Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - The Idaho Murders

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

In November 2022, four University of Idaho students, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho. The suspect, Bryan Kohberger, was a PhD criminology student who had been circling their house for months and who pled guilty without ever explaining why. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Vanessa Richardson examines the evidence, the investigation that led to Kohberger's arrest, and the unanswered questions that still surround the case. When a killer offers no motive, what does justice really look like for the families left behind? For more, follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes wherever you listen to podcasts: https://pod.link/1828469754 For Ad-free listening to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts.  🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Crime House 24/7, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bot. Every Monday, Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious, vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files, not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations. waiting for a closer look. Hidden history drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts,

Spotify, or wherever you listen, so you never miss a mystery. This is Crime House. In December 2022, roughly three weeks after four college students were stabbed to death in their off-campus home in Idaho, the Moscow Police Department released a public statement. They cleared several people who'd come under intense online scrutiny. The surviving roommates, the Uber driver, the DoorDash driver, and the man in the hoodie at the food truck. But one part of the statement raised more questions than answers. Quote, the Moscow Police Department wants to reassure the community that there is no imminent threat to the community at large based on information gathered during this investigation, end quote. No imminent threat.

Three weeks after a masked intruder walked into a house full of sleeping students and killed four of them. No suspect had been named, no arrest had been made, and yet somehow investigators were confident enough to tell the public, don't worry, how did they know? What did they already know? And if they already had a strong lead, which it turns out they did, why did it take another two weeks before anyone was arrested? Those are the kinds of questions this story keeps generating, because even now, with a guilty plea and four life sentences, this case is far from closed. From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations, and murderous doctors. These aren't just theories. They're real stories that blur the line between fact and fiction.

I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is conspiracy theories, cults and crimes, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'll explore the real people at the center of the world's most shocking events and nefarious organizations. And remember, these Monday episodes will also be on YouTube with full video. You can find them every Saturday. Just search for conspiracy theories, cults, and crimes, and be sure to like and subscribe. These cases are wild, and I want to hear what you think. At the end of each episode, leave a comment wherever you listen. Be sure to rate, review, and follow conspiracy theories, cults, and crimes to continue building this community together.

And for ad-free access to all three episodes, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. Today, I'm covering one of the most disturbing and talked about cases of the last several years, the Idaho College murders. In November of 2022, four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death inside their off-campus home in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho. Their names were Kaylee Gonzalez, Madison Mogan, Zana Kurnodal, and Ethan Chapin. The case shocked the country, paralyzed a campus, and sent the internet into a tailspin. A man named Brian Coburger was eventually arrested, tried, and convicted. But before we get to any of that, we need to slow down, because remember, an arrest isn't always the same thing as the full story, and a guilty

plea isn't always the same thing as the truth. All that and more coming up. Instacart knows that some people go bananas about getting the perfect, well, banana. Some want them green, some want them ripe, some want them ready right when they hit their doorstep. But with Instacart's preference picker, available at most retailers, you can choose to get your groceries just the way you like. That means perfectly ripe bananas, deli meat sliced just the way you want, and avocados that aren't still hard as a puck in the third period. So don't cross your fingers and hope for the best. Download the app and get groceries just how you like with Instacart. Before any of this became a news story, before the camera crews and the TikTok sleuths and the competing theories,

there were four real people with real lives, full of laughter and plans and possibility. Their names were Kaylee, Maddie, Zana, and Ethan. And this is where their story begins. Kaylee Gonzalez was 21 years old. She grew up in Rathdrum, Idaho, and by the time she got to the University of Idaho, she had the kind of personality that could fill any room. She was funny, outgoing, and a little bit of a jokester, always filming goofy videos for her social media. She was about to graduate a semester early, and she'd already landed a job with an IT company in Texas.

The next chapter of her life was right there, waiting. Her best friend since sixth grade was Madison Mogan. Maddie, also 21, also from Northern Idaho. Maddie was quieter than Kaylee, but no less confident. Her parents, Karen and Scott, said she made friends the second she walked into a room. She was majoring in marketing, managed her sorority's Instagram account, and was, by all accounts, someone who approached the world with warmth and ambition. Her boyfriend said she wanted to explore the world.

