The Megyn Kelly Show - FULL Deep Dive Into Bryan Kohberger and the Idaho College Murders - Megyn's True Crime Mega-Episode

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00:00:29.040 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:40.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's true crime

00:00:45.200 mega episode. Today we bring you our deep dive into the story of Brian Kohlberger and the horrific

00:00:51.440 Idaho college murders back in 2022. All five parts, looking at Kohlberger's upbringing,

00:00:58.780 how authorities tracked him down, the circumstances of the crime,

00:01:02.820 and unanswered questions to this day. Enjoy, and we'll see you Monday.

00:01:10.760 Suppose you wanted to kill someone. That would be easy. There are lots of ways. 0.99

00:01:16.580 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.

00:01:26.540 That could help eliminate the noise, but it would require skill, strength, and endurance.

00:01:32.760 Murder is hard work, especially if people fight back.

00:01:37.440 Then there's the really big obstacle.

00:01:39.660 You want to get away with it.

00:01:41.440 You're determined to stab four people living in a single home in the still of the night 0.92

00:01:46.960 and then disappear without leaving a clue to your identity. 0.85

00:01:51.560 Now that's a more difficult challenge, but you did it.

00:01:55.880 You have everybody stumped.

00:01:58.600 It's the perfect crime.

00:02:01.560 Welcome to a special edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone.

00:02:05.260 I'm Megyn Kelly, and for the first time ever,

00:02:07.780 I'm going to spend the episode today and all five episodes this week taking you on a journey

00:02:14.280 with just you and me as we dive into a true crime case that has captivated the nation

00:02:21.540 since it happened a little more than a year ago.

00:02:28.240 Ever since four young students in Idaho were found dead last November, I have consumed

00:02:34.100 every podcast, every article I could find about this case. I've watched all the true crime shows,

00:02:41.560 I've read all the magazine pieces, everything on the internet, and I've done my own reporting on

00:02:46.620 the case, interviewing experts and lawyers to try to make sense of what happened in Idaho.

00:02:53.600 As we will explore in each episode this week, there is something haunting and fascinating

00:03:00.800 about the details of this crime.

00:03:04.400 It is a mystery, but it's really several mysteries all in one.

00:03:08.580 In this series, I will bring you some of our reporting,

00:03:11.900 as well as the reporting and incredibly eloquent writing of Howard Bloom.

00:03:17.120 That was his writing at the top there.

00:03:19.240 He is second to none when it comes to covering the Idaho murders.

00:03:22.480 This is the guy.

00:03:24.980 That's the way this episode started with his words

00:03:27.060 that he used to open his first dispatch on this case

00:03:30.060 for the media outlet, Air Mail News.

00:03:32.860 It's relatively new and it's very good.

00:03:35.600 Bloom is a veteran and award-winning true crime writer

00:03:38.740 and reporter who has written more than a dozen books

00:03:41.560 and countless articles in his decades-long career.

00:03:44.600 He's done some of the best

00:03:45.680 and most unique reporting on this story.

00:03:48.300 And his forthcoming book on this case

00:03:50.060 will be published in the spring by HarperCollins.

00:03:53.340 That's going to be a must read.

00:03:55.700 And it is Bloom's storytelling that we'll begin with today.

00:03:59.300 We asked Howard if we could strike a deal where we could use some of his, not just his reporting, but his actual writing and intersperse it with our own so we could bring you some of the interviews and soundbites and so on that we've amassed for you to tell this story.

00:04:14.600 And he agreed.

00:04:16.920 It had been a football Saturday in mid-November, the last home game of the 2022 season for the University of Idaho Vandals.

00:04:24.860 The Kibbe Dome packed with more than 7,600 fans.

00:04:29.300 And despite the disappointing loss, Saturday night was still party night for a college

00:04:34.280 celebrated in knowledgeable polls as the best party school in the state.

00:04:39.380 The stately row of wet frats, as they're known on the U of Idaho campus, twisting along

00:04:46.380 Nez Perce Drive, was crowded with the brothers and their dates, high-spirited assemblies fueled

00:04:52.200 by blaring music, prospects of mischief, and rivers of alcohol.

00:04:56.880 downtown main street was hopping too the pool tables at mingles and the metal sheathed bar

00:05:03.420 at the corner club were shoulder to shoulder with students and townies filling the brisk

00:05:09.120 autumn night with the keen of cheery rowdy late night fun and then in the heavy quiet

00:05:15.260 of the new sunday morning four young corpses all students all friends were found hacked to death

00:05:24.320 in their beds in a pale clappered house, little more than a stone's throw away from the heart of

00:05:30.560 the university campus. There was so much blood, it had seeped through the wooden floors and run down

00:05:37.500 the building's gray concrete foundation in jagged red rivulets. But before we get to that Sunday

00:05:44.820 morning, we need to look back. We need to talk about the six young students who were in the house

00:05:49.840 that night and what brought them there. Two of the six went way back. Maddie Mogan and Kaylee

00:05:56.280 Gonsalves met in 2013 in the sixth grade and became inseparable. They grew up in the tourist

00:06:03.280 town of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, best friends for years. Listen to their parents talk about each of

00:06:09.660 them. Kaylee was one that was going to shake the world. I've yet to come across somebody who has

00:06:15.300 had anything negative to say which people think oh no one will tell you that but I mean I got

00:06:20.960 siblings and they'll tell uh you know stories about their you know their brother or their

00:06:26.760 sister they're not going to hold back so um I think she found a way to live in a big family and

00:06:32.100 learned uh you know the right ways to get along with people and then that showed um later on in

00:06:39.940 over her life when she was able to go to college

00:06:42.660 and meet all these people.

00:06:43.560 Maddie May Mogan, yes.

00:06:46.080 She's just, she was the sweetest, smart, loving.

00:06:52.920 She was the best.

00:06:53.920 She never caused me one day of stress in my life.

00:07:00.260 You know, just, she was the best child

00:07:02.900 I could have asked for.

00:07:04.500 And yeah, we miss her so much.

00:07:08.920 The night of November 12th, Maddie and Kaylee went out together in Moscow to the Corner Club Bar. More on that in a minute. Ethan Chapin was in the house that night. He was a triplet. He and his brother Hunter and sister Maisie all attended the University of Idaho. His girlfriend was Zanna Kernodel. She had a tough upbringing, but she was thriving. Ethan and Zanna's parents.

00:07:32.780 He literally lit up every room, every, everybody.

00:07:42.140 He was friend to all.

00:07:48.240 He just, he was an incredible human.

00:07:52.080 Deanna was, she was tough.

00:07:53.760 She was, she was strong.

00:07:55.680 She was funny. 0.73

00:07:56.300 um she just she just couldn't make you smile no matter what and she just had a quirkiness about 1.00

00:08:07.660 her that that uh not a lot of people possess that kind of talent to be able to light up a room like

00:08:15.740 she did on the night of november 12th 2022 ethan and zanna went to a party at ethan's fraternity

00:08:22.800 Theta Chi. One of Zanna's roommates, Bethany Funk, was at Theta Chi that night as well. But by 1.45

00:08:29.760 a.m. on the morning of November 13th, all five roommates, including the fifth, a young woman

00:08:36.540 named Dylan Mortensen, were home in the house on 1122 King Road, along with Zanna's boyfriend,

00:08:44.520 Ethan Chapin. Zanna received a DoorDash delivery order at approximately 4 a.m. And shortly after

00:08:52.360 4 a.m. reports are that all of the roommates were either asleep or at least in their respective

00:08:59.320 rooms the roommates were close active on social media pinterest instagram tiktok we see how close 0.96

00:09:06.600 they were in the social media posts they made like this one guys you're like pretty dick in here 0.98

00:09:13.620 murphy you've been a bad boy 0.99

00:09:16.300 Oh my god, it's 9-10.

00:09:19.740 Guys, can anybody drop me to class? 0.93

00:09:21.200 I'm fucking late for my weekend. 0.94

00:09:22.160 Am I supposed to be there 10 minutes ago? 0.98

00:09:25.440 Didn't anybody do their chores today? 1.00

00:09:27.220 Fuck, I'm just going to do it. 0.99

00:09:31.240 Did you see that right there? 1.00

00:09:33.120 Oh, shit, you guys. 0.99

00:09:34.600 It's 8. 1.00

00:09:35.280 Gotta go.

00:09:35.800 Jake's calling.

00:09:36.580 Oh, Jake's calling.

00:09:39.720 Oh my god, I look horrid.

00:09:42.540 Oh, Murphy, you look so cute. 1.00

00:09:43.940 Get out of here. 1.00

00:09:45.180 you seriously gotta get out of here you're fucking speaking this shit out hey guys i know 1.00

00:09:49.820 i talk about myself a lot but like what would you guys do in my situation 1.00

00:09:53.360 yo is it okay to have a party like just three or four people at most

00:10:06.520 so fun so full of life so funny and so unaware of the fate that would soon befall them

00:10:20.160 at precisely 8 57 p.m on the last full day of her life in the midst of a busy saturday bustling

00:10:27.600 with the flurry of convivial activities generated by a football game in a college town

00:10:33.080 Kaylee Gonsalves paused before going out for a night at the Corner Club bar with her best friend,

00:10:38.440 Maddie. She posted a series of photos on her Instagram account, which she captioned,

00:10:44.660 one lucky girl to be surrounded by these people every day. Oh. The photos are a cheery collection

00:10:51.500 of six college kids, the youngest 19, the oldest 21, bursting with bright-eyed good looks and future

00:10:59.060 promise. They were meant to be, it appears, visual testimony to the fun the students were having,

00:11:06.580 to the blessings a munificent life had generously bestowed on them. We know the girls' house on King

00:11:13.240 Road was one that was full of joy in the way a college house often is. It was the frequent

00:11:18.900 location of parties or informal gatherings. Many said the door was always open, that the roommates

00:11:25.240 gave the door code out to friends who gave the code to friends and they would find themselves

00:11:30.400 in the role of host quite often. On several occasions, the parties brought out the police

00:11:35.880 and it is actually, strangely enough, through police body camera footage that we get to know

00:11:42.620 the personalities of these young women. You can see how respectful they were of law enforcement

00:11:48.160 in these interactions, poised, friendly, outgoing. There was Zanna one night apologizing for a

00:11:55.100 noise complaint made by a neighbor. What's your name? Zana. Zana, do you live here? Yes. This is

00:12:00.820 the second noise complaint we've had here tonight within two hours. I'm sorry about that. So this

00:12:05.220 time it was the blonde gal and the guy on the back porch playing music. Okay. So I sincerely 0.78

00:12:11.620 apologize about that. I'm just going to bed. Okay. So just so you understand, you could be getting a

00:12:19.040 misdemeanor citation for this, which means you have to go in front of a judge and explain why

00:12:23.940 you couldn't keep the people in your house quiet okay we've already talked to maddie once and told

00:12:29.020 her the same thing okay the only reason she's not getting a ticket is because she's not standing

00:12:32.920 here in front of me but i'm telling you right now if we have to come back you're getting a ticket

00:12:36.920 okay so you will have to go see a judge i'm fine right now you're not gonna do right now i'm just

00:12:41.960 trying to go to bed right now kaylee too takes the lead in engaging with the police when they 0.98

00:12:49.700 showed up to a party one night, talking her way out of a potential $300 fine for a noise violation.

00:13:19.700 Once I have neighbors calling in, you're just too loud, you're disturbing the peace.

00:13:23.040 Nothing against having parties, nothing against having people over who are overage to drink.

00:13:26.480 But again, once we start disturbing the neighbors, then we've got to make sure.

00:13:29.460 My ticket is up to $300.

00:13:31.480 Yeah, somewhere around $300, $400.

00:13:33.140 It's a pretty expensive ticket.

00:13:33.900 I don't want to give that to you.

00:13:34.920 That being said, this is your place.

00:13:36.160 I'm going to hold you responsible.

00:13:37.680 I'd much rather you spend that $300 on beer or something fun.

00:13:40.400 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:41.000 My ticket, right?

00:13:41.500 Yeah, thank you.

00:13:42.220 I appreciate it.

00:13:42.980 Yeah.

00:13:44.360 That being said, Warrens, don't do it again.

00:13:47.760 Yep.

00:13:47.960 I'd hate to come back in a few hours and a half this year.

00:13:51.000 Any questions for me?

00:13:52.080 No.

00:13:52.440 All right.

00:13:52.920 Take care.

00:13:58.620 The girl's natural warmth and respect on these tapes, even in a tense situation, makes their fate that November feel all the more incomprehensible.

00:14:08.780 In March of this year, Howard Bloom was a guest on The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:14:13.280 It was episode 515.

00:14:14.440 He talked about the afternoon of Sunday, November 13th, shortly after 1158 a.m., the time a 911 call came in from roommate Dylan Mortensen's cell phone.

00:14:28.060 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.

00:14:37.280 And they see a group of kids mulling about the house like gulls on a beach, as it was described to me.

00:14:44.640 And these kids are silent.

00:14:47.500 They've been putting it up with the university kids all their professional lives as cops.

00:14:52.400 I don't think they've ever seen silent kids before.

00:14:55.340 they knew that this was something serious.

00:14:59.080 Bloom writes that the call was passed to Sergeant Shane Gunderson.

00:15:04.080 Gunderson, who on that day was midway through a 12-hour shift that had started at 6 a.m.,

00:15:08.900 was running the operations division at the sparklingly modernistic,

00:15:13.860 it had opened barely 11 months earlier, Southview Avenue Police Headquarters.

00:15:18.980 Prior to that moment, he would tell people his tour had been long and slow,

00:15:22.940 a languid weekend morning, punctuated by the chimes of the town's many church bells tolling

00:15:28.280 solemnly in the wind. In fact, he had spent a good deal of that desk-bound Sunday morning

00:15:34.400 mulling something other than police business. Gunderson had been avidly mapping out in his mind

00:15:40.300 a strategy for the eight-hour, or easily more, trek to the summit of Mount Bora. He and a friend

00:15:47.360 from the University of Idaho Psych Department had been planning for the spring. It's Idaho's

00:15:52.640 highest point, and the trail up the southwest ridge to the 12,662-foot summit is a steep,

00:16:00.280 hard climb. And he would admit after a beer or two, it was just the sort of challenge he'd been

00:16:06.060 missing lately. Now that he had his sergeant stripes, police work was more about distributing

00:16:11.120 memos and filing papers than getting out into the field. That bothered him. Nearly 10 years on the

00:16:18.020 force, he still wanted to be the gung-ho officer who had joined up straight out of Lewis Clark

00:16:23.140 State College in nearby Lewiston and worked his way up from patrolmen. In his early days,

00:16:29.000 he had distinguished himself as a hands-on cop, someone out on the streets doing what the Moscow

00:16:34.160 PD calls community policing. Back then, he'd scored a lot of points both in and out of the department,

00:16:41.740 as well as winning the Officer of the Year honor in 2017, when he single-handedly planned and

00:16:47.300 organized a hot dog barbecue, bringing together the cops and local school kids. He was from the

00:16:54.060 area growing up in small town potlatch and still smarting from his own childhood run-ins. He knew

00:17:01.500 only too well how hard-ass cops could sour things, make things confrontational. It was his job,

00:17:08.340 he'd say with determination, looking out for and working with the citizens of Moscow.

00:17:13.380 when the 911 call came in Gunderson had a corporal and two other officers on duty to assist with

00:17:20.460 patrol he could have left the response to them he certainly he'd tell people with a hint of

00:17:26.180 embarrassment had no intimation of something out of the ordinary that morning he was simply eager

00:17:32.700 to break the monotony and as always he felt strongly it was important for him to get out

00:17:37.820 on the street where people could see him. He swiftly decided he'd go to the scene too with

00:17:43.900 his officers. It was a quick trip. The roads leading into the university neighborhood that

00:17:49.240 Sunday were as empty as the classrooms. And as soon as Gunderson's black and white cruiser

00:17:54.560 pulled up behind the neat row of cars parked in the driveway of the austere cantilevered house

00:18:00.120 on King Road, he immediately knew something was very wrong. It was the noise. There wasn't any.

00:18:10.140 Just an eerie, unnatural silence. A cluster of young people were wandering about, not merely

00:18:17.700 subdued, they seemed stunned, as if drained by a deep and intense shock. When the three mystified

00:18:26.340 officers approached the front door, someone in the crowd, it would later be shared, muttered a

00:18:31.300 single plaintiff word, dead. Still Gunderson would confess to others he was unprepared for the strong

00:18:39.700 smell of blood that rose up in his nostrils the moment he walked inside. The coroner, who had

00:18:46.260 once been an emergency room nurse in an earlier stage of her life, would describe the scene in

00:18:51.360 press interviews as chaos, lots of blood. Few others would even attempt to put into words what

00:18:57.820 they saw. There are moments, cops will tell you, that are too profound, too unnerving to be

00:19:05.120 experienced in the present. All you can do is move forward. There will be time later to try to make

00:19:11.080 sense of it all. Procedure takes precedence. It allows a protective membrane to be stretched

00:19:16.760 between the real and the too real. All other thoughts, all other feelings become extraneous.

00:19:24.360 The trio of officers, meanwhile, proceeded with haste to the second floor. They opened the bedroom

00:19:30.880 door to find two dead bodies, a male and a female. The pair was gruesomely drenched in blood,

00:19:37.500 yet both had their good-looking faces oddly preserved like masks. Even at that probing

00:19:46.480 moment, it was difficult, one of the young officers would later nearly wail, to look at

00:19:51.160 the 20-year-old pair. They were Ethan and Zanna. On the third floor, things got, if possible,

00:19:58.660 worse. In one bedroom, lying in a single bed, were two inert women. It was Maddie and Kaylee. 1.00

00:20:07.320 They might have been sisters, so similar were the 21-year-olds, pretty Barbie doll-like sculpted features,

00:20:13.720 their long cascades of thick, streaked blonde hair falling down to their narrow shoulders.

00:20:19.180 Yet in death, there was one gruesome difference.

00:20:22.180 Kaylee, it would be reported, had been hacked with a particular ferocity.

00:20:26.800 It was as if her wild assailant, or was it assailants, had been intent on gouging out chunks of her flesh.

00:20:36.400 Large punctures was how the lacerations had been described.

00:20:41.520 Maddie's wounds, while no less fatal, appeared less feral, more measured, at least in comparison.

00:20:49.200 Across the narrow hallway was one final door.

00:20:52.320 The officers pulled it open, and at last, they discovered a sign of life.

00:20:57.040 A fluffy, caramel-colored dog.

00:20:59.560 It was Murphy, Kaylee's frisky labradoodle.

00:21:03.180 He was unharmed, not marred by even a speck of blood.

00:21:07.800 A small consolation and barely one at that for all they had seen and were only beginning to process.

00:21:14.900 Later that day, around 4 p.m., a police officer named Brett Payne arrived at the scene.

00:21:21.620 He would go on to interview the two surviving roommates, Dylan and Bethany,

00:21:27.140 who in the affidavit he would file were only identified as DM and BF.

00:21:34.120 Here is directly from the affidavit what he learned from his interviews with both Dylan

00:21:39.360 and Bethany, although it appeared Bethany had slept through the commotion on floors above

00:21:44.900 her first floor bedroom. DM and BF, quoting here from the affidavit, both made statements during

00:21:52.400 interviews that indicated the occupants of the King Road residence were at home by 2 a.m. and

00:21:58.260 asleep or at least in their rooms by approximately 4 a.m., he wrote. This is with the exception of

00:22:03.860 Zanna Kernodle, who received a DoorDash order at the residence at approximately 4 a.m. Law

00:22:09.720 enforcement identified the DoorDash delivery driver who reported this information. DM stated

00:22:15.820 she originally went to sleep in her bedroom on the southeast side of the second floor. DM stated

00:22:22.080 she was awoken at approximately 4 a.m. by what she stated sounded like Gonsalves playing with her dog

00:22:27.880 in one of the upstairs bedrooms, which were located on the third floor. A short time later,

00:22:35.360 DM said she heard who she thought was Gonsalves say something to the effect of, there's someone

00:22:41.860 here. A review of records obtained from a forensic download of Kernodal's phone showed this could

00:22:49.460 also have been Kernodal. As her cellular phone indicated, she was likely awake and using the

00:22:55.040 TikTok app at approximately 4.12 a.m. DM stated she looked out of her bedroom but did not see

00:23:03.140 anything when she heard the comment about someone being in the house. DM stated she opened her door

00:23:09.520 a second time when she heard what she thought was crying coming from Kernodal's room. DM then said

00:23:15.920 she heard a male voice say something to the effect of, it's okay, I'm going to help you.

00:23:23.280 At approximately 4.17 a.m., a security camera located at 1112 King Road, a residence immediately

00:23:30.460 to the northwest of 1122 King, picked up distorted audio of what sounded like voices or a whimper,

00:23:39.180 followed by a loud thud. A dog can also be heard barking numerous times starting at 4.17 a.m.

00:23:45.920 The security camera is less than 50 feet from the west wall of Zana Kurnodal's bedroom.

00:23:54.420 DM stated she opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her.

00:24:05.880 DM described the figure as 5'10", or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built, with bushy eyebrows.

00:24:15.920 The male walked past Diem as she stood in a, quote, frozen shock phase.

00:24:21.720 The male walked toward the back sliding glass door.

00:24:24.900 Diem locked herself in her room after seeing the male.

00:24:27.660 Diem did not state that she recognized the male.

00:24:31.460 This leads investigators to believe that the murderer left the scene.

00:24:39.800 We'll get back to the affidavit in a bit.

00:24:42.620 Dylan then locked her bedroom door until the morning in a decision that would just befuddle

00:24:48.380 so many people. Why? Why? Why didn't she do more? We don't know the answers, but surely we will

00:24:55.680 by the time this case is tried. Then sometime after 11 a.m., the roommates attempted to wake

00:25:03.220 their friends. They were unable to, and they would call others to the house for help. There,

00:25:08.840 at least one of those friends finally dialed 911. Howard Bloom again with us back in March.

00:25:15.200 One can raise all sorts of questions as I do at the same time. I think one has to cut this poor

00:25:23.860 girl a little slack. In many ways, she's a victim too. She will live with this for her entire life. 0.99

00:25:30.600 she saw something incredible, astonishing, and she just perhaps couldn't deal with it.

00:25:42.740 Back to Sergeant Gunderson. He quickly called his boss, Captain Roger Lanier,

00:25:48.500 the head of the 24 Officer Operations Division. He found him, not unexpectedly for a Sunday,

00:25:54.460 sitting down to lunch with his family. Lanier was a veteran cop. He had spent more than 20 years on

00:26:00.020 the force in nearby Lewiston before having been lured six years earlier to Moscow with a captain's

00:26:05.540 rank. After all his years on the job, he'd become a steady, avuncular presence, a bald-headed genial

00:26:11.700 cop who never got flustered because, as he would tell people, he had seen it all in his day.

