Pod Insights Rotten Mango Part 1: "Puppet Master" Killer Set Up The Most Elaborate Murder Plan To Kill A Woman About this episode In the event of a break in, usually something of value is stolen from a house. But what if someone breaks into your home and steals a single, random item. Your hairbrush. Your pet’s ashes. Your family picture but leaves the frame. Your one spare house key?
Daniel Krug, patriarch, calls the police after his wife, Kristil comes home and realizes that the spare key they keep hidden in their garage is missing. They could’ve just misplaced it right?
With three young children at home though, the family doesn’t want to take any chances. Especially after Daniel, the father, remembers pulling into his driveway, before the key went missing, and saw someone jump their fence and take off running.
If someone had broken into their garage, stole their spare key, and nothing else that can really only mean one thing right? They’re planning on coming back.
Daniel reports it to the police and even gives his statement to the responding officer who visits his house. For nearly three months the family will grow increasingly paranoid after feeling like the burglar never left the house in the first place. That he came back and started doing stranger and stranger things around the house.
Until exactly 82 days after the initial report, one of the Krug family members will be found inside the family home.
Full show notes available at RottenMangoPodcast.com
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0:59 Speaker 00 Eighty-two days before the murder, there is a break-in. And in the event of a break-in, usually something is going to be stolen from the house. Most times, it's going to be whatever that is within reach and is the most valuable. Nobody is breaking and entering, risking jail time to steal a can opener and the remainder of your laundry detergent. They want electronics, they want cash, they want things that they can resell and make money from. This is a literal cash grab with a side of trespassing. That's what most break-ins are. It's devastating, but at least you know that the motive is very clear. Whoever did this wants money. They're committing atrocious crimes to make money. But what if someone breaks into your house
1:41 Speaker 00 and they take something that is not of monetary value? They don't steal the $1,000 iPad that's in clear view, or the phone, or the car. They steal your journal that you write in every single day. It's not a password book. You don't have some sort of ledger for Bitcoin in there. It's just like your deepest inner thoughts leather-bound journal that financially would fetch no more than $10 on the market resold. Or what if someone breaks in and you check the entire house up and down? Nothing's been taken, nothing. And it's not like they didn't have time. And then you walk by the console under your TV, and there's the picture frame, the picture of your entire family that you framed last year during Christmas. The frame is still there, but the photo is gone.
2:24 Speaker 00 They had time to take the photo out of the frame, but they didn't take anything else? No valuables? What are they planning on doing with the picture? Or you go upstairs to try and collect yourself, you're about to shower and in the drawer, your hairbrush is gone, it's missing. Or maybe they take that one magnet that you have on the refrigerator that you bought during your first time going to Yosemite? What the hell are they gonna do with that? Or any of these things? These are the things that will keep people up at night. It's not just like the random violation of someone breaking into your home, which is typically the only private place that people can truly feel safe. But it's the fact that you don't know who did it, you don't know why they did it, it's clearly not for money. Then what is it for? Are they gonna come back? For the Krug family house in Colorado.
3:08 Speaker 00 It's even more alarming than all of those. Daniel Krug, the father of three kids and husband of Kristiell Krug, calls 911. Daniel's standing at the end of his driveway talking to the officer and he's explaining, I mean, as I pulled in, I saw someone run out, jump over my gate and take off that way. Like, he walked in on this trespassing, on someone breaking and entering. Okay, got it? I, I didn't think to call you until my wife got home recently and we realized the spare key that we keep in the garage isn't there. So, if someone breaks into your house and they only take the spare key, the only reason they would do that is to come back later. But to do what? Over the course of the next eighty-two days, it will be like the person who broke into
3:53 Speaker 00 that house never even left the house. Strange things are gonna start to happen to the Krug family, almost driving them to the point of being completely paranoid. And then finally, one of them is going to be killed in that very house.
4:28 Speaker 00 We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the National Network to End Domestic Violence. They are a nonprofit dedicated to ending relationship, workplace, and stalking violence. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team, and we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmango podcast.com. Today's episode includes mentions of stalking DV, so viewer discretion is advised, and please take care, take breaks, and with that, let's get into it. When you read a lot of fiction books, there's going to be patterns that you're noticing, and it's not just like the tropes. It could be the seven-point structure, the hero's journey, "Save the Cat" is like a popular one. It's the outline of the story. And oftentimes, I mean, I highly doubt
5:13 Speaker 00 authors are even using outlines like this.
5:15 Speaker 01 What's "Save the Cat"?
5:16 Speaker 00 I'm about to tell you. It's like a storyline. A lot of movies and books follow this exact point progress. It's like the progression of a story.
5:26 Speaker 01 Right, right. Like third-chapter breakup?
5:28 Speaker 00 Yes, like a third-chapter breakup that I always complain about. It's like that, but like, third-chapter breakup is maybe more so a trope, but this would like fit into the whole from start to finish, there's almost like an outline of ups and downs. And it's very interesting. I think it's because humans are comfort creatures. We enjoy stories with similar journeys, similar endings. The hero's journey is probably the most recognizable one in the US. Hero's journey must start in the hero's ordinary world. We have to see the hero in their regular life before the adventure begins. They're bagging groceries at the grocery store. We have to see their family. We have to see what's at stake for the hero. Then there will be a call to adventure, usually not inviting. It's like they hear someone scream, and they don't want to go investigate. They get a video that's like, "You need to come save me," but they're scared.
