Law&Crime Sidebar - Idaho Student Murders Author Claims Bryan Kohberger Targeted One Victim

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Award-winning author Howard Blum just released a new book examining the deaths of four University of Idaho students and the eventual arrest of Bryan Kohberger. Blum claims Kohberger specifically targeted one of the victims living at the off-campus home in 2022. The victim's family is calling his claim "fiction." As Kohberger’s defense team and Latah County prosecutors prepare for trial, Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber sits down with Blum to discuss the book’s release and analyze the author’s theories about the brutal stabbings.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lcsidebarLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. There have been several theories as to what exactly happened the night four University of Idaho students were massacred. While journalist Howard Blum has a new book about the killings and accused murderer Brian Koberger that he believes can provide some answers as to why and how this all happened. And he joins us to discuss. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

One of the most mysterious elements to the Idaho four killings is the why. Why would Brian Coburger, the former Washington State University grad student, who was arrested six weeks after the brutal stabbing of University of Idaho students, Madison Mogan, Kela Gonzalez, Zana Kernodal, Ethan Chapin. why would he do this, as prosecutors allege? Why would a complete stranger murder four people in cold blood back in November of 2022? We don't have a trial date set. We don't know exactly how prosecutors are going to lay out the story.

We do know there's quite a bit of evidence that prosecutors plan to use to prove that Brian Kovberger is the killer, DNA, surveillance footage, cell phone data, potential eyewitness. But again, why? Well, there is a new book that has come out, and it is by best-selling author Howard Blum that explores some of these questions, and it offers a potential explanation for what happened. It's called When the Night Comes Falling, A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders. And Howard Blum joins me right now. Good to see you, sir.

Thank you so much for coming on. So here's the book. It just came out, what, today? Yesterday, today, okay. Oh, yesterday, yesterday. So here's the question I have for you. everybody's been fascinated about this case. I'm not surprised you wrote a book about it because people are fascinated about it,

but how did you get involved in studying what happened here? It happened really by accident. Two years ago, we were sitting around the Thanksgiving table. We had finished discussing politics, family matters. That's dangerous, but yeah. And the talk turned to this perplexing murder that just occurred in Idaho about a week earlier. So I hadn't been following the case then, but all weekend just sort of stayed in my mind. And I texted Graydon Carter, who ran Air Mail magazine, and Graydon said, sure, go on out for us.

We'll pay your bills. I went out there, not really just to report in it, but I thought I'd been a former Times reporter, put on my trench coat. I go out there and I'll try to solve the case. Because no one had gotten to the bottom of things. So I get there. I'm there for like a couple of days, and I figure, well, I've got this figured out because the house is sort of in a gully. There's houses around it.

I would figure someone from one of those houses, one of the areas, would see these kids. They're full of the bullions, exuberance, beauty, and he'd feel on the outside of things, and that would have sent him sort of ragefully. So before we even get into the theories that you lay out in the book, which I find are fascinating, I think a big question is, and I was surprised by it too, why publish a book about this before the trial? It's a very good question, something I gave a lot of thought to. What I've done, and this is my 16th book, I was a reporter at the New York Times, I wrote for Vanity Fair as a contributor to an editor for a lot of years, and what I do is I tell true stories, but I tell stories.

And I think this is an important story with a beginning, a middle, and an end right now. The subtitle of the book is The Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders, and it's a story that's supposed to be a loving remembrance of these children who's lost their lives. It's also a police thriller in many ways, a procedural of how the police caught this man, and it's really an answer to a puzzle of what happened. And I'm able to tell it really as a cross-country journey that the father and son take, and this journey where I was able to get some new information, I lay out a story that aspires to be a narrative that people can enjoy. So I thought now is the time to write about it.

Let's talk about that puzzle. So one of the big pieces of this book is you have a theory as to why if Brian Koberger really did do this, who he was targeting. What can you tell us about that? First, you know, emphasize what you said. It's my theory, my suspicion. The prosecution and defense, one of the few things they agree on. is that there is never, never any interaction between Koeberger, either in person or on social media with any of the victims. I say that's perhaps not so true. If one looks at the course of what happened that night, Kohlberger enters the house on the second floor through the kitchen sliding door. There are two bedrooms right adjacent to the kitchen.

