Who killed Kristil Krug? Slain Colorado mom received menacing threats weeks before her murder.

Victim advocate Heather Aites is trained to comfort those in emotional agony, like Dan Krug, who dashed home from work and learned his wife, Kristil, had been found murdered in their garage in suburban Broomfield, Colorado, on Dec. 14, 2023.

Heather Aites: It’s a weird feeling standing there when somebody is being told, I’m sorry, but your loved one has died.

Heather Aites: This man has been going through a stalking case with his wife. … he is being stalked as well. And now she is gone.

As investigators searched the crime scene for clues, Aites drove Dan to the police station. An officer’s body camera recorded the ride.

Heather Aites: He was crouched over to the side of the passenger door.  … And I’m comforting Dan by rubbing his back.

Dan and Kristil Krug had been married for 16 years. The couple, both 43, had three young children.

Peter Van Sant: What did he say in the car?

Heather Aites: In the car … he was pretty focused on the kids. … he was very adamant about wanting to be the one to tell his children.

Under the command of Broomfield Police chief Enea Hempelmann, investigators were doing everything in their power to find the killer.

Chief Enea Hempelmann: We … immediately, uh, started doing interviews … talking to neighbors, canvassing.

Several hours had passed since Dan Krug’s emotional ride to the police station. He had settled down. And he told detectives there was nothing out of the ordinary that morning.

DAN KRUG (to detectives): Mornings are very routine in the house.

He said they got the kids to school, and Kristil seemed fine when he left for his job at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

DAN KRUG (to detectives): While I was driving, uh, my — my phone dinged.

Dan said Kristil texted him, asking if he could pick up one of the kids after school. But when he texted back and asked what time, he said Kristil never responded.

DAN KRUG (to detectives): And that — that was weird.

So weird — so out of character for Kristil — Dan called police and asked them to check on her.

OFFICER JOHN O’HAYRE (bodycam): I got a female down in the garage.

Lars Grimsrud: There are not words that can describe, what you feel as a parent at that point.

Linda Grimsrud: It’s probably a parents’ worst nightmare

Kristil’s parents, Lars and Linda Grimsrud.

Lars Grimsrud: She was an engineer. … She had … incredible skills in, uh, math, sciences, chemistry, physics. … she also had the — the talents in the … arts.

Linda Grimsrud She loved to just get out and live life.

Throughout her life, Kristil spent countless hours working with her dad on classic muscle cars in his colorful garage.

Lars Grimsrud (in his garage): We’d work on the cars. … We’d race the cars. … Kristil always felt very comfortable coming over here. … If we needed to talk or whatever, this is where we would sit and just … enjoy each other’s company.

Kristil Krug Tells Police She is Being Terrorized by a Stalker

But those fun, casual conversations suddenly turned disturbing in the fall of 2023, when Kristil first told her father that she was living with intense fear.

Lars Grimsrud (in his garage): She sat here and told me that she was being stalked and that just shocked me. … and I asked her, well, have you talked to the police?

Kristil had called the police and met with Broomfield Detective Andrew Martinez.

Det. Andrew Martinez: She came into the interview room and just kind of took over and just told me everything … without hesitation.

Their conversation was recorded.

KRISTIL KRUG (to Det. Martinez): I keep trying to remind myself, this is intending to be terrorizing. This is intending to scare me.

Kristil told Martinez that on Oct. 2, 2023, she received an unsettling text from someone named Anthony, who said he would be coming to the area and asked if Kristil wanted to “hook up.”

Peter Van Sant: And how does she respond to that?

Det. Andrew Martinez: She did not respond.

The following day, Kristil told Martinez she got more texts from Anthony that included obscenities and said, “you should kill urself. Dont waste my time.”

Peter Van Sant: Somebody that wants to hook up, now is saying, go kill yourself. How do you interpret that — that second text?

Det. Andrew Martinez: It’s a pretty extreme reaction to not getting a response.

Kristil told Martinez she knew an Anthony from her past, Anthony Holland, a boyfriend she dated for about a year after high school and into college. The two broke up in the fall of 2000. Lars and Linda Grimsrud say back then Holland made a good impression.

