Karen Harkness Murder Case: Three Trials and a Disbarment

The Karen Harkness murder case is the Topeka, Kansas, double homicide in which Harkness and her fiancé, Michael Sisco, were shot to death in her home on July 7, 2002, and which ended more than two decades later with the conviction of Sisco’s ex-wife, Dana Chandler, on two counts of first-degree murder. Chandler was tried three times. Her first conviction was overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct that later cost the lead prosecutor her law license, her second trial ended in a hung jury, and her third ended in March 2025 with a guilty verdict and two consecutive life sentences.

The Killings in Topeka

Karen Harkness’s father, Harold Worswick, found the bodies on the afternoon of July 7, 2002. He had come to her house at 2231 S.W. Westport Square for a family dinner, got no answer, and let himself in through an unlocked sliding glass door. Downstairs, he found his daughter and Sisco dead in bed. “Just as I got to the foot of the stairs, I could see Karen,” he later recalled. “I knew she was dead. And then I found Mike on the outside of the bed.”¹

Harkness had been struck by five bullets, Sisco by five to seven. All the rounds came from a 9mm firearm, which was never recovered.² There was no sign of forced entry. More than $1,000 in cash, a Rolex, and jewelry were left in plain view, which ruled out robbery. Neighbors reported hearing a car door and an idling vehicle between 2 and 3 a.m., along with a loud pop around 3 a.m.³

Who the Victims Were

Michael R. Sisco, 47, was a district sales manager for National Standard Welding Products.⁴ He had been married to Dana Chandler for roughly 15 years before their 1998 divorce, in which Sisco was awarded custody of their two children, Hailey and Dustin, and Chandler was ordered to pay child support.

Karen Harkness, 53, worked at the Topeka Convention and Visitors Bureau.⁵ She had a son, Chadwick, and a daughter, Erin Sutton, from her earlier marriage to Dewitt Harkness. She and Sisco had been dating for four years and were engaged when they were killed.⁶

Why Investigators Focused on Dana Chandler

Chandler had moved to Denver after the divorce, and from the earliest days of the investigation she was the prime suspect. Prosecutors would argue across all three trials that she killed Sisco and Harkness out of jealousy and obsessive rage over the engagement.

Between January and July 2002, Chandler placed more than 600 phone calls to Sisco and Harkness.³ Family members testified that she let herself into Sisco’s home uninvited, sat in her car outside both victims’ homes for hours at a stretch, and once appeared in the middle of the night to jump on a trampoline in Sisco’s backyard. Sisco kept a day planner tracking the intrusions, with entries such as “Dana stalking neighborhood” and “Dana came in house… went thru stuff.”

Nine days before the murders, Sisco told his brother-in-law, Mark Boots: “You’re gonna wake up and find me dead. And I want you to know who did it, Dana Chandler.”⁶ Erin Sutton, Harkness’s daughter, testified that her mother was afraid of Chandler and had received threatening messages on the couple’s phone.

A Cold Case, Then a Prosecution

Despite the suspicion, the case stalled. There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no physical evidence at the scene tying Chandler to the killings, and no murder weapon. Chandler was briefly arrested on a child-support warrant in July 2002 and interviewed by police, but then–Shawnee County District Attorney Robert Hecht concluded there was not enough evidence to charge her with murder.² By the end of that year, the file had gone cold.

Two things brought it back. In 2005, Chandler’s own daughter, Hailey Seel, began secretly recording conversations with her mother, trying to draw out a confession. In one recording, Chandler said of Sisco: “I said I could kill him. You ever think about killing him? … I did.”⁶ Seel also pressed her mother about a roughly 27-hour gap in her cellphone activity over the weekend of the murders. Then, in 2009, CBS’s 48 Hours aired a segment on the unsolved killings. Newly elected District Attorney Chad Taylor publicly named Chandler as the prime suspect, and on July 24, 2011, she was arrested in Duncan, Oklahoma.

