The Megyn Kelly Show - Murdaugh's Deception, and Idaho Murders Suspect's Past, with Phil Houston, Bill Stanton, Mike Swain, and Anne Bremner | Ep. 485

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Phil Houston, Bill Stanton, and Mike Swain, law enforcement experts and founding partners of Qverity, as well as Anne Bremner, author of "Justice in the Age of Judgment," to talk about how to spot deception and lies, the questionable potential confession of Alex Murdaugh, the supposed key Snapchat footage, signs of deception in the Murdaugh 9-1-1 call and the initial police interrogation, manipulation tactics he appears to be using with the police, what really happened in the Idaho murders house, what the suspect's action and words reveal, his disturbing writing, why the witness in the Idaho house may not have called the police right away, how a deception expert would be able to catch the Supreme Court leaker, and more.Bremner's book: https://www.amazon.com/Amanda-Knox-Justice-Age-Judgment/dp/151075136XHouston, Stanton, and Swain's company: https://qveritysecure.comFollow 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. Today on the program, one of the most fascinating people I have ever spoken to in this business. You hear me mention his name all the time, and for very good reason. His name is Phil Houston. He's author of the book Spy the Lie, which by the way, you should totally buy. It's available still, a New York Times bestseller, and for very good reason there too. Phil spent 25 years in the CIA conducting interrogations around the world. Half the time he was figuring out whether somebody was a terrorist and the other half, he was here domestically trying to figure out whether one of our agents had been turned.

I mean, this is literally a human lie detector. That's what he is. And he can tell you the signs to look for if you're trying to see if someone is lying. This is a special man and a special guest. Trust me. Today, Phil and his team are going to take a look at key moments in the trial of Alex Murdoch in South Carolina and the case against Brian Kohlberger, the suspected killer of four college students in Idaho. You're going to love this. When Phil listens to Alex Murdoch's 911 call made after he says he found, he stumbled upon the bodies of his wife and son. Does Phil detect deception? And what about Brian Kohlberger's first traffic stop when he was traversing from Washington state back home to Pennsylvania, got pulled over. He's got thoughts, but we begin with

dramatic moments in the Murdoch trial, a police investigator on the stand insisting that Alex Murdoch admitted to him on tape that Murdoch killed his son. This is brand new information. Anne Bremner is a trial attorney and author of the book Justice in the Age of Judgment, from Amanda Knox to Kyle Rittenhouse and the battle for due process in the digital age. Anne has been watching this trial very closely, and she joins me now. Anne, great to have you here. Oh, it's such a pleasure and honor. Thanks, Megan.

Oh, no, thank you to you. So this is the big, this is news that they are claiming they have an admission from the defendant on trial for double murder that he did it. Set it up and then I'll play the soundbite. Basically, he's on tape with an investigator and you it was played in court it was played slowly in court and the

question is of course for the jury is whether or not he said i did him bad or they did him bad the investigator is 100 certain of course that it was i did them bad and it was a confession. OK, so we have the moment here. First is the South Carolina law enforcement agent, Jeff Croft, testifying as to what he heard when he interviewed Alex Murdoch. Listen. Sitting there talking today is tough. It's just so bad. It's so bad.

When you asked the defendant about the traumatic picture that he saw of Paul and Maggie, what did he say? It's just so bad. I did him so bad. I did him so bad. Yes, sir. But did he say I did him so bad or did he say they did him so bad. We've now got solo tape that we're going to play for you of Murdoch, and we've put it over and over so the audience can hear it a little bit more clearly and make up their own minds about whether he said I did him so bad or they did him so bad. Here it is.

It's just so bad. They did him so bad. It's just so bad. They did him so bad. It's just so bad. They did him so bad. I can't tell, Ann. I don't know. I can't either. I can't either. And I, you know, when I listened to it slow down in the courtroom and when you played it like that, I thought, well, I'm going to catch it. But sometimes I heard I did it so bad. And then a little bit, I heard they did it so bad. Yeah. Let's hope the prosecution has more than this, because this is not going to be enough for a jury to convict somebody beyond a reasonable doubt. No. And the other thing is, I mean, he's a lawyer. So why is not going to be enough for a jury to convict somebody beyond a reasonable doubt no and the other thing is i mean he's a lawyer so why is he going to confess a and and b that you don't have a note of this or a follow-up question from the investigator

confirming that's what he said so they don't want to make this a centerpiece because it's just too shaky at least in my opinion yeah so that was he got cross-examined, Agent Croft, aggressively by defense counsel saying, so this is a big moment. Right. So surely you took a note and wrote it down. Right. No, he wrote it nowhere. And like that doesn't make any sense at all. Then he hammered him on the fact that he didn't follow up with Murdoch right then and there.

Like, what did you just say? I felt like you mean, right? I felt like his explanation for that was a little bit better than why he didn't take a note. Yeah, it was a little bit better. But the fact remains that any time you get a confession and, you know, as a prosecutor, that's golden. That's the best you can get besides just direct evidence. And if you don't make a note of it and you don't follow up on it, you don't clarify it, you know, et cetera. And then you can come in front of a jury and say, I'm a hundred percent sure that's what he said. Well, we're not

a hundred percent sure. Is the jury a hundred percent sure? Defense lawyer clearly isn't. So why didn't he preserve that in a way in writing, follow up, anything else to make sure that that could be the centerpiece of the case because it isn't. What they're suggesting now is that he didn't follow up because he still wanted to maintain the cooperation with Murdoch. He didn't want him closing down, you know, sort of officially declaring him, wait, what? You're the murderer? Like that would have caused a rift. Right. Like that would have caused a rift. I mean, I guess I can kind of see that. I can see, I don't know. You know how it is.

Even as a lawyer, you're in a deposition and somebody gives you an admission. Sometimes you don't want to touch it. Sometimes you just want it to stand and you move on. Yeah, all the time and all the time. And, of course, you have to resist the temptation to go. So you're confessing, you know, to connect the dots. You leave that for closing. You leave that for later in the case.

So I get that. And I think that's smart. You've got a conniving lawyer as a potential suspect who just gave you something that you don't want to wreck. You know, you don't want to disturb what you have. But you definitely go back and make a note of it and call people's attention to it. And then he didn't hear it almost seems like somebody else later heard the tape and said yo i know that's you know and he was like oh sure yes i definitely heard that 100 me too i know it reminds me of when i was a prosecutor you get these cops and say you know i almost got him to confess you know that that's the big thing you know i'm the one that did it and all of a sudden he's like oh i guess i did people said that yeah it was a confession you're And him being 100% sure that he heard it undermines his credibility because we're all hearing the exact moment.

It's not like we have to rely on his memory. We're hearing it and no one is sure. And in fact, some of the in-court reporters are saying when they slowed it down, they clearly heard they they did him so bad. So I wonder whether this this testimony has been more undermining than helpful to the prosecution. I do, too. And I saw some posts, I think, from Law and Crime and other places, you know, folks that post on these things saying they couldn't tell, you know, either, like you just said. And so when you have a really strong case, which I think they do, especially with the Snapchat video, you know, putting him there at the scene that we're just

hearing about, why do you take something weak like that and put it with the privacy recency in the beginning of your case? Maybe put that on later. So it's just a piece of the puzzle they talked about opening that all you'll see a picture come together when you assemble all these pieces. This is just a piece. It's not the centerpiece. There's not like a clear motive. I mean, we've we can cobble one together, certainly that Alex Murdoch was accused of civil fraud at his law firm. His finances were falling apart. He was being exposed as a financial criminal.

And his son, Paul, had been driving the boat a couple years earlier when this drunk, when this 19-year-old girl, Mallory, was killed and brought a lot of disrepute into the family. And so the theory is that he did this to distract from his own troubles and make himself look like a look like a victim i have to say like i believe it don't get me wrong i believe he did this but i do find that motive to be like kind of weird right the the old attention getting sympathy getting motive you know i think i agree megan i and i think really the prosecution talked about this gathering storm in getting motive you know i think i agree megan i and i think really the prosecution talked about this gathering storm in his life you know with being found out with his

finances in the mallory beach death case and then with the housekeeper that on the insurance fraud she dies he gets the family to get involved you know in terms of collecting money and then of course he steals it and he steals from the firm but the thing is everything was really coming to oh and he has to get someone to try and kill him, you know, to get the $10 million life insurance to his son, Buster. But everything's, yeah, maybe. Everything's falling apart for him.

