WI v. Chandler Halderson Trial Day 1 - Prosecution Opening Statement by William Brown

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: that the opening statements are not evidence attorney brown thank you [00:00:06] William Brown: could i have the screen turned on on the left hdmi while he's doing that i'll promise you he'll give you a copy of that by the way you don't have to remember all of those instructions my name is william brown i'm the deputy district attorney of dane county yesterday you met andrew raymond together were the prosecutors in the case you heard a little bit about how the process worked in jury selection and you probably thought you were being strung along the whole time and in a bit you were everyone was trying to gauge your knowledge of the case maybe any preconceived notions you had about the criminal justice system miss vera asked you a lot of questions about what you would think if she did nothing and sat there and and those were good questions i won't do nothing in this case because it would be a very short trial if i did you're going to hear from me and miss raymond quite a bit our job in a case is to present evidence that means to call witnesses the judge talked about what evidence is we think of evidence sometimes we think of especially a murder case you're in a murder case you think of the gun and you'll get that there'll be a gun you'll see that but evidence is so much more the first thing evidence is is the first thing the judge mentioned evidence is first the sworn testimony of witnesses both on direct and cross-examination when people raise their right hand and they swear to tell the truth that's evidence now you as jurors can decide whether you believe it or not does this person have any bias or prejudice do they have anything to gain by what they're saying they have anything to lose all those things are up to you but sworn testimony is evidence photographs are evidence videos are evidence statements made by people involved in the case including mr halderson are evidence our job is to over the course of the next couple of weeks present evidence to show you the path of what we believe happened which is that chandler halderson killed his parents dismembered their bodies and hid them around southern wisconsin i've been talking about bart and krista halderson you've heard their names mentioned numerous times by the judges here that's bart and krista halderson i'm going to try to use some photos as i talk to maybe guide us along some people are more visual learners some aren't that's bart and krista halderson a couple in their early 50s living in windsor wisconsin a quiet street in a quiet house kind of in a quiet town if you don't know windsor think just south of de forest or maybe if you're heading up toward the dells when you see the fleet farm on your left if you looked right that's windsor that's the halderson home at this point perhaps it would be best if i told you a little bit about the halderson family bart the father krista the mother they have two sons chandler the defendant and his older older brother mitchell chandler and mitchell are close in age but mitchell's a little bit older the time this all happened living in the halderson home was bart halderson krista halderson and chandler mitchell had moved out mitchell had a job working as a it person for a local corporation doing pretty well in life he's engaged doing pretty well in life buying a house adult things growing up but in july of 2021 it's bart and krista living in that house and their adult 23 year old son chandler halderson living in his room now all of the events i'm going to describe for the most part take place during the first week of july from the first to about the eighth so i put up a calendar this is not evidence in the case i suppose it might be maybe i'll mark it as an exhibit but just to provide some reference and i put the little flag on there because if you remember this year the fourth of july was on a sunday everyone celebrated of course all weekend a lot of places celebrated on saturday but the fourth of july was on a sunday now i'm giving my opening statement the judge told you opening statements aren't evidence and in fact that's the reason you don't have notebooks i'd like to think so you have to pay attention to me but that's not true it's because nothing i say is evidence so as i say things up here what i'm saying is what i expect to prove in the next couple of weeks but what i expect to prove beyond any reasonable doubt is that on july 1st 2021 somewhere between 3 p.m and 5 p.m chandler halderson murdered his parents it's an important date and it's an important time to remember july 1st between 3 and 5. but the story doesn't start there and this trial wouldn't be three to four weeks if the trial ended there the story starts a week later on july 7th 2021 nearly a week after killing his parents but no one in the world knowing chandler halderson walks into the northeast precinct of the dane county sheriff's office and says i'd like to file a missing persons report he sits down with sheriff's deputies and you'll meet them today and he gives a long story my parents they just haven't come back from the cabin they were there this weekend we have a cabin up north it's in white lake up in langlade county it's pretty far up north couple of hours they just haven't come back yet they were going to come back monday or tuesday and i don't know where they are who were they with the deputies ask i don't know i helped them pack thursday night they must have left friday early before i woke up at six who'd they go with i don't know where are their cars well they're still at the house what'd you help them pack bottles of liquor lots of money tools silver bars why were they going up there some people get they were fixing a window some people got it was a plumbing issue storm damage the story varied sometimes they took just money sometimes they took just liquor but over that day the next talking to numerous sheriff's deputies detectives including those detectives he gives this bizarre story of his parents leaving in an unknown car going to a cabin with an unknown couple with an unknown amount of money for really an unknown reason so sheriff's deputies do what cops do which is they ask him have you heard from him and he says yeah i got a text from my mom and he did he showed him his phone made it safely this is from krista halderson to chas that's what his family calls him not chandler they call him chas made it safely can't get anything through though yes it's packed going to white lake today for the parade we'll be home monday night tuesday early i love you lots so at this point the sheriff's deputies don't know what they're dealing with these folks get up there and decide now we're gonna go to the casino for a few days we're gonna play hooky didn't make a lot of sense they started talking to co-workers and realized these people had never no call no showed missed