Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime.
Speaker 3: Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind of a Murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Jill Thomas.
Speaker 3: How's it going, mister Thomas.
Speaker 2: It's going great. It broke into the forties up here
in the icebox of Connecticut for the first time in weeks.
I think January just feels is going to be a
long log after a very cold, snowy, icy December.
Speaker 3: It seems like it will probably be that way. We're
only nine days into January and it already feels like
it's January seventy first.
Speaker 2: I'm feeling the same way.
Speaker 3: January is always the longest, hardest month. It feels like
everything else will fly, but this one it drags.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And without getting into a political discussion, the national
news is very challenging in down Toyeat. Yeah, everybody I know,
regardless of their political persuasion, is unhappy in a tough
place right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it can be hard to find things to look
forward to and find joy in. But one of the
things that I'm trying to make an effort to do
every day is find a little joy somewhere. And so
today my joy was getting to see my parents pittmull Electra,
who is the sweetest, luckiest darling, and she was my
joy for today.
Speaker 2: Ah. Now she's transitioned over from one family member to another. Correct.
Speaker 3: Yes, she was my stepsister's dog and she's come to
live with my parents, and she is the most wonderful
love bug of all time. She's so sweet. None of
us ever thought we could love a pit bull. And
I'm not just saying that because it's a breed specific thing.
I have known two people who are attacked by pitbulls.
My life partner Mark's dog Piglet was mauled by an
off leash pet ball.
Speaker 2: I remember that, yes.
Speaker 3: So yeah. I never thought that pit bulls were anything
other than dangerous. But then I met Electra and she
is just the sweetest and goofiest, funniest girl, and I
just love her to pieces. She's so darling.
Speaker 2: She sounds like a real sweetheart, and the pictures are great,
and she does look like just like a complete love sponge,
like I want to be with my people and I
want to get lots of pets in the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she'll pile on top of you as soon
as she sees you. And because she's a lap full,
she's the big old girls. And when she puts her
ears up, she looks exactly like Scooby Doo, so I
don't think she's full pitbull. She may have some boxer
in her, but she's got Scooby Doo ears. When she
perks her ears up, we always go work fragging. Do
we know how old she is? Like two or three?
Speaker 2: Maybe hopefully she'll be around for a number of years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's a great girl. We love her so she
is our joy and I assume your Oliver is your joy.
Speaker 2: He is. We're having lots of fun, and we do
try to look for fun things to balance out all
the heaviness. I was reading an article early yesterday morning.
Get up and the first thing I do is start
dooms growing. I was reading this article about the feeling
of dread. That was the word the author used in
the community across the country these days, and I winced.
But I think it's pretty accurate. On the other hand,
I try to look for positive things. All the animal
stuff on social media were complete suckers for anything with
docs and dogs. Donkeys, Yep, we've had goats. We've had
serious discussions about whether or not we could get a donkey,
which we live in town. I don't think our neighbors
would be thrilled with us getting a donkey, probably not.
But a fun idea, though, isn't it. Could you get
away with a goat to mow your backyard? Well, I
don't think so, and we're right in town. This is
probably not a good idea. Olivre's probably the largest animal
we should have in our yard. We're in the village
and the houses are fairly close together. I just don't
think large farm animals are in our future, but we
like checking them out. I do look for good movies
and entertaining things to watch to just try to bounce
out all of this stuff. We've stepped away from the
news for a while, Yeah, but it's hard not to
follow what's going on.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's because you want to stay informed. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Today we wanted to talk about an article that was
in the New York Times. So once you set that.
Speaker 3: Up for us, I was very interested the other day
when I was scanning the New York Times and I
saw not even a headline, just a smaller piece buried
underneath the in other news, and the headline was her
brother pleaded guilty to the Idaho murders. Now She's ready
to talk. It is a piece by investigative reporter Mike Baker,
who was based in Seattle. He is reporting for the
New York Times, and he scored an interview with Melanie Coberger,
who goes by mel about how her family is coping
in the wake of her brother Brian's plea deal and
guilty plea for the Idaho murders. Was very interesting to me.