But I think, and maybe it's because I'm a psychiatrist's child. My brother's a psychiatrist too. Don't you think that the people that he loved the most, the ones that he sees as a reflection of his perfect self in their eyes, you know, his children, his wife, when he loses that, that's what's coming. Everything's unraveling everything. He has nothing,

he's going to be without money, he's being disbarred, you know, he's going to have all these kinds of problems for his life of crimes. But that's interesting. Yeah. Now, that's just a theory. I've had, I agree with you. Oh, it's sympathy. You want to kill two people to get sympathy? You know, I don't think so. But the fact is, something was happening with him. And he's a one man crime wave anyway. I mean, he's a serial killer, if you believe about all these other cases. But maybe the ultimate thing is, it was all about his narcissistic self, that he just couldn't see himself anymore the way they would see him.

Oh, my God. It's like no murder is non-brutal, but these were particularly ugly. The other thing the prosecution introduced is the last text messages before Paul, the son's phone, went silent. Because Alex Murdoch's story is that he wasn't at, it was this big property where they had kennels and they shot guns. And he says, I wasn't there. I was overseeing my mom, uh, not too far away. Who's got Alzheimer's. And then I came back and I stumbled upon my poor wife and son who had just been brutally shot. And I called 911. That's it. Um, So there's been a lot of testimony about cell phones. Paul, the son's cell phone was found on top of his body. And they this is what they put into evidence, the prosecution. This is from the South Carolina Post and Courier that Murdoch had been Paul Murdoch had been calling and texting his friend on the evening of the murder, June 7, 2021,

when suddenly he stopped responding. Paul and his friend Rogan Gibson had been calling and texting his friend on the evening of the murder, June 7, 2021, when suddenly he stopped responding. Paul and his friend, Rogan Gibson, had been discussing Gibson's puppy, who was staying at the dog kennels on the Murdoch property. Gibson sent a text at 8.49 p.m. The cops think the murder happened at 8.50 or thereabouts. Sent a text at 8.49 asking Paul to photograph the dog's injured tail. They had talked on the phone five minutes earlier, but Paul did not answer this text. Gibson tried to call him at 910 again at 929, 942, 957.

Texted him, yo. After that, he did not respond. Then this Gibson called one more time at 1008 and then even texted the mother, Maggie, asking her to have Paul call him. Nothing. Nobody responded. Maggie Maggie heard I have Paul call him nothing nobody responded then they say Maggie and Paul's phones had already been locked for the final time both at 849 p.m. they can tell Wow again after that and the the interesting thing about this according to the testimony was they showed i'm trying to get my exact back

but they basically showed that maggie's phone went back into portrait mode at what they say would have been after the murders and because they can tell they can tell like i know how you raise your phone and like the the picture comes. They can tell that that happened after the murders. And within seconds, Alex Murdoch called Maggie's phone. And their theory is he picked up her phone. He saw that it was locked. And then he called it immediately from the murder scene, trying to make it look like he was trying to reach her from someplace else. But he was standing over his wife's dead body at the time.

So incredibly eerie, Anne. I know. It's just unbelievable. How could there be so much evil in one person to be so brutal and then to do that, to stand over her body and then to act like he's calling her while she's alive? Unbelievably chilling and evil. The other thing is they say they're going to introduce prosecution, a Snapchat video. Now this could be really important, right? This Snapchat video, we haven't seen it yet, but they say they're going to be able to place Alex Murdoch at, by, or by the kennels where he says he wasn't and where the murders took place like moments before the writers right so this now do we know what this snapchat video is going to have on it have they said no i don't i was listening this morning watching the trial i know there was some reference to him

talking about a dog having a chicken in their mouth i mean just kind of just casual conversation but the fact is his voice is heard allegedly on that Snapchat video. And he's there with Paul and Maggie at the time of the murders. And this was about the dog puppy's tail. Remember that his friend wanted the picture of the puppy's tail to show to the vet. And so that's what the purpose of this was. But it's like that Latin phrase, you know, falsus in unum, falsus in plurium or falsus in omnibus, false in one, false in all. He lied. He said he wasn't there. But the jury's going to see the Snapchat video showing he was indeed there. Well, I don't know if he's shown on the video, right? Apparently,

I don't think so. He is said to be heard talking with Paul about a dog and that it was, according to Murdoch's attorneys, it was a convivial conversation. I'm glad you, I'm glad you pronounced that because I was trying to pronounce it. They say hardly the kind of talk you would expect to precede a pair of violent murders, but that's not the issue. The issue is Murdoch says he wasn't there. Murdoch places himself over with the mother, with the Alzheimer's, not in the kennel talking to his son murders, but that's not the issue. The issue is Murdoch says he wasn't there. Murdoch places himself over with the mother with the Alzheimer's, not in the kennel, talking to his son. And this Snapchat video, they're going to have a timestamp on it. They're going to know exactly when it was taken, but it's supposedly right before they were murdered. Yeah, there is a smoking gun in this

case. And this is it, I think. And the defense is doing a really good job of saying he's innocent. Why would he do this? You know, everything else, if there's no direct evidence. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. What's this? You know, we'll have to see what it says and what we hear. But from the descriptions of it so far, this is going to be devastating to the defense. If this is what they say it is. Yeah, they're going the prosecution is going to bring in a Snapchat rep so that they can get it into evidence and validate it, authenticate it. And if they do that and if the timing is close enough to 850, that really could be a smoking gun against. Oh, my gosh.

And we will continue to watch it. Thank you so much for coming on with your thoughts. See you soon. It's a pleasure. Thank you. All right. When we come back, we stick with the Murdoch case and Phil Houston will analyze the Alex Murdoch interrogation tapes. Wait until you hear what he has to say. Joining me now, Phil Houston.

Phil worked for the CIA for 25 years. He's the author of Spy the Lie and Get the Truth. Phil, it's so great to have you here. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you, Megan. Appreciate the opportunity to come on again. It's good to see you. Oh, you as well. So our audience should know you invented the deception detection method still being used to this day at the CIA and adopted by other intelligence agencies as well. You, I think it is fair to say, are a human lie detector. Thanks, Megan. Appreciate it. Yes, I was the principal developer of the detection of deception model, and we still use it every day. It's amazing.

So our team, back when I was hosting the Kelly File, took your deception detection class, it was sort of the quickie version, and we learned a few things about the way it works. And I'm just going to set it up a little bit before we have you analyze some of these tapes so people understand a little bit about what you do. What we learned was there are certain sort of buckets that you look for to figure out whether somebody's lying.

But if they just check a box in one bucket, it's not really cause for concern necessarily. But if they have multiple things checked in different buckets, then you have what's called a cluster. And now you're in deception territory. And it was so funny, Phil, because to this day, Debbie Murphy is my producer and she was then as well. And she'll get my ear while watching a guest and she'll say cluster. We're still trying to figure it out based on your techniques. So explain to us a little bit about the buckets that you use to figure out

whether someone's lying. Sure. There's basically five buckets, Megan. And what we did was is take all of the reliable indicators of deception and figure out what's causing them from a psychological standpoint. And that's where the buckets came from. That's each of the behaviors fit in one of those five buckets. The first of those buckets is evasion. And evasion is simply when people are doing things to hide the information actively. They're not answering your questions. They're failing to deny something of that, like that. The second bucket is the persuasion bucket. So if I've committed an act of wrongdoing, and you asked me if I did it, that really puts me on the spot, because I can't really answer the question. Otherwise, because there are consequences associated with telling the truth.

