Counterfeit Son: The Murders of Bart and Krista Halderson

It's not that unusual for people to bend the truth a little to show themselves in a good light, especially when they're young. Maybe you want to impress a crush, maybe you just want to add a bit of glamor to an otherwise normal life. It's mostly harmless...unless the lies get out of control. If someone lies with every beat of their heart, builds an entire alternate reality around themselves, then what happens when that alternate reality is threatened by the truth can get pretty ugly. Join us for the story of a golden-boy son turned double murderer.

Sources:
CBS's "48 Hours," episode “The Snapchat Clue”
Trial footage, People v Halderson
WMTV15 News: https://www.wmtv15news.com/2021/12/22/halderson-trial/ https://www.wkow.com/news/prosecutor-haldersons-father-about-to-expose-sons-lifestyle-lies-before-homicide/article_4385f8b0-6d96-11ec-bcd0-6b683767931a.html
Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/fake-spacex-job-murder-dismemberment-lies-1278750/
Channel 3000 News: https://www.channel3000.com/news/crime/analysts-say-phone-of-chandler-halderson-was-tracked-in-areas-where-parents-remains-found/article_4779b795-67a1-53ba-81d0-3b0261ce3688.html
WKOW News: https://www.wkow.com/news/crime/chandler-halderson-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-without-parole-for-the-murder-of-his-parents/article_1ec0c0b4-a626-11ec-b6d8-a303892e68f7.html

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallowsand gather around the true crime campfire.
We're your camp counselors. I'm Katieand I'm Whitney, and we're here to
tell you a true story that isway stranger than fiction. Or roasting murderers
and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. It's not that unusual for people to

(00:24):
bend the truth a little to showthemselves in a good light, especially when
they're young. Maybe you want toimpress a crush. Maybe you just want
to add a bit of glamour toan otherwise normal life. It's mostly harmless
unless the lies get out of control. If someone lies, with every beat
of their heart, builds an entirealternate reality around themselves, then what happens

(00:45):
when that alternate reality is threatened bythe truth can get pretty ugly. This
is counterfeit son the murders of BartonKrista Hollerson. So campers for this one

(01:07):
were in Windsor, Wisconsin, alittle town just north of Madison, July
seventh, twenty twenty one. Peoplewere getting really worried about bart and Krista
Halderson, a popular couple with twogrown sons. Their twenty three year old
son, Chandler, had just reportedthem missing. They hadn't been seen since
the previous Friday, July second.Chandler, who'd recently moved back in with

(01:30):
Bart and Christa, told police they'dgone out to the family cabin up north
near Green Bay to deal with somekind of property emergency. He'd spoken to
them over the weekend, he said, and he'd been expecting them to come
back home on Monday, but therewas no sign of them. No sign
of them on Tuesday or Wednesday,either, which was when Chandler went down
to the police station to file amissing person report. Bart and Christa seemed

(01:53):
to have an enviable life, withsolid careers in a beautiful house in a
leafy suburb. Bart was a highflying accountant, and after her two boys
left home years earlier, Christa hadgone back to work as a customer service
wrap at an auto shop, andtheir two sons seemed to be thriving too.
Mitchell Halderson, who was twenty four, was right at the start of
a successful career in it and he'djust gotten engaged. Chandler had just graduated

(02:16):
from college and had a long termgirlfriend, Kat. He had a part
time job working from home for aninsurance company, and volunteered as a scuba
diver for the local police department.But he also had a dream career all
lined up and ready to go.He'd been offered a job down in Florida
with SpaceX, the astrospace engineering company. Bart and Christa weren't the type of

(02:38):
people to just drop off the map, and Christa certainly wouldn't just not show
up to work for four days withouttelling anybody, but that was what had
happened from Friday onwards. In fact, it was so unusual for Krista to
miss work that her work buddy Danielhad gone over to the Halderson's house on
Friday afternoon to check if everything wasall right. When nobody answered the door,

(02:59):
he walked all around the house andpeeked in the windows, and it
didn't do much to put his mindat ease. A coffee table was on
its side in the living room,which is not the kind of thing you
want to see when you're checking upon a friend. Both Bart and Christa's
cars were in the garage, whichwas weird if they weren't answering the door.
As Daniel was walking around to theback of the house, Chandler suddenly

