He Pretended to Be a Stalker to Control His Wife, Then Murdered Her | Daniel Krug

When 43-year-old Kristil Krug was found beaten and stabbed in her Colorado garage, police thought her past had caught up with her. For months, she’d been stalked and terrorized by who she thought was her ex-boyfriend—sending threats, photos, and messages that tracked her every move. Her estranged husband, Daniel Krug, was "there to protect her."

But as police dug deeper, they realized that what began as a stalking case spiraled into one of the most chilling, calculated domestic murders Colorado has ever seen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now part of the dark Cast Network. Welcome to indie
podcasts with a Dark Side. At twelve twenty eight pm
on December fourteenth, twenty twenty three, Broomfield police officers arrived
at a home on the thirty one hundred block of
Promptory Loop, responding to a welfare check that had just

(00:21):
come in minutes earlier. The call came in from forty
three year old Daniel Bartholomew Krug, who told dispatchers that
he hadn't heard from his wife, Crystal for several hours
and was worried. Quote, I don't think this is an emergency,
but it just feels really weird. My wife isn't responding
to text messages or phone calls. He mentioned that for months,

(00:43):
Crystal had been getting disturbing messages from someone she believed
was her ex boyfriend. When the officers got to the house,
they looked through the garage window and saw a woman
on the ground surrounded by blood. Inside, they found forty
three year old Crystal Rug lying near the car, her
skin still warm but without a pulse. There was a

(01:06):
bright red blood smear on the dry wall beside her.
They tried CPR, but it was too late. Crystal was
pronounced dead at twelve forty three pm. Police noticed that
she had been beaten and stabbed. Welcome Lambs, Welcome too,
Love and Murder, Heartbreak to Homicide, your weekly true crime

(01:27):
podcast telling you cases of relationships that took a dark
turn and turned to homicide. My name is Kai and
I will be your host, and I invite you to
take a seat, take a listen all the way to
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(01:47):
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(02:11):
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dollars a month and above. Now that we got the

(02:32):
house cleaning out of the way, grab your butts, grab
your big, old delicious glass of apple juice, and let's
get back to today's love and murder. Crystal was a
mother of three children, born in two thousand and nine,
twenty twelve, and twenty fifteen. She was a Colorado native,
a biochemical engineer known for her intelligence, creativity, and warmth.

(02:54):
Her family described her as kind, funny, and deeply devoted
to her kids. One remembered her for her kindness, generosity,
and infectious laughter. Daniel worked for the Colorado Department of
Public Health and Environment. They had been married since two
thousand and seven and lived in the suburbs between Denver
and Boulder, but by late twenty twenty three the marriage

(03:18):
had fallen apart. Cristel had already separated her finances and
was sleeping in a different bedroom, and had told her
parents that she planned to divorce Daniel and seek full
custody of their children. She told them that she quote
couldn't stand that man and mentioned that he was quote
sometimes rough with the kids. The investigation into her death

(03:39):
started immediately. At first, detectives looked into the stalking reports
Cristel had filed. She told police about an ex boyfriend
from over twenty years ago who had been harassing her.
According to Cristel, they'd briefly dated for about a year
back in two thousand, when they were seventeen or eighteen
years old, before breaking up for some reason. In the

(04:01):
fall of twenty twenty three, Cristel had gotten a random
message from this ex saying that he was in town
and asked her if she wanted to hook up like
dude that was twenty years ago. No, thank you. She
didn't reply to that text, so he started texting her
even more, some even angry, and one that called Daniel
her quote lose her husband, like how do you know

(04:24):
who my husband is? The messages turned threatening, sometimes telling
her that she was being watched. By October thirty first,
Crystal became so concerned that she went to the police.
She reported an email that she'd gotten that day that
had a picture of Daniel quote exiting his vehicle at
his workplace, along with an obscene message. Crystal started keeping

(04:49):
track of everything. She made a detailed spreadsheet. A dossier
documented all the harassment, the fake emails, the phone numbers,
even the license plate of suspicious cars she saw near
her home. By November, the situation had gotten worse. She
began receiving messages that included her exact location and other

