The Megyn Kelly Show - Idaho College Murders: Who is Suspect Bryan Kohberger, and What Evidence is There Against Him, with Howard Blum | Ep. 515

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by bestselling author and journalist Howard Blum, who has been covering the Idaho college murders story very closely, to dive deep into whether suspect Bryan Kohberger is the killer in the Idaho college murders, how good the case against him is, the search for evidence against him now that he's arrested, the mysterious actions of the surviving two roommates in the house, Kohberger's background and how he sees himself, the disturbing writings attributed to Idaho college murders suspect Bryan Kohberger, what the term "visual snow" actually means, if Kohberger might be a psychopath or sociopath, the surveillance mistakes the FBI potentially made while tracking Kohberger,possible missteps by police in gathering evidence, what we know now about what was found in Kohberger's car and parents' home, whether Kohberger might take the stand in his trial, what the city of Moscow, Idaho is like, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Over the past few weeks, there have been several developments in connection with the murders of the four Idaho college students that shocked the nation last fall. So we wanted to take a look at the new details to see what they mean for the investigation and the man accused of carrying out the murders. One of the biggest headlines is the unsealing of the search warrant of suspect Brian Koberger's parents' home. Police revealing they took from that home a Glock pistol, two knives, and a black face mask, among other items that we're going to go over. One item taken from Kohlberger's car, a shovel. Joining me now to discuss this case and

all the latest developments is Howard Bloom. Howard is a journalist and a best-selling author. He has worked for the New York Times, for Vanity Fair, among several other publications. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize twice. He's currently writing a book about these murders for HarperCollins and is covering the case for Airmail, a relatively new media publication that Graydon Carter, among others, are behind, and it's well worth your time. I've really been enjoying it. He has been to several key locations in the investigation, and it is clear he has many sources on this case who are intricately connected. Howard, welcome to the show. Nice to speak with you.

Oh, the pleasure is all mine. I was floored by the first couple of pieces that you put out for airmail, and I want to tell the audience, what's amazing about your reporting is it always includes new information, shocking new information in some cases, but it is so beautifully written. You're open about where you're speculating, but your speculation is based on a very informed opinion and your writing is just absolutely gorgeous.

So thank you for these pieces. Well, that's very kind of you to say. I'm flattered coming from you. So thank you very much. There's nothing more a writer likes to hear than praise. Absolutely right. You're just like anybody else. Only my kids will remember that. We'll just play this tape whenever necessary. So I think the best way of doing this is let's go through the case and where the new information is appropriate, I'll fold it in so that the audience can get up to speed on what we learned to expand out some of your reporting and the other reporting. I want to take the audience to part one. You've done three

parts for airmail on the series, and this is how you begin part one, quoting now from your piece. Suppose you wanted to kill someone. That would be easy. There are lots of ways. But suppose you wanted to kill four people, all in the same house, all within moments of one another, and you chose to use a knife.

That could help eliminate the noise, but it would require skill, strength, and endurance. Murder is hard work, especially if people fight back. Then there's the really big obstacle. You want to get away with it. You're determined to stab four people living in a single home in the still of the night and then disappear without leaving a clue to your identity. Now that's a more difficult challenge, but you did it. You have everybody stumped. It's the perfect crime. That's incredibly what actually happened and what was likely in the mind of this killer who has been accused of being Brian Kohlberger until the day he was arrested. Let me start with, do you believe, based on your reporting,

police have the right man? I believe they have the right man. I also believe that they have, at this point, a very dubious case in court. I don't think it's going to be as easy as we all assume to make the case against him. I'm very much looking forward to finding out just how much new evidence the police are getting. But at this point, what they have is what we call in legal terms, you know, bad facts. They might sound good to a prosecutor, but a defense attorney can punch a lot of holes in them. That's fascinating because most people have been saying they think it's open and shut. It's a slam dunk. But proving it beyond a reasonable doubt is a lot harder than just pontificating about it.

And we will learn more in June when they have that preliminary hearing where the prosecution has to show its cards, what evidence it has to see if this case should be tried over. Very much so. But until then, what they're doing is they're sort of flailing about, it seems to me, and again, I'm on the periphery, they're flying about in desperation. They're looking for search warrants, pulling up American Express cards, trying to murder. Well, cell phone tower information is very inexact. It's good for 13 miles. And it's a town like Moscow, which is as big as a yawn. 13 miles is not much. There are thousands of cars in that vicinity.

A good defense attorney can raise lots of doubts, enough doubts to make a juror perhaps think twice about sending a man to what is in Idaho at this point, an execution chamber. They've set up a special room by Idaho law, and you're given a cocktail of four different chemicals that ends one's life. All right, let's set it up so that the audience that hasn't been following this knows what we're talking about. It was back November 13th of just this past year, 2022, and your piece points out that this was a festive night on the campus in Idaho. It was a football night. Everybody's having a good time. Um, you know, nothing foreboding. There'd been no reason

to fear that there was a potential mass killer roaming the campus whatsoever. No. And Idaho university, Idaho is very much a good time party school. It's proudly rated that on all sorts of college ratings. You go into the campus and there's a banner across the main campus yard. And this is something the administration has put up. It goes, number one best value in the West. And that sounds like an ad for a motel not for a institution of higher learning but that's sort of the atmosphere uh that pervades in the uh university and on this night the last football uh game homecoming game of the year everyone is out to have a good time. There's fraternity row, and they're all having parties. Interestingly

enough, the fraternities are allowed to serve liquor. The sororities can't. This seems to be a very sexist discrimination, but that's the rule in Idaho. And these four murders occurred in a house just right off campus, a stone's throw from campus in effect, where six very attractive young women with their whole lives ahead of them were living and enjoying their youth. They were having a really good time, as one can see in various videos that have been released. Amazingly, despite the fact that the house was so well-located and surrounded by other homes, it's not like this was a remote area, nobody noticed anything while the murders were taking place overnight that evening of November 13th, where they believe it happened around 4 a.m. Nobody noticed anything, even though these are

college students who were up and about and had been partying all night. It wasn't until the next day when the 911 call came in. Right. And the question of nobody noticing anything that ties into what made this such a big, you know, four deaths is a tragic event. Four deaths of four young people makes it even more tragic, arguably. But what made it, I think, so appealing or so fascinating, so intriguing to people all around the country, if not the world, was that it was a mystery. It happened, as you point out, in a house that was surrounded by relatively close by other homes, other families on a college boulevard. And he got away with it. It wasn't even any blood splattered outside. You couldn't see a trail of blood. How did this happen?

How did the police not be able to find the killer right away? And that's what added to the mystery. And it was a mystery where we were all involved in it because we were brought into it. The police were asking for our help. What did we know? We'd be in the public. And we all had our social media devices. We all had the internet. We all started looking for clues. We became sleuths in this very perplexing mystery. The four students who were killed were Kaylee Gonsalves, Madison Mogan, Zaina Kurnodal, and Zaina's boyfriend, Ethan Chapin.