(03:20):
popped out of a side door,shirtless with a towel around his waist.
Oh, I just got out ofthe shower, he said. I don't
know about y'all, but if somebodyknocks on my door when I'm just getting
out of the shower, I'm stillgonna like pull on pants and a shirt
before I answer it, if Ieven bother to answer it at all,
at least a bathrobe for something.Damn, but Chandler has more shirtless picks
out there than you would really expectfor a kind of skinny guy who doesn't

(03:44):
smile much. So maybe he justliked to give people a show such as
it was. He told Daniel thatBart and Christa had gone up north to
the cabin. Daniel was relieved,but got back in touch with Chandler that
weekend when he couldn't get hold ofthe couple on the phone, but Chandler
tod to that was normal. Thecell phone reception of there was garbage.
When Christas still wasn't back at workfor the first three days of the following

(04:06):
week and missed an important doctor's appointmentshe'd been talking about, Daniel decided he'd
had it. He pressured Chandler,who seemed weirdly reluctant for some reason,
into making a missing person's report.There were a lot of roads through deep
forest up around the cabin. IfBart and Christa had had an accident and
gone off the side, they wouldn'tnecessarily be spotted, and the cabin was

(04:29):
right by a lake. Maybe Bartand Christa had gotten into trouble out on
the water. Detectives first went tothe Halderson's house to get the story firsthand
from Chandler. He walked them aroundthe house, pointing out things his parents
had taken with them on their trip. He didn't know what the emergency up
at the cabin had been, buthe said another couple who he didn't know,
had picked his folks up to drivethem north, which was why both

(04:50):
their cars were still in the garage. Now, y'all, are your parents
likely to drive off with a strangecouple that you've never seen before and not
tell you who these people are?Obviously, I guess the answer to that
depends on how close you are withyour folks. But like Chandler was young
and he was still living at home, and they told him about the trip.
They're not going to tell him whois picking them up. Strange.

(05:12):
Except for a couple years when heshared an apartment with a friend, Chandler
had lived at home his whole life. He and his parents must have known
more of each other's business than theywanted to. He showed the detective's a
text he'd gotten from his mom onJuly fourth, saying she and Bart were
going to go to the parade atWhite Lake rather than come home. Chandler's
older brother, Mitchell, hadn't heardanything about a trip to the cabin,

(05:33):
and when Bart and Christo were reportedmissing, he drove up there with his
fiancee to look around. Deputies fromthe local sheriff's office met them there.
Chris's grandfather had built the cabin bythe lake in the nineteen forties, and
it was a vacation spot that thewhole family shared in a dark wooden walls,
moss on the roof, and hadin an antler deer skull hanging over

(05:53):
the front door. It could onlyget more Wisconsin if they put a cheese
hat on the skull. When Mitchelland the officer got there, the cabin
was dark, the grass out frontwas overgrown, and it didn't show any
tire tracks. A tree had fallenacross the driveway and looked like it had
been there a while. Mitchell didn'thave a key, but he gave officers

(06:15):
permission to crowbar open the doors tothe cabin in the shed. The inside
of the cabin was very obviously unlivedin. There was a layer of dust
on everything, and that musty smellold houses get when they're left empty for
months at a time. The boatwas still in the shed, Clearly it
had been a while since anybody stayedthere. Back in Windsor, Chandler went
door to door around his neighborhood,asking people if they had seen any sign

(06:39):
of his parents. No one had. In one neighbor's ring doorbell video,
you can see him asking if heknew which neighbors had security cameras. Maybe
the cameras had caught something. Upuntil now, Chandler Alderson's life had been
both kind of generic and kind ofidyllic at the same time. He was
a boy scout. He was onthe swim and soccer teams. He fit

(07:00):
in. He was reasonably good looking. He did well in school, but
not spectacularly well. He had areputation as a prankster, always looking to
joke around and make fun of people, which is the kind of thing that
could make you the star of theschool when you're like fourteen, and then
gets progressively less fun every year afterthat for everybody but you anyway. Chandler's
girlfriend, Katherine, or Kat aseveryone called her, was a couple of

