Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - New Details About Killer Bryan Kohberger Revealed

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Days after Bryan Kohberger admitted to murdering four University of Idaho students, a new book about the case has been released along with a docuseries on Prime Video. Investigative journalist Vicky Ward teamed up with author James Patterson to investigate the case in "The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy." Ward conducted more than 300 interviews and reveals new details from friends and family of the victims and law enforcement close to the case. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Ward 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: http://incogni.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Vicky Ward https://www.instagram.com/vpjw_/Producer:Jordan ChaconCRIME 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.

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New details about the Idaho murders are coming to light in a book and docu-series just out. Author Vicki Ward is here to tell us what she's learned about Maddie, Kaylee, Zana, and Ethan and a possible motive in this horrific crime. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjana Levy. In just over a week, Brian Koberger will be formally sentenced for the murders of four University of Idaho students that by all accounts, he had no connection to whatsoever. Coburger has now admitted to stabbing those four beautiful students to death in the house on King Road in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022. Maddie Mogan, Kaylee Goncalves, Zana Kernodle,

and Ethan Chapin's lives were stolen from them just after 4 a.m. and we still don't know why. Not that any reason Coburger could give would be reasonable or offer any rational explanation for such a heinous act. He murdered them and it should never have happened. But a new book out just now, The Idaho Four, An American Tragedy, digs into the case and the people whose lives Coburger shattered in a matter of minutes. Investigative journalist Vicki Ward and author

James Patterson teamed up to write the book. They try to answer the question why, and they show how deeply this crime impacted the small college town of Moscow, Idaho. But they also show us the toll of what Coburger did has taken on the friends and family members left to grieve Maddie, Kaylee, Zana, and Ethan, the trauma and grief his actions have caused. The authors believe, as I do, that Coburger was targeting Maddie Mogin that morning. He did, after all, go straight to her bedroom. He'd been casing the area for months.

Ward and Patterson write about a recurring dream that one of Maddie's friends had. The Coburger encountered Maddie at the Mad Greek restaurant where she worked, and that she rebuffed his advances. Ward conducted more than 300 interviews for the book, including with Moscow Police Chief James Fry, whose small police department was thrust into the international

spotlight as his officers worked with Idaho State Police and the FBI to solve the case. They also look at Coburger's misogynistic tendencies, talking with people who knew him who claim that Coburger believed women belong at home in the kitchen. And they look at whether he was inspired by Elliot Roger, an incel who killed six people in 2014. Roger was a virgin who hated women. Along with murdering those six people, he left another 14 injured before taking his own life. Now the release of the Idaho Four comes days after the One Night in Idaho docuseries dropped on Prime Video. James Patterson was a producer on that series,

which features interviews with Ethan Chapin's siblings, his parents, Jim and Stacey, his friends, Hunter Johnson and Emily Allant, who found their bodies on King Road that morning and were later the target of online sleuths who claimed that they had committed the murders. The series also includes a heartbreaking interview with Maddie Mogan's mother, Karen Laramie,

and her stepfather, Scott Laramie. Maddie was Karen's only child. She said in the series that she always sought to protect Maddie and never let her cry, even when she was a baby. The pain of losing Maddie was compounded her cry, even when she was a baby. The pain of losing Maddie was compounded by the intense media attention on the case.

Karen Laramie says she doesn't watch the news anymore. You also see pain and strength from Ethan's parents, Jim and Stacey Chapin, and his siblings, Hunter and Maisie. Maisie said in the last text message she ever received from Ethan, he said, love you. But she said they never said to one another. She now cherishes that message. Ethan's father, Jim, said in the series that he was surprised that Brian Koberger could

ask for more time to prepare for trial since Ethan couldn't get more time and he couldn't have more time with Ethan. Jim Chapin also said that he keeps Ethan's ashes in his basement, and he talks to him there all of the time. Gary Jenkins, the former Pullman police chief and later chief of the Washington State Police Department, interviewed Brian Coburger for an internship in 2022. There have been questions about why Coburger didn't get that job. Jenkins said in the series he could sense that Coburger might have trouble

developing trust in relationships, so that's why he didn't get that job. But back to the new book. Jenkins is also interviewed for the book, and so is former Moscow police chief James Fry. Vicki Ward says that neither one of them violated the terms of the non-dissemination order by disclosing evidence.