The other two female roommates were there, and that's one of the mysteries of this case. They were in the house that night. One of them, we've heard her name quite a bit, Dylan Mortensen, DM. They've outed her name, so it's not a secret. And then there was another roommate named Bethany, who you don't hear as much about. Dylan has outed herself as having seen who we believe was the killer that night inside the home. Why don't we hear anything about Bethany? Do we know what, if anything, she saw or was doing that night? Well, she allegedly didn't see anything. She was on the first floor to enter the house.

The house was built in three stories. Dylan, who saw the intruders, was on the second story with two of the people who were killed. And then there was a third story. The only reason we know about Dylan's seeing the intruder is that the police released their affidavit to charge the suspect, Koberger. And they quote Dylan. She said she saw somebody. She said she froze. He had bushy eyebrows. That was the big clue. And then, and here's the real mystery. Here's what is still perplexing. Here's what still is astonishing. She goes back to her bedroom, locks the door, and doesn't wake up till 11 the next morning and then they finally discover the

bodies you know one can right you know raise all sorts of questions as i do at the same time i think one has to cut this poor girl a little slack in many ways she's a victim, too. She will live with this for her entire life. She saw something incredible, astonishing, and she just perhaps couldn't deal with it. to be put on the stand to identify Kohlberger as the man she saw walking through the house dressed in black, wearing a mask over his mouth and up to his nose. How good is her memory? How reliable a witness was she if, as she admits, she only glanced for a second and was in a, as she says, quote, a state of shock? Well, here's the thing that jumped out at me. So the police are the ones who said that she was, in their affidavit,

that she was in some sort of state of shock that night. And afterward, because she didn't call the cops, she saw him exit the apartment and went back into her room, and the cops were not called for another eight-plus hours until noon the next day, and not by her. So that was a mystery if she saw him, she was terrified and she was in shock. I said at the time, if she saw him and she thought some guy's over, he's hooking up with a roommate. He was hanging out with somebody on the second floor, the third

floor, then it wouldn't be a mystery. College houses like that. It can happen. You don't think much of it. So that would have explained everything to me. And now we get this reporting. This is from the Daily Mail that, first of all, points out that the family of Ethan Chapin, who was killed that night, the boyfriend of Zaina Kurnodal, they are questioning why Dylan did not call the cops after hearing, quote, crying and screaming. And they're wondering, you know, what happened there? Well, now we get some reporting, and we don't know whether this is true or not, but we get some reporting that Ethan Chapin, again, one of the victims, his best friend was the one who found him and Zaina. And that, okay, this is per News Nation, Ashley Banfield reporting that a source who spoke directly with Dylan is saying Dylan allegedly did hear those noises at four. She opened her door. She yelled, calm down, you're being loud. I'm trying to sleep. Then she closed her door and locked it. And she saw, then later in the night, she heard more noises. So she opened the door.

She saw the killer walking down the hall, but she't frightened she assumed he was a guest now that makes sense to me again this is one single source uh as reported by ashley banfield of news nation that to me would make perfect sense howard she the reason she didn't call the cops is because she didn't think it was a thing right it makes sense it could be true but we really don't know. I think some of the News Nation reporting has been a bit dubious. Maybe that's my New York Times background prejudice. Maybe I'm not looking at it objectively, but rather subjectively. But I take it with a grain of salt. When you say she was in a state of shock, though, this is the police quoting her comments. I think they put it in quotes in the affidavit, and it's in quotes

because she said that to them. She could have, I think, and we'll only know that she, something as you describe it, perhaps very likely did happen. It's a college house. Things are going on. It's no big deal. And she just locked the door. The next morning, they get up, they find this. I think it's her phone from what I've heard. And again, this is just speculation that was used to make the call, but she herself did not make the call. She was, again, too much in a state of shock. Someone had to grab her cell phone, and they made the call with that to the police at 11.58 that morning. That's right. The same reporting again, this is again, News Nation saying, per multiple sources with knowledge of the killing investigation, It was Ethan Chapin's best friend

who called 911 using Dylan's phone. He went to the house on November 13th, and that same friend reportedly took the pulse of the victims and is the one who spoke to the 911 dispatcher, and then the police came. Your reporting sets the scene for when the officers showed up at the house, 1122 King Road, Moscow, Idaho. They showed up that day and you point out one of the eerie things about the police said the cops first thing they knew that something serious was wrong because all they got a report of was an unconscious victim an unconscious person rather at the house and they see a group of kids mulling about the house like gulls on a beach as it's described to me and and these kids are silent they've been putting it up with the university kids all their professional lives as cops. I don't think they've ever seen silent kids before. They knew that this was something serious. They walk into the house and they see blood right away. It's right seeping down the entrance floor.

And one cop talks to a local shrink who works with the police department about the smell of blood. Maybe he's imagining it afterwards, but it's still very strong in his mind and they start exploring things. And as they explore, as I said, it's a three-story house built on different levels. They go to the first level, and they go to the first bedroom, and everything's more or less fine. And they said, maybe this isn't so bad. And they go up on the next floor, and they start finding the bodies. And it's a shock for these cops. These cops have been spending a great deal of time with the local psychiatrist assigned to the police department.

And their wives have been going to the shrink, too, because they have to deal with their husbands who have had this experience of discovering this crime scene. To give a sense of what Moscow, Idaho is like, the local psychiatrist for the police department also plays in a 70s cover band who was playing just two weeks before downtown, you know, singing Sweet Caroline and Van Morrison favorites to a packed audience that included some of the cops. Oh, no, I appreciate the appreciate the color because yeah like a lot of these small towns it's a college town they're they're about the local sports and supporting the local kids and dealing with noise complaints and you know the education that comes along with all of it and it's it's sort of fun and it's a little dreamy i mean having grown up in syracuse new york i understand this it can be a little dreamy it be like another, just a little oasis from real life.

And has about as much snow as Syracuse in the winter. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. The tundra. There's something else about Moscow, Idaho that makes it a little more, a little more darker, I would say, than Syracuse or any other college towns. A large contingent of the town belongs to a very fundamentalist church, which is fine. They're right. They've announced I spent some time with them. They're against vaccinations. They're against masks. They've

had many demonstrations on the street. these have been come where people have been arrested. There are now court cases. This but this group is intent on creating a theocracy. That's what they've said. That's their word. They want to control Moscow on Main Street. Everyone talks about the bars that the kids went to the night before they were murdered.

There are also two different cafes, a bookstore, and a sort of pop-up university that has been set up by this church group. And they also have a real estate office to bring people in from out of town to help them find homes in the community. So this has become a force in this very liberal, as you say, carefree college town, a very openly misogynistic, openly not conservative. That's not fair to conservatives. This is a theocracy they're trying to create, a church run community in this town. And that's also at odds. There's an undergoing tension in this town.

