Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - SLAY SUSPECT BRYAN KOHBERGER COPIES SERIAL KILLER BTK, BIND/TORTURE/KILL

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Bryan Kohberger "stood silent" as an Idaho judge asked the accused killer to enter his plea.  When Kohberger chose to not answer, the judge entered not-guilty pleas for Kohberger on all counts. The only time Kohberger did answer was to say yes that he understood the charges against him and his potential punishment.  Prosecutors have 60 days to say whether they will pursue the death penalty. A trial date is scheduled for October 2.  Joining Nancy Grace Today: Tara Malek - Bosie, ID Attorney and Co-owner of Smith + Malek; Former State and Federal Prosecutor; Twitter: @smith_malek Caryn Stark- Psychologist- Trauma and Crime Expert; Twitter: @carnpsych Chris McDonough -Director At the Cold Case Foundation, Former Homicide Detective and Host of YouTube channel- "The Interview Room" Bill Daly - Former FBI Investigator and Forensic Photography, Security Expert  Traci Brown - Body Language Expert, Author: “How to Detect Lies, Fraud and Identity Theft;" Twitter: @Tracibrown37  Dr. Kendall Crowns - Chief Medical Examiner Tarrant County (Ft Worth), Lecturer: University of Texas Austin and Texas Christian University Medical School Nicole Partin - CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter; Twitter: @nicolepartin (Naples, FL) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. In the last hours, slay suspect Brian Koberger in a court of law for arraignment. He chose to neither enter a guilty or a not guilty plea, instead opting to, quote, stand silent in the open courtroom. Why? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thanks for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. First of all, listen to this. Ms. Taylor, is Mr. Koberger prepared to plead to these charges? No, we will be standing silent.

Because Mr. Koberger is standing silent, I'm going to enter not guilty pleas on each charge. Counts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Now at this juncture, the state has 60 days to give notice of intention to seek the death penalty. Is anyone surprised? Because I am not surprised Koberger, quote, stood silent. There are many theories about why he did it. But let me just throw this one out there. We hear him speak a little bit in the courtroom.

We hear certain answers. Could it be he did not want to speak any more than he had to because he did not want a witness, an ear witness from the time of the murder. I'm referring specifically to Dylan Mortensen, who heard someone at the time of the murder say something to the effect of, it's okay, I'll help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. If Dylan Mortensen hears Brian Koberger's voice, can she make a positive identification? That it was Koberger's voice she heard the night of the murders at the murder scene? The standing silent is in response to this. All right, I'm going to read you the charges on the indictment. Starting with count one, burglary as a felony under Idaho Code Section 18-1401 and 1403. This alleges that you, on or about November 13, 2022, in Latah County, State of

Idaho, did unlawfully enter a residence located at 1122 King Road, Moscow, with the intent to commit the felony crime of murder. This alleges that you, on or about November 13, 2022, in Latah County, State of Idaho, did unlawfully enter a residence located at 1122 King Road, Moscow, with the intent to commit the felony crime of murder. Count two, murder in the first degree. This alleges that you, honor about November 13, 2022, in Lake Talk County, state of Idaho, did willfully, unlawfully, deliberately, with premeditation and with malice of forethought, kill and murder Madison Mogan, Kayla Gonsalves, Zaina Pernodal, Ethan

Chapin. This is signed on May 16, 2023 by the presiding grand jury. You're hearing the judge outline the murder charges against him. And also we hear for the first time mention of the death penalty. Listen. For counts two, three, four, and five, murder in the first degree, maximum penalties, life in prison, or the death penalty. A fine of up to $50,000 for both fine and life in prison or the death penalty. Restitution for the victim's economic losses resulting from the crime. Also, an additional fine of up to $5,000 to be paid directly to the victim's family.

