The Megyn Kelly Show - March 20, 2023


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


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 20 minutes

Words per Minute

164.99646

Word Count

13,309

Sentence Count

929

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Four college students were found stabbed to death in their own home in Idaho in the early morning hours of November 9th, 2014. The police arrested suspect Brian Kohlberger on suspicion of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, but he was not charged until the day he was released from jail. Howard Bloom, a best-selling author and journalist covering the case for a new media outlet, Airmail, joins me to discuss the latest developments in the case and what they mean for the investigation.


Transcript

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.940 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.320 Over the past few weeks, there have been several developments in connection with the murders of the four Idaho college students that shocked the nation last fall.
00:00:23.980 So we wanted to take a look at the new details to see what they mean for the investigation and the man accused of carrying out the murders.
00:00:31.560 One of the biggest headlines is the unsealing of the search warrant of suspect Brian Kohlberger's parents' home.
00:00:38.360 Police revealing they took from that home a Glock pistol, two knives, and a black face mask, among other items that we're going to go over.
00:00:46.860 One item taken from Kohlberger's car, a shovel.
00:00:50.260 Joining me now to discuss this case and all the latest developments is Howard Bloom.
00:00:56.700 Howard is a journalist and a best-selling author.
00:00:59.620 He has worked for the New York Times, for Vanity Fair, among several other publications.
00:01:03.980 He has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize twice.
00:01:07.240 He's currently writing a book about these murders for HarperCollins and is covering the case for Airmail,
00:01:13.980 a relatively new media publication that Graydon Carter, among others, are behind.
00:01:18.720 And it's well worth your time.
00:01:20.040 I've really been enjoying it.
00:01:21.680 He has been to several key locations in the investigation, and it is clear he has many sources on this case who are intricately connected.
00:01:32.160 Howard, welcome to the show.
00:01:33.360 Nice to speak with you.
00:01:35.700 Oh, the pleasure is all mine.
00:01:36.620 I was floored by the first couple of pieces that you put out for Airmail, and I want to tell the audience, what's amazing about your reporting is it always includes new information, shocking new information in some cases, but it is so beautifully written.
00:01:52.340 You're open about where you're speculating, but your speculation is based on a very informed opinion, and your writing is just absolutely gorgeous.
00:02:01.280 So thank you for these pieces.
00:02:02.740 Well, that's very kind of you to say I'm flattered coming from you, so thank you very much.
00:02:07.140 There's nothing more a writer likes to hear than praise.
00:02:11.580 Absolutely right.
00:02:12.560 You're just like anybody else.
00:02:13.800 Only my kids will remember that.
00:02:14.860 We'll just play this tape whenever necessary.
00:02:18.860 So I think the best way of doing this is let's go through the case, and where the new information is appropriate, I'll fold it in so that the audience can get up to speed on what we learned to expand out some of your reporting and the other reporting.
00:02:33.220 I want to take the audience to part one.
00:02:36.940 Now, you've done three parts for Airmail on the series, and this is how you begin part one, quoting now from your piece.
00:02:45.260 Suppose you wanted to kill someone.
00:02:47.280 That would be easy.
00:02:48.300 There are lots of ways.
00:02:49.780 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.
00:02:57.500 That could help eliminate the noise, but it would require skill, strength, and endurance.
00:03:02.820 Murder is hard work, especially if people fight back.
00:03:05.380 Then there's the really big obstacle.
00:03:08.420 You want to get away with it.
00:03:10.040 You're determined to stab four people living in a single home in the still of the night and then disappear without leaving a clue to your identity.
00:03:17.300 Now, that's a more difficult challenge, but you did it.
00:03:21.000 You have everybody stumped.
00:03:23.240 It's the perfect crime.
00:03:24.540 That's incredibly what actually happened and what was likely in the mind of this killer, who has been accused of being Brian Kohlberger, until the day he was arrested.
00:03:37.360 Let me start with, do you believe, based on your reporting, police have the right man?
00:03:41.260 I believe they have the right man.
00:03:44.760 I also believe that they have, at this point, a very dubious case in court.
00:03:53.740 I don't think it's going to be as easy as we all assume to make the case against him.
00:03:59.700 I'm very much looking forward to finding out just how much new evidence the police are getting.
00:04:07.120 But at this point, what they have is what we call, in legal terms, bad facts.
00:04:12.180 They might sound good to a prosecutor, but a defense attorney can punch a lot of holes in them.
00:04:17.380 Hmm. That's fascinating, because most people have been saying they think it's open and shut, it's a slam dunk.
00:04:25.460 But proving it beyond a reasonable doubt is a lot harder than just pontificating about it.
00:04:30.300 And we will learn more in June when they have that preliminary hearing where the prosecution has to show its cards, what evidence it has to see if this case should be tried over.
00:04:39.360 Very much so.
00:04:40.320 But until then, what they're doing is they're sort of flailing about, it seems to me.
00:04:45.840 And again, I'm on the periphery.
00:04:48.380 They're flying about in desperation.
00:04:50.640 They're looking for search warrants, pulling up American Express cards, trying to make something out of cell phone tower movements of Koberger's car on the night of the murder.
00:05:03.520 Well, cell phone tower information is very inexact.
00:05:09.520 It's good for 13 miles.
00:05:12.080 And it's a town like Moscow, which is as big as a yawn.
00:05:17.760 13 miles is not much.
00:05:20.580 There are thousands of cars in that vicinity.
00:05:24.120 A good defense attorney can raise lots of doubts, enough doubts to make a juror perhaps think twice about sending a man to what is in Idaho at this point, an execution chamber.
00:05:36.800 Or they've set up a special room by Idaho law, and you're given a cocktail of four different chemicals that ends one's life.
00:05:46.320 All right, let's set it up so that the audience that hasn't been following this knows what we're talking about.
00:05:54.340 It was back November 13th of just this past year, 2022.
00:06:00.880 And your piece points out that this was a festive night on the campus in Idaho.
00:06:05.980 It was a football night.
00:06:07.720 Everybody's having a good time.
00:06:10.260 You know, nothing foreboding.
00:06:11.500 There'd been no reason to fear that there was a potential mass killer roaming the campus whatsoever.
00:06:16.360 No, and Idaho, University of Idaho, is very much a good time party school.
00:06:22.960 It's proudly rated that on all sorts of college ratings.
00:06:27.620 You go into the campus, and there's a banner across the main campus yard.
00:06:34.380 And this is something the administration has put up.
00:06:36.920 It goes, number one best value in the West.
00:06:40.160 And that sounds like an ad for a motel, not for an institution of higher learning.
00:06:46.900 But that's sort of the atmosphere that pervades in the university.
00:06:53.560 And on this night, the last football game, homecoming game of the year, everyone is out to have a good time.
00:07:01.540 There's fraternity row, and they're all having parties.
00:07:05.920 It's interesting, early enough, the fraternities are allowed to serve liquor.
00:07:11.700 The sororities can't.
00:07:14.040 It seems to be a very sexist discrimination, but that's the rule in Idaho.
00:07:19.440 And these four murders occurred in a house just right off campus, a stone's throw from campus in effect,
00:07:29.820 where six very attractive young women with their whole lives ahead of them were living and enjoying their youth.
00:07:42.320 They were having a really good time, as one can see in various videos that have been released.
00:07:49.440 Amazingly, despite the fact that the house was so well-located and surrounded by other homes,
00:07:56.640 it's not like this was a remote area,
00:07:58.900 nobody noticed anything while the murders were taking place overnight that evening of November 13th,
00:08:05.380 where they believe it happened around 4 a.m.
00:08:07.040 Nobody noticed anything, even though these are college students who were up and about and had been partying all night.
00:08:11.700 It wasn't until the next day when the 911 call came into place.
00:08:16.920 And the question of nobody noticing anything, that ties into what made this such a big, you know,
00:08:23.160 four deaths is a tragic event, four deaths of four young people makes it even more tragic, arguably.
00:08:30.440 But what made it, I think, so appealing or so fascinating, so intriguing to people all around the country,
00:08:37.360 if not the world, was that it was a mystery.
00:08:39.640 It happened, as you point out, in a house that was surrounded by, relatively close by other homes,
00:08:46.220 other families on a college boulevard, and he got away with it.
00:08:50.060 There wasn't even any blood splattered outside.
00:08:53.220 You couldn't see a trail of blood.
00:08:55.220 How did this happen?
00:08:56.440 How did the police not be able to find the killer right away?
00:09:00.640 And that's what added to the mystery.
00:09:04.320 And it was a mystery where we were all involved in it because we were brought into it.
00:09:09.840 The police were asking for our help.
00:09:11.420 What did we know?
00:09:12.580 We being the public.
00:09:13.900 And we all had our social media devices.
00:09:16.920 We all had the internet.
00:09:18.100 We all started looking for clues.
00:09:19.860 We became sleuths in this very perplexing mystery.
00:09:24.280 The four students who were killed were Kaylee Gonsalves, Madison Mogan, Zayna Kurnodal, and Zayna's boyfriend, Ethan Chapin.
00:09:35.660 The other two female roommates were there.
00:09:39.500 And that's one of the mysteries of this case.
00:09:42.380 They were in the house that night.
00:09:44.300 One of them, we've heard her name quite a bit, Dylan Mortensen, DM.
00:09:49.940 They've outed her name, so it's not a secret.
00:09:51.980 And then there was another roommate named Bethany, who you don't hear as much about.
00:09:58.160 Dylan is outed herself as having seen who we believe was the killer that night inside the home.
00:10:04.220 Why don't we hear anything about Bethany?
00:10:05.980 Do we know what, if anything, she saw or was doing that night?
00:10:08.840 Well, she allegedly didn't see anything.
00:10:11.880 She was on the first floor to enter the house.
00:10:14.900 The house was built in three stories.
00:10:17.640 Dylan, who saw the intruder, was on the second story with two of the people who were killed.
00:10:26.260 And then there was a third story.
