Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bodycam: Bryan Kohberger Investigated for Home Invasion Before Murders

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Brian Koberger is accused of murdering four University of Idaho students, but investigators looked at him for another case with eerie similarities. As soon as I kicked them, they like fell back into the closet and then just like booked it out of my room. I have the body camera footage and how Coburger ended up on the radar of police more than a year later. This is a law and crime legal alert.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Did you know that children are being diagnosed with serious conditions like type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? And research is potentially linking ultra processed foods to these outcomes, Morgan & Morgan is stepping in to fight to hold food companies accountable. With decades of experience fighting large corporations, they're ready to stand up for families who deserve justice. If your child under age 21 has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or fatty liver disease, visit www.forthepeople.com slash food to learn more. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Brian Koberger is charged with a terrifying crime, the murders of four University of Idaho students. And we've talked about the case many,

Starting point is 00:01:20 many times here on Crime Fix. Koberurger is accused of breaking into a home off campus in Moscow, Idaho in the middle of the night. It was November 13th, 2022. Maddie Mogan, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Zanna Kornodal were all stabbed to death. The brutality of this crime shocked the small town of Moscow, Idaho. No one could think of anyone

Starting point is 00:01:42 who would want to hurt the four students. Kaylee had moved out of the house on King Road and was only back for the weekend to show off her new SUV and to hang out with friends. It would take some time, more than a month, but eventually Brian Koberger was arrested and charged with murdering Maddie, Kaylee, Ethan, and Zanna. One piece of evidence that investigators said linked Koberger to the crime, a DNA profile they traced back to him. They found it on the snap of a K-bar knife sheath that was left under Maddie Mogan's body. Police also said that a surviving roommate saw a man wearing all black

Starting point is 00:02:17 and a mask with bushy eyebrows walking through the house after she heard the sound of one of the roommates crying. Investigators have said that Koberger's white Hyundai Elantra was also spotted at the scene of the crime. Koberger had moved to Pullman, Washington, 10 miles from Moscow in the summer of 2022. Moscow and Pullman are basically one big community, two college towns linked by one road. Koberger was a PhD student at Washington State University studying criminology. His lawyers have said that he's innocent and they plan to fight for him at his trial, which is scheduled for August of 2025.

Starting point is 00:02:53 Shortly after Brian Coburger's arrest, police started looking at old cases to see whether Coburger might be linked. One of those cases was a burglary in Pullman, Washington. On October 10th, 2021, more than a year before the murders in Moscow, some young women living in a house in Pullman called police after one of them said a person with a knife came into her bedroom. A Pullman police officer's body camera recorded her describing exactly what happened. So I have a couple questions for you. Okay. Where did you see this person?

Starting point is 00:03:32 I was asleep, and then I woke up me. Okay. And it was just me and Sadie home at the time, and we both lived down in the basement. And my door was closed. I heard my door open, I looked over and someone was wearing a ski mask and had a knife like this. Okay. And so I like kicked the out of their stomach and screamed super loud and they like flew back into my closet and then ran out my door and up the stairs. Okay. And that's the last you know is they ran up the stairs? Yeah, and then when they got home, this back door was wide open.

Starting point is 00:04:07 Okay, how long ago did this happen? Maybe 15, 20 minutes at most. Okay, and so between the four of you, it's the whole house? Yeah. No one else is there? What this young woman described is terrifying. The officer searched the house to make sure that it was safe and then brought the young woman back in and talked to the victim again. The video is redacted because it was recorded

Starting point is 00:04:35 inside the house. I really could not tell you if it was a guy or a girl. Okay. When I first looked at them, I thought it was a girl. And then I only looked at them for a second, and then I... So which room is yours? This one. So the victim offered some important information there. She said she couldn't tell whether the person with the knife was a man or a woman. At this point, the student reenacted the encounter with the person

Starting point is 00:05:00 who was in her room with the knife. So I was sleeping right here, and I'm a really heavy sleeper, but I heard the door open. Oh, okay. And I saw someone, like I saw the ski mask first, and I rolled over, and I was like, what the heck? And then I just, they like literally were like this. Okay.

Starting point is 00:05:18 Above me with the knife. So is this what the lighting was like at that point? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, this is exactly what the lighting was like at that point? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, this is exactly what it would have been. Can you describe the knife for me? It looked like kind of a smaller knife. Okay.

Starting point is 00:05:34 A smaller knife. It wasn't like a huge, like, anything. It kind of looked like just like a smaller steak knife. Okay. And so, yeah, I just rolled over and kicked them and they fell back into the closet. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do you know if they would be taller or shorter than me?

