The morning started like any other in the quiet Colorado suburb. Dan Krug kissed his wife goodbye, or maybe he didn’t. He left for work at 8:24 a. m.
on December 14th, 2023. Kristine Krug, known to everyone as Kristi, took her kids to school and came back home. The house was quiet. The cameras were rolling.
Then, less than four hours after Dan left, he called the police from his office. “Broomfield dispatch. ”
“Hi there. My wife is not responding to text messages or phone calls.
We have both been targeted by a stalker. ”
The dispatcher assured him officers would be sent over to check the house. It was the uncharacteristic lack of communication from Kristi that worried everyone. She always answered.
She always responded. She was the kind of woman who had everything under control. “151, send medical and 110. I need a force entry.
”
“I got a female down in the garage. Send backup. ”
The first responders arrived to find the garage door opened, Kristi lying on the ground. She had a head wound.
She was not breathing. A paramedic checked her pulse and tried to keep her alive while police cleared the house. Officers swept through every room, calling out, “Broomfield police, anybody inside, make yourself known. ” They found no one.
The stalker, whoever he was, was gone. Kristi’s mom arrived shortly after. She tried to get into the garage, desperate to see her daughter. A kind officer led her away gently, telling her he understood.
She didn’t want to hear it. She knew something was deeply, terribly wrong. When Dan arrived, police asked everyone to wait so they could share all the information together. He stood there, waiting, his face pale.
“Where is she? ” he asked. “Oh my god. Where is she gone?
”
They told him that Kristi was dead. She had been hit over the head multiple times with a blunt object. She had also been stabbed to the heart. The woman who had been so careful, so organized, so determined to protect her family, was gone.
—
Back in September of 2023, just months before that fateful December morning, life seemed normal. Kristi was an interesting, feisty, intelligent woman. Everyone who knew her talked about her kindness and her generosity. She studied biochemical engineering and had a successful career in technology.
Colleagues described her as having an amazing reputation, being well-liked and well-respected. She managed to be both an integrated working mom and a respected professional, which everyone agreed was not an easy thing to do. Then, in September, police received a call from the Krug residence about an intruder. Kristi described coming downstairs to find the door open.
She saw someone, she thought it was a guy, but it was so fast. Blue jeans, gray shirt. He ran out, jumped over her gate, and took off. She told the officer she cared less about following him than getting inside and checking on her kids.
Her daughter was adamant no one had come into the house. She never heard the garage door open. The officer suggested they had a double lock to work off of, reassured her, and told her to have a good rest of her night. He was sorry that happened to her.
Just over a week later, Kristi received a stream of unwanted messages from an ex-boyfriend she had dated twenty years ago. She didn’t respond, but the texts became more sexually explicit, insulting, and threatening. There were also sexually explicit photographs. Experts later explained that this kind of messaging is a form of sexual assault.
It comes into your phone. It’s an emotional and psychological violation. For a woman like Kristi, who valued her privacy and her safety, that would have felt incredibly intrusive and invasive. On October 31st, the threat level escalated.
The stalker sent Kristi an email with a photo of her husband at work. This wasn’t just an ex-boyfriend harassing her for attention. This was a potential real threat of harm to her husband or her family. It escalated her emotional state and her sense of danger.
Kristi called the police immediately. “Hi there. I need to report threatening emails and phone calls from a stalking ex. He has been threatening violence against both me and my family.
I have text messages and an email today that had a picture of my husband threatening to put something in his tailpipe. ”
“This is your ex? ”
“Yes, from 20 years ago. I’ve never given him my email address.
I’ve never given him my phone number. He’s clearly looking me up. ”
Police had to respond seriously now. They called Kristi in to talk through the stalker’s methods.
She told detectives about her historic relationship with Anthony. They had dated in the summer of 1999, very briefly. They argued but never in a violent way. She broke it off with him, and they ended fairly amicably.
The last contact she ever had with him was in the spring of 2001. She met her husband in the summer of 2001 and got married in 2007. They had been together through college and built a life together. Kristi came across as very organized.
