Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Ghastly New Info On Idaho College Murders Leaked To Public

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the leaks in the Bryan Kohberger case and what new information is now in the public. The Dateline show with information not released by the public has the judge in the case investigating the leak. Joseph Scott Morgan also looks at the ghastly injuries done to Ethan Chapin that were allegedly done while he was asleep.   Transcript Highlights 00:00.03 Introduction 01:15.89 Joseph Scott Morgan is being viewed by Kohberger 06:46.56 Is there any way to get death penalty off the table 10:13.55 Realizing a killer has been listening 15:44.22 Dateline sharing leaked info 20:13.79 Investigators don't always get it right 25:11.68 Sinister pictures, don't look at his eyes 30:02.54 Timeline in Idaho is a 20 minute window 35:05.07 What else haven't we seen?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. So this past Saturday, I was mentioned in a post on X and I looked down, my handle is on there and everything. And I'm thinking it's just going to be some comment about, you know, some case that's floating around there. Well, yeah, it was about a case. And not only was it about a case, it was about a very specific case because this was on Saturday and on Friday night apparently Dateline did an episode on the Idaho Four and of course the accused is Brian Coburger.

Boy do I have a tale to tell you guys because apparently, apparently, I have been viewed by certain individuals that I'm prepared to discuss right now. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. Dave could knock me over with a feather. I'm sitting there with my queen of the homestead and we're having our morning coffee as we do every day. My favorite time of day by the way. And I'm scrolling through the night's events catching up on ex-formally known of course as Twitter and lo and behold I've been tagged and there before me I see a picture that is a screen grab off of Dateline and it's my image. Apparently Ryan Coburger according to them at Dateline, they have information that states that he's watching or listening

to things on YouTube relative to true crime and specifically these four homicides in which he is accused of perpetrating. David, I got to tell you, brother, not too many things in to chill up my spine. It got my attention real quick. When the Idaho case kicked off, when we first had a national awareness of it, my wife and I were just as shocked. It was on a Sunday and it hit the

news that afternoon. The next day, that Monday, I was on national television and it seemed like for, oh my Lord, it was like solid for like three weeks. I just had phone calls coming in from all of these different networks, podcasters, YouTube channels and all this sort of thing. So the fact that I would pop up on his radar, I guess, because he's seeking, I think, if you continue with this line of logic here that Dateline is putting forward, this isn't me putting this forward, it's Dateline. I would think that he's seeking information from individuals that may have practiced in the past because if you're in kind of the atmosphere that I'm in right now, I don't

work in the field anymore. I'm a teacher and then I do commentary. So I bring my knowledge from, you know, as a practitioner and as an educator to most of the stuff that I do. And I just talk about it. And look, I'm not the only one. I'm sure that there were multiple, multiple locations that he visited along the way and just to glean information. And I find that's very interesting what you mentioned, Dave. People throw around that term narcissism quite a bit and it seems like it's in every other sentence now and then. Everybody's making a diagnosis of narcissism.

I don't know if that's the same as being egocentric or I guess there's shades of this involved in everything. But I'm interested in what you have to say about was he seeking information about the case potentially or was he scratching that itch to see his name or not his name? We wouldn't have known it at that time, but to see the shock that it elicits from the general public. You know, every time there's some breathless reporter that comes on the air to talk about some little new thing that has developed. I wonder why Joe, why he, but not in, I kind of, I'm more like,

I wonder why he's listening or watching that particular show. But I really, I think it's feeding his ego, you know, getting his name mentioned. But I think it's also, you got to remember, he's also a student. So almost a professional student in his life, you know, he didn't really go out of the educational atmosphere. But I think based on what we know of him and it makes sense that he would be driven to watch or listen to a professor give a breakdown as

opposed to a clinician. It just makes sense to me that he would be that he, I'm, I don't want to say that he's a, you know, he's drawn to you, but it makes sense to me that he would care what your opinion was because as a student, he wants to impress the professor. And as a suspected killer, um, you know, he wants as much fame. He's not going to get away with it. At this point, they've pretty much made sure He's not going to get away with it at this point. They've pretty much made sure that the judge has made sure that everything that they didn't want in is coming in. And so at this point, I think they're trying to mitigate the death

penalty. Is there a way that we can avoid that? Yeah. I mean, exhibit 1A is autism, right? Because autism has nothing to do with him. His appearance in court, you mentioned, I love that word mitigate, by the way. They're trying to mitigate the death penalty here. They're trying to say that he's not eligible because he's diagnosed with autism, which, you know, is- Look, man, if you're mentally handicapped because of that, then how did you get to be in a college level program? That just doesn't hold water. That is just a bucket full of holes, man. Really?