00:10:28.920 The only reason we know about Dylan's seeing the intruder is that the police released their affidavit to charge the suspect,
00:10:40.300 at Koberger, and they quote Dylan.
00:10:42.940 She said she saw somebody.
00:10:45.120 She said she froze.
00:10:47.320 He had bushy eyebrows.
00:10:48.880 That was the big clue.
00:10:50.580 And then, and here's the real mystery.
00:10:53.480 Here's what is still perplexing.
00:10:55.960 Here's what still is astonishing.
00:10:58.480 She goes back to her bedroom, locks the door, and doesn't wake up till 11 the next morning.
00:11:05.060 And then they finally discover the bodies.
00:11:10.220 You know, one can raise all sorts of questions, as I do.
00:11:14.900 At the same time, I think one has to cut this poor girl a little slack.
00:11:20.100 In many ways, she's a victim, too.
00:11:22.540 She will live with this for her entire life.
00:11:25.540 She saw something incredible, astonishing, and she just perhaps couldn't deal with it.
00:11:37.240 That also, though, raises questions if she's going to be put on the stand to identify Koberger as a man she saw walking through the house dressed in black,
00:11:47.400 wearing a mask over his mouth and up to his nose.
00:11:50.980 How good is her memory?
00:11:53.960 How reliable a witness was she if, as she admits, she only glanced for a second and was in a, as she says, quote, a state of shock?
00:12:04.340 Well, here's the thing that jumped out at me.
00:12:06.260 So the police are the ones who said that she was in their affidavit that she was in some sort of state of shock that night.
00:12:11.540 And afterward, because she didn't call the cops, she saw him exit the apartment and went back into her room.
00:12:18.060 And the cops were not called for another eight plus hours until noon the next day and not by her.
00:12:24.240 So that was a mystery.
00:12:26.440 If she saw him, she was terrified and she was in shock.
00:12:29.900 I said at the time, if she saw him and she thought some guy's over, he's hooking up with a roommate, he was hanging out with somebody on the second floor, the third floor, then it wouldn't be a mystery.
00:12:39.980 College houses like that.
00:12:41.720 It can happen.
00:12:42.420 You don't think much of it.
00:12:43.640 So that would have explained everything to me.
00:12:45.620 And now we get this reporting.
00:12:48.720 This is from the Daily Mail that, first of all, points out that the family of Ethan Chapin, who was killed that night, the boyfriend of Zayna Kornodal, they are questioning why Dylan did not call the cops after hearing, quote, crying and screaming.
00:13:01.760 And they're wondering, you know, what happened there?
00:13:05.980 Well, now we get some reporting, and we don't know whether this is true or not, but we get some reporting that Ethan Chapin, again, one of the victims, his best friend, was the one who found him and Zayna.
00:13:17.640 And that, okay, this is per News Nation, Ashley Banfield reporting that a source who spoke directly with Dylan is saying, Dylan allegedly did hear those noises at four.
00:13:30.820 She opened her door.
00:13:31.940 She yelled, calm down, you're being loud.
00:13:34.100 I'm trying to sleep.
00:13:35.060 Then she closed her door and locked it.
00:13:37.620 And she saw, then later in the night, she heard more noises, so she opened the door.
00:13:42.200 She saw the killer walking down the hall, but she wasn't frightened.
00:13:45.640 She assumed he was a guest.
00:13:48.100 Now that makes sense to me.
00:13:50.180 Again, this is one single source, as reported by Ashley Banfield of News Nation.
00:13:55.240 That, to me, would make perfect sense, Howard.
00:13:57.580 The reason she didn't call the cops is because she didn't think it was a thing.
00:14:00.880 Right.
00:14:01.460 It makes sense.
00:14:03.720 It could be true.
00:14:05.060 But we really don't know.
00:14:06.700 I think some of the News Nation reporting has been a bit dubious.
00:14:11.760 Maybe that's my New York Times background prejudice.
00:14:14.620 Maybe I'm not looking at it objectively, but I take it with a grain of salt.
00:14:21.660 When you say she was in a state of shock, though, this is the police quoting her comments.
00:14:29.900 I think they put it in quotes in the affidavit.
00:14:32.480 And it's in quotes because she said that to them.
00:14:35.340 She could have, I think, and we'll only know that she, as something, as you describe it, perhaps very likely did happen.
00:14:45.240 It's a college house.
00:14:46.580 Things are going on.
00:14:47.880 It's no big deal.
00:14:48.980 And she just locked the door.
00:14:51.760 The next morning, they get up.
00:14:53.820 They find this.
00:14:54.900 I think it's her phone, from what I've heard.
00:14:57.300 And again, this is just speculation that was used to make the call.
00:15:00.620 But she did herself did not make the call.
00:15:03.460 She was, again, too much in a state of shock.
00:15:06.080 Someone had to grab her cell phone.
00:15:07.540 And they made the call with that to the police at 11.58 that morning.
00:15:14.120 That's right.
00:15:14.980 The same reporting, again, this is, again, News Nation saying, per multiple sources with knowledge of the killing investigation,
00:15:23.440 it was Ethan Chapin's best friend who called 911 using Dylan's phone.
00:15:30.480 He went to the house on November 13th.
00:15:32.980 And that same friend reportedly took the pulse of the victims and is the one who spoke to the 911 dispatcher.
00:15:40.360 And then the police came.
00:15:42.820 Your reporting sets the scene for when the officers showed up at the house, 1122 King Road, Moscow, Idaho.
00:15:51.600 They showed up that day.
00:15:52.680 And you point out one of the eerie things about the moment was the silence.
00:15:57.000 Yes, I mean, the people who I spoke with who spoke with the police said the cops first thing they knew that something serious was wrong
00:16:06.120 because all they got a report of was an unconscious victim, an unconscious person, rather, at the house.
00:16:12.900 And then they see a group of kids mulling about the house like gulls on a beach, as it's described to me.
00:16:20.160 And these kids are silent.
00:16:22.480 And they've been putting it up with the university kids all their professional lives as cops.
00:16:28.260 I don't think they've ever seen silent kids before.
00:16:31.740 They knew that this was something serious.
00:16:34.500 They walk into the house and they see blood right away.
00:16:38.260 It's right seeping down the entrance floor.
00:16:41.260 And one cop talks to a local shrink who works with the police department about the smell of blood.
00:16:50.300 Maybe he's imagining it afterwards, but it's still very strong in his mind.
00:16:56.160 And they start exploring things.
00:16:58.400 And as they explore, as I said, it's a three-story house built on different levels.
00:17:03.300 They go to the first level and they go to the first bedroom and, you know, everything's more or less fine.
00:17:11.280 And they said, maybe this isn't so bad.
00:17:13.280 And they go up on the next floor and they start finding the bodies.
00:17:18.100 And it's a shock for these cops.
00:17:20.920 These cops have been spending a great deal of time with the local psychiatrist assigned to the police department.
00:17:28.740 And their wives have been going to the shrink, too, because they have to deal with their husbands,
00:17:36.740 who have had this experience of discovering this crime scene.
00:17:41.980 To give a sense of what Moscow, Idaho is like, the local psychiatrist for the police department also plays in a 70s cover band.
00:17:50.540 It was playing just two weeks before downtown, you know, singing Sweet Caroline and Van Morrison favorites to a packed audience that included some of the cops.
00:18:04.180 Oh, no, I appreciate the color because, yeah, like a lot of these small towns, it's a college town.
00:18:09.260 They're about the local sports and supporting the local kids and dealing with noise complaints and, you know, the education that comes along with all of it.
00:18:16.800 And it's sort of fun and it's a little dreamy.
00:18:19.420 I mean, having grown up in Syracuse, New York, I understand this.
00:18:22.740 It can be a little dreamy.
00:18:23.720 It can be like another just a little oasis from real life.
00:18:26.320 And has about as much snow as Syracuse in the winter.
00:18:29.600 Yeah, that's right.
00:18:30.320 Exactly.
00:18:30.760 The tundra.
00:18:31.180 There's something else about Moscow, Idaho that makes it a little more, a little more darker, I would say, than Syracuse or any other college towns.
00:18:44.760 A large contingent of the town belongs to a very fundamentalist church, which is, you know, fine.
00:18:51.780 They're right.
00:18:52.480 They've announced, I spent some time with them.
00:18:55.620 They want, they're against vaccinations.
00:18:57.720 They're against masks.
00:19:00.560 They've had many demonstrations on the street.
00:19:03.140 And these have become where people have been arrested.
00:19:05.660 There are now court cases.
00:19:06.900 But this group is intent on creating a theocracy.
00:19:11.400 That's what they've said.
00:19:12.240 That's their word.
00:19:13.340 They want to control Moscow.
00:19:15.180 On Main Street, everyone talks about the bars that the kids went to the night before they were murdered.
00:19:21.160 There are also two different cafes, a bookstore, and a sort of pop-up university that has been set up by this church group.
00:19:31.160 And they are, and they also have a real estate office to bring people in from out of town to help them find homes in the community.
00:19:37.200 So this has become a force in this very liberal, as you say, carefree college town, a very openly misogynistic, openly not conservative.
00:19:49.800 That's not fair to conservatives.
00:19:52.120 This is a theocracy they're trying to create, a church-run community in this town.
00:20:00.040 And that's also at odds.
00:20:01.600 There's an undergoing tension in this town.
00:20:05.260 And before the police chief had to handle this mind-boggling murder case, he had six death threats against him, serious ones, in the past year that, according to the police chief, came from this church group.
00:20:19.900 But who knows?
00:20:21.180 That's just speculation that it's all being adjudicated in the courts.
00:20:25.800 But this town is not as idyllic as one would think.
00:20:30.300 Oh, wow.
00:20:31.200 I didn't heard any of that.
00:20:32.420 That's interesting.
00:20:32.980 So these poor cops, because you don't think about the first responders and what they have to go through.
00:20:38.080 And never mind these poor college kids who came to the realization that morning that their roommates had been killed, the friend of the one roommate finding his buddy Ethan.
