Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags: Dishonor Thy Father and Mother

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

On July 1, Bart and Krista Halderson decide to go to their lakeside cottage...at least that's what their son, Chandler, says. Six days later, the 23-year-old reports his parents as missing. An investigation ensues, and a series of lies is uncovered. Lies that start long before Chandler Halderson says he parents went on a trip. Halderson is now charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating and hiding a corpse, and giving false information to authorities. Police say Halderson killed his parents and dismembered their bodies after Bart and Krista discover their son's untruths. Today, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan breaks down the gruesome details surrounding this case, including how police believe Halderson burned his parents' skulls in the fireplace. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. You've worked your entire life to make a home, to create a family, maybe even put away enough money to have a lake house somewhere where you can get away. Get away from all of the everyday, the grind. But suddenly your life ends brutally at the end of a rifle. And then your body is dismembered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.

Joining me today is my good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Joining me today is my good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, what can you tell us about this case today? 23-year-old Chander Halderson is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating and hiding a corpse, and giving false information to authorities. Now, the tension between Halderson and his parents began after it was discovered that he had been lying about a variety of things,

including attending Madison Area Technical College. It was Halderson who first reported that his parents were missing. He told police that they had intended to spend the weekend at their lakeside cottage. But according to Chandler Halderson, they did not return as expected. That missing person report was made at approximately 1130 in the morning. He also told them that maybe they decided to go to a casino. He said their phones were off or they had no reception or maybe they were on a boat having some fun. What we find out is Bart and Krista Halderson are missing because their son has

murdered them and dismembered the bodies. Joe, there was so much deception in this case and that really caused a problem with the investigation. When you have so many lies that are being told, what do you do? How do you start an investigation like this? It's very difficult, Jackie, when you begin to think about it. It's one of these things where you, as an investigator, you begin to look at it, and you see it's almost like fishing line that gets tied in this massive knot. Some people call it a bird's nest. And it's your job to go in there and begin to kind of take this thing apart very carefully.

You don't want to tear it. Tear the you don't want to pull it apart to the point where you break it into pieces. You want to try to unravel it so that you can understand the timeline, because that's what this is all about. You know, with this young man, he was specifically lying about timelines. And time is, as investigators, is the most important thing that we possess. It is the greatest asset that we have in any death investigation in particular for a variety of reasons. You know, if you look at it from the forensic standpoint, you begin to think about one of the main questions they ask a death investigator is, how long, in fact, has the individual been deceased?

Well, when you have witnesses, and in this case, you have a son that possesses what you hope is firsthand knowledge, if he is giving you bad time information, then everything begins to get twisted. But here's the reverse of that. When you begin to, when you finally get your hands on a body, for instance, and you begin to examine the body, the science says otherwise, okay, relative to the timeline. And that's one of the things that we'd look for. And many times criminals don't think about that. They don't think that the science can actually trip them up at the most simple level of science. You know, when we begin to talk about postmortem changes and decomposition and all those sorts

of things, that's when the science doesn't marry up with a narrative that a potential perpetrator is trying to sell to us. So we know that Chandler Halderson first reported his parents missing at 1130 that morning, and he said they could be with friends. He didn't know where they were. So the police started there. Where do they go next? Since we don't have an idea who the couple is, do they go to the home, to the farm that

they were supposed to be at? Do they start looking for bank records? I mean, how do you start to form that timeline? Well, you know, you want to reach out to any of the principals that are in the life of the missing individual. And in this particular case with Krista specifically, her co-workers had become concerned over the fact that she hadn't turned up at work. And, you know, she's apparently very diligent in what she does. She doesn't, you know, not come to work. So that is a head-scratcher for them.

She hadn't requested any kind of time off at that point in time. And here he is. He's telling this story that, well, first off, the story he said is that they had left with a mystery couple, okay? That they were going to this late cottage that the family had. And he didn't know who the couple was, all right? How can you do that? You live with your parents, you don't know who they're going off with. And when her co-workers came to the house, they looked in the garage and they saw that both of the cars were there. So that was kind of a head scratcher for them. And then Chandler puts forth also that the family, that his mom and dad had to go to the lake because of an emergency.

