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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 6: Just after four am on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 6: four University of Idaho students were viciously stabbed to death
Speaker 6: in an off campus house. The killings would shake the small,
Speaker 6: blue collar college town of Moscow, Idaho, dominate mainstream news coverage,
Speaker 6: and become a social media obsession, drawing millions of cliques
Speaker 6: and views. While a reticent Moscow Police department, the FBI,
Speaker 6: and the Idaho State Police search for the killer, unending
Speaker 6: conjecture and countless theories blazed online in chat rooms and
Speaker 6: platforms from Reddit and YouTube to Facebook and TikTok. For
Speaker 6: more than a month, the clash of armchair investigators in
Speaker 6: law enforcement professionals raged until a suspect, the twenty eight
Speaker 6: year old PhD candidates studying criminology, was arrested at his
Speaker 6: family home twenty five hundred miles away in the Pocono
Speaker 6: Mountains of Pennsylvania on the day before New Year's Eve.
Speaker 6: While Idaho Slept is a thought provoking literary chronicle of
Speaker 6: a small town murder investigation blistering beneath the unceasing light
Speaker 6: of international interests. As traditional investigators, citizen sleuths, and the
Speaker 6: true crime meetia acted, sometimes together, often in conflict, to
Speaker 6: uncover the truth.
Speaker 4: As J.
Speaker 6: Ruben Appleman brings the terrible crime into focus, he humanizes
Speaker 6: the four victims, examining the richness of their lives, dissects
Speaker 6: the mind and motivations of their presumed killer, and explores
Speaker 6: the world of Northern Idaho, a rugged, deeply conservative stronghold
Speaker 6: deeped in Christian values and American patriotism. Going deep inside
Speaker 6: the case, Appleman addresses a crucial question. With so many
Speaker 6: millions of citizens, armed by access and hungry to take
Speaker 6: part in a true crime hunt of their own, has
Speaker 6: the nature of homicide investigations permanently changed? Rising above the sensational?
Speaker 6: While Idaho Slept illuminates the intrinsic connection between today's media,
Speaker 6: citizen sluice, our societal mania for murder tales and an
Speaker 6: important public's insatiable appetite for spectacle as never before. Running
Speaker 6: beneath the pulse of the story is a heartbreaking narrative
Speaker 6: of the people we love, the dreams we all share,
Speaker 6: and the uncertain time left for sharing them. The book
Speaker 6: that we're featuring this evening is While Idaho Slept, The
Speaker 6: Hunt for Answers in the Murders of four college students,
Speaker 6: with my special guest journalists and author Jay Rubin Appleman.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 6: for this interview. Jay Ruben Appleman.
Speaker 4: Thanks, brother, it's good to talk to you again.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much for this interview. And congratulations on
Speaker 6: this new book, While Idaho Slept.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's the kind of thing I mean, I appreciate
Speaker 4: the sentiment, the congratulations. It's the kind of thing I
Speaker 4: don't generally feel comfortable accepting. You know, It's like, four
Speaker 4: people had to die for this book to come into play,
Speaker 4: and I'm just doing my best to chronicle the story
Speaker 4: that I can chronicle. I'm happy to be the person
Speaker 4: who gets to do it. I think of it as
Speaker 4: a privilege. But I appreciate your sentiment. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 4: glad the book is getting out, Glad that people are
Speaker 4: going to be able to read it. I'm glad that
Speaker 4: the audience that has been following this case will have
Speaker 4: something more whole to grasp onto, and they'll get to
Speaker 4: meet the victims in a better way than they've had
Speaker 4: in little blips and blurbs across mainstream media for the
Speaker 4: last ten months or so. This will be a richer,
Speaker 4: more compassionate, more full story of I think of what
Speaker 4: occurred and who these people were, and I think that's important.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I appreciate your sentiment. Also, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: It's a real I know it's cliche, but you've honored
Speaker 6: the victims in this book remarkably and admirably. So let's
Speaker 6: get right to this incredible tale. You take us to Moscow,
Speaker 6: Idaho as a college town most of the year, and
Speaker 6: you say it's about half the population when it isn't
Speaker 6: in session. Tell us a little bit more about Moscow, Idaho.
Speaker 4: Moscow is a really unique, really really special place in
Speaker 4: North Idaho that North Idaho in general is a place
Speaker 4: that most people in the country never get to. It's
Speaker 4: known for a few things, some good some bad It's
Speaker 4: known for some of its religious zealotry or some of
Speaker 4: its history with white supremacy, but those are things that
Speaker 4: really are small things in that area. What North Idaho
Speaker 4: is mostly about is sort of spiritual, faithful, heartfelt people
Speaker 4: who work hard and love each other and take care
Speaker 4: of each other in the landscape is a beautiful landscape.
Speaker 4: That is the stuff that Hollywood draws from in its
Speaker 4: Western films, things like that. I am familiar with Moscow,
Speaker 4: Idaho on multiple levels. I've lived in Idaho for twenty
Speaker 4: five years. I've been working as a private investigator for
Speaker 4: a decade, and many of my cases have brought me
Speaker 4: up to North Idaho, Moscow area, Lewiston, which is nearby
Speaker 4: places like that, and I've worked up there many times.
Speaker 4: I have a child who went to the University of
Speaker 4: Idaho graduated from there just a few years before these
Speaker 4: victims were slain, and having visited during those school years,
Speaker 4: I can say that during the school session, the University
Speaker 4: of Idaho session, it's a thriving, sort of bustling little
Speaker 4: village that is really rich culturally, where old school Idahoans
Speaker 4: who have lived there for maybe four or five generations
Speaker 4: in that area, mingled very freely with the liberals who
Speaker 4: come to school there. Sometimes there's a large LGBTQ population.
Speaker 4: There's a large sort of hipster gym rat population, as
Speaker 4: I call, people drinking fancy coffees and stuff. But they're
Speaker 4: sitting next right next to the old cowboys who sort
Speaker 4: of landed there four generations go, or I should say,
Speaker 4: the ancestors of the old cowboys. And it's a very
Speaker 4: interesting dynamic up there when school is out of session,
Speaker 4: which is when I I've done most of my PI
Speaker 4: work up there. In the summers, it's a very very
Speaker 4: sleepy sort of hamlet of a place that is really
Speaker 4: uniquely comfortable feeling for one of those small places. It
Speaker 4: doesn't have that sort of rough edge that a lot
Speaker 4: of really small places have, even in the summer when
Speaker 4: it's sleepy and there's only you know, twelve or fifteen
Speaker 4: thousand people there. In some of those small towns that
Speaker 4: you go to, especially in the West, there's the air
Speaker 4: of coldness that was sort of bred into social interactions,
Speaker 4: you know, But not in Moscow. Moscow is a very
Speaker 4: friendly place. And I ended up writing this story not
Speaker 4: because I was chasing a true crime. Du jour or
Speaker 4: something like that. That is not how I work. I
Speaker 4: write about things that matter to me, cases that somehow
Speaker 4: touched me. The first one in the kill Jar. I
Speaker 4: wrote about those murders because they happened virtually in my
Speaker 4: backyard and the outside of Detroit when I was growing up.
Speaker 4: That case affected me deeply on a sort of spiritual
Speaker 4: and psychological level. And same now with the University of
Speaker 4: Idaha murders. I mean, it's not just my personal connection
Speaker 4: to the place, but where I live in Boise, Idah,
Speaker 4: five hours south, there are hundreds of people that I
Speaker 4: know who have personal connections to either the victims or
Speaker 4: the surviving too, or to Moscow in general, or the
Speaker 4: University of Idaho. You can't walk around where I live
Speaker 4: and not know somebody who went to school there or
Speaker 4: knew one of the victims, or whose family friends are
Speaker 4: in contact with one of the survivors or I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just it's a very palpable in the air sort
Speaker 4: of case here. And so when Albert Collins chose me
Speaker 4: to do this book, I mean that was really why,
Speaker 4: because of my personal connection to the state, my personal
Speaker 4: connection to the community, and things like that. So I
Speaker 4: know that area very well, very tied to that area
Speaker 4: through multiple tentacles, so to speak, and it's a beautiful place.
