Chandler Halderson killed his parents, Bart and Krista Halderson, in July 2021 after years of compounding lies began falling apart.
Chandler was born on March 15, 1998, the second son of Bart and Krista Halderson. His older brother, Mitchell, was one year ahead of him. The family lived in Windsor, Wisconsin, around thirty minutes from Madison. Bart worked at an international accounting firm, and Krista worked in customer service.
By most accounts, they were a close and involved family. They also owned a cabin that had been originally built by Krista’s grandparents in the 1940s, which had been passed down to her side of the family. The cabin served as a regular getaway spot for the Haldersons.
By 2021, Chandler was twenty-three years old and still living in his parents’ home. He was supposedly attending Madison College and working part-time at an insurance company. He had also been in a relationship with a woman named Cathryn for about two years.
Cathryn later described the family as fun and welcoming, saying they all got along well and spent a good amount of time together. To everyone around him, Chandler’s life appeared stable and on track.
It was not. Chandler had actually flunked out of Madison College years before. His last enrolled class had been in the spring of 2019, and he had failed multiple courses while withdrawing from others.
He had never been a full-time student, and the school had no record of him completing any meaningful coursework. His part-time insurance job was also completely fabricated. Neither situation was real, but he had managed to keep both lies going for a considerable amount of time.
When his parents asked to see academic transcripts to check on his progress, Chandler did not come clean. Instead, he created a series of fake email accounts and posed as multiple Madison College administrators.
Through these accounts, he fed his parents false information about his enrollment and invented reasons why official documents could not be provided. One of the personas he created was named Daniel Speith, who he presented as his academic counselor.
His father, Bart, exchanged several emails with this fictional figure and even arranged a video call to resolve the transcript issue. At the last moment, Chandler canceled the meeting, using a fabricated COVID-related family emergency as the excuse.
The same pattern continued with other invented administrators. Meetings would be scheduled and then called off. Investigators later confirmed that all of the fraudulent email accounts traced back to the Halderson family’s home internet connection.
Chandler had also used his own date of birth when setting up the accounts, a detail that made them easier to link back to him once investigators began looking.
On top of lying about school, Chandler told his family and Cathryn that his insurance job was not paying him due to a payroll error that was sending his checks to the wrong address. Since the job did not exist, there were of course no paychecks to speak of.
At some point, he escalated his fabrications further and told everyone that he had received a job offer from SpaceX, the aerospace company. He claimed his starting salary would be eighty thousand dollars a year.
He invited Cathryn to move to Florida with him, and the two began browsing housing options online.
To avoid following through on the move, Chandler told his family and Cathryn that he had fallen down the stairs at home and suffered a severe injury. He claimed doctors had diagnosed him with a brain bleed, a brain aneurysm, nerve damage, and a spinal injury serious enough to prevent him from driving or flying.
He wore a neck brace and told everyone that SpaceX had agreed to hold his position open while he recovered. A physician who later examined him testified that the only confirmed diagnosis was a mild concussion.
Multiple medical scans had shown no serious abnormalities. The neck brace had been issued based solely on his reported pain, not on any clinical findings.
With the move postponed indefinitely, Chandler stayed at home. Bart, however, had not given up on obtaining official documents from Madison College. He believed Chandler needed verified transcripts to proceed with his supposed career.
Bart continued pressing through the fake email chain his son had constructed, but on June 29, 2021, he bypassed it entirely and called the school directly.
He reached a genuine representative named Omar Jobe, who confirmed that Chandler’s last class had been in the spring of 2019, that he had failed and withdrawn from multiple courses, and that none of the administrator names Bart had been corresponding with matched any actual staff member at the institution.
That same day, Bart sent his son a text message. It read: “I spoke to Omar Jobe. I’m ready when you are.” Three days later, on July 2, 2021, both Bart and Krista were missing.
The first person to raise concern was Daniel Kroninger, a close friend and coworker of Krista’s. She had not shown up to work on July 2 and had not contacted anyone to explain her absence. That was completely out of character for her.
That same afternoon, Kroninger went to the Halderson home with his girlfriend. No one came to the door, but both Bart and Krista’s cars were parked in the garage. Chandler appeared and told Kroninger that his parents had made a last-minute decision to spend the holiday weekend at the family cabin.