She and Kaylee had arrived at the University of Idaho together in 2019, gone through sorority rush together, and ended up in different houses. Kaylee got into Alpha Phi, considered a top house on campus. Maddie got Pi Beta Phi, which wasn't. She was disappointed, but tried not to show it. She ran to the Pi Phi Phi House with her new sisters, all smiles, and threw herself into making it work. She was so good at promoting the sorority on social media that they asked her to run their official Instagram account. She was going to make Pi Phi Phi Phi a top house, whether anyone else believed it or not.

Still, it was the first time since sixth grade that she and Kaylee had done anything apart, and it stung. But it didn't last. When COVID sent everyone home their sophomore year, it reset something. By the time they got back to campus, the appeal of sorority life had faded for both of them. They didn't want the rules, the politics, the house meetings. They wanted each other and their own space. So the summer before senior year, in 2022, they moved in together. Their families joked they were sisters who just happened to have different last names.

And for one last year, they were going to make the most of it. The house at 1122 King Road was a rental with five bedrooms, entrance on the ground floor, two bedrooms there, one in the basement below, and two more upstairs, so the girls had three other roommates. Dylan Mortensen and Zana Kernodle, both on the ground floor, and Bethany Funk in the basement. Kaylee and Maddie took the two rooms on the upper floor.

Kaylee also brought along their golden-doodle Murphy, who she shared with her ex-boyfriend. Zana was 20, also majoring in marketing, and one of Maddie's sorority sisters in Pi Beta Phi. Friends described her as funny, sharp, and effortlessly herself, the group's de facto DJ, who could show up to any party in a sweatshirt and a messy bun and still steal the show. Unlike the others, Zana hadn't come to college with a specific plan for her future, but things had been shifting for her. She'd met Ethan Chapin at a Sigma Chi party the year before.

It wasn't instant fireworks, but they ran in the same circles, kept finding themselves together, and the connection just grew. He spent almost every night at the King Roadhouse now, and Zana had just spent the summer with his family. Clearly, things were getting serious. Ethan was 20 years old, one of a set of triplets. He, his brother, Hunter, and his sister, Maisie, had grown up in Mount Vernon, Washington, and had been incredibly close their entire lives. When it came time for college, all three chose the University of Idaho. They weren't ready to scatter yet. Ethan and Hunter joined Sigma Kai, which is actually how Ethan met Zana at a party hosted by the fraternity.

Classmates remembered Ethan as magnetic and easygoing, the kind of person who made everyone around him feel welcome the moment he walked in. His parents, Jim and Stacey, had just visited campus for parents' weekend at the start of November 2022. They tailgated at the football game, spent time with Zana and saw for themselves how well all three of their kids had settled into college school. life. As Jim and Stacey drove home to Washington, Stacy turned to her husband and said she felt proud, like they'd made it through the hardest part of raising their kids, and now they were all thriving. One week later, everything changed. Before I get into the night of November 12th, I want to introduce the man who would eventually be charged with these murders, because understanding who Brian Koberger was, long before anyone knew his name, is essential to understand.

understanding this case. And frankly, to understanding why so many people still have so many questions about it. Brian Koberger grew up in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. As a teenager, classmates described him as quiet, awkward, and sometimes unpredictable. He struggled with a neurological condition called visual snow. That's a persistent disruption to vision that some neurologists describe as debilitating. Around the same time, he began writing online about feeling emotionally detached, disconnect, from reality, like he was watching his own life through a screen. He started using heroin in high school while dealing with severe depression. His father sent him to rehab more than once.

Kohlberger eventually claimed he got clean. By his mid-20s, he appeared to have turned things around. He enrolled at DeSales University, a small Catholic school in Pennsylvania where he studied psychology. He became fascinated with the criminal mind, specifically what drives people toward violence. He told friends he hoped to work with high-profile offenders one day. He was interested not just in the mechanics of crime, but in the psychology of it. What a person feels before, during, and after, what it's like to cross that line. He earned his bachelor's degree in 2020, then stayed on for a master's program at DeSales.

