HBO’s “A Killer Story” revisits Dana Chandler’s overturned murder conviction, while Joe Sexton examines how certainty can outlast a damaged prosecution.
Dana Chandler’s original conviction gave way to a new trial and a 7-5 hung jury, leaving the killings of Mike Sisco and Karen Harkness unresolved.
Sisco, Chandler’s ex-husband, and Harkness, his girlfriend, were killed in Topeka, Kansas, in 2002. Chandler was later found guilty in connection with their deaths.
“A Killer Story,” directed by Matthew Galkin, follows investigative journalist Joe Sexton as he examines the case, its disputed evidence and the people consumed by it.
The larger issue reaches beyond one defendant. When a prosecution breaks down under court review, the justice system must separate the strength of its evidence from its faith in its original theory.
Chandler was convicted in 2012, but the Kansas Supreme Court overturned those convictions in 2018 because of prosecutorial misconduct. Sexton described the court’s decision as unanimous and unusually harsh toward prosecutor Jacqie Spradling.
Sexton said the court found that Spradling had lied to the jury and manufactured evidence. He argued that the judges should have ended the prosecution rather than sending the case back for another trial.
Instead, prosecutor Charles Kitt received the discretion to try Chandler again. That second effort failed to produce a unanimous verdict.
The New York Post, Fox News and the Associated Press reported that jurors deliberated for six days. Their final split was seven votes for conviction and five against.
A hung jury is not an acquittal. It is also not a conviction. The state failed to persuade all 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the burden the government must meet.
Prosecutors argued that jealousy drove Chandler to kill Sisco and Harkness. Kitt told jurors that science could not solve the case and relied on circumstantial evidence to support the state’s theory.
But investigators never recovered the murder weapon, Fox News reported. They also found no fingerprints on the shell casings and no forensic match placing Chandler inside the victims’ home.
The Associated Press described conflicting evidence, including a witness identification that came late in the case. Defense attorney Tom Bath argued that investigators followed their bias rather than the evidence.
Those gaps do not establish Chandler’s innocence. They do explain why the state’s case deserves hard scrutiny, especially after misconduct already destroyed the first convictions.
Citizen investigator Eileen Umbehr pushed Sexton to look more closely. He said it took another 3,000 emails from Umbehr before he seriously engaged with the case.
Umbehr and her husband, Keen, had spent years developing their own theories. One centered on Jeff Sutton, Harkness’ son-in-law, and a hair burned into a shell casing.
The couple bought an Uzi to test a theory about how the hair might have landed on Sutton’s forearm, Sexton said. When the test failed to support the idea, they suggested the wrong hair might have been tested.
Sexton saw both persistence and danger in that response. He said Umbehr had invested so many years in her theories that admitting error might have become too painful.
Still, he credited the couple with answering his questions, even when he challenged their motives and methods. Obsession can uncover neglected facts, but it can also make a theory harder to abandon.
Sexton did not present his doubts as proof that Chandler could not have committed the killings. Instead, he asked others to assume she was guilty and explain how the crime worked.
He laid out that approach in the Newsweek interview:
“Let's stipulate she did it, out of anger, jealousy and vengeance, and walk me through how. How does she come by the gun, especially if it's some weapon of war? How does she get bullets that are Israeli-made and typically fired from an Uzi?”
Sexton also questioned a 540-mile drive each way from Denver. He asked how Chandler knew which house to visit and whether Sisco and Harkness would be at a casino rather than home.
He pointed to two five-gallon gas tanks allegedly bought with a credit card. If Chandler planned the crime carefully, he asked, why leave a purchase record instead of paying cash?
Another question concerned the shooting itself. Sexton asked how a woman whom no one could identify as an experienced gun owner fired a dozen bullets with such accuracy.
These were questions in Sexton’s hypothetical exercise, not findings that independently settled the case. Their value lies in testing whether the prosecution’s account can explain each necessary step.
Sisco and Harkness deserve justice. Chandler also deserves a process free from manufactured evidence, misleading claims and prosecutorial shortcuts.
The state holds immense power when it accuses a citizen of murder. That power must rest on lawful conduct and evidence strong enough to convince a unanimous jury.
Accountability is not softness. It is the safeguard that keeps justice tied to proof instead of institutional pride.