One that she was willing to talk and to what
she had to say. So I put forth the idea
to Bill that we should talk about this. And what
we're going to do is proceed through hitting the highlights
of the story, and we're going to stop and discuss
some of the points that we found most interesting, because
there are quite a few things in here that speak
to true crime culture at the moment, ethics and true crime,
which of course we all are big proponents of here
in the true crime space, and it's things that I
think we can all have a good discussion about. So
we'll go ahead and start the story begins. The harrowing
news had spread across the country. In the fall of
twenty twenty two, four college students were found stabbed to
death at a house near the University of Idaho campus. Melkoburger,
who was preparing to start a new job as a
mental health therapist in New Jersey, could not help feeling
a sense of alarm. Her brother, Brian, was living just
fifteen minutes from the scene of the mysterious killings. Investigators
had no suspects, and Brian was just the type of
person who would leave his door unlocked and go out
on late night jogs. Brian, you're running outside and the
psycho killer is on the loose, She remembers telling him
be careful. He thanked her for checking on him and
assured her that he would stay safe. In early December
that year, her brother returned to their parents' home in
Pennsylvania for the holidays, and later that month, Miss Coburger
got a call from her sister, Amanda. Law enforcement officers
had burst into the house in the middle of the
night and placed Coburger in handcuffs. She was like, I'm
with the FBI. Brian's been arrested. Miss Coburger said, I
was like, for what the response the Idaho murders. For
a brief moment, she wondered if it was a prank.
Then a sense of nausea overtook her.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one of those moments that I'm sure no
one expects to get. You don't expect the phone call
that says your brother's been arrested for serial murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as murder. Yeah, this isn't even killing one person.
This is killing four people, and as far as we know,
he didn't even know them in any serious way. You
remember that Coburger and his father had driven across the
country together and so Coberger had gone back during the
semester break. He's working on as doctorate at that point,
and he's spending time with his family over the Christmas break,
and that's when the FBI and other law enforcement agencies
broke their door down, went into the house in the
early morning hours. It has to be a complete shock.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I was thinking of is
I sat here reading this and thinking about what we
would like to discuss is the fact that you have
the families of the victims and you have the families
of the effender. Their reactions to that type of news
are likely very similar. They are literally on different sides
of the same coin. Both of us have been in
the position where we remember getting phone calls I am about
loved ones of ours who were murdered. We've never been
on the opposite end of someone that we know has
murdered someone else. I would imagine, like I said, that,
getting that phone call and hearing this terrible news that
you think would never happen to you, now, that's got
to be a world shaker. Bill. Do you remember where
you were when you got the phone call about Kathy?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, yeah, it was I was living in Philadelphia,
I was working for RCA Video. I remember my parents
called me. It was a Sunday in October. Both my
parents who were on the phone. We used to talk frequently.
This is in fall nineteen eighty six, So just as
a reminder, this is before the Internet, before email, before
cell phones. If you wanted to get a hold of somebody,
you called them on their landline, which was either at
home or at work. Typically I had an answering machine.
I remember that, anasonic answering machine with two cassettes, one
with an outgoing message and one with incoming messages. In
this case, it was my parents calling me together. I
remember my dad saying very seriously, are you sitting down?
And I remember thinking this is ridiculous. What do I
need to sit down for. I thought this was just
going to be that sort of weekly phone call you
had with your parents. My dad then proceeded to tell
me that Kathy's body had been found in her Honda Civic,
together with her relatively new girlfriend, Rebecca Dowski. And it's
like a bolt out of the blue. And then I
found later that becomes like a line of demarcation. I've
used this expression before on Mind over Murder. It's like
your own private nine to eleven or other significant date
where you're never going to forget where you were the
day you were hit with this news. Now, it's not
a shared event when I was a kid, or President
Kennedy or the Challenger disaster or nine to eleven, But
it's just like that, but on a more personal level.
So there's the before and then you get this news,
and then everything after that becomes the after. Yeah, And
I remember thinking about it much later. I came to
realize that friends of Kathy's that was a club that
was no longer accepting members. It's like a steel sheet
came down. And then there's the before that's when Kathy
Thomas was alive, and then there's the after. And it's
such a profound impact on your life, especially now in
the two years since we got the first solve in
the Colonial Parkway murders, and that was right about two
years ago at the time we're recording this January twenty
twenty four. That announcement, I think especially for Robin Edwards
and David Knobling's families and then Teresa Howell's family as well,
that we were not familiar with at that time. For
I think all of these families. This is another one
of those very sharp lines between the before and the after.
