Unmasking the Colorado Catfish Killer | The Case of Kristil Krug | UNSEEN

I'm Harvey Ghien, and this is Killer Stories. Every Monday, I'm cutting the lights. I'm telling you a bedtime story. Except these stories are all real. We're talking Brazen Heist, Devastating Cons, Serial Murders, and Cases that defy tidy categories. So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Ghien, every Monday. Broke up, please! You go one way, I got the other, another one on the left. R.P. said there was a stalker. Oh, f*ck. Oh, f*ck. On December 14, 2023, the Broomfield Police do a welfare check at this house, where Kristiel Krueg lives with her husband Dan, and their three loving children. The footage you're about to see was filmed just minutes after Kristiel's family life took a disturbing turn for the worse. One month earlier, Kristiel walks into the Broomfield Police Department, claiming that her crazy ex-boyfriend has been stalking her. It's a lot, and it has definitely made me, like, hair point everywhere I go, unfortunately. Detective send units to follow Kristiel around, and her husband install security cameras on their property. The problem is, police have been unable to track down the suspect, and the stalking doesn't stop. Now is escalating. This is not just threats against me, threats against my husband. On December 14, at 8.56 a.m., Kristiel sends this text message to her husband. She has never heard from after that. Detective dispatches, my wife isn't responding to text messages or phone calls. OK. We've had threats against us. Can I get a, maybe, a wellness check at the house? We have both been targeted by a stalker. After going around the house, officer Ohera notices the garage door has windows, but they're too high for him to see. The footage then shows him returning to his vehicle, before he pulls his car up the driveway, close to the door, so he can use it to climb up. So that's when he sees it. 151, send medical, and 1,2, and I need a 4-centre. Broke up, please! Broke down, please! Right there, on the floor of the garage, is 44-year-old Kristiel Krug, unconscious. She has a head injury, but officer Ohera is not sure if she simply fell, or if she was attacked. I'm on CPR. Let me know when the next unit is closed, and I'll open the garage door, particularly medical. Outside, Kristiel's mother Linda walks up to the house, just as officer Ohera opens the garage door for the paramedics. As other family members start arriving, police secure the rest of the house. Guys, you see any other than a fall-type wound? Police can tell Kristiel was attacked, getting into or out of her car. She was hit over the head before the person stabbed her. They rolled out the stretcher, and I thought, "Oh, she's going to be okay. They're going to do everything for it." But then they rolled the stretcher back out without her. I knew. Soon after, a scream is heard coming from down the road. It's Kristiel's husband, Dan. Hey, stay back, stay back. It's my house. He's just learned the news that his wife was murdered, and runs into the arms of Kristiel's family. Dan is in shock. He suddenly goes weak in the knees, and can no longer stand on his own. This man right now has just lost his everything. He's lost his wife. He's lost the mother to his children, and now he has to do everything. With the killer still at large, Dan is brought in for further questioning. But when Detective Martinez goes to see him, he's in no state to be interviewed. I arrived at the police department, and immediately went to go speak with Dan. When I walked in, he became very emotional. I know what. That's a trick, true. That's your fault. To make things easier for him, Detective Martinez tells Dan that he has people in his team who can help break the news to their children. But Dan insists. He wants to be the one to tell them. For now, Detective Martinez is worried about protecting Dan and his three kids before the killer claims another victim. Christel's other family members are also brought in, each put into separate interrogation rooms. But while investigators are hoping to gain any information on the identity of Christel's stalker, there's one person that holds the key to solving the case. Christel crew herself. One month before her murder, Christel makes a phone call to the Broomfield Police Department. I need to report threatening emails and phone calls from the stalking ex. Detective Martinez is the one assigned to her case. I reached out to Christel and arranged an interview with her. When Christel came in, she just kind of filled the whole room with her presence. We could tell that she was just very intelligent and she was very well-prepared. When she sits down to talk with Detective Martinez, Christel tells him that for the last few weeks, a stalker has been following her around and harassing her online. It's a lot and it has definitely made me, like, heroin everywhere I go, unfortunately. So, you know, I completely understand that. Yeah. She, first and foremost, wanted the stalking and the behavior and the contact to stop. So, I have to wait until. This makes it so much simpler. Okay, I did a timeline before I got it. Christel has come prepared. She's gathered all the information about the stalking instances onto a spreadsheet. All I do is let's go. We're going to create a stalker log. We're going to monitor this. I'm going to go see what information I can have in the picture that you'll see there. I don't know. I just always heard documents, everything. The stalker log was detailed and complete and included. Everything from dates, times, locations, her feelings about it. The first date on the stalker log is September 23rd, 2023. This is when everything started. On that day, her husband Dan saw an