Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The House Is Gone - The Idaho Student Murders

Episode Date: January 14, 2024

The Idaho house where Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin were murdered has been demolished.   Both the prosecution and defense were  in agreement that the residence should be torn down before Bryan Kohberger's trial. Join Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack as they discuss the impact of the demolition, what might now be missed and who might be helped by the biggest pieced of evidence being destroyed.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Transcript Highlights  00:01:08 Talk about why the odd shaped home had to come down  00:02:18 Discussion about destroying house before trial  00:03:47 Compare being able to visit the home of Lizzie Borden   00:05:47 Discussion of taking down horrible crime scenes  00:08:33 Comparing evidence like knife to house, would a picture of knife be sufficient  00:09:06 Discussion of both sides in agreement in taking building down  00:11:28 Talk about how to tell if someone could hear noise from top to bottom of house  00:13:36 Discussion of first-person perspective  00:15:48 Discussion of Parkland scene  00:17:42 Talk about taking jury to crime scene  00:19:26 Discussion of house layout – would killer have to be familiar  00:20:39 Talk about moving around rooms in the dark  00:21:53 Discussion about seeing size of rooms and 'ear' witness 00:24:15 Talk about effective documentation  00:26:23 Discussion about where suspect entered home  00:27:07 Discussion about room size  00:29:51 Talk about dynamic distribution of blood, being able to see it in context  00:31:32 Discussion of Jeffrey MacDonald case, jury saw murder scene in house  00:32:4 Talk about without house, no way to know where sound would go  00:33:51 Discussion comparing Gettysburg site to a house   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. It doesn't come about with me as a result of age. It is something that has plagued me my entire life, and that is curiosity regarding places. I love to try to understand the origin of places and the things that occupy a particular space. I like to drive down the road, particularly through old neighborhoods.

I'm from New Orleans, as many of you guys know. And there are a lot of old dwellings there. Sometimes, though, I am as fascinated by what is not there as I am by what is there. Because you're left wondering. If you have a space, let's say, for instance, in an old neighborhood, what had occupied that space? What lives were lived there?

Every place does, in fact, have a story. Today on Body Bags, we're going to step back for a second to November of 2022, to just off campus at the University of Idaho, where there was a dwelling, an odd dwelling, shaped in a bizarre fashion because it had been added onto over the years to accommodate students. And now in the present, it is no more. Today, we're going to discuss the demolition of the home where four University of Idaho students were murdered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.

Here we are. The house is gone. It's been called many things. A house of horrors. It was called off-campus housing. It was called the spot of a multiple homicide. But the dwelling, the physical structure, exists no longer. I think that's a shame.

It really is. Not for any Korean interest or horror story thing. It's just that on November 13th of 2022, Zanna Cronodal, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogan, and Kayla Gonzalez were murdered inside this home, and we don't have a conviction of the murderer yet. This is still a crime scene to me. We haven't had a trial and now they have removed the opportunity for if I was a juror, I'd want to go see the space. How do you tell the story of what happened if you don't have the space, Joe? Do you expect me to use my imagination we're not all that good 3d photos

are fine video is fine movies are fine but they're not the same as seeing it with your own two eyes touching it with your own two hands i don't see how this makes any sense i don't either i i you know and i know look i know the counter to this is going to be, well, you don't understand. We've got the technology now that they went in with probably what's referred to as a FARO system, F-A-R-O, which is the electronic or digital mapping system that's got the, you know, the mirrors and it spins and it's taking thousands of images. But let me back up just a second. You know, Dave, we don't live that far apart. And I'll tell you what. I'll go get in my car. We'll go half on gas and half on food.

All right. I'll come and pick you up. And we're going to make a drive. We're going to drive to Massachusetts. Okay. It's going to be kind of a long drive but you know you and i all right we like to we like to yammer with one another so yeah uh and did you know that right now if we took the time we could go hop in my old jalopy and provided it would get us up there, we could drive not just to Massachusetts.

