Bart & Krista Halderson | Killed to Keep a Lie Alive (Part 1)

By the Summer of 2021, Bart and Krista Halderson were living the quintessential Midwestern life. They owned a beautiful home in Windsor, Wisconsin, and a rustic family cabin up north in White Lake, where they loved spending time together. They were also preparing to cross the finish line of parenting. Their oldest son Mitchell was a successful tech professional, engaged and in the process of buying a house. Their youngest son Chandler was days away from moving to Florida to work for SpaceX. But on July 7th, 2021, the dream shattered. Chandler went to the police station to report his parents missing. Bart and Krista had gone up north to the family cabin for the Fourth of July weekend with an unknown couple. They never came back.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  By the summer of 2021, Bart and Krista Halderson were living the quintessential Midwestern life. They owned a beautiful home in Windsor, Wisconsin, and a rustic family cabin up north in White Lake, where they loved spending time together. They were also preparing to cross the finish line of parenting. Their oldest son, Mitchell, was a successful tech professional, engaged and in the process of buying a house. Their youngest son, Chandler, was days away from moving to Florida to work for SpaceX. But on July 7, 2021, the dream shattered. Chandler went to the police station to report his parents missing. He said Bart and Krista had gone up north to the family cabin for the 4th of July weekend

• 0:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  with an unknown couple. They never came back. For the next 24 hours, the community rallied around Bart and Krista's two sons. Chandler sat in police interrogation rooms wearing a medical neck brace from a recent injury, softly trying to help detectives piece together his parents' final hours. Police launched a massive multi-county search, scouring the dense Wisconsin woods for any sign of the missing couple. But as detectives tracked the couple's final movements, the timeline began to fracture, and a sudden dark discovery on a rural farm miles away would turn a desperate search into something deeply unsettling.

• 1:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 1:51Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm Derrick Levasseur. And Stephanie, I have to ask, I am a SpaceX nerd. And I'm also, I was alive in 2021. And yet, I have never heard of this case. Why?

• 2:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, to be honest, I didn't either. It came across my desk in a weird way. And I said the same thing. I was like, it's pretty recent. This case is crazy. How have I never heard about it? I think maybe because it kind of went down during like the COVID time where...

• 2:20Derrick Levasseur?

  The world was just crazy at that point?

• 2:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, where we had a timeline jump.

• 2:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  So lots of people have heard about it, obviously, because now I was researching it and I was watching. Still, I don't think it's as known as it could be or should be, so.

• 2:35Derrick Levasseur?

  When you said 2021, I'm like, what? How have I not heard of this one? Especially, it seems like a prominent family, successful family. You know, they're doing the right thing and SpaceX ain't no joke.

• 2:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or are they?

• 2:47Derrick Levasseur?

  I love SpaceX. I just, I just got my Starship Blowtorch in the mail. Basically, it's a little model, like 100th scale model, and it actually, you fill it and you, it actually has like the flame come out the bottom. You can like roast your marshmallows with it. Pretty cool. I pay way more than I'm willing to admit.

• 3:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm not a big fan of like space government contractors and, and what they're, what they're doing to the lower space orbit and making it like, I don't know if you know, but they're making it like a whole economy. Like they're taking the government out and the government, government's gonna rent space from these contractors like SpaceX and Boeing and all of these contractors. So we're gonna be paying our tax dollars to rent space in the lower.

• 3:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Why do you have to rain on my parade?

• 3:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's just really twisted and dystopian and I hate it. I hate everything about it.

• 3:36Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm not saying anything negative because I'm still hoping that in my shallow brain here, that somehow, some way, with some of the crazy things that have happened in my life, we get a call or an email where they're like, hey, we want you and Stephanie to be the first true crime creators to go on Blue Origin or SpaceX to like do a trip out, get out.

• 3:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Not gonna do that.

• 3:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, I'll convince you.

• 4:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Not gonna do that.

• 4:01Derrick Levasseur?

  We're doing it. You're getting, if I have to sedate you, you're coming.

• 4:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  I have my morals.

• 4:07Derrick Levasseur?

  You won't even get on a plane barely, so you are right. Like, you have to be sedated.

• 4:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's not that I wouldn't wanna go into space. It's I have my moral red line. And that prevents me from ever working with anybody like Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg.

• 4:25Derrick Levasseur?

  Jeff Bezos.

• 4:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Jeff Bezos.

• 4:27Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm going. Guys, I'm going. This is me if you're watching on video.

• 4:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Jeff Bezos is Lex Luthor, but anyway.

• 4:35Derrick Levasseur?

  I know, I don't want to get off track, but just so you know SpaceX Blue Origin. What's, uh, what's, uh, Richard Branson? He's Virgin, right?

• 4:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Virgin, yeah. Hit up Derek. Don't even lose my number.

• 4:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Hit me up. I am there. I will be your shill. I'm go- I'm going. I want that ticket.

• 4:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Wow. He's cheap. He's a cheap date.

• 4:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Cheap date. Put me on a rocket ship. I'm going. If it blows up, it is what it is.

• 4:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, didn't we learn anything? Didn't we learn anything from the submarine, but?

• 5:02Derrick Levasseur?

  No, that's, that's a different ballgame. I mean, you're talking-

• 5:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  That Titan submersible?

• 5:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, that's a different ballgame. I mean, he wanted to be Elon Musk.

• 5:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Elon Musk wants to be Elon Musk, but-

• 5:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Fair.

• 5:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, all right, we've got the Halderson here. Great family, great couple. It's one of those situations where you're like, this couldn't have happened to better people. Kind of like, why them? You know?

• 5:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  So 50-year-old Bart Halderson was a CPA who worked as a tax manager at a major Wisconsin firm. He was known to have a great sense of humor, kind of dry. He was an avid golfer. He loved woodworking and doing home improvement jobs around the house and cabin. In fact, he was actively always working on some renovation or home improvement project at his house that his friends kind of laughed because they were like, this is maybe definitely something he should have paid people to do for him. But he took pride in like figuring it out and doing it himself and, you know, spending a lot of time on the weekends and whenever he had free time doing these projects, these renovation projects on his home. So the, the house was kind of always in a state of like, you know, it's a work in progress kind of thing.

• 6:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Krista, his wife, worked as a customer service representative for a local auto body shop. She was described as being really warm, bubbly, very, very nurturing. Okay, so where Bart was probably like the more dry humor, no nonsense guy. Krista was just the complete opposite, just very warm, open, friendly. And you often see a lot of couples like that. It's kind of the yin yang. They balance each other out.

• 6:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 6:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Bart and Krista truly enjoyed life and they enjoyed living life with each other. They attended music and sporting events. They grilled out. They played with their two dogs, Izzy and Rizzo. They spent time at their cabin and every summer they participated in a horseshoe league. They had many extremely close friends, some that they had known for decades. So it's interesting, the kinds of friendships they had because I could, I just, I don't know. It's crazy. I don't have a lot of like close, close friends. And a lot of these, these people, the Haldersons knew, they had met separately, like when they were younger. And then when they got married, they all sort of just like blended into this one big friend group.

• 7:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  And they all, they had known each other since they were like kids, which is awesome. So most of all though, for Bart and Krista, they were devoted to and loved their two sons, Mitchell and Chandler, who were only 18 months apart in age and who were both making their parents proud as young men. In 2021, the older son, Mitchell, had a good job in IT. He was engaged to a woman he loved deeply and they were in the process of buying a home together. Chandler, the younger son, he had recently completed his degree at Madison Area Technical College, where he'd been enrolled in an IT and solar energy program. He was in a long-term relationship with a beautiful girl named Catherine Melander.

• 8:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  And the two were getting ready to move to Titusville, Florida, because Chandler had secured a great job working for SpaceX, where he would be making $80,000 a year. So Bart and Krista were so proud of Chandler's achievements that they held celebratory dinners for him. Krista messaged many of her friends to express her happiness that both of her boys were on the right path and making lives for themselves. And honestly, Mitchell and Chandler had every advantage in life to be successful and happy. They'd grown up with extreme privilege, specifically the extreme privilege of having two parents who were happily married and who loved and supported them through every stage in life. And in those growing up days, the father, Bart, worked a lot to provide for the family so that-

• 8:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Krista could be a stay at home mother and focus on raising their two sons. But Bart was still available to act as a den leader for Boy Scouts, which both Mitchell and Chandler participated in. Chandler played soccer as a kid, but he'd always been an extremely, extremely good swimmer. And in high school, he became a star on the swim team, where both of his parents cheered him on from the sidelines at every single swim meet. So I want to, I want to very much like state, you know, Bart is busy because he's working a lot to provide. Krista's a stay at home mom, so she's got her own to do list every single day. Both of them made sure that they were still actively involved in their kids' lives at every single swim meet. Bart's being the den leader for Boy Scouts.

• 9:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  They were very much were focused on making sure that their, their sons had every opportunity to be successful and have a good life.

• 9:37Derrick Levasseur?

  From the outside looking in, just the, the perfect family, right? Like they had everything going, a two parent home, supporting, loving, all doing well, school, extra recreational activities. Like this is, this is what you hope for. This is what you want.

• 9:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, exactly. This is what you want to build. And so many people, they struggle to do that because of this or that. But the Haldersons were doing it.

• 10:00Derrick Levasseur?

  How many times have we heard this story though? And then things aren't always how they, how they look.

• 10:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  From what I could tell, Bart Halderson was the more sensible, logical parent. But everyone knew that Krista, for her being a mother, was her entire world. She was known to be very focused on it with her son Mitchell, even describing her as a helicopter parent, but he said, not in a bad way. She was just very focused on them, very concerned. If he was injured, she would be really kind of like anxious about it and always be texting him and wondering if he was okay and how he was doing. He said she was a helicopter parent in a way that showed how deeply she cared. And Krista was the perfect homemaker and doting mother. She loved doing art projects and cooking for her family. She was incredibly empathetic and protective of the people she loved, specifically her younger son, her youngest son Chandler,

• 10:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  who she called her baby boy, even when he was an adult man. By all accounts, from everyone who knew Bart and Krista, they were amazing people and the gold standard for what parents looked like.

• 11:02Derrick Levasseur?

  What kind of parents were Bart and Krista?

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 11:06Derrick Levasseur?

  What do you mean by that?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  They never really got angry, like.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  I'll throw myself under the bus because when I get mad at my girls, I used to yell. They weren't yellers. They didn't like, you know,

• 11:23Speaker 02

  do any of that stuff. I mean,

• 11:27Speaker 02

  I don't think they had probably ever even spanked their kids. They just,

• 11:33Speaker 02

  they always gave them options and choices.

• 11:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I've always believed that one of the clearest signs that someone was a good parent is when their children grow up and still choose to be close to them, right? Because once children become adults, the relationship does change. They're no longer dependent in the same way. They're no longer required to spend time with their parents, or share their lives, or answer the phone, or come for holidays, ask for advice, or seek comfort from their parents. So when adult children still want that closeness, when they still choose to call, visit, laugh with their parents, confide in them, and make space for them in their lives, that does say something powerful. It says those parents did the work when it mattered the most. They built something during the childhood years that lasted beyond obligation. They created a foundation of trust, safety, love,

• 12:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  support, respect. They made their children feel seen and valued and protected. Enough that even after growing up and gaining the freedom to walk away, those children still chose to stay connected. And that dynamic that I just described was exactly what the Halderson family had. Even when Mitchell and Chandler were grown, they still remained close to their parents. In fact, Mitchell continued living with Bart and Krista as he went through college, and he was living with them in July of 2021, when they went off for a fun holiday weekend and never came home. So I think you would agree with that. Like, when you have a strained relationship with your parents in childhood, you know, once you become an adult, you're like, okay, I get to choose now how much I want this person to be involved in my life. I have autonomy.

• 13:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  And if it's a sign, you know, that you're still, and that's what we both want with our kids, right? We want our kids that even when they're 18 plus and they don't have to come home anymore and they don't have to call and they don't have to be a part of our lives, they still choose to because we gave them good childhood and we loved them and they know that.

• 13:19Derrick Levasseur?

  That's the hope. Yeah, I hope my kids stay with me forever, but we'll see.

• 13:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  So when you, I wouldn't necessarily say I want them to stay with me forever.

• 13:28Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm even trying to, I'm trying to manipulate them already to just go to a state school and live with me, but.

• 13:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, I want them to be close forever. I don't want them to be like, living in my house forever.

• 13:37Derrick Levasseur?

  I want to be, I want to be.

• 13:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Maybe like a compound kind of thing.

• 13:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I want them like right next to me.

• 13:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  That doesn't sound very healthy.

• 13:45Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I'm obsessed. Yeah, I'm definitely obsessed.