00:26:17.980 But Gunderson's report left him unnerved. It took me a second, he recalled, a sharp edge even weeks

00:26:24.760 later to the memory, I really had to think about what I'd just heard. Four murders in Moscow, Idaho

00:26:31.920 was so out of character. At the time, they were fairly certain it was college students and it was

00:26:37.660 near the campus and that area is kind of a campus community. So once I got over the initial shock,

00:26:44.200 I knew that I was coming to the station. So I drove in and everybody just kind of fell into a

00:26:49.780 roll. That was an all-hands-on-deck moment Sunday afternoon. It became fairly apparent when I got to

00:26:56.540 the scene that we were going to need resources outside of just what the Moscow Police Department

00:27:02.600 could provide. But quickly, Lanier's professionalism took control. He had a thousand

00:27:08.460 questions, and yet he knew the only hope of finding answers would be to follow the previously

00:27:13.220 established protocols. Dutifully, he gave the orders to set up the perimeters of the crime

00:27:19.340 scene to bring in the forensic team and to summon the coroner. It was standard in a major case,

00:27:25.080 and if four homicides was not a major case, what was? To alert the Idaho State Police,

00:27:32.320 and he did that too. Moscow was the responsibility of the state's District 2 Detective Office in

00:27:39.360 Lewiston, the county seat, and where he'd been on the job for two decades, and he knew many of

00:27:44.720 the state detectives. There was a companionship. Still, it was a difficult conversation, but his

00:27:51.180 next call was harder. The university had to be informed. It was not just that four students had

00:27:57.620 been brutally murdered in an off-campus home, but there was no way of knowing whether the killer or

00:28:02.540 killers planned to strike again. The students needed to be warned. At 2.07 p.m., a little over

00:28:10.260 two hours after the three cops had entered the blood-soaked house, the University Office of

00:28:15.560 Public Safety and Security sent a vandal alert email to the students and faculty, quote, Moscow

00:28:22.620 PD investigating a homicide on King Road near campus. Suspect is not known at this time. Stay

00:28:28.100 away from the area and shelter in place, end quote. A shelter in place order requires people 0.96

00:28:33.800 to take refuge in a room with no or few windows. At this point, busy hours had already quickly

00:28:40.040 flown by, but despite his marathon of activities, Lanier still had not succeeded in completing one

00:28:45.800 task that was at the top of his mental list. He had not been able to speak with his boss,

00:28:51.120 James Fry, the chief of police. By the time Lanier had finally reached him, it was hours after the

00:28:57.520 discovery of the bodies. And by the time Fry finally entered the home on King Road, it was

00:29:02.800 dark outside, according to several accounts, close to 6 p.m. For some abstruse reason, he had thought

00:29:09.920 it was important to go home first and change into his chief's uniform. Perhaps he hadn't fully

00:29:15.760 grasped the magnitude of the disaster. Or maybe, after nearly 28 years as a Moscow cop, he had felt

00:29:23.940 the imprimatur of his uniform was integral to his ability to command. But what he saw that evening

00:29:31.080 left him, he would confide to a friend later, physically and emotionally drained. He was a

00:29:37.320 father of two daughters who had attended the University of Idaho, and he had also graduated

00:29:42.500 from the university nearly three decades earlier. It was impossible, he said, not to feel a visceral

00:29:47.940 tie to the victims and to their parents. The cruelty of the crime was deep and affecting,

00:29:54.780 and yet he knew there was police work to be done. His mind was racing, but quixotically perhaps,

00:30:02.220 within moments of buried memory pushed itself forward.

00:30:06.860 What if, Fry asked himself with a sudden alarm,

00:30:10.140 a serial killer had attacked the four students?

00:30:14.680 Pausing here to bring you some of Chief Fry's initial comments

00:30:18.440 to the Moscow, Idaho community from his very first press conference

00:30:22.580 several days after the murders.

00:30:25.280 My name is Chief James Fry with the Moscow Police Department.

00:30:28.640 I'm going to be reading from my notes today

00:30:30.240 because I want the information you received to be extremely accurate.

00:30:34.240 This was a horrible crime that took the lives of Ethan Chappin,

00:30:38.760 Zanna Kernodal, Madison Mogan, and Kaylee Goncalves.

00:30:46.160 This horrible crime has affected all of us,

00:30:49.120 the families, the University of Idaho, our community, our country, and our officers.

00:30:57.600 based on details of the scene we believe this was an isolated targeted attack on our victims

00:31:04.720 we do not have a suspect at this time and that individual is still out there we cannot say that

00:31:11.940 there's no threat to the community and as we have stated please stay vigilant report any suspicious

00:31:18.120 activity and be aware of your surroundings at all times here's what was challenging for the police

00:31:24.620 from Bloom's reporting. Fact, the four students were killed in their sleep, or at least while

00:31:30.180 in their rooms, sometime between 3 and 5 a.m. In the weeks ahead, they would develop a more

00:31:35.600 precise timeline. The murders the authorities deduced occurred between 4 and 4.25 a.m. Think

00:31:43.040 about that. At 4.12 a.m., they had Zana on TikTok, and the murders took place between 4 and 4.25 a.m.

00:31:52.200 Fact, there was no sign of forced entry or of robbery

00:31:56.420 Fact, a single weapon had been used

00:31:59.340 A long-bladed knife

00:32:01.060 Critically, a tan leather knife sheath

00:32:04.640 Stamped with a U.S. Marine Corps insignia

00:32:07.560 Was found lying next to Maddie Mogan's bed

00:32:10.700 Fact, there was no trail of blood outside the house

00:32:15.260 Fact, the house was a repository

00:32:18.320 For a large collection of forensic evidence

00:32:20.880 blood, saliva, hair, prints, DNA, but whether any of those belonged to the killer.

00:32:28.420 After the autopsies, the general consensus held that it was a single assailant

00:32:32.580 still was undetermined. These were all, the investigators agreed, important pieces in the

00:32:38.840 puzzle. Yet they were not enough. For more than three weeks, the early morning conferences ended

00:32:44.820 in a grim litany of what remained unknown.

00:32:48.720 They couldn't figure out how the killer had gotten away,

00:32:51.820 seemingly without leaving a clue,

00:32:54.000 and they had no idea why he had chosen these victims.

00:32:59.220 And now, as the investigation in Moscow plotted on,

00:33:02.540 and frustratingly on,

00:33:04.680 an exasperated Chief Fry appealed to locals

00:33:07.120 to become, in effect, consulting detectives.

00:33:09.980 We appreciate everybody's help that has been sending in those tips,

00:33:14.060 and investigators are vetting those and they're following up on those and the response has been

00:33:19.760 very great we appreciate all the help from across the nation and our community he wanted help to

00:33:25.480 put his men on the right scent detectives are looking for context to the events and people

00:33:30.960 involved in these murders a moscow pd press release announced to assist with the ongoing

00:33:36.780 investigation any odd or out of the ordinary events that took place should be reported and

00:33:43.320 nearly begging the release urged, your information, whether you believe it is significant or not,

00:33:48.240 might be the piece of the puzzle that helps investigators solve these murders.

00:33:52.640 The tips poured in. A new generation of consulting detectives armed with cell phones and laptops

00:33:59.360 with access to a vast repository of information from selfies to Facebook pages and further stoked

00:34:05.200 by the barrage of the raw theories and hearsay disseminated on Reddit and 4chan embraced the

00:34:11.940 opportunity. It was a real-life mystery that had the compelling allure of a particularly thorny CSI

00:34:18.640 episode, and not least, the police were pleading for help. More than 9,025 email tips were received

00:34:27.580 in addition to the 4,575 phone calls and 6,050 digital media submissions. An army of law

00:34:36.460 enforcement analysts was assigned to the long daunting task to see if in all the oysters there

00:34:42.660 was a single pearl. Much of it led down rabbit holes of fatuous speculation. Some of it was not

00:34:49.980 just wrongheaded but cruel. Innocent ex-boyfriends, a hoodie-wearing bystander lurking at a food truck

00:34:56.860 where Maddie and Kaylee had ordered early morning bowls of carbonara to soak up the alcohol ingested

00:35:02.660 during the last carefree pub crawl of their lives, a bro neighbor who insisted on sharing

00:35:08.240 rambling anecdotes with every reporter who knocked on his door, and frat brothers who

00:35:13.420 were rumored to be stoked up on steroids and driven by long gestating grievances, all were

00:35:19.300 callously and persistently slandered with a malicious authority. It got so madcap that a

00:35:26.200 history prof at the university decided she had to sue to put an end to one internet sleuth's

00:35:32.200 bizarre speculation that a failed romance with one of the women had driven the teacher to kill.

00:35:39.800 And then the analysts hit a gold seam.

00:35:49.080 The overnight assistant manager, her name at her request remains secret, for a gas station

00:35:56.580 on Troy Road, not far from the house on King Road, had decided she might as well see what

00:36:01.820 she could do. She had not been working the night of the murders, but nevertheless, she spent the

00:36:07.120 downtime on her graveyard shift, reviewing the videos recorded by the station's surveillance

00:36:13.000 cameras on November 13th. I had a weird feeling, she later said. For two nights, she intermittently

00:36:21.740 kept at it, but found nothing. Then on the third night, she spotted a white car speeding down

00:36:28.440 Highway 8 before turning pell-mell down a side street. She took a screenshot of the car and

00:36:34.220 emailed it to the tip line address. Two days later, Moscow police arrived at the gas station

00:36:39.800 to confiscate hours of surveillance footage. And after just a quick view, they began to feel the

00:36:46.120 hunt was on. Encouraged, they reached out on a hunch to Kane Franzich. Recently retired and now

00:36:53.480 investing in real estate, was a freewheeling guy who shares on his website that he listens to

00:36:58.280 classic vinyl while drinking single malt scotch. He also owned a six-unit rental complex on Linda

00:37:05.540 Lane, about three-tenths of a mile from where the bodies had been found, with a surveillance camera

00:37:10.180 fixed to the roof. I downloaded it and gave them access to everything from 2 a.m. through noon

00:37:17.440 on Sunday the 13th, he said. Once those tapes were reviewed, the same telltale white car

00:37:23.440 was spotted. And again, it appeared to be making a breakneck getaway through the dark AM streets.

00:37:31.320 With this confirming sighting, a different pace, a different mood took over the investigation.

00:37:37.160 The team felt they could now march forward with a purpose.

00:37:40.900 The FBI laboratory enhancement had succeeded in deciphering the blurred image of the car.

00:37:46.860 They believed it was a white 2011 to 2013 Hyundai Elantra.

00:37:52.300 And there were 22,000 Hyundai's in the region that matched the search criteria.

00:37:59.080 And one of them, the police were starting to suspect, had been driven by a killer.

00:38:04.200 From the affidavit released in January, quote,

00:38:08.240 A review of footage from multiple videos obtained from the King Road neighborhood

00:38:12.280 showed multiple sightings of suspect vehicle one, starting at 3.29 a.m., ending at 4.20 a.m.

00:38:20.700 These sightings show Suspect Vehicle 1 makes an initial three passes by the 1122 King Road residence and then leaves via Wallen to drive.

00:38:30.620 Based off my experience as a patrol officer, this is a residential neighborhood with a very limited number of vehicles that travel in the area during the early morning hours.

00:38:39.800 Upon review of the video, there are only a few cars that enter and exit this area during this time frame.

00:38:45.860 Suspect Vehicle 1 can be seen entering the area a fourth time at approximately 4.04 a.m.

00:38:53.100 It can be seen driving eastbound on King Road, stopping and turning around in front of 500 Queen Road, number 52, and then driving back westbound on King Road.

00:39:04.440 When Suspect Vehicle 1 is in front of the King Road residence, it appeared to unsuccessfully attempt to park or turn around in the road.

00:39:12.720 The vehicle then continued to the intersection of Queen Road and King Road, where it can be seen completing a three-point turn and then driving eastbound again down Queen Road.

00:39:23.420 Suspect vehicle one is seen, next, departing the area of the King Road residence at approximately 4.20 a.m. at a high rate of speed.

00:39:34.700 Back now to Bloom's reporting.

00:39:37.640 Finding the one Elantra that would lead to an arrest loomed as a needle in a haystack sort of challenge.

00:39:44.460 The search, even with a small army of burrowers, was a nearly impossible task.

00:39:50.180 Then, as the holiday season approached, a hint of a Christmas miracle.

00:39:55.760 Chief Fry, for once upbeat, met late in the morning of December 20th with Rand Walker,

00:40:02.400 the department psychologist, and Rod Ulps, one of the police chaplains in the courthouse

00:40:07.120 law library. It was one of the few places they could huddle where the chief felt no one would

00:40:11.680 be listening. I'm going to need you two to get ready, he said with a deliberate coyness. I'm

00:40:17.360 going to need you before too long. The two men eagerly asked whether there had been a break in

00:40:22.460 the case. Fry did his best to rein in a pregnant smile. All I'm saying, he reiterated, is I need

00:40:29.040 you both to stand by. I might be calling you very soon. But at 4.30 that afternoon, the Moscow

00:40:36.100 police public communications team issued a flash update, quote, investigators are aware of a Hyundai

00:40:42.240 Elantra located in Eugene, Oregon, and have spoken with the owner. The vehicle is not believed to

00:40:49.760 have any relation to any property in Moscow, Idaho, or the ongoing murder investigations.

00:40:55.160 And just like that, the psychologist and the chaplain knew that the chief, despite the hopeful conversation earlier that day, would not be calling them anytime soon.

00:41:06.520 Meanwhile, as the hunt for the Elantra proceeded with tedious concentration, the no less discouraging challenge of finding a clue in the forensic evidence of vast muddle of prints, blood and DNA that had been collected in the house was brought vividly home.

00:41:24.000 Body cam footage was released of a call at the King Road residence two months before the murders

00:41:29.580 by a trio of Moscow cops in response to yet another noise complaint from an annoyed neighbor.

00:41:37.460 The body camera footage, Bloom would write, was at first seen as deeply poignant. The house seemed

00:41:43.940 to be nearly shaking with festive noise. Tyler Childress's feathered Indians boomed from the 1.00

00:41:50.140 speakers. Kids were calling happily to one another, a giddy mix of bouncy, energetic voices.

00:41:57.340 It was a Thursday night and there was a party going on. This is what it's like to be young.

00:42:02.780 To more acerbic minds, the footage was a small, self-contained story about the tensions of policing

00:42:08.920 in a college town. The kids being kids were seen giving the police a sly runaround,

00:42:15.140 and the cops being cops, retaliated with a display of petty vengeance.

00:42:20.500 A confiscated stash of beers and Trulies was poured onto the driveway. 0.79

00:42:26.280 Yet this being Moscow and this house being destined for infamy, 0.88

00:42:30.560 this burst of class warfare would have an unexpected coda.

00:42:34.600 One of the smirking cops spilling the booze

00:42:36.840 would in time be part of the team that first discovered the bodies.

00:42:42.260 Another would help load the cardboard cartons

00:42:44.360 holding the murdered students' belongings

00:42:45.980 into a U-Haul for the grim trip to the police parking lot.

00:42:51.100 To the informed and dispassionate view

00:42:53.660 of the FBI's scientific experts, however,

00:42:56.320 the body cam footage was seen solely in operational terms

00:42:59.820 and it was dispiriting.

00:43:02.180 It made clear that just about anyone and everyone

00:43:04.920 had access to 1122 King Road.

00:43:08.060 The door was always open

00:43:09.920 and a stream of people were constantly coming and going.

00:43:14.360 The analysts moaned that there would be so much forensic evidence, it might be easier to determine who in Moscow had never been inside the house, rather than their having any realistic hope of ever finding a suspect.

00:43:27.240 And yet, perhaps it wasn't a 2011 to 2013 Elantra after all.

00:43:33.220 Investigators were given access to video footage on the Washington State University, or WSU, campus located nearby in Pullman, Washington.

00:43:42.380 A review of that video indicated that at approximately 2.44 a.m. on November 13, 2022, a white sedan, which was consistent with the description of the white Elantra, known as Suspect Vehicle 1, was observed on WSU surveillance cameras traveling north on Southeast Nevada Street at Northeast Stadium Way.

00:44:05.660 At approximately 2.53 a.m., a white sedan, which is consistent with the description of the white Elantra known as Suspect Vehicle 1, was observed traveling southeast on Nevada Street in Pullman, Washington toward SR-270.

00:44:21.520 This is Howard Bloom here quoting from the affidavit.

00:44:24.820 SR-270 connects Pullman, Washington to Moscow, Idaho.

00:44:29.020 This camera footage from Pullman, Washington was provided to the same FBI forensic examiner.

00:44:33.940 The forensic examiner identified the vehicle observed in Pullman, Washington, as being a 2014 to 2016 Hyundai Elantra.

00:44:46.300 At approximately 5.25 a.m., a white sedan, which was consistent with the description of suspect vehicle one, was observed on five cameras in Pullman, Washington, and on WSU campus cameras.

00:44:58.640 What was it doing there?

00:45:00.660 Well, shortly after midnight on November 29th,

00:45:02.880 Washington State Police Officer Daniel Tiango

00:45:04.920 reported that he had identified a 2015 white Elantra on campus

00:45:11.120 with a license plate LFZ-8649.

00:45:16.600 It wasn't from Washington, though, or Idaho.

00:45:19.780 It was registered to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

00:45:23.840 According to the affidavit, just minutes later,

00:45:26.200 a different officer, Curtis Whitman, located that car.

00:45:29.760 in the parking lot of an apartment complex that houses WSU students.

00:45:34.900 The vehicle belonged to a graduate student and a teacher's assistant

00:45:38.880 named Brian Christopher Kohlberger.

00:45:41.980 His major was criminology.

00:45:45.720 Kohlberger would be driving that car shortly after the identification,

00:45:49.500 far away from Washington and Idaho,

00:45:52.460 and the scene of that gruesome quadruple murder.

00:45:56.200 It was headed for a cross-country drive.

00:45:58.300 he had a passenger in the car too, his father.

00:46:02.140 Little did they or the small town community of Moscow, Idaho,

00:46:05.520 or the country that had become obsessed with

00:46:07.920 and terrified by this story

00:46:09.660 have any idea that the police and the FBI

00:46:13.200 were tracking their every move

00:46:15.580 as they made their way back home to Pennsylvania.

00:46:18.780 But not before a few bizarre chance encounters

00:46:21.460 with authorities along the way.

00:46:24.420 We'll be back tomorrow with that.

00:46:28.300 The case captivated the country for weeks.

00:46:37.160 Four college students murdered inside their Idaho home.

00:46:41.280 Was it a home invasion gone wrong?

00:46:43.100 Was it drug-related?

00:46:44.880 Was it something far more personal? 0.98

00:46:47.680 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:46:49.100 I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:46:50.240 This week, we are bringing you a special edition of the show

00:46:52.840 focused on the true crime case

00:46:54.920 that I, along with millions of others,

00:46:57.060 became absolutely obsessed with beginning just over one year ago.

00:47:02.000 There's so much mystery and confusion around the story.

00:47:06.840 On Monday, we told you about the gruesome and horrific murders.

00:47:10.560 And today we dive into how the suspect was identified and how he was caught.

00:47:15.120 And we will begin to get into the key question.

00:47:18.380 Who is Brian Koberger?

00:47:20.440 And what possible motive did he have for this crime?

00:47:24.540 To take you through the intricacies of all this,

00:47:27.180 we're bringing you some of the fantastic writing and reporting of Howard Bloom,

00:47:31.900 who covers this case in great detail for Air Mail News.

00:47:36.140 In addition to those articles,

00:47:37.860 his forthcoming book on the case will be published in the spring by HarperCollins.

00:47:41.680 That will be a must read,

00:47:43.280 and we will have Howard back on to talk about it when it comes out.

00:47:47.240 But for now, we're going to take you back to November 25th,

00:47:50.420 12 days after the murders.

00:47:53.000 and Bloom's writing.

00:47:59.700 To the investigators' rising sense of excitement,

00:48:03.000 the circumstantial theory they had been secretly incubating for weeks

00:48:06.480 was growing stronger and stronger.

00:48:08.760 Back on November 25th,

00:48:11.100 Moscow PD had whispered to local lawmen

00:48:13.300 to keep their eyes peeled for a white 2011 through 2016 Hyundai Elantra.

00:48:18.700 We still are asking people to call in on any spotting of white Elantra.

00:48:24.660 You know, we appreciate all the tips that we've gotten, not only from local Moscow, but state, but across the nation.

00:48:32.940 And we're following up on all those.

00:48:34.340 Remember, according to the affidavit, the forensic examiner initially believed it to be a 2011 to 2013 Elantra.

00:48:42.020 But after further review, amended that to make it 2011 to 2016.

00:48:47.060 A car like this had been caught on surveillance video dashing about the neighborhood not far from King Road from the crime scene in the early morning hours immediately following the murders.

00:48:59.580 Four days later, Daniel Tiango, a Washington State University police officer,

00:49:04.880 was diligently spending the midnight hours on his quiet graveyard shift going through the inventory

00:49:10.380 of white Elantras registered at the university, and up popped one belonging to a Brian Kohlberger.

00:49:18.260 A half an hour later, another WSU officer drove over to the graduate student parking lot

00:49:23.820 and eyeballed the vehicle, only to discover the car now had Washington state plates,

00:49:30.680 not Pennsylvania anymore. Later in the still new morning, this morsel of intelligence,

00:49:36.760 interesting, but certainly nothing provocative, was passed on to Corporal Brett Payne,

00:49:42.240 the gung-ho former Army MP who was the Moscow police's lead investigator.

00:49:48.420 Payne dutifully typed the car's registration details into the motor vehicle's record system

00:49:53.020 and the screen quickly displayed a photograph of Brian Koberger as well as his state driver's

00:49:59.800 license information. The license revealed that Koberger is a white male and a sturdy six feet

00:50:06.520 and 185 pounds, but it was the photograph that held Payne's studious gaze. He swiftly zeroed in

00:50:14.220 on the eyebrows. They were bushy and that, Payne realized with a mounting sense of triumph,

00:50:21.100 was precisely the sort of telltale clue he had been praying for over the past two weeks.

00:50:27.080 For all along, since the very first days of this grim case,

00:50:30.940 he and the small inner circle of investigators had been guarding an explosive secret.

00:50:36.580 They had an eyewitness.

00:50:39.420 Dylan Mortensen, one of the two 19-year-old surviving roommates, had seen the killer.

00:50:45.340 At a little past 4 a.m., just about when the detectives theorized the four students had been hacked to death, she had heard a plaintiff cry.

00:50:56.720 Anxious, she opened the door to her second floor room and saw someone, a man dressed ominously in black, was walking toward her.

00:51:04.680 He was, she would vividly recall, the details forever etched deep in her memory, at least 5 feet 10, not bulked up, but still trim like an athlete.

00:51:15.340 And he wore a mask that covered his mouth and nose, but not his eyes or his eyebrows.

00:51:21.580 A profound and vehement fear seized hold of her.

00:51:25.100 A, quote, frozen shock phase was how she would try to describe her galloping emotions.

00:51:30.840 But the black clad intruder continued past her as if she were invisible and headed toward a sliding glass door that led out of the house.

00:51:40.420 For reasons that continued to be bound tight with the bands of mystery, Dylan returned to her room, locked the door, and did not emerge until after 11 a.m.

00:51:52.720 Only then did she summon friends who, in a state of full-blown panic, at last called 911.

00:51:59.720 But as she later related her unnerving experience to police interrogators, she shared one detail that at the time seemed small, if not irrelevant.

00:52:08.300 The man in black had bushy eyebrows.

00:52:12.480 And now, 16 long days after the murders,

00:52:16.560 Brett Payne found himself staring at a photograph of a man who might,

00:52:19.820 just might, be the intruder Dylan had seen walking purposefully through her home.

00:52:27.320 There were a few other very notable elements that police would find in the house,

00:52:31.420 which was detailed in the 18-page affidavit written by Payne on December 29th,

00:52:37.540 just ahead of the arrest of Kohlberger.

