Kristil Krug was stalked and killed by her husband in Colorado. Her case led to a law that ...

The Colorado mom created what she called a “stalker log” to document the vulgar texts and threatening emails. When the messages didn’t stop, she hired a private investigator. And when the stalker started mentioning intimate details her life — like her expired license plate and her visit to the dentist — she turned to police.

Investigators said they sought warrants from tech and communications companies for the sender’s phone records, email accounts and other digital evidence. But weeks passed with no response.

Overcome with fear, Krug took firearms training and bought a handgun and pepper spray. She practiced drills with her three children – ages 14, 11 and 8 at the time – in case the person tormenting her broke into their , said her cousin, Rebecca Ivanoff.

But on December 14, 2023, two months after the messages began, her case took a devastating turn. After dropping her children off at school, Krug was found fatally stabbed in the garage of their 3,500-square-foot in the Denver suburb of Broomfield. She was 43.

Only after her death did investigators receive the records linking burner phones and “fake” email accounts to an unexpected suspect: her husband, Daniel Krug.

Last year, Krug was convicted of stalking, criminal impersonation and first-degree murder. The 45-year-old is serving a sentence of life without parole at a state prison in Sterling, Colorado.

But for Kristil’s family, the verdict was only the first step. With critical evidence in her case arriving too late, her cousin said, the bigger challenge was fixing a system they believed cost her life.

“Communications companies held the key to unlock the true identity of her stalker and ultimately her killer. The information was readily accessible and could be produced but it wasn’t,” Ivanoff said. “This is a gaping hole in our system, and we need to close it.”

Ivanoff, a former prosecutor, teamed up with activists and lawmakers in her state of Oregon to push for faster responses to warrants in stalking and domestic violence cases. Her efforts led to a law that went into effect in Oregon last month and that she hopes will be a blueprint for other states, including Colorado.

Known as Kristil’s Law, it forces tech and communication companies in Oregon to fast-track warrants in domestic violence and stalking cases. Under the law, social media platforms must comply within 72 hours, while communication companies have five days.

“She did everything right. She did everything you’re told to do in this situation. So this part of the system basically failed her,” Ivanoff said.

Oregon’s law is believed to be the first of its kind in the country, said state Rep. Kevin L. Mannix, a chief sponsor of the bill. “In domestic violence and stalking cases, speed saves lives,” he said in a statement .

Mark Leymon, a criminal justice professor at Portland State University in Oregon, said the new law addresses a real problem. 80% of stalking victims are harassed through technology, and stalking is frequently a precursor to deadly violence in intimate partner cases, he said.

“Research shows that the majority of femicide cases, stalking occurred in the year prior to the killing. So faster digital evidence access is not just a marginal improvement, it could be lifesaving,” he said.

Kristil Krug and her cousin Ivanoff grew up in Colorado and Oregon, respectively.

As the only daughters of two sisters, they shared childhood summers on family beach vacations and whitewater rafting adventures. Adulthood later pulled them in different directions, but the two women remained close.

“It was an easy and fun relationship, and we were there for each other’s important things. She was at my law school graduation, and I was at her wedding,” Ivanoff said. “And although we didn’t talk all the time, she was one of those connections where you could just pick right back up no matter where you left off.”

Kristil Krug worked as a biochemical engineer, but her life mostly revolved around her three children and her love of ballet and dance.

“Dance was such a big part of her,” Ivanoff said. “She probably would have liked to have pursued that professionally, but she was more of a realist.”

On October 2, 2023, her ordinary suburban life suddenly began to veer off course.

A message lit up her phone from a number she didn’t recognize. “I go to Boulder every few weeks and thought we could hook up. U game?,” the message read, according to an affidavit from Broomfield police.

The sender claimed to be an ex-boyfriend who lived in Utah and demanded she meet him. More texts and emails followed. Before long, they were coming at all hours.

When she did not respond the messages grew increasingly frequent, profane and unsettling. By November, the sender was sharing photos of a man’s genitals and referring to details only someone close to her would know.

“Your license (plate’s) expired. Gotta fix that,” one message said. Her license plate had expired the month.

A week later, she received a text from the stalker saying he’d seen her at the dentist. She had, in fact, visited the dentist that day.

Every time she blocked the sender, a new number popped up with more messages. She saved screenshots and emails, cataloging the evidence in her growing log.

“She basically put together every single detail every and content, and her reaction to it,” Ivanoff said. “Even though she was completely traumatized … she went so far above and beyond what we could ever reasonably expect a victim of crime to do.”

The relentless barrage left Kristil Krug on edge. She took firearm safety classes and started carrying a concealed weapon. On December 9, 2023 – five days before she was killed – she received a handgun training certificate.

In the final weeks before her death, the threats grew darker.

“U don’t belong in that big house. U belong with me,” one message said. “I’ll get rid of him and we can be together.”

At the time, Daniel Krug worked for a Colorado public health agency. Not knowing he was behind the harassment, the local police considered the messages a threat to his safety and sent officers to his workplace to check on him.

