Hi, everyone. I'm Lester Holt. Welcome to Talking Dateline. I'm joined by Josh Mankowitz today to talk about his

riveting episode called The Phantom. Josh, it's great to see you. This is the first time we have done this

together. Yes, it is. Welcome to Talking Dateline. And welcome to it. What an incredible story,

which we're going to be talking about in a moment. I want folks to know if you haven't seen it yet,

you can find this program on the Dateline podcast feed. Go there, listen to it, or stream it on

Peacog, and then come right back here. So, Josh, let me recap for viewers right now. It was the fall of 2023.

Colorado mother, Christel Krug was found murdered in her garage. After she had been stalked

for months, all signs pointing to her ex-boyfriend as the stalker and killer. But

detectives soon learned they'd gone down the entirely wrong path and that

Christel's ex-boyfriend had been framed by the real killer, drumroll, her husband, Daniel

Krug.

An incredible story.

Josh, I want to start off with my takeaway about this episode.

I was incredibly impressed with Christel, the victim in this case.

She did not take this line down. She was after her stalker. Yeah, I mean, one of the things

about this episode is it points up sort of how terrible a crime stalking is, how it's not

taken seriously enough almost anywhere in law enforcement,

which we can talk about later, and how even when you do everything right, which is what she did,

even when you are unafraid and you stand up to this and you get the police involved and you

document everything, it can still go terribly wrong and

end really badly. She was nothing short of impressive in her life before this and in the way

she conducted herself during this investigation up until the point that she was killed.

...