World's Worst Liar: The Chandler Halderson Story

Welcome to the Eastern Crime Zone, the podcast that takes you inside investigations of real, true crime cases. I'm your host, Cassie Malay, and each week I'll guide you through the twists and turns of some of the most fascinating cases in history, from the familiar to the obscure. We'll deep dive into the details and explore new angles you've never considered before. But I don't want this to be a one-sided conversation. I want to hear from you too. So if there's a case that's been on your mind, head on over to EasternCrimeZone. com and leave me a voicemail or sign in my DMs on Instagram. Who knows, maybe your suggestion will be our next case. So sit back, grab your detective hat and get ready for a journey through the criminal underworld. This is Eastern Crime Zone. So before we get started with today's case, I did want to acknowledge just something a little bit new to the podcast, and if you're listening on audio on Spotify or Apple or where you listen, you aren't going to notice probably any difference. I hope you don't anyway. But if you're on YouTube, you're seeing my face. So that's just a choice that I made. It's really popular to have a visual version of your podcast for YouTube. It's just another way of getting out there, and I do have some people who have already been listening on YouTube. I think last week I actually had like 2,000 people listen to the episode where it was just our logo and the audio. So that was lovely. Thank you all so much for listening and I hope you stick around. I'm going to keep putting in a lot of work and making this podcast the best that I possibly can, but I know that's not what you're here for, that's not what you want to hear me talk about. So let's go ahead and dive into the case because, as Gwen Stefani said, shit is bananas. So Bart Halterson was born on May 14, 1971 in Sheboygan, wisconsin, and he was the son of Blake and Kaleen Halterson. Krista Rae Freider later Halterson was born on January 25th in 1968 in Madison, wisconsin, and she was the daughter of Andrew and Betty Freider. Krista graduated from Valder's High School in 1989 and Krista graduated from Madison East High School in 1986. Both earned bachelor's degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Bart and Krista would meet working at Boston Store at Easttown Mall in Madison, wisconsin, when she was a manager and he was a clerk, and they would get married on July 30, 1994. Bart and Krista welcomed their first son, mitchell, in 1996 and their son, chandler, just 18 months later, in 1998. While the boys were growing up, krista was a stay-at-home mom, while Bart had a successful career as an accountant for BDOUSA. Once the boys were older, krista returned to the workforce as an administrative assistant at Zimbabwek Automotive. By 2021, the older son, mitchell, was engaged in working in the technology field. I don't know a ton about him and, out of respect for his privacy, I'm going to try to keep it that way. Her brother, chandler, was finishing up his degree at Milwaukee Area Technical College, matc. He was really interested in solar technology and he earned a separate certificate in solar energy. Most degrees at this school take two years, but Chandler was taking a little bit longer, at three years. But this was also around 2020 and we know what was going on in 2020, so can't really blame him for taking a little bit longer to finish up school. But his graduation was scheduled for June 2021 and while he finished his studies he landed a paid internship at American Family Insurance. Chandler actually helped out with the Madison Police Department as well on their SCUBA team. This team was in collaboration with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to locate items in rivers and lakes related to open investigations. He would find all sorts of things on these dives phones, knives, and one time, I guess, he found an adult sex toy. So very interesting. Chandler also had a girlfriend of two years named Kat. Kat was a pharmacy technician and attending college as well, and her goal was ultimately to become a pharmacist. Kat and Chandler would be in constant contact throughout the day through text, facetime and Snapchat. Kat would sometimes also check up on Chandler and see his location on SnapMaps. Now, if you aren't familiar with what Snapchat is and what SnapMaps is, let me just give you the rundown. So Snapchat is a social media platform where you can send pictures back and forth with your friends and most of the time, if you haven't adjusted your settings, the pictures will delete after you read them or see what it is. So you can change this in your settings to where you can save them in your chat and so on and so forth, and the other person will be notified. This is usually used for just communicating with your friends or sending risque photos that maybe you wouldn't want everyone to see. So they delete very quickly. And, of course, if you do send a special photo, you'll see if the other person screenshots it. So a lot of people use this. Snapmaps is a little different. Snapmaps is where you can see your friends' locations, if they have it turned on and shared to you, so you can open the app and