Speaker 6: Let's get before we talk about November twelve two, Let's
Speaker 6: introduce first some of the one of the four victims,
Speaker 6: and that's Kaylee Gone Selvis and she has a roommate
Speaker 6: named Mattie Morgan. But let's first talk about Kaylee Gone
Speaker 6: Salves and her background.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you mentioned Mattie as well. Kaylee can solve. It's
Speaker 4: hard to talk about Kaylee Gonsolves without talking about Matti Mogan.
Speaker 4: But Kayleie she grew up in North Idaho with a
Speaker 4: really large family, parents who took great interest in her upbringing.
Speaker 4: Steve and Christy and very actively involved in Kaylee's life.
Speaker 4: Kaylee was sort of the I wouldn't say the troublemaker,
Speaker 4: but the spunky one of the group, and always a jokester,
Speaker 4: always pulling pranks, kind of life of the party type
Speaker 4: and always having fun, always smiling, kind of in control
Speaker 4: of her situation. You can see that in childhood. You
Speaker 4: can also see that as an adult when she's on
Speaker 4: police bodycam. Later we can talk about that, but she
Speaker 4: when police showed up to their college house for a
Speaker 4: noise complaint. You can tell that Kaylene was somebody who
Speaker 4: could have been running your business. There could have been
Speaker 4: you know, she was definitely somebody who was the face
Speaker 4: of wherever she was. You know, she could take charge
Speaker 4: of a situation, She could take charge of herself. She
Speaker 4: could take charge of like I say, you could see
Speaker 4: she was going to be the face of a business
Speaker 4: someday or something like that. A big personality, very charismatic,
Speaker 4: like very well spoken. And her family was not what
Speaker 4: people think of when they think of North Idaho when
Speaker 4: they're not from the area. They think of, oh, it's
Speaker 4: like lower income, or they say people from out of
Speaker 4: state people especially on the East and West coast, we
Speaker 4: think of blue collar as necessarily one of the requirements
Speaker 4: is sort of like a poor, uneducated things like that.
Speaker 4: She has a very whip smart family and very well
Speaker 4: to do for that area. You know, they live on
Speaker 4: in a beautiful house on a nice plot of land,
Speaker 4: and her family for all all that, everything we can find,
Speaker 4: it really took care of her. She came from a
Speaker 4: very privileged but hardworking scenario, I could say that. And
Speaker 4: she was right about to graduate. In fact, she had
Speaker 4: already started moving out of the house and had what
Speaker 4: I could tell from all reports that she had only
Speaker 4: come back to spend the weekend with her roommates and
Speaker 4: show them a new vehicle she had purchased in. One
Speaker 4: of those roommates, Matt Maddey Mogan, was Kaylee's best friend
Speaker 4: since very early on in early school years. I mean
Speaker 4: they were stuck together at the hips so to speak,
Speaker 4: and always doing everything with each other. Kaylee's family took
Speaker 4: Maddy Mogan on all their big trips that they would
Speaker 4: take to overseas or to cross the oceans, I should say,
Speaker 4: and I'm just big big adventures that the family. Kaylee's
Speaker 4: family dragged Maddie on, and it was a friendship that
Speaker 4: looked from the outside if you were one of the
Speaker 4: kids who didn't get all that stuff like the big
Speaker 4: house and the adventures with family and the close knit
Speaker 4: family and the love between best friends and all that,
Speaker 4: you really noticed Kaylee and Maddie as something that was
Speaker 4: admirable and that you would have loved to have in
Speaker 4: your own life.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about now, Xanna Kernodle and Ethan Japin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, really interesting couple. Ethan came from also a very
Speaker 4: sort of. I would say privileged background at least financially,
Speaker 4: and family roots, a very tight family. He was a triplet,
Speaker 4: a huge guy, six or four something like that, and
Speaker 4: great athlete, the traditional floppy hair of a college kid,
Speaker 4: big smile on his face, dimples, handsome as all get out,
Speaker 4: and you know, had all the benefits of a really
Speaker 4: solid upbringing. I say in the book that they looked
Speaker 4: like the family looked like they were out of an
Speaker 4: Eddie Bauer catalogue, you know, And to a lot of
Speaker 4: people that means everything that appears Ethan really had, which
Speaker 4: was a good amount of family income, a great support
Speaker 4: at home, just the confidence of somebody who grew up
Speaker 4: with a lot. You know. He had a ton of
Speaker 4: confidence and carried a room with him, so to speak,
Speaker 4: and knew how to work the room. And it's very
Speaker 4: interesting that he met up with Xanna Kernodle, who came
Speaker 4: from a somewhat opposite environment. Her mother was in and
Speaker 4: out of brief incarcerations because of drug issues, and that's
Speaker 4: a very sad thing. I'm not I'm not speaking disparagingly
Speaker 4: at all when I say that, but it's very clear
Speaker 4: that her mother had many many and continues to have many,
Speaker 4: many troubles with based on her addictions, and her father
Speaker 4: had a rough time in the beginning Santa's childhood, but
Speaker 4: really is not that guy anymore. Is really just a
Speaker 4: brilliant beauty, seems to be a beautiful human being, hard
Speaker 4: working in the construction trades and built his own sort
Speaker 4: of contracting business. And Xanna did not live in poverty,
Speaker 4: but Xanna lived with the sort of emotional trauma and
Speaker 4: psychological trauma one can assume of having her birth mother
Speaker 4: have all these complications in their life and in her
Speaker 4: life and lived in the same areas. It's not as
Speaker 4: if Zanna's mother was unseen. I mean, she was around
Speaker 4: and that area and was in a lot of suffering
Speaker 4: through a lot of trauma and turmoil based on her addictions.
Speaker 4: And that's what Xanna came from. It is is that history.
Speaker 4: And it's so interesting. It appears that when Xana and
Speaker 4: Ethan began dating, Xanna entered a world of a big family,
Speaker 4: big privilege, and she tiptoed through it, so to speak.
Speaker 4: You know, it seems like the way any of us
Speaker 4: who didn't grow up with that and are sort of
Speaker 4: guests in that world it's an experience that is rich
Speaker 4: and sometimes can be overwhelming and sometimes beautiful. And it
Speaker 4: seemed like between the two of them had big dreams
Speaker 4: together and that they had great, great, big love for
Speaker 4: each other. And they appeared, from what everybody says, to
Speaker 4: have been a really beautiful, warm, loving couple. And it
Speaker 4: seems to be happenstance. We won't know this until after
Speaker 4: the trial, but seems to be happenstance that Ethan was
Speaker 4: there that night. Based on what we know the slayings
Speaker 4: of these students, the suspect appears to have been somebody
Speaker 4: who would have been targeting women, not men. So Ethan
Speaker 4: was not a resident of that house at King Road
Speaker 4: where the other roommates, where he was a visitor staying
Speaker 4: the night with with Xana that night.
Speaker 6: Before we get to November twelfth, twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 6: first with Kaylee Gonzalvez and Matty Mogan, what they were
Speaker 6: doing that night, just tell us briefly about the layout
Speaker 6: of the eleven twenty two King Road house, this sixth
Speaker 6: unit house. Tell us about the security and just the
Speaker 6: layout of this building itself.