• 13:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I wanted to really, um, to, to put in an importance on that because when Chandler, in 2021, he's 23 and his older brother Mitchell is 24, they're still actively seeing their parents.

• 14:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're coming home for Father's Day. Yeah. Things were good. Chandler lives there with them, okay? And his girlfriend, uh, Kat was like, yeah, him and his parents would cook together. They'd play the Wii together, you know, you know, if you're playing the Wii with your parents, it's awesome. You've got a great relationship. They chose to spend time together. This wasn't Chandler just doing his own thing and then coming home and sleeping there and then going off. He seemed to have a great relationship with them. So then we get to July of 2021. And at 11:25 a.m. on July 7th, 2021, Chandler went to the northeast precinct of the Dane County Sheriff's Office and he reported that his parents had left for their cabin on the morning of Friday, July 2nd, around 6 a.m.

• 14:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Chandler believed that his parents, Bart and Krista, were going to the cabin to work on a water pump and a fire pit that had been possibly damaged during a recent storm. So Chandler said he thought that his parents were supposed to have been back by the following Sunday night or Monday, but they weren't home. And when he called their cell phones, his calls were going straight to voicemail. So Chandler said he hadn't actually seen his parents leave on the morning of July 2nd, but he had helped them gather and. Pack up some items they were planning to bring with them to the cabin, including a pipe wrench and a hatchet and gas cans for the chainsaw. He'd also helped his mother Krista pack up her medications and he did this the night before they left. So he said when he woke up at 6:15 a.m. on Friday morning to like let the dogs out,

• 15:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  his parents were gone along with those items. And the last communication he'd received from his parents was a text from his mother Krista that she'd sent him around 11 a.m. on July 4th, in which she stated that they were going to the parade in White Lake and they'd be home either Monday or Tuesday. So Chandler said it wasn't uncommon to not be in constant contact with his parents when they were out at the cabin because there wasn't great service there and his parents were busy, et cetera, et cetera. So it wasn't actually Chandler's idea to go to the police and report his parents missing. And we're going to take a quick break and talk about that when we get back.

• 16:15Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 16:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it definitely does. Summer is expensive in a very sneaky way.

• 16:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Very sneaky. It's like, oh, it's just in or out. Then it's travel, gas, groceries, a random iced coffee, a concert, another dinner, kids camp. And suddenly your bank account is like, all right, we need to talk.

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• 17:02Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 18:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the alarm had actually been raised by coworkers of Krista's when she hadn't shown up for work on Friday. So the day allegedly that Krista and Bart left for the cabin, Krista didn't show up for work, which means she hadn't informed anybody that she was going away for the weekend and she wouldn't be there.

• 18:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, and just to confirm, that was July 2nd?

• 18:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 18:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, July 2nd, she didn't show up for work.

• 19:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mm-hmm, which was a Friday. And this was very unlike her, obviously. We always hear this. Whenever the coworkers are calling and being like, hey, this person didn't come in. It's usually because it's like, this is very unlike them, not just like, oh yeah, Krista, she does this sometimes. She just doesn't show up for work, takes a long weekend, so we weren't concerned. No, they were concerned. It wasn't like her. And at that time, a man named Michael Hilgendorf received a call from Krista's office asking if he had talked to her or he knew where she was. And, you know, Michael and his wife Jane had known Krista since middle school. They'd been friends for 38 years and they considered each other family. So, Michael and Jane had twin daughters Haley and Hannah, who were close in age to Chandler and Mitchell. So their kids had grown up playing together and then also becoming friends.

• 19:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Michael actually worked for the same company as Krista. He worked in kind of a different area, but for the same company. And when she'd been ready to stop being a stay at home mother when her kids got older and she wanted to enter the workplace again, he'd actually helped her get the job there because he'd known her for so long and he knew her so well. So Krista not showing up at work and not calling anyone was alarming. And then another coworker and friend of Krista's was also getting calls from Krista's office, asking if he'd seen or talked to her. Daniel Croninger had the day off from work on July 2nd because he was closing on a house. And he also felt right away that something was wrong. Okay, so Michael, Krista's friend, works in like kind of a different area of the same company.

• 20:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's like a, a car place and he works in like the auto body area.

• 20:34Derrick Levasseur?

  A different department.

• 20:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's, yeah, she's in kind of a different building, but they're in the same area. So he gets a call from her building, like, where's Krista? You know, we know you've known her since middle school. This isn't like her. Have you talked to her? He was like, no. Daniel Croninger also works in the same place as Krista. He's got the day off, so people from her office are calling him because he knows, because they know that he and Krista are close. And they're like, have you heard from her? And Daniel's like, no.

• 20:59Derrick Levasseur?

  No, this is, this is a red flag for sure. I mean, the fact that she didn't show up, you could chalk it up to, oh, she had let somebody know and the message wasn't delivered to the right person, but she did let someone know.

• 21:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's why I think they're calling.

• 21:12Derrick Levasseur?

  But to not call anybody and just not show up, especially considering why we're here, you know that this is a sign that something, something more is going on than what it looks like on the surface as far as just a, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to call.

• 21:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so it's a holiday weekend, so people in the office might be like, well, maybe she went up to the cabin, right?

• 21:30Derrick Levasseur?

  She might've told someone, just not the right person.

• 21:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  She might've told someone.

• 21:33Derrick Levasseur?

  They didn't put it in the computer or something like that. You know, maybe this, I'm sure there wasn't alarms at first, but they're trying to call around. They're doing their own investigation, talking to people she knew, to see if someone knew where she was and maybe it was just a simple misunderstanding.

• 21:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're calling people she works with, who are also friends with her in real life. So the thinking is if something's going on in Krista's personal life, like she took a trip to the cabin, they'll know, even if we don't. But they didn't, right? So Daniel Croninger had actually worked with Krista since September of 2019. He knew her family. He'd been to her house and he knew how reliable and responsible Krista was. And since Daniel only lived a few miles away from the Haldersons, he and his girlfriend decided, you know, let's just hop into the car and drive over to Krista's house. And they did this around 4:30 PM. So when he got there, he knocked on the door, but no one answered. So he peeked in through the front window, but he didn't see anyone. So he went to the garage door and looked in.

• 22:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  And he saw in the garage parked both Krista and Bart's vehicles. So both of their cars are there.

• 22:33Derrick Levasseur?

  That's a problem.

• 22:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, and this is July 2nd, the day that Chandler says they left at 6 AM to go to the cabin.

• 22:41Derrick Levasseur?

  They're already gone. And as far as Chandler's statements concerned, they're at the cabin. Or on their way there at least.

• 22:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  On their way there at least, yeah. So at that point, then-

• 22:49Derrick Levasseur?

  What would you need to get there, Stephanie?

• 22:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  A car, right?

• 22:52Derrick Levasseur?

  You need a vehicle. Bingo. Need a vehicle.

• 22:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  But remember Chandler's going to claim, well, they got picked up by some friends.

• 22:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, convenient, okay.

• 23:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  So at that point, Daniel and his girlfriend, they're kind of looking around. They're like, what's going on? Both their cars are here. What's going on? And then Chandler Halderson, he came outside and he talked to Daniel. And he explained that his parents had gone to their cabin up north and they'd be home in a few days. Then at this point, Daniel's like, well, their cars are here. And Chandler's like, yeah, they got picked up by like a friend. Somebody picked them up. I wasn't awake when it happened, so I don't know who it was. Now, this was the same thing he told Michael Helgendorf, the other friend, when Michael texted him on that same Friday, concerned about why Krista wasn't at work. So Michael's wife, Jane, really tight, close friends with Krista. Jane had already tried to call both Bart and Krista, but her calls were going to voicemail.

• 23:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  So she called their son, Mitchell, the older son. And he said he didn't even know anything about his parents going to the cabin that weekend. And so then Jane called Chandler.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  Did Chandler seem to have any more details other than they were with another couple and they went to the cabin?

• 23:59Speaker 02

  He said that they loaded up a bunch of booze and took a whole bunch of money.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  And maybe that they went gambling and they were gonna have a really good time.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  I'm gonna pause there for one second.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  Were Bart and Krista people who loaded up a bunch of booze into their car usually?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  You answered somewhat emphatically. What do you mean by that?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  We had been to their house many occasions. My husband and Bart would have like a beer. That's all Bart would ever drink is a beer or he likes scotch. That was, you know, or a little small glass of scotch, whatever. Just as we were winding down. Krista usually didn't drink. She would have maybe a beer on one of my occasions when I went up to her house. I'm like, do you want me to pick up a bottle of wine for us tonight? And she's like, no, I don't want to drink in front of the kids. And I was like, you're an adult. You can.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  Right. You don't share that concern yourself?

• 24:58Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Okay. The money. Did that make any sense to you that Bart and Krista would load up cash, a bunch of cash and go up to the cabin?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  No. Bart's a CPA.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  He was very tight with his money. They both were. They kind of had a budget. And they didn't spend outside that budget.

• 25:17Derrick Levasseur?

  All right. So first thing we can, we can confirm is Jane likes to have a couple of drinks.

• 25:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, Jane's like, I do not share that I don't want to drink in front of my kids.

• 25:27Derrick Levasseur?

  But but overall, she knows, she knows Bart, she knows Krista, she knows their, for the most part, how they conduct themselves.

• 25:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's known Krista since middle school. Yeah. And known Bart ever since Krista and Bart were married. Yeah.

• 25:39Derrick Levasseur?

  And she's animated here because obviously she knows more than I know and the audience knows at this point in the story. But she's obviously passionate about this because it sounds like even initially, when he said this, it raised some flags for her where she was like,

• 25:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Correct.

• 25:53Derrick Levasseur?

  They loaded up a bunch of booze and money. These are people who are very frugal and don't drink a lot. Two things I wouldn't expect you to say Chandler. So in hindsight, she's probably even more pissed now knowing more about the story than we do.

• 26:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And, you know, she's also saying, like, I think it also says something about Krista where it's like, even when she's an adult and her kids are adults, she's still like, no, I don't want to set the wrong example.

• 26:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Very cognizant of.

• 26:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Very wholesome, you know?

• 26:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Which is fine. Two weeks their own.

• 26:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm not gonna drink in front of my kids, which I respect that. Like, I like Jane. I'm like, no, if my kids are adults, I'm gonna have a few drinks in front of them. I don't care. But I wish I could be more like Krista. And and have this, you know.

• 26:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Overall, the story is just not adding up because they're going up to a cabin for a weekend. I'm sure you've gone away to cabins or vacation homes on the weekend. As a lot of our audience has. It's usually a little bit more involved as far as the packing, even if you own the place. You gotta bring up, you know, paper plates and food or groceries, whatever. Usually, usually you pack it up before you go up there. You might need certain toiletries and medications, whatever it is, and it's at least.

• 27:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, remember Chandler said he helped his mother pack her medications. The night before.

• 27:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Right, but but it sounds like they packed very light for an entire weekend when you're going up to the cabin. I would think that you'd have to bring a luggage, you know, you need clothes. And so you're gonna hop into someone else's car. And and I don't know how big their vehicle is, but you're gonna load up your personal belongings. Then you have two, you two. And then them too. It's not a lot of room. So logistically, without knowing details, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And then on top of that, which I'm sure you're gonna get to. We haven't heard the name of these friends that they were picked up by allegedly. And so that's gonna become a big a crossroad in this whole story because that's where I would imagine some of this is gonna fall apart.

• 27:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, cuz Chandler doesn't know who picked them up cuz he wasn't awake. And all of Krista's friends are like, well, we're her friends, you know, so who would she?

• 27:52Derrick Levasseur?

  What other friend is picking her up that we're unaware of that would be going up to the cabin with her? It's not some random person she just met.

• 27:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. Who would they be with? Yeah.

• 28:01Derrick Levasseur?

  They have to be someone who are their local, right? They're from the area. It's convenient for them to stop by and pick them up. So who are we talking about here?

• 28:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  And we've known Bart and Krista for decades.

• 28:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  And we can't for the life of us imagine who who they would be with.

• 28:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it sounds like Bart and Krista, and this is an assumption of my part, probably had a a smaller circle of friends that they were tight with.

• 28:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Small. I wouldn't say it was small because it was very extended, right? Like, but that they were very close with, especially Krista, who was talking to her friends every single day, right? She's always telling them what she's doing, what's going on in life. She's keeping them constantly updated. So if for her to have a whole different set of friends that nobody knew about and for her to be going to the cabin and not have told Jane or anyone. Hey, by the way. Going to the cabin this weekend. Yeah. That was very concerning. And so at this point, people were very unsettled by the sudden disappearance of Bart and Krista. Yes, they were adults. Yes, they could pick up and leave whenever they wanted to. But a lot of things were happening that were so out of character for them that those people who knew them well were genuinely alarmed.