00:20:47.380 So you point out that Bethany was on the first floor of the house.
00:20:51.840 On the second floor were Zaina and Ethan, boyfriend and girlfriend, together.
00:20:55.920 Also Dylan, the surviving roommate, one of the two, who was an eyewitness to the killer.
00:21:02.480 And on the third floor were Kaylee and Madison, best friends their entire life, found in the same bed.
00:21:08.500 And Kaylee, according to your reporting and others, seems to have been the focus of the attack.
00:21:16.200 She she these two were killed first.
00:21:18.500 And Kaylee, I don't know if this is the right way to say it, but she seems to have gotten it worse than anyone.
00:21:24.080 Her father has said that.
00:21:25.660 He said he talked to the local medical examiner and she had the most brutal blows and sort of viciousness.
00:21:35.420 I think the medical examiner described as hacking away.
00:21:39.220 It's just gruesome.
00:21:41.280 Oh, my goodness.
00:21:42.640 So that does lead people to wonder why.
00:21:45.140 These are beautiful looking young kids.
00:21:46.920 Everything ahead of them in the future.
00:21:50.720 And that's what adds to this tragedy.
00:21:55.280 Well, and it also that what happened to her is not just I don't mention it just for gruesome facts, but it does make you wonder whether she was the main target.
00:22:04.280 Right. Why would the murder of Kaylee be more violent and brutal than the murder of the others?
00:22:10.500 And there's again, I have I share your skepticism about some of the reporting out there.
00:22:14.760 I do wonder whether the People magazine reports a couple of them have been exclusive.
00:22:18.880 And it's always one source unnamed.
00:22:22.200 One of them's already been shot down that he was in the vegan restaurant where they worked a couple of times.
00:22:27.900 And now they have a second report out saying that there's a picture of direct mail or watching them on Facebook.
00:22:34.960 Yeah. OK, so you don't share that.
00:22:36.880 You don't you don't believe that that's proven or shown up.
00:22:40.100 I mean, you started this conversation talking about the search warrants.
00:22:44.900 And I think that shows that the police are as in the dark as we are.
00:22:52.920 They're trying everything to try to find a connection at this point between now and June 26, when the hearing takes place.
00:23:00.280 We'll be able to get this evidence, which people seem to have, but they're looking all over to try to get it for themselves.
00:23:07.580 Another thing that hasn't been really touched on and I'm probing around these days is I'm trying to make sense of Kohlberger.
00:23:17.160 You know, what sort of makes him tick and what we've read a lot.
00:23:24.880 We can understand, you know, what happens at the moments of the killing.
00:23:28.180 But I'm trying to figure out what happened at the minute before he makes his decision to get go into the house.
00:23:34.880 How is his life is dramatically changed?
00:23:39.020 Everyone has talked about how he seems to be planning the murders so carefully doing this and that.
00:23:45.800 I think he was really spending the past year at least trying to overcome all his internal demons to not try to find a way to prevent himself from killing people.
00:24:03.100 I mean, to this point, he's made a remarkable recovery from a young man, a teenager who used heroin.
00:24:10.560 He's gotten into a junior college and succeeds to get into college and winds up at a very reputable graduate school in criminal justice where he's a teaching assistant.
00:24:20.860 He's doing everything.
00:24:21.920 He's pushed his father out of his life.
00:24:24.160 Now he's taking his father back into life.
00:24:26.640 They're going to make a cross-country trip home for Christmas.
00:24:29.500 He's doing all this, and at the same time, he knows who he is and how he will always be an outsider.
00:24:38.820 And he's trying to find his way in, and he really can't.
00:24:43.600 I think that's also an untold story, part speculation at this point that we want to try to get more of come June.
00:24:52.500 This man who sees himself as someone more sinned against than sinning and that his life is, in his way, a horror story.
00:25:06.320 It's also a tragedy, too, I would suggest.
00:25:09.140 Perhaps that's not popular.
00:25:09.820 The details on him have been frustratingly sparse.
00:25:13.680 You know, I would have expected more, more people, more of his students, more of those who have just known him to come out.
00:25:19.720 We've had a few, you know.
00:25:21.320 One person, the quote I remembered was something like, Brian and people, they don't do so well.
00:25:25.400 Like, that he was always socially awkward.
00:25:28.200 He had a period where he was allegedly bullied.
00:25:30.640 He was very overweight.
00:25:31.720 Then he lost all the weight, became an ardent vegan.
00:25:34.560 Then we found these writings online where he was obviously extremely depressed, talking about how he felt nothing, how he was just this ball of flesh.
00:25:45.020 I mean, you can see mental health issues from his early teens.
00:25:48.400 It was about 10 years ago.
00:25:50.800 And what is, to me, he's so valiantly, even on those writings, which are, you know, scary at best, he's trying to overcome all this.
00:26:02.580 He's, he's trying to move beyond all this.
00:26:05.700 He's just, you know, a teenager than a young man, trying to make a way from himself, coming from this life that doesn't provide him any outlet, any future.
00:26:18.600 And he's actually succeeds in making a future for himself.
00:26:23.100 His father is the janitor, the high school where he, where he is going to school.
00:26:28.760 Oh, that's, in itself is a burden that you have to carry.
00:26:32.560 His father has gone bankrupt, not once, but twice in the bankruptcy papers.
00:26:38.380 His father talks about having $47 in the bank.
00:26:42.320 That's a burden for a family.
00:26:44.660 Two, finding the strength to overcome heroin.
00:26:48.740 How many people can't do that?
00:26:50.420 How many people can't get beyond junior college into a more reputable college and then into a, a, a well-respected graduate school.
00:27:01.200 That's something.
00:27:02.120 And at the same time, he knows he doesn't belong.
00:27:05.800 And he finds himself on the periphery of this party school where everyone is young, bright, beautiful, and gifted.
00:27:12.460 And this is a future he has to feel is denied to him.
00:27:17.740 This is his own personal health, and there's no way out of it.
00:27:22.100 It can lead, I would imagine, to a lot of rage.
00:27:26.820 And this is what's building up on him, in him, as he's trying to fight it until that one night.
00:27:32.360 The police have talked about his driving around the neighborhood, has him casing the house.
00:27:41.360 I see it perhaps more as he's fighting his emotions to do something, as were these all attempts before that could have led to the deed, and yet he's able to overcome them.
00:27:57.860 This is something that also has to, I think, find out.
00:28:01.120 What I'm trying to do is get on the facts of the case and the speculation into the story of the people involved, the police, the victims, and the perpetrator.
00:28:15.240 The thought of Brian Kohlberger, if he'd been less smart, not immersing himself in a college community, not being surrounded by all the joy, and as you point out, the word you use in your piece,
00:28:30.100 this exuberance of these beautiful young women who clearly caught his eye, and just living a loner's life, you know, quietly doing whatever it was he was doing.
00:28:40.540 You know, that maybe it was his smarts and whatever proper foundation his parents did give him, because we were hearing that they were loving parents, that gave him the strength to sort of pull himself out of those addictions and so on.
00:28:51.700 And then get immersed in this community that he could never be a part of, he could never, he was too mentally unwell.
00:28:57.820 I think that's part of it, but his journey to get there is in some ways for someone with all those psychic problems, as discussed on the internet and the various postings he did as a teenager,
00:29:14.760 someone who's living with visual snow, which is disease or the psychological state that he suffered to get there, is a triumph over the will.
00:29:23.140 And at the end, he just succumbs to it. He just can't deal with any more. I think perhaps there's more to his family's upbringing than we've been told, loving parents, whatever.
00:29:38.420 I think it's a difficult life when your family goes bankrupt twice. The houses he was living in, these are sort of, you know, hardscrabble communities, that part of Pennsylvania.
00:29:53.140 Where he grew up in every two miles is sort of a car, a car junk shop, where they're just old vehicles, are just piled on one top of the other.
00:30:05.260 It's a very grim, at least to my eye, part of the world. And he's trying to make his way in it.
00:30:13.880 And he literally leaves it all behind. He drives across country in his Hyundai, thinking of making a new start at Washington State University.
00:30:23.920 And he's a graduate teaching assistant, a TA. That's, you know, a position of some respect. I once did that a thousand years ago.
00:30:32.280 And, you know, it's sort of fun. At least I enjoyed it. And he couldn't find any satisfaction.
00:30:41.340 Why weren't there any girlfriends at any point? I mean, he's not a bad looking guy. He's not a dumb guy.
00:30:48.280 He winds up in this somewhat authoritative position, and that can often lead to romance with a student, that kind of thing.
00:30:56.760 Why haven't any of the press found any girlfriend?
00:31:04.140 It is interesting, the point you raise. There was one girlfriend who had his college before he went off to graduate school, talks about a date with him that went nowhere.
00:31:15.500 And she says she felt creepy. She might have felt creepy in retrospect, if you find out that he was an alleged killer.
00:31:22.940 Or it could be someone on the Internet making it up. These are all questions I'm hoping to try to find the pieces to in the weeks ahead.
00:31:31.460 I have a lot of travel ahead of me to the various communities. I've been there already a couple of times.
00:31:39.040 I'm going to go back and start knocking on doors.
00:31:43.460 Another problem is getting at the bottom of things. The judge in the case has put a gag order on the case.
00:31:50.800 That means that anyone involved, any of the police, the family members, their lawyers, can talk to the press.
00:31:58.820 And in that vacuum, we don't get facts. We just get speculations. We just get theory.
00:32:05.440 And the judge's view that this will lead to a fairer trial, to my mind, it's just creating an atmosphere where rumors are going to fuel people, because people are going to remain interested in this story.
00:32:22.360 And getting at the facts will be a lot harder.
00:32:24.240 Well, and it's too broad. I mean, he's basically silenced everyone, the families of the victims.
00:32:30.320 How are they not allowed to say how they feel or what they know?
00:32:33.540 There are this is it's too broad. There's a First Amendment. The press has a right to report on these things.