If you are found guilty or plead guilty on each charge, and the maximum sentences are imposed consecutively, that means one right after the other, you could be facing 10 years in prison, followed by four consecutive life sentences or death penalty. Fines of up to $200,000. You are hearing Judge John Judge speaking. We have an all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now. First, to Chris McDonough, joining us, director of the Cold Case Foundation, former homicide detective, and host of YouTube channel The Interview Room. Chris, are you surprised that on some questions he would say yes, yes, yes, a single word,

but when it came time to say not guilty, he, quote, stood silent? No, I'm not surprised, Nancy, but your point about that voice match potential for that witness is, you know, I got a shiver when I heard it because I had not considered that personally. And I think you're right on target there. He is in this control mechanism, even there in the courtroom. And he wants to, again, mitigate his risk in relationship to that. Or he's mentoring, you know, back to the individuals that he studied in his course studies in relationship to his assigned books from his professor, specifically Dennis Rader, who also stood silent. Wow, that's a really good comparison. Could you explain that, please?

Yeah, I mean, when BTK went before the court, he had his attorney say the exact same thing and elevated himself, you know, the thought process is, by having a judge declare his, you know, not guilty. Why do you say that elevated himself? Well, you're sitting there and you have a judge telling the world, well, I'll just go ahead and tell the world you're not guilty, that you're standing silent. And BTK relished it. And then later on, of course, when he saw the extent of the evidence, then he came forward with his now infamous confession to the world. Very, very compelling, because we know that Koberger has taken a very unusual interest

in Dennis Rader, BTK, buying, torture, kill, serial killer. In fact, there was much speculation that the two had been in contact. Very compelling argument, along with the theory that he does not want his voice repeatedly out there for Dylan Mortensen or, frankly, the other survivor to be able to identify him, Bethany. So you've got Dylan and Bethany there that night. We don't really know what Bethany heard or didn't hear because her statement has not been made public. Very curious.

What about this tie into it? I'm going to go to Karen Stark joining us, renowned psychologist joining us out of Manhattan. You can find her at karenstark.com. It's Karen with a C. Karen, what about this? Complete disdain for the judicial system, for our jury system, for our judges. You know, a judge in herself or himself are not the law, but like our president is not the U.S. government. They represent, the president represents our country, represents our government. The judge represents the law. And, you know know Koberger seemingly have you ever heard have you read the accounts of how students that were in school with him co-workers say he always had to be right he always had to point out when other people were wrong about anything. He loved being smarter than thou. I could see him bearing great disdain for the judge

and for our judicial system. Well, Nancy, think about his personality. I mean, this guy, he's so narcissistic. He actually studied the killers. He wanted to know more about it. He had no hesitation to tell other people that they were wrong. People that worked, that learned underneath him, that other students, they just felt that he was so arrogant. And think of what it takes to, if in fact he is guilty, do what he did.

And I felt like even when he was stopped, when the police stopped him and he was attempting to have a good exchange with them, that he wasn't even at that point able to show that oh gee i'm really really sorry i'm rich if anything it seems more like his father was than he was so i i don't feel like this is the guy who feels like anybody knows more than he does Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You know, I want to go back to, and guys on the panel remember we're not having high tea at Windsor Castle with Charles and Camilla. Jump in if you have a thought. Chris McDonough, do you remember how his colleagues and co-students disliked him because he was always correcting them, always had to have the last word, always had to be right about everything? Do you remember that? Yes, absolutely. So how does that connect to his choice to basically not even acknowledge the judge?

Well, you know, to the doc statement, you know, to dovetail into the doc statement a moment ago as well, the fact that he is projecting this total control over everything. And now you think about how he's convincing those around him by just dominance of conversations, dominance of even his colleague in his understudies where the kid was saying, look, you know, you got to stop, you know, you got to be serious for a minute. I got to take your picture. And he was able to, you know, in a quick second, just flip that switch and pose for those photographs. And so, you know, as the doc can tell us, you know, we live three lives, our private life, our secret life, and our public persona. So everything that he is doing right now has been the secret persona, but he's projecting it into a public persona. So, you know, the doc, I'm sure can get into the psychology of how deep that goes. But what Korberger is doing right now is he is now taking this stage to the courtroom and he's projecting this dominance.

