[MUSIC] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of "True Crime with Kennell Reign." Thank you so much for joining me today, and if you're new to this show, then welcome. I'm so happy to have you here, and make sure to click subscribe so you never miss an upload for me. So, you guys, today, we are going to be talking about a case that is local to me, here in Colorado, and it has to be one of the most complex and frustrating cases of harassment and stalking and, unfortunately, murder as well, that I have come across in my time covering these cases. It's just unbelievable, not only because of what the victim, Christel, went through, but also because of who was doing it all to her. I'm going to be talking about Christel Krueg, and I feel that this case has not gotten nearly enough coverage. It's something that I think more people should be talking about for many reasons. It brings up a lot of important discussion, and I'm going to tell you this right now. This case is filled with twists and turns that are going to truly leave you questioning who you can trust in life. Before I start explaining exactly what happened, let's start out by talking about who Christel Krueg was. So, she was born on November 24, 1980 in Boulder, Colorado, to her parents Lars and Linda Grimsbread. They also had a son, but I couldn't determine if he was older or younger than Christel. Anyway, I love Christel's name. It's a very unique name, and it's actually Norwegian, and her parents have said that they didn't give her a middle name because Christel was just so unique on its own. And Christel really came from humble beginnings. Her family didn't have a lot of money, and they actually lived in a mobile home for the first few years of her life. But that really never held her back from thriving it, everything that she did. From a young age, she was a super talented dancer, but she was also gifted in academics, specifically science. Christel was someone who was always wondering about the world. She was incredibly inquisitive and was interested in how every little thing worked. She was even able to take her bike completely apart and put it together as a kid because she wanted to understand the mechanics of it. Then when she was around six or seven, her parents, Linda and Lars ended up getting a divorce. But they were still very committed to co-parenting their children. They both were very present in her life, and I thought this was cool. Her dad was really into racing old cars, and Christel and her brother would work on them with him, kind of being like his pit crew. Which I think sounds really fun, and as a kid, you would feel so special getting to do that for your dad. And it's such a unique hobby to have as a family. Then when Christel was a teenager, her family grew even bigger because both of her parents remarried other people. And she gained a step sister and a step brother, who she ended up being very close with. And it totally makes sense that she would be because she was the type of person to really embrace her friends and family. And she was just known for being very open and kind, generous, outgoing, and friendly in general. She had sort of a warm energy about her and people describe her as having an infectious laugh. So she was someone that people liked to be around. And as Christel got older and graduated from high school, she decided to attend Colorado School of Minds, which is a top engineering university. And it's very impressive to be accepted there. Everyone that I know personally that went there or goes there is super, super smart. And I visited the campus a couple of times, and it's very nice, very, very nice. It's beautiful. And everyone I know that's been there had a great experience. So obviously she was really excited to be able to go to School of Minds. But this decision did not come easy. It came at a little bit of a cost because she had to break up with her boyfriend, her first serious boyfriend, Anthony Holland. The two of them had met working at a local JCPenney and they dated for about a year, but they just had different plans and goals for their lives and futures. So they decided to part ways before Christel started college. And I guess this was a decision that they both made at the time. And it was pretty amicable, even though it was difficult. Apparently when they were breaking up, they were holding each other and crying. It was something they didn't want to do, but knew had to be done. They were just going in different directions. Now college went very well for her. She just excelled in her classes. Eventually she did transferred to the University of Colorado Boulder, graduated with a degree in biochemical engineering. And this was around the time that she met a man online who would end up becoming her future husband, Dan Krueg. And the two of them really hit it off. Dan was a political science major with dreams of having a career in academia. So, Christel felt like she had found her sort of intellectual match. Then after a few years of dating, they got married in 2007 and settled into a very nice home in Bernfield, Colorado. Which is a beautiful place to live. So they were really living the dream and they had established careers as well. Dan got a job as a financial analyst for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, while Christel began working as a biochemical engineer for a technology company. The two of them had three children together and their identities have been kept very private. And so I don't know much information about them, but I do know that Christel was a very dedicated and loving mother. But all of this really ends up being put on hold because she