work which they both did on friday did they crash their car did this other couple kidnap them where the hell are they but what good police do and what they did in this case is they start looking into the people who saw them last who were with them last who reported a missing and in this case all three of those things the person who purportedly saw them last was with them last and reported them missing were the same person there's chandler halderson so what the police did started to look into chandler halderson this is all occurring in the same 24-hour 48-hour period what they learned about him isn't suspicious at all he's a madison college student matc they go by madison college now if you didn't get the email madison college student he's about to graduate he's studying renewable resource engineering kind of a hybrid it degree with solar panels things of that sort he's about to get a certificate but things that looked bright for him he'd recently been working at american family insurance he's working from home like most of us the last couple of years but he's working a good job at american family insurance and not only was he working a good job chandler had just gotten a better job he got hired at spacex he was about to embark on a career that people in the it field could only dream of he's planning to move to titusville florida that's where spacex operation is down in florida with his girlfriend they'd rented an apartment they bought a car and not only was this not someone who was anti-social he was pro-social he was working with the madison police and the department of natural resources on their rescue diving team he was a scuba diver working with the police the only thing that was a bit odd is he'd recently suffered a head injury fallen down the stairs had terrible concussion was any unable to move for the most part had to wear a neck brace he was permanently perhaps injured all of those things threw police off from thinking it was chandler he had anything to do with this at that point for all they knew as sad as it is bart and krista and an unknown couple were crashed into a ditch somewhere between here and white lake wisconsin dead from a car crash so they started looking deputies are sent up north the langland county sheriff's department is searching a cabin no one had ever been there it didn't look like anyone had been there at all in years it was run down the grass hadn't been mowed there's no food in the refrigerator no one had been there so the police expand their search and they start talking to not only just chandler people about chandler they start talking to people who were with chandler that weekend specifically they talked to his girlfriend young girl named katherine she goes by cat and cat says i was with him like all weekend we had normal fourth of july weekend we went out to my family's farm we got a farm there was a pool we ate dinner chandler was having the concussion issue and he couldn't really move his legs and so he asked to use their pool the next day because he thought that was good therapy so the police what do they do next they go talk to the person who owns the farm and they say was chandler out here and she goes yeah he was out here on the fourth of july but you know what he showed up the next day by himself he showed up the next day by himself i told him he could come back come back anytime as we just say to people not expecting they're going to roll into your house the next day she says he was acting bizarre said that he he had a doctor's appointment and they'd given him some bad news that he was going to lose his job at spacex because he couldn't travel he couldn't attend orientation to start and she goes and he he asked to use the pool and of course i said yes this woman will testify and she'll tell you that she sat in her house for a while perhaps a bit weirded out that someone had just shown up at her rural farm but she let him have his space but about an hour later she goes down to the pool to check out of him he's not there no one had opened the pool no one had been in the pool but she sees his car it's parked out in the field away from the pool backed in toward where that grass is a bit longer and had its hatch up she thought boy that was strange but she thought maybe he's just on a walk so she goes in the pool she said i'm just gonna go in the pool if you remember that weekend it's extraordinarily hot she starts swimming she says then i see chandler he's walking out the woods in that area now at this point in the investigation the police are out there with this woman they're out on the farm and she says he walked out over there and you'll hear from the detective detective brett baverstock who was out there and he'll tell you that his eyes kind of shifted up and he saw vultures and i promise the photos are only going to go this far for right now but the police walked about 20 yards into the woods and in that pile of debris under dozens of sticks bushes and dirt they found bart halderson now when i say they found bart halderson i need to explain that they found a human torso someone had crudely chopped off the head the arms and sawed off the legs in the middle of the thigh leaving the underwear on in the beginnings of the pants they removed the sticks and brush over a course of a few hours they brought out doctors from the medical examiner's office to make sure everything was done appropriately they rolled the torso over there were gunshots in the back this man had been shot in the back and chopped up at this point the farm a beautiful farm all cultivated for years of wildflowers kind of a eden of sorts was turned into a crime scene police swarmed the place but one detective said it was a farm and one detective said that that was in the woods everyone's looking through absolutely everything they could but it's a farm there's a million places things could be but one detective said look at that in the woods is that a garbage can full of a tarp it was i'll tell you that tarp was taken out taken to the wisconsin state crime lab eventually bart halderson krista halderson their blood is all over it another detective said that spot where chandler was walking out of the woods there's an oil barrel there like an old fuel tank with a hole in it that's right where the car was parked so she peeks her head in and that's what she sees broken saw blades hand saws scissors tree loppers all of them tested by the state crime lab all of them covered human flesh and blood of bart and krista halderson the farm was searched extensively and i'll tell you that some months later things were even continuing to be found up to this fall in october the homeowner the person who owns the farm was tearing apart a barn trying to clean it and there in a barn about a hundred yards from where bart halderson was found the murder weapon behind a bunch of boards on the side of the barn at this point in the investigation the police knew they needed to start talking to