6:13 Speaker 00 This is no adventure to Disneyland. It's typically a threat or a massive problem. The hero will refuse the call. They will hesitate. They'll try to go back to their ordinary life, but now they can't bag groceries without thinking about everything that they saw in that video and they need to go save somebody. They need to be the hero. They're gonna cross the threshold into the new world, letting go of the ordinary world. They're gonna meet friends, make enemies, friends along the way. They get small tests. Then they'll meet a mentor. Usually the hero's journey has mentor, who's gonna give them advice and tools. And then they'll start approaching the inmost cape. It's like they're getting closer. The hero's journey is almost like this palpable center core of the universe type of fight.
6:53 Speaker 00 They're getting closer to the central challenge, or it's a lot of times a central location where the challenge is gonna be. They're on a literal journey to the top of Mount Everest. Think of this as the part of the movie where they turn the exposure and the brightness down. And then you like can't see anything anymore. Everything looks like it's filmed on a potato on a cloudy day. No more sun, more dread, doom, gloom. That's all you get. Then it's the ordeal, the life or death crisis. It's death or rebirth. That's the moment. And of course, they're not gonna die. They're gonna be reborn. And then finally, that's the end of stage one. They receive a reward for surviving. Usually it's some sort of knowledge or reconciliation. It's not like a prize.
7:33 Speaker 00 And then the hero is gonna try to go back into the ordinary world, but then the bigger fight happens. You thought the first fight was the big fight? No, this is the real fight. Their whole family is dead or something of that nature. It's the resurrection, the final test where everything is at stake. Everything learned up until this point must be used. And finally, the hero returns home transformed with knowledge, with gifts, with love. Ultimately different because they're a hero now. And then you have the similar and somewhat familiar Save the Cat. You introduce the protagonist to the world. The world is flawed and you can tell from the beginning it's flawed. And then a secondary character will say something to the protagonist. It hints at the entire journey the protagonist is gonna take.
8:17 Speaker 00 Protagonist is like, I don't know. This is so dumb. She's like reading a romance book and this old lady walking by. She's been divorced five times and it's like, love is never dead. Then there's some sort of catalyst, some sort of incident that will be the protagonist's call to adventure. That's all part of act one. Then it's act two. For the first twenty percent of the act, protagonist is on the up and up. They're transforming, they're making friends. They're they're small hiccups, but they're B-roll-able. Meaning, in a movie, they're usually learning how to use their newfound superpowers, but they superpower so hard that they accidentally fling themselves through the window of an elderly facility where all the senior citizens are playing bingo. And the music cuts, the senior citizen
8:59 Speaker 00 looks up, one of their dentures fall out, protagonist gets up, brushes off the wrinkles in their shirt, and then they smile sheepishly. It's B-roll-able. And then it cuts to them, walking in New York City, blending in with the normies, before the bad guys start closing in. And then the stakes get raised and raised. It's all fun and games, but now something big is about to happen. The threat is huge, and the threat is personal. Somebody took grandpa. And then by the end of act two, grandpa is dead. Act three, the protagonist is at their lowest point. They're at the, what's the point of even fighting anymore? They took grandpa. Before they learn, or they realize something, or they find something in grandpa's journal that was like, Stephanie, never stop fighting. You were made for this.
9:42 Speaker 00 And then it changes everything, and it causes them to stand up, and that escalates typically to the happy ending, the finale, the end. Saving the cat, who they name after grandpa's favorite snack, black sesame rice crackers. Which, actually, saving the cat is supposed to happen in the beginning. It was like the whole theory where, to show the audience that you should like the protagonist, the protagonist should do something like saving a cat early on in the movie, or the book.
10:07 Speaker 01 Okay.
10:07 Speaker 00 The point is, if you read a lot of bad fiction, you notice these frameworks. If you read a lot of good fiction, which most fiction is good, you won't even notice these frameworks, because they either don't follow it to a T, or they do it so well that it just feels like a brand-new story in a brand-new world. But ultimately, most books can be boiled down to the three-act structure. Which is how I'm gonna boil down this case for you. Not because I think that this is reminiscent of a fictional storyline, but because somebody involved in today's case thought that their plan would play out like the movies. They even mentioned movies and fiction multiple times. So with that, let's get started.
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13:28 Speaker 00 Act one is the promise. You get thrown into the world and you don't really know what's going on. And the Krug family house sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood where all the neighbors are closely stationed nearby. Their houses are very close in proximity. The streets are smaller. The sidewalks are well maintained. People like to walk their pets outside. It's the neighborhood that a lot of the houses decorate for Christmas. And at night you have to close your blinds. Otherwise, the red and green, not so jolly anymore. They're gonna drive you crazy when you're trying to sleep. But not December of twenty twenty-three. Something happens in the neighborhood. As the Christmas lights are going off, police are stationed behind do not cross yellow tape. It's been like that for a while. Eventually, a neighbor stops the car in front of an officer and asks, are we safe?