Here it is it's more than thirty years later, and
now those families who've suffered a similar loss to ours
are also then going through the shocking news that there's
some sort of resolution in their case. Now, I suppose,
had Alan Wade Wilmer Senior or identified suspect not been deceased,
we'd then be heading into another pivotal stage for this
whole thing, which is going into a trial. And then
I suppose the day they announce a verdict would probably
be again one of those very right lines between the
before and minster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. It's a watershed moment. One of the
things I want to talk about before we move on
is something that I've only alluded to on the podcast
because I've never really felt that it was my story
to tell, and I still feel largely that is true.
If I want to tell this story in any depth,
I will ask the family members to come on. But
probably the closest that I had come up until working
with Bill in relation to knowing someone who had been
murdered was the murder of my best friend's mother, Lynn.
Lynn was the one of the moms in my very
small friend group, and her daughter, Karen and I were
joined at the hip, which means I was always over
at Lynn's house or Karen was always over at mine.
Lynn was the cool mom. Lynn was the mom who
would She would let us make virgin strawberry dakeries in
the blender, even if it made a mess of the kitchen,
and she would let us borrow the car if we
wanted to, Whereas it would have been a huge sort
of power trip with all the rest of our parents,
she was just like, yeah, sure, go ahead and take
the car. It's fine. She was young, she was hip,
she was really beautiful, and she was fun and love
being around her kids. She adored them. And so Lynn
is somebody that I came to know very well. Over
the years that Karen and I went to school together
and had sleepovers together and all the rest of that.
I learned that Lynn had been murdered by her on again,
off again romantic partner. They were off again at that
point when my parents called me my freshman year of
college and told me with the are you sitting down?
I hate when people say that for that reason, can't
stand that they said, are you sitting down like yours.
My parents were both on the phone too, which is
pretty rare because my dad and my mom don't. They
get along, but they don't do the bulk of the
parenting together. That's mainly my mom's job. But both my
parents were on the phone. They said that they had
seen in the paper that day, in March of two thousand,
that Lynn had been murdered by her on again, off
again romantic partner. He had her out for a date
two nights previous. She had never come home. Her family
went looking for her, and they found her at the
home of her romantic partner. Again. I will not give
his name because he doesn't deserve to have his name given.
He had shot her to death and committed suicide himself.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: And it was the most shocking thing that had happened
in my life up to that point. And it was
the shock for all of us in our friend group
because it was so splashy and because it was tabloid
almost it made the front page of both our daily
newspapers here, you know, the headline, romance turns deadly, very exploitative.
Things were not the same for any of us after that,
not for my best friend, not for her family and
not for me either or our friend group, because all
of us had spent time not just with Lynn, but
with her murderer as well, and none of us had
a clue who, not an inkling that he would have
ever done something like this. And so those watershed moments,
like you said, are the ones that you remember where
you were when you when it happened, You remember how
you reacted, and it is a change from this is
what my life was before this happened, and now here's
the reality afterward. And I feel terrible not only for
the victims' families who get that phone call, but I
feel bad for the families like the Coburgers who get
that call too, because they didn't ask for it either.
Speaker 2: And this has been an interesting development for us now
over the last two years because after Alan Wade Wilmer
Senior was identified as the suspect in the Colonial Parkway murders,
who've been linked to three murders at that time Robin Edwards,
David Nobling, and Teresa Howell as we mentioned, and now
in November twenty twenty five was linked to the murder
of Lori M. Powell. So now he's linked to four murders.
But we've had the very un usual circumstance of connecting
with and communicating multiple times now with his family, with
Wilmer's family, and I remember two years ago hearing from
the Wilmer family. They had listened to Mind over Murder
and that had allowed them to figure out the answer
to a question they had. The FBI had told them,
don't talk to Bill Thomas, and I would imagine they said,
who the heck is Bill Thomas's Bill Thomas? How would
they know? As usual in twenty twenty five and in
recent years, they jumped on the internet and they started
looking around trying to figure out who Bill Thomas is.
And then they quickly discover that Kristin Dilly and Bill
Thomas have a podcast and Bill Thomas is the brother
of one of the murder victims in the Colonial Parkway murders.
They did exactly what the FBI didn't want them to do,
which is they reached out to me. Now, I've spoken
to multiple members of Wilmer's family number of times, and
one of the things I quickly figured out was I
don't share any animus towards members of the Wilmer family.
Now now, Alan Wade Wilmer, Senior, our deceased suspect, certainly
has earned my scorn. I'll go with that word. And
I don't have a great feeling about his brother Keith Wilmer,
William Keith Wilmer, who died in April twenty twenty five.