How can that be based on what you've accomplished? Hiller-Livett-Klein Listen, people that would make a different argument will say, well, you don't understand the spectrum is new on us. Moser-Tombs Oh, I do. Hiller-Liv Oh, I do. I mean, how many times have we heard that? And look, that's going to be the people that say that are making the same argument that the defense is making. You and I have had this conversation about the, on the spectrum with regard to my grandson. Yo, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have. As soon as that started coming out on this. I went really you're gonna play this card Let's see how far they go and Having seen it up close and personal I wasn't shocked that they tried to play it. I'm

thankful that Nobody bought it. Well, I'm not shocked. He came looking for you. I want to interject one more thing and About this as well. People throw around this term, in cell a lot. Yeah. And so, you know, they'll say, you know, I'll just see random comments that'll pop up on social media and they'll say, classic in cell. And I'm thinking, okay, how did that, how'd you arrive at that diagnosis? Because I can tell you this, there

is a manual that mental health workers use. It's called the DSM and it's in multiple iterations. I think they're in like the third, third, I'm sorry, excuse me, they're in the fifth iteration of this now. Nowhere in that manual are you going to go in there and find the term in cell. And the way this manual, the DSM works is that, yeah, it helps you make diagnoses, but you know what else they do? There's a code in there so that when mental health people are making a diagnosis, they have to enter that code onto their insurance forms in order to get reimbursed. So if there was money to be made with a diagnosis of being an incel and I don't even know what you would call it, inceltitis, incelitis, I have no idea.

That implies an infection. There's no such thing in the mental health world as being an incel. This is a term that has been created to categorize a certain group of men. And so they've used this term for him. And they just kind of throw these terms around like that. I don't know. Just so you know, friends, if you don't know what incel means, it means involuntarily celibate.

It's for guys who have trouble with girls. And to be honest with you, they would have problem with most guys, based on the way they talk, act, and think. They're not the type of individual I know anybody would hang out with. And so I think it's made up term. It's weird.

I mean, most of the time people are, you know, you come across somebody and they're, you know, I don't know, eccentric maybe. But back to- That's a great term! That's a great term! Yeah. Eccentricity, you know. And I have a touch of that in me. I'm a college professor. It's actually mandated in my contract every year. You must be eccentric because you're a college professor. But you know, back to this idea of him, can I tell you one other thing that happened to

me on Saturday morning as I sat there with my, with my bride and my cup of Joe? It's weird to hear you call it a cup of Joe. Yeah, I know. It's kind of Joe. It's weird to hear you call it a cup of Joe. Yeah, I know. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I sat there and as I was sipping on my coffee and I'm kind of absorbing this thing, the first thing that jumped into my mind's eye was, what did I say? What did I say? Did I say anything that could have been taken by this individual and had some kind of utility for them?

And you can't think that way, but that's not outside. We go to CrimeCon and I actually have people that will walk up to me. It happens almost every crime con. They'll say, do you feel like that you're teaching killers out there, prospective killers? And no, I'm teaching forensics. I mean, all are welcome at the table, I guess. But you know, you can't tell who's out there in the audience when you're making any kind of comment.

You could say the same thing, I guess, about the people that are on Dateline. I mean, they do this, they've done this for years, you know, they have that slotted time and there are people that can't go without watching Dateline. Hey, that's cool if that's what you're all about. But, you know, they're disseminating information as well. But, you know, I've had that thought, you know, that's come up in my mind, you know, over the years, you know, thinking about, you know, who's within the sound of my University. And now all of these years later after this massacre in Moscow, Idaho took place, I really wonder are they thinking? Are they thinking?

What do we teach them? Well, Brother Dave, um, aside from my mug appearing on television and the shock, my own personal pearl clutching that took place over it. Um, they did, they did have information that they revealed and a lot of stuff was stuff that we had not heard before. Um, you know, kind of the, um, as it applies to what was going on within the house before, you know, kind of this as it applies to what was going on within the house. And, you know, my question, I think one of my big questions is how did they come into

this information, Dateline that is. Was there a source within some department up there? You know, and I don't know, I'm not going to even state any department. I'm just going to say that there are multiple departments that are involved in the investigation of these four homicides. If the folks at Dateline, the producers, felt this strongly that they would produce this thing. And I bet you dollars to NoNets, brother, that this episode, I bet they had some of the highest ratings they've had in a while, just simply based on this particular episode,