ends up becoming the victim of an awful stalking and harassment campaign that truly derailed her whole life. And it all started in September of 2023, when Dan called the police to report a break in at their home. He had been out running errands that day, and when he returned home, he saw someone running out of their garage. And he told police that it happened so fast that he couldn't get a good description of him and that the only thing missing from the garage was a spare key to their house. So officers drive around the neighborhood and they don't see anyone that looks suspicious, but everyone is freaked out here because they have no idea who this person is that broke into their garage and now has a key to their house. And who knows what they want the key for, right? But then a few weeks later, things took a strange turn on October 3, Christel got a random text that said, hey, Christel, that's Anthony. I hope it's okay. I looked you up. I go to Boulder every few weeks and thought we could hook up. You game? Now, if you don't remember, Anthony was Christel's ex-boyfriend who she had broke up with right before she went to school of mines. And she, you know, was really weird out that he had texted her because she hadn't talked to him in years. And she wasn't interested in seeing him, so she just ignored his text, but her not responding seemed to infuriate him. And rather quickly, because the next day, 24 hours later, he sends her a bunch of texts that read, are you there? You should say yes when I offer a pity fuck. Whatever, saw your picks, you got fat. Bet your loser husband won't fuck your fat ass. And then also one that told her she should end her life. So she doesn't want to engage with it. She doesn't respond. So she just blocks the number and ignores him, but he just kept coming back. He was relentless. And as terrible as these messages were, everything took an even scarier turn because the messages escalated from sexual harassment and just creepy to straight up threatening harm. October 31st, Halloween, her steal got an email from
[email protected]. And quickly she figured out that this was coming from Anthony. An attach was a photo of Dan getting out of his car at work with a message that said, "This your husband drives like a slow old lady." Obviously implying that he is following him while he's driving to work, which is super scary. And then there was something even more bizarre in the email. He said, "Don't want a clear rubber hose in his tailpipe." Which really freaked Kristiel out because just a few weeks earlier she had found a rubber hose in her car's tailpipe. So now it seems that Anthony is actively following them and is starting to do things to potentially harm their family. And her mind just goes wild thinking about what he could possibly do. And this email terrified her so much that Kristiel made the right call and decided to get police involved. So later that day she went to the Broomfield Police Department to file a report and spoke with a detective. And Kristiel really made their jobs as easy as possible because she had been collecting evidence this whole time, had it super organized, a timeline, everything. She was documenting every single detail because she was just that type of person she was on shit. She actually had created a spreadsheet that she called her stalker log with every message including dates, times, and where she was when she got it. She also made a timeline of her entire relationship with Anthony going back to when they first dated and any interaction they had after the breakup. And it turns out that Anthony had been interested in Kristiel for quite some time over the years he had reached out to say that he missed her and she would always politely turn him down explaining that she had moved on and she was now married with kids. And the last time he had reached out to her was in 2016 when he messaged her on Facebook but once again she turned him down and even blocked him. And she hadn't heard a single thing from him since, so it was really bizarre that here he is seven years later coming back in such an aggressive end.
and scary way. And while Kristiel is explaining all of this to a detective, it was clear that she was taking the stalking very seriously. She had already installed security cameras at her home, shared her location with her brother, talked to her kids about ways to keep them safe, and even started carrying a gun. And she was also on her own trying to track down Anthony before he could do something to her. She had even hired a PI to find him, but they couldn't figure out where he currently lived because his name was linked to multiple addresses in Utah and Idaho. So when she's at the police station, she just goes ahead and asks them if they can go to those addresses, try to find him and serve him with a restraining order. Now, the detective is very apprehensive about doing this because he's worried that it will sort of put fuel on the fire, that it will make Anthony do something bad, possibly cause a big reaction from him, and who knows what that's going to be. So instead, they decide to take the approach of gathering enough evidence, hopefully, to just go ahead and arrest the guy. They sent out search warrants to Google, Verizon, and text now to get the location information from the messages. And they're hoping that they're going to come back with that pretty quick, but in the meantime, the stalking continues. (gentle music) Just two days after she met with police, she got a very creeping message that said, "saw you at the dentist, see you soon." And I'm not going to share the exact wording because it's disturbing, but it also said that he