20/20 - Idaho College Murders: Can Suspect Get a Fair Trial in Moscow?

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

With his trial nine months away, Bryan Kohberger’s defense team tries to move the venue out of Moscow. Our legal experts weigh in on the high bar to move a trial. And we visit the remote park where Kohberger says he was the night of the murders. Follow ABC's "The King Road Killings" podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now for more on this story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, 2020 listeners. This is Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020. Nearly two years after the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, the court battle to bring a suspect to trial is gearing up. Today on the podcast, the latest developments in the case against Brian Koberger, who's been charged in those murders and maintains his innocence. Here's Kena Whitworth with a bonus episode of The King Road Killings.

You can find the whole series, The King Road Killings, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Kena Whitworth. I came back to Moscow, Idaho for the latest hearing in the Brian Koberger case. Can I have the record, please? Koberger is scheduled to stand trial for the murders of Kaylee Gonsalves, Madison Mogan, Zanna Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin next summer.

A not guilty plea has been entered on his behalf. The big question the judge is wrestling with now is where will that trial be held when it's set to begin nine months from now? The defense wants it moved out of Latah County, where Moscow is located, to Boise, several hours away, or to another nearby county. Koberger's defense says all the pre-trial publicity about their client has been negative. It's actually prejudiced potential jurors in Laetitia. We have to get this case out of Laetitia County.

That's an important decision, and it's important to make now. We're nine months from trial, and we need to have the venue issue settled. Prosecutors concede the media coverage has been intense, but they say changing the venue won't solve the defense's problems. Thank you, Your Honor. The pervasive media coverage across the entire state has simply created some complications and difficulties. Those are not unique to Lake Talk County.

In this episode, we sat down with two of our ABC News legal contributors just hours after the hearing wrapped up, and they walked us through the dilemma of seating a jury for a case that everybody's heard of. And we'll visit the county park that Coburger's lawyers say he was at the night of the murders. It's very remote. There at the night of the murders. It's very remote. There's no cell service down here. So it's an easy place to go escape.

This is a bonus episode of The King Road Killings. Can Brian Koberger get a fair trial in Moscow. Inside the small courtroom in Latah County, a crowd gathered to hear the defense make the argument for moving the trial away from this small college town where the murders took place nearly two years ago. Kaylee Gonzales' parents, Christy and Steve, were there. They've pledged to be at every hearing. Kaylee's brother, Stephen III, was also there, in a shirt and tie. Brian Koberger walked in, wearing a large black suit coat. It looked new. You could see that the back vents hadn't been cut yet. He greeted his

attorney and took his seat at the defense table. Throughout the hearing, his attorneys would present nearly six hours of testimony from media and psychology experts. One of them was Brian Edelman, who polled public attitudes across four different counties in Idaho. He surveyed what 400 potential jurors in Latah County knew about the case, their attitudes toward the defendant, and their ability to be impartial. Edelman testified that he found a clear negative media bias within Latah County. Latah County is a small venue, and the crime has been seared in the community's consciousness. People have been saturated with prejudicial coverage. Many people here have direct and indirect connections to this crime. We know from the data that jurors have closely followed

the case, have talked about it, they're familiar with prejudicial details. I think that the presumption of innocence has been undermined, and presumption of guilt prevails in this community. The defense had used the term mob mentality in its filing before the hearing. And in court, Edelman gave examples of the types of responses they got in their survey, how people said they'd react if Brian Koberger were found not guilty. react if Brian Koberger were found not guilty. A range of themes from people would basically kill him to they'd burn the courthouse down or assume that the jury failed or that he would have to prove that he was not guilty. Again, shifting the burden and then just emotional stuff about it would be devastating to the community. Other people talked about the fear if you didn't do it, well, who did? The defense, along with their witnesses, argued that yes, there's bias present all over Idaho. But they believe that other nearby counties

like Nez Perce or further south, Ada County, home to Boise, the state's largest city, are less biased than Latah. Their survey found there are fewer people in these counties who've prejudged Koberger. Prosecutors cross-examined the defense's witnesses and pointed out that moving the trial would take a toll on victims' families and witnesses who would have to travel potentially long distances. Lead Deputy Attorney General Ingrid Beatty noted the defense's survey showed attitudes in Latah County weren't that different from attitudes in other counties surveyed. I would also point the court to the fact that jurors among the total sample size who had no opinion about this case, potential jurors, survey respondents, Latah County had the highest

number of folks who reported having no opinion about this case at 17 percent. Two ABC legal contributors streamed the hearing. They're joining me now. Matt Murphy was a former prosecutor for 17 years trying capital murder cases in Orange County. And Brian Buckmeyer was a homicide defense attorney in Brooklyn who's now in private practice. And gentlemen, I'm so honored to have you here with me. And I'm curious as to your thoughts. And Brian, we'll start here with you. Look, the defense team really had the courtroom today.