He's a longtime suspect in the murder of Mary Ke's
er harding as another unsolved murder which is remarkably similar
to the Colonial Parkway murders. Other than Allan and at
least peripherally is brother Keith. I don't have any negative
feelings hard feelings towards the rest of the family, as
I've said on the podcast before. If anything, they're victims too.
So when you're reading this article from Melkoberger being interviewed
by The New York Times, I get where she's coming
from and what a shock this is for members of
these families who had nothing to do with and no
knowledge of their loved ones aurable activities.
Speaker 3: The article continues literally overnight, the mystery of who stabbed
four young people to death in an ordinary neighborhood full
of college students gave way to a new question. While
mister Coburger, a reclusive but dedicated PhD student who had
been on a path to a career in criminology, may
have mounted a silent and brutal attack on four students
from another university who had no apparent connection to him.
The arrest upended the lives of the Coburger family. Tabloid
stationed cameras outside their homes, snapping images of Mss Coburger's
father cleaning up the damage from the police raid. Online
salute scrutinized footage of Amanda acting in a twenty eleven
horror film that had also involved stabbings. None of the
families involved in any true crime case ask for this,
because we live in an age of twenty four to seven.
In media and tabloid culture, both the family members of
the victims and the family members of the offenders become
public commodities, and again, that is something that nobody asks for.
They end up in this credibly invasive space where they're
being stalked by reporters, by influencers, by self appointed media folks.
I feel awful for them because it gives them no
room to grieves, It gives them no room to process,
and it puts them under this microscope that they don't
deserve and they didn't ask for, and I feel horrible
about this for them.
Speaker 2: I do too. I'm going to have zero sympathy or
someone like Alan Wade Wilmer Senior or William Heath Wilmer
his brother. However, I have buckets of sympathy for the
rest of the family. I know in the last two
years we've done a lot of digging into Wilmer, and
I know that makes the Wilmer family somewhat unhappy. I
get it. At the same time, I'm not willing to
let it go just because Wilmer's dead. First of all,
it's so frustrating to me that people now have a
perception that the Colonial Parkway murders have been solved when
only one of the pairs of individuals, Robin Edwards and
David Knobling, have been solved. That leaves three pairs Kathy
Thomas or Beckadowski, Keith call Cassandra Haley, Anna, Maria Phelps
and Daniel Lower. These cases remain unsolved. And I find
it really frustrating that people I think are mostly well meaning,
but they'll say, oh, I thought those cases were solved.
First of all, We've been hearing this for decades. No,
these cases aren't solved, and even now with Wilmer being identified,
we are still hopeful that the FBI and the Virginia
State Police will continue to do their job and further
identify who the other responsible parties are, Whether it's Wilmer
his accomplices, of which we think there are several, and
I should mention several of whom are still alive. It
could be any of them. It could be a completely
unknown person to us. I do understand the families of
Coburger and Wilmer and others that find this very bright
light to be incredibly invasive and uncomfortable for them. I
really have no acts to grind with the members of
those families, but a lot of what mel Coberger mentioned
in this New York Times article really resonated with me
because it sounded so much like my conversations with the Wilmers.
You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at
mindover Murder.
Speaker 3: This next part. This is just a line all by
itself that I think needs a little bit more discussion.
Ms Coburger said she was anger by internet posts from
people who speculated whether her family had known all along
that mister Coburger was the killer that frosts my cookies.
That's about the nicest way I'm gonna put it, why,
because that is victim blaming at its worst and at
its cruelests. It cast the killer's family into a role
they don't deserve, and assumes that killers in psychopaths are
easily identifiable when most canon do hide in plain sight.
Speaker 2: We've seen this before, and I don't know how the
Coburger family is supposed to know that these very dark
thoughts and impulses and ultimately these are things that he
acted out upon. I don't know how the heck they're
supposed to know this stuff. We've all talked about this
before on Mind over Murder and elsewhere. Never know what's
inside someone else's head. Let me just give you an example.