you see their little character on a map and you can see wherever they are and you can turn this on and off. I personally have mine turned off and, just so you know, snapmaps is a feature of Snapchat. So I've just talked about one app and it will come in handy later, so I'm not telling you this just for the sake of educating you on social media. So this is what Kat and Chandler would communicate on throughout the day, sending each other pictures and videos and whatever was kind of going on in their lives, and they would also use this to see where the other person was, if they maybe weren't answering their phone. Just see their location. I don't think there's anything wrong with that necessarily. As long as you're not being toxic about it, it can be absolutely a positive thing. You could be using it for safety. Just have a piece of mind that someone knows where your location is. But Kat would get suspicious from time to time about where Chandler was every now and then, especially because Chandler would get grounded Like Homeboy, was 23 years old, telling his girlfriend he was getting grounded. I would be suspicious too. Me and Chandler actually were only born a few months apart and in 2021 I was not getting grounded by my parents. I don't think my parents ever actually grounded me, definitely not since after high school, at least. Sometimes, when Kat thought Chandler might be lying about what he was up to, she would text him, show Face, and when she texted that, he would be expected to send her a picture of him right then and there or FaceTime her. I feel like, if you have to check up on your partner like this, something isn't right there. But they were in their early 20s. This was their first serious relationship, so maybe they were just figuring things out, but their relationship was pretty serious. They were having long talks about the future and making plans together. They would hang out with each other's families. Kat was close with Bart and Krista, and Chandler was close with Kat's mom, dulce, and Dulce's partner, kras, as well. Kat had a really strong head on her shoulders and valued that Chandler was as hardworking and motivated as she was to make sure their future that they talked about would actually happen. Something else that's pretty notable is that at this point in their relationship, kat would pay for pretty much everything. When they went out on the town or they rented a movie or something, kat would be the one to pay for it because Chandler had not gotten paid from his paid internship from American Family Insurance. There is actually issues with his paychecks. Chandler had not gotten paid at all from this internship. First they sent us, checked the wrong address and had to reissue it. Then the payroll department didn't set up his position correctly. Finally, chandler said that the back pay he was owed because he had been working there for months without getting paid. The back pay that he was owed was so much that the bank thought it was fraudulent and canceled it. So Bart Halterson, like I mentioned, he was an accountant, so this is his bread and butter. This is something he could absolutely help his son out with. So Chandler would forward the emails from American Family to Bart to take a look at when he had time. Bart really wanted this resolved quickly for Chandler, because Chandler's internship was set to end soon and they owed him months worth of pay. Since his internship was ending and college graduation was right around the corner, the next step for Chandler was applying for jobs. So Chandler shot for the stars, literally. He wanted a job with SpaceX at their location in Titusville, florida. Cat was especially excited to see if Chandler would get the job at SpaceX. She was planning on moving with him down to Florida if he got the job. They would spend a lot of time on FaceTime together looking at places to rent down in Titusville and Cat was also looking at pharmacy schools in Florida. On May 25th 2021, chandler had the best news he got the job. Everything started virtually the next week and he would be down in Florida by June 14th to start official work. Everything was happening so fast. He only had three weeks to move, which I've never heard of anyone having to move that fast for a job. But Cat wouldn't be able to join him until her lease was up. Chandler would go first and Cat would join him later. At the same time as all of Chandler's happy news, some unhappy news was unfolding. Krista had found out that she had skin cancer. Krista was a natural redhead and she was very fair, so she was pretty vigilant about taking care of her skin and making sure she had sun protection, but she did end up getting an official diagnosis. She wasn't feeling too well, mentally or physically to say the least and a week after Krista got diagnosed with cancer, mitchell, the older brother, was diagnosed with diabetes and actually had to be hospitalized. Obviously, this is a lot for one family to deal with emotionally and just logistically dealing with everything making sure everyone's taken care of. So Chandler contacts SpaceX and lets them know what's going on with this family situation and SpaceX agrees that he can continue working from home for just a little