• 29:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  Krista never missed work. She was always in touch. She always told her friends and her children where she was going and what she was doing. And yeah, Chandler knew, but their other son, Mitchell, didn't know. So the Haldersons were also not the type of people to load the car with alcohol and money before a trip to their cabin. And gambling was something that neither of them ever took part in. So Jane said she did feel a little bit better on the 4th because at that point Chandler communicated with her and told her that he'd gotten a text from his mother. But the following Wednesday, which was July 7th, Jane got a call from Chandler telling her that Bart and Krista, they hadn't come home yet and he still hadn't heard from them. So at that time, Jane and her husband, Michael, were at their own cabin.

• 29:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  So they left on July 4th for a two week vacation at their own cabin. And their cabin was 88 miles away from the Halderson cabin. But Jane was so concerned when she got that call from Chandler on the 7th. And she was like, something's not right, something's not right. So her husband, Michael, was like, you know what? Screw it, you're right. Let's just, to make you feel better, to make me feel better, let's get in the car. Let's drive 88 miles.

• 30:11Derrick Levasseur?

  90 miles.

• 30:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, we're gonna check on Bart.

• 30:13Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm a Rhode Islander, so that's like, that's like, that's a true friend.

• 30:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Derrick Levasseur?

  That's a true, that's a real, that's a real close friend.

• 30:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  So it's like, they're like, oh, we're at our cabin, they're at their cabin. It's just a, you know, a 15 minute drive. No, 90 miles away. They were, they were 90 miles apart. So they're like, let's get in our car, we'll drive it, we'll check on Bart and Krista for ourselves.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  What do you find?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  There is two like big old, like spoke wheels. Like people use them in their outdoor motif all the time. And then there's a birch log across that. And I'm like, I take a picture and I'm like, is this the cottage? And he's like, yeah. And then he's like, haven't you ever been there? And I'm like, no. At this point, I called him.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  On my cell. And I said Chandler, no one's been here. The grass is like two feet tall, 16 inches, two feet tall. And when you drive over grass, like when we haven't been up to the cottage, it gets pushed over. So you know that somebody's been there. It didn't, it wasn't pushed over. It was pretty tall.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  So you called Chandler?

• 31:25Speaker 02

  I called him back.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  Get back in your car, I would imagine, and you're talking to him?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  My husband didn't let me go out of the car. He said, you stay in, I'm gonna go look. So I called Chandler back, so I have him on the phone and I'm like, nobody's been here. And he's like, are the doors unlocked? And I said, no, they're locked from the outside, which I thought was weird because ours has a normal like key lock. And he's like, no, that's how it is. I'm like, okay. And he's like, did you check everywhere behind like the boathouse? And I'm like, Uncle Mike's doing that right now. He's like, okay. He's like, did you find anything? And I said, like, what? And I was shocked that he said, any bullet shells or any blood or anything? And I went, what?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  And he's like, did you find anything? And I'm like, no, no one's been here. And he's like, okay, what do you think I should do? I'm like, you need to report them as missing. Obviously, they didn't make it here. I don't know how they could go to a parade if they didn't make it here. But whatever, maybe they stayed somewhere else. I didn't know.

• 32:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, Jane's not playing around. Jane doesn't take any bullshit for sure. I mean, she, and also what she said there, you know, Uncle Mike is looking like that just tells you how close they were. Because they weren't blood related and yet that's how close they were. But you could tell, and maybe I'm giving her a little too much credit here, but she's, something smelt off to her from the beginning.

• 32:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's a detective. She's like, there's no grass pushed down, man.

• 32:58Derrick Levasseur?

  She hadn't even gotten out of the car yet and she's like, yeah, they haven't been here. This is some, this is not adding up. Someone's not telling us the truth.

• 33:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  And, and then come to find Jane, Jane and. And Michael, her husband, they also do a little like kind of looking into things. They find out there never was a parade in White Lake on July 4th. Cause remember Krista had allegedly texted Chandler on the 4th and said, oh, we're here. Everything's fine. We're going to a parade tonight. And you think, yes, July 4th, places have parades. Maybe there was a parade. There never was. And you can see the people who know Krista and Bart, they're going through this stuff in their head and they're like, well, maybe they went to like a neighboring town and they went to a parade there, but why did they say it was in White Lake? And maybe they found there was no parade in White Lake. So then they, they went and found a parade, or maybe they found there was no parade in White Lake. So they didn't go to a parade, but they were not at this cabin. So like, what's going on here?

• 33:48Derrick Levasseur?

  And, and by the way, I don't want to skip over the fact that what Jane said there was extremely important. I mean, it's been minutes since she showed up at the cabin with Mike and already Chandler's asking if there's any shell casings.

• 34:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's like, did you find anything like bullets or?

• 34:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Anybody in the comments section, listening, watching right now, if there's ever been a time where you were looking for someone within a matter of minutes, did you think to yourself to ask the person who was doing the searching for you?

• 34:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  They must've been executed outside the cabin.

• 34:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey, did you see any, any ballistics evidence around there that I should be aware of? Like never crossed my mind as a former cop.

• 34:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Jane's like, what the hell? What? No bullets? What are we talking about?

• 34:25Derrick Levasseur?

  At this point, everybody should be thinking, oh, maybe it's just something, there's a miscommunication.

• 34:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Maybe they were going to the friend's cabin. Yeah.

• 34:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Something that we're unaware of where it's just a chain of events that resulted in a lack of communication. Not, hey, any signs of a murder up there that I should be aware of?

• 34:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Any shell casings do you see?

• 34:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Yeah. Nope. Not good.

• 34:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  So yeah, there's a lot going on here. It's, it's suspicious. Like did Bart and Krista leave with somebody unknown who hurt them? Uh, what's going on? Did they lie to Chandler? I don't know, but stuff's going on here. So let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 35:04Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 35:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I feel like everyone is talking about GLP-1 right now. It's a very common trend that I see online.

• 35:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Everyone, right? It's GLP-1 this, GLP-1 that. Are you on one? Do you know someone on one? Is your neighbor's cousin's dog on one? It's everywhere.

• 35:23Derrick Levasseur?

  The dog seems a little unnecessary, I'll be honest.

• 35:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I don't know if you guys know, but I've been looking into GLP-1s because everyone's talking about it. And so I was curious about Veracity's Metabolism Ignite. I wanted to see if it was worth it, if it worked. I wanted something that could support my goals without adding another complicated step to my day.

• 35:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, for sure, because the more complicated the routine is, the less likely you're gonna stick with it.

• 35:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  That goes for everything, so.

• 35:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Everything.

• 35:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  I do not need a 14-step wellness ritual that requires me to wake up at 4:45 a.m. And become a literal different person who's actually organized.

• 35:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Nope, that sounds horrifying. I'm all set. Pass.

• 36:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  But the Metabolism Ignite is easy. I have been trying it out. I've been taking two capsules with breakfast. One thing I've noticed is that I'm not constantly thinking about snacks. Normally by mid-afternoon, I'm wandering into the kitchen, looking for something usually salty, usually cheesy, sometimes sweet. You know, basically whatever is willing to cooperate. And lately, that's been happening a lot less.

• 36:20Derrick Levasseur?

  The 3 p.m. snack spiral is a very real thing.

• 36:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  It is. One minute you're being normal, the next minute you're absolutely ravenous and you're staring into the refrigerator like it owes you answers.

• 36:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, and you notice it never has those answers.

• 36:32Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 36:46Derrick Levasseur?

  And I like that it's simple. Two capsules with breakfast is very manageable.

• 36:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Very, very. And sometimes wellness brands act like you have unlimited time, unlimited energy, and a kitchen that looks like a clean-girl Pinterest board. I do not. I need something I can actually remember to do while drinking coffee and answering emails.

• 37:04Derrick Levasseur?

  That feels more realistic to me. Yeah, that works.

• 37:06Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 37:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Chandler goes and reports his parents missing on July 7th because you could hear he's talking to Jane. She's like, nobody's here at the cabin. Nobody's been here. He's like, what should I do? She's like, uh, report them missing. So he goes and he reports them missing. Yeah. So on the evening of July 7th, Detective Sabrina Sims and Detective Brian Shunk went to the Halderson home to talk to Chandler. And the detectives noticed that both Bart's Subaru and Krista's Volkswagen were parked in the garage, just like Daniel Croninger noticed. And Chandler mentioned to them that he had driven both vehicles during the time his parents were gone, but he said not a lot. He said he'd driven to his girlfriend's house on the east side of Madison, and he took a trip to the Sun Prairie area. Other than that, Chandler said he hadn't driven a lot

• 38:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  because he had gotten a concussion before his parents left for the cabin, and it limited how much he could drive. So this concussion in question had happened on June 17th, when Chandler had fallen down the stairs. Remember, I said Bart and Krista had been doing a lot of renovations on their home, and Chandler had been helping as much as he could. And during some work on the upstairs bathroom, Chandler had been carrying an old porcelain toilet down the stairs by himself when he lost his footing and fell. And after going to the hospital, Chandler came home and informed his family and his girlfriend that his injuries were pretty extreme. It was, it was bad. He said the doctors had found blood on his brain and that he was at risk for a fatal aneurysm. The fall had left him with extensive nerve damage

• 39:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  across his upper body and temporary leg paralysis. So he actually was sleeping downstairs on the first floor because he was closer to the bathroom because he would routinely- keenly lose feeling in his legs, which would cause him to need assistance with standing or walking. He also told his girlfriend Kat that spinal fluid was leaking from his head and spine, and the injuries may lead for him to need to wear a colostomy bag eventually, although at that point, he was wearing a neck brace that was given to him by the doctors. So Mitchell Halderson, Chandler's older brother, he also felt a growing anxiety as the days passed and he didn't hear from his parents. And the fact that his brother Chandler was concerned enough to report them missing, it

• 39:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  signaled to Mitchell that this might in fact be serious. So he decided to drive with his fiancee three hours to the cabin on July 8th.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  So you go up north and you meet the deputy up there?

• 40:11Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  What do you do once you're up there?

• 40:14Speaker 06

  Before the deputies arrived, I took a lap around the cabin myself, just because I didn't want to wait outside any longer. Eventually Langley County, I guess the deputies, I believe they were sheriffs and deputies, met us there. And eventually I took another walk around the property with them, just pointing out things that I noticed. And also, they busted into the doors because they were all locked and the keys that I had were not working.

• 40:35Speaker 05

  At any point, obviously, you did not find your parents up there?

• 40:38Speaker 06

  No.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  Did you find any signs at all that they had been there?

• 40:42Speaker 06

  Nothing looked like it had been used. There was a couple pieces of trash around, but I believe that's just because sometimes people will walk through the property on the way, either between properties or just in the way. Either way, I do not believe it had been used anytime recently.

• 40:54Speaker 07

  Hi there. Hi there. I'm Detective Sergeant Groves of Langley County. Are you guys, um? The Haldersons. You, okay, you are affiliated with them? Yes. Okay. What's your relation? I'm their son. You're their son? Okay. All right. Yeah, it's my understanding someone from the Dane County Sheriff's Office is going to be up here soon. I don't know if you've- They unfortunately were just called, from being informed, they were just called back, actually. So they will not be here? Really? Yeah. Okay. That's news to me, too. Yeah, it's okay. This is actually someone from the sheriff's office, if you weren't mistaken. Oh, sure.

• 41:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think he was monitoring the radio, but.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  We probably could get in if you wanted us to. I'd, obviously, there'd be some damage. We'd try to minimize it as best we could.

• 41:46Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I think that honestly at least makes sense at this point.

• 41:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, I, to be safe rather than sorry, and I mean, yeah, we, we're not gonna drive a, a truck through a wall, but, um, but no, unfortunately, if it's locked, we would have to do something, but.

• 42:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I wouldn't expect the, the locks to be crazy strong anymore at this point. Is it just the padlock on the front door? Yeah, it's just a padlock on the front door.

• 42:07Speaker 07

  Okay, yeah, and I, I have a pry bar, and we might have some other options to, yeah, a lock is a lot cheaper to replace than a wall, but do you, based on, I guess, your experience with the property, do like, a lot of people walk the shoreline, or I know there's, there's campground and stuff, is that like, common for people to, to kinda wander?

• 42:23Speaker 06

  I guess it's hard to say, cause I don't, not when we're here at least, but it's possible, I guess they do when they're not here.

• 42:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  Sheriff's office, anybody inside? Now it's your presence, make yourselves known.