00:32:38.200 And his right to a fair trial doesn't trump all of the other rights that are at issue here.
00:32:43.680 And I don't think it would trump his right to a fair trial.
00:32:47.120 I think it might lead for further discussions. It might uncover something that could be used in his defense at the trial.
00:32:55.580 It's, you know, you're just leaving all speculation open to the wild west of the Internet.
00:33:01.640 I say that while we're on the Internet right now, but it is an unpoliced area.
00:33:07.240 And they're, you know, the standards of journalism vary quite a lot.
00:33:10.860 We talked about some of his writings online. This is from your piece and it's been reported by others as well.
00:33:20.460 But it hasn't been confirmed by Kohlberger or the police, but pretty much everyone has accepted that the tie is there, that these are his writings.
00:33:28.160 Let's talk about the visual snow he suffered.
00:33:30.060 I guess that's like when you look at, you look around and you see, I call them the ant races that come on your TV, or at least they used to back in the day when the programming ends.
00:33:39.660 That he sees that just looking around sometimes or used to.
00:33:43.360 You write, for the teenage Brian Kohlberger, if his online posts are any reliable guide, visual snow had at times buried his existence in an avalanche of despondency and desperation.
00:33:53.700 His posts were calls from the wild.
00:33:55.840 I often think of myself as an organic sack of meat with no self-worth.
00:34:01.940 I am starting to view everyone as this.
00:34:04.540 I always feel as if I am not there.
00:34:07.120 Completely depersonalized.
00:34:09.040 Constant thoughts of suicide.
00:34:10.880 Crazy thoughts.
00:34:12.200 Delusions of grandeur.
00:34:13.480 Poor self-image.
00:34:15.340 All caps.
00:34:16.180 No emotion.
00:34:18.300 I feel like nothing has a point to it.
00:34:20.560 Everyone hates me pretty much.
00:34:22.380 I am an asshole.
00:34:23.140 As I hug my family, I see nothing.
00:34:27.000 It is like I am looking at a video game, but less.
00:34:30.800 Did you get the chance at all, Howard, to talk to anybody with mental health expertise on what those tell us?
00:34:38.460 I did.
00:34:39.720 And doctors can't even agree on whether visual snow is a psychological state or a disease.
00:34:48.480 And since they can't agree on what it is, they also differ on how to treat it or if it can be treated.
00:34:55.880 What the best sources I found for any insight into this are really in novels.
00:35:03.140 Camus, the stranger, opens up with a character who talks about feeling nothing that eventually leads to a murder on the beach.
00:35:11.060 Sartre has a, in one of his novels, writes about a character that has the same sort of disassociation from the world.
00:35:19.560 It's, you know, it's existentialism on one level, and it's also dislocation from the world on another.
00:35:31.740 And if you, you know, if everything means less than zero, as Elvis Costello sings, you know, then you can do anything.
00:35:39.120 Anything is unjustified because it doesn't matter.
00:35:41.540 I once had somebody define, I once had somebody define for me the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath as follows.
00:35:51.640 They both want to kill people, but the psychopath enjoys it.
00:35:56.020 The sociopath does it and feels absolutely no remorse, but the psychopath enjoys it.
00:36:01.120 And I do wonder, as I read these excerpts, you know, it's, he sounds like a sociopath, like he feels no emotion.
00:36:07.520 He wouldn't feel guilty if he hurt somebody for whom he feels absolutely, quote, no emotion.
00:36:13.340 But killing four people in one setting, to me, has the flavor of enjoyment, like that he would do that because he would get off on it somehow.
00:36:23.720 There would be some purpose to it for him.
00:36:26.900 Or, and was the purpose not so much the killing, but getting away with it?
00:36:32.600 I see the connection between his being this criminal justice student who wanted to pull off this crime.
00:36:41.280 He figured he could do it.
00:36:43.260 There was an old Alfred Hitchcock movie called Rope, which was about the Leopold and Loeb case of two guys from Chicago who thought they were the smartest young men in the world and they could commit a murder and get away with it.
00:36:56.240 And in many ways, perhaps, that's what's driving his psychopathy.
00:37:00.180 Uh, again, he is, villain that he is, he's also an interesting figure.
00:37:09.060 And I am trying in the weeks and months ahead, as before I write my book, to get into the heart of the matter of what's making him tick, if I can find it.
00:37:19.620 Well, I feel like if anybody's going to do it, you're the one.
00:37:21.780 I'll be following on airmail.
00:37:22.800 But let's get to the investigation, right?
00:37:26.580 So we talked about the crime scene, the effect it had on the cops, um, they didn't have a killer.
00:37:32.280 So they, they did not know, uh, immediately who, who did this or even have any suspects as of November 13th and into the 14th.
00:37:41.160 And, um, for, for weeks there, six plus weeks, the speculation in the news media was, these are a bunch of keystone cops.
00:37:48.720 They don't know anything.
00:37:49.860 They got to get the FBI in there.
00:37:51.080 They got to get somebody who knows what they're doing in there.
00:37:52.900 But unbeknownst to the people saying that they were very much on the case.
00:37:58.380 Now there's been conflicting reporting on whether their first big break was figuring out that this white Hyundai was his or whether the first big break was figuring out that they had DNA on a knife sheath that had been left there.
00:38:19.020 And then somehow tying it back to Brian Kohlberger, what, what, what, how would you describe the evolution of the investigation?
00:38:25.800 Well, they had the knife sheath, but they didn't know what was on it.
00:38:30.620 They sent it first, uh, to the lab in Idaho and the lab in Idaho couldn't find anything.
00:38:38.400 So they thought this might be a dead end.
00:38:41.280 What they did do, it seems that Idaho had a contract that was set up six months earlier with a startup in Texas, some Silicon Valley guys had put together several million dollars to build this lab in Woodlands, Texas, set up this new company.
00:39:02.040 That was really going to just look into cold cases, uh, DNA that had not been considered before.
00:39:09.400 Idaho sends this down to Woodlands, Texas to this lab, which is funded by the Silicon Valley, uh, tech, uh, people, venture capitalists.
00:39:20.060 And that makes the connection.
00:39:22.900 However, that connection is not made for another three weeks.
00:39:27.000 Meanwhile, they've got this white.
00:39:30.080 So wait, just, just to interrupt you, just to interrupt you.
00:39:32.780 Hold on.
00:39:33.540 So they found DNA on the snap of the knife sheath, but they didn't have a match.
00:39:39.860 They didn't know whose DNA it was.
00:39:41.880 So, uh, as, as will be pointed out at the hearing for Kohlberger in June, it's something called touch DNA.
00:39:50.300 Touch DNA means he, he touched it.
00:39:53.620 Anyone, he could, someone could have handed him the knife sheath, a neighbor, whatever.
00:39:57.340 When the kids, it doesn't, there's no blood.
00:40:00.900 It doesn't prove that, uh, it, it definitely comes from him from a murder case.
00:40:07.000 So touch DNA in trial after trial.
00:40:10.460 And there's a record of it has been thrown out by some judges.
00:40:14.080 It's been overturned on appeals.
00:40:16.280 This is very fragile, very nebulous evidence.
00:40:21.680 Equally.
00:40:22.260 Okay.
00:40:22.560 So they find that they don't have a match.
00:40:24.560 Which is the evidence on, on the car itself.
00:40:28.300 They see this picture of the white Hyundai.
00:40:30.580 They don't really know what it is.
00:40:33.200 They finally get a, there's a gas station attendant on Troy Avenue, the local gas station, who takes it upon himself or herself.
00:40:42.420 Actually, she's working a night shift, uh, at the graveyard shift.
00:40:47.160 It's sort of boring.
00:40:48.100 She's going through and she sees this white Hyundai too.
00:40:50.460 They give it to the police.
00:40:51.560 They now have two matches.
00:40:52.780 And so they're pretty convinced they're looking for a white Hyundai.
00:40:57.240 They then take the information.
00:40:59.260 They send it out.
00:41:00.240 And it's originally, I think it's a two 11, uh, 20, 2011 to 2013, uh, white Hyundai.
00:41:09.880 It turns out eventually it's a 2015, but one of the people they send it to is a guy who was working late at night, a cop at the university of Washington.
00:41:19.800 He goes through the records and sees that there's a car registered in graduate student housing.
00:41:25.000 Another guy goes, another cop goes over there.
00:41:28.840 They get the number, uh, license plate, uh, and they run it, give it to the Idaho police department.
00:41:37.140 The Idaho police officer, corporal, who's running the investigation, he's sort of in charge.
00:41:45.440 He had formerly been in the military police.
00:41:48.740 Uh, so the police chief thought he'd be used to, uh, crimes involving forensic evidence.
00:41:53.900 And his name is Brett Payne.
00:41:56.220 He's very gung ho guy, uh, very, uh, also in your face cop when he needs to be very authoritarian.
00:42:03.920 He pulls up the license plate record.
00:42:08.240 He's looking at it on his screen.
00:42:10.760 There's a picture, photo picture of, of, of, of Kohlberger and he sees bushy eyebrows.
00:42:17.840 Uh, and he remembers that, uh, Dylan Morgensen, she talked about bushy eyebrows.
00:42:25.320 So he makes this connection.
00:42:27.560 This means they now have the suspect they can zero in on.
00:42:31.200 But meanwhile, to go back a step, all the pictures of the white Hyundai they have, there's not one photo from all the various surveillance cameras of who's at the wheel.
00:42:44.880 So, none, so Kohlberger could say, someone took my car, uh, seems far-fetched, but is it, is it, does it raise enough of a doubt not to send one into an execution chamber?
00:42:59.320 This will all come out in the weeks ahead.
00:43:02.140 So, do we know when in the timeline they had put those facts together?
00:43:09.840 The guy at University of Washington, again, just 10 miles from University of Idaho where the girls and Ethan were killed, where the guy said, oh, we've got, we've got a white Hyundai Elantra 2015 graduate student housing.
00:43:22.600 Here's the guy.
00:43:23.500 It's registered to a Brian Kohlberger.