chandler he's seen coming out of the location where his dad's body was just brutally chopped apart the tools the cutting instruments are found there so they do what police do they bring them downtown but they ask him and he's at the house and they ask him and his girlfriend to come downtown with them they do that girlfriend cat is in one room and chandler is in another chandler you'll see this we'll play it for over an hour meets with police and again regurgitates this odd story of his parents with this missing couple in a random car going places that no one really knew or cat in the other room she's vomiting information to the police literally vomiting at times but also vomiting information in terms of she has her phone out she's giving them pictures she's providing every single detail she can because she'll tell you when she testifies she's one of these people that watches these crime shows and she knows when someone's missing you got to exclude the people closest to him first and she thought that's what we got to do chandler didn't have anything to do with this i didn't have anything to do with this we got to get to the people who did and the first step is we got to exclude us she didn't for a second think that mr halderson had done anything wrong she thought she was with him most of the weekend and i'll tell you right now cat did nothing wrong cat was an unknowing unwilling accomplice to some of this but she did absolutely nothing wrong and she'll tell you she liked mr and mrs alderson there were the normal disputes you'd have with your boyfriend or girlfriend's parents maybe you want to go out a lot and they don't let you maybe you want to hang out more than they don't want to but she liked him her phone is full of messages between her and mrs halderson friendly in all respects cat meets with police not just once but multiple times and in one of these meetings she says you know what was weird is this weekend when i was with chandler while his parents were at the cabin i left the house early one day on saturday in fact saturday july 3rd and she says he told me he was going to do chores that morning around the house but when i looked at my snapchat i saw his location was in a weird spot if you don't know on snapchat you can set it up so that other people can see exactly where you are a gps tracker on you at all times if you will chandler had that set up with his girlfriend and she goes it was so weird where he was i took a screenshot of it on my phone and that's what it showed chandler was saved as hubby in her phone that's perhaps a term of endearment between two folks dating in their 20s but she said at 8 58 in the morning when he was supposed to be doing chores on saturday july 3rd i thought it was strange that he was in what appears to be a forest on the banks of the wisconsin river near prairie du sac the police took that they identified immediately where that location was just based on looking at it that's a bridge couldn't be hard out they go the drones go up the dogs go out the search team starts searching very quickly and i promise this is as far as the photos will go they find the remains of krista halderson now when i say krista halderson i have to qualify that as well we found her legs one complete leg then somewhat farther away in another bush a foot a thigh but the same pattern crudely cut apart what appears to be hand saws axes things of that sort no more of krista halderson that's identifiable to her will ever be found she's just those two legs at this point the police thought this is just a strange location why would chandler be out there he'd been out there before they started talking to people including the girlfriends of his in the past friends of his and they say yeah chandler really liked this location out on the wisconsin river he'd go there all the time it's where he'd go swimming when his friends came into town that was the secret swimming spot and one friend even said you know what last year he sent me a picture while he was out there kind of shirtless hanging from a tree with a machete i don't know didn't have a lot of significance at the time when the police saw it but eventually someone realized the tree looks unique interesting v pattern right there the hollowness of the tree as it goes down the way in which five of those branches branch off and eventually one of the detectives realizes why something clicked it was the exact location he ditched his mother's remains that's about 100 feet away so obviously shouldn't come to anyone's surprise at some point chandler was arrested in fact he was arrested on july 8th 2021. when you're arrested for a lot of crimes you go to jail you get booked in and and not much more happens investigation wise after that they have what they need but of course that's not the case in a murder investigation especially something like this chandler is taken to jail and the police start searching when i say searching you're going to hear about searches of the house searches of this farm searches of this property you're going to hear about searches of landfills and ponds and ditches all across dane county but one of the things they started searching was what was this guy doing on his phone that weekend and oddly enough most of what they found was nothing either chandler hadn't googled anything all weekend except for the eighth or he had deleted his search history you'll never know but remember he was arrested on july 8th taken to the police station and that's where they told him hey man we know what's going on so meaning while he was still on his phone on july 8th he was still telling everyone his parents were missing not just the police this kid was standing in his front lawn giving media interviews to all the local media outlets about the cabin and the unknown couple the unknown car he was going door to door in his neighborhood my parents are missing can you help me out do you have any security cameras by the way and you'll hear from these neighbors some of them were so weirded out by what was going on that they secretly recorded those conversations one of them you'll hear was a man who'd only been retired as a detective with the city of madison police for about a month he recorded his conversation with mr halderson but while he's doing this that morning what's he googling this is what he's googling body found wisconsin woman's body found wisconsin wisconsin dismembered body found we'll come back to the next two dead body found in wisconsin body found in milwaukee river he's searching for whether they found his parents and you'll hear in this case he's starting to search because he's starting to get worried because the amount of police in his neighborhood has been ramping up and up and up because unbeknownst to him they're finding his parents remains and you'll hear that while this is going on while he's googling these things he's frantically calling police officers hey why are there more cops in my neighborhood calls this