Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bryan Kohberger’s College Claps Back in Idaho Four Showdown

Episode Date: February 21, 2026

The families of the four University of Idaho students that Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to murdering are suing Washington State University — the school where Kohberger was studying criminology and working as a teaching assistant. The suit, filed by the families of Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle claims wrongful death and negligence. Now Washington State University has answered the suit denying any wrongdoing. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes over the suit and why WSU says they're not liable in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code CRIMEFIX at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Scott ThomasCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The families of the four University of Idaho students that Brian Koberger admitted to murdering are suing Washington State University for wrongful death and accusing the University of negligence. Now WSU is responding to the lawsuit in a new court filing. I go through what the school says to the allegations that they knew they had a predator on campus and did nothing about it. I'm Anjanette Levy and this is Crime Fix. Cases like the Idaho murders really make me think about how important it is to protect my personal information and yours when we're all online. Things like your name, your phone number, even your address, all of it is floating around the internet for data brokers to sell or scammers to

steal. Our sponsor, Incogni, lets you take back control. They find which data brokers have your info and demand they remove it. When I signed up, they found more than 50 brokers with my data, and within days, it started disappearing. Setup takes just minutes, create an account, authorizing Cogni to act for you, and they do the rest. And with their new unlimited plan's custom removals feature. You could submit custom links where your data shows up and a team of privacy experts will remove it for you. So if you care about your online safety and you should, take your data back with Incogni, use code Crime Fix for 60% off an annual plan. The families of Kaylee Gonzalez, Maddie Mogan, Ethan Chapin, and Zana Kurnodal, they want someone to pay financially

for the murders of their children and they believe that Washington State University is the entity that should pay and pay big. The families are suing WSU claiming wrongful death and negligence, essentially saying the school knew that Brian Koberger was a potential predator and did nothing to contain him. But now WSU is responding to the suit in court, saying not so fast. I'll get to what the university is claiming shortly, but first, just a quick recap in case you haven't followed this case closely. Koberger was in his first semester as a teaching assistant and PhD student in criminology at WSU when he admitted to murdering Kaylee, Maddie Zana, and Ethan in the early morning hours of November 13th, 2022. Coburger denied carrying out the murders up until July

2025 when he pleaded guilty to the murders in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table. And then let me ask you, did you on November 13, 2012, enter the residence at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, with the intent to commit the felony crime of murder? Yes. Did you, on November 13, 2022, in LATO County, state of Idaho, kill and murder Madison Mogan, a human being? Yes.

And did you do that willfully, unlawfully, deliberately, and with premeditation, malice of forethought. Following Coburger's arrest in December 2020, there were a lot of rumblings that Coburger was creeping women out on the campus of WSU and that Coburger was a big, big problem there. His own attorney even alluded to that at pretrial hearings and blamed Coburgers' behavior on his level one autism diagnosis. But Your Honor, when I look through the mounds of discovery, there are probably 100 hours of interviews of people that Mr. Koberger went to school with at WSU and of course those interviews come just

hours and days after the headlines hit that Mr. Koberger's been arrested in this case and people that he went to school with that he interacted with had unkind things to say about him and a lot of their unkind things when you understand them in the context of autism, the way he may stand in a room near a doorway, the way he may look too long at a person. Their interviews are different when you know he has autism and you know the characteristics he displays. After Coburger was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences for the murders of Kaylee, Maddie, Zana, and Ethan, we got to see what people at WSU said about Coburger. And it wasn't pretty. It was actually quite terrifying. Students reported to Idaho

state police that Coburger was following female students to their cars, that he was blocking doorways and their desks when they tried to exit. And a professor in the criminology department feared Coburger was a potential future predator. There was a plan in place at the time of the murders to terminate Coburgers' funding at the end of the semester just weeks after the murders. But the lawsuit filed by the families suggests that WSU should have cleaned house and given Coburger the boot much sooner. And had they done so, he may not have been in the area in November of 2022. The suit filed by the family's claims Washington State University recruited Coburger and brought him to Washington from Pennsylvania and didn't vet him properly.

