Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - BONUS: The Megyn Kelly Show: Howard Blum on Bryan Kohberger

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Highlighting a must listen podcast: The Megyn Kelly Show In this episode, Megyn Kelly is joined by bestselling author and journalist Howard Blum to discuss the Idaho student murders and his new book on the case. They cover suspect Bryan Kohberger, the case against him, the actions of the surviving roommates, Kohberger's background, and his disturbing writings.   Subscribe to The Megyn Kelly Show:   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0awxEJH88Xur0GHXuteBLw?si=UYTJl1P6TQippmzAu3f69g&nd=1 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-megyn-kelly-show/id1532976305  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hi, everybody. Nancy Grace here. Let me introduce you to a podcast. I think you will love the Megyn Kelly Show. The Megyn Kelly Show features open, honest, and sometimes provocative, that's one way to put it, conversations with some of the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures of the day. Give it a listen and follow The Megyn Kelly Show wherever you get your podcasts. You may love the guest. You may hate the guest. But I'm telling you, The Megyn Kelly Show is a must listen.

Here's Megyn Kelly now. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show is a must listen. Here's Megyn Kelly now. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm very excited for what we're about to bring you. It's now been 590 days since four University of Idaho students were found savagely murdered. 590 days and still no closure for the families of the young victims. There's not even a trial date set at this point. How can that be? Best-selling author and journalist Howard Bloom has been reporting on this tragedy since day one, like no other. I mean, if you read nothing about this case,

read anything Howard Bloom writes. He's been writing for Airmail, which is Graydon Carter's new online publication. It's doing really well. Thanks in large part to Howard. You may remember we featured Howard's reporting in our special series on the murders back in December. You can go back and listen to all five parts, episodes 688 through 692. Howard has done more fantastic reporting

on this case for a new book just out today. It's called When the Night Comes Falling, a Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders. Again, it's out today. You can get it right now. I've read it, both read it cover to cover, and I listened to the audio too. Uh, and it's already rising up. The Amazon charts is going to be number one, zero doubt in my mind. It'll be on the time seller list too. Welcome back to the show. Howard bloom. This is a great, great book. I'm so glad you wrote it. Nobody's been reporting like you. So you put it all in your time words. It's always easy to use. It's not like it's not a doorstop book. So it's like manageable. You can read this at the beach in a day or two. And I

recommend it because you learn a ton about the case. Let's start with the title. What do you mean a requiem for the Idaho student murders? What was in mind when you were writing that? Well, something that's been lost in the whole coverage of this case and trying to get to the bottom of a perplexing mystery is the lives that were lost. These four young kids, four young children, as a father of three children, the heart has to go out to them. And I wanted to honor them. I wanted to honor the lives that they lived. Zanna Carnoodle, one of the young women who was killed at her high school graduation, carried a mortarboard with her, and it said on the underside, for the lives I will change, for the lives I will change. And that struck me all the time as I was writing this book. I even had it on a note above my desk. You know, these children will never have the opportunity to change these lives.

And that affected me. And I wanted to try to do their memory justice. Oh, wow. That's awful when you think about it. I know just the other day they celebrated, I guess a better word is marked, Kayla Gonsalves' what would have been her 23rd birthday. I'll show you the tape. Um, there was a balloon release by friends and family of hers. This young girl's been dead now going on two years. She should be celebrating her post-college, you know, first career and time with friends. And I was struck by what the family said when they did the balloon release talking about what, what they think of

when they think of, uh, Kaylee Jade day, which is what they're calling it, which is how she liked to enjoy lunch with a friend or family member. They hope people will do things like this, planning vacations or holidays, trying out a new recipe, treating oneself to mimosas and appetizers at a local restaurant, embarking on a new hiking adventure, witnessing the sunrise, reconnecting with distant friends or family, and spreading kindness at a favorite drive-thru. That jives completely, Howard, with what we know of this young woman, how joyful she appeared in every picture, her tight best friendship with another victim, Maddie Mogan, and just how these girls were so young and had it all in front of them when their

lives were taken. And you mentioned the families, how they're trying to come to terms with this. But there really are no survivors in this story. This is a story about victims. And as you pointed out in your introduction, you know, there still is no sense of closure for these families. The trial drags on and on and on. The delays are cool, cool. It's a cruelty to the families. It's amazing. I don't understand how you can be so into this case and still not even have a trial date. There's going to be a hearing on June 27th where they're going to try to get one again. But this defense attorney, whose name is Ann Taylor, has been doing a very good job of convincing the judge, whose last name is Judge. So he's Judge