guy brian schunk he records him what's going on there's more cops and something happened did you find something the middle ones state versus peter kaputza probably means nothing to everyone it meant nothing to me when i first saw it the name rung a bell and i wondered why not only did it show he googled state versus peter kaputza showed that he clicked on a link on the wisconsin court's website and read something what he read was a legal case much like this one is the state versus chandler halderon the state versus peter kaputza though it's a case that made it to the court of appeals based on some legal technicalities about a man who dismembered part of his family members and threw their bodies in the river so at the same time chandler halderon is going door to door in his neighborhood crying about his parents being missing talking to the local news telling sheriff's deputies signing documents saying they're missing he's conducting legal research to get himself out of today so that today never happens now when i started i started with that calendar a while ago and i said the police were initially thrown off because of one thing and that was this text message from krista and it's real i'll tell you that text message is in all the search warrant returns from us cellular it's on the phone that we were able to search we're not able to search every phone but some of them are made it safely can't get anything through though yes it's packed going to white lake today for the parade be home monday night tuesday love you lots sent on the fourth of july so the police started looking into that and the first thing they found was white lake the parade was on july 3rd remember the fourth of july this year was on a sunday so everyone celebrated on saturday so they started thinking well how the hell did this message get sent so they searched the alderson home where chandler was and in the garage under a shelf in a shoe wrapped in aluminum foil was his mother's phone along with her driver's license police would later subpoena the records from us cellular the cell phone carrier that covers chandler and the family and they would look into what cell towers were being used when that message was sent if you didn't know all of you probably have cell phones at any time your phone is pinging off of different cell towers it's not always the same as you sit here half of you might be using one tower and half of you might be using another it's based on the workload of those towers you'll hear about that but it's generally an approximate area of where you are that message on july 4th krista there's in pink chandler's in green the message was sent from the halderson home on july 4th chandler sent it to himself so at this point the investigators began to wonder and perhaps you're beginning to wonder how the evidence will come out how does this happen how does this kid with everything in the world going for him promising new jobs school a girlfriend that loves him willing to move across the country for him or even physically a kid who just suffered this major concussion was unable to use his legs for the most part how does this happen and what you'll learn it happens because none of these things are true he wasn't going to madison college he wasn't studying renewable resource engineering the people at american family insurance they'd never even heard of him there's no indication he'd ever even applied for a job much less had any job at spacex the apartment he told his girlfriend he'd rented and the car he'd bought none of that was real the madison police they don't even have a scuba diving team neither does the dnr and this concussion he apparently suffered he did go to the hospital you'll hear from the doctor who was there said yeah he came in he reported that he hit his head falling down the stairs i diagnosed him with a mild concussion gave him a neck brace on the way out told him he could use it if he needed it but none of the things that chandler reported to other people the leg weakness his inability to move drive travel none of that was real and given what you're going to find out in this case you may conclude at the end of it he never suffered any fall at all what you may conclude is that it was all made up now police started looking into all of these lies because how does a person who looks so promising was able to convince so many people of his success how are you able to keep this up how are you able to catfish your family your girlfriend your brother your friends they started to find things around the halderson home in the email accounts of bart and krista halderson in the email accounts of chandler halderson when they talked about american family insurance the first big lie chandler was making up again the people of american family insurance you'll hear them testify they're directors of human resources he never worked there never worked for any of their affiliates never worked for any of the companies that are associated with them chandler had been claiming to work there for a year but he never had any money and his father was an accountant so his father would ask him questions pretty much daily why don't you have any money why haven't you paid any rent and chandler spun an amazing web of lies first it was well i'm a salary guy but they were accidentally paying me hourly so they just held my paychecks until they fixed it then it was i gave him the wrong direct deposit info then it kind of shifted eventually and he said well they were going to pay me but now the amount is so much they got to pay me so much money that when they deposit in the bank they thought it was fake and police started to find emails like this this from tom selznick a guy in american family insurance in northeast remote human resources guy describing this you're registered his salary but you're making hourly and these emails would go back and forth with chandler and the hr person and eventually he'd forward them to his father but in the way a parent looks at their child as maybe telling the truth is not the way that you as jurors have to look at this you like the police maybe have to take a more critical look at emails like this and for one notice why is the guy who works at human resources at american family insurance using a proton mail generic email address why is the guy who's the human resources manager spelling the word resources wrong saying he's the human recourses manager it's comically fake he emailed himself back and forth trying to explain why he didn't have any money and he forwards it to his dad now here's where the story gets maybe a little more complex having a fake job solves a lot of riddles in your life no one's hassling you to get a new job no one's hassling you to do chores all day the problem is if your dad works for home from home if he was an accountant for instance which he was and which he did you actually have to wake up early every day and go to work so there he was messages between bart and