Speaker 4: That's a great place to start because it's such a
Speaker 4: strange house for most people. It's got three levels basement,
Speaker 4: a first floor, and a second floor, which is not unusual,
Speaker 4: but it's built against kind of like a slope. So
Speaker 4: the entryway there's an entryway off a large parking area
Speaker 4: in front. The parking area in front could fit if
Speaker 4: you had to squeeze them in, it could fit a
Speaker 4: dozen cars. It naturally fit six or seven. But you
Speaker 4: pull up to the house in this big parking way
Speaker 4: and there's the front door. Well the front door. Really
Speaker 4: it's unique because you walk in the front, but you
Speaker 4: have to go up to get to the kitchen. So
Speaker 4: I forget what they call that kind of house right now,
Speaker 4: but the basically the front door opens into what would
Speaker 4: normally be considered the basement of most houses, and that's
Speaker 4: a parent when you look at the house from the backside,
Speaker 4: where what appears to be the first floor is really
Speaker 4: the second. If you're only looking at it from the rear,
Speaker 4: you only see two floors. You can tell that there's
Speaker 4: a third, but you only really are in contact with
Speaker 4: two floors. If you're only looking at it from the front,
Speaker 4: you see all three floors. And so it's a really
Speaker 4: unique situation in that way. Both floors in the back
Speaker 4: have points of egress. There's a sliding door you kind
Speaker 4: of walk up to the backside. If you were going
Speaker 4: around the back, you would walk up a little slope
Speaker 4: you would swing around, then you'd see a sliding glass
Speaker 4: door that leads into the main living quarters. There's another
Speaker 4: on the second floor which has theoretically a point of egress,
Speaker 4: but there's no way down from it. It's just on
Speaker 4: a little balcony, so theoretically you could climb up to
Speaker 4: that fORCH or balcony and get through the slider on
Speaker 4: the very top floor, which is actually I said the
Speaker 4: second floor, but it's actually the second from the back
Speaker 4: when you're looking at from the back, but it's technically
Speaker 4: it's the third floor. Anyway. From the front, you walk
Speaker 4: in and it's it's an unusual space. You walk in
Speaker 4: and there are bedrooms to the left and right, and
Speaker 4: there's like a whottle hall kind of stairwell that takes
Speaker 4: you up to the main living quarters, and then there's
Speaker 4: another weird kind of misplaced stairwell kind of thing off
Speaker 4: to the side because there was an addition at some
Speaker 4: point to the house, and it's not exactly it doesn't
Speaker 4: appear that it would be entirely to code and new
Speaker 4: construction or anything like that, but it was maybe grandfathered
Speaker 4: in through certain clauses or whatever. But there's a weird
Speaker 4: stairwell and it gets to the top floor. And on
Speaker 4: the top floor is where man which is technically the
Speaker 4: third floor, which is where Maddie and Kaylee had separate bedrooms.
Speaker 4: And on the second floor is the kitchen and living area.
Speaker 4: And to one side of that area was Xana Pernodle's bedroom,
Speaker 4: and to the other side of that area on the
Speaker 4: night of the murders was where Dylan Mortenson was sleeping.
Speaker 4: She is surviving victim, survivor, survivor. I call her a
Speaker 4: surviving victim because she's still suffering through the horrors of this.
Speaker 4: And then on the bottom on the bottom was Bethany Funk,
Speaker 4: who was also a survivor of these crimes. But there
Speaker 4: are two ways of looking at the house. I want
Speaker 4: to state this again, because if you're looking at it
Speaker 4: from the front, you see three floors. If you are
Speaker 4: looking at it from the back through a small either
Speaker 4: from immediately from the back or through a small small
Speaker 4: grove of woods to an area above that woods where
Speaker 4: cars to a nearby apartment complex can sometimes park. You
Speaker 4: would be looking down through the woods to the rear
Speaker 4: facing two stories. On the bottom would be a slider
Speaker 4: that is commonly used by the people who visited that
Speaker 4: house to get into the house. And on the top
Speaker 4: would be a slider that went to Kaylee Gansolvez's bedroom.
Speaker 4: And there's no access to the top unless you climb,
Speaker 4: but there is access to the second again through that
Speaker 4: slider that was commonly used in knowing these students and
Speaker 4: their peers likely often unlocked because that's the way sliders
Speaker 4: are in these college houses oftentimes because people come and
Speaker 4: go all the time. And the front door had a keypad,
Speaker 4: so if you didn't have the key code, or you
Speaker 4: didn't feel like typing in the key code or whatever,
Speaker 4: you could go around to the slimb up the little
Speaker 4: slope from the front and open that slider on the
Speaker 4: second floor. And that's what it appears a lot of
Speaker 4: people did.
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Speaker 6: Now, Jay, let's get to November twelfth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6: Kailey Gunn Salvi and Maddy Mogan are out at the
Speaker 6: nearby watering hole called the Corner Club in downtown Moscow, Idaho.
Speaker 6: And so tell us who are they're with and just
Speaker 6: how the evening goes and when they return to King
Speaker 6: Road that night.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Kayley and Maddie are out drinking at the little
Speaker 4: bar that you mentioned. It's a common watering hole for
Speaker 4: Greek students, meaning fraternity and sorority members and and authers.
Speaker 4: I mean, I went to the Corner Club and it's
Speaker 4: full of just regular day drinkers and whoever during the day,
Speaker 4: but at night it was a very collegiate place, and
Speaker 4: they're there with some friends. I won't name everybody that
Speaker 4: they're there with, but I will say one thing, one
Speaker 4: person who they were there with, a guy who I'll
Speaker 4: just called Jack. They were there with Jack Showalter as well.
Speaker 4: And he's important because he later gets blamed for these
Speaker 4: crimes and it's a horrible thing because he had nothing
Speaker 4: to do with them. I'm I mentioned that because of
Speaker 4: the media presence that swarmed him, dogpiled onto him, the
Speaker 4: social media mobs and everything in this poor kid and
Speaker 4: his family were living in fear for quite a time
Speaker 4: after these murders. I have to drop him into this
Speaker 4: story for a second in case you get back to
Speaker 4: that later and we can talk about him. But they
Speaker 4: were out drinking. They leave, Kaylie, Maddy leave with Jack
Speaker 4: so Walter, and they go to the Grub Truck, which
Speaker 4: is a local food truck. They're seen walking that night
Speaker 4: to the grub Truck. They're seen on exterior security camera
Speaker 4: footage from another business. They're talking. We can hear what
Speaker 4: they're saying. They're talking about some common thing that two
Speaker 4: college girls would be talking about. And they then show
Speaker 4: up in live twitch feed from the grub truck whose
Speaker 4: owner has a twitch stream that shows video of what's
Speaker 4: going on at the grub truck. A cool idea to
Speaker 4: have live footage of your good truck. And because of that,
Speaker 4: we know what their actions were at the grub truck.
Speaker 4: They looked, they appeared to be intoxicated, and by the
Speaker 4: way they were moving and acting and talking and stuff.
Speaker 4: And then they leave Jack Showalter behind and they take
Speaker 4: a ride share back home, and that ride share driver
Speaker 4: is the last person in the cerve public to have
Speaker 4: seen Kayleie and Maddie alive. They were seen at the
Speaker 4: grub truck. They were hanging out with Jack. Then the
Speaker 4: ride share driver takes them home, and that ride share
Speaker 4: driver and Jack Showalter have been cleared of any involvement
Speaker 4: in these crimes. So at first they weren't though that
Speaker 4: people were looking at Jack, and they were looking at
Speaker 4: the ride share driver, looking at whoever they could look at.
Speaker 4: And the police tained alibis and cleared all these people.
Speaker 4: But those are the last moments of Kaylee and Maddy's
Speaker 4: life outside of that King Road residence. Same with Similarly,
Speaker 4: if I may Xana and Ethan were out that night,
Speaker 4: they were at a fraternity party at Ethan's fraternity Sigma Kai,
Speaker 4: just down the road from the King Road residence. And
Speaker 4: I mean not just not on the same street, but
Speaker 4: as the crow flies a few hundred several hundred yards
Speaker 4: and that's it. But in fact, from the bluff, if
Speaker 4: you stood high enough on the bluff behind the King
Speaker 4: Road residence where these murders occurred, you could see the
Speaker 4: Sigma Kai fraternity house. So it's within I shot through
Speaker 4: some house, through some other houses and things like that.