Judge to continue delaying. It's frustrating for those of us who want to see justice take its course. All right, let's get into let's get into the substance of the book, because you've I mean, we'll never be able to scratch the surface here because there's a ton of new stuff in here. And just just for what it's worth, audience, the way Howard writes is absolutely it makes you feel delirious with interest because he just chooses the right adjective. And he's very transparent about where, where he's using his own opinion and where he's reporting facts, but has a way of telling the story that is very illuminating. And I think that's one of my things, the favorite things I love about the book when the night comes falling by Howard Bloom, B-L-U-M. One of the, the big pieces that I learned in this, and I don't know how you got it. And I won't ask how you got it, is you tell us about the conversation. The suspect who's under arrest, Brian Kohlberger, now for committing these four murders, had with his father, Michael, who had flown from the Poconos, Pennsylvania, all the way across country to Washington State to pick up his son some, I don't know, a month. It was a month right after the murders. The murders took place November 13th, 2022. The dad flew out there about a month later to get the son and drive back cross country to

the Poconos with his kid who was a teaching assistant at Wash U and also was getting his Ph.D. in criminology there. And you walk us through their exchange, what was on the dad's mind, what was on the son's mind, who's now in prison awaiting trial. So talk to us a little bit about that. Well, here is this father who makes this trip. His father is 68 years old and he decides to go out to Washington state to then, two days later, turn around completely and drive across country with his son. He does this because he's nervous. He's anxious. He is connecting the dots in his mind. He knows his son is a disturbed young man. He knows his son has had problems. He knows his son also lives about 10 miles away where four young women, three young women and one young man were killed. And he knows his son has a white Hyundai Elantra, and that just happens to be the car,

the model of the car the police are looking for. So he goes out there, not sure what he's going to find, and immediately his son is in a mood. And he's seen Brian's moods before, and he knows to sort of go with the flow. He doesn't want to anger him. But as he spends time with Brian, he's very, it is as if he's following footsteps. And these footsteps suddenly become bloody footsteps. And he realizes, oh my gosh, my son might very well be involved in this. And yet he also refuses to make this leap, as any parent might. They can't put this on his son. So in a way, Michael Koberger, the father, is a victim too. He's one of the characters in this story. And I structure the book in many ways around this trip. It's sort of like Homer's Odyssey,

a long voyage, which is going to have a lot of traumatic events. And here, as the father's fears are coming closer and closer into focus in the father's mind, the car is stopped once by a state police, actually a sheriff's deputy in Indiana, and then nine minutes later by another sheriff's deputy, a state trooper, and the father is now realizing perhaps this is it, perhaps everything I was thinking about is true, and it becomes clearer and clearer. And then when the car is stopped, what's the first thing the father blurts out to the law enforcement people who are stopping the car? He talks about a shooting in the Washington State University that happened earlier that day.

It's what's on his mind. All this violence out in the West is coming together. And he feels something benevolent is happening. And he begins to fear as they make this cross country journal journey, he begins to fear with greater certainty that his son is involved in it and he doesn't quite know what to do. It's something to consider that the father too, of course, now in retrospect, when you think about it, the father too was suspicious of his son. You know, we hear that all these facts, knowing that Brian Kohlberger was later arrested for these crimes. And then you hear that his father had gotten him at college, was driving him back home. The cops, well, not the cops, but the FBI, this is one of the points you make in the book,

was already onto him, was aware, was following. But of course the father would have suspicions. Of course the father knew about the quadruple murder, right? You know, 10 miles from where his son was a TA and getting his PhD. He's got to know the son is weird to just put it very mildly. He's off, very off socially. and we heard the detail prior to the book about how brian the son rerouted the trip home they had something all set the the shortest distance between two lines is a straight one right and two points is a straight line and how brian had changed it suddenly wanted it to go a much more circuitous route home but you really lay some details in there about how angry he was about the dad pushing back on that at all and how the father had to handle him so gingerly.