• 43:17Speaker 07

  Alright, so, we were able to, uh, just, basically just pop the latch off the front door, so it shouldn't, uh, that really should be the only thing that would need to be fixed is just the latch, um, it should still lock and everything. Nobody inside and nothing looks like it's disturbed, um, but if you wanna take a look with us, cause you might know better if, um, anything looks out of the ordinary, just trying to think of any other possibility, like, you know, when you were a, a kid, when you came up here years past, I mean, is there anywhere else you guys would go, like, uh, up to Monaca or Rhinelander or anywhere like that, uh, if you were up here, like, take a day trip somewhere?

• 43:56Speaker 06

  A candy store just for fun, but that would be about it.

• 43:59Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 44:00Speaker 06

  My parents would go there since they like the taffy there if they were up here.

• 44:04Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 44:05Speaker 06

  It's a pretty big place, but I don't know.

• 44:08Speaker 07

  Sure. To my knowledge, nothing was a report like we didn't have any accidents or anything like that. Um, you know, sometimes we have like car accidents, fourth of July weekend, but um, nothing where uh, like we didn't have somebody who wasn't identified or anything like that. So.

• 44:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  The other thing we've been wondering about is like hospitals. I'm sure they're looking into that.

• 44:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  And like your brother had been saying that your mom was having some health diagnoses or something.

• 44:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was supposed to get have an appointment for like skin cancer or something.

• 44:40Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 44:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  And so we didn't know like they had gone. Sure. Do that instead and just didn't want to tell anyone.

• 44:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, um, I'm not sure if Dane County would have called our hospitals up here. Um, I know like if we ever have uh, like a missing persons case, we usually call if you know, there's a different area they're believed to be in. Um, but I can certainly call, um, you know, Aspiris and Anago and Wassa are kind of the, the two closest, most common ones.

• 45:04Derrick Levasseur?

  All right. So from that video, I guess there's, there's a lot we can talk about, but for the sake of just staying on, on course with the story. The big thing to me is that even though this is kind of a secluded area, there was in the beginning of the clip, a, another house right next door. And I have to imagine, just based on my own personal experience with beach houses and, and log cabins, like if you own something in that area, it's probably been owned by the same families for a, a reasonable amount of time and you're, you're pretty close with the people around you. And you would think that if at any point Bart and Krista had come up to that cabin, the people next door would have said, yeah, yeah, we saw the car here the other day. You're familiar with what's going on around you. So although that wasn't on camera, I'm sure that's something that was done, that was asked.

• 45:48Derrick Levasseur?

  And then as far as the actual property, it's kind of like Jean said, right? Like it looks like it's been almost deserted for a while. And, and you would think that if they were up there, there would have been some landscaping or something done to make the place a little bit easier.

• 46:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  You're not at your cabin for months. Probably one of the first things you do when you get there is mow the grass.

• 46:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, take care of it.

• 46:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Derrick Levasseur?

  The only other thing that I'd be asking at this point, if I was the first guy on scene, was did they own a boat, right? Is it possible that, again, you would still expect to see activity in the home? That doesn't, that doesn't rule that out and that as far as it doesn't appear anybody had been there in a while. But I would ask if they had a boat and, and if, you know, they could have taken the boat out and something happened there, which again, still wouldn't make a lot of sense because it wouldn't be like they got out of their car and the first thing they did was hop on their boat and go for a ride. But you gotta dot all your i's, cross all your t's. What did you take from the video?

• 46:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, it kind of breaks my heart because first of all, you hear they're, they're asking Mitchell, like, is there a place you like to go when you were kids? And he's like, yeah, there's this candy shop. My parents like the taffy there, maybe there, but other than that, I don't know. And then the police are like, well, you know, we don't have any accidents that have been reported where the victims are unknown. So they're thinking about everything. And then Mitchell's girlfriend slash fiance, she says, well, your brother did say your mother was having some medical issues. So we were wondering, maybe did Krista and Bart go to get some tests done and they just didn't want to worry us? So they told us they were coming to the cabin, but that's not where they went. And that's when they start talking about like, yeah, we can check the hospitals and things. But something that's very important to note that happened pretty much in the first, I

• 47:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  don't know, 30 seconds of that clip. You heard that this is, this is in Great Lakes. So it's a different county than where they live in Windsor, right?

• 47:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 47:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's like a three hour drive. And you heard that the local law enforcement who were reporting to the cabin, you heard them say that the officers from the Dane County Sheriff's Office had been on their way to the cabin in White Lake to basically meet with local law enforcement and to talk to Mitchell. But then they'd been called back. And this is what Mitchell says and the local law enforcement, they're like, oh, really? Like, that's weird. And, and they call, I didn't put that part in there, but they called Dane County and Dane County is kind of like very vague about what's happening. Well, the reason that Dane County had been on their way to the cabin and then they turned around was because they were investigating a tip they'd received that morning that led police. Police to a property in Cottage Grove,

• 48:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  which was about 20 minutes southeast of the Halderson home in Windsor. And that property, it was huge. It spanned roughly 80 rural, heavily wooded acres along Noah Road. The property owner had called the police to report that on Monday, July 5th, they'd witnessed some strange activity there. So on the afternoon of July 8th, Dane County search teams and K-9 units swarmed the property. And one of the first things Detective Beverstock would testify, he saw when he arrived was vultures circling over an area of woods.

• 48:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, that's not good.

• 48:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  At the edge of the property line. Yeah. So I'm going to try to, it's a very complicated sort of setup. But the main house was large. There's an expansive area of manicured grass. And then further away from the house, there's a swimming pool. And it's kind of so far away from the house that they had a golf cart, where they would get in the golf cart from the house and, and drive the golf cart to the swimming pool. So it's a big property. And then police, they get out on July 8th. They get out of their cars. They walked towards a large wood sided utility shed, standing at the edge of the property line, really far back away from the main house. And this is when they spotted distinct fresh tire tracks

• 49:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  leading into the tall grass and weeds at the wooded property line. So there's like the house that they're living in, their, their property, which is kept mowed and stuff. And then they have like this area that's not mowed, tall grass leading into woods.

• 49:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Lot harder to get to.

• 49:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Derrick Levasseur?

  A little bit more secluded.

• 49:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the police, they continue on into the trees. They go through the thick brush, the low hanging branches. And about 20 to 30 yards into the dense forest, they spotted something out of place just beyond a large mossy log on the forest floor.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  So there's the mowed section of the grass, which is just south of the barn. There's a, you know, a stack of old logs sitting there. But to the right is where we could see what appeared to be two tire marks going into the deeper grass.

• 50:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Did you follow those tire marks?

• 50:22Speaker 03

  Yes, I did. Where the tire marks end, there's another area of depressed grass.

• 50:27Speaker 07

  And all different directions at the end of it. So you're standing near where all that grass was padded down at the end of the tire marks in the grass. You look over and you can see more of the grass is like pressed down, heading towards the woods.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  And was that, you know, we're seeing it on a photograph, but I'll say, I'll ask you, because you were out there. Was it apparent to you that this was an area that had been walked through or trampled in some way by someone or something?

• 50:52Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  And did you follow it?

• 50:55Speaker 07

  Yes, I did.

• 50:56Speaker 04

  Okay. And so you entered the woods right there?

• 50:58Speaker 07

  Correct. It's hard to tell from this picture, but there's actually a downward slope here. You know, if the trees weren't here, it'd be a good little sled and hill for little kids. But there's like a downward slope that goes down into, you can see like a little brush pile down there. More of the trampled grass that goes to this log that goes across. And then you can see, they get the green moss on the log. But there's areas where the green moss had been scraped off as if something had scraped it off.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  Did you notice anything ultimately beyond that log at this point?

• 51:32Speaker 07

  Yeah. The pile of sticks on the other side of the log. And there was just something that wasn't natural under the sticks.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  Did you go check it out?

• 51:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, I got as close as I had to. Couldn't quite tell what it was right away, so I stepped over the log and got a little bit of a closer look.

• 51:54Speaker 04

  And what did you find?

• 51:58Speaker 07

  I didn't know what it was at first.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  What do you mean by that?

• 52:03Speaker 07

  It's just, it took me a while to process what I was seeing, you know. Then it was, became obvious that I was looking at a human torso.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  We're starting to maybe be able to see that, what you saw that there?

• 52:21Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  Under those sticks?

• 52:23Speaker 07

  Yeah. And that's This is about the view that I had.

• 52:29Speaker 07

  You could see the flesh-colored skin on the right and the belt and pants. And a black rope attached to it. You can see the rope coming out from the bottom of the stick pile.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  What are we looking at there?

• 52:49Speaker 07

  That's the rope that was attached to the body.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Was it a considerable pile of debris on top of the torso? If you could describe in any way you could.

• 52:57Speaker 07

  You know, it wasn't natural to, it looked like it had been accumulated and placed on top.

• 53:04Speaker 07

  There wasn't another pile of sticks nearby similarly. It was mostly a collection of dead wood that was placed on top.

• 53:12Derrick Levasseur?

  I feel for that officer right there. It's something we've talked about before. I remember early on in my career. And other officers and detectives have described it similarly. It almost looks like a mannequin. And it takes a moment for your brain to process it, to catch up with what you're seeing. Like your eyes see it. But even though you're a police officer and you should be, you know, aware of this and understand it could happen. Those moments leading up to it, when you're just walking down this grassy path and you see these tire tracks.

• 53:45Derrick Levasseur?

  You're not expecting to find a dead body. It's never something you can, you think about it. But until it actually happens, you don't understand that feeling. And when you're looking at it. Now, like you said, obviously now it looks like a body, but in that moment, you're like, wait a second. What is that? No, it can't be, it can't be that. And then it's like, oh, that's exactly what it is. You know, and you could tell he struggled with it.

• 54:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, that was Detective Beaverton. And like I said, you could definitely tell that even trying to recall it, it's like, I, I just, I don't even, I don't even want to go back there, you know, I have to for court, but I don't, I don't really want to.

• 54:19Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't know how long he's been on or what he's been in. I don't know that area, but not, just because you're a detective. It doesn't mean that you've seen hundreds of dead bodies.

• 54:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  That you're always encountering these things. Yeah.

• 54:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. So this could be something for that area, which there is not normal. And so to. He might have been on 15, 20 years on the job. Maybe he had one or two cases like this. So he's going out there, doing his due diligence, not expecting to find this.

• 54:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, they all kind of said, all the police on this, they were like, we've never really seen anything like this. This was horrific. This was nightmare inducing.

• 54:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  So we are going to talk about what they did find, but let's take a quick break first.

• 55:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  This episode is brought to you by Quince and every summer I have the same realization, which is that I want to look effortlessly put together, but I don't want to put in a heroic amount of effort.

• 55:16Derrick Levasseur?

  That seems fair. Effortless should not require a full strategy. Meaning I think most people would agree with you.

• 55:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Especially when it gets warm like this, you know, it's, it's not easy to just kind of like throw something on and layer. I want lighter fabrics, easy pieces, things that look elevated, but still feel comfortable. I want to look like I casually threw something on and walked out the door, even if there was a whole internal negotiation happening beforehand.

• 55:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. So what Stephanie is saying is polished on the outside, but complete chaos on the inside, which I think is relatable to a lot of us.

• 55:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's, that's my, that's my whole aesthetic.

• 55:50Derrick Levasseur?

  That's your mantra. That's your mantra.

• 55:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  And that's why I keep coming back to Quince. They make premium essentials like breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk. Without the luxury markup, everything feels elevated, but still easy. I got this beautiful green, like emerald green satin dress and it looks like it's so fancy and it looks like it's so uncomfortable. It fits perfectly like a glove.

• 56:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely love Quince. I'm glad you're on board with me because whether we're sponsored by them or not, I'm going to be wearing their gear. There's no doubt about it.

• 56:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And they have beautiful everyday pieces, like 100% European linen pants, dresses, like I just talked about, tops with style, starting at $32. Their denim is soft. It's easy to wear. Their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for a cool summer nights when you want to layer without looking like you gave up. And the best part is that Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for quality, not the brand markup. And it's not just clothes. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across the home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, so you can bring that premium feel into everyday life without overpaying for it.

• 56:58Derrick Levasseur?

  All right, so I'm going to ask you then, because I always talk about my Quince gear. What's your Quince summer uniform?

• 57:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  These days, anything linen, linen pants, linen dresses, linen sets. They make you look like you have your life together, even when you're just trying to survive humidity.

• 57:12Derrick Levasseur?

  That's a strong endorsement right there.

• 57:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/crimeweekly for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada too, eh? That's quince, Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash crime weekly for free shipping and 365 day returns, quince.com slash crime weekly.

