Jurors in Chandler Halderson murder trial see graphic photos of father's remains, hear from former girlfriend (2024)

Jurors in Chandler Halderson’s murder trial heard from witnesses Thursday about his trip to a rural Cottage Grove farm where the mutilated remains of his father, Bart, were found and, more than three months later, a rifle hidden in a shed.

Halderson, 23, of Windsor, appeared to show no emotion as Deputy District Attorney William Brown took witness Brent Baverstock, a Dane County sheriff’s detective, through a series of increasingly graphic photos of Bart’s shirtless, headless torso as it was found under a pile of sticks in a stand of woods near where Halderson had been seen days before. In the center of the torso’s back was a wound, believed by the prosecution to be a gunshot wound.

Prior to Baverstock’s testimony, jurors heard from Chandler’s former girlfriend’s mother, Dulce Mellender, and Mellender’s girlfriend, Cresent L’Sai, who owns the farm where Bart’s remains were found.

They described how Chandler had been at the farm on July 4 with the girlfriend for an Independence Day gathering, and then came by alone the day after asking to use L’Sai’s pool — a ruse, prosecutors contend, used by Chandler as an excuse to dump his father’s torso.

Halderson is accused of killing both his parents, Bart, 50, and Krista, 53, on July 1 in the home they shared after his father discovered his son had been lying for months or years about having a job and going to school.

To cover up the killings, prosecutors say, Chandler concocted a cover story about his parents having gone to the family cabin in Langlade County on July 2 before filing false missing persons reports on both of them five days later — days he spent dismembering his parents’ bodies and trying to burn them in the family fireplace before dumping them at the L’Sai farm and along the Wisconsin River near Prairie du Sac, where some of Krista’s body was found.

Baverstock said the Sheriff’s Office decided to search L’Sai’s farm shortly after he interviewed Mellender in connection with Chandler’s reports. Without going into detail, he said Mellender was “emotionally distraught” and the interview raised enough red flags that he felt investigators had to get to the farm right away.

It was there that he saw turkey vultures — unusual among birds in their strong sense of smell — circling overhead, long grass tamped down as if with car tires near the woods, and a Target bag filled with what appeared to be bloody rags.

“It took me a while to process what I was seeing,” he said of Bart’s remains, “and then it became obvious I was looking at a human torso.”

Prior to Baverstock’s testimony, Mellender and L’Sai described the events of July 4 and 5, when they said Chandler seemed down and had told them he’d recently lost a new job at SpaceX in Florida because he’d suffered a concussion and couldn’t fly.

Generally quiet and a bit nerdy, Chandler “just seemed kind of off, kind of weird, actually,” L’Sai said. Mellender said he told her “his concussion was really bad.”

The prosecution, though, has sought to shed doubt on whether Halderson was seriously injured or injured at all in the fall he said he took down some stairs at his home in June. An emergency room physician who saw Halderson on June 17 testified that while he likely had a mild concussion, his CT scans did not show any abnormalities and he did not tell Halderson — as Halderson allegedly told others later — that he might need surgery and couldn’t fly.

On the Fourth, Chandler had asked L’Sai for her phone number so that he could come by and use the pool, L’Sai said, and she’d provided it, but didn’t hear a message he left on her landline before he showed up on the afternoon of July 5.

Chandler had never been to the property alone, L’Sai and Mellender testified, and Mellender rushed over there when she heard he was headed that way because L’Sai sometimes went topless in the pool.

“I was worried he might see her,” said Mellender, who was embarrassed enough about the disclosure to need a short break during her testimony.

Chandler didn’t immediately head to the pool, though, according to L’Sai, who said she had become irritated because it was hot and she wanted to use the pool herself. Mellender, meanwhile, was worried he might be doing drugs while on the property, L’Sai said.

Eventually, she and Mellender decided to go in the pool and it was a short time later that they saw a shirtless Chandler walking up from where Bart’s torso was later found, L’Sai said. Mellender said he asked to use the pool with them, and she said no because L’Sai was topless, but he got in anyway and L’Sai said he spent about 15 minutes making washing-like motions with the water on his arms and upper body before getting out and leaving.

“It was odd because he just seemed really different when he got in the pool,” L’Sai said, appearing more “lucid” and “present.”

L’Sai testified that she found the rifle hidden behind some boards in her shed in mid-October as she was cleaning the shed out. She said she hadn’t been locking the shed and the rifle wasn’t hers or her father’s, who also lives on the farm. On cross-examination she acknowledged that she hadn’t looked in the shed for a long time at that point and didn’t know every item that was in there before it was cleaned out.

Girlfriend testifies

Much of the afternoon was taken up by testimony from Halderson’s former girlfriend, Cathryn Mellender, 21, who spoke of the close relationship she had with Halderson and his parents for nearly two years, and how she believed Halderson had been going to school at Madison Area Technical College and working at American Family Insurance but had taken a job in Florida with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. She said she planned to join him in Florida in August after her lease in the Madison area ended.

Cathryn, who goes by Cat, testified repeatedly that she believed what Chandler told her about his life and their future life together, although she saw little proof of any of it, such as grades or money.

Brown took her through a series of texts and Snapchat messages between the two of them to show the jury what both were doing or said they were doing from late June through Halderson’s arrest on July 8, initially on charges of lying to investigators. A tearful Cat agreed with Brown at the end of her testimony that she was the person most in contact with Chandler and most often at his home in the days after Bart and Krista’s deaths, which she said she knew nothing about until later.

“I just believed his parents were missing,” she said. “I just wanted them to be found.”

Messages between the two of them as July 1 approached showed Chandler telling her his parents might go to the family cabin and worried about his future.

“I just had a bright future planned and it’s falling apart,” he told her in a Snapchat message just after 7 a.m. July 1.

Later, they texted about what they would be doing together and in some, Chandler asked her to bring him hydrogen peroxide, ice and a Swiffer WetJet mop. When she went to stay at his house on July 2, she testified that she smelled smoke, which Chandler explained as being a result of breaking one of the glass panes on the fireplace while while playing fetch with one of his dogs inside. Investigators later found part of a human skull in the fireplace, the prosecution says.

Questioning neighbors

On Wednesday, witnesses, including longtime friends of the family, neighbors and Bart’s brother, Brett, described Krista as doting and her and Bart as too responsible to have gone on a trip without telling anyone, as Chandler alleged. Bart, a certified public accountant, would not have taken a large amount of cash with them, possibly to gamble, as Chandler reportedly suggested, witnesses testified. And while Chandler told people his parents also took a lot of alcohol with them, neither were heavy drinkers, witnesses said.

Several of the 29 people called to the stand Tuesday and Wednesday described Chandler as nervous, awkward, distracted and “emotionally flat” in his interactions with them in the days after the murders, including when he visited several neighbors on the morning of July 8 — the day he was arrested — to ask whether they had surveillance video showing his street.

“It’s almost feeling like you have to think how to act,” Hanna Hilgendorf said of Chandler’s demeanor when she and her sister — longtime friends of the family — went to visit him on July 7.

Prosecutors also showed a compilation of security footage taken from a home near the Haldersons in which the family’s Subaru can be seen leaving and returning multiple times between July 1 and July 7. Prosecutors contend that Chandler only decided to distribute his parents remains around southern Wisconsin after failing to burn them in the fireplace.

Chandler Halderson is charged with two counts each of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse, hiding a corpse and falsifying information about a missing person.

The trial continues Friday and is expected to last about two more weeks.