He knew he was dealing with the powder keg of a man. It's also interesting that this was not the father's first trip out with his son. He came out when Brian registered at the beginning of the term. He made the cross-country trip with him. Now, the father is 68 years old. The family has had financial problems. They've been bankrupt twice. They went to bankruptcy proceedings. And yet he feels he still has to go with a 28-year-old young man to be with him on this trip, even when he's registering. He doesn't want his son to be alone at the crossroads. And what does his father do when he's out there? He goes to one of Brian's neighbors and says, you know, my son has a hard time making friends. Can you help him out? And this neighbor invites Brian to a pool party,

which I talk about in the book. And that's really Brian's first trip to Moscow, Idaho. The conversation they have relating to and the revelations about Brian Kohlberger's problems in his T.A. position are absolutely fascinating. So it was far worse for Brian Kohlberger in the weeks leading up to the murders of these four University of Idaho students on November 13th. And also Brian's return to the Poconos in early December with his dad than I knew until I read your book. He tell us about the problems Brian was having in the TA role and about the fact that he revealed a lot of what he did know to the dad. What you have to begin with, I think, to understand how traumatic this was for Brian is where he came up from. He was an academic success

story. He reinvented his life. He came from being a heroin addict at a junior college, gets into a graduate from DeSalle, and then he gets into a first-rate graduate program at a Washington State University. And he's on his way to be a doctorate. And then in the course of his first term as a teaching assistant, the students start to complain. They don't like the way he's treating them. They feel he's treating the women in a chauvinistic way. He always has to have the last say. He's marking too strictly. And the professor who's handling his course is working for Professor John Snyder, calls him in for a meeting, and what does Brian do? He blows his top. He really doesn't want to discuss it, but he exacerbates matters,

and the professor, who was a lawyer before coming to teach at Washington State, starts making a paper trail, sending letters to the administration that we might have a problem here, whatever. Finally, on November 2nd, just 11 days before the murders, he's given sort of an ultimatum by the authorities of Washington state, get your act together or you're gonna lose your teaching assistant job. Now for Brian to lose this, it's not just a job, it's the tuition that allows him to go to graduate school, it's the opportunity to reinvent his life from the hard scrabble life he was leading

as a youth in the Poconos to become professor, Brian Koberger, become a forensic psychologist. And this was a shock to his already tentative system. I mean, Brian is always living every day on tenderhooks, and now it becomes even worse. So while he's driving across country with his father, he begins to reveal, and this was related to me by people who have spoken with Brian's father, Michael Koberger, that he's in a bit of trouble. That's how he describes it at the university. But Brian tells his father, I'm going to have the last laugh. You know, they can't just get rid of me. I'm going to be able to have a disciplinary hearing and I will make my case and I will

be able to continue teaching. And I believe until the moment he's arrested, he still believes that he's going to get away with things and he's going to be back teaching in the next semester at Washington State University. He believes that he still is the smartest person in the room and he can out talk to these professors because in his heart, he feels he's done nothing wrong. He's always right. He's trying to spin it to his dad as if these are weak need students who just don't like tough grading. And, you know, they're they're basically just snowflakes. And I'm a I'm a tough grader. And that's the problem. Meanwhile, he was it looked like he was

harassing a couple of the young female students. He had zero tolerance for conflicting viewpoints. He was disdainful of these students. I mean, all the things that you would expect if this guy really is a quadruple murderer. He wasn't perfectly normal in the classroom. He was odd, to put it mildly. And these students actually spoke up en masse to the professor Snyder saying there's something wrong with this guy. And Snyder, when he started to kick the tires, seems to have found you're right. And that's just it. Brian's behavior did not go unnoticed. The students that he was teaching picked up on it. There was something really off, something really wrong. And he couldn't hide it. And this is what he was living with.

