SERIALously - 296: One Night in Idaho: Friends Who Found Victims Speak Out & Bryan Kohberger’s True Motive

Starting point is 00:00:00 These kids were just having the best time of their lives. The biggest true crime case and trial in the nation. How could they not tell us what's going on? Nobody could imagine what was about to happen. I just felt my heartbeat go crazy fast. I know that guy. Why these four kids? This can't be true. I mean...

Starting point is 00:00:23 Moscow police get out very little information. This is Idaho. My mom said it's over. And I said no mom. It's just the beginning. The suspect in that case has been offered and accepted a plea deal. Hey true crime besties, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, your host and your True Crime BFF, Annie Elise. Now we have a very interesting episode today and it's going to dive into everything Idaho

Starting point is 00:01:19 4 related, but also a lot of new information and a lot of new interviews and details that we have never heard before. Now let me just give you a little bit of a rewind on this because about, gosh when was it, about a month and a half ago Amazon Prime reached out to me telling me that they were working on a new Idaho docu-series. Not working on, I should say completed at that point. And they knew that I had been covering the case pretty extensively for the last several years, so they asked me if I wanted screeners of the episodes, which for those who are unfamiliar, screeners are basically, they're links to watch the episodes or movies early before

Starting point is 00:01:58 it's released. It's very carefully watermarked, you have to sign in a million different ways to view it on your browser, you have to have passwords, this, that, all these things. But anyway, my point is, they shared this jockey series with me about six weeks ago. I watched it, and it has a lot of new takeaways and a lot of new fresh perspectives into this case. We're hearing from people that we have never heard from before. We heard from Hunter, the friend of Zana, Ethan, Maddie, and Kaylee's who is the one who walked into the house that morning

Starting point is 00:02:33 right before the 911 call was placed. We're hearing from Ethan's triplet brother and sister, Hunter and Maisie. We're hearing a lot from Maddie's mom and her stepfather. I mean, just a lot of interviews. In addition to people personally connected with the victims and also the survivors, we hear from people who knew Brian personally, former classmates of his, former partners on assignments with him, and again, we just are getting this whole new lens into this case. So, theu-series is called One Night in Idaho, and today I'm going to recap it for you.

Starting point is 00:03:10 But instead of just recapping the docu-series as a whole, I also am going to be weaving in some of the information that we've already reviewed on this podcast in the past regarding the case, just to give you now this full comprehensive overview of the case. Now for whatever reason, I am unclear why Kaylee Gonzalez's family did not participate in this docu-series, which did surprise me because her father Steve has been pretty outspoken about this case in general, going on several different news anchors sites or reports whatever you would call it broadcast there's the word Annie but um for whatever reason they chose not to participate in this one but like I said it is for the very first time hearing

Starting point is 00:03:54 now what happened that morning what happened when they opened the door to King Road before calling 911 we also are hearing from Dylan and Bethany's friends Dylan and Bethany being the two survivors who were in that house that night. We're hearing from them not only what Dylan confided in them about the situation, but what they learned as all of this was unfolding right before their eyes. It really does give us a glimpse into this case

Starting point is 00:04:20 like we have never seen or heard before. So we are gonna jump right in. Now we all knew that Kaylee and Maddie had this very deep friendship, that they had been friends for years, but really hearing Maddie's mom speak about it in this, I think that she paints such a clearer picture of just how deep that friendship went,

Starting point is 00:04:40 because it was almost as though they were sisters. They had been best friends since the sixth grade so with that their families were also very close with one another and the girls were so close that they were inseparable. They even applied to the same colleges. They just did not want to be away from one another. So as you can imagine when this horrific, horrific situation happened the parents were double heartbroken, right? Because it was almost like they were losing a second daughter by extension because they were just so incredibly close. And I think that that was really important to

Starting point is 00:05:13 hear because again when you hear firsthand from these families, from these friends, it just it humanizes the victims in such a way that we don't often get to see. Almost behind the curtain, who they really were, what they enjoy doing, seeing family videos, home videos, pictures, all sorts of things. So of course Maddie's mother and her stepfather were very emotional throughout this docu-series, but they shed a lot of light on who Maddie was and her friendship with Kaylee. Ethan's parents also spoke out and what I thought was really interesting

Starting point is 00:05:45 and very emotional as well is that they opened the docuseries with Ethan's parents talking about how they went to Parents Weekend up in Idaho the weekend before these murders happened. And they specifically said how they were there just a week before the murders, seeing all of their kids because remember Ethan's a triplet. He had a brother Hunter and a sister Maisie. So they go up there for Parents Weekend and his mom says how when she and Ethan's father left that day, they looked at each other in the car and gave each other a literal high-five just being like, we did it. We did it. We raised our kids. They're good. They're happy. They're going into adulthood and like, we did it. Seven days later, Ethan was murdered.

Starting point is 00:06:27 Now let's start with the day of the discovery. It was November 13th, 2022 at approximately 11.45 a.m. A friend of the group named Hunter, whose girlfriend was Emily, who was also a very close friend of Zanna and Maddie's, was sleeping over at Emily's apartment. The two of them were together in a relationship. They received a phone call from Dylan and so with that phone call they went over to the King Road house. Dylan had called

Starting point is 00:06:52 them and said something to the effect of, you know, something weird happened. I don't know if I was dreaming or not but I'm really really scared. Can you please come over and can you check out the house? She said, I'm in the basement right now with Bethany. I tried calling Zana a few times, but she hasn't responded. Can you guys please just come over here? I'm scared. We got a call.

Starting point is 00:07:13 I didn't really think much of it. Dylan had called us. She and Zana, they were roommates. She was like, something weird happened last night. I don't really know if I was dreaming or not, but I'm really scared. Can you come check out the house? She was like, I'm in the basement with Bethany.

Starting point is 00:07:35 She said, I called for Zana a few times and she hasn't responded, but we just come over. I was like, oh, sure. Should I bring my pepper spray? Not thinking anything of it. So Emily Hunter and another friend of theirs head over to the house and when they arrive, they see Dylan and Bethany coming out of the house and they are flustered.

Starting point is 00:07:58 They're confused and you could feel that something just wasn't right. So I started walking to Zana's house, and when we got there, Dillon and Bethany had exited the house. They were frightened, just kind of like, just hands on their mouth, like, I don't know what's going on type thing. When the girls finally walk into the house, Hunter was already inside. He had been a few steps before them. They were a little bit behind. So he already was in the house, walking around and kind of, I don't want to say investigating, but looking around. And when they walked in,

Starting point is 00:08:34 they could feel that something was wrong immediately. Dillon and Bethany still weren't saying very much. They were just very confused. However, almost immediately upon entering, Hunter was like rushing them out, ushering them out of the house, saying, get out, get out, you need to call 911. And when he told them that very specific instruction, you need to call 911, he didn't give a lot of detail. He told them, call 911 and let them know that there is an unconscious person.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Now the girls did not know the extent of what was going on, because in that moment Hunter had made the, in my opinion, very incredibly brave and courageous decision to shield them from the truth of what he saw, what he witnessed. He said, tell them it's somebody unconscious because he didn't want, he wanted to protect them, he didn't want them to spiral. Hunter was ahead of me and Emily. I set foot in the house and immediately was pushed out and Hunter was like, get out, somebody call 911.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Hunter had enough courage to tell them to call the police for not a real reason. He worded it very nicely. He said, tell them there's an unconscious person. Hunter saved all of us, extreme trauma, by not letting us know anything. Now, I think now being armed with this information, it really does explain that chaotic 911 call. We all heard that 911 call

Starting point is 00:10:03 when it was first released months ago, and it felt very chaotic. Everybody was passing the phone around and nobody could say what really was happening. We heard somebody say that somebody was unconscious but everybody was like, well wouldn't you have seen blood? Wouldn't you know what was going on? Could they have been in shock? What was going on? And I think this really does set the foundation for that. Hunter had shielded them intentionally. So they didn't know what was going on. All they knew was that somebody was unconscious inside.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And they know though, of course, that whatever's going on, it's really bad. And so I think that really does explain the chaos of that call. Can I know the location of the emergency? Something is happening. Something's happening in our house. We don't know what. What is the address of the emergency? Something is happening. Something's happening in our house. We don't know what.