pleasureed himself while he was in the car at the dentist. And this latest message really freaked Kristiel out. She's worried that he is getting very, very close to her to be able to see her that well. And so she contacts police again. And so they come to her house, they're talking to her in the garage, and she's just trying to explain that she does not understand how he knew that she was at the dentist. She says the only possible way he would have been able to figure out where I was is if he put a tracker on my car. There has to be a tracker on my car. So they search her whole car for a tracker, but after extensively examining it, they weren't able to find anything. So after this happened, the broomfield police regularly send out squad cars to her house just to keep an eye on it and also see if they see anything suspicious, but they never found anything. And Kristiel felt like they could have been doing more to help. So Dan spoke with a detective and pled with them to take more action. And he expressed as well that he was panicked about everything and felt like he was failing to protect his family. He talked about how shook he was by the whole experience that even when he was at the grocery store that week, that someone had dropped a can of whatever on the floor and it really freaked him out that he was just super on edge. And it overall just seems like everything is affecting Dan in a really deep way. Detectives even noted that they felt that Kristiel was in a better position to protect herself than Dan was. But even after this, detectives were still concerned that if they took action too quickly without evidence that they may end up in a bad situation that they may put Kristiel in danger. And they still wanted to wait until the data came back from those tech companies, which is already a really slow process, but it was even more delayed because on December 6th, Google informed broomfield police that there was a typo on the warrant. So the detectives had to start the process over and file a new one, which is really, really frustrating. You would think they would make absolutely sure that there is no typos in their warrant, especially in a situation like this. Now in the meantime, the messages, of course, do not stop. And here are some of the things that they said. I know how to satisfy you. You don't belong in that big house. You belong with me. You don't want him. I know you want me. And some of them let her know that her and Dan were being watched. One of the messages described with the security guard at Dan's job looked like and was very on point. Another one said, "I see you flirting with waiter. Almost begging for sex." And a lot of them threatened Dan with some saying, "I'll get rid of him. Then we can be together." I know he's stopping you from talking to me. I'll do it for us. Help me get rid of him. Then we can be together, just like you want. Give me a signal and he won't come home. And to say that Kristiel was stressed about all this would be a massive understatement. I mean, this was controlling every aspect of her life, all of her thoughts, everything she did. By this point, everyone in her family, everyone around Kristiel knew it was going on, and they were on high alert, too. They had even come up with the nickname kickman, based on the email account that Anthony was using. Dan and Kristiel even routinely went through readiness drills over what they should do if kickman was ever near them. And Dan had also become hyper-vigilant of their surroundings, to say the least. He was constantly looking out the windows of their home, watching every person that walked by, every vehicle that drove by, and I don't blame him. I would be the same way if I was going through what they were going through. And one time when they were at a family party, he even asked a relative to watch the door for Anthony while he was playing with the kids. And maybe some of this was to just keep Kristiel calm, or maybe try and help his own mental health or to keep others from getting freaked out, because he did express to a few people that he didn't think the threats were that serious. He told Kristiel's step sister that Kristiel was blowing things out of proportion, and said to her mom that she was just making a big deal out of this. But her family certainly didn't think so, and they were worried about everything. And her parents were just so shocked at the end of the day that Anthony was the one doing this, because when they knew him, which it had been a while, he seemed like a great guy, super nice guy, harmless, dude. So they were thinking how much did this person change since then? But overall, they were just committed to keeping Kristiel safe in any way that they could. Her mom, Linda, even went to the gun range with her to practice shooting, which wasn't something that she was ever wanting to do before this, wasn't ever interested in doing. And while they were there one time, Kristiel just broke down sobbing. I mean, it was really getting to her. They're sitting in the parking lot, and she is just letting it all out. And her mom just sat there and listened as she talked about how much stress she was under. So as you can tell, at this point, the stalking is clearly taking a massive toll on her mental health, as it really would to pretty much anyone. People around her said that she always seemed frantic and looked exhausted. She hardly left her home anymore, and anytime that she did, she was constantly looking around. She had installed a camera in her car to catch Anthony, but all it recorded was her crying. And man, that footage of her crying is just so upsetting to see, you can just see on her face