He wanted to be something else. He wanted to fit in. He wanted to, he reinvented his life and he wanted to live this life he once had imagined. But he also was intelligent enough to realize that this was an impossibility to him. He could not make this complete leap. And that was the tortured state that he was living in. So most of us, if we were, if our tuition were getting paid by this school there at the school, liking us was the difference between us being able to get the PhD and not because they can't cut your scholarship at any time would shape up. If we were sat down by our professor, nevermind the department head and said said and told, shape up or we're going to ship you out. He didn't do that. Professor Snyder called him in. And you write about how the Snyder,

he was astonished that Kohlberger started arguing with him as opposed to just saying, I'm sorry, I'll do better. I'll resolve. The department head seems to have had a similar experience with him where instead of being apologetic or falling on his sword, he was irascible. And then ultimately, when they reach sort of an accord, okay, he's going to try to do better and keep this position. You write about his self-sabotage, about how he couldn't do it. He was just incapable of it at that point where he thought maybe he's fooled them that he can stay on. He then became more aggressive to some of the women in the class. And at one point, one of the young women in his class said related to the college authorities that he followed her to her car.

And he acted in, she said, quote, an aggressive, unquote, manner. And that was just the straw that broke the administration back. They said, we've got to get rid of this guy. And they sent him a letter. The problem is when the letter reached his home in Washington State University, he was already on this car trip across America with his father, and he was lecturing his father, or hectoring his father, how he was going to ultimately be able to go back because he was smarter than they were, and he would have a hearing, and he would argue his case so successfully that they would have to bow to his superior intelligence. In the midst of all of this, he allegedly committed four murders. That's what's so fascinating about the private and personal life, his slow downward spiral in

his TA position, his inability to control his anger and defensiveness, even to his own peril. Like he knows what's going to happen if he continues pissing off his department chair and so on. They've made it very clear. He just can't stop himself. As you write, he unleashed the full force of his considerable fury. And that was ultimately with the women and so on. When the department sent him that note, the department chair sent him an email. I'm reading from your book here, requesting that they meet. You write, this was most likely a summons to the gallows. But before this execution could take place, Brian quite effectively placed the noose around his own neck. Several of his female students reported to the department that Brian was making them feel uncomfortable. In fact, the creepy TA had even followed one woman to her car.

Now there was nothing further to discuss. Brian's TA job was over. Mr. Kohlberger, I am writing this letter to formally inform you of the termination of your teaching assistantship with the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology effective December 31st, 2022. But this, as you point out, was never received by him. He had already left the campus and was driving back to Pennsylvania. But Howard, by the time she sent this, if the prosecution is correct in this case, he had gone from having troubles in his TA job to murdering four students in cold blood at the neighboring university to back in with his superintendent, his director, on whether he could improve his behavior and then peaced out of there

back to the Poconos. I mean, you can imagine the chaos that was going on in his internal structure in his mind. And he was always trying to become something better. And yet every time he succumbs to who he is, even on the nights of the murders, I believe that Koberger was still not stalking the house, but he was trying to find the will to cross over that threshold into making the ideas in his mind become a reality. And he kept on fighting against it. He would go up towards the murder house, and then he would drive off, up to the murder

house, and then he would drive off. It was a colossal battle of wills. And when he finally turns off the key in his car and parks and makes up his mind, requires the strength of Hercules to do this. But he decided at this point to give in to the demons. And I believe he grabs the knife sheath and parks on the top of the hill above King Road and starts walking down on the cold, frosty ground and making his way towards the kitchen door, back door of the house. So this is a new a new way of looking at the evidence. I thought this was interesting, too.