You could see the project manager in her. She had dates, photographs, records. She was doing everything she could to deal with a very difficult situation. Over the years, she had received a handful of messages from Anthony, but in the fall of 2023 they suddenly intensified.
She couldn’t tell if it was him, couldn’t verify it. But the aggression within the messages warranted a forensic digital investigation. “First thing that I want to start with is writing different search warrants to a lot of these different phone companies, seeing what comes up, whether there’s IP addresses, anything like that. But usually we get a result and records returned in about 30 to 35 days on average.
But it’s not outside of the scope to be six or eight weeks. ”
That was a long time to wait. With a possible two more months of uninvited attention, Kristi needed to make sure she was protected. “You have cameras?
”
“Yes. ”
“And the one thing I always impart when you feel that if you need to defend yourself, you want to maximize injury, escape, and call 911. You have a good, robust safety system already in place. You have plans, so stick with those.
”
“My cell phone is right there. ”
Even under this pressure, Kristi was still taking care of her children and her home. She was still married. She was still functioning.
Everyone who saw her thought she was moving forward and handling everything, even knowing underneath she was not okay. Just two days after meeting the police, the threat level increased even further. Kristi received a message that indicated her stalker knew she had been at the dentist. She was convinced he might have placed a tracker in her car.
She called the police again. “Kristi? ”
“Kristi, that’s my handwriting. Yeah, that’s my name.
”
“Nothing jumps out at me. I’m just going to grab some photos of the car just to document what it looks like right now. ”
“I can only assume a tracker based on the fact that he could show up there. ”
“I think it’d be obvious.
I mean, there’s nothing to me that’s out of the ordinary. ”
“Okay, the in-person stuff, that’s scaring the crap out of me. This has been starting since last Tuesday, and it’s been almost every day since. ”
Kristi looked much more disturbed than she did in the police interview.
She seemed genuinely freaked out that the stalker knew she was at the dentist. She couldn’t figure out how this was escalating into a level that made her feel very, very uncomfortable. “Just make sure you’re keeping doors closed, locked, all that good stuff. ”
“I mean, we have cameras now everywhere on the property, and I’m going to also get my permit for my concealed carry, so yeah, I will be making sure I am protected.
”
“Well, thank you. ”
“All right. You’re very welcome. ”
“All right.
And then if anything else, please don’t hesitate to call. ”
But just a few days later, Kristi received another alarming message. This time, it indicated that the stalker had been inside her husband’s office. At this point, she felt none of them actually was safe anymore.
Police went to Dan’s office in Glendale to check the CCTV footage. After searching through it, they couldn’t find a recording of any individual who was not meant to be there. With the threats now extending to Dan, he went to speak with police in person. “I just wanted to introduce myself.
You and I haven’t had a chance to meet. I just wanted to sit down with you and see how you’re doing and what information you might have that I don’t already know. ”
“Okay. I have never met him, never interacted via any social media platform.
All I know about him is what she has relayed to me. ”
Dan also revealed he was having marital problems with Kristi. “We do maintain separate bedrooms. Marriage itself has ups and downs.
Rocky patch. This is not helping. ”
“Yeah. So, what am I doing?
I’m panicking. And I’m doing what? Protecting my wife. So I’m not doing good.
”
“Yeah, I can see that. ”
Three days later, another email came. Kristi installed cameras on the outside and inside of her car in case she came into contact with her stalker. She was reaching a breaking point.
At that point, you don’t know what the person is capable of. That’s the whole disturbing part. You don’t know if there’s an escalation, where it’s going to end. Is it going to end in violence?
It’s the unknown and the potential for harm that is the most disturbing thing. Kristi knew she was in true danger. She knew something was really wrong. And she was desperate to stay safe.
—
The investigation into Kristi’s murder began immediately. The house was now a crime scene. Police began looking for evidence. They discovered the family’s doorbell camera had been covered with blue masking tape.
Some of the home security cameras had been turned off that morning. But a device across the road was still filming, and there was no trace of anyone visiting the Krug home that morning. Other than Dan leaving for work, nobody had left. Nobody had come.