This was multiple hours of witness testimony. What stood out to you the most? It was the level of detail from the surveys intertwined with the expert analysis as to bias, cognitive dissidence, the way that people think and also don't realize how they think and how that could affect jury selection. Yeah, it certainly makes you question almost everything that you do in your own personal life from day to day. But Matt, on the prosecution side, boy, they were awfully quiet today. Yeah, I think that there's really two parts to that. Number one, it is traditionally very difficult to get a change of venue granted based on pretrial publicity. Orange County, for example, we've never had one granted in decades and decades.

But I think at the end of the day, whether this is tried in Boise, whether it's tried in Moscow or whether it's tried in one of these other small counties closer to the murder scene, the prosecution's looking at it like they're going to get a fair jury. And I don't think there's going to be that much difference between the group of jurors who show up in one jurisdiction compared to another. I don't think it's going to make much difference from the prosecution standpoint. Well, it's so interesting that you say that though, Matt, because I mean, that was the crux of everything that we heard from the witnesses today, right? They were displaying all kinds of data to try to say, these are the respondents from Ada County, which is where Boise is. It's the most populated county in Idaho. And they just felt like these responses are far

less emotional from what they viewed as incredibly personal and emotional responses in Latah County. Yeah, well, those responses, of course, are they pick the worst ones. And that's the defense's job, right? And there's 40,000 people in Latah County. And of course, there's a lot more in Boise. But a juror that expresses any sort of bias like that is never going to be a proper juror. The court is going to dismiss that. That's called dismissal for cause. And remember, you've got a constitutional right to have a fair jury. You don't have a constitutional right to find people that haven't heard of a high profile case. And when you actually go to pick that jury, it's shocking. You feel like the entire world is watching your case and living and breathing by it. And you might get like one person in 10 that knows anything of real substance. Everybody else is like, yeah, I heard something about that. And there's some college students. And it's surprising how out of touch of the news most jurors are. But, you know, once somebody's heard of a case, the next question is, well, can you put aside anything you've heard before and base it on the law and the evidence as you hear it is instructed by the court?

Most jurors really want to do the right thing at the end of the day. I know it's easier for the victim's families if it stays in Moscow. That will weigh heavily with the court. And Brian, to that point, they had witnesses testify today about how many newspaper articles had been written and how that equates to past trials that have been granted a change of venue. Brian, you and I have talked about the Vallow case. That is one that they decided to highlight today in court. And frankly, Brian, it wasn't the only high profile case that they tried to link Brian Koberger's case to. They also said that in terms of general awareness about this case, they linked it to George Floyd. Yeah. The name of the game is precedence. And the ability to attach your arguments to another case that worked in your favor is pretty much what we as attorneys do. The other part of that is

the human aspect of it, that no judge, especially in a higher profile case, wants to stick their neck out. They love to have the ability to say, you know what, this judge over there did the same thing as me, and he or she was okay. I can follow the same path. And so pointing to, I think, the Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow Daybell case, the doomsday cult parents, the parents who had killed their children because it was the end of times and traveled to Hawaii and everyone heard about this story. And ironically enough, they moved their case, I think it was from Fremont County to Ada County, the exact same county that they're trying to move it here. And everything worked out. They picked a jury and for the prosecutor, it worked out for

them. They got a conviction. Chad Dayball is actually being sentenced to death. And so for the defense to be able to point to a case like that and say, in this very state, another judge did the exact same thing. It wasn't sticking their neck out. It was just as much, if not more, media coverage. And they found a fair and impartial jury. And Brian, in terms of what the defense is trying to do here in trying to build this case, bringing all this witness testimony, I mean, it was over five hours today of PowerPoint presentations. There was dozens of slides, clearly of this extensive survey that was conducted by this outside firm. But also, a lot of it had to do, Brian, with the oversaturation of media coverage. And I was a little bit surprised in the courtroom that so

much of what they considered media coverage had to do with social media and Reddit threads. What they were talking about wasn't coming from journalists. I mean, I think that is just an indication of the times. We weren't talking about people getting news from social media 15 years ago. We weren't talking about people getting news from social media in the same way they get today, maybe even two or three years ago. I mean, X, Reddit, all these places, people turn to get their news from at a greater volume than they did the day before. And they probably will do it in a greater way tomorrow than they do today.

