Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the program. We've
heard a lot now about Brian Cohberger and how he
was under investigation at Washington State University prior to, during,
and after the murders were committed in Moscow. Well, we
have heard that from a lot of sources, and now
The New York Times has an article out talking about
this very thing. So let's dive right into the article
and let's see what the New York Times is talking about.
Headlined university investigated Idaho suspects behavior around the time of
the killings. Brian Coberger had a verbal altercation with the
professor and was investigated over his behavior around female students
before he was charged in four murders. And to tell
you the truth, it doesn't look good for Brian Colberger.
Again circumstantial and certainly not something I'd be willing to
convict him over if I was a jur But when
you look at at all of this evidence that is
being compiled for me, this is the most damning as
far as what people have to say about Brian Coberger,
because I really don't care what he was up to
when he was eighteen seventeen years old. Sure it helps
get an idea of how he became what he became.
But I think it's much more relevant to take a
look at how he was doing leading up to these murders,
and if he was having altercations with his professor, and
he was considered a creep around women. That certainly fits
with all of the categories that we heard about previously
to Brian Coberger being arrested, him being an inceel, somebody
who hates women. All of it tracks. This article was
authored by Mike Baker and Nicholas Bogel Burrows, the PhD
student charged with murdering for University of Idaho undergraduates, displayed
such troubling behavior in the weeks around the killings that
his university investigated his conduct around women, counseled him over
a verbal altercation with the professor, and ultimately fired him
from his job as a teaching assistant, according to interviews
and the university record. Now you want to talk about spiraling,
You want to talk about being in an absolute freefall
and bottoming out. This is what we're talking about. Less
than two weeks before the killings in November, the PhD
student Brian Colberger was called to a meeting with faculty
members to discuss growing concerns about his behavior. According to
the record, a timeline the university prepared in justifying its
decision to terminate him. The meeting was part of a
series of discussions over mister Coberger's conduct during his criminology
studies at Washington State University, which lies about seven miles
west of the University of Idaho. Now, if I'm the
professor and this dude just shows up and all of
a sudden has all of these behavioral issues right away,
We're talking about a month into this gig, I would
have sat him down that day and been like, buddy,
you're done. There has to be a ton of students
out there that would literally do anything to have this
kind of position. And here's Brian Coohberger with his whole
entire future set up for him and allegedly throws it
all away and goes and commits a quadruple homicide. The
faculty's concerns with mister Coberger grew in the weeks after
the November thirteenth killings, though he had not yet been
identified as a suspect. They culminated in the Criminal Justice
department's unusual decision to terminate mister Coberger from his teaching
assistant role in December, shortly before his arrest, According to
three people familiar with his time at the university and
the formal letter mister Coberger was sent to mister Coburger
informing him that he failed to meet the conditions required
to maintain his funding under the program. And there were
some people out there saying, well, he lost his job.
That doesn't mean going to go commit murder. But it
wasn't just losing his job, right, He lost everything when
he lost his teaching assistants job, He lost his way.
He has no way to pay for school. Now he
has no way to continue his studies. So it's a
big problem for Brian Colberger and for you or I
it would be a gigantic setback, right, But we're not
going to go out and commit murder over it. But
when you have the kind of mind and you're wired
the way the government tells us Coburger is, it's a
completely different story and it doesn't take much to launch
you in the orbit. The faculty made the decision at
the department's end of year meeting in December, during which
professors were also told that some female students were reported
that mister Coburger had made them feel uncomfortable. In one
of those instances, mister Coberger was accused of following a
female student to her car, according to two people familiar
with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because they we're not authorized to discuss the case. And
once again, for people out there who are not hip
to how this works, a lot of these journalists, a
lot of these outlets have previous relationships with sources who
are going to have information about this case. Whether it's
the FBI, a local police officer, a local prosecutor, whatever,
There's going to be information that gets leaked. And when
you're an outlet like The New York Times, you're going
to have some sources. Now I'm not the biggest fan
of the way the New York Times handles their business
these days, but when they're running something like this, chances
are they have done their due diligence, and if not,
all they're doing is digging their own hole deeper. Because,
like we've said earlier, there is a big time distrust
when it comes to the legacy media and of all
of the allegations against Coburger. Besides obviously the homicides, I
think following girls to their car are the biggest ones.
What it does is that shows a pattern of behavior.
It doesn't prove anything definitively, but it shows that pattern
of behavior that jurors are going to look for in
the case of the female students. The university's investigation did
not find mister mister Coburger guilty of any wrongdoing, two
people said, and it was other matters that prompted the
decision to eliminate his funding and remove him from the
teaching assistant job. That decision, they said, was based on
his unsatisfactory performance as a teaching assistant, including his failure
to meet the norms of professional behavior and his interactions
with faculty. Basically, what they're saying is Brian Cohberger sucked
at his job and he couldn't get along with people.