while longer while his family situation gets figured out. Only a few days after this, another bad thing happens for the Halterson family. Chandler has a really bad fall down the stairs of the family home. He was playing with the dog and the dog got under his legs and tripped him going down the stairs. This fall was really, really bad. Chandler had a concussion and had to wear a neck brace. He had numbness in his legs and tingling. He couldn't walk properly and there was even talk of him maybe needing a colostomy bag at some point. There was another issue for Chandler this college wouldn't release his transcripts and he would need these to forward to SpaceX along with a documentation from his solar energy program and from his internship with American family. He would need to provide this to show that he graduated with the correct qualifications. Bart and Krista were so worried about Chandler. First his internship wasn't paying him, he had that fall and now he can't even get his transcripts. So they wanted to help. They were really loving and very supportive parents. They wanted to help him out. So Chandler would forward these emails from his school to Bart so Bart could help him figure this out. The two staff members emailing with Bart and Chandler were Alyssa Brant and Daniel Spieth. They would schedule meetings over Zoom, but those would always get canceled. And one time Bart did speak with Daniel Spieth over the phone, but that eventually got nowhere as well. Through all of this, bart probably thinks everyone at MATC was really incompetent and bad at their jobs. So he decides to call the school one more time and just get all of this sorted out and see if he can schedule a meeting to come in person, because it's getting ridiculous at this point. He graduated from school, he paid the tuition, give him the transcripts he earned, right. So he calls the school and he gets in touch with someone named Omar Job. So when Bart calls the school, he is pretending to be Chandler. And while Bart is pretending to be Chandler. He explains the whole situation to Omar Job, how they've spoke to Alyssa Brant and Daniel Spieth over email and that they've tried multiple times to go through their online service to get their transcripts. But Omar Job looked up Chandler's file on his end and there were a couple problems. One Chandler still owed the college $2,000. And the second issue is that Chandler had not graduated or taken any classes since the fall of 2020. So Bart hears this and he asks if anyone named Alyssa Brant works there. Omar says no. Daniel Spieth Omar says no. So Bart just says thank you and hangs up the phone. Now, if you haven't put it together, what Bart just learned was that Chandler has been lying. He didn't graduate from college and the reason he hadn't gone to his transcripts was because he hadn't earned them. So I'm not sure how Bart reacted to this information. I don't know how I would react to this information, but what I do know is that Bart sent Chandler a message and let him know that he spoke with Omar Job from MATC and that he was going to schedule a meeting for July 1st and they would both be going down to school together to talk with Omar about his transcripts. So Bart knows that Chandler has been lying and Chandler knows that Bart is about to figure out he's lying. So for Chandler it's time to face the music. And I will add to the story a small personal anecdote. I was also a shitbag of a child when I was 18, I had moved out of my parents' house, was living on my own and I was enrolled in school, but I wasn't really attending class. I maybe was going every once in a while, but I told my parents that I was doing really well because I was stupid and selfish. So eventually my mom, before the semester even ended, her bullshit meter went off and she found out that I was lying. It was an awkward conversation. It was not very fun, had some trust loss there. We're good now. But it's not unusual for people to lie about various things to their parents. It's very common. I'm sure you've lied to your parents about something, but this lie is a little bit out of the ordinary because it wasn't just telling your parents oh yeah, school's going great, I'm doing good. It was making fake email accounts. It was falsifying records. He was doing the absolute most to convince his parents that he had graduated from college. And remember, I told you that Bart had spoke with Daniel Spieth over the phone at least once before. Yeah, that was Chandler using a burner phone. So put that information in your back pocket because we're going to go somewhere else for just a little bit and we'll come back On June 30th. Chandler led his girlfriend Kat know he is actually grounded and he can't go see her that night. She's obviously upset and wants to actually text Krista herself because it's getting ridiculous Now. Kat and Krista did talk often via text so it wouldn't be awkward necessarily for Kat to text Krista, but Chandler didn't want her getting involved in his grounding. He said it would just piss his parents off more and they should just focus on their upcoming July 4th weekend because they were going to have some fun together. They were going to have the Halterson House all to