Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the program. We're
getting some new information about Brian Cohberger and how he
was arrested in twenty and fourteen. Now, the arrest in
twenty fourteen wasn't for anything violent. He was arrested in
twenty fourteen for stealing a cell phone from his sister,
and according to this report, it was his father who
turned him in. Now, the reason we didn't know about
this previously is because his record was expunged under a
program that's offered in the state of Pennsylvania. So let's
dive into this article from ABC News and let's get
caught up. Headline. Idaho college killing suspect was first arrested
in twenty fourteen, record show. Colberger's father reported the incident
to police. Record show this article was authored by Cana Whitworth,
Josh Margolin, and Sasha Peasanik. Nine years before he was
accused of killing four college students in Idaho, Brian Colberger
was arrested in his native Pennsylvania and charged with misdemeanor
theft for allegedly stealing his sister's iPhone, according to records
reviewed by ABC News, When You're on drugs You'll do
some wild shit. You'll steal from your sister, you'll steal
from your grandmother, your best friend, It does not matter.
It was Coburger's father, Michael, who reported the incident to police,
according to court records. According to the records, Michael Coberger
told law enforcement Brian had warned him not to do
anything stupid after learning his son had taken the phone,
adding that his son had struggled with drug addiction. Don't
do anything stupid. Sounds like a threat to me. Brian
Coberger's earlier run in with the law, as described in
these records, is only now coming to light as he
prepares to defend himself against charges he killed four University
of Idaho students last fall. According to the records, Brian
Kohberger was nineteen years old when he was arrested for
the alleged theft in twenty fourteen. He served no jail time,
according to officials, there is now no public record of
that arrest or the outcome of the case. So nineteen
years old and he's out here, still still in his
sister's cell phone. Not exactly a solid mark in the
category of character building. Monroe County, Pennsylvania, offers first time
offenders the opportunity to enter into a pre trial program
called Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition, which allows for charges to be
dropped and the record to be expunged once the accused
successfully completes probation. I think that's a pretty good program. Honestly,
as long as we're not talking about violent offenders here,
I think that getting your record exploded is a good thing,
and it helps society as long as you're somebody who's
looking to change. If not, well, it doesn't matter because
you're going to get another charge eventually and your ass
is gonna end up in jail. But for people who
just make one mistake, I think a program like this
is a solid idea, especially for those who aren't committing
violent crimes. Now, when we start talking about violent crime,
that's a different story. If you're going to go out
there and cause all kinds of chaos and be a
violent scumbag, well you deserve to sit behind bars. Martin
Sodo Diaz, an attorney representing the Coburger family, declined to
comment on the record describing the earlier arrest. The District
Attorney's office in Monroe County also had no comment, and
I wouldn't expect the county to have any comment whatsoever,
especially because this record was expunged, so they're not going
to really comment on anything like that besides to say, hey,
go look at the official record. In a court filing Monday,
Idaho prosecutor Is announced they intend to seek the death
penalty against Brian Kolberger for the alleged murders. It remains
to be seen whether the alleged incident in twenty fourteen
and his previous alleged history with substance abuse will have
any bearing or offer any clues in relation to what
happened in the early morning hours of November thirteenth, twenty
twenty two, when four college students Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogan,
Xana Kernodle, and Kaylee Gonsalvez were stabbed to death at
an off campus home on King Road in Moscow, Idaho. Well,
I don't think it'll have any direct bearing, but I
think it goes towards the character of the person who's
in question here. What kind of dirtbag steals from their sister. Now,
of course, stealing from your sister doesn't make you a murderer,
But when you're building a profile of somebody, you have
to go back to their teenage years and take a
look at how they were behaving and then work from there.
And now that this record is becoming available, it certainly
adds to the fact that Brian Colberger was a bit
of a degenerate, right, A source briefed on the case
told ABC News the alleged twenty fourteen incident is now
subject of inquiry for prosecutors in Idaho as they prepare
for an impending capital trial that could start as early
as October. And while that's when the trial is set
to kick off, I have my doubts that we're going
to see this thing kick off on time. You want
to get all the puzzle pieces figured out, even as
you keep finding new pieces, said ABC News Law enforcement
contributor Richard Frankel, a retired senior FBI official and former
prosecutor in the New York City suburb of Suffolk County.
You're working to figure out how they all fit together,
Frankel said, speaking generally on investigative procedure for building a case.
And that's that's what it is. It's a gigantic puzzle.
As an investigator, you start at the corners and you
build it piece by piece until an image begins to emerge.
And to do that effectively, you can't leave any stone unturned.