It also claims WSU didn't control its employee who was stalking women on campus. The suit claims, Pullman, Washington is only a few miles from Moscow, Idaho, home to the University of Idaho, and the combined area is referred to as the Pullman-Moscow community, Almost immediately upon his arrival to the Pullman-Moscow community, Coburger developed a reputation for discriminatory, harassing, and stalking behavior, instilling substantial fear among young female students and fellow WSU employees, necessitating regular security escorts for multiple females, despite receiving at least 13 formal reports of Coburgers' inappropriate, predatory, and menacing behavior, WSU failed to respond in any meaningful way and allowed Coburgers' escalating behavior to continue unchecked.

lawsuit also points to Coburgers past in Pennsylvania, his troubled teen years and history of addiction. Before WSU brought Coburger to the Pullman-Moscow community, he had a history of heroin addiction, had been arrested for theft, and had made numerous posts over a period of years on public online forums, commenting about his inability to feel emotion and crazy thoughts. He had been removed from a vocational program in high school because of problems with women, and later, local business owners had become so alarmed at his behavior toward young women that staff kept electronic notes about him to warn female staff when he arrived. He also had pursued a graduate degree in criminology where he demonstrated a particular fascination with serial killers. The family suit also claims that Coburger was so creepy that there was a code

that one student would use for him just in case. The suit claims, on more than one occasion, WSU employees, would stay in a room where Coburger was engaging with one of their colleagues out of concern that the colleague should not be left alone with him. On another occasion, a WSU employee told her colleague to email her with the subject heading 911 if she needed help because of Koberger. On yet another occasion, a WSU undergraduate fled into a bathroom to hide from Koberger because she was so uncomfortable with his scary behaviors. Washington State University has now filed an answer in federal court to this lawsuit.

This is a line-by-line response to each allegation made in the lawsuit by the families. The answer states, WSU admits on November 13th, 2022, Coburger murdered for University of Idaho students. Except for that, WSU denies each and every remaining allegation in paragraph 22 and specifically denies that the murders were a result of WSU's actions or inactions. The answer also states, stalking is a serious and prevalent risk to college students to the extent this heading calls for or requires an answer. WSU denies WSU denies WS. U.S.U. brings Koberger to the Pullman-Moscow community and quickly learns of his threatening, stalking, and predatory behavior. To the extent this heading calls for or requires an answer, WSU denies. So in the portions of the lawsuit that deal with the allegations that Koberger was harassing female students on campus and that a professor believed he was a future predator who would one day sexually abuse students, the answer is the same from WSU. The answer repeatedly states, WSU is without knowledge or information. sufficient to admit or deny the allegations in and therefore denies the same. So how could this be?

So to discuss WSU's response to this lawsuit, their answer, and also the lawsuit in general, I want to bring in Scott Thomas. He's a trial attorney. He does a lot of civil work. Scott, thank you so much for coming on. First of all, generally speaking, your response, your analysis of the lawsuit filed against WSU by the four families, the victims of Brian Koberger. Good morning. Thanks for having me. I've reviewed the complaint and the answer. The answer is rather typical general denials and such. I think when you break down what the elements or building blocks, if you will, of each of the different claims, the families have a very tough, tough road ahead of them,

primarily because the unfortunate victims were not students of WSU. That's going to plague them throughout the prosecution of these cases. Each of the elements of the claims have a common, common question of whether there's a duty. Whenever there's negligence, the first a duty must be established. The duty has to go from the university to the victims, and that's the problem. In the wrongful death action, there really is no discernible duty to, from the University of Washington to the citizens of another state who were never students of their university. So that's the problem.

And negligent, there's three different versions of negligence that they've pled expressly or impliedly. Negligent hiring, negligent supervision. And the one that's implied is what Washington calls a negligent protection claim. The negligent hiring one is focused on the date when Coburger is hired. And really, the only thing that can fairly be laid at WSU's door, that is it may fairly be said that they knew or should have known about Coburger's heroin problem or his arrest for theft. but neither of those would put a reasonable person on notice of the kind of heinous crimes

that Koeberger later committed several months later the murders. It's just not foreseeable in that kind of environment. I understand what you're saying there completely because, you know, having a heroin addiction and then, you know, he overcame that addiction and went on to go to school. school. So it's like, do you hold that against somebody for the rest of their lives? I mean, he, he went to treatment. He got, he kicked it and was in recovery and then obtained a master's degree and then did well in school and was recommended for this position. And then the theft of the cell phone went along with that heroin addiction. And then he didn't have a criminal record. So after that. So,

you know, they, you know, the school, you know, should they be expected to hold that against him in the admissions process, even if they did a background check, which we don't know if they did. And just to underscore your point, Washington has one of those ban the box laws in terms of giving people that have had a checkered background a fair shake at the employment opportunities. I don't know if a background check was conducted, as you say, but even if it were in disclosed the facts that we've learned after the investigation on the criminal side, I don't think there's anything that puts the university on notice of the horror that was to come later. Let's talk about the wrongful death aspect of this. I mean, really, when I read through the initial complaint, in this suit.