14:14 Speaker 00 Neighbors are asking, are we safe? I mean, it's a good question. Considering in one of the houses that looks just like the others on the outside, it's like a regular, nice, family suburban home, there is one family that is preparing for something. That's what it feels like. They have a whole gun safe filled with weapons, and there's schedules to go learn on how to use these guns. They have family codes. These are not just shared between parents, but with the children. Orange means caution, near normal operations. Red, high alert, limit visitations.
14:47 Speaker 01 Like they're talking to each other, like today is cold orange, or right now it's cold red?
14:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, or like certain activities are orange-red, nuclear, and they have like a whole, they wrote it down.
14:58 Speaker 01 Okay.
14:59 Speaker 00 Nuclear means lockdown, separate locations, active threat.
15:05 Speaker 00 I think it is a pretty good idea to teach kids about active threats and what to do in case of emergencies, but the level at which this particular family is preparing, it seems like there is an imminent threat that they know about, not just like a potential what if. The whole family has to know and they have all these thorough, well thought out plans on how to keep everyone safe. On a separate piece of paper, it reads, needs gun training, add walking lights, add fence lights, add outdoor cameras, add front door security, protection orders in place, trim landscaping for visibility, add extra security system, replace sliding glass door with regular doors. What are they preparing for?
15:41 Speaker 01 Hmm.
15:42 Speaker 00 And do the neighbors know, like, are they all preparing for the same thing? Why are all the neighbors scared too? December fourteenth, there is a wellness check being done at the Krug house. The officer goes to the front door to knock and there's someone there, just standing in front of the front door, a woman in a big puffer jacket.
15:59 Speaker 01 Outside or inside?
16:00 Speaker 00 Outside, and she looks a little startled. Oh, I was just, I'm their neighbor and they called me, they're like, can you go see if she'll answer the door? So a neighbor was asked to check up on the residents of this house too, and she's like, you got it, you got it from here. She walks off. The officer starts knocking on the door, nobody responds. He peers inside the window, I mean, the rest of the house of the property, it seems completely normal.
16:21 Speaker 01 Is there police cam footage of these?
16:23 Speaker 00 Yes. So there's no coffee table that's overturned inside, there's no broken glass, there's, I mean, there's nothing. According to his official report later, he's looking through the front door window, nothing is amiss, there's no coffee table that's been overturned, no broken glass, there's nothing. According to his official report later, quote, "Everything looked orderly, quiet. I gave the door a loud knock." He says that he thought whoever he's checking in on probably isn't even home right now, and he's about to drive off in the patrol car when he decides, "I'm just gonna see if there's a car inside the garage to be extra thorough." The Krug family garage has those windows at the very top of the garage that let sunlight in, but they're so high up that you can't even really tippy toe and see into them.
17:08 Speaker 00 So the officer walks back down to his car, and just when it seems like he's about to drive off, he drives his car right up to the garage, climbs on top of his car so that he can get up to an height to peer through the garage windows. And as he's balancing and peering through the window, he's shining a flashlight through. And according to the officer's police report, he says he very quickly sees a woman lying on the garage floor, and she is very clearly not moving. He says he quickly gathers, the woman is very close to the steps that lead into the house. So she's not close to the garage door that slides up and down. She's close to the door that goes into the house. She has a winter coat on, the hood is pulled over her head, but her face is showing.
17:51 Speaker 00 So she's lying on her back, and she's really, really still. He immediately radios in, 151, send medical, and 110, I need a force entry. I got a female down in the garage. He runs to the front, kicks open the front door, books it to the garage. He's not even clearing the house. He doesn't know if somebody else is in the house. The first words to come out of his mouth when he opens that garage door is, holy shit, shit, holy shit. And it sounds like he's trying to calm himself down from the panic. According to the report, I noted a significant amount of blood, which appeared to be fresh, noted by the bright red color. The blood is running down the wall, and the woman's head is about two feet away from the wall. So there seems to be some sort of blood splatter, or a traumatic event enough that blood would
18:35 Speaker 00 end up on the wall. There's more blood underneath her head. According to the report, he says he very quickly sees that she's clearly not moving, and he gathers, okay, so she's close to the steps, and there's blood on the wall, there's blood on her, it seems like... She probably might not be alive. This is a life-threatening fatal amount of blood. He's calling for backup, he's calling for paramedics, he's administering CPR, and he's trying to gather as much information as possible. Initially, he realizes that there's trauma near her right temple, but because of all of the victim's hair, he can't make out what is causing the bleeding. He just knows that she's bleeding. It could have been a fall. Her neck is kind of slanted to the left, it could indicate a broken neck. It also could have been from a small caliber weapon, but he can't be sure.