We could drive to Fall River, Massachusetts. And I could take you right now to the home where Andrew and Abby Borden on August 4th, 1892. That structure is still standing. I could, I could take you there. Right, right. Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she'd done, she gave her father. 41.

I'm looking at it. That's, I had to look it up because i remember them doing i remember as a child doing little rhymes and things like that and yet that was the horror scene that we were all growing up to i'm not saying that it's funny that that happened but okay allegedly did it not happen did they not get killed with an axe they did get killed but lizzie was never convicted of it. She was convicted, I think, by the public. Maybe she did. I have no idea.

But that physical structure is still there. And we could actually book a room. Yeah, we could. They've turned it into a little B&B? Isn't that something? And look, don't misconstrue what I'm saying. I'm not saying that this should be some kind of oddity, a sideshow. You said it right just a moment ago about that this structure is gone forever and ever.

Amen. That if you and I watched it, I have to I have to admit I did. I watched one of my friends was covering this and she kind of narrated the process. And it had a I think it was like a time lapse or something. And I watched square foot by square foot of, you know, they've they've got the they've got the big equipment out there. They're taking this thing down floor by floor and it's taken against against against the, the protest of the families, right? They did not want this to go away.

Let me ask you this. Would you, or would you not agree that there are horrible homicides that occur in our country day in and day out? I know, you know, this, you know it better than I do because you cover more of them because you work

with Nancy so much. I mean, you, you, this stuff, I don't know this. You know it better than I do because you cover more of them because you work with Nancy so much. I mean, the stuff, I don't know if my fans understand what this man does, but every single day he sits and he studies. Can you imagine, folks, if you spent all of your time studying cases, there are many cases that you guys never hear about. But guess what? Dave Mack has to look at them. He sees cases day in and day out. Let me ask something, Dave, out of all these cases that you cover and all of this horror that takes place across the nation and across the world in Nancy's case, because she covers everything. Um, are they going around tearing down crime

scenes? Are they going around tearing down physical structures all the time? No, I don't, I don't understand it. It just, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me. Not when there's still a trial to go. I could see some justification, Joe,

if, if there was damage to the structure or if it became some kind of macabre, uh, which this place, I, I don't doubt that it had become a bit of a place that crime people would go and look at. I don't doubt that. But I have a problem with it because we don't have a trial.

We haven't had, it hasn't gone to trial. We don't know what happened yet. We know what we think. But you know what, Joe? We only know one side of it. We only know the side that you and I have been privy to, and you've studied it a lot. You've talked about this a lot. I have too. And you and I have both looked at a lot of material, but you know what? We haven't heard everything. And I think that they're doing a disservice to everybody when they do this,

to the four people who are dead, to the other two who were in that house the night that uh i still have a lot of questions i'd like to have them answer some questions and i'd like to have them walk me through where they were but i can't now no you i can have them tell me where they were look we have no way of knowing do we i mean we truly don't we have no way of knowing who the jury members are going to be right it's out in the ether i mean there's there's not been a pool that has been assembled to even select from at this point in time. All we hear is that it's going, you know, we've heard it's going to go to trial this summer. All right.

Now. If they found the knife, would they destroy the knife, Joe? That's an excellent question. Because, you know. We got pictures of it. No, no, we don't. We don't now. Um, we've got the sheath that people have gone on and on about, you know, now for low

these many months, um, that, that scene to me is just as valuable as the, to this point, at least the unfound knife, um, or the yet to be discovered knife, I'm trying to remain hopeful in that. But yet you you want to get rid of and I think the you is the big the big part there. You know, who is the you? Because we're hearing that both the prosecution and the defense are in agreement over this. But we all know. It's one thing to say that you're in agreement over it. Okay. But anything can be argued after the fact, you know, that we weren't given an ample opportunity to do.