because there were a couple of really big reveals in this, Dave. And they built it up right. They did a good job promoting it, you know, and there's a zeitgeist here with this particular killing this murder the of whatever, you know, to call a topic popular when you're dealing with the deaths of four college students is mind numbing. It shows you a lot about how we look at things. But you know, every time now that we talk about the Koberger story, the murders, I I'm to be honest, Joe, I have a twinge of hurt for you over what happened in Orlando at CrimeCon when you were giving an

incredibly, you did a loving tribute to the students, to the victims. You talked with a lot of care about what they went through and what happened. And you kind of got at the very end, um, you know, I felt like you were that, that you were not treated the way you should have been treated by somebody. And that bothered me. And so every time we cover this story, I think about how no matter how hard you work to take care of talking about the individuals, you and I are both victim advocates. And whenever we're not seen that way, it bothers me. Yeah, it does.

And listen, it's like I said before, not turning down any kind of offer that's made. Even in those circumstances, which by the way, I think I've made mention of this before, but it was in a room of 3,400 people. I don't think that I've ever spoken to a crowd that large before. I couldn't see the back of the room. First off, there's lights in your eyes.

It was awesome. But I could tell there were a lot of people, and so I couldn't see beyond it. But yeah, it was a learning experience. And you never know. You never know what's going to bubble up out of that. But when you think about what Dateline has done in talking about this case, 3,400 people is nothing that happened that night or that afternoon. You know, with me, you think about the people that they reach. And there's not going to be anybody standing up and making some kind of

comment in the crowd. This is going to be about something else. You know, there might be people at home screaming at the television screen for all I know. I have no idea. But, but when you get into like that kind of real granular detail about what they are being told, and I have to think that they're being told because they're not investigators. I think that, you know, the most striking thing that came out of this is that there was one part, I believe, where they allege that Zana may have gone upstairs when she heard a noise. I don't know how they validate that.

I don't know how they come up with that. And then of course she is perhaps, it's kind of implied that maybe she was chased back down the stairs by Coburger. He goes into the room, attacks her. You know, she had been up, she had received the order that they had done, the food order. She was awake and it deviates from what we had heard about Ethan because now they're saying that Ethan most likely was asleep in bed. And we know what we've heard previously about Zana and her injuries where you've got these sharp force injuries that literally go down to the cartilage in her fingers where there's

either blade grabbing going on in a defensive posture or she's been stabbed in the hand and of course she's brutalized at that point. And then, you know, my Lord, the information that Dayline is saying, again, not Morgan saying it, what they're talking about relative to Ethan, you know, we've heard that Ethan, I think there was one iteration where they said Ethan was on the floor and just adjacent to the door and he'd had a really nasty injury to his neck. That according to, that doesn't square with what Dateline is saying because Dateline, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dave, Dateline said that Ethan's leg or legs were carved up with a sharp force injury and that he was in the bed.

So that, it completely changes the dynamic of what we had known about this case to begin with. Am I right? Isn't that what they had said? Absolutely right. When I saw that, I thought, this is new. This is not information that we have had up to this point. As a matter of fact, a lot of the stuff that we're being told now are things we didn't know or things that don't make make sense to be honest with you.

You know, we were told at first that Dylan Mortenson, you know, the bushy, the one who described the bushy eyebrows, that Dylan, you know, that she heard something and went back and went to sleep and woke up around noon, you know. Now we find out that Dylan Mortenson was on the phone all the time. So there's a lot of things. And I think that information actually came out prior to the Dateline special. It did. And that was like week before last or something.

I think it was leaked information. It's like this kind of slow trickle of things that has gone gone on. You know, Joe, I remember back to the Scott Peterson case, and do you remember what happened between the first day of the trial and the last day? Other than all the evidence, there was a really big reveal, a really big change happened, and it's because of that, that whenever I see a trickle of information coming out or something that is really counter to what we believe up to this moment, I realized that investigators don't have all the truth yet. They're still figuring it out. In the Peterson case, the investigators, the prosecutors opened by saying they believe

Lacey Peterson was killed on December 23rd. Yeah. And by the end of the trial, it was proved that no, she wasn't killed on the 23rd, she was killed on Christmas Eve. That's a pretty big difference. Yeah, that's true. And that's why when something like that can happen in a major crime that had all the world's attention and still does, Peterson still has huge ratings. The guy's got the LA Innocence Project.

