She was killed by her stalker. Could social media companies have saved her?

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Warning: This article contains details of domestic violence and violent death that some readers may find distressing

It had been months since married mother-of-three Kristil Krug first started receiving the messages.

The harassment campaign had materialised out of nowhere the autumn of 2023, when a man claiming to be Krug's ex-boyfriend began bombarding her with increasingly threatening texts and emails. The Colorado woman went to the local cops for help; the detective assigned to her case sent warrants to Google and mobile providers, hoping to find the identity of her digital tormentor.

But weeks went by with no response from the tech companies and no sign of who might be sending her those messages - as Krug lived in abject fear, constantly on high alert. When the 43-year-old got out of her car in the garage one morning in December after dropping her children off at school, she was even carrying a gun for self-protection.

But it wasn't enough to save her life. Her attacker surprised Krug from behind before she could make it into the house, fatally smashing her in the skull and stabbing her in the heart.

A call for a wellness check from her husband around noon quickly led to the discovery of her body - and gave police the justification needed to put a rush on the warrant demands.

Within hours, the stalker's identity was revealed: It wasn't her ex-boyfriend. It had been her husband all along.

Daniel Krug was sentenced to life in prison last April after his conviction in Colorado for stalking, murder and criminal impersonation. Her family sat aghast through the trial, trying to absorb not just the enormity of what had happened but also the tragedy of knowing that major companies could have revealed Krug's stalker far earlier.

"I'm confident that she would have been alive today," said Krug's cousin, Rebecca Ivanoff, a former domestic violence prosecutor who lives in Oregon."She would have been in a place to safety plan, and he never would have had the opportunity to get behind her in the way that he did."

So Ivanoff, Kristil's parents and extended family began working to change the law and save other lives. The key, they believed, was to put in place protocols that would require communications companies to respond more quickly to police in cases of stalking or domestic violence.

Everyone they approached, they said - from law enforcement to legislators – considered it "a no-brainer," according to Krug's cousin.

On 1 May, Oregon became the first state to pass Kristil's Law, which gives social media companies 72 hours and communication companies five days to comply with law enforcement warrants in cases of stalking and domestic violence.

Before that, there were no rules about when companies must respond and what would happen if they didn't. Krug's family is hoping the legislation will be passed soon in her native Colorado, other states and even federally.

"This at least helps me have a belief that I don't have to look at her death as just another meaningless statistic … that she's just another victim of domestic violence," said Krug's mother, Linda Grimsrud.

Hearing that the law had passed, she said, was nearly the same as hearing the guilty verdict read at the end of her former son-in-law's trial. But, she says, she and the rest of Krug's family and supporters are just getting started, hoping the law will expand to other states, federally, and even abroad.

The issues prompting the need for Kristil's Law "resonate strongly with challenges we are seeing internationally", said Professor Asher Flynn of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women at Monash University.

In Australia, for example, there is also no statutory requirement for companies' response. As in the US, police can ask for disclosures to be expedited for life-threatening circumstances.

"However, these pathways are discretionary and rely on police identifying and articulating the situation as urgent," she said. "This means that cases may only be escalated to emergency response mechanisms once risk has clearly intensified, rather than at earlier stages of stalking or coercive control."

Nicole Westmarland, criminology professor and director of the UK's Durham Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse, noted how stalking had been "shape-shifting" over the years - calling technology-facilitated abuse a "global public health problem" that law enforcement has struggled to keep up with across the board.

"We used to talk about technology-facilitated violence and abuse; I think that's almost not a useful term anymore, because … it's practically all technology-facilitated," she said. "So it's a massive swing."

• 'I was stalked for 10 years - the law needs improving'

Back in Oregon, one of the bill's main sponsors, Rep. Kevin Mannix, had been the author of the state's original anti-stalking law in 1995. He's seen that "shape-shifting" throughout the decades and "immediately recognised the problem" when he heard about Kristil's case.

The "typical time" for companies to process warrants is "in the range of six weeks, because it's sort of first in, first out," he said.

"It became clear that, in Kristil's situation, had the communications companies provided their information immediately, she probably would not have been murdered," he said. "And so looking at that, we realised we needed a special category of warrant which is dedicated to domestic violence and stalking situations."

Mannix, a Republican and long-time legislator, sat down with the communications companies to negotiate.

He said that they "recognised that we were not doing a broad-based warrant - we did a specific warrant for these situations."

A request for comment to Google and the mobile providers who were served search warrants in Krug's case was not immediately answered. In the past, Google has pointed to the large volume of police requests they receive daily, and said they have a team dedicated 24/7 to fulfilling emergency requests.

Krug's mother addressed the delicate dance between privacy and safety when it comes to these types of cases.

"It's a tough topic, right, because it does deal with … freedom of speech and your rights and your freedoms," she said. "But I just don't feel that, especially in this age of technology … people should be able to hide."

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Meg Garvin, executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute, said she too found the law "definitely a step in the right direction" - though she was also "a little angry that we had to pass a law to try to fill this gap".

She hopes the legislation serves as "kind of a wake-up call".

"Jurisdictions that don't have it, corporations in those jurisdictions should take a hard look at themselves and say: Why wouldn't we automatically prioritise information requests that involve risks to persons?" she said.

Krug's mother has thrown herself into advocacy in her own jurisdiction, visiting legislators in the Colorado Capitol with Kristil's father as they worked to rally support for the law in her name in the state's 2027 legislative session. They're equally focused, meanwhile, on helping raise her children, now 17, 13 and 11.

Krug, always fiercely protective, would want to shield her daughters and son from publicity and any pain - but she'd also be incredibly supportive of the work being done in her honour, her mother said.

"She would be proud of the fact that we can … try to make someone else's family not go through such suffering, or at least make some small ripple in the pool," Grimsrud said of the dancer, beloved friend and sister - a whipsmart mind with a degree in biochemical engineering and keen sense of humour.

"I just feel really strongly that she's there and wanting to see us succeed … if she can do some good for other families, I know that she'd be proud of that."