• 57:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we are back. So what they found, and you could hear him, he said it was past a mossy log and the moss on the log had been disturbed, like it was scraped off by something, right? So what they found on the other side of that mossy log was the shirtless torso of Bart Halderson, lying face down with a rope tied around his waist, no arms, no legs, no head. So like I said, there was this large mowed area where the barn was located, and then that mowed area abruptly ended with the land beyond, leading to the tree line with the unmowed long grass. Right at the edge of that long grass area, the police saw what looked like a large oil drum.

• 58:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  On the north side of the oil drum, there was an odd shaped cut, and inside the oil drum, police would recover several items, a pair of red household scissors, long handled pruning shears, a broken hand hacksaw, and a broken bone saw. So three tarps were also found at the crime scene. One was found on top of Bart's torso, located underneath the foliage that had been placed on top of his torso to conceal it. A piece of that same tarp was discovered, bound in yellow duct tape in a black roll Garbage can a short walk away from the torso outside the utility shed. A separate tarp was found in the main barn about 50 yards away from the utility shed. All three tarps had red staining on them that would test positive for blood.

• 59:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  So as it turns out, the tip that had led the police to the Cottage Grove property had come in from a woman named Dolce Melander. And this is the mother of Chandler's girlfriend, Catherine. So on the night of, right? So on the night of July 7th, Catherine had told her mother that Chandler had just reported his parents missing. And so this caused Dolce and her partner Crescent Lassie to discuss together how they had seen Chandler on Monday, July 5th, and how weird it had been. So Chandler had just been at their home on July 4th because they had a pool. They had a nice property. So Dolce and Crescent, their families came over and there was kids and, you know, they were all swimming and eating some food and hanging out.

• 59:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  And even on that day, Chandler had been acting abnormally.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  He just seemed kind of off, like, kind of weird, actually. I mean, I remember asking him how he felt, you know, because I just, he just kind of seemed.

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  Okay, you asked him how he felt. What did you remember how he responded?

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, he just said, oh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing okay. Or I'm doing the best that I can. And because he had an accident, he fell down the stairs or something. So I thought maybe it was because of the accident that he was acting off.

• 1:00:29Speaker 05

  Sure. Was he displaying any physical symptoms on July 4th?

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

  Not that I, not that I saw, no.

• 1:00:35Speaker 05

  Okay. Was he wearing a neck brace at all on July 4th when you saw him?

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  No. Well, shortly after he was done eating, the kids were sitting at the table in my family room. And they'd gotten up and I was kind of walking towards the kitchen. And he approached me and asked me if he could have my phone number, my personal phone number, because he wanted to.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  If he could come and use the pool.

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  Okay, did you give him your number?

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I gave him my cell number and I also gave him my, my landline.

• 1:01:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Crescent said that before that weekend Chandler had never been to the house alone before and he had never really talked about his parents all that much. That Crescent didn't even know their names to that point, like he really didn't discuss his parents. So the following day, which would have been July 5th, Crescent saw Chandler again.

• 1:01:26Speaker 05

  Did you have any interactions with Chandler on Monday, July 5th?

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Yes, the first interaction was I opened up my window. I, you know, I live in a two-story and I saw a car in my driveway. Came in from outside to get a drink of water and I saw a car and it didn't recognize the car. And someone was standing in my driveway and it was, it was Chandler. So I opened the window because he was kind of standing, holding his phone and, and looking around. And so I opened the window and I said, I asked him if he was okay. And he said, yeah. And I said, oh, I said, are you here to use the pool? And he said, yeah, would that be all right? And I said, yeah, sure.

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  Were you expecting Chandler that day?

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  No. Like I said, I was just a little startled because I'm like, who's, who's here, you know?

• 1:02:16Speaker 05

  Sure. Your property is pretty remote.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:02:20Speaker 05

  So what happened after you told Chandler he could use the pool?

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Well, he drove up, you know, because if you come, I live on a hill. And when you come to the driveway, it's kind of in the middle of the hill. And so you have to drive further up the hill to where the pool is. So he, he drove up there.

• 1:02:38Speaker 05

  So he, do you guys have any further discussion before he goes to use the pool?

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  He did come down to where I was working on my project, which was putting on a ramp on my deck. I was putting a ramp so that my father and my brother could get up and down the, the deck in their, on the scooter and the wheelchairs.

• 1:02:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  And so when I was working on that, he'd come down. Was he come, there's a hill that comes, leads down to my house. And he'd come walking down that hill. And then we had a conversation. He was telling me about his accident. He'd said he was at a doctor's appointment. And so he was talking to me about what the doctor had said and what was going on. Well, he told me that he had like damage. And I asked him where and he said in this area of his head, in the back of his head. Well, he said it wasn't good, that they might have to do some surgery or something. And that he said he was having trouble like with numbers and he said he got lost.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  He had to use a GPS. He's just like said his mind was kind of messed up and wasn't thinking so well. Asked him, you know, basically how he was overall doing and about his job. Cause he said he had was getting a new job in Florida and I asked him about that. Like was.

• 1:04:03Speaker 05

  What did he say?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Well, he said that he probably wasn't going to get the job, that some manager told him that it wasn't going to work out because of his injury, that he wasn't able to work. So he seemed concerned about, you know, maybe not having a job and what was he going to kind of do? And I asked him, you know, would he talk to his parents, you know, maybe could he talk to them or, you know, things like that, just to try and reassure him because he just seemed upset about this news that he'd gotten from the doctor.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Sure. And what did he respond to that, to the idea of talking to his parents about his job and health?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  And he said, no, they're, they're still up north. And, and I just says, well, you know, maybe it would help you to talk to them. And his response is he says, no, they'll just be mad and which seemed odd to me, why his parents would be upset with him that he was hurt and couldn't work. You know, it just seemed odd to me.

• 1:04:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And this video says so much more than just about this case. We just covered earlier this week, Kevin Verville. And we talked about the people in the lives of the person we're looking for. And as detectives, you're always trying to develop a baseline on someone you just met, which is extremely difficult. But the people in their lives, they have that built in baseline. They know what their normal behavior is and what's different. So it's not only about what the person is saying, it's their behaviors and how they're saying it. And someone like Crescent in this video, she was able to pick out something being off almost immediately because she knows Chandler personally. And so it's so valuable to have someone like that come forward and say, no, no, not only

• 1:05:37Derrick Levasseur?

  was his specific behaviors different, but his, his actual conduct, him coming over here to use the pool, completely out of character. This is information that is extremely valuable.

• 1:05:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and he had kind of asked her the day before, you know, can I have your number because I might want to do that? And she's like, yeah, whatever. You know, they seemed both, both Crescent and Dolce seemed to be very welcoming people, pretty chill. And she says he pulls in, she sees him in the driveway. And then there's this kind of a moment of she's like, what's going on here? She calls him up. Instead of going right down to the pool, he comes to the main house where Crescent's working on a project, putting in this ramp. And they're talking, they're having this conversation. And Chandler tells her, I'm not doing well. You know, my health isn't doing well because of this injury I have from falling down the stairs.

• 1:06:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, because of that, this very valued prized job that I was supposed to get with SpaceX, that's falling through. And I can't talk to my parents about it because they're just going to be mad at me. And the conversation at this point is happening while Crescent and Chandler are sitting on the deck. And it lasted roughly about 20 minutes. And during that conversation, Chandler's girlfriend's mother, Dolce, arrived home. She walks up, she's like, what's going on? Chandler told her the same thing about losing the SpaceX job in Florida. And then he went to go swim in the swimming pool where Crescent and Dolce kind of stay at the main house. Now, later Crescent and Dolce decided to also go use the pool because it was hot that day, really hot. It's July, it's humid.

• 1:07:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  They wanted to swim, but they also wanted to see kind of what Chandler was doing because he was acting weird, right? And when they're in the pool, they get in the pool, Chandler's not in there, okay? The Cottage Grove property is very large. The pool area is located up a hill away from the main house. They had to drive a golf cart to the pool area. When they got there, they immediately noticed that the solar cover was still entirely covering the swimming pool. Chandler was nowhere in sight. So they get in the pool, they're talking, and I think it was Crescent who testified. They were like, what the hell's going on with Chandler? And Dolce was like, I wonder if he's on drugs or something because he's acting weird. Now, while they were in the pool, they did see the car that Chandler was driving, a Subaru.

• 1:07:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  It was parked all the way back on the property at the wood line and the hatchback part was wide open. So like I said, Dolce and Crescent, they get into the pool, they start swimming, they're talking about what's going on with Chandler. He's acting weird, is he using drugs? What's going on? Now, this is where it got a bit awkward because Crescent usually swam in the pool topless.

• 1:08:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  And at some point while they were swimming, Chandler walked up to the pool edge, also without a shirt on, and asked if he could get in. And it was weird because when they got to the pool, Dolce was like, I know that Crescent's going to swim in the pool, topless. This is her home, her property. Chandler's nowhere to be found, but hopefully when he does like approach the pool, he'll see what's happening and he'll, you know, give some discretion and he won't walk right up to the pool and be standing there and staring at us. But that's not what happened.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  He asks if he wants to, if he can get in the pool with us.

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  And what did you say?

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  I was like, no.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  No?

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  But I say it myself, no.

• 1:09:04Speaker 04

  Why?

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  Because Chris didn't have clothes on the top.

• 1:09:12Speaker 04

  She didn't have a top on?

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  What happened next? Did Chandler go away? Did he get in the pool? What happened?

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  He got in the pool.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  What did Chandler do once he got in the pool?

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  He was just, he was looking to the horizon.

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  How was he? What was he doing in the water physically? Was he moving around? Was he swimming?

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  He was like going underwater and, you know, putting on water on his body and, you know.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  So you're making those motions on your arm? And this is one of those weird things because we have to type down everything that's happening. How would you describe what he was doing when you put your hands on your arms?

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Like he was, you know, putting on water. You know, when you put water and.

• 1:09:54Speaker 04

  Stand, you can rephrase. Did Chandler tell you where he had been?

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  No, I thought he was, he went for a walk. He wasn't in the car. He was walking. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. That's what I said to Chris.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  Did he tell you anything at all about what he was going to do next or what his plans were that day?

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Yes, he was, he was going to my place because Catherine was making.

• 1:10:19Speaker 05

  His favorite. And we asked, what was his favorite? And he says McDonald's.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  He's he's gonna go get McDonald's.

• 1:10:28Speaker 05

  McDonald's. And I said, Catherine is a lazy. She should not make McDonald's.

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  You thought your daughter would cook something better?

• 1:10:35Speaker 05

  I'm like, yeah. I mean, they know we cook good food in the house.

• 1:10:40Derrick Levasseur?

  I do love McDonald's. I can't judge him for that. I mean, I think we all, I mean, love McDonald's. Uh, but clearly he's washing himself off, right? He didn't care about.

• 1:10:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  So they're trying to get her to say that.

• 1:10:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  But.

• 1:10:50Derrick Levasseur?

  That's that. That's the picture they're painting. He didn't care whether they said yes or no to the pool. He was going to pretend he didn't hear it and get in anyways, because he had to. He had to wash himself off. He was probably covered in dirt and grass and.

• 1:11:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  His father's DNA.

• 1:11:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So he was chlorine in a pool. That's a perfect place to go after doing something like that.

• 1:11:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  And you got Crescent in the pool topless and maybe normal Chandler, under different circumstances, would have would have exercised discretion and been like, oh, probably. But because he was like, I need to get in that pool.

• 1:11:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I need I need that pool. And maybe he didn't think they were gonna be there or whatever.

• 1:11:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, he probably didn't. Yeah.

• 1:11:25Derrick Levasseur?

  And also, not only in that moment, him being aggressive and going in the pool, even when he probably realized this was an awkward moment. As they said, he had never gone in that pool before.

• 1:11:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, not when, not just of his, when he was there with Kat or they had the Fourth of July party. Yeah, but not just like, I'm by myself. Hey, can I come over and hang out with you ladies?

• 1:11:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Quick dip.

• 1:11:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And and when they're in the pool, they keep talk. They keep talking, dude, right? Like, he's still talking and it was that point, I think Dolce was like, are you on drugs, dude? Like, what's going on? And he's like, no, no. And she's like, I don't care what you do, but like, don't bring that shit around my daughter and don't ever bring that stuff here to Crescent's property. And he was like, no, no, I would never. I would never do that. It's like, okay, so after being in the pool for about 15 minutes, Chandler got out. He went to get his car that was still parked at the tree line. And then he drove away, leaving the property. He drove by the pool. He waved at them. That was it. So Dolce and Crescent decided to contact the police as soon as they heard that Chandler's parents were unaccounted for because it triggered their memory of his odd behavior that day,

• 1:12:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  July 5th, at the Cottage Grove Farm. They estimated that between the time Chandler said he was going to go swimming and the time that he actually got into the pool was about 45 minutes to an hour. And Chandler seemed different when he got into the pool as opposed to how he had been behaving before getting into the pool.

