DENVER (AP) — In the late fall of 2023, Kristil Krug got a text purporting to be from an old boyfriend and asking if she would like to “hook up” while he was in town. She didn’t respond.
Other messages followed, often angry and obscene, including one referring to her “loser husband” and others that indicated she was being watched.
A few weeks after the initial text, she was found fatally stabbed and beaten in her suburban Denver home.
Opening statements could come as soon as Friday in the trial of the man who prosecutors say actually sent the messages and then killed Krug: her husband.
Daniel Krug, 44, is charged with first-degree murder, stalking and criminal impersonation in his wife’s death in Broomfield.
His lawyers, Joseph Morales and Phillip Andrew Geigle, did not respond to a call seeking comment.
Krug was arrested Dec. 16, 2023, two days after his wife was found on the floor of their garage by a police officer. While at his job with the state health department, he had asked police to do a welfare check, saying she failed to respond to his text messages.
Three of the home’s surveillance cameras, which Kristil Krug’s mother said she installed because of the recent stalking, were not recording when she was found, according to the arrest affidavit. The one in the garage was covered with tape.
Video from cameras at neighboring homes did not show any unknown person entering the home in the hours leading up to her being found, the document said.
Kristil Krug had contacted police about the messages, which she thought came from the former boyfriend. After she was killed, police traced the IP address for the texts to Daniel Krug’s workplace, according to the affidavit.
At the time of the killing, the ex-boyfriend was an eight-hour drive away in Utah, where he was living, the affidavit said. He is not a suspect.
Krug’s mother told police that her daughter’s relationship with her husband was not good, and that she wanted to get divorced and seek full custody of their three children.
Krug, had a degree in biochemical engineering and a fulfilling career in technology and innovation, as well as a passion for the performing arts and modern dance, according to her obituary.
“She accomplished so much in her short life, and had so much left to contribute before being so savagely removed,” it read. “The world will miss what she had yet to give us.”
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