Before the police chief had to handle this mind boggling murder case, he had six death threats against him, serious ones in the past year. That, according to the police chief, came from this church group. But who knows? That's just speculation that it's all being adjudicated in the courts. But this town is not as idyllic as one would think. Oh, wow. I hadn't heard any of that. That's interesting. So these poor cops, because you don't think about the first responders and what they have to go through. And never mind these poor college kids who came to the realization that morning that their roommates had been killed. The friend of the one roommate finding his friend, his buddy, Ethan. So you point out that Bethany was on the first floor of the house. On the second floor were Zaina and Ethan, boyfriend and girlfriend together. Also Dylan, the surviving roommate, one of the two, who was an eyewitness to the killer. And on the third floor were Kaylee and Madison, best friends their

entire life, found in the same bed. And Kaylee, according to your reporting and others, seems to have been the focus of the attack. These two were killed first. And Kaylee, I don't know if this is the right way to say it, but she seems to have gotten it worse than anyone. Her father has said that. He said he talked to the local medical examiner, and she had the most brutal blows and sort of viciousness. I think the medical examiner described it as hacking away. It was just gruesome. Oh, my goodness. And so that does lead people to wonder why.

These are beautiful- looking young kids everything uh ahead of them in the future uh and that's what adds to this tragedy well and it also that what happened to her is not just i don't mention it just for gruesome facts but it does make you wonder whether she was the main target, right? Why would the murder of Kaylee be more violent and brutal than the murder of the others? And there's, again, I share your skepticism about some of the reporting out there. I do wonder whether the People magazine reports, a couple of them have been exclusive, and it's always one source unnamed. One of them's already been shot down that he was in the vegan restaurant where they worked a couple of times. And now they have a second report out saying that there's a picture of direct mail or I'm watching them on Facebook.

Yeah. OK, so you don't share that. You don't you don't believe that that's proven or shown up. I mean, you started this conversation talking about the search warrants. And I think that shows that the police are as in the dark as we are. They're trying everything to try to find a connection at this point between now and June 26 when the hearing takes place. When they'll be able to get this evidence, which people seem to have, but they're looking all over to try to get it for themselves. Another thing that hasn't been really touched on, and I'm probing around these days, is I'm trying to make sense of Koberger, what sort of makes him tick.

And we've read a lot, and we can understand what happens at the moments of the killing, but I'm trying to figure out what happened at the minute before he makes his decision to go into the house. How has his life dramatically changed? Everyone has talked about how he seems to be planning the murders so carefully doing this and that. I think he was really spending the past year at least trying to overcome all his internal demons to not try to find a way to prevent himself from killing people. I mean, up to this point, he's made a remarkable recovery from a young man, a teenager who used heroin. He's gotten into a junior college and succeeds to get into college and winds up at a very

reputable graduate school in criminal justice where he's a teaching assistant. He's doing everything. He's pushed his father out of his life. Now he's taking his father back into life. They're going to make a cross-country trip home for Christmas. He's doing all this, and at the same time, he knows who he is and how he will always be an outsider. And he's trying to find his way in, and he really can't. I think that's also an untold story hard speculation at this point uh that we want to try to get more of uh come june uh this man who sees himself as someone more sinned against than sinning and that uh his life is in his way, a horror story. It's also a tragedy too, I would suggest.

Perhaps that's not. It's been the details on him have been frustratingly sparse. You know, I, I would have expected more, more people, more of his students, more of those who've just known him to come out. We've had a few, you know, one person in the quote I remembered was something like Brian and people, they don't do so well, like that he was always socially awkward. He had a period where he was allegedly bullied. He was very overweight. Then he lost all the weight, became an ardent vegan. Then we found these writings online where he was obviously extremely depressed,

talking about how he felt nothing, how he was just this ball of flesh. I mean, you can see mental health issues from his early teens. It was about 10 years ago. And what is, to me, he's so valiantly, even on those writings, which are scary at best, he's trying to overcome all this. He's trying to move beyond all this. He's just a teenager, then a young man, trying to make a way for himself, coming from this life that doesn't provide him any outlet, any future. And he actually succeeds in making a future for himself. His father is the janitor at the high school where

he is going to school. That in itself is a burden that you have to carry. His father has gone bankrupt not once, but twice. In the bankruptcy papers, his father talks about having $47 in the bank. That's a burden for a family. Two, finding the strength to overcome heroin. How many people can't do that? How many people can't get beyond junior college into a more reputable college and then into a well-respected graduate school? That's something. And at the same time, he knows he doesn't belong and he finds himself on the periphery of this party school where everyone is young bright beautiful and gifted and this is a future he has to feel is denied to him this is his own

personal hell and there's no way out of it it can lead i would imagine to a lot of rage uh and this is what's building up on him in him as he's trying to fight it until that one night uh the police have talked about his driving around the neighborhood has him casing the house i see it perhaps more as he's fighting his emotions to do something, as were these all attempts before that could have led to the deed, and yet he's able to overcome them. This is something that also has to, I think, find out. What I'm trying to do- Right, it may not have been plotting. It may have been the wolf circling the sheep.

The facts of the case and the speculation into the story of the people involved, the police, the victims, and the perpetrator. The thought of Brian Kohlberger, if he'd been less smart, not immersing himself in a college community, not being surrounded by all the joy. And as you point out, the word you use in your piece, exuberance of these beautiful young women who clearly caught his eye and just living a loner's life, you know, quietly doing whatever

it was he was doing, you know, that maybe it was his smarts and whatever proper foundation his parents did give him, because we were hearing that they were loving parents, that gave him the strength to sort of pull himself out of those addictions and so on, and then get immersed in this community that he could never be a part of. He could never. He was too mentally unwell. I think that's part of it. But his journey to get there is in some ways for someone with all those psychic problems, as we discussed on the Internet in the various postings he did as a teenager, someone who's living with visual snow, which is disease or the psychological state that he suffered to get there, is a triumph over the will. And at the end, he just succumbs to it he just can't

deal deal with any more uh i think perhaps there's more to his family's upbringing than we've been told loving parents whatever uh i think it's it's a difficult life when your family goes bankrupt twice. The houses he was living in, these are sort of hardscrabble communities. That part of Pennsylvania where he grew up in every two miles is sort of a car, a car junk shop where they're just old vehicles are just piled on one top of the other. It's a very grim, at least to my eye, part of the world. And he's trying to make his way in it.

And he literally leaves it all behind. He drives across country in his Hyundai thinking of making a new start at Washington State University. And he's a graduate teaching assistant, a TA. That's a position of some respect. I once did that a thousand years ago. And it's sort of fun. At least I enjoyed it. And he couldn't find any satisfaction in it.

