The Kristil Krug Case: Husband, Murder, and Kristil’s Law

The Kristil Krug case is the December 2023 murder of a 43-year-old Broomfield, Colorado mother of three by her husband, Daniel Krug, who had spent months secretly stalking her while impersonating one of her ex-boyfriends. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder, stalking, and criminal impersonation in April 2025, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The case also exposed a gap that has since produced new law: search warrants police sent to Google, Verizon, and TextNow to unmask the “stalker” went unanswered before Kristil was killed, and Oregon later passed “Kristil’s Law” to force faster corporate responses in stalking and domestic violence cases.

The Fake Stalker Was Her Husband

On October 2, 2023, Kristil received a text from someone calling himself “Anthony,” a reference to Jack Anthony Holland, a man she had briefly dated more than 20 years earlier. The messages escalated over the following weeks. Using burner phones and an “a.holland” email address, the sender bombarded her with vulgar notes, sexually explicit photos, and threats, at one point writing, “Ill get rid of him and then we can be together. So easy,” a reference to Daniel. The harasser also posted her phone number on classified-ad sites.¹

The stalker was Daniel Krug. He fabricated the entire persona, sending messages from burner phones and routing some through the public Wi-Fi at his workplace, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, where he was a financial analyst.²¹ He staged photographs of himself to suggest the “stalker” was watching him too, extending the fiction to the whole family. The couple’s three children, then 14, 11, and 8, all believed the threat was real.³⁴

At trial, a former girlfriend of Daniel’s testified that he had used strikingly similar tactics against her decades earlier, creating fake online personas to harass her after their breakup. He was never charged in connection with that earlier conduct.²

What Kristil Did to Protect Herself

Kristil responded to the threat with methodical care. She kept a detailed “stalker log” documenting every message and interaction, hired a private investigator to look into Holland, took firearm safety training and earned a certificate on December 9, 2023, purchased a handgun and pepper spray, and practiced safety drills with her children.⁴ Family and acquaintances would later say she “did everything right” — everything a person is told to do when being stalked.¹ At the time of her death, she and Daniel were separating and she was seeking full custody of the children.

The Warrants That Came Back Too Late

Kristil met formally with Detective Andrew Martinez of the Broomfield Police Department on November 7, 2023, handing over her dossier of evidence, including a timeline of her past relationship with Holland, the log of threatening communications, and possible addresses she had located online.⁵ By mid-November, Martinez had submitted search warrants to Google, TextNow, and Verizon to trace the messages, and they were formally served on the companies on November 17.¹ Police also dispatched undercover officers to surveil the family and secured an arrest warrant for Holland that would allow his detention on any contact with law enforcement.

None of the three companies returned data before Kristil was killed. A typo in the Google warrant required a corrected filing, which was approved on December 6, 2023, eight days before the murder. Martinez later said waiting weeks or months for responses from major tech companies was “not unusual,” and that without digital proof, a detective confronting a suspect could simply have the door shut in their face.¹ During the second half of 2023, Verizon received about 22,000 warrants and Google received more than 35,000; companies generally processed them in the order received, often without knowing whether a case involved imminent danger.⁴

The Murder

On the morning of December 14, 2023, Kristil dropped her children at school. When she returned home, Daniel was waiting in the garage. Prosecutors said he ambushed her from behind, struck her multiple times in the head with a blunt object, and fatally stabbed her in the heart.³

He had prepared. The home security cameras were disabled and blue masking tape covered the Ring doorbell. After the killing, he manipulated Kristil’s phone to send scheduled text messages to himself and others, designed to suggest she was still alive and to imply she had been unfaithful. Digital forensics later showed Kristil had not used her phone after 8:22 a.m. Around noon, Daniel called police for a welfare check. Officers found Kristil in the garage at 12:28 p.m., and she was pronounced dead at 12:43 p.m.³

Investigators found that the night before, Daniel had run Google searches including “How hard would you have to hit someone in the head to make them unconscious?” and “How long can you be unconscious without brain damage?”³

How Police Identified Him

Once the case turned into a homicide investigation, the tech companies’ calculus changed. Investigators recontacted Google, Verizon, and TextNow under emergency “exigent circumstances” requests, and the companies responded within an hour.¹ The data traced the threatening messages to IP addresses at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, where Daniel worked. Anthony Holland, the ex-boyfriend Daniel had impersonated, was quickly cleared: he lived in Utah and had a verified alibi placing him at a retail store at the time of the killing.⁶