As a graduate student, he was known for being meticulous, highly analytical, and deeply focused on methodology, So impressive that a professor recommended him for a Ph.D. program. In the fall of 2022, Kohlberger moved to Pullman, Washington to begin a doctorate in criminology at Washington State University, located approximately nine miles from the University of Idaho in Moscow. Nine miles. That detail will matter. Here's where things start to get strange. In the months before the murders, Koeberger posted a survey on Reddit. He identified himself as a student research.

working with two professors at DeSales looking for former inmates willing to answer questions. The survey asked them to describe their thoughts, emotions, and actions, quote, from the beginning to end of the Crime Commission process. At the time, it sounded academic. In hindsight, it reads like something else entirely, like a man who wasn't just trying to understand violent crime, like a man who was planning it. And at Washington State, the picture only got darker. Classmates described Koberger as brilliant, but strange, mechanical, observational, like he was studying the people around him rather than connecting with them.

He didn't socialize, he didn't go to parties, but he was unusually engaged in class, particularly when the conversation turned to forensics and evidence. Just days before the murders, he'd been unusually animated during a discussion about how prosecutors use DNA evidence to win convictions, and, crucially, how a case could fall apart if no DNA was recovered. To his classmates, it seemed like an obvious observation. Of course, physical evidence matters, but in hindsight, it reads differently. By that point, Koberger had already been circling the house on King Road for months. He wasn't talking about theory. He was talking about himself.

And if that's true, then the questions aren't just about who did this. They're about how a PhD student in criminology, someone literally studying how the killers get caught, managed to stalk a house for months, carry out four murders, and nearly escape detection entirely. The answer to that question is more unsettling than most people realize. Think about some of the cases that defined true crime in America. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, the Karen retrial. Some crime cases are so shocking, they don't just make headlines they forever change a country. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases, whether it's unfolding now or etched into American history,

revealing not just what happened, but how it forever changed their society. Serial killers who terrorized cities, unsolved mysteries that kept detectives up at night, and investigations that changed the way we think about justice. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. These are the stories behind the headlines. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes available now wherever you get your podcast. November 12th, 2022 was a Saturday in Moscow, Idaho. The University of Idaho football team had a home game. Students were everywhere, tailgating, partying, moving from house to house as the night stretched on.

At 1122 King Road, all five roommates got ready to go out. Kaylee and Maddie headed to a local sports bar called the Corner Club, a longtime Moscow staple with neon lights and cheap drinks. Zana met up with Ethan at a Sigma Chi party just a few blocks away. Dylan and Bethany went out separately with plans to eventually end up at the same party. After leaving the corner club, Kaylee and Maddie stopped at the Grub Truck, a popular late-night food cart. Here's something that seems almost too strange to be coincidental. The Grub truck had a habit of live-streaming their late-night rush on Twitch.

Anyone who ordered food was caught on camera. Anyone in the world could tune in and watch, in real time, who was there and when. Kaylee and Maddie showed up around 1.30 a.m. The feed was silent, no audio, but they were clearly visible, smiling and, and chatting. Then a man in a hoodie appeared nearby. He spoke with them briefly. They turned and walked away. A few seconds later, he followed in their direction. That footage would later go viral on TikTok and be scrutinized frame by frame by thousands of amateur detectives online. The man in the hoodie was quickly identified as a fraternity student, and after weeks of intense and unfair

public scrutiny was cleared of any involvement. But the clip still raised a question worth sitting with, was someone watching that live stream that night, not someone who randomly happened to be at that food truck, but someone who had been tracking where Kaylee and Maddie were. By around 2 a.m., all five roommates, plus Ethan, were back at the King Roadhouse. The lights went off one by one. At 3.30 a.m., a white Hyundai Alontra began appearing on security cameras from nearby homes. It drove past the house once, then again,

Then again, over the next hour, it circled the block multiple times before stopping near the home. Inside, Zana was still awake. She ordered DoorDash. The delivery driver arrived around 4 a.m. and handed off her food at the front door. She took it back to her ground floor room where Ethan was already asleep and started scrolling through TikTok. She didn't hear the sliding glass door in the kitchen open. She didn't hear a masked figure step inside. The intruder moved quietly and went directly upstairs to the third floor where Maddie and Kaylee were asleep together in Maddie's bed.