00:43:24.800 And then he gets that information to the police investigating this crime, and now the police say, aha, we have a suspect.
00:43:34.800 Because, the reason I ask you this, is I watched an in-depth report by NBC News where they claimed the guy found, okay, Kohlberger, he owns one, and then that information was forwarded to cops but just sat in a stack for days and weeks.
00:43:53.400 And, you know, there were lots of reports and the cops never got to it.
00:43:56.280 And I left still asking myself, well, then how the hell did they get the name Brian Kohlberger if the cops let that just sit in a stack for weeks and weeks?
00:44:06.160 They had a whole lot of white Hyundais.
00:44:10.600 Originally, they thought it was a car that was found out in Oregon, and they thought they had broken the case.
00:44:16.040 The police were even telling people they broke it earlier.
00:44:18.580 We do know to set up a timeline that on December 13th, Kohlberger leaves Washington State University to drive a cross-country to go home with his dad as his wingman in the car.
00:44:33.880 We do know on that December 13th that the police were already following Kohlberger.
00:44:40.520 They did not have a note.
00:44:41.960 They did not have the DNA confirmed yet to arrest him, but he was still a suspect.
00:44:47.440 So, at this point, he was a person of interest, and they didn't want to close the case too soon.
00:44:53.000 So, I think—
00:44:54.140 So, Howard, that had to be as a result of the white Hyundai.
00:44:58.020 I mean, there's—right?
00:44:59.800 Like, reading what the police put out in that affidavit tells me that's from the white Hyundai because even though they have cell phone data from Brian Kohlberger and so on,
00:45:08.520 what gets you to Brian Kohlberger's cell phone, you need his name, you need—so, it was that police report.
00:45:17.060 Somebody saw it, and they put him at the scene.
00:45:20.000 They put him in the vicinity, within 12 miles.
00:45:24.840 A cell phone report can only get you 12 miles in the area.
00:45:29.620 But that's why there wasn't an arrest.
00:45:32.960 They had all this before he leaves Washington State, before he goes across country, and they did—they could not make the arrest.
00:45:40.040 They could not bring him into court because all this is pretty circumstantial at best.
00:45:45.900 So, they're waiting for the DNA—
00:45:47.420 So, wait, let me ask you this.
00:45:48.240 So, let me jump in on this.
00:45:49.280 So, the dad—you point this out.
00:45:50.740 You've got great reporting on the journey he took with his dad cross-country.
00:45:54.120 The dad flies out there from the Poconos, Pennsylvania, to get his son and drive cross-country with him back home from Washington to Pennsylvania.
00:46:02.620 Was that, do we know, a pre-planned trip?
00:46:07.280 Or was that a last-minute decision to join his son?
00:46:09.960 According to Jason Labar, who was the attorney in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, who first represented Kohlberger, and he's been—so far, nothing he's said has been refuted by anyone from the Kohlberger family.
00:46:25.700 He said that he was told that Michael Kohlberger, the father, had agreed sometime around Thanksgiving to go out with his son and drive back with him.
00:46:36.680 And just on the face of that, that's pretty interesting, moving, affecting.
00:46:44.740 Here's his father.
00:46:45.740 He's 67 years old, doesn't have a ton of money.
00:46:49.200 Clearly, he's a janitor.
00:46:50.260 He's been bankrupt twice.
00:46:51.760 He's going to fly out to—first, you've got to go to Seattle.
00:46:56.120 Then you've got to fly on another flight into Washington, Pullman, go across country, and then you've got to quickly make a turnaround.
00:47:03.240 And he's looking, I think, and this is what people have told me, to try to get back, make amends with his son, say, you know, you were on the wrong path.
00:47:13.500 I tried to set you right.
00:47:14.740 There was a great deal of antagonism between us.
00:47:17.280 But now things are hunky-dory.
00:47:19.580 This is a bright future.
00:47:20.840 You're going to have a good playing job.
00:47:22.660 You're going to be a professor.
00:47:24.600 All things are good.
00:47:26.100 Little does he know, you know, what's going on in his son's world.
00:47:29.780 I think this trip across America, this father-to-son journey, is the center of its own interesting little drama.
00:47:40.060 It's enough for a play, in fact.
00:47:42.980 Right.
00:47:44.020 So your information is that when they took that cross-country journey, I mean, one month to the day after the murders,
00:47:51.220 the FBI was on to Brian Kohlberger and, I assume, was watching Brian Kohlberger.
00:47:58.600 Well, you've got great reporting on how that went down.
00:48:00.860 But they were not behind the two traffic stops that happened to Brian Kohlberger and his dad en route home.
00:48:09.500 That's, again, what's so incredible.
00:48:12.160 The FBI is watching, and they see an Indiana State Patrolman stop the car, and they figure, what's going on here?
00:48:25.080 It's been an all-points bulletin for a person of interest, for a white Hyundai.
00:48:30.980 Have the Indiana State Police solved this, put it together that this might be the car?
00:48:36.260 And if it is, is the Kohlberger, who they assume has killed four people, is he going to come out shooting?
00:48:45.020 Or is he going to tear off?
00:48:47.420 Is there going to be another O.J. chase across the length of America all the way to Pennsylvania?
00:48:52.440 But the FBI decides to just sit there and watch this play out.
00:48:57.240 They're like stunned spectators.
00:48:58.760 And then Kohlberger pulls over, the cop approaches, and they engage in this dialogue, which is pretty nonsensical.
00:49:09.200 It's almost like a Bud Abbott and Luke Costello routine.
00:49:12.180 Who's on first?
00:49:13.320 Kohlberger starts talking about he's going out driving for Thai food, and the cop doesn't quite understand.
00:49:19.820 You're driving from Washington State to Pennsylvania for Thai food.
00:49:23.000 Then his father starts another non-sequitur talking about a shooting that occurred at the university, and the cop's ears perk up when he hears about a shooting and SWAT team coming in.
00:49:35.360 And Kohlberger, meanwhile, throughout this whole thing, is, you know, his temperature doesn't seem to raise a notch.
00:49:42.080 He's very cool.
00:49:42.880 I get stopped by a cop any time if I've just gone through a red light or something, or they think I'm, you know, a light is broken on the back of my car, and I get nervous just dealing with that.
00:49:56.020 But he's really cool, and that maybe says something, too.
00:49:59.020 And once they're stopped, they go another nine miles before they're stopped again.
00:50:05.740 And Kohlberger's reaction is the same, you know, level, even, calm reaction, while the FBI, which is watching this from a distance and has no idea what's going on, can't believe it's happening again.
00:50:18.320 You had a bit of reporting that I want to ask you about.
00:50:25.040 It was stunning that the FBI's onto Kohlberger before he peels out of University of Idaho on December 13th—sorry, University of Washington on December 13th—they're on to him.
00:50:37.080 They see he's going with the dad.
00:50:38.760 They see he's taking—well, they would eventually see he was taking a very weird, circuitous route home.
00:50:44.260 But you reported, you broke this news, that they lost him for several hours.
00:50:52.640 Now, the FBI has since denied that.
00:50:55.600 Yes.
00:50:56.140 They have come out and said kind of what you said, you and I were saying earlier, but they're kind of using it against you, saying,
00:51:03.840 the FBI is aware of reports detailing alleged FBI surveillance on Idaho murder subject Brian Kohlberger.
00:51:09.160 There are anonymous sources providing false information to the media.
00:51:13.260 So, do you stand by the reporting that they lost him for a couple of hours?
00:51:19.080 Yes, I do.
00:51:20.220 What also maybe would help make my case, and the reason I found out about this, why I started, you know, knocking on doors, metaphorically, to see what was going on,
00:51:31.300 they mentioned that Kohlberger goes off, and they finally—they first see him.
00:51:39.460 There's a license plate reader attached to a traffic stop in a town in, I think it's Loma, Colorado, and that figures into the affidavit.
00:51:50.280 So, I'm asking myself, why is this the only traffic license plate reader they mention?
00:51:55.880 Why is that so significant?
00:51:57.720 And so, I start calling, you know, people who have a place in law enforcement, and I have done several books that involve the FBI, so I have some sources there, and this is what I heard.
00:52:12.680 But, you know, one of the things that reporters always have to deal with is people who give them misinformation.
00:52:21.940 To the best of my knowledge, and logically, according to the affidavit, it still makes sense to me.
00:52:27.880 But if some FBI official wants to swear on his life that I'm wrong, well, maybe he's right.
00:52:36.640 Well, it's not the kind of thing the FBI would rush to admit, given that, you know, what you reported is they are following this guy.
00:52:44.240 They believe he's their killer, though they don't have enough to arrest him yet, and they lost him for several hours,
00:52:50.940 and it wasn't until a license plate reader, one of those random things we all drive through that looks like a toll,
00:52:59.300 it's sort of taking your money if you have an easy pass or what have you, registered him, and they got the alert,
00:53:05.000 and they said, oh, thank God, we know where he is again, and they caught back up with him.
00:53:08.300 I mean, this is sort of an operation, a surveillance operation from health.
00:53:12.180 I mean, they're watching this car, first they lose him, and then once they see an Indiana State trooper,
00:53:19.340 and then a local cop stop the car that they're facing, they don't know what's going on,
00:53:24.740 and they're as helpless as we are, you know, to sort of try to make a decision.
00:53:29.040 How should we respond?
00:53:32.260 I think, and there must have been a large debate, do we warn the Idaho State Police?
00:53:37.840 They've just, and one of their guys, one of their men is approaching a car that could be a killer.
00:53:42.780 We have to, you know, call headquarters, tell them to stop this guy from going into the car,
00:53:48.160 because this could put him in harm's way.
00:53:50.880 I think they should have, I think perhaps they should have done that.
00:53:53.860 I think they shouldn't have allowed this traffic stop to take place.
00:53:56.620 I wouldn't have risked that state trooper's life.
00:54:00.440 Well, there are other similar questions once they landed in Pennsylvania.
00:54:03.840 So they get there taking a weird route.