intruder running out of their home. My husband caught somebody going through a garage. I can see him only running out of a garage. When the officer shows up at the house, Dan is already waiting outside in the middle of his driveway. He explains to the officer that he saw the intruder when he got back home that afternoon. As I came down, the door was open. I saw somewhat, I think it was a guy, but it was so fast. Eugene's gracious, run out, jump over my gate, and take off that way. I care less about following him than getting inside and checking on my kids. Yeah, absolutely. We realized the spare key that we keep in the garage isn't there. OK. Where was that? Get the toolbox. Everything seems to be there, except a spare key. The house key. OK. Got it. [INAUDIBLE] Troll officers responded, checked the area, and they couldn't find anybody that matches the description at Dan's It. When Kristiel learns about the incident, she's more annoyed than afraid. My daughter, she said, Dan left the garage door open. She's very angry. I watched the garage door closing, not necessarily closed. She did. I don't think she thought there was danger. She didn't see it as a real threat. Dan takes care of changing the locks, so there no longer seems to be anything to worry about. Just a few days later, on October 2nd, Kristiel receives a strange text from a number she doesn't recognize. It reads, "Pie Kristiel, it's Anthony. Hope it's OK. I looked you up. I go to Boulder every few weeks and thought we could hook up, you game?" And the only Anthony she knew of was Jack Anthony Holland. Kristiel's long details her relationship with Anthony over the years, starting in 1999 when she graduated high school. We dated at summer of '99, very briefly. He was a very nice guy. He was fun. We liked everybody liked Anthony. But the relationship didn't last for more than a year, probably. Their life goals and ambitions were two completely different tracks. I was going to college, I was like on an engineering track, there was just a total of different lifestyle choices. I broke it off with him, and we ended fairly eloquently. About a year later, while studying to get her degree in chemical engineering, Pristeel met Dan. I remember when Dan came over, and my mom and I were there, and he was looking for my dad. And that's when it kind of hit me like, "Oh, this is real. This is going to be the guy." I was happy at the time because I knew she was going to be really happy. In the years that followed, while Pristeel was building her life with Dan, Anthony would still reach out from time to time on social media. Anthony had tried to contact Pristeel a number of times over the years to kind of rekindle their romance every time she rejected him. Here, he says, "Let's go together." No. Here, he says, "Let's go together." I'm like, "I have a serious boyfriend. We were living together at this time." And he's like, "Let's go to your boyfriend." And then, I got married in 2007, and he's reaching out to me. He can see I have a kid. This is my profile picture of him, like my kid. He's like, "We're going to be together." I'm like, "I'm married, happily married with children. You need to stop." And he got real emotional. It wasn't angry, but it was her to reel over the top emotions and then blocked me. I'm like, "Good. I stepped down Facebook entirely before the pandemic." So there was no way to get a hold of me on any kind of old email address or old way, and that's when this starts. So when Kristiel gets a text from Anthony in October of 2023, she doesn't reply. The next day, she receives a more disturbing message. You should say, "Yes, when I offer pity, whatever. Saw your picks. You got fat, but your loser husband will f*ck your f*ck." Kristiel is shocked. This doesn't sound like the Anthony she knows. He's never said this on the stump to me before, so it's like something's really wrong here. Back in the day, harmless. Now I have no idea what this is. I don't know this person anymore. So I just see him as pretty on the table, honestly. Kristiel doesn't answer, hoping things will just blow over. And if this is, in fact, Anthony, he'll get the hint and leave her alone. But she has no idea that her nightmare is only just beginning. I got a really strange text message from somebody saying, "Are you still looking for men?" And I was like, "Okay, I don't think this is Anthony." She's receiving numerous text messages from all sorts of different unknown numbers, all of men, many of which are sending photos of themselves and sexually explicit poses. After researching online, Kristiel discovers a classified ad with her name and phone number on it. The ad solicits men to send her obscene photos of themselves. Kristiel is convinced someone posted the ad to torment her, but she can't be sure if Anthony is behind this. Whoever it was, this bizarre incident is causing tension between her and Dan. Then, on October 31st, almost a month after those first text messages, she gets an email with a picture of her husband. It was taken at his work without him knowing. The email was sent by A. Holland Kicks at gmail.com, whoever was sending this email was actively following Dan. The message comes with a threat against Dan. It reads, "This, your husband, can't believe you want to f*ck his f*ck, but not mine. He needs to drive safe. Don't want to clear rubber hose in his tailpipe." "This now is escalating. My husband has a camera in his car he did not see anybody, and then unfortunately lost all the video because he didn't see it. So, I don't have any evidence." Kristiel now has a clear indication that she and her family are being followed, and she's terrified. But the thing that bothers her the most is she never thought her ex-boyfriend Anthony