Linda Grimsrud: Very friendly very courteous. He always had good manners.

In 2002, out of the blue, Holland contacted Kristil. According to Kristil, Holland never seemed to take no for an answer — contacting her again in 2005, 2010 and 2016 via Facebook. 

KRISTIL KRUG (to Det. Martinez): He’s like we’re meant to be together … I said, “this is really creepy for me. You need to stop.”

Kristil deleted Facebook and thought she’d heard the last of Holland. But then came the texts in 2023.

KRISTIL KRUG (to Det. Martinez): This was alarming. He’s never said this kind of stuff to me before, so —

Over the next two months, Kristil said she received alarming message after message through text and email. They included threats to her and Dan — including a disturbing photo of Dan getting out of his car at work, which prompted Kristil to first come forward and call police. A few days later this text to her: “Saw u at dentist… see you soon.”

Peter Van Sant: That suggests he might be surveilling them both, right?

Det. Andrew Martinez: Correct.

KRISTIL KRUG (to Det. Martinez): This now is escalating.

Det. Andrew Martinez: The harassment, uh, is just constant. … And she’s just believing that every corner presents some sort of danger for her.

To gather evidence and locate Anthony Holland, Martinez was required to file search warrants with the phone and email companies, a slow process.

Peter Van Sant: Getting that information takes time. … Sometimes those companies are reluctant, or they slow walk getting that information to you, correct?

Det. Andrew Martinez: Yes.

Kristil had been searching for Holland on her own. She hired a private investigator, and eventually located him living in Utah, about 500 miles away. Kristil shared her discovery with Martinez, who chose not to contact Holland.

Det. Andrew Martinez: I explained to Kristil … that we wanted to gather as much evidence as possible and ideally obtain an arrest warrant so when law enforcement does go to, uh, Anthony’s door, we can take him into custody and not have to walk away.

But Lars Grimsrud says Kristil had been losing patience with the investigation.

Lars Grimsrud: She made the comment that she felt … they had abandoned her that — that they weren’t doing things aggressively enough.

Kristil had taken steps to protect herself and her family – including installing security cameras.

Lars Grimsrud (in his garage): She was scared. … I said …well this sounds serious enough you need to start carrying. … you’ll use one of my guns for — for right now.

Peter Van Sant: Is this the very gun that she took with her?

Lars Grimsrud: That is the actual gun that she initially then carried.

Dan Krug was also interviewed. The threats were taking a toll on him, as well.

DAN KRUG (to detectives): I went to the grocery store briefly on Tuesday and someone behind me dropped a can and I f****** panicked. … So, what am I doing? I’m panicking. And I’m doing a s*** job of protecting my wife. … So, I’m not — I’m not doing good.

Dan Krug told Martinez the stalker had a nickname.

DANIEL KRUG (to detectives): We call him Kickman.

Peter Van Sant: Where’d that name come from?

Det. Andrew Martinez: Kickman … Dan had told me was because the suspect email that was initially contacting Kristil was … ahollandkicks at gmail.com.

As the weeks went by and Martinez’s investigation continued, Lars and Linda Grimsrud say the constant threats were ruining their daughter’s life.

Linda Grimsrud: It was just heartbreaking. She was just in tears … She was just like, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna live?

Peter Van Sant: Did she feel she was being hunted down by Anthony?

Linda Grimsrud: Yes.

Kristil also shared her fears with her siblings Jenna Ericson and Josh Adamson.

Jenna Ericson: She was terrified.

Peter Van Sant: Did she ever express to either of you the fear that this man I think is going to kill me?

Jenna Ericson: Yes.

Josh Adamson: Yep.

Jenna Ericson: She said, it’s either going to be me or him that’s dead. And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it’s not me.

Police Zero in on Kristil Krug’s Stalker

When Kristil Krug was found dead in her garage, Detective Martinez had only one suspect in mind.

Det. Andrew Martinez: My initial assumption was that … Anthony Holland had, uh, gone to her home and murdered her.

Within hours, local police descended on Holland’s home in Eagle Mountain near Salt Lake City.