(05:11):
personal details. Proven someone was actively tracking her. That must
have been terrifying. On November thirteen, she got a text
that said, quote, helped me get rid of him, then
we could be together, referring to Daniel. These messages didn't stop.
They continued into December, growing more invasive and threatening. The

(05:33):
constant harassment left Tristel exhausted and terrified. She told officers, quote,
this is exhausting. It has definitely made me paranoid everywhere
I go. She decided to take steps to protect herself.
She bought a new gun, signed up for firearms safety classes,
and started carrying her concealed firearm in her special purse.

(05:56):
Police even launched counter surveillance and undercover operation to try
and figure out who was behind these messages while they're
really doing their due diligence, so only hours after the murder,
investigators contacted the ex boyfriend Crystal thought was responsible, Jack
Hollin in Eagle Mountain, Utah, over eight hours away, and

(06:18):
quickly learned that he had a solid alibi. He'd been
at a cold store that morning, with receipts and surveillance
footage to prove it. He hadn't even left Utah. Once
Jack was cleared, detectives turned their attention back to Daniel,
as digital forensics pointed directly back to him. Detectives got

(06:39):
the IP addresses for the fake email accounts and were
traced to a password protected network at Daniel's workplace. As
a matter of fact, one of the fake email accounts
was actually made on a password protected network at the
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Police found that
one email was sent at eight twelve a m. On

(07:02):
the day he had clocked in for work. Investigators found
that the Burner phones had been activated with a Visa
gift card registered to Daniel's name, and one of the
phones used to harass Crystal had pinged in the exact
same areas as Daniel's personal phone multiple times. The more

(07:23):
they dug, the worse it looked. When police confronted him
with this information, Daniel tried to deflect. He said maybe
Crystal was having an affear quote, there must be somebody else.
When detectives told him that her ex had been cleared
beyond doubt, Daniel leaned back, rolled his eyes and said, sarcastically, quote, ugh,

(07:48):
it has to be the husband. Two days later, on
December sixteenth, twenty twenty three, officers said, yeah, it has
to be the husband and arrested Daniel at King Souper's
grocery store. He was charged with first degree murder, two
counts of stocking, and criminal impersonation. After his arrest, Daniel

(08:08):
was booked into the Broomfield Detention Center. Investigators called the
case quote one of the most disturbing domestic homicides they'd
ever seen because of how calculated it was. Even as
he said in jail, Daniel continued trying to manipulate the story.
During interviews with detectives. He denied everything. He said he

(08:31):
was being framed and claimed someone must have even hacked
his accounts. He also said he loved Crystal and would
never hurt her. Daniel's trial started on April fourth, twenty
twenty five and lasted more than two weeks. Prosecutors described
him as methodical and analytical, someone who quote didn't love her,
he hated her. They said Daniel had created a fictional

(08:54):
stalker and spent months terrorizing his wife to isolate and
control her, hoping she would turn back to him. When
she finally began to see through him, he killed her
to end the lie before she exposed it to break
it down more. Prosecutors explained that Daniel began a calculated
plan to manipulate Crystal and hold on to her. He

(09:15):
decided to create an outside threat, someone they could both fear,
then he could play the role of protector. The scheme
started around October twenty twenty three, when Cristel received the
first messages from someone claiming to be Jack Holland, but
by December, she had started wondering if the threat was
a bit closer to home than she thought. She told

(09:38):
her family quote, I can't even rule out my husband.
The night before the murder. Daniel's Google searches gave away
what he was thinking. On December thirteenth, twenty twenty three,
he searched, quote how hard would you have to hit
someone in the head to make them unconscious? What the wow?
He also searched quote how how long can you be

(10:00):
unconscious without brain damage? And quote when is a head
injury a cause for concern? So it looks like he
was trying to escalate this. He wasn't really trying to
kill her, but he wanted it to seem like maybe
this guy had come and hit her and then maybe
with this narration she would finally come back to him.