I mean, everybody's working on this thing. And you know, I'll be honest with you, Joe, if investigators had that part wrong, I got a feeling, look, I think he did it, but go ahead and look at it again. But in this case, how do you go from saying the reason we didn't get a 911 call until noon is because the roommate was asleep. After she sees a guy with bushy hair is bolting out the door, she just goes and lays down and crashes out. But then we find out she was on the phone the whole time. It can't be both. It has to be one or the other.

Yeah. This is not one of these things where two things can be right at the same time. I hear that phrase come up a lot now in conversations all around. So what do you think? Yeah. I don't think that... I guess that if you're stating, not you, but they, if they are stating that they have information now that indicates that there was phone activity, remember we got this text, you know, talking about run to me, expletive, you know, all these sorts of things. And there was even one bit that came out recently, and I don't know how they concluded this,

that Dylan actually saw Zana's body and maybe thought she was sleeping. But I got to tell you, I don't know what the degree of lighting was in that environment. And I know she's not a trained professional, at least I don't think she is. In my estimation, the area around her would have been super saturated with blood. So how can you merely when you're looking over your shoulder just say, yeah, she was sleeping and why would she be sleeping on the floor? I mean, what are you thinking? She passed out drunk because that doesn't seem like something she would have done necessarily. She's there with her boyfriend. And look, I know that there's, we don't know yet. Alcohol had been imbibed. I mean, they, they come from a fraternity

party, you know, and every one of my fraternity parties, I can tell you, they were not T-totallers there. Neither was I. I was chief among sinners. And so, I got to tell you, I think about this and I think about the information that has been provided along the way about the circumstances that night, maybe even leading up to that day's events and what happened afterwards. I still think, Dave, that at this point in time, I still have more questions than I do answers. What's the adage Dave?

A picture's worth what? A thousand words? Is that what they say? Is that it? I get confused sometimes. If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you? David Gates and bread. Amen.

I had that on a Telly Savalas record. Oh my gosh. Telly was singing it too. Now he talks. If a picture paints a thousand words, baby, why can't I paint you? These images that have come out of Coburger, listen, I got to tell you, and I'm in no way pro-Coburger, but these are, and I don't know if these are going to be admitted into evidence because on one level, you know, just when you see the sinister nature of them, because they do,

they do look sinister. And remember, we've been warned not to look at his eyes, you know, we can't, defenses, you can't because of his condition, you know, he's got that blank stare, you know, he wears, he's, you know, he stares off in the distance, you know, I've been locked up in a room with a lot of people over the years, when I'm lecturing and they've got blank stares off in the distance. I've been locked up in a room with a lot of people over the years when I'm lecturing, and they've got blank stares as well. So I don't know how much can be read into that. But when they did release these images of him with the hoodie on, and he's got like a watch cap,

a knit cap to bargain thing on under it. And he looks like he's very dark looking at it. He's got the same kind of drawn down like a Holocaust cloak like monks used to wear. It's got that weird kind of vibe to it. Is that part of the evidence? Is this the trove of evidence, some of the electronic evidence that's going to be presented in court? And if it is, how

in the hell Dateline get their hands on it? I don't know how they got it. I don't know. I do know that I've made a number of calls trying to find out some information to verify things and I, um, I'm not finding it out, but you know, you do have an investigation that if you remember early on, remember they had the, um, the person who was the, uh, not the medical examiner, but they were like voted in. Um, like, yeah, the corner, how the corner gave out information early on that we would never hear before, you know, from a, no, I don't want to say a legitimate source, but you know

what I'm saying? That was a very unusual way to get information the way it was. Oh my God. It was when I, when that dropped, when that person dropped that information, first off, she actually stated that they all appear to have been asleep. I thought at that time now, if we were to believe what's going on with this new data that's coming out, it's confirmation to me, did you even go to the scene and see the bodies? How long were you there with the bodies that you would make these observations?

Because I got to tell you, I don't know what appears to have been asleep means. Did Xana sleep on the floor? Is that what you mean? And again, it's skewed. That's an area that the coroner never should open up about on any kind of case. And Dave, I don't care how, in what far flung area of the country you're in, that's like a minimal, that's kind of a baseline of knowledge that every coroner has. We've had the national standards in place now for medical legal death investigators since 1998. That's like one of the things that we kind of pound into people's heads

in that training that we established all those years ago was that you work together as a team. When you're talking about a homicide day, particularly, especially one that is unsolved, day, particularly, especially one that is unsolved. It's your, you're an elected official, you're separate from the cops. You can say what you want to say, but let me tell you this, I don't see her getting Christmas cards in the future. You know what I mean? She ain't going to be invited to the Christmas party. All right.