Starting point is 00:10:47 What is the address of the emergency? 112. Oh, no. It's so loud. We don't know what's happening. We don't know what's happening. What is the rest of the address? Oh, King Street Road.

Starting point is 00:11:04 OK. And is that a house or an apartment? It's a house. Can you repeat the address to make sure that I have it right? I'll talk to you guys. We live at the white, so we're next to them. I need someone to repeat the address for verification. The address? 1122 King Road. And what's the phone number that you're calling from? What's your phone number?

Starting point is 00:11:28 And tell me exactly what's going on. One of our roommates has passed out, and she was drunk last night and she's not waking up. Oh, and they saw some man in their house last night. Yeah. And are you with the patient? OK, I need someone to keep the phone, stop passing it around. man in their house. That's need someone to keep the it around. Can I just tell

Starting point is 00:11:55 much? What is going on co passed out right now? I d pretty much at four a.m. what's going on right now Can you find that out? Yeah, I'll come. Come on, let me go check. But we have to. Is the cash fellow? She's not waking up. Okay one moment I'm getting help started that way. Okay, thank you. What's wrong?

Starting point is 00:13:07 Sorry. Okay, and how old is she? She's 20. How long is she in the house? 20, you said? Yes, 20. You're doing a test of them? Yes. Okay. Okay.

Starting point is 00:13:22 Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, and how old is she? She's 20. 20 you said? Yes, 20. Okay. Hello? Hello? Okay, I need someone to stop passing the phone around because I've talked to four different people.

Starting point is 00:13:38 Okay, sorry, they just gave me the phone. Is she breathing? Hello? Is she breathing? No. Okay. I can't talk to them. I need you to talk to them. Hello?

Starting point is 00:13:49 Okay. My R.D. sent the ambulance and law enforcement to stay on the line. If there is a defibrillator available, send someone to get it. Okay. My RDS sent the ambulance and law enforcement. Stay on the line. If there is a defibrillator available, send someone to get it now and tell me when you have it. Say that again?

Starting point is 00:14:12 There's a point here right now. Okay. If there is a defibrillator available, send someone to get it now and tell me when you have it. We don't have it. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. Do you have a defibrillator? Yes. Yes, you have it?

Starting point is 00:14:26 Did you have a defibrillator? Yes, you have one. Are you talking to the officer? Yes, OK, I'm going to let you go since he's there with you and can help you. OK, thank you. OK, 1159. So while they're waiting for the authorities and paramedics to arrive,

Starting point is 00:14:41 they also are all standing together outside trying to make sense of what's happening. What's going on? What's happening inside? Where are our friends? All they know in this moment is that something very bad happened. Dylan made a comment of, I can't believe somebody And I whispered to Emily, where's Zana? And she said, she's inside. And I think she's dead. I think all I wanted was to go wake Zana up. And I knew it wasn't gonna happen.

Starting point is 00:15:18 Now, meanwhile, as all of this is happening, around 12 o'clock, so about roughly 15 minutes later, Ethan's brother, Hunter, is being woken up by a fellow frat brother, saying, hey, police are over at King Road House. They're at the King House. You need to wake up. You need to wake up. But Hunter wasn't really spooked by this. The King Road House had a lot of parties. He knew that there were a lot of noise complaints all the time, so he's like, okay, like, who cares? Whatever, you know, what else is new? But then he gets up and he starts going over to the house and Hunter shares about what that moment was like when he found out. And I just want to mention before I play this clip,

Starting point is 00:15:55 he does kind of laugh while he's speaking and recounting this, but it's almost this laugh of discomfort and disbelief. Almost as though to this very very day he still doesn't think that it's real. He doesn't, like, in those moments he didn't think that it was real. He also calls his sister, Maisie, the other triplet of the three of them, and he tells her that she needs to come over to Zana's house, although he does not give her specifics as to why. So I was walking over to the King Road house. I saw a group of people sitting on the ground. And it's all the people I've been hanging out with.

Starting point is 00:16:30 And they all just had this look in their face. When I walked up, like, the world had ended. I remember seeing Hunter walking up. And I remember us all turning and being like, oh my god. Like somebody's going to have to tell him what just happened. I'm like, what the hell's going on? Like, where's Ethan? They're like, Ethan's not here anymore.

Starting point is 00:16:54 What do you mean Ethan's not here anymore? It was like, where'd he go? They're like, your brother's dead. It was like, that can't be true. And then Hunter Johnson was like, I think Zana, Ethan were murdered last night. Didn't even know how to respond to it because it's like so unreal that someone I had spent almost every minute of my life with. I don't even know. Just dying. The first person I called was Maisie.

Starting point is 00:17:40 They were all hundreds of us and you just need to come to Xanthas. And I asked him why and he said, just come. Don't ask any questions. Have someone drop you off. I remember sitting in the car feeling like, I was like feeling like something was wrong. It was weird. Now after realizing the severity of this, what's really going on and being hit with all of this information, Hunter calls their mother. And he keeps repeating to their mom over and over, they aren't here, Ethan's not here,

Starting point is 00:18:14 Ethan's not here, to which his mom is just saying, okay, well go get him, like go get him then. But he just could not say the words. All he could say is, he's not here. To when finally then he said, he's not on this earth anymore. Then it finally clicked. Oh my gosh, where's Kaylee and Maddie? Their phones are pinging in there. Their phones are inside that house. We didn't know if they were home. We didn't know if they were in

Starting point is 00:18:41 there. We didn't know anything. We couldn't get a hold of them. I was sitting next to Dylan, and she really wanted to find out where they were, and we never went up there. Then suddenly, while all of these friends and siblings are kind of gathering out front of this house, trying to make sense of what's happening, they get told that Ethan and Xana have been found and that they are dead.

Starting point is 00:19:02 But then in that moment, they realize very quickly that they had all been consumed with Zana and Ethan, with what happened to them. They take a moment then and stop and step back and say, well, what about Kaylee? What about Maddie? News, of course, spreads very fast. We're in the era of text messages, social media,

Starting point is 00:19:19 all of these things. So these friends were also very close and people lived very close by, walking distance. So everybody's starting to learn about this information but still not knowing the details. So Jake, Maddie's boyfriend, calls Maddie's mom and says, hey, do you know what's happening right now in Moscow? There's been a homicide.

Starting point is 00:19:38 There's been a homicide at Maddie's house and Zana's dead. Like, have you heard about what's going on? Do you know anything? So Maddie's mom and stepdad, they're like, what? What are you talking about? They jump in the car, they start driving to Moscow, trying to figure out and see what's going on. But they figured there must just be some sort of misunderstanding here. Surely there's not a homicide. Surely Zanna's not dead. So they figure, you know, once we arrive to Moscow, everything will be fine. We'll figure out what this miscommunication was, and we'll take Maddie out to lunch. While we're there, you know, once we arrive to Moscow, everything will be fine. We'll figure out what this miscommunication was, and we'll take Maddie out to lunch.

Starting point is 00:20:07 While we're there, you know, we already made the drive, let's take her out to lunch, and everything will be okay. But then, while they were on the drive to Moscow, Maddie's mom decides to call the police. And she says to them, look, I know you can't tell me anything. I know you can't confirm anything or give me any details, but can you confirm if there is an active homicide investigation at 1122 King Road?" To which the officer she spoke with confirms yes. But still there was a little bit of a sense of, I don't know if you would say denial or hope perhaps, because the entire drive they were thinking, God, this is so horrible, there's been a homicide, it's true, Zana is dead, so we'll pick up Maddie, we'll

Starting point is 00:20:48 pick up Kaylee, since Kaylee stayed over there, and we'll console them, we'll be there for them. Not thinking that something had also happened to the girls. They thought more that the reason they weren't answering their phone calls was because they were attending to all of the chaos that was going on. So everything that was surrounding Zana, the possible homicide, all of the drama at the house, that's why they thought they weren't answering their phones. They never thought that it was because they were victims in this as well. Meanwhile, at 1 p.m., about an hour after that 911 call was made, a vandal alert goes out. And a vandal alert is basically kind of like an amber alert.

Starting point is 00:21:26 It's like a push notification, but it goes out to all the students for the campus. I saw the ambulances, cops. So the cops still not speaking to us. And then all of our phones go off and there's an alert that says homicide on King Road. Everyone simultaneously just started bursting into tears. We all get the first vandal alert, which is like amber alert, but for just University of Idaho students investigating a homicide on King Road. It didn't say how many, it didn't say who.