Starting point is 00:05:53 They were shorter than you. Oh, okay. They would probably come to about like maybe here on you. Oh, okay, so pretty short. Yeah, they were pretty short. That's the one thing I noticed. Thick, thin? short yeah they were pretty short that's the one thing i noticed thick thin i couldn't say for sure but i don't think either really um side so you're saying like a ski mask any glasses or lenses or

Starting point is 00:06:17 anything okay sure it was a burgundy ski mask yeah no glasses uh did you get a sense of eyes or skin tone or anything? Not really. It was so fast. Yeah, no, I totally get that. I'm just... Yeah, I wish I remembered more. The next day, police went back to the street and spoke with neighbors and others to see if they knew anything about what happened, including a neighbor the young woman said smoked outside. Pullman Police police search warrant,

Starting point is 00:06:47 come to the door. Then about eight days later, they returned to the neighbor's house looking for possible evidence. This was the apartment for the neighbor that sometimes smoked outside, and police had said another neighbor had filed a complaint against him for entering her apartment and watching her sleep several times. An officer also talked to the victim again. Did you remember anything else about his appearance, the knife, anything like that? I really didn't. I've honestly kind of remembered less ever since it happened, but I don't know. He was wearing a ski mask, I'm pretty sure, gloves, and like black hoodie, sweatpants, something like that. Okay.

Starting point is 00:07:28 And then can you describe the length of the knife to me? I would say like a little bit bigger than a steak knife is what I remembered right after it happened. Like maybe just a smidge bigger than a steak knife, but not like a butcher knife or anything. Can you give me like a hand estimate? Maybe like that. Okay, if you want to hold your hands kind of down that way, I'm going to take a picture of your estimate there. And is that with the handle or without? Just like the blade.

Starting point is 00:07:56 Okay, with the handle, how long would you say? Maybe like that long. Okay. Did you see the handle at all? No, it was was in his hand. Police did not charge the neighbor because they said they didn't have probable cause and the case to this day remains unsolved. Fast forward to January of 2023, days after Brian Koberger's arrest and someone in the Pullman Police Department started asking questions about

Starting point is 00:08:23 Brian Koberger. A Pullman officer wrote in a supplemental report on the burglary, although Koberger would not have been residing in Pullman during October 2021, Commander Brashears advised that Pullman Police Department had received information that WSU's Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology may have had an on-campus event for prospective graduate students that Koberurger may have attended around the time of this incident. I emailed the department's graduate program coordinator Danielle Makin requesting information. Makin responded the following day and wrote that the department was looking into my request. Now it was worth looking into. Both

Starting point is 00:09:01 incidents involved a knife, although one was a large K-bar, and the Pullman incident involved what was described as a small steak knife, and in both incidents, the perpetrator wore a mask. But in the Pullman incident, the burglar was described as short, maybe 5'3 or 5'5. Danielle Macon wrote in an email to another staff member, okay, so I figured out who I met with on October 15th, and it was BK Norton. I think we can safely tell Pullman PD that we are not aware of any visit from Coburger during the period they indicated. We did not hold a recruitment event during that time and actually did not hold an in-person one that fall anyway. So Coburger was determined to

Starting point is 00:09:41 not be involved in the burglary in Pullman in October 2021, and the burglary was placed on inactive status. But what could this incident mean possibly for Koberger, if anything at all? I want to bring in somebody who has been following the Brian Koberger case very closely, just like I have. She is Ashley Banfield. She's a host on NewsNation. She hosts Banfield on NewsNation every night, and she has a great new podcast coming out.

Starting point is 00:10:07 It's called Drop Dead Serious. We'll talk more about that later. So, Ashley, I want to know what your first thoughts were when you heard that the police had gone back and looked at Brian Koberger as a possible person of interest in this October 2021 home invasion where a guy goes into a house with a small steak knife and a mask and stands over a woman. She kicks him and then he takes off. Right at 3 30 in the morning and all dressed in black. It sounded so familiar. Well, first I sort of like my blood ran cold.