Why weren't there any girlfriends at any point? I mean, he's not a bad looking guy he's not a dumb guy he winds up in this somewhat authoritative position and that can often lead to romance with a student that kind of thing um why why haven't any of the press found any girlfriend? It is interesting the point you raise. There was one girlfriend who had his college before he went off to graduate school, talks about a date with him that went nowhere. And she says she felt creepy. She might have felt creepy in retrospect if you find out that he was an alleged killer. Or it could be someone on the Internet making it up.

These are all questions I'm hoping to try to find the pieces to in the weeks ahead. I have a lot of travel ahead of me to the various communities. I've been there already a couple of times. I'm going to go back and start knocking on doors. Another problem is getting at the bottom of things. The judge in the case has put a gag order on the case. That means that anyone involved, any of the police, the family members, their lawyers can talk to the press. And in that vacuum, we don't get facts. We just get speculations.

We just get facts. We just get speculations. We just get theory. And the judge's view that this will lead to a fairer trial, to my mind, is just creating an atmosphere where rumors are going to fuel people because people are going to remain interested in this story. And getting at the facts will be a lot harder. Well, and it's too broad. I mean, he's basically silenced everyone, the families of the victims. How are they not allowed to say how they feel or what they know? There are, this is, it's too broad. There's a first amendment. The press has a right to report on these things and his right to a fair trial doesn't trump all of the other rights that are at issue here. And I don't think it would trump his right to a fair trial. I think it might lead for further discussions. It might uncover something that could be used in his defense at the trial. It's just leaving all speculation open to the wild west of the Internet.

I say that while we're on the Internet right now. But it is an unpoliced area and the standards of journalism vary quite a lot. We talked about some of his writings online. This is from your piece and it's been reported by others as well, but it hasn't been confirmed by Kohlberger or the police, but pretty much everyone has accepted that the tie is there, that these are his writings. Let's talk about the visual snow he suffered. I guess that's like when you look around and you see, I call them the ant races that come

on your TV, or at least they used to back in the day when the programming ends, that he sees that just looking around sometimes or used to. You write, for the teenage Brian Kohlberger, if his online posts are any reliable guide, visual snow had at times buried his existence in an avalanche of despondency and desperation. His posts were calls from the wild. Consider, quote, I often think of myself as an organic sack of meat with no self-worth. I am starting to view everyone as this. I always feel as if I am not

there. Completely depersonalized. Constant thoughts of suicide. Crazy thoughts. Delusions of grandeur. Poor self-image. All caps. No emotion. I feel like nothing has a point to it. Everyone hates me pretty much. I am an asshole. As I hug my family, I see nothing. It is like I am looking at a video game, but less. Did you get the chance at all, Howard, to talk to anybody with mental health expertise on what those tell us? I did. And doctors can't even agree on whether visual snow is a psychological state or a disease. And since they can't agree on what it is, they also differ on how to treat it or if it can be treated. The best sources I've found for any insight into this are really in novels. Camus' The Stranger opens up with a character who talks about feeling

nothing that eventually leads to a murder on the beach. Sartre, in one of his novels, writes about a character that has the same sort of disassociation from the world. It's, you know, it's existentialism on one level, and it's also dislocation from the world on another. And if you, you know, if everything means less than zero, as Elvis Costello sings, you know, then you can do anything. Anything is justified because it doesn't matter. I once had somebody define for me the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath as follows. They both want to kill people, but the psychopath enjoys it. The sociopath does it and feels absolutely no remorse, but the psychopath enjoys it. And I do wonder as I read these excerpts, you know, it's, he sounds like a sociopath, like he feels no emotion. He wouldn't feel guilty if he hurt somebody for whom he feels

absolutely quote, no emotion. Um, but killing four people in one setting to me has the flavor of enjoyment, like that he, he would do that because he would get off on it somehow. There would be some purpose to it for him. And was the purpose not so much the killing, but getting away with it? I see the connection between his being this criminal justice student who wanted to pull off this crime. He figured he could do it. There was an old Alfred Hitchcock movie called Rope, which was about the Leopold and Loeb case, two guys from Chicago who thought they were the smartest young men in the world and they could commit a murder and get away with it. And in many ways, perhaps that's what's driving his psychopathy. Again, he is, villain that he is, he's also an interesting figure. And I am trying in the weeks and months ahead, as before I write my book, to get into the heart of the matter

of what's making him tick, if I can find it. Well, I feel like if anybody's going to do it, you're the one. I'll be following on airmail. But let's get to the investigation. All right. So we talked about the crime scene, the effect it had on the cops. They didn't have a killer. So they did not know immediately who did this or even have any suspects as of November 13th and into the 14th. And for weeks there, six plus weeks, the speculation in the news media was, these are a bunch of Keystone cops. They don't know anything. They got to get the FBI in there. They got to get somebody who knows what they're doing in there. But unbeknownst to the people saying that, they were very much on the case. Now, there's been conflicting reporting on whether their first big break was figuring out that this white Hyundai was his, or whether the first big break was figuring out that they had DNA on a knife sheath that had been left there, and then somehow tying it back to Brian Kohlberger. How would you describe the evolution of the investigation?

Well, they had the knife sheet, but they didn't know what was on it. They sent it first to the lab in Idaho, and the lab in Idaho couldn't find anything. So they thought this might be a dead end. What they did do, it seems that Idaho had a contract that was set up six months earlier with a startup in Texas. Some Silicon Valley guys had put together several million dollars to build this lab in Woodlands, Texas, set up this new company that was really going to just look into cold cases, DNA that had not been considered before. Idaho sends this down to Woodlands, Texas, to this lab, which is funded by these Silicon Valley tech people, venture capitalists, and that makes the connection.

However, that connection is not made for another three weeks. Meanwhile, they've got this white. So wait, just to interrupt you, just to interrupt you, hold on. So they found DNA on the snap of the knife sheath, but they didn't have a match. They didn't know whose DNA it was. Also, as will be pointed out at the hearing for Kohlberg in June, it's something called touch DNA. Touch DNA means he touched it. Anyone he could have someone could have handed him the knife sheath, a neighbor or whatever. When the kids it doesn't there's no blood. It doesn't prove that it definitely comes from him from a murder case so touch dna in trial after trial and there's a record of it has been thrown out by some judges has been overturned on appeals this is very fragile very nebulous evidence

equally okay so they find that they don't have a match is the evidence on on the car itself they see this picture of the white hyundai they don't really know what it is they finally get a there's a gas station attended on troy avenue the local gas station who takes it upon himself or herself actually she's working a night night shift at the graveyard shift. It's sort of boring. She's going through, and she sees this white Hyundai, too. They give it to the police. They now have two matches, and so they're pretty convinced they're looking for a white Hyundai.