00:52:39.860 Here's what Payne wrote in that affidavit.

00:52:43.240 I also later noticed what appeared to be a tan leather knife sheath

00:52:47.580 laying on the bed next to Maddie Mogan's right side when viewed from the door.

00:52:52.920 The sheath was later processed and had KBAR USMC

00:52:57.160 and the United States Marine Corps Eagle Globe and Anchor insignia

00:53:01.200 stamped on the outside of it.

00:53:02.820 The Idaho State Lab later located a single source of male DNA left on the button snap of the knife sheath.

00:53:12.520 We'll get back to the affidavit in one sec.

00:53:15.200 That single source of male DNA would prove to be crucial, as you will hear later on.

00:53:21.300 In an episode of The Megyn Kelly Show from earlier this year, we talked with Cece Moore about the DNA that was found at the crime scene.

00:53:28.980 Cece is known as the DNA detective.

00:53:32.820 and is one of the leading experts on what's called genetic genealogy. Listen.

00:53:38.520 I think that he went to great lengths to not leave DNA. He likely had gloves on. He was,

00:53:45.500 you know, educated about this. You would think he certainly would have made sure he wasn't

00:53:51.040 leaving DNA behind, but he must've handled that knife sheath earlier when he didn't have gloves

00:53:57.700 on. That's my guess. But I also want to point out that they don't have to reveal everything

00:54:02.820 they have in the affidavit. And you know that, of course. And so I think it's very possible they

00:54:07.880 have additional DNA. And even if they didn't, they might by now, because I'm sure they've been

00:54:12.700 going through all of that physical evidence batch by batch, sending that to the Idaho Crime Lab

00:54:18.200 and trying to detect any additional DNA. So I don't think we'll really know what they have

00:54:23.940 until this case progresses. And hopefully they will find more DNA or already have. It might be

00:54:30.680 more complex, meaning there might be mixtures of blood. Cases I've worked where there was a

00:54:36.640 frenzied stabbing, almost always the knife has slipped and cut the suspect as well. But then

00:54:42.840 you have a mixture and you might even have a mixture of three people in this case. Maybe you

00:54:48.000 have his blood plus two of the victim's blood, for instance, and they have to do what's called

00:54:53.300 deconvolution, where they extract out the victim's DNA and are left with just that suspect's DNA.

00:55:02.080 And so it's possible that that could have taken more time, which is possibly why they were

00:55:06.820 focusing on this knife sheath for the affidavit. And speaking of other evidence, here's more from

00:55:12.960 the affidavit. During the processing of the crime scene, investigators found a latent shoe print.

00:55:20.240 This was located during the second processing of the crime scene by the ISP forensic team

00:55:25.280 by first using a presumptive blood test and then amino black, a protein stain that detects

00:55:31.220 the presence of cellular material.

00:55:33.420 The detected shoe print showed a diamond-shaped pattern similar to the pattern of a Vans-type

00:55:38.980 shoe sole just outside the door of DM's bedroom located on the second floor.

00:55:44.760 This is consistent with DM's statement regarding the suspect's path of travel.

00:55:49.060 The comings and going of that white Hyundai Elantra, similar to the one Kohlberger owned,

00:55:54.500 would be studied in great detail.

00:55:56.380 This is what we know.

00:55:58.100 On August 21st, 2022, Brian Kohlberger was detained as part of a traffic stop

00:56:04.860 that occurred in Moscow, Idaho, by Corporal Duke.

00:56:08.800 At that time, Kohlberger, who was the sole occupant, was driving a white 2015 Hyundai Elantra

00:56:15.180 with Pennsylvania plate LFZ 8649,

00:56:19.080 which was set to expire soon.

00:56:21.760 Kohlberger was reportedly pulled over

00:56:23.140 less than two miles from the site of the murders.

00:56:25.600 In that stop, which occurred just before midnight,

00:56:28.480 he received a ticket for failing to wear a seatbelt,

00:56:31.200 according to the traffic citation.

00:56:33.240 While video of that encounter

00:56:34.760 has not been released publicly,

00:56:36.540 we know from the affidavit

00:56:37.780 that Kohlberger provided his phone number

00:56:40.240 as ending in 8458

00:56:43.260 and that investigators conducted electronic database queries

00:56:47.660 to begin to trace that phone number and the pings related to it.

00:56:52.520 We also know that on October 14th, 2022,

00:56:56.940 less than a month before the murders,

00:56:58.860 Brian Kohlberger was detained again as part of a traffic stop

00:57:02.180 by a WSU police officer.

00:57:04.340 This one was for running a red light

00:57:06.740 and that body cam footage has been released.

00:57:10.580 Take a look.

00:57:11.080 Hi, I'm Officer Luangus, stops being audio and video recorded.

00:57:14.420 I think you know why I stopped you.

00:57:16.300 You ran the red light.

00:57:17.640 What actually happened was I was stuck in the middle of the intersection.

00:57:20.680 Yeah, I was behind you the whole time.

00:57:22.800 Yeah, it never even occurred to me that that was actually something wrong.

00:57:27.400 I'm actually just from a very rural area, so we just don't have crosswalks.

00:57:32.120 Oh.

00:57:32.840 Unless I visit an area where there are crosswalks, and then it's not very frequent.

00:57:37.600 Yeah.

00:57:37.740 I do apologize if I was asking you too many questions about the law.

00:57:42.100 I wasn't trying to like.

00:57:43.040 No, no, no, not at all.

00:57:44.080 Like, I understand you're not from here.

00:57:48.200 So investigators had Kohlberger's cell phone data.

00:57:53.400 And what did they do with it?

00:57:54.880 They tried to see if they could find where that phone was pinging on the night of and the morning after the murders.

00:58:03.180 This is from the affidavit.

00:58:04.700 On November 13th, 2022, at approximately 2.42 a.m., the 8458 phone was utilizing cellular resources that provide coverage to 1630 Northeast Valley Road, Apartment G201, Pullman, Washington, hereafter the Kohlberger residence.

00:58:20.740 At approximately 2.47 a.m., the 8458 phone utilized cellular resources that provide coverage southeast of the Kohlberger residence, consistent with the 8458 phone leaving the Kohlberger residence and traveling south through Pullman, Washington.

00:58:37.400 This is consistent with the movement of the white Elantra.

00:58:40.760 At approximately 2.47 a.m., the 8458 phone stops reporting to the network, which is consistent with either the phone being in an area without cellular coverage, the connection to the network is disabled, such as putting the phone in airplane mode, or that phone is turned off.

00:59:00.100 The 8458 phone does not report to the network again until approximately 4.48 a.m.,

00:59:07.260 at which time it utilized cellular resources that provide coverage

00:59:10.900 to Idaho State Highway 95 south of Moscow, Idaho, near Blaine, Idaho.

00:59:16.840 Between 4.50 a.m. and 5.26 a.m., the phone utilizes cellular resources

00:59:21.740 that are consistent with the 8458 phone traveling south

00:59:25.320 on Idaho State Highway 95 to Genesee, Idaho.

00:59:29.180 then traveling west toward Uniontown, Idaho, then north back to Pullman, Washington.

00:59:34.780 At approximately 5.30 a.m., the 8458 phone is utilizing resources that provide coverage

00:59:41.060 to Pullman, Washington, and consistent with the phone traveling back to the Kohlberger residence.

00:59:47.520 The 8458 phone's movements are consistent with the movements of the white Elantra that is

00:59:52.560 observed traveling north on Stadium Drive at approximately 5.27 a.m. Based on a review of

00:59:59.840 the 8458 phone's estimated locations and travel, the 8458 phone's travel is consistent with that

01:00:05.800 of the White Elantra. Further review indicated that the 8458 phone utilized cellular resources

01:00:11.440 on November 13, 2022 that are consistent with the 8458 phone leaving the area of the Kohlberger

01:00:19.380 residents at approximately 9 a.m. and traveling to Moscow, Idaho. Specifically, the 8458 phone

01:00:28.000 utilized cellular resources that would provide coverage to the King Road residents between 9.12

01:00:33.780 a.m. and 9.21 a.m. The 8458 phone next utilized cellular resources that are consistent with the

01:00:41.060 8458 phone traveling back to the area of the Kohlberger residents and arriving to the area

01:00:46.460 at approximately 9.32 a.m.

01:00:50.080 Investigators found that the 8458 phone

01:00:52.560 did connect to a cell phone tower

01:00:54.280 that provides service to Moscow on November 14th, 2022,

01:01:00.320 but investigators do not believe

01:01:02.040 the 8458 phone was in Moscow on that date.

01:01:05.740 The 8458 phone has not connected to any towers

01:01:08.860 that provide service to Moscow since that date.

01:01:12.720 We'll get back to the affidavit in a bit.

01:01:15.280 So that's where things stood as of the end of November, or at least as the end of November

01:01:21.120 approached. Christmas was nearing, and the police did not believe that they had enough yet to make

01:01:27.140 an arrest. And now, as Howard Bloom puts it, the discovery that Kohlberger had apparently turned

01:01:34.080 off his phone during the time when the murders occurred was further tantalizing knowledge.

01:01:39.320 But it was not enough. They also sourly realized to persuade a judge to issue an arrest warrant.

01:01:44.600 all they could do for now was store this intelligence away

01:01:47.500 until another vital part of the puzzle could be unearthed.

01:01:50.580 The crucial eureka moment that would allow them to tie all the disparate pieces

01:01:55.620 into a firm knot.

01:01:57.760 A knot that not even the most industrious defense attorney could ever hope to unravel.

01:02:03.300 The entire country, or so it often seemed,

01:02:06.780 was complaining that the case was dragging on and on without resolution.

01:02:11.340 It would be a disaster, not just professionally,

01:02:13.440 but also for their own peace of mind

01:02:15.580 because Moscow was, for many of them, a hometown too.

01:02:20.740 If Kohlberger slipped out of the police's grasp,

01:02:23.340 before handcuffs could be firmly locked around his wrists.

01:02:27.200 And that brings us to the journey that was to come

01:02:30.080 as Brian Kohlberger was set to begin a cross-country journey

01:02:34.120 with the FBI and other law enforcement monitoring closely

01:02:38.560 or at least trying to.

01:02:40.720 And he would have a guest on this journey.

01:02:43.440 his father. As Bloom writes, Michael Kohlberger, the father, was worried about the snow. Only days

01:02:51.000 earlier, he had flown from Philadelphia to Seattle, then caught a twin-engine Embraer 170 jet for the

01:02:57.520 one hour or so shuttle flight into the frigid Pullman Moscow Regional Airport. And now, December

01:03:03.020 13th, he was already heading back home. Only this time, it would be a road trip. It was a fatiguing

01:03:10.640 back-and-forth cross-country jaunt, especially for a 67-year-old. But Kohlberger had promised

01:03:15.980 his son Brian, who had nearly a month off before classes resumed at Washington State University,

01:03:21.500 that he would accompany him on the drive back home for the Christmas break,

01:03:25.080 and he was determined to make good on his pledge.

01:03:33.000 Over the years, there had been some rough combative times between the two of them.

01:03:37.200 He'd even had to get Brian into rehab to kick his teenage heroin habit.

01:03:42.560 But now the young man seemed on a good path.

01:03:45.020 Studying for a PhD in criminal justice offered a promising career trajectory for Brian.

01:03:51.380 And it can be imagined it must have puffed up a father with a prideful sense of parental accomplishment.

01:03:57.400 After all, Michael's own life had been tarnished by not one but two embarrassing bankruptcies,

01:04:03.380 and his work days were a drudgery.

01:04:06.500 spent as a maintenance man at the dreary high school his three children had attended.

01:04:10.980 Perhaps he was even looking forward to this road trip as a way to revitalize his relationship with

01:04:15.720 his son, a way to bury once and for all any lingering remnants of their old antagonisms.

01:04:21.620 But now Michael, as he'd later recount to an associate, was largely focused only on the

01:04:27.260 forecast. When it snowed in the Northwest, the accumulations were routinely measured in feet,

01:04:33.240 not inches, Michael knew.

01:04:35.240 And so he wanted to get going.

01:04:37.040 When the weather came in,

01:04:38.340 it would be rough traveling

01:04:39.320 in a seven-year-old Hyundai Elantra.

01:04:41.840 Without four-wheel drive,

01:04:43.420 you'd be slipping and sliding all over the road.

01:04:45.840 So he urged Brian that they should pack up

01:04:48.300 and get going now.

01:04:50.300 His son agreed.

01:04:51.840 Only once they were on the road,

01:04:53.120 Brian did something his father would later

01:04:55.200 casually share with one of the mechanics

01:04:57.500 at the garage near their home

01:04:58.760 in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania,

01:05:00.640 who had serviced the car after the trip,

01:05:02.080 that had caught him by surprise.

01:05:05.280 Before Michael had headed out to Washington,

01:05:07.620 he had Googled the route back home.

01:05:10.540 The quickest, most logical drive

01:05:12.300 was pretty much a straight line

01:05:13.500 plowing across the country along I-90.

01:05:16.280 Brian, however, buttonhooked south toward Colorado

01:05:19.860 where he'd pick up I-70.

01:05:22.560 It seemed to make little sense.

01:05:24.780 Colorado in mid-December was snow country.

01:05:27.760 There was no telling what might suddenly

01:05:29.040 come blowing down from the Rockies.

01:05:31.440 But Brian, according to what his father told people,

01:05:34.880 insisted the northern route across I-90 promised wintry conditions,

01:05:39.300 better to head away from the weather, even if it added hours or even a day to the trip.

01:05:44.320 It was a strategy that, when explained that reasonable way, was practical, even prudent.

01:05:50.180 But it seemed like something more devious to the FBI.

01:05:54.740 Unknown to either the father or the son,

01:05:56.760 the Bureau had been determined to keep a watchful eye on that white Hyundai's track across America.

01:06:03.600 Only sources and law enforcement would confide with a bristle of embarrassment

01:06:07.760 not long after the car had pulled out of its space in the graduate housing parking lot

01:06:12.520 fronting 1630 Northeast Valley Road in Pullman, Washington.

01:06:16.380 They lost it for several alarming hours or more.

01:06:21.880 The authorities are keeping the precise details of the screw up very close to the vest

01:06:25.900 for reasons you could understand, the chief suspect in a quadruple homicide that had shocked

01:06:31.520 the nation had seemingly vanished. The Bureau's watchers called it a hat box operation, and the

01:06:39.400 jargon was a throwback to an era when G-men sporting fedoras would be out in force on the

01:06:44.320 street to monitor a target's every move. A sea of hats would box the suspect in. These days, 0.94

01:06:51.420 the watchers have a few more tricks at their disposal, undercover vehicles, surveillance vans,

01:06:57.140 low-flying fixed-wing planes, and that's just for starters, but the name has stuck.

01:07:02.980 And the surveillance on Brian Kohlberger, according to published reports and interviews

01:07:06.700 with officials, was hatboxed all the way. But as Kohlberger headed across the country,

01:07:12.740 in the very car they believed had been captured in the blurry surveillance footage, his father

01:07:17.880 mystifyingly at his side. They had lost him even before the hat box op could get underway.

01:07:24.460 A mood of panic rapidly escalated into one of despair. Frantically, they began to search the

01:07:31.600 records of automated license plate readers or ALPRs in nearby states. It was an exercise in

01:07:38.000 futility. Nothing. Not a single hit. Then they got lucky. U.S. Route 6 passes straight through

01:07:46.780 the small town of Loma, Colorado. And eight years ago, the Colorado Department of Transportation

01:07:52.920 thought it was high time to install Loma's first traffic light. It went up in 2015 at the bustling,

01:07:59.860 things being relative, of course, intersection of Route 6 and Highway 139. It wasn't long after

01:08:06.800 that when the engineers decided they might as well affix an ALPR to the light pole. And on

01:08:12.700 December 13th, it caught Washington State plate CFB 8708, the white 2015 Elantra, registered to

01:08:22.260 Brian Kohlberger. Now we should pause here in Bloom's reporting to note that the FBI disputes

01:08:28.520 that they ever lost Kohlberger during his trip across the country. Quote, the FBI is aware of

01:08:34.680 reports detailing alleged FBI surveillance on Idaho murder subject Brian Kohlberger, an FBI

01:08:40.880 spokesperson said. There are anonymous sources providing false information to the media.

01:08:46.820 For his part, Bloom points to the affidavit itself and its curious wording, which notes the

01:08:52.620 following, quote, investigators believe that Kohlberger is still driving the 2015 white Elantra

01:08:58.740 because his vehicle was captured on December 13th, 2022 by a license plate reader in Loma,

01:09:06.280 Colorado. Bloom says his sources were within the FBI, that he trusts them, and he stands by

01:09:12.940 his reporting. Speaking of Bloom's reporting, back to it here. With this sighting, the hat box op was

01:09:20.820 once again underway. The watchers would keep their eyes covertly on the car all the way to

01:09:25.540 Pennsylvania. Fate had mercifully bestowed on them a second chance, and they were determined

01:09:31.480 not to stumble. Still, they were not prepared for what happened next. The interstate was as flat

01:09:37.760 and empty as the landscape. Any threat of snow had vanished. The dome of sky above I-70 was

01:09:44.500 reassuringly blue. In Michael Kohlberger's calm and steady universe, there was no reason to suspect

01:09:51.600 that the FBI was lurking in the shadows. Even the suggestion of such clandestine goings-on would

01:09:57.580 likely have struck him as preposterous. But then, as the Hyundai crept through Hancock County,

01:10:03.260 Indiana, something changed. At 1041 on the morning of December 15th, as the car approached the 107

01:10:11.160 mile marker on the interstate, Brian Kohlberger saw red and blue lights flashing in his rear view

01:10:18.060 mirror. Can you imagine? A sheriff's car was demanding that the vehicle pull over.

01:10:23.660 Brian obeyed.

01:10:24.960 He waited behind the wheel as the officer approached.

01:10:28.200 What would happen next seemed destined to play out as high drama.

01:10:32.740 At the very least, the car approximately fit the description of a vehicle

01:10:35.780 observed in the aftermath of a quadruple murder.

01:10:39.420 The driver of the Moscow Police Department had alerted the nation

01:10:42.120 was to be considered a person of interest in their investigation.

01:10:45.720 As Deputy Nick Ernstess walked with slow, measured steps

01:10:51.000 toward the passenger side of the Hyundai, where Michael sat, there seemed to be no escape.

01:10:57.040 There would be no springing free. The time of reckoning had arrived, only as the tape

01:11:03.280 from Ernst's body cam revealed. The ensuing confrontation was all denouement, more farce

01:11:10.380 than tragedy. The conversation between the Kohlbergers and the deputy moved forward

01:11:14.520 with its own abstruse logic, a litany of non sequiturs that seemed as if it had been inspired

01:11:21.120 by a madcap Abbott and Costello routine. When the deputy officiously demands where they are heading,

01:11:28.740 Brian's response suggests nothing more than a casual drive. We're going to get some Thai food

01:11:33.060 right now. That's when the father decides it's his turn to play the straight man. Well, we're coming

01:11:39.880 from WSU. Here's some of that incredible encounter captured on Bodycam.

01:12:09.880 to the indiana deputy the initials have no meaning it's all beyond him so both the father

01:12:20.940 and son eager to please attempt to remedy the confusion and in the process only add to the

01:12:26.320 officer's puzzlement he can't decide whether both of them work at the university or who in fact is

01:12:31.920 the student or if they've headed out from washington state on a cross-country road trip

01:12:36.700 to get Thai food in Pennsylvania.

01:12:39.560 In the end, perhaps eager to escape from this madness,

01:12:43.120 he warns them not to tailgate

01:12:44.400 and lets them go without a ticket.

01:12:46.780 As the body cam footage ends,

01:12:49.240 it is difficult to discern

01:12:50.720 who's happier to be driving off,

01:12:52.880 the Kohlbergers or the deputy. 0.99

01:12:55.340 Yet a quick nine minutes

01:12:57.120 after they're back on the interstate,

01:12:59.280 Brian once again sees flashing lights

01:13:01.800 in his rear view mirror. 1.00

01:13:03.460 The Kohlbergers are stopped again.

01:13:06.300 This time, it's a state trooper who pulls them over. 0.99

01:13:09.320 And here again, we can watch some of the body cam of that remarkable interaction.

01:13:29.640 Once more, at the very least, their car should create a shock of recognition

01:13:34.500 after the nationwide Moscow PD vehicle alert,

01:13:38.400 it's a ticking bomb.

01:13:40.080 Only against all odds,

01:13:42.820 they're again simply reprimanded for tailgating

01:13:44.820 and sent on their way without a ticket.

01:13:48.140 Former CIA analyst and the creator

01:13:50.800 of the CIA's deception detection program,

01:13:54.620 Phil Houston, he's actually a human lie detector,

01:13:58.380 joined us earlier this year about these traffic stops.

01:14:00.700 He gave his expert opinion on Kohlberger's exchanges in them.

01:14:04.780 Watch this.

01:14:05.440 When he asked, where are you going?

01:14:07.880 When a police officer stops you on the side of the road and says, where are you going?

01:14:12.360 He's looking for your destination, so to speak.

01:14:16.900 And Brian lies about, conceals the destination and really lies about what they're actually

01:14:23.000 doing, which is traveling all the way across country, you know, from Washington to Pennsylvania.

01:14:28.620 He says instead, he answers, we're just going to get some Thai food right now.

01:14:36.960 Brian clearly doesn't want to engage the officer at all.

01:14:42.300 He doesn't want to give him any information.

01:14:44.680 His dad recognizes, I think, how bad Brian's answer sounded.

01:14:50.400 And therefore, he's the one that got them back on the right path.

01:14:53.540 saying, look, we're from Washington state and, uh, you know, and we're, we're, we're going

01:14:59.020 elsewhere. Um, we, you know, we do have a destination. More from Bloom here and his

01:15:04.380 reporting that draws from his conversations with sources inside the FBI. Yet unbeknownst to either

01:15:11.100 the father or the son, it will be only a matter of time before their luck runs out. And while

01:15:16.420 Michael's previous worries did not come to fruition, this one will. And what were the FBI

01:15:22.400 thinking as they from a discrete distance observed their targets being pulled over not only once but

01:15:29.140 mind-bogglingly twice by the authorities. There is an iron rule, law enforcement veterans will tell

01:15:37.000 you, that in any long-running op, the unexpected is to be expected at any time. The outrageous,

01:15:43.360 in fact, must be regarded as inevitable. Yet according to sources familiar with the Bureau's

01:15:48.620 skittish temperament as these two unanticipated traffic stops played out, knowing patience was

01:15:55.880 not the guiding standard that December day. The agents were frustrated and they were angry.

01:16:01.340 The possibilities were too dangerous. The main problem, shared law enforcement officials with

01:16:06.140 an arm's length familiarity with the FBI surveillance operation, was the watchers helpless

01:16:11.160 passivity. All they could do was observe from a distance and wonder. Had diligent Indiana lawmen

01:16:17.960 spotted the car traveling down the interstate and immediately connected it to the white Hyundai

01:16:23.120 that was wanted by the Moscow PD? Were the locals about to make an arrest before the final

01:16:29.200 incriminating piece had been fitted into the puzzle? If that happened, it had the potential

01:16:34.800 to be a catastrophe. The suspect would be alerted, and perhaps then, if he was advised by a canny

01:16:40.540 lawyer, the army of investigators would never have the opportunity to make their airtight case.

01:16:47.140 Their second concern, however, was an even more dangerous prospect.

01:16:51.280 Was the suspect armed?