A person here in town I won't name names committed
suicide a couple of years ago in the yard of
a home that's nearby to ours. Oh my god, this
guy had a lot of issues. I didn't know him personally,
had a lot of issues, mental health issues, some problematic
relationships and so on. But he sat himself out late
at night, and I wouldn't be surprised if drugs and
alcohol were involved here, But he sat himself out in
a lawn chair and blew his brains out outside the
home that was being rented by his former girlfriend, whom
I did know. This was a shocking news to find
out early the next morning that he had killed himself
just one hundred yards from our house, out in the
yard and a place where we could clearly see if
we were standing on our front steps. You never know
what's going on inside someone else's head. Much in the
same sad way, this man did away with himself, and
did it in a way that was deeply symbolic outside
the home of the woman he used to date. There
was a terrible story. A lot of people here in
town tended to stay things like oh, if I'd only known,
I would have helped them. And I do understand all that.
But I also thought to myself, you can never know
what's going on inside someone else's head, what pain they're
going through, what extreme dark impulses they're struggling with. I'm
not sympathetic to coburger in any way, shape or form,
and Coburger deserves to sit in jail for the rest
of his life. All of us who tend to look
at people and think, if I'd only known, perhaps I
could have helped, shouldn't be beating ourselves up about that,
because you're actually never going to know unless someone reaches
out to you and says, hey, I'm really struggling with
this issue, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I have made a point
of doing over the years is reading the memoirs of
people who live with and love and we're family members
of serial killers. I think some of the best reads
that I have read recently was ed Nikel Martin's book
about her cousin Ted Bundy, She Had No Idea, Carrie
Rawson's memoir about life with her father Dennis Raider, The
BTK Killer. One very affecting memoir that I would definitely recommend,
but not unless you're really ready to deal with the
effects of it, is from Sue cleebold And she is
Dylan Kleeboldt's mother, who was one of the Columbine School shooters,
and she wrote a serian memoir called A Mother's Reckoning
where she really talked about how much she wished she
understood what was going on that turned her son into
a killer, but that she continued to say, I had
no idea. I had no idea. This idea that people
have that, oh I would know if a loved one
of mine was a serial killer. And I get it
because we want to think that we're smart enough and
savvy enough to see it. We want to think that
we know someone well enough to clock it. You can't
put that on yourself. For many years, the people in
my friend group, we all sat around and said, could
we have seen what Lynn's killer like? Should we have
seen what he was going to do? Could we have
known somehow? What did we miss? And it was something
that ate all of us up. We spent time with him.
How could we not have known? But the reality is
we couldn't have known. There is no way that we
could have known. But it took a long time for
all of us to reckon with that and to come
to the knowledge that there is no way to really
know what is going on inside someone. It's not like
serial killers walk around dropping clues as to what they're doing.
They're very skilled at this. Again, you can look at
Dennis Rader. He was able to keep whole facets of
his personality, of him as a father, away from the
facets of his personality that were him as a killer.
Speaker 2: Pillar of the community. To use the cliche, a church
going guy. Remember they caught raider because he was using
the computer at his church. I love this that law
enforcement lied to him when he asked, can you tell
if something's come from a particular computer? And a court
law enforcement said, oh, of course not. Oh no, that's
not possible. And he actually sent them a floppy disk.
This sounds like ancient technology at this point. By sending
one of his taunting letters on a floppy disk, he
didn't realize that was imprinted with the unique identifier the
number of that computer, so that later on they were
able to look at that computer and determine this is
coming from this particular church. Look, I'm very interested in
true crime, and I know you are too, and we
have a lot of friends who listen to this podcast
and others that are fascinated by true crime. But I
think it's the height of arrogance for someone to think
that they're going to be able to figure out in
advance what someone is thinking. It just doesn't work that way. Now.
In the example you just brought up with Lynd's tragic death.
You actually knew the offender.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did. We'd spend a lot of time around
him as a friend group. He was always at her house.
They were linked romantically.
Speaker 2: It's very natural to think what did I miss? And
I do understand it. I find it really baffling and
a little galling, to be frank, that someone thinks they're
going to be able to think through what someone they
never even met was thinking. Whether it's a Ted Bundy
or a dentist raider or whomever. Oh, they would have
been able to figure this out. And we've also seen
people say some incredibly cruel things in the Coburger example,
about the fact that they should have known, how could
they not know, and that the Coburgers were covering up
for Brian Coburger. Look, the guy clearly had struggles. We've
all read a lot about him. None of those things
add up to this guy is going to turn into
a brutal spreek killer that kills four college students, that
he doesn't seem to have any personal relationship with whatsoever.
None of that adds up to the Coburgers had to know.