And so instead, what I do is go into what we call the convince mode. We refer to it as the convince versus convey dilemma. I can't convey what the truth is, so I have to convince. And there are things like, I would never do that. I'm not that kind of person. And there's a million different examples. The third bucket is aggression. Sometimes when people feel cornered and or run out of convincing ideas or strategy, then they will become aggressive. They will start attacking either the questioner or the victim or the process, you know, the legal

process or the investigative process, whatever the case may be. The fourth bucket is what we call the reaction bucket. These are things where people react non-verbally. So, for example, and I'm going to mention one of these in one of the videos here with Murdoch, he, at one key point when he's asked a question, he starts to do a very significant anchor point shift. It clearly represents a spike in his anxiety, and it tells us he's concerned about what he's saying. And then the fifth bucket is manipulation. There are things that people do or say to manipulate you during the course of the questioning or the conversation. And these things are designed to make the process work more for them than for you. For example, if you ask them a question and they feel the need to buy time, they may repeat your question. And while you're repeating,

they're repeating your question, they're really thinking about what am I going to say? It just buys them a moment or two. But that moment or two is a lot when you think about the cognitive process. People tend to think about 10 times faster than they're talking. So if it takes two seconds, for example, to repeat the question, that can give them maybe 20 minutes of, or excuse me, 20 seconds of thinking or strategy basically to come up with. So those are the five buckets. One of the ones I remember, and I think this would be in reaction, but correct me if I'm not right about that, is certain body movements. So I remember hands above the midline, hands above the midline, touching your nose,

touching your ears, touching your hair, like touching yourself is, because it's nerves, right? It's basically like electricity shooting out of your fingers. Yep. It's often a part of what the, you know, psychologists refer to as the fight or flight, or actually there's a third piece to it, which is a freeze. Sometimes instead of, instead of creating physical activity, it actually creates a frozen person in front of you momentarily as they're there, the deer in the headlights look and they're thinking, Oh my God, what do I do now? Or what do I, what do I, what do I take this? What do I say? Yeah. It's, but again, it doesn't

necessarily count against them unless it's part of a cluster. So don't start thinking your spouse is lying to you just because he touches his nose in the middle. Maybe he has an itchy nose. So you got to look for the cluster for this to become meaningful. And we're going to have you on for a full feature, Phil, because you're so interesting. I want to get much more in depth with you. But just quickly before we do the specifics, could you put a little bit more meat on the bones of how I described your career, half figuring out whether somebody's a terrorist, half figuring out whether one of our CIA guys had turned for another country. I mean, what really difficult challenges you had? So could you just

describe a little bit about that life for us? Sure. About half of my career was spent back home in the US in investigative, and I was a polygraph examiner for many, many years, positions of that nature, screening, what we refer to often as screening work. The other part, significant part of my career was spent overseas involved in the vetting process of intelligence sources. And those sources, you know, sometimes they're recruited sources, sometimes they're voluntary sources. People will walk into an embassy or an American consulate and say, hey, I've got significant information. So, you know, something's going to blow up. Something is, so-and-so is going to be assassinated. Could be any number of things. And when the stakes are high enough, then somebody's got to go talk to that individual

and sort it out. Are they telling the truth or not? And if they're not, that's where the interrogation piece comes in to get them to open up and tell us that they fabricated this piece of information. Has anyone ever fooled you? Pardon me? Has anyone ever fooled you? The hard part about that is that because of the serious nature of the issues, if they fool us, they don't usually come back, unless we're lucky enough to catch them later.

And so there are people to this day I still worry about. You know what I mean? I wonder, you know, how much did they get one over on me? Where we do tend to miss things in our world or get fooled, Megan, is when we're dealing in, for example, like a screening issue. Say that we're doing a pre-employment interview and you're looking at a whole bunch of issues that you're interested in, the problem is that individual could be lying to more than one of those issues. However, they have a disproportionate amount of concern to, let's say, the biggest issue. And as a result, their fear of detection isn't as significant on the other issues as it is on this one, this one that they're most afraid of. And so sometimes

the behaviors don't show up on issues where they're actually lying to you. Oh, my gosh. I've got to ask you about this. The Supreme Court leaker, Phil, I've been saying on the show virtually every day since the Supreme Court opinion was leaked in Dobbs. They need a real investigation. They need Phil Houston. You tell me if they if if old Gail at the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court marshal said, Phil, would you come in and conduct this investigation? I have to figure out who the liar is, because somebody in this building, we have very good reason to believe, leaked this opinion first time in U.S. Supreme Court history. Do you think you could have done it? It's very hard to tell. I did a number of leaks investigations when I was in my former life in the agency. And leakers are hard to identify simply because there are so many people that might have access

to the information and who could have been leakers, and you get copycat leakers. There's an old saying in the world of psychology that there are no secrets. And what that means is, is that as human beings, if you tell me a secret, it's rare that someone will have 100% fidelity in terms of keeping that secret a secret. Because people have other people that they feel that they can confide in, in a secure manner. And it just seems to be an inherent part of human nature. I'm not saying that people never, ever, you know, have kept a secret, but it is very difficult. And we found that because in our world, keeping the secrets was at the, you know, top of the list. So how does that relate to the Supreme Court leaker?

Well, first of all, you know, there's a lot of people in the building, okay? So in essence, it becomes like a Ponzi scheme all of a sudden. It's not a scheme, but so if you know something and then you tell me and then I tell the next person and they tell it, there's an exponential characteristic to it. And before you know it, there's 50 people that know. What you hope for in catching the leaker is that you have a chance to have that person in front of you, meaning that you get a chance to ask them the question, were they a leaker? And I mentioned that because in the Supreme Court situation, I've heard a lot of people say, oh, it couldn't be one of the justices. You know, they're a Supreme Court justice. How on earth

could they ever be a leaker? In reality, the reality of human nature is, is that people lie when they think it's in their best interest to do so. And you ask about, has anybody ever fooled you? Where people get fooled is when their bias is so strong about something. They believe in someone so deeply that they're in their mind, it's impossible for that person to have done it. And it's rare in investigations when I, you know, when I'm working, you know, with other investigators and so forth, that I don't hear like, no, he or she couldn't have done it. They're just not the type, they wouldn't do that. And in reality, you know, we all lie to varying degrees in terms of quantity and as well as gravity. It is, you know, life wouldn't work if there wasn't some deception involved, even if it's protective deception.

You're not you're not telling someone something so that you can protect their feelings. So it's not a great idea to have the Supreme Court marshal who's pretty low on the totem pole at the Supreme Court doing the interviews. I use that term in air quotes of Chief Justice John Roberts and all the other justices. Yeah, I would not have done it. And it's actually, if you use someone independent, I'm not suggesting myself, but if you use someone who's independent, and you're actually doing them a favor as well, because they have no relationship with you, and they know that you have no dog in the fight, so to speak. So when they say, we don't think you did it, it's much more meaningful than when

your best friend or somebody you've known for 20 or 30 years is the person who did the interview. How hard is that to buy into? And it's like your boss's boss. I mean, it's like the justices are up here and everybody else at the court is down here. There's a very clear hierarchy and Gail's at the bottom of it and the justices are at the top. But I do wonder, Phil, because we were told from the reports that the questions she asked were, did you do it? Do you know who did it? And that was basically it. That was not the entirety, but that was kind of the reporting was that that was the type of questioning she was asking.

Okay. You would have to ask those. But my point in mentioning you is if you're a skilled interrogator or somebody who's been educated on the art of detecting deception, you are looking for hands above the midline for clusters, for the buckets, for what did you say? I'm sorry. You're like all those things that you just mentioned. And we would have been asking many, many more questions. We would have been asking not only what involvement might you have had in this league? How did you find out about the leak? How surprised were you when you found out? When's the first time you heard about the leak? And the list can go on and on. If you think about each of those questions and use the dichotomy of truthful or untruthful, the truthful person has a, you know, a story or an explanation for each of those questions.

But what do those questions mean to the untruthful? Okay. How did I find out about it? Oh, my gosh. I was my idea. You know what I mean? And that will cause those deceptive behaviors that you're describing. And all of those questions I just gave you are what we call repurposed questions. They're there

to get a specific piece of information. But what they do is it's like instant replay in sports. It gives us another look at the key element, which is the act itself. You know, the did you do it? When I say how surprised were you? The deceptive person, how surprised? Like I said, geez, it was my idea, you know, is what's going on in their head. So what do I say? And there's a ton of questions that you can come up with in these kinds of interviews that give you a much better chance of, and you know, it's also a much better chance for the truthful person to demonstrate that they're being truthful. Because when you go through a whole series and say, Hey, look, we asked Megan, you know, 10 questions, and she didn't show any deception on those questions. And that has much more power or powerful in terms of the results.