They were going there to check on the cottage in order because there had been a big storm that had come through and they were going to go do repairs. And then this story just becomes bigger and bigger and bigger all along. And this is the trick, isn't it? If you're trying to stay convincing when it comes to investigators, the more you add on to this, you can't remember the lies that you've already told. And so this is going to make alarm bells go off with the cops at any moment in time. And you have to be very, very careful if you're the perpetrator and it distracts you, doesn't it? It distracts you from what the reality is versus what the story is that

you're trying or the story that you're trying to sell them is. So it's kind of an odd situation to be in. The first lie when Chandler reported that his parents were missing. Again, I just mentioned that, I know, but it's really important because his report was made on Wednesday, July 7th. That was when Chandler reported his parents missing. Again, 1130 that morning. But the last time that Bart and Krista Halderson were seen was July 1st, 2021 at their home. You would think that there would be more concern with the fact that your parents did not come back when they said they were going to before six days. Yeah, you would think so, Jackie, that you would have contact with them. Now, Chandler's got a brother, an older brother that doesn't live

at home. He's out on his own. This young man lives with his parents. He has an intimate relationship with them from a familial standpoint. He kind of knows their comings and goings. That's why it's so odd about this mystery couple that they were supposed to have gone off with that he can't come up with a name for? How can you not keep track of your parents' timeline? And why is it that you would wait six days, Jackie, six days to report your parents missing? I mean, these are people that he sees day in and day out. He knows what his father does for a living. He's an accountant. He knows his mom's schedule. He's fully aware of what's going on.

And here's another wrinkle. And this is kind of interesting that, you know, it's kind of a head scratcher knowing what we know about Chandler's father. Chandler had put forth a narrative as well that his mom and dad had gone to a casino. Well, just let me tell you, Bart Halderson, guess what he did for a living? He was an accountant. And according to his friends, the people that were, quote unquote, in his intimate circle, this guy knew every single cent that he had. He didn't spend money at all. Now, for somebody that holds on to money like that, that is fully aware of what they have in the bank, going off to a casino rather spontaneously seems a bit frivolous, doesn't it? It does.

And what compounds this web of lies is that Halderson told the police that he had messages between himself and his parents while they were gone. Messages are easily traced. You would think that people nowadays would have an understanding. This is not like this took place two decades ago, where back then text messaging and everything was rudimentary compared to what it is like now and tracking of phone devices and all of those sorts of things. We are in a connected universe now. And this case is a prime example of the lack of awareness that an individual has relative to how they can be tracked, not just with the messages that they're sending, but also

the movement of a phone. You know, and to keep this in mind, both Krista and Bart's phones were nowhere to be found, at least initially. They couldn't track them. They didn't know where they were. As a matter of fact, one of the messages or one of the pings that they had came back from a county which they had not been visiting, that they did not regularly go to. And so from Jump Street, the police were suspicious at that moment in time. Jackie, I got to tell you, as a death investigator, one of the most overwhelming tasks that we have is anytime we have a case where a body or bodies have been dismembered. And the reason it's

so difficult is the fact that there's always the potential that you're going to have multiple scenes with a case like that. What can you tell us about the evidence in this case? One of the biggest clues that came forward, Joe, to help the police solve this crime is that even though Chandler Halderson told police that he did not have any idea where his parents were, that he had not been to the family cottage, we now know that he had been. A witness came forward after the couple was reported missing to tell police that Chandler was seen coming out of the woods by the cottage house. And that gave the police a place to start searching and is in that search that they found the remains or partial remains, I should say, of Bart Halderson. You know, with Chandler, Jackie, he claimed that he had no idea as to the location of his parents. But let's keep in mind that several witnesses had actually placed

an individual that looked similar to Chandler in these specific areas. I think one area was near what's referred to as the Wisconsin River, where he was kind of wandering back and forth between a roadway and the river, presumably to look for a place to deposit remains. There was also a vehicle that fit the description of one of the family's vehicles there at the scene with, now get this, with the hatchback open. And he was seen walking away from the vehicle with, now get this, with the hatchback open. And he was seen walking away from the vehicle with a backpack on his shoulders. And so anytime you begin to see this

kind of activity and it sticks in the brain of a witness, that could be very damning, but it can also be a major help to the police. Because keep in mind, at this point in time, when you walk into an investigation like this, you don't really know which way the wind is blowing, particularly if you have a primary suspect witness like this son who is giving you bad information all the way along. The key here is discovering physical information, whether it would be, say, gunfire-related evidence, blood evidence, instrumentalities, or specifically human remains. We know that the first piece of evidence that the police came across was a tarp covered in blood, and inside that tarp was Bart Halderson's body. So with the discovery of that, that gave the police the impetus to get a search warrant to search the entirety of the property and other related properties.