Mister Coburger began having trouble about a month into the
fall semester, his first at Washington State. He had an
altercation on September twenty third with John Snyder, the WSU
professor he was assisting. According to the termination letter, a
copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Then on November two, department leaders met with mister Coberger
to discuss an improvement plan. The letter accounts eleven days later,
the four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death
overnight in a home just off campus in Moscow, Idaho.
So take from that what you will, and there's going
to be people that are going to look at it
and say, no, big deal, doesn't mean anything. But for me,
I'm trying to look at it in the whole, entire
entirety of what we know. And when you do it
like that, things lead into each other. And a lot
of times for killers, there's an incident in their life
that sparks their murders free. And for Coburger, this definitely
could have been it, and this whole situation with the
job certainly could have been that turning point where it
went from fantasy to reality. In the termination document, officials
described a second altercation that mister Coburger had with the
professor after the killings on December ninth. Later that month,
the department decided to remove him from his position as
a teaching assistant, cutting off his pay and saying that
he had not made progress regarding professionalism. Phil Wheeler, a
vice president and spokesman for Washington State University said a
federal student privacy law prohibited him from commenting in detail
on mister Coberger's history with the university. He said only
that mister Colberger was no longer enrolled in the university.
Mister Coberger's lawyer did not respond to a message seeking
comment on Friday. I don't know why they continue to
ask the lawyer for any comment. It's not going to happen.
She is not going to send any kind of information
to you. There is a gag Orderly Coburger is being
held in jail after being charged with four counts of murder.
He has said through his lawyer that he looks forward
to being exonerated. The Times previously reported that students had
complained about mister Cole's harsh grading in his teaching assistant role,
resulting in a classroom discussion in which he sought to
defend the feedback he provided the students. Mister Coberger had
entered the program at Washington State University after earning a
master's degree in June at Tasallas University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania,
not far from where he spent his teenage years struggling
with emotional problems and drug addiction record show. After the
initial altercation with the professor, on September twenty three, mister
Coburger met with a university official to discuss the norms
of professional behavior. You mean to tell me a guy
with a master's degree that's going for a PhD doesn't
know the norms of professional behavior? What are you twelve?
What are you in the back of the room picking
your nose and talking shit while the teachers teaching you
remedial math? What does that even mean? Professional behavior? By
October twenty first, a professor emailed him about the way
in which you had failed to meet your expectations as
a TA thus far in the semester. Some of the
details of mister Coberger's troubles and eventual firing were first
posted online by an Arkansas woman who has closely followed
the case. What what does that even mean? How does
some woman in Arkansas get this information? This case gets
weirder and weirder by the minute, folks. The Idaho students
were found stabbed to death in two bedrooms of the
home on November thirteenth. Madison Mogan and Kaylee Gonsalves were
both found in one room, while Xana Kernodle and Ethan
Chapin were found in another. According to a police affet David,
the three women all lived in the home, the police
have said, and mister Chapin was visiting Miss Kernodle, his girlfriend.
The police said the killings took place around four am.
Four weeks after the killings, investigators did not identify as suspect.
Records show that mister Coberger was still worse working in
his teaching assistant job at the time, and was continuing
to grade undergraduate student papers. About a week after his
second altercation with the professor, as the semester was drawing
to a close in December, mister Coburger began driving across
country with his father to the family's home in Pennsylvania.
I'm convinced that Coburger knew what was coming down the
pipe at this point, and he wanted to put as
much distance between himself, the murders, and what had happened
at Washington State University. Officials notified mister Coburger of his
termination on December nineteenth, According to the university timeline, he
was arrested at the end of the month. The authorities
cited DNA that appeared to link him too a knife.
Sheath found that the crime scene video showing a white
car in the neighborhood of the crime scene that resembled
mister Coberger's car, and phone records indicating that mister Coburger's
phone disconnected from the cell network during those key early
more hours. A judge is scheduled a June preliminary hearing
where prosecutors are set to lay out more of their evidence.
All right, Well, I wanted to add a little more
clarification about this letter, and we had heard about it
from News Nation and other outlets, But with the New
York Times writing up this piece, I figured we throw
that bad boy in the catalog as well. That way
we continue to build up that context, and the best
way to do that is to be armed with as
much information as possible. All Right, folks, that's going to
do it for this one. All of the information that
goes with this episode can be found in the description box.