It was the type of case that people tend to think happens only on TV and never in real life: A desperate husband, on the verge of a divorce he doesn’t want, decides to terrorize his wife with a campaign of stalking and calculated subterfuge.
Pretending to be her ex-boyfriend – a man he knows for a fact has tried to reconnect with his wife in the past – he sends vulgar messages, threats and surveillance photos indicating she and her family are being watched.
His petrified wife starts practicing at the shooting range, buys a new gun and a purse to conceal it in. She hires a PI and reports the stalking to police.
But two and a half months later, she’s fatally bludgeoned and stabbed in the heart in the garage of the family home, her keys still in her hand and her gun still in her purse.
On Friday, a Colorado judge sentenced that husband, 44-year-old Daniel Krug of Broomfield, Colorado, to life in prison without parole.
A jury found him guilty one day earlier of murder, criminal impersonation and two counts of stalking.
It could be easy to get lost in the intrigue and ‘wtf’ elements of the stranger-than-fiction crime.
But when victim Kristil Krug herself appeared in video evidence during the trial – presenting a Colorado detective with a spreadsheet and dossier documenting every element of the stalking ordeal – the true reality and enormity of the tragedy sinks in.
Kristil Krug, 43, was brutally bludgeoned and stabbed in the heart by her husband in December 2023 – after he’d terrorized her for months with vile messages claiming to be from an ex she believed to be stalking her
Daniel Krug, 44, was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without parole after a Colorado jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, stalking and criminal impresonation
This was a woman with a biochemical engineering degree and a formidable career – a mind of ‘intellectual and scientific brilliance,’ her father noted Friday.
‘She had this infectious laughter and a warm spirit that everybody could sense who was around her,’ he said at a press conference immediately after sentencing. ‘She was simply … she was beautiful in every way.’
During the Broomfield detective’s interview with Kristil shown in court, the investigator remarks that Kristil has essentially done his job for him – gathering possible license plates, addresses and phone numbers for the ex she believes is stalking her.
Detective Andrew Martinez is impressed – and it’s evident that the mother-of-three, fastidiously organized, has left no stone unturned.
‘This is exhausting,’ Kristil tells him in the footage shown in court, laying out the evidence she’s compiled and speaking with clipped assurance – but her rapid speech belies her panic.
The contact, she says, ‘comes from all directions at any time.
‘It’s a lot, and it has definitely made me paranoid everywhere I go.’
She tells the detective she is looking for ‘a little bit of safety so I know where he is and what car he’s driving.’
But no one from the police department ever called that ex, Jack Anthony Holland. When Martinez drafted a search warrant to get to the bottom of the email addresses, he made a typo that rendered the search useless, the defense told jurors. It took him weeks to resubmit it. Krug’s lawyers pointed to other missed opportunities to rule out Kristil’s ‘stalker.’
Kristil felt abandoned by police, jurors heard, and was becoming increasingly petrified in the weeks before her death. Her loved ones could see it on her face and hear it in the cadence of her voice.
‘She was getting scared,’ her brother, Lars Grimsrud, testified during the trial. ‘She was really … stressed because she didn’t know when another text was going to come in and what it was going to say.
‘She didn’t know what [the stalker] was capable of.’
Kristil’s mother, Linda Grimsrud, told the court about her daughter collapsing into tears in a parking lot.
‘I held her and there wasn’t much else to do for her, because she was so upset and so troubled … I felt helpless, and she did too.’
Kristil’s stepmother family members hugged each other and cried after the verdict, including her father, far right, uncle, far left, and stepmother, pictured hugging a relative
Daniel Krug, far left, sits with his defense team during proceedings; he declined to testify in his own defense or speak at sentencing
The ‘stalking’ disrupted almost everything in Kristil’s life, from the engineering job she’d excelled at for 19 years to the schedules of her two daughters and son. She worked out a new pickup and dropoff plan for the children to keep them out of harm’s way. She and Krug had them practice drills for what to do if they identified a threat.
The kids had come up with a nickname for the stalker: Kickman – a reference to one of the email addresses, a.holland.kicks@gmail.com.
Kristil even stayed home from her daughter’s Nutcracker performance, an activity especially dear and bonding for the talented dancer and her child. But the dedicated mother made that sacrifice out of concern about her ‘stalker.’
The whole time, a jury decided on Wednesday, it had been her own husband orchestrating the campaign of terror.
His plan had been filled with intrigue and cunning from the start.
It all began in October 2023, when Kristil got a text from ‘Holland,’ who’d last contacted her years beforehand. They’d dated as teenagers after meeting at JC Penney, where both Kristil and her brother had part-time jobs, before breaking up around 2000.
Holland had reached out a few times, including an exchange on Facebook several years before her murder – but the communication had never been anything to worry about, she told Martinez.
Holland testified during the trial that, during one early attempt, Kristil told him her boyfriend – believed to be Krug – would be angry with her for speaking with her ex.
Their final Facebook exchange was around 2016; Holland said on the witness stand that he wasn’t sure what he’d said in those messages as he’d been drinking at the time.