Peter Van Sant: So you’re alone in the house … what do you hear?

Anthony Holland: Pounding at the door.

Peter Van Sant (bangs hand on table): Like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Anthony Holland: Yeah.

Peter Van Sant: Big time.

Anthony Holland: So I go to the door. … I see like eight cops. … I had no idea what was going on.

OFFICER (bodycam): Where’s your ID at?

ANTHONY HOLLAND: It’s in my room.

OFFICER: Have you ever heard of the name Kristil Krug?

Anthony Holland: They asked me if I knew Kristil Krug and I told them I did know her.

ANTHONY HOLLAND (bodycam): She was my very first girlfriend ever.

OFFICER: And when was the last time you talked to Kristil? Has it been a while? A minute?

ANTHONY HOLLAND: Uh, it’s been a minute. Yeah.

Peter Van Sant: When was the last time you had reached out to Kristil?

Anthony Holland: It was around 2014, 2016.

Holland says he’d reached out to Kristil on Facebook years before.

Peter Van Sant: What are you thinking? “Why would they come all — all the way here to ask me about Kristil?”

Anthony Holland: I thought it was for that message … where I said I missed her. That’s the only thing I could think of because I was like I haven’t contacted her since then.

Peter Van Sant: They didn’t tell you that Kristil Krug had been murdered?

Anthony Holland: No, they did not tell me.

Police were there to gather information from their suspect — not give it.

Anthony Holland: They asked me where I was that day. … Can I prove where I was?

Holland had made a purchase just hours earlier at a Kohl’s store near his home.

Peter Van Sant: What’d you buy?

Anthony Holland: A sweatshirt, this one right here.

And he still had the receipt. The purchase was made at 12:16 p.m. Investigators say Kristil was attacked around 8 a.m.

Peter Van Sant: It turns out that was one of the most important purchases you have ever made.

Anthony Holland: Because it was my alibi, because there is no way I could have made it from Colorado back to Utah to buy the sweatshirt. … It was an eight-hour drive.

Holland also showed police some of his employment records. They proved he’d been in Utah all along — never traveling to Colorado as the messages from Kristil’s stalker led cops to believe.

Anthony Holland: I had a bunch of receipts from my work showing the days that I worked. And they took those, took my receipt from Kohl’s and … went to the squad car and made a phone call … came back in and told me I was free to go.

OFFICER (to Holland): You have a better day, OK?

Back in Colorado, Dan Krug was still face to face with investigators. He told them his theory of the crime.

DAN KRUG (to detectives): So in my brain, the story that I have is someone came to the door, maybe she went outside to get a package and they must have come in. And she’s — she’s a fighter. She’s — she is strong. She would’ve fought.

Earlier in the interview, Dan requested he tell the children what had happened to their mother.

VICTIM ADVOCATE: Your kids do not know yet. 

DAN KRUG: Are they here? 

VICTIM ADVOCATE: They’re here. They’re right in the hall. 

DAN KRUG (pats his chest): I’m — I should tell my children. 

VICTIM ADVOCATE: You want to tell them? 

DAN KRUG: I just don’t know how. 

VICTIM ADVOCATE: That’s OK. 

Det. Andrew Martinez: Watching their response is just heartbreaking.

Investigators were working every angle. They checked those security cameras Kristil had installed on the house.

Det. Andrew Martinez: The doorbell camera, the side camera, and the side house camera, uh, were all manually turned off.

Except for that one Nest camera near the garage. Police canvassed Dan and Kristil Krug’s neighbors in search of anything their home security cameras might have recorded.

They also enlisted Randy Pihlak, a digital forensic examiner with the Broomfield Police Department, to take a closer look at those disturbing messages to Kristil.

Randy Pihlak: I think it was probably four hours, five hours after the murder was reported to us. 

Now that the stalking case had become a murder investigation, Pihlak was able to file new, expedited requests for information. He quickly discovered that messages from two accounts used to harass Kristil had been sent from the same location.

Randy Pihlak: Both … came back to the same IP address. That IP address was the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which is where Dan worked. 