Police needed any information that could lead them to Kristi’s killer. Her grieving husband tried to help. “Dan, I know this is the last thing in the world that you ever want to experience. We’re trying to do our very best to figure everything out.
Okay? So, I have your permission to operate this phone and get what we need? ”
“Yeah. ”
“Okay.
So, when do your cameras go off? Do you ever have them set to turn off? ”
“24/7. They don’t turn off.
”
“And if one has the ability to turn off cameras, who has the ability to go in there and turn this off? ”
“Kristi? Me. Those are the only people.
”
“That’s it. ”
“That’s it. All right. ”
Then his voice cracked.
“I didn’t protect her. ”
“It’s not your fault. ”
“I know. I was so hurt.
I know. ”
—
Detectives managed to track down Kristi’s ex-boyfriend, Anthony, in Utah and gave him a call. He answered, sounding calm. Detective Martinez introduced himself.
“We’re just trying to piece this together because your name’s been thrown around as somebody who had been here recently. So, when’s the last time you saw Kristi? ”
“Last time I saw her was like 2000 when we broke up. She was my very first girlfriend, so I think about her sometimes, but I have no idea where she lives.
I’ve never even tried to find where she lives. I haven’t been to Colorado since 2016. I’ve been in Idaho the whole time since, and then I just moved to Utah in February. ”
Local police verified everything Anthony said.
He hadn’t left his home community for any length of time. He simply couldn’t have done it. Detectives returned to the digital forensics. They located the source of the stalker’s messages.
The IP addresses for the messages and photos led back to one place: Dan Krug’s work computer. Armed with the digital evidence, the police had another discussion with Dan. “I mean, who do you think killed her? ”
“I think it’s Anthony.
If not him, why him? I have no other suggestions. ”
“What if I told you that we had already spoken with Anthony and there’s no way that he was in town today? ”
“And I have nothing.
And I’m terrified to bring my children home. ”
Detectives explained that the source of the stalking messages had been traced. The Gmail account that Kristi initially received with the photo of Dan in it, and the phone number those originated through their IP addresses at his office. “It doesn’t make any sense.
It sounds like you’re confusing me. ”
“Provide us a different explanation then. We have a lot of information that points your direction, and we are hoping that you could provide a legitimate explanation other than it wasn’t me. ”
Dan was allowed to go, adamant it couldn’t be him and that the killer was still out there.
“Find him. I don’t care if you capture him. I don’t care if you kill him. Find him.
”
But the police continued to investigate Dan. He seemed to have more than one link to the stalker. The phone used for the messages was bought with a gift card registered to Dan, and his search history was odd. Police discovered that Google searches on Dan’s devices the day before the murder included search terms like “how hard do you have to hit somebody to knock them unconscious.
” They were incredibly damning searches given the circumstances of Kristi’s death. Police also discovered that the photo taken of Dan at work was taken in selfie mode on a timer. Just two days after Kristi was killed, police had enough evidence to charge her husband, Dan, with murder. They moved in quickly.
“Hands on your face. Hands on your face. ”
Kristi did everything right, and it still wasn’t enough because she was not expecting that the stalker was her own husband. How do you protect yourself against someone you’re living with?
It’s like putting an alarm on, but the robber is already in your house. You can’t protect yourself if the person who’s threatening you is someone you’re living with and you don’t know it. When Dan was arrested, one officer asked him, “Hey Dan. Do you want me to tell your kids that you killed their mother, or do you want somebody else to?
”
Dan responded, “Okay. All right. Good luck. ”
There was no crying.
No shock. No protest of innocence that time. Just that cold, flat acceptance. —
When the news broke, those who knew Kristi felt sick.
One former colleague said she was very grateful that Kristi was going to get the justice she so deserved. Another person remarked that Dan’s job as the husband was to protect and provide for her and their children. Instead, he made her live in constant fear. The police charged Dan with murder, two counts of stalking, and criminal impersonation.