I still have a memory. Lord, I wish I could remember the date of this because I've covered this thing for so long, this quadruple homicide. Let's re-anchor ourself in that. Do you remember this where they had sent the crime scene cleanup group to the house. And it was around the same time. And I can't remember. It was around the same time that Koberger, who is alleged to have committed the homicides, was being arrested. I think he may have still been, was he still in Pennsylvania at that point in time? And they had said that they were going to clean this place up. And the trucks had pulled up to the door.

They were putting up like plastic over the entryway so they could go in and like do whatever in the heck it was they were going to do in there, clean the thing up. And his defense team at the time, the people that were representing said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses now. And they wound up being able to get a team out there, you to to you know take a look around i'm look i'm not a fan of brian coberger what i'm saying is you know what what i'm a fan of is trying to get the jury in touch with with the reality of what happened there it was a three-story building, Joe. Yeah, it was. I love the saying that we say in forensics many times, negative findings are just as important as positive findings. And so those things that, you know, you talk about it being three-story, we've got that basement level, which some people call the first floor. You know, the thing is built into the side of a hill. You know, what I'd be interested in knowing if I was a jury member, if I was down on that first

floor, could I hear somebody up in the top floor yelling or just talking normally? Because I got to tell you, if I'm a jury member, I'm assuming if I were selected for jury or these people that are, I'm assuming they've never been to this dwelling. So from an acoustic standpoint, just that alone, I'm hoping against hope, Dave, that the reason or the rationale for taking this structure down didn't simply come down to the idea that it may have made certain people uncomfortable. It comes down to perspective. We were chatting just a second ago about those things that are lost. I still have this memory of, and they were on to something too, I think. I still have this memory of a reporter walking up to guys in what we used to refer to as either raid jackets or warrant jackets, which are, you know, those kind of shells that you see the police officers wear.

It's generally got a panel on the back that identifies who you are they were out in the brush line which is to the rear of this structure where the sliders are looking out over that field that kind of gently rose up behind and you could see there's like a little tree line back there and these guys were there was a reporter that walked up and they were in daylight, walked up to these fellows that were kind of perched and they were squatting and they were looking through the brush back toward that house. And I know what they were doing. They were trying to get an idea. It's not that they were looking for evidence on the ground. It wasn't that kind of thing. It's like they were trying to perceive what their field of vision was allowing

them to see back toward the house, looking from that brush line. That's gone. That's gone. I mean, I guess you could call those guys up and say, Hey, you know, agent so-and-so, I want you to testify to what you saw. What was your perception up there? What was your opinion about what you saw what was your perception up there what was your opinion about what you could see well first off they can't render an opinion about it and their recollection i don't really care about no because it's perceived it's their it's not mine it's their perspective it's like dealey plaza right if i was to go and stand on the grass you know behind the fence where i believe there was a shooter positioned to shoot the president of the United States, if that's what you believe, you can go there. You can go to the sixth floor of the school book depository.

Yes, you can. That's not a great view, but you can go up and you can look through that window. I've done it. I didn't tear it down. But that structure is still standing. Okay. And I'm not trying to equate the president's assassination with, I'm glad you brought this up because acoustics comes into that as well.

I'm not trying to equate that with this quadruple homicide that happened in Idaho. But your point is well taken here. I just don't see how you can tear down the evidence. I don't either. And, you know, going back to, I think one of the most poignant days I've ever been on air was that day where that jury was taken out to Parkland High School. I'll never forget. They had taken the jury out there. Keep in mind, this is years after the fact.

They had put up chain link fence all around this building. And it's a government structure, but Hey, you know what? That house in Idaho is a government structure now too, because why the state university have complete and total control over the thing. But you know, when they took those jury members out to Parkland, um, you know how though, and I know you do because you've been at this a long time, the, they, they choose pool reporters that will go, you know, they just don't let not every single reporter can go. So they choose who's going to go. There'll be like a videographer person. Um, I guess like, uh, you know, like a print journalist, you know what I'm saying? And those journalists, I remember they had comments from them and it was, it was gut wrenching to hear what they had said because they, they went back to that moment in time when that person went into that high school and slaughtered all of those kids. And it transported the jury members back to that point in time. The game was over at that point because, you know, they were able to kind of