And so I think now the court, and the court's not very good at this. We're often a couple of years behind in science and in media and trends. And so the court, in some regards, has to play catch up and bring in the experts. And you tell the judge, like, judge, this isn't something we've done before. This isn't something we had to contemplate before, but this is something that definitely interferes with the Six Amendments of a fair and impartial jury that we need to contemplate. One moment in the hearing demonstrated just how tricky it is in court to talk about media coverage without giving it an even bigger megaphone by feeding images and headlines into the court's

own live stream. As Edelman was going through his testimony with lead defense attorney Ann Taylor, he displayed a lengthy list of Facebook groups that have popped up to talk about the case. I think this goes on a little bit. Sure. These are all groups that you're looking at right now. So these are just Facebook groups that have been created talking about this, guys. These are videos. And these all popped up from that one search trap.

Judge John Judge quickly stepped in. I don't think we need to advertise all these, honestly. Okay. We've been trying to protect from this kind of stuff. You're on our end. I don't, I'm aware of it. I don't look at it. I don't read it. We know it's there. May we take a brief break, Your Honor? Sure. The hearing went on break, and when it resumed, a portion of discussion wasn't live-streamed. But eventually, we got back to the expert witnesses and the attorneys making their change-of-venue arguments.

Okay, we are back on camera. Sorry for the disruption about that, but we're going forward now. Okay, Ms. Taylor? Thank you. Your Honor, may I share my screen? Yes. You know, there's been so much focus about potentially moving this trial down into Ada County where Boise is.

But at the end of the day today, we heard Ann Taylor, the lead defense attorney, talk really forcefully about the option of moving it into Nez Perce County or another neighboring county as well. These are smaller counties, smaller populations. And she tried to ask the judge to really, really consider that, noting that they weren't so far away, right? Boise's, depending on how you drive, five or six hour drive from Moscow, and that would certainly be hard on the families. And so she was trying to say, what if we get it out of Moscow, out of Latak County, but into one of these neighboring counties? And so, you know, Matt, again, we didn't hear from the prosecution rebutting that in that moment,

but how do you think they were taking that? Well, one problem for the prosecution rebutting that in that moment, but how do you think they were taking that? Well, one problem for the defense on that is that, you know, there's the whole concept of potential, you know, jury viewings is something that most courts in death penalty cases at least like to have available, although it's kind of rare. In this case, remember, they tore the house down. Yeah, there's nothing for them to look at. But they built these models or something to bring in. Right. So but four hours is a long way away. That's four hours for for witnesses and convenience of of of parties and witnesses is one of the factors in Idaho Penal Code Section 21 regarding change of venue. So, yeah, so that that may actually carry some weight. Yeah. If they if they kick it to the county next door, I don't that the media coverage has been so extensive that, you know, many residents in Moscow have this prejudgment of guilt towards Brian Kober.

But then, you know, they put these filings out there and they tell the community of Moscow, based on their survey, there's a mob mentality here. People I spoke with in the community are very offended by that characterization. What does it do for Ann Taylor to put that out into the world? So I can only I can't speak for Ann Taylor because I am not Ann Taylor, but I will say this. Ann Taylor is a public defender. I was a public defender for nine years. There is some commonality amongst people who choose to go to law school, choose to go to probably one of the least paying jobs that you can get out of law school, but do it for a reason that is a true belief that the system needs people to push back on and to represent people who should not be judged by the worst thing that they're accused of or the worst thing that

they do. And so for better or for worse, and I will include myself in this category, I represent my client and I don't care about anything else. And I think that's what everyone deserves. And I understand that I myself have said things that have hurt the feelings of victims and their families. I think every public defender understands that. But we compartmentalize and force ourselves into that position because everyone deserves that person. that position because everyone deserves that person. Everyone who gets accused of a crime deserves a person in their corner that says, I'm here for you and you only. I'm not measuring or weighing how the community will feel. I'm not measuring or weighing anything other than how do I advance your best interest? And I think the system only works when a person is represented by that

person. And on the other side is a person that says, I'm going to put you in jail and I'm going to make sure the rights of these victims are heard. And then we have those two opposing forces. The hope and belief is that we have justice, but you can't have those two people trying to do each other's jobs. It's got to be two equally strong opposing forces, and we hope that the outcome is justice. After the break, more from our legal analysts about the most contentious parts of this case. Plus, my visit to the place Koberger's attorneys say he was on the night of the murders. was on the night of the murders. After being pulled underwater. And how a hiker in Alaska survives a 1,000 pound moose attack. After the animal crushes her limbs.