chandler hey are you up for your meetings yeah over and over again so chandler woke up but he had nothing to do all day because his job was pretend and so he sat on his computer playing video games and i'm not against people playing video games i'm a guy myself people play video games but video games if you don't know some of you are of an age where you do and some of you are an age where you don't are a much more social thing than they used to be when you play video games you don't just sit on nintendo 64 and play mario by yourself you're playing role player games with people from around the world and who's up early in the morning when mr halderson had to wake up to attend his fake work meetings people in the military who are stationed overseas they speak english they're american but they're on a different time schedule they're on him's time schedule most people here probably play video games at night during weekdays but every day mr halderson was able to wake up and find a group of friends to play video games with online one of which was stationed in germany this friend was a guy named andrew smith now mr smith mr halderson became kind of best friends they would talk all the time they communicated in this video game all the time and mr smith he'll testify he's coming up here he lives down south he's back in the us he'll tell you the chandler really liked an sks rifle when they play some of these shooting games it's just something he liked not a big deal there's nothing wrong with that but this past summer about a month before the murders of bart and krista halderson this online friend andrew smith comes to visit mr halderson and in fact stays at the home with bart and krista this is the picture of mr smith and that perhaps crudely designed yellow shirt that's mr halderson it's the only photo we have of them on that visit you'll learn that mr smith had gotten out of the military he was done with it but you also learn that he really likes guns like he really likes guns and he knew his friend liked sks rifles so when he visited him this year in june he brought with him a gift the sks rifle that was found about 100 yards from bart halderson's body he's not really probably a paperwork kind of guy and so when he gave the gun to mr halderson he wanted to document that he transferred the gun but he wasn't going to fill out any paperwork so he just took the serial number of the gun he put mr halderson's driver's license next to it snapped a picture on his phone there's a clear picture of that but that serial number matches the gun found in the barn 100 yards from bart halderson's body and before mr smith left he decided he would gift his friend something else which was about 400 rounds of high-powered ammunition now you'll hear from mr smith despite maybe his bizarre actions and maybe his bizarre statements he may make he's not a suspect police proved he was in texas at the time all of this happened another unknowing accomplice to mr halderson's crimes so at this point mr halderson's working a pretend job at american family insurance he's not getting paid his father who's an accountant is kind of on his case about it and he's got to figure out something else and the best way out of your pretend job is an even more pretend job so around may going into june of this past year american family wasn't going well so mr halderson decided to get a new job he's going to be an astronaut i work at spacex this is messages to his girlfriend i have a good feeling about spacex i have a follow-up interview for florida tomorrow shoot sorry i got the job i have training next week over the computer and leave june 11th and start june 14th he didn't give himself a lot of time but what he gave himself was an escape hatch he could move could end the lies that he had going on in his life about being a rescue scuba diver and working for american family insurance by simply moving to florida that presented with it one major problem which was that job which was also make-believe would pay absolutely no better than the last job that was make-believe so in late june as he's supposed to start the job at spacex in florida for elon musk something happens in the halderson family something real there's a change remember when i started off and i said there were two sons his older brother gets hospitalized that's real it happened got diagnosed with diabetes and was having some complications he's doing great now mr halderson uses that as an excuse to delay starting at spacex was a stroke of good luck for him a stroke of bad luck of course for the family but a stroke of good luck for him but that only gave him a couple of weeks so his brother who's doing really well in life engaged house real job making a lot of money suddenly he's in the hospital being doted over by his family by his mother people care about him so roughly a week later when chandler halderson needs to think of a new lie to get out of the spacex lie guess he ends up in the hospital being doted over by his mother and his family with a supposed neck injury this is father's day of this year in late june that's bart halderson in the middle mitchell on the right of course chandler wearing a neck brace that no one told him he had to wear on the left now around this time chandler started telling people an extraordinarily bizarre set of claims that he had a brain bleed a hematoma that he had spinal damage that he needed his head drilled open that the inability to use his legs at all he couldn't drive people had to do that for him that he had nerve damage that he needed to get a colostomy bag but most importantly he couldn't go to florida the doctors had told him he couldn't fly of course that's not true you'll see his medical records and you'll see his doctor testify so suddenly this man who was for all intents and purposes disabled was being doted over by his family people were making him meals you'll see notes his mom was leaving for him call this neighbor if you need anything she'll help you out couldn't drive couldn't work couldn't do chores now a bit of a preview and a fast forward this guy who's wearing a neck brace nearly every day in late june 2021 would have no problem just days later carrying large bags of ice out of gas stations to chill his father's cut up body in a freezer and you'll note no neck brace and in fact you'll note in this case chandler halderson has never seen in that neck brace again after july 1st 2021 when he kills his parents so the job lies are over for chandler in his life american family insurance don't worry about that because he got this new job at spacex and spacex i can't go because i'm hurt it was a perfect scenario but there was one last lie that chandler had to get out of and that is he had told everyone he was going to matc for college and that he was about to graduate and you'll hear there's a hint of truth to that he was going there at one point in fact there's a hint of truth to all of these lies he did go to matc for