(07:24):
years younger than him. They hadgotten together two years earlier, right after
Kat started college. She was cute, sweet, with a little bit of
an edge, and she got alonggreat with Barton Krista Halderson. They were
warm and welcoming, especially Christa andKat always liked visiting there. Sometimes they'd
all play Mario Kart together after dinner. It was fun. Her relationship with
Chandler, though, had gone throughsomething of a rocky patch. See Chandler

(07:48):
liked bragging to his buddies about howhe was hooking up with other girls behind
her back. Whether he really wasor not, who knows. As we'll
see as the story goes, Chandlerwas absolute lutely the kind of guy who
would cheat on his girlfriend without thinkingtwice about it. He's also absolutely the
kind of guy who would make upstories about fucking around just to impress his

(08:09):
friends, So who knows? Yeah, which do you think is worse,
Like not for their relationship, butjust worse actually cheating or being so much
of a dweb that you lie toyour friends about cheating like I'm not sure
they're both toe curlingly cringe in theirown special way. And to make matters
worse. In the first of along list of failing to understand how the

(08:30):
world actually works, Chandler didn't seemto grasp that people in the same social
group, you know, talk toeach other. Yeah, Chandler's Chandler's a
special one. Kat found out aboutChandler bragging about slam and ass Oliver Windsor,
and she confronted him about it.He denied ever cheating on her and
was kinda sorta able to convince heras in like, sure, babe,

(08:52):
I believe you. Also, you'regonna need to keep your Snapchat location on
so I can always see where youare. And Chandler ull there wasn't only
having trouble in his romantic life.He was super unlucky when it came to
work. He was theoretically supposed tobe paying rent for staying with his parents,
but never did. In fact,despite supposedly working remotely for an insurance

(09:13):
company, he never seemed to haveany money at all and was always asking
for some from his folks. Initially, the company had mistakenly had Chandler down
as an hourly worker instead of asalary employee, and getting that sorted out
delayed him getting paid. Then itturned out Chandler hadn't gotten his bank account
information right for the direct deposits,which just delayed things even further. And

(09:33):
when the company finally tried to depositthe months of back pay Chandler was owed,
the sum was so high that Chandler'sbank thought the deposit was fraudulent.
In Froze's account, all those monthsand months of work and he still hadn't
been paid a dime. What anunlucky guy. But this was nothing compared
to the misfortune around. Chandler's bigopportunity was SpaceX. At the start of

(09:54):
June, he and Kat were allset to drive down to Titusville, Florida,
so that Chandler could get a starton his glittering new career. He'd
already rented an apartment down there anda rental car for the two of them
to drive down together. It wasan exciting time for both of them.
Chandler and Kat would be living togetherfor the first time, and Chandler would
be working with rockets in space exploration. What could be cooler. He could

(10:16):
go to fancy parties and smugly tellbrain surgeons that what they did wasn't exactly
rocket science. But tragically, whilehe was home alone one day, Chandler
fell down the stairs and hurt himselfreal bad. He was somehow able to
get himself to the emergency room,which was downright heroic given the severity of
the injuries he sustained, primarily abrain bleed so bad that a surgeon had

(10:39):
to drill a hole in Chandler's skullto relieve the pressure, which apparently they
were able to do without shaving anyhair off Chandler's head. Pretty advanced medical
technology they have up there in Wisconsin. He also suffered spinal damage, a
nerve damage which weakened his legs somuch he could barely walk, and meant
he how to use a colostomy bag. This must have been a new type

(11:01):
that no one could see. Whenhe went in the pool to exercise,
his poor wrecked legs again, veryadvanced medical technology up there in Wisconsin.
Obviously he couldn't drive, and hisdoctors told him he wasn't allowed to fly
either. Chandler's dream job at SpaceXhad just been scrubbed before launch, and
he was stuck at his parents' housein a neck brace. Again, What

(11:24):
an unlucky guy, Chandler Halderson's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad
life. Similar to all the difficultiesChandler had had with his employers, he
kept running into trouble with Madison AreaTechnical College, where he'd just graduated from.
He needed a copy of his schooltranscript and still hadn't received his diploma,