As an investigator, one that's a big jump to go
from an alleged non violent theft and from a family
member to being charged with multiple homicides, and two eight
years is a long time for nothing to happen, Frankel said,
So I would want to know, both as a prosecutor
and as an investigator, what he did in those years
in between. And I still think that's a pretty big
mystery what Brian Cohberger was up to all these years
before these murders happened. Now we've heard from some people
that knew him, some people that used to hang out
with them, But how many people really knew Brian Cohberger
and what he was up to or what sort of
thoughts he was really Harboring ABC News contributor Robert Boyd,
the retired chief of detectives for the New York City
Police Department, said what you look for now is was
this a foundational moment and was this a precursor for
things to come? You know, I think that's a bit
of a leap While this news is a little piece
of the puzzle, it certainly isn't some kind of groundbreaking
bombshell that tells us that Brian Coberger is capable of
committing for homicides. Just because you steal from your sister
doesn't mean you're capable of murdering people. It makes you
a scumbag, of course, but it doesn't mean that you're
capable of doing what we saw happen in Moscow. A
trial in the quadruple homicide has been set for October second,
though that could be delayed. Brian Coberger is due to
appear at the Layta County Courthouse on Tuesday afternoon for
another in an ongoing series of pre trial hearings connected
to the murder case. He is being held without bail
at the Layta County Jail. Brian Koberger's team is pushing
for a pause in his case while the defense and
prosecution argue over the scope of which grand jury materials
can or should be released. His lawyers are looking to
determine whether there are grounds to dismiss his indictment based
on the way the grand jury was selected according to
court documents, and nobody should be shocked by this loopholes
being exploited, loopholes being navigated. That's what happens when you
don't have the evidence on your side. But with that said,
if the prosecution did make any missteps, if they're stepping
on Brian Colberger's constitutional rights, then they need to be
dealt with as well. The defense is asking Idaho prosecutors
to disclose more information about their investigation, including more detail
on their forensic DNA analysis and information obtained from cell
phone records, according to court filings. The hearing Tuesday is
also expected to focus on Brian Coolberger's requests for more
time to decide whether to offer an alibi a trial,
as his attorneys say they are trying to navigate the
large and still ongoing discovery process. According to recent court filings,
doesn't that go directly in the face of what they're
saying that they're not getting enough discovery material. If you
have all these mountains of discovery to get through, then
what are you even talking about when you're trying to
infer that the prosecution is holding stuff back. Prosecutors said
they wouldn't object to a reasonable extension to decide so
long as any potential alibi is offered within the next month.
Back in Pennsylvania, on Saturday, February eighth, twenty fourteen, Brian
Colberger had recently exited a rehab center and rejoined the family,
his father told police, according to the records reviewed by
ABC News, home from rehab, Brian took his sister Melissa's iPhone,
which had an estimated value of four hundred dollars, Michael
Colberger told police, According to the records, authority said. According
to the records, Brian Colberger paid a friend twenty dollars
to pick him up and take him to a local mall,
where he sold the phone for two hundred dollars at
an automated Kiosk for used electronics. The records say Brian
Colberger was charged with misdemeanor theft and offer no further
explanation about what happened from there. With any case, we'd
always do a timeline, and on this case, I'd want
to do the timeline not just of the actual alleged
Tomiside incident, minute by minute, but also I would want
to do a behavioral timeline from his teens into his adulthood,
because I want to know who this guy is. Frankel said,
it all goes to the assessment of his character. It
may also help me when I interview other people about him,
because I may know what the right questions are going in.
Frankel added, and that's why it's important to go through
somebody's whole ass life and figure out what they were
up to. Now, it doesn't mean that because you were
on drugs or you stole from your sister that you're
a murderer. I just want to reiterate that. But when
you're building a profile of somebody, you have to add
all of it in so that you get a complete
and robust picture of who this person is. Brian Coberger,
now twenty eight, was indicted in Idaho last month and
charged with four counts of first degree murder and one
count of burglary. At his Idaho arraignment in late May,
Brian Colberger declined to offer a plea, so the judge
entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Authorities alleged
that in the early morning hours of November thirteenth, Brian Cohberger,
a criminology PhD student at Washington State University, broke into
an off campus home and stabbed to death of four
students from the nearby University of Idaho. After a more
than six week hunt, according to police documents, police zeroed
in on Brian Colberger as a suspect, tracking is why
Honda a Lantra cell phone signal data and recovering what
authorities say was his DNA on a knife sheath found
next to one of the victim's bodies. And that's the
evidence that looms the largest against Brian Coberger. It's the
glue that binds all of this together. And if they
can find a way to challenge that DNA on the
knife sheath, then we have a whole different conversation. But
so far they haven't offered anything in the way of
evidence that that knife sheath didn't belong to Brian Coberger,
and they certainly didn't say in those court filings that
one of those three unknown male DNA profiles was the
real killer. The DNA evidence taken from the knife sheath
at the crime scene showed a statistical match with a
cheek swab taken directly from Brian Coberger after his arrest,
authority said in a recent filing, and that was what
the bukele swab was. When they went and arrested him.
They brought the cheek swab with them so they could
take that DNA swab right there at the scene. Brian
Coberger's attorneys pushed back on that analysis in several recent
court filings, casting doubt on whether that DNA evidence irrefutability
implicates their client, saying the statistical probability is not an
absolute and pointing to what they called a total lack
of DNA evidence from the victims in Coburger's home or car.
He was arrested on December thirtieth, twenty twenty two, at
his family's home in Pennsylvania, after driving cross country to
spend the holidays in all Brightsville. Some of Brian Colberger's
childhood acquaintances have recalled to ABC News that the quiet,
but funny person they knew began to alienate some of
his friends in high school as his drug habit developed.
Casey Arnes, who went to high school with Coburger, told
ABC News he would ask her for rides that she
later found out were to buy drugs. Brian used me to,
you know, drive him around to get heroin. Aren't said.
A lot of people are like, well, why are you
still friends with them? After that, and I'm like, because
you gotta forgive him. I mean, you can't fault him
for being so sucked down this hole. And I did.
I did forgive him. So while this new revelation of
Brian Cohberger being arrested at nineteen years old for stealing
the iPod certainly isn't earth shattering, it is worth discussing
and adding to the catalog as we continue to build
a profile and see who Brian Colberger is and who
Brian Cohberger was. All Right, folks, that's gonna do it
for this one. All of the information that goes with
the episode can be found in the description box.