Starting point is 00:22:02 Homicide being investigated. Now this alert alert it made everyone fearful and still very unsure of what was happening, who was killed, who wasn't killed, what's going on, and even before they could think what was happening next, they get the next alert.

Starting point is 00:22:17 We got another vandal alert. Four students found dead. A Drupal murder. We look at the text and we're all like, what the f— What? Because nobody had said anything to us. That was before the cops even told us that Maddie and Kaylee had passed and that they were in there. I don't even know if I looked at my phone or if somebody showed me.

Starting point is 00:22:44 But some of my girls started yelling at the police guys. I show my phone and go, what the f*** is this? And he just looked at me, he goes, he like grabs my phone, he's like, I didn't even know they were sending this, I'm so sorry. And we were like, well, what does this mean? He was like, all four of them. So after hearing this, after hearing the confirmation that this was a quadruple homicide, they also start hearing details from Hunter, Hunter who had gone in earlier that morning,

Starting point is 00:23:11 and he says that it did look like it was a malicious attack. He had shielded them this entire time from any of the details, but now that he was starting to kind of catch his breath and reality was setting in and the news was spreading, he was starting to share of catch his breath and reality was setting in and the news was spreading. He was starting to share a little bit about what he saw, about what had happened. Yet the one thing that nobody could understand, the one thing that nobody could seem to grapple with was who could have done this?

Starting point is 00:23:38 Their worst fears had come true. Four of their friends just murdered. But how, by who, Why? As all of this is continuing to unfold, the police take the kids to the police station. Some kids drive there on their own, but the intention behind this was so that the police could start questioning them and clear them. It's not because any of the friends were under any sort of suspicion, but they wanted to just gather as much information as they could, and the students and friends were sharing all of that information.

Starting point is 00:24:09 Maddie's mom also arrives around this time, and the police speak directly with her. I feel like the struggle getting to this point was, I can't do this. I just can't. But it's just not mentally healthy to waste time. Other than laughing about Maddie, talking about Maddie, it's really all we do. There is very little place in my heart for holding on to anger. That's not what you heal from. A year ago, I couldn't's not what you heal from.

Starting point is 00:24:47 A year ago, I couldn't have spoken to you at all. I couldn't have articulated any of this. And it's taken friends, family, time to slowly creep out of that really, really bad place. And it's also reminding myself like, how would Maddie and Kaylee want to see me? Would they want to see me crying my pajamas and can't get out of bed? Or they want to see me talking about them and how happy and how amazing they are. And that's a struggle.

Starting point is 00:25:20 You never know how strong you are until strong is all you can be. This nightmare was now everyone's reality. The friends didn't want to go back to their houses that are near King Road. The family was also in town from out of town or from neighboring cities. So all of them stayed at a hotel for the night. The family, the friends near King Road, everybody. Hunter and Emily, the couple, the best friends of Xana and Ethan, they went to bed incredibly scared, thinking that every single noise that

Starting point is 00:25:50 they heard, just a twig breaking, a pin dropping, they thought that every noise they heard was them about to be attacked. They had been told, too, that this appeared to be targeted, so that left them confused. They had a very big group of friends. Why were those friends targeted? Had they been stalked for months? Is that person still out there still stalking them? Are they watching them? Why these four friends? Who is responsible for this? I know that the majority of my listeners are other females and women out there like myself, and I feel like I can talk to you about the real life things, right? Sometimes it's TMI, but that's okay.

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Starting point is 00:31:12 So reality has set in at this point. Four of their friends, barbarically and brutally murdered. Everybody is in complete disbelief. How, why, who? And then collectively, all of the friends start thinking about the day before the murders, before the discovery, trying to really piece it all together. Was somebody at the party? Did they make somebody mad?

Starting point is 00:31:33 Was somebody watching them? They were almost looking to solve this or get answers to this among the friends and just figure it out, get to the bottom of it. So they go back in time a little bit. They go back to November 12th, trying to figure out what happened, who were they around, who could have been responsible for this. So on that day, they had had a party at the King Road house.

Starting point is 00:31:54 It was game day. It was a very big day in the town. Everybody was gonna be drinking all day, partying all day, celebrating, and everybody was having fun. The roommates also were all partying, having fun together, and they were taking photos together, which now are those infamous photos we know of

Starting point is 00:32:10 from outside of the house, where they're on each other's shoulders, they're smiling, they're laughing, they're just having an amazing day, an amazing time together. So then Ethan and Xana left the party, and they go to the game. The game day happens, the fall formal happens,

Starting point is 00:32:24 parties were happening, everything was just happening next to each other simultaneously, just a very buzzed up busy day. Everyone ended up leaving around 9 p.m. and then some of those people ended up going back to an after party at Sigma Chi. Ethan tried to get his sister Maisie to go out and come to the party at Sigma Chi with him,

Starting point is 00:32:43 but she didn't want to. She was tired, she was in for the night, she was going to sleep. So Z go out and come to the party at Sigma Chi with him, but she didn't want to. She was tired, she was in for the night, she was going to sleep. So Xana and Ethan go to this party. They arrive around 9pm, and then they leave the party around 1.40am and head back to King Road. Meanwhile, at 1am, Kaylee and Maddie were out at the local bar called the Corner Club. Just drinking, hanging out, having fun.

Starting point is 00:33:03 So as the friends are all starting to piece this together, figuring out, you know, building the timeline, figuring out who was where, what they could have done, they kind of start thinking, you know, could someone have been at the party? Could somebody have been watching them at the corner club? Had they been being stalked all day and all night? Now of course, as the friend group is trying to piece all of the information together and figure this out, so is the public. And because of the lack of information from the police at this point, as you can imagine, rumors and speculation, it all started to run rampant.

Starting point is 00:33:36 And rumors began spreading fast. Rumors like, because King Road was a party house, it also was a drug house. There were drugs going in and out a drug house. There were drugs going in and out of that house. People were dealing. People were using that, you know, these murders, it was all part of a drug deal gone wrong. People then also started saying, you know what, Ethan's a drug dealer and all four of them overdosed on Ethan's drugs. Just really, you know, fueling all sorts of rumors and things. But the problem with these theories and the problem with these rumors is that the friends

Starting point is 00:34:09 who were closest to Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, and Ethan knew that nobody did any drugs. They knew that Ethan didn't deal drugs. Nobody was a dealer. Nobody was doing hard drugs in that house. They drank. They had fun. They were kids. So the friends knew, no, this is impossible. This theory doesn't check out. Move along to the next.

Starting point is 00:34:28 Meanwhile, reporters were also hounding everyone. They were showing up in person. They were calling, they were DMing just incessantly. Everybody was trying to get answers. And then, finally some answers came because we had the first press conference. Finally, some answers came because we had the first press conference. Now in this press conference, they confirmed that it was in fact a homicide. And they also confirmed that the cause of death was stabbing. Now this detail was new. It had been out there a little bit, but now it was being confirmed. And this made everybody realize these murders, they were much more personal. Because stabbing is extremely intimate.

Starting point is 00:35:07 It is an up close and personal thing to do. It's not necessarily the weapon of choice for somebody who is killing randomly. Not unless it's somebody who is fixated on knives and wants the personal feeling of a stabbing murder. So now everybody was learning this very disturbing and unsettling information, but really that's all that the police were saying. So hearing this information now and mentally lining it up with the very bloody scene at the King Road house, so much blood where it was like seeping out of the house almost, you remember seeing it there on the

Starting point is 00:35:42 drywall, it became very unsettling. It felt like there's this complete psychopath out there and still on the loose, a psychopath who had been stalking these students or at least one of them who barbarically murdered all of them with a horrific knife and there was a complete bloodbath at the scene and now they're still on the loose.

Starting point is 00:36:02 That is terrifying. Now at this same press conference, a lot of controversy started to build and it really started to first take flight because for the first time we were told that the survivors were at the house when these murders occurred. But we also knew that the 911 call

Starting point is 00:36:19 didn't come in until noon. So because of this, everybody was asking these questions of, well, why didn't these survivors and potential eyewitnesses call the police sooner? And it was a question that the police were not prepared or willing to answer. So after living in fear for days and still not understanding what exactly happened or why it happened, the autopsy results were released. We're just getting some breaking news in the case of those four college students who were murdered in Idaho.