• 1:12:48Speaker 03

  It was odd because he just seemed really different when he, he got in the pool from when he was talking to us before. Different how? Well, he seemed more lucid, like he just seemed more present.

• 1:13:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  So feeling that Chandler may have used the property for some unknown suspicious purpose, right when his parents vanished, Crescent and Dolce contacted the police and gave them permission to search the property. So going to that same area of the woodline where Dolce and Crescent had seen the Subaru parked, investigators discovered the remains of Chandler's father, Bart Halderson. And after this, the dominoes started to fall down, painting a picture of what had happened in the early days of July 2021, before Bart and Krista uncharacteristically left their home and went on an unannounced trip to their cabin with some unknown person. All right, so on the evening of July 1st, this would have been the night before Bart and Krista allegedly left to go to the cabin, Stephen

• 1:13:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Gribber, a man who not only lived across the street from the Haldersons, but was a retired detective, he was outside when he started to smell a strong odor of burning wood.

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  What caught my attention was while I was there doing that for a period of time, all of a sudden I had, could detect a strong odor just of burning wood. And so I thought someone maybe had a fireplace, or I should say a fire pit or something outside going, they're just burning some firewood. But about five minutes or so later, all of a sudden that odor of burning wood became a distinct odor that was more like in the line of

• 1:14:34Speaker 03

  When I thought someone was like barbecuing a large pork, like in one of these large barbecue pits or whatever that can hold a whole pork.

• 1:14:49Speaker 04

  And how long did that smell persist in your neighborhood?

• 1:14:53Speaker 03

  Well, for the remainder of the time I was outside, it was present, kind of became real strong, kind of like a pungent smell, to the point that I actually walked down my driveway half the distance, kind of looked up and down the street to see if anybody was doing anything like grilling or something else was going on, and I didn't see anything at that point.

• 1:15:15Speaker 04

  If you had to guess, or if you had to estimate distance-wise from the location you are to the Halderson home, about how far away is it?

• 1:15:21Speaker 03

  About maybe 100 to 130 feet.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  And you have that observation that day, you're not here to say exactly what that smell was?

• 1:15:28Speaker 03

  Other than it smelled to me like, yeah, something burning of a meat or fats or something.

• 1:15:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so Stephen Grierber, he's a retired detective, and he doesn't really say it during his testimony, but later he's like, yeah, you know, I have smelled things similar before. So another neighbor, Colin Lynch, would later provide police with security camera footage from a camera that was pointed towards the Halderson home. And the video showed that later on in the evening of July 1, and into the early morning hours of July 2, there was a flickering light inside the Halderson home, a flickering light that started around 12:18 a.m. and continued on until about 4:30 a.m.

• 1:16:11Speaker 07

  When I initially got briefed on this case upon my return to Madison, I made contact with Deputy Sheriff Mike Wilk. He had been assigned to look at the video from 7022 Bridgman Road, Mr. Lynch's DVR video, and to catalog the series of events chronologically that he observed in the video. I've trained Mike Wilk in the past at Madison College, so I'm familiar with him and his work. And I said, Mike, let's meet. I just want you to show me what you see, what you don't see, and what your observations are. And he indicated to me that on the video, there was a flickering light. That he believed was coming from the Halderson residence on the early morning hours of July 2nd, 2021. And I said, what do you believe that light to be? He said, I think it's a fire

• 1:16:52Speaker 07

  in that family room at the house. And I asked him why he believed that. And he said things that made sense to me. It's a flickering light. He had knowledge. He told me that there was a fireplace in that room. And I had not yet at that point been in the house. And I said, well, how do you know it's coming from that that window? He said, well, I've looked at daytime video. And I think that's where it is. So I looked at that video and not being familiar at that point with the residence, I thought he's probably right, but really it's a perception thing. We perceived it probably was that window. So the question I posed to him and to Detective Schunk and Sims is, I think we have an opportunity here with this video to not only perceive what

• 1:17:34Speaker 07

  we think was the source of that light, but to prove it. And so the question really was, where was that light coming from? Not what the source of the light was, but where in the Halderson residence was that coming from?

• 1:17:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, this is great. I smell a recreation coming up here, going in there and redoing it. Because initially, when I heard flickering, I was thinking like a light bulb. And my first thought was, oh, sign of struggle. Maybe a lamp got knocked over and it was flickering because it had been damaged or the electrical cord had been damaged. But not knowing that there was a fireplace in the house, now I have a different visual of more of a, not a flickering, like a on off type flickering, but more of just like, an inconsistency with the lights that you would see more similarly with with a fireplace, not a not a blinking light.

• 1:18:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, yeah, and now we have, you know, Colin Lynch's video showing the flickering light for like four hours. And then we have it combined with Stephen Greber's testimony that he's smelling something burning. And now you have the police saying like, well, we think it was the fireplace, but we have to prove it. So to prove that the flickering light was a fire coming from the family room of the Halderson home, investigators performed a real world test using the neighbor's security camera, Colin Lynch's security camera. So they went back to the neighborhood at night. They looked through the exact same camera feed, and they had an officer go inside the Halderson house to Shine lights in front of different windows. So by comparing the live test to the original video, digital experts mapped out the exact layout of the house on the screen

• 1:19:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  and proved the flickering light wasn't from a TV or a bedroom lamp. It was coming directly from the family room window, where the fireplace was located and burning most intensely around 3:00 a.m. So we have a couple areas now here where we're focusing on. First, we have Jane at the cabin in White Lake. And Chandler's like, do you see shells or bullets there? So it's kind of making you think, did something happen at the cabin? And then we have Crescent, Lesize property, about 20 miles from Chandler's home. And then you have the Halderson home itself. And you have Bart's body or partial body discovered. But where's Krista? So we got a lot going on.

• 1:19:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, remember Krista's coworker and friend, Daniel Croninger, who had gone to the Halderson home on July 2, which was that Friday, to check on Krista because she hadn't shown up for work. And we know that while he was there, he encountered Chandler. And Chandler was like, yeah, my parents left for the cabin. Oh, why are their cars here? They went with a friend. I don't know who that friend was. I wasn't awake. Now, Daniel would testify about some things that stood out while he was talking to Chandler that day.

• 1:20:12Speaker 06

  When we arrived at a period, he had just gotten out of the shower. I confirmed with him that his parents were not there.

• 1:20:18Speaker 05

  And other than Chandler just getting out of the shower, was there anything else unusual about his appearance?

• 1:20:25Speaker 06

  He had a bandage on his large toe. Not sure which side it was, but he had a bandage on one of his toes.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  Did he say anything about his foot?

• 1:20:36Speaker 06

  He said that he had broken the glass around the fireplace while playing with the dogs.

• 1:20:41Speaker 05

  Did he describe his injury at all?

• 1:20:43Speaker 06

  He just said there was blood everywhere.

• 1:20:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  So now we have Daniel Croninger talking to Chandler on July 2nd and Chandler says, "Oh, it broke the glass around the fireplace." So now we got a fireplace involved in Chandler's story. Okay, so when the detectives went to talk to Chandler at the house on July 7th, Chandler showed them around the house, which they reported was well-kept, even though there was some remodeling going on. And Detective Shunk noticed that there was a piece of glass missing from the fireplace. And Chandler explained that he'd been playing with the dogs when the dogs broke the fireplace and he got a piece of glass stuck in his left big toe. So Detective Shunk actually inspected Chandler's injury and reported that it looked more like a blood blister and it didn't appear to be recent. Chandler

• 1:21:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  also had warned the detectives that there would be a lot of blood in the house as a result of his injury, like he had told Daniel Croninger, but they didn't see any blood in the house. So on that day, one of the detectives spoke to a neighbor who mentioned that she had also noticed the small windows in the Halderson's garage were open and she said she had never seen the small garage door windows open before. And you gotta thank God for nosy neighbors, because I would never notice that about like my neighbors' windows, like the small windows of the garage are open and that's never the case. I would never notice that. I'm not paying that much attention to my neighbors' garages, but there are some neighbors. I guess she also did say like, hey, there'd been maybe some like weird things happening in the neighborhood, so she was being a bit more vigilant. But yeah.

• 1:22:14Derrick Levasseur?

  I think a lot of neighborhoods have that. I have it too, where there's just people who are bored, but it's a good thing sometimes because they can catch things that others would miss. So you hate the Karens and Kens of your neighborhood at the time, but for something like this, we're very appreciative of their nosiness.

• 1:22:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Thank you. Thank you all for your nosiness. Yes. So there's some stuff happening at the Halderson home that's not usual. The Haldersons are missing. Chandler's starting to look very suspicious.

• 1:22:41Derrick Levasseur?

  No, it's all, it's all starting to make sense because you found Bart's body, but you didn't find Krista's and now you're starting to get the delight and also the smell. And I think everybody out there, our part-time detectives are starting to put two and two together.

• 1:22:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so if something happened on July 2nd, then Chandler goes to his girlfriend's mom's partner's home on July 4th. He's acting weird. He shows up there again on July 5th. He's doing something by the tree line, which is exactly where Bart's body is found, et cetera, et cetera. We're starting to put it together.

• 1:23:11Derrick Levasseur?

  And by the way, too, the fire at 3 o'clock in the morning being the most active, that is a red flag as well, where, again, normal behaviors, is that something that the neighborhood's seen in the past? Probably not. And who's really starting a fire and keeping it going at 3:00 in the morning?

• 1:23:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  In July.

• 1:23:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, so there's some things here that behaviorally, just for anybody at that time of night and, or I should say, time of morning and during that time of year, suspicious.

• 1:23:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  So we are going to take our last break. We'll be right back.

• 1:23:48Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 1:26:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so on July 8th, 2021, and if you'll remember, this is the day that they're finding Bart's torso on Creston Ellis's property. So on this day, Chandler Halderson sat down with Detective Shank and Detective Hendrickson for an interview. Wearing a hoodie and baseball cap, Chandler often appeared tired, slow moving. He would frequently complain about having a headache or a memory lapse that he claimed was due to a breakdown he had suffered from because of the stress of his parents going missing and losing his job and all of these things. Now, he specifically showed confusion right from the start as he was being read his Miranda rights. You understand the rights that are scheduled? I do. Okay.

• 1:27:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Realizing that you have these rights or you're not willing to answer questions or make a statement?

• 1:27:27Speaker 06

  Just need a yes, right?

• 1:27:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the second one, so I'll just read it again. Realizing that you have these rights, are you not willing to answer questions or make a statement? Oh, I will make a statement. Okay.

• 1:27:37Speaker 06

  So you understand them?

• 1:27:40Speaker 04

  Can I have the card so I can read it? I missed some.

• 1:27:44Speaker 06

  I'm sorry.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  I can read it.

• 1:27:47Speaker 06

  Still having a little bit of problems, but the third one? I'll just, I'll read it. Let's start all over. Yeah. So you have the right to remain silent.

• 1:27:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Reading is hard.

• 1:27:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Listening is hard.

• 1:28:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  I want to make a statement that like, as I started looking into this case and everything, a lot of people were like, oh, Chandler's so good looking and that's why he wasn't suspe- I don't see it, man.

• 1:28:12Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm not going to judge. I mean, like I've always said, like, you know, whatever, to each their own.

• 1:28:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think that it's funny too, because you can see Chandler's doing this whole like, I don't, I can't remember, he's acting kind of out of it, like-

• 1:28:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, not lucid at all, just completely confused by this, this very brief statement.

• 1:28:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, like he's, you know, you could, and, and this is how he was acting apparently kind of on July 4th and July 5th, when he's talking to Crescent and Dolce, and that's why they're like, yeah, he's kind of acting weird, that's why maybe they thought he was on drugs. I could see why you would think that, because it does kind of seem like this guy's high, man. You know, like, how much did he smoke before sitting down for this police interview?

• 1:28:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Like aloof, aloof, is that a good word?

• 1:28:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  No.

• 1:28:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Distant, kind of like detached from everything?

• 1:28:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, like disassociated maybe? Like he's just, it's kind of, yeah, when you're, when you're high and you're kind of just like spaced out and you're not totally like connected and locked in. He's going to do this and he's going to keep saying, well, it's because of this concussion and because of this injury and this is why he couldn't get his job with SpaceX and all of this stuff, and he's going to really play it up.

• 1:29:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay.