One of the things that I find out that also is confusing and contaminates these investigations is when the investigation is over, so often the people that you say are telling the truth, they never ask you if you're sure. But almost inevitably, if you say that they're being deceptive, they almost always say, well, wait a minute, are you sure? And it's just human nature. We live in that society where we're innocent until proven guilty. And being objective isn't being, and managing your bias isn't being prejudiced against that individual in any way. It's a fascinating thing to think of. You're pressing the pressure point only for the guilty person because the non-guilty person is like, oh yeah, I found out when Bob told me. Yeah,

it was shocking. My God. But the guilty person is like, danger, danger, danger with each of those questions. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it, and it's a more comprehensive approach. And you often get some information and some leads. You know, that person is trying to lead you in a certain direction. And when you ask more than one or more than just a couple questions, or look at the other questions you're asking, in the light that I described to you, it often gives you leads. The behaviors tell you, you know, which way to go and how far down that path to go. Sometimes they get right up to the precipice of getting the answer. Anne alluded to that, you know, when she was, when you were talking to her, you know, the person doesn't even realize they have a confession in front of them and the person just confessed or said something that was really, really,

you know, incriminating and just not capturing all the messaging. Oh, this is, I could go on like this for days and we will, when you come back and we do the full feature of Phil Houston, the thing I've been most looking forward to since I launched the show. Okay. Let's talk Murdoch because people are interested in this murdoch case um let's get the first soundbite this is the 9-1-1 call alex murdoch made after allegedly stumbling upon the bodies of his wife and his uh son who was i think 19 or or 21 at the time of his death. Here it is. Oh no, hell no. I can tell that he shot in the head and he shot really bad. Where did he shot at? Ma'am, I don't know, but he shot everywhere. I can't explain.

A lot in there. Just a couple of highlights for the audience if they couldn't hear it. My wife and child got shot badly. He says, did they shoot themselves? Oh, hell no. No, hell no. I can tell he shot in the head. She shot really bad. Where's the shot at? Where's he shot at? Ma'am, I don't know. There's blood everywhere. I can see his brains. She's got a hole in her head. What did you make of it, Bill? Interestingly, you don't see a lot of deception in 911 calls, but you do in this one. And I was surprised when I saw it. We got to the point where Alex said, yes, this is Alex Murdaugh. I need the police and an ambulance immediately. My wife and child got shot.

When Murdaugh is focusing on is the action as opposed to the outcome. He's saying my wife and child got shot badly. He never touches the outcome. You know, geez, I'm not sure if they're dead or alive. I think they've been killed. I think they're dead. You know, he just steers clear of that because that's what the consequences go,

you know, are most severe. And he also, when he says the way he says it, it sounds like he's actually saw, he actually saw them get shot. And that's what he's describing. And then the dispatcher goes on and she says, did they shoot themselves? And he says, oh, hell no. And immediately he he uses some aggression behavior. He's literally cursing at the 911 operator. Why is he doing that? Because she's out now asking the question and starting in his mind, perhaps, to delve into who did the shooting. And that's, if he is the killer, which I think he is, if he's the killer, that's the last thing he wants to be talking about. He also then has some inconsistencies. When he says, after he says, I can tell that her, we're talking about his son, that he shot in the head and she shot really bad.

And the operator says, well, OK, where's he shot at? And he says, ma'am, I don't know. Wait a minute. You just said he was shot in the head. Now you're saying he doesn't know. And then he says, after a pause, long pause, he realizes perhaps his faux pas. And he says, a pause long pause he realizes perhaps his faux pas and he says well there's blood everywhere and

he said I can see his brains obviously if he can see where those brains what part of the head region is he looking at he just doesn't like that questioning instead he gets off to his wife and simply says,

she has a hole in her head. And, you know, to sort of tie it up and hopefully, you know, take the, he's taken the operator down a path far enough that she'll drop it, you know, from there. Not the standard 911 that you would, there's never a standard 911. And you have to give people some latitude, because they're extremely emotional. You know, I mean, these are the stimuli that they're looking at can be extremely horrific. And that can certainly impact someone's communication style, communication approach. What I'm suggesting to you is that, that despite that influence on that approach, you can still see deception at times. And you see it in his, you know, in times that he's been emotional. So, yeah. So saying, I don't, I don't know where he's shot at his son, but he's saying,

I can see his brains. And we've heard in this trial that the son's brains, forgive me, audience, very graphic, but were shot all the way up to the ceiling. It was a massive blast from this very powerful gun. To then pretend you don't know where he's been shot, I mean, it seems like it would have been very clear that he was shot in his head. And so you're saying the fact that he just didn't go there tells us something. Yeah. Keep in mind too, Megan, that the person who's being deceptive, the criminal, is trying to control the situation at any point they can. And they're willing to say or not say anything at that particular point because they just want to get through the moment. And that's why you end up seeing people say things sometimes that sound really ridiculous, you know, later on in the aftermath.

But at the time, that's the best they can come up with. Oh, that's interesting because it's a stress reliever when they're in control as opposed to when the inquisitor is. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, let's do the second video. This is Alex Murdoch and his first interrogation by the police. I pulled up and I could see him. I knew something was bad. I ran out, I knew it was really bad. My boy over there, I could see it was. I'm so sorry.

And I could see his brain. I mean, I tried to do it as limited as possible, but I try to take their pulse on both of them. Have y'all been having any problems out here? Trespassers, people breaking in? None that I know of. The only thing that what comes to my mind is my son Paul was in a boat wreck a couple years ago and there's been a you know he was charged with being arrested for being a driver there's been a lot of negative publicity about that he's been punched and hit and just attacked a lot so you know but i mean nothing like this

a lot in there ph, what are you seeing? Yeah, you see a lot of things. The first thing that jumps out at me is when he says, I, I touched them both. I mean, I tried to do it. He has what we call a false start there. When he says, I touched them both, he's trying to convey something, but he realizes that that's not the way he wants to go. That's not the most effective thing for him to say. And then he says, I mean, I tried to do it as limited as possible. So what's he trying to get at there? He's trying to demonstrate, he knows he's talking to a police officer. And so he's trying to show them that he's helping them. This is in that persuasion bucket. Okay.

The first part, the false start is in that manipulation bucket. Okay. And he's trying to demonstrate that he's being helpful at that moment in time, that he's not going to contaminate the crime scene in some way. And, you know, it's hard to imagine that anyone that was in that situation would be worried about the crime scene if they were looking at their son and their daughter with the horrific graphic damage that's been done to them, and they would have very little reluctance to reaching out and seeing if there's a pulse and seeing if there's just some miraculous chance that they're still alive and so forth. Again, he's thinking about the action that's there as opposed to the outcome that's really happened. And the reason he's doing it is because he's got to convince the officers to look elsewhere, that it's not him.

And that leads us to the next part where he says the only thing, and then he stops, and he says, what comes to mind? And again, it's another false start. What's happening with the false starts? Remember I said you think 10 times faster than you talk. You realize that what you're about to say maybe isn't as effective. And so I got a better way to say it. And he said, so what comes to mind?

And then he refers to his son, Paul, and he starts going into the convince mode. You know, he was in a boat wreck a couple of years ago. There was a lot of negative publicity. And then he was attacked and so on, trying to garner sympathy from the officer instead of focusing on the officer's question and providing real information that would help him starting with either yes or no. Hmm. But the officer says, have you been having any problems out here? And he says, trespassers are people breaking in.

So what, isn't it on point to say, yes, there are, he's kind of saying, would anybody have been here like causing problems? He's trying to say there are people who are out to get us. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a much broader. It's a much it's a nonspecific statement. In other words, there are people this this guy or the officer is looking for some specific leads and he doesn't have those leads, but he wants to broaden by bringing up this story. What it also does for him is it broadens the requirements of the investigation. In other words, it suggests there may be other people that you should be looking at. So go look at them and don't look at me.

And that was what you called an anchor point shift, that what comes to mind, an anchor point shift, which you referenced earlier. And can you just expand on what that is? It's really a qualifier. It's really a qualifier, what comes to mind at this moment. It's like, I'm going to give you this, and I'll see if that works. And if it doesn't, then I'll go elsewhere, which is what he did. Okay, last but not least, Sergeant Daniel Green takes the stand and talks about sort of the manner of Alex Murdoch when he's sitting there, which sounded very cavalier. That's why they put Sergeant Green on the stand in part. Here's a little bit of that. I'm sorry.

You're fine. I'm very sorry. What's her name? Her name's Maggie Murdoch. Margaret Branstad Murdoch. How you doing? What did the defendant just say? Let me back it up.

Margaret Brandstadter from Murdoch. How you doing? What did the defendant say right there? So while I'm in the process of gathering information about the two victims from Mr. Murdoch, somebody walks by behind me and he pauses what he's telling me to say, hey, how you doing? How you doing? Yeah. And who was that he said that to?

