Speaker 1: This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast
Speaker 1: More what You Hear Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive.
Speaker 2: He's a New York Times bestselling author, Howard Bloom. He's
Speaker 2: an American author and journalist as well, formerly a reporter
Speaker 2: for The Village Voice in New York Times. He's got
Speaker 2: a new book out called When the Night Comes Falling.
Speaker 2: It's a requiem for the Idaho student Murders, the inside
Speaker 2: story of the mysterious murders that have horrified and captivated
Speaker 2: the nation. Welcome Howard Bloom.
Speaker 3: Nice to speak with you.
Speaker 2: You too. This is the realization I think of every
Speaker 2: parent's nightmare. A group of students at the prime of
Speaker 2: their life, getting ready to go on break when all
Speaker 2: of a sudden their lives are cut short.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean there are videos of the police coming
Speaker 3: to the house in Moscow where the murders occurred for
Speaker 3: noise disturbances, and you can see just a bunch of
Speaker 3: young kids, full of life, full of beauty, full of
Speaker 3: exuper He's having a good time, and it makes the
Speaker 3: tragedy particularly poignant when you watch those videos.
Speaker 2: So what have we learned in the meantime since the
Speaker 2: arrest and things have been progressing.
Speaker 3: Well. The suspect is Brian Coberger, who is a criminology
Speaker 3: student at a nearby university, Washington State University. He was trying,
Speaker 3: I believe, to create the perfect crime, and yet there's
Speaker 3: a trove of evidence that the prosecution is assembled that
Speaker 3: puts him in the crosshairs of this case. There's touch
Speaker 3: DNA off a button of a knife sheaf that was left.
Speaker 3: There's surveillance video of a white Hondai Elantra. He drove
Speaker 3: a white Hondei Lantra. There's his phone being shut off
Speaker 3: for the two hours during the period while the murders occurred,
Speaker 3: and he's drove by the house. All these elements build
Speaker 3: a very convincing case. Again, in fact, on the night
Speaker 3: when the police arrest him in the Poconos, they burst
Speaker 3: into the house in the Poconos, they go into the kitchen,
Speaker 3: they find him there sitting in his boxer shorts and
Speaker 3: he's taking his garbage and putting it into plastic bags.
Speaker 3: So he's separating his DNAs from the family so that
Speaker 3: in case the police comes to grab the family's garbage,
Speaker 3: he won't be caught. It didn't work out that way.
Speaker 2: Though he was painstaking about his preparation. Is there any
Speaker 2: thought that that may be why he became a criminology
Speaker 2: student in the first place.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's why he became a criminology
Speaker 3: student in the first place. But he was fascinated with crime,
Speaker 3: and the more he got into it, this fascination builds
Speaker 3: and builds and builds, and I think he decided to
Speaker 3: He wanted to experience the real thing. He was a
Speaker 3: troubled youth. He had been a heroin addict. He had
Speaker 3: been a mediocre student. But he's able to find the
Speaker 3: will to move on from how to become a graduate student,
Speaker 3: a doctoral kind of a top university. And yet he
Speaker 3: still cannot escape from who he is. I mean, biology
Speaker 3: is destiny. His state is determined by who he is.
Speaker 3: And he always saw himself on the periphery of events,
Speaker 3: and he felt that was a constant rebuke to him
Speaker 3: and his way of looking at the world. And one
Speaker 3: night he decided he just had to do something about it.
Speaker 2: Howard Bloom, when the Night comes Falling Arequiem for the
Speaker 2: Idaho Student Murders out Now he's a New York New
Speaker 2: York Times bestselling author, of Dark Invasion and the Last
Speaker 2: Good Night. What was it about these students that attracted
Speaker 2: them as a target. I mean, they didn't go to
Speaker 2: the same school, so how did they have any interaction
Speaker 2: prior to the murder?