01:16:53.520 Would someone who they believed had killed four people hesitate to kill again?

01:16:58.380 Would the highway cops become victims too?

01:17:01.200 Or would the suspect simply gun the Hyundai and race down the highway?

01:17:06.220 The spectacle of another OJ-like chase might be imminent. 0.67

01:17:09.960 In the end, none of the apprehensive watchers' anxieties came to fruition.

01:17:14.400 But a hard lesson, according to what other law enforcement officials heard, had been learned.

01:17:20.160 This case had to be wrapped up soon.

01:17:23.380 If not, anything could happen.

01:17:25.520 There were too many imponderables.

01:17:28.000 Time was not on their side.

01:17:30.180 In the antsy days following the Kohlberger's arrival, at last, in the Poconos on the afternoon of December 16,

01:17:37.500 the Moscow police suffered through variable moods.

01:17:40.140 There were bursts when there was no denying that a great push forward was underway.

01:17:46.160 Corporal Brett Payne, the PD's lead investigator, obtained a search warrant.

01:17:51.140 And then a day later, on December 23rd, he received those records of Kohlberger's cell phone for the 24 hours before and after the homicides, the ones we told you about earlier when we were quoting from the affidavit.

01:18:05.000 Just as the case was nearing the finish line,

01:18:07.200 cops in Moscow moaned they had no choice

01:18:09.680 but to hand it off to the Pennsylvania State Police.

01:18:13.480 Kohlberger was now on the Stadies playing field.

01:18:17.100 They'd be the ones who would take the ball over the goal line.

01:18:20.720 Major Chris Parris had been handpicked by the FBI 0.99

01:18:23.340 to run the op for the Stadies, and he was a shrewd choice. 1.00

01:18:27.000 He looked like a linebacker,

01:18:28.360 and he had a gruff, no-nonsense edge.

01:18:32.220 But he was also a thoughtful, scholarly man.

01:18:35.440 He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Scranton,

01:18:38.560 and he went on to get a law degree from Temple.

01:18:41.420 And perhaps most valuable given the circumstances,

01:18:44.980 Paris possessed a lawyerly sense of discretion.

01:18:48.640 He shared the secret that a suspect was in the crosshairs

01:18:52.500 with just an eight-person working group,

01:18:54.680 a leak, a promiscuous whisper, and the whole case might be blown.

01:19:00.220 For although Kohlberger was unaware, apparently, of it,

01:19:03.460 at the time, the Stadies and the suspect 0.84

01:19:05.580 were playing an intricate game of cat and mouse. 0.96

01:19:09.980 There was Kohlberger, observed taking his Hyundai

01:19:12.700 in for servicing at a garage in Effort, Pennsylvania,

01:19:17.040 not far from his parents' home.

01:19:19.060 Next, he spotted wearing gloves

01:19:21.240 as he gives the vehicle a meticulous cleaning.

01:19:24.460 And of course, these are actions

01:19:26.120 that can mean nothing or everything.

01:19:27.940 It just depends on the preconceived notions that influence your judgment.

01:19:32.600 A little harder to dismiss, though, is Kohlberger's sneaking over to deposit some trash in a neighbor's garbage pail at around 4 a.m. one morning.

01:19:42.140 Getting rid of incriminating evidence or just a bit of mischief.

01:19:46.800 Once again, evil is in the eye of the beholder. 0.67

01:19:50.700 But all this was before the great trash robbery. 0.88

01:19:53.260 that was what some wags at Troop N, 0.75

01:19:57.160 the state police barracks that was running the surveillance op,

01:20:00.100 later dubbed the pilfering.

01:20:02.340 On December 27, Major Paris received a request from the FBI

01:20:06.180 to plunder the trash bins outside the Kohlberger residence.

01:20:11.240 That same day, once the stateies were certain no one was looking,

01:20:15.260 two troopers swooped in and made off with a pile

01:20:18.140 of the Kohlberger's family distritis.

01:20:21.720 The purloined parcel was quickly shipped across the country to Meridian, Idaho.

01:20:27.820 There, at the Idaho State Police Crime Lab on South Stratford Drive,

01:20:32.660 a forensic team went to work sorting through the trash.

01:20:35.700 It turned out to be a treasure trove.

01:20:39.140 For all along, the Moscow police had been holding on tight to a second secret,

01:20:44.840 one that was no less charged than the statement from the eyewitness.

01:20:48.740 a knife sheath stamped with the U.S. Marine Corps Eagle, Globe, and Anchor insignia

01:20:54.620 had been found lying on the bed next to Maddie Mogan's bloody corpse.

01:21:01.560 And from the sheath's button snap, a speck of male DNA had been recovered.

01:21:08.500 It was a minuscule sample, but it was all that was needed.

01:21:12.200 When compared to Michael Kohlberger's DNA lifted from the garbage

01:21:15.820 that had been clandestinely carried off,

01:21:18.840 it proved nearly conclusively,

01:21:21.180 the techies confidently rejoiced,

01:21:23.460 that it was his son's DNA on that knife sheath.

01:21:32.900 The next day, December 29,

01:21:36.140 a triumphant Brett Payne sat down

01:21:38.700 to finalize the arrest warrant for Brian Kohlberger.

01:21:42.400 When he was done, he had no time

01:21:44.140 to enjoy the moment of high achievement.

01:21:46.700 Instead, full of a tense urgency

01:21:49.140 and animating conviction that every moment counted,

01:21:53.320 he hand-delivered the 18-page document to the courthouse.

01:21:56.800 Moments after Judge Megan Marshall signed off,

01:21:59.900 a call was made to Pennsylvania.

01:22:02.880 It's a go, Major Parris was told.

01:22:06.040 Here's how Payne wrote about the discovery in the affidavit.

01:22:09.980 On December 27th, 2022,

01:22:12.500 Pennsylvania agents recovered the trash from the Kohlberger family residence located

01:22:17.140 in Albright's Vale, PA. That evidence was sent to the Idaho State Lab for testing.

01:22:23.580 On December 28, 2022, the Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash and the

01:22:31.300 DNA profile obtained from the sheath identified a male as not being excluded as the biological

01:22:37.880 father of suspect profile. At least 99.9998% of the male population would be expected to be

01:22:48.160 excluded from the possibility of being the suspect's biological father. And here is CeCe Moore

01:22:54.380 on the trash poll. This is pretty common when investigative genetic genealogy has pointed law 1.00

01:23:00.420 enforcement toward a certain individual or family, and they'll do what's called a trash poll. If they

01:23:06.040 can't just follow that person and pick something up that they dropped, then they'll typically resort

01:23:10.620 to waiting for that person to put their trash out on the curb. And most states allow this. It's

01:23:16.040 considered abandoned at that point. And then they go through the trash and try to find an item that

01:23:21.420 might have DNA on it. But when it's a home like this, a household where there's multiple people,

01:23:25.980 they don't know exactly whose DNA they're going to get. More from Bloom. Dynamic entry is only

01:23:32.260 to use to serve an arrest warrant when the threat matrix is code red. You go in with overwhelming

01:23:37.820 force, pounding down the doors, breaking windows, and setting off explosive devices.

01:23:43.040 The strategy is meant not just to surprise the suspect, but also to scare the living daylights

01:23:47.740 out of him. Because there's one thing that's always rising up in the mind of any tactical

01:23:51.620 cop charging through the front door. If the target's waiting inside to ambush you, it doesn't

01:23:56.740 matter too much what sort of tactics you use. This is his turf. He has the advantage. And if he's

01:24:02.620 determined not to give up without a fight, bad things can happen. At just after midnight on

01:24:08.600 December 30, a Pennsylvania State Police Special Emergency Response Team, or CERT, S-E-R-T,

01:24:15.860 assembled at the Gray Barn Lake Troop End Barracks in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. There were about 24 of

01:24:22.660 them. The usual 16 entry team members and maybe eight sharpshooters and they were packing. Glock

01:24:29.520 40 caliber pistols were generally the weapon of choice and the point men as a rule carried two

01:24:34.900 pistols. Those who would be the first through the door were also armed with stubby black HK MP5

01:24:40.940 submachine guns. It was a brutal weapon particularly in an enclosed space. The backups had short

01:24:47.760 barreled Remington 870 12 gauges. It was a shotgun meant for killing, not wounding.

01:24:53.600 And over military style camo uniforms, they wore heavy load bearing tactical body armor fitted out

01:25:00.200 with level four strike plates. The early morning arrest of Brian Kohlberger would be a code red op

01:25:06.360 dynamic entry all the way. It was so quiet. It seemed as if the cocking of a single rifle would

01:25:12.660 rouse people from their slumber. But then all hell broke loose. A door flew off its hinges,

01:25:18.800 windows shattered, explosive charges boomed. The CERT team stormed the stunned Kohlberger's

01:25:24.580 white clappered home. In the end, without a single shot being fired, Brian Kohlberger was let off

01:25:31.320 in handcuffs. I recognize the frustration with the lack of information that's been released.

01:25:37.460 However, providing any details in this criminal investigation might have tainted the upcoming criminal prosecution or alerted the suspect of our progress.

01:25:47.880 Mr. Kohlberger was taken into custody without incident.

01:25:51.740 The scene was turned over to the FBI evidence response team for processing.

01:25:56.340 Mr. Kohlberger was then turned over to the Monroe County prison where he has remained in their custody since.

01:26:02.340 On January 4th, shackled and in a red jumpsuit,

01:26:06.520 Kohlberger was flown in a tiny fixed-wing single-engine Pilatus across the country.

01:26:11.580 The plane landed at Moscow Pullman Regional Airport,

01:26:15.020 the same airport where, only about three weeks earlier,

01:26:17.780 Michael Kohlberger had arrived in anticipation of a convivial road trip with his son.

01:26:23.240 But as Bloom writes, nothing in this case would be easy.

01:26:27.260 There existed quite a few bad facts.

01:26:31.040 Bad facts is a phrase defense lawyers like to bandy about.

01:26:34.900 It's a term that's meant to draw an epistemological distinction

01:26:37.960 between what is objectively real and what is subjective opinion.

01:26:42.680 Just because the prosecutor says it's true, well, that doesn't make it so.

01:26:47.140 And the bad facts riddling the probable cause affidavit

01:26:50.960 that police used to obtain Kohlberger's arrest,

01:26:54.720 as well as those in the laundry list of seemingly provocative items

01:26:58.100 found in a search of Kohlberger's apartment in Washington

01:27:00.960 are indeed disturbing.

01:27:04.140 Item, the affidavit cites a shoe

01:27:07.340 with a diamond-shaped pattern

01:27:09.560 similar to the pattern of a Vans-type shoe style

01:27:12.640 found at the scene of the crime.

01:27:14.620 Well, does Kohlberger own a pair of Vans?

01:27:17.820 And even if it is established that he does,

01:27:20.800 there's a photo that shows at least one person

01:27:22.580 in the house on King Road wearing Vans

01:27:24.700 prior to the murders.

01:27:27.120 Item, the cell phone tower data that links Kohlberger to the scene of the murders

01:27:32.420 is more an approximation of his whereabouts than an exact location.

01:27:37.860 And being in the vicinity is not at all the same as being at the scene of the crime.

01:27:44.000 More damaging, the affidavit with a remarkable candor

01:27:47.800 admits to some confusion in this sort of analysis.

01:27:52.640 Quote, investigators found that the phone did connect to a cell phone

01:27:56.140 cell phone tower that provides service to Moscow on November 14th, 2022. But investigators do not

01:28:03.380 believe the phone was in Moscow on that date. What? The prosecution is stating that the cell

01:28:10.500 phone evidence is correct only some of the time. How's that going to fly with a jury?

01:28:16.460 Item, the white Hyundai Elantra. While there are photos of the car zooming through the Moscow

01:28:22.340 streets on the night of the murder, there is no clear photo of Kohlberger at the wheel that

01:28:27.340 evening. Not a single one. Item, the DNA on the knife sheath snap. It is apparently touch DNA.

01:28:37.300 That is, it's derived from a fingerprint rather than a drop of blood. And that's pretty shaky

01:28:43.820 evidence, often more guesswork than science. The courtroom reality is that in case after case,

01:28:50.460 touch DNA has been tarnished by a motley collection of false positive results. A smart

01:28:56.880 defense attorney might argue that there's just as much likelihood of touch DNAs being accurate

01:29:01.400 as a jurors winning the lottery. Who would want to condemn someone to execution

01:29:06.300 based on those odds? Item, the eyewitness identification. Well, a lot of people have

01:29:14.860 bushy eyebrows. And the testimony from a witness who was in, quote, frozen shock phase, as she put

01:29:21.420 it, might be problematic at best. And that's without even getting into why she waited seven

01:29:27.340 hours or so before making sure the police were notified. The poignant truth might very well be

01:29:32.120 that Dylan Mortensen, although she was not physically attacked, was another victim that

01:29:37.160 night and that she is in no shape to take the witness stand to face a rapid firing, if not

01:29:42.220 mean-spirited defense counsel. Item, the murder weapon. Where is it? The police have not found 0.93

01:29:52.840 the long-bladed knife used in the killings, and they have so far not been able to establish that

01:29:58.100 Kohlberger owned such a weapon. But arguably the most perplexing question that the prosecutors

01:30:03.800 will have to wrestle with if they hope to persuade a jury is why? Why? What was the motive

01:30:11.620 for someone to kill four college students in cold blood.

01:30:17.080 And so far, there isn't an answer.

01:30:21.360 But the exploration for a motive

01:30:23.020 needs to take us into an examination

01:30:25.060 of Brian Kohlberger himself,

01:30:27.940 who he was at an early age, who he became,

01:30:31.060 an attempt to get inside his head

01:30:33.540 and really learn about what makes this guy tick.

01:30:36.840 As it turns out, the trip into the psyche of Brian Kohlberger

01:30:39.900 would be a fascinating and deeply disturbing one.

01:30:44.340 And that is where we will pick up next episode.

01:30:47.840 We'll see you tomorrow.

01:30:55.300 I am stuck in the depths of my mind

01:30:58.200 where I have to constantly battle my demons.

01:31:01.200 Am I here or am I fake?

01:31:04.040 I feel myself slipping away.

01:31:07.580 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, everyone.

01:31:09.320 I'm Megan Kelly, and welcome to episode three of a special edition of the show focused on the

01:31:14.940 fascinating and disturbing case of Brian Kohlberger and the quadruple murder in a sleepy college Idaho

01:31:20.980 town last year. We started the week diving into the gruesome stabbings and got to know the victims

01:31:26.940 a bit. Yesterday, we walked through how Kohlberger was identified and the incredible series of events

01:31:32.560 that led to his arrest. Today, we take a look at who Brian Kohlberger is, the man accused of this

01:31:41.140 barbaric crime, atrocities which he denies having anything to do with. As we bring you that story,

01:31:47.940 we are thrilled to rely in part on the fantastic writing and reporting by journalist and author

01:31:53.240 Howard Bloom, who covered the Idaho murders in great detail for Air Mail News. Bloom's forthcoming

01:31:59.260 book on the case will be published in the spring by HarperCollins. Brian Christopher Kohlberger

01:32:08.500 is 28 years old, but the quotes I read you at the beginning of this episode are from way back in

01:32:15.940 2011 when he was just 16. It has been reported by multiple outlets, including Bloom in airmail,

01:32:23.740 that Koberger wrote often on an early social media platform called Tap-A-Talk.

01:32:30.140 He described a condition he had, or claimed to have, known as visual snow.

01:32:36.060 It's something I discussed with Bloom when he was a guest on the Megyn Kelly show in March. Watch.

01:32:42.160 Doctors can't even agree on whether visual snow is a psychological state or a disease.

01:32:48.960 And since they can't agree on what it is, they also differ on how to treat it or if it can be treated.

01:32:56.380 What the best sources I found for any insight into this are really in novels.

01:33:03.600 Camus the Stranger opens up with a character who talks about feeling nothing that eventually leads to a murder on the beach.

01:33:11.560 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.

01:33:31.360 And if everything means less than zero, as Elvis Costello sings, then you can do anything.

01:33:39.620 Anything is unjustified because it doesn't matter.

01:33:42.300 From Bloom's reporting, they are the raw, bedeviling forces that drove him, he explains, to contemplate suicide.

01:33:50.240 They are the painful demons, he wails to a friend, that drove him to search for a sort of relief by mainlining heroin.

01:33:56.460 And at the root of all his swirling emotions, he diagnoses in the online postings with an

01:34:02.620 unwavering certainty, is visual snow. Visual snow is a rare but very real and chronic neurological

01:34:09.600 condition. To those who suffer from it, the world is viewed through a glass darkly. It's like looking

01:34:15.840 at a television screen and the pictures fluttering. The image is obscured by amorphous grayish waves

01:34:22.220 and scattering flickering dots.

01:34:24.580 But is it a disease or is it a psychological condition?

01:34:28.640 Doctors, according to the sparse literature,

01:34:31.140 throw up their hands in frustrated confusion.

01:34:33.360 They just don't know.

01:34:35.100 And what can't be diagnosed is even more difficult to treat.

01:34:38.640 But for the teenage Brian Kohlberger,

01:34:40.880 if his online posts are any reliable guide,

01:34:43.820 Visual Snow had at times buried his existence

01:34:46.460 in an avalanche of despondency and desperation.

01:34:50.860 His posts were calls from the wild.

01:34:54.380 Some of Koberger's most telling teenage posts give us a window into who he might become.

01:35:00.420 We have voiced them over here.

01:35:02.360 October 29th, 2010.

01:35:05.220 I have completely disconnected from reality.

01:35:08.220 I feel all the time that I'm living in my own reality.

01:35:11.520 It seems as if my brain chemistry is altered from this, even though I am certain it's not.

01:35:17.000 First, I felt very uninterested in the things I usually like to do.

01:35:20.500 But then it changed to the point I saw no reason for anything, and everything became boring to me.

01:35:26.440 It'd feel at times completely disconnected.

01:35:29.900 And as if I can't live like a normal person.

01:35:33.660 When I think about my future, I think about how I will barely remember my mother and father, etc.

01:35:39.420 Because I have an altered memory and also have been unable to think of them due to the 10 things I think about non-stop all at once.

01:35:48.940 Visual snow, altered brain, tinnitus, disappointment, regret, etc.

01:35:57.020 I think that possibly I could have brought this onto myself from post-traumatic stress disorder or something similar, but I can't tell what it is.

01:36:05.540 I remember how it was before and remember that I felt like it before. 0.99

01:36:09.420 It is all real bullshit. 0.96

01:36:11.840 If I have any chemistry change, I have this detox program that can fix it. 0.98

01:36:18.020 May 12, 2011.

01:36:20.900 I always feel as if I am not there, completely depersonalized.

01:36:25.960 Mentally, I experience fog, lack of comprehension at some times,

01:36:30.520 feel like my life is a movie, depersonalization, depression,

01:36:36.340 No interest in activity.

01:36:38.620 Constant thought of suicide.

01:36:40.020 Crazy thoughts.

01:36:40.900 Delusions of grandeur.

01:36:42.940 Anxiety.

01:36:43.640 Poor self-image.

01:36:45.240 Poor social skills.

01:36:46.800 No emotion.

01:36:49.280 I feel like nothing has a point to it.

01:36:52.700 When I get home, I am mean to my family.

01:36:56.500 This started when VS, or visual snow, did.

01:37:00.460 I felt no emotion, and along with the depersonalization, I can say and do whatever I want.

01:37:05.520 with little remorse. Everyone hates me. Pretty much. I am an asshole.

01:37:13.360 July 4th, 2011. I've had this horrible depersonalization go on in my life for almost 1.00

01:37:19.740 two years. I often find myself making simple human interactions, but it is as if I'm playing

01:37:26.140 a role-playing games such as Oblivion. I can see what is going on. I am slightly into it,

01:37:32.720 but I can pause the game and focus on my real life.

01:37:37.460 In this case, my life is the game and my old self can be reached by pausing the game.

01:37:42.700 But how?

01:37:43.660 I often think of things that humans do, things I have done my whole life.

01:37:48.760 I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self-worth,

01:37:52.480 as I am starting to view everything as this.

01:37:56.860 Everything I have ever done makes no sense.

01:38:00.200 How did things get this way?

01:38:01.880 How am I wearing this shirt?

01:38:03.740 And who decided that humans shall wear shirts like this?

01:38:07.160 Are we all just advanced animals with possession?

01:38:10.040 Or is there more?

01:38:11.480 More that I can't see.

01:38:13.540 I can't connect.

01:38:14.700 I view everything as if I would if I was playing oblivion.

01:38:18.540 Pointless and full of nothing.

01:38:20.500 Out of reality.

01:38:22.680 I'm moving out of my house.

01:38:24.240 My last holidays were already lived.

01:38:26.440 But where was I?

01:38:27.960 As my family group hugs and celebrates,

01:38:30.020 I am stuck in this void of nothing, feeling completely no emotion, feeling nothing.

01:38:37.080 I feel dirty, like there is dirt inside my head, my mind.

01:38:41.380 I am always dizzy and confused.

01:38:44.620 I feel no self-worth.

01:38:46.640 I am intelligent, but I feel the opposite.

01:38:49.320 I say things I don't mean.

01:38:51.240 The last holiday in my house, the house I grew up in, the house I once contributed to,

01:38:55.960 the house I once fell at home in, is past.

01:39:00.020 As I hug my family, I look into their faces. I see nothing. It is like I am looking at a video

01:39:05.600 game, but less. I feel less than mentally damaged. It is like I have severe brain damage.

01:39:13.380 I am stuck in the depths of my mind. These posts paint a picture of a severely depressed,

01:39:19.460 disturbed young man, riddled with pain, feeling himself, quote, slipping away from the bounds of

01:39:26.380 normality, constantly burdened by visual snow and the sound of screaming. Torture. And it wasn't

01:39:34.060 just the posts on Tappatalk. As Bloom lays out, there was also bristling anger uncovered by

01:39:40.280 internet sleuths who have traced his teenage email to a posting on SoundCloud. 11 years ago,

01:39:47.340 Kohlberger's defiant moods took flight in a howling rap song. You are not my equal. You are

01:39:53.840 evil, but I'm the devil, he challenges. Listen. Of course, Bloom writes, these posts and lyrics 0.99

01:40:10.820 are the work of a teenager. More than a decade has flown by since they were written.

01:40:15.860 Nevertheless, perhaps the anguished posts and the ferocious song are also a warning.

01:40:21.580 Out of words come events.

01:40:24.220 The future cannot exist without having been envisioned in the past,

01:40:27.100 and one more puzzlement in this case must be confronted.

01:40:30.620 Are these teenage thought dreams the intimations of an adult's future?

01:40:35.580 During high school, reports suggest Kohlberger was a bit of a misfit and an outcast.

01:40:40.980 He was overweight, and according to friends who knew him at the time,

01:40:44.840 he fell into drugs, first marijuana and then heroin.

01:40:48.780 He began focusing on eating healthier, found kickboxing, began to lose weight in the process.

01:40:55.540 Here's high school friend Jack Bayless speaking to local NBC affiliate King5TV.

01:41:01.180 He was definitely heavier set, and that caused issues in school.

01:41:04.800 I believe it was the weight loss first.

01:41:07.000 Weight loss first, and I was, you know, I want to say 14 to maybe 16 in between there was the big weight loss.

01:41:13.800 I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure that it was.

01:41:15.620 And then it was the drugs.

01:41:16.480 He got in drugs.