like a semester he failed out but he wasn't going there anymore and the parents were starting to grow suspicious and we knew this because when we searched the house we started to find notes on bart halderson's desk bart halderson was one of these guys who prints his emails i don't know if any of you print your emails but some people they get an email and they print it out that was bart and we find one it's an email between bart and krista detailing a conversation that he had had with chandler's advisors at matc supposed to meet with someone else so we met with this guy daniel spieth chandler's going to get a solar certificate he wasn't he's registered for fall classes he wasn't he's in the it program he wasn't all of these things line by line none of them true but bart halderson talked to this person so police honked in on something that line when i talked to the advisor he sounds just like chas on the phone and he gives this number that is of course because bart halderson when he talked to chandler's college advisor was just talking to chandler who had bought a burner phone you know cheap phone from like walgreens that you can buy with no service carrier and police know that because they searched chandler's bedroom and in his gesture they found that phone now this kept going the lie about going to matc or madison college was the most extensive there were emails dozens if not hundreds of emails going back and forth between supposed advisors at matc and chandler and then he'd forward them to his dad from people like someone named alyssa brant 64. sometimes chandler would spell brant b-r-a-n-d-t sometimes just with the t and no d depended on the day but they all had the at gmail address not at madisoncollege.edu and you'll hear from the people at madison college their people have real emails they don't use gmail but it was over and over again elissa brant was one of them you heard about daniel spieth also at gmail there's someone named aaron hoover also at gmail in this one chandler's getting upset i have to have a call with whomever's in charge within the next 30 minutes i have been a student for over three years and i will be treated fairly of course he's yelling at himself all of these were fake back and forth to himself and eventually to his dad the halderson parents had to have been growing extraordinarily frustrated kid wasn't getting paid he was injured suddenly his college transcripts aren't coming through so he can't get a job so police looked at that original note again they saw something interesting which is in this sea of fake people daniel spieth aaron hoover tom selznick elissa brant there was one name that stood out omar jobe and that name didn't stand out because it was fake it stood out to the police because it was real that is the only real person on any of these emails and what we've discovered in this investigation is in just the day and a half prior to being murdered bart halderson chandler's dad called matc and pretended to be chandler to try to finally get some information on what's going on just as any of you could call any doctor and pretend to be your kid you know their name their social security number their birthday you can get through you can get through those minor security things bart called matc said i'm chandler and i want some answers and for 17 minutes bart halderson just before his murder talked to a man named omar job omar job is a entry-level customer service guy at matc he's got no skin in the game doesn't even really remember the call but it was recorded for customer service purposes and bart halderson questions omar and he's very mean at first because in his mind he'd been getting screwed around for a year on where his son's transcripts were and what degree program he was in and why he hasn't graduated yet but toward the end of the call bart asked somar job hey do any of these people work there alissa brandt daniel spieth aaron hoover and he's told no they've never worked there and in fact they haven't and he says that'll be it then that'll be it then are the last recorded words of bart halderson alive bart halderson shortly after that sends a text message a text message that ultimately sealed his fate which was a text to his own son and it says i spoke with omar job now what happens over the next 24 or so hours is a bit unknown homicide investigations are a lot of unknowns because the two people who are the victims who maybe know the most about what happened they're of course dead but there's not much verifiable information that happens over the next 24 hours it's also unknown if chandler even knew who omar job was of course he wasn't going to matc so why would he know who some lowly entry-level customer service guy was he wouldn't but bart halderson did when you look at bart halderson's work calendar that he maintains it as accounting firm you see something quite interesting remember at the beginning i said i wanted you to remember a date time which was that the halderson's were killed between 3 and 5 p.m on july 1st 2021 guess what was on bart's calendar at that exact time he was supposed to have a meeting with the people at matc with his son so supposed to go to matc and have this meeting at three o'clock on july 1st 2021 of course that meeting couldn't happen because he wasn't going there and none of the people were real but bart halderson knew that bart halderson knew that and so chandler had obviously figured that out at this point there's no way out of this one you can't get out of this lie and so the next day chandler halderson wakes up on july 1st and starts messaging his girlfriend 7 26 i hardly slept 7 27 stuff hasn't been going well for me lately just trying to plan for the next thing to fuck me over 751 i had a great future planned it's falling apart 104 just two hours prior to the murders i overheard they might go to the cabin with their friends but i don't know so somewhat of a full circle at this point that's the moment chandler halderson decides to kill his parents and engage in this bizarre story of them missing at a cabin with an unknown couple in an unknown car at 104 july 1st now shortly after this message it's about an hour and 10 minutes bart halderson's getting ready to go to matc for this meeting perhaps to confront chandler perhaps chandler's going to confront him bart text chandler i'm ready whenever you are that's about 50 minutes prior to when he was killed those are the last words ever recorded about bart halderson his phone is never used really again dies at some point he never goes back to work no one ever sees him the neighborhood he lives in riddled with security cameras never see him again i'm ready whenever you are what the evidence will show in this case is that sometime after the i'm ready whenever you are message and probably just around three o'clock when he was supposed to go to this meeting with matc bart halderson was shot in the back multiple times with a high-powered rifle and after shooting