Law&Crime Sidebar - Idaho Student Murders: Bryan Kohberger and The Strength of DNA Evidence

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Attorneys for Bryan Kohberger are preparing for a lengthy trial, as their client stands accused of slaughtering four University of Idaho students in their beds. One of the most critical pieces of evidence against Kohberger is DNA allegedly found on a knife sheath at the scene. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber debates the strength of that evidence with criminal defense attorney Andrea Burkhart. PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:To learn more about the Genetic Witness Program and how to join GEDmatch, head over to www.gedmatch.com/Sidebar!Go to https://zbiotics.com/SIDEBAR to get 15% off your first order when you use SIDEBAR at checkout. You can also sign up for a subscription using my code - so you can stay prepared no matter the time or occasion. ZBiotics is backed with 100% money-back guarantee so if you’re unsatisfied for any reason, they’ll refund your money, no questions asked.HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo 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.

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Vicka Barlow has a lot of training in DNA. She does a lot of teaching on DNA as well. It's not a simple little process and they'll describe what kinds of materials we should have and discover. There has been some back and forth regarding how strong the evidence is against Brian Koberger, the man accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death.

It's time to debate it with criminal defense attorney, Andrea Burkhart. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Brian Koberger, Washington State University grad student accused of murdering four University of Idaho students. Is he going to be found guilty? It's an interesting question. If we go back on November 13, 2022,

Ethan Chapin, Zana Kurnodal, Kali Gonzalez, Madison Mogan, they were all found stabbed to death inside of a large off-campus rental house at the University of Idaho. There was a massive police investigation as basically the entire Moscow police department started looking for who did this.

And after about six weeks after the murders, police arrested 28-year-old Washington State University doctoral student Brian Coburger at his parents' home in Pennsylvania where he was spending Christmas break. They extradited him back to Idaho, charged him with four counts of first-degree murder, one count of burglary, grand jury indicted him. They looked through all the evidence, and the state announced that it will seek the death penalty against Coburger. And while the trial date hasn't been said, we are moving towards an actual trial, closer to it now than we were. In fact, we did learn that the judge overseeing this case has now ordered that court proceedings will be live stream on the court's YouTube channel.

So while the media won't be operating the camera or taking photographs, we the public will still see this trial and have access to the proceedings. It's just under the control of the court. So with all of that, and we will presumably see all the witnesses and exhibits and so forth, how strong is the evidence against Brian Koeberger? Well, I will tell you, in my opinion, I think this is a great case for prosecutors. I've thought that for a while. My next guest, though, maybe disagrees with me.

And she has been kind enough to challenge me on some of this evidence. And I am joined right now by criminal defense attorney, Andrea Burkhart. You can check out her YouTube page at Burkhart Law. That's at, excuse me, at a Burkhart Law. Her Twitter handle or X handle is the same thing. And she joins us now. Andrea, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. Well, I think the first thing that we can all agree on, whether or not there are those

who believe there's enough evidence to convict Brian Coburg or not, it is great that this is going to be televised in some form. It may not be great for the media, but it is great for the public in general that we are going to have some transparency and see these proceedings, right? 100%. Transparency in the court process is so essential. not just for folks to understand what is happening and why, but to be able to evaluate whether it's working correctly. It's an important feature of our Democratic government

that the public be informed. So the fact that the judge recognizes the need for the public to see this trial for themselves is very heartening to me. I was nervous that we were going to have a Lori Valo-Debel situation where in that case, in Idaho, it was just audio only. I felt we lost something. You can't see the witness. is you can't see the reaction but listen we got something and something is better than nothing but

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link in the description. All right, let's go through the evidence. Now, I want to start with what I think is arguably the strongest piece of evidence, the DNA. And there has been some discussion recently. If the DNA evidence alone would be enough to convict Brian Koeberger, I am of the opinion that it could certainly be enough. Now, I want to give a little background about it. So we know that authorities were able to make a familial match from the DNA on a knife Sheath found at the crime scene to Coburger's father, and they did this by collecting trash from outside the Coburger home in Pennsylvania. And then after Coburger was arrested, authorities took a cheek swab from him, and court documents reveal that the DNA recovered from the sheath

is an almost identical match to Coburger. What do you think, Andrea? Yeah, so the DNA evidence, you've described it as strong. I would describe it as really the lynchpin of the state's case, because if this DNA evidence does not stand, in my opinion, the case does not stand. So it's really the only hope that they have to get a conviction here. So you've described it as strong evidence. What we know about the DNA is that it appears to be what we call trace evidence, meaning this doesn't come directly from a body fluid like a blood or something like that that can help explain how that DNA got onto that knife sheath.