And it was really stunning, Scott, because we learned about much of this information from the Idaho State Police investigative reports when they were released last fall through public records requests. And there were red flags all over the place with Brian Koberger at the WSU campus. I mean, you had actual criminologists

in charge of teaching him, and basically saying, we can't renew this guy. You know, we can't have him on campus anymore after December. Like they were basically putting him on an improvement plan and they wanted to boot him at the end of the semester. They were afraid of a lawsuit from Coburger if they booted him too soon.

So, but there were red flags all over. They were saying, this guy, if we give him a Ph.D., he's going to be a future predator. So I see where the families are coming from. They're angry. You know, they're upset. They feel like if they had just fired them, fired him, he might have packed his bags and gone back to Pennsylvania to his mom and dad because he wouldn't have had the money to even hang out in Pennsylvania more than likely, or in Washington, rather, more than likely, and commit these homicides. So do you see any place, you know, is there any way for these families to hang their hat on that for wrongful death?

Well, you raise a number of issues, one of which is it echoes what's in the complaint. They say, for example, if WSU had not hired or, as I think they say it, brought Koberger to Washington State, these crimes would never have occurred. That's what we call a but-for cause. that had that not happened, these crimes would not have been committed. That doesn't cut it in this type of litigation. What you have to show is a what they call proximate or a direct or substantial cause. And that's really the problem that they have.

They're essentially saying that WSU's crystal ball was not clear enough in terms of predicting the future. You're absolutely right. There are terrible red flags, a lot of mismanagement, but the red flags are always crisper in hindsight. These criminologists, you know, they can't predict the future either. They may be very, they may be brilliant people. They may be going on to the FBI to help catch other people with, that are just, just this deviant behavior. But they can't predict the future. And for as many as those horrible things that went on in the, in the short months between his arrival and the crimes, there wasn't anything that would give any law enforcement agency what is needed probable cause to detain him, to arrest him,

to institutionalize him, to commit him for observation. None of the things meet the difficult threshold that the conduct of course. What I find unfathomable is in this day and age, these kinds of accusations that were made by WSU students were not promptly and vigorously investigated. That's just a head scratcher to me. I write employee handbooks for companies all the time, And that's, it's always a central aspect. You know, you set up a process, the student can access the mechanism.

An investigator is appointed. Facts are collected. The complaint is protected against retaliation, all of those kinds of things. And if the complaint is to be believed, none of that happened. In fact, the one allegation is that, the university, the recipient of the complaints, the 13 complaints, never reached out to Koberger himself. And that's just, I can't fathom how that would happen.

I don't know whether that person who was in charge of those things was not properly trained. But that's a serious failing. Right. And that to me is like stunning, absolutely stunning, if that is indeed the truth. And if one of the students that made one of those 13 complaints was Coburger's victim, this lawsuit would be completely different. It would be completely different. But when he crosses his state line and he is off campus in an environment that has nothing to do with WSU and his victims have no connection to WSU,

there's just a complete different world, different scenario, different types. and I feel for the families, I am very pessimistic about their chances to overcome their inability to meet some of the central elements. You could see, you can see in a portion of the complaint, I think it's paragraphs 223 to 229, the lawyers go to great lengths to show the connection between the University of Idaho, where the victims went, and the University of Washington State University, which employed Coburger. But those connections will not carry the day because the victims were not engaged in those connections. There was no, they weren't colleagues at the school for criminology. They weren't engaged in crossover programs with the courses that were taught and been credited by both universities.