what a massive toll this is taking on her. And the harassment just kept coming. On November 24th, her birthday actually, Kristiel started receiving a bunch of sexually explicit texts from different numbers. Some even including nude pictures of random men. And it turns out that someone had created these fake online ads with her name and her phone number out there to the world, saying that she was looking for multiple sex partners to meet up with her that night. So on top of everything else she's dealing with at this point, she now has to deal with strangers, having her personal information. And these strangers think that she is looking for an orgy essentially. And so now she's even more freaked out rightfully so. And that Thanksgiving, her family was separated into two houses so that they all wouldn't be in one place in case Anthony tried to do something. That's how serious things had gotten. There were squad cars positioned outside of the houses that day, but Kristiel felt so uneasy. That when she sat at the table, she had to make sure she was basing the front door so that she could be ready to spring into action if anything happened. And even with everything she was trying to do, no matter how organized she was about it all, no matter how many precautions she took, it just wasn't getting any better. And this is just so upsetting, but her daughter was in a production of the Nutcracker. And Kristiel was planning on volunteering for it. I mean, she's a very active mom. And the creative director asked her not to out of safety concerns. And they also didn't even want her to come to any of the shows which understandably just broke Kristiel's heart. She and her daughter had really bonded over their shared love of dance. I mean, as a reminder, Kristiel had danced as a young person and was very, very good at it. It was a big part of her life. And this was just another huge thing that this stalker had taken from her. And by this point, Kristiel was worried that he was going to take more, much more. She told her parents that this whole thing would probably end in either Anthony or her being dead. And she was going to do everything that she could to make sure it wasn't her. But tragically, no matter how much she tried, Kristiel did not survive this horrific ordeal, which unfortunately brings us to December 13th, 2023, not that long ago. While at work Dan received a text from Kristiel asking him
to pick up their kids that day because she needed to meet with detectives. He responded saying that he would, and then he also told her that he had left some chicken out and he wanted her to put it away, but then she never responded to that, and quickly, of course, he starts to panic, given the situation. He tries calling her and texting her, but he wasn't hearing anything back. So around noon, he has some family and friends to go over to the house and check on her, and then he placed a call to broomfields non-emergency dispatch and requested a welfare check. An officer was dispatched to the house, and at first, he knocked on the door and looked in the windows, but nothing seemed wrong. But luckily, he noticed the garage door had windows on top, so he drove his squad card next to it, climbed on top and looked in, and that's when he sees a horrific scene. The steel is lying in a pool of her own blood, not moving, at the bottom of the stairs that lead into the house from the garage. And so he immediately calls for medics, he kicks in the door and runs over to her. He of course checks for a pulse, can't find one, and even so, he starts performing life-saving measures, and this is absolutely heartbreaking and horrible timing. But at this exact moment, Kristiel's mom arrives at the house, and she walks over to the garage looks in, because she sees the officer's car pulled up, and she sees her daughter lying on the ground. The officer had opened the garage door so that EMTs could get in, and as soon as Linda sees her daughter, she knows that it's not good. You can just see the panic on her face and in her body language, and it is absolutely devastating to watch, but the officer tells her that she can't be in there. And shortly after she had got there, Kristiel's dad and siblings and some friends as well had all arrived, and while all of them are standing on the street, they know it's bad, of course, but they're anxiously waiting on any more information just hoping for the best possible scenario. And then they hear a scream from down the street. It was coming from Dan, as he ran up to the house, but police stopped him on the street, and when he was told what had happened, he staggered for a bit before he then falls to his knees and cries. And the end of Kristiel's life was just absolutely brutal. She had been hitting the back of the head twice with a blunt force object, and then after she fell faced down on the ground, her attacker turned her over and stabbed her directly in her heart. She was pronounced dead at just 43 years old, and of course, right away, everyone's number one suspect was Anthony and the police went into overdrive to find this guy. They put out a nationwide alert for his license plate number, and it was caught on readers in Eagle Mountain, Utah. So Brimfield Police contacted the authorities out there. They tracked down where he's living, and obtaining a rest warrant, go to his house, and they're fully expecting a standoff with Anthony. But when police got there, something very unexpected happens. Anthony casually opens a door, and while he was definitely confused, he was totally calm. They asked him if he knew Kristiel, and he said that, yeah, she was his first serious girlfriend, but he claimed he