19:19 Speaker 00 So if it was like a, not a small caliber weapon, it probably would have left a certain type of fragmentation to the head that he would have been able to quickly identify. So he's so unclear about what even caused this. All he knows is, he's not picking up a pulse. He opens the big garage door that leads out into the driveway because he just got radioed in that paramedics are about to pull up. So he wants them to have direct access into the garage because every second is life or death. He opens the big garage doors and instead of uniformed officers or medics, there's an older woman softly walking towards the opening of the door, and she catches him performing CPR. She catches a glimpse of someone laying on the garage floor covered in blood. And his report reads,
20:03 Speaker 00 "It appeared to me the woman was either a neighbor or a relative. She was visibly upset, clearly seeing me perform CPR. I quickly asked the woman to stay away from the garage, knowing other officers were coming into the area. I requested via radio that they contact this woman and escort her from the garage." It seems like she's freaking out. Um, there's multiple angles of this, of the older woman walking up to the garage, but it seems like she takes a step back and then she wants to go forward, but then probably her logic is like, no, let the police officer do the medical help, you're not gonna be helpful. So then she eventually walks down, away from the garage door, down the driveway.
20:37 Speaker 01 How old is this woman?
20:39 Speaker 00 I would say maybe sixties, seventies.
20:41 Speaker 01 Oh wow.
20:42 Speaker 00 I mean, this is a family member who just walked in at the precise time that her loved one is on the floor, on the garage floor covered in blood, and an officer is performing CPR.
20:53 Speaker 01 Does she seize exactly who's down there?
20:56 Speaker 00 Yeah. And it's not an accident, and it's not a coincidence. All of this was planned. Even her showing up at that exact moment was planned by somebody else. She's escorted away from the garage and all the backup officers arrive at the scene. Paramedics rush in and they realize it's not a head wound that they're working with. I mean, she does have a head wound, but that's not the only thing. Under her thick winter coat, there's one mark and she's been stabbed near the heart. Who would want someone in the Krug family dead? And does this have anything to do with the break in that happened eighty two days ago? Act two of a fictional story usually is the confrontation. It's the structured escalation. It's kind of the why.
21:41 Speaker 00 Why are we even talking about any of this? Thirty five days before the murder, there is a text message sent to Kristielle Krug.
21:50 Speaker 01 Saw you at. Kristielle is.
21:51 Speaker 00 Kristielle is the mother of three and the wife of Daniel Krug. So eighty two days before the murder, Daniel Krug calls the police and is like, hey, I just saw some guy break into our house. And I talked to my wife and we realized the only thing stolen was our spare key. Now thirty five days before the murder, so this is after the break in. Kristielle Krug gets a text message. Saw you at dentist. I like clean teeth for my. C O C K. You got me so horny and slutty in my car, so I nutted on yours. See you soon. Kristielle is like the dentist. How would anybody know that she's at the dentist? Kristielle checks her car for a tracker or anything else. And there's nothing, I mean, she hasn't posted on social media. She's barely online these days.
22:35 Speaker 00 She values privacy over everything else since the stalking started. She took down all her personal photos, family photos. How would they even know that she's at the dentist? And the dentist, the plaza that the dentist's office is in.
22:47 Speaker 01 Wait, wait, so this is a stalker?
22:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:51 Speaker 01 And this is not the first message?
22:53 Speaker 00 No, she's been getting messages all month long.
22:56 Speaker 01 Hmm, and he say he.
23:00 Speaker 01 Notted on hers?
23:01 Speaker 00 Yes, on her car.
23:02 Speaker 01 On her car.
23:03 Speaker 00 She doesn't see any of it. This is the first time the stalker is like, I saw you at the dentist at this time. And she knows there's no way. It's not even just a message of like, I, I want you to like, you know, the stalker was saying all things like, I'm gonna kidnap you. You should leave your husband for me. But now it's very specific. I saw you at the dentist.
23:22 Speaker 01 Was she?
23:23 Speaker 00 Yeah. And the dentist plaza has like a ton of other businesses in the same plaza. So if someone even just tracked her phone, it would be unclear which business or establishment she's visiting. How would they know specifically she went to the dentist that day unless they're tracking her car or they're watching her in person? Then another message. He doesn't deserve you. You know it. He doesn't satisfy you. That's why you keep all your fuckboys on the side. You're a dirty slut and I know how to satisfy you. Admit that no one satisfied you since me. I see you flirting with waiters, almost begging for sex, licking your lips and you got your boobs out. Don't know how many fucking boys you kept, but I'll save you. I know he's keeping us apart. You don't belong in that big house. You belong with
24:05 Speaker 00 me. I'll get rid of him and then we can be together. So easy. The stalker sends another message. They have random security. They let me park and walk right into his building. Been there for weeks. Give me the signal and he won't come home. Every married bitch I ever banged wanted to get rid of their husbands. I'll do it for us. Help me get rid of him and then we can be together, just like you want. I'm planning a big birthday party for you. Just you, me and 20 friends. I know you're a dirty slut and I'll treat you right. You can be slutty with me and I'll take you. You don't want the fake married life. You want to be dirty and I will save you.
24:39 Speaker 01 So these are all sent like several times?
24:41 Speaker 00 Yeah. Halloween is probably the scariest message to date. It's a picture of Chris Steele's husband, Daniel, while he's leaving work. This your husband? Drives like slow old lady. Can't believe you want to suck his dick, but not mine. He needs to drive safe. Don't want to clear rubber hose in his tailpipe, does he?
25:00 Speaker 01 What exactly is a photo like?
25:02 Speaker 00 It's of Daniel getting out of his car going into the work.