connect the reality of that moment frozen in time. There was dried blood still on the ground. They had, I'll never forget one of the things cause it was on Valentine's day. You remember, um, they had dried flowers that were kind of falling apart, uh, laying there, teddy bears, you know, with like little Valentine's hearts on them, you know, like kids give one another, you know, at Valentine's day, that stuff was still there, but it was frozen in time. And you, you get this kind of relationship, physical relationship. Um, and I mean that in the sense of what you're viewing, what you're hearing, even what you're smelling, you know, at that point in time, and it all feeds back into it. Now I will state this. It's obvious that every single homicide I have ever worked, we did not take juries back out to scenes.

It's the rare ones. But I think I could probably convince you to agree with me that this is a rare one. This is something where you've got a major loss of life event in a small little town. There's a lot riding on this that you want to make sure that you get right, both for not just prosecution, but for the defense as well. And it's, it's not there anymore. You have to account for entry into the building. You have to account for movement inside the building,

moving from room to room, upstairs, downstairs, down a hallway, seeing a person you have the activity and how big the rooms are and what's taking place right now. We have some reporting of what we were told happened with some of the victims, uh, whether they were able to fight back or not, whether they're, we don't still know. We know what we've been told by certain family members who may have said things that didn't need to come out yet. It'll come out at trial, but we don't know yet. And the jury that is seated is going to have to watch video or the use their

imagination now to decide how long it takes to make these steps. How, how strong does one have to be? Exactly. Can one person truly contain this entire environment in a very short window of time, moving up and down stairs, and, by the way, actually having a live witness? Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing. I'm fascinated by this.

It was stated early on that whoever had done this had perpetrated this massacre. There's no other way to put it. Had to be familiar. It's such a bizarre layout. I mean, it really is. You and I both are former college students. We've been to off-campus housing and you know how weird some of that stuff is because, you know, they just kind of add on, they stick things, you know, it's, it's not like you're going out to, I don't know. It's not like you're going to standard neighborhood most of the time where everything makes sense and everything, you know, it looks well-ordered and all that. You know,

they add things on because they're trying to get as many people into a structure as I can to make money. And there's nothing wrong with that. If you're a landlord. But this thing, you got to admit, it's bizarre. You know, you got essentially two main entrances for this thing. You got one on the lower that's built into the bank where you're walking into the basement back by the parking pad. And you got these sliders up there. You got the windows how is it that you're going to this thing when i when i saw it dave and i saw some of the the uh schematics for you know how the whole thing the floor plan rather is a better way to put

it how it's all laid out it looked it kind of looked like a maze like a you know and and not just that how are you going to you're talking about something that this is occurring in the wee hours so it's got to be dark. In the dark. You know, how are you going to navigate this environment in the darkness with these weird twists and turns? And from a jury perspective, that's valuable information. How powerful would it be to take a jury out to that location? As a matter of fact, let's just argue for the defense for a second. Let's just say, look, how did my client do this? He's never been in the building before. Look, we're going to turn the lights off now, ladies and gentlemen. Now, let's try to make

our way up the stairs and try to figure out how easy or difficult this would be to facilitate this. I'm not saying that they would do that, but even if they wanted to, they can't do it now. And here's the other part, Joe. Imagine this, talking about evidence that they find in the building, which we know they have found some. We know they have found DNA. We know they have found other things inside this building that is going to come up. You think about it from the perspective of, of the perception of whoever was still housed in the dwelling after these,

when, when these events were going on. And if they were an ear witness to these events, how could they not have heard something? And again, that opportunity is gone because you don't have, well, first off, you don't have, there's no way to even perceive it at this point in time. There's no way to appreciate the idea of, I think, and this goes to distribution of blood in particular, because one of the things that we do know, Dave, that was stated early on, and I can't remember if it was the coroner who I have a whole nother set of issues with because they were talking early on about this against, you know, they were not

supposed to be speaking out of turn here. They were going, they were, they were making these comments, you know, which was shocking to me early on. We do know, according to them, that this is a very bloody scene. How do you make it through here without deposition of blood in other locations? Because if you're walking through a location that is, you know, this is my, I'm just inserting this word, bathed in blood. If you're going in and checking out, how is it that you're not tracking trace evidence around? Why is it that there's no other evidence that can point back to an individual? And this goes to, I'm not arguing for the accused here. What I am saying, though, is that for anybody that is looking to defend someone, the fact that you can argue in a manner that could greatly benefit your case, because you know what?