The Circumstantial Case

The prosecution’s case was entirely circumstantial. Beyond the stalking history, the recorded admissions, and the cellphone gap, prosecutors leaned on several other threads:

The day before the murders, Chandler bought two five-gallon gas cans and a cigarette lighter in Denver. Prosecutors argued she used them to make the roughly 1,100-mile round trip to Topeka without stopping at gas stations where she might be remembered. She did not mention the cans when police first interviewed her.³
Chandler gave at least three different accounts of her whereabouts during the 27-hour window surrounding the killings.
Both of Chandler’s children, Hailey Seel and Dustin Sisco, testified for the prosecution, describing how their mother had taken them to spy on Sisco’s home and told them to look through the windows to see whether Harkness was inside.
In recorded jailhouse calls after the 2002 child-support arrest, Chandler and her sister Shirley Riegel discussed the death of a potential witness, Patti Williams, with Riegel calling it “huge” for Chandler’s case. In another call, Chandler expressed concern about DNA testing on a hair found on a shell casing.

That DNA cut the other way. A limb hair found on a shell casing was tested before the 2012 trial and excluded Chandler and both victims. A piece of gum recovered from a neighbor’s yard was tested with no match. Searches of Chandler’s black Mitsubishi Eclipse in 2002 and again in 2011 turned up nothing linking her to the crime.⁶

The 2012 Conviction

Chandler’s first trial began in Shawnee County District Court in March 2012 before Judge Nancy Parrish, with Chief Deputy District Attorney Jacqie Spradling leading the prosecution and Mark Bennett defending. On March 28, 2012, after just 83 minutes of deliberation, the jury convicted Chandler on two counts of premeditated first-degree murder. She received two consecutive life terms under Kansas’s “hard 50” scheme, each carrying a mandatory 50 years before parole eligibility.³

The Kansas Supreme Court Reversal

On April 6, 2018, the Kansas Supreme Court reversed the convictions and ordered a new trial, finding that Spradling had committed serious errors that deprived Chandler of a fair trial.³

The central error was a false claim Spradling made to the jury: that Sisco had obtained a protection-from-abuse order against Chandler out of Douglas County District Court. No such order existed, and the State conceded the point on appeal. In a case built entirely on circumstantial evidence, the court held, the fabrication could not be brushed aside as harmless, and the State had not shown beyond a reasonable doubt that it did not affect the verdict. The court flagged other problems as well, including Spradling’s unsupported argument that a five-minute July 5, 2002 phone call was the moment Sisco told Chandler he was engaged, when no evidence established what the call was about. Separately, the State conceded that the hard 50 sentences violated the Sixth Amendment under Alleyne v. United States, because a judge rather than a jury had found the aggravating factors.

The court did hold that the evidence at the first trial was sufficient to sustain a conviction, so double jeopardy did not bar a retrial.

The Prosecutor’s Disbarment

The misconduct followed Spradling out of the courtroom. Attorney Keen Umbehr filed an ethics complaint against her in 2016, and after a December 2020 hearing a three-attorney panel of the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys unanimously recommended disbarment, finding she had “knowingly and intentionally” engaged in deliberate misconduct to secure convictions.⁷

On May 20, 2022, the Kansas Supreme Court disbarred Spradling in a 101-page opinion, finding violations of more than a half-dozen Kansas Rules of Professional Conduct, including rules on candor toward the tribunal and fairness to opposing parties. The court described her conduct as a “serious pattern of grossly unethical misconduct” and “intolerable acts of deception,” noting she had ignored court orders, made arguments unsupported by evidence, and lied to the Supreme Court itself in written briefs and oral arguments. The disciplinary panel also found she had made false statements during the investigation, including testifying that the nonexistent protection-from-abuse order had been a simple misstatement.⁸

Karen Harkness’s son, Chad Harkness, put the family’s frustration this way: “Had Jacqie not made those comments, we wouldn’t be sitting here today. This would be over.”⁶

The Hung Jury in 2022

Chandler’s retrial took place in Shawnee County in August 2022 before Judge Cheryl Rios, with Deputy DA Charles Kitt prosecuting and Tom Bath defending.⁹ On September 1, 2022, after six days of deliberation, the jury hung. The split was reported as seven to convict and five to acquit.