25:06 Speaker 01 How far is it very close by?
25:07 Speaker 00 Really close. It's like if someone were to park um nose in and then I were to drive right by and take a picture out my window.
25:16 Speaker 01 Oh, you're driving by their car and snapping a photo huh?
25:19 Speaker 00 It's not from five parking spaces away. It's like if you're at a Trader Joe's and you're driving by one of the parked cars and you just stick your hand towards the passenger seat and take a photo.
25:29 Speaker 01 Okay, what was like the first message though that she received? Are you gonna go over that? Okay.
25:35 Speaker 00 Now whoever the shocker is, they're now following the entire family. But how I mean, it's like they have eyes and ears everywhere. How do you follow an entire five person family? Four days later, a picture of a man's private parts come in with the question, what do you think? It's only escalating and this all started October 2nd, 2023. So the break in happens earlier than this, but the first message, the very first message comes in October 2nd, 2023. Kristielle gets this. It's hi Kristielle, it's Anthony. Hope it's okay. I looked you up. I go to Boulder, Colorado every few weeks and I thought we could hook up.
26:15 Speaker 00 Kristielle doesn't respond mainly because it's like a really odd message from an old, old friend of hers. It's her old high school boyfriend. Kristielle is now married. She's three kids. One of them I think is in high school now, like she.
26:29 Speaker 01 Like twenty years ago.
26:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, who's thinking about their high school boyfriend from decades ago? It's not like they have the same sort of friends either. He knows she married a guy uh named Krug and they have three kids. Why would she even meet up with him? They haven't even spoken in so long. But the next day, another message. Are you there? You should say yes when I offer a pity fuck. Whatever. Saw your pictures. You got fat, but your loser husband won't fuck your fat.
26:56 Speaker 00 Just you should kill yourself.
27:00 Speaker 01 That just second day?
27:02 Speaker 00 Yeah. But it's not just text messages. Emails are coming in. Your license plate expired. Gotta fix that. She checks her license plate is expired.
27:12 Speaker 00 You and your husband down to Eiffel Tower? Then the dentist messages and Christine starts feeling rightfully paranoid. But there's also nothing that indicates that somebody is following her. I mean, she's been tracking what cars have been on the street outside her house, all normal cars that always pass by, nothing abnormal. I would imagine that there's more than one exit out of the neighborhood. So if Christine switches it up each time, then how would he even follow her out? Christine calls an officer to the house to check out her car. There's nothing. There's no tracker. There's nothing, but they can't even do anything, even though every day there's a new message. If it's not from the stalker, it's from somebody else. Like a text message from someone else seemingly unrelated. Hi, I saw your post on Ion Canto. Are you still looking for some men to join you? So I guess it's like a
27:58 Speaker 01 Group sex?
27:59 Speaker 00 Yeah. Christine responds, can you tell me which ad this was for? About you wanting a train? I believe someone may have taken out an ad with my number. Could you share the link or the title of the ad, please? No response.
28:11 Speaker 01 Wow.
28:11 Speaker 00 The entire Krug family has this heightened sense of anxiety about all of this. I mean, the pictures, the stalking, the threats. It's just starting to become overwhelming. They try to track down the number sending the messages. It only leads them to other dead ends. And the stalker keeps switching numbers. Sometimes the messages would have thinly laced threats of kidnapping Christine, killing Daniel. This seemingly very normal suburban family, the Krugs, they start changing their entire lifestyles. They have lockdown protocols in the house. They're installing cameras outside around the house. Christine is getting a concealed carry license. She's learning how to shoot guns. Daniel, the husband, he's freaking out. Daniel's kind of a geeky guy. He's the type at work where if he has his work credentials on a tag that he clips onto a backpack.
28:56 Speaker 00 He will do these elaborate swirls in front of like the key readers, the key card readers to hit his backpack on it rather than get like a retractable lanyard of some sort. And this is not like me trying to give you an analogy of his personality. I literally saw him do this. So it's like, that's what he does. That's the type of kind of geeky energy that he has.
29:15 Speaker 01 What does he do?
29:16 Speaker 00 He works for the Department of Public Health for accounting.
29:19 Speaker 01 He's accountant?
29:20 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah, for the government.
29:24 Speaker 01 Interesting.
29:24 Speaker 00 Now, during an interview with the police, because Chriselle and Daniel have talked to the police frequently about this stalker.
29:29 Speaker 01 And what does she do?
29:31 Speaker 00 She is a bioengineer, but I believe that she is a full-time mom at this point. But yeah, she was focused on engineering. Everyone that has spoken about Chriselle says she was just like whip smart. So smart. Yeah. And like even the way that, because we FOIA had requested this case. The way that she was able to log each of the stalker's messages, I mean, she was methodical about it. She did not play games. She would have these ways of calming herself down. Even when she talks to Detective Martinez, which is the guy, the officer that's helping her with catching the stalker. She even tells him, like, she has folders. She is presenting all the evidence to him.
30:11 Speaker 00 And she's telling him, I know the whole point is to freak me out. So I'm trying to keep that in mind.
30:17 Speaker 01 Hmm. So she's like logging all of these? And what is the, so the police saying there's nothing they could do about this?