00:54:05.800 They didn't do the most direct straight across the country.
00:54:08.160 They drove south, and then they drove back up to Pennsylvania.
00:54:11.720 Kohlberger allegedly said to his dad to avoid snowy weather.
00:54:16.180 But one wonders whether it was, if somebody's telling us, let's go a weird route,
00:54:21.580 let's not do what would be expected of us, that kind of thing.
00:54:24.320 Little did the dad know.
00:54:25.920 No evidence the dad knew anything about any of this.
00:54:29.040 So they get back to the house in the Poconos, and the reporting is that they saw him.
00:54:36.720 They're watching him.
00:54:38.600 They saw him take the Hyundai Elantra to the car wash,
00:54:43.580 and the place where, like, you can clean your own car, you can vacuum it, you can do all the things.
00:54:47.760 How did they allow that, Howard?
00:54:49.120 It's incredible.
00:54:51.340 He also goes to a sort of repair shop to change the oil to, and he's talking to the repair guy.
00:54:59.660 I don't think, at least at the point when I spoke to the repair people,
00:55:04.420 and there are only, like, three places that you can go to in that area,
00:55:08.460 so it's not hard to track it down.
00:55:10.000 None of the police had spoken to the guy I spoke with.
00:55:15.480 No.
00:55:16.060 I also, Stroudsburg is the main town.
00:55:20.100 It's a 15-minute ride or so from where he lives.
00:55:23.340 That's where you go.
00:55:24.400 On the main drag in town, there's a sporting goods store.
00:55:28.820 It's almost a half block long.
00:55:30.840 You walk in, it's like an armory.
00:55:33.420 There are case after case after case of bright, shiny knives.
00:55:38.560 You would think they would have checked to see, it would be the logical place.
00:55:43.160 He might have bought a hunting knife before he went off to school in Washington.
00:55:49.240 Many reasons to have a hunting knife, whatever.
00:55:52.620 They never went and asked to check the records there, the purchases.
00:55:57.300 I mean, it's very sort of questionable police work.
00:56:03.220 We'll see how it all stands up in court of law.
00:56:06.160 But at this point, it's, I would say, pretty dubious work.
00:56:13.700 So in the meantime, they know something that, I don't know if Brian Kohlberger knew,
00:56:20.720 but they knew they had the knife sheath with touch DNA on it,
00:56:24.980 and they'd been searching for a match for somebody who would match the touch DNA.
00:56:30.360 But now they've got Brian Kohlberger in their crosshairs.
00:56:33.720 They see him with his dad.
00:56:34.740 They've got to be trying to get their DNA.
00:56:36.880 To me, it sounds like they didn't actually make a real attempt to get the DNA of either one of these guys
00:56:42.760 until they were back in the Pennsylvania house in the Poconos.
00:56:48.460 It doesn't sound like they did the trash gathering prior to that.
00:56:53.200 We do know, or we've seen Kohlberger, on the way going across country,
00:56:58.260 they're stopping off from Thai foods.
00:57:00.380 Well, if you Google Thai foods, Indiana, where they were going, Indianapolis,
00:57:04.300 there's two Thai restaurants there.
00:57:07.040 If the FBI was on the trail, you know, they would have seen him go in.
00:57:12.740 You try to grab the silverware as they pull out or a plate or glass.
00:57:17.660 He could have gotten everything then.
00:57:19.180 To have to do this sort of clandestine, you know, great trash robbery was a bit absurd.
00:57:28.460 Yeah, it didn't need to be that hard.
00:57:29.820 It's strange to me.
00:57:30.660 There are lots of questions.
00:57:31.680 And, of course, they know more than we do.
00:57:32.940 So maybe it'll all become clear once they lift their gag order at the preliminary hearing,
00:57:36.780 if not before.
00:57:37.860 But these are just some of the questions some of us on the outside have.
00:57:40.980 So he's in Pennsylvania now with the dad.
00:57:43.320 He's getting the car cleaned.
00:57:44.820 He's living with the dad and the mom.
00:57:46.640 And this is a fascinating new piece of information that I have to ask you about.
00:57:52.780 Per an interview with a local news outlet in Pennsylvania called BRC 13, citing Monroe County
00:57:58.300 First Assistant, I assume prosecutor, Michael Mancuso, saying that Mr. Cole, because there's
00:58:04.380 a quote, Mr. Kohlberger was found awake in the kitchen area.
00:58:09.280 This is when they went in to get him.
00:58:10.500 Dressed in shorts and a shirt and wearing latex medical type gloves.
00:58:15.720 This is a lot of information.
00:58:17.500 And apparently was taking his personal trash and putting it into a separate Ziploc baggie
00:58:25.500 or plural baggies.
00:58:27.480 Mancuso tells local BRC 13 that discovery cleared up another part of the investigation.
00:58:33.100 Continuing by Mancuso, quote, a trash pull that was done days before recovered DNA profiles,
00:58:41.700 but not from Brian Kohlberger, only from his family members.
00:58:46.160 So this is a great little get by BRC 13 and getting Monroe County First Assistant Michael
00:58:50.600 Mancuso to say all those things.
00:58:52.240 And it explains because you reported they were monitoring the dad's house.
00:58:57.320 They were doing the trash pull in the middle of the night.
00:59:00.060 And while they were monitoring the house, they saw Brian Kohlberger take the trash over to
00:59:06.080 the neighbor's house, throw the trash out of the neighbors.
00:59:09.220 And it probably wasn't these little baggies that Mancuso was talking about.
00:59:14.100 I mean, so you can see this criminal mind trying to get away with the perfect crime.
00:59:20.560 You know, go back to the beginning of the story, how to kill four people and get away without
00:59:26.840 without leaving a drop of blood.
00:59:29.240 And now he's trying to still get get away with it.
00:59:32.400 And that's why I think.
00:59:34.700 Come the trial, come the hearing, he's not going to plead guilty.
00:59:40.520 He's going to be the smartest person in the room and his only hope and his only be on center
00:59:47.420 stage and try to outsmart them again in front of the whole world.
00:59:50.620 So they his little ruse did not work.
00:59:55.100 They did get DNA from the dad and from the trash in the dad discarded.
01:00:01.520 And they did, according to the police, match it up to the dad.
01:00:05.440 They understood that the DNA on that knife sheath matched one of these guys with ninety nine point
01:00:09.720 eight percent certainty.
01:00:11.980 And the dad, no one suspects the dad of these murders.
01:00:14.780 So Brian Kohlberger's little ruse of trying to get his own DNA into a different person's
01:00:20.300 trash can was both spotted by the cops and then underscored when they burst in on him.
01:00:28.040 I know we never heard what they found.
01:00:30.040 You did great, great riveting reporting on the team that went in there for this, quote,
01:00:35.240 dynamic entry to get this suspected serial killer.
01:00:40.820 But we didn't know what they found.
01:00:42.400 Like, where was Brian Kohlberger?
01:00:43.740 And now this this says he was sitting there.
01:00:46.460 Unbelievable.
01:00:47.140 In shorts and a shirt, wearing latex medical gloves inside his parents home, taking his
01:00:52.600 personal trash and putting it in separate zip.
01:00:54.760 Take that with a grain of metaphorical salt in the sense someone smashes down your door
01:01:02.080 and they're letting off concussion grenades to scare the daylights out of you.
01:01:07.420 You've got to be pretty calm to sit there making your little baggies.
01:01:10.520 I don't know if he actually was he might have been doing that moments before, but I don't
01:01:17.700 believe at the moment when the police broke in, a bunch of guys come in, shotguns leveled
01:01:22.940 at you and you're and there's grenades going off.
01:01:25.520 The door has just been broken.
01:01:27.160 We saw the debris outside the house, the windows that have been smashed and you're just sitting
01:01:33.000 there calmly through it.
01:01:34.080 Well, that's a sense of calm that is supernatural.
01:01:37.280 Well, perhaps he had just stepped away from the sitting project and they realized that
01:01:43.320 he'd been doing that prior to their entry.
01:01:44.980 But the dynamic entry does tell us something about just how seriously the Pennsylvania authorities
01:01:50.520 were taking this and how certain they seem to be that they had their man.
01:01:55.280 Yes, you know, this is scary stuff.
01:01:59.040 You go into a closed door of a man accused of killing four people.
01:02:04.740 You don't know what kind of weapons he has.
01:02:07.000 As it turned out, he had a Glock revolver.
01:02:12.200 I don't know of his possession, but was somewhere in the house.
01:02:15.140 He also had two knives in the house.
01:02:16.980 You don't know if he's going to make a last stand or just surrender meekly while he's making
01:02:22.460 his baggies.
01:02:23.460 These cops are putting their lives on the line.
01:02:27.040 Yeah, that's right.
01:02:28.060 We know now that he went peacefully, but they had no idea he was going to go peacefully when
01:02:33.340 they were getting ready to storm into that home.
01:02:36.160 I mean, they're thinking this is somebody who kills for fun.
01:02:39.260 Like this is this is a serial killer.
01:02:41.040 Took out four young people in the course of 20 minutes.
01:02:45.440 And he might want to make a last stand.
01:02:47.320 He might want to go in a blaze of glory in his mind rather than being taken off meekly
01:02:53.580 in chains.
01:02:54.780 And yet after that, in all his conversations with his attorney in Pennsylvania, the attorney
01:03:01.780 very pointedly says that he was impressed with the intelligence, the calmness of Koberger
01:03:09.080 and Koberger's determination to have a statement made that says that he is innocent and he
01:03:16.660 will be proven innocent in a court of law.
01:03:19.140 This is a conduct of a man who is trying to or is determined to have the last laugh.
01:03:29.020 Well, that's the thing that kind of many people missed.
01:03:32.080 But you reported he did talk.
01:03:34.280 He gets taken into custody and the first thing he did was to talk to the cops.
01:03:40.420 For 15 minutes.
01:03:41.720 At that time, his lawyer is on record saying his client talked for 15 minutes.
01:03:48.060 That's a lot of time.