So our content really shows you how important personal safety is, and that's especially true, when it comes to protecting your privacy online. You would be shocked at how much of your personal information is out there, like your address and phone number. Ever wonder why you get so many spam calls and emails? That's because this information, it's all public. That's where our sponsor, Incogni, comes in. It's a service that helps you take control

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Now you're probably thinking, Anjanette, who in the heck has time to contact a data broker? Well, that again is where Incogni comes in. They contact those companies for you to get your online safety back. You don't have to do a thing, and then they alert you after the request has been completed. After signing up, I get virtually no spam now. So I highly recommend giving Incogni a try. Right now, anyone who uses the code crimefix at incogni.com slash crimefix gets 60% off. That's code crimefix at incogni.com slash crimefix for 60% off an annual incognito plan. So I want to bring in Vicki Ward to discuss her fantastic new book, The Idaho

for an American tragedy. Vicki, thank you so much for coming on. I want to I want to ask first of all, why why you decided to write this book? Because this is definitely a departure from what you're usually focusing on in your work. So, well, thank you, Anjaneet, for having me. You know, you're right, this is a departure for me. This book is personal. I was drawn to this story, I was drawn to this story because I have two 22-year-old twin sons who were both in college at the time of the murders, and they are the exact same age as the victims. And so, as you will probably remember, the murders took place right before Thanksgiving in 2022. And I remember that when my own sons came home

for Thanksgiving that year, I really sort of couldn't get what had happened out of my head. And I kept wondering what the Idaho Four's families must be going through. And then the weeks ticked on. And as we were all sort of looking at our screens, and, you know, I was following the press conferences,

and I could see that, you know, the police still didn't have any answers, really. And suddenly, my kids were again back from college for Christmas, and still nothing. And then that very dramatic arrest right on sort of New Year's Eve. And I think that there was something about both the town of Moscow in Idaho that drew me in from the images of this sort of picture-perfect little town covered in snow where this awful,

awful tragedy had happened. Something about that was very compelling. And then there were the images of the guy they arrested who was again, it was you know, a college, another college student, a guy, a criminology student who you know, raised more questions at that point than he answered because you know, I was left wondering why had a guy who'd overcome heroin addiction and his teams, who'd clearly been a loner, not a popular guy, come from a very poor background. So he'd managed to overcome all of that and get himself into a PhD program at Washington State University. And I guess I wondered, you know, what had taken this

guy to the dark side? You know, I happened to be on the phone to James Patterson, who I have partnered with once before, not writing, but we were executive producers together on Chasing Glenn, which a podcast series we made about Jeffrey Epstein, and a documentary we co-produced together. And something about it spoke to him. And we had a long conversation. And we sort of decided we would do it together because I did think that Jim's narrative storytelling was the right way to try to tell the story of what had happened in Moscow, Idaho. He said to me at the beginning, right, we're going to feel, we're going to make the reader feel like they're there, they're in Moscow at the time of the murders. This is going to feel close and emotional and personal.

And we're not going to report this and write it as from 40,000 feet. Like we were, you know, like perhaps some of my other books have been written with deliberate distance. In this book, there is no distance and that's deliberate. You know, we wanted the reader to feel what it was like if you were the victim's parents, if you were the victim's friends, if you were the police chief, if you were the mayor, if you were the coroner, if you were a local journalist, if you were the other students. We wanted to draw you in and make you feel what it was like to be part of that community, which got absolutely pulled apart during the murders.

People might have no, there's no reason they would know anything about that sort of subplot in the book. But it is the story of a community. And that is what happened. I know you've been to Moscow more times than I have, but when you go there, I was there in December and January of 2022 and January 2023. It was a huge wound that had been opened into that community. People were suffering and they felt very almost assaulted by the spotlight, placed on their beautiful, idyllic little town. I felt that.

Yes. On so many different levels, Angela, you know, the police chief, James Fry, police chief at the time, who I got to know very, very, very well, was very unhappy about the fact that because the week's ticked on, the police appeared to have no answers, that he felt, you know, he was aware that his small police department, which only has about 24 people in it, sort of looked incompetent. He said to me one time, you know, I know that people think we're the Keystone cops. And actually, he was very proud, ultimately, of the police work that they did. And he was very proud of how when the FBI and state police

all came in and worked with his team, everyone worked together seamlessly. And he wouldn't fault the investigation. What he what he would fault. And he was open about this was his lack of PR expertise. He said, this is not my first rodeo. Yes, it was a horrendous mass homicide, but I've had homicides before. What I haven't had is the world's press descending

on this small town. And he said that his mistake was to do something he's been trained to do. He's been trained to stay quiet at the start of an investigation where you have no idea who the perpetrator is, to protect the investigation, to protect the wheels of justice turning, to not tip off whoever might be out there watching the press conferences. And what he learned was that in the modern world with all the millions of true crime maniacs out there, you can't do that because they fill the void with all sorts of speculation that can be extremely harmful. And in a way, the fake speculation then almost becomes the real speculation.

