The Megyn Kelly Show - The Trial Ahead： Idaho College Murders and Bryan Kohberger, Megyn Kelly Show Special - Part Four ｜ Ep. 691

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:13.240 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm Megyn Kelly. On this special edition of the show,

00:00:17.920 we bring you deep into the fascinating and disturbing case of Brian Kohlberger and the

00:00:23.500 murder of four young college students in Idaho. The trial of Brian Kohlberger is expected to begin

00:00:29.520 sometime in 2024. We have brought you the details of the murder that November early morning of

00:00:36.280 Kohlberger's arrest, and we went deep into the psyche of the man accused of committing these

00:00:41.180 heinous crimes. Today, we examine the trial ahead. What is the case, legally speaking,

00:00:47.720 against Brian Kohlberger? What are the key components you should expect prosecutors to lean on

00:00:52.060 when they get in front of a jury? And keep in mind, we are going to get to watch as all of this plays

00:00:57.960 out. The judge has agreed to televise this trial. Now, it will be with courtroom cameras and without

00:01:05.100 media, but America will have a front row seat for the people versus Brian Kohlberger. It may sound like

00:01:12.560 an open and shut case for the prosecution, but trial attorney after trial attorney, seasoned pros

00:01:18.820 prosecutors have been warning us all year, not so fast, that this case is far from a slam dunk

00:01:25.960 for prosecutors. It's not going to be easy.

00:01:31.280 But first, remember, Brian Kohlberger, through his attorneys, maintains that he is innocent.

00:01:37.620 Following his arrest, his initial public defender in Pennsylvania, Jason Labar, released a statement

00:01:43.220 on Kohlberger's behalf that reads, Kohlberger is eager to be exonerated and looks forward to resolving

00:01:51.240 these matters as soon as possible, eager to be exonerated. Mr. Kohlberger, the statement goes on,

00:01:57.360 has been accused of very serious crimes, but the American justice system cloaks him in a veil of

00:02:02.060 innocence. He should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, not tried in the court of public

00:02:06.880 opinion. One should not pass judgment about the facts of the case unless and until a fair trial in

00:02:12.240 court, at which time all sides may be heard and inferences challenged. Labar told NBC's Today

00:02:19.500 show that Brian believes he will be exonerated. He believes he's going to be exonerated. That's what

00:02:27.980 he believes. Those were his words. When we interviewed Phil Houston, author of the book Spy the Lie and

00:02:36.260 former CIA officer, he noted that exonerated comment. He did release a statement to us, all of us, through

00:02:45.700 his lawyer, that he looks forward to being exonerated. So he's definitely trying to tell us,

00:02:52.560 I am going to be found not guilty, but the words used raised a red flag for you. Why?

00:02:58.900 There's, there's something very important missing from that statement, Megan, and that is, I didn't do

00:03:06.700 it. And, and, and it is in their efforts to focus on convincing everybody that they didn't do it. They

00:03:16.500 forget to say, I didn't do it. And not a, it is not a truthful fact for them. In fact, they're dealing

00:03:26.280 mentally with an ugly fact, which is I did do it. And so that goes, that gets pushed to the

00:03:33.000 background. And now I have to focus on strategy and how do I get out of this?

00:03:40.320 Since the arrest, we have heard bits and pieces from Kohlberger's defense team.

00:03:43.760 In May at Kohlberger's arraignment, he and his attorney made the bizarre decision to stand silent

00:03:49.340 and make the judge enter Kohlberger's not guilty plea.

00:03:55.720 Okay, Ms. Taylor, is Mr. Kohlberger prepared to plead to these charges?

00:04:01.220 Your honor, we will be standing silent.

00:04:03.560 Okay, because Mr. Kohlberger is standing silent,

00:04:07.900 I'm going to enter not guilty pleas on each charge. Counts one, two, three, four, and five.

00:04:15.980 Kohlberger sat there in an orange jumpsuit, but did not speak. Kohlberger's defense team has been

00:04:22.920 very active in hammering the prosecution with motion practice. In June, in an effort to get the

00:04:28.040 DNA evidence thrown out, the defense floated a theory that Kohlberger's DNA might have been

00:04:33.380 planted on the knife sheath and described the process as rigged, saying the state was purely

00:04:40.280 focused on Kohlberger and used a, quote, bizarrely complex DNA tree experiment to make their match.

00:04:48.620 They tried to dismiss the grand jury indictment entirely, claiming that the grand jury had been

00:04:54.060 misled about the proper standard of proof. That was not successful. And then in a formal objection,

00:05:01.860 the defense team has gone public with one hint of what we believe is to come at trial,

00:05:07.300 claiming Kohlberger has an alibi. This is something they would be required to disclose,

00:05:13.300 and we'll get into it in just a bit. And of course, the big news came in August. With the trial

00:05:19.340 just six weeks away, as of then, Kohlberger waived his right to a speedy trial, and the trial that was

00:05:25.800 set to begin in October was postponed indefinitely. His defense team argued they needed far more time to

00:05:32.220 prepare and go through all the material provided to them by the prosecution, especially as the