(11:45):
but every time he tried to usethe college's online portal, it crashed.
He was stuck in a frustrating emailloop with a couple of school administrators,
Alyssa Brandt and Daniel Spice, whokept giving him the run around and
making excuses for the college. Chandlerhad shown the emails to his dad when
Bart Halderson wanted to know where hisson's diploma had gotten to. And now
it's about the time we need totake a step back and take a look

(12:09):
at actual reality. Because if youbelieved all of that, You need to
put a post it on your mirrorreminding you every morning that wallet inspectors aren't
real. It was lies, allof it, Very nearly the entirety of
Chandler Halderson's life was one big pileof Dairy state cowpoop. He'd dropped out
in his first semester at the technicalcollege and hadn't told anybody, not his

(12:31):
girlfriend, not his parents, noneof his buddies. He hadn't done one
iota of work for any insurance company. The one he claimed to be working
for remotely had never heard of him. He wasn't a volunteer scuba diver for
the police department. Not only wasn'the a licensed diver. The local PD
didn't even have a scuba dive team, which you'd expect because there was literally

(12:54):
just four deputies working there. Andof course there was no SpaceX job.
Of course there wasn't. There wereno job listings that read wanted, completely
averaged nobody from rural Wisconsin for importantwork in space. Why Chandler had picked
such an enormous lie that was obviouslygoing to bite him in the ass.
Who knows, but it's something we'veseen so many times with the weirdos in

(13:16):
our cases, like just a completeindifference to future consequences of their current words
and actions, no matter how heavythose consequences are going to be. It
was when reality started catching up tohis SpaceX lie when he and Kat were
supposed to get in the car hehad definitely rented and drive to the Florida
apartment. He had also very definitelyrented that Chandler you know, fell down

(13:39):
the stairs. He wasn't hurt atall, of course, but he complained
so much about phantom neck pain thata doctor finally like threw a neck brace
at him when to use When thingsgot real bad, he was like,
here, shut the fuck up.So if he wasn't studying, and he
wasn't working, and he wasn't schooldiving for the popo, what was Chandler

(14:01):
doing all day? Well, prettymuch just playing video games and jerking off
until his mom came home from workand made him dinner, probably some like
chicken nuggies, God dino shaped,I'm assuming definitely dino shaped. Basically living
like a teenage kid on permanent summerbreak. His favorite game was Escape from

(14:22):
Tarkov, a multiplayer first person shooterthat bills itself as kind of a more
realistic and hardcore version of Call ofDuty. While he was playing Tarkov,
Chandler befriended another player, a guynamed Andrew Smith, who was stationed overseas
with the Army. Unbeknownst to him, Smith probably inspired one level of Chandler
Alderson's great ziggarette of bullshit. Hesuffered a serious head injury and a humby

(14:45):
crash, got an honorable discharge,and moved back home to Kansas. Hmm,
okay, so hurt his head andimmediately got out of his army commitment
and got out of it honorably atthat, Like nobody's mad at you if
you just have a head injury,right, And I I think there was
one other thing that might have inspiredthis little fake out about the head injury.
His brother had been diagnosed with diabeteslike a year or so earlier,

(15:09):
and it was really scary, andyou know, it was like adult onset.
I think I was type one,which is really rad and like scary,
and so you know, he gota lot of attention, obviously from
his family and they were very worriedabout him. And you know, for
somebody like chant Man. That makesan impression. There's like a there's like
a Venn diagram of like pathological liarsand Munchausens. Yeah, people sure,

(15:33):
Like I just think that's I thinkit's so fascinating because you can see the
exact thought process he went through.It was like, Huh, how do
I get out of this without anybodybeing mad at me? Now? Exactly?
I just pretend to be sick.It's fine. Yeah. In June
of twenty twenty one, just beforeChandler faked falling down the stairs and injuring

(15:54):
his head, Smith visited his buddyin Wisconsin and brought him a gift,
a Soviet SKSM I automatic rifle.This was Chandler's favorite weapon in Escape from
Tarkoff, and we're not going topretend that giving a military rifle to your
weird online buddy shows great judgment.But Smith was at least smart enough to
take a photo of Chandler's ID alongsidethe rifle serial number so he'd have record

(16:15):
of the transfer. June was alsowhen Bart Halderson started investigating Chandler's problems with