I Was Prey features audio from hit shows like This Came Out Of Me. Nature's Deadliest. And Still Alive. And Monsters Inside Me. Listen to I Was Prey wherever you get your podcasts. When you really care about someone. You shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance.

I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird I don't remember saying that part visit desjardins.com care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? One of the things I've been so curious about in this case is where Brian Koberger was on the night of the murders. Oh, there's the first sign. Wa-Wa-Wee. Yep. on the night of the murders. Oh, there's the first sign. Wawee. Defense claims that during the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, Koberger was alone,

driving around Pullman, Washington, where he lived, including Wawee County Park. As the alibi filing stated, he often did this to hike and run or see the moon and stars. It's a half-hour drive from where he lived. It's remote. I drove out there with two of my producers to look around. And okay, we're going to turn right off the Toonland Road and go in. the Toonland Road and go in.

Okay, so first of all, the sign, hours of operation are 7 a.m. to dusk. The park is closed and gated at dusk. It even threatens to lock your vehicle in the park if it's still here. We head inside and we're out here on a perfect early evening in August, and there still aren't very many people here. And now we're on a little bit of a trail. Locals come to Hawaii County Park to hunt and fish in the Snake River.

We see one fisherman in the distance. He's not having much luck. The sun is kind of just starting to go down. The river looks like glass. Some of the hills are in the shadows. Some are just getting that last little bit of daylight. On the November night in question, it was a much different scene. Records show it was a chilly 28 degrees. There was ice fog and it was overcast. Just inside the park, the road splits into a Y and we pass a driveway.

There's a house built into a hill. It has a really cool, large, circular window in the front, and the roof is in the hill. It's dirt and grass. I knock, and the park superintendent, Dave Mahan, answers the door. This is where he lives year-round with his family. And he agrees to talk with me. As we stand here now, it's, what, it's 740 at night. I mean, it's gorgeous here. The temperature is perfect. The sun's going down. It's beautiful.

But what is it like in November? It's really cold in November. You wouldn't really expect to see very many people down here in November. Dave's heard the news reports. He knows Koberger says he was here the night of the murders. But Dave tells me he really has no way to know if that's true or not. I can't prove that anybody was here or not here at any given time. There's no sign-in book, no security camera footage. And Dave says this isn't even the first time that someone has used the park as an alibi.

From the beginning, we've always said he better not say he was here. Really? You had that thought that early on and then they gave this partial alibi without a location and followed it up later with the location right and what did you think i wasn't surprised yeah i mean it's not comforting. I mean, how would you feel if... I mean, I live here. I don't want my place being in the national spotlight. And as for the gate that's supposed to lock the park after dusk, Dave says he closes it, but if he has campers,

he leaves it unlocked for them to come and go. He doesn't monitor it too closely. He says a person could walk right through for a night hike if they wanted to. Still, I wonder how Koberger's alibi will hold up in the courtroom. And I brought this up with our legal experts, Matt Murphy and Brian Buckmeyer. Matt Murphy and Brian Buckmeyer. Brian and Matt, there's been a lot of talk about this alibi. At one point, Judge Judge called it a so-called alibi because there wasn't a lot of detail.

And so his team then provided this follow-up, noting that Brian Koberger sort of made this habit of going out to this remote park and that he started in the summer running and hiking and then his school got busy. It turned into these nighttime drives. They say he has all these photos on his phone depicting the night sky on several different occasions, including November. I'm fascinated by their decision to enter this alibi with so few details. Brian, I'll start here with you. I drove out to Waway Park. You lose cell phone service completely about 15 or so minutes before you even get to the park. But why provide this alibi that still leaves so many questions? Remember, we as attorneys have to play by certain rules. And I think the easiest way I explain it to people

who come in contact with the criminal justice system is it's not what you know, it's what you can prove. And so one, when it comes to alibis, I think Idaho and New York where I practice operate in a very similar way, that it's if you don't announce it, you don't get to use it. And so you have to put forward what your alibi is because you're supposed to not spring the song in your opposition. They're supposed to have the ability to verify it and confirm it.