30:25 Speaker 00 The police have put out warrants for these cellphone companies to get extra data. But these cellphone companies, they're very sensitive about giving out any sort of information until it's too late.
30:37 Speaker 01 Is it like a known caller or is it a fake number?
30:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's like text now numbers, where you can generate like a Google number. And then if you give a warrant to Google, they're gonna stall until maybe somebody's dead. Then you can get an expedited warrant to catch a killer. But at that point, it's kind of too late. So during an interview with the police, you know, Daniel is just saying like, I was at the grocery store briefly on Tuesday. And someone behind me dropped a can and I panicked. You know, like, what am I doing? I'm panicking and I'm doing a shit job of protecting my wife, so I'm not doing good. It just seems like this whole family is falling apart because of this stalker. Chriselle, on the other hand, she's not putting up with this. She's ready to go to war for her safety, as she should.
31:24 Speaker 00 She gets the meeting with Martinez and she's, Martinez even says, she came into the interview room and just kind of took over. And just told me everything, like, this is what's happening. She's bringing out papers, files, documents. She got a full-blown report from the P I.
31:38 Speaker 01 So the first message saying this is from Anthony, right? That's the first person of interest and
31:44 Speaker 00 Yes, and she's tracking, she got a P I to track all of his addresses, all of his associated phone numbers, but they keep moving from different parts of the state. She's handing this all to the police, all of this. And she's like, this is my ex-boyfriend from high school. This is his name. I think this is his current address. Officer Martinez opted not to go talk to Anthony. Because his problem was, there's not enough to arrest him. So if they go and talk to him without arresting him, that could set him off.
32:17 Speaker 01 Okay, so what?
32:19 Speaker 00 So they need to gather more information. They need to wait for these phone companies to come in with the data to have enough evidence to arrest him. So Officer Martinez is like, I mean, I could go talk to him, but if I don't have that evidence, I can't arrest him. So we don't know what he's gonna do after we stop talking to him.
32:38 Speaker 01 It's because because that they only have a message saying that's his name, but there's not evidence linking it to his number.
32:44 Speaker 00 Yeah. So they have a message saying, hi, it's Anthony, and then all these crazy messages. And then a P I who separately finds Anthony's home address. There's no evidence to say that that is Anthony. Anyone could send a message and say, hey, it's Stephanie Sue, but like you have no evidence that it's Stephanie Sue, right? So he's like, I could go talk to him, but if it is Anthony, that could set him off.
33:05 Speaker 01 Right.
33:05 Speaker 00 Like, he could go crazy after that, and I don't know if that's a good risk. Now, do I agree with that kind of sentiment? I don't know, but that's how the laws are. So I would say blame the laws more than Officer Martinez.
33:17 Speaker 00 I don't know, maybe I'm too personally invested. There's a lot of body cam footage. And there's a lot of footage of people, family members rightfully initially being upset with Officer Martinez. But later, all of Chris Steele's family have come out and it seems like Officer Martinez took it very hard, so we'll get into it. But because the way the laws are set up, it's not like Martinez doesn't want to go and talk to him. It's not like he's being lazy. It's more so, I can't even arrest the guy.
33:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:45 Speaker 00 And Chris Steele just keeps telling Martinez, like, I get it. I keep trying to remind myself, this is intending to be terrorizing. This is intending to scare me. Chris Steele tells her family members, it's either going to be me or him that's dead. And I'm gonna do everything in my power to make sure it's not me. If this were a fictional story, which it's not, and again, the only reason we're comparing it to one is because there's somebody in this case that thinks that this is gonna play out just like the movies, is going to be this theatrical, beautiful cinematic ending, and it's not, but Act Three is the resolution. It's typically where everything collides together, the clues start clicking into place, the story's central question is answered, usually who did it and why.
34:30 Speaker 00 At the Krug house, backup officers, paramedics have all arrived, but it is too late for Kristiell Krug. She's dead, she's been killed, someone stabbed her in the heart in her own garage. One by one, all the family members are arriving to the house. Kristiell's mother was the one that saw when the garage first opened.
34:50 Speaker 01 That was her own mom outside?
34:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, that was Kristiell's mother, and she is now being comforted on the street by the neighbor in the puffer coat. Nobody knows if Kristiell is dead yet. The officers don't wanna tell the family members until everybody's gathered.
35:04 Speaker 00 Kristiell's dad Lars arrives, Kristiell's brother Lars Junior arrives, her sister-in-law Kate arrives. The last person that they need to wait for is Kristiell's husband Daniel. Thankfully, all the kids are in school. The police don't wanna tell anyone until they're all gathered. Daniel's the last to arrive, and he parks further away because there's cop cars all surrounding the house. He runs up to the cops, they're telling him back up, like, under no circumstances are you going into that garage right now. He freaks out, they tell him, family's on the side, he books it to the family, nobody's giving him information. Finally, an officer walks over and lets them know that she's gone.
