Law&Crime Sidebar - Top 5 Revelations from Bryan Kohberger Affidavit in Idaho Murder Case

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Authorities released a probable cause affidavit detailing why they believe Bryan Kohberger is responsible for the murders of four University of Idaho college students. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber, Legendary Homicide Detective Fil Waters, and Law&Crime's Angenette Levy (in Idaho) break down the top five revelations learned from the criminal complaint about the night of the murders and the 28-year-old suspect.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - 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.

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. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will 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. Do you understand these rights? Yes. I am now going to go over the criminal complaint with you. We go over the five biggest revelations from the newly unsealed probable cause affidavit in the University of Idaho murder case. I'm joined by my co-host, Anjanette Levy and legendary former homicide detective, Phil Waters. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

And again, the maximum penalty for this offense, if you plead guilty or found guilty, is up to death and imprisonment for life. Do you understand? Yes. Well, I will tell you that I was not expecting this amount of detail in the probable cause affidavit. this was an affidavit from Moscow police officer Brett Payne in support of an arrest warrant of Brian Coburger. Now, Coburger has officially been extradited back to Idaho after his arrest in Pennsylvania.

He now faces four counts of first degree murder and burglary for allegedly stabbing to death University of Idaho students, Madison Mogan, Zonar Kurnodal, Ethan Chapin, and Kaylee Gonzalez inside of their off-campus home. Their bodies were found on November 13th of last year. Coburger has had his initial appearance in Idaho court. No bail was set. He was read the charges. He's due back in court January 12th for a status hearing that would proceed a preliminary

hearing. But we have to talk about this probable cause affidavit. 19 pages. It has been released. And wow. Just wow. Let me bring in my co-host here on Sidebar and correspondent for the Long Crime Network and Jeanette Levy, who's live in Idaho right now.

And we also have with us legendary former homicide investigator Phil Waters, who's been following this case from the very beginning. It's great to have you both on. Phil, I am going to start with you. You called it. And the type of knife that they're talking about is the United States Marine Corps K-bar. So when I saw this, my thought was is that is this person prior military? So the specific weapon, if they're talking about a K-bar, which is what this is,

then there's a possibility that they need to look into military background. of some kind. You called it. We asked you about a month ago about the murder weapon, which hasn't been recovered, and you pretty much nailed it because this is from the affidavit. As I entered this bedroom, I could see two females in the single bed in the room. Both Gonzavas and Mogan were deceased with visible stab wounds. I also later noticed what appeared to be a tan leather knife sheath laying on the bed

next to Mogan's right side. The sheaf was later processed and had K-Barr, USMC, and the United States Marine Corps Eagle Globe and anchor insignia stamped on the outside of it. The Idaho State Lab later located a single source of male DNA left on the button snap of the knife sheath. Phil, what do you think? Well, I tell you, I don't know that I nailed it. The first part of that was a K-bar was what they talked about at the very beginning, very specific about that being a K-bar, and one plus one still equals two.

So I surmise, in fact, I think when we first talked about this, this. I showed you the K bar that I have at the same type of sheath sitting in my office at my home. So the, I just think it's, it's interesting that as brilliant as he has been portrayed to be, that he has left that piece of evidence behind at the scene. And that's what we talk about, you know, the suspect who has this studying criminology and an interest in police to leave allegedly such an important piece of evidence is just Makes no sense. And Jeanette, we don't know where he got this weapon, allegedly got this weapon from

or how it was obtained. And not only that, can you also tell us the significance of the DNA on that sheath and how they were able to match it back to Koberger? Well, it's incredibly significant because the affidavit says that the DNA came from a single male contributor. And they were able to determine that it came from Brian Koberger. But the way they were able to determine that, according to the affidavit, was through going through his father's trash at the home in Albrightville, Pennsylvania, where Brian Coburger was later

arrested. And it said that it was like a 99.999-98% match or something, some crazy, you know, percentage likely to be the son of Michael Coburger. So there's been a lot of discussion in reporting out there that this happened through genetic genealogy, that they were able to get the dad's DNA through that. And so we're thinking maybe that's like that. And so we're thinking maybe that's like, true since it discussed that in the probable cause affidavit. They went through the trash, got some things, items of DNA from that trash, and were able to make an identification and link things together through there. And, Anjanet, just real quick follow-up, we don't know where the knife was purchased. I know there was talk about whether or not Coburger's father was former military,

but nothing like that. We don't have any indication, right? We have no indication of that. One of our viewers asked a question about that, whether or not maybe his father had once been in the military. This is the type of thing where you could probably find this online or the pawn shop, what have you. They may be, you know, out there floating around. Okay. So now, Phil, I want to bring your attention to this because later on in the affidavit, they said, a short time later, DM, who, by the way, is the roommate. It was one of the two roommates on the ground floor, a surviving roommate. I use that word interestingly because this is what she said. In the affidavit, she said that she heard or she thought that she heard was Gonzales say something to the effect of there's

someone here. DM stated that she looked out of her bedroom but did not see anything when she heard the comment about someone being in the house. DM said that she opened a door a second time when she heard what she thought was crying coming from Kernodal's room. DM then said that she heard a male voice say something to the effect of it's okay, I'm going to help you. DM opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure clad in black, black clothing, and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her. DM described the figure as five, 10 or taller male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past DM as she stood in a frozen shock phase.

The male walked towards the backsliding glass door. Diem locked herself in her room after seeing the male. She said she did not recognize the male. And this leads investigators to believe that the murder left the scene. We had no idea this happened, Phil. What's your reaction to that? I think that is just good police work in terms of what was released at the beginning of this thing. We were told at the beginning that the roommates on the first floor heard nothing. And there were a lot of pundits, a lot of people offering their opinions that that was just amazing. That couldn't have happened and this and so forth and so on, as though that was supposed to be revealed at that time. And I think, I don't know this for a certain, but my reading of that would be that was done for the protection of those witnesses and did not want to let anyone know that they had, in fact, seen more than what was conveyed in that initial press release.