And the police had to waste their time then clearing, publicly, all sorts of people who had had nothing to do with the murders. So I think you get his frustration about the reputation of the Moscow Police Department, loud and clear. But you also see through the reputation of the Moscow Police Department loud and clear. But you also see through the eyes of the local journalist, Evan Ellis,

he's very protective of Bill Thompson, the prosecutor. He's very protective of his friends in the community and the neighbors. And he becomes increasingly worried that the town is being ill served by all the media there. And there was, I mean, obviously I spent most of my time, I didn't go to Moscow until after they had caught and arrested Brian Koberger. But I did speak to people in, sometimes people wanted to come, they came in sort of large groups and everybody expressed, even in a room full of let's say 35 people, expressed such relief when it emerged that the person who'd done this was not from

Moscow, that he was from the East Coast. Huge, huge relief that this evil hadn't come from amongst them because they all know each other. And there's this terrible moment where There's this terrible moment where in that six week period, where nobody knew what had done it, people started looking at each other's arms for knife wounds. I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And we're the hosts of Wanderers podcast, British Scandal. Pray, good fellow, please join us in our latest, most gripping series. What on earth are you doing?

Well, speaking in Tudor English, you know, because we're doing Amberlyn. So I thought it would help people get in the mood and take them back to the court of King Henry VIII. Now, if I know British Scandal listeners, and I think I know British Scandal listeners, they will be reeled in with talk of treachery, sexual jealousy, backstabbing and treason. There is a lot of that to be fair, but at its heart, isn't it just a traditional girl meets king, girl loses king kind of story? Yeah, with a divorce, a nation altering religious reformation and the show trial to begin all

show trials. So listen to the story of Amberlyn now. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts and binge entire seasons early and ad free on OneP+. I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, you know, about Brian Coburger and the fact that he, that's one of the most, one, not the most, but one of the most stunning things about this, the fact that he had overcome things, challenges, such as heroin addiction, you know, he had shed that weight, you know, he was getting his PhD.

This is somebody who had some level of promise. And then this, he does this. Have you been able to piece together through your investigation of this case, what you believe to be the motive in this case? I mean, I know what I think it is and what my theory is, but what do you think the motive was here? Well, I think it's, you know, it's complicated.

I do go back into his formative years and it emerges that despite actually parents who, decent parents who did their best, he is a complicated loner and he's manipulative. You know, I do have these scenes becoming addicted to heroin. He's very clever how he manipulates his only friend's mother to tell him into when she's not going to be at home to go see her son who's in jail for the first time, having been arrested for the first time for drugs possession. And he uses that window of time to break in to the house of a woman who'd been nothing but kind and generous to him. So you have that scene. And you have another scene where a former Navy SEAL

becomes convinced that this young man who's a friend of, sort of friend of his son, they're playing airsoft in the woods outside his house, is actually stalking him in order to steal knives and jewelry and prescription meds from him. So you get the sense of someone who's calculated. You also get the sense of someone who's fascinated and is noticeably interested and innovated in his psychology classes as he gets through his addiction problems. He goes to DeSales and he majors in psychology. He learns about serial killers. He learns about the spree killer, Elliot Roger, who was an incel, involuntary celibate. We also see

Brian Coburger, even though he seems to be flourishing academically and interested in class, he has no friends. He makes a nuisance of himself at a local bar to the point that he's chucked out. And you get a sense from the text messages that I got from people that he is developing into a full-blown misogynist. And what I think you then see in the book is by the time he gets to Washington State University, his views of women are heinous and also things that he seems unable to keep to himself. And his misogyny is really what blows him up in that classroom and out of it and really wrecks his career.

The way he treats and speaks to women, you know, following them or, you know, mansplaining would be the best of it, following them and then telling male classmates he can have any woman he wants and that he believes women should be in the bedroom and in the kitchen. And he continually gets hauled in front of the administration until I think you do see that by the time the murders happen, it's all over for him. He's thrown away everything he's worked for. He's got nothing to lose. I mean, what do you think, Anjane?

My personally, and I agree with you, I think that he does have some type of... I think he is a misogynist, but I think that he does have some type of, I think he is a misogynist. But I think that he targeted Maddie. That's always been my, I think Maddie was his target. He didn't expect Kaylee there. I think that he wanted to commit some sort of sexual assault and murder.