Starting point is 00:36:48 The autopsy report was just released and reveals that the killer likely used the same large knife to attack all four students. CBS spoke with the coroner who says the nature of the crime seems personal. There was a lot of blood. It was a very sad scene. Were the deceased all in close proximity to each other or were they in different rooms? Um, I don't know that I can discuss that. Friends continued brainstorming with one another, trying to think of who could possibly have done this.

Starting point is 00:37:18 They start scouring the internet too, trying to piece it together, and that's when the grub truck footage first took surface and took flight, which if you remember that footage and even if you don't, let me explain it. It's basically the only food truck in Moscow. It's the only place really, or one of the only places, where you can get late night food after the bar. It's a food truck, it has all sorts of different options, but what's interesting about this food truck is that they live stream the whole thing.

Starting point is 00:37:46 They live stream people as they're coming up and ordering, as they're making the food. So when people are going through this footage of the grub truck that night, they spot Kaylee and Maddie right there on the footage ordering food after the corner club before returning to King Road House. And on that footage they also see somebody who appeared to be watching them, who wildly in the media was referred to as Hoodie Guy. And this footage goes viral. Everybody's wondering who was this guy. He was there in the crowd kind of watching them. Then when the girls

Starting point is 00:38:20 get their food and go out of the camera site, he follows a little bit after them in their same direction. So everybody starts thinking like, was this a guy who had been at the corner club all night? Did he follow them to the food truck? Was he watching them? Did he then follow them to 1122 King Road? Even friends became suspicious of him.

Starting point is 00:38:39 It just did not look good. And as I'm sure you can imagine, the true crime community was covering this case extensively. And when I say some people arguably completely threw ethics away, I mean it because we now hear too that people in the community were so desperate for answers. It wasn't just reporters, it wasn't just internet sleuths, but people were taking it next level. So much so as they were dressing up and posing as students going into these dorm rooms trying to get statements or comments. Just absolutely unethical and overstepping boundaries. One thousand percent full stop.

Starting point is 00:39:18 And with this, with everybody just thirsty for answers and information, speculation and coverage went absolutely insane. People were turning on everyone. There were also points where the public turned on Hunter and Emily, Xana and Ethan's best friends. Hunter, the one who discovered them in the house that morning, they turned on them as though they did it. And Hunter and Emily speak out in this docuseries saying they were receiving death threats that people thought they were the ones responsible for this. Of course, blame and public opinion

Starting point is 00:39:50 was also turning on Dylan and Bethany, the two survivors, the two surviving roommates, because people were questioning, how could you have slept through all of this? How did you not know anything? Why didn't you call 911 for hours? Jack, Kaylee's ex-boyfriend, also got roped into all of this. Was he a jealous ex? Was he trying to retaliate? Was this revenge? We had found out that

Starting point is 00:40:13 she had rapid fire called him that night at many times, which it's my belief. She's a young girl. She was drunk dialing him. Who the hell cares? But people were taking this information and running with it, trying to figure out who did this, just desperate for answers. Everyone felt scared. Everyone felt like they were being stalked, either stalked for comment or stalked because the public was now calling them a murderer. And it got so bad that a second press conference had to be held, one in which the police just used this presser to publicly clear these people as suspects. That's how insane the harassment became. So in this press conference they clear the roommates, they clear Jack, and they also

Starting point is 00:40:55 clear the hoodie guy. They also said in this press conference that they had no known suspects. They also had no weapons that had been recovered. So still, it was like, great, you were clearing some people, but not others. You're still not giving any information as to who this is, if there's still a danger out there, if there's a threat to the community. So of course, rumors are just going to continue to build and build and build. And over a month and a half went by with no updates, no news, no suspects. But then everything changed. Because just after 11 p.m. on December 29th, all of the families each received a very important phone call. A phone call that was about to change their lives. So

Starting point is 00:41:38 it's now been about a month and a half since the quadruple murder took place. No suspects had been named, no public information released. It was really just left up to everyone coming up with their own conclusions, forming their own opinions and some really batshit crazy rumors and speculation out there. But then just after 11 p.m. on the 29th of December, the police made a phone call. They called the families of all of the victims and they shared some very important news. It was after 11 o'clock. I was already in bed and the officer said don't tell anyone but we have the suspect in custody.

Starting point is 00:42:16 The following day, on December 30th, another press conference was held and this time it was to announce the arrest of Brian Koberger. A major development in a closely watched murder case. Just moments from now, police in Moscow, Idaho will hold a news conference. This room is absolutely packed here at Moscow City Hall. Dozens of reporters here inside, bunches of TV cameras. So we're all sitting there, mostly a bunch of local newspaper reporters, people within like an hour or two of Moscow. And there was a press conference last night. Detectives arrested 28 year old Brian Christopher

Starting point is 00:42:53 Kohlberger in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania. Kohlberger resides in Pullman, Washington, and is a graduate student at Washington State University. Due to Idaho State law, we are limited in what information we can release today until Cole Berger has been has his initial appearance in Idaho Court. Now this new information, it made everyone spin. Everyone was trying to make a connection,

Starting point is 00:43:18 trying to see if anybody knew who he was. Did he know any of the victims? Did he know any of the friends? Who was this guy? Who was this guy? Who was this guy who came in in the dead of night and stabbed four young college students? I went to my friend's house and we all were like,

Starting point is 00:43:33 do you know who he is? Do we know who he is? And none of us knew. My first reaction was, who the hell is this guy? He is just this random person that has nothing to do with any of our lives. We all now know the name of the person who's been charged with these offensives. Please ask the public, anyone who knows about this individual, to come forward. I was told that they had made an arrest someone named Brian. I was like, Brian? It's like I've never even heard of a Brian. Like why would this random guy

Starting point is 00:44:03 from Pullman that no one's met before do this? Nobody could understand who this guy was. There was a lot of relief that it wasn't somebody they knew, it wasn't a friend among themselves, it also wasn't another one of their own from Idaho, but even though that was a little comforting, there was still the massive discomfort of who the hell was this guy?

Starting point is 00:44:21 Who is this creep? So as his mugshot is shared pretty much everywhere, it took no time at all for all the sleuths to start digging, to start putting information together, figure out who Brian is, figure out all the details they could about him. And sure enough, pretty quickly it was discovered that he actually was a PhD criminology student. And this was very upsetting because it looked as though, okay, this guy was not only a fellow student at a different campus at WSU,

Starting point is 00:44:51 but only 15 minutes away from Moscow, but he studied criminology. He was going for his PhD. He was smart. He was interested in this stuff. And that was a little unnerving. Just a few days later on January 5th, Brian had his first hearing. And here is how that day was described.

Starting point is 00:45:09 The first time they brought Brian Coburger into the courtroom, when they opened the doors, a chill swept through the courtroom. It was just a really eerie, surreal feeling to see him for the first time. Maddie's parents also described what it was like seeing Brian for the first time. Just seeing him, and he was probably, I don't know, maybe eight feet away from me. I almost really wanted to take him out myself right there. It was, okay, okay, gotta calm down. My wife actually was holding on to my arm because she was afraid I was gonna go do something.

Starting point is 00:45:51 I remember just holding his arm as tightly as I could and he was shaking. I think we were all shaking. Count 2 alleges that you committed the felony offense of murder in the first degree the maximum penalty for this offense is Dead or imprisonment for life. Do you understand? Yes, I thought I would Feel like you know, yes We're here. We're watching you like how dare you and

Starting point is 00:46:24 It wasn't that way at all. He didn't look at us, but I'm sure he was instructed to do so. And I thought. If he doesn't feel bad, why am I wasting so much time even pretending like he's a human being? I'm hurting myself.