And yesterday was another perfect example of that. What better way to have his message told than by a judge in the highest court in Idaho in relationship to the superior court where he's presenting himself and the judge say okay well I'll go ahead and put in the not guilty for you because you don't deign to speak I'll do it for you why did Brian Koberger quote stand silent is it because he doesn't want the witnesses, the survivors, to identify his voice by speaking out in court? Is it because he has an odd connection to BTK, Bind, Torture, Kill, Dennis Rader, who did the same thing in court? Or is it because he has such disdain for the judge, for our justice system? We know he treated colleagues, co-teaching assistants, students in that manner very disdainfully. But here's a big indicator.

The way he talked down to a lady cop that very simply warned him about pulling into a crosswalk when people were walking in the crosswalk listen to this okay so i found it so i don't know what in pennsylvania the where you go to find laws but in washington it's called the revised code of washington so I'll try to turn my brightness up but um it's basically it's just called an RCW so it's RCW 46.61.202 so it's no driver shall enter an intersection unless there is significant space on the other side of the intersection um to accommodate the vehicle he is operating without obstructing the passage of other vehicles despite any traffic control signals signal indications to proceed so you had a green light so you're thinking you can go but you're blocking the intersection straight out to special guests joining us Tracy Brown author of

how to detect lies fraud and identity theft Tracy Brown at BodyLanguageTrainer.com Tracy, I mean, he made the lady cop go and research the law about pulling your car into a crosswalk with people walking across it. He did not accept that she was going to give him a warning for doing that.

He had her pull the law. Are you surprised at all? He made the judge enter the not guilty plea for him and refused to speak. I am not surprised. And I think really what he was going for. And I think what everybody was hinting at is it's actually it's called a prestige suggestion. Whoa, hold on.

I got to write that down. Prestige suggestion. What's that? Well, that's when you get you. People are more readily accepting of a comment from someone of prestige. Right. So it could be a dentist. When you go into the dentist and they say that you need some kind of treatment. Well, you must because they're a dentist, right?

Same thing here. So prestige suggestion from a judge. Well, you got to believe a judge. What could possibly be wrong with a judge, right? And so it's just that little bit of extra prestige to something to make you consider what's really being said differently. Prestige suggestion. to make you consider what's really being said differently. Prestige, suggestion.

So how does that factor in, Tracy, to him, quote, standing silent when it was time to enter a plea? Well, I think he's depending on that prestige to start to change public opinion. Well, it didn't. As far as I can tell, it didn't. I don't think so, but he's got to try. You might as well try something if you're him. You've got is that Karen started jumping in Karen yes well because I I also want to point out that he was he had no problem stating very firmly that he understood what was being said to him oh my Karen Stark, you just read my mind. Jack, could you play our cut 435?

Do you understand the charge in count one? Yes. Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes. Do you understand the charge in count two, murder in the first degree? Yes. Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes. Do you understand the charge in count three, murder in the first degree? Yes. Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes. Do you understand the charge in count three, murder in the first degree? Yes. Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes.

Do you understand the charge in count four, murder in the first degree? Yes. Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes. Do you understand the charge in count five, murder in the first degree? Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes. You're absolutely right, Karen Stark.

Very forcefully, yes. And I also noticed, you know, Karen, no matter what judge I was in front of, didn't matter what judge, even if it was a, when I got sworn in at the U.S. Supreme Court, all the way down to a traffic judge, doesn't matter. I would always say, yes, sir, or yes, ma'am, or yes, judge, to show respect for this person, whether i liked the judge or thought that they were a lunatic it didn't matter they still represented our judicial system and you see coberger putting you know just just like tracy brown was talking about prestige suggestion putting himself on the same level as the judge in a court of law instead of showing any respect by saying sir or ma'am, that's not going to happen with Koeberger. No. And Nancy, another idea too is that I think, you know,