However, there are competing constitutional rights here. tell me that Brian Koberger does these solo drives and goes out there, in my mind, I'm thinking, how are you going to prove that but putting Brian Koberger on the stand? Because you need someone to be able to give that firsthand knowledge. For example, when I'm stressed out and my wife and son are now sleeping right now, I'll sometimes go to the garage and I'll juggle a soccer ball. That's how I decomp of like decompress. Right. But no one can tell you that's true. My wife can't testify to that. You guys can't testify to that. That'll be hearsay. Maybe this video in my garage of me juggling a ball, but you would still need someone to be able to say that's a true and accurate representation

of what that depicts. So in terms of the rules of evidence, only Brian Koberger can bring that in, but he has a fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself. And so they have to give enough to get the alibi, but they can't give you everything without putting their client up. And they're not willing to do that, especially at this point. And they may have a very difficult time doing that come trial. If he has photos, the only way I could maybe imagine that coming in as an alibi is there is usually a digital footprint to a photo that says, yeah, the metadata that tells you the time and often location of where it is. I think even if you don't have service, the metadata should still stamp where you are and what time. You would have to have someone that does data mining to get that out of the phone who could testify to that and not have Brian Koberger do it. But that's still a lot of hoops to jump through.

And so you've got to do it delicately at this phase. So I think you're right about all of that. And Matt, I'll get your opinion here. essentially that this metadata does exist on a photograph, even if you're out of service, even if your phone is in airplane mode. Metadata that's embedded in every photograph. That'll give you the GPS location of the picture where that photo was taken. But most interesting, even if he had no service, it would have that data in it.

Ben Levitan is an independent telecommunications expert witness, and I interviewed him over the phone while I was in Idaho. He's not involved in the case, but he's been watching it closely. Huberger's defense team's alibi filing didn't clarify if they have a photo from the night in question, but they say they have several from the area depicting the night sky on multiple occasions, including November. Koberger's cell phone data from that night reportedly shows his phone pinging off two cell towers in Pullman and Moscow, with the exception of a two-hour period beginning at 2.47 a.m., when his phone apparently disconnected from the network. Ben cautioned that in a remote area like this, with cell towers spread so far apart,

it may be a challenge for either side to prove his location. There's a cell tower in Pullman that covers his house. There's a cell tower in Moscow that covers the campus. There's no cell towers between these two cell towers because it's such a rural area. These two slightly overlap. There's no expert in the world who can look at that and pinpoint where someone is located. It's just not possible. Yeah, it's fascinating technology. The problem for Mr. Koberger on this, evidence-wise, is that it's not that he went out of range.

As I understand it, he actually turned his phone off. And he was pinging on transponders in the same direction on his way to the murder scene. And then he turned his phone back on when he came back in. That's the prosecution's position on that. The defense may call an expert to try to challenge that, but that's the current state of the evidence as I understand it. I think it was almost an open question of, did he turn his phone off? Did he turn it on airplane mode? I think that's what the prosecution was openly questioning. And then it sounds to me like the defense might be coming back and saying maybe neither of those things were true. Maybe he was just

out of cell range. It's some of the strongest evidence that the prosecution has in this. And of course, the timing matches up perfectly from the time he left his house to the time it takes to drive to the murder scene and get back. It's very, very close. The timing fits well. Every murder case like this, it's important to remember there are collages of evidence. It's not just one piece that we just look at in light of itself and nothing else. The jury will be instructed at the end that they must consider every piece of evidence in light of every other piece of evidence. And so it's going to be layers. We're going to have that cell phone stuff. The defense will attack that as they always do. We'll see how that plays out in the battle of the experts on that. I'll give you the defense side just to balance it out.