Bath pressed the same weakness that had defined the case from the start: no DNA, no fingerprints, and no physical evidence placing Chandler at the residence or even in Kansas on the night of the murders. Kitt acknowledged the absence of forensic evidence and told jurors the case rested instead on “jealousy, rage and obsession.”²

The Third Trial and the 2025 Conviction

The third trial began in February 2025 and was moved to Pottawatomie County to secure an untainted jury pool.¹⁰ Chandler dismissed her attorneys and represented herself. She testified for roughly 20 hours over seven days, insisting she was not in Kansas when the murders happened and had never owned a 9mm firearm.

Both of her children testified again for the prosecution and told the jury they believed she was responsible. Chandler cross-examined them personally, an experience Hailey Seel later called “the most awful thing I’ve ever” gone through. On March 7, 2025, after nearly four hours of deliberation, the jury found Chandler guilty on both counts of first-degree murder.²

Sentencing and Appeal

On June 3, 2025, Judge Rios sentenced Chandler to two consecutive life terms with no parole eligibility for 50 years, crediting her with roughly 13 years already served. The hearing took place at the Pottawatomie County District Court in Westmoreland, Kansas.¹¹

Chandler maintained her innocence. “I have always maintained my innocence. I continue to maintain my innocence,” she told the court. “I was not in Topeka, Kansas, on July 7. I never owned or possessed a 9-millimeter firearm. What is happening in this courtroom is a grave injustice.”

Hailey Seel delivered a victim impact statement calling her mother “the most manipulative and deceptive person I’ve ever met.” She had offered a deal in advance: if Chandler confessed and showed remorse, Seel would ask the judge for mercy. Chandler did not confess. “I truly see her now as the evil killer,” Seel said. Afterward, she told reporters: “I just feel like my life can begin.” Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay said: “In the end, justice was achieved. And I think that’s the message here, is no matter how long it takes, no matter how hard it is, justice is worth fighting for.”

Chandler filed a motion for a new trial, but it was denied because the court found it had not been filed within the 14-day statutory deadline.¹² She announced her intent to appeal at sentencing, alleging unethical conduct by the judge, prosecutors, police, and witnesses. Her appellate representation has been unsettled: Kristen Patty, described as Chandler’s 14th attorney, moved in March 2026 to withdraw over a dispute with the Shawnee County District Court about who would pay for transcripts and case documents, and noted that Chandler had made three attempts to remove her.¹³ Chandler is serving her sentence in the custody of the Kansas Department of Corrections.

1
Topeka Capital-Journal. Harkness Father Recounts Finding Harkness, Sisco Dead
2
CBS News. Dana Chandler Sentenced to Life in Prison Kansas Third Murder Trial
3
Kansas Supreme Court. State v. Chandler
4
Topeka Capital-Journal. Slain Couple Sensed Danger
5
WIBW. Dana Chandler Trial Enters Day 7
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CBS News. Dana Chandler Mike Sisco Karen Harkness Topeka Kansas Double Murder Trials
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Kansas Reflector. Kansas Supreme Court Disbars Former Shawnee County Prosecutor for Unethical Conduct
8
Kansas Supreme Court. In re Spradling, Case No. 124,083
9
Court TV. Kansas v. Dana Chandler Obsessed Ex Murder Trial
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Kansas Reflector. Kansas Double Murderer Sentenced to Consecutive Life Terms After Third Trial
11
Topeka Capital-Journal. Dana Chandler Sentenced in Topeka Gunshot Homicides
12
WIBW. Dana Chandler’s Motion New Trial Denied
13
Topeka Capital-Journal. Dana Chandler’s 14th Attorney Wants Out in Topeka Double Murder Case