01:41:18.100 via an acquaintance of his.

01:41:20.360 It was definitely heroin.

01:41:21.440 It was pretty gnarly.

01:41:25.140 But Kohlberger was able to straighten his life out,

01:41:28.200 or so it seemed.

01:41:29.520 Whether his internal anguish ever abated

01:41:32.120 is a much trickier question,

01:41:34.420 as we discussed with Howard Bloom.

01:41:36.740 Everyone has talked about how he seems to be

01:41:39.040 planning the murders so carefully,

01:41:42.640 doing this and that.

01:41:44.040 I think he was really spending the past

01:41:47.940 year at least trying to overcome all his internal demons to not try to find a way to prevent

01:41:59.640 himself from killing people. I mean, to this point, he's made a remarkable recovery from a

01:42:05.960 young man, a teenager who used heroin. He's gotten into a junior college and succeeds to get into

01:42:12.660 college and winds up at a very reputable graduate school in criminal justice where he's a teaching

01:42:17.780 assistant. He's doing everything. He's pushed his father out of his life. Now he's taking his father

01:42:23.160 back in the life. They're going to make a cross country trip home for Christmas. He's doing all

01:42:28.640 this. And at the same time, he knows who he is and how he will always be an outsider. And he's trying

01:42:37.180 to find his way in. And he really can't. I think that's also an untold story, part speculation at

01:42:46.360 this point that we want to try to get more of come June. This man who sees himself as someone

01:42:55.300 more sinned against than sinning, and that his life is, in his way, a horror story. It's also

01:43:04.420 a tragedy, too. After Kohlberger graduated high school, he went to college at DeSales University

01:43:12.640 in Pennsylvania. He got his bachelor's degree in 2020 and a master's degree in criminal justice in

01:43:18.000 2022. One professor of his, Dr. Michelle Bolger, who advised Kohlberger on his master's thesis in

01:43:25.040 the criminal justice department at DeSales University, she's very well respected, told the

01:43:29.840 Daily Mail reporter he was a brilliant student. Quote, in my 10 years of teaching, she raved,

01:43:35.760 I've only recommended two students to a PhD program, and he was one of them. He was one of

01:43:41.460 my best students ever, end quote. Here's more from those who knew him, including friends and

01:43:52.480 classmates. He wanted to do something that impacted people in a good way. People were not his strong

01:44:01.180 suit. And I think through his criminology studies, he was really trying to understand humans and try

01:44:08.780 to understand himself. I think a lot of people who were close to him are feeling this massive

01:44:15.260 amounts of guilt. Why didn't I see it? Did I miss something? Where did it go wrong? He seemed very

01:44:22.040 comfortable around other people. He was fairly quick to offer his opinion and thoughts and he

01:44:27.120 was always participating fairly eagerly in classroom discussions. Does anything else come

01:44:31.580 to mind that Brian said to you in the past that today you think might be of interest? There was

01:44:38.520 a comment that he made and it was this kind of a flippant uh guy talk thing um at one point he

01:44:44.280 just idly mentioned you know i can go down to a ball or a club and just have pretty much any lady

01:44:50.240 i want looking back over the last four months is that i feel like there should have been signs

01:44:56.920 that i should have seen and i didn't uh i was blindsided

01:45:00.960 while kohlberger may have bragged about his luck with the ladies no girlfriend has emerged

01:45:09.900 at all from any point one woman posted a tiktok about a date she says she had a single date with

01:45:18.100 kohlberger which did not go well watch we matched on tinder um we talked for a couple hours and

01:45:24.740 then he was like hey you want to go to the movies with me tonight and i was like sure

01:45:28.180 we ended up going back to my dorm um and he kind of invited himself inside he kept trying to touch

01:45:36.000 me um not like inappropriately just like trying to tickle me and like rub my shoulders and stuff

01:45:44.000 and I was like why are you touching me or what are you doing and he would just like get super

01:45:49.500 serious and he's like I'm not and I'm like you are though and he's like I'm not touching you

01:45:56.340 kind of like trying to gaslight me into thinking that he didn't touch me, which was weird. Um,

01:46:03.760 but then I was like, I'm just going to run to the bathroom quick. And he was like, okay. And then he

01:46:09.900 followed me to the bathroom, um, which I thought was kind of weird. So I proceeded to pretend to

01:46:16.900 throw up, um, to get him to leave. He ended up messaging me on Tinder that he was going to go.

01:46:23.920 And I was like, awesome. My plan worked. And then about an hour later, he texted me and said I had good birthing hips.

01:46:35.180 Some who observed him in his role as a teaching assistant saw a man anything but comfortable.

01:46:42.340 When he was standing in front of the class, it was like he was, you know, in a box.

01:46:45.640 He was very, I don't know, uncomfortable, I guess. Like it felt like he was perpetually uncomfortable.

01:46:50.460 Hmm. Though Koberger's online postings appeared to stop, those ones we went over when he was

01:46:59.160 about 16, his criminal justice studies brought more public outreach, like the Reddit post from

01:47:05.580 his time at DeSales asking for research participation from criminals. Some criminologists

01:47:11.860 say it's pretty standard for the field to send things like this out, but still, it's chilling

01:47:17.800 when you know what he would later be accused of.

01:47:20.920 Hello, my name is Brian, he writes,

01:47:24.000 and I am inviting you to participate in a research project

01:47:26.920 that seeks to understand how emotions

01:47:29.300 and psychological traits influence decision-making

01:47:32.400 when committing a crime.

01:47:34.700 In particular, this study seeks to understand the story

01:47:37.480 behind your most recent criminal offense

01:47:40.400 with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings

01:47:43.140 throughout your experience.

01:47:45.520 In the event that your most recent offense

01:47:47.520 was not one that led to a conviction, you may still participate. What sort of questions did

01:47:53.220 Kohlberger ask? Here's what was uncovered from the survey itself. Questions included the following.

01:48:00.440 Did you struggle with or fight the victim? Did you prepare for the crime before leaving your home?

01:48:06.700 Please detail what you were thinking and feeling at this point. How did you travel to and enter the

01:48:11.360 location that the crime occurred? After arriving, what steps did you take prior to locating the

01:48:16.840 victim or target? Please detail your thoughts and feelings. Why did you choose that victim or target

01:48:22.920 over others? Before making your move, how did you approach the victim or target? Please detail what

01:48:29.680 you were thinking and feeling. What was the first move you made in order to accomplish your goal?

01:48:35.660 Please detail any thoughts and feelings at this point. How did you accomplish your goal? Please

01:48:41.120 explain what you were thinking and feeling. Before leaving, is there anything else you did? How did

01:48:46.280 you leave the scene? After committing the crime, what were you thinking and feeling?

01:48:52.460 After DeSales, Kohlberger moved west, a criminology doctoral student now at Washington State

01:48:59.440 University. He began the program in the fall of 2022, mere months before the murders in the

01:49:06.140 neighboring state. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Washington, he applied for an internship

01:49:12.280 at the nearby Pullman Police Department.

01:49:15.740 In the application essay, which Idaho cops later shared,

01:49:19.040 Kohlberger, with apparent self-affirming pride,

01:49:22.240 wrote that he had an interest

01:49:24.180 in assisting rural law enforcement agencies

01:49:26.660 with how to better collect and analyze technological data

01:49:29.900 in public safety operations.

01:49:32.340 So what should we make of Kohlberger's interest in criminology

01:49:36.340 and his attempts to work with local police?

01:49:39.380 It's a question I asked CIA officer and expert in deception, Phil Houston, earlier this year.

01:49:45.380 In my mind, this fits into the category of what we call countermeasure behavior.

01:49:50.280 So it's starting out, you know, very early.

01:49:52.880 And what I mean by early is there's still months off from a killing.

01:49:56.840 But in his mind, he may well have had something in his mind that he was going to do that was bad.

01:50:03.980 So joining the police department or having some connection by the police department in his mind might very likely have served two purposes.

01:50:13.340 First of all, from the persuasion context, it's he's an insider now.

01:50:19.580 Why would anyone look at him, you know, immediately as the, you know, the the perpetrator?

01:50:25.520 And then secondly, if he's inside, it's possible he may get some access to what's going on in the investigation, to details of the investigation that may give him some more early warning if the police do start to, you know, zero in on him.

01:50:47.860 It does not appear Kohlberger ever landed that police internship. However, he did have a meeting with the chief of police.

01:50:55.520 Inside Edition obtained an email exchange between Kohlberger and Gary Jenkins, the top cop in Pullman, Washington at the time.

01:51:03.960 Quote, it was a great pleasure to meet with you today and share my thoughts and excitement regarding the research assistantship for public safety, wrote Kohlberger.

01:51:12.940 Great to meet and talk to you as well, responded Jenkins.

01:51:16.840 Jenkins would go on to take a job as the campus chief of police at Washington State University,

01:51:21.700 the force that would later help identify Kohlberger's vehicle as the one police believed

01:51:26.680 was seen leaving the murder site that evening. After the murders, Kohlberger may have returned

01:51:32.600 to an old habit, posting about himself online. You see, there was massive interest in this case

01:51:39.820 online and several reporters believe Kohlberger himself was among the crew on social media

01:51:45.460 openly discussing the case.

01:51:48.300 One Facebook user named Papa Roger

01:51:51.520 was a regular poster in a discussion group

01:51:54.240 about the murders.

01:51:55.980 One of his posts seemed to indicate

01:51:58.560 he knew something about the circumstances of the murder,

01:52:01.280 or at least took a very lucky guess.

01:52:04.440 Quote, of the evidence released,

01:52:07.420 the murder weapon has been consistent

01:52:09.240 as a large fixed blade knife.

01:52:12.320 This leads me to believe

01:52:13.680 they found the sheath. He wrote, this was before there were public reports that police

01:52:20.700 had indeed found the knife sheath inside that house. Meanwhile, on Reddit, in the Moscow

01:52:27.840 Murders Group, Moscow being the town where the killings took place, one user named Inside

01:52:33.620 Looking seemed to have inside details about the method behind the murders. Quote, speculation,

01:52:40.280 it began. Quote, killer parked behind the house, approached property through tree line,

01:52:47.620 entered sliding door and left it open, committed murders and exited sliding door. One knife,

01:52:54.440 according to the coroner's statement. Time of murder, approximately 3.20 a.m. to 3.40 a.m.,

01:53:01.340 according to car fleeing scene and on camera on Highway 8, approximately 3.45 a.m. Vehicle left

01:53:08.260 skid marks upon exit, end quote. Since Kohlberger was arrested and held without bail, Papa Roger

01:53:16.340 and Inside Looking have not posted on Facebook or Reddit.

01:53:27.220 As one might suspect, Brian Kohlberger's troubles were not limited to his head. His interactions

01:53:33.600 with women were awkward and at times inappropriate, as we alluded to earlier. There were reports of

01:53:41.300 him getting kicked out of a high school vocational law enforcement program after complaints from

01:53:46.240 several girls. Creepy interactions with women in college. And more recently, Dateline of NBC 1.00

01:53:53.040 reported Kohlberger befriended a female colleague at Washington State who contacted him after she

01:53:58.720 thought someone had broken into her apartment. Kohlberger helped her, reports NBC, by installing

01:54:05.540 security cameras at her place. According to Dateline, authorities believed it was Kohlberger

01:54:11.440 himself who had broken into that apartment and that he installed the cameras so that he would

01:54:17.380 be able to spy on this young woman, or perhaps something even more sinister. Former FBI criminal

01:54:24.800 profiler, Candace DeLong, was a guest on this program in January 2023, and she had this to

01:54:30.520 say about Kohlberger and women. One of the things I find interesting and possibly telling, a lot of

01:54:39.320 female friends from high school, college, and even recently in his grad program

01:54:45.000 um talk about him various things to say no former girlfriend or former intimate person

01:54:55.920 has come forward possibly because you know it could be oh my gosh you know i was i wrong to

01:55:02.980 be involved with this guy but i wonder if he simply hasn't had an intimate relationship

01:55:12.800 a romantic relationship. And the reason I think that is, without question, this was a targeted

01:55:23.940 murder. And one of the victims, the two blondes, was brutalized, stabbed many more times than the

01:55:36.260 other one. I think she was probably the target. One of the things that I think of regarding, 0.75

01:55:45.840 pardon me, motivation is, was this motive? There was no sexual assault,

01:55:52.260 but there was certainly a display of anger and rage and possibly revenge. There are many murders

01:56:04.260 And it's happening more lately by men murdering women in this way. Angers, multiple stab wounds. It's not, it's rarely a gunshot. It's a stabbing someone, of course, is in their face, personal, I hate you, I hate you, that kind of thing.

01:56:24.360 And that's what we see here.

01:56:26.720 So I am wondering if he, well, there's actually a term for it, Megan, and it's in cell, which

01:56:35.160 stands for involuntarily celibate.

01:56:39.200 So no lovers that we know of, nevermind girlfriends, but what of his family?

01:56:44.420 His mother, Marianne, worked at the same local school district as his father.

01:56:48.000 She was an aide for special needs students.

01:56:50.640 He has two older sisters, Amanda and Melissa, the latter of whom was a mental health therapist.

01:56:57.940 Some reports indicate that both sisters were fired from their jobs after Brian's arrest.

01:57:03.300 And what about his father, the maintenance worker, the one who flew out to make that long trip across the country with Brian as the FBI was tracking him?

01:57:12.100 More here from my interview with Howard Bloom.

01:57:14.740 Here's his father. He's 67 years old.

01:57:17.980 Doesn't have a ton of money.

01:57:19.220 clearly he's a janitor he's been bankrupt twice he's going to fly out uh to first you got to go

01:57:25.260 to seattle then you got to fly on another flight uh into washington pullman uh go across country

01:57:31.760 and then you're going to quickly make a turnaround and he's looking i think and what this is what

01:57:36.680 people told me to try to get back make amends with his son say you know you were on the wrong

01:57:43.280 path i tried to set you right there was a great deal of antagonism between us but now things are

01:57:48.660 hunky-dory. This is a bright future. You're going to have a good playing job. You're going to be a

01:57:53.400 professor. All things are good. Little does he know what's going on in his son's world. I think

01:58:00.720 this trip across America, this father-to-son journey, is the center of its own interesting

01:58:09.160 little drama. That trip took Brian back to his childhood home and to the place where police

01:58:14.700 would ultimately arrest him. Reports were that upon making their dynamic entry, police found

01:58:21.000 Kohlberger awake just before 1.30 a.m. wearing rubber gloves and packing his trash into Ziploc

01:58:27.620 bags. He did not resist, and the police effected a search of the premises. From his parents' home,

01:58:34.600 police recovered a cell phone, a laptop, two containers of a green leafy substance,

01:58:40.380 along with black face masks, a black hat

01:58:43.680 and several articles of dark colored clothing

01:58:46.320 along with a book with underlining on page 118

01:58:50.660 as well as a Glock 22, 40 caliber handgun

01:58:54.440 and empty magazines.

01:58:56.160 They also found a Smith & Wesson pocket knife and more.

01:59:00.180 Back at Kohlberger's student residence in Washington State

01:59:03.140 police searched as well

01:59:04.680 retrieving a stained mattress cover, a computer tower

01:59:08.260 various receipts, a dust container from a Bissell Power Force vacuum cleaner,

01:59:14.560 a fire TV stick with a cord and plug, and what's described as one possible animal hair strand.

01:59:21.940 His childhood home and his graduate student housing both poured through by police looking

01:59:26.740 for any clue as to why, how, anything tying Kohlberger to this crime. The home of his

01:59:34.780 boyhood unhappiness and the adult home to what seemed a new kind of grievance and a freedom now

01:59:40.920 to act on it. Retired FBI profiler, James Fitzgerald. Ted Kaczynski was about the same age

01:59:47.840 when he launched his first bomb in Chicago and four of them right after that. Some people,

01:59:54.020 it takes longer to mature in terms of their criminal sophistication or devolve in terms of

02:00:00.240 their their psychological disorders. And I'm not clinically saying that. So who knows exactly what

02:00:05.700 happened? I think a big factor with that with BK is that I think he grew up in northeastern

02:00:12.160 Pennsylvania. I'm from Philadelphia. Originally, I know that area. He went to school a little bit

02:00:16.620 away from there. But look what he finally did at the age of 28 or so. He travels 2,500 miles across

02:00:23.240 country. He's far away now, finally, from the tentacles of his parents, of his familial

02:00:28.500 upbringing uh you know the home the neighborhood where he grew up and he may think he may be

02:00:33.560 thinking for the first time i am finally on my own i can do what i want i don't have any daily

02:00:38.400 reporting or weekend reporting to any parents or authority figures this is my opportunity it

02:00:44.100 doesn't mean he moved out there consciously to kill four people it's just that it was a uh jupiter

02:00:49.520 aligning with mars with a few other planets in there and of course not in a good way we have

02:00:54.540 really this, I say, hodgepodge or mishmash of all kinds of personality issues finally coming together

02:01:00.660 for him. And again, for some people, that happens in a good way. You know what? I'm finally going

02:01:05.480 to, you know, college. I'm finally going to join the military, graduate school, whatever.

02:01:09.660 This guy, it was about it was about paying back sort of a as as we call it, you know,

02:01:14.720 a grievance collector. Some psychologists use that term. All these grievances that build up,

02:01:20.320 The foundations were laid brick by brick by brick, and it's finally hit sort of this crescendo in, of all places, Moscow, Idaho.

02:01:31.760 And this aligns at the same time, and these poor four victims are the ones to pay the price for the alleged grievances placed against him.

02:01:43.000 Grievance and perhaps the related emotion of envy.

02:01:48.000 We're going to get to that soon.

02:01:49.380 Of course, this all presumes that Kohlberger is in fact guilty, but what if? What if?

02:01:58.140 Next episode, the prosecution's case against Brian Kohlberger, plus Kohlberger's defense.

02:02:03.980 It may be better than you think. We'll see you tomorrow.

02:02:13.440 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm Megyn Kelly.

02:02:15.980 On this special edition of the show, we bring you deep into the fascinating and disturbing case

02:02:21.480 of Brian Kohlberger and the murder of four young college students in Idaho.

02:02:26.980 The trial of Brian Kohlberger is expected to begin sometime in 2024.

02:02:32.080 We have brought you the details of the murder that November early morning,

02:02:36.320 of Kohlberger's arrest, and we went deep into the psyche of the man accused of committing these heinous crimes.

02:02:42.720 Today, we examine the trial ahead.

02:02:45.660 What is the case, legally speaking, against Brian Kohlberger?

02:02:49.400 What are the key components you should expect prosecutors to lean on when they get in front of a jury?

02:02:54.060 And keep in mind, we are going to get to watch as all of this plays out.

02:02:58.560 The judge has agreed to televise this trial.

02:03:02.020 Now, it will be with courtroom cameras and without media, but America will have a front row seat for the people versus Brian Kohlberger.

02:03:14.940 It may sound like an open and shut case for the prosecution, but trial attorney after trial attorney, seasoned pros, have been warning us all year, not so fast, that this case is far from a slam dunk for prosecutors.

02:03:30.900 It's not going to be easy.

02:03:32.360 But first, remember, Brian Kohlberger, through his attorneys, maintains that he is innocent.

02:03:38.680 Following his arrest, his initial public defender in Pennsylvania, Jason Labar,

02:03:43.400 released a statement on Kohlberger's behalf that reads,

02:03:47.260 Kohlberger is eager to be exonerated and looks forward to resolving these matters as soon as possible.

02:03:54.120 Eager to be exonerated.

02:03:56.560 Mr. Kohlberger, the statement goes on, has been accused of very serious crimes,

02:04:00.260 but the American justice system cloaks him in a veil of innocence.

02:04:03.700 He should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, not tried in the court of public opinion.

02:04:09.020 One should not pass judgment about the facts of the case unless and until a fair trial in court, at which time all sides may be heard and inferences challenged.

02:04:19.240 LaBarre told NBC's Today Show that Brian believes he will be exonerated.

02:04:24.900 He believes he's going to be exonerated.

02:04:28.280 That's what he believes.

02:04:30.100 Those were his words.

02:04:33.700 When we interviewed Phil Houston, author of the book, Spy the Lie and former CIA officer,

02:04:39.860 he noted that exonerated comment.

02:04:42.820 He did release a statement to us, all of us, through his lawyer,

02:04:47.660 that he looks forward to being exonerated.

02:04:51.620 So he's definitely trying to tell us, I am going to be found not guilty,

02:04:56.580 but the words used raised a red flag for you.

02:04:59.600 Why?

02:05:00.520 There's something very important missing from that statement, Megan, and that is, I didn't do it.

02:05:09.260 And it is in their efforts to focus on convincing everybody that they didn't do it, they forget to say, I didn't do it.

02:05:21.020 And it is not a truthful fact for them.

02:05:25.460 In fact, they're dealing mentally with an ugly fact, which is I did do it.

02:05:31.040 And so that gets pushed to the background.

02:05:34.820 And now I have to focus on strategy and how do I get out of this?

02:05:42.380 Since the arrest, we have heard bits and pieces from Kohlberger's defense team.

02:05:45.920 in May at Kohlberger's arraignment, he and his attorney made the bizarre decision to stand

02:05:50.840 silent and make the judge enter Kohlberger's not guilty plea.

02:05:56.600 Okay, Ms. Taylor, is Mr. Kohlberger prepared to plead to these charges?

02:06:02.100 Your Honor, we will be standing silent.

02:06:04.780 Because Mr. Kohlberger is standing silent, I'm going to enter not guilty pleas on each charge.

02:06:13.260 counts one, two, three, four, and five.

02:06:19.100 Kohlberger sat there in an orange jumpsuit, but did not speak.

02:06:23.760 Kohlberger's defense team has been very active in hammering the prosecution with motion practice.

02:06:28.400 In June, in an effort to get the DNA evidence thrown out,

02:06:32.100 the defense floated a theory that Kohlberger's DNA might have been planted on the knife sheath

02:06:37.460 and described the process as rigged, saying the state was purely focused on Kohlberger and used

02:06:44.080 a, quote, bizarrely complex DNA tree experiment to make their match. They tried to dismiss the

02:06:52.260 grand jury indictment entirely, claiming that the grand jury had been misled about the proper

02:06:58.340 standard of proof. That was not successful. And then in a formal objection, the defense team

02:07:04.820 has gone public with one hint of what we believe is to come at trial, claiming Kohlberger

02:07:10.680 has an alibi. This is something they would be required to disclose, and we'll get into it in

02:07:16.740 just a bit. And of course, the big news came in August. With the trial just six weeks away as of

02:07:24.080 then, Kohlberger waived his right to a speedy trial, and the trial that was set to begin in

02:07:29.020 October was postponed indefinitely. His defense team argued they needed far more time to prepare

02:07:35.100 and go through all the material provided to them by the prosecution, especially as the state said

02:07:40.220 they plan to seek the death penalty in this case. So here we sit with no trial date as of December

02:07:47.100 2023. Soon, we will take you down an incredible road, a truly fascinating possibility about an

02:07:56.640 entirely different direction this case could take once those defense attorneys get on their feet.

02:08:05.280 A theory expertly crafted by the longtime journalist and author Howard Bloom,

02:08:09.380 who covered this case in great detail for Air Mail News. Bloom's forthcoming book on this case

02:08:14.760 will be published in the spring by HarperCollins. You're not going to want to miss that. We're going

02:08:19.260 to bring you some of Bloom's writing throughout this episode with his agreement. But let's start

02:08:25.060 with the case against Kohlberger,

02:08:28.260 the DNA evidence found on the knife sheath

02:08:30.720 in the house on 1122 King Road.