He could have gone into either of those bedrooms. Instead, he pursues as if a man on the mission up a narrow stage, case and goes into Maddie Mogan's bedroom. He finds inside that bedroom not just Maddie but Kaylee. He had really no idea that Kaylee was there. She's not really living in the house anymore. She's up in North in Cordillin. She's getting ready to graduate and she's doing an internship there.

So I believe that he had one point in the Mad Greek restaurant where he would go for, which is in downtown Moscow, he goes there for vegan food. We met Maddie, didn't even have to talk with her. He was a man who was prone to obsessions, his heroin addiction, his decision to lose 125 pounds, his decision to go from a low-ranking community college to a top-ranking graduate school in criminology, he threw himself into things. And for some reason, her beauty, her exuberance, her vitality, her blondeness even, that attracted Brian Kohlberg, I believe.

You know, a killer needs two things, someone to love and someone to hate. And either he loved the image that she projected so much and hated himself for being on the outside of it, or he hated her and felt she was a constant rebuke to everything that he was trying to become. Why do you say that? Because first of all, to back up and to be clear, you're not suggesting that anybody who has some sort of drug addiction will have an obsession with a person, right? They might have an addiction to a drug.

I mean they're obsessed with, there's something specific about, something about Koeberger. An obsessive personality. Okay. I think you can see a pattern of a personality that falls into obsessive beliefs, obsessive behavior. And that's been the story of his life. And for whatever reason, and, you know, I wish I could speak with him. Have you tried?

I've tried everything. It's pretty hard to get to Brian Kovberger right now. Well, this is legal cases going on. And I don't think he's allowed to by the gag order. Right, right. That's another problem with this case. To digress for a second, this gag order is so restrictive that it's allowed anyone with any knowledge to speak on the record. Anyone I spoke to, I had to speak to off the record.

And in this vacuum of authoritative comments on the case, the vacuum is filled with half-truths, lies, innuendos and outright vicious accusations that filled the internet. You talk to, there's a part of your book where you talk about the idea of that night in question. And a lot of piece of the evidence is that he had been allegedly circling that area multiple times. Now some would say he was stalking it, trying to scope it out. You have a different explanation for what might have been happening there. I believe that he was not stalking the area. If he was stalking the area, he would have seen all the cars in the driveway.

He would have seen the door dash delivery of 4 a.m. And that would have deterred him if he was out to make the perfect crime, he would have thought twice about it. What was going on in the person driving the white car's mind, I believe. And again, this is my supposition. He was trying to find the will, trying to cross over from the world he was living into this manicurricular. state where he could have the power to kill to take someone's life. And he was trying to escape from it. He was trying to, every time he drove away, he was hoping I can get away from this.

But like a magnet, these demons pulled him back and he ultimately could not escape. And when the car stops at the top of the hill and he turns off the ignition, the killer, I think it took the strength of Hercules for the killer to do that and then make up his mind. Then he was committed to these murders. So just to clarify that point, you don't think he set out that night, left his campus, left where he was living, to go murder somebody. Would that be fair to say? No, I think, or was he, he was, he was, his mindset was, he was ready to murder,

but as soon as he got there, he was, he tried to pull back. And he tried to pull back not once, not twice, but three times. For all we know, there might have been another night when he tried to commit this. crime too and was successfully able to pull back in other words and by the way this is we're speculating here we have to be clear yes but the evidence that he had been in that area multiple times before you suggest that that could have been opportunities that he was looking to strike earlier yes or trying to come to turns with this or what I think part of it was he was on the periphery of these events and he was looking into

everything was happening at that party house I think that that and you believe that based on his background he was on the outside looking Yes. And also, you know, in Pennsylvania, where he grew up, he was always on the periphery events with women and events there. I talk about in the book about a pool party he goes to when he first gets to Washington State University in Moscow. And he's sitting there and he's looking good on the steps of the pool. He's now worked out. He's made his body a fortress. And he's talking up to people. And he suddenly breaks away. and goes to two women in black two-piece bathing suits. And he gets their numbers. He gets one, and then he gets the other. And then as immediately after that, he makes this connection. He disappears.