And Kaylee being there awakening upset his sick plan. And then Xana and Ethan sadly I think were killed because Xana saw him. I mean, that is my kind of theory. Hopefully that's what you get from the book. I mean, definitely, you know, Emily Allant, who was Anna's best friend, you know, there's a chapter, which is a dream. She and I talked a lot about, you know, how to sort of capture her fears in a way that readers would really feel them too. And, know it is her belief and it's the belief of the families

of the victims that Maddie was the target and that Maddie you know was this beautiful blonde sorority girl, Elliot Roger back in 2014 who we know Coburger had studied, talked about wanting to take revenge on his childhood blonde, his childhood friend Maddie, who was also in a sorority. And Emily believed that, you know, Maddie was always turning down guys when she was waitressing at this restaurant, the Mad Greek, which sold a lot of vegan food. We know Coburger was a vegan. And so Emily's best guess is that,

you know, he might've tried something with Maddie, she would've brushed him off and never thought twice about it, but he then stalked them. We know that he stalked her online, more than he stalked the others. He really got to Kayleigh and Xana through pictures of Maddie. And I know because I drove in his footsteps as it were and I sat in a car where he would have sat

to look into that house and there's only, you can see the deck and the main living room, but there's only one bedroom you can really see from the road, and that is Maddie's. And he would have known it was Maddie's because she had her name in the window and she had these pink cowboy boots. And she didn't think twice.

I mean, one of their neighbors and friends told me that she would, Lexi her name, she would often walk to her car in the evening and the house was all lit up and she would smile to herself because she would see Maddie in the window at her vanity, putting on her makeup, cutting her hair, never dreaming that somebody would be staring at her from the road, stalking her with, you know, terrible, terrible thoughts in his head. Yeah, it's sickening. One of the things I love about this book is that it highlights the victims and their families and their friends despite the horror of this. And you know, I'm not finished with the book

by any stretch of the imagination, but it honors them. And I want you to tell me a little bit about that because I think that's an important part of this because they're who matter here. Yes. So when Jim and I first talked about it, we were very clear on this that we were not

going to do anything that glorified the murderer. That is a risk in the true crime genre, that we were going to try to resurrect Maddie and Kayleigh and Zana and Ethan, and we were really going to try and take the reader into their lives and their personalities, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, in a way so that the book means that they'll never be forgotten. And I think we were able to win the trust of the families because of that. I mean, and the families have said to me,

they are very, very glad that the book exists because it does keep the four of them with their different personalities alive. I mean, when Jim and I talked about doing the book, the book we had in mind was In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. We wanted to do a sort of fact, I mean, that's had questions

about whether or not it's factual. We wanted the book to be very, very factual, which it is. There are 40,000 words of source notes online to go with it. But we wanted it to be a story for every man, a story of humanity at its worst, yes, but also at its best. And we wanted it to be a story about the four students, but also the town and the overwhelming sense of loss. So I mean, it's a broader book. It's not just a book about a horrific event that occurred at four o'clock in the morning on November the 13th of 2022. Yeah. And it's lovely the way you talk about Zana and how she was, you know, you talk about Emily's mother relaying her, you know,

the late night conversations, I have a boyfriend and things like that. I mean, how she was like, coming into her own and wanting to save money. And I mean, just you paint a portrait of these beautiful children who are now frozen in time and it shouldn't. Well, I think, you know, all of us who are parents, you know, that age when they're in college, they're literally at the cusp of everything, which makes the way that they were killed, the timing of it, everything so incredibly tragic. And Zana, you know, of the four was the most carefree. She was the one who didn't really have plans until tragically the summer before the murders when she'd fallen in love with Ethan. And Ethan, you know, I've been to stay with the Chapins. The Chapin family are just one of those families that, you know, they're fun, they're athletic, they're kind,

they've got it all going on. And I think she looked at this family and she looked at Ethan and suddenly she was like, I want a future. I want a future with this guy. And I'm, you know, I want to open a bank account. I want to start decorating my room. She started to care. And so, you know, such, such a tragic loss. I mean, poor Ethan, you know, he was sound asleep, just. But as his mother said, you know, he was with his girlfriend on a Saturday night in college. I mean, this, you know, young man in his twenties, he was where he wanted to be.

And then you have Kayleigh, who was this go-getter, who'd already moved her stuff out, got her job lined up, wanted to see the world, probably then come back to Jack, her boyfriends, and for forever. But meanwhile, go and do some things by herself. And then you had Maddie, who had a serious boyfriend who'd already graduated, who had coped with the disappointment of not getting into the same sorority as Kayleigh, her best friend, and then coped magnificently, ended up becoming the kind of the chief curator of the social media of the Pi-Fi sorority, which is a very big deal. And, you know, she was loved by everyone, an only child. They were all, all deeply loved.

They were and they still are. Vicki Ward, thank you so much, co-author of The Idaho For An American Tragedy. It's really, I'm still working on reading it, working my way through. It's beautifully written and thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. The Idaho For An American Tragedy is on sale now

at all major retailers. And 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.