders.
Krista's cousins were horrified.
You couldn't write this.
It just wasn't anything that you could possibly come up with in your head.
How do you make sense of it?
We don't. And that's sense of it? We don't.
And that's the hard part.
We don't have a why.
In January of 2022,
at the Dane County Courthouse,
Chandler Halderson went on trial for the murder of his parents.
All right, for the jury.
He was also facing charges
for lying to the police
and for mutilating and hiding their bodies.
Our job is to, over the course of the next couple of weeks, present evidence to show you the path of what we believe happened.
Assistant District Attorney William Brown.
That Chandler Halverson killed his parents, dismembered their bodies, and hid them around southern Wisconsin.
Prosecutors laid out a motive.
They say Chandler murdered his parents when his lies were about to be exposed,
and that for months he had been trying to hide the truth from them.
Among the evidence, those fake email accounts he created.
No one uses a Gmail account as their official Madison College email. No. And his fictitious internship with an insurance company.
I found no record of that person working for American Family.
Investigators believe the murder weapon was a semi-automatic rifle that had been hidden in a
barn at that farm where bart's remains were discovered good afternoon sir could you please
state your name and then spell it out andrew smith how do you spell it alpha november delta
romeo echo whiskey the rifle came from this man andrew Smith, who testified that he was in the military when he met
Halderson online. How did you meet Chandler Halderson? Playing video games while stationed
in Germany, sir. Halderson had wanted a gun. Smith testified he had no idea what Halderson
wanted to do with the weapon. And in June 2021, he gave him that semi-automatic rifle as a gift.
I'm going to give it to someone who might actually appreciate this weapon and take care of it. In 2021, he gave him that semi-automatic rifle as a gift.
I'm going to give it to someone who might actually appreciate this weapon and take care of it.
And nearly 480 rounds of ammunition.
How did Chandler react when you gave him the gun?
Oh, he was happy.
What do you mean? But how do you know he was happy? How do you know that?
Because he had a big smile on his face when I had given it to him as a gift.
But the most anticipated witness in this trial Good morning.
would be Halderson's girlfriend.
Did you verbally answer yes to the oath?
Yes.
Who gave police that Snapchat screenshot.
What is that?
A screenshot of Chandler by the Wisconsin River.
What do you make of the prosecution's case against Chandler Halderson?
See more evidence at 48hours.com
Could you please state and spell your name for us?
Catherine Melander
For three hours, Kat Melander sat on the stand
telling the jury about the young man she thought she knew, Chandler Halderson.
Did you go on a lot of dates together?
Yeah, we would grab dinners, have movie dates,
just sit at home and watch movies, go on walks quite often.
Kat told the jury that she was working on July 1st when authorities
believed the murders happened and didn't see her boyfriend in person that day. But you weren't with
him? I was not with him. Did you know that Bart and Crystal Halderson had died? No. According to
investigators, Halderson asked Kat to bring a few cleaning supplies to his home
the following day. He told her he had stepped on some broken glass from the fireplace.
She brought him a Swiffer mop and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Kat, did you have absolutely
anything to do with cleaning anything up or their disappearance.
Investigators say there's no evidence that Kat had any involvement in the murders.
They believe Chandler Halderson acted alone.
Prosecutors showed the jury police video from inside the Halderson home.
These walkthrough videos will document the home
as is. At first glance, it seemed neat and clean, but test results revealed what appeared to be
blood. Is that all blood that it's reacting to? This could be blood that it's reacting to, yes.
And that appears that there's been some wiping or cleanup. For Barbie Townsend,
the most disturbing part was when the jury was shown a view of the Halderson home
from a neighbor's security camera. I was talking to one of my cousins. We said one of the images
that is going to be seared in our minds is when they showed that video of the window.
Flickering window from July 2nd.
And it was the flickering glow from the fireplace for like hours.
That is haunting, knowing what was happening.
A forensic expert testified that more than 200 bone fragments
were discovered in the fireplace.