(16:45):
his insurance job and with Madison AreaTechnical College. Chandler had given his dad
pronounce of his emails with college administrators, but they really just raised more questions.
For one thing, one of theadministrators, Alyssa Brandt, kept spelling
her own name wrong in every emailfrom her. There was about a fifty
to fifty chance that she'd forget thetea on the end of brand How many

(17:07):
of y'all spell your own name wrongon a regular basis? Yeah, I'd
say that's a red flag. Andhow many how many times in your job
do you actually type out your lastname? Like you have email signatures?
Yeah, like that, they're juston the they're at the bottom of your
email. Especially, I worked ata university for a while. That was
exactly what happened. I had alittle email signature. I never had to

(17:27):
I'd never type my last name,That's true. Yeah, I didn't even
think about that. Well. Andthen on top of that, all of
the college emails came from Gmail accounts, as of the messages the insurance company
Chandler was supposed to be working for, including one from a guy whose signature
line said Department of Human Recourses.Oh boy, man, if you're gonna

(17:49):
live a lie, you gotta comea little bit correcter than this okay,
this is just a pitiful display.It's it's honestly, like really sad like
I like, it's like, it'sjust every every mistake you could make as
a liar he made. Oh,absolutely, he crossed the streams. He

(18:11):
lied too many times. He didn'the didn't have enough backup, Like,
it's just stupid. Yeah, youain't say nothing yet. Yeah, I
mean, like you guys are gettingthe gist. But of course all these
emails were actually from fake accounts Chandlerhad set up so he'd have something the
show is toad like, that's obvious. Sometimes he'd take a little effort to

(18:32):
make them seem slightly official, likeadding m ATC after the names of supposed
college admins, but most of thetime he wouldn't bother. Bart, who
was a human being with a workingbrain, was suspicious, suspicious enough that
he called it the Technical College.Pretending to be Chandler. He asked to
speak to Alyssa Brandt, and surprise, surprise, learned that there was nobody

(18:53):
there by that name. He alsolearned that Chandler owed two thousand dollars intuition
and had barely spent any time atthe college before dropping out he certainly hadn't
received a degree. Bart arranged ameeting on July first for himself and Chandler
with college administrators, actual real ones, not just Gmail ghosts. Round two
pm on that day, he sentChandler a text I'm ready whenever you are,

(19:18):
and then he vanished. A littlelater, Chandler texted his mom.
Dad's phone died. Text her calland get soda on your way home.
I've got an extra hour of work. Her reply was kay, I can
smiley face. Christa Halderson got homejust after five, and no one heard
from her again, except for thattext message he supposedly sent Chandler on July

(19:41):
fourth. Later, Kat wanted tohang out, but Chandler said he was
too busy doing chores for his parents. This was, to say the least,
out of character for him. WhenKat came over the next day,
he asked to borrow her swiffer wetjet and for her to bring over some
hydrogen peroxide because he'd cut his footon broken glass on July eighth, the

(20:03):
day after Bart and Krista Halderson hadbeen reported missing, police got a call
on July fourth, Chandler and hisgirlfriend Kat had visited the farm just outside
of town where Kat's mom, Dulce, lived with her girlfriend. They had
a pool, so of course Chandlerand Cat liked to visit in the summer,
especially now that Chandler's legs were hurtand he needed to gently exercise them

(20:23):
in the water. The next day, Chandler called Kat's mom and asked if
he could come over by himself toswim. This was kind of weird,
Chandler had never asked to come overby himself before, but she said sure.
She was going to be out mostof the day, but he could
come over whenever. When she gothome, Dulcie noticed the cover of the
pool was still on. She couldn'tsee Chandler, but his SUV was parked

(20:48):
by the woods out at the backof the property. The back of the
car was open. Then she sawChandler coming out of the woods, looking
really down a droopy dog expression onhis face. He went into the but
to Dulcie, it didn't look likehe was swimming so much as cleaning himself
off. Dulce's girlfriend later testified thatshe was kind of annoyed by the whole

(21:08):
thing. Chandler said he needed toexercise his legs, but he took forever
to actually get in the pool,and then he didn't even seem like he
was exercising. She wanted to getin the pool herself and cool off,
and she liked getting in there topless, which of course she didn't want to
do in front of Chandler. Thewhole thing struck she and Dulci as weird,
but it wasn't till they heard thatChandler's parents were missing that weird and