(10:22):
The next morning, Crystal dropped off their two kids at
school and drove home. She parked in the garage around
eight am. What she didn't know, though, was that Daniel
was already there waiting for her. He ambushed her from behind,
hitting her multiple times in the back of the head
with a blunt object. The blows caused severe head injuries.

(10:42):
Then he stabbed her into heart, Like when did it
turn to stabbing? Weren't you just searching hitting? I guess
because he found out, like, it's not the movies. You
hitting somebody once in the back of the head with
a shoe isn't going to cause them to pass out.
You is going to take real work. And when you
saw she wasn't passing out, I guess maybe he panicked look,

(11:05):
I'm not giving him any excuses, Don't get me wrong.
I'm just trying to figure out where it turned from.
How hard would you have to hit somebody in the
head to render them unconscious to now stab it in
the heart. That's all I'm doing. When police found her,
her person keys were still besides her, her gun was
still inside her purse. There were no signs of a struggle,
suggesting that she never even saw it coming. Daniel immediately

(11:30):
began to clean up and cover his tracks using Crystal's phones.
He turned off three of their home security cameras and
covered the doorbell camera with blue masking tape from the
kitchen draw. He disabled the home security system at eight
fifteen am. Surveillance footage from a neighbor's house showed him
leaving at eight twenty four am, about thirty minutes later

(11:52):
than his normal routine. He then deactivated his car's dash cam,
which is something that they saw that he ever did
before before, stopping at a coffee shop. At the coffee shop,
he corrected the barista about his order, insisting on a
hot drink instead of an iced one, basically trying to
make a scene so that the barista remember him he

(12:14):
wanted to appear calm, normal and routine. After getting to work,
he texted Crystal's phone multiple times, pretended to be worried
that she wasn't responded. Around eight fifty six am, he
sent himself a pre scheduled message from the phone to
make it look like she was still alive, but forensics
proved that her phone hadn't been active since eight twenty

(12:37):
two am, exactly when Daniel had been in the garage.
At noon, Daniel called the police non emergency line and
asked for a welfare check. Pretended to be concerned. He
told the dispatcher he hadn't heard from his wife all
morning and that she had been understressed from being stalked.
When police arrived, they found exactly what Daniel already knew

(12:59):
they would. He also called her mother, Linda, who arrived
at the scene around twelve forty p m. When a
responding officer was performing CPR, and her daughter, how diabolical
do you have to be? Freaking cold blooded bastard. Then
they showed the jury how Daniel had manipulated every part
of the narrative. They played the audio from his nine

(13:21):
one one call, where he sounded calm, and polite, telling
dispatchers that he didn't think it was an emergency. They
showed the time stamp proven that by the time he called,
Cristel had already been dead for hours. Detectives testified to
everything the prosecution had laid out. The medical examiner testified
that the autopsy found Crystel suffered quote two or more

(13:45):
blunt force trauma wounds to the back of the head
and one STAD wound to the left side of her chest.
When it was time for the defense, huh, you know
how I hate the defense, Daniel's attorneys argued that the
evidence was circumstantial. They there was no proof that he
actually sent the messages or that he had killed Crystel.

(14:05):
They tried to paint the investigation as lazy and incomplete,
and argued that none of Daniel's DNA was found on
Crystal and that police failed to test her phone for fingerprints.
They pointed to partial DNA from an unknown person on
Crystel's neck and said it could belong to the real killer.
They also insisted Daniel's behavior that morning, correcting a barista's

(14:27):
order driving his daughter to the bus stop didn't fit
the profile of a cold blooded killer. What would a
cold blooded killer have done if they had just cold
blooded killed and didn't want to get caught. Tell me
what that profile looks like then. That theory, however, didn't
last long. The prosecution quickly dismantled it. They pointed out

(14:49):
that every borner phone Daniel used pinged off the same
cell towers as his personal phone within minutes of each other.
The most powerful testimony came from Cristel's mother and brother, Lars.
Her brother testified about how terrified she had been in
the week's leading up to her death, and how Daniel
had pretended to care. Lars said that during one conversation