01:03:50.780 And finally, when I guess the questions got too pointed, he decided I need an attorney.
01:03:57.640 And that's when they brought in the public defender.
01:04:00.920 Who said he will be exonerated?
01:04:02.660 He looks forward to being exonerated.
01:04:05.580 Is there anything that you've seen so far that would suggest he might go for an insanity
01:04:09.600 defense?
01:04:10.140 And I'm not even sure he can do that in Idaho, given the Idaho laws on this.
01:04:14.160 But have you seen anything that would suggest to you he's set one up?
01:04:17.400 I, you know, my investigations into that area of his legal defense have been pretty much
01:04:24.080 watered at this point by the gag order.
01:04:26.720 I'm still trying to so I'm trying to look into what makes him tick, what what life was
01:04:34.160 like for him at the university, how the forensic case was built.
01:04:38.360 I'm trying to get all the peripheral events.
01:04:40.540 But for the legal strategy, I think anyone who's talking about that is is really making
01:04:47.380 up facts because the gag order is pretty effective.
01:04:49.640 There's I mean, based on what we know so far, there is zero chance of that succeeding, even
01:04:55.780 if it's allowed.
01:04:56.420 He's just the standard for criminal insanity is so high.
01:04:59.900 You really genuinely have to not understand the difference between right or wrong.
01:05:02.860 And he did so much covering up of his crime, you know, the vacuuming of the car and the
01:05:08.380 sneaking off and, you know, all of it.
01:05:10.660 This it's just I'll go out on a limb right now and say without knowing a lot more, it's
01:05:14.580 not going anywhere.
01:05:15.240 I mean, we are getting a look, go ahead, he could plead not guilty to try or he could
01:05:21.480 plead guilty, rather, to try to avoid the death penalty and think, see, a judge would
01:05:26.500 be sympathetic.
01:05:27.240 But I'm not sure that would fly in Idaho either.
01:05:30.780 And I'm not sure he wants to.
01:05:32.460 Right.
01:05:32.700 I mean, given everything we think we know about him, he's so smart, so calm, cool, collected.
01:05:38.880 He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would just give it up.
01:05:41.260 But it depends how scared one becomes as you get closer and closer to your fate.
01:05:48.140 You know, who knows?
01:05:49.580 So, well, and that's one of the questions is, what do they have?
01:05:52.120 Because the cops know more about what they have against him than we do.
01:05:54.500 And, you know, you pointed out saying, I'm not feeling so confident about the investigation
01:05:57.880 or what they have.
01:05:58.640 But if they have his DNA now that they know it's him, right, they've got their name.
01:06:02.700 If they have his DNA on any one of these victims, he's toast.
01:06:06.120 Yeah.
01:06:07.000 And if they've got any of the victims DNA in his car.
01:06:09.940 That's the next fit.
01:06:11.260 That will be the nail, literally the nail in his coffin.
01:06:15.460 Yep.
01:06:16.360 And so that leads me to the search warrant that hit the news not long ago.
01:06:21.120 So they've released now what they searched for at his parents' home in Pennsylvania and
01:06:27.080 also in his car.
01:06:28.500 They keep these things under seal for some 60 days.
01:06:30.900 So we just start getting a look at it.
01:06:32.360 But they already have had this stuff in their possession.
01:06:35.760 They seized from the parents' home a knife.
01:06:38.980 I mean, there's no way this guy was stupid enough to keep the knife, but maybe I'm wrong.
01:06:43.500 A knife, a Glock 22, Smith & Wesson pocket knife, some magazines, a tailor cutlery knife
01:06:53.160 with a leather sheath.
01:06:55.280 Here's where it gets interesting.
01:06:57.000 Black face mask.
01:06:58.220 Again, what the roommate said was it was like a COVID mask.
01:07:00.980 So we don't know, you know, not like a ski mask.
01:07:03.060 But anyway, black face mask, black gloves, black hat, another black mask, AT&T bill for
01:07:10.740 Brian Kohlberger, a book with underlining on page 118.
01:07:14.380 Love to see what's in there.
01:07:16.360 Prescriptions, cell phone, laptop, multiple dark colored pants, Columbia Navy fleece.
01:07:22.940 Again, the roommate said he was dressed in dark and black.
01:07:25.620 New Balance shoes.
01:07:27.100 There were reports of footprints belonging to the suspected killer on site, two pairs of
01:07:32.020 dark colored boots, a criminal psychology book, note to dad from Brian, and inside his
01:07:38.140 car, a shovel.
01:07:40.660 Interestingly, they list 36 dimes, 82 nickels, eight pennies, gloves, goggles.
01:07:50.320 That one threw me for a loop, Howard.
01:07:51.660 Uh, and then they took parts of the car, including headrest, seatbelts, brake, gas
01:07:56.940 pedals, door panel.
01:07:59.140 I mean, there is a report in the Washington Post that they don't know if it's his, you
01:08:02.980 can have goggles.
01:08:04.020 If you're could have been skiing goggles, if you're chopping wood, you might wear goggles
01:08:08.740 there.
01:08:09.100 If you're using a wood chipper, uh, you might wear goggles.
01:08:12.660 All of this can be nothing or something.
01:08:15.920 The phone records could be interesting.
01:08:18.760 Did he ever try to call any of, uh, the victims and then hang up or whatever?
01:08:24.480 Had he ever had any conversations with them, but they're, they are trying to find a nexus,
01:08:30.500 a connection.
01:08:31.660 Uh, and they're trying to build their case.
01:08:34.480 They're, they're doing what an investigative reporter would do, uh, is you try to throw a
01:08:40.240 wide net and see where things intersect.
01:08:42.340 But at this point, they, they don't have, uh, it doesn't appear as if they have any connections
01:08:49.680 or at least, uh, we're going to have to wait till June to know about them.
01:08:53.280 All we have now is a lot of things that are hypothetically interesting and could be in the
01:08:58.840 end, nothing.
01:09:01.960 As far as we know, they haven't found the murder weapon.
01:09:03.940 Washington Post reporting that quote, the police did not appear to have found any items with bodily
01:09:08.540 fluid on them, unclear whether the knife investigators found was believed to be linked to the killings.
01:09:14.800 Uh, they did not know whether Kohlberger was the owner of all the items seized from his parents'
01:09:19.720 house.
01:09:19.900 Could be the dad's face mask, could be the dad's shoes.
01:09:22.940 We, you know, we don't know any of that.
01:09:24.560 Um, we haven't found the murder weapon.
01:09:26.840 We haven't found the clothes allegedly used that would presumably have some blood on them.
01:09:31.820 I mean, even Brian Kohlberger, PhD of criminology, can't avoid the laws of physics.
01:09:37.780 You brutally stab four people to death.
01:09:39.340 You're going to get blood on you.
01:09:40.360 And suppose you don't ever find those things.
01:09:43.560 Uh, but what you also haven't found and might be harder to get ultimately.
01:09:48.860 And I think you'll need is a motive.
01:09:52.020 You know, why did he do this?
01:09:54.280 Because we can speculate, uh, you know, you know, I have a B from Stanford in psychology.
01:10:00.780 I don't think that's going to hold up making my speculations very valuable.
01:10:05.180 Uh, and in a court of law, they'll get, you know, my psychology professors on both to say
01:10:10.660 both reasons for and against, but to like get a real motive and what they're trying to use
01:10:18.020 these computers, uh, the cell phone records is to see if they can piece together a logical
01:10:25.640 motive, uh, that makes, but that will make some sense to a jury.
01:10:30.040 And that's going to be a bit of a artificial construct, at least, uh, at this point.
01:10:36.680 Hmm.
01:10:37.300 As we heard the prosecutor say over and over in the Alex Murdoch case, they don't need it.
01:10:41.260 They don't have to prove motive, but it sure helps.
01:10:45.300 Juries want to hear one.
01:10:46.260 Well, but to go back to the Alex Murdoch case for, and I'm no authority on that, but if
01:10:52.340 they did not have that cell phone call by the son, which they didn't realize, uh, for
01:10:57.480 many months, I don't know if he would have been indicted, let alone convicted.
01:11:02.420 No, I don't either.
01:11:03.980 That cell phone video was Al, Alec Murdoch's son, Paul from the grave, IDing his killer.
01:11:11.620 And I think you're going to need some sort of deus ex machina like this to make this case
01:11:15.580 perhaps.
01:11:17.260 We don't have that here that we know of the other things that the cops are doing that
01:11:20.300 we do know of they've released or they've sought, uh, information sending out 60 plus
01:11:25.460 warrants.
01:11:26.660 They too have been sealed, but we know of a few.
01:11:28.660 They sent one to door dash, which we believe did make a delivery to the girl's house shortly
01:11:33.320 before the murders, which is just so weird that they got it like almost at the same moment
01:11:37.880 the killings began.
01:11:38.920 I mean, I think she was on Tik TOK or Instagram and had a door dash delivered from Jack in
01:11:46.760 the box just moments before the murder at 4am.
01:11:50.200 It's like nonstop college life.
01:11:52.700 It's exciting.
01:11:53.460 It's exuberant.
01:11:54.580 It's a brilliant.
01:11:55.980 Uh, and this was this sort of world that these kids were living in.
01:12:02.080 And one can sort of look at it.
01:12:03.460 If you know, I look at it now, my stuffy, uh, sheltered life was a bit of envy.
01:12:09.160 It's, it's wonderful for them.
01:12:10.320 Well, it's just so strange to think that all these things were happening at the house,
01:12:16.500 a door dash delivery, you know, Tik TOK, you know, the two girls chatting and laughing
01:12:21.180 as gals do, you know, in the bed, the, you know, Zayna and her boyfriend, Ethan together.
01:12:26.500 Like, how was this all happening at the moment?
01:12:28.820 The guy was walking into the house.
01:12:30.700 How did, how did, how did they not jump the guy?
01:12:33.780 How did, you know, like those are these, how did he go in?
01:12:36.740 Did he see the door dash guy coming up there?