35:42 Speaker 00 Daniel's on the ground, he's on his knees, he's sobbing, even Kristiell's mom is comforting him because there's just a lot of guilt coming in. Daniel is hyperventilating, saying things like, "I didn't protect her, I was supposed to protect her." Kristiell's autopsy states that she was attacked from behind with a blunt object, bludgeoned in the head, rolled over before being stabbed in the heart. All everyone knows is, unless the police catch this guy, Daniel Krug is probably next. And if this were a fictional story, if this played out like the movies, this is where the resolution would come in. They would all find the guy, Anthony, the guy that's texting and stalking Kristiell, they would arrest him and all the questions would get answered. Anthony's a bad guy, he'll get what's coming to him, the story isn't happy at the end because how is it gonna be happy? But you get to see Anthony rot in jail.
36:28 Speaker 00 But this is not like the movies or the books. I mean, this is real life, it never happens that way. Through the body cam footage of the officers at the Krug's house, there's this one part where all the officers are pulled to the side away from the family members, away from the neighbors, and one of the officers tells the others, "I don't know the backstory. Husband said there was a dude who has been stalking her, threatening to kidnap her. Martinez was involved, Detective Martinez. I don't know, dude. I don't know the history of that. Martinez does, though, and he's gonna come in. So other than that, we're just kind of securing the scene, waiting for detectives, see what they need." They all point to the blue piece of tape. So over the Google Nest camera on the front door, there's blue piece of tape covering the camera.
37:09 Speaker 01 It's like a Ring camera, right?
37:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, and they just covered the, someone came and covered it with blue tape. And the cop is like, "Did you do that?" The guy's like, "No." So I'm like, "That's interesting. It's really interesting."
37:21 Speaker 00 The officer that first arrived at the scene, obviously adrenaline was rushing once he saw a woman down in the garage, but he said that when he kicked the front door, he didn't feel a lot of resistance. He doesn't think that it was dead bolted. Like, maybe there was a lock, like the bottom lock, but it wasn't dead bolted. Maybe just the handle was locked? But the most interesting conversation the police have away from the ears of family members and neighbors is that this is still an active investigation. We're going to treat every single person here as a potential suspect.
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40:42 Speaker 00 That night at the police station, Daniel, Kristiels husband, is about to leave after answering questions, along with the rest of Kristiels family. So they're all coming in for interviews. And he turns, and before he leaves the police station, he stops in the police lobby, and he's talking to one of the officers, and he says, "He took my children's mother before Christmas."
41:05 Speaker 00 They're never gonna get over that. "I don't care if you capture him. I don't care if you kill him. Find him. Don't just assume it's me."
41:16 Speaker 01 "Don't just assume it's me?"
41:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, what do you mean, "assume it's me"? Daniel is Kristiels husband. Daniel says so himself. I've seen the movies. It's always the husband, isn't it? But you need to find him.
41:32 Speaker 00 Inside the Krug house, near one of the action plans, in case the stalking escalates, there's a tiny little post-it sticking to a bookshelf. And it reads, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. If you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." Nietzsche.
41:51 Speaker 01 Handwritten?
41:52 Speaker 00 Handwritten. What does any of this mean? Informing the adults of the Krug family of Kristiels murder is one thing. To inform her three kids is a totally different situation. And this happens to be one of the... Okay, like, I could... Sometimes words are very bland. I feel like the words heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, horrendous, heinous, they're all pretty empty at this point. I think it's just so shitty. I believe it's the eldest daughter. She's in high school, and she already knows that something is wrong before police and family members come to pull her out of school. She's in the guidance counselor's office when the first officer shows up. And she's explaining, like, she saw a lot happen through her phone, because this family has been stalked. They likely all have access to the phone cameras.
42:36 Speaker 00 And she's, like, in high school, so definitely she does. And they're probably all alert, watching for any suspicious activity. And she's crying, and she says, "My phone notified me of my house cameras going off. There was police at the house and an ambulance, and there was a stretcher. I couldn't bring myself to see who was on the stretcher, so I called mom and dad. My dad picked up, and he's crying, and he, like, wouldn't tell me what's going on. He told me to shut off my phone, and my aunt is coming here to pick me up." So the officer is trying to gather intel because the officer knows everything that's happened to. What's been going on at home? So this dude has been threatening my mom, stalking her, taking photos of my dad, saying that he's gonna kill him. Do we know who this person is? One of her exes, I don't know his name. Like an ex-boyfriend, yeah. Okay.
43:20 Speaker 00 And they broke up a while ago, they ended it as friends, so this has all come as like a really big shock to my mom. But she mentions to the police officer, he's been contacting her from different numbers, sending pictures of my dad, saying that he's gonna kill him. He hasn't mentioned anything about me and my siblings yet, which is good. He posted something to a website trying to recruit guys to help him with whatever plan he's going and he's been contacting my mom through all of this. And so my mom has contacted the police and she has like a whole bunch of people on this case, but the thing is, he's making it sound like she's helping him and she's not. So we're really afraid that the police are gonna turn on us. So she's been trying to protect herself, so she has a gun and she's in the process of getting her concealed carry license so that she can protect herself and us. And then, yeah, when I saw the camera, I assumed that she would have to use that gun.