Speaker 4: But they were out that night as well, just the
Speaker 4: two of them hanging out with some friends, but they
Speaker 4: weren't out drinking at bars or anything like that. They
Speaker 4: came back to the residence around the same time as
Speaker 4: Kaylee and Mattie, which was sometime after two o'clock let's say,
Speaker 4: just for the purposes of this narrative here in this interview,
Speaker 4: but it's roughly around the time period, and the other
Speaker 4: roommates were home. Bethany and Dylan were home trying to
Speaker 4: get some sleep as well. Eventually, and the only thing
Speaker 4: we really know about the activities of that night after
Speaker 4: everybody arrives home is that we know that Xana Kernodle
Speaker 4: was on TikTok briefly, or appeared to be on TikTok briefly.
Speaker 4: She may have just had the app open and so
Speaker 4: it maybe showed that she was on TikTok, but she
Speaker 4: might You can leave your Instagram app open and it
Speaker 4: shows people that you're on it, but you're not really
Speaker 4: paying attention to it. We know that she ordered food
Speaker 4: like a door dash situation, and ordered food to the house.
Speaker 4: Food arrives around for a so they were up kind
Speaker 4: of late. We know that Dylan Mortenson, who was sleeping
Speaker 4: in the trying to sleep on the second floor, was
Speaker 4: awakened by some of this. Them coming home Kayley and
Speaker 4: Mattie upstairs making a little bit of noise. It seemed like,
Speaker 4: you know, so there was early morning hours with most
Speaker 4: people in the world are asleep, but these are college kids,
Speaker 4: several of whom had been out drinking. There were plenty
Speaker 4: of college nights on my own where I didn't go
Speaker 4: to bed till four or four thirty. That's a normal
Speaker 4: thing if you don't come home from a bar until
Speaker 4: two thirty or so, and that's what was going on
Speaker 4: in this house. They were not having any kind of
Speaker 4: boisterous partying going on. They were settling in for the night,
Speaker 4: but it was very late. It was four in the
Speaker 4: morning by the time people were really settling down.
Speaker 6: You talked about Dylan and also Bethany Funk. Of course
Speaker 6: this is found out later, but at the time they
Speaker 6: had no reason to be suspicious of the sounds that
Speaker 6: they heard. Tell us about the sounds they thought they
Speaker 6: heard that night and when.
Speaker 4: Well, we do not know at this point anything about
Speaker 4: what Bethany heard because the police have not released it,
Speaker 4: and all we can assume based on that is that
Speaker 4: she heard nothing and slept through it right. That is
Speaker 4: the narrative that has been consistent across all reporting. Anybody
Speaker 4: who has looked into what Bethany was up to it
Speaker 4: at the moment of the murders. Everybody who has looked
Speaker 4: into that has said, we can only guess she was sleeping,
Speaker 4: because that's all we found out is she slept through
Speaker 4: it right, and that appears to be what the police
Speaker 4: documents indicate as well as all reporting. Dylan Mortenson, on
Speaker 4: the other hand, heard several things. She was trying to
Speaker 4: get to bed, and this is all based on police
Speaker 4: documentation and other verification of from different sources that I
Speaker 4: reported on the case early, things like that, who's opened
Speaker 4: to police or whatnot. Dylan Mortenson was trying to get
Speaker 4: to bed. She heard what appeared to be what sounded
Speaker 4: like Kaylee and Kaylee's dog sort of rough housing a
Speaker 4: little bit. Murphy is his name. I was forgetting the
Speaker 4: dog's nady briefly, which which was heartbreaking, I mean, because
Speaker 4: I love dogs. Cayley was it sounded like she was
Speaker 4: googing off with Murphy and Maddie and Dylan yelled up
Speaker 4: stairs like hey, basically, can you guys keep it down?
Speaker 4: She didn't get any response. She heard barking from Murphy,
Speaker 4: and then she tried to go back to sleep. Shortly thereafter,
Speaker 4: she heard some more sort of unst I would say, uncertain,
Speaker 4: not unfamiliar, like you know, there's there's scuffling, or there's
Speaker 4: something's going on or whatever. But you know, in a
Speaker 4: college house you don't think much about that stuff. You
Speaker 4: just think people are making noise and you wish, you
Speaker 4: wish they'd shut up. So she heard some kind of
Speaker 4: more of that, and then she heard she heard what
Speaker 4: appears to have been Kaylee saying someone's here and it
Speaker 4: and she also then shortly after heard from and that
Speaker 4: was all from upstairs from her, and then down the
Speaker 4: hall from her where Zanna and Ethan stayed. Shortly after,
Speaker 4: she heard some version of someone crying, which she thought
Speaker 4: was she assumed was Xanna crying. And then she heard
Speaker 4: some version of it's okay, I'm going to help you,
Speaker 4: coming from a male voice. Now she did not say it.
Speaker 4: Does not say in the police documents that she heard
Speaker 4: Ethan say it, but just a male voice, but she
Speaker 4: did not say it wasn't Ethan either. She basically from
Speaker 4: what we can gather from the police documents, from the
Speaker 4: investigative documents, that she she was not specific in those
Speaker 4: documents or the police intentionally left that out of their documents,
Speaker 4: whether or not she was specific, But that doesn't seem
Speaker 4: to be the case, and the police have no reason
Speaker 4: to have left that out intentionally. But that's very interesting
Speaker 4: because she heard somebody say some version of it's okay,
Speaker 4: I'm going to help you, and then shortly after that,
Speaker 4: she becomes slightly concerned, not necessarily about any kind of
Speaker 4: violent crime occurring, but she can't sleep. There's weird things
Speaker 4: that she's hearing. She doesn't know what's going on. She
Speaker 4: opens her bedroom door, and she looks out the door
Speaker 4: and she sees, well, she had already previously looked out
Speaker 4: the door, saw nothing. She does it again, and she
Speaker 4: sees a man dressed in black with a covering over
Speaker 4: his face, black covering over his face, walking toward her,
Speaker 4: but toward her also happens to be the route to
Speaker 4: exit the house. And you know, he's not walking into
Speaker 4: her room, so to speaks, tucking in the direction toward her,
Speaker 4: and he passes her, and he goes out the slider,
Speaker 4: and this is on the second floor, and something unusual occurs.
Speaker 4: She doesn't know if we don't know anyway, if she
Speaker 4: believes he has seen her or not. She says that
Speaker 4: she just sort of stood there, like the police say,
Speaker 4: frozen in a fear type of state. But it appears
Speaker 4: that the police are phrasing that for her. It's not
Speaker 4: even quotes. They don't say in the police documents Dylan
Speaker 4: said she was. They don't say Dylan said she was
Speaker 4: frozen in fear, and they don't say Dylan said, quote
Speaker 4: I was frozen in fear. Quote. It is written as
Speaker 4: such that the police could have been paraphrasing what she
Speaker 4: said basically, though the paraphrases that she stood frozen, she
Speaker 4: didn't know what was going on. There's this man leaving
Speaker 4: the house. She describes him as having bushy eyebrows, being Caucasian,
Speaker 4: you know, being slightly athletic in build, but not muscular
Speaker 4: or anything like that. And well, she goes back to bed.
Speaker 4: This is very unusual to most people, because if you
Speaker 4: don't know who this person is in your house and
Speaker 4: you've heard weird sounds, you would tend to think that
Speaker 4: this was an intruder. However, several factors have come into
Speaker 4: play before this one. We've all just lived through two
Speaker 4: years of COVID at that time, and people wearing masks
Speaker 4: all the time on their faces, right, and there's a
Speaker 4: very unusual time in the world and where masks have
Speaker 4: become more commonplace than any other time that we've lived through.
Speaker 4: So one, he's wearing a mask, but that's not necessarily
Speaker 4: that unusual. And two, this was a college party house. Basically,
Speaker 4: everything we've learned about this house, it indicates that there
Speaker 4: were people coming and going at all times, all the time,
Speaker 4: and it not only was a party house for them,
Speaker 4: but it had been a part party house in previous iterations.