01:12:39.000 Or was he going through the back, coming in through the woods, through the back door?
01:12:42.300 There's a woods behind the house and sort of on a hill.
01:12:45.160 Uh, that one guy's going in the front.
01:12:46.680 Did he see the car pull up?
01:12:48.680 Also, you go up to the house.
01:12:50.840 I think there were five cars parked right in front of the house in this row.
01:12:56.060 You have to know that there are a lot of people there.
01:12:58.720 Uh, are you really?
01:13:00.260 It's so bold.
01:13:01.640 You know, it's just thinking you can get away with it in a house full of five people.
01:13:06.700 You almost know you're going to encounter.
01:13:09.000 Other people.
01:13:10.920 Right.
01:13:11.380 It's so brazen.
01:13:12.680 And he did, you know, as you point out that night, he did.
01:13:15.540 He got in and out of there without anybody stopping him.
01:13:17.840 And the other targets of the warrants.
01:13:20.300 His car.
01:13:22.340 Right.
01:13:23.200 How?
01:13:24.020 How?
01:13:24.340 So, but one of the big questions is, yeah, like where are the clothes and where's the
01:13:28.020 murder weapon?
01:13:28.460 And there's a real question about whether he dumped them the night, the night in question.
01:13:31.700 He did not take the most direct route home back to his University of Washington place.
01:13:36.380 Very securitist route.
01:13:37.620 Should have taken 10 minutes.
01:13:38.600 Took him 60.
01:13:39.140 So, could be someplace along there.
01:13:41.660 Others receiving the warrant.
01:13:43.340 Verizon.
01:13:43.960 That makes sense.
01:13:44.800 Tinder.
01:13:45.640 Interesting.
01:13:46.640 Reddit.
01:13:47.420 That is where we believe he made a lot of these disturbed posts when he was a teenager.
01:13:52.340 Amazon.
01:13:53.140 Sure.
01:13:53.700 Meta, which owns Facebook.
01:13:54.840 Snapchat.
01:13:55.140 All the social media companies trying to see what he did.
01:13:57.080 If anything, AT&T, Apple, and so on.
01:13:59.780 They're casting a wide net, Howard.
01:14:02.180 And perhaps a desperate net.
01:14:04.860 Because you would think they might have had this information already from his computers
01:14:09.400 and stuff.
01:14:10.100 And they're still looking.
01:14:11.320 And I think, again, I'm just hypothesizing to make a connection.
01:14:16.580 They're trying very hard to find glue that will stick.
01:14:20.900 I mean, they're hoping, again, the Murdoch case, to find that one cell phone call that's
01:14:28.360 going to be the smoking gun.
01:14:31.440 Well, and that's the other thing, is to get onto somebody's phone, you need their password.
01:14:35.080 Even if you're the cops.
01:14:36.260 Even if you're the FBI.
01:14:37.560 Yeah.
01:14:37.880 Like, I don't know that they've unlocked his cell phone.
01:14:40.960 And I don't know whether Brian Kohlberger would have had something meaningful on there
01:14:45.120 anyway.
01:14:45.720 You kind of think this is a smart guy, criminology major.
01:14:49.380 But then you think, why would he take his phone with him while casing the girl's apartment
01:14:54.960 so many times?
01:14:55.780 Why would he use his own car?
01:14:58.200 Why would he drive there not understanding everyone's got surveillance cameras now?
01:15:02.000 Right.
01:15:02.320 And this concept of casing the apartment, let me just say, we don't know that for sure.
01:15:08.220 We know he was in the area.
01:15:09.560 He was in, you know, I'm 13 miles from your studio, more or less.
01:15:13.380 Uh, that doesn't mean I'm, I could be going to a bookstore down the road, or I could make
01:15:18.540 the case that I was going to a bookstore.
01:15:20.520 It's a college town.
01:15:21.360 There are a lot of things doing all in a self-contained area.
01:15:24.980 Uh, he could have been many places.
01:15:28.020 Other questions.
01:15:28.960 Uh, that's the big question.
01:15:30.360 Do they have DNA?
01:15:31.460 Do they find his DNA on them or theirs on him?
01:15:35.080 Go ahead.
01:15:35.360 Sorry.
01:15:35.520 Did he ever try anything like this before?
01:15:38.380 Uh, was this the one time?
01:15:40.660 Was this his first time?
01:15:42.420 Did he ever make an attempt that was failed in his other university towns, his other college
01:15:48.340 towns in Pennsylvania?
01:15:50.300 Uh, and so far the police can't find anything to evidence of another attempt.
01:15:56.640 And that would maybe also help make the case that it wasn't him.
01:16:01.580 His, his, uh, defense attorneys could make that case too.
01:16:06.520 You know, on the subject of Alec Murdoch, he was not, uh, this is not a death penalty
01:16:13.000 case, even though it could have been, they could have charged him, uh, sought the death
01:16:17.120 penalty.
01:16:17.460 And one of the reasons it's believed they did not was because it was a very circumstantial
01:16:21.840 case.
01:16:22.680 And it's a lot harder to ask a jury to put a man to death, to find a man guilty, understanding
01:16:28.020 this is a death penalty case with just circumstantial evidence.
01:16:32.220 They, they might be much more likely to say, we're not doing that.
01:16:35.520 We're going to go for not guilty.
01:16:37.160 And in this case, if there's some way this guy managed to keep his DNA off of those four
01:16:44.200 victims and out of that house and didn't get their DNA on his car or anything grabbed
01:16:50.520 by police in these searches, this is a totally different case.
01:16:55.880 Yes.
01:16:57.440 And that's why he could plea if they're going to assure him that it won't be the death
01:17:02.860 penalty, if they, if they can make that assurance, uh, you know, he's an outsider in Idaho.
01:17:09.940 He's villainized.
01:17:11.320 The Murdoch case, uh, you know, they had long tradition in that courtroom and that's the case.
01:17:16.980 They had a lot of connections, the family, uh, a deal could be cut.
01:17:21.040 That's, or it should seem that way at some point.
01:17:24.160 Uh, but you know, how all this is going to play out is something that fascinates me and
01:17:30.880 sort of an exciting, I'm excited at the book I'm going to write as I'm, you know, playing
01:17:35.420 it out.
01:17:36.100 I'm looking forward to reading it.
01:17:37.240 It's a nice challenge for a reporter, uh, for someone who likes to tell stories.
01:17:41.640 Well, you're great at it and just, but just to sum it up that one of the differences while
01:17:46.840 we're on Murdoch is, uh, Murdoch had the best lawyers money could buy.
01:17:51.420 Great, great lawyers.
01:17:52.460 They did a great job.
01:17:53.320 The defense lawyers there.
01:17:55.040 Kohlberger is likely to have a public defender.
01:17:56.700 I'll do respect to the public defenders.
01:17:58.140 That's not going to lead to any sort of dream team defense.
01:18:01.480 Like we saw in OJ, like we saw in Murdoch.
01:18:04.120 On the other hand, one of the things that was striking about Alec Murdoch was he's very smart
01:18:10.600 and while the jury wasn't persuaded by his testimonial, Kohlberger's not, you know, some
01:18:18.320 Neanderthal defendant who, if they put him on the stand, couldn't put two sentences together
01:18:23.380 and the jury be like, okay, but he's smart too.
01:18:26.900 And maybe I don't know whether he can be charming.
01:18:29.460 It's not what we've heard, but that's an advantage to him.
01:18:33.160 Yeah.
01:18:33.780 I think if he gets on the stand, uh, he could be very effective.
01:18:38.440 And I also think like Murdoch, he might want to always be the smartest person in the room.
01:18:45.120 I think he would enjoy, uh, having the last laugh, trying to trump, uh, the defense or
01:18:52.280 the prosecutors rather.
01:18:54.500 Hmm.
01:18:55.780 So far, the, the few views we've had of him, those two traffic stops were, as you point
01:19:00.820 out, any normal person's blood would be racing through their veins.
01:19:04.560 Nevermind if you actually had killed four people a month earlier, you're, you'd be insane
01:19:09.760 with anxiety.
01:19:11.720 None of that shows a couple of court appearances, same steady as they come.
01:19:17.040 So what we know about him so far is this is a cool cat and he's pretty cool.
01:19:21.900 And his lawyer, the one who's been talking at least, uh, Jason Labar has reiterated that,
01:19:27.400 that he was even intelligent.
01:19:29.520 He was very impressed with him.
01:19:31.240 He says he can make no connection, uh, between the crimes that have been charged and the person
01:19:37.040 he was talking to.
01:19:38.800 My God.
01:19:40.920 Time's going to tell.
01:19:41.920 And that June hearing is going to say a lot.
01:19:44.520 In the meantime, we will be reading Howard Bloom at airmail.
01:19:49.000 I was saying to the audience, something like 82 or 90 bucks to subscribe for the year.
01:19:52.600 It's worth it.
01:19:53.440 It's so good.
01:19:54.260 You make it worth it.
01:19:55.140 You alone.
01:19:55.640 Thank you.
01:19:56.420 I'll tell Graydon you said so.
01:19:57.780 Yeah.
01:19:59.120 Yeah.
01:19:59.560 Tell him, tell him I'm a big fan.
01:20:00.900 I love the publication.
01:20:01.860 So all the best to you.
01:20:03.380 Please come back.
01:20:04.340 If you have something new and you want to promote it, we're, we're here and we'd love
01:20:07.640 to hear from you.
01:20:08.280 Thank you so much.
01:20:08.920 A pleasure speaking with you.
01:20:11.600 Thanks for joining us today.
01:20:12.860 I wanted to let you know that we are off for a few days going into the second week of
01:20:17.320 our kids spring break.
01:20:18.680 And this one I'll be joining the family and taking a little vacay on, but I will be back
01:20:24.200 talking with you next Monday, March 27th.
01:20:27.280 Looking forward to it.
01:20:28.340 In the meantime, have a great week and I'll talk to you soon.
01:20:35.100 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.
01:20:36.980 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.