Nanette was a firecracker, by all accounts. But in the months leading up to her murder, her light slowly began to dim.
Her 22-year marriage to Steve Krentel, then the fire chief of St. Tammany Parish, was crumbling, according to loved ones.
“They weren't happy,” Kim, a criminal prosecutor, says. “She thought he was cheating.”
And Nanette’s suspicions were warranted.
Adding another level of strain to their relationship, Nanette was reportedly at odds with Steve's ex-felon brother, Brian Krentel, who blamed the couple for his additional legal troubles after he totaled his mom’s car.
“He was drinking and driving and crashed the car,” Kim says.
Kim says Nanette was the one who called the cops to report the incident, resulting in Brian’s arrest and subsequent incarceration.
Brian was purportedly furious.
“Nanette told me that he blames her and that he sent them a letter that said that when he got out, he was going to kill them and burn their house down,” she says.
Upon his release, Nanette feared for her safety, and in response to the terrifying threats, she insisted they install additional security cameras around their sprawling rural property.
Nanette also made sure she was constantly armed with at least one firearm from the couple’s 30-gun armory.
Still, Kim says Nanette felt as though her husband wasn’t taking her safety as seriously as she would have liked.
“She had told me if Steve didn't get it together and start protecting her, that she was going to kick him out of the house,” Kim claims.
Kim and their late father, Dan Watson, begged Nanette to stay with them in Iowa until things cooled down, but she was hesitant to leave home.
“She said, ‘As long as I have my gun and my cameras, I'm good,’” Kim recalls.
Dan died in 2021 without the closure of knowing who killed his daughter.
“I think he blamed himself, and a part of him died with her,” Kim says. “He was never the same.”
'Time Works Against You’
Nanette’s family has been outspoken about the investigation since its inception.
At first, authorities were working the case as a suicide, but loved ones said they weren’t convinced that Nanette would take her own life.
The coroner later ruled Nanette's death a homicide.
The initial oversight might have played a crucial role in bringing justice to Nanette’s case.
"The lag in coming to the conclusion that this was a homicide could have affected the investigation,” Doug Johnson, a retired Nebraska State Patrol investigator, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
Kim says she brought Johnson and medical examiner Dr. Tom Bennett on to help with the family’s own independent inquiry into Nanette’s slaying after their dissatisfaction with local authorities. The men traveled to the St. Tammany Parish coroner’s office to view Nanette’s burned remains, but they were prohibited from conducting their own autopsy.
“In my mind, her death wasn't much of a mystery, and it wasn't much of a close call,” Johnson says.
With decades of experience in law enforcement and time spent as a death investigation instructor, Johnson explains he would have handled the case differently.
“You treat every death scene as a homicide because time works against you,” he advises. “You start to lose evidence, witnesses. The first 48 hours—they're golden. And there seemed to be a lot of hesitation in determining or calling the manner of death in this case a homicide.”
Almost a week passed before investigators secured the crime scene, and nearly two months went by before St. Tammany Parish coroner Charles Preston officially ruled Nanette’s death a homicide.
'She Saw People Following Her’
In the months leading up to Nanette's death, Kim says her sister was wrecked with paranoia.
“She had called Dad more frequently, talking about how she felt like Brian and his friends were coming for her,” Kim says. “She said things were getting worse and she saw people following her.”
As investigators attempted to piece together the events that preceded Nanette’s slaying, they determined her vehicle was captured on surveillance video at a local McDonald’s drive-thru hours before she was killed.
Kim says she and her family are not completely convinced it was Nanette behind the wheel, citing the grainy footage.
Back at the crime scene, authorities determined that the fire was intentionally set in two separate areas of the home, following Nanette's fatal shooting. And it appeared the perpetrator deliberately drenched the DVR—the device that recorded home surveillance footage—with an accelerant, making it impossible for authorities to retrieve its data or view any video of her murderer, they said.
A Sister’s Intuition
Authorities said they looked into several individuals, including Steve and Brian, who were both cleared of any wrongdoing in connection with Nanette’s killing by investigators.
According to investigators, both men were captured on security footage at the time of her death—Brian at the fire station, and Steve at their mother’s house.
Despite these claims, Kim says her gut feeling tells her otherwise.
“This seemed planned. Somebody had to know the area,” she alleges. “And, because she thought Steve was cheating, I think he shot her or had someone else do it and had someone set the house on fire.”
Steve and Brian did not return A&E Crime + Investigation's request for comment, while the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office and the district attorney’s office rejected A&E’s requests for interviews.
In 2024, Steve said the years following his wife’s murder were “the hardest of my life." "The only thing that keeps me sane is the fact that Nanette's case is still active and being worked on," he said in a statement to WDSU News. "Loss is extremely difficult for everyone, but loss without answers is torture."
Ahead of the ninth anniversary of Nanette’s death, Kim’s fight for justice hasn’t wavered.
“It’s like you're in a dream, and nobody can hear you,” Kim says. “I want whoever was involved in her death to be held responsible. There’s just no peace of mind.”