Starting point is 00:46:41 He's not going to make me a victim. Now, although Maddie's family went to that hearing and some friends have gone and other family members, Ethan's family has shared that they have no interest in attending any of the hearings, not even the trial when the trial begins. And here is what his mom had to say about it. Sending in a courtroom. This doesn't feel right. Why would I go sit in a courtroom with that person? Have you attended any other hearings? No, I will not. We won't. We won't attend any other hearings. What's the

Starting point is 00:47:11 purpose? Definitely not the trial. No, no. I don't have a need to go look them in the eyes or I don't. It is what it is. We cannot change the outcome on this thing. We cannot bring it back. Now, due to this case being such a high profile death penalty case and so much speculation just taking over and it being so chaotic, a gag order was issued. And the gag order was actually issued through the duration of the verdict, meaning until a verdict is reached and read and put into court law, no investigators, no law enforcement officers, nobody related to the case

Starting point is 00:47:50 can discuss the case because they fear that it would jeopardize the trial. And because of the gag order, then the attention started shifting because now there were these sleuths who were looking into the case, who were dissecting every detail, but with a gag order, that was giving them a roadblock. They couldn't keep doing that.

Starting point is 00:48:07 So, the natural shift was to start looking into Brian, to start sleuthing his background, trying to figure out more about him, since no more details were coming out about the case. Everyone just became obsessed with figuring out everything about this guy. Who is Brian Coburger? What brought him to that house? Did he just spontaneously combust into a killer overnight? So as this case is taking flight and going viral, a guy named Josh sees him. Sees it come across his screen on the news, and he recognizes him. He went to DeSales University with him.

Starting point is 00:48:39 He was even a partner with him on a school project. He knew Brian personally. And here is Josh and another classmate of Brian's describing their partner with him on a school project. He knew Brian personally. And here is Josh and another classmate of Brian's describing their history with him and their interactions with him. Brian Coburger and I met in the biology room. We were all being paired up for this long project that we were about to do.

Starting point is 00:48:57 We're like picking partners and I see this guy standing alone with his leather jacket on and he's like just kind of being quiet. I'm the type of guy that says, hey buddy, do you want to be my partner? This guy is incredibly smart, incredibly detail oriented, and he is honestly a pleasure to work with. Do you need help with A? Do you need help with B? Bouncing ideas off each other, fact checking each other. I took a few classes with Brian Koberger. He was also a forensic psychology major. We saw him maybe as the smarter student. I remember there was a class where I actually tried

Starting point is 00:49:30 to cheat off his test. I don't tell a lot of people that but I tried to cheat off his test because I knew he always did amazing in our psychology classes. He seemed to be a lonely guy. I definitely invited him to a party one time and he said no. I can't remember that. He commuted to DeSales. So it was kind of hard to learn who Brian was. He is an oddball. He is smart, but he's like a robot. Purely based off the fact of his social inability to perform in a normal human manner. I can absolutely see someone like him being involved in something like this. Then they mention Dr. Ramsland and how Brian studied directly underneath her.

Starting point is 00:50:20 Dr. Catherine Ramsland is a very accredited woman in the forensic psychology world. She has been on multiple TV shows. She's published multiple books. I spent five years talking with Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer, because he defies many of the formulas. Brian Koberger studied forensic psychology under Dr. Ramsland. In that class, you learned about serial killers, murderers, and their motives. Right behind our campus is a group of houses where normal

Starting point is 00:50:53 people live, but one house to sales bought and they use it as a crime scene house. Dr. Ramsland would leave evidence and clues of a real murder that happened in history. We would try to figure out exactly how this crime took place, just thinking about how and why a person would do something like that. I did one assignment with Brian in the crime scene house. We're all sitting there quiet and he would come up with something like, well, maybe the insurer did this. Brian's analysis usually helped us get to the end goal of what Dr. Ramslen wanted us to get to. So a big point of conversation through all of this was how Brian was very, very inquisitive and how sometimes serial killers can mask their personal

Starting point is 00:51:45 curiosity through education. Almost as though he wasn't interested in this at an educational level and then became a serial killer because of it, but more so he always wanted to kill, and so he strategically took courses to learn the ins and outs. Again, that's just a theory and that was just conversation. But with that, it then catapults us into the now infamous survey that we saw go viral after the arrest. Koberger posted a Reddit survey where he was interested in figuring out what motivates people to commit certain types of crimes. You don't look like a psychopath. You look like you're doing your homework. Brian was asking questions about how certain inmates felt

Starting point is 00:52:27 about the crime that they did, which to me was very bizarre to ask. It was definitely out of the realm of the type of questions that we would ask. The Master of Arts in Criminal Justice is awarded to Ryan Koberger. You could be a teacher who is supposed to be the protector of children doing nefarious things with a student. How often times do we see that? They coach the football team and they're involved in Little League and they're part of the community.

Starting point is 00:53:01 All the well-being that chameleon is blending in with society. It's summertime and it's the season of doing things that are like nice and enjoyable, and that make you feel like you can just go outside, enjoy all your activities, not be like tied into the kitchen, tied to like cooking or grocery shopping, and in enters HelloFresh to the chat because HelloFresh makes it so easy to fit quick home cooked meals into your schedule every week and without even a second thought.

Starting point is 00:53:35 They curate these delicious recipes that go right to your door. They have sun dried tomato grilled cheese. They have like panko crusted, chummy,urri, barramundi, which is like something, it's a mouthful to me to say, but it's a mouthful to eat and it is so bomb. And for summer, HelloFresh has even made it easier to enjoy these delicious, healthy, and homemade quality meals

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Starting point is 00:55:16 I recently talked to you guys about my skims haul and I just want to talk to you about it again because it has been just a full game changer in my closet and my dresser. My sister Amy has been wearing skims for years, pajamas, their undergarments, you name it. And I always ask her like, is it really worth the hype? I don't know. I just, I've always worn, I'm not going to say who the brand is, but it's probably the one you're thinking is like the most mainstream underwear company on the market and bra company. I was wearing them for years, even though I was unhappy, the quality's trash, it like rips in the wash,

Starting point is 00:55:47 it like bulges, it's just not comfortable. So anyway, I was like, is the hype really worth it? She's been telling me forever, yes, yes, yes. Then Skims became a partner on this channel and let me just tell you, I did a haul and I am officially converted. I bought things from their Fits Everybody collection. They're little like cloth cloth soft bralettes, their actual bras, their thong underwear that is

Starting point is 00:56:10 totally seamless where that's why I always stuck with my old company because it was the only one that I could ever find seamless underwear with. Theirs is so comfortable, so stretchy, fits like every groove, every crevice, every curb. It's just and it feels like you're wearing nothing. So it's been truly life-changing. I replaced literally all of my underwear, even my bras, replaced it all. And I am never looking back. I know that sounds cliche, but I'm really not.

Starting point is 00:56:34 I even showed you guys my most recent haul when I was like, cause I did a little, you know, testing the waters, tried a few things here and there, loved all of it. So then I did this massive haul where I got just a full restock of all my underwear and then threw all my old underwear away. So I will never go back. I think you guys should try it too because if you haven't, it's probably going to change your life like it did mine, especially the fits everybody

Starting point is 00:56:55 triangle bralette. I wear it every single day. So shop Skims fits everybody collection and more at skims.com. But after you place your order, be sure to let them know that I sent you just select podcast in the survey, be sure to let them know that I sent you. Just select podcast in the survey, be sure to select my show in the dropdown menu that follows. It's a free way to support the channel. It lets them know where you came from and where you heard it. And then tell me what you tried and what you like,

Starting point is 00:57:16 because now that I am on board with like their bralette, their underwear, I've even tried some of their pajamas, I need to know what are the other hidden gems that I'm missing? What are they? So go to skims.com slash Annie and grab your stuff today and tell me what I need to add to my list as well. So as everybody's piecing together his background,

Starting point is 00:57:42 we also learn about how when Brian Koberger wanted to be a research assistant for the police department in Washington. This was in the spring of 2022, so just a few months before the quadruple murders previous to my employment at Washington State University.

Starting point is 00:57:56 I was the chief of police for the city of Pullman. We had a program where a WSU criminal justice PhD student would do research and assistance for us. So I interviewed Brian Koperger. I know that he had an interest in the mind of a person who commits crimes, their motivation, how they feel.

Starting point is 00:58:18 They seemed maybe a little bit awkward talking with him. His communication style was not like a fluid conversation necessarily where he spoke easily. It was a little bit more stuttered I guess. With a researcher and a law enforcement agency, a huge factor is development trust. And that was one area where I thought he might fall short. He did not get the job. So everybody's finding out all of this unsettling information about Brian in real time, right? They're finding out about his education. They're finding out that he's kind of a loner,

Starting point is 00:58:52 but nobody really still knows who Brian is. Who is he? What we know about Brian Koeberger is that he was raised in the rural mountains of the Poconos in Pennsylvania. He seems to have been picked on or bullied as a kid a lot. When he got older, he was kind of a loner kid, while Coburger was at Washington State University.

