Murder of Kristil Krug

Kristil Krug, a 43-year-old biochemical engineer and mother of three, was fatally attacked in the garage of her home in Broomfield, Colorado, on December 14, 2023, shortly after driving her children to school. She was struck in the head with a blunt object and stabbed in the chest. Her husband, Daniel Krug, called police to request a welfare check that day, and a responding officer found her dead.

In the roughly ten weeks before her death, Krug had been reporting a stalking campaign to police. Beginning in early October 2023, she received threatening texts and emails from someone using the identity of a man she had briefly dated more than two decades earlier. She kept a log of the messages, hired a private investigator, met with a Broomfield police detective in November 2023, took firearms-safety training, and bought a handgun. Investigators initially looked at the man she had dated in the early 2000s, who by then lived in Utah, several hundred miles away; he was cleared after providing a time-stamped store receipt and other records placing him there at the time of the killing.

Digital evidence instead led investigators to Daniel Krug. The harassing messages were traced to an account created on the computer network of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, where he worked, and burner phones used in the scheme had been purchased with a gift card registered in his name. Records showed he had made online searches about head trauma and unconsciousness the day before the killing. Investigators also concluded that text messages sent from Kristil's phone that morning, which suggested she was alive later than she was, had been scheduled in advance, and that the home's security system and doorbell camera had been disabled or covered shortly before the attack. He was arrested two days after the murder and charged with first-degree murder, stalking, and criminal impersonation.

At a multi-week trial in Broomfield County District Court, prosecutors argued that Daniel Krug staged the stalking campaign to position himself as his wife's protector while their marriage was failing, and killed her as the scheme risked being traced back to him; the defense argued that no physical evidence directly tied him to the killing. On April 17, 2025, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder, two stalking counts, and criminal impersonation. The next day, a judge sentenced him to the mandatory term of life in prison without parole for the murder, plus nine and a half consecutive years on the other counts, and found that the crimes constituted domestic violence.

Oregon enacted House Bill 4045, known as Kristil's Law, as chapter 34 of the 2026 session laws. The governor signed it on March 31, 2026. For covered warrants in domestic-violence and stalking investigations, the measure requires social-media platforms to respond within 72 hours and other communications providers within five business days; the new warrant-response process began operating May 1, 2026. Those deadlines do not apply to every warrant. [Oregon Legislative Information System](https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2026R1/Measures/Overview/HB4045)