I'm not 100% certain. I believe it was a fire rescue individual. What do you think, Phil? It's similar to something we see in a lot of interrogations and so forth of a guilty person. One of the things that happens is they become frustrated during the process and so forth, and they'll get upset and they start crying or they start getting angry or whatever the case may be. And we simply tell them that, you know, listen, we don't want it. We didn't mean to make you angry, you know, or upset you. And, you know, and it's not going to help. And then we just continue on with what we're doing. And what we see happen in those situations is the person turns off the anger or they turn off the distress almost instantly. And that's what Murdoch is doing here. He sees a chance to curry favor with this other first responder and show

how much respect he has for first responders and law enforcement and so forth. And so it's easy to turn off the feigning and then say, hi, how are you doing? It's like if we were practicing for a play and your job was to cry and then they'd say, well, okay, let's do that again. Immediately you'd stop crying and you'd go back to the beginning, so to speak. And you could be smiling or whatever. And then you'd put your acting face on and then start crying again. And it also relates back to what you were saying earlier, the curry favor. Like, I tried to touch the cell phones or the bodies as little as possible. I'm a good boy. I cooperate with law enforcement. I'm definitely not a double murderer. All persuasion, Megan. Absolutely.

All right. So much more to get into. Phil stays with us and we are bringing in more experts to talk about the latest in the Idaho murders. This is a great show. Stay with us. Now for an in-depth look at the case against brian kohlberger the man suspected of killing four college students in idaho back with me now phil houston but also joining us are two of his business partners mike swain is a private investigator and former nypd detective and bill stanton is with us as well bill's a former ny NYPD police officer and also the author of the book, Prepared, Not Scared, your go-to guide for staying safe in an unsafe world. Guys, great to have you here. Nice to be here. Thank you. And I will disclose to the audience that

your firm is so great that I use you guys for security as well. When unfortunate things pop up in my life, as they sometimes do for all public figures. And one of the many reasons I'm such a huge fan of you all. More on that later. So, OK, we're going to get into this from all angles. Phil, you've got obviously your deception detection techniques and you all work together now helping corporate companies look into these things and other people like me figure out if there are bad guys in their lives. Um, and we're going to go inside the mind of this guy. Since I left off with Phil doing analysis of soundbites and lies, that's where I'm just going to pick it up to kick this off. And what better way than stopping with that first police stop when Brian Kohlberger got

stopped with his dad would pick them up. This is post-murders um december 15th of just this past 2022 he's driving cross-country and he gets pulled over in a traffic stop this is weeks after he has allegedly committed committed a quadruple homicide here it is where are you headed well we're coming from WSU. You're coming from Washington State University? And you're going there? Oh.

Oh, okay. So y'all work at the university there? Actually, we do. All right, I'm going to translate that for people because it's hard to hear. Where are you headed? This is Brian. Actually, we're just going to get some Thai food. Dad, well, we're coming from WSU.

Brian's looking forward, starts nodding. Officer, so you're coming from Washington State University? Brian does not nod, but his dad does. Dad, we're going to Pennsylvania. We're slightly punchy because we've been driving for hours. Officer, so you say you all work at the university? Father points to Brian. Brian, I actually do work there.

All right, Phil, what did you make of that? Not good in terms of Brian's responses to the police officer. When he asked, where are you going? When a police officer stops you on the side of the road he asked, where are you going? When a police officer stops you on the side of the road and says, where are you going? He's looking for your destination, so to speak. And Brian lies about, conceals the destination and really lies about what they're actually doing, which is traveling all the way across country, you know, from Washington to Pennsylvania. He says instead, he answers, we're just going to get some Thai food right now. He, Brian clearly doesn't want to engage the officer at all. He doesn't want to give him

any information. His dad recognizes, I think, how bad Brian's answer sounded. And therefore he's the one that got them back on the right path. So look, we're from Washington state and, uh, you know, and we're, we're, we're going elsewhere. Um, we, you know, we do have a destination. Yeah, it is weird. We're just going to get some Thai food. That's not what's happening like you're you're driving cross-country yeah like it's an obvious dodge and the facts are bill that they took a different route than the most direct directly across country brian wanted to go south he allegedly claimed it was because of bad weather um but it was sort of interesting he chose the

route it was not the most direct one it It has people wondering, you know, was he trying to lose potential followers? Why would he do that? This plus the license plate situation where he changed out his Pennsylvania license plate for a Washington state license plate shortly after the murders. What do you make of it? Well, we were all talking, you know, in prep for this. And as Mike noted, there would have been license plates from all over the country at a university. He changed the license plates, we believe, to blend in. And as far as taking the Sarah Tip, you know, the roundabout route, if you will, was to stay off the main roads. And you have to think to yourself, that information by this time was out. What was the father thinking? The father would have known the routes. Why are we going this way? Did he have any clue what was going on? So, you know, I think we're all in agreement. We believe this guy is guilty. It's fascinating, given the fact that he is a doctoral student and how much was he using from what he learned to try to commit the perfect murder in his mind oh my god well bill that's

what's so crazy so now the news this week is that he applied for a police internship he wanted your old job bell and mike he applied for a police and we knew he was studying criminology, but he applied seven months before the killings for an internship with the police here and in Pullman, Washington. Right. So where he was about to go to do to get his Ph.D. and get this. It's unclear whether he was hired and the Pullman police have declined to answer. I mean, there is some possibility he was interning for the police at the time of these crimes. Megan, in my mind, this fits into the category of what we call countermeasure behavior. So it's starting out, you know, very early. And what I mean by early is there's still a months off from a killing, but in his mind, he may well have had

something in his mind that he was going to do that was bad. So joining the police department, having some connection by the police department in his mind might very likely have served two purposes. First of all, from the persuasion context, he's an insider now. Why would anyone look at him, you know, immediately as, to details of the investigation that may give him some early warning if the police do start to zero in on him. Wow. I mean, to think about him seven months out planning to that extent, like I'm going to get in, going to get an inside role, give myself a leg up on the investigation. I mean, it's chilling. Um, the other thing we

learned this week is that the, uh, the evidence, the, the amount of evidence that the state has gathered and produced over to the defense, it includes 995 pages of documents, one audio slash video file, no more detail on that. Uh, 1,865 photos. I'm sure that would have included photos of the crime scene and what have you. But I mean, the biggest case, I mean, you tell me, Mike, but I feel like this case in large part could come down to the crime scene. They haven't released much on what they found there other than that sheath of the knife. But would you expect there's a lot more? Absolutely. I think there's a lot more forensic evidence to be gathered from the scene. I think the police department's done an excellent job of staying tight-lipped, not letting a lot of information out to the public. A crime scene like

this is going to yield tons of evidence. The perpetrator, when he goes into the crime scene, he's going to bring something in. When he leaves, he's going to bring something out. There's going to be hair, fiber, DNA, blood, all sorts of different types of evidence. And it's going to take a long time for all of this to get sorted, processed, analyzed, and see what's actually useful for prosecution and what's not. Why do you think that there will be his blood? I mean, his blood at the crime scene, that's ballgame, but he had gloves, he had the mask. I'm sure he was probably clothed head to toe, as it seems from the eyewitness reporting of the roommate who survived. So why would you think his blood might be there?