He leaves the party. I spoke with the women, and he never called them. He never called them. However, in the aftermath of events, they've now come to believe that perhaps the hang-up calls they started getting in the aftermath of the party were from Kohlberger. And again, he just could not make the next step to become the man or the person that he wanted to be. My voice is cracking. Let me see.

Grab a water real quick. All right, here we go. It's to say the least. say the least. The world's a scary place. And the truth is, one of the scariest things that can happen to you in life is if you get injured. But that is why I want to talk to you about our sponsor, Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. This is a firm that has secured multi-million dollar verdicts, verdicts, verdicts. I'm going to get it. I got one down. I'm going to, The Night of the Killing, you talk about how, and again, assuming that Brian Koeberger did this,

that's the allegation. He goes in the house, goes upstairs, kills Madison Mogan, kills Kaylee Gonzalez is in the room. Explain to us why he would feel the need to go downstairs and kill Zana and Ethan. Well, he has to go down the stairs first to get out of the house. That's where the door is from the kitchen, the second floor. And I think Zana was up. I mean, we hear her saying, according to the testimony from Dylan Mortensen, there's someone here. And so she's up. I think Ethan then goes to, he was killed first from what I've been able to discover.

He goes to confront him. And Ethan is a six foot four. He's an athlete, a basketball player, a soccer player. And yet the suspect or the assailant, whoever it is, kills him with really basically one knife slash to the neck. And as Ethan is laying there, Zana is now crying. He moves forward the killer. And he says, and this, according to Dylan Mortensen, it's okay. Everything's going to be okay.

I won't hurt you. And, of course, he then proceeds to kill her. The attack is so vicious, she holds up her hand at one point. The knife goes right through her tendon, right through the hand. And these two people and Kaylee upstairs, I believe, are unfortunately grimly collateral damage. He then leaves and then becomes the famous or infamous incident where Dylan Mortensen emerges from her room and sees him. And she's in, as she describes it, a frozen state of shock. At this point, the killer is locked in his own sort of.

of mania, his own armory of hate, if you will. And I don't think he's even aware of her presence. If she had spoken up, if she had said one word, if she had screamed in terror, I think he would have then attacked her too. And I think it was her silence that saved her life. You're saying you don't believe he even saw that she was there? I had, he had no realization. She could have been as close as you and I are right now, but he just walked by.

He was locked in his own tight world. He had just crossed over into all the dreams he was having into the world of becoming a killer. One of the big questions is, why would the knife sheafed be left there? So do you believe it was in a state of panic, assuming that he did this, presuming that he did this, that he just didn't think about what he left behind? Because, again, a lot of talk has been, he's a criminology student, he's trying to commit the perfect crime. How could he make a mistake like that? I think, first he's shocked to find Kaylee in the room.

And then Kelly, even though she's wounded, gets up from the bed, her body is found, wedged the far corner of the room. The bed occupies most of the room, and she's also fighting him back in this corner. And he hadn't anticipated they would have to kill someone else. And in that battle, in that confusion, because she's fighting valiantly. He just left the knife sheath behind. All his plans just fell apart. You know, like Mike Tyson says, once the first punch is thrown, all plans go out the window. You write that you believe Coburger's family may have had a feeling he was the killer?