In the weeks leading up to the murder, Daniel Krug took elaborate steps to create the illusion of a stalker, prosecutors said. He used alternate email accounts and burner phones to hide his identity, but investigators later traced some of the messages to his work IP address. A burner phone was purchased with a Visa gift card registered to him, police said.

The day before he killed his wife, investigators said, Daniel Krug did a Google for “How hard would you have to hit someone in the head to make them unconscious?”

On the morning of December 14, 2023, he lay in wait as his wife entered the garage after dropping their kids at school, prosecutors said . They said he ambushed her from behind, struck her in the head with a blunt object and stabbed her in the heart. Authorities said she was wearing her loaded, concealed handgun at the time she was attacked.

Later that day, Daniel Krug called the police and requested a wellness check, saying he’d not been able to reach his wife for hours. An officer found Kristil Krug’s bloodied body in the garage.

Daniel Krug did not testify at his trial last year. His attorney, Phillip Geigle, told jurors there was no blood on his clothes or other physical evidence linking Krug to the crime. “I’m telling you, Mr. Krug did not kill his wife,” Geigle said, according to CNN affiliate KMGH-TV .

But prosecutors said Daniel Krug was a killer whose scheme was driven by a single goal: To scare his wife into abandoning her plan to divorce him. According to the police affidavit, Kristil Krug was seeking full custody of the couple’s three children.

“This was a brutal, calculated murder, preceded by months of manipulation, emotional abuse, and deception,” District Attorney Brian Mason said after the sentencing. “Daniel Krug terrorized his wife, his children, and an innocent man — all in order to control and then murder a woman who no longer wanted to be with him.”

With prosecutors revealing little before trial, Ivanoff learned the magnitude of her cousin’s horror in the courtroom. She was devastated.

“I did not know the stalker log or the full content of the messages until after she’d been murdered,” she said. “She basically had put her entire case together.”

Kristil Krug went to the police in early November with her stalker log. On November 17, a judge approved warrants seeking data from Verizon and TextNow on the phone numbers, and detectives sent them to the companies. A Google warrant for email addresses was also issued at that time but had to be refiled in early December due to a typo, according to police records.

Investigators did not receive the information.

After Krug was found dead, investigators again submitted requests to the companies seeking an expedited response. Google and TextNow provided data almost immediately, while Verizon responded two months after she was killed, according to police documents.

“Children should not lose their mother when actionable information is available,” Ivanoff said. “And if timely produced to law enforcement, it allows victims to make a safety plan and law enforcement to take appropriate steps toward arrests.”

CNN reached out to the three companies for but has not heard back.

In September 2025, Google told NBC News it uses several factors to prioritize responses to warrants, including law enforcements’ designation as an emergency. “At Google, we recognize the critical importance of maintaining flexibility in our processes to effectively triage matters based on the individual circumstances, particularly when assessing the presence of an ongoing emergency,” the company said.

Verizon told NBC it generally responds to requests in the order received but expedites requests that law enforcement officials consider urgent. The company said it generally doesn’t know the nature of the investigations.

Verizon received almost 22,000 warrants from law enforcement in the US in the second half of 2023, according to a company transparency report . During that same period Google received more than 35,000 warrants seeking evidence for US criminal cases and produced at least some data for 89% of the requests, the company said in a report .

The Broomfield Police Department declined to on how long it took investigators to get communications data in Krug’s case and whether receiving it earlier would have made a difference.

“While we can’t speculate on alternate outcomes, it is fair to say that timely access to critical information is essential in missing-person and violent-crime investigations,” said Rachel Haslett, a spokesperson.

“The efforts of Kristil’s family to honor her life through advocacy and potential legislative change are deeply respected. Turning unimaginable loss into something that may help protect others is an extraordinary act of strength.”

Leymon, the criminal justice professor, said Oregon’s law fixes a key weakness in the fight against domestic violence and stalking. But its effectiveness on companies outside the state will likely depend on future court challenges, he said.

“ In the large, complex criminal justice system, this is just one piece of the interconnected puzzle,” he said.

Kristil Krug’s children are being raised by a relative. They are “surrounded with love,” Ivanoff said, declining to more details to protect their privacy.

For the family, the grief has evolved into a mission. In February, Ivanoff sat in the Oregon House chamber alongside her parents and other advocates as lawmakers voted to pass Kristil’s Law.

“We are going to save lives,” Ivanoff said she remembers thinking that day. “This will be part of Kristil’s legacy, and people will know her story and her name.”

With Kristil’s Law in effect in Oregon, Ivanoff is hoping her cousin’s state of Colorado is . In March, Colorado passed legislation that requires social media companies to respond to law enforcement warrants within 72 hours. But that law does not go far enough, she said.

“If that law had been in place when Kristil was targeted, it would have made no difference in her case because her killer did not use social media. He used texting and email,” she said.

Ivanoff hopes to help activists in other states pursue legislation that’s similar to Kristil’s Law. “This is not a partisan issue,” she said. “This is a common-sense solution.”