Instead, it is simply a small amount of what is likely, DNA associated with skin cells or sometimes there's not even any cellular material at all. It's simply free-floating DNA. And so what we know now is that this type of DNA is very easily transferred, not just from person to object, but from person to person to person, person to object, person to person to person. So there have been numerous instances of cases where false convictions have occurred due to reliance on this type of evidence. The most prominent one is a gentleman named Lucas Anderson, who, as it turned out, his DNA was found underneath the fingernails of a murder victim, and the defense was subsequently later able

to tie that to his having been treated by paramedics, first responders, shortly before they then responded to the crime scene and handled this body. Okay, I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm glad you mentioned that. That I could understand how's explainable. Out of all places for the DNA to be, and I hear what you're saying about the difference between skin cells and blood.

Out of all places, it's not found on a doorknob. It's not found on the carpet. It is found on a knife sheath, the very item that was housing the potential murder weapon. How on earth would that be there first? Well, as I've indicated, there are multiple ways that it can end there. It could be direct touch, but it's not required to be direct touch. It could be somebody shook Brian Koberger's hand the night before and then touched this knife blade.

That type of thing has been established to lead to the transfer of a trace DNA like this. It can simply be talking, having a conversation at a room, not touching anything at all. your DNA can end up in measurable amounts on items like this. And part of that is because the technology itself is so sensitive now that we can pick up minute traces of DNA beyond the amounts that you would expect to have from, again, something like blood or a direct deposit like that. That would mean he would have to have had some sort of connection to the victims to someone in that house, someone who have touched that knife sheet. That knife sheet, by all accounts wasn't there before those kids went to bed that night.

It was placed there. Where else would it have come from? Someone would have had to touch it. So in other words, if it wasn't Brian Coburger, then it was the real killer who had touched Brian Coburger or it might have been one of the victims who had shook Brian Cobur's hand and then touched that knife sheath. It seems to me that's where it's the location of where the DNA is. And by the way, just to be clear, the court has indicated, the court filing when they

match the cheek swab to that DNA, that it is at least 5.37 octillion times more likely that Brian Coburger is the source rather than some random person. Well, so the degree of the connection is something that the defense has also challenged in their filings. We know that that's coming because of the way that these statistics are performed. They are calculated in a manner that is not consistent with the reality of the population at large, and it allows the creation of these overinflated numbers that make this sound like a more precise match than in fact it is. But having said that, were this an impeccable crime scene, I think your argument would be a lot stronger. But the problem is that there were hours in which various people had access

to this scene. We had numerous first responders and investigators and so forth in and out through this scene. So any one of those people is a potential source of transfer DNA. Any one of those people could have potentially been the reason why Brian Coburger's DNA ended up on this knife sheath and nowhere else in the residence. Here's the thing. If they had had Brian Coburger in custody and they were interrogating him and they had some, police had some sort of connection to him and then go to the crime scene. I could say to you, you know, Andrea, you're making a good point. He was a complete stranger. There's no, there's no evidence that I have seen so far. Maybe something will come out that he had

partied at that house before, that he had been at that house, that he had some kind of contact with any of these people, didn't have contact with law enforcement. His DNA came out of nowhere. And that's the part that I just can't get past. And I'll leave it back to you on that because I would agree with you if he had some sort of connection to either people who were processing the crime scene, if his DNA was in the, or his materials, genetic material was somehow in the possession of law enforcement beforehand, or if he had some connection with the victims of the people in that house, I'd agree, but it seems too limited there. Well, I think some of that does cut both ways. As you pointed out, the defense has indicated