They're just, you can't, you can't get any traction there. And I think that's what, that's what their hope was by, by showing that they would fall under the, the schools have a solemn duty to protect the students in their charge. Unfortunately, these victims were, were outside that protective scope. When they talk about negligent supervision, this is the part, you know, I'm skeptical, of that because of course if they're supervising coburger and he's sexually harassing and you know stalking per se female students making female students at wSU feel really uncomfortable and then he goes on to murder a Washington state university student who was the subject of one of these complaints i i can totally see

a connection there and grounds for a suit but because he went from Washington state in Pullman crossed over state lines, went for whatever reason that he did over to Moscow and committed these crimes. I mean, they can't be expected to just have an eye on him 24 hours a day. I mean, it seemed like they were laying the, they were laying the groundwork to boot him at the end of the semester. I agree. I agree. And it's, you know, in the world we live in the, it's very difficult if a person is discharged and the person is discharged on these on these reports that would be an easy approach but some folks are gun shy because they've been to the the the EEOC and the first question that the examin says in that scenario is do you have a system

of progressive discipline and did you use it? Did you have an oral warning, followed by a written warning, followed by a formal admonition, followed by three-day suspension without pay, and this escalating approach to discipline, and if it's not followed, you know, the person can often back pay in the statement and such as that. So it is a quandary for employers.

I don't think it's fair to the university, say that they were a friend suit, but you have to have this real world recognition that hiring and firing decisions are difficult, and there are a lot of people, particularly in the academic arena, are averse to confrontation. They're not good at it, even when it would be the best approach for all parties. So it's, I don't, I don't think, I don't think it's fair to call it fear, I think it's more accurate to say that it's a recognition of it's, there's a lot of gray area, there's a lot of areas for responsibility. And the tragedy is the inability to predict that going from a person who makes someone feel very uncomfortable because they loom over them in front of

their desk or they block their access to the exit. those kinds of behaviors, that there's a chasm between that kind of inappropriate conduct and murder. You know, you're just making that leap is a challenge for the families. And I think it's a very difficult one. There'll be a stage, there'll be a stage in these proceedings where the university will ask the court to grant them summary judgment, meaning that the plaintiffs can't prove one of the building blocks of the claims or more than one, and that as a matter of law, the court can't decide what the facts are. If one party doesn't have the ability to present some facts on a particular part of the claim,

the claim can be thrown out of court. So that's going to be the big hurdle for these folks. and they have their work cut out for them. You and I were talking about this offline, and we talked about how the optics of this are just awful, you know, really terrible. I mean, like, you had this guy creeping women out all over your criminology department.

You have a professor saying, you know, this guy's going to be a predator. I work with predators. I'm telling you he's going to be a predator. I mean, it just all looks bad. And then he carries out a quad. droopal homicide, you know, not connected per se to the university that he's where he's studying, but one nearby, you know, what do you see happening to this case? I mean, do you try to just

make this go away or do you just fight this because you're going to, you're going to say, despite all of the red flags and all of these criminologists saying, like, you've got, we've got a problem. Like, this is awful. We can't have women alone with this with this guy. do you pay to make this go away? What would your advice be? Well, I'm in favor of settlement, generally speaking, because trials are a very uncertain business. I've won trials I should have lost, and I've lost trials I should have won. You end up having a very complicated decision, as we discussed here just here today in these last few moments. These are very complicated issues. And the 12 jurors, they're going to have a lot of sympathy for the families.

And the question will be, if this gets to trial, if it survives summary judgment, will the jurors be able to parse their emotional sympathies for the plaintiffs' families and divorce that from the legal requirements of the claim and weighing the evidence to see whether those elements have been... That's a very... That's a very... It's a tough business. And when a person has an opportunity to mitigate that risk,

I recommend that folks do, particularly here where the plaintiffs have accepted. expressed that their desire is not so much for the money that can't bring their children back, but rather it's they don't want this to happen again. They want not only WSU, but all similarly situated schools, to have an understanding that this kind of conduct, the red flags, as you were, need to be acted upon, and they need to be acted upon promptly for the sake, not only of the students, and they're going to have to go this way,

they're going to have to say that the duty is the people in the community have a right to depend that the school is going to do its job. It's very much in local parenthood when a student goes to the university. The parents are there, and the university becomes the parent, and they need to provide that kind of protection. So that's the challenge. And the settlement in advance would also blunt the terrible stain that is going to be on the university. If the allegations in the complaint are ultimately shown with regard to the ignoring of the various student protests and such,

that's going to be very difficult for the university to. to contend with just as a public relations matter. An early settlement, quiet, confidential, respectful, could go a long way to minimize the damage that that kind of revelations can entail. Scott Thomas, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. So as I mentioned earlier, this. lawsuit is now in federal court. We will continue to follow it for you and see what happens.

That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.