We knew, according to the police, that he had cased the house. That's kind of how we saw it, that this white Hyundai Elantra, we believe was his. It still has to be proven, had cased the joint three times or so before the actual moment of the murders, which the cops are putting it around 4.02 a.m. And your theory, having studied this more than any outsider, you know, outside of law enforcement that I know, is that it wasn't a casing that he was. This was a man who, other than his heroin addiction, had not led a life of violating the law and was in Ph.D. studies to, you know, work against criminals and try to understand them and help law enforcement figuring out whether he could cross it in a profound and before and after way? If he were actually casing it, he would have noticed

all the cars in the driveway, a house full of people. He might have wondered if there were people he would have a physical confrontation with that he couldn't overcome. He also would have noticed a DoorDash driver coming at 4 a.m. delivering food to Zanna and would have known that she was probably still awake. I don't think any of these more reasonable thoughts entered his mind. I think he was it was an internal dialogue between Brian and his demons. And that was driving him back and forth that night until he crosses that threshold into complete mania.

The other theory that you reveal in here made a lot of headlines is that you believe that this actually was about one victim. This is something we've all wondered. And I apologize to the audience. I should have just offered a few details about the crime at the top of the hour. I just assume familiarity because our viewers have heard us cover this so often, but it was a murder of four young students at the university of Idaho. We believe by this TA slash PhD student at a neighboring university. Um, and the four students were two best friends, uh, Kaylee and Maddie, who are there on the left in the, uh, Maddie's up on the shoulders of Kaylee there in this picture of all the roommates who live there. Xander Cronodal, who's over there on screen, right with her boyfriend, Ethan's arm

around her. Those two were killed. They were on the second floor. The two blondes, Kaylee and Maddie were up on the third floor in a bed together. They were lifelong best friends. And these two gals on the left and the right were surviving roommates where they were surviving roommates in this. And the one Dylan who's on the left would be an, were surviving roommates. They were surviving roommates. And the one, Dylan, who's on the left, would be an eyewitness as well. So you believe, just for the viewing audience who's watching this with us on YouTube, that Maddie, who was on the top of Kaylee's shoulders, was the target of this attack. Why? When Kohlberger went to the house, he had no idea, I believe, that Kelly was there.

He goes in on the second because Kelly wasn't living in the house really at that point. She was living up north in Coeur d'Alene. She was just in for the weekend to show off her new car. He goes in through the second floor kitchen sliding door. If he was intent on just killing, he would have gone into any of the two bedrooms on the second floor. But he is on a deliberate path. He makes his way upward and goes into Maddie's bedroom. And he then finds that there are two young women there, two young, blonde, pretty women, and his only target originally was Maddie. Kaylee tries to back away, she fights back, and she becomes in a grim, gruesome way, collateral damage. I believe, you know, according to the prosecution and the defense, they both have

stated categorically in the courtroom that there's no evidence of Koberger having any interaction with any of the victims, either in person or on social media prior to the killings. And that Koberger, who was a vegan, went to the Mad Greek restaurant, which specialized in vegan food in Moscow. There weren't too many places to get it. And he met Maddie, who was a waitress there. He didn't even have to speak with her. He was a man who lived by obsessions. Look at his decision to become a heroin addict and break it, to become the best criminologist. He did things with extremes. And he became, for whatever reason, obsessed by her beauty, her exuberance, her vivaciousness, and he focused on her. And I believe he went by the house on sometimes, saw her. I believe the house was a party house. We've all seen the videos of the police coming

there and the kids interacting with them. And there's something, you know, full of poignancy in those videos, the kids being kids, the cops being rough town cops, sort of the dynamic, the dialectic of how kids and cops interact on a college campus. But Koberger is outside of this. And it was a constant rebuke. He had done everything possible, traveled, you know, millions of miles in his own mental vision from this kid on the periphery of events in high school, becoming a heroin addict, to now being a teaching assistant at a celebrated university and a

celebrated department at that university. And yet, he still couldn't quite get into the swing of things. He still was an outsider. And his outsider-ness was a constant insult to him. And that pushed him, I believe, into what can only be described as a a mania uh to to why to want to feel that he can't live in this world if these constant rebukes uh to him are going to be living in it too that i mean it's a stunning theory and it actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it because you're right kaylee wasn't even supposed to be there that night maddie did work at this mad greek restaurant zanna did too. Zanna Cronodal, who was another one of the victims, she was there with her boyfriend, which, you know, I mean, they've