in their court filings. There is no evidence of any connection between Brian Coburger and these victims, which is a circumstance you would expect from a killing like this if it's a targeted type of killing. But that aside, we do know that Brian Coburger had at least some nominal contacts with law enforcement because we know that he had applied for an internship with the Washington State University Police. We don't know if that internship was ever granted or not, but also he is a criminology student. He is working in this area. So there are potential nexus there between Brian Koberger and potentially the investigators who ended up at the scene. But again, because this evidence can be so easily transferred, it doesn't require that Brian

and Koberger directly contacted any one of the victims for his DNA to end up at the scene. He could have simply been out at a bar the night before on a Saturday night in a college town where some of the other college students would have been present. That is enough and has been demonstrated to be enough for this type of thing to take place. So I think what you're going to see in this case is that certainly the DNA evidence is a strong piece of evidence for the state and it's what they're going to rely on. But they're going to have to show how the absence of other circumstances that we would expect to be present if Brian Koberger were the killer,

how that can be reconciled with their theory of how this killing transpired. The complete absence of victim DNA from his car, from his home. As of right now, we don't know, we don't know yet. We don't know what else they might have. That has been represented in court filings by the defense, that that is the state of the evidence. If that is the case, that is going to be a massive hole that the prosecution has to fill. You know the phrase, work hard, play hard, pretty easy to say, but you know how you feel after a big night

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property of different like mattresses and and different articles that he had in his apartment there was a potential animal hair that was found and we're not sure if that matches the animal hair that belonged to the dog of one of the victims i imagine prosecutors are going to have more than they've shared at this point and if that's the case then i believe their case is going to get much stronger but just to go back to the DNA for a second i told i said i think the DNA alone could be enough. Why do I say that? We've covered a case here. The Jerry Burns case, cold case out of Iowa, convicted of murdering Michelle Martinko back in the 1970s, cold case for decades. No eyewitnesses, no surveillance, no text messages, no GPS data. They took crime scene DNA. They took blood. So yeah,

I agree with you. This was blood, but they took blood from the crime scene and they compared it to data in genetic genealogy databases. They get a pool of people. It includes Jerry Burns. they collect a straw, he discarded at a restaurant, and the DNA on the straw was consistent with the blood found on Martinko's dress. They were able to match the DNA. He is convicted. It was the strongest piece of evidence in the case. Golden State Killer, DNA pled guilty.

I see these kinds of cases where juries are seizing upon DNA. I understand that he has some connections to law enforcement, and he lived nearby the house. But other than that, it doesn't. seem to me a jury is going to accept that there's some other alternative explanation, as of right now, if you can provide some alternative explanation for why his DNA would be not only in the house but on the knife sheet, that feels like smoking gun, a slam dunk in this case. You can disagree with me. I do disagree. And the main reason why is because of that very critical detail in the previous case that you mentioned, which is the presence of blood. The problem with DNA evidence

isn't so much the fact that it exists, it's explaining how it got there. And with something like blood in a murder setting, there's a pretty strong inference that you have to draw that that means the person was present and bled on the item from which the blood was recovered. With trace DNA, that argument simply doesn't follow. There are too many ways for that potential evidence to end up on a sheaf like that knife. There is a massive amount of forensic science that has been done on this topic. The defense is going to have experts who can come in and explain how all of this works to the jury. You can be sure that the jury is going to hear about this Lucas Anderson case that I mentioned previously. This is simply not the weight of evidence that something like a blood

sample is going to give the state. And so because of that, it's all the more important that the surrounding circumstances strongly corroborate the state's theory of how these killings occurred. And that is where, in my opinion, the evidence that we have so far is nowhere near at the level that it would need to be to establish Brian Coburger's guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Let's keep going forward with this. So, and obviously, you know, the defense is trying to also understand how law enforcement used. It's called IGG investigative genetic genealogy to actually find this tree and how, you know, it was actually able to narrow it down to Coburger. But I do want to move down to the other evidence, cell phone evidence. So, again, I also think a huge piece of evidence.