They then take the information. out and it's originally i think it's a 211 of 20 2011 to 2013 uh white hyundai it turns out eventually it's a 2015 but one of the people they send it to is a guy who was working late at night a cop at the university of washington he goes through the records and sees that there's a car registered in graduate student housing. Another cop goes over there. They get the number, the license plate, and they run it, give it to the Idaho Police Department. The Idaho police officer, corporal, who's running the investigation, he's sort of in charge. He had formerly been in the military police. So the police chief thought he'd be used to crimes involving forensic evidence. And his name is Brett Payne. He's a very gung-ho guy, a very also in-your-face cop when he needs to be very authoritarian. He pulls up the license plate

record. He's looking at it on his screen. There's a picture, a photo picture of Kohlberger, and he sees bushy eyebrows. And he remembers that Dylan Morgansonon she talked about bushy eyebrows so he makes this connection this means they now have the suspect they can zero in on but meanwhile to go back a step all the pictures of the white hyundai they have there's not one photo from all the various surveillance cameras of who's at the wheel. None. So Colbert could say, someone took my car. It seems far-fetched, but does it raise enough of a doubt not to send one into an execution chamber? This will all come out in the weeks ahead. So do we know when in the timeline they had put those facts together? The guy at University of Washington, again, just 10 miles from University of Idaho, where the girls and Ethan were killed, where the guy said, oh, we've got a white Hyundai Elantra

2015 graduate student housing. Here's the guy. it's registered to a Brian Kohlberger. And then he gets that information to the police investigating this crime. And now the police say, aha, we have a suspect because the reason I ask you this is I watched an in-depth report by NBC news where they claimed the guy found, okay, Kohlberger, he owns one. And then that information was forwarded to cops, but just sat in a stack for days and weeks. And, you know, there were lots of reports and the cops never got to it. And I left still asking myself, well, then how the hell did they get the name Brian Kohlberger if the cops let that just sit in a stack for weeks and weeks? They had a whole lot of white Hyundais. Originally, they thought it was a car that was found out in Oregon.

And they thought they had broken the case. The police were even telling people they broke it earlier. know to set up a timeline that on December 13th, Kohlberger leaves Washington State University, drive across country to go home with his dad as his wingman in the car. We do know on that December 13th that the police were already following Kohlberger. They did not have a number. They did not have the DNA confirmed yet to arrest him, but he was still a suspect. So at this point, he was a person of interest and they didn't want to close the case too soon. Reading what the police put out in that affidavit tells me that's from the white Hyundai, because even though they have cell phone data from Brian Kohlberger and so on, what gets you to Brian Kohlberger's cell phone? You need his name. You need. So it was it was that police report. Somebody saw it and they put him at the scene. They put him in the vicinity within 12 miles. A cell phone report can only get you 12 miles in the area. But that's that's why there wasn't an arrest. They had all this before he leaves Washington state, before he goes across country. And they did. They could not make the arrest. They could not bring him into court because all this is pretty circumstantial at best.

So they're waiting. So let me ask you this. So let me jump in on this. So the dad, you point this out, you've got great reporting on the on the journey he took with his dad cross country. The dad flies out there from the Poconos, Pennsylvania, to get his son and drive cross country with him back home from Washington to Pennsylvania. Was that, do we know, a pre-planned trip or was that a last minute decision to join his son? According to Jason LaVar, who was the attorney in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, who first represented Kohlberger and he's been, so far, nothing he said has been

refuted by anyone from the Kohlberger family. He said that he was told that Michael Kohlberger, the father, had agreed sometime around Thanksgiving to go out with his son and drive back with him. And just on the face of that, that's pretty interesting, moving, affecting. Here's his father. He's 67 years old, doesn't have a ton of money. Clearly, he's a janitor. He's been bankrupt twice. He's going to fly out. First, you got to go to Seattle. Then you got to fly on another flight into Washington, Pullman, go across country, and then you've got to quickly make a turnaround. And he's looking, I think, and this is what people have told me, to try to get back, make amends with his son, say, you know, you were on the wrong path. I tried to set you right. There was a great deal of antagonism between us. But now things are hunky-dory. This is a bright future.

You're going to have a good playing job. You're going to be a professor. All things are good. Little does he know, you he know what's going on in his son's world. I think this trip across America, his father to son journey is the center of its own interesting little drama. It's enough for a play of that impact. Right. So your information is that when they took that cross-country journey, I mean, one month to the day after the murders, the FBI was on to Brian Kohlberger, and I assume was watching Brian Kohlberger. Well, you've got great reporting on how that went down.

But they were not behind the two traffic stops that happened to Brian Kohlberger and his dad on route home. That's again, what's, what's so incredible. The FBI is watching and they see a Indiana state patrolman stop the car and they figure what's going on here? It's been an all points bulletin for a person of interest for a white Hyundai. Have the Indiana State Police put solve this, put it together that this might be the car. And if it is, is the Koberger, who they assume has killed four people, Is he going to come out shooting? Or is he going to tear off? Is it going to be another OJ chase across the length of America all the way to Pennsylvania? But the FBI decides to just sit there and watch this play out. They're like

stunt spectators. And then Koberger pulls over. The cop approaches, and they engage in this dialogue, which is pretty nonsensical. It's almost like a Bud Abbott, Lou Costello routine. Who's on first? Koberger starts talking about he's going out driving for Thai food, and the cop doesn't quite understand. You're driving from Washington State to Pennsylvania for Thai food. Then his father starts another non sequitur talking about a shooting that occurred at the university. And the cop's ears perk up when he hears about a shooting and SWAT team coming in. And Koberger, meanwhile, throughout this whole thing is, you know, his temperature doesn't seem to raise a notch. He's very cool.

I get stopped by a cop anytime if I've just gone through a red light or something, or they think I'm, you know, a light is broken on the back of my car. And I get nervous just dealing with that, but he's really cool. And that maybe says something too. And once they're stopped, they go another nine miles before they're stopped again. And Kohlberger's reaction is the same level you about. It was stunning that the FBI's onto Kohlberger before he peels out of University of Idaho on December 13th, sorry, University of Washington on December 13th. They're on to him. They see he's going with the dad. They see he's taking, well, they would eventually see he was taking a very weird, circuitous route home. But you reported, you broke this news, that they lost him for several hours. Now, the FBI has since denied that.

Yes. They have come out and said kind of what you said you and I were saying earlier, but they're kind of using it against you, saying, The FBI is aware of reports detailing alleged FBI surveillance on Idaho murder subject Brian Kohlberger. There are anonymous sources providing false information to the media. So do you stand by the reporting that they lost him for a couple of hours? Yes, I do. What's also maybe would help make my case, and the reason I found out about this, why I started knocking on doors metaphorically to see what was going on, they mentioned that Kohlberger goes off and they finally, they first see him. a license plate reader attached to a traffic stop in a town in, I think it's Loma, Colorado. And that figures into the affidavit. So I'm asking myself, why is this the only traffic

license plate reader they mentioned? Why is that so significant? And so I start calling people who have a place in law enforcement, and I have done several books that involve the FBI. I have some sources there and this is what I heard. One of the things that reporters always have to deal with is people who give them misinformation.