• 1:29:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  So they then start talking to Chandler about Wednesday. Now, this would have been June 30th, the last day of June, the day before July 1st. Let's just go back to, to last Wednesday. Wednesday. I was with my dad.

• 1:29:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  We, what time Wednesday? I remember it. It was kind of a bad day. Okay. Why was it a bad day?

• 1:29:42Speaker 05

  Um, well, my ma had work, so she was gone.

• 1:29:48Speaker 05

  My dad and I were watching something over lunch. It was uh, the Wheel of Fortune. And we have, we're normally have the couch, like with our back facing her, the table we sat at at the end of you coming.

• 1:30:04Speaker 06

  Downstairs or upstairs?

• 1:30:04Speaker 05

  Downstairs, in that room with the TV. I tossed the ball and I smashed the glass.

• 1:30:13Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:30:14Speaker 05

  With the dog, the dog, so uh, that, yeah, set my dad off and we tried to clean it up.

• 1:30:25Speaker 05

  I don't know about him, but I got injured. Um, but he was mad. He didn't really talk to me too much that day. And my mom got home at five, I believe.

• 1:30:37Speaker 06

  Alright, so you was tossing that around, uh, broke the fireplace glass. Uh, you said you were injured. What type of injury?

• 1:30:43Speaker 05

  I got a pretty deep hole in my foot. Uh, last night, Mary looked at it and she said the reason it keeps bleeding is because there's glass in it.

• 1:30:52Speaker 06

  Oh, that's the, you showed us your toe?

• 1:30:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I showed the protective leaf.

• 1:30:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 1:31:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, so.

• 1:31:03Speaker 05

  That one. It could be infected is what she's thinking, but Neosporin's been helping.

• 1:31:08Speaker 06

  Okay, good. Um, keeping it clean and stuff? The best you can.

• 1:31:15Speaker 05

  I, I don't know, I guess.

• 1:31:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:31:19Speaker 05

  Uh, once I, oh, Wednesday, back to Wednesday, once I got all the glass out of the dog's hair. Um, she didn't sustain any injuries.

• 1:31:28Speaker 06

  Good.

• 1:31:28Speaker 05

  That's dog. That was roughly around two.

• 1:31:34Speaker 05

  And then the rest, he didn't really talk to me. I went back to doing like a job search, kind of just shitting my day away, just getting games, YouTube maybe.

• 1:31:50Speaker 05

  Uh, that's when I came across one of the jobs I liked. Um, then five o'clock rolled in by and we, mom came home. Um, dinner. By the way, I detected. At my house and something's happened. And while we're leaving, people were going inside. Is there a warrant for my house?

• 1:32:12Speaker 06

  Should there be?

• 1:32:13Speaker 05

  No, I'm just wondering if.

• 1:32:14Speaker 06

  Okay. Uh, as far as I know, they were at your house and they were going to be there talking to you to ask if you would come up here and talk.

• 1:32:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, um, Officer Haley.

• 1:32:28Speaker 05

  Just like walked pretty much in through the gate, you know, the gate on the outside. She's kind of walked in, I was wondering.

• 1:32:36Speaker 06

  Was that when you were getting your wallet?

• 1:32:38Speaker 05

  Uh, no, we were, we were, um, I was in the car waiting to leave. I was just wondering if everything's okay. Cause she said something's happened.

• 1:32:47Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:32:47Speaker 05

  And we need to go down.

• 1:32:49Speaker 06

  All right, I'll find out what that's about.

• 1:32:52Speaker 05

  Well, is anything bad happening?

• 1:32:54Derrick Levasseur?

  I, I gotta tell you, man, I could just watch interrogation videos all day. We gotta just start another podcast, which just reacting to interrogation videos. It's a great idea. But just like the subtleties here, like he's so concerned that someone's inside, but he's like trying to be passive about it.

• 1:33:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's like, did something happen?

• 1:33:11Derrick Levasseur?

  But he's also like, oh, you're kind of infringing on my, my fourth amendment rights.

• 1:33:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Guys have a warrant?

• 1:33:16Derrick Levasseur?

  She walked through the gate. This is, you're, but you're trying to also present yourself as someone who is completely oblivious to what's going on because you're looking for your parents.

• 1:33:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  You don't want to seem too concerned about it because you'd want them to be investigating.

• 1:33:29Derrick Levasseur?

  You want them in there, right?

• 1:33:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  But you're just casual, like something, did something hap- they said something happened?

• 1:33:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Something I should be aware of? Do I need an attorney? But it's like, I'm trying to present myself as the, the son who just kind of has no clue what's going on and I'm as concerned about where they are as you are. And yet I'm also concerned that you could be looking at something that I don't want you to look at. So even though he thinks in his mind, he's probably doing a good job. Everybody listening or watching right now is like.

• 1:33:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're like, they're like, is there a warrant? Should there be?

• 1:33:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, should there be? It's great. It's great. And he's like, no, no, no, I'm just, just wondering, cause you kind of just walked through the gate with like, you know, without my consent.

• 1:34:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Making, making conversation.

• 1:34:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, crazy, crazy. But in his mind, he's like, I'm. I'm crushing this right now.

• 1:34:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  They have no idea. But did you also see how he kind of is like posing this like, oh, it wasn't a good day. You know, my dad got mad at me because I broke the fireplace, you know, playing with the dog. So he was mad. He didn't talk to me. So he's trying to make his dad seem like, you know, this kind of mean guy, hard to be around. It's like, it was a bad day because mom was at work and she left me alone with dad. And he was mad because I broke the fireplace. And then he says something that I thought was interesting. I don't know about him, but I got injured. So that was interesting. Like, I don't know if he's going to have any injuries on him when you find him.

• 1:34:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Chandler, accident prone, like.

• 1:34:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Chandler's, yeah, Chandler's got some bad luck.

• 1:34:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's, he's going through and he's kind of making it seem like, yeah, my mom's at work. Me and my dad are home while she's at work. And it's just really awkward, you know? We were, we were watching something on TV, but he wasn't really talking to me after I broke the glass. And I was kind of shitting my day away on YouTube and, and job search. So now we're also getting this idea that he's lost his job, so he's looking for a job. And we have an idea, if you're the detectives and you don't suspect him of anything, that maybe his dad isn't like the best guy to be around. Maybe he's kind of angry, kind of holds things against his son. They don't have a great relationship, right? So they did not have a warrant to enter and search the Halderson home that day yet, but they didn't need one at the time because Chandler had reported his parents missing.

• 1:35:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  So police had implied consent to check the premises for clues regarding their whereabouts.

• 1:35:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Hmm, that is, that is a slippery slope. If I'm being honest, but I get it. Exit in circumstances, implied consent. They're just basically looking in the main areas for a human being. That's would be, that would be the exception here where it's like, whoa, we weren't looking in drawers. We weren't doing any of that. We weren't looking for evidence relating to a crime. We were there for the safety of two adults.

• 1:36:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which is what they are, and they're making observations along the way. They're not opening anything. They're not collecting anything.

• 1:36:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 1:36:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  But they are making some observations.

• 1:36:09Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm going to play a little inside baseball with you guys though, right now. They're definitely looking in stuff.

• 1:36:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know.

• 1:36:14Derrick Levasseur?

  They shouldn't be, but I'm telling you they are. I, I, it's, they, they, they're already looking at him as the guy. And I, you know, they're not gonna, they're not gonna touch anything. But do I think they might be peeking in some areas where a human being wouldn't fit?

• 1:36:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I almost wonder if they wanted him. Like, did they do this in a timely manner? Where as he's leaving to go to the police station, the police are like, hey, we want to talk to you again. As he's leaving, the police walk by him and they're like, yeah, something happened and we're going in your house. And now they want him to be stressed going into this interview.

• 1:36:45Derrick Levasseur?

  You could tell by that interview and by the, the tone, they're already on to him.

• 1:36:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yeah, because.

• 1:36:49Derrick Levasseur?

  They're already on to him. They're way past.

• 1:36:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  The body of his father's been found where he was seen. Yeah, of course.

• 1:36:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, they're, they're on to him, for sure.

• 1:36:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  To the detectives, obviously, it's a major red flag that Chandler was even asking, like, what's going on? Did something happen? And he seemed to be probing for details about the investigation. Chandler, once again, he told the detectives that he'd been sleeping downstairs because it was closer to the bathroom. And due to his injury, he wasn't able to handle the stairs all that well. He said he always slept with his door closed, but he had a feeling his parents were arguing that Wednesday night. What were they arguing about? Probably what set my dad off that day of the glass.

• 1:37:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Us not having food ready and stuff like that. We, I mean, we just microwaved whatever was in the fridge, I suppose. Yeah.

• 1:37:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Who was upset about that? Dad. Dad was, okay. He usually doesn't like that. He likes when we cook.

• 1:37:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay. Does he ever cook? I haven't seen him cook. Oh, he grills. He, he likes to grill. He grilled on Thursday. So Chandler's over here like, yeah, my dad's just this like, like chauvinistic, masochistic male. And he's like, oh, my, Chris has been working all day. You were just gonna microwave something? That's unacceptable. And then they're like, well, does he cook? And he's like, oh, I mean, I never do. Oh, no, he grills, actually. And then Chandler proceeds to tell a whole story about his dad, like, grilling on Thursday and he made them lunch. So it's like. Yeah, he doesn't cook. He just gets mad when my mom doesn't cook or when me and my mom don't cook. But then he comes to find out he like made this elaborate like delicious meat that he, you know,

• 1:38:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  heated up the grill early to make sure it was all done and ready for for lunch for them on Thursday. So it's just absolutely ridiculous, but he's trying to make it sound, I think, like, maybe my dad killed my mom because he already knows something's happening and he knows more than what I've even showed you that he knows. We're going to talk about it, but he knows that the police know stuff. So.

• 1:38:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, they're on him. I personally think he's setting up a potential defense down the road.

• 1:39:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or like he had to protect his mother?

• 1:39:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Like his mom was killed and then he killed his dad.

• 1:39:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, yeah, we'll see.

• 1:39:07Derrick Levasseur?

  I think he knows that this could go bad and if it does, he needs a plan B.

• 1:39:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:12Derrick Levasseur?

  And this is what I think he's thinking.

• 1:39:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's possible. So Chandler then discussed what happened on Thursday morning. He helped his mother get ready to leave for work. He said he always did that. He helped her, you know? He's the best son ever. She left for work. His dad started getting the grill ready. They ate lunch around noon. They watched their TV shows in the living room while they ate and then went off to do their own things. Chandler was searching for his job. His mother got home. They ate dinner and that's when they told him they were going to the cabin the next morning. And then he helped them gather everything to get ready to leave for the following day. So Chandler proceeded to lock himself into a highly specific timeline from June 30th to July 7th. July 1st, the last day he saw his parents. July 2nd, the day his parents left early in the morning

• 1:39:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  before he woke up. July 3rd, Chandler spent the entire day alone at the house doing chores, cleaning up and resting his injured foot. July 4th, he last heard from his mother via text message when she said they were at the cabin planning to go to a 4th of July parade. And then he went to Crescent's house for the party. July 5th, Chandler said he was starting to feel a little bit isolated and he wanted to go for a swim, so he went over to Crescent's. And when he talked about July 5th and going to Crescent's farm, he said that he wasn't in the pool when he said he was supposed to be because he'd gone off to the shed to have a breakdown.

• 1:40:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Hmm.

• 1:40:28Speaker 03

  I'm there talking to their mom and Chris.

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  Then I, um, then I go up to have, you know, breakdown by their shed and they go swimming.

• 1:40:46Speaker 05

  Right by the swimming pool is shed so they're they wanted to watch me like.

• 1:40:52Speaker 05

  You know.

• 1:40:54Speaker 05

  Break down and all that so after I noticed they're just watching I.

• 1:41:01Speaker 05

  Walk over to him.

• 1:41:04Speaker 06

  Describe your breakdown to me.

• 1:41:07Speaker 05

  Uh, I actually cried.

• 1:41:12Speaker 05

  Started kicking grass. Just doing the toddler tantrum shit. Um, then I. Hopped in the water with them. So it was uh too late uh I was in the water and he realized Chris didn't have a top. Um, and that was uncomfortable. But I talked to them more and that's when she brought up the housing situation, how she doesn't like. How my parents like. Are, I guess, I don't know if she doesn't. She doesn't know them that well, she's never met them.

• 1:41:46Speaker 06

  Chris was saying that?

• 1:41:47Speaker 05

  Cat's mom, oh, cat's mom is uh. Speaks is.

• 1:41:54Speaker 05

  Her first thought right away.