So on the night of the murderers at 2.42 a.m., Ryan Koberger's phone is connecting to a tower that covers his apartment in the Pullman, Washington area. Five minutes later, the data shows that he, that phone leaves the residence, travels south through Pullman, Washington, and that is consistent, which we'll talk about next, the movement of the white Hyundai Allantra that's caught on surveillance footage. Then the phone stops responding to the network. Prosecutors say he shut off the phone purposely to avoid detection. And of all the times to come back on, it comes back on at 4.48 a.m. Two hours later, after when prosecutors say the killings happen, and it hits the towers covering the area to the highway south of Moscow, Idaho. Okay, so now it looks like the phone was traveling towards the King Road residence

and now leaving King Road residents. Then between 4.50 a.m. and 5.25 a.m. on the day of the murders, the phone hits a tower showing the phone is traveling towards Union. Gintown, Idaho, back to Pullman, Washington, 5.30 a.m. It hits the area providing coverage for his residence. It's consistent with the phone is back home at his home at his apartment. And also, the probable call is affidavit revealed that Coburger's phone GPS pinged at or near that house on King Road residence at least 12 times before the day of the murders. Now, either late at night or early in the morning, and as I said, that cell phone data is consistent with the movement of the Hyundai Alantra.

I find that to be so strong and really pinpoints him because who else would have had his phone. You tell me, is it not as strong as I'm saying? Again, I don't particularly think this evidence is as strong as you're saying. And part of that is because I have the advantage of living in this area. of the country. This is a rural area. I'm quite familiar with it. And so cell tower density is not there like it is in a city like Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. or something like that. Those types of dense cell phone configurations allow fairly precise tracking of cell phones because the location of the cell phone can be triangulated from the pings off of multiple towers. In an area like

Moscow, Idaho, this is an area where you might only have a single cell tower that covers a range of, you know, 100 square miles or so. So the precision that you get from a single cell phone connection to a single cell tower does not tell you much at all. One of the things that we know from the probable cause affidavit as well is that police obtained a cell tower dump from that tower that was near the King Road residence. So the defense is also going to be able to point out here's the other hundreds, potentially thousands of people who were also pinging off of this phone, off of this tower within that time frame. So it doesn't particularly give you a precise view of where Brian Koberger's location was at any given point in time. So I've heard that

argument in countless trials before that the cell phone tower pinging is not as precise. Okay, even assuming if it can't pinpoint within a mile, two miles feet, whatever, the idea here is, is that the phone is connecting to certain towers at the precise times when before the murder happened, after the murder happened, shuts off at that key two-hour period, that seems awfully suspicious because the phone could have very well been at his apartment the entire time. You know, if it was at the phone, it was at the apartment, it would have been pinging so we have to accept okay he had his phone and he was driving around seemingly in the

direction and away from the direction generally speaking of where the murders happened and then it shuts off at that key point it feels even if we can't pinpoint exactly where he is where it's connecting when it's shutting off generally that is awfully circumstantial and suspicious well certainly the state is going to argue that and Brian Coburger has acknowledged in his kind of alibi, not alibi, if you will, that he was, in fact, out driving around that night. This is a Saturday night. These are college towns. That's not unusual behavior for a person to be engaged in. And again, the police have theorized that a possible explanation for this is that Mr. Coburger turned off his cell phone during the time frame that the murders were committed, suggesting he's a sophisticated type of perpetrator, he would know how to hide his tracks. Well, one has to wonder why a sophisticated

perpetrator like this would bring his cell phone at all, let alone drive to the scene in his own vehicle, which could then be identified. So this explanation of Mr. Coburger as kind of both the most organized and disorganized pillar at the same time doesn't really line up with a coherent theory of this case. But again, part of the issue with the cell tower density here is that It is not difficult to get out of cell phone range in this area. And that is another perfectly viable explanation for why Mr. Coburger's cell phone was no longer connecting to these particular towers. If Mr. Coburger is driving out in the area of, say, Moscow Mountain,

it would absolutely be expected that his cell tower, his cell phone was going to lose connectivity with the towers in that area. It's starting to become mountainous, and again, the density is very low. So this is a common occurrence in this type of area that I think folks in the community of Moscow are going to understand and relate to because they have lost their cell signal driving on these roads before, whereas folks from more denser urban communities may not be able to necessarily relate to that. I have a theory and I don't know if it could be good, but here's a theory that he didn't plan to kill them when he left that night, that maybe he brought his phone, he was driving out, then saw that they were all home, decided. or he, you know, he decided at some point when he was in the car that he was going to do this. And or he made a mistake and brought the phone with him. I mean, one of the big questions we have is if you committed the murders, why would you leave the knife sheath?