02:08:33.400 That's critical.

02:08:35.200 But as Bloom writes,

02:08:36.880 the DNA here may not be exactly irrefutable.

02:08:41.240 The consumer DNA kits that are sold in your local CVS

02:08:44.400 need about 750 to 1,000 nanograms

02:08:48.120 to find out all they need to know about you.

02:08:50.540 That's not much.

02:08:51.800 It's smaller than a speck of floating dust

02:08:53.980 and a whole lot less substantial.

02:08:56.720 A single nanogram is as heavy as a breeze.

02:09:00.560 It weighs a few trillionths of a pound.

02:09:03.360 There's nothing to it.

02:09:05.000 But crime scenes often contain a whole lot less DNA than that.

02:09:09.440 The forensic teams will routinely wind up

02:09:11.780 with only 100 or so nanograms of DNA.

02:09:16.200 Yet scientists can nevertheless work their magic

02:09:19.380 and use even this microscopic amount of genetic evidence

02:09:23.360 to nail the criminal. The problem, however, was that the DNA on the knife sheath here,

02:09:31.320 authorities would concede on background, was less than 100 nanograms. A whole lot less.

02:09:38.620 A mere fraction, in fact, of a single nanogram. Nothing more than just a handful of microscopic

02:09:46.740 sized cells. In total, according to knowledgeable sources, about 20 cells, reports Bloom.

02:09:55.180 Maybe, they whispered, even fewer. The DNA sample was as small as a fragment of a speck balanced on

02:10:01.720 the head of a tiny pin. It no longer mattered that they had previously drawn a blank trying

02:10:07.720 to make a link between the DNA on the knife sheath, Button, and Brian Kohlberger. They had

02:10:12.880 succeeded in doing the next best thing, and they were convinced that was good enough. They had

02:10:19.280 matched the speck of DNA recovered from the murder house to the DNA embedded in the trash of Michael

02:10:27.760 Kohlberger, the suspect's father. And while moralists might find biblical authority for

02:10:33.960 the argument that the father is not responsible for his son's alleged sins, the more practical

02:10:39.520 geneticists had found an indisputable link. Quote, at least 99.9998% of the male population

02:10:49.580 would be expected to be excluded from the possibility of being the suspect's biological

02:10:54.760 father. End quote. Meaning the DNA on the knife sheath button belonged, the Idaho authorities

02:11:01.820 asserted, to Michael Kohlberger's son, Brian. So they had the knife sheath with a miraculous

02:11:09.620 DNA match, but minuscule amounts and apparently only touch DNA, which as we discussed in episode

02:11:16.960 two, is not exactly a smoking gun. A defense attorney can do a lot to poke holes in touch DNA.

02:11:24.400 And while the knife sheath was found, the knife was not. Where's the supposed murder weapon?

02:11:31.820 Still nothing on that, as far as we know.

02:11:35.340 Then there's the evidence around the white 2015 Hyundai Elantra

02:11:40.480 that happens to be Kohlberger's car.

02:11:43.580 And separate but related, the cell phone pings from Kohlberger's phone.

02:11:49.100 That's not a slam dunk for the prosecution here either.

02:11:52.420 Take, for instructive example, the now infamous sightings

02:11:56.020 of the white Hyundai Elantra on surveillance camera footage

02:11:59.840 in the vicinity of the King Roadhouse in the pre-dawn minutes

02:12:03.260 subsequent to the savage killings of the four college students.

02:12:07.980 Within days of the murders, the Moscow police had gathered a stream of video

02:12:11.920 featuring what they quickly dubbed Suspect Vehicle 1.

02:12:15.980 Only they had a problem with the quality of the images.

02:12:19.180 They were flickering, recorded in varying light.

02:12:22.560 The Pixels had captured a fast-moving white car,

02:12:25.140 but that was about all the local cops could say for sure.

02:12:28.200 So the promising but far from conclusive videos

02:12:30.940 were swiftly dispatched to building 27958A Pod E, Quantico, Virginia.

02:12:38.060 That was where the forensic examiners of the image analysis unit

02:12:41.440 of the FBI Operational Technology Division worked their magic

02:12:45.800 using a bit of software that had been originally developed

02:12:49.680 at the cost of about $1 million taxpayer dollars

02:12:52.840 for a secretive Defense Department outfit

02:12:55.380 nestled deep in the clandestine heart of the deep state,

02:12:59.440 the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate.

02:13:03.220 With the click of a few computer keys,

02:13:05.980 the program searches through a staggering inventory of cars

02:13:08.700 until it ultimately, according to the confident government description,

02:13:13.080 quote, identifies the make and model of the vehicle in a still image.

02:13:18.160 And it worked, like a charm on the handful of videos the Moscow cops had gathered,

02:13:23.100 or more precisely, three charms. The FBI forensic examiner first deduced that

02:13:29.160 suspect vehicle one was a 2011 through 13 Hyundai Elantra. Then, quote, upon further review,

02:13:37.560 to use the chagrined phrase of the candid Idaho authorities, he decided the mysterious Hyundai

02:13:43.620 might very well be actually a 2011 through 16 vehicle. And when he poured over the image of a

02:13:51.560 car consistent with a Hyundai near the murder scene that was caught on camera not long after

02:13:57.640 the killings racing toward Pullman, Washington, he deduced that it was a 2014 through 16 Hyundai.

02:14:06.180 That is, he cast a pretty broad net and he cast it three times to boot. Still, when it turned out

02:14:13.800 that Brian Kohlberger owned a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra, it was right in the ballpark of the FBI's

02:14:20.560 analysis of the make and model of suspect vehicle one. But it was a super dome sized ballpark. It

02:14:26.560 had been stretched to cover five full years of cars. A smart defense attorney could drive a

02:14:31.980 fleet of Hyundai's through a speculative gap that wide. And that wasn't all. There was further cause

02:14:38.720 for hand wringing in the aftermath of the FBI's vaunted forensic image analysis. Despite all the

02:14:44.780 inventive manipulation of the pixels in the video footage of suspect vehicle one, the analysts

02:14:50.220 still could not come up with a legible shot of the license plate. They couldn't even offer a guess.

02:14:57.540 They had no idea. Even more vexing, there wasn't a single legible image of the driver.

02:15:05.900 The Bureau Wizards tried all sorts of photographic tricks to pull a face from the blur, as you can

02:15:12.040 imagine. In the end, however, the best they could decipher was a dark, murky shadow hovering over

02:15:18.280 the steering wheel, and he can't slap handcuffs on a shadow. At a glance, the new evidence seemed

02:15:24.620 deeply incriminating. Kohlberger's car was arguably placed near the King Road house immediately before

02:15:31.260 the murder, and later hightailing it away from the scene of the crime in the pre-dawn aftermath.

02:15:36.480 His cell phone pinged to towers that seemed to correlate to the Elantra's route. However,

02:15:42.360 when examined closely, it turned out that the maps had been sketched with a swirling impressionistic

02:15:49.140 hand rather than with a cartographer's rigor. What went unmentioned deliberately when the police

02:15:57.080 shared their handiwork with the public was that those cell phone towers cast a wide net. Their

02:16:03.660 range can be as broad as 14 miles. And in a cozy town like Moscow, that takes in a whole lot of

02:16:10.140 territory. It's more wishful thinking than solid detective work to put Kohlberger's phone at a

02:16:15.800 precise spot at a certain time. Being in the vicinity is not the same as being at an exact

02:16:22.700 address. Just ask anyone whose Amazon delivery wound up at a neighbor's house or any of the

02:16:27.860 combative defense attorneys who've succeeded in convincing courts to question the reliability

02:16:32.760 and accuracy of the FBI's attempts to map the signal footprints cast by cell towers.

02:16:39.680 Our Megyn Kelly show lawyers, they come on for a segment we have called Kelly's Court.

02:16:44.540 They know the challenges here, as famed former prosecutor Marsha Clark and defense attorney

02:16:49.660 Mark Garagos discussed with me when we had them on earlier this year.

02:16:53.460 The car was spotted there by surveillance cameras before the fact, for weeks before

02:16:58.240 the fact, which indicates the possibility of stalking.

02:17:01.000 And then you have the cell phone pings that corroborate the movements of the car.

02:17:05.220 Then you have the observation by DM, the other girl who lives there, that makes it very clear the intruder is there.

02:17:14.840 And also she has the one characteristic of bushy eyebrows that did go along with his appearance.

02:17:20.560 And that's not the strongest thing.

02:17:22.060 And I'm never a big fan of eyewitness identification cases.

02:17:25.520 But when you start to put it all together, it is starting to look that way.

02:17:29.440 Now, you're right. At this point, it's not a slam dunk. It looks very much like it's moving in that direction. But that's why they're continuing to investigate. And, you know, of course, they're going to turn his apartment upside down. They're going to turn this crime scene upside down. And we're going to see a lot more in days to come.

02:17:46.760 Go ahead, Mark. What are your thoughts on all that?

02:17:48.940 I don't disagree with Marcia. I think that you've got, to me, it's probable cause all day long.

02:17:55.340 However, I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's so many holes in this.

02:18:00.440 I've had, I can't tell you the number of murder cases that have turned out that cell phone evidence ended up exonerating my client as opposed to showing that he was guilty.

02:18:14.580 The view as I'm sitting right here, I could be using my phone and it could be pinging onto two towers 12 miles away from each other just by virtue of the amount of traffic on one of the towers.

02:18:30.260 So I've never been a fan of the cell phone triangulation.

02:18:33.820 It's a good tool to try to get you there.

02:18:36.920 But I've used it to show that somebody was 40 miles away at the time of the crime and exonerated them.

02:18:43.700 So that's not going to that's not going to get him there.

02:18:46.780 They also the fact that the phone was not being used during the two hour period.

02:18:52.940 I know law enforcement speculates that he turned it off.

02:18:56.140 There's other explanations like he wasn't there.

02:18:59.080 So those kinds of things, you get jury instructions to say two reasonable alternatives.

02:19:03.660 You got to pick the one that points towards innocence.

02:19:06.180 They need more evidence.

02:19:08.440 There is at least one other arrow in the prosecution's quiver.

02:19:12.800 the possibility of an actual eyewitness.

02:19:16.060 As we told you about in episode one,

02:19:17.800 her name is Dylan Mortensen.

02:19:20.500 Yes, one of the surviving roommates

02:19:22.220 claims to have actually seen the killer,

02:19:24.980 despite the fact that she never called the police

02:19:26.880 until someone else did it from her phone

02:19:29.380 more than seven hours later.

02:19:31.260 Still, she described to police the next day

02:19:33.280 seeing someone 5'10 or taller, male,

02:19:36.820 not very muscular, but athletically built

02:19:39.080 with bushy eyebrows.

02:19:41.420 This physical description, while vague, certainly matches Kohlberger.

02:19:45.840 Will it be enough?

02:19:47.560 As Bloom writes, cop after cop promises that the single unshakable reason Kohlberger

02:19:52.380 will be sent by the state to his richly deserved death is Bill Thompson, the county prosecutor.

02:20:01.260 Thompson, his long, white, biblical beard flailing about as the wind roars.

02:20:07.060 Thompson in his down-home uniform of jeans and fleece vests.

02:20:11.320 Thompson, the wry musician who plays rock, folk, country with his band.

02:20:16.500 Thompson, who had been in office for over 30 years.

02:20:19.240 Thompson, who had famously done the impossible in the closely followed Rachel Anderson murder case

02:20:25.580 and won a conviction without the body ever being found.

02:20:29.080 An improbable victory that sent no less a culprit than a blood relative of Al Capone to jail for life.

02:20:36.240 rumor has it that this will be thompson's last hurrah there is no way cops believe that he would

02:20:44.680 retire to idle away his days strumming his guitar and casting his fishing rod without having secured

02:20:51.760 his already impressive reputation with a final victory in a big trial like this and trials just

02:20:58.780 don't come any bigger than this one in Lataw County. But will it all be enough?

02:21:06.920 Will it be enough for a prosecution to prevail?

02:21:15.500 Let's get to the defense. First up, Ann Taylor, Kohlberger's lead public defense attorney in

02:21:22.280 action from this year. As the court knows, we have been representing Mr. Kohlberger since the

02:21:27.700 end of December of 2022. And during the course of the last several months, there has been a lot of

02:21:34.420 discovery that's been requested and a lot that's been supplied. I come here asking the court to

02:21:40.280 compel discovery. I'm seeking an order directing that we receive this discovery. As we told you,

02:21:46.780 the defense has made clear that they plan on arguing that Kohlberger has an alibi. Well,

02:21:51.980 here's what we know. In August, defense attorney Ann Taylor and her team filed a formal statement

02:21:57.680 disclosing that Kohlberger plans to use an alibi defense.

02:22:01.120 She's required to tell the court that.

02:22:03.360 But she teased that it would be a unique one from the filing.

02:22:07.620 Quote, Mr. Kohlberger has long had a habit of going for drives alone.

02:22:13.420 Often he would go for drives at night.

02:22:14.880 He did so late on November 12th and into November 13th, 2022.

02:22:21.220 Mr. Kohlberger is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time.

02:22:25.500 At this time, there is not a specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohlberger was

02:22:30.480 at each moment of the hours between late night November 12th and early morning November 13th,

02:22:36.100 2022. He was out driving during the late night and early morning hours of November 12th through

02:22:42.880 13th, 2022. Counsel for Mr. Kohlberger is aware that case law broadens the definition of alibi

02:22:49.480 with the statutory requirement of a specific location

02:22:52.700 to more broadly include disclosure of information

02:22:56.280 that tends to state the person claiming alibi

02:22:58.980 was at a place other than the location of an offense.

02:23:03.100 Mr. Kohlberger has complied

02:23:04.440 to the extent possible at this time.

02:23:07.040 Corroboration of Brian Kohlberger

02:23:08.380 not being at 1122 King

02:23:11.000 may be brought out through cross-examination

02:23:13.940 of the state's witnesses.

02:23:15.800 At this time, Mr. Kohlberger cannot be more specific

02:23:18.120 about the possible witnesses and exactly what they will say.

02:23:21.840 The defense has been hampered by the state's own choices.

02:23:24.940 The state chose a secret grand jury

02:23:26.860 rather than the planned preliminary hearing.

02:23:29.700 Had the state moved forward with a preliminary hearing,

02:23:31.720 the defense would have had the opportunity

02:23:34.240 to develop testimony through cross-examination

02:23:36.300 and witness presentation, end quote.

02:23:39.820 That's it.

02:23:41.460 That's his, quote, alibi.

02:23:44.100 He was out driving alone,

02:23:46.640 but there also may be corroboration of him not being at the location brought out through

02:23:52.960 some unspecified future cross-examination of someone and witness presentation but we don't

02:24:00.320 know of exactly whom now we do know that kohlberger's neighbor in washington state

02:24:06.860 said that kohlberger was often active at night but what about that night november 12th leading

02:24:14.280 into the 13th. Could there be more to the story? His lawyers have been diligent. They have pounded

02:24:20.480 the courthouse table with motions, a rat-a-tat-tat of demands for discovery, objections to protective

02:24:25.640 orders, and so on. Even a curious request for the personnel files of three of the cops who played a

02:24:31.820 role in helping to clamp the cuffs on Kohlberger. It's a seemingly desperate strategy that has left

02:24:37.300 the Moscow-Idaho authorities bemused, Howard Bloom reports. In the second floor, Detective

02:24:43.300 shack of the Moscow Police Department building, the mood is, he says, haughty and confident.

02:24:49.980 S-O-D-D-I, the cops taunt derisively. Some other dude did it. How many times have they heard that,

02:24:57.720 and how did those cases work out? We got our man, they insist, and there's no way he's going to

02:25:02.900 wiggle out of this. With an attention-grabbing oratorical drum roll, defense sources enumerate

02:25:08.760 the large lingering mysteries the prosecution has refused to address. And they very pointedly

02:25:15.340 make the case that these inconvenient truths, when lined up end to end, hint at another still

02:25:21.180 untold story. Consider the timeline for the murders, the prosecution asserts, was an extremely

02:25:27.860 tight window. Remember, one victim was on her phone looking at TikTok at 4.12 a.m. and police

02:25:34.980 estimate the suspect was gone by 4.25 a.m. Could a single assassin, a graduate student, not a

02:25:42.060 secario, get the job done with such disciplined professionalism and then disappear into the night

02:25:47.880 without leaving a single drop of his blood in the house, in his car, on his clothes, or in his

02:25:52.500 apartment? The stunned cops arriving on the scene had described what they encountered as a blood

02:25:57.200 bath. Is this lack of blood evidence testimony to the killer's fastidiousness or a prod to go

02:26:04.740 down other ruminative paths. And remember too, Kaylee's father had found a measure of small

02:26:11.140 comfort in the fact that his brave daughter had, the coroner had revealed to him, fought back like

02:26:17.260 a tiger. And yet no traces of cuts, scrapes, or bruises were observed on Brian Kohlberger.

02:26:25.080 Four young, fit targets, and he somehow traipsed away with his pasty skin as smooth and unblemished

02:26:32.820 as any sedentary academics. Then there's the coroner's autopsy reports. What was behind the

02:26:40.600 delay in the determination of Ethan's wounds? The autopsy was performed on November 17th,

02:26:47.700 but the report on his death was not issued for nearly a month, December 15th. Had there been a

02:26:53.260 problem in reaching the findings? A final analysis that had been subject to weeks of debate? The

02:26:59.480 coroner's descriptions of the wounds, as noted in court documents, seems to differ from floor to

02:27:05.340 floor in the house. Kaylee and Maddie, lying in the same bed on the third floor, suffered through

02:27:12.180 visible stab wounds. Yet on the floor below, Zanna succumbed to wounds caused by an edged weapon.

02:27:23.540 What does that mean?

02:27:25.560 Ethan's, again, that's Zanna's boyfriend,

02:27:28.280 were, quote, caused by sharp force injuries.

02:27:32.420 Why the difference?

02:27:33.880 Was there some doubt in the coroner's mind

02:27:35.740 that the wounds were all caused by the same weapon?

02:27:39.440 And speaking of the murder weapon, where is it?

02:27:43.300 The knife, or is it knives?

02:27:45.880 Used in the attack has not been found.

02:27:48.200 There is not an incriminating trace of a weapon

02:27:50.560 that can be tied to Kohlberger, at least not that we know of.

02:27:54.820 But these suspicions are just preludes to the bigger mysteries

02:27:58.020 that keep the defense up at night.

02:28:00.840 In an objection to state's motion for a protective order

02:28:03.560 they had filed late in June,

02:28:06.000 the team zeroed in on a few of the lingering questions.

02:28:09.360 It is a revelatory document and a provocative one.

02:28:13.260 They point out that back in December,

02:28:15.120 the prosecution was made aware of two additional males' DNA

02:28:19.120 found inside the King Road house

02:28:21.480 as well as male DNA on a glove

02:28:23.560 found outside the residence

02:28:25.240 just days after the murders.

02:28:27.220 If the DNA had been Kohlbergers, 0.63

02:28:28.960 the prosecution would have been screaming 0.99

02:28:30.420 this revelation from the Moscow rooftops.

02:28:33.240 The state's stony silence,

02:28:35.000 the defense believes,

02:28:35.820 can mean only one thing.

02:28:37.720 The DNA comes from three other men.

02:28:40.480 And so the obvious

02:28:41.260 and yet very pertinent questions

02:28:42.760 remain unanswered.

02:28:44.040 Who are they?

02:28:45.020 And how do these three unknown men

02:28:46.440 fit into the horrific events

02:28:48.260 of that night?

02:28:49.120 if at all. And there is still another ticking bomb in the court document.

02:28:54.320 The motion dramatically demolishes the tantalizing press reports that had been buzzing around the

02:28:59.900 case for several months. Forget the unfounded stories about online direct messages between

02:29:05.540 Kohlberger and one of the victims. Forget the alleged run-in at a Main Street Moscow restaurant

02:29:11.460 where two of the girls worked. The defense asserts plainly that there is no connection,

02:29:16.820 quote unquote, between Mr. Kohlberger and the victims. And if there is no connection,

02:29:22.740 then there is no motive, no obvious motive anyway. And without a motive, the random brutal killing of

02:29:31.240 four college students by a grad student from a nearby university sure is an enigma. Why?

02:29:37.800 Why would he do it? It doesn't make sense. But there's still another puzzler at the beating

02:29:45.440 heart of this case. Namely, the eight-hour gap between one of the surviving roommates, Dylan

02:29:51.400 Mortensen, first heard disquieting noises in the house and spotted a masked, black-dressed

02:29:57.040 intruder. Police were finally summoned eight hours later. There have been a lot of agile,

02:30:05.100 emphatic offerings to explain away this remarkable delay, and none so far, the defense believes,

02:30:10.160 has been satisfactory or they believe has the ring of truth. Meanwhile, these simmering doubts

02:30:17.440 have only intensified now that the defense has been able to read the roommate's grand jury

02:30:21.860 testimony. A person familiar with the grand jury findings that led to Kohlberger's indictment

02:30:27.120 told Howard Bloom with undisguised bafflement and frustration that Dylan Mortensen's testimony

02:30:33.640 quote raised more questions than it answered. Then the defense, along with virtually everyone

02:30:38.700 else with access to the internet watched a newly released video that showed a pickup truck leaving

02:30:44.820 the neighborhood of the murder scene just minutes after the white Hyundai Elantra. Was this some

02:30:51.160 neighbor heading off at a pre-dawn hour to his early morning job? A Romeo who didn't want to

02:30:56.820 stay for breakfast? Or was it something else a whole lot more significant? Perhaps it was another

02:31:02.780 piece in a complex puzzle that, despite the state's confident assurances, has not yet been

02:31:09.180 satisfactorily pieced together. So the defense has gone on offense. The accumulated doubts have

02:31:17.420 worked to liberate them from poking holes in the prosecution's case. And with this freedom,

02:31:23.420 they have begun to explore new narratives, alternative versions of what might have happened

02:31:29.740 on that fateful night in November on King Road.

02:31:34.060 And if Kohlberger was not the killer

02:31:35.960 or if he was an accomplice rather than the sole perp,

02:31:39.880 then they realized they had to go back

02:31:41.520 to what had been previously brushed over.

02:31:44.340 They had to work their way to an explanation that made sense.

02:31:47.920 And the farther they traveled,

02:31:50.020 according to people familiar

02:31:51.000 with what the defense team is exploring,

02:31:52.500 the more the trail led inexorably to drugs.

02:31:56.420 We know about Kohlberger's past drug use.

02:32:00.860 We also know from a variety of reporting that the area where the murders took place was a hotbed of drug activity.

02:32:07.400 Then last March, a former University of Idaho frat president, a 22-year-old journalism major in his junior year, died.

02:32:16.640 And in the aftermath of his sad and needless demise, new avenues of speculation multiplied, spreading out in previously unexplored and surprising directions.

02:32:26.420 it was spring break and Caden Young was looking to score and he succeeded only to pay with his

02:32:39.880 life that is a thumbnail history of the events as detailed in the initial news stories however

02:32:45.700 the voluminous police reports as well as a conversation with one of the detectives who

02:32:50.660 had led the investigation and with a legal aid lawyer who subsequently got involved offer a more

02:32:55.880 detailed account, one that introduces two new actors to Caden's story and perhaps to ours.