• 1:41:58Speaker 05

  So they're offering me to get a job. Live with them. Work for him while I'm working. And pay rent and that's kind of their their deal. I would have like a month for your rent or a month or two maybe if if. They're thinking, um. I could be able to borrow a car. From Chris, maybe if she's nice or not using it, I'd be able to go to work.

• 1:42:25Speaker 06

  What were you having a breakdown about?

• 1:42:29Speaker 05

  You ever have your legs?

• 1:42:34Speaker 05

  I don't even know if they're done eating like as bad as they they can be yet, so that's uh. That's not fun.

• 1:42:41Speaker 06

  And you, I think you were telling me last night it was it's it's a symptom of a concussion, right?

• 1:42:45Speaker 05

  So that's not it, that's a it's a symptom of nerve damage from the hit to my spine, so it's permanent.

• 1:42:52Speaker 06

  Okay, I understand that, I'll tell her.

• 1:42:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, so it's just legs and it's.

• 1:42:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  We's feeling is probably colostomy day down the road and all of that. But we are Sunday. So yeah, if you notice, it's like always everybody else with Chandler. It's everybody else is the problem. And he's like, oh, they went swimming in the pool because I was having a mental breakdown and crying. And they wanted to watch me do that. Like, okay.

• 1:43:20Derrick Levasseur?

  I feel bad for him.

• 1:43:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then, and then I got in the pool and I didn't even realize she didn't have a top on until I got in the pool. And not that I was standing there, like getting ready to, I, I didn't notice then.

• 1:43:30Derrick Levasseur?

  I was just standing in the corner of the pool crying.

• 1:43:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then he's like, and then, uh, you know, Kat's mom, Dolce, she's like talking about my parents, even though she's never met them. She doesn't even know that, but she just says whatever's in her head. And then they were offering me a job, you know, because they were worried that I wasn't going to have a job. And, and even offering me a place to live for a month's free rent and, you know, a car even if Crescent's nice. And, but still they're bad. They wanted to watch me have a mental breakdown, even though they're trying to help me. Everybody tries to help me. And then the police like, what were you having a mental breakdown about? And he's like, have you ever not been able to use your legs? Spoiler alert. Chandler's not injured, but we'll talk about that soon.

• 1:44:07Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, he walked down that big hill allegedly to, to put Bart's body, but yeah, we're moving on.

• 1:44:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  There are no concussions. There's no, uh, mu- muscles not working in the legs. He's like, yeah, spinal fluid, it's a permanent nerve damage, none of that. But also I want you to understand this whole concussion thing happened in June. So was this premeditated? Or does he just like to be a victim? Or does he have a grander plan? That's the question. So yeah, understand Chandler's now telling the police that all of his nerve damage is permanent. He may not ever be able to use his legs normally again. He's very much affected by this and losing his dream job. So on July 6th, Chandler said he met up with his girlfriend, Catherine, Kat. They went to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. And July 7th, he was starting to get worried because his parents were long overdue in their return.

• 1:44:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  So he said he spent the afternoon walking around his neighborhood, knocking on doors to see if any of his neighbors ring doorbell cameras had captured anything about his parents before he went to the sheriff's office to report them as. Okay, July 7th, he said he did this before he went to the sheriff's office. Okay.

• 1:45:15Derrick Levasseur?

  We all know why he was.

• 1:45:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, he, he, it is true. It is true. The Chandler walked around the neighborhood.

• 1:45:20Derrick Levasseur?

  No doubt.

• 1:45:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Asking about ring.

• 1:45:21Derrick Levasseur?

  I have no doubt about it.

• 1:45:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  But it was not on July 7th. It was on July 8th.

• 1:45:29Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 1:45:29Speaker 06

  Hi. My name is Chandler Halderson. I live just down the road.

• 1:45:34Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:35Speaker 06

  You're down the path of the police.

• 1:45:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:37Speaker 06

  I was told you the fancy security system. I was wondering if you were able to capture the road or my house.

• 1:45:45Speaker 05

  Um, the, the police actually came and downloaded everything they have. But it is actually my sister's house.

• 1:45:52Speaker 06

  Oh, okay.

• 1:45:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, so they were here until like 9 o'clock last night and downloaded all the video she's got. So we're hoping that.

• 1:46:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, did they capture anything on?

• 1:46:03Speaker 05

  We don't know. We don't know. They just took a copy of everything and so we're hoping.

• 1:46:09Speaker 06

  Why name the runs?

• 1:46:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's all.

• 1:46:11Speaker 06

  Be able to get a.

• 1:46:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's all HD. And then I think there's one, um.

• 1:46:16Speaker 06

  Especially in the dark. It looks like it has a little bit of night vision.

• 1:46:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, and there's one on the, uh, the corner of the garage too.

• 1:46:26Speaker 05

  Um, I don't know if that one quite goes that direction, but.

• 1:46:30Speaker 06

  Maybe see this road and see if they're.

• 1:46:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, so hopefully, I mean, we can give them everything that we have. So we're hoping they find something on there.

• 1:46:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, excuse my language. This is a visual representation of I'm.

• 1:46:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, yeah. She's like, they, she's like, yeah, we already gave it the police everything. He goes, really? Really?

• 1:46:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, looks like you got a little night vision on there too, huh?

• 1:46:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:55Derrick Levasseur?

  You really didn't spare any expense for this camera.

• 1:46:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right here. He's, he's like, I heard you have a fancy security camera.

• 1:47:00Derrick Levasseur?

  What are you guys, NASA?

• 1:47:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Is this the CIA home?

• 1:47:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Jesus.

• 1:47:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's like, and there's another one in the garage.

• 1:47:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, that's great. That's great news, guys.

• 1:47:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's like, looking with his hand. He's like, it probably captures this angle, huh? Right here?

• 1:47:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep. And he's thinking, he's, yeah, it's not, it's hilarious.

• 1:47:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  You could clearly see a freeze happening in Chandler when he's informed that the footage from the HD cameras with night vision had already been handed over to the Dane County Sheriff's Office, right? So it's funny because he said, I did this on July 7th. No, he went to the police to report them missing on July 7th. Then the police started investigating. Part of the investigation was obviously going to neighbors and seeing if they had ring footage to see who the Haldersons had left with, right? And then they're, they got all the stuff and they left. And now he's finding out on July 8th, because he said, oh, I heard you're the one that called the police, right? So somehow he found out a neighbor had called the police and said, we have really, a really fancy camera with all the bells and whistles, HD, night vision, everything. He's like, that was you? So like, did it capture anything?

• 1:47:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  And she's like, I don't know, they just downloaded it. Like, we didn't watch it. They didn't, you know, they, they took it. They didn't sit here and watch, watch it with us and narrate what was happening. They just took it. And he's like, oh shit, the police know something. And now they want me to come in and talk to them today? And, and then he's going to leave and the, and the police are there at his house and they're like, something happened and we're going into your house. And he's like, oh, this is not looking good.

• 1:48:21Derrick Levasseur?

  He knows.

• 1:48:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  So after Chandler finished laying out his timeline, the detectives informed him that they knew more than he thought they knew.

• 1:48:30Speaker 07

  We got all the background, I think, right?

• 1:48:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:48:33Speaker 07

  So I think it's time we start talking about what happened to your parents. Like the truthful version.

• 1:48:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay.

• 1:48:40Speaker 07

  Okay? So we have like 20 pages of writing. We're gonna start with a clean, white piece of paper for you to start telling the truth. Okay. Why? Because, listen, listen to me. This is the only chance you're gonna have to tell us the truth. Okay. What? We, listen, listen, I can't tell you what we know, but we know you're not telling us the truth. We know your parents are no longer with us. Okay? And we know the reason why. Okay? You need to tell the truth. There's... Listen, listen, you need to tell the truth about what happened and just tell us why it happened. Okay? If something happened, if you were defending yourself, or if you just got fed up with stuff, you need to tell us the truth. Okay?

• 1:49:23Speaker 07

  This is your chance to tell us why. Okay? I'm not BSing you. Okay?

• 1:49:34Speaker 04

  So can we do that?

• 1:49:35Speaker 07

  Okay. Okay.

• 1:49:46Speaker 07

  What happened?

• 1:49:48Speaker 04

  Okay. Can... Look, you know what happened. We're not gonna tell you what happened. You know what happened. You were there when it happened.

• 1:49:56Speaker 04

  We're not BSing you, okay?

• 1:49:58Speaker 07

  I was, when it happened.

• 1:50:02Speaker 07

  We know more than you think we know. I understand.

• 1:50:08Speaker 07

  There's people that have pulled this things. We have, we have evidence, we have proof that more has happened, okay?

• 1:50:16Speaker 07

  So your parents never made it to the cabin, and I think you know that.

• 1:50:20Derrick Levasseur?

  No reaction to your... We know your parents are no longer with us. Because he... That's just an acknowledgement. No reaction from him. Body language or verbally. Because he...

• 1:50:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  But he looks stressed. I think the body language looks like he's like...

• 1:50:32Derrick Levasseur?

  He's stressed because he knows the...

• 1:50:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm in a corner, yeah.

• 1:50:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he's done. But if, if this was someone who was innocent, when he said, "We know your parents are no longer with us", it would have been, "What? Wait, what? What did you just say?"

• 1:50:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  My parents are dead? Yeah.

• 1:50:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's already thinking, "Oh, I gotta go to Plan B now."

• 1:50:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  So obviously, they're like, "Tell us the truth." And he's like, "I want a lawyer."

• 1:50:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, he does not...

• 1:50:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Shock.

• 1:50:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's funny, because the, the police are like, "We have 20 pages of bullshit."

• 1:50:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so we're gonna throw that out.

• 1:50:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, we're gonna, we're gonna crumple that up. We're gonna start with a fresh, white piece of paper. And you are going to write the truth on that now.

• 1:50:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Thanks for the story, Mother Goose. Now, let's go to the real one.

• 1:51:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  We had fun.

• 1:51:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that was great. Cute.

• 1:51:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  But now, it's time to tell the truth. And he's, he lawyered up. He obviously was not like, "Let me confess everything to you." Because, the fact of the matter is, there was so much to confess at this point. And it went so deep. Like, the detectives told Chandler that they knew what happened. And they knew why it had happened. But at that point, I don't think the detectives understood just how deep Chandler's deception had gone. How much effort he put into covering up all of his lies. How long it had been going on. And how hard it was all going to come crashing down around him. Which is where we will pick up in part two.

• 1:51:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I can't wait for part two. This case reminds me a lot and I'm going back into memory here, but I'm sure you wrote it. So you'll know Lisa and Joel Guy.

• 1:51:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, Joel Guy. Yeah.

• 1:51:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Not the same. That was a, that was crazy. That was with the acid and all that stuff, but.

• 1:51:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, this just, this gets just as crazy. Don't get it twisted.

• 1:51:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, I'm, I'm looking forward to diving into part two. Uh, this is one of those cases where you could see some good investigative work. You have people do dot in their i's, cross in their t's. Chandler did not do a good job with any of this. He really just thought everyone around him was going to be, uh, completely ignorant to his behavior. And, uh, it, it unfolded in, uh, for him a lot more rapidly than we see in other cases where sometimes they can put up a farce for at least a couple of weeks, but within a matter of hours of reporting his parents missing, he was already, he was already doomed.

• 1:52:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think he was underestimating how well other people knew his parents, how well they knew their habits, how close they were to them.

• 1:52:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Um, because you'll find out that Chandler is, there's nothing authentic or honest about him. So I don't think he can comprehend, his brain can't comprehend the kinds of relationships and connections an honest, authentic, genuine person has. Like he doesn't get that because he lies to everybody all the time about everything.

• 1:52:54Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm looking forward to seeing how the investigation unfolded, what they did to tie everything together to ensure that.

• 1:53:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  And where's, where's his mother?

• 1:53:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Where's his mother? I think, I think we have an idea. I think we have an idea, but I want to see how that goes. I also want to see.

• 1:53:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  The motive?

• 1:53:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, his motive, we may never know a true motive. Maybe we will. You know more than me, but what I want to know is what's the plan of action here? Because Chandler thinks he's the smartest guy in the room and they're always the best people to deal with because you prove them wrong. And so I'm wondering what plan B is because I think we hit it on it earlier. He's going to paint as bad as dad as a bad guy and he's going to go that route and he was a hero in all of this, but we will see. I'm looking forward to it, guys. Let us know your comments below. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening on audio, please leave, leave a review, leave, uh, five stars. That would be greatly appreciated. It helps more people see what we're doing, especially when we're covering cases like we did earlier in the week where we're trying to get word. out there about cold cases that haven't been talked about in 45 years.

• 1:53:52Derrick Levasseur?

  We appreciate the love. We appreciate the support. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you soon.

• 1:54:12Derrick Levasseur?

  You.