09/10/2026
A CONVICTED DOUBLE MURDERER… OR A WOMAN WHO HAS SPENT YEARS IN PRISON FOR A CRIME SHE DIDN’T COMMIT?
Tomorrow night, one of the most controversial murder cases in Kansas history is about to be thrown back into the national spotlight.
HBO’s new three-part docuseries, “A Killer Story,” premieres September 10 and centers on an extraordinary effort by a Kansas couple to prove that convicted murderer Dana Chandler is innocent.
And here’s where this gets wild:
Eileen and Keen Umbehr were not Chandler’s relatives.
They weren’t friends.
According to reporting about the documentary, Eileen had no personal connection to Dana Chandler or the case when she became convinced that something was terribly wrong with Chandler’s conviction.
She eventually began contacting former New York Times journalist Joe Sexton, urging him to look into it.
Now that fight has become an HBO documentary.
But before deciding whether these people are fighting to free an innocent woman, or refusing to accept the evidence against a convicted killer, you need to know exactly what happened.
THE MURDERS OF MIKE SISCO & KAREN HARKNESS
On July 7, 2002, 47-year-old Mike Sisco and his 53-year-old fiancée, Karen Harkness, were found murdered inside Karen’s Topeka home.
The couple had been at the Sac & Fox Casino the previous evening and returned home sometime after 1:30 a.m.
Later that day, Karen’s father arrived at the home.
Mike and Karen were found dead in a basement bedroom.
Both had been shot multiple times.
But the crime scene presented investigators with a problem that would follow this case for more than two decades.
There appeared to be no robbery.
Karen was still wearing jewelry.
Mike’s wallet contained more than $950.
Karen’s purse, containing more than $350, remained inside the house.
A sliding glass door at the rear of the home was found ajar.
And investigators did not find fingerprints on the spent shell casings or other evidence at the scene that identified Dana Chandler as the killer.
There was no DNA evidence placing her inside the house.
And the murder weapon was never recovered.
So why did investigators eventually become convinced that Mike’s ex-wife killed them?
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ENTER DANA CHANDLER
Mike and Dana Chandler had gone through an extremely contentious divorce.
At the time of the murders, Dana wasn’t even living in Kansas.
She lived in Denver, Colorado, more than 500 miles away.
But investigators began hearing disturbing stories from Mike’s family and Dana’s own children.
They described Dana as obsessed with Mike.
Prosecutors would eventually present evidence that during the six months before the murders, Dana placed more than 600 calls to Mike and Karen.
Some occurred late at night.
On one occasion, records showed 17 calls in just 18 minutes.
Her children also testified about incidents in which Dana allegedly watched or followed their father.
And then investigators discovered something extremely interesting about Dana’s cellphone.
Around the time Mike and Karen were murdered, there was approximately a 27-hour period with no outgoing activity from Dana’s phone.
Prosecutors believed Dana shut it off while driving from Colorado to Kansas.
Dana had another explanation:
She said she was in the Colorado mountains where she didn’t have service.
There was no cellphone location evidence proving she traveled to Kansas.
But investigators found another detail.
The day before the murders, Dana purchased two five-gallon gas cans.
Prosecutors suggested those cans could have helped her make the trip while limiting stops that might leave a trail.
Dana maintained there was an innocent explanation for the purchase.
Then came something perhaps even more damaging.
Investigators learned there had been another weekend roughly a month before the murders when Dana’s normal phone activity similarly disappeared.
A friend testified Dana told her she had driven to Topeka, entered Mike’s house through a window while nobody was home, and later waited outside Karen’s house.
Prosecutors would characterize that trip as essentially a dry run.
And Dana’s own daughter, Hailey, secretly recorded conversations with her mother after the murders.
During one conversation, Dana acknowledged that she had thought about killing Mike.
Dana did not admit murdering him.
But to prosecutors, it became another piece of a much larger circumstantial puzzle.
BUT THERE WAS STILL ONE HUGE PROBLEM.
Investigators could not physically put Dana Chandler in Topeka.
No DNA.
No fingerprints.
No murder weapon.
No eyewitness who saw her commit the murders.
No forensic evidence placing her inside Karen’s house.
And Dana maintained that she was in Colorado.
For years, prosecutors apparently weren’t convinced the circumstantial case was enough.
Dana wasn’t arrested until 2011, nine years after Mike and Karen were killed.