Speaker 3: I mean he raised a very good point. Both the
Speaker 3: prosecution and the defense agree on one point, and that
Speaker 3: is that the suspect never talked to any of the students,
Speaker 3: that he never followed them on social media. However, I've
Speaker 3: been able to theorize that coburger of the suspect was
Speaker 3: a vegan. There was a vegan restaurant in town where
Speaker 3: one of the students, Matty Mugen, was a waitress. I
Speaker 3: believe he encountered her at that restaurant. He didn't even
Speaker 3: need to speak with her. Obsessions came easily to him,
Speaker 3: and for some reason, he fixated on her fondness, her exuberance,
Speaker 3: her beauty, her vitality, and she was a constant reminder
Speaker 3: of everything he was not. And on the night of
Speaker 3: November thirteenth, he set out not to kill four students
Speaker 3: I believe that I recreated in my book, but he
Speaker 3: set out just to kill Matti Mogen and everyone else
Speaker 3: who lost their lives, who was bludgeoned to death, was
Speaker 3: grimly horrifically collateral damage.
Speaker 2: When the night comes falling a requiem for Idaho's students murders,
Speaker 2: Howard blooms with us and so was there any significance
Speaker 2: to the time of year in which this happened.
Speaker 3: In his own life, he was having problems. He had
Speaker 3: been a teaching assistant at the University of Washington. He
Speaker 3: was on a full scholarship which is paid for by
Speaker 3: his teaching and he had gotten in trouble with the department,
Speaker 3: and the department was putting him under review, and it
Speaker 3: looked like he very well could lose the job. And
Speaker 3: they'd pull him in about a week before the murders
Speaker 3: and say, you know your job is on the line.
Speaker 3: He was just too volid. All the students didn't like
Speaker 3: the way he interacted with them. He seemed, according to
Speaker 3: some of the female students, to be treating them as
Speaker 3: a misogynistic way in the class. And when Coberger is
Speaker 3: informed of this by the university officials and the supervising professor,
Speaker 3: he doesn't say, Okay, I'll try to deal with things,
Speaker 3: but he explodes and he tries to make his own case,
Speaker 3: and so his life was in jeopardy, and losing the
Speaker 3: job would be losing his chance to reinvent himself. From this,
Speaker 3: a student from a hard stubble background was now going
Speaker 3: to become a PhD. And I think that existential shock
Speaker 3: to a system is part of what throws him off kilter.
Speaker 2: Howard Bloom a requiem for the Idaho student murders. When
Speaker 2: the night comes falling and was there a was there
Speaker 2: any sexual assault to any of the victims, or was
Speaker 2: it all just murder?
Speaker 3: There was no sexual assault, that it was all just murdered.
Speaker 3: The story about Coberg's sexuality in a sense I described
Speaker 3: how he goes to a pool party long after he
Speaker 3: goes out to Moscow, and it's all filled with kids
Speaker 3: and they're having a good time, and he's sitting by
Speaker 3: the pool by himself, and he suddenly gets up and
Speaker 3: he approaches two young women and both of them seems
Speaker 3: to be wearing black two piece bathing suits, and he
Speaker 3: asks for their phone numbers and he gets it. He
Speaker 3: gets both their numbers, and then he immediately leaves the party.
Speaker 3: He never calls the women. I spoke with them, but
Speaker 3: they started receiving hang up falls and afterwards after Coburg
Speaker 3: was arrest they put the pieces together that this might
Speaker 3: very well have been Coburger calling them, And I think
Speaker 3: this sort of sums up his sexual relationship with other people.
Speaker 3: He could never make the leap to become a fully
Speaker 3: integrated person, yet he wanted to be.
Speaker 2: And they very well may have been his first targets,
Speaker 2: and they got by by this in the neck.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think he was. You know, this idea was
Speaker 3: taking hold of his mind and he wasn't quite there yet.
Speaker 3: Even on the night of the Murderers, he goes by
Speaker 3: the murder house not once, not twice, but three times.
Speaker 3: You know, there have been some reports that he was
Speaker 3: stalking the house. I don't think that's accurate, and I
Speaker 3: recreated he was trying to find the whell, trying to
Speaker 3: find the commitment to move into this world of becoming
Speaker 3: a murderer. Each time he goes by the house he escaped,
Speaker 3: he drives off into the distance, and yet he's pulled
Speaker 3: back as if by a magnet, and he just can't escape.
Speaker 2: Who he is when the night comes falling Requiem for
Speaker 2: the Idaho Student Murders. Howard Bloom is the author of
Speaker 2: the books available everywhere and thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Howard, my pleasure speaking with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Speaker 1: Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
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