There's a white area in the middle of that burnt. Based on my training experience, that appeared to be bone. Holderson's defense attorney,
Catherine Dorrell, did not address the bone and blood evidence found in the home,
but insisted that did not mean her client was the killer. Chandler Halderson did not murder his parents. He is not guilty of those
crimes. She reminded the jury there were too many unanswered questions. What happened to the
Haldersons? What happened in that Halderson's home? You just aren't going to know what happened.
Alderson's home. You just aren't going to know what happened.
Chandler Alderson himself didn't testify, and his defense didn't call any witnesses.
You have to go back and look at everything.
Instead, attorney Crystal Vera closed the case and urged jury to find reasonable doubt. She admits Halderson told a lot of lies,
but she argues there isn't enough direct evidence to tie him to the murders.
I guarantee you that the 12 of you that are going to go back and deliberate are all going to have 12 different theories on what happened. And that's a problem.
I'm asking you to find him not guilty.
A first-degree intentional homicide.
Prosecutors had the final word.
This is a first-degree intentional homicide.
You cannot shoot someone in the back.
You cannot chop them up.
You cannot scatter their remains
and come to any other conclusion.
And there is only one person who did those things here.
And that is Chandler Halderson.
We're asking you to find him guilty.
Thank you.
It didn't take long for the jury to decide.
Breaking news.
In just about a little over two hours,
a jury has reached a verdict in the Chandler-Halderson case.
We, the jury, find the defendant Chandler M. Halderson
guilty of first-degree intentional homicide as to Bardet-Halderson,
guilty of providing false information about him,
guilty of mutilating a corpse,
guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, guilty of mutilating a corpse, guilty of providing false information. Guilty of mutilating a corpse. Guilty of first-degree intentional homicide.
Guilty of mutilating a corpse.
Guilty of hiding a corpse.
Guilty on all eight charges.
I think it was just overwhelming from all the work that we put in on it.
In March 2022, at his sentencing hearing,
Good afternoon.
2022 at his sentencing hearing. Good afternoon.
Halderson, who had been silent during his trial, surprised everyone by indicating he finally had something to say. Mr. Halderson wishes to make a statement.
Your Honor, I want to take this opportunity to state my intent to appeal my convictions.
If there are any lawyers listening and willing to take on my appeal,
if there are any lawyers listening and willing to take on my appeal,
take a moment to please reach out to me.
It's not that I do not have feelings.
It's that I was warned to not show them due to the scrutiny of this case.
Thank you.
What was your reaction when he had the chance to speak and all he did was ask for a lawyer to take an appeal?
What was your reaction? I was actually disgusted.
I just couldn't believe it.
Like, you can't even say I'm sorry.
We are adjourned.
Thank you.
Halterson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
When do you miss them?
Oh, I think about them just about every day.
Really?
Yeah. We're building a pond in our backyard.
You know, they would love to see that and love to be a part of it.
Mitchell Halderson, Bart and Krista's oldest son, is now living with an unimaginable loss.
Barbie shared a text and this photo that Krista sent to the family just three months before she died.
Happy Easter. Yes, the boys and their women.
Mitchell is still at Epic Systems and will turn 25 this year. Yikes. Chandler is currently interning with American Family Insurance as an IT administrator,
but his other degree, sustainability management, has given him an edge. You see in her text
how proud she was of her boys and how 100% completely believing Chandler. She can't help but wonder what would have happened
if Alderson had just been honest with everyone.
If he had just gone and thrown himself at the mercy of his parents,
what do you think Kristen and Bart would have done?
They would have helped him.
They definitely would have confronted him on it,
but after the confrontation and the truth-telling,
would have come the grace how do we go forward
how do we help you how do we get your life back on track they would have helped him
It was deemed unsolvable prior to my involvement.
Very small amount of DNA.
Just a speck of a speck.
Decades later, can it help this expert catch the killer?
And I scream, today's your day, Rock. 48 Hours, Saturday on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.