(21:29):
irritating graduated to alarming, and Dulcecalled the police. When they'd spoken to
Chandler the day before, they'd askedhim what he'd done each day since his
parents had left for the cabin.He told them about going to the pool
with Cat on July fourth, butnot the second visit, so they brought
him down to the police station foran interview at the same time, as
deputies went to look around the farm. When they got there, they saw

(21:52):
right away that turkey vultures were circlingover the woods at the back of the
farm. Back there, they followeda trail of flattened grass like something had
been dragged on a tarp, andunder a small pile of branches and twigs,
they made a horrifying discovery the torsoof an adult man. The head
and arms were missing, and thelegs were cut off at mid thigh,

(22:15):
the cuts going right through a pairof pants. Whoever had done this had
been perfectly willing to cut up ahuman body, but apparently was skewed out
at the idea of having to lookat this poor guy in his underwear while
doing it. The police didn't havemuch doubt about whose torso they had found,
and DNA would soon confirm this hadbeen Bart Alderson Chandler's dad. There

(22:37):
were two bullet holes in his backin his back ugh. Near By in
the woods there was a rusted outold water tank, the kind of junkets
not that unusual to find on anold working farm. Hidden inside it were
pruning shears, scissors, and brokensaw blades. Elsewhere in the woods police
found a bloody tarp. Blood onthe tarp and cutting tools would later be

(23:02):
matched to both Bart and Christa Halderson. Chandler's interview at the police station had
so far just been him recounting hisstory to detectives, but the tone quickly
changed when they learned what their colleagueshad found out at the farm. One
officer got in Chandler's face, pressuringhim again and again to tell the truth.
Tell the truth. It's not abad idea. When you're interviewing a

(23:23):
young dork like Chandler, they'll oftenjust crack like an egg. But he
just said, okay, yeah,okay, lawyer, and that was that
for Chandler Halderson talking to the police. He was arrested right away, initially
on a charge of providing false informationabout a missing person. After that,
the dominoes kept falling. Andrew Smith, Chandler's army buddy from escape from Tarkov,

(23:47):
called police right after he heard Chandlerhad been arrested to tell them about
the rifle he'd given him. He'dlater explained to a prosecutor why he came
forward so fast, To put itblankly, Sir, I served in the
army and I'm not going to getfucked for something I didn't do. He
knew the SKS rifle he'd given toChandler could be traced back to him.
The rifle itself would take a littlelonger to show up. Chandler had hidden

(24:08):
it behind some boards in a shedon the farm. Investigators talked to the
Halderson's neighbors and Windsor One said thaton the night of July first, there
was a strong smell of wood smokeall over the neighborhood. The smell soon
changed. The neighbor described it likebarbecuing a large pork. Oh boy.
There was a pond behind the Haldersonhouse, and the neighbor on the other

(24:30):
side of it was I think it'sfair to say a scoch security conscious.
He had thirteen security cameras around hishome. Dude, what are you hiding
in there? So important? Thisguy's got like fifteen of the pulp fiction
briefcases stacked up in his basement.God dang, at the very least,
I mean, come on, atthe very least. One of the cameras

(24:52):
pointed across the pond at the Haldersonhouse, and early on the morning of
July second, it caught the glowof light from the fireplace there, visible
through a window. This remember,was on a warm summer night. Later,
the light flared up really brightly andthen suddenly went out. Investigators would
later find scorching around the fireplace andthe glass screen in the front of it.

(25:14):
Was broken. They think Chandler triedto burn his parents' remains in the
fireplace, unaware that the fat ina human body can be flammable. The
fire flared up almost out of control, the heat intense enough to shatter the
screen, and Chandler had cut hisfoot on the broken glass and his panicky
attempt to put out the blaze.Unlike fat, bone doesn't burn easily.

