BROOMFIELD, Colo. — A Broomfield man convicted of killing his wife after stalking her while posing as her ex-boyfriend was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The mandatory sentence came a day after jurors found Daniel Bartholomew Krug, 44, guilty of first-degree murder, two counts of stalking, and criminal impersonation.
Krug was also sentenced to eight years for the stalking charges and 18 months for the impersonation charge. All are set to run consecutive to one another.
Feeling like he was losing control of his marriage to his wife Kristil – who was preparing to divorce him and was working toward fully custody of their children – prosecutors said Wednesday that Krug decided to play “puppet master” over his family by scaring his wife and then trying to protect her from the fake stalking to win her back.
An investigation by police into the threatening messages Kristil was receiving from Krug while he impersonated an ex-boyfriend in late 2023, however, led Krug to believe authorities were closing in on him and he started to plan how he would kill his wife, prosecutors said during the trial.
Screengrab via pool video
They said Krug waited for her to return to their Broomfield home on Dec. 14, 2023, after taking two of their children to school and then knocked her unconscious and stabbed her in the heart.
He was arrested two days later.
At the time of the killing, Kristil’s ex-boyfriend was living in Utah, prosecutors said, arguing he could not have committed the crime based on shopping receipts, license plate readers and lack of flight records that showed he was nowhere near the couple’s Broomfield home at the time of the crime.
In closing arguments, the defense argued there was no physical evidence linking Krug to the violent killing, noting that there was no blood found in his car or his clothes, which his daughter said were the same he was wearing when he drove her to the bus stop that morning. None of Krug’s DNA was found at the scene, though partial DNA from an unknown person was found on her neck, the defense said.
In response, prosecutors said Krug was searching online for how hard to hit somebody to cause unconsciousness on his work computer just 17 hours before the killing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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