On the ground floor, Dylan stirred. She thought she heard a noise. Then she heard something much worse. Kaylee's voice, faint and unsettling, saying, there's someone here. Dylan cracked open her door. She didn't see anything. She closed it again. She couldn't have known that just above her, the intruder had already unsheathed a knife. Back in her room, Dylan heard more sounds. Then a man's voice, it's okay, I'm going to help you. She opened her door a second time, nothing. Then she heard crying, then a thud. Then Kaylee's dog Murphy started barking upstairs.

Dylan opened her door a third time and saw him, a masked figure dressed entirely in black, walking. in her direction. She caught a brief glimpse of his face, bushy eyebrows, roughly 510, athletic build. She froze. He walked right past her room, down the hallway, and out through the sliding glass door in the kitchen. Dylan locked her door, grabbed her phone, and started texting her roommates. No response from Kaylee, Maddie, Zana, or Ethan. The only person who replied was Bethany down in the basement. Dylan ran to her room. The two of them huddled together and waited. Now, before we go any further, I want to address something directly.

Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funk were harassed mercilessly online in the weeks after the murders. People accused them of waiting too long to call 911. Some even accused them of being involved. Both were formally cleared by the police. Okay, think about what Dylan had actually experienced. She'd made eye contact in the dark with a masked man who had just killed four people and walked right past her door. She didn't know what had happened upstairs. She didn't know if he was still outside.

She was in shock, hiding in a basement bedroom with her roommate, afraid to move. That's not suspicious behavior. That's what surviving something unsurvivable looks like. Later that morning, still with no response from their roommates, Dillon called her friend Hunter Johnson and his girlfriend, Emily Alant. She said something strange had happened. She was scared. Could they come by?

Hunter arrived first. First, he went inside. He found Zana and Ethan in Zana's ground floor room, lifeless, with visible stab wounds. He felt for a pulse, there was none. He walked back outside and told the others someone needed to call 911 because there was an unconscious person inside. He didn't say what he already knew, that they were gone. When police arrived and swept the house, they found four bodies. Zana and Ethan on the ground floor, Kaylee and Maddie on the third floor in the same. bed, both with stab wounds. Some of the victims had defensive wounds, suggesting they'd woken up and fought back. Others appeared to have been asleep when they were killed. And next to Kali and Maddie, a tan leather K-bar military-style hunting knife sheath embossed with a Marine Corps insignia, left behind by the killer. Campus alerts went out just after 1 p.m., first an ongoing homicide investigation on King Road, then minutes later, Four people were dead.

The students gathered outside the house and read the alerts on their phones. No one from law enforcement had told them anything directly. They were learning their friends were dead from a university text message. Ethan's surviving siblings, Hunter and Maisie, were the ones who had to call their parents. Their mother had been grocery shopping when they reached her. She couldn't understand what they were telling her at first, but she knew one thing. She and her husband needed to get to Moscow immediately. They started the six-hour drive.

Zana's sister, who was studying at Washington State University, just 10 miles away, called their father. She didn't just tell him the details over the phone. She just said, come to Moscow. In northern Idaho, Kaylee and Maddie's families were both getting alarming messages from friends, but couldn't reach either girl. Kaylee's parents called Maddie's mom to see if she knew what was going on. She said she was already on her way to campus. She promised to bring both girls home once she found.

them. She didn't know yet that she couldn't keep that promise. By late afternoon, all four families had been told their children were gone. And at that moment, no one knew who had done it or why. The only hard evidence was a knife sheath, a shoe print with a diamond pattern sole, and grainy ring camera footage of a white Hyundai Allantra circling the block in the early morning dark. What followed was one of the most chaotic public investigations in recent memory. The country became obsessed. Tips poured in by the thousands. Armchair detectives flooded Facebook groups, Reddit threads and TikTok comment sections. True crime podcasters weighed in, local news cameras camped outside the house. And in the absence of any official information, because police were

strategically staying quiet to protect their investigation, the internet began building its own case. All of its targets were completely innocent. The man in the hoodie at the Grub Truck. The Uber driver who took Kaylee and Maddie home, the DoorDash driver who delivered Zana's food minutes before the murders, Dylan and Bethany, a former boyfriend, a neighbor. All of them faced public accusations, online harassment, and genuine fear for their safety. Meanwhile, the actual suspect was nine miles away in Pullman, going to class and grading undergraduate papers as if nothing had happened. It's worth pausing on that, because it speaks to something important about how these cases unfold in the internet age.