But when asked by the prosecution whether he’d declared his love for Kristil, he answered: ‘Probably.’ He confirmed that the brilliant, generous victim had been his first love.
Kristil didn’t immediately answer that first October 2023 text purportedly from Holland – which prosecutors argued had instead been sent by her husband from a burner phone.
Her failure to write back, Senior Deputy District Attorney Armstrong told jurors, prompted Krug to text his own cell phone number ‘test’ from the burner – and ‘shortly after, he responded to the track phone: “yeah.”‘
It would be one of the more damning pieces of evidence at the trial.
Kristil never responded to any of the messages, and she wasn’t overly concerned, at the start. But on Halloween, she received an email with a photo of Krug at his workplace and a threat to his safety.
She called police and had her first meeting with Martinez days later.
The messages would continue to escalate, and Kristil also began receiving unsolicited photos of male genitalia. She did her own detective work and figured out that someone had placed an ad on a hookup site referencing her birthday, inviting texted photos and seeking encounters.
Kristil’s mother, left, and brother, right, look on during a press conference after they both testified during the murder trial; Broomfield County District Attorney Brian Mason, center, addressed reporters on Friday, noting: ‘This was a brutal, calculated, premeditated murder, and in the months before he brutally murdered his wife, the defendant manipulated, deceived and terrorized both his wife and his children – and an innocent man who he tried to frame for the crime that he was about to commit’
On November 16, Martinez spoke to Krug, as well – and jurors watched the footage of that police department conversation, too.
Presenting himself as meek – moving and speaking gingerly – Krug acts deferential to the detectives … and seems to break down.
‘I’m panicking and I’m doing a s*** job of protecting my wife,’ Krug says, slumping over on the interview room couch.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ he says haltingly to the detectives. ‘I wear a mask around the kids.’
Krug installed new security cameras at the house, and he acted scared around family members, too.
During a November family birthday party at an interactive game center, Krug asked his brother-in-law to stand watch with him outside the room where Kristil, the kids and other family members were celebrating.
Krug told Lars about striking a balance ‘between vigilance and paranoia’ and, ‘whenever a car would come by, he would stand up and look out the window,’ Lars testified – noting that his brother-in-law seemed ‘on edge.’
Despite that, however, Kristil complained to loved ones that he didn’t seem to be taking the threat seriously.
The couple spent Thanksgiving apart, splitting up the kids, partially because Kristil felt safer at the home of her father, who was better armed, the court heard during testimony.
As all of this was going on, though, she was starting to suspect the all-but-estranged spouse living under the same roof.
Her stepmom’s sister, Diana West, owns the store where Kristil bought the purse for her conceal-carry firearm.
‘She was very tense, anxious, nervous,’ she testified. ‘She sat with her back against the wall so she could see the parking lot.
‘I remember her saying … “’The sad thing is, I cannot even rule out my husband as the stalker,’ Diana West testified Monday.
Kristil even confronted Dan and asked him; he denied being behind the stalking and recounted the conversation to police.
But prosecutors argued during his trial that Krug realized he was ‘losing control’ of his family and that Kristil was gearing up for leaving him sooner rather than later.
He’d begun the stalking campaign with the hope that ‘he would be able to bring her back to him and that, in that state, he could be her hero and protector, and they could come back together as a united front,’ the court heard during closings.
Then messages started getting weirder and more frantic, threatening to kidnap Kristil and ‘get rid of’ her husband.
By December 2023, Armstrong said Wednesday, ‘the walls are closing in on Dan Krug … [he] knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s going to be in not only legal trouble for stalking …but he’s also going to be exposed to his friends and his family and everyone he’s trying to present this picture [to] as this great family man and great father.
Kristil’s father, Lars Grimsrud Sr, also spoke at the press conference Friday. ‘Obviously, there’s never enough justice for a life that has been so wrongfully and horrifically taken, but the legal process and the support and dedication of many people has now at least allowed some relief in knowing that Dan Krug has been held accountable for his actions in achieving some justice for Kristil,’ he said
‘At this point in time, all hope of rekindling the relationship is over …. His ruse has not worked,’ she said.
‘Then the only thing left to do was to end Kristil’s life, both to silence her and to punish her for not wanting to be with him.’
The prosecution called another witness during the trial to testify about Krug’s historical reaction to breakups: A girlfriend he’d dated from the end of high school into college.
She told the court how, after the pair ended their relationship, Krug begged her to get back together – before she began receiving abusive and suspicious messages. Some claimed to be from Krug’s roommate or other people, but she eventually came to believe each sender had really been him.
Krug’s ex sought a protection order in 2001 – and reached out independently to Broomfield PD when she became aware of Dan’s arrest on stalking and murder charges, the court heard.
On December 13, 2023, Krug went to lunch with colleagues in Glendale, came back to his office and made a number of google searches related to head trauma. They included ‘what happens when you’re knocked unconscious’ and ‘how hard for head trauma to go unconscious.’
The next morning, prosecutors said, he took one daughter to school and returned to the house, staying later than his usual departure time. He told investigators he had diarrhea. The garage camera pictured him leaving a few minutes before 8.30am.