as much as we speak about the recording of his voice and people hearing it, there are recordings of his voice, whether through the body cam video with police stopped him and interviews, which maybe if they can be entered in and suppressed as evidence could be heard by the witnesses. My view is that this is really about him being smarter than everyone else. Him studying, him wanting to be smarter, he wanted to outsmart investigators. He wanted to do things that would be not traceable to him. He was trying to commit this kind of, I believe the allegation here is that he was trying to commit kind of his perfect crime. And as a result, he's going to put the full burden of proof, full burden, everything on the prosecution to basically say, here I am, you got to come after me, you got to give me everything you have. The smarter than everyone else. I think you're hearing Bill Daley right now,

former FBI investigator, forensic photography security expert. Bill, I think you're right. Karen Stark, weigh in. He's definitely, he's correct, Nancy. This is an arrogant guy. There's no difference there. This guy is going to show you that he knows the law. Absolutely.

And he is smarter than everybody. And he's going to get away with this. I don't think this guy is afraid. I really don't. I think he believes that he's going to be found innocent. Now I want to go to Tara Malik joining us, a high profile lawyer out of that jurisdiction in Idaho. And you can find her at smithmalick.com. Tara, thanks for being with us. What about the theory that this whole standing silent move in the courtroom by Brian Koberger, and clearly his lawyer was on board with it, Ann Taylor, they don't have the insanity defense in Idaho, but how about somehow lying the ground for an incompetency defense? You know, I don't know that it's an incompetency defense, because as we heard on that clip, he said, yes, he understood the charges.

So, you know, I think that, and I agree with the other panelists and what they've been saying, you know, he's this narcissist, he's trying to kind of gain control, put himself above the judge. I think the other thing that standing silent does as far as a strategy is if there are negotiations ongoing right now behind the scenes, you know, to take the death penalty off the table or who knows what with the prosecution, it's a bargaining chip that they can save and they can say and kind of save face a little bit and be like he didn't enter a not guilty plea he wasn't doubling down and saying he was not guilty what he was doing was standing silent you know defaulting to the not guilty and then using that

later on um you know he has that right to stand silent the other the other thing that came to mind when i heard that he stood silent was that they don't have all the discovery yet. You know, there's a pending motion to compel by the defense against the state. I think the state has turned over over 10,000 documents and several thousand photographs already. But they're requesting more information and think there's more information out there. And if they don't have all the discovery yet, you know, they may not be able to assess right now what he's going to do. And so standing silent would give them some leeway there as well to say, you know, I can't even advise my client one way or another because I don't have all the information yet. Yeah, you're right, Tara.

Typically, even at the outset, when all the discovery has not been handed over, the defendant will enter a not guilty plea. The law is that when a defendant refuses to speak, the court will presume the defendant wishes to enter a not guilty plea and enter it for the defendant. That is the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent as it has been interpreted by U.S. and state case law. So when a defendant won't enter a plea, the law presumes a not guilty

plea is intended. That's really good reasoning, Tara Malik. Another issue, guys, have you ever heard of sov-sits, Sovereign Citizens? You know, the ones that, yeah, I hear you laughing, so you are familiar. They are the ones that, for instance okay, yeah, the IRS is real.

I will pay my taxes. a citizen of the world and do not recognize any sovereign over them, i.e. the government, the judge, anybody. We've all heard of the people, and it's usually, have you noticed to Bill or Chris, Karen, Tara, anybody

on the panel, that it's usually about taxes. That's when they suddenly refuse to acknowledge a sovereign is when it comes to paying taxes everything else fine yeah i'll stop at the red light but i'm not going to pay my taxes have you guys noticed that it's that and traffic they don't like traffic tickets either yeah they don't yeah when they get a ticket they no longer agree with the traffic rules yes that, that's a good point. Maybe he's a soft set.

I don't know. But I do know that that is what has happened in court. Take a listen to our cut 438. By the way, I do want to let everybody know, if they don't already know this, that once the grand jury issued the indictment, preliminary hearing scheduled to start on June 26th was no longer needed and was vacated. So I was confused about that. So I thank counsel and the media and the public for your attention in this matter. So we are adjourned.

There are many ways to charge someone formally with a felony like murder. You can have a single prosecutor draw up what is called an information. They just write it up themselves and say, Hey, you're formally charged. You're going to trial. You can have a preliminary hearing like in the O.J. Simpson case where witnesses are called. They can be cross-examined, and a judge then, quote, binds the case over to the correct court, such as a superior

court for trial, or you can have a grand jury proceeding, which is what was held this time. By having the grand jury hand down the charges, that got rid of the need for a preliminary hearing. So the preliminary hearing set for June is now off. I want to mention again the behavior of Brian Koberger in the courtroom. And I watched defendants like a hawk to see if I could learn anything from their behavior, their demeanor. Nicole Parton joining us, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Nicole, I played and replayed Koberger going in and out of the courtroom. He very carefully trained his gaze on anything but the victim's families.

What did you see, Nicole Parton? Absolutely. I noticed the very same thing, Nancy. And I also have heard witnesses that were in the courtroom saying that members of Kaylee's family kept their eyes locked on him, but he refused to even look their way. He only looked at his attorney. I also noticed that yesterday, compared to the previous videos and photos we've seen of him, he is not as frail and thin now. Physically, he looks stronger. He also doesn't have those scratches and marks on the side of his face that we saw in previous court events. So he looked physically different, but he had that focus,

not looking at any family members, not looking at anyone in the courtroom, and just sitting there, gazed into his attorney. That one little small smile that he gave her, and that was it. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace To Tracy Brown, body language expert and author of How to Detect Lies, Fraud, and Identity Theft, what do you make of Koberger's behavior in court? Well, I thought there was really a lot to see. And let's start with how he walked in. And you all mentioned his gaze, which is true.

There was a couple of clues that said he was emotionally unaffected by the proceedings. For one, did not show emotion on his face. Okay. But here's what's more interesting is that he did not protect himself like we would normally see someone walk into the courtroom. So his arms were out into the side. He was making himself a little bit bigger. Now, some of that had to do with him wearing what I think was a bulletproof vest. But his arms were hanging down to his sides.

Usually we'd see someone protect themselves in some kind of way with arms in front of them, at least a little bit. So, excuse me. So this lets me know, okay, wait a minute. This guy doesn't think he has anything to protect himself from. Now, beyond that, he does not, when he's sitting there, he does not show any adapters or pacifiers. And what those boil down to are small little movements that release stress, small little repetitive movements, right? So he didn't put his hand to his forehead. He didn't lean on his elbows. He

didn't smooth down his pants, right? Those kinds of things. He didn't run his hands through his hair. None of that. I have never seen anyone without these kinds of movements in what's such, what you'd think would be such a pressure-filled situation, which lets me know he does not emotionally connect to the pressure that's around him. Like just not protecting himself, not letting off any anxiety at all. Now, we hinted at some of this earlier. I think from the way that he actually didn't move his head because he was very straight on the whole time. It tells me he's a really analytical, linear thinker in my experience. That's what we see. And he doesn't do emotions well.

So I thought that was not necessarily uncharacteristic of someone who's likely been involved in this kind of situation. Now, here's what's most interesting is that we didn't see any wrinkles in his forehead. And our forehead is the part of us that's the hardest to control. It's almost impossible to do. So that's, and what we'd see is stress marks, stress lines across the forehead. If he was stressed, he didn't show a drop of stress at all about anything. The only time I've seen anything like that was similar was with Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed Kennedy. He didn't show any stress when he was on camera either. So his his blink rate was super slow. Okay. So that says, okay, wait a minute,

there may be something going on there, or as far as stress goes inside that he's trying to hold back, or he could be staring out at what's going on, trying to emotionally disconnect from the situation. But I don't think there's a lot of connection there to start with. Like he sounds fully aware. I think he just wasn't able like mentally to connect to the gravity of what's going on. You know what I compare it to? And I want everybody to jump in, Karen, Chris, Bill, Nicole, and Dr. Kendall Crowns, coming right back to you. He would not look at the victim's families sitting in the courtroom, some of them anyway.

And I remember, in my own experience, coming down off the witness stand in my fiance's murder trial, and I looked at the defense attorneys, and they all looked down. I looked at the defendant, and he looked down. I find that significant. What about it, Chris McDonough? You've seen plenty of homicide defendants. Nancy, so my take on him in relationship to that is, again, remember the victims are here. That again, I read that as, you know, well, they're mine.

I control the whole scenario here. I control that before it happened. I control that when it happened. And now I'm going to control it after it happened. And so by him not acknowledging it, it's almost remember these guys and the doc can break into this much deeper. These guys do these things at night because deep down inside, it's this idea that says I am nothing. Joe, remember if you pull that mask off, everybody goes, that's the guy. And you know what? That guy's really weird. And he's been weird, blah, blah, blah. And you go back and look in their history and sure enough, they were. And we start seeing evidence of that just on with this guy, you know, the Tinder dates and we can

keep going on. But what he's doing there is telling that family, no, they belong to me. I'm in control here and I'm not going to let you in. You know, I'm just thinking through everything that happened. Bill Daley joining me, former FBI investigator, forensic photography and security expert. Did you notice he trained his eyes on his lawyer and the defense table and would not look at the victim's families at all? Yeah, absolutely. Nancy, what they were all getting around here to is that he's emotionally vacant. And even during the car stops, we saw the body cam footage and all the way through,

he just has this kind of vacant look on his face. But I think it actually goes a bit more deeper than that. I think as he's standing there and not willing to say, to put it forward, a plea of not guilty, he's already thinking down the road as to how he's going to try to unravel the prosecution's purpose of going forward with forensic evidence. I think he's looking already, and I imagine what we're going to see him be very active with his attorney in trying to pull apart piece by piece the forensic evidence, whether it's chain of custody, like we saw in the O.J. Simpson trial, or whether it's, you know, through questionable laboratory techniques. They're going to try to suppress as much as he can. And I think that's where he already is. I think he's already down the road trying to outsmart the court, outsmart the prosecution. To Dr. Kendall Crowns, chief medical examiner, Tarrant County, that's Fort Worth, lecturer,

University of Texas, Austin, TCU Medical School. Dr. Kendall Crowns, the one thing he did not want to hear about at all is what happened to these victims. Before we close today, I don't want our discussion to be just about strategy, technique. Could you please explain what happened to these four victims. So all the individuals were stabbed multiple times with a K-bar type knife, and that's the type knife that the Marine Corps has issued. So it's a relatively large kind of hunting knife, but used for hand-to-hand combat. They were all stabbed multiple times about their bodies. Evidently larger gaping wounds, so there's probably a fair amount of movement in the stab wounds as well. So I would think that they each individually were probably over

stabbed more than once because usually in these situations it's hard to just stab a person one time and have them drop dead like it happens with a gunshot wound. So usually the individuals are stabbed multiple times and there's defensive wounds as they're trying to stop you from stabbing them and all they have to defend themselves is their arms and hands. So often there's mutilating injuries of the hands where even fingers are hacked off because you're grabbing at the knife trying to stop it. So I would assume that these individuals have those wounds as well.

So they're probably, as a group, all of them have multiple stab wounds with a combination of defensive type injuries and then mutilating injuries as well. What did you mean when you said movement within the stab wounds? So there's a couple things. injuries and then mutilating injuries as well. What did you mean when you said movement within the stab wounds? So there's a couple things. You're not going to just stand there and be stabbed, right? You're going to try and get away from them, pull away. When the knife enters your

body, it's painful. So you'll twist and turn, and then that can cause a change in the shape of the wound itself. And also, sometimes with individuals, when they stab you, they will actually put the knife in and then pull it as hard as they can in one direction or another to make the injury even more devastating and make the wound bigger. I'm just thinking back to the night that these four students were murdered, stabbed over and over and over, the way our medical examiner, Dr. Kendall Crowns, is describing. And then this guy comes into court and refuses to enter a plea. We wait as justice unfolds.

Goodbye, friend.