Well, maybe you panic. So I agree there could be an aspect of it where he's trying to be a sophisticated killer. But he also realizes, oops, I made a mistake or oops, I'm going to decide to do this now and ultimately turn my phone off. So it becomes a question, when did he actually plan it or not? I think there's other explanations to go through there. But I know my time is limited with you, Andrea, so I want to go with you to the Hyundai Alantra.

I mentioned how the cell phone pinging is consistent with the white Hyundai Alantra. So the car was spotted on several cameras passing the King Road home four times between 3.29 a.m. and 404 a.m. on the night of the killings. And then it speeds away 16 minutes later. then the car they have on tape leaving the Washington State University campus at 24 a.m. They capture it headed towards Moscow. 525 a.m. The camera shows it returning back to Washington State University.

And by the way, later on in the afternoon of the day of the murders, they track the phone to an Albertson's grocery store and they see Koeberger on tape exit that white Hyundai Alantra. Not only that. After the killings, a Washington State University officer spotted a white Hyundai Allantra in the parking lot of an apartment complex. It comes back registered to Koeberger. We've seen him driving that car before on body cam footage. So now you have the cell phone data matching up to the White Hyundai Alantra that is not seen by necessarily eyewitnesses.

It's captured on surveillance tape. That, again, is another critical piece in my mind. Now, this allantra, there are tens of thousands of white Hyundai allantras in this area. There are many, many vehicles that could have potentially been this suspect vehicle. We have not seen these surveillance videos and so forth that the FBI has relied on to make these claims of being able to track it and so forth. We don't know what their methodology is. We don't know how strong it is. we do know that the FBI initially misidentified the Honda-Alauntra.

If it was, in fact, Ryan Koberger's car, the police initially identified what they saw on what they saw on camera as the wrong model year vehicle. So at some point in time, how central is that? How central is that if they got the year wrong, but it's still the same type of car? Because if these are the types of details between the model years that are allowing them to make that type of specific identification, then there was a reason why they initially thought it was this one vehicle and perhaps some detail led them to change their mind. But out of all the White Honda-Launtras, out of all the White Honda-A-Lontras,

the fact that it's on tape at these key locations and it's matching up to the cell phone footage, the two things can't be separated. Well, again, they can because the cell phone footage is not particularly precise. sorry. Well, that's a court that you're, but okay, but even if you're saying that of all the phones, this phone that they have registered to Brian Coburger, this car, they have registered to this car registered to Brian Coburger, it's doing the same kind of thing. And so it's going to be very hard to separate that he is not the holder of that phone, that he's not the driver of that car going in these specific locations. The surveillance footage makes up where the cell phone

footage, the cell phone data can. So if you say you can't accurately pinpoint him, surveillance footage of the car can surveillance footage of the car approximately 50 miles south and in Clarkston, Washington and in Albertson's parking lot can certainly corroborate his location there at that particular point

in time. But that car is not traced on video in an uninterrupted fashion back to the King Road killings. And this just comes back to the fact that we don't know what the FBI relied on, what their methodology was to be able

to make these claims that it's looking at the same vehicle, that the vehicle is moving in a certain way. The defense also has identified in some of their briefing in the court filings that at least some of the information that the FBI relied on to make this identification showed this vehicle going in the wrong way on one of the primary roads out there. So, okay, but the idea, but the idea of the But the idea of the car, but the idea of the car, but the idea of the car on four times going past that house at 3.29 a.m. 4.4 a.m. and then speeding away 16 minutes later, is that we're just not going to believe what the footage shows? What the footage shows is potentially something associated with the murder. Potentially not. The footage does not show Brian Coburger. And as far as we can tell, the footage doesn't give. us a clear enough identification of that vehicle for us to be able to say definitively, yes, that is Brian Koberger's car. There are other Honda-A-Lontras that are within this model

year that exist in that neighborhood, let alone other white sedans that are driven by other people in that neighborhood. So again, to be able to pin this on Brian Koberger is that's definitively his car, the state's certainly going to try to do that. But whether that's going to be enough to be able to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that because of some grainy surveillance footage that therefore this is this is brian coberger's vehicle that's going to be a bit of a more difficult cell now i could talk about this evidence forever i do want to get to you one last big piece the i potential eyewitness identification i will tell you right now i don't think that this is the strongest piece of evidence having said that i think this is the cherry on top