been inseparable from what we heard. And he walked past Zanna's bedroom. Did he not, Howard, to get to Maddie's room. He just goes right by. And I also believe that if Ethan and Zanna had not come out, I mean, Ethan, after the murders, they hear the noise. Ethan goes out to confront Koberger. And before he can even say anything, Kohlberger slashes out with his knife and gets Ethan across the neck. Ethan is 6'4", an athlete, and he was a wonderful young man, full of vitality, full of vivaciousness, a sort of happy-go-lucky, life-of-the-party person. And Kohlberger snuffs him out. Then Zanep speaks up or starts crying and Kohlberger in one chilling moment says to her, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. And of course, he moves in and kills her. She has a defensive wound on her hand. The knife penetrates her palm. It's shoved so strongly, so savagely at her,

but she succumbs. And then after killing those two, he walks out towards the second floor. He's heading towards the sliding door, trying to leave. And there is Dylan. Dylan sees him. And she can't speak. She's locked in a, I believe, as she describes it in the police affidavit, I think a shocked state of fright. But at the same time, Exactly, yes.

Brian is locked in his own sort of armory of hate. And if she had spoken up, she might have been penetrated. This protective barrier that he had wrapped around himself, this narrow focus vision. And I think she would have become a victim, too. I think her silence saved her life. Oh, wow. And I'm going to get back to the roommate in a second, but the timeline for the murders is so compressed. We know that they didn't happen before 4 a.m. because as you point out, the door dash driver was there dropping off food to Zanna. And so they

believe it started at 4.02 when Zanna and Ethan presumably would have been awake and in their room eating the food delivery. And then I thought the timeline was to 4.18, which I think is when we see the Hyundai Elantra leaving there, but it may be even more compressed than that down to like four 10, four Oh eight. You go ahead. You take it. Yes. Is it about four,

four Oh two to four Oh eight to four 12. They're not exactly sure, but it's whatever it is. I mean, the point you're making is so accurate. It was such a short amount of time. It was such, you know, and he wasn't a trained assassin. And yet he was,

one can only imagine if Koberger was the assailant, filled with so much rage that he was able to do this work with so much manic energy, so much manic viciousness. it's a horrific crime you've got four victims potentially in the course of eight minutes and you write in the book that that would be two minutes per person to commit these murders to to take out these young promising lives by a guy who as far as we know as far as we know has never killed before the know, has never killed before the, um, you, you spend some time as potentially a weakness of the prosecution's case on something we've talked about before. And that is the difference in the coroner's descriptions of how at least three out of the four were killed. And I wondered if you wanted to say anything about that here. You say, okay, they talk about, the corner writes about how Kaylee and Maddie were killed and suffered visible stab wounds,

quoting here from the corner, suffered visible stab wounds. I think we all can understand what those are. Yet on the floor below, second floor, Zana succumbed to quote wounds caused by an edged weapon, which isn't the same thing as a visible stab wound. It sounds to me like they maybe slit her throat. That's, I don't know. And then just to finish it off, Ethan's wounds are described as caused by sharp focus injuries. I don't know what that means, caused by injuries, caused by. But walk us through those details. I think, you know, you're making, I think the defense, this is one of the defense's best case that the coroner's report was so inexact.

There were lots of screw-ups in this case, and I think the coroner's inexactitude was one of them. I don't, you know, he lays, the coroner, or she actually, I think the coroner is she, she was a former nurse in town, lays open the possibility for the defense to raise that maybe there were other assassins involved, maybe other weapons, but I don't think that's the case. I think it's just poor use of language. The point that you're making about the differences will be made by the defense in court, and they will try to drive it home to raise doubts in the jury's mind. Right. How could one man have done this? One, as far as we know, not trained assassin who, you know, worked for the CIA for years. It's one 28 year old man. And if he did do it, where were the,

where were the injuries on him? Because there's evidence that at least two of the victims fought. So where are the defensive wounds? Well, where are the attack wounds on Brian Kohlberger? There are no scratches on Brian Kohlberger. What the prosecution believes I've discovered is that prior to the murders, Kohlberger had bought, they contend, a blue Dickies work suit, which covers from your ankles, more or less up to your neck. And he wore that work suit on the night of the murders. After the killings, that work suit was probably drenched in blood, according to the prosecution and law enforcement's theory. He took off that work suit, put it in a plastic garbage bag,