So let's start with the tarp, Joe. What all is that going to tell us? Well, you know, Jackie, a lot of people don't understand you. And particularly if you listen to any kind of trial, any kind of testimony from trial, you cannot simply go up on a stand as a forensic witness and say, I saw blood at the scene. You have to jump through several layers in order before you can get to blood. So one of the things they would have done with that tarp is they do what is referred to as a presumptive test. And that's a field test that you can do out of the scene. You look at the tarp, and you might see a dried red area or brown.

Sometimes it appears brown. Sometimes I've even seen it look like milk chocolate. And you swab that area, and you do a test. At that point in time, you say, okay, yeah, this is blood. The chemistry is telling me this is blood. But you can't go any further than that without doing another test. And that is a test where you test it to see if it is actually human blood because it could be an animal. Maybe it was a deer.

Maybe it was a dog. You have no idea. And so once you find human blood, then you have to think, well, we've got people that are missing. Is this blood tied back to the individuals that are missing in some way? And of course, it turned out to be Bart. Now, you had mentioned that they found Bart's body. Well, they didn't actually find the totality of his body. They found his torso and his torso. It was missing limbs, Jackie.

So, you know, can you imagine you're a police officer and you have no idea what to expect? And then suddenly you recover the body that is missing limbs. It's missing a head. And as it turns out, had a couple of gunshot wounds in it as well. That was the first indication of the gruesomeness of this case. At that time that the father's body was found, Krista Halderson's body was still missing. And we still do not believe that full remains of Krista have been found. The parents were dismembered and brutally dismembered. Explain to me, Joe, what he used.

How is that going to be done?. How is that going to be done? How difficult is that going to be done? And what is the evidence that is going to show up on the body to let us know which instruments were used? I want our listeners who are just really bright, you wouldn't believe some of the comments I get from folks about what we talk about on Body Bags. I know that you guys are going to understand this. When you think about a body and you're taking a body

apart, what are you doing? Well, you're creating more evidence, aren't you? And it's not just the marks that you leave on the body. It's what you leave behind all of the blood evidence, because it's hard to keep blood evidence, for instance, contained. I mean, how many of us have spilled a glass of milk before? It goes everywhere, doesn't it? Well, blood's no different. You're going to have a shower of blood all over these locations where you're attempting to dismember body. And then you're going through bone, Jackie. And we do know that he used a saw, a hand saw. And not only did he use a saw, Jackie, they found broken saw blades, which means he went through several iterations of the saw. You know, he's attempting, and because the bone, human bone is so robust, if you don't

have the right tools in order to take it apart, it's going to be problematic. So he actually broke a couple of blades while sawing through the remains of his parents. And so that's going to leave telltale marks on the bone. And that's where we call in people like tool mark examiners, people that are criminalists, and they can actually microscopically match up marks on the bone that are created by metal objects like teeth from the saw. And every saw, I urge anybody at home, if you have a hacksaw, for instance, it's going to look different than, say, a limb saw. Or the saws that we use, for instance, in the morgue.

I mean, how many of you watch a show like Dexter or something like that and you hear the little buzzing sound, that high-pitched buzzing sound for a bone saw? That's called a striker saw. We use those in the morgue, and that's how we open, say, for instance, the head. It's an agitating saw, like a cast saw. So those teeth marks are going to look different, particularly microscopically. So anytime you apply an instrument to a body, it leaves a specific marking on the body, much like a bullet has specific markings.

And it's something that can be tied back to the instrumentalities that are being used. We do know that they found scissors that had blood, bone, and DNA on them. We do know that they also found the aforementioned saw with the handle and the broken blade. Jackie, they found bolt cutters. Can you imagine that? Bolt cutters were used as well. And an ax. So you have all of this instrumentality that is literally bathed in the parents' DNA.