Speaker 4: So this was a house near the university, and there
Speaker 4: are a lot of people who are in the Greek
Speaker 4: party system. I call it the party system, but it's
Speaker 4: basically there's a lot of partying in Greek social life
Speaker 4: at the universities and the fraternity and sorority social life.
Speaker 4: And this was a house pretty close to all that.
Speaker 4: It sleeps six, which means off and on for years.
Speaker 4: There were probably twelve because you know, most college students
Speaker 4: are dating somebody, there are parties going on, and you know,
Speaker 4: all people coming and going all the time. Fact on
Speaker 4: multiple different occasions, three of them that I have and
Speaker 4: probably many many more over the years, but three. And
Speaker 4: in the months prior to the night of the murderers,
Speaker 4: police had showed up because it was a boisterous, loud scene.
Speaker 4: Neighbors were complaining, So there were all kinds of people
Speaker 4: that these residents were used to seeing. We can assume
Speaker 4: that she just chalked it up to that, or she
Speaker 4: was suffering from some traumatic response, and we don't know
Speaker 4: how people are going to respond to what their sixth
Speaker 4: senses telling them, what the lizard brain is telling them.
Speaker 4: She may have subconsciously understood something horrible had happened, but
Speaker 4: the trauma response was such that she basically closed the
Speaker 4: door and she went back to went back to bed,
Speaker 4: and nobody knew exactly what had happened until the survivors
Speaker 4: woke up in the morning. In fact, Bethany is said
Speaker 4: to have never gone and seen it, but Dylan is
Speaker 4: said to have seen what had happened after and the
Speaker 4: residents of the house that were survivors called other people
Speaker 4: to come help them through this moment with their friends
Speaker 4: in the morning and stuff. We haven't talked about what happened.
Speaker 4: I'm just slipping to the fact that, like, it wasn't
Speaker 4: until about noon that the police actually showed up at
Speaker 4: the house, so full eight hours after the murders.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about what police discover at that crime scene.
Speaker 6: Tell us what they discover, what they can determine immediately.
Speaker 4: Well immediately we will skip past what happened. We'll skip
Speaker 4: past the details. But basically, Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, and Ethan
Speaker 4: were stabbed to death in the middle of the night
Speaker 4: sometime after four. We have a pretty good timeframe of
Speaker 4: when we think it happened, but before four thirty, I
Speaker 4: mean between four and four thirty and it's even more
Speaker 4: spelled out like that in the book. It's just for
Speaker 4: the sake of your listeners. They were murdered, stabbed to death,
Speaker 4: and several several hours later, Dylan Mortensen and her peers,
Speaker 4: who she has called to the house to help her
Speaker 4: through whatever scene she has discovered, they called the police,
Speaker 4: and the police show up. It's around noon, and they
Speaker 4: very I mean very quickly. It's apparent. I mean, there's
Speaker 4: blood everywhere in these areas where the students were killed.
Speaker 4: They find Katie and Maddie upstairs in the same bed together.
Speaker 4: It does not mean that they would have gone to
Speaker 4: bed together to sleep. We don't know what they were
Speaker 4: doing in the same bed, but it appears that they'd
Speaker 4: fallen into the same bed together after a struggle and
Speaker 4: being murdered. Right, They could have been laid in the
Speaker 4: same bed together at that time. We could have jumped
Speaker 4: into the same bed together, you know, out of instinct
Speaker 4: to get away from whatever was happening. We won't know
Speaker 4: exactly what they were doing there until after a trial,
Speaker 4: and presumably we may never know, but they were found
Speaker 4: in the same bed together a stab to death. Horrifically.
Speaker 4: One of them was stabbed what they call overkill. One
Speaker 4: was one was stabbed to a greater degree of viciousness
Speaker 4: and than the other. And they found a knife sheath
Speaker 4: to a hunting knife or survival knife known as a
Speaker 4: k bar knife. It's a marine issue knife ka dash bar,
Speaker 4: and that's a very particular type of sheath. And they
Speaker 4: found that lane next to Matty Mugen, not positioned next
Speaker 4: to her on purpose, but as if it had been
Speaker 4: accidentally left behind. And they also then discovered Xanna and
Speaker 4: Ethan in Xana's bedroom also it appears in the doorway
Speaker 4: as well as in the bedroom, also brutally stabbed to death.
Speaker 4: You know, we're not talking a couple of a couple
Speaker 4: of sticks, you know, like like you see in a
Speaker 4: prison shanking where it's just you know, this was not
Speaker 4: like that with a knife. The coroner described it as
Speaker 4: harrors and gashes and I'm just horrific violence. And they
Speaker 4: also the police also discovered community surrounding that house suffering
Speaker 4: through immense shock and terror. The students who they first
Speaker 4: interviewed had been on that scene were clearly traumatized by
Speaker 4: what had gone on. So that was basically what they discovered.
Speaker 4: They had no evidence at first other than this knife sheet,
Speaker 4: which is a big deal, but they didn't have any
Speaker 4: other indicators of anything else. Later they found a latent
Speaker 4: footprint that they have included in their list of evidence.
Speaker 4: They later weeks later were able to pinpoint connections to
Speaker 4: DNA that was left on the knife sheet. So they
Speaker 4: have that evidence, and they have neighborhood security camera evidence
Speaker 4: showing a vehicle what became popular immediately online and not popular,
Speaker 4: but the infamous white Hyundai that was splattered internationally in
Speaker 4: the media after they released that. They had that footage
Speaker 4: of a Hyundai that they believed to be associated with
Speaker 4: the crimes. And they also had very troubling me So
Speaker 4: a neighbor's security like door cam picked up audio of
Speaker 4: the inside of the King Road house at the time
Speaker 4: of the murders, and that audio it plays back some
Speaker 4: moaning sounds and what sounds as if a head were
Speaker 4: hitting the floor the way like its sack was described
Speaker 4: as a bowling ball hitting the floor. But that's basically
Speaker 4: what a head sounds like when it's dropped. I don't
Speaker 4: mean a detached head, I mean when a person falls.
Speaker 4: That's what their head sounds like against the ground. You
Speaker 4: know that has a very heavy, solid thing. We don't
Speaker 4: think of that when we watch like boxing matches or
Speaker 4: mma matches because they fall into into canvas or in
Speaker 4: the octagon. But when a head hits a hard surface
Speaker 4: and when a person falls, it makes a very strong thud,
Speaker 4: and that audio is picked up on a neighboring security
Speaker 4: camera is very troubling. But that also assisted them in
Speaker 4: inpointing the timeframe for the murders. So in the initial days,
Speaker 4: they had no clues as to why anybody would do this,
Speaker 4: who would do this, what it was, They didn't have anything,
Speaker 4: But little by little the police were able to piece
Speaker 4: together evidence that pointed them toward this suspect.
Speaker 6: Brian Koberger, let's talk about the incredible pressure, and you
Speaker 6: introduced Chief James Fry of Moscow Police Department. But he
Speaker 6: also immediately gets the state police involved person named pain
Speaker 6: and also the FBI. So tell us about this pressure,
Speaker 6: forcing him to do press conferences before he's ready. Tell
Speaker 6: us about the criticism and the pressure this Chief Fry,
Speaker 6: Bass and all police.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I mean a huge part of the
Speaker 4: book because a huge part of the story is the
Speaker 4: interplay between the actual investigators on the scene, the small
Speaker 4: town of Moscow's police department, and the sort of social
Speaker 4: media frenzy that forced them into this small town into
Speaker 4: the limelight. This was never like a town that was
Speaker 4: used to public eyes on it, but the social media
Speaker 4: frenzy around this case drove traffic toward these murders in
Speaker 4: the media, and because of that, the mainstream media just
Speaker 4: kept reporting on this constantly. They're seeing their numbers skyrocket,
Speaker 4: and dozens and dozens of out of state reporters flocked
Speaker 4: in with camera crews, hundreds of cyber sleuths flocked in,
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of cyber slus online were paying attention.