Holland would be capable of doing something like this. "There was nothing in the relationship other than having stupid stuff that was ever violent. We argue but never in a violent way." When her parents come to visit her that weekend, Kristiel doesn't hide what's been happening. "I need to let you know. I'm being stalked. I'm getting emails from Anthony. He's threatening me with the things he's saying just bizarre things." "She had called me to ask if I could help her get a restraining order. I'm going to kind of what that process would look like and what she needed to do to get her ducks in a row." Kristiel has already hired a private investigator to find Anthony so she can serve him the restraining order, but tracking him down proves to be much harder than expected. "Temporary protection order is what she's going to seek which would require him to be served with paperwork in person." Dan installs security cameras on their house and both by dash cams for their car in case Anthony follows them while they're driving. First and foremost, Kristiel is worried for the safety of her children and her husband Dan, so she starts carrying a six-sour 9mm. "She felt she had to get a gun. My heart just sunk." "She had a concealed carry purse specifically designed for that gun." "I do have weapons in my home. I am attending to register for a course here to re-learn. It's been a long time since I shot my guns to get to re-learn and get familiarized with my handgun." "And I do remember going out to the gun range with her and she just sat in the parking lot and cried and she was just so upset. All I could do is hug her." With everything that's happened, Kristiel's children have started to notice that their mother is upset. She now has to explain to them what's been going on. "I want them to also know that they can stand up themselves in situations that might be threatening." "So she was telling them all about what they needed to do if an intruder came in." "My oldest said she's like, 'I'm glad that you told me something.' She's like, 'Because it's making me feel worse when we've just heard you guys talking and hushed homes." Kristiel is doing her best to keep their lives as normal as possible. She makes sure her oldest daughter can focus on her dance classes instead of worrying about her mommy's stalker. "She was so active in all of her daughter's performances and would be backstage and would be like a mom backstage helping all the little dancers get out to the stage on time." With Christmas just around the corner, Kristiel's daughter will be performing in two productions of The Nutcracker, something she's been looking forward to the whole year. But because of what's been going on and because no one knows where the stalker is, Kristiel is asked by the artistic director and the company to stop volunteering and to stay away from her daughter's performances. "It was devastating to her." "I think a lot of this is the trying intentionally to scare me as opposed to actually trying to approach me. But my fear is when does that switch happen for he someone gets involved in because I'm not responding." "When Kristiel leaves that day, I'm believing that this is a very real issue and there are credible threats and we need to get on top of this quickly." The first thing Detective Martinez wants to do is confirm the identity of the stalker. He served search warrants to Verizon, text now, and Google. Their records could prove that Anthony Holland is in fact the one behind these threats. "When we serve a search warrant to any major company, it takes time. Weeks if not months for some companies." "It would be, I think, foolish of any detective to go talk to somebody that they don't even know that is actually the person." "If I get involved too early and start trying to be like, 'Hey, knock it off, this isn't okay,' it usually throws a steal on the fire and kind of emboldens because look at me, this cop getting no consequence." "Right, this cop came to me and I have no consequence. He just told me to knock it off, like, what'd you do, you know, like. " "November 9th, just two days after her meeting with Detective Martinez, Christel receives another text message that only makes things worse. It reads, 'Saw you a dentist, you got so f***** in my car, so I f***** on yours. See you soon." "Luding to the person being outside in their own car watching Christel." Christel immediately notifies Detective Martinez, who sends an officer over to her house. "Mr. Seal?" "Mr. Seal? Officer Henry." "Yeah, Mr. Seal." That saw you at the dentist text has gotten Christel worried her stalker might have put a tracker on her car. "Okay, I'll only assume a tracker based on the fact that he could show up there and I don't see vehicles and the rest of the station. I'll let him order the vehicle to the station and leave it." "We put Christel's car on a lift. We check that car top to bottom, front to back, and we couldn't find anything on the truck." "I wouldn't find anything on her car." "I'm lying and streaming my location all the time, so we're done." "Locker." "So that he knows any time we'll be at our side, sir." "So everyone knows what I'm going to be from now on." "Locker." "I arranged for some undercover officers to follow her around, kind of, to sit outside of her home, to see if there was any weird cars or anything like that. We weren't able to identify anybody." The constant paranoia is taking a toll on Christel, causing more strife in her relationship. She and Dan have been fighting more and more to the point where Christel tells her parents they're headed for divorce. And then, more texts come in, making it clear what Anthony is planning next and who he's aiming for. I'll get rid of him, and then we can be together, so