And then to boot, after the dismemberment takes place, he has to deposit these remains somewhere. So at the end of the day, the remains are found dispersed in a variety of different locations. I think in total, almost six maybe, with one of them actually being the family home. But of course, the most gruesome thing is yet to follow, what actually happened in the fireplace, Jackie? Well, that would be the discovery of the father's skull inside the fireplace. It is believed that Halderson burned his parents' heads in the fireplace. That is apparently what had happened. The fire in this fireplace, according to the arson investigators, got so very hot that the bone began to fragment. And when you look at fragmented bone that comes about as a

result of burning, it's a very interesting presentation. When it kind of cracks apart, it looks like a matrix. It's like a spider web looking appearance. And you'll generally get this. It's very pronounced in burned bone. If it doesn't pulpify, that means go down to powder. It begins to kind of break apart. And you can see this webbing that it appears like within the interior of the bone itself. Now, I want our listeners to really understand this and kind of grab hold of this. A crematory, if you've ever had loved ones that their remains have been taken care of by funeral home and they've been cremated, it takes 1,800 degrees of sustained heat in order to render down a human remain. And that's with a constant fuel source, which, of course, is natural gas in most cases. This is going into the line that powers the crematory.

And that's sustained. And keep in mind, a cremation unit is actually all contained. It's not like an open hearth fireplace. So this is what this young man would have allegedly had to have done. Can you imagine, Jackie? You're having to sit in front of a fireplace. You've got your father's head, potentially your mother's head. You build a fire in the hearth, a hearth that you've sat around as families, maybe on Christmases, and you begin to burn wood in order to fuel the fire. And you have to constantly tend this fire as these heads are literally cooking down before your eyes. And this is a big takeaway for me. On the right side of the fireplace, there is a large black stained area.

And this is quite horrific. The fire investigator said that was an indication of liquefied fat that had rolled off of the bodies and had stained that metallic grate that holds the wood in place. And presumably, that's where the head or heads would have been rendered down. Now, apparently, there was an attempt made to push. There's an ash trap in the base of the fireplace. And the individual had opened the ash trap and pushed these ashes down into the ash trap. And they had fallen behind the wall. It's like this catch area that they had. And you would not believe what the investigators had to go through in order to retrieve these fractured remains. They actually had to call a forensic anthropologist out to the scene to sift through this ash that they're trying to collect.

It is a major, major undertaking, Jackie. When you talk about rendering down the bones, Joe, and you talked about how robust bone is. What kind of temperatures are you talking about that he used to break down the bone? And it's not like paper. It doesn't just, oh, there's heat and it turns into ash. Talked about sustained temperatures. But did he pound? Did he grind the skull down? I mean, how do you actually get it down to powder?

Will fire actually just do that? I think that it probably could over a protracted period of time. But listen, if you don't have a contained space where you can hit that sustained temperature of 1800 degrees, remember in a crematory, they're not tending remains. They're not having to add fuel. And it's just as I've stated, it is a sustained constant heat until these remains become what are referred to as cremains. In this particular case, he would have had to or the perpetrator would have had to have sat in front of the hearth and maintain this heat. So if you cannot attain that 1800 degrees, Jackie, you're going to have to work with a lower heat and a longer period of time. I cannot even begin to fathom how long he had to sit there and tend that fire

and continue to add fuel to that fire in order to keep the sustainability going where you can begin to render it down. And to your question, I think that's a fantastic question. Would you have had to have pulpified the remains? Yeah, I think that you would probably have to. And the question is, would you have the will to? Do you have the ability to take an instrumentality like a hammer or maybe even a sledgehammer or maybe even your foot and then take the mortal remains of your parents out of there and stomp them down or beat them down until they become pulverified. You know, in its totality, when you begin to look at this case, you can see how much activity is involved in this.