Starting point is 00:10:43 Hair stood up on my arms as always happens when something really eerie um is disclosed and then I was thinking more about it digging a little deeper my first thought was that they had looked at him back then and I thought well that was prior to the Idaho four murders why on earth would the police have ever been drawn to this you know med student uh who as looking back he wasn't even at the university at that time. Like, what would have drawn them to him? But it was a after-the-fact look back. You know, if you're going to arrest a guy for this kind of a heinous crime with this sort of modus operandi, then I guess you're going to look back at all your case files and start investigating the other creepy crimes that are similar in that area. So it actually made perfect sense and it wasn't as odd

Starting point is 00:11:29 knowing that, but I'll tell you what, had they looked at him a year prior, then there'd be some explaining to do. And clearly I think at trial, we would have found out a lot more why Brian Kohlberger was on their radar ever before the four murders happened. Yeah. And I think that, um, I think that you probably thought that. And when I saw the headlines, I mean, the way the headlines were written, it made you think, oh my gosh. I mean, I think the headlines, some of them were a little misleading, uh, maybe on purpose, maybe not. Um, but it made you think, oh my goodness, the police in 2021, we're looking at Brian Koberger when that was not the

Starting point is 00:12:06 case. They were told back after the arrest in early January of 2023, hey, you know, obviously this murder 10 minutes away had a similar MO. You might want to take a look at this. And so they did their due diligence. They contacted the Washington State University Department of Criminology to see if they had any recruiting events. And they determined that Brian Koberger was not there visiting at that point in time. One thing, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on this because you've been covering court for a really long time. This person, the burglar with the small steak knife that the woman described, was supposed to be 5'3", 5'5", something like that. Shorter, obviously, than the suspect in Idaho murders was described. Does the defense in Brian Koberger's case, does Ann Taylor possibly point to this as a similar instance,

Starting point is 00:13:08 something that happened in the neighborhood, so to speak, more than a year prior to the Idaho murders and say, you know what, there was something similar that happened and they never made an arrest in that case. And this girl kicked the assailant and the assailant took off. Yeah, there might have been a height difference, but they just honed in on my guy. And do they try to use this to their advantage to maybe cast some doubt on the prosecution theory in this case? Well, I think there's a couple of answers to that. The first is it's ridiculous, obviously. If a guy is 5'3", 5'5", it's unmistakable. There's no doubt that that's a whole separate issue, right? But I also think you open the door to a lot of questions that Brian Koberger may not want to have to answer, questions that may not come into this, questions about his behavior prior, things that he'd done that maybe would be suppressed, you know, in this trial. But if you start asking about all sorts of other instances, it can be, you know, a Pyrrhic victory if you're able to bring that up, because you could get flattened by all the other things that the prosecution will bring in on cross-examination. Like opening the door is always the biggest risk, right? You might think it's something that would really help your case, but in the end, it just, you know, obliterated all your suppressed stuff. Also, and they are trying to get a lot of the evidence, if not all of the evidence in

Starting point is 00:14:36 the case tossed out right now. The state is fighting back against that, of course, as they would. But Brian Koberger has conceded. He was out driving around that night. That's part of his alibi that he's put forth. He was a night out. Can we just talk about the definition of alibi? Yeah. I mean, it's alibi-ish. That's how I've described it. It's really not an alibi because he hasn't given- Their legal definition. That's what they call it. It's a legal alibi, but I've always,

Starting point is 00:15:04 I think most reasonable people who will be on the jury look at alibi as something that you can actually prove, not driving around by yourself. That, to me, is what you call not much of an alibi. Well, and there hasn't been anybody he has named that can back up his alibi, and that's part of what you have to do, according to the statute out there in Idaho. You know, but back to this burglary, it's terrifying to me, absolutely terrifying to me that you've got a college town, two college towns so close together. And yet we have something so terrifying. Even in the body camera footage, the officer says that one of the officers on scene says, this is very bizarre. This does not happen in Pullman. So it's just very crazy to me.

Starting point is 00:15:52 And you've got these kids in these college towns not locking doors, not locking windows. I'm sure as a parent, it probably gives you chills. I lived in a college house with nine people. We all had our own bedrooms in this big, big house, two kitchens, two living rooms, nine bedrooms, and not one of us had a lock on our door. Things have changed. As it turns out, in the Idaho Forest house, each one of them had their own locking door. It may have been because that home was a different kind of home. It was an individually rented room home prior to the girls moving in. And thus, each person who was moving into that home didn't know the other roommates and you'd

Starting point is 00:16:37 have your own, you know, it was like a shared living arrangement. You had your own room, but then you'd share the kitchen and the, you know, the living facilities. But, you know, I think if I were to send off girls to university today, I would say you're going to have a lock on your door just because of other reasons. I mean, parties and rapes and, you know, drinking too much and things that can happen afterwards. But I did, I didn't think it was so strange. Maybe I'm the only one just because I live and breathe true crime all the time. I didn't think it was so strange that a year prior, in the same very large vicinity over the state line, there'd been an attempted incident in the middle of the night. It happens a lot. I mean, that's the sad truth is that it happens a lot. That might have been someone she knew. We have no idea whether it was a complete stranger. This was a masked person, 5'3 to 5'5. Hard to say whether this was something unique, whether this was something random, but it does happen. And they had a person of interest who they investigated who lived right next door, but they never had any probable cause to make an arrest in the case. So the case remains unsolved. And Brian Koberger, as we mentioned earlier,