easy, give me the signal and he won't come home. It was a direct threat towards Dan. Basically, it implies that they belong together and that he will make Dan disappear. Dan? So Dan also comes in to talk to Detective Martinez. I just want to sit down with you and kind of once you have your new one. I don't remember to start with that open-ended question. Largely being paranoid for the last few days, my panic level has gone considerably hotter. I had a retractable ass steel baton, pepper, gel, spray, always in this pocket. I went to the grocery store briefly on Tuesday, and someone behind me dropped a can. I'm panic. So am I doing? I'm panic. I'm doing your job. I'm protecting my wife. Interacting with Dan that day, I felt that Kristiel was better equipped to defend herself than Dan was to defend Kristiel. The anxiety has become unbearable, and Kristiel fears she won't be able to prevent the worst from happening. That sooner or later, someone will get killed. She will never stop. She will never stop. But what she fears the most is that her children will get hurt and she can't let that happen. I don't think she was sleeping. She was just exhausted. I've never seen my daughter like that before. We had conversation almost daily throughout the month of November about where she was, how she was doing, and she basically refused to leave her house because that's where she felt most safe. On December 13, the last day before her murder, the dashcam and Kristiel's car catches a rare glimpse into her life. Instead of showing her stalker following her car, the footage only shows how exhausted she's become and how the last three months have visibly worn her down. Thursday, December 14, the security cameras around the crew residents show the activity that morning. At 6.45 a.m., Dan drives their eldest to the bus stop before returning minutes later, just before 7. At 7.42 a.m., Kristiel is seen driving away as she takes their younger two kids to school. She returns just before 8. At 8.24 a.m., Dan pulls out, heading off to work about a half hour away. Dan is on the road when at 8.56 he receives a text from Kristiel asking him to pick up their daughter after school because she has a meeting with Detective Martinez. Dan responds when he arrives at the office, 20 minutes later. Sure thing, FYI, I forgot my chicken on the counter, please put it in the fridge. But Kristiel doesn't message back, which has Dan worried. He tries calling her, but gets no answer. For the next three hours, he keeps trying to reach her until at 12.01 p.m., Dan asks for that welfare check. He also calls Kristiel's mother, who lives close by. Dan said, "I can't find Kristiel." I thought, "Oh, she's probably just not answering her phone. Let me go over and I'll find out what's going on." When Kristiel's mother Linda arrives at the house, she walks up the driveway. Female has some sort of head wound. She is warm. As the garage door opens, she peeks inside. I need you to stay out, please. I need you to come over here for a minute, so we can work. She's okay. I was running towards the house, and I said, "That's my daughter." "She's gone! She's gone!" Linda was standing right there and said, "She's dead. They killed her." Kristiel's family is completely distraught. When Dan arrives, he breaks down crying, held close in their arms. With the killer still at large, detectives begin combing through the crime scene, while others start looking for the suspect. We started canvassing the neighborhood detectives were assigned to track down Jack Anthony Holland, who was our prime suspect. Dan was potentially the next victim. They haven't been able to locate Anthony in the last few months, but what they do have is a license plate attached to his name. Police put out a nationwide alert to be on the lookout for his vehicle. Almost immediately, they get a hit. Only it's not on any roads leading out of Colorado, but in North Central Utah. Investigators contact authorities there. We made the joint decision to go make contact at the residence. Multiple deputies in Utah, zero in on Anthony's vehicle, parked outside a residence. They have a warrant for Anthony's arrest on stalking charges. Mr. Holland answers the door. We introduce ourselves. We ask him who he is, introduce himself as Mr. Holland. The most shocking thing is that Anthony is already home just a couple hours after the murder. Anthony invites the officers inside, waiting to be told what all this is about. You say seated. Say seated. Have you ever heard of the name Crystal Krug? She may have been Grimsrod when you knew her. And you know Daniel Krug? No. How do you know Crystal? She was an extra girlfriend. She next girlfriend? How long did X? How long ago? 1999. Oh, so like a long while ago? She was my very first girlfriend ever. Oh, okay. The deputies go through the events of Anthony's morning. Apparently, he had been shopping for clothes at a store in American fork just 10 miles outside Salt Lake City. He shows him the receipt from his purchase and the officers are able to confirm Anthony is telling the truth. There was a lot of police officers. I'm like, geez, I must have been in trouble. I had no idea what was going on. They asked me if I knew who Crystal Krug and I said yes, I know her. She was very smart, which I really looked up to. The bigger was the hard on both of us. We both held each other and just cried when we broke up. I haven't cried that hard. So my mom died and we became friends on Facebook. The strange thing is, Anthony admits to having texted Crystal after their split, but says the last time he messaged her was in 2016. I got a little drunk and I left her a message saying that I apologize to her for all the things that I did when we were together