He pleaded not guilty on all counts. And in a dark twist, they discovered this wasn’t the first time he had impersonated a stalker in a relationship. Dan’s girlfriend from twenty years ago explained his behavioral pattern. “I broke up with him a couple months into my freshman year.
I started to get messages from his roommate. I started to get these really disturbing phone calls. And the phone calls were someone who had bought a voice distortion machine, like the really deep, scary kind of voice. The phone messages kept happening, and they got more aggressive as time went on.
I believe from some of the ones that I could hear, I was being called a slut and a whore and things like that. And I had a meeting with the office of special investigations at the Air Force Academy. And they said, ‘We’ve had a forensic psychologist look at all these emails. And we think it’s Dan.
’”
Given that Daniel did this before, it showed a real difficulty in managing his own feelings and accepting rejection or endings or not being loved. For those who examined the case, it pointed to his own difficulty in managing those emotions as the motivation, as the trigger for his behavior. “This was so the antithesis of who I thought Dan was and the personality he had portrayed. He was a pretty calm person.
The communication had pretty much stopped after he received the temporary restraining order. And so because that was my ultimate goal, I didn’t pursue anything further than the permanent one. ”
One detective believed Daniel killed her because he couldn’t handle the marriage breaking down. He couldn’t handle the rejection.
The disturbing part was that they had children together, and the kids were at school when he did this. Clearly, that’s a very sociopathic kind of response because he’s not thinking of anything other than just getting revenge against his wife. He did the first stalking behavior twenty odd years before, never dealt with it, didn’t get help for it, and clearly didn’t tell Kristi about it. Then, when his marriage began to break down, he did the same thing again.
But this time, he escalated. The full details of his deception were revealed at trial. He was convicted of first-degree murder, stalking, and criminal impersonation. In April 2025, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional nine years.
—
The most striking thing about this case was how amazingly thorough Kristi Krug was in her work to try to stay safe. She did everything anyone could think a woman could do in her circumstances. The cameras, the security system, the weapons. It’s heartbreaking that it didn’t save her, really.
It’s just heartbreaking it didn’t work. In the aftermath of the murder, Kristi’s family proposed a change to the law that would call for swifter execution of search warrants in cases involving stalking. They believed that if police had investigated Kristi’s stalker earlier, it might have turned their attention to her husband quicker and maybe saved her life. People are capable of incredibly cruel acts.
Sometimes that’s a sign of something called expressive violence, where someone is expressing their emotions by hurting another person or getting something out of it, like sadism. But instrumental violence can look pretty similar, where you are systematically hurting somebody in order to get information or to get something else out of them. And so it doesn’t have to have any emotions involved at all. —
In the UK, in Leicestershire, Whetstone was home to forty-year-old Natasha Moray.
Whetstone is a small village just south of Leicester, really in the middle of nowhere. That’s where Natasha lived. Natasha, known as Tasha, had a big family: three brothers and a sister. You could tell how close the family was because on her phone she kept her mother under the name “My Life.
” They were a lovely, happy family. Tasha, though, was a vulnerable person. She had physical disabilities. She found it difficult to walk.
She had a condition called neurofibromatosis, which causes nerve pain. She was really concerned about people with disabilities, and she started to blog and busied herself trying to reach out to and help other people. “Afternoon, this is my blog. Today is about mindfulness.
Always be aware of others if you live in a communal area or if you share with others. Always be mindful. ”
She had struggled in her life, and emotionally she was fragile because her boyfriend, Reuben Craven, had died in a horrific car crash in the summer. She had been a passenger and had been injured, too.
Only four weeks after the car crash, on June 22nd, Leicestershire police received a 999 call. Natasha’s mother was reporting that she could not get hold of her daughter and was concerned. Police knocked but got no reply. So, they forced the door.
Inside the flat was no sign of anybody, no sign of Natasha. The flat was in a state of disarray. And there was some blood. Their attention turned to an ottoman-style bed.
The bed opened with a storage space beneath it. In it, they found Natasha’s body. She wasn’t breathing. But she was still warm to the touch.