02:33:05.280 There are a couple who quickly caught the defense team's rapt attention and continue to hold it

02:33:10.260 like a magnet. It was all too common, another young life ravaged by fentanyl. And within days,

02:33:17.120 it might very well have become simply another tragic statistic in a national body count that

02:33:21.660 is climbing toward pandemic proportions. But then the police made two arrests in connection

02:33:27.320 with Caden Young's death. Hurrying to room 214 of the Holiday Inn, where Young had first overdosed,

02:33:34.800 the police arrested Emma Bailey, 22, of Moscow, and Demetrius Robinson, 36, of Tacoma, just as

02:33:43.720 they were apparently preparing to leave. They were each charged with one count of conspiracy

02:33:48.500 to commit a violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act.

02:33:52.660 That is, they had allegedly supplied the student

02:33:54.700 with a lethal fentanyl-laced cocaine.

02:33:58.200 They were held on $100,000 bail.

02:34:01.260 Pleading not guilty, but unable to post bail,

02:34:03.920 they were shuffled off to the Lewis County Jail

02:34:05.880 where they were to await their May 30th trial date.

02:34:08.800 The pair spent two months and five days behind bars.

02:34:12.060 And during that time,

02:34:13.080 law enforcement investigators and the press kept digging.

02:34:15.840 and what they unearthed grabbed the attention of the preternaturally curious Kohlberger defense

02:34:22.880 team. Demetrius Robinson, or D as he was widely known in the college towns of both Moscow, Idaho

02:34:29.460 and Pullman, Washington, had quite a rap sheet. Extensive was the adjective the local paper used

02:34:35.780 to describe it. Violent was the modifier, though, that leaped up in many people's minds.

02:34:41.580 Among the eyebrow-raising highlights, a 15-month prison sentence for a second-degree assault

02:34:47.040 in Pullman back in 2018, a second-degree rape investigation two years later, and then in

02:34:53.460 2021, an arrest in Pullman for suspicion of possession of a controlled substance with

02:34:57.960 intent to deliver, and for allegedly assaulting a companion when their alleged partnership

02:35:02.200 went south.

02:35:03.620 While the drug case had fallen apart because of legal concerns over an overly gung-ho search

02:35:08.440 of a hotel room, the fourth degree assault and harassment charges stuck and Robinson served 151

02:35:15.080 days in jail. Also scattered about Robinson's sheet were five charges for driving with a suspended

02:35:21.300 license, one of which landed him in jail for five days. There was an outstanding arrest warrant for

02:35:27.200 another. As for Emma Bailey, her record was more banal. A DUI arrest this past February after she

02:35:35.560 breezed through a red light in Pullman around 2 a.m. When the cops dug deeper, they grew to

02:35:40.540 suspect that the couple were very possibly dealing drugs they had scored in Seattle to the local

02:35:45.580 colleges in Pullman and Moscow. In fact, they discovered in the detective's incident report

02:35:50.480 flatly stated, there were investigations in other jurisdictions for Emma and Demetrius for

02:35:57.220 narcotics trafficking. But just five days before the trial for supplying the lethal cocaine was

02:36:03.360 to begin, a judge dismissed the case. Their legal aid lawyer had zeroed in on a technicality,

02:36:09.820 but it was clearly a very consequential one, the question of prosecutorial jurisdiction.

02:36:16.340 Apparently, they had been scheduled to be tried in the county where the death had occurred

02:36:20.560 rather than where the cocaine had been ingested, but their good fortune might be short-lived.

02:36:28.460 The judge dismissed that case without prejudice,

02:36:31.420 which means it can be refiled in the same court of law

02:36:34.660 if the authorities draft a new

02:36:36.100 and more carefully drawn indictment.

02:36:38.220 Is one in the works?

02:36:40.560 All a fuming Centralia detective

02:36:43.100 who'd been involved in the case from the morning

02:36:45.520 he'd found Young's inert body would say,

02:36:47.860 is we are not going to let this case disappear.

02:36:51.560 And he's not alone.

02:36:53.400 The case hasn't disappeared

02:36:54.560 from the thoughts of the Kohlberger defense team either.

02:36:58.380 Why?

02:36:59.400 What does this have to do with him?

02:37:02.040 It is a touchstone, according to people familiar with their inquiries,

02:37:05.860 that has the team digging deep into the possibility of narcotics trafficking along Greek Row in Moscow

02:37:13.600 and wondering whether these furtive activities might have somehow played a part in the quadruple murders.

02:37:21.800 What if anything they have uncovered is wrapped up tight by the iron bands of the gag order?

02:37:26.960 The overview, offered by the Seattle DEA field office, is a tale of cutthroat international

02:37:32.340 intrigue, a pipeline that runs from China, where the fentanyl precursor chemicals are

02:37:37.180 produced, to the sinister Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Mexico, which manufacture the drugs

02:37:43.100 and then smuggle the too-often-lethal product to their distribution networks in northwestern

02:37:47.920 urban hubs such as Seattle and Spokane.

02:37:51.260 Then, with the eager help of a freelance army of small-time distributors, the tentacles of the octopus reach into the seemingly wholesome all-American counties and college towns, stretching across the great outdoors.

02:38:04.880 That's the view from 1,000 feet.

02:38:08.020 But Sheriff Brett Myers, head of the Quad City Drug Task Force, a multi-jurisdictional team propped up in part by federal money, whose territory includes the university towns of Moscow and Pullman, offers a ground-level account.

02:38:20.860 And it is enough to give anyone whose kid is heading off to college in the area the willies.

02:38:25.900 Matter of factly, the sheriff shares that his task force is working with college kids in the local schools whom they've caught dealing MDMA and cocaine, flipping them and then using the students to go after the big local dealers.

02:38:43.380 And once the scared, witless college kids have helped his team ID the foot soldiers,

02:38:49.140 quote, we go up the ladder to get the people tied to the cartels in the cities.

02:38:55.060 There are a lot of unanswered questions, he acknowledges.

02:38:59.140 Pressed further about the quadruple murder of the Idaho students, he candidly goes on,

02:39:04.060 could it have been a drug-related case? I can't rule it out.

02:39:07.600 It's not improbable, he says, adding, from what I know, that would answer a lot of questions.

02:39:13.380 But did any of the victims know these two accused drug dealers, Bailey and Robinson?

02:39:21.300 Maybe, maybe.

02:39:24.780 Ashlyn Couch, then a University of Idaho senior, was an original signer of the lease, stay with me here, on the King Roadhouse with the others.

02:39:35.500 But she never actually moved in.

02:39:37.840 Nonetheless, she remained a friend as well as a sorority sister of several of the residents.

02:39:42.440 and according to some reports,

02:39:44.100 she would visit from time to time.

02:39:46.500 Couch also follows Emma Bailey,

02:39:49.240 one of our arrestees, on Instagram,

02:39:52.620 which could mean something or nothing.

02:39:55.300 But so we have the person who is the lessor

02:39:57.700 on the King Road house

02:39:59.960 following one of these accused drug dealers on Instagram.

02:40:04.260 It all does lead to another question. 0.88

02:40:06.840 Did Emma Bailey, accused drug dealer,

02:40:09.840 know Brian Kohlberger?

02:40:12.440 We know he had a drug passed.

02:40:14.660 This question has persuaded investigators associated with the defense

02:40:18.160 to revisit Brian Kohlberger's first day in Moscow.

02:40:23.420 That was three months before the murders,

02:40:26.420 when he met his next-door neighbor, Christian Martinez.

02:40:30.260 It was then that Martinez invited his new neighbor, Brian Kohlberger, to a pool party.

02:40:35.160 This is back on July 9th at The Grove,

02:40:39.120 a clappered complex of buildings filled with college kids,

02:40:41.540 It's mostly University of Idaho students.

02:40:43.740 Just a 15 minute or so drive across the state line in Moscow.

02:40:48.140 Recall Brian lived in Washington state.

02:40:51.280 Thanks, I have to run and get trunks,

02:40:54.200 Kohlberger texted back to Martinez.

02:40:56.840 And so while Zach DJ Grape Vinyl Cartwright,

02:41:01.960 a muscular PhD in food science

02:41:04.080 with the countenance of an Aztec chieftain

02:41:06.380 and a jet black man bun,

02:41:08.440 manned the turntables at this party,

02:41:11.580 Kohlberger, in his new trunks, perched at the shallow end of the large pool.

02:41:17.280 Bad Bunny wailed from the speakers, reports Bloom, imploring party, party.

02:41:22.980 Chicken and steak were being grilled to make tacos.

02:41:25.760 There was beer, wine, tequila.

02:41:27.980 The sun was blinding.

02:41:29.880 There must have been a hundred or more college kids on the deck surrounding the two large ovals

02:41:33.560 that formed the pristine blue pool.

02:41:35.860 And just down the hill from the housing complex, close enough for Bad Bunny to come rattling through its windows, was the Moscow police headquarters.

02:41:46.400 Taking a seat next to Kohlberger that day was Beseth Salamjan, a laid-back, darkly handsome, off-and-on WSU undergraduate who was friends with Kohlberger's new neighbor, Martinez, who had invited Kohlberger to the party, as well as DJ Cartwright.

02:42:05.060 Salaam John and Kohlberger got to talking.

02:42:08.080 And while the details of their conversation have long been forgotten,

02:42:11.400 Salaam John vividly remembers how, quote,

02:42:13.860 the dude would talk chin up straight to my face. 0.99

02:42:17.460 We were just shooting shit, he says, 0.99

02:42:19.660 but he was definitely one serious dude. 0.99

02:42:21.480 Nice enough, though.

02:42:23.060 Then Salaam John stood up and went off to dance.

02:42:25.940 So Kohlberger, perhaps not wanting to be a wallflower

02:42:29.400 as the party was gathering steam,

02:42:31.380 went over to talk to the DJ.

02:42:33.220 Quote, he was asking me about my speakers,

02:42:36.200 all kind of technical stuff, Cartwright remembers.

02:42:39.780 But he had this way about him.

02:42:41.780 You know those people who don't understand personal space?

02:42:44.900 He was one of them.

02:42:46.240 He'd get real close.

02:42:47.280 It was off-putting, says Cartwright.

02:42:50.000 Finally, Cartwright told his new acquaintance,

02:42:52.260 quote, I'm DJing, man.

02:42:53.860 I'll catch you later.

02:42:55.500 With that, Kohlberger returned to the shallow end of the pool.

02:42:58.980 And before too long, Salam John returned too.

02:43:02.660 And he witnessed two events that in their pregnant way are provocative footnotes

02:43:06.320 to all that would happen in Moscow just a few months later.

02:43:10.980 He watched as Kohlberger abruptly jumped up without warning and approached a girl 0.84

02:43:15.120 in a black thong bikini with pink hair and a complex tattoo design on her left thigh.

02:43:21.200 Then Kohlberger, after only a brief conversation, asked her for her phone number, and he got it.

02:43:27.420 Next, as if a man on a mission, he turned to the pink-haired woman's friend, also in

02:43:33.220 a black two-piece, and asked for her number, too, and he succeeded once again.

02:43:39.240 Only after that, perhaps feeling he had accomplished all he'd set out to do, more, in fact, Brian

02:43:45.840 quietly shuffled off while the party was just hitting a groove.

02:43:49.800 He said no goodbyes.

02:43:51.880 Did he ever call the two women?

02:43:53.620 They insist he did not, at least not long enough to speak to them.

02:43:57.860 As it happens, both women received several hang-up calls in the aftermath of the party,

02:44:02.920 but neither of them ever had any thoughts about who the culprit might have been

02:44:07.120 until Kohlberger's arrest.

02:44:10.700 And by then, the FBI was inquiring into what went on at that pool party.

02:44:16.280 The agents commandeered a room at the red brick Lightly Student Services Building

02:44:20.820 adjacent to the main WSU campus.

02:44:23.060 And with a professional politeness that impressed the students, began interviewing anyone who knew Brian Kohlberger.

02:44:30.400 In the process, they inquired if anyone had any photos or even a video from the July 9th pool party.

02:44:37.120 A few were produced.

02:44:38.260 It was not an extensive record of the festivities, more a haphazard collection of snapshots and at least one brief, somewhat random video.

02:44:47.780 The agents were searching for Gonsalves,

02:44:51.900 Mogan, Kernodal, or Chapin.

02:44:55.360 They could not find them,

02:44:57.020 which means they weren't at the pool party

02:44:59.320 or they simply did not appear in the photos

02:45:01.820 or the video that were taken that day.

02:45:04.900 Or maybe they just weren't in the handful of photos

02:45:07.740 and videos that were shared with the Bureau.

02:45:10.880 But what if the FBI's review done last November

02:45:13.720 in the early stages of this investigation

02:45:15.580 was too narrow? What if they had scrutinized the pictures in the video and had ignored the

02:45:20.980 possible presence of another guest whose appearance could put a whole new spin on what

02:45:27.460 happened at the house on King Road? What if accused drug dealer Emma Bailey had been at the

02:45:36.760 pool party? If she had been, then she might very well have also been approached by Kohlberger on

02:45:43.320 the make. And if, as the police allege, she was in the habit of dealing recreational drugs,

02:45:49.600 it might have been a connection a one-time heroin addict like Kohlberger would have relished. This

02:45:54.800 is all speculation, but the defense is looking into it. It might have been a connection that,

02:46:00.640 unlike his approaches to the two other female partygoers, could have had some longevity. In fact,

02:46:06.620 he might have even visited Bailey from time to time at her home in Moscow, which, as it happens,

02:46:15.180 was tucked into the very end of a cul-de-sac a minute or so away from the murder house by car,

02:46:22.220 which would put it very much within the same incriminating cell tower radius as the scene of

02:46:27.740 the crime on King Road. So was Emma at this party? Howard Bloom talked to seven people who had been

02:46:37.380 there and the responses he received, all shared after a good deal of thought, ran the gamut from

02:46:42.760 I think she was to she might have been. But no one said she definitely was there. And no one said

02:46:51.080 she definitely was not. In short, there remains something for the defense to seek its teeth into.

02:46:57.500 a hypothetical alternative to the version of the case presented by the prosecution.

02:47:02.460 Now, this theory, as laid out by Bloom, is just that, a theory.

02:47:06.660 But the defense will surely try to suggest to the jury

02:47:09.240 that there were other reasons for Kohlberger to have been out driving that night,

02:47:13.360 perhaps tapping into an old habit on a night he would later wish he had spent at home.

02:47:20.560 Keep in mind, the defense does not need to prove anything here.

02:47:24.520 It just needs to muddy the waters enough to create reasonable doubt.

02:47:29.140 In our next and final episode, we dig into the as-yet unanswered questions that may affect the jury's determination on that score.

02:47:39.740 We'll see you then.

02:47:46.900 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm Megyn Kelly.

02:47:50.320 All week, we've been bringing you

02:47:51.840 a special edition of the show

02:47:53.540 where we take you inside the murder case

02:47:55.860 that has captivated the country

02:47:57.240 for the better part of a year.

02:47:59.440 The story of the quadruple murder in Moscow, Idaho

02:48:02.660 and of suspect Brian Kohlberger.

02:48:05.640 Today, we conclude our series.

02:48:07.820 We brought you the details of the murder,

02:48:10.060 the arrest, the potential paths

02:48:12.100 for the prosecution and defense

02:48:13.620 when the trial begins next year.

02:48:15.220 And we examined the dark side

02:48:17.020 of Kohlberger and his past.

02:48:19.740 And now, some of the unanswered questions that are still swirling about this unfathomable crime.

02:48:26.820 As this concludes, I would love to hear your thoughts on all of it.

02:48:31.360 What stands out to you about this case?

02:48:33.580 Have you made up your mind about Kohlberger's guilt?

02:48:36.940 And if not, why not?

02:48:38.460 What lingering questions do you still have?

02:48:41.120 This case will be front and center in 2024.

02:48:43.580 We'll be covering the trial as it happens.

02:48:45.240 Remember, cameras will be in the courtroom for this one, which will be absolutely fascinating.

02:48:50.940 Email me your thoughts on this program, on the Kohlberger case, at megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.

02:49:00.340 All right, megan at megankelly.com.

02:49:03.600 And if you go to megankelly.com and sign up there for our weekly email, we'll provide you with behind-the-scenes details on the reporting of this case.

02:49:15.240 As with our previous episodes, today's features the writing and the reporting of legendary crime

02:49:22.860 journalist and author Howard Bloom. Bloom has been reporting on this case for nearly a year.

02:49:28.440 He's written compellingly about it for Air Mail News. His forthcoming book on the case will be

02:49:33.060 published in the spring by HarperCollins. Keep that on your radar. But for now, big questions

02:49:38.920 include the following. One, assuming it was Kohlberger, as the police allege, why? Why did

02:49:46.680 he do it? What could his motive have been? Was he targeting a specific victim and then the crime

02:49:53.560 spun out of control? Two, if it was Kohlberger, is it possible he had help? Could there be an

02:50:01.280 accomplice in the picture here? And three, what about the two surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen

02:50:08.160 and Bethany Funk. What did they see? Why didn't they call the police right away?

02:50:14.460 And what are they up to now? As we tackle those questions, one name in particular stands out

02:50:19.560 as a person who has been at the forefront of asking questions and pushing for answers.

02:50:25.420 It's not a podcaster or a crime reporter, although there have been plenty of those too.

02:50:31.380 It's a dad, a father with a deep and tragic connection to this story,

02:50:35.800 The four victims in the case, Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Gonsalves, Zanna Kurnodal, and Maddie Mogan, all their parents have spoken out on behalf of their children, but one father in particular seems to have led the push for answers, and that is Steve Gonsalves, Kaylee's dad.

02:50:55.060 Within weeks, he was out on all the national news channels.

02:50:58.300 You can't imagine sending your girl to college and then they come back in a, you know, in a, in a, it was fast and nobody suffered and nobody felt like, like that kind of pain.

02:51:13.560 Every day that goes by and you don't hear anything, what does that do?

02:51:17.320 Just tells me statistically I'm going to have to do more work myself.

02:51:21.260 I'm not going to sit here and just be a crybaby dad.

02:51:24.840 It's going to be a cold case if we don't do something within the next week or two.

02:51:29.460 He stayed on it, talking after Kohlberger's arrest and arraignment.

02:51:33.620 I'm just like everyone else. I want to know exactly what's going on.

02:51:37.040 I want to see all the evidence.

02:51:38.000 All the information will come out, but it doesn't have to come out in multiple times, in multiple ways.

02:51:43.320 And continuing to push for the facts to get out to the public and to his family.

02:51:47.920 He and his wife, Christy, spoke to a local news outlet.

02:51:50.760 It's been almost a year. I mean, it's hard to believe, right?

02:51:54.460 How are you guys doing?

02:51:55.780 I think people would love to know that.

02:51:58.420 I think we're doing the best we can.

02:52:01.760 And I think that that is to be thankful to all the people that are wondering about us.

02:52:10.020 They really get us through.

02:52:12.560 You know, co-workers, friends, they're like family now.

02:52:15.720 And I think it would be much harder without all the love and support.

02:52:22.700 Yeah.

02:52:22.920 We've got a page where we're able to talk to people all across the world

02:52:26.540 that this has made an impact and change in their life, so that helps.

02:52:31.960 Behind the scenes, Steve has been active too,

02:52:35.140 doing his own detective work before and after Kohlberger's arrest.

02:52:38.660 He says he needed to know if all the facts were uncovered.

02:52:41.240 He needed to keep pushing.

02:52:43.380 As Howard Bloom writes, among those Steve tracked down early in the case

02:52:47.340 was Hunter Johnson, Ethan Chapin's frat brother and best friend.

02:52:53.700 Just before noon on November 13th, Hunter Johnson had been summoned by the two distraught survivors

02:52:59.640 to the King Roadhouse, where he had discovered Ethan's body. Days later, he gave his eyewitness

02:53:06.040 account to Kaylee's dad, Steve, as a soldier might. Straightforward, factual, and without

02:53:12.700 either embellishment or emotion. It was only when he finished that the two men, both overwhelmed,

02:53:17.920 at last convulsed into tears. Steve also made a point of knocking on the doors of the houses

02:53:25.020 adjacent to the murder scene and interrogating the neighbors. He was going where he felt he had

02:53:29.900 to go, but his mission had not produced the desired result. Over a month had passed since

02:53:35.920 the murders, and there had been no arrests, only vague statements about a missing Hyundai Elantra

02:53:41.820 that had been spotted near the King Roadhouse the night of the murders.

02:53:45.820 The authorities had yet to name a suspect.

02:53:47.800 It was infuriating.

02:53:49.400 The prospect of his daughter's murder becoming one more cold case was torture.

02:53:55.100 But as much as he needed to see a perp being let off in handcuffs,

02:53:59.280 Steve Gonsalves was also chasing after something else.

02:54:03.140 He needed to know why.

02:54:05.380 Why these kids?

02:54:06.520 Why this house?

02:54:08.380 Why had this nightmare enveloped his family's life?

02:54:10.880 For his own peace of mind, he required a motive.

02:54:16.020 And without this knowledge, nothing in his life from November 13th onward would ever make sense.

02:54:22.280 He did posit to Court TV in June that perhaps jealousy was a factor.

02:54:28.500 They're just two girls that were always happy, always filming.

02:54:32.240 So I think maybe he just seen that happiness and there's something in him that was jealous of the fact that

02:54:38.680 two people could love each other and be like the best friends and um i think that really rubbed him

02:54:45.940 wrong and got you know got him thinking about why do they have this great life and i don't

02:54:51.720 and i think that's whoever he picked that'll be the back story is uh just a jealousy of their

02:54:59.540 their lifestyle steve remains open to the possibility that others might also have been

02:55:07.560 involved here, according to texts provided to Bloom. It seems to Steve quite possible that there

02:55:14.380 were more perpetrators in the house on King Road on the night his daughter and her friends were

02:55:18.140 killed, and if there were, they must still be at large. He is furious that Kohlberger's trial,

02:55:25.460 which had been scheduled to start on October 2nd, has been postponed indefinitely. He fears,

02:55:30.620 he's complained, according to Bloom, that the trial will not occur for many months or even years,

02:55:34.900 And he's particularly incensed by the no-nonsense gag order that severely limits what the law enforcement authorities, the lawyers, and even the families of the victims can publicly say about the case.

02:55:47.760 It is not just that he deems this a violation of his fundamental constitutional rights.

02:55:53.320 Rather, the paucity of specific intelligence has created a vacuum that is being filled by rumors, half-truths, and crackpot lies.

02:56:02.500 And once these malignant seeds are planted, they grow tall and wild on the Internet.

02:56:08.100 Steve needs answers, not rumors.

02:56:10.860 And so despite the arrest of a suspect, he has not abandoned his quest.

02:56:15.560 He has a clear mission, as he told News Nation in May.

02:56:18.740 I feel like we have a mission, we have a job to do, we have things that have to happen.

02:56:22.440 And when I see those things happening, that helps me understand that we're going in the right direction.

02:56:29.480 And that's always better than just sitting and waiting for who knows what's going to happen.

02:56:38.480 And it's not simply vanity, the belief that one middle-aged guy with only a background in IT can get to the bottom of things in a special way.

02:56:48.460 It's fear that propels him, the fear that if he waits passively for the cops finally to share what little they have managed to uncover, it might be too late.