Speaker 4: Millions of people were clicking on every article that popped up.
Speaker 4: The media that couldn't even keep up with the demand
Speaker 4: for content about this case. Because of that, they kept
Speaker 4: pressuring the police department to give them information, and Chief Fry,
Speaker 4: who was the chief of police of Moscow Police Department,
Speaker 4: was just bombarded with media. I mean, you would have
Speaker 4: thought this was the most famous cop in America. You know,
Speaker 4: it was just insanity, and he was forced to have
Speaker 4: daily press more almost daily press conferences. It seemed like
Speaker 4: he was forced to the Moscow Police department website gave
Speaker 4: near daily updates on the progress of the case. There
Speaker 4: were social media sleuths starting to say, oh, Chief Fry
Speaker 4: in the Moscow Police depar and are way over their head.
Speaker 4: They'll never handle this case. This should be taken over
Speaker 4: by the FBI. Because of that, the mainstream media was
Speaker 4: saying that, I mean, we had people reporting from CNN
Speaker 4: and Fox and NBC and wherever big big media reports
Speaker 4: from questioning whether or not the Moscow Police Department could
Speaker 4: handle it well. In the meantime, it wasn't just the
Speaker 4: thirty seven member of Moscow Police Department that was doing this,
Speaker 4: and Chief Fry was a smart guy. He immediately called
Speaker 4: him the Ido State Police, which handles big, big, big
Speaker 4: murder cases like any other state in the country. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: that's the society we live in. The Ido State Police
Speaker 4: and the FBI were called in. The FBI committed dozens
Speaker 4: of members to the task force to assist, so Chief
Speaker 4: Fry was not just Podam Chief Fry, and as the
Speaker 4: world saw him, I mean, he had all the resources
Speaker 4: of the State Police and the FBI assisting in this investigation,
Speaker 4: and he was forced to really walk a sort of
Speaker 4: tricking line between giving information just enough to the public
Speaker 4: so they'd stop bother the basically, and the police department
Speaker 4: so that they could do their work asking for help
Speaker 4: from the that same public for leads and tips, and
Speaker 4: hold onto the leads and tips that were substantive and
Speaker 4: not telling anybody about them. So when they some six
Speaker 4: weeks later or whatever it was, when they arrest the suspect,
Speaker 4: Brian Koberger, it appears to have been out of the
Speaker 4: blue because Chief Fry and his team and Brett Payne
Speaker 4: under him did exactly what they were supposed to do
Speaker 4: as police, which is hold onto the investigative details so
Speaker 4: that when they have substantive leads, they can follow those
Speaker 4: leads without a scaring off a suspect be getting those
Speaker 4: leads diluted or those that information diluted somehow or changed
Speaker 4: or altered or twisted by the public, and so they
Speaker 4: can focus on what they do best, which is what
Speaker 4: they've been hired to do and what they've been trained
Speaker 4: to do their whole lives is solve crimes. What they
Speaker 4: were forced to do is act as a liaison between
Speaker 4: the insecurities and trauma and fears of a public and
Speaker 4: the details of the case in some ways, and that's
Speaker 4: not exactly what police are supposed to do. And I
Speaker 4: think they did it exactly right. They worked day and
Speaker 4: night tirelessly. They were photographed by I mean they were
Speaker 4: they were We're talking about a police department that had
Speaker 4: paparazzi camped outside its windows, you know, shooting photographs of
Speaker 4: them through the windows while they're working on this case.
Speaker 4: While the scene was being processed. We had crime scene
Speaker 4: investigators in full hasmad suit and whatever with paparazzi shooting
Speaker 4: pictures of them through the windows of the of the house.
Speaker 4: I mean, this was a This was a really stressful
Speaker 4: situation for police to work in and when what the
Speaker 4: world sees as backwoods North Idaho, they pulled it off spectacularly.
Speaker 4: And it's one of the focuses of the book. A
Speaker 4: huge focuses the interplay between social media saluthing the traditional
Speaker 4: police investigators and how we expect crime investigations to be
Speaker 4: played out in the future. When we have YouTubers and
Speaker 4: podcasters and TikTokers diving into those crime scenes to get
Speaker 4: their next bit of content, it becomes very complicated. On
Speaker 4: the one hand, shows like yours and writers like me.
Speaker 4: We bring to light stories that people should hear, because
Speaker 4: otherwise those stories go without a voice. On the other hand,
Speaker 4: there are people like some TikTokers were showing up at
Speaker 4: the crime scene to do TikTok dances in front of
Speaker 4: the crime scene, and that's clearly gone too far right
Speaker 4: in terms of not only decorum, but in terms of
Speaker 4: getting in way of investigative processes. You and I are
Speaker 4: not putting on our best suits and shiny shoes and
Speaker 4: tap dancing in front of the door of a murder scene. Theoretically,
Speaker 4: we're telling stories that matter, but the tide is turning
Speaker 4: on that a little bit, and that's a very complicated
Speaker 4: place for police departments to be.
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Speaker 6: Now, let's get to this complex character. And you have
Speaker 6: found out and relay all this information about Brian Kolberger,
Speaker 6: his early life and background and up to his eventual arrest,
Speaker 6: like you say, six weeks later, but he is under
Speaker 6: surveillance as soon as he's a suspect by police. Tell
Speaker 6: us about Ryan Colberger.
Speaker 4: Brian Coberger, the primary suspect, the person who's been arrested
Speaker 4: in charge with these murders, was a PhD student in
Speaker 4: criminology at nearbyy Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, right
Speaker 4: across the border from Idaho. That was not a far drive.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're talking about Moscow is practically at the border,
Speaker 4: so you know, ten to fifteen minutes away is a
Speaker 4: PhD student in criminology and a teaching assistant, a professor
Speaker 4: you could say, because he would run his own courses
Speaker 4: or run sections of his course in criminology as well
Speaker 4: criminal justice in criminology. So a very unique character for
Speaker 4: being a suspect in this type of horrific murder. This
Speaker 4: is a guy who studies crime, and he grew up
Speaker 4: in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. He had somewhat troubled youth.
Speaker 4: He was an outsider in many other ways. He did
Speaker 4: not underseem to understand how to interact with women young women.
Speaker 4: When he was a student, he was rejected often by
Speaker 4: the popular social classes he studied. Tried to study law
Speaker 4: enforcement when he was in high school. There was a
Speaker 4: tech school version of his school as well, and you
Speaker 4: could take these tech school classes instead of your regular classes.
Speaker 4: He was studying law enforcement. He at one point was
Speaker 4: a heroin addict. He seems like for a couple of
Speaker 4: years he struggled with with heroin addiction. He made inappropriate
Speaker 4: remarks to a lot of people. He was insecure and lonely.
Speaker 4: Then he became physically fit after kicking heroin, and or
Speaker 4: right around the same time, that's how he kicked heroin,
Speaker 4: I believe. But he became very physically fit. He became
Speaker 4: a runner. He was very heavy when he was younger.
Speaker 4: He lost like one hundred pounds or something like that
Speaker 4: while he was still in high school. So when you're
Speaker 4: in high school and you have the ability to you
Speaker 4: have enough to lose that you can lose one hundred pounds.
Speaker 4: You were a big boy. And he lost one hundred
Speaker 4: pounds and his attitude about the world changed. He became
Speaker 4: more hard edged, more dedicated, more focused about what he
Speaker 4: wanted in his life. He eventually graduated from college. It
Speaker 4: took him a while. He went to some local schools
Speaker 4: and he got his master's degree. His master's degree in
Speaker 4: criminology from the Sales University, where he studied briefly under
Speaker 4: a renowned professor who had worked with BTK Killer on
Speaker 4: a pung a book about the BTK killer and also
Speaker 4: many other books that she's written, just tons and tons
Speaker 4: of his writings and serial killers and mass murderers, and
Speaker 4: Brian Coberger studied with her. He was said by one
Speaker 4: of his professors to have been brilliant, and he got
Speaker 4: into the PhD in criminology program at Washington State University
Speaker 4: and appeared to have turned his life around. He actually,
Speaker 4: before starting at the university, applied for an internship with
Speaker 4: the Poeme and Police Department, wanting to assist them in
Speaker 4: their forgetting the terminology right now because it's not in
Speaker 4: front of me but they're basically they're digital forensics. So
Speaker 4: he believed, at least we can assess that he believed
Speaker 4: that he knew quite a bit about digital forensics, how
Speaker 4: to track people online and things like that. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 4: it's digital forensics that led to his arrest. So if
Speaker 4: we believe that Brian Coberger was the perpetrator of these crimes,
Speaker 4: while he was supposedly an expert in crime, you know,
Speaker 4: getting a PhD in criminology and knowing a lot about
Speaker 4: digital forensics, it's very opposite of what appears to have happened.