Daniel Krug was arrested on December 16, 2023, two days after the murder, in a grocery store parking lot.¹ Additional evidence tying him to the scheme included a burner phone purchased with a Visa gift card registered to him and the fake email accounts created on his workplace network.³

Trial, Conviction, and Life Sentence

The trial in Broomfield County District Court lasted more than two weeks. Prosecutors argued to the jury that Daniel had operated as a “puppet master,” inventing a fictional stalker to terrorize his wife and then killing her when he feared discovery.² The jury found him guilty on all counts: first-degree murder, two counts of stalking, and criminal impersonation.⁷

On April 18, 2025, Judge Priscilla Loew sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder, plus eight years for stalking and 18 months for criminal impersonation, all consecutive.³⁷ District Attorney Brian Mason said after sentencing: “This was a brutal, calculated murder, preceded by months of manipulation, emotional abuse, and deception. In planning and executing this horrific crime, Daniel Krug terrorized his wife, his children, and an innocent man — all in order to control and then murder a woman who no longer wanted to be with him.”

A restitution hearing was scheduled for March 13, 2026, to determine what Daniel owes for Kristil’s burial expenses, storage of her belongings, and therapy costs for the three children.⁸ Daniel Krug maintains his innocence and is pursuing an appeal.²

Kristil’s Law

The case left a specific question hanging: if the tech companies had answered the warrants while Kristil was alive, could she have been saved? Her cousin Rebecca Ivanoff, a former domestic violence prosecutor living in Oregon, believes so. “I’m confident that she would have been alive today,” Ivanoff said. “She would have been in a place to safety plan, and he never would have had the opportunity to get behind her in the way that he did.”⁹

Ivanoff, with no prior lobbying experience, worked with Kristil’s parents and Oregon lawmakers to champion House Bill 4045, known as “Kristil’s Law.” Chief-sponsored by Representative Kevin Mannix of Salem, it passed the Oregon House unanimously in February 2026 and cleared the Senate shortly after.¹⁰¹¹ The law, effective May 1, 2026, requires social media platforms to comply with search warrants in stalking and domestic violence cases within 72 hours, and other communications companies within five business days.¹² To trigger the accelerated timeline, the warrant application must specify that the case involves domestic violence or stalking and that an immediate response is required.¹³ Companies that fail to comply can be held in contempt. Mannix described the measure as creating a “special category of warrant” designed to bypass the standard first-in, first-out queue that typically takes about six weeks.¹⁴

Oregon was the first state to pass a law of this kind. In Colorado, where the murder occurred, the path has been harder. The legislature considered HB26-1255, which would have required social media and dating platforms to acknowledge warrant receipt within eight hours and comply within 24 hours, with penalties of up to $250,000 per violation.¹⁵ The governor vetoed the bill on May 28, 2026.¹⁶ Ivanoff has noted that even if it had passed, the bill’s focus on social media would not have covered the texting and email channels Daniel used against Kristil. She is pushing for broader Colorado legislation modeled on Oregon’s Kristil’s Law, aimed at the 2027 session.⁴

1
NBC News. Kristil Krug Murder Conviction
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ABC News. Colorado Woman’s Stalker Turns Out to Be Husband
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17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. Broomfield Defendant Sentenced to Life in Prison
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CNN. Kristil Krug Murder Colorado Oregon Law
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5280. Why Wasn’t Kristil Krug’s Murderer Caught
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CBS News. Kristil Krug Daniel Krug Broomfield Colorado Murder
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Denver7. Broomfield Man Sentenced to Life in Prison for Killing Wife
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Broomfield Enterprise. Daniel Krug Faces Restitution in Broomfield
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BBC. Kristil Krug Oregon Kristil’s Law
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Oregon State Legislature. House Unanimously Passes Bill That Enhances Safety for Victims of Stalking and Domestic Violence
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Yahoo News. Companies Must Now Quickly Respond to Stalking Warrants in Oregon
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NBC News. Companies Must Now Quickly Respond to Stalking Warrants in Oregon
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Oregon State Legislature. HB 4045 A Measure Analysis
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BBC. Kristil Krug Oregon Kristil’s Law
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CBS News. Colorado Bill Law Enforcement Social Media Search Warrants
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Colorado Legislature. HB26-1255 Social Media Duty to Report and Search Warrants