With Independence Day approaching and the cabin near a lake, the explanation seemed just plausible enough. Kroninger left but remained uneasy and continued trying to reach Krista over the following days.
Each time Kroninger followed up, Chandler had a ready response. He said the cabin had poor cell reception, which was why Krista had not returned any calls. On July 4, Chandler texted Kroninger asking to spend the holiday with him.
While there, he told Kroninger that his parents would be back the following day. Kroninger knew Krista had an important medical appointment scheduled for that Monday and felt reassured that she would not miss it.
She did not show up. She also did not show up on Tuesday. By Wednesday, Kroninger told Chandler that a missing persons report had to be filed. Chandler agreed and went with him to do so.
When detectives spoke with Chandler, he gave them a new version of events. He said that an unknown couple had arrived at the house and driven his parents to the cabin, which would explain why their cars were still at home.
Later, he changed the story again and said his parents had gone to the cabin to deal with a plumbing emergency. Police had already visited the cabin by that point and found no signs of any plumbing problem and no indication that anyone had been there recently.
Chandler’s brother, Mitchell, had also driven up to the cabin independently and found nothing.
On July 8, detectives brought Chandler in for a formal interview that quickly turned into an interrogation. They told him directly that they believed his parents were no longer alive and that his account was not credible.
Chandler requested a lawyer, which ended the session. He was arrested that day on charges of providing false information in a missing persons case, as investigators had not yet gathered enough evidence for murder charges.
That same day, a property owner near Windsor reported to police that she had seen Chandler leaving a wooded area on her land in the days before the disappearance was reported. His behavior had struck her as odd. Officers searched the area and found human remains.
On July 10, those remains were identified as belonging to Bart Halderson. Chandler was charged with Bart’s murder and with dismembering and concealing his body.
Krista had still not been located. Authorities held a press conference asking the public for help. Around the same time, Cathryn came forward with a piece of information she had held onto since July 3. Because she was aware that Chandler had been unfaithful to previous partners, the two had agreed to share their locations through Snapchat.
On July 3, she had checked his location and found him near the Wisconsin River. She found it unexplained and took a screenshot. After the press conference, she handed that screenshot over to investigators.
Police searched the area near the river and recovered Krista Halderson’s remains. Chandler was then charged with her murder as well.
Physical evidence collected from the Halderson home filled in much of what had happened. When Kroninger had first visited the house, he had noticed through a window that a coffee table in the living room had been turned over.
During the holiday weekend, Chandler had asked Cathryn to bring ice, hydrogen peroxide, and a Swiffer to the house, telling her he had cut himself on a broken glass panel near the fireplace. She stayed the night but was asked to leave early the next morning.
Luminol testing later revealed that blood had been cleaned from the floors. Security footage from a neighboring property showed a light flickering inside the Halderson home during that weekend, consistent with a fire burning in the fireplace.
Inside the fireplace itself, investigators found more than two hundred human bone fragments.
A tarp and twenty pounds of ice were also linked to Chandler’s activity during that period. Near where Bart’s remains had been found, police discovered an oil drum containing tools that tested positive for the blood of both Bart and Krista.
Based on the condition of the remains and the evidence at the scene, investigators determined that Bart had been shot. The state of Krista’s remains did not allow the medical examiner to establish a precise cause of death.
At trial, prosecutors introduced the fraudulent college emails, the fabricated employment, and the exaggerated medical claims as part of their case. Bart’s final text message to Chandler on June 29 was presented as evidence of the confrontation that preceded the killings.
Chandler’s phone contained a series of Google searches conducted on July 8, the same day he was walking through his neighborhood asking if anyone had seen his parents.
Those searches included terms such as “body found Wisconsin,” “woman’s body found in Wisconsin,” “Wisconsin dismembered body found,” and “dead body found in Wisconsin.” The final search included the names Bart and Krista directly.
Chandler pleaded not guilty to all charges and did not testify in his own defense. After the prosecution presented its case, the jury deliberated for two hours before returning a guilty verdict on every count. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
After sentencing, he asked whether any attorneys in the courtroom were interested in taking his appeal. At least one was. An appeal was filed, and in April 2023, two convictions related to the concealment of his parents’ remains were vacated on procedural grounds. His sentence, however, remained the same.