themselves. Because he overheard his parents talking to their friends on the phone about maybe going to the cabin, and the cabin that the family owned was up in White Lake, wisconsin, and there was a parade happening that Saturday, july 3rd. So Kat lets the whole grounding thing go and focuses on their upcoming weekend. She invites Chandler to spend a little bit time at her mom's partner's house Kress' house so they could spend some time in the pool and the water might actually be good for Chandler's injuries. But on July 2nd Krista Halterson didn't show up for work, and this was highly unusual for a reliable employee. Krista was actually so on top of her PTO that she would request days off for the whole year. In January she actually worked in a department with only two other people, so it was really important to communicate about when you would be off of work so that there would be enough coverage in the department. Krista's co-worker and friend, dan, began to worry about her and tried to call her several times without a response. Finally, he just stopped by the Halterson House to check on his friend. Chandler was there and explained that his parents had left the day before to spend July 4th weekend at their cabin in the northern part of Wisconsin. Chandler explained that there was poor cell service up there, so she probably didn't receive any of Dan's messages. Although it was pretty odd that Krista hadn't informed her job that she wouldn't be in, it was plausible that she and her husband would plan to spend the holiday at the family's cabin. Maybe there was some sort of mix-up and Krista would be back soon and she would explain the whole thing and everything would be fine right. That same day Kat was coming over to spend some time with Chandler. Now that he had the place to himself for the weekend, he asked her to bring a few things over for him, including hydrogen peroxide and a Swiffer wet jet, since he had stepped on some glass. Kat does a target curbside pickup and goes to the Halterson place. When she walks in it smells really smoky like he had been using the fireplace. But it was July, so Kat obviously asked why does it smell like smoke in here? Chandler tells Kat the story of how he was playing with his border collie, rizzo, and when Rizzo went to retrieve a ball she accidentally slid into their glass fireplace front and shattered the whole thing. This is how he had cut his foot and why it smells so smoky in the house, why he asked her for the hydrogen peroxide and the Swiffer wet jet. That night they decided to actually sleep in the living room because Chandler's injuries made it hard for him to go up and down the stairs and since there were home renovations at the time, the only working bathroom was actually downstairs. Kat left early the next morning and Chandler was alone for the day and he was acting a little bit unusual. He wasn't answering his phone, so Kat checks his location on SnapMap. He wasn't where he was supposed to be, though he was 30 minutes away at a spot by the Wisconsin River that they had actually been together a month earlier with his friend Andrew. She sends him a screenshot of him on SnapMap and is like what are you doing? You're not supposed to be there. You're not even supposed to be driving because of your concussion. Well, he calls her and explains that he was buying some CBD and went a little bit out of his way to get it. They put the whole situation to bed and Chandler goes home. The next day was July 4th, so Kat and Chandler go to the farm that Dulce's partner Cress lives, on, the one with the pool that Chandler can use for his legs. They have a great time hanging out with Kat's family and being in the pool. Sometime that day, krista sent Chandler a text message informing him that Krista and Bart had decided to stay in White Lake just a couple more days, but they'd be back Monday night or Tuesday morning. That Monday, bart and Krista didn't come home, and Krista still didn't contact her work to let them know that she would be out, which was very out of character for her. They had also not been texting anyone back, including her other son, mitchell, which was very strange. She was the kind of person who'd be contacting her children, friends and family throughout the day. Especially if she was up at the cabin or at a parade for the 4th of July, she would be texting pictures. Everyone was getting really worried about Bart and Krista at this point. This behavior was very out of the norm for them, and when the couple hadn't returned by Wednesday morning, july 7th, chandler filed a missing person report with the police, and it was the time to let you know that most of what I have told you about Chandler is a lie. Chandler does live with his parents and well, that's pretty much it. That's all I can tell you. That's true. He lives with his parents and he has a girlfriend named Kat. Everything else, pretty much a lie. Chandler had not only lied about going to college. He did not work remotely for American Family Insurance, which was why he was having issues with his paychecks. It's because he didn't work there. That was just an excuse for him to sit alone in his room playing video games all day. He wasn't even a certified scuba diver for