Cases that I've had in the past that involved knife stabbing, this vicious rage, this violent attack, almost all of the times the perpetrator has cut himself accidentally. During the rage of the stabbing, the knife will slip, the blade will cut a finger during some kind of a struggle. And I have to believe somebody struggled. I don't think this was just as easy as going in and killing four sleeping students. There had to be some semblance of a struggle from at least the one victim that allegedly was found on the floor, not on the bed. So I think that it's going to come out at some point that he probably cut himself and he did in fact leave some blood behind at the scene. I mean, again, we think he wore gloves, but we don't know. We haven't found the murder weapon. How important is that going to be, Bill? There's no murder weapon. And can you speak more to Mike's

point about he goes in there and he kills these four victims. Like they're right next to each other. The two, the two and the two were sleeping right next to each other. It remains to be answered. How was there no noise? How, how wasn't there, why didn't we have screams as the person next to you is getting murdered? Well, you know, you bring up a fascinating point. And again, we were talking about this. How much of this did he role play? How much information from studying, possibly studying serial killers or murderers, did he practice on the most effective way or Google the most effective way to kill someone with a knife? how to do it silently. Killing someone, it's hard to

kill someone unless you go with the direct thrust to the heart or you slice the throat with your hand. Sorry to talk about this this way, but this is how we talk behind the scenes. There's going to be noise. And was he able to see that there was a male? You know, there was a surveillance. He did surveillance before he went in. You know, our understanding, you know, based on the pinging of the phone and we don't we can't say it's absolutely him. But this phone pinged at around three thirty. It was a food delivery at about four. He went in right after that. Right. So if he went in as soon as he got there, when that food delivery knocked on the door, he could have disturbed

the whole act. So he goes in two people. You mean there's no noise, right? Then to your point, he goes down to the second floor. Does he give, you know, the female, uh, uh, stab her? Mike has a great theory. He thinks she heard the noise on the third floor, opens the door and sees him directly. He engaged her and then went to the male. And that's where there may have been some scuffling and defensive wounds as well. Mike, didn't you mention that? Well, you're talking about because he went in the original two murders where the two women on the third floor. And then he went down to the to the couple, the male female couple who was on the second floor. So what's the theory, Mike?

My theory is the couple on the second floor. She was found on the floor, not on the bed. She just received the food delivery at four o'clock in the morning. She had to take time to eat it. She was on TikTok, I believe, at 412. So this was not going to be a sleeping victim like the two up on the third floor were. My theory is that she heard some noise. She might have opened up the door probably right at the point that he was about to enter the door.

She might have been stabbed initially, fell onto the floor. He went onto the bed, stabbed the male and then came back and finished off the female. I just wanted to make another point about the possibility of him cutting himself. Only one glove was found during the search warrant. One, I believe, was a black nitrile glove. The cut would have probably went right through the glove, and it might have been something that he might have disposed of with the knife. Yeah, because he definitely got rid of the murder weapon and was sure to take that with him, but didn't remember that sheath, which to those of us on the outside, you know, seems impossible, right? Like that he managed to get in there. He managed to kill four people. He managed not to be detected. He managed not to have anybody really hear him, at least in the neighboring houses or call 911. But he forgot the sheath of the knife. I don't like, what does that tell you guys? I don't, I don't think that he quote forgot it. I don't think he realized he lost it until it was too late during the heat of, of all of this struggle, all these victims,

two different floors. I don't think he knows where he lost it. Quite honestly, I think it simply fell off. And for you and everyone here and in your audience, have they ever had an emergency situation where your adrenaline is pumping and they call it an adrenaline dump? scene out of the area, you know, whether it's a fistfight or whether you're killing four people and wanting to get away as soon as possible, you are not thinking clearly, no matter how many times he may have done this in his mind and gone through it and gone through the rooms and role played it, you know, in actuality, killing someone for the first time is, you know, surreal. And I know, like, I think I read you say, Phil, something to the effect of he would have been in there. This could have been an obsession. And after one commits a murder like this, there tends to be a sense of euphoria, which is, I mean, that is just chilling that, that that's what he might've been feeling.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Me, Bill? I don't know which, which one of you said that it was somebody who said to our producer, Debbie, I think it was Phil talking about how, um, normally they feel exhilarated, like these serial killers. This is not, you know, he would have been like on a high in terms of the knife sheath and leaving behind, you know, a messy crime scene. This wouldn't have been sheer panic. Yeah. Well, I think I was talking about, you know, the, uh, oh gosh, Mike, help me with the name again, the strangle victim, you know, in central park, Robert Chambers, there was a murder, Robert Chambers, Central Park, where he actually went back. Based on the phone pinging, we found out the perpetrator, possibly with the phone, went back to the scene of the crime.

Almost like a hunt and looking with pride, the euphoria of this is what I've done. Let me see what they're finding out. And, you know, wanting to relish almost like a football player spiking the football and celebrating the touchdown as macabre and as horrible it is to think, you know, that's what these people, you know, do it for. They do it for the juice or the revenge. Now, the interesting part here is, was this a hate killing or a revenge killing, or was this the beginning of a serial killing? Right. What do you think? You know, I think this man's life, you know, judging from the self-loathing at 16 years old, he wrote something, you know, to his family,

how he just like hates himself. Right. And then all the things, it seems when this guy came to forks in his life, crossroads, he kept making the wrong turn. And it ultimately led to this, you know, we say, how do we stop a crime? Well, you can't stop a crime such as this because you don't know until it actually happens. But there were times in this man's life where he could have made different decisions. And in my opinion, he made all the wrong ones, obviously. And it brought us to this moment. You mentioned those writings. Howard Bloom for Air Mail News is well worth reading on this subject. He's done a. Howard Bloom for Air Mail News is well worth reading on this subject. He's done a couple of in-depth reports and is writing a book on it for

HarperCollins as well. And his reporting went back and pulled some of the writings. We've heard these out in the public, but not described so well. He says, okay, just to bring a flavor of it. Okay. There is also by his own admission and in his own words, another side to him, one that is dark, detached and steep, deep in misery. Unhappiness and alienation can often dominate his mood, says Kohlberger, writing online posts are are any reliable guide visual snow had at times buried his existence in an avalanche of despondency and desperation he said he suffered from something called visual snow like he sort of i call him the ant races that you see on tv when you're when programming has ended um he says his posts were often her his posts were calls from the wild consider i often think of myself as an organic sack of meat with no self-worth i'm starting to view everyone as this

i always feel as if i am not there i am not there completely depersonalized constant thoughts of suicide crazy thoughts delusions of grandeur, poor self-image, no emotion. This is Brian Kohlberger writing. 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.

Oh, so dark. What do you glean from that, guys? I mean, so what you see here, it's almost as if like, Megan, you studied to become a lawyer. You had a goal. That was your goal. All of us have goals in life, whether physical or mental goals to strive to achieve. It seems that his goal was to become this evil, loathing person, what he had within to project to the world. And unfortunately for us, he accomplished that goal. What do you make of it, Phil? Megan, the way I would describe it, and I agree with what Bill was saying, what you see in those early comments about himself is an emerging psychopath, in my opinion.

And that's not just a loose observation. While none of us are psychologists, we were trained to identify certain symptoms of psychopathy. And even as a teenager, and you see these, you could see behaviors that are evidence of psychopathy. The four major characteristics that you're looking for initially, number one is extreme narcissism. Number two is, and this one's really important, The rules don't apply to me. And the epitome of that particular element in this case is what worse rule to violate than killing someone. And then the other two rules are immaturity and grandiosity, the reference to delusions of grandeur and things. These are things that he believes that he can do. Some of the other things that he said about himself, he said, whatever I want to do, I can do with little remorse. And in other words, he doesn't care about the consequences.

He believes he's smarter than everyone else, that he can figure out how to do what he wants to do and not get caught. It's a common thread of a serial killer. Do you feel, Phil, like he was on his way, like that he was a serial killer in the making? Absolutely. I think Bill or Mike said it or both said it, I agree completely. This could be the infancy of his serial killer career. And everything that he was doing was preparing for that. He went to, got his master's degree in criminal justice. And then he's now working on a doctoral degree. And he asked to work. We talked earlier about him applying for a job in the police department. And then he applied in another situation just a few months before the killing for an internship at a police department, all for the purpose of helping him become,

in my opinion, potentially a better serial killer. My gosh. I mean, the reason we go there, of course, is there's no clear motive for these murders. It's not like he dated one of the girls or we can put together a scenario where he was clearly rejected by one of the girls. That's not there. So we're left to wonder, without a connection between them, why? He doesn't need a motive. That's the thing about a psychopath. They can do what they want to do. They live life on their terms. And so anytime anyone offends him or rubs him the wrong way, or just even without knowing it, enrages him, then that's a reason for action. Mike, do you glean anything from the crime scene when it comes to motive? Because we know from some of the reporting that poor Kaylee was, forgive the term, hacked worse than the others.

She seemed to be the main target, I guess. She was up on the top floor again with her roommate, and that's where he is believed to have gone first. Yeah, I definitely feel that Kaylee was the primary target based on the description from the coroner as to her injuries. You know, we don't know how many times everybody's been stabbed. I mean, again, they're so tight-lipped over there. I mean, here in New York, you know, we had a, you know, an EMT lieutenant stabbed a couple of months back and it was immediately in the news. She was stabbed X amount of times. Okay.