Your phone, if it's on and connected and running, is going to find the closest tower to be able to get you service. If you're too far from a tower, then you won't connect. If you've ever driven in a rural area and you are talking on a phone and a phone call drops out, that's you being too far away from a tower. And the argument is, is that if the tower can't find you, then you're not pinging. And so you can not ping because you turn off your phone, because you put it on airplane mode, or as a defense attorney would argue, you're out of range. And that argument can make sense in a rural area. To the point that Matt brought up, there are so many reasons why you can imagine that Brian Kohlberger is guilty, whether it be the DNA, the pinging, the Honda Elantra. I've made this joke

in jury selection. Some people would say, well, it's got a bill, it's got webbed feet, and it's got a tail, so it must be a duck. I was like, well, duck-billed platypuses also have those things as well, and they're not ducks. You can't just look at the individual elements and say, well, he must be guilty because of these three points. You can say, well, cell phone pinging, he's out of range. DNA on the sheath, you can say, well, cell phone pinging, he's out of range. DNA on the sheath, I have clothes at friends' places that I forgot, or I've gone to college parties and my clothes end up somewhere else. The Honda Elantra, that's not his Honda Elantra. How many Honda Elantras that are white are in that area and are registered? If you start picking apart at these things,

it could create reasonable doubt. But in these death penalty cases, sometimes it's just about raising enough doubt in the trial that people say, I think they're guilty, but I'm not sure if I want to take their life. And sometimes these cases, the win is not the guilt or innocence. The win is just saving their life. And I think Ann Taylor, for at least what I'm seeing, is operating on that basis of, I'm going to throw enough at you that he might be guilty, but is he guilty enough that you want to take his life? Can I ask you y'all's general thoughts too? Because frankly, this was a little bit shocking to us. When we drove out to Hawaii Park, we went and knocked on the door of the superintendent of the park. This is a man who lives on the park year round with his family. He's done it for many years. I was the first person to knock on his door.

He said, I've been waiting for someone to come. The prosecution has not knocked on his door. The defense has not knocked on his door. Law enforcement has not knocked on his door. Why is no one talking to this guy? Matt, you want to take this one first? Short answer is I don't know. Sometimes the defense, it's like Brian said, they have to announce their alibi and they've got a long way to go before trial to develop that. These cases get worked up all the way to the end. There's

some people think that once an arrest is made, the investigation is over. And in reality, in murder cases, especially capital murder cases, it's the ethical obligation of the prosecutor to keep an open mind all the way throughout. The prosecution, from their perspective, though, they're probably looking at it like chasing down what they would consider to be an unconvincing alibi is probably pretty low on their priority. But I don't know. Sure. But I was out there with a producer of mine and we were walking around the park together, getting a sense of what it's like. And we were talking about how, I bet Ann Taylor's done all of this. I bet she's walked around here. I bet she's asked her client, where exactly were you? Where did you go? Where were you standing

when you took the pictures? All kinds of things like that. And then we went and knocked on Dave's door. And just the fact that no one had had a conversation with him about like, hey, what's this park like in November? The jury's not going to do what you did, Kanan. And this is one of the reasons why I don't have journalists on my jury, because you want to get the answers to every question. You want to go to the scene, see what it's like, hear the information. But for it's like, hear the information. But for the defense attorney, if I can give you just enough to give you reasonable doubt, that's my job. If I go further than that and I answer the question and the question is a bad one, then it doesn't help my case. And so a defense attorney may stop at a point for two reasons.

One, if they go all the way to answering the question and they intend to use it at trial, that's now discoverable and you have to turn over to the prosecutor. And then the prosecutor has the ability to disprove one of your strong arguments. The second part is if you go all the way down the rabbit hole further than what you need, you may lose an argument that worked for you. Because maybe you do go there and you find out that you have to sign in your name every time you go to the park. And Brian Kohlberger's name is not there that's signed in. Well, damn, I just screwed myself over there.

Brian's exactly right. And that's a really interesting point. It's like sometimes, you know, defense wise, you've got to be very careful about being too clever and screwing up your case because you're, you know, almost too good a sleuth. But, yeah, you're a very good journalist. So let's put it down to that. You're a professional. Oh, thanks. Yeah, we'll start the podcast with that. Great.

you're probably wondering what happened at the end of the change of venue hearing did the judge grant the defense's motion well as this judge seems to have a pattern of doing in this case he decided to take his time he He said both sides made strong arguments and that he'll need to spend more time considering the logistics of relocation and concerns about media coverage biasing a potential jury. I would say this is probably professionally the most difficult decision

I've ever had to make. He said both sides made strong arguments and that he'll need to spend more time considering the logistics of relocation and the concerns about media coverage tainting a potential jury. He said he'll go through everything and go back to the law again, too.

Until then, a decision will have to wait. We'll be back in your feed with important updates on this case. Season 2 of The King Road Killings will cover the trial of Brian Koberger next summer. This bonus episode was produced by ABC Audio. audio.