the Madison Police Department. That was a lie. That lie is actually really interesting because his uncle Brett was a cop and a diver and all of the stories that Chandler would tell were just modified versions of his uncle Brett's stories. The injuries from his fall down the stairs were not nearly as bad as Chandler made them seem. When the doctor was asked later about Chandler, the doctor didn't remember him and had to look up his notes, which I guess he sees a lot of people. But when he looked up his notes, chandler just got diagnosed with a mild concussion and was told to take at home pain reliever and take it easy. Of course, since that was all false, chandler did not have a job at SpaceX. He lied about that too. Almost all the lies he was telling were because of his original lie that he had graduated from college. He had to lie about working for American families so that his parents wouldn't make him get a real job. He had to lie about applying to SpaceX because he would have to get a real job. He had to lie about getting injured so that he didn't have to go to Florida for a job he didn't have. So all of this is just getting bigger and bigger. There were a couple other lies but for brevity I didn't include them. Just know that Chandler is a liar and he was also cheating on his girlfriend, cat. I don't think he ever really got grounded from his parents. Based on what I've read about them, that was so not their parenting style. Also, it's kind of ridiculous to ground your 23 year old child, even if they live at home Knowing all of that mess. Let's go back in time to July 1st. Remember I told you that Bart had told Chandler that they were going to go down to the school on July 1st for a meeting to get his transcripts and to get everything figured out with the school. So the last thing that Bart Halterson ever said to his son Chandler at least confirmed via text was I'm ready to go when you are. Shortly thereafter, the health app on Bart Halterson's iPhone stopped recording data. After that, chandler then texted his mom. Dad's phone died. He followed that with text or call and get a soda on your way home. I've got an extra hour of work. According to cell phone tower data, krista Halterson arrived home at around 5 12 pm. What police had later found out was that night after Krista got home, she discovered that Bart was most likely already dead, having been shot in the back by his youngest son, and then Krista was also shot. The rifle that had shot both Bart and Krista was an SKS rifle. Now, this rifle was not purchased by Chandler and it wasn't owned by anyone in the home. Most likely Bart and Krista had no idea that Chandler even had this. The way that Chandler got this gun was really interesting. He had a friend named Andrew that he played on-guying games with. The game that they would play most often was called Tarkov, and in this game they used SKS rifles, and Chandler had expressed interest in wanting one, and so Andrew drove 13 hours to bring him one for free, like as a gift, and so Andrew took a picture of Chandler's license next to the SKS certificate so that he could prove that he had sold it to him without it being traced back to him in case something like this happened. But I do find this part of the story very interesting. I wouldn't drive 13 hours to give my friend a rifle. I don't know if he actually drove the 13 hours to just hang out with Chandler, because they did hang out. They went to the Wisconsin River. They hung out with Bart and Krista. They did other things, but it just seems really odd that he would gift his friend a rifle. Now I will say Andrew has never been charged with anything. I will not be including any of his identifying information. As far as we know, he is innocent and this was an unfortunate Circumstance where he had gifted this rifle to his friend and his friend made the worst possible decision with it. But I will say, take this as a lesson Don't gift rifles to your friends, please, if they can't get one themselves or don't want to get one themselves. There might be a reason, and you don't want to be tied up in it. The entire reason Chandler found himself in this mess was that his already flimsy house of lies was starting to crumble around him. Now that he had the braze, the stakes and his parents were missing, he had to create even more lies to get away with it. There were a lot of problems with him creating more lies to cover his tracks. One, it's really hard for a bad storyteller to control the narrative. And two, mistakes are going to be made when someone whose life was going nowhere is in a rush. It actually only took about 32 hours after Chandler filed the missing persons report for him to end up in handcuffs. One of the first things that police did to investigate Bart and Krista's disappearance was go and check out the cabin that Chandler said they were going to for the weekend. Just see if they were there, if they were all right. When they arrived at the cabin they found the place looked like no one had been there in a while. There was some fallen trees across the driveway and the grass was overgrown. The cabinet self was locked up tight and once they made their way inside there were zero signs of recent activity. Police