To the best of my knowledge and logically according to the affidavit it still makes sense to me uh but if some fbi official wants to swear on his life that that i'm wrong well maybe he's right well it's not the kind of thing the fbi would rush to admit given that you know what you reported is they are following this guy. They believe he's their killer, though they don't have enough to arrest him yet. And they lost him for several hours.

And it wasn't until a license plate reader, one of those random things we all drive through that looks like a toll that's sort of taking your money if you have an E-ZPass or what have you, registered him and they got the alert and they said, oh, thank God, we know where he is again. And they caught back up with him. I mean, this is sort of an operation, a surveillance operation from hell. I mean, they're watching this car. First, they lose him.

And then once they see an Indiana State trooper and then a local cop stop the car that they're facing, they don't know what's going on. And they're as helpless as we are, you know, to sort of try to make a decision. How should we respond? I think, and there must have been a large debate, do we want the Idaho State Police? And one of their guys, one of their men is approaching a car that could be a killer. We have to, you know, call headquarters, tell them to stop this guy from going into the car because this could put him in harm's way. I think they should have. I think perhaps they should have done that.

I think they shouldn't have allowed this traffic stop to take place. I wouldn't have risked that state trooper's life. Well, there are other similar questions once they landed in Pennsylvania. So they get there taking a weird route. They didn't do the most direct straight across the country. They drove south and then they drove back up to Pennsylvania. Kohlberger allegedly said to his dad to avoid snowy weather. But one wonders whether it was if somebody's telling us, let's go a weird route. Let's not do what would be expected of us. That kind of thing. Little did the dad know. No evidence the dad knew anything about any of this. So they get back to the house in the Poconos. And the reporting is that they saw him. They're watching him.

They saw him take the Hyundai Elantra to the car wash. And the place where you can clean your own car, you can vacuum it, you can do all the things. How did they allow that, Howard? It's incredible. They also, he also goes to a sort of repair shop to change the oil too. And he's talking to the repair guy. I don't think, at least at the point when I spoke to the repair people, and there are only like three places that you can go to in that area, so it's not hard to track it down. None of the police had spoken to the guy I spoke with. No.

Also, Stroudsburg is the main town. It's a 15-minute ride or so from where he lives. That's where you go. On the main drag in town, there's a sporting goods store. It's almost a half block long. You walk in, it's like an armory. There are case after case after case of bright, shiny knives. You would think they would have checked to see. It would be the logical place.

He might have bought a hunting knife before he went off to school in Washington. Many reasons to have a hunting knife, whatever. They never went and asked to check the records there, the purchases. I mean, it's very sort of

questionable police work. We'll see how it all stands up in court of law. But at this point, it's, I would say, pretty dubious work. So in the meantime, they know something that, I don't know if Brian Kohlberger knew,

but they knew they had the knife sheath with touch DNA on it and they'd been searching for a match for somebody who's who would match the touch DNA. But now they've got Brian Kohlberger in their crosshairs. They see him with his dad. They've got to be trying to get their DNA. To me, it sounds like they didn't actually make a real attempt to get the DNA of either one of these guys until they were back in the Pennsylvania house in the Poconos. It doesn't sound like they did the trash gathering prior to that.

We do know, or we've seen Kohlberger on the way going across country, they're stopping off from Thai foods. If you Google Thai foods, Indiana, where they were going, Indianapolis, there's two Thai restaurants there. If the FBI was on the trail, you know, they would have seen him go in. Try to grab the silverware as they pull out or a plate or glass. He could have gotten everything then. To have to do this sort of clandestine, you know, great trash robbery, uh, was a bit absurd. Yeah. Didn't need to be that hard. It's strange to me. There are lots of questions. And of course they know more than we do. So maybe it'll all become clear once they lift their gag order at

the preliminary hearing, if not before, but these are just some of the questions some of us on the outside have. Um, so they, he's in Pennsylvania now with with the dad he's getting the car cleaned he's living with the dad and the mom and this is a fascinating new piece of information that i i have to ask you about per an interview with a local news outlet in pennsylvania called brc 13 citing monroe county first assistant i assume prosecutor michael mancuso saying that Mr. Kohlberger was found awake in the kitchen area. This is when they went in to get him. Dressed in shorts and a shirt and wearing latex medical type gloves. This is a lot of information.

And apparently was taking his personal trash and putting it into a separate Ziploc baggie, or plural, baggies. Mancuso tells local BRC 13 that discovery cleared up another part of the investigation. Continuing by Mancuso, quote, a trash pull that was done days before recovered DNA profiles, but not from Brian Kohlberger, only from his family members. So this is a great little get by BRC 13 and getting Monroe County First Assistant Michael Mancuso to say all those things. And it explains because you reported they were monitoring the dad's house. They were doing the trash pull in the middle of the night. And while they were monitoring the house, they saw Brian Kohlberger take the trash over to the

neighbor's house throw the trash out the neighbors and it probably wasn't these little baggies that mancuso was talking about i mean so you can that's amazing this criminal mind trying to get away with the perfect crime uh you know go back to the beginning of the story, how to kill four people and get away without leaving a drop of blood. And now he's trying to still get away with it. And that's why I think come the trial, come the hearing, he's not going to be the smartest person in the room and his only hope and his only be on center stage and try to outsmart them again in front of the whole world so they his little ruse did not work they did get dna from the dad and from the trash in the dad discarded and they did according to the police match it up to the dad they. And they did, according to the police, match it up to the dad. They understood

that the DNA on that knife sheath matched one of these guys with 99.8% certainty. And the dad, no one suspects the dad of these murders. So Brian Kohlberger's little ruse of trying to get his own DNA into a different person's trash can was both spotted by the cops and then underscored when they burst in on him i know we never heard what they found you did great great riveting reporting on the team that went in there for this quote dynamic entry to get this suspected serial killer um but we didn't know what they found like where was brian kohlberger? And now this says he was sitting there, unbelievable, in shorts and a shirt, wearing latex medical gloves inside his parents' home,

taking his personal trash and putting it in separate zip-lock baggies. I kind of have to take that with a grain of metaphorical salt in the sense someone smashes down your door and they're letting off concussion grenades to scare the daylights out of you you've got to be pretty calm to sit there making your little baggies uh i i don't know uh if he actually was he might have been doing that moments before but i don't believe at the

moment when the police broke in a bunch of guys come in shotguns leveled at you and you're and there's grenades going off. The door has just been broken. We saw the debris outside the house, the windows that had been smashed, and you're just sitting there calmly through it. Well, that's the sense of calm that is supernatural. Well, perhaps he had just stepped away from the sitting project, and they realized that he'd been doing that prior to their entry. But the dynamic entry does tell us something about just how seriously the Pennsylvania authorities were taking this and how certain they seemed to be that they had their man. Yes. This is scary stuff. You go into a closed door of a man accused of killing four people. You don't know what kind of weapons he

has. As it turned out, he had a Glock revolver. I don't know of his possession, but it was somewhere in the house. He also had two knives in the house. You don't know if he's going to make a last stand or just surrender meekly while he's making his baggies. These cops are putting their lives on the line. Yeah, that's right. We know now that he went peacefully, but they had no idea he was going to go peacefully when they were getting ready to storm into that home.