She had a gag around her face and chin to stop her screaming. Ligature had been used, cable ties around her neck. It appeared that Natasha had been tortured in several ways, including being burned and being beaten. It was a horrific scene for officers to walk into.
Natasha was found in a terrible state. All of this suggested either that someone took their time and really savored hurting her in an almost psychopathic way, or they wanted something and were torturing her in an effort to extract information, money, or something else out of her. —
Natasha’s mother told police that she had received text messages from Natasha’s number that seemed out of character. When the family got to the flat, they found that there was somebody inside it who called down from the window and told them that Tasha wasn’t there, which they found hard to believe.
The mother didn’t know who the male was, but her son, Tasha’s brother, did. He had been to school with him. He knew that he was Shannon Grant. Shannon Grant was twenty-seven.
He was tall, athletic, and powerfully built. It must not be forgotten that Natasha was a weak, vulnerable, disabled woman. He could easily have overpowered her. Police searched for cameras outside Natasha’s home to check the family’s theory.
They saw Shannon leaving the block of flats where Tasha lived. Footage showed him talking on the phone and trying to find a place to dispose of a bag. He was seen on the way back, still on the phone, no rucksack, no jacket. The bag was gone.
Other cameras captured Shannon Grant holding what appeared to be Natasha’s bank card. He could be seen on his phone a lot, trying to call someone else, looking quite frustrated. Knowing the scene that Shannon left in Natasha’s apartment, it seemed unusual that he would be just walking around quite calmly. You’d expect him to be worried, panicking, upset in some way.
The question was, who was he calling? Why was he the whole time trying to reach somebody? The bag was recovered. In it, they found clothing, a black top, and, more tellingly, a sawn-off shotgun.
A gangland kind of weapon to keep. At that point, police had got all they needed, apart from one thing. They needed to find Shannon Grant and apprehend him. —
Police needed to look at Natasha’s personal life to find out more about Shannon Grant.
Natasha had come to know Shannon through her boyfriend, Reuben. Natasha and Reuben met in their twenties. It was sort of friends to lovers. They had a connection all throughout Natasha’s life.
On the fifth of June, 2023, there was a car crash that involved Natasha and Reuben. He was killed. Natasha walked away with minor injuries, and she was devastated after this. She was very vulnerable after losing Reuben.
Reuben had died only four weeks before Tasha was killed. And after Reuben’s death, Shannon Grant had stepped in and offered her support, coming to present himself as a kind of guardian angel to her. She was starting to hang out with him more, and that was potentially a connection to Reuben in some way. But the more police learned about Natasha’s background, the more skeptical they became of her self-appointed guardian angel.
Tasha had been left a considerable sum of money by her grandmother, who cared deeply for her and knew that Tasha was vulnerable. For this reason, the money was kept by her mother. Tasha would have to be in touch with her mother if she wanted to buy anything. And because of that, police began to wonder whether there wasn’t some cynical alternative motive to Shannon Grant’s newly found affection for Tasha.
—
Police continued scouring the neighborhood for footage recorded in the days before the murder. Next, they discovered some supermarket footage in which Shannon could be seen with Tasha. She was spending money on her account, buying items for them. Police conducted a review of what money had gone from her bank account and where.
It became apparent that in the few weeks she had known Shannon, he had got her to spend quite considerable money. This had the makings of a romance scam. This is someone who is taking, taking, taking, and then eventually takes too much. This man who wasn’t in her life before suddenly she bought him expensive watches, clothing, trainers.
Her mom was sending her more and more money, and she ended up needing more money due to the fact that Shannon Grant needed more money. All signs indicated that Shannon was engaging in a type of romance fraud, which is in a really nasty way referred to as pig butchering. That’s the term police use to make people aware of the specific kind of fraud he was engaging in. You tell people things they want to hear.
You tell them they’re special, that you want to be friends with them, maybe that you’re in love with them, depending on the context. You’re thereby fattening the pig. And then you extract, you start butchering by taking money and resources from them. By the end, what we see in this case is that he actually kills her in an effort to get the rest of the money.
