WESTMORELAND — The timeline of the alibi for a Topeka woman on trial for double homicide appeared to deteriorate under questioning from the state Tuesday afternoon.

Dana Chandler is representing herself in the third trial for the murders of her ex-husband, Michael Sisco, and his fiancée, Karen Harkness, in Topeka in July 2002. The trial is in Pottawatomie County after a Shawnee County District Court judge granted a change of venue because of media attention. She was convicted in the initial 2012 trial, but that was overturned in 2018 because of prosecutorial misconduct. The second trial in 2022 ended when the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

Before the lunch break Tuesday, Shawnee County chief deputy district attorney Charles Kitt questioned Chandler about a custody evaluation of her performed during the proceedings of her divorce with Sisco.

Kitt asked Chandler a series of questions about whether the findings of John Spiridigliozzi, who performed the evaluation, were in his report. These regarded the diagnosis of major depressive disorder Spiridigliozzi gave her, Chandler’s poor impulse control, her defensiveness during psychological testing.

, her denial of hostile intent when aggressive toward others, her tendency to bottle up anger for long periods before exploding, her narcissistic characteristics, her strong sense of entitlement and lack of empathy, her overreaction and volatility, and her decision in 1994 to give up custody of the children to show Sisco he couldn’t handle it.

Chandler agreeed that some of the statements in Spiridigliozzi’s report were accurate to his evaluation but some of them she couldn’t recall.

During the state’s continued cross-examination of Chandler, she said her statements to Topeka Police Department detective Richard Volle and acquaintance Jeff Bailey were consistent with each other. In Volle’s testimony, which lasted from Thursday to Monday, he said in his initial interview with her, Chandler didn’t include her proposed trip through the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Bailey reportedly later told Volle that, in a conversation with Chandler after the murders, “she told me she lied to the police” about her alibi for the time in question.

When asked about an alleged cassette recording of Volle’s interview with Chandler made by her former attorney, Mark Bennett, Chandler agreed that Bennett had not done or said anything about his recording of the conversation after hearing Volle testify in the first trial.

Chandler also admitted that, though she believed the official evidence copy and Volle’s testimony didn’t include her full alibi and conversation with Volle, she made no effort to preserve Bennett’s recording or to share it with the prosecution as part of discovery.

In a jumbled back and forth between Chandler and Kitt, Chandler said Volle’s questioning confused her during the interview and attributed that confusion to her conflicting statements about her whereabouts in that conversation .

When asked why she’d brought copies of her credit card statements for the time of the murders to the meeting with Volle and why she’d asked that it be held at her attorney’s office, Chandler said she wanted to be prepared for any questions he might have.

In that recorded interview, Chandler said she drove from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, through Dillon, Colorado, to Granby, Colorado. She said then that she hiked south of Granby. However, on Tuesday, she admitted that wasn’t true and isn’t consistent with what she previously claimed to the jury during this trial .

Jurors again heard portions of a recorded conversation between Chandler and her daughter, Hailey Seel, in 2005. In one portion, Seel asked her mother, “Have you ever thought about killing him?” about her father, Sisco, and Chandler replied, “I did.”

Though Chandler has stated that the same conversation played in the first trial was not her voice during the admission, she confirmed during this trial that it is her voice in the recording.

Later, Kitt asked Chandler if she told Volle or Bailey about the gas cans purchased on her credit card or the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting she attended in Denver, both on July 6, 2002, the day leading into the overnight hours when the murders happened. Chandler said, “No, I didn’t.” The jury has previously heard testimony on multiple occasions from Chandler that she did tell both men about the gas cans and AA meeting.

Kitt ended his cross-examination by asking about a period of time on July 7, during which Chandler said she was back at her apartment in Denver. Her phone records show an attempted call from Chandler’s land-line to her cell phone at 7:20 p.m. The call did not go through, as the cell phone was turned off. Chandler has previously stated that periods of inactivity or unavailability on her cell phone records on July 6 and 7 were caused by a loss of service in the mountains and that she couldn’t give an explanation for the attempted call.

Chandler began a redirection of herself, giving more details about her distrust of different parties involved in the case, her alcohol addiction and alleged misinformation in the case. She said she has developed a “strong distrust for lawyers” throughout the multiple trials and referred to her decision to waive client-attorney privilege with former attorney Deborah Hughes.

While explaining her reasoning for the dismissal of her numerous former attorneys, prosecutors asked the judge to clarify if Chandler was waiving her right to attorney-client privilege, to which Chandler confirmed she was.

Before court recessed for the day, Chandler said she was “getting this really gut feeling that I’m being set up, that I’m waiving all this client-attorney privilege.”

Chandler was scheduled to continue her re-direct Wednesday morning.