This is information that we don't have. So we don't know exactly what the rage was regarding each individual victim the locations of the stab wounds we don't have that either how many of these stab wounds were defensive stab wounds versus offensive stab wounds so a lot of that when it eventually comes out i think is going to be helpful in determining you know was there one particular intended victim? Was everybody else collateral damage? It's going to remain to be seen as more and more information comes out. Well, what do you guys make of it though? Because I do think it's very interesting that, you know, Kaylee and Maddie, best friends for life, they were sleeping in the bed together, going to sleep after a night, fun night out. And the, the,

you mentioned the corner, they, she described it as large punctures, describing the lacerations in Kaylee and Maddie's wounds, um, were more measured, I guess, for lack of a better term, at least in comparison. So, I mean, really, what what psychologically would make you go go go after so with such ferocity, the one and then still want to kill the other, but do it in like a more a less gruesome manner? Well, I mean, go right ahead, Bill. No, Mike, you go. What I was going to say was we still don't know who the target of his messaging was. I think it came out that he was trying to message somebody that, for whatever reason, disregarded him, didn't respond back. Maybe. It's People Magazine with one source, but we haven't confirmed it.

Keep going. It's not confirmed. And I have to believe that when it comes out, it's going to wind up probably being Kaylee. That was the one that he was attempting to make contact with, that for whatever reason, she either chose not to engage with him or she had no idea that he was attempting to contact her. I think it'll come out eventually that she was the one that he was most

interested in. Do you guys buy that this guy was an incel, you know, an involuntarily celibate who was, you know, just angry about that condition, about women, you know, about the vivacity of these young girls? Like, do you believe that there was no sexual assault? But what do you make of that theory? Go ahead, Bill. rage out. They write everything out. And like a drug, when that doesn't become enough for them, some step outside of the cyber world, almost like stepping outside of the matrix and going into the real world. And, you know, when we have investigations, what we do is kind of like what we're doing here. We throw different theories around. Just to go back, you were talking about the knife, you know, one had dramatic wounds, The other one had more neat wounds. It could have easily have been he got one in the sleep where he was able to do it like he couldn't contain himself.

And then the proceedings, they got, you know, easier and more efficient, if you will. I mean, we were also talking about the witness, you know, when we can get into that a little bit. Oh, yeah. I want to ask you about her. Everybody was like, what was she thinking? And I go more to that thing in the cyber world when faced with a real life dilemma. She short circuited. Well, I mean, a lot of us would have short circuited if some stranger had been found inside of our home, a college girl. You know, those are the ones who get murdered. You know, having been a college girl, I can speak to this. Your whole college, you worry about getting murdered. It's part of being a young woman in America, sadly.

So any young woman seeing a stranger with a mask on, dressed in black in her home after having allegedly heard him say something like you're going to be OK, you know, on another floor to a roommate would be terrified. I get all that. I don't get sitting there for seven hours doing nothing, not calling 911, you know, nothing, Bill. I don't, I don't know what to make of that. Well, Mike and I have conflicting, conflicting theories. So I'll let Mike do his. All right, go ahead, Mike. You know, everybody had been out earlier in the evening to a certain degree. I feel that, you know, it's possible that she might've been, you know, semi intoxicated under the influence of something to where she went into that shock phase where she initially encountered this burglar. Because that's all he really was at that point, a potential burglar to her. She had no idea what had happened, you know, upstairs on the third floor.

And she locked herself in the door. She made herself safe. And she probably just passed out from a combination of fear, fright, you know, stress, whatever. I mean, there has to be a reason. And we haven't heard it really from her as to what took seven to eight hours to actually pick up a phone and called 911. And I I'd really love to hear what her reason is as opposed to, you know,

the, the theories as to what she was going through, what she felt. I'd love to hear from her what took seven hours. Cause I can understand. Okay. You see him in the house. Maybe you're thinking one of your roommates just hooked up with him,

right? If you think he's, he's not a threat and you just go back to sleep that I totally get. But I don't get I saw him. I was scared, so scared. I was frozen in fear. And then I didn't call 911 for eight hours. I don't get that bill. Well, you see, exactly. You know, listen, in my youth, I did a little drinking myself and there's no way, you know, there was enough noise to wake her up or startle her to make her come out of the room. She sees this guy and we think it's a COVID mask, not a full face mask, but you see this person come out with a mask. It's going to be okay. And you're saying you're in fear. I'm going to go with that

sensory deprivation that, you know, I I've never, you know, today's parents, they smooth out for the most part, not you, they smooth out every speed bump in these children's lives. So when they're faced with any adversity, they don't know how to handle it. I've seen it within my own family. I've seen it with cases with children, not to this extent, obviously. So I just think she went into total shock thinking, what am I going to do? Is he still out there afraid to call? And I think it was just not knowing how to handle the situation. Oh, my God. I mean, that's no critical thinking.

No, nothing. And literally a deer in the story. And I do think there's going to be a real question at trial about whether they put her on the stand. Like, can this woman take the stand, um, and stare down Brian Kohlberger and tell the story. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's going to be a challenge for the prosecutor and for her. And by the way, we never hear anything about the other roommate. There was a sixth roommate. We haven't heard anything about the sixth roommate and whether that person saw anything or whether that person's a potential witness here either. We did see a prosecution objection to releasing anything to the defense that would identify informants, informants. And it's like, well,

what? This isn't like a drug case. Who would an informant be? We'll pick it up there after a quick break. More with Bill, Bill and Mike as they stay with us. So what we know from investigators is that they're from the police is that they're not handing over information about an informant, as I mentioned before the break. And here is how the prosecutor put it. I'll read you the statement. To the extent, because they have to give everything to the defense that you have as the prosecution, if you're going to be relying on it at trial, or if it's exculpatory, meaning suggest they didn't do it. To the extent that information exists regarding an informant who is not going to be produced as a witness,

including recordings or written statements of an informant or that identify an informant, such information is not subject to disclosure. And the state asserts informant privilege, writes prosecuting attorney William W. Johnson Jr. Could this be the sixth roommate? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I think the term informant is very specific. I don't think informant and witness are interchangeable whatsoever. What do you make of that statement then, Mike? Someone after they locked him up, maybe a cellmate, someone in the jail. Well, why would they be using information from that person and not producing them at trial? Mike?

I don't necessarily think that they are using information from anybody. I sort of think that they're just covering their bases just in case. Maybe they do have information from someplace. They haven't been able to verify it. Could have been a conversation overheard, something said offhanded to somebody. And I think they're just keeping it really tight in Idaho, as opposed to other places. I think they're just keeping everything really tight and they're going to play it step by step as things develop. Now, Brian Kohlberger seems to be continuing in his attempts to manipulate people, us,

the whole process. He's made a couple of court appearances. And while we don't always get the sound, we get to see him. Sometimes we don't see him in any event. There was an initial court appearance in Idaho. And I'd love to know what you guys make of this, especially you, Phil. Watch this. Walking in, he's got his orange jumpsuit, sits down next to his female attorney, smiles, shakes his head at her like, yeah, yeah, I'm good. Now he's just staring forward, nodding his head, nodding. The judge is walking him through the charges. Is there anything to be gleaned from that, Phil? Not a whole lot. I mean, he's trying to look cool, calm, and collected was my immediate thought. And again, like he's unmoved or he's not unnerved by this whole proceeding.

It's all part of the persuasion mentality. Because to me, it reminds me sort of the smile and the nodding of the head reminds me of what you were saying about Alex Murdoch. You know, like, I'm a good boy. I comply with law enforcement. You're all going to really love me in here. Trust me. At one point, he supposedly turned to his parents and said, I love you, Mal, I love you. And it's exactly that same thing. It's like, I'm the good child and I haven't done anything wrong. And that's what he's just trying to convince the whole world of. You know, Megan, in my opinion, what I'm seeing and what the vibe that I'm getting is here's a guy that has been essentially marginalized his whole life. Never got the girl, you know, at the high school reunion. They didn't even know him even when he had his name tag on.