00:05:37.080 state said they plan to seek the death penalty in this case. So here we sit with no trial date as of

00:05:44.200 December, 2023. Soon, we will take you down an incredible road, a truly fascinating possibility

00:05:52.920 about an entirely different direction this case could take once those defense attorneys get on their feet. 0.99

00:06:01.980 A theory expertly crafted by the longtime journalist and author Howard Bloom, who covered this case in

00:06:08.200 great detail for Airmail News. Bloom's forthcoming book on this case will be published in the spring

00:06:13.560 by HarperCollins. You're not going to want to miss that. We're going to bring you some of Bloom's

00:06:17.780 writing throughout this episode with his agreement. But let's start with the case against Kohlberger,

00:06:25.000 the DNA evidence found on the knife sheath in the house on 1122 King Road. That's critical. But as

00:06:33.120 Bloom writes, the DNA here may not be exactly irrefutable. The consumer DNA kits that are sold

00:06:40.860 in your local CVS need about 750 to 1000 nanograms to find out all they need to know about you. That's

00:06:48.320 not much. It's smaller than a speck of floating dust and a whole lot less substantial. A single nanogram

00:06:55.400 is as heavy as a breeze. It weighs a few trillionths of a pound. There's nothing to it. But crime scenes

00:07:03.440 often contain a whole lot less DNA than that. The forensic teams will routinely wind up with only

00:07:10.060 100 or so nanograms of DNA. Yet scientists can nevertheless work their magic and use even

00:07:18.200 this microscopic amount of genetic evidence to nail the criminal. The problem, however, was that the DNA

00:07:26.280 on the knife sheath here, authorities would concede on background, was less than 100 nanograms. A whole lot

00:07:35.100 less. A mere fraction, in fact, of a single nanogram. Nothing more than just a handful of microscopic sized

00:07:45.020 cells. In total, according to knowledgeable sources, about 20 cells, reports Bloom. Maybe they whispered even

00:07:54.420 fewer. The DNA sample was as small as a fragment of a speck balanced on the head of a tiny pin. It no longer

00:08:01.900 mattered that they had previously drawn a blank trying to make a link between the DNA on the knife sheath,

00:08:07.840 Button, and Brian Kohlberger. They had succeeded in doing the next best thing. And they were convinced that

00:08:15.000 was good enough. They had matched the speck of DNA recovered from the murder house to the DNA

00:08:21.820 embedded in the trash of Michael Kohlberger, the suspect's father. And while moralists might find

00:08:30.220 biblical authority for the argument that the father is not responsible for his son's alleged sins,

00:08:35.720 the more practical geneticists had found an indisputable link. Quote, at least 99.9998% of the male

00:08:46.500 population would be expected to be excluded from the possibility of being the suspect's biological

00:08:52.280 father. End quote. Meaning the DNA on the knife sheath, Button, belonged, the Idaho authorities asserted,

00:08:59.860 to Michael Kohlberger's son, Brian. So they had the knife sheath with a miraculous DNA match,

00:09:08.840 but minuscule amounts and apparently only touch DNA, which as we discussed in episode two,

00:09:15.140 is not exactly a smoking gun. A defense attorney can do a lot to poke holes in touch DNA. And while the

00:09:22.720 knife sheath was found, the knife was not. Where's the supposed murder weapon? Still nothing on that,

00:09:30.700 as far as we know. Then there's the evidence around the white 2015 Hyundai Elantra that happens to be

00:09:39.000 Kohlberger's car. And separate but related, the cell phone pings from Kohlberger's phone. That's not a

00:09:46.720 slam dunk for the prosecution here either. Take, for instructive example, the now infamous sightings

00:09:52.760 of the white Hyundai Elantra on surveillance camera footage in the vicinity of the King Roadhouse in the

00:09:58.980 pre-dawn minutes subsequent to the savage killings of the four college students. Within days of the

00:10:05.660 murders, the Moscow police had gathered a stream of video featuring what they quickly dubbed Suspect

00:10:11.460 Vehicle 1. Only they had a problem with the quality of the images. They were flickering,

00:10:17.660 recorded in varying light. The pixels had captured a fast-moving white car, but that was about all the

00:10:23.400 local cops could say for sure. So the promising but far from conclusive videos were swiftly dispatched

00:10:29.660 to building 27958A Pod E, Quantico, Virginia. That was where the forensic examiners of the image

00:10:37.620 analysis unit of the FBI operational technology division worked their magic using a bit of software

00:10:44.560 that had been originally developed at the cost of about 1 million taxpayer dollars for a secretive

00:10:51.320 defense department outfit nestled deep in the clandestine heart of the deep state, the irregular

00:10:57.180 warfare technical support directorate. With the click of a few computer keys, the program searches through

00:11:04.180 a staggering inventory of cars until it ultimately, according to the confident government description,

00:11:10.220 quote, identifies the make and model of the vehicle in a still image. And it worked like a charm on the

00:11:18.260 handful of videos the Moscow cops had gathered, or more precisely, three charms. The FBI forensic examiner

00:11:25.300 first deduced that suspect vehicle one was a 2011 through 13 Hyundai Elantra. Then, quote, upon further