The messages to Kristil threatening her, threatening her husband, had been sent using the Wi-Fi system at Dan’s office. For the first time, detectives believed Kristil’s stalker could be sitting right in front of them. Could he be her killer as well?

Det. Andrew Martinez: The entire air was just kind of evacuated out of our investigations room and we realized … we need to focus on Dan and where he’s been and what he’s been doing.

Martinez, along with Detective Jennifer King Sullivan, confronted Dan.

DET. KING SULLIVAN: Who do you think killed her?

DAN KRUG: I think it’s Kickman. I think it’s Anthony.

DET. MARTINEZ: What if I told you that we had already spoken with Anthony and there’s no way that he was in town today? 

DAN KRUG: Then I have nothing. And, then I’m f****** terrified to bring my children home.

DET. KING SULLIVAN: What are you terrified of?

DAN KRUG: If it wasn’t him, who was it?

But even as Dan claimed ignorance, the detectives saw that his body language told a different story. 

Peter Van Sant: What were you seeing with Dan?

Det. Andrew Martinez: He took a defensive posture. He sat back in the couch a little bit. He crossed his arms. … Kinda like I have nothing to explain.

Det. Jennifer King Sullivan: I think his head is spinning, thinking about what else are they gonna find?

Dan Krug Goes From Grieving Husband to Murder Suspect

DET. KING SULLIVAN (questioning): The mystery continues and –

DAN KRUG: And it has be the husband.

DET. KING SULLIVAN: If you were watching these facts unfold in front of you in a movie, what would you say happened?

DAN KRUG:There has to be someone else. 

Moments after detectives told Dan Krug they had eliminated Anthony Holland as a suspect,  Dan calmly insisted he was not the one who stalked and murdered his wife Kristil.

DAN KRUG: I loved her… there has to be someone else. But I don’t know who that is.

Martinez and King Sullivan didn’t believe a word of it,  and were struck by how stoic — how unmoved — Dan was.

Det. Jennifer King Sullivan: He had no reaction, um, and really no explanation.

DET. KING SULLIVAN (questioning): Help me make sense of it.

DAN KRUG: I don’t know. I’m not the one who does this. … I don’t have a narrative or a story that I can offer you.

Within minutes, Dan Krug had gone from sympathetic victim to murder suspect.

DANIEL KRUG (to detectives): I get the narrative you’re putting together, but it alleges that I would do this to my children. … I love and adore my children.

Det. Andrew Martinez: It’s a pretty frightening idea that … the biggest threat that to you and your safety is actually living in the same house as you.

DET. MARTINEZ (to Dan Krug): We need to process you for physical evidence, OK.

Det. Andrew Martinez: He knows that we are on to him. … We just didn’t have enough evidence at that point to take him into custody.

DET. MARTINEZ (to Dan Krug): We’ll walk you out to the lobby …

On his way out, Dan kept insisting the real killer was still on the loose and he made a desperate plea.

DAN KRUG (to detectives): I just want the f***** to pay … He took my children’s mother before Christmas. 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 as assume it’s me. Keep looking.

Peter Van Sant: When did you find out that Dan was now a person of — of interest in this case?

Linda Grimsrud: I think at his interview. So that same day when they held him and they held him pretty late.

An autopsy revealed what happened to Kristil. She had been attacked from behind with a blunt object.

Det. Andrew Martinez: Bludgeoned to death in the head and rolled over and then stabbed in the heart.

With Dan now the prime suspect, the detectives wanted to know more about his relationship with Kristil. According to Kristil’s parents, it wasn’t good.

Linda Grimsrud: She said, well, I’m sleeping on the couch mom.

Peter Van Sant: But you knew there was trouble in paradise, right?

Linda Grimsrud: Yeah. And especially in that — those last few months.

Kristil’s family says those troubles were caused by Dan’s fiery temper.

Peter Van Sant: What set him off?

Lars Grimsrud: It — it could be anything, but it was usually if he was losing control …

Kristil’s sister Jenna Ericson says she could always tell when Dan was angry.

Jenna Ericson: His face would get really red when he was getting frustrated … I vividly remember seeing his face get red.

Linda Grimsrud: They had a thing where … they’d go, OK, walk away. … You need to walk away. And so, you know, they were trying to manage it.