(25:36):
Forensic technicians found bone fragments in thefireplace, including pieces from at least one
human skull. Chandler had tried toburn his parents severed heads in his fireplace.
Jesus Murphy, I can't even imagine. I can't. I just can't
even imagine. But watch that securityfootage you can find it online of the
firelight in the window. It isone of the creepiest things I have ever

(25:59):
seen in a murder case. Itgave me chills all over. It's yeah,
just because you know what's going on. You know, you can see
the light just flare up really rightand then wink out, and you know
exactly why. And it is justchilling in his own parents fireplace. That's
just it's in their own fireplace.It's awful. I can't even imagine.
In the basement, which had asparklingly clean floor, investigators found a shellcasing,

(26:25):
and despite Chandler's hard work with theswift Er web jet, luminol and
a black light, revealed plenty ofblood evidence. At least one of Chandler's
parents was likely killed down there,probably both of them, given the lack
of blood evidence anywhere else in thehouse, and they'd probably been at least
partially dismembered down there too when hisfirst disposal method failed. And I really
do think that Chandler was dumb enoughto believe he could get rid of two

(26:48):
entire human bodies in a living roomfireplace. He turned to the woods.
Police had found a piece of bartbut what about Christa. Investigators interviewed Chandler's
girl friend Kat. You can watchvideo of that first interview where she completely
dismisses the possibility that Chandler could havehurt his parents. I mean, of
course she would. This was theguy she loved, someone she thought she

(27:10):
knew better than anyone. And maybeI'm over analyzing, but I do think
you can see a little doubt there, like she's trying to reassure herself that
what she's saying is true. Yeah. At one point they asked her,
you know, do you think hecould have had anything to do with it?
And Kat says, no, noway, I mean he has SpaceX.
It was really sad, Just likehis parents and everybody else in his

(27:30):
life. Kat had bought every wordin his big bag of bullshit. She
was completely cooperative with the police andgave them her phone when they asked to
make a copy of it. Rememberwhen Kat had thought Chandler was cheating on
her and made him keep the locationservice turned on on Snapchat. Well,
it turns out around nine am onJuly third, Kat checked her phone and

(27:52):
saw that Chandler was twenty five milesaway at a swimming hole he liked on
the Wisconsin River. He told Kathe was going to be at home.
She took a screenshot of the locationimage and saved it. She had no
idea anything was wrong with Chandler's parentsat that point, but she did wonder
if he was up there with anothergirl. And by the way, one
of the more memorable pictures from thiscase was taken at this same swimming hole

(28:15):
a year earlier. It's Chandler inreal short denim cutoffs, holding a big
knife and like trying to give thecamera his blue steel. He's got like
one foot up against a tree,way higher than you'd think, like his
knee is almost at nipple height,and obviously thinks he looks like an ultimate
badass. The reality is closer towhat you'd get if you google Twink crocodile

(28:37):
Dundee cosplay. But there you go. What a goob. When police went
to search the overgrown land around theswimming hole, they made a discovery just
as shocking as the torso at thefarm. One complete adult female leg severed
mid thigh and just one foot fromthe other leg, both hidden in bushes,

(28:59):
along with the fragments of bone inthe fireplace. This was all they'd
ever find of Krysta Halderson. It'sreally hard to comprehend just how dumb Chandler
was about all this, which isgood. I mean, we like it
when criminals are dumb. It meansthey get caught easy. And Chandler was
arrested just thirty six hours after he'dreported his parents missing. We had another
Wisconsin case similar to this recently.If you recall, like half the state

(29:22):
is deep dark woods where a bodycould stay hidden for years or decades,
and instead Chandler goes to a farmwhere the people know him well and his
favorite swimming hole without turning off thelocation on his phone, and he left
his bloody tarp and cutting tools rightthere beside the remains. You're in Wisconsin
and you can't find a lake tochuck all that stuff in. Just dipshit.