Phil, does it make it odd that if this is true, why wouldn't he have killed her? And the second question is, why did she not immediately make a phone call? We know that a phone call was made from that residence, either from her or the other. roommate at almost noon the next day. What's your response to people who are questioning? Well, people do different things under stress. And while it's detailed in the affidavit that she saw these things, we don't know that he saw anything. He's moving around in the dark. He's got this mask over his nose and his mouth. He's already done what he's going to do or he's on his way to do it. He's already focused on where he's headed and whether it's to leave it, apparently

it's to leave the structure. So he's not getting distracted with things going on around. And remember, it's dark in there. So there's certainly what it indicates to me is that he didn't see her. She saw him, which was certainly to her benefit. Yeah. And, you know, there's also, like you said, how do you judge somebody in that position for what they did? Maybe she froze.

Maybe she panicked. And, I got to talk to you. Yeah. I'll give you a final word on that. To address the lack of a phone call at that point in time. she locked the door and she was away from it and she saw the guy leave so maybe she thought at that point he's gone you know i i'm locked in and we're done here not having any idea what it actually happened and janet i got to go to some of the biggest piece of evidence i mean how did they track him right

we talked about the dna the cell phone evidence i find to be so crucial can you briefly summarize for our listeners and our viewers the significance of the cell phone evidence The cell phone evidence is incredibly significant, and one of the key pieces there is the fact that his cell phone pinged off of a tower on the night of the murders at certain points in time, but during a period of time in that window, there's no signal from this cell phone, and I think that's really interesting, and it doesn't come back on. That cell phone doesn't start pinging against a tower again until. So after police believe the homicides were committed. Also, that cell phone evidence, according to the affidavit, shows that he was in the area of that home on at least 12 occasions between August and November 13th. That August stopped, one of the instances in which his phone was determined to be in that area of the King Road House was on August 21st of that year. He was pulled over at 1140 p.m. near the house. for a seatbelt violation. And that's a Sunday night. So you would think a PhD student,

if it was indeed him and his phone in this area, remember he's maintaining his innocence, why is he out and about at 11.40 p.m. at night. So the cell phone evidence in this case, I think is very significant. I don't think you can hang your hat on it entirely. It's just another kind of piece of the mosaic that is going to, you know, paint this picture that they kept talking about law enforcement kept saying they were getting new pieces of information that really painted a picture of what happened that night and i think it's just another piece of the puzzle or that picture yeah so there was a question about if he was stalking the victims well as we said 12 times before this night they have the cell phone in this key location they you know by

the house and as you mentioned you know his cell phone turns off during the time of the murders and then comes back on right afterwards so that's significant you know phil we talk about how this guy, you know, the suspect is a criminology student, has this interest in criminology, and yet leaving this breadcrumb of trails. The cell phone evidence is one thing. Phil, let's talk about the car itself, the white Hyundai Alantra, which we were all in the search for, because based on this affidavit, to give everybody an idea about the car, there were cameras tracking the car's movement for a long time. And there was even one surveillance video where they see him exit the car, so we know that it belongs to him. We know it's registered to him.

They have this car leaving WSU at 244 in the morning on the night of the murders. It makes its way to Moscow. It initially makes passes of the house in the early morning hours. It enters the area at 404 a.m. And then drives fast from that crime scene at 4.20 a.m. And then is back in Washington at 5.25 a.m. Again, what is your reaction to the way police were able to track him? Just good old-fashioned detective work.

I said from the beginning that that's what's going to crack this case. And that's what they did. These guys hit the grindstone and put their noses to it. And one of the first things they're going to do, and we've talked about this before, Jesse, is that they're going to go out there and they're going to try to draw from any kind of video surveillance evidence that they can draw from. And that's exactly what they did. In reference to the cell phone, I guess he was brilliant enough to turn it off when he was

in there doing what he was alleged. doing, but he wasn't smart enough or didn't think about the fact that he needed to turn it off the entire time that he's making his reconnaissance of that structure in those people. Andrea, we got a better minute. I want to really briefly talk about this because I thought this was another big revelation. We learned some background history on the defendant as well, didn't we? We learned about his interest in criminology. I know there was a Reddit post that was interesting as well.

Can you tell our viewers, our listeners, what we learned about his interest and background? I think it's really interesting about the Reddit post that he, you know, they cited that in the affidavit because that is one of the first things we found when we started looking for information after we learned his name last Friday. And it was this survey that had been posted asking for criminals to respond or people who had committed crimes to talk about their emotions. And I found that to be really interesting that the police found that that was worth. mentioning in the probable cause affidavit, and I want to know why they felt that was important, talking about the emotions that people feel. What they're trying to get at when they put that in the probable cause affidavit, obviously criminology, we know that he is a PhD student studying that. We know from talking to students at DeSales University, he had taken undergraduate

classes, one taught by Catherine Ramsland, who specializes in serial killers. So we learned that the police were on to all of this. And I think another funny thing about this, or not, not funny per se, but interesting thing is that the whole time they were telling us they didn't have a suspect, they were onto him. They were on to him in November, late November. So I thought that was another interesting part of this. Yeah, I agree, because that goes into more of the idea of motive, you know, the motivation, what would have led someone to do this. What we didn't get from this affidavit very clearly is the why. Maybe we'll get that later on. But right now, now, we just understand what led police to ultimately arrest Mr. Koeberger.

Phil Waters and Jeanette Levy, thank you both so much for taking the time. Thanks, Jesse. And that's all we have for you here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, 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 long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus.

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