hadn't spoken to her in years. And when they asked him what he had did that day, he explained that he had gone out shopping for clothes, and he was even able to provide them with a receipt to verify that. And he was at the store at 12.16 pm right around the time that Dan had called in a welfare check. And Brimfield is about an eight-hour drive from where he was living. And based on this receipt, it would have been impossible for him to have killed Kristiel and made it back home in time. And police even checked the flight manifests in the area to see if he potentially could have flown down to kill her, but his name didn't appear on any of them. So it became clear pretty quick that Anthony didn't murder Kristiel, so who did? Who was this stalker? And now detectives are back at square one. Dan bringing all of her family members to the police department to question them. And at the same time, they contacted those tech companies and asked them to elevate those warrants that they had previously said because they still had not gotten any information back. Luckily, Google and Verizon had come back with them in about an hour, and detectives were absolutely blown away by the results. The IP addresses attached to the stalker's emails had come back to a place that they were already familiar with, and I'm sure a lot of you have already figured this out. I figured it out very quickly when I first dove into this case. It brought them right back to Dan Kroog's office. That's right. Anthony was never stalking Kristiel. It was Dan all along her own husband had been terrorizing her this entire time. And at the exact same time that detectives learned this, Dan was still sitting at the station being interviewed. So they confronted him with this bombshell evidence. And he is just so slimy and gross in this interview. In my opinion, all of the footage of Dan is slimy and gross from the very beginning, even when he first called police about the break in in the garage. He just seems so obvious. But in this particular interview, he's already acting pretty dramatically, which given the situation, of course, makes sense if you didn't know. But in retrospect, knowing everything that we know now, he was acting like he was channeling Liam Neeson and taking her something. He kept his voice low and said things like, "I couldn't protect her," and that he wanted to find Anthony. But then police informed him that they had tracked Anthony down. And turns out there is no way he could have done this. To which Dan just said, "Then I have nothing." And that he was scared of who could be out there wanting to hurt him. But the police were so done with his act by this point that they told him the messages pointed at him. And his reaction was ridiculous and infuriating, but not surprising. He rolled his eyes and said, "It has to be the husband. And you have your theory. It is wrong." So obviously, he's trying to play on the trope here that police always look at the husband when a married woman is murdered, which, uh, yeah, of course, they always do. It's not a stereotype. It's statistics. There's a reason that that is part of the process. But of course, Dan tries to explain why the IP addresses came back to his office. He told them that there were some public Wi-Fi networks there. So the stalker must have been using that. You can just really tell Dan thinks he is the smartest person in the room. He really thinks that the police are going to believe that this stalker pulled up to his office connected to the Wi-Fi and sent every single email from out front of his building. Okay, dude. But eventually, Dan realizes that the walls are closing in on him and he refuses to keep talking to them. So police took his DNA samples and collected his clothes for evidence and they let him go. But before he left, he tried to pull one more act. One of the detectives walked him out of the building. And when they were in the lobby, Dan stopped and intensely said to him, "Find the fuck who did this. I don't care if you capture him. I don't care if you kill him. Find him. Just don't stop looking elsewhere. He took my children's mother for Christmas." And what's even more disturbing is that right after this, Dan goes to be with Chris Steele's family. Like, he actually had the nerve to go be with them, knowing that it's only a matter of time until police have enough to arrest him. And later, they said that he was acting really meek and trying to make everything about him just pulling the ultimate victim card in that situation, even though he had just killed his wife. And of course, he didn't tell the police that they were looking at him as a suspect. But at some point, he asked Chris Steele's step sister if she would be willing to help him find a good lawyer. Which at the time, she didn't think was that odd, especially because, I mean, emotions are running high and everything. And she was a lawyer herself, so she thought maybe he needed a lawyer to help deal with the authorities and just, you know, didn't put too much thought into it in the moment. But at the time, she also had no idea what evidence the police had discovered. It turns out that Dan was very methodical in his planning, but definitely was not perfect in covering his tracks. These were able to determine that all of the texts Chris Steele got from the stalker came from a burner phone, which was purchased using a gift card that was registered to Dan's name. And get this, you guys. Detectives even figured out that Dan had tested them by messaging his own phone. What a genius. They also figured out the timeline for the day that Chris Steele was murdered, so let me tell you about it. At 6.45am, Dan drove their eldest child to the bus stop and came home shortly after. And at 7.42am, Chris Steele left to bring the other two kids to school and then came back around 8am. And normally, Dan would have left for work by then, but the garage camera showed that he didn't actually leave that day until 8.24am. And that wasn't the only interesting thing that the security cameras showed. At around 8am, the other cameras around the house were abruptly turned off, and a piece of tape was placed over the one at the front door.