In 2012, a jury convicted her of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder.
She received two consecutive life sentences.
It looked like the case was finally over.
It wasn’t.
THEN THE CONVICTION FELL APART.
In 2018, the Kansas Supreme Court reversed Dana Chandler’s convictions because of prosecutorial misconduct.
One major issue involved statements made by prosecutor Jacqueline “Jacqie” Spradling concerning a protection-from-abuse order.
The Kansas Supreme Court determined misconduct had occurred and that there was a reasonable possibility the error contributed to the guilty verdict.
And the story didn’t stop there.
In 2022, the Kansas Supreme Court DISBARRED Spradling.
In its disciplinary opinion, the court said her conduct included ignoring a court order, repeatedly making arguments to the jury without evidentiary support, intentionally making false statements to the Supreme Court and making false statements during the disciplinary investigation.
Dana Chandler suddenly no longer stood convicted of murder.
But prosecutors weren’t finished.
TRIAL #2 — AND THIS TIME THE JURY COULDN’T AGREE.
Dana was prosecuted again in 2022.
The State once again argued the murders were driven by jealousy, rage and obsession.
The defense hammered the same question that had haunted the case from the beginning:
Where was the physical evidence?
After approximately three weeks of testimony, the case went to the jury.
They could not reach a unanimous verdict.
Hung jury.
Mistrial.
After two trials, Dana Chandler had one overturned conviction and one jury that couldn’t agree whether she was guilty.
But Kansas prosecutors decided to try her again.
TRIAL #3
In February 2025, Dana Chandler went to trial for a third time.
And this time she made an extraordinary decision.
She represented herself.
For 18 days, jurors again heard about the phone calls, her relationship with Mike, her statements, the gas cans, the unexplained period of cellphone inactivity and the inconsistencies prosecutors said existed in her account of where she was.
They also heard what still didn’t exist:
Physical evidence placing her at the murder scene.
Dana told jurors that she had behaved badly.
She acknowledged her alcoholism and some of the terrible things she had said about Mike and Karen.
But she insisted being a deeply flawed ex-wife did not make her a murderer.
On March 7, 2025, the jury reached its decision.
GUILTY.
Two counts of first-degree murder.
In June 2025, Dana Chandler was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, with no possibility of parole for 50 years.
She continues to maintain her innocence.
AND NOW HBO IS ASKING PEOPLE TO LOOK AT THIS CASE AGAIN.
Tomorrow, September 10, HBO premieres the first episode of “A Killer Story.”
The three-part series follows Eileen and Keen Umbehr and former New York Times journalist Joe Sexton as they examine the case and the Umbehrs’ extraordinary belief that Dana Chandler was wrongfully convicted.
The series doesn’t just ask whether investigators got the right woman.
It also raises another uncomfortable question:
Can people who become convinced someone is innocent develop the same kind of tunnel vision they accuse police and prosecutors of having?
In the trailer, Sexton confronts the couple with essentially that very question.
And THAT may be what makes this case so fascinating.
Because two things can simultaneously be true:
The original prosecution of Dana Chandler involved misconduct serious enough to get her convictions overturned, and the prosecutor was ultimately disbarred.
AND
A completely different prosecution later presented the case to another jury, which independently found Chandler guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in 2025.
So tomorrow, thousands of people are going to hear the argument that Dana Chandler may be an innocent woman sitting in prison.
But Mike Sisco and Karen Harkness also deserve to remain at the center of this story.
They were brutally murdered in their home more than 24 years ago.
Their families have endured an investigation, an arrest nine years later, an overturned conviction, prosecutorial misconduct, a mistrial, a third trial and more than two decades of public scrutiny.
Now the debate begins all over again.
After looking at BOTH sides:
Do you believe the circumstantial evidence, the hundreds of calls, Dana’s behavior toward Mike and Karen, the 27-hour cellphone blackout, the gas cans, the alleged earlier trip to Topeka and Dana’s own recorded statements, adds up to proof beyond a reasonable doubt?
OR…
Without DNA, fingerprints, a murder weapon, an eyewitness or physical evidence proving Dana ever left Colorado, do you believe there is still reasonable doubt?
And the biggest question:
Do you believe Dana Chandler murdered Mike Sisco and Karen Harkness… or do you believe Kansas convicted the wrong woman?
A Killer Story premieres September 10 on HBO, with the three-part series airing weekly.
What do YOU think?