When there is nothing that you can turn back to, there's always the possibility of planning to see for reasonable doubt. I think that it's important that we look at, I would say, three areas that I hope that they have effectively documented relative to how they're going to play this narrative out absent the home now. Because, you know, look, it's one thing if you and I are in a meeting, Dave, and I've got a way to illustrate a meeting where you can visually see it, and a lot of it goes to what kind of learner you are. You know, my wife is always throwing around the term that she's a kinesthetic learner, which, you know, hands- on, that sort of stuff. But if you're a visual learner, I think that we've effectively argued the position here that that opportunity is gone. So what did you do, you being the authorities, what did you do at the scene before the place was torn down to document the place in totality

so that you're going to take this and present it to the jury. I actually had one person that came to me and said, well, the FBI is talking about completely restructuring or mocking this building out and recreating the thing. And I'm thinking, really? That's what they're going to do? They're going to do it digitally? Is that what you're talking about? Well, maybe you can do that digitally. Maybe it'll be wonderful. But I can tell you this, if you think for two seconds this thing is going to be like the holodeck on the Star Trek USS Enterprise, you're going to be sadly disappointed because it thing is going to be like the holodeck on the Star Trek USS Enterprise,

you're going to be sadly disappointed because it's not going to be like that. You're going to lose all sense of relationship between things. And so I think that we have to first off understand, we've talked about sound, how does sound travel through a structure? How are you going to document that to entertain possibilities of what could and could not have been heard? We have to think about timing relative to how long would it take from one point from the starting point to make entry into the home? If in fact, and this is a big if because we don't know, were the sliders open? Did the perpetrator make entry through the sliders? Was there some other way that they made entry? You know, we talk about the food delivery that was made to Ms. Cronodal.

How do we know that that didn't play a part in this? Because that's in a different location than, say, for instance, where the sliders are. And then from sliders, how do you make your way through the house? How is it possible? And then I think one of the things that really stands out to me, you know how I was mentioning Parkland just a moment ago, and they had literally left that scene frozen in time with the distribution of blood and all those sorts of things. We're talking about the deaths of these four young people

in their bedrooms. And this goes to the dynamics of blood distribution. That's not going to be there. If there was blood stains on the wall, for instance, and they're dynamic blood stains, which I mean, we're talking about everything from cast off where you're, you know, you think about dipping a paintbrush in a bucket of paint and throwing it against the wall. That's how it happens. If you take a sharp instrument, dip it in blood and kind of cast it off as you're stabbing or on the ceiling, that's gone. Arterial spray, if you've clipped an artery and that's spraying on the wall, well, where is that in relation to where the body was found and can you connect those

two things? And then you have this issue of transfer blood. Well, if you're talking about an individual that is placing their hands and you're going to have commingled blood everywhere, commingle, which means you've got four victims. You're essentially mixing this blood together as you're going through this process. I talked about this early on where whoever has the least amount of transferred DNA to their body is probably going to be the first victim. Okay. going to be the first victim, okay? So, if you have victim A that has little or no DNA from another person in the house, say they're on two different floors, you're using the same weapon,

assuming that they're using the same weapon, you're not going to be able to appreciate the dynamics of how that blood issued forth from the victims. Are they going to take the mattresses from the beds and bring them into the courtroom? That has happened before. That has absolutely happened before. Items from the bedroom, is that going to, okay, well, let's say that you do bring in the headboard from a bed and you've got what appears to be blood that has been cast off on it. Okay. You can bring that in there. You're taking that out of context. You are taking it out of context. And, and look, understanding they would have had to have removed the headboard and examined

