MADISON (WKOW) — A jury has found Chandler Halderson guilty of killing his parents, Bart and Krista Halderson.
Halderson was charged with two sets of the same four charges: first degree intentional homicide, providing false information on missing persons, mutilating a corpse and hiding a corpse.
Halderson originally reported his parents missing July 7, claiming they went to the family cabin in northern Wisconsin and never returned. He was arrested the next day for providing false information.
Soon after, Halderson was charged with first degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and hiding a corpse when Bart’s body was located in rural Dane County. The second set of charges were added after Krista’s remains were found on DNR property in Roxbury.
The jury’s verdict came after a little over two hours of deliberations and after a near-month long trial that was at one point temporarily suspended after Halderson tested positive for COVID-19 during mass testing at the Dane County Jail.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said the service of the jurors was admirable.
"Under the best of circumstances, this is a monumental requirement of our citizens," Ozanne says. "We are still in the middle of a pandemic. That people were willing to come in and sacrifice their time and potential their safety is huge and speaks to the backbone of this community."
Both the prosecution and the defense rested on Thursday morning. The defense rested without presenting any witnesses and Halderson decided not to take the stand.
Throughout the trial, the prosecution, led by William Brown and Andrea Raymond, claimed Halderson killed his parents after they discovered a “web of lies” surrounding his life.
Those lies included claims of employment at American Family Insurance, his education at MATC, plans to move to Florida for an alleged job at Space X and the extent of a head injury sustained in June, among others.
To prove their case the prosecution called more than 60 witnesses over the course of eight days of testimony. Those who took the stand ranged from law enforcement officials involved in the case, Chandler’s former girlfriend and her family members, people who were friends or worked with Bart and Krista, his brother, neighbors and experts from the Department of Justice or Wisconsin State Crime Lab.
On top of witness testimony, prosecutors displayed a substantial amount of evidence to the jury. Over the course of the trial jurors saw hundreds of photos, hours of videos and dozens of physical pieces of evidence found at several scenes connected to the case. Much of the evidence tied Halderson to crime scenes.
Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett says his investigators worked up to eighteen hour days at the height of the investigation to make the case against Halderson.
"It really just comes down to resources and time," Barrett says. "I had one hundred percent faith in...our deputies and our civilian staff's ability to obtain and uncover any and all evidence in reference to this investigation." While Sheriff's personnel discovered several dozen key pieces of evidence, the Soviet-style rifle authorities say was used to kill Bart Halderson was found by a property owner in October on land and buildings heavily searched in the summer by investigators.
Ozanne says Halderson's guilty verdicts may help to bring closure for the victims' loved ones.
"This is a first step to hopefully some finality in this situation," he says.
Halderson will be sentenced to a life prison term in March, with a judge to determine when, and if he would become eligible for parole. A pre-sentence investigation by state corrections officials may explore why Halderson acted in such an almost unimaginable, violent way.
"We may never know," Ozanne says.
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