Speaker 4: He left behind what appears to be quite a trail
Speaker 4: of digital evidence. However, prior to that, he was, you know,
Speaker 4: he'd only done just a brief first semester. You know,
Speaker 4: his crimes occurred in November of co worker's first semester
Speaker 4: as a PhD student, and in that brief time there
Speaker 4: were many complaints about him from some of his students,
Speaker 4: from some of his peers, from other people on campus,
Speaker 4: or also after the fact, we learned that other people
Speaker 4: on both campuses at WSU and at University of Idam
Speaker 4: were quote creeped out by him. He appeared to have
Speaker 4: a real strong problem with women. He made misogynist comments
Speaker 4: to the effect that women aren't a smart He was
Speaker 4: very anti LGBTQ. He was very upset by many things
Speaker 4: that to not fit his view of how the world
Speaker 4: should be, and many people associated him with that in
Speaker 4: cell movement, which is involuntary celibates, but which tend to
Speaker 4: be angry people. You don't call someone an in cell,
Speaker 4: they have to identify as that. To be that, it's
Speaker 4: like belonging to a club. You know. He appeared to though,
Speaker 4: be striking out with women all the time, to be
Speaker 4: angry with women, to be disassociated, to be suffering from
Speaker 4: his visual snowstuff, to just things just kept getting worse
Speaker 4: and worse for him, even though he was physically fit
Speaker 4: now slightly you know, kind of a handsome guy and
Speaker 4: you look at him just you know, he looks like,
Speaker 4: you know, no different than a version of John F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy junior or something great hair, good physique, chiseled job.
Speaker 4: But there was a there was a strange stare in
Speaker 4: his eyes that everybody commented on. He was always sort
Speaker 4: of lurking and staring. And you know, when the police
Speaker 4: arrested him over Christmas break, we didn't know any of
Speaker 4: this yet, but he had already been perminated from the
Speaker 4: university for pause. He had not been performing his duties
Speaker 4: as a as a instructor, and his funding for his
Speaker 4: PhD would have been tied to those duties as an instructor.
Speaker 4: So he was he likely lost his funding as a
Speaker 4: PhD student, and he was on a downward spiral. He
Speaker 4: appeared to be doing great, but underneath it all, he
Speaker 4: was all falling apart on this guy. When they arrested
Speaker 4: him in Pennsylvania after tracing all this digital evidence they
Speaker 4: had on him, then hundreds and hundreds of tips came
Speaker 4: in about him from all these other people who said, man,
Speaker 4: I had experiences with this guy. He creeped me out,
Speaker 4: and this and that, and there were lots of lots
Speaker 4: of people calling in about him to the FBI and
Speaker 4: state police and the Moscow police.
Speaker 6: You were talking about him, believing maybe that he was
Speaker 6: smart enough to cover his digital tracks, but you talk
Speaker 6: about the miracle that Moscow police received in terms of
Speaker 6: the cameras, the footage of the white Hyundai Atlantra, but
Speaker 6: also that he wasn't clever at all with his cell phone.
Speaker 4: Can you explain, Yeah, so a white Yndai Atlantra of
Speaker 4: Sedan was seen on video prowling in the neighborhood. Let's
Speaker 4: call it coming in and out of the neighborhood several
Speaker 4: times that night in the late hours, you know, right
Speaker 4: around the murders. I mean we're talking from three am
Speaker 4: until four point thirty. Let's say I'm just roughly, for
Speaker 4: the sake of here listeners, this car cruises in and
Speaker 4: out of the neighborhood three four times, and then when
Speaker 4: it finally leaves the neighborhood, it leaves right after what
Speaker 4: has been assessed as the time of murders. And it
Speaker 4: speeds out of the neighborhood right after the time of
Speaker 4: the murders. And this is all caught on neighbors security camera,
Speaker 4: which is an amazing stroke of luck. So one thing
Speaker 4: that Brian Koberger, if he is the perpetrator, which it
Speaker 4: looks like he is, but one thing he should have
Speaker 4: assumed in that case, being a digital evidence type of expert,
Speaker 4: or even just a general student in criminology, or heck,
Speaker 4: even just somebody who watches TV, one thing he should
Speaker 4: have assumed is that there would be security cameras in
Speaker 4: the neighborhood and if you're going to kill the four people,
Speaker 4: you don't drive your own car. What the defense will
Speaker 4: probably argue, as a side note, is that that's evidence
Speaker 4: that he wouldn't do it, because why would he have
Speaker 4: driven his own car if he's a PhD student in criminology, right,
Speaker 4: so they'll probably argue the opposite. You know, are you
Speaker 4: that for opposite reasons? However, police get this footage of
Speaker 4: a white Hondai sedan and they try and figure out
Speaker 4: who this belongs to. Well, it doesn't have a front
Speaker 4: license plate on it, so what the only license plate
Speaker 4: they can see is what they could have seen would
Speaker 4: have been the front, but it's not there. The rear
Speaker 4: license plate is it's too obscure in the footage they
Speaker 4: don't have a license plate on. Eventually, police in Washington
Speaker 4: discovered that in university housing for graduate students there is
Speaker 4: this white Hondai Elantra, and they track it to Brian
Speaker 4: Koborger based on the plates because everybody's out looking for
Speaker 4: a Hyundai. Now it takes weeks, but they track this
Speaker 4: to They've got thousands and thousands of Yndai Alantras to track.
Speaker 4: One of them happens to be a criminology student in
Speaker 4: Washington State, right right nearby. And then they also pull
Speaker 4: records from cell phones that utilize tower that served the
Speaker 4: King Road residence, and Brian Coburger is his cell phone
Speaker 4: utilized the tower that services the King Road residence not
Speaker 4: just in general, but at the time of them surrounding
Speaker 4: the murders, okay, also at least a dozen occasions previously.
Speaker 4: So they realized that in I'm paraphrasing this for sake
Speaker 4: of quickness for your listeners, it's a little bit more complicated,
Speaker 4: but they realized that Bryan Coberger, his cell phone anyway,
Speaker 4: had often been in the vicinity of the King Road residence,
Speaker 4: including on the night of the murders, and that a
Speaker 4: white Alantra belonged to him, which was also in the vicinity.
Speaker 4: Other video footage in the area, from surveillance footage, security
Speaker 4: footage from other cameras, treat cams and nearby businesses and
Speaker 4: things like that, they were able to piece together that yes,
Speaker 4: Brian Coberger's own white Hundrei Elantra was in that area.