Starting point is 00:59:15 He was a teacher's assistant. And from what we've heard from students who were in classes with Coburger, he had somewhat of an off-putting personality. But it's not like this guy had a rap. It'd be different if like in his past he had some other like violent assault or something on his record. What makes this so striking is this wasn't some career criminal. This might have been someone's first act. The same day of that hearing the probable cause affidavit was released. And this gave a whole new level of insights into how Brian was connected and how they

Starting point is 00:59:51 ended up coming to arrest Brian. We have breaking news for you, and that is that the probable cause affidavit in the Idaho Four murder case has officially been released. A lot of information as to what led to Brian Kohlberger's arrest. These details are so heartbreaking. Let's talk about the key takeaways because OMG. Probable cause affidavit is supposed to provide a judge with just enough evidence for the suspect to be held on the crime.

Starting point is 01:00:19 DNA, phone records, and that white Hyundai Elantra, those are the pieces of evidence police believe connect Brian Coburger to the Idaho murders. We get to see the homework that all the investigators put together to say Brian Coburger is our guy. The night the killings took place, Coburger's cell phone data reveals he leaves his apartment in Pullman heading toward Moscow.

Starting point is 01:00:44 His cell phone stops reporting to the network at 2 47 a.m. Investigators say that's consistent with someone like putting their phone in airplane mode or turning it off. Just before 3 30 a.m., a white Elantra scene on surveillance footage making passes at the King Road house. Investigators believe the homicides occurred between 4 and 4.25 a.m. And then sometime after 4.20 a.m.

Starting point is 01:01:12 A white Hyundai Elantra is seen leaving the King Road residence at high speed on security footage. When Coburger's phone starts reporting to the network again, it happens at 4.48 a.m. as he's headed south from Moscow towards Genesee. According to cell phone data, Coburger drove back to Pullman in an odd way. Typically, people will drive down the main highway that connects the two towns or they'll drive on

Starting point is 01:01:40 the airport road. But he drove through a residential subdivision out of the way. He winds his way back to Pullman through some of the smaller farm towns. Koberger returns to his residence on the Pullman campus in the early morning hours. One of the most shocking parts of the affidavit was that investigators found a sheath for a knife next to Maddie on the bed. The cell phone records show Koehberger likely returned to the area of 1122 King Road that morning. He seems to circle back to the crime scene sometime around 9 a.m. sometime around 9 a.m. It kind of makes my skin crawl knowing that he was on the same street.

Starting point is 01:02:29 He was by my car. He was by my front door that morning. When he went back there in the morning, that was an oh shit moment. I left the sheath and that has my DNA on it. That's what I truly believe. Where is that sheath? Oh my God, where is it?

Starting point is 01:02:43 Probably freaking out because he probably wore booties on his feet He probably gloved up. He probably had long sleeves. He probably had a hair net and a hood up and Knowing what he did know probably accounted for every little thing that he could You can say you're gonna do this this and this on any given day But almost 100% of the time the plan has to deviate because you can't control the outcome. As this is released, we also start hearing more about Brian's movements in the days

Starting point is 01:03:12 following the murders. And with this information, it starts illustrating a lot of red flags. Five days after the killings occurred, Brian Koberger changed his car registration from Pennsylvania to Washington. This is extremely suspicious because maybe someone is worried that their car was captured on video or surveillance of some kind. And so registering a different state

Starting point is 01:03:36 is a way to change not only the look of your vehicle, but where it's registered, the information about it, maybe it's a way to cover something up. Once that car from that footage was identified, the police put out a Bolo, but they only put it out to law enforcement. It wasn't a public one, which a Bolo is a be on the lookout for.

Starting point is 01:03:55 So they put this car out to a law enforcement Bolo. And there was an officer who was just driving around the student housing complex, and he spotted that same car with Pennsylvania plates. They ran the plates and sure enough it was registered to Brian Coburger. And when they ran that it was discovered that he had actually been previously stopped for a traffic violation. Now even though this officer discovered this car with the plates because the car model was a different year, they didn't submit the lead to Moscow.

Starting point is 01:04:25 And this discovery was on the 29th of November, so a month before the arrest. And in hindsight, when this information came to light, a lot of people thought that they dropped the ball and that they could have easily connected it then, but because it was a different year, they didn't submit the lead to Moscow. So as the details in the case are slowly leaking or slowly being released, the public and the true crime community was like in overdrive, just searching for anything and everything that could explain why someone would kill these four students. And that is

Starting point is 01:04:58 when the Papa Rogers account was discovered on social media, although it was initially created a month before the arrest happened. And we covered this Papa Roger account in real time when we had first discovered it years ago. So I'll link that deep dive in the show notes, but basically people saw this account and they thought that it was Brian Coburger. They thought it was like a sock account

Starting point is 01:05:21 or an alias account of his. And the reason why is because this Papa Rogers account, that was the name of the user, he was in these groups that were dedicated on Facebook to the Idaho Four case, commenting, theorizing, just sharing details too that nobody knew at the time, details that had not been publicly released. Papa Roger joined our Facebook group, the University of Idaho Murders Case Discussion. A couple of weeks after we started the page, and he immediately started to get attention

Starting point is 01:05:53 because of the questions he was asking and just how creepy overall he was. Well, Lena and I are like the administrators of the page. And if something gets posted that's inappropriate, it like pops up to our attention. We get this like file of people that report comments. And his were in there all the time, which is how he became like even more prominent in my head.

Starting point is 01:06:15 I mean, he just asked really weird questions. Like, how did the killer hold the knife prior to entering the scene in your opinion? He said, which hand do you think they used to kill with? And I was just like, ooh, who is he? Something's not right. Something's off with this guy. Alina and I have a passion for true crime.

Starting point is 01:06:33 We have multiple pages that focus on crimes that people are looking to solve. But the biggest and most well known is the University of Idaho murders. There was talk back then like, oh, I bet the killer is on this page. There's 220,000 of us. We have almost a quarter million members. Somebody's going to say something that's going to be significant. People ask questions on this page and they're like, oh, I think so-and-so did it. But he was so into like the crime scene and like the killer and why he did things in hindsight

Starting point is 01:07:07 I see something very much Along the same lines as the questionnaire that Brian Coburger created for a school project He wanted like the thoughts and feelings into why somebody committed crime Papa Roger asked on our page into why somebody committed crime. Papa Roger asked on our page, how did the killer leave the scene? Colberger asked, how did you leave the scene in his questionnaire?

Starting point is 01:07:31 Papa Roger said, did you clean up at all? Brian Colberger asked, before leaving, is there anything else you did? The questions on his questionnaire are very similar to the questions that Papa Roger asked on our page. During this same window of time as Papa Rogers is making these comments and these posts in this Facebook group, Brian went on that cross-country drive with his father back to Pennsylvania. During that drive, we also know and saw through body cam footage that he was pulled over twice.

Starting point is 01:08:02 So I would imagine that news of the Elantra being out and him being pulled over and knowing that law enforcement is looking for his car, it's enough for me to believe and it was enough for people to suspect that he probably was starting to spiral in these moments, especially as he was being pulled over, thinking like the walls are starting to close in. He knows law enforcement's looking for his car or a version of. He sees all these people theorizing and seeing that this case has just completely gone nuclear and everybody's talking about it.

Starting point is 01:08:34 I could imagine that he starts feeling quite a bit of stress, which at the same time, while all of this is happening, the Papa Roger posts and comments start becoming more erratic, more unhinged, starting to deflect from the car saying, no, no, no, this car that they've put out, it's just a red herring. We don't need to look into this. This isn't anything real or big. He also then comments mentioning the idea of the sheath being left behind, which, by the way,

Starting point is 01:08:59 this was a detail that at the time of that post had not been released. That detail of the sheath being left behind was not released until a month later, prompting the question, how would this user know to ask about it? And I'm going to get back to that in a bit, but take a listen. One post in particular that really catches my attention is his very first post on November 30th. Of the evidence released, the murder weapon has been consistent as a large fixed-blade knife. This leads me to believe they found the sheath.