(29:45):
But you know it's I think thereason I bring that up is because
it's so emblematic of who this personis. He is just lazy to his
core, just lazy to the core. I mean, that's the reason for
everything in this absolute self absorption andlaziness phone in, it in in every
area of his life, just unreal. Before Bart or Christa's remains were found,

(30:08):
and thus before anyone but their killerknew they'd been cut to pieces,
Chandler's Google history showed searches like Wisconsin, dismembered body found and dead body found
Wisconsin. Remember the text his momhad supposedly sent Chandler from the cabin on
July fourth, saying she and bartwere going to watch the parade up in
White Lake. Well. Cell phonedata showed Christa's phone had been in Windsor

(30:30):
in or near the Halderson home whenthat text was made. The phone had
been turned on just long enough tosend the message, then turned off again
and to put the cherry on thisSunday of incompetence. White Lake had actually
held their parade on July third thatyear, which I imagine would be something
you could easily google. Lazy policewould find both Bart and Christa's phones in

(30:53):
the Halderson's garage, wrapped in foiland hidden inside a shoe. Bart had
a health app run on his Itstopped recording data right after two PM,
when he and Chandler were supposed toleave to see the college administrators. That
was probably when he was killed.Investigators think Chandler killed Christa right after she
came home from work later that day. And just think of how icy cold

(31:17):
this was. He was planning tokill his mother, but he also wanted
some soda, so he'd asked herto pick some up on her way home.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable, knowing that hewas going to murder her when she
got there, but he still wantedthat coke. Unreal. You can watch
video of Chandler's trial online, whichis fascinating to watch because of the witness

(31:40):
testimony and to see Chandler just apparentlybored out of his tiny mind, but
there wasn't any real doubt about theoutcome. Chandler lied as easily as breathing,
but he was also terrible at it, just like he was terrible at
trying to cover up his crimes.He might as well have gotten a T
shirt printed that said I killed myparents. Ask me how Why had he

(32:01):
killed his parents? Obviously his wholedumbass web of lies was about to fall
apart, and for a narcissist likeChandler, maybe avoiding that confrontation was reason
enough to kill him. He isprecisely that pathetic like for a narcissist's ego,
death is death right. So tolose face, to have everybody find
out he'd lied about getting a jobat SpaceX and lied about this, and

(32:22):
lied about that, it's unthinkable.They can't absorb that kind of an ego
shock, so they would rather killIt's just absolutely crazy. As it happens,
Bill and Krista had life insurance policiesthat combined to around a million dollars,
which could give a guy an awfullot of free time to play escape
from Tarkov. But we don't knowif Chandler was aware of those policies or

(32:45):
whether money was a motivator at all. The jury convicted Chandler after a couple
hours of deliberation, and after thatall the insurance money went to his older
brother. Chandler was sentenced to lifein prison with no possibility of parole.
Thank God. We're not psychologists,so obviously we can't diagnose Chandler Halderson.

(33:07):
But I think it's fair to sayhe's at least within walking distance of psychopathy.
I mean, when you consider howthe story ended, all his stupid,
grandioselies seem like something you'd pull whenyou don't consider other people real when
you think of everybody else's NPCs inyour story who would never question you,
of course, and then there's thekillings themselves. This guy not only murdered

(33:29):
his parents, he had no qualmsabout cutting them up with saws and gardening
tools. He cut off his momand dad's heads and tried to burn them
in the fireplace, and apparently itdidn't bother him at all. A person
who can kill that easily just toget out of an embarrassing conversation is almost
certain to hurt someone else, andwe should all be glad this loser is

(33:50):
going to be behind bars forever.So Chandler's joined the long list of adult
kids who killed their parents because theydidn't feel like explaining themselves. He covered
several of them before, Sef Gonzalez, Christopher Porko, Chris Prichard. Then
there's Bart Whittaker, Sidney Powell,Jennifer Pan And that's just the list I
came up with off the top ofmy head. This stuff happens a fair

(34:12):
amount. Sometimes these killers do endup confessing. Bart Whittaker, who actually
hired two friends to murder his familyfor him so he wouldn't have to admit
he'd flugged out of college, eventuallydid an interview about it. He and
his dad, the sole survivor ofthe awful massacre, still have a close
relationship. His dad forgave him family. Man, it's wild stuff. I

(34:36):
wonder if chan there will ever admitto what he did. Something tells me
he won't. I think lying isin his blood. Yeah, makes me
glad my husband and I opted forcats instead of kids. But it's a
chilling thought when you watch the documentariesabout these cases, there's always a picture
of the parents like holding their brandnew baby, so happy and proud,
and you think they're holding their futurekiller. Try to sleep tonight with dad

(35:00):
image in your head. So thatwas a wild one, right, Campers.
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