Chandler Halderson (Chaz Halderson)

Chandler Michael Halderson was born in 1998 and grew up in Wisconsin as the younger of Bart and Krista Halderson's two sons. His older brother, Mitchell, pursued a career in technology, while Chandler continued living with his parents at their home in Windsor, a community north of Madison. By his early twenties, Halderson presented himself to family and friends as an ambitious young man building a successful career in information technology.

Much of the life Halderson described, however, was fabricated. He claimed to be studying information technology at Madison Area Technical College and told people he was progressing toward graduation. He also claimed to have secured employment with American Family Insurance and later announced that he had obtained a job with SpaceX that would require him to move to Florida. Halderson produced increasingly elaborate explanations when family members questioned why his education and employment never seemed to progress.

By 2021, maintaining these lies required Halderson to fabricate emails, telephone calls and other communications. He impersonated college officials and created explanations for why his academic records were unavailable. His father eventually became suspicious and contacted the college directly. Bart discovered that Chandler was not enrolled as he had claimed and arranged a meeting with college officials for July 1, 2021.

On July 1, 2021, the day Bart intended to confront the discrepancies in his son's education, Halderson killed his father inside the family home. Prosecutors established that Bart was shot at least twice in the back. Halderson then killed his mother, Krista, although investigators were unable to establish her precise cause of death from the remains that were eventually recovered.

Halderson subsequently dismembered his parents and attempted to destroy evidence inside the house. Investigators later recovered more than 200 fragments of human bone from the family's fireplace. Other physical evidence throughout the property demonstrated that significant efforts had been made to clean the residence and conceal what had happened.

Rather than immediately leaving the area, Halderson began disposing of his parents' remains at separate locations around Dane County. Portions of Bart's remains were left on rural property near Cottage Grove, while Krista's remains were deposited near the Wisconsin River. He relied upon people and locations familiar to him when selecting disposal sites, a decision that later helped investigators reconstruct his movements.

Halderson then created a cover story explaining his parents' disappearance. On July 7, he contacted authorities and reported Bart and Krista missing, claiming that they had travelled to the family's cabin in White Lake for the Fourth of July weekend and had failed to return.

The murders were committed inside the Halderson family home, with prosecutors arguing that the immediate motive was preventing Bart from exposing Chandler's extensive deception. Bart was shot with a firearm, while Krista's exact cause of death could not be conclusively determined.

Halderson then dismembered both victims and attempted to destroy some of their remains by burning them in the home's fireplace. Other remains were transported away from the residence and concealed at separate rural locations. He cleaned areas of the home and disposed of evidence in an effort to prevent investigators from determining that his parents had been killed there.

His concealment strategy extended beyond physical evidence. Halderson constructed a false narrative that Bart and Krista had travelled to their cabin, reported them missing himself and initially cooperated with investigators while presenting himself as their concerned son.

Dane County Sheriff's Office investigators initially approached the case as a missing-person investigation. Halderson told detectives that his parents had travelled to their cabin and supplied details about items they had supposedly taken with them. Investigators soon discovered inconsistencies in his account.

A significant breakthrough came through Halderson's girlfriend, Cathryn Mellender. Halderson had shared his location with her through Snapchat, and the application's location history placed him near property where he had no obvious reason to be. Investigators searched the area and recovered human remains belonging to Bart Halderson. He had been shot at least twice in the back.

Additional investigation connected Halderson to another area near the Wisconsin River. Search teams subsequently recovered remains identified as Krista Halderson. Evidence gathered from the family home further undermined Chandler's missing-person story, including blood evidence and hundreds of human bone fragments recovered from the fireplace.

Digital evidence, surveillance footage, location records and witness testimony allowed investigators to reconstruct Halderson's movements during the period when he claimed his parents were away. He was initially arrested for providing false information before prosecutors filed homicide and related charges as the evidence accumulated.

Halderson's trial began in Dane County Circuit Court in January 2022. Prosecutors presented the murders as the culmination of an elaborate web of lies that was collapsing as Bart investigated his son's education. The state introduced extensive physical, forensic and digital evidence showing that Bart and Krista had been killed inside their home and that Chandler had subsequently attempted to conceal their deaths.

The prosecution also reconstructed Halderson's fabricated life, demonstrating that he had lied about attending college, graduating, working for an insurance company and obtaining employment with SpaceX. Evidence showed that he had impersonated college employees and created false communications to prevent his parents from discovering the truth. The defense argued that the prosecution could not establish precisely what occurred inside the house. Halderson did not testify.

After approximately two hours of deliberation, the jury found Halderson guilty of all charges, including two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. In March 2022, Judge John Hyland sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences without eligibility for extended supervision, ensuring that he would never be released from prison.

Halderson appealed his convictions. In April 2023, two convictions relating to hiding his parents' remains were vacated because of a procedural issue concerning how those charges had been entered. The change did not affect his two murder convictions or his punishment, and Halderson continues to serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Halderson's extensive deception became a defining feature of the case. His lies were not limited to casual claims about employment or education; he constructed supporting communications and explanations designed to convince his parents that events that never occurred were genuine. Prosecutors argued that the murders occurred when maintaining that fabricated life was no longer possible because Bart had begun independently verifying Chandler's claims.

Digital evidence was particularly important in exposing the attempted cover-up. Halderson's own technology use helped investigators trace his movements, while his girlfriend's access to his Snapchat location became an important lead. Surveillance footage, mobile-device information and forensic examination of the Halderson residence ultimately combined to contradict virtually every significant part of the missing-person account he had given investigators. The case later became the subject of the CBS 48 Hours episode The Snapchat Clue.

• Dane County Sheriff's Office
• Wisconsin court records
• CBS News / 48 Hours
• Associated Press
• Wisconsin State Journal
• WMTV 15 News
• WISC-TV / Channel 3000