his dad chandler texts his mom dad's phone died text her call me and get sewed on your way home i have an extra hour of work you know he didn't have an extra hour of work but he was delaying her getting there because the evidence will show he needed to move things around prepare for what he was about to do when she showed up she responds k i can smiley face those are the last words of krista halderson alive shortly thereafter around just after five neighborhood security cameras the halderson's didn't have one but the neighborhood a lot of people did show krista pulling in getting out of the car walking in she's never seen again until her legs are found out by the wisconsin river but just after killing his mom and his dad the evidence in this case will show that chandler went on his phone if you go on your phone i don't know if any of you ever taken a note you can take notes on your phone iphone has an app called notes we got some raw data and i'll put it up here in a second i won't put the raw data because it's a bit challenging to see but chandler creates a note about 5 11 that day on july 1st probably minutes after killing his parents and the note reads weekend chores h2o2 lemon h2o2 is the chemical name for hydrogen peroxide you'll hear from people in this case it's essentially a household cleaner to clean up blood lemon it deodorizes things mixed together it's a pretty cheap cleaning product you can have at home so chandler writes a note after murdering his parents h2o2 lemon door handles move your shit upstairs get a job and clean the floor he then does just that spends the afternoon cleaning the house eventually jumps in the shower we know he's in the shower because his girlfriend and him face time when they're in the shower no judgment but that's what happened and the girlfriend took a screenshot we know he's in the shower they say they're good nights and chandler says i'm going to bed but he doesn't he goes to gas stations he's carrying out large bags of ice because what chandler had done that night is what you all probably suspect by now he had dismembered his parents or at least started the process and had to fit them inside of freezers that were in the halderson home you'll see some of these freezers they're cleaned there's still some evidence around that night i'm not going to show many photographs for a little bit just because i think you deserve to kind of be eased into some of the things you're going to see that night what appears to have happened what the evidence will show is mr halderson took items from around the house and began cutting apart his parents saw blades covered in barton christus blood an axe barton christus blood hand saws things of that sort covered in barton christus blood he cleaned the house as best he could and you'll hear about that but still blood spatter found of barton christus blood around the house and he had a plan it wasn't a well thought out plan but he had one and that was he was going to burn the remains in the family fireplace there in the house so it's july 1st and if any of you remember fourth of july weekend's pretty hot this year people in the neighborhood thought it was a little bit weird that someone's fireplace was going on they smelled stuff one person this neighborhood's full of retired cops but one retired cop said i smelled like a barbecue like a smell like a pig roast and he said that just not knowing what it was at the time talking to the police and that night a neighbor who had a security camera behind the halderson home way far away was able to catch something because it was pitch black at night he was able to catch just a little glimpse of all the windows in the halderson house we have an expert that's going to come in who works with video and light analysis he's going to tell you he was able to figure out which window that was and the window it was that he was looking at in that camera footage that kind of just peaked his attention it was the window by the fireplace and for many hours over the course of that night the light flickered came on died down on down but in the early morning hours the next day been up all night doing this because you'll learn you really can't burn human remains your home fireplace is not going to get hot enough to do that it takes an extraordinary amount of heat if you go to like a crematorium they're inducing it with oxygen chemicals not a residential fireplace but eventually in the middle of the night the fire started going well it appeared that air was being pumped into it and you'll see when they searched the halderson home there was in fact a fan found right next to the fireplace next to a tape measure trying to make sure the remains were the right size as they went into the fireplace but that light at one point grew and grew and grew and got very bright in one room and then all of a sudden the kitchen light came on and then all the lights went out i don't know if anyone's ever taken a hot pyrex plan pan out of the the stove and put water in it or dumped hot or dumped water on your hot water on your windshield on your car in the winter but it explodes the glass the evidence in this case will show that what happened was the fire had gotten out of control burning these human remains human fat was rendering out it was igniting so chandler threw water on it but when you throw water on your residential fireplace you break the glass and that's exactly what happened just above that broken glass panel which is clearly shattered you see the paint kind of bubbled off from the heat this is in the search of the home some week later fireplace is clearly used police noticed something interesting about this photograph which is despite being clearly used the fire the logs are rebuilt someone had cleaned out all the ashes and rebuilt it clean logs newspaper one burnt piece in the middle but what stuck out to police right away was that little rock right there they thought what is that you'll hear from the people who collected this evidence you'll hear from an arson specialist from the department of justice a guy named bill boswell will come in you'll hear from a forensic anthropologist a doctor named christina figuero soto who will tell you we were all interested in what that was because it was out of place so they pulled it off and they put it on one of these fancy police deals and the forensic anthropologist took one look at it and she said oh this is a human skull he had burned his parents heads in that fireplace later the police would go through the ash trap of that fireplace and they would find human remains facial bones the knee bones which because we found krista's legs by deduction had to be barred all in the ash trap of that fireplace they were all catalogued now burnt remains can't be tested for dna there's no biological material left but they're able to tell it's human based on the structure of the bone and you'll hear from the anthropologist who will talk about that so that's what