Right. So here he is, like it or not, he's getting his closeup. This is his day in the sun and he's still playing chess. My guess is he still thinks he's smarter than all of us and he's going to play this to the bitter end. And he unfortunately got what he wanted. This brings me to what Phil says is the biggest thing of all, the absolute biggest thing. So Brian Kohlberger, I don't know how widely known it was that Brian Kohlberger talked. He spoke to the law enforcement officials initially and before he asked for a lawyer. But what he said and what he didn't say are hugely important to you, Phil. Can you explain? My suspicion is, is that he went in with perhaps the exact mindset that Bill was describing, full of himself and believing that he can snooker these guys. And he quickly found out that he couldn't, that whatever excuses, whatever attempts at

countermeasures or persuasion that he was trying to employ simply didn't work. And when that realization hit him, his next best move was to get himself out of there by lawyering up. But he did release a statement to us, all of us, through his lawyer, that he looks forward to being exonerated. So he's definitely trying to tell us, I am going to be found not guilty, but the words used raised a red flag for you. Why? There's something very important missing from that statement, Megan,

and that is, I didn't do it. And it is, in their efforts to focus on convincing everybody that they didn't do what they forget to say, I didn't do it. And so that gets pushed to the background. And now I have to focus on strategy and how do I get out of this? We talked about this in the past, but we've talked about how it would be the equivalent of there's a bank robbery and Phil sits down across from me and says, did you do it? And I say, I would never rob a bank. I wasn't raised like that. How dare you ask me that? What was the question again? All those things like red flags, red flags all over. No, the normal person is like, no, I didn't do it.

Bye. It's a convince, convey dilemma that I spoke about earlier when we were talking about Murdoch, it's that your questions start to put them on the spot and they can't convey because that's bad for them. That brings consequences. And instead, they're trying to do everything under the sun to convince you that it wasn't them. Mike, one of the eerie things about that video that we saw of him driving the white Hyundai Elantra with his dad cross country to go back home to Poconos in the Pennsylvania is that's the getaway car. If what the police are telling us is true,

that's the getaway car that he got into after he murdered them. And we're seeing inside of it. We're seeing him. It's, it's eerie, but that car is huge in this investigation. Absolutely. That car is going to be very huge in this investigation. I mean, listen, we know that he cleaned it. Um, I'm personally a little surprised that the investigators watched him clean this car and allowed it to go on without at some point, you know, stepping in and trying to pull, you know, some kind of a rabbit out of a hat and prevent that. He did it when he was already on their radar. He did just to interject.

He did it when he was already on their radar and being monitored by the FBI back in Pennsylvania, according to the reports. Correct. I'm just a little shocked that they're acknowledging that they watched him thoroughly scrub this car down. However, even with the thoroughly scrubbing it down, once they forensically process this car, it's virtually impossible to get rid of, you know, all traces of evidence. I mean, that blood, you know, if there was blood, it's going to seep through a rug, seep through upholstery, seep through, you know, whatever. And they'll find it. That car is going to eventually give off some type of evidence that's going to be used against him. But is it possible, Mike, that we are overestimating the amount of blood he would have had on him? Now, I realize the reports of they're saying there was so much blood at the house, it was seeping out of the doors, like the windows, the ways of exiting the house.

The same reporter, Howard Blum, who was writing for that airmail, talks about how the first responders who got on the scene talked about how they could smell blood, which I didn't even know was a thing. So I see your point. He probably had some on him. But is there is it possible we're overestimating that and that there was a way of him not? No, absolutely not. I mean, a crime scene like that, four different victims, all that rage, the number of stab wounds, self-defense wounds, somebody trying to fight back. There's going to be blood everywhere. So I don't think we're overestimating at all.

He left that crime scene with a lot of blood. You know, Megan, speaking of the car, Mike, Mike did the route on the ride home on his ride home. And Mike, I'll let you say. And that's what we were talking about. Why did he take such the long way home? Was it to dump off his clothes, the knife, etc. Mike, you know, you look you look up the route on the route home versus the route there. How how different was it? The route was obviously very different. You know, he went all the way south to go west to go back north.

It's something that investigators are going to have to look at. You know, why would he take that route? Did he know somebody along the way? Was he planning on dumping the knife, dumping his clothes, changing his clothes? It's a very interesting route that he took. And I think it's being looked at. And hopefully at some point, we'll find out why he took this totally out of the way when 12 prior occasions where we believe that he'd been scouting the location, going back and forth. It's a quick eight mile, you know, 10 minute ride. So after the crimes committed, why he wouldn't

want to as quickly as possible, get back home, get back where it's safe, do what he needs to do to dispose of whatever he needs to dispose of. Instead, he puts himself out there for this extended period of time. He puts himself out there at great risk. He's driving a car that was at the scene of a quadruple homicide. He's probably covered in blood. He's got a weapon with him that's covered in blood. It's just an amazing risk that he would have taken given how smart and cautious I think he felt that he was. So the reward would have had to be high. And wouldn't that reward have been, I got to hide this knife and I got to hide this bloody clothing and, you know, sneakers, like everything that, and so that, why aren't they pouring over that distance? You know,

like we do when somebody's missing, walking side by side, getting the community to volunteer, walking every inch of that area? I actually think that they are, you know, once again, they're very tight lipped. I think absolutely they are. I think they're also looking to try to find out if he has any ties to the neighborhood that he drove through. See if he knows anybody in those areas. They're going to go through his computer. Did he research any local dump in any of those towns that he drove past? I think they're doing a lot of work on that because I think it's obvious that he did not want to show back up at his residence bloodied. Okay. I think he changed his clothes somewhere along the way.

He got rid of the weapon and it was a spot that he was familiar with. He's been there before. You don't just get on I-95 and just start driving South. And all of a sudden get on I-95, I-195 West and start driving West. You know where you're going. He knew where you're going. Or he could have researched it. And it'll be interesting to see if, to your point, Mike, if he went there in the past, looking for the perfect hideaway spot to do the exchange. He may have researched that spot.

Well, that's why I'm saying the computer forensics, once they get into his computer, it's going to be very interesting to see what he's been researching over the last six months well what about the gps on the car can the car computer you know how it can tell it can tell everything about you now it can tell if you were doing your mascara when the car crashed you can tell all the stuff will it be able to tell you know prior rides and whether he stops it's an an older car. I don't know if that car had the capabilities. I haven't personally looked into that make model to see, but today, the cars that I drive, absolutely. That car knows exactly where I've been, how long I've been there, et cetera. That's an older car. So I don't know if that car had the capability, but I can guarantee you

investigators are going to be looking into that. Oh, my car tells me when I ovulate, it's really uncomfortable. So let me flash forward to now he's back in Pennsylvania and we know that the FBI was watching him and we know the FBI was watching him when he did his crosscountry drive. They say they were not behind those two traffic stops that in fact, the reporting is again, citing Howard Blum, that the FBI was like, oh my God, he got stopped by these two locals, but that they weren't behind it, but that they were watching him by that point. He gets back home to Pennsylvania and they see him throw his trash out at four in the morning in the neighbor's trash. So what do you got? They've got it. They were watching him. And so like, what? Is it possible they they have the murder weapon?

Is it like if you're Brian Kohlberger, what have you brought home that cannot be disposed of in your own trash? Well, you said it. You said it right there, Megan.gan you know was he keeping trophies and then he thought you know hey i better get rid of it he did a cost benefit analysis you know i got to get rid of these trophies you know i got to get rid of the weapon you may be exactly right it's chilling this is i'll give you this howard Blum's been the secret star of our exchange. And he ends one of his pieces for Airmail as follows about the possible motive. He talks about the exuberance of these young girls. We saw them on tape trying to tell

the cops, oh, sorry, we had a party. We'll be quieter. They were totally respectful. And he says the following. Can you imagine looking at that wild night with those girls on the tape, all the happy frivolity from some hideout in the shadows, and at the same time, knowing deep in your dark heart that you would never be a part of anything that exuberant, that beautiful? It would be hell, a hell of unsatisfied desire that could plunge someone deeper and deeper into a tormenting rage, an envy that would be an all-consuming sickness. And in the end, there would be no way out, just the deed. My God, it's dark. I mean, this is what you guys do. You deal in this kind of darkness for a living and try to find a way of getting real answers.

I'll end with this. Your level of confidence on a scale of one to 10 that they've got the right guy and he'll be convicted. Let's go down the line, Phil. 10, 10 plus. Wow. Bill. 10. Mike.

10 plus, plus, plus. Wow. Wow. That's good to know. That's very good. You guys are the greatest. Let's get the band back together. Really, really enjoyed speaking with you and hearing all your expertise. Thank you guys. Thank you. Wow. What a show. I hope you loved that as much as I did. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.