so we know that in that house there were two surviving roommates one of them was dylan mortensen she told police, before Brian Coburger's name ever came up, before anybody knew what Brian Koeberger looked like, she spoke to law enforcement and said that on the night of the killing, she was home, she heard, she believed Kaylee say, there's someone here, she heard crying, she heard a male voice saying, it's okay, I'm going to help you. She opens the door and she sees this person wearing all black clothing with a mask that covers their mouth and nose, walking towards her. She said she didn't recognize him but thought he was five foot 10 or taller, male, not very muscular, least athletically built, and he has bushy

eyebrows. That description matches up to Brian Coburger before anybody knew about Brian Coburger. And again, you could say maybe it's not the strongest piece of evidence. I think you add that to everything we talked about. It's important and it could be really bad for Brian Coburger. It's certainly going to be a part of the state's case. There's no question about that. The difficulty with this description that Dylan gave is that it is very vague. There are probably going to be, you know, again, thousands of people, young men who are five foot, ten, or older, taller, who could potentially meet this description. Again, this is, this was known as a party house from what we know about how things were done there. It seems like it was pretty common for

people to be coming and going at really all hours of the night. So yes, certainly this is something that the state is going to rely on as part of their evidence. But I tend to agree with you as to how strong it is. It would be much stronger if Dylan Mortensen, some later point has been, for example, shown a photo lineup of people including Brian Koberger and has identified him as the man she saw in the house. That would be a much stronger piece of evidence. Couldn't she do that a trial? Couldn't they say that a trial? Ms. Mortensen is Brian Coburger, the man that you saw that night?

Couldn't they ask her that? They can certainly ask that at trial, and the defense is going to point out, she knows exactly who she's supposed to identify in this courtroom. That's why you do a photo lineup series where it is blindly administered, and there is no suggestion to the witness as to who is the right person to identify. It makes it a much cleaner identification that isn't, by these these potentials opportunities for bias to enter into that I guess I guess I would just say out of all of the description she could give of somebody it matches up more or less to

coburger and at that time what she hears it's not like she just saw him she's hearing the crying she's hearing the words she sees this person walk right past her at that specific point in the night and I think that's where we have to remember the significance of it? Well, you know, there's something that is missing from the probable cause affidavit that jumped out at me immediately. And that is the medical examiner's opinion as to the time of death. The reason why this is important is because the time frame in which these murders occurred, that has been largely reverse engineered by the state from everything that we've seen in the probable cause affidavit. They have simply looked at.

the correspondence between when were the last time that people were seen, when were they communicating on their cell phones, there was a DoorDash delivery of food at some point in this time frame. There's a lot of pieces that have come together that have led the state along with the video surveillance of this white vehicle to take the position that the crime happened at this very specific time frame between about 405 and 420 in the morning. I would like to know, does that correspond with the medical examiner's estimate of the time of death? That's something that we would have known before the probable cause affidavit was written. I would expect that information to be included in the probable cause affidavit if it confirmed the state's theories of how these murders occurred.

So there is going to be a burden on the state to establish the time frame as well, because all of these pieces have to fall into place for Mr. Coburger to be the suspect that they've identified. And if any one of those pieces falls apart and it turns out maybe there are reasons to think the murder took place an hour earlier, an hour later, then this whole theory of Mr. Coburger being the perpetrator falls apart because of the timing of that white, of that white bar. I will tell you. So, again, an example of how all of the circumstances really have to come in alignment in

the state's favor for there to be enough. a jury to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. But so many cases we cover, we see a successful prosecution, we see a conviction without them establishing the specific exact time that the killings took place. They can't sometimes tell you this happened at 453 in the evening, in the afternoon. They can't do it sometimes, and yet they're able to convict nonetheless. Listen, Andrew Burkart, I could talk about this all with you. I really enjoyed going back and forth with you about this.

Hopefully I can get you back on as the case progressed. You can check out Andrea's YouTube page at A. Berkart Law. Her Twitter or X profile is the same handle. Andrew Burkart, thank you so much. Thank you so much. All right, everybody. That is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us.

As always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. 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.