But in the weeks before her death, according to her parents, Kristil was getting ready to leave Dan. 

Linda Grimsrud: She didn’t wanna have this marriage anymore.

Lars Grimsrud: She had decided that she needed to get a divorce.

As the detectives methodically built their case, more evidence was uncovered on Dan and Kristil Krug’s cell phones by digital forensic expert Randy Pihlak — including texts from the morning of the murder.

Randy Pihlak: So on Kristil’s phone, um, we see text messages to Lars, Detective Martinez, and then a text message to Dan.

The one Dan said he received while driving to work about picking up one of the kids at school. But Pihlak discovered those texts had been set on a timer. It was a new feature on the phone Kristil had.

Peter Van Sant: Who do you believe preprogrammed those messages?

Randy Pihlak: Uh, Dan Krug.

Peter Van Sant: And he did it to do what?

 Randy Pihlak: To hide his actions.

Pihlak says the messages were preprogrammed before Dan left the house.

Randy Pihlak: And we believe Kristil was deceased.

Peter Van Sant: That for him, then, would establish an alibi that well I had already left and my wife is alive right? She’s texting me.

Randy Pihlak: Correct.

All while Dan casually arrived at work.

Pihlak discovered more damning evidence from Dan’s phone: internet searches like “What happens when you’re knocked unconscious?” “Do people really go unconscious when hit in the head?” and “How hard for head trauma to go unconscious?”

Randy Pihlak: All searches were the day before the murder … it was rather damning.

Just two days after Kristil had been murdered, detectives Martinez and King Sullivan felt they had enough evidence to charge Dan Krug with stalking and murdering his wife. 

Det. Jennifer King Sullivan: We begin following him.

Peter Van Sant: How many cars we talking about?

Jennifer King Sullivan: Probably eight cars. … we’re like, “that’s him, he’s alone in the car.”

Det. Jennifer King Sullivan: We follow him all the way to the grocery store.

Det. Jennifer King Sullivan: We wait for him to park … we quickly converge on his car.

Det. Jennifer King Sullivan: We surround him …

OFFICER (bodycam): You’re under arrest.

Det. Jennifer King Sullivan: … pull him out of his car and … tell him he’s being arrested for the murder of his wife.

Det. Andrew Martinez: I asked him just one question.

DET. MARTINEZ (to Dan Krug/bodycam): Do you want to tell your kids that you killed their mother, or do you want somebody else to?

Peter Van Sant: That’s quite a line. … That goes back to when … he said he wanted to tell his kids that their mother was dead.

Det. Andrew Martinez: After I asked that question, he just said that he wanted to speak with his attorney and then looked away from me.

Det. Andrew Martinez: And I shut the door and he went to the county jail.

Lars Grimsrud: I felt a huge relief. … they got him. … It felt like a burden had been lifted, that he had been arrested.

And soon, Kristil’s family would come face to face with the man detectives say murdered her.

Lars Grimsrud: He, uh, looked right at me and smiled at me.

And they hear, for the first time, Dan’s side of the story.

Kristil Krug’s Final Moments Revealed

When Deputy District Attorneys Kate Armstrong and Stephanie Fritz were assigned to prosecute Daniel Krug, they say they were struck by his downright stupidity in believing he could get away with murdering his wife by impersonating her ex-boyfriend.

Kate Armstrong: The audacity with which he thought he could manipulate not only his family, his loved ones, but also the police department.

Peter Van Sant: And some of this … is sophisticated, is it not?

Stephanie Fritz: It’s sophisticated, but not too sophisticated because we were able to figure it out.

The trial began in April 2025.

Lars Grimsrud: When he first came in … he smiled at me like, he was saying, “hey, thanks for being here for me” … I believe my facial expression … made it very clear that I was not on his side.

The prosecution laid out Kristil’s final hours of life for the jury.

Kate Armstrong: On December 14th of 2023, Kristil Krug started her day like any other day. … She took her younger two children to school.

And when she returned –

Kate Armstrong: Kristil … pulled back into her garage. She gets out of the car … when she is attacked from behind.