The pressure on investigators to release information, any information becomes enormous. And when they don't, the void fills itself with rumors, with suspicion, with the most available targets rather than the right ones. People's lives get upended, and the actual investigation has to keep moving in silence anyway, because tipping off a suspect before you have enough to charge them

can destroy a case entirely. On December 12th, nearly a month after the murders, Moscow police released a statement clearing all of the people who'd been blamed online. That was necessary. But here's the thing. By then, investigators had already identified Koberger's car on the Pullman campus two weeks earlier. They were already building a case. The public just didn't know it yet.

On November 29th, 16 days after the murders, a Washington State University officer spotted a white Hyundai Allantra on the Pullman campus. The registration came back to Brian Koeberger, a 28-year-old PhD student in criminology. Police ran his driver's license. His photo matched Dylan's description almost exactly. Athletic build, roughly 5'10, bushy eyebrows. They also found that Kohlberger had recently changed his license plates. He'd been pulled over in August with Pennsylvania plates set to expire on November 30th.

He got new Washington State plates on November 18th, exactly five days after the murders. Maybe a coincidence, his old plates were expiring anyway, but the timing was notable. And when detectives filed a warrant for his phone records, any remaining doubt began to dissolve. Coburger's phone had been pinging near the King Roadhouse 23 separate times between July and November 2022,

four months of visits to the same address before the murders ever happened. Investigators believe he'd been casing the house, studying the routines of the people inside, learning when they came home and when the lights went off. Then on the night of November 12th, his phone traveled from Pullman toward Moscow. At 247 a.m., it went dark, powered off for nearly two hours. At 4.48 a.m. it came back online, heading back toward Pullman. And then, later that same morning, after police had already been called to the house,

it pinged near 1122 King Road again. Police believe Coburger returned to the scene, maybe to watch the response unfold, maybe to look for something he'd left behind, something like a knife sheath? The FBI began covertly surveilling Coburger at his family's Pennsylvania home, where he'd driven for the holidays.

On December 27th, agents collected trash from outside the house and found a used Q-tip inside. DNA testing confirmed that whoever left biological material on the knife sheath at the crime scene was the biological son of the person who used that Q-tip. In other words, Coburger's father's DNA tied Coburger directly to the murder weapon. This is genetic genealogy. The same technique used to catch the Golden State killer after decades. It is a powerful investigative tool. It's also raised serious civil liberties questions, which Coburger's defense team would later challenge in court.

The judge allowed the evidence to stand. At 3 a.m. on December 30, 20, 22, a SWAT team of 40 officers surrounded the Coburger family home. They expected to find everyone asleep. Instead, they found Brian in the kitchen, wide awake, wearing latex gloves, methodically sealing his own trash and individual Ziploc bags, separated from the rest of the family's garbage. He was a criminology student. He had spent years studying how physical evidence brings killers down.

He knew exactly what DNA could do to a case. He just apparently never considered that his father's DNA might give him away just as easily as his own. When the SWAT team zip-tied his wrists, Kohlberger spoke to them as though they were students in one of his classes. He asked whether anyone else had been arrested. He mentioned his Ph.D. program. He suggested they all get coffee afterward. Every account from that night described the same. same thing. A man with no visible distress, no apparent remorse, just calm and detached engagement

with the situation unfolding around him. He was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary and extradited to Idaho on January 4, 23. When he landed in Moscow, reporters lined the streets. Cameras followed his every move. To many people, it felt like the story was finally reaching its end. It wasn't. Hi, Crime House community. It's Vanessa. Are you interested in the mysterious parts of history? Like when in 1518, an entire European city couldn't stop dancing. Or in 1908, when something flattened over 800 square miles of Siberian forest in an instant. I'm excited to tell you about a new show, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bott. Dr. Bott has spent her entire career demanding evidence and asking why.