Starting point is 01:09:31 That is so odd because we didn't hear anything about the sheath. This has never been discussed publicly. This is November 30th. This is a full month before they even arrest him." Now my personal opinion, and you may disagree which is totally fine, but my personal opinion is that if Papa Rogers is Brian Koberger, which we will also talk about more here in a minute, I think that he posted about the sheath because he wanted to see if anybody would confirm that

Starting point is 01:10:02 it was found. Because at that point it was a detail that wasn't made public yet, right? It was just a fear of his that he left it behind. So I think he was trying to almost like, not breadcrumb, but maybe a little bit, be like, I think that maybe there was a sheath that was left behind. That's how they know about this, this, and this. Hoping that maybe somebody would be like, yeah, I'm connected to law enforcement, or I have a friend in law enforcement, and they did find find a sheath trying to almost get that information out. I think that he slipped up a little bit. I think he got a little bit careless.

Starting point is 01:10:29 So we also find out that prior to his arrest they did in fact find that sheath. We also learned that the police had connected touch DNA located on the sheath's button and connected it to Brian through genealogy testing. So after all of that, in Pennsylvania, after he arrives there on his cross-country road trip with his dad, the FBI begins surveilling him. They also arrest him and they search his properties. Back in Pennsylvania, the FBI began surveilling the Coburger residents.

Starting point is 01:11:01 They take some of the family's garbage and made a DNA profile of Brian Coburger's father and then got at least a partial match to the DNA profile on the knife sheath. So using all of this information investigators say we believe the person who committed this crime is Brian Coburger. We want a warrant for his arrest. The investigators let us know of their plan that they were going to do an arrest at his family home in Pennsylvania. We were going to time the search warrants at his office and his graduate student housing department to happen almost simultaneously. Police department search warrant, come to the door.

Starting point is 01:11:48 A break in the case that has gripped this nation. Authorities have arrested a suspect in Pennsylvania. Koberger reportedly had a blank stare as he was arrested and also asked if anyone else had been taken into custody. Mr. Koberger was found in the kitchen area wearing latex gloves and apparently was taking his personal trash and putting it into separate ziplock baggies. The police took computers, they have hard drives, they took black clothing, they took gloves, masks. There were no clothes at the apartment. It just was almost vacant. Looked like he had planned not to come back. Now you know

Starting point is 01:12:25 what's so interesting is right after the arrest, poof, like magic, the Papa Rogers account disappears, just erased from the internet. So I don't, he obviously couldn't have done that. He was in custody, but if it was connected to Brian, could the FBI have scraped it? Once they searched and seized all of his devices, will they find that the IP is linked to that account? Will they see postings that were on the account? So now, with all of the pieces that are beginning to come together,

Starting point is 01:12:54 how they were killed, who was responsible, when it happened, the biggest question on everyone's mind, aside from, you know, why did he do it, was what really happened inside that house that night. I don't know if you're anything like me, but I feel like these days fees just seem to be everywhere. You know, concert tickets, there's a fee. A door-dash order, there's a fee. A movie theater, there's a processing fee.

Starting point is 01:13:23 All these like, just mysterious fees. They're everywhere. And they hurt the most when you're feeling down and already tight on money. And that's why Chime offers fee-free banking. That means no monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and no minimum balance fees. And you can sign up today at chime.com slash serialously. Now, bank fees can also be a huge pain in the butt, right? Overdraft this, overdraft that, all sorts of things, use it in a different ATM, whatever it may be. So this is a huge benefit that you get from banking fee free with Chime, because there are no monthly fees, there are no overdraft fees, there also is no minimum balance requirement. You can open your account in just two minutes at chime.com

Starting point is 01:14:05 serialously. That's chime.com serialously. Chime feels like progress. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. Members FDIC, spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs. Bank ranking and number of ATMs according to US News and World Report 2023. Time checking account required. At this point, we still didn't know what took place inside 1122 King Road. And that was the question weighing so heavily on everyone. That night I had left an apartment complex near the King Road house at 4 a.m. And I remembered thinking to myself that it was eerily quiet. Usually you can see the last remnants of people leaving a party, but it was silent.

Starting point is 01:14:56 The probable cause affidavit not only told us more about Brian, but it also told us more about what happened in those early morning hours. And more specifically, it told us what Dylan saw and what Dylan did. A few weeks after that night, Dylan had expressed to me what happened. She heard Kaylee and Maddie come home, and she heard them chit-chatting on the couch for a while. The couch was on the wall of her bedroom. And she was pretty much sleeping through it.

Starting point is 01:15:30 The surviving roommates, Bethany Funk and Dylan Mortenson, confirmed that all members of the King Road residence were asleep by 4 a.m. That's with the exception of Zanna Kernodle at 4 a.m. DoorDash drops off an order for Zana. At 4.05 a.m., a white Elantra is seen driving in front of the King Road house, making a turn, and then parking. And cell phone data shows that Zana was on TikTok around 4.12 a.m. That is when Dylan hears some commotion kind of upstairs.

Starting point is 01:16:05 She thought she heard someone say, there's someone here. She looked out of her bedroom door on the second floor and didn't see anything. Dylan said that she remembered hearing crying. And she thought she heard a male voice say, it's okay, I'm going to help you. Video from next door at 417 a.m. captures the sound of a whimper and a loud thud. A dog barking can also be heard on the footage. Dylan opens her door for a third time and she describes seeing a man with bushy eyebrows.

Starting point is 01:16:38 This person walked past her bedroom and out the sliding glass door of the back room. She said that she just scared they closed the door. Like, the home. Dylan was incredibly frightened and she started calling all of the roommates, but nobody was picking up. So then she ran down to Bethany's room in the basement so that she could be with her so that she wasn't alone. Eventually she just decided to go for it and she made a run for it to Bethany's room down in the basement. Dylan was like, did you hear any of that?

Starting point is 01:17:10 And Bethany was like, no. And so I think that Dylan was probably just like, I must have imagined it. And if you didn't hear anything, then let's go to bed together safely. Now with all of this information now out there too, as you can imagine, the internet just started attacking these surviving roommates, laying into them for potentially hearing the murders, seeing the murderer, and not calling 911 until hours later. I'm sure Dylan and Bethany see these hurtful comments, and they can't really say anything back to it. But, you know, they are not speaking out

Starting point is 01:17:50 for obvious reasons, legal reasons. And that's what the public, I don't think, necessarily understands. I think it's very important for everybody to know that what if doesn't matter because if she had known what was going on, it would have been too late anyways. So as we know, Dylan then woke up and she made that phone call to her friend saying something weird is going on. It's not a dream.

Starting point is 01:18:20 I think it's real. It's at the house. Can you come over? And that's when Hunter and the girls went over to 1122 King Road. Police entered the house and went up to the second floor. They went into Zana's bedroom and found her and Ethan dead with stab wounds. Police then went up to the third floor and into Maddie's bedroom where they found both Maddie and Kaylee in Maddie's bed, dead with multiple stab wounds.

Starting point is 01:18:48 Now this fueled even more speculation as to who this guy was. Was he stalking them? Police stated that it was targeted, so who was the killer targeting? Then given the only publicly available information out about Brian, the public decided to create their own profile of him,

Starting point is 01:19:04 kind of like how an FBI profiler would create one on their perp, on who they think committed a horrific crime. And that is right about the time when the term incel was mentioned. Now, I did a full deep dive on this very, very early on before it became like public theory and sp- and fodder. It was back in, gosh, it was back in January, I think, of that year. It was right around the time of the murders, which I'll link it for you, but it's where we spoke about Elliot Rogers.

Starting point is 01:19:34 And Elliot Rogers is a famous incel, which the term incel means involuntarily celibate. And it's a very dangerous group of people, in my opinion, or it can be. Now, as I said, Elliot Rogers is a very infamous incel. He has fan clubs, fan groups, people who look up to him like he's a hero. But what's interesting is he also coincidentally has the same last name as that internet user, Papa Rogers. So is that some sort of inspo alias that somebody created looking to Elliot as some like hero?

Starting point is 01:20:06 The definition there is involuntarily celibate. So this is a sort of person that cannot connect with the other gender sexually and maybe feel some resentment toward that gender. Hayley Willett says they met in 2015 when he took her to a movie, then insisted on escorting her to her dorm room. He kept trying to tickle me and I would ask him to stop or he would get very serious. I proceeded to pretend to throw up in the bathroom, hoping that he would leave. And then he messaged me and he said that I had good birthing hips.