And this is just the most classic mistake that I've seen so many killers make. Investigators actually found the exact same tape in their kitchen drawer with a tear on it that perfectly matched the ripped piece that was put over the security camera, just awesome. So obviously, police believed Dan did this and left the camera over the garage so that he could be seen leaving the house to build his alibi. And then they also believed that when Pristil got back home, Dan had been hiding in the garage and he attacked her, attacked his own wife before she could make it into the house. Pristil never grabbed the gun that she had in her purse, which Dan knew, so he snuck it from behind and hit her on the back of the head to disarm her. Then when she was down, he flipped her over to stab her. He stabbed his own wife, the mother of his three children directly in the heart after mentally torturing her for all of that time. I mean, I think they're hard to even put words onto someone like Dan who could actually do something like that, but I think he qualifies as evil. And after killing her, he of course tried to build an alibi and this alibi, man, wow, of all the things he could have thought of, Dan tells investigators that he was leaving the house later than usual that day because he had been experiencing diarrhea. Yeah, and he said that Christel was still alive that morning and that she was even rushing him to get out of the house that day. But what's interesting is that just a few minutes after he left, Dan was spotted on the surveillance cameras at a local coffee shop and I don't know about you, but I feel like when any of us are having the Hershey squirts, the last thing that you wanna do is go to a coffee shop, but maybe that's just me. And one thing that's interesting about this little trip to the coffee shop is he had told the barista that they made his drink cold when he wanted it hot and wanted it remade. Almost like he wanted to be remembered there. He wanted it to stick in a witness's mind that he had been at the coffee shop that morning, solidifies alibi even more. And then remember how I told you he had received a text from Christel while on his way to work? Well, cell phone data showed that her phone wasn't active at that time. Dan had actually scheduled it to be sent at 8.56 AM and then he responded about 20 minutes later. And then he kept calling and texting her knowing full well that she obviously wasn't going to answer because he had killed her already. And the reason for this was to not only establish an alibi, but to also have a reason to have other people go to the home to check on her because he's evil. That way he wouldn't have to deal with the suspicion of being the one to find her. And he was perfectly fine with potentially her mom being the first one to find her or any of her other friends and family that he had called over there. It is Dan's fault. Not only is Dan responsible for killing her daughter, but Dan is the one who sent Christel's mother, Linda, over to the house. He is the reason that she saw her on the ground with an officer over her trying to save her life. And it could have been even worse if she was the one to initially come across her. But the trauma of that alone will stay with her for the rest of her life. And that is all because of Dan. And in my opinion, I think he called everyone else to the scene because he wanted them to see him act shocked and distressed and put on this whole big performance when he arrived at the scene so they wouldn't suspect him. And thinking of those moments where he comes to the house and he collapses onto the ground and he's crying and screaming, it makes you think how much did he plan in advance? Do you think he acted that out? Do you think he practiced? Do you think he improbed? It's just so sick to think about. And just when you think Dan couldn't possibly be any more evil and manipulative, it turns out that he also tried to frame Christel for everything. He scheduled emails from her account to go out at 8.30 a.m. on the morning she was murdered. One was to her brother and it says, I can't keep up with the lies. I had an affair for 18 months. We framed Anthony. Dan was supposed to kill himself in depression, not grow a spine. I just confessed to Martinez. My now ex-boyfriend and I are going there now. Push Dan not to press charges. And an email to the detective said, I can't do this anymore. I confess, I've had an affair for 18 months. We framed Anthony and pushed it on Dan. I just broke up with my BF and we're coming to the police station to give statements. Be there in 30 minutes. And I guess Dan just was hoping that the police would assume that the man that she was having this supposed affair with would have killed her to stop her from going in and confessing. And it seems like he had this whole idea for about at least a week before her murder. (gentle music) On December 6th, Kristiel received a random email that said, "Hey, gorgeous, I can't visit you no more. "No more Colorado time. "My girlfriend doesn't want us talking without her. "She says you will let cops get me after you off him, "but she don't know you like