Now every Monday on Hidden History, she goes where history touches the unknown, vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files, not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations, waiting for a closer look. At the end of every episode, she'll tell you exactly what she thinks happened and ask, What if it happened today? Hidden History drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, so you never miss a mystery. Let's talk about what the official version of events still doesn't explain, because there are several things about this case that

continue to generate genuine good faith questions. Not from fringe corners of the internet, but from journalists, legal analysts, and the victim's own families. The first is the house. Before a trial date had even been set, the University of Idaho accepted a donation of the King Road property and announced plans to demolish it. Two of the victims' families, Kaylee Gonzalez, and Xana Kurnodles, were adamantly opposed. They argued the House was irreplaceable physical evidence and that destroying it before Koeberger had been tried was reckless at best and potentially something worse. University President Scott Green responded with a statement, prioritizing, quote, collective healing, end quote.

Families' objections were noted and overruled. On December 28, 2023, a full year before the trial was ever supposed to begin, heavy machinery tore through the walls of 1122 King Road at sunrise. In under two hours, it was gone. For some, that was closure. For others, it raised an uncomfortable question. Whose interests were actually being served by destroying the crime scene before the case went to trial?

The second unresolved issue is motive. The prosecution never formally established one. We know Coburger had been near the house 23 times in over four months. We know he entered it deliberately and went directly upstairs to where Kaylee and Maddie were sleeping. We know the DNA evidence was compelling. But why those students? Why that house? Why that night? Some who studied the case closely believe Coburger may have been drawn to the in-cell world. That's short for involuntary celibate, a loosely organized online movement of men who feel socially and romantically rejected by women. In some cases, those men have channeled that resentment into real-world violence.

And the most infamous of those attackers was Elliot Roger. In 2014, Roger killed six people near the University of California, Santa Barbara. He'd spent years documenting his rage in online posts and videos before carrying out a targeted attack near a sorority house. women he felt had rejected and humiliated him. His writings became a kind of dark scripture in in-cell circles. Kohlberger had reportedly studied Roger's case in-depth at DeSales. There's also the matter of which victims Kohlberger targeted first. According to Liz Garbis, co-director of the Netflix docu-series,

One Night in Idaho, the evidence suggests that either Maddie or Kaylee, or both, were the intended targets. Coburger went directly to their room. They were killed first. Zana and Ethan, by contrast, may have been killed because they were witnesses, which raises the possibility that Coburger had fixated on one or both of the women on the upper floor specifically, that this wasn't random, but personal, even if the connection was entirely one-sided. Maybe he had crossed paths with one of them. Maybe he had felt rejected or ignored. Maybe he had simply become obsessed from a distance, no one knows. And because Kohlberger never explained himself, no one ever will.

But we do know the username, Papa Rogers, appeared in Idaho murder-sloothing communities on Facebook almost immediately after the killings. This account posted in ways that stood out, even among thousands of amateur investigators. They asked which hand a killer might use, what knife grip was most efficient, mentioning the knife sheath before that detail had been made public and insisting repeatedly that the white Hyundai Alantra was a red herring. When Coburger was arrested, multiple Facebook group administrators noticed something that stopped them cold. The profile photo used by Papa Rogers bore a striking resemblance to Coburger. And the name itself sounded unmistakably like a reference to

Elliot Roger. Papa Rogers never posted again after Coburger's arrest. authorities said they found no direct evidence conclusively linking the account to Coburger, but they never definitively ruled it out either. If the account was Coburger, a criminology student who'd spent years studying how investigators think, it would suggest he wasn't just committing a crime. He was watching the investigation of his own crime unfold in real time and nudging it in the wrong direction. Then there's the plea deal.