also became suspicious about a text message that Krista had sent to Chandler on July 4th Saying they were going to stick around to see a parade in White Lake. That 4th of July was a Sunday and the town of White Lake held its parade that Saturday. So the day before that Monday, july 5th, two days before reporting his parents missing, chandler showed up at Cress's house the one with the pool unannounced. Cress and Dulce actually were in the pool together having a good time and Cress who is a woman, by the way was topless. And Chandler just got in the pool without saying anything. He was acting super weird and had was like glazed over, look in his eyes and was not responding to them whatsoever when they were like hey, dude, I'm topless right here, please don't get in the pool. He got in any way and he actually started Rubbing himself, almost like he was taking a bath and just looking straight through them. So they kind of gave him his space. Cress and Dulce left him alone in the pool for a while and they went back to check on him. But Chandler wasn't in the pool anymore. She did see his SUV was way back in the wooded area of the property and the back hatch was opened. So when she found out that Bart and Krista were missing, she called the police and thought that they should check it out. When the police arrived on the property, one of the first things they observed was a flock of turkey vultures circling overhead, and if you're not familiar with turkey vultures, they eat Dead organisms. They're really disgusting looking birds. I'm sure that they're vital to our ecosystem, but they're pretty gross. So they saw them circling overhead and they knew that that meant there was a dead creature nearby, and the police decided to check it out. Going into the woods, police found what the vultures were looking for under a pile of branches they found what remained of a human torso with bullet wounds in the back, no head, no arms, and the legs were cut off, mid thigh and still wearing pants. So whoever did this Cut the body up while it was still clothed. Police didn't know at the time who this was for sure, but we know now that that was what remained of Bart Halderson. They would find other things on the property, including an SKS rifle, which is apparently a Russian rifle, and it was stashed away under some wood inside of a barn. They would find a bloodstained tarp in the woods and an old water tank with a bunch of cutting tools like scissors, sawblades and a lot of other DNA evidence. Dna tests would match the blood to both Bart and Krista Halderson, but just the discovery of the scene was enough cause to arrest Chandler for murder. With Chandler's arrest, there were a lot of people who came forward about his strange behavior. The week that his parents went missing, one of his Napers told the police about how he had knocked on their door inquiring about footage from their security cameras, and the footage from their ring doorbell is actually available online. It was kind of weird that he was walking around and asking people what they gave to police if they did give anything to police, knowing what we know. Now it kind of seems like he wanted to know what police knew at the time. They chalked it up to him just having reported his parents missing and wanting to know if there was any evidence. And now Kat would come forward with some information that she had. She had the snapchat screenshot of when he was by the Wisconsin River and how she bought him hydrogen peroxide and the Swiffer wet jet to clean up the accident from the fireplace that he had told her about. When the police saw the location that Chandler was at near the Wisconsin River that Kat had indicated on snap map, they searched the area and found what was later identified as Krista Halderson's complete right leg and her left foot, I believe. At this location they also found a target bag that had Kat's information on it because, like I said, when she came to Chandler's house she did a target pickup and he had actually used this target bag to clean up some of the evidence and put some bloody rags inside of. I believe this was also Found there. It may have been found back at the barn, but I want to say it was by the Wisconsin River. The police had found Krista and Bart's phones as well, and and obviously we know that Krista had not texted Bart saying that they were gonna stay in White Lake for a couple more days. We know that she's passed away at this point, but Chandler was trying to pass it off like his parents had left and there was no way that he could have done anything to them because, see, I have this text message saying that she's in White Lake and I Guess he didn't realize that cell phones ping off of towers. So the text message had pinged off of the closest tower to the Halderson house, meaning that Chandler had texted himself from his mom's phone and then he had turned it off and wrapped it in tin foil. Because a lot of people think and I'm not sure if it's real Because I've seen a couple different sources I'm leaning towards it actually is, but I guess after you wrap your phone in tin foil it can't be traced. I think it's incredibly ironic that Chandler had lied about going to school for an IT degree and an