Kristil returned home from dropping the two other children at 7.56. According to prosecutors, Dan killed her just minutes later after turning off all security cameras in the house except the one in the garage and putting blue tape over the front door ring camera.
They argued he surprised Kristil from behind because he knew that, if his tough wife spotted an attacker, she would fight – and that she was armed with both a gun and pepper spray.
‘He hit Kristil Krug in the back of the head so hard that it caused devastating injuries,’ the prosecutor said during closing arguments.
‘He did it from behind; she didn’t even see him coming. He didn’t even give her a fighting chance. He did it because he knew he had to do it in order to stab her. He wasn’t going to get in that close without doing that.’
After ‘lying in wait for her,’ the prosecution told jurors,’ Krug ‘assaulted her from behind, hitting her several times in the back of the head with a blunt object before stabbing her in the heart.’
Then Krug ‘manipulated’ her phone to send delayed text messages to himself, only one of which went through – telling him Kristil had a nonexistent meeting with Martinez and asking him to pick up their daughter from school.
‘He needed to craft a reason that she needed to reach out to him.’
Krug removed the blue tape from the ring camera then left, heading to work with ample gaps that would’ve given him time to dispose of the murder weapon and any evidence, the court heard.
Krug had called police for a wellness check after being unable to reach his wife for several hours that morning. He also called her mother, who arrived as a responding officer attempted CPR on Kristil upon discovering her unconscious in a pool of blood, her car keys and purse – which held her recently purchased 9mm – still beside her.
Within hours, Utah police had approached a surprised Holland at his home, an eight-hour drive from the scene of the crime. He’d been buying a sweatshirt at Kohl’s at the time of her murder.
On top of that, forensic IT experts with police had traced emails to the wifi at Dan Krug’s workplace – and texts to a burner phone purchased with a gift card registered in his name.
Broomfield detectives confront Krug with this damning information in the immediate aftermath of her death. As he sobbed and issued worried exclamations about his three children, they posited their theory that he’d, in fact, been the one behind his wife’s stalking.
Holland, they told him, had been ruled out. He could not have killed Kristil.
‘There must be somebody else,’ Krug protested.
But as it became clear that he was emerging as Suspect Number One, Krug threw his head back and rolled his eyes.
‘It has to be the husband,’ he sighed – referencing law enforcement’s tendency to look at victim’s spouses first.
He was arrested and charged two days after her murder.
Many of Kristil’s loved ones gave victim impact statements, including one friend from dance, pictured, who pointedly quoted a Jewish proverb directed at the newly convicted killer, telling the court: ‘The name of the righteous is used in blessings, but the name of the wicked will rot’
‘Before Kristil’s death, you stalked her. You terrorized her. You tortured her,’ Judge Priscilla Loew told Krug on Friday while sentencing him to life on the murder charge, the maximum of four years each on two stalking charges and maximum 18 months on the charge of criminal impersonation.
‘She lived in fear; it was evident through the evidence, her video statements, that the last months of her life were managed by you and your actions, through deceit and control.
‘And not only did you manipulate her through the stalking … you manipulated your family, impacting your own children, and you also manipulated law enforcement.’
Kristil’s father, Lars Grimsrud, was the last in a bereft line of friends and family giving victim impact statements on Friday before Judge Priscilla Loew. Those who spoke included Kristil’s mother; aunts; uncles; cousin; stepsister; friends from elementary school, college and adult dance classes; and even statements from the couple’s two daughters, aged 16 and 12.
They asked their new permanent guardians – Kristil’s brother and his wife – to read their statements.
Ella Krug simply relied on a quote from Queen song lyrics from the song One Vision – lamenting: ‘I had a dream when I was young/A glimpse of hope and unity/And visions of one sweet union/But a cold wind blows and a dark rain falls/And in my heart, it shows.’
Lorelei Krug, calling herself ‘the child who was forced to grow up too fast,’ told the court though her statement: ‘As I once came up with: “Don’t run from your problems, skip from them.”
‘I’m not sure if I can skip away from this one.’
Family members, prosecutors and even gathered media were crying throughout the verdict and the victim impact statements. The judge acknowledged her own respect for Kristil and the family, noting that it had been ‘an honor’ to get to know the murdered mother of three through proceedings and to preside over the case.
Following the sentencing, one of the prosecutors began to collapse during the press conference – the wide toll the trial had taken written on the faces of all involved.
‘Our hearts are broken,’ Lars Grimsrud Sr told those gathered.
‘As we grieve this sad loss of a vibrant and such a talented soul that she was, we remember her for the joy that she brought into our lives and the beauty that she shared with us.
‘The world is going to miss what she had yet to share.
‘Obviously, there’s never enough justice for a life that has been so wrongfully and horrifically taken, but the legal process and the support and dedication of many people has now at least allowed some relief in knowing that Dan Krug has been held accountable for his actions in achieving some justice for Kristil.’
The case, he said, had been ‘convoluted.
‘It’s something you could see in a Hollywood movie that, you know, would be fiction,’ he said. ‘It can’t be believable.’
