What the camera saw
The detectives watched the week of July 1 to July 7 from across the street.
Chandler had said his parents left with another couple. The video showed no vehicle leaving the Halderson house during the time he said they were picked up.
What it did show was the family’s own cars. Krista’s Volvo and Bart’s Subaru came and went all week, some trips leaving as early as 4:31 in the morning, some coming back as late as 11:30 at night. Chandler’s girlfriend’s Subaru visited several times.
And a neighbor’s security camera recorded something else that week: a flickering glow in a window of the Halderson house, next to the fireplace. It went on for hours.
Krista’s cousin, Barbi Townsend, would later see that clip in court. “That is haunting,” she told “48 Hours,” “knowing what was happening.”
A tip from a farm
On July 8 the detectives got another call. The owner of a farm in rural Cottage Grove, about 20 miles from Windsor, was a friend of Chandler’s girlfriend, Cathryn “Cat” Mellender. She said Chandler had been at her property over the Fourth of July weekend, and then had come back the next day, alone. She had seen him walking out of the wood line. His car had been backed up to the field.
Deputies went to search the property. At the same time, detectives brought Chandler in for another interview.
For nearly two hours, Detectives Brian Shunk and William Hendrickson walked him back through every day from June 30 to July 7. He told them that on Thursday, July 1, his parents had told him over dinner that they were going to the cabin with friends, to deal with a plumbing problem. He said he had helped them pack tools.
He mixed up days. He asked for headache medicine.
What he didn’t know was that, out at the farm, deputies had followed a trail of flattened grass into the woods. Hidden under sticks and twigs, they had found human remains: an adult man. In an old oil drum nearby were cutting tools, including scissors and a broken bow saw.
The detectives stopped asking about the timeline.
“This is the only chance you’re going to have to tell us the truth,” Hendrickson told him. “I can’t tell you what we know, but we know you’re not telling us the truth. We know your parents are no longer with us, okay? And we know the reason why.”
“Your parents never made it to the cabin,” Shunk said, “and I think you know that.”
Chandler asked for a lawyer. He was arrested that night for giving false information about missing persons.
The lies behind the lie
Within days, the remains from the farm were identified as Bart Halderson. He had been shot at least twice in the back. Chandler was charged with his father’s murder on July 15.
Investigators soon found what they believed was the reason.
Almost everything Chandler had told his family about his life was false. He had flunked out of Madison College. There was no internship at American Family Insurance. There was no job at SpaceX. When his parents asked about his transcripts, he invented college staff members and wrote them emails from fake Gmail accounts, emails his father thought were real.
In June 2021, Bart called Madison College himself. A college official told him: “I don’t see that you were admitted in any program.”
Bart had arranged to go to the college with Chandler on Thursday, July 1. Around 2 p.m. that day, he texted his son: “I’m ready whenever you are.”
It is believed to be the last message Bart Halderson ever sent.
The Snapchat screenshot
Krista was still missing. The break came from the girlfriend.
Cat Mellender had long suspected Chandler of cheating, and she had made him agree to share his location with her on Snapchat. She let detectives download her phone.
On the morning of July 1, Chandler had messaged her: “I just had a great future planned and it’s falling apart.”
And early on July 3, Mellender had opened Snap Map and seen his avatar, labeled “Hubby,” almost 25 miles from home, by the Wisconsin River near the Town of Roxbury. She saved a screenshot.
Search teams went to the riverbank, close to a swimming spot Chandler loved. On July 14 they found human remains there. On July 30 the sheriff’s office confirmed they were Krista’s. Chandler was charged with her murder too.
What the house held
On July 28 a deputy processing the house found Bart’s and Krista’s cell phones and driver’s licenses in the garage. They had been tucked inside a pair of shoes, wrapped in tinfoil and paper towels. The parents who had supposedly been at the cabin all along had never taken their phones.
In June 2021, a friend Chandler knew from online gaming had given him a semi-automatic rifle and nearly 480 rounds of ammunition. A rifle was later found hidden in a barn on the farm.
He had bought a tarp and 20 pounds of ice. A tarp like it turned up at the farm.
Investigators found a shell casing in the basement and traces of blood in several parts of the house, with signs of a cleanup. The day after his parents disappeared, Chandler had asked his girlfriend to bring cleaning supplies. He told her he had stepped on broken glass from the fireplace.
In that fireplace, a forensic anthropologist testified, investigators found more than 200 fragments of human bone.
“Guilty”
Chandler Halderson went on trial at the Dane County Courthouse in January 2022, on two counts of first-degree intentional homicide plus charges of lying to police and mutilating and hiding his parents’ bodies.
His lawyers admitted he had told a lot of lies, but argued that nobody could prove what had happened inside that house. Chandler did not testify, and the defense called no witnesses.
“You cannot shoot someone in the back, you cannot chop them up, you cannot scatter their remains and come to any other conclusion,” prosecutor William Brown told the jury.
On January 20, 2022, after about two hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty on every count.
He was sentenced on March 17, 2022. Before the judge ruled, Chandler said he wanted to speak. He did not apologize. He announced he intended to appeal, and asked any lawyers listening to reach out to him.
Judge John Hyland sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In 2023, a judge threw out the two hiding-a-corpse convictions on a legal technicality; the life sentence stood. In November 2025 the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld his conviction, and in June 2026 the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to review it.
Three months before she died, Krista had texted her relatives an Easter photo of “the boys and their women.” Chandler, she wrote proudly, was interning at American Family Insurance as an IT administrator.
She believed him completely. So did everyone else, until a camera across the street showed that no one had ever come to pick his parents up.