And yet it's those unspeakably cruel things that were said
about the Coburger family. Do I have negative feelings about
Brian Coburger, You bet that doesn't extend to his parents
and his sisters.
Speaker 3: The article continues with a quote from Mel Coburger. I've
always been a person who's spoken up for what was right,
she said. If I ever had a reason to believe
my brother did anything, I would have turned him in.
For the past three years, the family has kept quiet,
avoiding interviews, even as mister Coberger pleaded guilty and accepted
four life sentences. His parents and siblings wanted to do
everything in their power to respect the victims' families during
the legal process, Miss Coburger said, and even now she
expresses fear that she might say something that would further
traumatize them. Her family's challenges, she said several times, cannot
compare to what those families have endured.
Speaker 2: I think those are all excellent points.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it has to be very difficult for them to
know that there's nothing they can say or do that
will make this in any way easier, and that is itself.
I think its own type of agony.
Speaker 2: And they're going to have to live with this for
the rest of their lives, not just Coburger, but every
person associated with Brian Coberger, his parents, his siblings, other
family members. The list just goes on and on, and
that in itself, like you say, is a form of torture.
Speaker 3: And while the family still does not want to discuss
the crime itself, Mss Coburger agreed recently to share a
part of their story, saying she hoped that she could
bring out the truth about her family and what it
has been like to be dragged into the epicenter of
a true crime epic family members of high profile criminals
have long struggled to navigate the collateral infamy thrust upon them.
The Coburgers found themselves not just interrogated by detectives, but
subject to the scrutiny of an assortment of amateur slews,
part of a true crime fervor that has brought millions
of people together in Facebook groups, Reddit forums, and YouTube channels.
This again, is where we need to get into the
idea that we have to have some ethics and some
standards in the true crime space. And it's not just
vowing to respect the families of the victims, but it's
to respect the family of the offenders. The offenders do
not warrant our respect or our sympathy. I think we
can all agree on that. But their families did not
ask for this, and there's no manual for how to
navigate it, just like there's no manual for how to
deal with becoming the loved one of a murder victim.
There is no manual out there for what do you
do when your loved one becomes an infamous killer.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, and I understand people's anger. Trust me,
I have plenty of anger in my sister Kathy and
the rest of the Colonial Parkway murders. Directing that anger
towards the family of the offender, it's beyond insane and
it's unfair. And because in a number of these examples,
except during a victim's impact statement, assuming the offender is alive,
there's an opportunity to speak, which I think has great value.
As we've talked about here on mind of a murder
before lashing out at the offender is one thing. They
probably deserve your scorn and more to lash out at
the family members, the parents, the siblings, the spouses of
an offender. It's beyond unfair. These people are going to
have to live with this for the rest of their lives,
just like those of us who've lost loved ones will
have to do that excruciating pain that they're going through
that never goes away either.
Speaker 3: The article continues. When her brother was arrested, ms Coberger
had been training to start a job as a mental
health counselor, but her new employer was so flooded with
inquiries that she agreed to abandon the position. More recently,
a book about the case emerged on Amazon, with an
author listed as Melissa J. Koberger suggesting that someone was
trying to make money by selling a false version of
her story. It's confusing, she said. It's painful. It's like
being victimized but not really being a victim. Imagine being
preyed upon by someone so dishonest that they would attempt
to profit from your family's pain and tragedy. That's gross.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing a lot of YouTube videos in particular on
the Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm talking about a dozen
in the last year. Yeah, perhaps more that are gross.
They're inaccurate. They use our family's names, but then they
throw up pictures of completely random garbage that aren't of
the victims that aren't even of the locations. Many of
them are AI generated. It's like they just gathered up
a whole bunch of footage. Sometimes you and I look
at these things and they are horrifically inaccurate. They'll show
mountainous terrain, for example, for the Colonial Parkway, which if
you haven't figured out, if you've never been there, it's
along the water, it's along these major rivers, it's flat,
it's beautifully wooded, but it sure doesn't look like the
rocky mountains. These pictures that they throw up, supposedly the victims,
they're just pictures of people. They're just stock photography. It
just makes me crazy. One of the things that's been
very important to me over the years is, at least
let's get the basic facts of the Colonial Parkway murders straight,
so that if people want to help, if they want
to provide information to law enforcement, participate in the conversation,
let's at least present these things in ways that are
reasonably accurate. I just find it infuriating to see this
crap mostly on YouTube. I see these videos regularly now.