Peter Van Sant: And did she ever see him approaching, do you think? … Or was this an ambush?

Stephanie Fritz: It was an ambush. … She had two or three skull fractures.

Kate Armstrong: As she’s laying on the floor bleeding, he … pushes her over, gets over her and stabs her … just above her heart.

Peter Van Sant: And why do you suppose — he had to do that vicious last stab?

Kate Armstrong: I think it was rage. I think it was control and power that he wanted to exert over Kristil.

Dan Krug had been losing that control for a long time, say prosecutors. Their theory of the crime is that Dan sent Kristil those disturbing messages in an attempt to drive her closer to him and not leave, hoping she’d see him as her heroic protector.

Kate Armstrong: It was not working … the stalking was not leading her back to him … I think it then turned to, ‘I’m still losing her’ kind of, uh, ‘if I can’t have you, nobody can.'”

The prosecution says that in the last days of her life, Kristil had begun to suspect that her stalker was possibly her husband.

Stephanie Fritz: We know from Dan’s own interview that she confronted him and said, “I can’t rule you out as the stalker.

DAN KRUG (to detectives): She said that right to my face, that she wanted to know if it was me. And I told her no.

Peter Van Sant: He felt the walls closing in.

Stephanie Fritz: Closing in. He was going to lose Kristil anyway. … He was going to be exposed as the stalker. … So he did that last, uh, fatal act and murdered her.

Prosecutors say Dan Krug tried to outsmart investigators — pre-programming those text messages on Kristil’s phone before he left the house — assuming he wouldn’t be caught.

Kate Armstrong: Were we not able to discover that that was a delayed send text, it would have appeared as though Kristil was still alive when he left the house.

At trial, the long list of digital evidence against Dan Krug was laid out: the threatening texts, the emails, the internet searches. Also included — that photograph of Dan arriving at his office, attached to a menacing email seemingly sent by Anthony Holland to Kristil. But there was one problem, according to the state’s digital expert.

Peter Van Sant: Who took this picture, do you believe?

Randy Pihlak: Uh, Dan. Dan took this picture.

Pihlak discovered that the phone which snapped that photo was in selfie mode using a timer — a fact that Kate Armstrong reminded the jury about in her closing argument. That’s when the judge allowed cameras into the courtroom.

KATE ARMSTRONG (in court): The phone was propped on the back of this vehicle next to him. … The defendant took this photograph and then he sent it to his wife.

PHILLIP GEIGLE (in court): We respectfully disagree with the prosecution in this case.

Defense attorney Phillip Geigle argued the murder investigation was poor. The blunt object used on Kristil’s head and the knife used to stab her were never recovered by police. The defense also zeroed in on the fact that Kristil’s phone was not tested for fingerprints or DNA.

PHILLIP GEIGLE (in court): Why not the phone? … The prosecution wants to believe, “Well, you know, there may not be a lot to be found there.” Well, you won’t know if you won’t try.

Geigle said other forensic tests supported his claim that Dan Krug is innocent.

PHILLIP GEIGLE (in court): They submitted the chest swabs. … And you know whose DNA wasn’t there? The person who lived in the house, the person who ate in the kitchen with them, the person who shared the living room, that idiot right there (points to Dan Krug).

PHILLIP GEIGLE (in court): There is absolutely no physical evidence on Mr. Krug’s clothing. … There’s no blood found on that car inside or out. It’s searched three times.

In week three of the trial, the jurors began deliberations. After a day-and-a-half, verdicts were reached.

Judge Priscilla Loew read the verdicts.

JUDGE LOEW: We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. … We, the jury, find the defendant, guilty of count number two, stalking, extreme emotional distress.

Krug was also found guilty of stalking with credible threat and criminal impersonation.

Lars Grimsrud: Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. And at that point I think I started breathing again.

Krug was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on the murder charge, and an additional nine-and-a-half years for the stalking and impersonation counts. But right after his conviction, in a video call from jail, Dan Krug told his family that the jury got it wrong, saying the real killer remained at large and that his children could be the next targets.

DAN KRUG (video call with family): I need them safe. I don’t know where or who did this. Where he is or who he is. I need my children out of Colorado.