You know, we're talking about the disappearance. We're talking about the murder, the homicide. And then we're talking about dismemberment. And as I previously stated, Jackie, yeah, I mean, the idea here is that everywhere you go, even going back to my favorite forensic scientist of all time, Edmond LeCard, who stated that every contact leaves a trace. He said that over 100 years ago. This is a perfect example of that happening here. Every contact left a trace in this case. Well, I think the obvious answer here is that Halterson

contacted his parents in just about every location of that home. DNA and blood found throughout the home. Police do believe that the parents were shot in the home with the DNA that was found. It was even found on his shoes and in the walls. How did that part of the investigation progress? You know, once the police had a search warrant into the Halderson home, they really took their time once they were in there. And keep in mind, when you have a search warrant to go through a home, it gives you license to be in there for a protracted period of time. You can take your time. It's a controlled environment, and you want to be very, very careful.

But through their care in this investigation, what the police discovered was, first off, they found mom and dad's phone. They were hidden away. And I think, if I remember correctly, they were hidden away on a shelf beneath an old pair of shoes, if I'm not mistaken. But the other thing that they found were several spent casings, which the caliber was 7.62 by 39, which if folks are familiar with firearms, that's actually the same round that an AK-47 platform or an AK platform utilizes. In this case, when the police began to search through the home, they pulled back part of the wall that was kind of hidden, and they discovered what turned out to be an SKS rifle that actually fires the same shell casing that they found, the same ammo that they found

with the spent brass at the scene. And so that was a specific tieback to these injuries that Bart had sustained. He had the forensic pathologist actually testified that one of the rounds traveled through his spine, smashed it, and cut through his spinal cord. Quite horrific. There's evidence that there was an attempt to clean up, but as we know, it doesn't matter how much you clean up nowadays. We're going to be able to find, the forensic community is going to be able to find blood. In this case, they did.

They found a treasure trove of blood at the scene. And as you rightly mentioned, Jackie, this is a real interesting point here. They found Bart and Krista's blood droplets, and they identified those through DNA on the exterior of a pair of shoes there. But guess what they did? They swabbed the interior of a pair of shoes there. But guess what they did? They swabbed the interior of the shoe. And guess what the only DNA was that they found on the interior of the shoe? That was Chandler's.

And so you've got this kind of odd marriage between a son and his parents in death where their evidence is being borne out in shoes that he utilized as he was taking their bodies apart in their home. You said something very specific there, Joe, talking about blood droplets. One of the things that I have learned from listening to you and Nancy Grace is there's a difference in the way blood falls. Can you explain that to me? Yeah, absolutely, Jackie. We'll get, you know, you can have various forms of blood staining that take place.

You have like a dynamic form, a very dynamic form where we measure velocity, where we'll talk about low velocity. And if you think and kind of break this down for you, you think about low velocity blood staining, that's going to be where someone, let's say, for instance, is punched. Okay. That's about as much velocity as a human punch could sustain, or maybe a stomp. Okay. The blood droplets will be rather big. Then you go up to a medium velocity. Okay. And the medium velocity is going to be, say, if an individual is struck with a bat or they're hit with a machete or something like that, where you can leverage force. All right. That'll be medium velocity. And then you have high velocity, which is this kind of fine particulate

or histamine-like spray that comes off. And that's generally associated and is almost always associated with gunfire. And so those are the three types of dynamic blood staining that we have. Now, you do have other types. You have this kind of passive dripping. Say, for instance, back to somebody being punched, if you have a bloody nose, and many people have, as you're standing there and the blood is falling from your nose, that's kind of a passive droplet. The droplets remain large and that sort of thing. And then you have transfer blood, which is where you brush up against something or you grab something and blood is transferred onto a surface.

So all of these types of blood droplets and blood staining are very specific. And somebody that is a blood expert can actually kind of ferret through this and understand this, and they can actually tell a tale. So, if you have blood droplets on a shoe, say, for instance, in this case, the thing that you want to think about, well, we know that there was a firearm involved, right? So, is it a high velocity blood stain where you have this kind of fine histamine spray that's on the surface of the shoe and and kind of on the tongue of the shoe and this sort of thing? Or is it this kind of passive dripping that's taking place as if you were, say, for instance, sawing a remain? All right. Or is it a transfer? Is this a transfer where, for instance, you've got a bloody surface, say like an arm that's been dismembered or taken away from a body and you brush up against it with your shoe? And this creates this kind of swath, this blood swath that's on the shoe itself on the surface.

So we look at this and the dynamics of the blood itself can tell us a tale about what actually happened. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.