A man in Wisconsin killed his parents in July after they discovered that he had faked going to college and getting a job offer from SpaceX, prosecutors say.
Chandler Halderson, 23, was charged with two counts each of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse, hiding a corpse, and falsifying information about a missing person. Halderson has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial began Monday and is expected to last three weeks.
“A lot of cases begin with a murder. This one is just a small piece of the puzzle,” Deputy District Attorney William Brown said Monday in his opening statement of the murder trial in the circuit court in Dane County, Wisconsin. “Chandler spun an amazing web of lies.”
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Halderson presented himself as a soon-to-be graduate of Madison Area Technical College with a job at American Family Insurance and a job offer from SpaceX, Brown said. The young man attempted to create the image that he was legitimately employed through the fabrication of dozens, if not hundreds of emails between himself, MATC, and American Family Insurance, though his constant cash shortage raised his father’s suspicion, the prosecutor said.
Halderson’s father, Bart Halderson, later posed as his son during a phone call with MATC, who confirmed that he had not been attending classes, the prosecutor continued. Bart Halderson informed his son that he had arranged a meeting between the two of them and MATC officials on July 1, prompting the defendant to shoot his father in the back in response, Brown said.
Halderson shot his mother Krista Halderson a few hours later, Brown said, and the young man spent the next few days attempting to dispose of the bodies before filing falsified missing person reports with the Dane County Sheriff’s Office on July 7.
Brown said the man spent July 4 cutting up his parents and burning their bodies due to investigators finding a tape measure and a piece of a human skull in his fireplace. After determining that the fire was not hot enough, Halderson buried his parents’ remains in two different locations, the prosecution contended.
The defense pushed back on these allegations in its opening statement. Defense attorney Catherine Dorl described Halderson as “just a normal kid” who didn’t kill his parents. Dorl also argued that it was not possible to know the direct cause of Bart and Krista’s deaths or how the parents would have responded as the prosecution implied they would.
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Investigators found human remains buried on a rural property on July 8, reports CBS 58 Milwaukee. The remains were identified as Bart Halderson, with preliminary autopsy results revealing he died from “homicidal violence, including firearm injury.” Investigators later discovered dismembered human remains on July 14, later identified as Krista Halderson.
Under Wisconsin law, a homicide conviction could result in a lifetime prison sentence.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