Could Kristil Krug’s Murder Have Been Prevented?

As Daniel Krug began serving his life sentence, he continued making video calls to his parents and brother in the days immediately after his conviction. The man who viciously murdered his wife, terrorized his own children and lied to everyone, was seeking sympathy from his side of the family.

DAN KRUG (video call with family): I’m probably sleeping like 16 hours a day because of the depression.

PATRICIA KRUG: Mm-hmm.

DAN KRUG: I sleep, I read and I cry. That’s about it.

PATRICIA KRUG: OK.

Despite overwhelming digital evidence against him, Krug fell back to his old ways — lying to his loved ones — now claiming he was wrongly convicted.

DAN KRUG (video call with family): They never produced a single piece of hard evidence.

His brother, Jeremy Krug, gave Dan Krug a much-needed reality check — that the foundation of the family’s loyalty had started to crack.

JEREMY KRUG (video call with Dan Krug): Support is dwindling. You know, mom and dad want to believe you very much. I want to believe you very much. … There’s a lot that’s come out, um, and as imaginative as I can be with finding explanations and ways to theorize how that, you know this or that could have been, the, the reality, um, some of it is beyond even my creativity.

The case that ended with a murder had begun with stalking and criminal impersonation of Anthony Holland. Which begs the question: what if Detective Martinez had acted on the information Kristil and the private investigator had uncovered.

Anthony Holland: They should have found me right away. … They should have found me, they should have came to my house. They should approached me. They should have talked to me.

But Detective Martinez chose not to call, telling “48 Hours” he didn’t have enough evidence to do so, and was concerned a phone call could exacerbate the situation.

Peter Van Sant: Is this something where you’ve kicked yourself about this?

Det. Andrew Martinez: Uh, this case has, uh, haunted me since, um, it occurred. … And the outcome of this case has haunted me for the past two years.

Peter Van Sant: And if you could get in a time machine, perhaps you’d make that call today?

Det. Andrew Martinez: Absolutely.

And Kristil’s parents sympathize with Martinez and believe their daughter was doomed no matter what the outcome of his investigation.

Lars Grimsrud: Inevitably, I think he was gonna kill her. … When someone sets their mind to do something like that and that’s what the plan was … I don’t think that would’ve stopped the murder from happening.

Kristil’s death has left a hole in the lives of those who experienced her love and joy for life.

Anthony Holland: I’ve had lots of other girlfriends and I’ve never been in love with anybody else like her.

Peter Van Sant: She was the love of your life.

Anthony Holland: Yeah.

Jenna Ericson hopes her sister Kristil’s story will serve as a cautionary tale.

Jenna Ericson: If it can help just one other person, who’s in a dangerous situation, like she was in, that it gives them the strength to make a move because it can escalate and it can escalate really, really fast.

Peter Van Sant: What was lost when she was taken from us?

Linda Grimsrud: Her light, you know, her light.

Lars Grimsrud: That’s a — that’s a tough one to talk about because there’s, uh, there’s so much. I want her to jump outta that car and say, “hey Papa.”

Lars still passes his time restoring parts for vintage cars. That father-daughter hobby is now being passed down to Kristil’s children.

Lars Grimsrud: They’re in here. They run that same electric screwdriver and they can tear a carburetor apart.

Peter Van Sant: So, in that way, you’re honoring her memory. Aren’t you?

Lars Grimsrud: Well, that’s the whole idea. Yeah.

Peter Van Sant: You carry on that tradition.

Lars Grimsrud: Yeah. That’s the whole idea. She, uh, she would get such a kick out of seeing the kids doing the stuff that she was involved in.

Linda Grimsrud: I look at my grandkids and … I find a moment of peace … because I see her.

The family has started an online fundraising campaign to help Kristil’s three children.

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Produced by Betsy Shuller and Susan Mallie. Elena DiFiore and Ryan N. Smith are the development producers. Michael Loftus is the associate producer. Marcus Balsam, Diana DeCilio, Phil Tangel and George Baluzy are the editors. Anthony Batson is the senior broadcast producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.