(15:11):
about the soul called stalker, Daniel told him he was
between vigilance and paranoia, explaining that whenever a car would
come by, he would stand up and look out the window.
Even Linda spoke about how scared her daughter had been,
saying nobody knew what the stalker was capable of. To
find out that it was Daniel all along, pretending to

(15:32):
protect her while he was the one causing her fear
left them shattered and furious. Her mother broke down on
the stand, describing how Crystal had confided in her just
days before the murder quote, she said she was finally done.
That statement became the emotional center of the trial because
it was exactly what Daniel couldn't stand. Prosecutors argued that

(15:56):
the murder wasn't a moment of rage, it was the
final act of a long, deliberate plan. During closing arguments,
the prosecutor told the jury that Daniel wanted to scare
Cristel and win her back by uniting against a common threat.
When the ruse failed, quote, the only thing left to
do was to end Cristel's life, both to silence her

(16:17):
and to punish her for not wanting to be with him.
The jury deliberated for less than a day. On April seventeen,
twenty twenty five, Daniel was found guilty of first degree
murder to count the stalkin and criminal impersonation. Cristel's family
filled the front row of the courtroom when the verdict

(16:37):
was read. Her mother cried quietly as her brother hugged
her behind them. Daniel's family sat in stunned silence. He
was handcuffed immediately and led away. The next day, Judge
Priscilla Lowe sentenced Daniel to life in prison without the
possibility of parole, plus an additional nine and a half
years for the stalking and impersonation charges. His parents didn't

(17:01):
attend the sentence. In Cristel's father addressed the court, quote,
my daughter was brilliant, kind and compassionate. She trusted the
wrong man. He destroyed her life, and he destroyed our family.
This horrible and brutal murder has been absolutely traumatic for
this family. Our grandchildren's lives have been forever altered. Cristel's

(17:24):
family continues to share her story not just a tragedy,
but as a warning. Daniel, now forty four, maintains his innocence.
He told the court that he plans to appeal. He
is currently serving his sentence at the Sterling correction at
the Sterling Correctional Facility in Colorado. Even from prison, Daniel

(17:45):
has shown no remorse. Prosecutors said that he's never once
admitted what he did or express regret for the months
he spent terrorizing her. This case is a reminder to
all the Lambs that abuse isn't always physical. It can
begin with faiar control and lies. Linda Grimsrud spoke to
twenty twenty saying, quote, every day is a difficult day.

(18:08):
You wake up and you feel the pain, and then
you just try to go on with your day. Crystal's children,
now sixteen, thirteen and ten, aren't the custody of her
brother and his wife in Boulder, Colorado, where Lars works
as an engineer at First RF Corporation. And that is
the case of a man who just couldn't let go.

(18:30):
Instead of just accepting that, you know, she didn't want
to be with you anymore, he decided to terrorize this woman,
terrorize the mother of his children, terrorize somebody that he
claimed to love, and then when he still couldn't get
her back, he decided that if I can't have you,
no one will. What did you think about this episode?

(18:53):
Tell me your thoughts in the comments below, or you
can go over to the Patreon and tell me your
thoughts there. And if you were experience in domestic violence,
call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at one eight hundred
seven ninety nine seven two three three. That's on eight
hundred seven ninety nine seven two three three, or go
to the hotline dot org. All calls are toll free

(19:16):
and confidential, and the hot line is available twenty four
to seven in more than one hundred and seventy languages.
You could also visit my website for more resources Murder
and Loove dot com. That's Love and Murder backwards Murder
and Loove dot com. So go ahead and let me
know what you think about this case. Have you ever
heard of anything as convoluted as this? Just pure unadulterated craziness,

(19:43):
and still even though all the evidence points to him,
he's still maintaining his innocence. It's just crazy. Let me
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(20:05):
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(20:26):
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all love and no murder, y'all. Thank you for listening,
thank you for your time, thank you so much for

(21:13):
your support, thank you for believing in love and murder.
And I will see you in the next episode. Bye.