it in the lab. But if you, if you don't have a way, a facsimile to demonstrate that, uh, and not just the facsimile, but the physical structure to say, okay, the bed was positioned right here. Do you understand? And it's right here in this position we have, if you reflect back, we showed you the images here, the images again of the bed and how it's demonstrated are dispersed on the head of the, uh, the, the headboard of the bed. And it's on the wall adjacent to it. This is what our expert believes happened. Well, you can't do that. You can't go back to that. And that's, that's just the dynamic distribution of the blood. What about if we've got passive where people are putting, you know, you're, you're lifting your body, you're transferring blood from your hands because you're trying to leverage your body weight to get out of a place. What about passive dripping?

Well, what they're saying is that same weapon involved. Well, same weapon involved. If they start on the top floor, come down the stairs, are they dripping blood from the tip of the knife blade or off of their person onto the carpeted surface of the staircase and it leads into where, where Ethan and Ms. Cronota were, um, is that that's gone in, in totality as well. You're not going to be able to appreciate that. Is there a moment where more blood was dripped in one location? Like someone's pausing to stop, to think that they hear something and then they progress on. And then another attack initiates. Oh, that's gone.

You don't have that. You don't have it at all. When you and I talked about this earlier, I brought up the case of Jeffrey McDonald, the, uh, uh, army green beret doctor. Fatal vision. Yeah. Fatal vision. All right.

Jeffrey. Yeah. Yeah. There you go february 1970 he claimed a group of hippies came into his house on base in fayetteville north carolina 544 castle drive the reason i know this because i watched the trial very carefully when it happened nine years after the fact february 1970 was only months after the manson murders the tate la bianca murders and so there was a lot of talk about this and many people believe that

Jeffrey McDonald got his idea of the hippies from those murders. Right. Jeffrey McDonald's pregnant wife, Colette, and his two young daughters, Kimmy and Christy were both murdered. We're all three murdered in that house, a pregnant mother and her two small children were murdered in that home, murdered with an ice pick. There was blood everywhere and that crime scene stood for nine years joe until they could have a trial

and they had already gone through the military process uh an article 32 hearing where they discovered that okay mcdonald maybe didn't do it we're not going to further prosecute this and it was only brought up in a criminal court because of colette's stepfather freddie cassab pushing it and it did go to trial in north carolina and jeffrey mcdonald was found guilty of murdering his pregnant wife and his two young daughters but one of the things that happened it was nine years later he was a successful doctor in southern california he was a good-looking young guy people couldn't believe this wonderful nice man could have ever done a green beret. Doctor wouldn't kill his family, but the jury, they were able to go back to that house nine years after the murder. They were able to walk into this home

to look at the size of it and to imagine could hippies have really come in here and done this in this small of a space. are all very close together there's patrols going by all the time the noise somebody would have heard it they were able to go through that because the crime scene was still in existence they were able to see it no pictures no drawings pictures and drawings by the way are there they have those too but they actually got to see it with their own eyes and And I think it mattered. It does matter. And it's, it's powerful stuff. It's powerful stuff. Anytime you can introduce the jury into an environment like this so that they begin to appreciate form and function of a structure where an event took place. You know, if, if you have a mass homicide that takes place in an open field,

it's really hard to appreciate the dynamics of that. It can happen anywhere. You know, it's like, you know, if, if you go to visit a civil war battlefield, even if you go to Gettysburg, you know, you believe what they tell you about what happened there, but it's so vast. It's so broad that you can't really understand it in a way that walking into a home where lives have been lived, where parties were had, where people got to know one another and to be friends,

that's gone. It's gone forever and ever. And that goes to the heart of this case, because this case was about the relationships that these people, these young people had developed while college students and the environment that they were in, in Idaho, living and learning together. I just hope. I just hope that the right decision has been made. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.