I do." But at the time, Kristiel was so used to getting these strange messages that there's no way she would have figured out that it was her husband trying to frame her. And I'm sure you already guessed this, but there's absolutely no evidence of Kristiel having any type of affair with anyone. Just wasn't in her nature in general, it seems like. And this is just one of Dan's many lies to try and tarnish her character to get what he wanted to frame her and it was being uncovered and get this. Remember that photo of Dan getting out of the car that the stalker sent? Well, phone analysts were able to determine that it was taken in selfie mode with the timer, so he clearly staged that. Plus, just look at the quality of this photo. I mean, whoever took this is standing like right there. This wasn't taken from far away and zoomed in. So was he trying to make people believe his stalker was just standing that close to him? And so the evidence is really starting to pile up, but there's more. The night before Kristiel was killed. Dan Googled, "Do people really go unconscious when hit in the head? How hard for head trauma to go unconscious? And how hard would you have to hit someone in the head to make them unconscious?" Yeah, he really Googled all of that, which God it will never cease to amaze me, the things that people will search. Either leading up to a murder they commit or after. It just blows my mind in this day and age in 2023. He did this. Now since Kristiel had obviously suffered from head trauma, this was enough for them to obtain an arrest warrant. And this was only two days after the murder. So the place went out to get Dan and they found him driving his daughter's dance performance. While they were following him, he pulled into the parking lot of King Super Skrushy store and that's when he was surrounded. And one of the officers that was there was actually the one who was called in for the welfare check and found Kristiel in that condition and tried to help her. And I imagine this was a pretty intense moment for him. Now Dan was arrested and charged with first degree murder to counts of stalking and one count of criminal impersonation. He pled not guilty in an April of 2025, his trial began. And this is so bizarre, but on the first day of court, he walks in and he smiles at Kristiel's family who was sitting there and not in like a sinister, creepy way in their opinion, they think he was smiling at them as if he thought they were there to support him. That's how delusional this man is. If that's really what he was doing, it shows, can't not only adjust the delusion, but the arrogance of Dan. And I don't know why he would be smiling at all. Maybe he really thought he was about to go in there and get out of this somehow. But no, you are about to face everyone and you're going to be exposed for that evil person that you really are and you're gonna be exposed as a total fucking idiot. In the opening statements, prosecutors made it very clear what they believed Dan's motive was. Turns out he and Kristiel had been having trouble in their marriage and they were on the verge of a divorce. So he carried out this stalking scheme as a way to scare her, hoping they could bond over a mutual enemy and that she would see him as some sort of protector. It was basically a fucked up way for him to make her into a damsel and distress so that he could swoop in and be that night in shining armor. But that wasn't working because even in the midst of all of her fears, she still wanted to divorce him. And the prosecutor should argue that he knew they were pending search warrants with the tech companies that would point to him. So he killed her in order to try and pin the blame on her and also of course because if he couldn't have her, no one could. And of course, his defense attorneys tried to fight this but their argument was pretty strange. They said that the murder investigation couldn't be trusted because the detectives were so bad at figuring out that Dan was the stalker. So they were basically trying to argue that yeah, our client is capable of stalking his own wife but not murder and that doesn't mean
matter really because it took the police too damn long to realize what a bad guy he is. And so how could you ever even trust them? Oh and as for those Google searches about head trauma, they had an explanation for that too. Dan had gotten lunch with a co-worker who had a traumatic brain injury so he was just looking up how they could have gotten it of course. Now for as ridiculous as these arguments were, the defense did bring up one interesting point. And that was that there was no DNA found at the scene that connected Dan back to it. But the prosecution pointed out that his phone location showed that after he left his house, he stopped for five minutes near an open field that was under construction, which they argued could have been somewhere that he disposed of evidence, including the murder weapons, which seems like the likely scenario here. Unfortunately detectives did search this location and they weren't able to find anything, but even so, the circumstantial evidence was more than enough obviously to prove that Dan was Kristieel's stalker and ultimately her killer, which became even more apparent when they ended up calling one of his ex-girlfriends to the stand and she, man, wow, she had quite the story to tell. She said that she and Dan had dated when they were in high school and college, but she broke up with him in 2000. And after that, she had received a bunch of anonymous messages and calls and it turns out that Dan had posed as fake people claiming to be his friends and tried to get her to take