interest in technology and then he was stupid enough to Use technology to create more evidence of his crimes. One of Chandler's neighbors testified that on July 1st he had noticed a strong smell of burning wood in the neighborhood and After a few minutes the smell had changed. What he described as like a barbecuing a large pig, which is the most disgusting thing because it's going exactly where you think it is. Chandler had tried to burn his parents dead bodies in his family's fireplace. It wasn't an accident with his dog that had broken the glass on the fireplace, it was Chandler's dumbass. Security camera footage from a neighbor's house that had a view of the back of the house would show consistent light with fire burning. You could kind of see in the windows that it's almost like flames because of a regular living room light or a lamp, because a regular light would be consistent, it wouldn't move at all. But in the footage you can kind of see that the light would flicker here and there and it would change brightness. So it was definitely a flame in the living room at the time. What police do in these investigations is just so interesting to me. I mean, obviously I have a true crime podcast. I am fascinated. But when police do good work, like they did in this case, they do some pretty interesting things. So one of the police officers actually went over to the neighbor's house and filmed and another officer went in and shown a flashlight through each of the windows so that they could tell and make sure that the light flickering that they saw was in fact from the living room where the fireplace was. And I just thought that was so cool that they took the extra step to do that, that they didn't just go with it and be like, yep, that's the living room. They had to prove it. So they went in with the flashlight and got that evidence and I just thought that was a cool little tidbit. So once investigators figured out that Chandler had tried to incinerate his parents' bodies there was a lot of evidence that came from this From what investigators could tell Chandler had failed to account for the fact that when fat is over a fire, it becomes flammable. Based on the burn marks around the fireplace and the broken glass panel on the fireplace screen, it appears as if the fire escaped into the house and needed to be put out. And investigators did find a fire extinguisher that was empty in the basement. Chandler also didn't take into account that a fireplace does not get nearly hot enough to properly cremate a body. Cremation takes place between 1400 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and fireplaces only get to about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. This is why he inevitably gave up and decided to put his parents' body parts in different places, like next to the Wisconsin River and at Crest's property. So Chandler did actually step on broken glass. Obviously it was not the dog story that he had told to cat, but he did step on broken glass and he actually showed the cut on his foot to multiple people, especially people who worked in the medical field, asking them if it looked okay. But the cut on his foot was not why he wanted cat to pick up the hydrogen peroxide in a Swiffer wet jet. It was to clean up blood evidence. Hydrogen peroxide and lemon work really well to pick up blood and lemon is a deodorizer. But the amount of blood evidence that they found at their home was staggering and when he was being questioned by police they asked him would there be any reason why your parents' blood is in the home? And he said that both of his parents who are not genetically related, by the way have terrible nosebleeds, just like out of nowhere, and sometimes they wouldn't even know that they're happening. They would just like be dripping blood out of nowhere, and that I believe it was. Bart had really bad psoriasis and would just scratch his legs until they bled and let it bleed everywhere, which is one of the worst lives that he's told this whole time. Like who is gonna believe that, bro? They also found in the ashtrap, which I didn't even know existed. An ashtrap is a little compartment that falls down out of your fireplace to collect ash. I thought it all stayed in in the fireplace that you can see, but I guess ash falls down into this ashtrap and it really doesn't need to be emptied that often. You could use it for a whole winter and only need to empty it once and it's fine. So they went down into the ashtrap and opened it up and found a lot of bone fragments, including skull fragments, by the way, which, if you think about it, is the most heinous thing I've heard in a long time. It means that his parents' heads were cut off and burned in this fireplace. A total of 230 bone fragments were retrieved from the fireplace's ashtrap. That is insane. They found all sorts of bones Spongy bones. They found part of a patella, of course, the skull bone I already mentioned. But it's just amazing to me how little he cared about his parents' remains. I mean, I have my dogs cremated ashes and I treasure them. I would never get rid of my dogs' ashes. And he just left fragments of both of his parents around the state of Wisconsin and in his family's fireplace. It's