Starting point is 00:17:48 they did not determine that he was even in the area at that time at any type of event at Washington State University. He was in Pennsylvania in October of 2021. Okay. To suggest to this jury that maybe it's this five foot three guy who did the crime the year, you know, afterwards is preposterous because anybody within an inch of their salt can

Starting point is 00:18:10 tell you five, three to over six feet is not something you accidentally mistake in the dark. And there is, there are, you know, human eyes were laid on this suspect walking through the house on King road. And that's going to be really powerful. And that's a six foot man. And when you are, you know, Dylan was terrified and looking at this figure in her house, you gather how big they are compared to you. Yeah, most definitely. And that will be some compelling testimony. And I'm sure that Brian Koberger's attorneys are going to have to be very they're going to have to be walk very

Starting point is 00:18:46 gingerly around how they cross-examine her. Let's talk now about your new podcast, Drop Dead Serious. I watched the trailer and it's fascinating. It's about Peter Nygaard. That is the first subject of your new podcast. And you are lifelong friends, apparently with his niece. So tell me a little bit about why you decided to launch this podcast and what you did with it. Well, I'll be doing a lot of true crime stories. We'll be talking about a lot of things, especially

Starting point is 00:19:17 Idaho, as it's coming up this summer. But I decided to launch with this six-part series. And it's because I grew up with Uncle Peter. My best friend's uncle was this billionaire clothier, rags-to-riches story, who'd made such add Fabio to the mix and sort of the ladies' man character, and that's who this guy was. Just always seen with women on every arm, furs, long flowing hair, jets, fabulous vacation homes. And he had homes all over the world and had a ton of money and was very successful. Little did we know that he was raping his way through the decades and his numbers are just sort of astronomically astonishing. If you were to put, you know, the allegations against P. Diddy and Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, and you put them all in a basket, he would dwarf that, all of it combined. And so Peter was doing some terrible, terrible things to a lot of

Starting point is 00:20:26 women, but also to a lot of kids. And in the end, he was finally arrested, but it took four to five decades. It's looking like these attacks probably go back 50 years in order to bring him to justice. And he is only in the beginning stages of justice at age 83. He's got a criminal case in Toronto, a criminal case in Montreal, a criminal case in Winnipeg, a criminal case in New York in the Southern District, a federal case. And then there's this massive civil case with 130 plus always growing numbers against him. It is unlikely he will even see the civil case at his age. Likely he may not see the American extradition in that criminal case just because of his advanced age and all the litigation he has to face. So as I called him

Starting point is 00:21:11 Uncle Peter growing up, I certainly got a lot of access to a lot of things that people haven't seen. Letters from him to Hugh Hefner, photographs and video from the Bacchanalia orgies that he was hosting in the Bahamas at his massive lair. It looks like a Swiss family Robinson over seven acres. It's just an insane place that just hosted these naked, debaucherous parties constantly. And I got into the vault and I kind of have all the awful stuff, including the horrible ways that he treated his staff. It just sounds awful. Well, it sounds very interesting too. When does the first episode drop? January 24th. I'm so excited. It's been a year and a half in the making. And it's also video. So

Starting point is 00:21:52 there's a YouTube component, so you can watch a lot of this stuff. And when you're talking about a guy like this, it's so visual. Like you just can't imagine it. For a while there, he was super connected to Anna Nicole Smith. And there's all these private photos of the two of them gallivanting around this Bahamian you know um this incredible vacation place oh I mean it was it was the richest part of the Bahamas and he had a 50 million dollar end of the key it was called Lyford Key but his little section was called Nygaard Key. And so all of these famous people, every famous person you can imagine was there at some point visiting. Even George Bush, you know, was there with Barbara Bush. And little did everybody know that you're literally walking through a crime scene, an ongoing crime scene, because these rapes were

Starting point is 00:22:40 happening pretty much weekly. That just sounds awful. Well, we'll look forward to the podcast once it releases. Thank you so much, Ashley Banfield. Great to talk to you, Anjanette. Thanks for having me. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bodycam: Bryan Kohberger Investigated for Home Invasion Before Murders

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bodycam: Bryan Kohberger Investigated for Home Invasion Before Murders

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