Yes. The book, as I said before, is structured on this cross-country trip where Kohlberger is sitting with his father. They're as close as you and I are right now. They're in a white Hyundai. Just so happens that the police have made it clear they're looking for a white Hyundai. The killings the father knows were about 10 miles away from where his son is living. He knows his son has had a history of psychological problems. At one point when his son is a heroin addict,

the father even has to report him to the police for stealing the sister's iPhone. And so the father goes out there and immediately takes the son's temperature, emotional temperature. And the son is in one of his states. This is how it's explained to me. He can be arrogant, dismissive. And the father's usual reaction to that is, okay, take a step back. But as they're going in the car, there's conversation. And one of the key conversations, according to the reporting I had,

is the son complaining about how he's being treated at Washington State University. How the professors have it in for him. The students just want lenient grading. They don't want to live up to his standards, and he's being victimized because he doesn't want to molly coddle these students. But he tells the father, don't worry, I'm going to be able to argue my case. They might try to dismiss me, but I will prevail in the end. And as the father is listening to all this, is a key event that makes his, I believe, his thoughts come together with sort of a shock of recognition. That morning, as they're driving across country, there's a shooting at Washington State University,

a former Army veteran who's living in student housing, off student, graduate housing with two students, takes him captive. He has a mental breakdown. The police have to come in, a SWAT team, and he's killed. This Army veteran, unfortunately, is killed. The father, when he stopped by the traffic cops, that's the first thing the father talks about. That's immediately on his mind. It has no connection to any events, but to the father, it's sort of a, the culmination

of all the benevolent forces that are at loose in Washington State, in the world his son is living in. And slowly but surely as his journey goes across America, the father is realizing that, my God, my son might actually be guilty. And yet the father still can't quite make that step to even declare, or or say anything about it to his son. What about the rest of the family? When they get to Pennsylvania and it's Christmas time

and he has two sisters in their home, one of the sisters is a psychologist, a family psychologist. And she sees her brother, who she's known has had a history of psychological problems, has a temper. It can be sometimes rageful, he can be dismissive, he can be arrogant. And he's also living in the town 10 miles from where the murders took place. She knows she's read the papers. The police are looking for white Hyundai Alontera. There's a

white Hyundai Alontera in the garage. And there's the brother meticulously cleaning and vacuuming the white Hyundai Alantra. And if that isn't an alarm enough, she goes down in the evening and there's the brother sorting through his garbage for the day, his personal belongings, putting them into Ziploc bags, and then carrying them out to a neighbor's garbage can, which would give anyone pause, but I think she's intelligent enough and clearly to put two and two together and get a conclusion that, you know, something's not right here. So she confronts the father, and she says, in effect, Dad, I think we've got a situation here. And what does the father do?

He sort of stares at her in a stony silence, and then he just leaves the room. He can't make that leap. He can't articulate all he's feeling about the possibility that his son might indeed be murdered four people. So, Howard, that is a, that's a chilling account. And I think it's fascinating what you're describing. There are people who are going to watch this, and there's people who are going to listen to this and say, how does he know that happen? How does he know what he's talking about?

So how do, you know, Howard Blum, great author, great journalist, I understand, but why would you have more information about this? How would you know these things as opposed to somebody else when people want to pick up the book? I mean, it's a very valid question and it's a question that's particularly hard to give specific answer to name names because of the gag order. But when I went out there, it was, as I explained before, it was just the days after the murder. And there was no gag order in effect.

And I was able to talk to people in law enforcement, talk to people in the town, talk to people who knew the people in law enforcement, and I was able to make some connections. And then I also went out to Pennsylvania, spent a good deal of time in Pennsylvania. And what I tried to do to get to the bottom of things is I took a lesson from the FBI. When the FBI builds this case, they use investigative genetic genealogy. And that's really sort of, they build family clusters, sort of like the beginning of in Genesis in the Bible, the begets, the begets, the begats, and so they worked their way up this family tree to the farthest branch, which is Brian Coburger.

So I started doing that in reverse. I couldn't talk to the people at the far end of the family tree, but I was able to talk to relatives farther back who had interactions with family members, with attorneys, whatever, and they were able to describe these scenes to me. And, you know, would I like to have their names on the record? I sure would, but I thought being able to get this story was important enough that I had to go with what I had. And, you know, as a Times reporter, you use your career,

you measure it out in confidential sources. Did you get an opportunity, and I know you might be limited, did you get an opportunity to speak to the victim's families during the course of this? I'm sort of, I can't really, I don't want to go into who my specific sources are. You know, the beginning of the book and note to the reader, I had an old city editor at the New York Times was sort of a mentor to me, Sid Schamburg,