In the wake of this, Because that is, it's forbidden. You don't do this. You don't step outside what I refer to as the investigative bubble because there's no telling who's listening and unless they told her just to say these things. And I can't imagine anybody would have done that. I don't understand why she felt compelled to begin to talk about these things that seem to be inaccurate. Exactly. That's the most gentle way that I can put that. I think you're being kind. I think that there's a number of issues here that this Dateline special, again, I don't

know where they got their information, but they felt comfortable enough with it from a legal standpoint to put it on national network television. And nobody has come out to scream about it. So it kind of makes you believe that there is information that is available somehow. But a couple of questions I still have, is that again I go back to the Dylan Mortenson and I really I don't want to beat this dead horse They tore the building down they tore the house down and we have no way of going in there to verify anything Because I have real questions about the people they call survivors I have real questions mainly because I haven't heard what

actually transpired. But now we've been told about Dylan being on the phone the whole time, texting back and forth and on Indeed or Facebook or wherever, you know, that seems to be a little odd thing to do for eight hours and then get up and you have this carnage going on you don't call 9-1-1. But again, stepping over that, the timetable puts Xanacronodal ordering food at four o'clock in the morning. Yes. And it being delivered at what, 408 something like that. Yep. So the timetable we're looking at Yep. So the timetable we're looking at begins there with Zana and ends before 430. Yeah. According to what we've been told. Right. So you've got a 20-minute window where one guy is going to come into a house with six people and he is going to be able to brutally kill very quickly. Enough that it was quick enough that he didn't wake up Ethan because they say Ethan was asleep when he was attacked.

Although I'm still wondering, how does he get something carved into his leg? If he is the last victim and he slept through the whole thing. Uh, again, just a clean response alone, you would think that that would be something that would jolt you awake. Of course, we don't know about sequencing. Okay, let me throw this at you. I was going to ask you how you're going to figure that one out. Well, just let me throw this at you. Yeah, if what date, and this is not Morgan saying this date line, if what Dateline is saying is accurate okay then what are the fatal wounds that Ethan would have sustained? It's not going to be a carving of the leg okay that's not going to be fatal at least in the immediate you might

exsanguinate after a period of time depending upon how deeply your legs might have been cut. However, here's something I want to throw at you. What if he was attacked in another area of his body and then after the fact this is done to him? That goes into an area of mutilation. And again, I know I'm projecting here, he's a male. He's only male in Domesaw. Wow. And I think back to a comment that was made in this program by this person that knew him over at Washington State. And she had invited him allegedly to a pool party and his eyes according

to her had locked on to these two young women that were clad in bikinis and was just focused on them. He knows nobody. This is like we feel sorry for this guy, we want to invite him in, kind of introduce him to, it's probably other graduate students, TAs, GAs, those sorts of people that are working toward the same goals or maybe employees that work in the department. And he can't take his eyes off of them.

As a matter of fact, he interjects himself into a conversation with one of these young women allegedly that was there with her husband, never acknowledged the husband, the entire conversation is having a conversation with her allegedly. It goes something like, do you like rock climbing? You like hiking? Just completely inappropriate. I think about that and you're dismissing the male that's there and what they're talking

about. And I don't know if this was their point with a Dateline special that they maybe perhaps are intimating that he did something to Ethan because he's a male. He was there and there were these other females. Maybe that's a long shot. I have no idea, but I don't know. It's certainly something to think about. Tanner Iskra I don't think he was just out toodling around looking at stars at four o'clock in the morning and said, Hey, there's a nice house. I think I'll go

in and see if I can kill anybody. You know? David Morgan No, no. This is a location that whoever did this, whoever did this, had some level of familiarity with it. And you know, that's another interesting bit that they dropped here, Dave, is the fact that now, and I don't know, this might be bigger than anything else, that now we've got new surveillance photos or surveillance video from an adjacent house where you can, and we've never seen this before. That was one of the other big reveals here where you can see what appears to

Be a white Elantra. That's that's making loops and passive. Do you remember some of the other footage that we had initially? That we've talked about before And it's real blurry this is Not quite as blurry and you can see the car pass in multiple directions from that static camera that was on an adjacent house. My wife and I were kind of watching it the other day, just the video, because I haven't seen the entire episode of the Dateline thing.

And you know, we were saying, well, if they have this camera, this videography, and here's where I kind of will leave this. If they have this videography and we've never seen it before, a big question is, what else do the police have that we haven't seen yet? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.