02:56:56.960 the remaining unidentified perpetrators will have gone to ground and justice will not be secured

02:57:03.700 nor will he ever get the terrible satisfaction of knowing the whole story he will never achieve

02:57:09.180 the state of grace that comes he wants to believe with understanding a motive he will never know

02:57:15.360 the answer to the question at the beating heart of this case why and so for the past year he has

02:57:22.380 plowed on. It has not been easygoing or always fruitful. For one cruel example, early on,

02:57:29.700 an enticing tip came his way, according to the texts from a source he described as a, quote,

02:57:34.660 jailhouse snitch. That's who gave him the tip. It was a tale that offered to tie up all the loose

02:57:41.100 ends of the case, and spurred on by that promise, both Steve and the private detective he had hired

02:57:46.100 fanned out with their inquiries into several states, energized by the intoxicating possibility

02:57:51.640 that he was on the verge of accomplishing what the professionals had failed to do.

02:57:56.140 But in the bitter end, it was nothing more than an elaborate con,

02:58:00.740 a malicious scheme to squeeze some money out of a grieving family's misery.

02:58:05.860 The experience was demoralizing.

02:58:09.400 As for the rumors of a drug deal gone bad being the underlying motive,

02:58:13.540 Steve had been told by the authorities that the toxicity reports on all four of the victims

02:58:18.080 established that they had no drugs in their system.

02:58:22.160 Besides, if they wanted to score some pot,

02:58:24.180 there was no need to get involved with a street dealer.

02:58:27.180 The kids, he pointed out, could go down a street

02:58:29.280 and in eight miles, there was a store

02:58:31.680 where they could easily make a buy,

02:58:33.940 despite the fact that marijuana remained illegal in Idaho.

02:58:37.800 Christy, his wife, went with them once to check it out.

02:58:40.960 He texted the friend, reports Bloom.

02:58:45.000 News Nation's Brian Enten asked prosecutor Bill Thompson

02:58:48.120 in November, 2022, if drugs were involved

02:58:51.420 in the case and the veteran d.a made no bones about the answer could drugs be involved in all

02:58:59.320 of this i have not heard that there's any suspicion that drugs played a role in the killings

02:59:04.320 so not like a drug deal gone bad or something like that i am not aware of anything like that no

02:59:09.720 what else did steve learn as he did his own investigation into his daughter's murder

02:59:18.260 Kohlberger had purchased a dark blue Dickies long sleeve work uniform at the Walmart in Pullman, Washington, not long before the murders was one thing he learned.

02:59:29.820 The authorities had a copy of the $49.99 receipt, and they also now had a theory to explain how Kohlberger had managed to escape from the crime scene without a scratch and without leaving an incriminating drop of blood in his getaway car or his apartment.

02:59:46.480 Perhaps he had worn the work uniform during the murders

02:59:48.880 and then had disrobed before he got behind the wheel

02:59:51.800 of his Hyundai Elantra for his circuitous drive

02:59:54.920 back to his apartment.

02:59:56.760 Perhaps, the authorities hypothesized,

02:59:59.260 he had stuffed the work suit into a plastic garbage bag

03:00:02.120 and then shoved it into his trunk.

03:00:04.820 Only authorities could find no sign of the Dickies outfit.

03:00:08.580 The police had looked high and low,

03:00:10.200 but they could not find it

03:00:11.780 just as they could not locate the murder weapon.

03:00:15.160 They had a receipt for a K-Bar knife he had purchased, Brian, online, months before the killings, but this too had seemingly vanished.

03:00:26.440 And as long as these two crucial pieces of evidence remained unavailable, what the killer wore and what the killer used,

03:00:34.540 Steve feared the building case against Kohlberger would remain more open than shut.

03:00:39.840 Even more troubling, if true, was what Steve had learned from people who had spoken to members of

03:00:43.960 the grand jury who had been presented with the prosecution's case. It centered on the alleged

03:00:49.180 behavior of the two roommates who had miraculously survived the night unscathed. We made a reference

03:00:55.140 to it earlier. How, he wondered, could they have been so blissfully unaware, sleeping? Through the

03:01:01.920 savage pre-dawn stabbing murders of four people in a narrow house with paper-thin walls.

03:01:08.960 Steve had been told that the two survivors allegedly had not only been awake while the killings had taken place, but that they had heard everything.

03:01:19.320 More astonishingly, his grand jury sources alleged that the two girls had been texting one another as the murderer methodically went from one room to the next.

03:01:30.420 Of course, if that's true, police will have seen the records.

03:01:34.520 All of those texts will have been recorded.

03:01:36.560 The possibility that two people had a sense of the horror while it occurred and had not acted, calling neither friends nor 911, left Steve floored.

03:01:46.280 Again, this is according to Bloom.

03:01:48.380 And no less confounding, they had, if his sources were as knowledgeable as he believed, then let hour after hour tick away before they finally decided to summon friends.

03:01:58.860 It added an entirely new band of mystery to a crime that was already bound by so many unanswered questions.

03:02:06.320 Wracked by frustration and despair, all Steve could do was send a disheartened text to one

03:02:12.340 of his fellow internet detectives, quote, there is so much more to this story than is in the media.

03:02:17.900 The time gap between when at least one roommate heard and possibly saw the intruder and when 9-1-1

03:02:25.160 was called remains one of the strangest things about this case. Why neither Dylan nor Bethany,

03:02:32.820 who was also home that night, called 911 until more than seven hours after the murders

03:02:37.660 remains unclear. In the end, while we do not know precisely who made the 911 call,

03:02:43.740 we know it was not ultimately one of those roommates who called the police at all. It was

03:02:48.260 a friend calling from Dylan Mortensen's phone. Murders around 4 a.m. and no phone call until

03:02:55.600 almost noon. Sure, it was a weekend. College kids, they sleep late and tend to sleep soundly.

03:03:02.820 but we have to go back to the affidavit where we learned that while roommate Bethany Funk was

03:03:08.040 sleeping through the entire ordeal, at least according to what she told police, Dylan Mortensen

03:03:12.660 was awake. A reminder, here's what we learned. And the initials DM are for Dylan Mortensen.

03:03:19.960 DM stated, this is from the police affidavit. She originally went to sleep in her bedroom on

03:03:24.300 the Southeast side of the second floor. DM stated she was awoken at approximately 4 AM

03:03:29.720 by what she stated sounded like Gonsalves playing with her dog

03:03:33.760 in one of the upstairs bedrooms, which were located on the third floor.

03:03:38.220 A short time later, DM said she heard who she thought was Gonsalves

03:03:42.420 say something to the effect of, there's someone here.

03:03:46.660 A review of records obtained from a forensic download of Zanna Kurnodal's phone

03:03:51.400 show this could also have been Kurnodal,

03:03:55.400 as her cellular phone indicated she was likely awake

03:03:58.160 and using TikTok at approximately 4.12 a.m.

03:04:03.680 DM stated she looked out of her bedroom

03:04:05.480 but did not see anything when she heard the comment

03:04:07.980 about someone being in the house.

03:04:11.300 DM stated she opened her door for a second time

03:04:13.940 when she heard what she thought was crying

03:04:15.920 coming from Kernodal's room.

03:04:18.500 DM then said she heard a male voice

03:04:20.220 say something to the effect of,

03:04:21.860 it's okay, I'm going to help you.

03:04:24.560 At approximately 4.17 a.m., a security camera located at 1112 King Road, a residence immediately to the northwest of 1122 King Road, picked up distorted audio of what sounded like voices or a whimper followed by a loud thud.

03:04:43.500 A dog can also be heard barking numerous times starting at 4.17 a.m.

03:04:48.440 The security camera is less than 50 feet from the west wall of Kernodal's bedroom.

03:04:53.380 room. DM stated she opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure

03:05:00.980 clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking toward her.

03:05:06.840 DM described the figure as 5'10 or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with

03:05:12.360 bushy eyebrows. The male walked past DM as she stood in a, quote, frozen shock phase, end quote.

03:05:20.860 The mail walked toward the back sliding glass door. DM locked herself in her room after seeing

03:05:27.060 the mail. DM did not state that she recognized the mail. This leads investigators to believe

03:05:32.420 that the murderer left the scene. So a frozen shock phase, that appears to be the phrase given

03:05:40.860 by Dylan to police as outlined in that affidavit. But what else do we know? First, very early on,

03:05:47.400 questions about Dylan's actions that night became a public conversation, even among those closest to

03:05:52.260 the victims. Initially, the attorney representing the Gonsalves family, Shannon Gray, defended

03:05:58.320 Dylan's actions, saying that Dylan must have been scared to death and was still a victim in this

03:06:03.440 case when he called into Fox News in January. No, no 911 calls. I mean, that raises a great

03:06:10.360 many issues. How how are you kind of sorting that together? Well, you remember, she's a victim in

03:06:17.080 this case. Everybody kind of forgets that. She is still a victim in this case. And the fact that

03:06:25.320 she was able to give some additional identification, I think, is beneficial to the case. She was able

03:06:30.380 to give kind of hype and build and what they looked like a little bit, bushy eyebrows, things 0.98

03:06:37.200 along those lines, and in regards to going back into her room. And she was scared. She was scared

03:06:43.360 to death, and rightly so. But according to the Daily Mail, Ethan Chapin's sister-in-law posted

03:06:50.520 on Reddit that Dee, which we understand to mean Dylan Mortensen, quote, supposedly called all the

03:06:58.060 girls in the house after crying and screaming stopped, and no one answered, and she still 0.79

03:07:04.260 didn't call the police. She goes on, quote, she needs to explain herself and her actions that

03:07:12.040 night. We don't have anything more from the sister-in-law on that, but you can bet if she

03:07:19.660 knows something along these lines, she may be a witness. The reason Dylan and Bethany did not

03:07:30.800 call 911 remains a mystery to this day, one of the biggest of the case. Perhaps it is what Dylan

03:07:36.180 told police the next day that she was just paralyzed with fear for seven hours? Multiple

03:07:43.760 reports suggest that we expect a trial. We will hear from both roommates in their own words as

03:07:50.060 both women would likely testify. How helpful their testimony will be for the prosecution

03:07:55.140 or the defense remains to be seen. Koberger's defense team tried to subpoena roommate Bethany 0.89

03:08:01.320 Funk in April to testify at Kohlberger's scheduled preliminary hearing. After fighting

03:08:06.940 this subpoena, she eventually agreed to be interviewed at home in Nevada. The Kohlberger

03:08:12.280 defense initially alleged that Bethany Funk had information that is, quote, exculpatory to the

03:08:18.200 defendant, meaning potentially supportive of his innocence. We don't know why they might believe

03:08:24.160 that or whether they really do. But what we do know is that if either roommate talks at trial,

03:08:30.480 We will see it.

03:08:31.340 Cameras will be there.

03:08:32.760 The televised nature of this trial is something I discussed with former prosecutor Marsha

03:08:37.360 Clark earlier this year.

03:08:39.080 She brought her O.J. Simpson trial experience into her answer.

03:08:42.840 The downsides are huge.

03:08:45.420 You know, the problem that you face, of course, is that it turns into a circus.

03:08:48.640 Now, in fairness, if you have a judge who knows how to keep the guardrails on, it can

03:08:54.040 be fine.

03:08:54.640 but if he doesn't and he just lets the cameras you know be turned on 24 7 it's a nightmare and

03:09:01.200 you wind up having people come forward who just want the limelight and really have nothing to say

03:09:05.160 or you have people that are afraid of the limelight and have something to say and don't

03:09:09.180 want to come forward you have lawyers who are you know stumping for camera time and face time

03:09:14.480 and you know and extending things interminably with no real argument to make because they want

03:09:20.640 to be famous you have prosecutors who probably do the same thing um and in some instances and

03:09:26.000 you know you have a judge who sits down for a six-part interview with the news anchor to talk

03:09:31.180 about his life in his past so i don't know where i pulled that one from so i do um so i mean it

03:09:38.780 causes these kinds of distortions and it does cause a circus so you know i understand the problem

03:09:44.520 And Fred Goldman said, and he changed my mind, but the world would never know what the evidence really was.

03:09:52.420 The world would never know and bother to read the newspapers after the fact about all of the evidence that we were able to produce.

03:09:58.700 A huge, overwhelming amount of evidence of guilt.

03:10:01.660 He was right.

03:10:02.820 You know, if you have the people moving around in the courtroom, people pay attention in a different way.

03:10:07.060 so you know i've come down on the side of having a certain kind of thing where you allow the cameras

03:10:13.680 in the courtroom when the jury is in the courtroom so that what is disseminated to the public is what

03:10:18.300 the jury sees but when they when the jury is not there and you're having hearings about the evidence

03:10:23.080 that should and should not come in etc that kind of thing then you should not have cameras in the

03:10:27.740 courtroom you can have print reporters that's fine but having the cameras in the courtroom

03:10:31.700 should be banned when the jury's not there.

03:10:34.240 And with that kind of caveat, I think it's a good thing.

03:10:37.760 In the one year since the murders,

03:10:39.960 Bethany and Dylan have kept a low profile.

03:10:42.320 They have not spoken publicly a single time.

03:10:45.100 We know Bethany lives in Nevada,

03:10:46.920 while Dylan was recently seen in social media posts

03:10:50.280 partying with friends at a University of Idaho sorority

03:10:53.640 and at Halloween parties.

03:10:56.380 Now we turn to unanswered question number two.

03:11:00.500 How likely is it that Brian Kohlberger acted alone

03:11:03.840 if he is indeed the perpetrator?

03:11:06.740 Is it possible he had an accomplice

03:11:08.800 or more than one accomplice?

03:11:11.220 Much of this speculation stems from the fact

03:11:13.180 that Kohlberger is someone with no known criminal history.

03:11:16.880 And yet in what appears to be his first serious crime ever,

03:11:21.360 he brutally stabs four individuals to death, 0.68

03:11:23.880 killing them without detection

03:11:25.240 and commits this heinous act in less than 15 minutes?

03:11:30.320 Initially, one of the storylines that led some to believe there might be another person involved

03:11:34.240 was when Kohlberger's defense team filed a motion early on in the case,

03:11:38.280 requesting, among other things, information about a potential, quote, co-defendant in the case.

03:11:43.740 This seemed to connect to an early question from Kohlberger himself to police in Pennsylvania

03:11:48.780 when he reportedly asked them, after he'd been arrested, if they had arrested anyone else.

03:11:54.540 We quickly learned, however, that there was no co-defendant,

03:11:57.920 and the prosecution was and appears to be working under the assumption that Kohlberger acted alone.

03:12:05.340 And now we look to unanswered question number three, and it's really the big one.

03:12:11.900 Why? What possibly could be the motive for this brutal and horrifying act? And along those same

03:12:21.060 lines, does any evidence point to any of the four victims as being the specific target of the

03:12:26.960 murderer here? On that question, here's what we know. First, we know based on reporting from News

03:12:32.920 Nation that Kaylee Gonsalves, that her injuries were considered, quote, significantly more brutal

03:12:39.400 than those of her roommate and best friend, Maddie Mogan. We have just confirmed News Nation

03:12:47.080 is learning that Kaylee Gonsalves' injuries were significantly more brutal than her best friend

03:12:54.040 Maddie's injuries, which may end up being a very, very important piece of evidence when it comes to

03:12:59.980 determining who the target was in this attack. Does that indicate a particular focus by the

03:13:06.240 killer on Kaylee? But then again, those murders occurred in Maddie's room, not Kaylee's. In fact,

03:13:13.160 Kaylee had recently moved out. She was only visiting her best friend the night of the murders.

03:13:18.580 So if Kaylee was the main target, how could the killer have known that she was even in the house, never mind exactly where?

03:13:28.420 In September, Kaylee's family told CBS further details about what they have been told by authorities.

03:13:35.640 Kaylee's mom said it appeared Maddie was killed first and that perhaps Kaylee was awakened by that attack and tried to escape.

03:13:44.000 The bed was up against the wall. The headboard was touching the wall and the left side of the

03:13:49.680 bed was touching the wall. And we believe that Maddie was on the outside and Kaylee was on the

03:13:55.260 inside. According to coroner Mabbitt, the killer's first victim was Maddie, says Steve. And then

03:14:02.320 from Maddie, he moved on to your daughter. You believe she had awakened at that point? Yes.

03:14:09.460 Yeah, there's evidence to show that she awakened and tried to get out of that situation.

03:14:14.400 The way the bed was set up is what...

03:14:17.180 She was trapped.

03:14:17.880 She was trapped.

03:14:18.800 There are reports of defensive wounds found on Kaylee's body, on Zana Kurnodals too, reportedly.

03:14:25.780 No such reports about Ethan or Maddie.

03:14:29.420 But what does any of that mean for motive or targeting?

03:14:34.500 Kaylee's parents told CBS News they believe an Instagram account belonging to Brian Kohlberger was following Kaylee and Maddie.

03:14:42.880 They believe they had found a possible connection through Instagram and immediately took these screenshots.

03:14:51.200 From our investigation of the account, it appeared to be the real Brian Kohlberger account.

03:14:56.620 Among the people this account was following were Maddie Mogan and Kaylee Gonsalves.

03:15:01.720 However, that has not been corroborated, and others have disputed it.

03:15:11.160 In court, they'll have to prove it.

03:15:13.260 But whether there was a connection or not still does not explain motive.

03:15:18.520 If it was Kohlberger, why did he do it?

03:15:22.340 As we told you in episode three, Kohlberger was a criminology student.

03:15:26.680 His past several years had been spent studying crimes in detail.

03:15:31.380 While at DeSales getting his master's degree, he posted a questionnaire to Reddit, which

03:15:35.780 we went over.

03:15:37.100 In retrospect, it appears ominous.

03:15:39.940 Hello, my name is Brian, and I'm inviting you to participate in a research project that

03:15:44.880 seeks to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing

03:15:50.300 a crime.

03:15:52.080 In particular, this study seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal

03:15:57.120 offense with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience. To the

03:16:03.640 average citizen, these questions may sound bizarre, but experts say it is not unusual for criminologists

03:16:10.040 to want to better understand the criminals they study. Or maybe it's just the reason many criminals

03:16:17.040 commit a murder. Maybe that's what was at issue here. Psychosis, rage, jealousy, untreated mental

03:16:27.960 illness, or evil. As Howard Bloom writes at the end of one of his many excellent pieces on this

03:16:40.180 case, maybe it was a matter of deep-seated envy and resentment from a man whose life had been

03:16:46.280 plagued with anger, disconnection, and an inability to feel human. As Bloom writes,

03:16:52.920 he yearned for the fun he saw at that house. Can you imagine looking at that wild night,

03:16:59.020 all the happy frivolity from some hideout in the shadows, and at the same time knowing deep

03:17:04.540 in your dark heart that you would never be a part of anything that exuberant, that beautiful?

03:17:10.440 It would be hell, a hell of unsatisfied desire that could plunge someone deeper and deeper

03:17:15.960 into a tormenting rage, an envy that would be an all-consuming sickness, and in the end there

03:17:22.260 would be no way out, just the deed. There are other questions that remain in this case, like

03:17:29.680 where the murder weapon is as we've gone over, and the clothes he must have worn. So far we believe

03:17:36.640 the police may not have any of that evidence. Perhaps they were dumped along the oddly circuitous

03:17:44.100 wooded drive Kohlberger allegedly took from the murders back home to WSU.

03:17:51.800 As we look back on this case and this week, I want to leave you with some final thoughts from

03:17:56.620 past guests who have been on this show about this case, this suspect, and what is to come.

03:18:03.020 Couldn't imagine him not leaving DNA behind because it's such a violent crime scene.

03:18:07.520 He stabbed four people multiple times. And the chances of either the knife not slipping and cutting him or one of those victims fighting back and potentially getting his DNA under their fingernails or just dropping a single hair seems highly unlikely to me.

03:18:24.920 The sheath, if I'm the defense lawyer, does not bother me because somebody, you can have an

03:18:30.920 explanation for that. There's an innocent explanation for that if it's on the button.

03:18:35.540 Somebody else had the knife, obviously some other person. The bushy eyebrows, that doesn't bother

03:18:41.940 me. If, in fact, as you posit that there is victim's DNA in his apartment, that's a real

03:18:50.460 problem i don't know that it's game over but that's a real real problem when people hear dna

03:18:56.380 nowadays they do get that largely it goes right and largely it doesn't uh tag somebody else you

03:19:03.720 know it doesn't tag the wrong person and i'm sure they're going to be very careful in handling the

03:19:08.180 samples i would imagine knowing that that's going to probably be the most significant evidence that

03:19:13.640 they get and the kind you're talking about the defendant's uh dna all over the room the victim's

03:19:19.220 DNA in his room, that sort of thing, that kind of combination is, I think it's a knockout

03:19:24.320 punch if that's what they come up with.

03:19:25.860 When those handcuffs went on, him, essentially, if he's the guy, his life is over.

03:19:35.520 Life as he knew it is gone.

03:19:38.480 Your level of confidence on a scale of one to 10 that they've got the right guy and he'll

03:19:45.040 be convicted.

03:19:45.720 Let's go down the line, Phil.

03:19:47.400 10, 10 plus.

03:19:49.220 Wow. Bill?

03:19:51.180 10.

03:19:52.640 Mike?

03:19:54.580 10 plus, plus, plus.

03:19:56.840 And now my final thoughts.

03:19:58.660 I believe Brian Kohlberger committed this crime.

03:20:01.980 A life of darkness, deep unhappiness, and of being mentally unwell likely all contributed to a sick fascination with death and what he may have seen as the power that comes from taking a life.

03:20:13.200 The phone, car, and touch DNA evidence may be enough,

03:20:17.080 particularly when coupled with the fact that back home in Pennsylvania,

03:20:21.140 Brian Kohlberger was disposing of his trash in the neighbor's garbage cans,

03:20:25.680 and when police effected the arrest raid,

03:20:28.740 they allegedly caught him wearing gloves,

03:20:31.620 stuffing his own garbage into little Ziploc baggies.

03:20:34.760 Who does that?

03:20:36.520 But this is not an easy case for prosecutors, notwithstanding those facts.

03:20:41.440 The killer was careful.

03:20:43.300 No murder weapon, no bloody clothes.

03:20:46.680 There are some indications that no additional DNA has been found to link Kohlberger to the

03:20:51.800 crime scene, nor any link from the victims to anything found in Kohlberger's apartment.

03:20:58.580 The eyewitness here, the roommate, has only an amorphous description.

03:21:03.300 The killer's medium build and his bushy eyebrows, which will not be enough to qualify as a

03:21:07.740 definitive ID. The car and phone evidence will be mercilessly attacked and picked apart at trial,

03:21:14.700 as will the one minuscule spot of touch DNA on the knife sheath. The jury may wind up confused.

03:21:22.160 That's a defense attorney's goal. In short, the prosecution likely needs more. Maybe they have it.

03:21:29.040 They have held their cards very close to the vest in this case, and certainly the defense would not

03:21:33.540 be leaking the most incriminating evidence against their client, Kohlberger. In death

03:21:38.920 penalty cases like this, however, jurors sometimes like to have zero doubts, even though the legal

03:21:45.540 standard, of course, is beyond a reasonable doubt. Does the prosecution have enough to meet this

03:21:51.580 burden? It's not yet clear. For now, we must hope that the DA has more than the office has made

03:21:59.240 public, in particular on the DNA front. And as we wait, we keep the victims' families in our prayers.

03:22:07.640 Kaylee, Maddie, Ethan, and Santa. Thank you all so much for joining me today and all week.

03:22:16.160 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 12, 2026

FULL Deep Dive Into Bryan Kohberger and the Idaho College Murders - Megyn's True Crime Mega-Episode

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