and on his circuitous route back to his apartment in Washington, somewhere along the way, he dropped it off, threw it in a river. But they've never found that, and they've never found the murder weapon. I mean, the prosecution is going to have, I believe, a difficult legal case to make. And I think the defense, they've left the defense, lots of avenues to pursue, lots of avenues, not to raise facts, but to raise doubts. Well, you point out in the book that Kayleigh's dad, Steve Gonsalves, has been working his own investigation into this case. And he apparently, among others, got his hands on a grand juror, two of them, two of the grand jurors. And this may be how we know some

of these facts, like the Dickies uniform that Brian Kohlberger allegedly purchased and may have been wearing. And like the fact that Brian Kohlberger bought a K-Bar knife, just like the one used in these murders months before the murders. And interestingly, though, there are reportedly receipts for both of those items in Brian's accounts, neither one has been found, which in some ways, Howard,

is even more suspicious than actually finding them. Right. And you raised Steve Kahn, Kavis, Kaylee's dad. I mean, he's a fascinating figure in this entire story. I mean, my heart goes out to him. He was the father of three children, myself. How could your heart not break over what he's been through? After the events first happened, he says, you send your daughter off to college and she comes back to you in an urn. That's one of the most poignant phrases I've ever heard. And yet I admire him and respect him for

the fact that he refuses to give in to events. He's not going to just sit back passively and let anyone else do it. This was his daughter and he's determined as best he can to get to the bottom of things. And even now, while I think he believes the suspect has been caught, he's still filled with a desire not just for justice, but also for retribution and vengeance. I mean, he and his family members support the Idaho law for a firing squad for execution on a guilty verdict if the chemicals needed for a chemical execution cannot be found. Again, he is, Kohlberger's father is, these are all victims of this story. This is a story where there are, as I keep on saying, no survivors. Everyone has been victimized.

An entire town has been victimized. For the record, Brian Kohlberger denies having committed these crimes and has asserted in court that he has some sort of an alibi, something we've discussed at length on the show. It seems incredibly flimsy. He doesn't really have an alibi. His lawyer's saying, as far as I can glean, he just likes to drive around at night. And that's why his car, when he wasn't at his apartment at the time the murders were taking place. We'll learn more if we ever actually see a trial on this never ending pretrial motions, if they end in an actual trial. Let's talk about Dylan because she's the eyewitness the police had in their back pocket, an eyewitness of sorts. She didn't see him commit murders, but she described a man who matches Kohlberger's description with the bushy eyebrows

and a COVID-type mask in her apartment, in her house on the night of the murders. We believe this was as he was leaving post murders. And what I didn't fully understand, I mean, this has been reported, but she and the other roommate who was not an eyewitness, but was also there. Was she also there? I don't know why I'm forgetting this, but they were texting during the midst of the murders, Howard. Well, according to what I've heard and according to what was given to the grand jury, they were concerned about the noise. At the same time, you're asking, I'm asking, the defense will ask all sorts of reasonable, rational questions. How could you not say anything? How could you not pick up the phone and call 911? These are not rational questions. How could you not say anything? How could you not pick up the phone and call 911?

These are not rational moments. I believe, and I went into this with a great deal of suspicion about what was going on. I believe Dylan was, as she describes it, in a state of shock, a frozen state of shock and fright. And she just couldn't respond. And her mind was not making sense of events. It's incredible that she waited until the next morning to make a call. And she doesn't even call the police even at that point. She still calls friends uh at one of the fraternities uh and they come down and one of uh ethan's friends makes the uh