just insanity to me, honestly. That is all the evidence I'm going to present to you in this episode, just because there is so much here. The full trial is on YouTube. All the footage that they have from ranked doorbell cameras is on YouTube. They had every time he left his parents' house. They have everything available for you. If you want to dive more into this case, I'll try to link as much as I can in the show notes, but that's all I'm going to present to you for right now. So onto the trial. Chandler opted for a speedy trial, which began in January of 2022. So that's kind of a quick turnaround. His parents were murdered in July of 2021 and then in January of 2022, we're already at the trial. That's lightning speed for the way our justice system works. Chandler's entire defense strategy really boiled down to how can any of us be sure of anything? Which, honestly, I can't blame his defense team at all. He gave them nothing to work with. He had no shot at winning this case, but his defense team was really, really bad. If you watch the footage on YouTube, you can actually see his attorney call him by the wrong name, call her own client Chandler multiple times it's not once like a slip of the tongue Chandler multiple times, and his attorney was actually very unprofessional, talking about how much better the prosecution was treated and how they had more tables than the defense had. It's actually a very interesting trial. It only took the jury two hours to unanimously find him guilty and he was given the maximum sentence allowed on all charges Two counts of first degree intentional homicide, which was a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Mutilating corpse seven years, six months. Hiding a corpse, which was seven years and six months, and providing false information about a missing person, which is three years. All of these sentences are going to be served concurrently, but obviously, since he received a life sentence without the possibility of parole for intentional homicide, the rest of the charges don't really matter in terms of his sentence. He's going to die in prison. Chandler's lawyers never called any witnesses in his defense, least of all him, which, of course, was probably a good choice given how many lies that he told and how many of his lies were going to be exposed, and it's also not really uncommon for defense attorneys to not want their own clients to testify on their own. Perhaps the only thing that Chandler said in court was at his sentencing hearing and he said your Honor, I want to take this opportunity to state my intention to appeal my convictions. If there are any lawyers listening and willing to take on my appeal, please reach out to me. It's not that I do not have any feelings. It's that I was warned not to show them due to the scrutiny of this case. Thank you, so that is all I have for you today on Chandler Halderson and Krista and Bart. What all they went through. I can't imagine how they felt in their final moments, if they even knew what was happening, because, like I said, bart at least was shot in the back, so he may not have known who had done this or even what was happening to him when he passed, but I couldn't imagine knowing that the person that you love most in the world is the one who murdered you. But, like I said, in this episode, everything is available on YouTube the whole trial, everything. So if you want to look more into this case, there is plenty more to find out. I couldn't possibly put it all into one episode, especially because I only have a few days between episodes to make all the content for you and I am trying to play around with how long these episodes should be. I've heard some feedback from family and friends about liking shorter episodes or liking longer episodes, so if you could chime in and let me know what you think. I just want to create content that other people will enjoy as well as I enjoy making. So I personally like, when podcasts that I listen to have longer episodes because I listen to them at work. But if you're someone who prefers shorter episodes and maybe I could split something into two parts that way it's a little bit easier for you to consume I'd be happy to do that. So if you just let me know what you think in the comments or let me know on Instagram, I am open to feedback. There is one more thing I want to mention before I go. I will be on an upcoming episode of Dave and Doc doing an interview. I've been on their podcast before because, if you don't know, I had this podcast last year and then I had some stuff happen and I took all the episodes down and I'm re-recording them and making new episodes in better quality. I have a better microphone. I have this booth that I constructed that has better sound quality. If you want to hear more about that, I am recording it this Saturday. I'm not sure when it's going to go up, so I am going to link their podcast below if you want to check that out. There's going to be lots of things linked below, but I'm going to put them at the very top. That way, in case you want to see my upcoming episode with them, you can check it out. But until I see you next Friday with a brand new case, stay safe and remember to question everything. Bye, bye, bye.