I watch them all and I hope that they'll be
reasonably accurate, and I'm disappointed so often because they're just
AI generated crap.
Speaker 3: The article continues. Mister Coberger grew up in the Poconos
in a home centered and family with readings of books
like Little House in the Prairie and lessons rooted in
their mother's Catholic upbringing. Ms Coburger said she and her
brother and sister had been imbued with values of loyalties,
self reliance, and putting the needs of others ahead of
their own. Some of her fondest childhood memories were the
Knights when her parents, Mary Anne and Michael, ordered takeout
food and woke up the children laying blankets out on
the deck. There they all looked up the stars, talking
about astronomy and the wonders of the world. Friends have
described how mister Coberger had been overweight as a teenager
and had a standoffish personality, something the family now believes
was related to autism. He injured persistent bullying. Miss Coburger
said he wrote online during those years of having no emotion,
little remorse, and feeling as if he was an organic
sack of me with no self worth. Later, he spiraled
into heroin addiction when he stole Miss Coburger's phone and
sold it at a mall to buy more drugs. She said.
Her parents alerted the police. Miss Coburger said they were
all worried that he was on a path to an
early death, as ultimately happened with one of his friends.
But after he went through treatment, she said, mister Coburger
seemed to be on a better trajectory. She and her
brother both shared an interest in crime in psychology. She
was pursuing a career in mental health therapy. He began
discussing a career in policing, going on to study psychology
at the Sales University in eastern Pennsylvania before getting accepted
into a PhD program in criminology at Washington State University.
We were all so proud of him because he'd overcome
so much, she said. He was still socially awkward and
could be abrasive. She said they often argued, still, she
said she never saw him be violent. When she once
tried to force him out of the house during an argument,
he de escalated the situation by holding back her hands.
The lack of a violent history was one reason the
family found it so disorienting to hear that mister Coberger
was accused of such a barbaric crime.
Speaker 2: And this is somewhat familiar. When I talked to the
Wilmer family, they had no idea. One of the family
members said to me, it's almost like there were two Allen's.
There was the Allen that we knew this is in
Lancaster County, Virginia, and then a completely different person when
he was down in Hampton. Was the way they put it.
Meaniept in Virginia, almost like a doctor Jekyl and mister
Hyde kind of thing, where there were these two personalities.
One the guy they knew. He and his wife had
gotten married just out of high school sweethearts. He was quiet, unassuming,
a good provider, a hard worker, but not violent, not
dark in the way that you would think, at least
not in front of his wife and kids. And the
two kids and some people had taken some pokes at
them online. They were eight and ten years old at
the time of the Colonial Parkway murders. They're not going
to know anything about Wilmer's dark impulses or even his activities,
which now connect them to at least four murders, and
I think will connect them to further unsolved murders in Virginia.
It doesn't feel like his family would have had any
way of knowing these things.
Speaker 3: In the days before the raid, the family had gathered
for Christmas. Ms Cothberger remember being thrilled to see her
brother back home in Pennsylvania and hugging him tightly to
accommodate the strict diet he now followed. Their mother had
made him vegan cookies for the holidays. They played TV
party games. One night, as Miss Coburger was cleaning up
the kitchen, a sharp edge of foyle caused her finger
to bleed, and her brother, initially expressing disgust at the
sight of blood, helped clean the cut and cover it
with the bandage. During those days at home, Miss Coberger
said she recalls him only briefly mentioning the Idaho murders,
saying that investigators were still hunting for the killer. Investigators,
after go weeks without naming a suspect, had turned to
the public in early December and requested help finding a
white Hyundai Elantra of a model year between twenty eleven
and twenty thirteen that had been seen circling near the
victim's house on the night of the killings. Mss Coburger,
knowing that her brother had driven a white Lantra back
from school, said she briefly wondered if they were looking
for the same model, but then learned that his was
from a different year twenty fifteen. Unknown to the family,
investigators had pinpointed mister Coberger as a suspect within days
of his return to Pennsylvania. They were already surveilling the house.
We have a lot more to discuss about this article,
so we are going to put a pin in this
episode for now and come back to it with a
part two very soon. That is going to do it
for this episode of mind Over Murder, the first of
January twenty twenty six. We are now what are we
seven years old? Now?
Speaker 2: Bill, we are. We've just passed over and entered our
seventh season on mind Over Murder.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll see
you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McCloud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas. Five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mind Over Murder
Speaker 3: At as