him back. And when that wasn't working, ultimately the messages turned sexually explicit and threatening. Eventually campus place got involved and they were able to trace it all back to him. She got a temporary restraining order against him, but he never faced any charges, which is really mind blowing to think he had done this before. And this is, I think, as far as I know, this is not something that Kristieel knew because I think if she did, I'm very confident that if Kristieel knew about this, she would have put the pieces together very quick and it's scary to think that she didn't know this about her husband. And his ex girlfriend wasn't the only one to give shocking testimony at the trial. Kristieel's stepmother sister testified that Kristieel had grown suspicious of Dan being her stalker and even once said to her, "I can't rule out anyone, even my husband." Which doesn't shock me that she was even catching on to him a little bit because she was so smart and seemed to be very intuitive, but it really makes me sad to think that she knew deep down that she couldn't even trust him. And after hearing all of this, the jury deliberated for just a day before finding Dan guilty on all counts. And the following day, he was given the mandatory sentence of life in prison. And when the judge asked if he wanted to speak it all, Dan refused. The man had nothing to say even after everything that happened, everything he did, he could not admit to it or face anyone or say sorry, nothing, nothing from this loser. In fact, to this day, Dan has not admitted to what he did. Police later uncovered his prison phone calls in which he complained to his parents that he was falsely accused and deeply depressed in prison. And man, I'm happy to hear that. Not that he's still in denial. That's not shocking me, but I am so glad to hear he is fucking miserable and depressed in there. That's exactly what Dan deserves. Just what a sicko to do this to the mother of his children to kill her in such a brutal personal way. I mean, stopping is very, very personal. And to do that, after months of just mental anguish and torture that he inflicted on her knowing all well, he could put an end to it at any time. It's truly sick. And for what? Because she bruised his ego by not wanting to be with his bitch ass anymore. This man is just such a monster. I'm so glad he is locked up. I mean, he is exactly where he belongs. And I'm just heartbroken thinking of her children and what they're going to, I don't know how much they know at this point. I don't even know how old they are. But what they have to process with all of this or what they have already had to process is just horrific to think about the magnitude of their loss. My heart is just so broken for Christel thinking about just what distress she was under in her last months of life having no idea how this was going to end. I mean, I guess in a way she did know it was going to meet her or Anthony and just the fear that she was living with. It's so horrific and thinking of her loved ones and everything they've had to process and the shock of finding out that it was Dan all along. Someone that they had spent so much time with is just so so horrific for them to have been there and seen firsthand what she was going through, suffering through all of the stalking only to be murdered by the one person who vowed to protect her. There's just no words. A GoFundMe has been set up for her children, so I'll be sure to link that in the show notes if you're interested in donating. And Christel's family is still carrying on her legacy. They've stated that they want to make changes in the legal system when it comes to stalking, specifically to get tech companies to turn over data quickly. I'm sure you've already had this thought but had those companies turned that data over to the police right away or at least a little sooner. Christel's life may have been saved but these companies don't treat these requests with urgency until the worst happens. One of Christel's cousins actually is a prosecutor and she has stated that she wants to create legislation that would force companies to prioritize turning over information in stalking cases within 48 hours of receiving a warrant. And I really hope that this case can lead to that because all too often victims of stalking just are not treated with the level of urgency they deserve and need until it's too late. And I just wanted to put this out there to her family that if you guys have any type of plan that you want to pursue anything that we can do to help you make this possible, I would love to be involved in it. My foundation higher hope would be happy to give you guys a grant. We would love to speak more about it. So please reach out. If you are interested in a grant and there's some way that we can work together, please go to higherhope.org. Let's get in touch and talk more about that. But that's going to be it for me today. You guys, I am still on maternity leave. I think this episode will be going up towards the end of my maternity leave. I'm not sure exactly when we're going to release these and whatever but I should be back soon. If you want to stay in touch with me or check in on me and baby boy, you can go to my Instagram which is Kendall Ray on YT as in on YouTube made that a while ago. Almost forgot what it was. But anyway, like I said, I'll be back soon. Thank you for listening to Crystile's story. I think this case definitely needs more coverage and there's a lot of discussion to be had from cases like this. I think they're really important. But until I see you next, stay safe out there.
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