and that she stopped talking to me. I was done. I was over. Colorado police are now left without any legal basis to arrest Anthony. They have no proof he was Crystal's stalker or her killer as he was probably 500 miles away at the time of the murder. Detectives might have lost their prime suspect, but with a murder on their hands, they can now escalate those search warrants. Martinez has been waiting nearly a month for the digital information that would tell him where those stalking messages came from. But now, almost immediately, the companies respond and what he discovers in the data is shocking. I felt like I was looking at the wrong person the whole time. Dan Krueck is arrested for the murder of his wife, Kristiel. He was pulled over on his way to their daughter's performance of the Nutcracker. The data provided by Verizon, text now, and Google showed that the stalker had been using the Wi-Fi at Dan Krueck's office. The email that was used, the phone number that was used, all of those things are coming back to one place and that's Dan's work. The burner phone first used a text Kristiel was traced back to a storm broomfield and it had been purchased using a gift card registered to Dan Krueck. The day before the homicide, Dan had searched a number of different things related to head trauma. How hard you have to hit someone for them to be unconscious, how long someone needs to be unconscious, to become brain dead, all of a variety of those kinds of searches. Police also did a digital analysis of that photo of Dan outside his office. It showed the photo had been taken in selfie mode with a timer. What about the text message sent from Kristiel's phone at the time Dan was arriving at work? Investigators found out that the text was scheduled to be sent after he had already left the house. Dan was building his alibi that he's going to get this text message saying, "Hey, I got a text from her while she had been alive, I got this text from her." In looking back at his work camera, he took very specific routes at his work so that he was seen on camera. He receives the text message he sent himself. He starts trying to communicate back with Kristiel. He doesn't want to be the one to find the body, so he calls the non-emergency line at the Brunfield Police Department and asks for a welfare check. "You wanted an alibi, obviously. Why did it have to be me?" As it turns out, not everyone was surprised to discover Dan had killed his wife. Just hours after Kristiel's death, her mother Linda tells detectives that maybe Anthony isn't the only suspect they should look at. Helmings looks once and once and he glistens to you. Her husband and her were not good terms. She told me that her marriage was over. Here in the last few months she just slowed them. I kept thinking why are you staying until she's gone? I remember hugging Linda and I don't know why it came out but I remember just saying like, did he kill her? Did Dan kill her? And I remember Linda telling me like, "I don't know." I can't shake this question and see what one that's been doing this with empty. But the most shocking statement comes from Donna, Kristiel's stepmother. It appears Kristiel was about to discover that Dan was her stalker all along and it's possible that Dan decided to kill her before she found out the truth. April 4, 2025, Dan Krueg pleads not guilty to first-degree murder and stalking. Digital information points to Dan, the physical evidence against him is then. If Dan Krueg walks free, he will have full custody of Kristiel's children and their lives will be in danger. But there's one witness that will change everything, one of Dan's ex-girlfriends. To this day, she's still terrified of him, so much so that she asked to remain anonymous. She says that after she broke up with him, she began receiving disturbing messages and phone calls from someone she did not know. When we heard her full testimony, it was just so shocking because it was exactly nearer to our daughter. At the time, the messages were investigated by police and traced back to Dan's college on the east coast. The woman got a temporary restraining order against him, but he was never charged with any crime. Until now, after seven days of testimony, the jury in Kristiel Krueg's murder case is asked to deliberate. When the jury returns with a verdict, Kristiel's parents are holding their breath. We the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. A jury returned a guilty verdict in the trial of a broomfield man accused of killing his wife. Daniel Krueg is found guilty of first-degree murder, stalking, and criminal impersonation. Today, the court sentenced Mr. Krueg to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It's a just and appropriate sentence for a horrific crime. Dan Krueg thought he could fool everyone and get away with his crimes. He just never thought Kristiel would outsmart him. It was her efforts that helped police solve her own murder and put a monster behind bars. At the cost of her own life, she made sure her children will always be safe. She loved them, she wanted to protect them, and she wanted them to be happy. Now, with their mother gone and their father in prison, Kristiel's children live with her parents. We want to protect them. They're very surrounded by their mother's family's love. They're in a loving environment. They're given everything that Kristiel would have given them. It's only been two years since her death, and for her parents, the pain is still hard to bear. But they do all they can to make sure Kristiel's memory lives on with her children. Every day is a difficult day. You wake up and you feel the pain. And then I look at my grandkids and I find a moment of peace because I see her. [BLANK_AUDIO]