Starting point is 01:20:41 I still think the more we find out that this was incel rage, rage against women because of his history with women starting in high school where the girls would be bullying him. Certain men feel like they are owed a relationship with a woman, that that's not something they should have to earn, it's something that they should be given. I did hear about a situation where Coburger had followed a student out to her car, like trying to flirt with her, and she reported it to someone in the criminal justice department. At Washington State University, he starts getting into altercations with students, and we find out later that he was fired from his TA ship. He got more feisty and belligerent,

Starting point is 01:21:25 even arguing with his professors. Until December 19th, Brian Coburger is officially terminated by Washington State University. And I'm pushing them for documents. I wanna know about the stuff about Coburger with the girls. If that's true, I wanna see his record. But again, it's just tricky because there's rumors about his behavior at the school, but none of it's verified until we have the

Starting point is 01:21:50 documentation. So I mentioned Elliot Rodger and how we made that deep dive episode into him very early on before it was even a public theory out there, and I personally thought that Brian most likely was or is an incel. That's just my personal opinion. I'm not in a position to diagnose him. That is just what I think. But what I think is very interesting is as we were making these connections between Elliot, between Brian, and when I did that deep dive, as I was watching this docu-series,

Starting point is 01:22:17 it was the first time that I found out and heard that Brian did in fact study Elliot Roger. This is brand new information that had never been released before. We had heard that he had studied serial killers, but we had never heard that he studied Elliot. Now here's Brian's former classmates sharing those details. At DeSales University,

Starting point is 01:22:37 some of the people that Brian and I studied that were serial killers were Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Kemfer, and Elliot Roger. So Elliot Roger, he was a young man in college that was basically jaded and hated his life because he lacked the attention from friends, family, and most of all, women. So Elliot Roger, one day, first he invited some people over that he claimed to be friends with. He stabbed them to death. He then went out with firearms to a sorority and killed a number of women in the sorority. He then drove around, shot multiple other

Starting point is 01:23:18 people in public, and he ended his own life in his vehicle. But after the fact, there was a written manifesto and he basically tells you, this is what I did, this is why I did it. Roger's sexist rants are part of a culture that breeds violence against women. Roger wrote, all of those beautiful girls I've desired so much in my life,

Starting point is 01:23:39 but can never have because they despise and loathe me. I will destroy. So this of course genuinely makes me think that that Papa Roger account was an inspiration to him, almost like an ode to Elliot. If you listen to some of the manifestos of Elliot Roger, he talks about hating all the girls from Alpha Phi, the same sorority that Kaylee was in. Brian was interested in a lot of things that we learned, but he did have more of an interest in Elliot Rogers. I talked to other girls in the class

Starting point is 01:24:12 where we were all bothered by what Elliot Roger did, but Brian did not seem bothered. Incel, in my professional opinion, this is a particularly dangerous version of misogyny because in cell communities have this presence in an online space. They can say things and provide support for things that perhaps they wouldn't do in a face-to-face context because they would be concerned about what the social consequences or the repercussions would look like.

Starting point is 01:24:43 Now, as all of this was public and people were talking about it and making connections in online incel forms, Brian was being praised, being admired even, saying he did what Elliot couldn't do. I mean, Brian had a full-on fan club, still does to this day. People even started creating fake accounts of his, just trying to be him. Some people taking it so far and so sick and twisted

Starting point is 01:25:06 that they would create social media accounts posing as Brian and they would DM the friends of the victims, taunting them, saying, sorry I killed your friends, sorry I killed those bitches. Just truly sick and unhinged. So then the docu-series starts sharing what the aftermath has been like. What it has been like having this huge high-profile case out there, people harassing you, hounding you,

Starting point is 01:25:31 and not even being able to just breathe without a new theory popping up or a new question or a new accusation. And Ethan's family also shares what they did with Ethan's remains, which I personally find this just incredibly touching and beautiful. They talk about how they were looking for a place to put him, but that nothing made sense because where do you put your child? That's the exact question his mom said. Where do you put your kid? So they shared that they put him in the basement until one of them dies.

Starting point is 01:26:00 Then he will be with them. They say that way he is safe, he's with family, they can go downstairs to the basement and talk to him whenever they want, which they do, and I find that very comforting, personally. Now when sharing about how to move forward, Maddie's mom also shared, and here's what she had to say. I feel like the struggle getting to this point was, I can't do this. I just can't. But it's just not mentally healthy to waste time other than laughing about Maddie, talking about Maddie.

Starting point is 01:26:41 It's really all we do. There is very little place in my heart for holding on to anger. That's not what you heal from. A year ago, I couldn't have spoken to you at all. I couldn't have articulated any of this. And it's taken friends, family, time to slowly creep out of that really, really bad place. And it's also reminding myself like, how would Maddie and Kaylee want to see me? Or they want to see me crying my pajamas and can't get out of bed?

Starting point is 01:27:22 Or they want to see me talking about them and how happy and how amazing they are. And that's a struggle. You never know how strong you are until strong is all you can be. Now after I had wrapped this recording, a complete curveball was thrown on June 30th, because on June 30th, it was announced that Brian Coburger was accepting a plea deal. In exchange for the death penalty being removed, he was going to plead guilty to the burglary charge and all four murder charges.

Starting point is 01:27:56 And sure enough, on Wednesday, he had his plea hearing where he changed his plea in court and it was accepted by the judge. And there has been a lot of conversation about whether this was fair, whether this was right, and a lot of the families believe it's unfair. They didn't agree with this. They wanted to go through with the trial.

Starting point is 01:28:13 They wanted Brian to have to face everyone in court an answer to these crimes, every detail coming out. So even though this plea deal was structured and accepted, people were mad, people were outraged, and a lot of people said, well, if they are gonna at least do this plea deal was structured and accepted, people were mad, people were outraged, and a lot of people said, well, if they are gonna at least do this plea deal and cancel the trial, there needs to be an allocution, meaning he needs to say every single detail,

Starting point is 01:28:34 the motive, what happened, where the murder weapon is, all of those things. However, in the plea hearing on July 2nd, the judge accepted his plea, and he did not state that that was going to be a requirement. So as of now, it seems that the only information that we are going to receive, since it's not going to trial, is going to happen once the gag order is lifted,

Starting point is 01:28:58 which will not happen until sentencing, which is scheduled for July 23rd. That day he will be sentenced and also all of the victims in this case will have an opportunity to read their victim impact statements and address the court. But at this point, the plea deal has already been accepted, the guilty plea has already been accepted, and there was no mention of allocution or certain criteria within that required. or certain criteria within that required. So we will just wait until the gag order is lifted to see what other information comes to light. The good news with this is that he will spend the rest of his life behind bars, he will have no

Starting point is 01:29:36 opportunity for appeal, and we will never hear from this loser douchebag again. However, that's not much solace in comparison when you hear from the family and how they have said very vocally, not all of the families but some, that this is not the outcome that they wanted. Overall, I found this docu-series incredibly insightful just because, again, we're hearing from people that we have not personally heard from before. Dylan and Bethany's friends, Hunter, who went into the house that day, people who knew Brian personally. And so I think it just gives us

Starting point is 01:30:12 a better depiction of who Brian is, what the motivation could have been, and more importantly, who these victims were, what their legacy stands for, everything that was a bright light in their life, and I just found it really insightful. So I encourage you to watch if you are interested. If you have been following along with this case, make sure that you take a quick second, whatever app you're listening to this podcast on, make sure you click the button in the corner to follow it. It's totally free, but that way you won't miss as those update episodes come out because I release them outside of the normal release schedule. Also, if you're

Starting point is 01:30:48 watching this on YouTube, make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss those updates. And I'm curious to hear from you. So thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode. Again, the docu-series is called One Night in Idaho. I appreciate you tuning in. Let's keep all of the families and our thoughts and prayers. Alright guys, thank you so much, and until the next one, be nice, don't kill people, don't hang around any incels, and just watch your back. Lock your doors, lock your doors. That is the number one thing, lock your doors. Alright guys, thanks, bye. Bye.

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SERIALously - 296: One Night in Idaho: Friends Who Found Victims Speak Out & Bryan Kohberger’s True Motive

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