The road to it was long and connected. In 2023, Koberger was arraigned. During the proceedings, he stood silent when asked for his plea, forcing the judge to enter not guilty on his behalf. After that, his defense team spent two years filing motion after motion. They challenged the DNA evidence, arguing that the genetic genealogy technique used to link Koberger's father's cue tip to the knife sheath was unconstitutional. The judge denied that, so the defense switched tactics. They argued that, Hohberger's autism diagnosis, which his lawyers revealed during pretrial proceedings, should disqualify him from the death penalty. They pointed to a Supreme Court ruling that bars the

execution of those with intellectual disabilities. The judge denied that too, noting that autism is a developmental condition, not an intellectual disability, and that the legal standard didn't apply. The trial had originally been scheduled for June 2025. It was pushed back to August. Then, in the summer of 2025, just weeks before jury selection was set to begin, Kohlberger agreed to plead guilty to all four counts of murder in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table. He was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences, plus 10 years. He will never leave prison. Prosecutors maintained that the plea was the surest path to justice, a guaranteed outcome with no risk of acquittal, no years of appeals, no chance Coburger ever walks free, and they had met

privately with the victim's families to prepare them for this possibility. Some families supported the deal, Madison Mogan's family, Ethan Chapin's family. For them, it offered closure. But Kaylee Gonzalez's family felt blindsided, not by the conviction, but by what the deal cost them. A guilty plea meant Coburger never had to take the stand, never had to be cross-examined. never had to answer the question that still haunts them. Why Kaylee? At the sentencing, Kaylee's sister Olivia stood up, looked Coburger in the eye, and said, quote, My sister Kaylee and her best friend Maddie were not yours to take. They were not yours to study, to stalk, or to silence. They're everything you could never be. Loved, accepted,

vibrant, accomplished, brave and powerful." Zana's aunt took a different approach. She said she could no longer carry the hatred she felt, and so she chose to forgive him. She told him that if he ever wanted to explain what had happened that night, to tell her why, she would listen. Dylan Mortensen, the surviving roommate who had seen him face to face in the dark, sobbed as she spoke.

She described the panic attacks, the moments when she drops to the floor, heart racing, reliving the night over and over. She said he had shattered her, quote, in places I didn't know could break, end quote. Coburger sat in silence through all of it. When given the opportunity to speak, he declined. So what do you think? We have a conviction. Four life sentences, no possibility of release.

But we also have an unexplained motive, a demolished, crime scene and a man who never once explained himself. Does a guilty plea equal the full truth? Can justice be truly served when the most important questions are left permanently unanswered? Let us know in the comments wherever you listen. I'd love to know. Here's what I keep coming back to. Brian Coburger didn't stumble into this. He spent four months circling that house. He studied exactly how investigators catch killers. He powered off his phone at the precise right moment. He wore gloves and a mask. He drove back to the scene the next morning, apparently to observe the response. And yet, he still left behind a knife sheath. He still circled the block

in an identifiable car multiple times on camera. He returned to the scene in daylight while police were already there. He drove across the country for the holidays, as though nothing had happened. He was found by federal agents sorting his own trash in latex gloves, which, if anything, suggests he knew they were closing in and still couldn't quite stop himself. Was that sloppiness? Errogance? The behavior of someone who genuinely believed his academic understanding of criminal investigation made him untouchable?

Or was there something about this case, about what was known, when it was known, and what was never shared publicly that we still haven't been given a full accounting of? I don't have a clean answer. What I do know is this. Kaylee was fierce and loyal. Maddie had an easy laugh and big dreams for her life. Zana was sharp and effortlessly, wonderfully herself. Ethan was warm and magnetic and beloved by everyone who knew him.

They deserved better than a silent courtroom. They deserved better than a demolished crime scene, a delayed trial, and a man who, when finally given the chance to speak, chose silence. Their families are still waiting for that answer. And until someone provides it, really provides it. I don't think we can honestly say this case is closed. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Conspiracy Theory's Cults and Crimes.

Come back next time. We'll decode the episode together and hear another story about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious cults, conspiracies, and criminal acts. Conspiracy theories, Cults and Crimes is a crimehouse original, powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today,

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You'll get every episode ad-free plus exciting. bonus content. We'll be back on Wednesday. Conspiracy theories cults and crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and is a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the conspiracy theories cults and crimes team. Max Cudler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertzowski, Lori Marinelli, Melissa Fox, Kaylee Pine, and Michael Langsner. Thank you for listening. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crime. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases in American history.

Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes available now wherever you get your podcast. Looking for your next listen, check out Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bot. Every Monday, Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious, vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Follow Hidden History Now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.