911 call uh to the police uh these are all incredible events is one of the reasons why this entire story has i think captivated and perplexed so many people, because it's not nice and neat the way you see things on a television movie, for example. But there are a lot of things that really don't make sense, because a night like that doesn't make sense. And that's sort of why I called the book when the night comes falling, when the night came falling on that night and that morning on November 12th into the 13th, chaos, madness, it all rained. Silence about this only makes sense to me if she did not know what was happening. If

she didn't think that anybody was in danger, if she thought this was a guy visiting one of the roommates, she's annoyed. She's texting with the other roommate. They're so loud. They're annoying. That would make sense to me. That's how young people behave. Like, God, shut up. It's four in the morning having zero idea they're being killed. And that then when she saw Brian leaving, she thought this was an invited guest and not a killer. That would make perfect sense to me. It doesn't line up with what's in the police affidavit, however. No, I think the scenario that you are saying makes sense. I think her realization at the same time is very much like like Michael Koberkus in the sense that they have intimations of what's going, but they refuse to make the leap because the leap is too horrific.

It's too horrific for her to make this leap that this guy is not just a party reveler who's leaving the house, if they've been whatever, fooling around upstairs. But he actually is a murderer. And that sends her trying to make that thought process into a complete detachment. It's the same sort of detachment that Michael Kohlberger does when he realizes in his mind that, oh my gosh, my son might have been involved in these murders. So instead of taking a step forward, they both take a step back. Well, this leads me to one of the most interesting things in this book, and it's Melissa. Melissa is Brian Kohlberger's older sister. And much like Michael Kohlberger, who you write in the book, seems to have had suspicions about his son from the start, long before the cops knew the name Brian Kohlberger.

Melissa, too, had reason to suspect him and spoke to the dad, Michael, about it. Tell us about her. Well, Melissa is a family psychologist and she's's, like we all are, reading the papers. She knows her brother who's had problems, who is a heroin addict, who has violent tempers, tantrums, and he's just a little weird, is out there. He lives 10 miles from where the killings occurred, and he happens to be driving a white Hyundai Elantra. And that just happens to be the car the police are looking for. She has her psychology degree. She's able to put the pieces together.

And when she finally comes back for the Christmas holiday and she sees her brother meticulously cleaning his Hyundai, seeing him. At one point, she sees him taking his garbage and keeping it separate from the family, putting it into plastic bags. And, you know, two and two make four. And she confronts the father. And the father now has his daughter articulating all the thoughts that were simmering, coming into realization in his own mind.

And then suddenly he's given them, someone is telling them that everything you've been thinking is true, is in fact true. And the only thing he can do when confronted with this is do what Dylan does. He sort of walks back into his room. He walks off just the way There he was in the kitchen late at night, sorting his day's personal detritus into plastic Ziploc bags. And though she had not set out to spy and afterward wished she had never seen it at all, there was her brother sneaking out after midnight. Like a man on a mission, he walked down the long drive in the starlit chill to deposit the family's trash bags in a next-door neighbor's bins. When she put a name and purpose to all she'd been witnessing, it left her shaking. At last, though, Melissa found the will to share her increasingly certain deduction with her father.

Michael listened, and yet he could not respond. A long, agonized silence filled the room until at last he turned his back and walked away. And it would have had to have been within days of that, Howard, that they were all woken up in the middle of the night by the police, guns drawn, arresting Brian Kohlberger. And there's an irony to that because it was Michael's DNA that the police had that connected him to the knife sheath. So the father, in effect, his DNA caught his son. He was trying to escape from that.

And yet it was almost like a Greek tragedy. He couldn't. It was an exaltery drawn to that, that he was going to be the one to condemn his son. Yes, because of genetic genealogy, which is another revelation in the book about how the FBI knew it was Brian Kohlberger or suspected him thanks to genetic genealogy. There was a touch DNA on the knife sheath. Thanks to genetic genealogy, they traced it to someone related to Michael Kohlberger, which led them to Brian, and they didn't share it with the local cops. There's all sorts of interesting details on why and theories as well that you're going to want to read. Again, the book is called When the Night

Comes Falling, a Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders by Howard Bloom. Please check it out. It's available now in whatever form you want. As I said, I already consumed it twice and recommend it to all. Howard, thank you. Thank you. Pleasure talking with you, Megan. My gosh, such a horrific crime. And again, on 627, we'll find out, we think, whether they're going to set a trial date anytime soon. Fingers crossed. This is an iHeart Podcast.