44:04 Speaker 00 She tells the officers that my parents don't have the best relationship, it's not violent whatsoever. They just haven't been getting along, they won't get a divorce, they say it's for the children, it's best for us, but at least you know, I I know it's their marriage isn't doing the best, but it's not, like it's never bad enough for her to pair up with this guy. So she's explaining the stalker is making it seem like Christine and the stalker are gonna kill Daniel so that they can run off together. And this little girl, like the daughter is like, that's not like I I'm telling you, like my mom would never do that, please.
44:37 Speaker 01 So the she is kind of thinking that the mom was self-defencing her, like
44:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, and maybe killed the stalker.
44:48 Speaker 00 And I know she's not lying and plotting anything because she's terrified. I've never seen her so terrified. And like throughout this, she's breaking down and because in the FOIA request, they, it's all blurred thankfully, but you actually see the moment when the kids are told. I'm not gonna include it, it's but I think it's important to know it's like a very heavy moment because all of this will the importance of that comes full circle later. But there's almost this speculation from the daughter at least that the stalker was trying to kill the dad and make it seem like the mom was part of it, trying to frame the mom. But how did Kristiell end up dead then?
45:31 Speaker 00 Whoever's out there stalking Kristiell, it is not their first time. It's not their first time creating multiple identities and creating multiple phone numbers and changing their locations just so they could stalk a woman. And there is a lot of potentials to debate here. The messages show that the stalker would have an idea of what their end result was going to be and then completely change their mind and then think about something else. At first, they want to kidnap Kristiell and likely hold her captive. There are messages of kidnapping her and then the stalker believing that Kristiell would finally be happy with him. Or if that's too hard, they could just kill Kristiell. Maybe that's the better plan. Or how about they kill Daniel, Kristiell's husband, and frame Kristiell for it? That way Kristiell won't have anyone. She'll have to come to him, her stalker, right?
46:14 Speaker 00 A nationwide arrest warrant is put out for Anthony, the ex-boyfriend, the stalker. And while they're looking for him, a woman named Carrie is brought into the police station. She explains the same exact thing happened to her during her breakup. I mean, this was a long time ago, so this was when she was in college. So like fifteen years ago. And she says, you know, I broke up with him a couple of months into my freshman year and he was pretty emotional. I would say sort of desperation would maybe be the word I would use to describe him after the breakup. Of just kind of like, please don't do this, kind of crying, that sort of thing that I can recall. And then I started to get messages from his roommate. That person's name is Tom. And she starts getting these messages and quote, and I know Tom is real because they're roommates.
46:58 Speaker 00 If I called him, sometimes Tom would pick up the phone and they had like a joint phone and a joint room. She says that Tom would message her talking about how her ex wasn't doing well because of the breakup and maybe was gonna be injured. But then turns out Tom isn't Tom. I mean, Tom is real, but Carrie says Tom's messages were being sent by her ex-boyfriend.
47:23 Speaker 00 To try and push her closer to her ex again. They're not from the real Tom. They're not from the real roommate. The stalker also created other identities to try and separate her and isolate her from her friends. It kind of ruined her entire college life. Ultimately, all the leads led back to a public library. Even though she and one of the officers that she was working with, I mean, they knew who it was. It was the ex-boyfriend. They just didn't have enough evidence to get him. But yeah. And so the police were like, okay, and your ex-boyfriend is Daniel Krug.
47:57 Speaker 01 Damn. So this lady Carrie, right? She showed up by herself or was she?
48:03 Speaker 00 Police brought her in. There was, um, in Daniel's sealed records. There was an incident between her and him in college. And the police are like, what are the odds that Kristielle was being stalked? And Daniel has an ex-girlfriend from college that was stalked by Daniel?
48:23 Speaker 01 Oh, she was stalked? She wasn't just?
48:26 Speaker 00 No. She got these threatening messages, weird messages from all sorts of people that were not the people they claimed to be.
48:34 Speaker 01 For from decades ago? That's wow. Now, the police, did they suspect him from the get-go? Or was it a while? Like, well, how did they even go down that path?
48:48 Speaker 00 They suspected him the minute that he came into the police station. Because it's like the movies. He was sitting there and he's just gonna give information like all the other family members. But I think that is a whole Pandora's box that we're about to open in part two of the audio. So in part two, we're gonna go through all of the ways that the police were looking at Daniel because he's just acting very strange. He keeps bringing up fiction and movies. And the way that he's acting is like a fictional character. None of it feels real. It's very, he's whispering all the time. And he keeps saying things like, I couldn't protect her.
49:32 Speaker 00 And it's just so unsettling. And so the police are trying to figure out, they have to find Anthony to rule him out. They also have to find evidence against Daniel, if it is Daniel. And also in part two, we're gonna go through a ton of jailhouse calls because I think this is one of the very few FOIA requests that I got where we were just like inundated with all of these video calls from jail of Daniel.
49:56 Speaker 01 With who?
49:57 Speaker 00 With his parents. And he's telling them he is being framed. That will all be in part two of the audio. Stay tuned, stay safe, and I will see you in the next one.
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Previous Fertility Specialist Helps Couples Get Pregnant, Then Has Affair With Wives- Mysteriously Found Dead Next Part 2: "Smartest" Husband Pretends To Be Ex & Stalks Wife For Months Before Stabbing Her To Death Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated