Law&Crime Sidebar - Idaho Murders: 6 Key Revelations from Bryan Kohberger’s Unsealed Warrants

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Authorities have unsealed Idaho murders suspect Bryan Koherger’s warrants detailing what led up to the accused killer’s arrest and what potential evidence investigators looked for after arresting him. Kohberger faces four counts of murder for allegedly stabbing four University of Idaho students to death at their college home in November. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy breaks down six key revelations from the warrants with legendary homicide detective Fil Waters.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Dozens of search warrants issued in the Idaho 4 murder investigation and many remain sealed, but there are some clues about what detectives are trying to find. I've covered a lot of crime stories over the years. Many of them here at law and crime. And it really makes me think about how important it is to stay safe. One thing that can help you do that is this. It's palm pepper spray. It's a small but mighty self-defense tool. Palm pepper spray shoots up to 12 feet directly in front of you. And it uses the safest legal form of pepper spray available. It's safe and easy. You just point it and spray. And if you want to

try it, you can actually get 10% off. Just log on to Palm Pepper. spray.com and put in the promo code law crime 10. Again, go to palm pepper spray.com. That promo code is law crime 10. And remember, as always, if you or someone else is in danger, call 911. It's been five months since Kaylee Gonzalez, Maddie Mogan, Zana Kurnodal, and Ethan Chapin were all stabbed to death in their home off campus near the University of Idaho in Moscow. And there's still so much we don't know about what happened that night. Brian Koberger is charged with the murders, and he will be back in court at the end of June for a preliminary hearing. There have been dozens of search warrants issued in this case, but Judge Megan Marshall, who's presiding over the

case at this point in time, on her own motion has ordered that many of these documents remain sealed. Joining me to discuss the search warrants that we know about in this case is Phil Waters. He's a legendary homicide detective. He was with the Houston Police Department investigating high-profile homicides for more than 33 years, also the founder of Kindred Spirits investigations. Phil, welcome back to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Anginez. Good to be back with you. Good to be back with you, too. Phil, there is a lot of paperwork here. It's hundreds and hundreds of pages. Why do the affidavits for these search warrants? When we already have a suspect in custody, we know the manner of death, sadly was stabbing in this case. Why is all of this stuff still sealed? We know that the affidavits

often contain a lot of really interesting information that can give you some insight into the crime or at least what the investigators are thinking. Well, they may be remaining sealed by the judge's order or it may be because there are individuals that are named within the affidavits of the search warrants that the officials do not want to have released at this point in time. So there's a variety of reasons why they may keep those things sealed and they'll open them up at the appropriate time in course of the continuing investigation. And that would be my take on most of that. So it's not surprising that there have been search warrants issued to a number of social media companies. Also, a number of search warrants issued regarding the K-bar knife. We know from the

affidavit for the charging documents in this case, charging Brian Koberger with the murders, that a K-bar knife sheath was found next to the body of Maddie Mogan. And they issued the search warrants to Amazon, Walmart, K-bar knives directly in Olean, New York for any information about sales of these K-bar knives. So it sounds like almost these are so common, Phil, that it might be difficult to pinpoint who bought the knife when and then used it in a homicide. I mean, you might get when they bought it, but who exactly used it is going to be the question. So are they going to maybe find Brian Kroberger's name in one of these records as somebody who purchased one of these knives? Well, that's the hope. And you're right. K-bar knives can be purchased in a number of places.

There have been, I think they have found every possible supplier of a K-bar knife and issued search warrants. And we know that, of course, I won't refer to him by name, but we know that the defendant at this point in time is a digital, he's a geek. He's one of those guys. And so he's, you would think that he is well adept. to trying to find a way to make those purchases if he did them online and kind of keep them covered up. And on the other hand, he may have found a source for that knife and went in and paid cash for it. And there is no digital footprint anywhere. And they were asking for several models of Kbar knives and also Blue Ridge knives. I thought that was interesting. So maybe at the time that these warrants were issued because they were asking for sale information from January 2022 to November of

22, that's an 11-month period. Maybe they didn't know the exact knife that was used, or maybe they suspected, is it possible they suspected more than one knife was used? And maybe it was just of the same brand, but maybe not necessarily the same model. Well, that's certainly the possibility. But the, the sheath that he left behind is distinguishable to a particular, more the traditional type, K-bar that's on the K-bar website. And if you go to the K-bar website, there are so many different versions of the K-bar knife. But that particular, sheath seems to point in one direction. Now, these other knife brands, I don't know. I don't recall if they named the type of knives that were found at the parents' home, but those may be the brands for those knives. And so they're just doing their due diligence here. They're going to go out and they're going to ask for any information regarding the purchase of those particular types of knives. And it may be that he made those purchases at around the same time. So you kind of have a pattern of behavior here in regards to the knives. Let's move on now to dating apps.

There was a search warrant served on Match Group, which owns Tinder, and Tinder is a popular dating app. A lot of people use this, apparently younger people for networking, not necessarily dating per se, but it requested all subscriber information for 19 different accounts, and these names of these accounts, it's redacted in the documents. So we don't know the names, but they want it from a specific time period. period from November 3rd to present. So this was redacted. I guess they said it contained intimate personal details. What's the point in keeping this redacted if we just want to know who's

dating app information they requested? Well, that's all about protecting those individuals whose accounts they're trying to pull from, draw from. And again, we're trying to establish a pattern of behavior here. We want to see the detectives want to see what was this defendant, what was he doing at the time after the murders? What was his pattern of behavior within these accounts? Who was he contacting? Who was responding to him? What was the nature of those discussions? And so I fully understand why they're wanting to protect the people that are only named in those search warrants because they happen to be in association with him at the time. So it's a matter of just a privacy. This was another interesting one to me too, Phil, because Reddit is that

message board. It's a huge website that a lot of people have accounts on. I have one. Brian Coburger had one for his criminology work. You know, he had posted information requesting people submit information for a survey, but this requested information specifically for Kaylee Gonzalez's account and information regarding it from January to the time of the murders. So is it possible they suspect she was communicating with somebody on Reddit or somebody may have been trying to communicate with her. Well, I think that's a, that is a, that's one of those big moments. Certainly, if we've got any, if we have any communication between Kaylee, and I call them the evil doer, so if we have any, any, any, any, any communication between those two individuals prior to, certainly that's going to be huge. So I think

from the beginning, there's been an indication that there, there was some kind of a relationship between, between the evildoer and someone in that house. And I think it was, of course, people are speculating, speculating. But if Kaylee seems to be coming up on the radar, it would appear that, and we don't know what moniker that he was using. He may not have been using his name. He may have been using some other type of a name to communicate with her and posing as someone.

And so that made her feel comfortable with this free, if there is, a free exchange of information. on those particular apps. So, yeah, I think that's a, they're trying to, you know, what they're trying to do here is uncover every stone, and they're trying to turn them all over and see what the association was with him and those four young people and specific to maybe one person in that house before this event occurred, which is going to establish more affirmative links to put him in that house or around it.

And it's great, great circumstantial evidence surrounding this case. I think they're going to come up with maybe better circumstantial evidence that I've seen in cases that had direct evidence. So I think they're going down the right road, certainly, and they're not leaving any stone unturned. Interesting. And it's interesting, too, because Kaley's family said, their attorney told me and some other people that they haven't found any connection between Kaley and Brian Koberger, but they have to look. You know, I guess they have to look everywhere to see if there ever was any contact between any of them. Right. Well, they may not know that. But like I just said, we don't know what name he was using or what, you know, he was using on those online apps.

So he may have been communicating with them and they don't know. I mean, that's reasonable to say that. But it'll all get revealed here when we get the information back as a result of the search warrants. I thought this next one was really interesting, Phil. They sent a search warrant to DoorDash. We know that Zana Kurnodal got a DoorDash delivery on the night of the murders around 4 a.m. I should say the early morning hours. And sadly, we know that she was murdered a short time later.

She had been eating this DoorDash delivery. And they looked for and they saw it. The police did all of the deliveries to that King Road house for that year. Why would that be important in the investigation? Well, it shows a pattern of behavior for the people living in the house. And is this something that was commonplace? Was this a common activity? at four in the morning after being out all night long and so forth and so on was this kind of a pattern

of the folks in the house that they order from jordash so i don't i think they're what i know what they're trying to do is just establish patterns of behavior not only with him but with the victims so we want to find out what their common practice was and if this was one of those things then the jor dash food delivery at that time of the morning may have been just something that happened it wasn't anything that was part of the bigger scheme in terms of the evil doer and what he did. And finally, there were search warrants served on the Cordillane Police Department and Moscow Police Department forensic labs. That piqued my interest.

So why would the police serve a search warrant on a lab at a police department? Well, there's going to be digital information at those labs, whether they're cell phones, laptops, hard drives, whatever they may be. And even though they have a search warrant that sees them. that evidence, they have to get a separate search warrant to get into those particular digital devices. And it's, they could have, a couple of ways they could have done it. They could have done it by consent. They could have done it because the phones were abandoned in some form and they wouldn't necessarily need a search warrant. I know in Texas that under those circumstances, you don't need a

search warrant. But the, my food, it's always been the thought that if you have time to get a search warrant, get the search warrant. So that's what they're doing here. They don't want any issues coming up in later prosecution where the defense attempts to suppress the digital evidence that's retrieved out of these recovered from these digital devices. So it does take two separate search warrants to get the device and then get the information off the device. Well, Phil Waters, veteran homicide detective, extraordinaire. Thanks so much for joining us to talk about what we could talk about regarding what was in these documents. A lot of it still sealed, which is a little frustrating, but we appreciate your time nonetheless. Oh, thank you for having me back.

And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcasts. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Janette Levy, and we will see you next time. You can binge all episodes of this Law and Crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.