I mean, they're thinking, this is somebody who kills for fun. Like, this is a serial killer. Took out four young people in the course of 20 minutes. And he might want to make a serial killer. Took out four young people in the course of 20 minutes. And he might want to make a last stand. He might want to go in a blaze of glory in his mind rather than being taken off meekly in chains. And yet after that, in all his conversations with his attorney in Pennsylvania, the attorney very pointedly says that he was impressed with the intelligence,

the calmness of Koberger and Koberger's determination to have a statement made that says that he is innocent and he will be proven innocent in a court of law. This is a conduct of a man who is trying to or is determined to have the last laugh. Well, that's the thing that kind of many people missed. But you reported, he did talk. He gets taken into custody and the first thing he did was to talk to the cops. For 15 minutes. At that time, his lawyer is on record saying his client talked for 15 minutes. At that time, his lawyer is on record saying his client talked for 15 minutes. That's a lot of time. And finally, when I guess the questions got too pointed, he decided, I need an attorney. And that's when they brought in the public defender. who said he will be exonerated. He looks forward to being exonerated.

Is there anything that you've seen so far that would suggest he might go for an insanity defense? And I'm not even sure he can do that in Idaho, given the Idaho laws on this. But have you seen anything that would suggest to you he's setting one up? I, you know, my investigations into that area of his legal defense have been pretty much watered at this point by the gag order. I'm still trying to, so I'm trying to look into what makes him tick, what life was like for him at the university, how the forensic case was built. I'm trying to get all the peripheral events,

but for the legal strategy, I think anyone who's talking about that is, is really making up facts because the gag order is pretty effective. There's, I mean, based on what we know so far, there is zero chance of that succeeding, even if it's allowed. He's just, the standard for criminal insanity is so high, you really genuinely have to not understand the difference between right or wrong. And he did so much covering up of his crime, you know, the, the, the vacuuming of the car and the sneaking off and you know, all of it, this, it's just I'll go out on a limb right now and say without knowing a lot more, that's not going anywhere. I mean, we are getting a look.

Go ahead. He could plead not guilty to try, or he could plead guilty rather to try to avoid the death penalty and see a judge would be sympathetic, but I'm not sure that would fly in Idaho either. And I'm not sure he wants to, right? I mean, given everything we think we know about him, he's so smart, so calm, cool, collected. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would just give it up. It depends how scared one becomes as you get closer and closer uh to your faith you know who knows so well and that's and one of the questions is what

do they have because the cops know more about what they have against him than we do and you know you pointed out saying i'm not feeling so confident about the investigation or what they have but if they have his dna now that they know it's him right they got their name if they have his dna on any one of these victims, he's toast. Yes. And if they've got any of the victim's DNA in his car. That will be the nail, literally the nail in his coffin. Yep.

And so that leads me to the search warrant that hit the news not long ago. So they've released now what they searched for at his parents' home in Pennsylvania and also in his car. They keep these things under seal for some 60 days. So we just start getting a look at it. But they already have had this stuff in their possession. They seize from the parents' home a knife. There's no way this guy was stupid enough to keep the knife, but maybe I'm wrong. A knife, a Glock 22, Smith & Wesson pocket knife, some magazines, a Taylor cutlery knife with a leather sheath. Here's where it gets interesting. Black face mask.

Again, what the roommate said was it was like a COVID mask. So we don't know, you know, not like a ski mask. But anyway, black face mask, black gloves, black hat, another black mask. So we don't know, you know, not like a ski mask, but anyway, black face mask, black gloves, black hat, black mat, another black mask, AT&T bill for Brian Kohlberger, a book with underlining on page 118. Love to see what's in there. Prescriptions, cell phone, laptop, multiple dark colored pants, Columbia Navy fleece. Again, the roommate said he was dressed in dark and black new balance shoes. There were reports of footprints belonging to the suspected killer on site,

two pairs of dark colored boots, a criminal psychology book note to dad from Brian and inside his car, a shovel. Interestingly, they, they list 36 dimes, 82 nickels, 8 pennies, gloves, goggles. That one threw me for a loop, Howard. And then they took parts of the car, including headrests, seatbelts, brake, gas pedals, door, panel.

There is a report in the Washington Post. You don't know if it's his. You can have goggles. If you could have been skiing goggles, if you're chopping wood, you might wear goggles there. If you're using a wood chipper, you might wear goggles.

All of this can be nothing or something. The phone records could be interesting. Did he ever try to call any of the victims and then hang up or whatever? Had he ever had any conversations with them. But they are trying to find a nexus, a connection, and they're trying to build their case. They're doing what an investigative reporter would do, is you try to throw a wide net and

see where things intersect. But at this point, it doesn't appear as if they have any connections, or at least we're going to have to wait till June to know about them. All we have now is a lot of things that are hypothetically interesting and could be, in the end, nothing. As far as we know, they haven't found the murder weapon washington post reporting that quote the police did not appear to have found any items with bodily fluid on them unclear whether the knife investigators found was believed to be linked to the killings uh they did not know whether kohlberger was the owner of all the items seized from his parents house could be the dad's face mask could be the dad's shoes we know we don't know any of that. We haven't found the

murder weapon. We haven't found the clothes allegedly used that would presumably have some blood on them. I mean, even Brian Kohlberger, PhD of criminology, can't avoid the laws of physics. You brutally stab four people to death, you're going to get blood on you. And suppose you don't ever find those things. But what you also haven't found and might be harder to get ultimately, and I think you'll need, is a motive. You know, why did he do this? We can speculate. You know, I have a B from Stanford in psychology. I don't think that's going to hold up making my speculations very valuable. In a court of law, they'll get my psychology professors to say both

reasons for and against, but to get a real motive. What they're trying to use these computers, the cell phone records, is to see if they can piece together a logical motive that will make some sense to a jury. And that's going to be a bit of an artificial construct, at least

at this point. As we hear the prosecutors say over and over in the Alex Murdoch case, they don't need it. They don't have to prove motive but it sure helps juries want to hear one well did you go back to the alex murdoch case for and i'm no authority on that but if they did not have that cell phone call by the son which they didn't realize uh for many months i don't know if he would have been indicted let alone convicted convicted. No. I don't either. That cell phone video was Alec Murdoch's son, Paul, from the grave IDing his killer. Yeah. And I think you're going to need some sort of deus ex machina like this