—
Police discovered video that revealed the exact moment Shannon Grant made the decision to kill. Chillingly, the day before the killing, Shannon Grant was caught on CCTV footage from a different shop. But this time he wasn’t buying items of luxury. He was caught buying a set of cable ties.
They were white, large, industrial-size cable ties. And they were what was going to be used by him to tie her up and restrain her in the attack he made upon her the next day. Those cable ties were bought using her bank card. The video evidence and witness testimony from neighbors helped police put together a disturbing timeline.
The neighbors heard screams at about three in the afternoon on the day Tasha died. But a grim mystery in the case was that the attack on Tasha had actually started in the late evening of the night before. The neighbors heard some kind of hammering noise. The campaign of torture must have broken off before being recommenced, because police also discovered that a delivery driver who had taken some food to the flat had seen Tasha.
She answered the door at about half past one in the morning. The best guess was that she was terrified for her life, had become paralyzed with fear, and was just being completely compliant. That would fit with her vulnerabilities and what she was suffering. Police discovered that she had made three telephone calls to her bank forty-five minutes after the scream had been heard by the neighbors.
It seemed plain that what was happening was that she was being subjected to torture, violence, threats of violence, and that Shannon was making her call her bank. That’s a horrible experience. And for Natasha, if she was realizing that all of this pain he was inflicting on her was to get at the rest of her money, that it was always about the money, that must have been a catastrophic moment for her to realize. —
At 5:47 p.
m. , Natasha’s mother received a series of text messages. It seemed as if that was a message Shannon had sent, not her. By then, she may not have been able to send any messages at all.
Natasha’s mom, Jacqueline, and her brother, Joel, went round to the flat after receiving the strange message asking for cash. Shannon stuck his head out the window and refused to let Natasha’s family in. Joel said he heard a flurry of activity, doors banging, what sounded like footsteps running back and forth, sort of panicked movement. By the time the police arrived, Shannon had disappeared.
Police knew that Shannon Grant lived in Coventry. Police were able to find him and arrest him. At the property, they found several items: her bank card, a watch, and other personal effects belonging to Natasha. One of the features of the case was the orderliness with which Shannon Grant conducted himself over this period of time.
On the day of the killing itself, he did the school run. He went into the hardware shop and bought the cable ties in what looked to be a very matter-of-fact way. He must have known at that time what he was intending to do. —
Once police learned more about Shannon, it transpired that Natasha was not the only woman in his life.
He was in an entirely separate relationship and had been for thirteen years. He had two children with his partner. This was a relationship that Tasha knew nothing about. The case went to trial in March 2024.
At trial, Shannon Grant claimed that he wasn’t guilty, that there were other men involved, that it was more of an orchestrated outside job. But the cameras revealed that this killer was acting alone. No one would answer his call or give him a lift back to Coventry, where he was trying to get to after he had tortured and murdered Natasha. Him saying that there were other people involved, but no one would even give him a lift, clearly fell apart.
Ultimately, there was a lot of Natasha’s DNA found on many of these items that Shannon had been seen trying to dispose of on CCTV. On the 21st of March 2024, Shannon Grant was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was ordered to serve a minimum term of thirty-four years. —
He targeted her when she was emotionally vulnerable and used her for her money.
Despite her lavishing him with gifts and buying him what he wanted, he wanted direct, absolute access to that money. That led him to torture her as if she weren’t nothing. What’s important to remember about Natasha is that fraud victims, whether it’s a romance fraud or any other kind of fraud, are never to blame for their circumstances. This is someone who’s being kind, generous, supporting this person.
This isn’t even a stranger. This is someone she’s known for a really long time. This could happen to literally anybody, especially if they trust the person. That’s how fraudsters design the circumstances.
They design their scripts. They design what they say to their victims to elicit trust. And so the fact that she trusts him is literally because she’s being manipulated to do that. Maybe she had started to see through him.
Maybe it was beginning to be difficult for him to get money from her. And so he turned to violence. Tasha should be remembered for the happy, sweet, loving, caring woman that she was. She deserved none of this.
Her family can only hope to hang on to that picture of her.