Speaker 4: Wasn't just a random Honday it was it appears to
Speaker 4: have been Brian Coberger's Yundai A Lantra and his cell
Speaker 4: in the air, so the defense could say, well it
Speaker 4: wasn't coberg Er, somebody took his cell in his car. However,
Speaker 4: the DNA eventually matches to Brian Coberger. The DNA that
Speaker 4: is left beim in the knife sheet, so they have
Speaker 4: in terms of evidence, they have the DNA that's left
Speaker 4: on the NFE sheet beside mate Mogan it's touched DNA,
Speaker 4: and then they have his cell phone and his vehicle
Speaker 4: in the vicinity and another thing that they have interestingly
Speaker 4: enough to talk about, Well what he asked originally, like,
Speaker 4: you know, if he's so smart, why wasn't he smart
Speaker 4: enough to leave his cell phone behind? We don't know
Speaker 4: the answer, but we do know that his cell phone
Speaker 4: was turned off at the exact time of the murders
Speaker 4: and then later turned back on. But does not have
Speaker 4: a pattern of turning off his cell phone at three
Speaker 4: in the morning, say, and turning it back on at
Speaker 4: five or two thirty in the morning and turning it
Speaker 4: back on at five. That's not what Brian Coberger does
Speaker 4: based on his cell phone records. So he actually turned
Speaker 4: off the phone, but he only but he brought it
Speaker 4: with him. So when the phone comes back on again.
Speaker 4: He's far away from the crime scene, but he's traveling well.
Speaker 4: First of all, he returns home, his phone is on again.
Speaker 4: Then then later he's traveling with that phone to other
Speaker 4: locations south of the crime scene within an hour or so.
Speaker 4: And in a sense, it appears that he's probably going
Speaker 4: out there, if he's the doer, he's probably going out
Speaker 4: there to bear get rid of evidence, get rid of
Speaker 4: the knife which they have not found, get rid of
Speaker 4: clothing that he might have been weared, things like that.
Speaker 4: But if he's the doer, then he wasn't smart enough
Speaker 4: to just leave his phone behind everywhere, Like his phone
Speaker 4: is basically giving them the GPS coordinates of everywhere he's
Speaker 4: not exactly the GPS coordinates, but more or less everywhere
Speaker 4: he's been in that period surrounding the murderers. So they
Speaker 4: don't have it on the GPS coordinates. They have it
Speaker 4: based on the opinion of cell towers. But it's just
Speaker 4: very it's very complicated. It's spelled out very clearly in
Speaker 4: the book what is believed to have happened. But basically,
Speaker 4: this guy who claims to be a digital forensics type
Speaker 4: of specialist was captured through digital forensicks right now.
Speaker 6: You talk briefly about the status of this case right now,
Speaker 6: but this is also potentially a death penalty case, and
Speaker 6: in the case of Idaho, is somewhat unusual. He would
Speaker 6: face a firing squad potentially, wouldn't he.
Speaker 4: Yeah, One of the unusual things about the state of
Speaker 4: Idaho is that they have recently brought back the firing
Speaker 4: squad for the death penalty because of difficulty in obtaining
Speaker 4: chemicals needed for lethal injection. And I'm not a death
Speaker 4: penalty expert, but that's an unusual thing in it for
Speaker 4: a state to allow the firing squad. But if Brian
Speaker 4: Coberger has found guilty in this death penalty case, it's
Speaker 4: very likely that with the current political climate and answers
Speaker 4: on criminal justice and in the state of Idaho, that
Speaker 4: he could face he could face death by firing squad eventually.
Speaker 4: That is something that the citizens of Idaho, many of
Speaker 4: them agree with in terms of the death penalty, and
Speaker 4: so that is something that might occur. This case now
Speaker 4: has been pushed out, was slated to begin October second.
Speaker 4: My book comes out October third, but this case has
Speaker 4: been now pushed out indefinitely and we won't know all
Speaker 4: of this sort of intimate details of how something happened
Speaker 4: or didn't happen. I should say this, we don't know
Speaker 4: that Brian Coberger did this until he's convicted, until all
Speaker 4: the evidence. Right. I bring him up in the story
Speaker 4: because he's the alleged perpetrator, and he's he's who police
Speaker 4: highlight in there in all of their narratives, and he's who. Sure,
Speaker 4: he's who's been charged, right, so you have to talk
Speaker 4: about it. But theoretically the prosecution will lay out much
Speaker 4: more evidence than what we know. Absolutely, they only had
Speaker 4: to show him to arrest him. They only had to
Speaker 4: make public small amount of everything. They could have five
Speaker 4: times as much on him, and we just don't.
Speaker 6: Know it, sure, Absolutely. Before I Let you go, part
Speaker 6: of this book is also I had mentioned. It's a
Speaker 6: remarkable tribute and an honor to these victims. Just interesting
Speaker 6: for people that will take this up and read this
Speaker 6: book is the memorials, the vigils, and the very very
Speaker 6: interesting posthumous diplomas that were handed to Kayley and Maddie.
Speaker 6: Just before I Let you go, tell us about that.
Speaker 4: Well, it's easy to get lost in the details of
Speaker 4: what we think happened and whatever, But at the end
Speaker 4: of the day, four families are suffering through the most
Speaker 4: unimaginable thing that nobody likes to think of this and
Speaker 4: it's a horrific set of circumstances. And North Idaho was
Speaker 4: just the whole part of the state. I mean the
Speaker 4: whole state really, but especially North Idaho. It's just a
Speaker 4: very traumatic experience to go through. And the communities rallied
Speaker 4: behind the families. They had multiple memorials, they were live
Speaker 4: streamed watched by hundreds of thousands of people in the
Speaker 4: commencement ceremonies that in spring. Kaylee was going to graduate
Speaker 4: in December, but they waited till spring, and the spring
Speaker 4: commencements ceremonies at the end were very emotional and they
Speaker 4: presented posthumous degrees to Kaylie and Maddie in to family
Speaker 4: members accepted on their behalf. Ethan and Xanna received certificates
Speaker 4: some sort. They were not set to graduate yet they
Speaker 4: were younger. But it also important to note was that
Speaker 4: another young woman had died during the school year. She
Speaker 4: received a posthumous degree as well, in her large family
Speaker 4: accepted on her behalf. She died of under other circumstances,
Speaker 4: and to me it really seem that, I mean, look,
Speaker 4: to be murdered viciously is a horrific thing, and to
Speaker 4: suffer through that as a family is horrific. It's horrific.
Speaker 4: It's the stuff of nightmares. But then we focused on
Speaker 4: that all year. Everybody did. Everybody focused on that all year.
Speaker 4: And then to suddenly realize that another young woman had
Speaker 4: died who also had hopes and dreams for her future,
Speaker 4: and whose family also had raised her through that process
Speaker 4: of becoming an adult, finally, it really strikes a chord.
Speaker 4: It really drives home theig notion that none of us
Speaker 4: are forever, and there's no way to promise forever to
Speaker 4: our loved ones. All we can do is live the
Speaker 4: life that we have in front of us day by day,
Speaker 4: hold on to it, promise our loved ones that they
Speaker 4: can do the same, and try to get the most
Speaker 4: we can out of this. You know, this time we
Speaker 4: have here, and it's a really heartbreaking reminder that, you know,
Speaker 4: when these things happen, we never wish this on anybody
Speaker 4: or on ourselves. It's just it's horrific. But they are
Speaker 4: a reminder to live hard, love as much as you
Speaker 4: can and really enjoy the time you have here, because
Speaker 4: none of us will be here one hundred years from now.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, I want to thank you so much, Jay Rubin Appleman,
Speaker 6: for talking about your latest While Idaho Slept, The Hunt
Speaker 6: for Answers and the Murders of four college students. Those
Speaker 6: people that might want to find out more about this
Speaker 6: book While Idaho Slept and more on this case, where
Speaker 6: can they go?
Speaker 4: Tell us? Well, the book is out everywhere. It'll be
Speaker 4: online obviously many places. It comes out October three. It'll
Speaker 4: be if you're a Walmart chopper, it'll be in Walmarts,
Speaker 4: it'll be in it'll be in Barns and Noble. It'll
Speaker 4: be in your local bookstore. It it'll be in some airports.
Speaker 4: You can just jump online and search for a while. Idoh,
Speaker 4: it's slept, you know, it's it's anywhere people sell books online.
Speaker 4: It'll be available.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Jay Rubin Appleman, While Idaho Slept,
Speaker 6: The Hunt for Answers and the Murders of four college students.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for this interview. You have a
Speaker 6: great evening.
Speaker 4: Thanks brother, I appreciate you, and good night,