who had won a Pulitzer Prize for Cambodia, The Killing Fields, a movie was made about his life. And I was once caught up in a Times story in the South Bronx where I was just getting nowhere, getting nowhere. It was involved 38 murders and a drug ring. Sid said, don't worry, people talk. You keep on knocking on enough doors, people talk. And I sort of took that as my guide. I remember what Sid said as I went around and eventually people did talk and I was able to put together what I think is what really happened and also is, I hope, a suspenseful narrative. And let me ask you this. Do you think that the prosecution is going to present this case in a very similar way to the way that you laid it out?

because, again, with the gag order, we don't really know what they're going to present. We know pieces of evidence. They talked about how they're not going to say that Brian Koberger was, like you said, stalking the victims on social media. But do you think that they're going to present a narrative at a trial whenever that happens in a way similar to the way you just laid it out? I think the prosecution wrongly, I think, is going to rely a great deal on the technical evidence. and I think that's a mistake. At least, I'm a layman. No, I agree.

Look, from a legal point of you, I'll throw it back to you, they don't have to prove a motive in order to prove the crime, but to sell a story like this to a jury where a complete stranger murders four people in cold blood, you need it. You need it to tell the story. I mean, the dialectics of a courtroom, as you get one authority says that this science works in genetic genealogy,

you can find another authority. he'll say, well, it's junk science, and then the jury is left to decide which one is true. You also mentioned the jury, and I think the jury element is pretty important in this trial, and I think the defense is doing themselves harm by trying to move the trial out of Moscow. I was going to ask you that. You believe so, because their argument is he can't get a fair and impartial jury. They did a number of surveys where they asked maybe a little too specific questions. about this case, but they feel that that jury pool's already tainted. They're already biased against Brian Koeberger.

You disagree? I do disagree. I think the last thing Brian Kovberger really wants, if I were representing him, is a fair trial because I think he's going to have big problems. I think he needs to get a favorable jury, and I think he can get a favorable jury in Moscow. What do I mean by that? Well, it's a town of about 25,000 people. anyone associated with the university

might be not allowed to serve on the university so that leaves what is the largest group then what's the largest church group and that is Pastor Wilson's Kirker Church the Christ Church there and that is this Christian right-wing community that wants to

as they put it set up a theocracy that's his word in Moscow and in the West where Moscow will be the capital of it. And I've sat with him and he's told me, I will recommend to anyone in my church that you have to think twice if a Moscow policeman is on the stand telling you that this person is guilty. That's so interesting perspective on it.

Think about the church component. I know we have to let you go, but my final question to you about this is your thoughts on the fact that we're not at trial, right? So a lot of us thought that we might have a trial in 2024. Now it's a question if we'll have it in 2025 and when. There's been a lot of legal issues that have pushed it off. What's your thoughts on the fact that this hasn't gone to trial yet?

There's an old lawyer's wisdom, which I'm sure you've heard. When you have the facts, you pound them. When you don't have the facts, you pound the table. And the defense has been pounding the table with every motion they can find to, I believe, delay things. If they really believed, even though they've said it time after time that they think that Brian Koberger is innocent, well, I'd want to get him into the courtroom. I'd want to proclaim it from the rooftops. I'd want to get him out of the jail.

And I'd want to have the authorities looking for the person who is guilty of this crime. But their only strategy at this point really is to delay. The alibi that took them two years to come up with is, to me, very thin gruel, that he was out at 4 a.m. in the precise hours in a wilderness park looking at the stars at a frigid night. I don't buy that. So I think this delay is really not fair to the community. It's not fair to the families, and it's really not fair to the memory of the victims. I have a Washington Post editorial op-ed today that runs where I discuss all this, but I think it's a travesty of justice.

Well, I encourage everybody to read that article. I encourage everybody to read your book again. When the night comes falling, a requiem for the Idaho student murders. Howard Blummetz have been such a pleasure talking. I really enjoyed it. And we will see what ends up happening. But thank you so much for coming on. Pleasure.

All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.