happened on july 1st now you're going to hear about all of those days in between barton krista dying at three o'clock on the first all the way through the police report but to summarize chandler stayed up all night that night of the first obviously things weren't going well burning his parents remained so the next day perhaps not having slept he walked into fleet farm at 7 21 a.m to buy a tarp he's on video he knew his girlfriend was spending the night that night so he spent the whole day cleaning but he's sending her text messages which you will see throughout the day asking her to bring him hydrogen peroxide and a mop because he still needed to clean up the next day saturday july 3rd 2021 his girlfriend leaves early in the morning that's the day she snaps that picture of him out by the wisconsin river dumping off his mom's remains spends the rest of the day hanging out but when he goes home and says he's going to bed that night this young man who supposedly couldn't drive or carry heavy objects his phone records show that he's up near the wisconsin river in portage as if you're driving the interstate up to the dells right when you cross the wisconsin river off in the state land there to the right for about an hour in the the middle of the night the police tried to search that area it was impossible with the currents whatever remains were thrown in there are lost forever july 4th 2021 this is the day he texts himself spends the day with his girlfriend's family goes to their farm to use the pool that's the day he says hey can i come back tomorrow goes to some fireworks he's living a normal life no mention of his parents the next day takes out the garbage in the morning who knows what was in that garbage can we've thoroughly searched the landfills but it's impossible to find anything but he took out the garbage he goes out to the farm to supposedly use the pool where he's seen walking out of the woods cell phone tower records prove that he was out there on the farm remember i told you he told that person that he was having trouble at work and school and and and having a bad doctor's appointment he never went to any doctor's appointment that day phone records show he never talked to any doctor it was all a ruse to be able to go out in the woods and hide his father's body the next day not much happens because chandler was up all night began that light analysis shows all night the garage light on and off the garage of course being where we found some of these tools the axe covered in blood he's cleaning up at 4 30 in the morning for no apparent reason he drives around the city of madison there's no idea what he did there but he's not doing much but people begin questioning him about his parents he just says they're late the person most worried perhaps is his girlfriend she thought that was unlike them the next day he drives back to the farm throws a bag of bloody rags into their garbage can that's out by the street and 11 22 he texts his girlfriend and he's finally going to the police we know the bag of rags came from his house because they were in the target bag his girlfriend picked up from target and she did the curbside pickup so her name was printed on the outside it was when she brought him hydrogen peroxide he filled the bag with bloody rags and left it at the house the next day he starts googling body found wisconsin dismembered body found he's walking door to door asking about security cameras in his neighborhood and at 4 pm they take him downtown and they arrest him at 641. so that's the story that's why you're here for a couple weeks like i said in the beginning a lot of cases end with the murder this one it's just a small piece of the puzzle none of the things that happened after and none of the things happened before make any sense without knowing the murder happened on a specific day at a specific time but the evidence in this case you'll find is overwhelming chandler halderson killed his parents on july 1st 2021. he cut up their bodies with axes and saws and knives and he didn't even give them the dignity of having a funeral or even a final resting place in one piece or together their remains were scattered across dane county in public land on farms in garbage cans the rivers and perhaps every ditch is a possibility in this county you'll find the evidence in this case is overwhelming now over the next couple of weeks i'll make you a couple promises as your prosecutor in this case i'm not here to waste your time but of all the constitutional rights we talked about of chandler he has them i want you to respect them there's another one that you should know which is this is the only time we get to have this trial you get one trial in the united states of america and i have to do it right so if that means calling a lot of witnesses i apologize in advance if it means calling experts to say things that maybe you already know i apologize in advance but i'm going to do my job right as your prosecutor second you're going to see terrible photographs there were approximately 5 000 photographs taken in this case you're going to see maybe total a couple hundred of actual body parts maybe a couple dozen we have scoured those photographs and tried to remove ones that are just horrible to see because of the conditions the bodies were in because of insects and maggots and things of that sort and instead are trying to only show you photographs that help you understand how the remains were hidden where they were hidden how they were dismembered to the extent possible we're using cleaner photographs that were taken by the denkano medical examiner i promise you i'm not trying to pull on anyone's heartstrings i'm not trying to make this overly emotional you might feel emotional i suspect many of you have never seen anything like what you're going to see in the next couple of weeks but i promise to do my best to limit the amount and lastly i promise to just ask questions a lot of questions because you're the jury in this case and you deserve to hear absolutely everything it will be a struggle you'll get sick of walking back and forth these jury rooms you might get sick of each other i hope not but it's an important task what happened here shouldn't happen but it did and so in a couple weeks when i stand up here and miss raymond stands up here i'm going to ask you to deliver a verdict of guilty to finally bring some much needed truth to chandler holders thank you [01:06:38] Speaker 1: thank you attorney brown council could uh attorney brown could whoever's giving the close opening come up we don't have to we can do this without going off just want to discuss time okay perfect thanks ladies and gentlemen we're going to take our morning break at this point and uh what will happen is randy will take you back you'll go to your respective rooms you'll have at least [01:07:07] William Brown: 15 minutes we'll come back and continue go right in all rise for the jury [01:07:25] Speaker ?: uh um