to make this case, perhaps. We don't have that here that we know of. The other things that the cops are doing that we do know of, they've released or they've sought information sending out 60-plus warrants. They, too, have been sealed, but we know of they've released or they've sought uh information sending out 60 plus warrants they too have been sealed but we know of a few they sent one to door dash which we believe did make a delivery to the girl's house shortly before the murders which is just so weird that they got it like almost in at the same moment the killings began i mean i think she was on tiktok

or instagram and had a door dash delivered from Jack in the Box just moments before the murder at 4 a.m. It's like nonstop college life. It's exciting. It's exuberant. It's ebullient. And this was this sort of world that these kids were living in. And one can sort of look at it. I look at it now my

stuffy uh sheltered life with a bit of envy it's it's wonderful for them it's just so strange to think that all these things were happening at the house a door dash delivery you know tiktok you know the two girls chatting and laughing as gals do you know in the bed the you know zaina and her boyfriend, Ethan together, like, how is this all happening at the moment? The guy was walking into the house. How did, how did, how did they not jump the guy? How did, you know, like those are these, how did he go in? Did he see the door dash guy coming up there or was he going through the back, coming in through the woods, through the back door? There's a woods behind the house and sort

of on a hill. Uh, that one guy's going in the front did he see the car pull up also you go up to the house i think there were five cars parked in right in front of the house in this row you have to know that there are a lot of people there uh are you really it's so bold you know it's just thinking you can get away with it in a house full of five people. You almost know you're going to encounter other people. Right. It's so brazen. And he did.

You know, as you point out, that night he did. He got in and out of there without anybody stopping him. And the other targets of the warrants. Right. How? How? But one of the big questions is, yeah, like where are the clothes and where's the murder weapon? And there's a real question about whether he dumped them the night

in question. He did not take the most direct route home back to his University of Washington place. Very securitous route. Should have taken 10 minutes, took him 60. So could be someplace along there. Others receiving the warrant, Verizon, that makes sense. Tinder, interesting. Reddit, that is where we believe he made a lot of these disturbed posts when he was a teenager. Amazon, sure. Meta, which owns Facebook, Snapchat,

all the social media companies trying to see what he did. If anything, AT&T, Apple, and so on. They're casting a wide net, Howard. And perhaps a desperate net because you would think they might have had this information already from these computers and stuff, and they're still looking. I think, again, I'm just hypothesizing, to make a connection.

They're trying very hard to find glue that will stick. I mean, they're hoping, again, the Murdoch case to find that one cell phone call that's going to be the smoking gun. Well, and that's the other thing is to get to get onto somebody's phone, you need their password, even if you're the cops, even if you're the FBI. Yeah. Like, I don't know that he's that they've unlocked his cell phone. And I don't know whether Brian Kohlberger would have had something meaningful on there anyway. You kind of think this is a smart guy, criminology major, but then you think, why would he take his phone with him while casing the girl's apartment so many times? Why would he use his own car? Why would he drive there not understanding everyone's got surveillance

cameras now? Right. And this concept of case in the apartment, let me just say, we don't know that for sure. We know he was in the area. He was in, you know, I'm 13 miles from your studio, more or less. That doesn't mean I'm,

I could be going to a bookstore down the road or I could make the case that I was going to a bookstore. It's a college town. There are a lot of things doing all in a self-contained area. He could have been many places. That's the big question. Do they have DNA? Do they find his DNA on them or theirs on him? Go ahead. Sorry. Did he ever try anything like this before? Was this the one time? Was this his first time? Did he ever make an attempt that was failed in his other university towns, his other college towns in Pennsylvania? And so far, the police can't find anything to evidence of another attempt. And that would maybe also help make the case that it wasn't him. His defense attorneys could make that case too you know on the subject of alec murdoch he was not uh this is not a death penalty case even

though it could have been they could have charged him uh sought the death penalty and one of the reasons it's believed they did not was because it was a very circumstantial case and it's a lot harder to ask a jury to put a man to death, to find a man guilty, understanding this is a death penalty case with just circumstantial evidence. They might be much more likely to say, we're not doing that. We're going to go for not guilty. this guy managed to keep his DNA off of those four victims and out of that house and didn't get their DNA on his car or anything grabbed by police in these searches. This is a totally different case. Yes. And that's why he could plea if they're going to assure him that it won't be the death penalty, if they can make that assurance. He's an outsider in Idaho. He's villainized. The Murdoch case, they had a long tradition in that courtroom.

In that case, they had a lot of connections, the family. A deal could be cut. It always seemed that way at some point. But how all this is going to play out is something that fascinates me. I'm excited at the book I'm going to write as I'm playing it out. I'm looking forward to reading it. It's a nice challenge for a reporter, for someone who

likes to tell stories. Well, you're great at it. But just to sum it up, one of the differences while we're on Murdoch is Murdoch had the best lawyers money could buy. Great, great lawyers. They did a great job. The defense lawyers there. Kohlberger is likely to have a public defender. All due respect to the public defenders, that's not going to lead to any sort of dream team defense like we saw in O.J., like we saw in Murdoch. On the other hand, one of the things that was striking about Alec Murdoch was he's very smart. And while the jury wasn't persuaded by

his testimonial, Kohlberger's not some Neanderthal defendant who, if they put him on the stand, couldn't put two sentences together and the jury would be like, okay, he's smart too, and maybe, I don't know whether he can be charming, it's not what we've heard, but that's an advantage to him. Yeah, I think if he gets on the stand, he could be very effective. And I also think, like Murtaugh, he might want to always be the smartest person in the room. I think he would enjoy having the last laugh trying to trump the defense or the prosecutors, rather. So far, the few views we've had of him, those two traffic stops were, as you point out, any normal person's blood would be racing through their veins. Never mind if you actually had killed four people a month earlier. You'd be insane with anxiety.

None of that shows. A couple of court appearances, same. Steady as they come. So what we know about him so far is this is a cool cat, and he's pretty cool. And his lawyer, the one who's been talking at least jason labar has reiterated that that he was even intelligent he was very impressed with him he said he can make no connection uh between the crimes that have been charged and the person he was talking to my god time's gonna tell and that june hearing going to say a lot. In the meantime, we will be reading Howard Bloom at Air Mail.

I was saying to the audience, something like 82 or 90 bucks to subscribe for the year. It's worth it. It's so good. You make it worth it. You alone. Thank you. I'll tell Graydon you said so. Yeah.

Yeah. Tell him I'm a big fan. I love the publication. So all the best to you. Please come back if you have something new and you want to promote it. We're here and we'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much. A pleasure speaking with you.

Thanks for joining us today. I wanted to let you know that we are off for a few days going into the second week of our kids' spring break. And this one, I'll be joining the family and taking a little vacay on. But I will be back talking with you next Monday, March 27th. Looking forward to it. In the meantime, have a great week and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.