00:11:33.400 review, to use the chagrined phrase of the candid Idaho authorities, he decided the mysterious Hyundai might

00:11:41.680 very well be actually a 2011 through 16 vehicle. And when he poured over the image of a car consistent with a

00:11:51.100 Hyundai near the murder scene that was caught on camera, not long after the killings racing toward Pullman,

00:11:56.400 Washington, he deduced that it was a 2014 through 16 Hyundai. That is, he cast a pretty broad net, and he cast it

00:12:07.240 three times to boot. Still, when it turned out that Brian Kohlberger owned a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra, it was right in the

00:12:16.160 ballpark of the FBI's analysis of the make and model of suspect vehicle one. But it was a super dome-sized

00:12:22.260 ballpark. It had been stretched to cover five full years of cars. A smart defense attorney could drive a

00:12:28.620 fleet of Hyundais through a speculative gap that wide. And that wasn't all. There was further cause for

00:12:35.520 hand-wringing in the aftermath of the FBI's vaunted forensic image analysis. Despite all the inventive

00:12:41.840 manipulation of the pixels in the video footage of suspect vehicle one, the analysts still could not

00:12:47.940 come up with a legible shot of the license plate. They couldn't even offer a guess. They had no idea.

00:12:57.080 Even more vexing, there wasn't a single legible image of the driver. The bureau wizards tried all sorts

00:13:04.560 of photographic tricks to pull a face from the blur, as you can imagine. In the end, however, the best they

00:13:10.160 could decipher was a dark, murky shadow hovering over the steering wheel. And you can't slap handcuffs

00:13:16.720 on a shadow. At a glance, the new evidence seemed deeply incriminating. Kohlberger's car was arguably

00:13:23.420 placed near the King Road house immediately before the murder, and later hightailing it away from the

00:13:28.520 scene of the crime in the pre-dawn aftermath. His cell phone pinged to towers that seemed to correlate

00:13:34.280 to the Elantra's route. However, when examined closely, it turned out that the maps had been

00:13:40.800 sketched with a swirling, impressionistic hand rather than with a cartographer's rigor.

00:13:47.940 What went unmentioned deliberately when the police shared their handiwork with the public

00:13:53.160 was that those cell phone towers cast a wide net. Their range can be as broad as 14 miles.

00:14:00.380 And in a cozy town like Moscow, that takes in a whole lot of territory. It's more wishful

00:14:06.860 thinking than solid detective work to put Kohlberger's phone at a precise spot at a certain

00:14:12.360 time. Being in the vicinity is not the same as being at an exact address. Just ask anyone whose

00:14:19.420 Amazon delivery wound up at a neighbor's house or any of the combative defense attorneys who have

00:14:24.700 succeeded in convincing courts to question the reliability and accuracy of the FBI's attempts to map

00:14:30.340 the signal footprints cast by cell towers. Our Megyn Kelly show lawyers, they come on for a segment

00:14:37.260 we have called Kelly's Court. They know the challenges here, as famed former prosecutor Marsha

00:14:42.980 Clark and defense attorney Mark Garagos discussed with me when we had them on earlier this year.

00:14:49.060 The car was spotted there by surveillance cameras before the fact, for weeks before the fact,

00:14:54.900 which indicates the possibility of stalking. And then you have the cell phone pings that corroborate

00:14:59.720 the movements of the car. Then you have the observation by DM, the other girl who lives

00:15:06.780 there, that makes it very clear the intruder is there. And also she has the one characteristic of

00:15:14.060 bushy eyebrows that did go along with his appearance. And that's not the strongest thing.

00:15:18.100 And I'm never a big fan of eyewitness identification cases. But when you start to put it all together,

00:15:23.580 it is starting to look that way. Now, you're right. At this point, it's not a slam dunk.

00:15:29.740 It looks very much like it's moving in that direction. But that's why they're continuing to

00:15:33.820 investigate. And, you know, of course, they're going to turn his apartment upside down. They're

00:15:37.760 going to turn this crime scene upside down. And we're going to see a lot more in days to come.

00:15:41.920 Go ahead, Mark. What are your thoughts on all that?

00:15:44.300 I don't disagree with Marcia. I think that you've got, to me, it's probable cause all day long.

00:15:51.400 However, I've said it before and I'll say it again. There's so many holes in this. I've had,

00:15:57.080 I can't tell you the number of murder cases that have turned out that cell phone evidence ended up

00:16:05.400 exonerating my client as opposed to, um, showing that he was guilty. The view I, as I'm sitting

00:16:13.140 right here, I could be using my phone and it could be pinging onto two towers, 12 miles away from each

00:16:22.220 other, just by virtue of the amount of traffic on one of the towers. So I've never been a fan of the

00:16:28.260 cell phone triangulation. It's a good tool to try to get you there, but I've used it to show that

00:16:35.340 somebody was 40 miles away at the time of the crime and exonerated them. So that's not going to,

00:16:41.380 that's not going to get them there. They also, the fact that the phone was not being used during the

00:16:47.940 two hour period. I know law enforcement speculates that he turned it off. There's other explanations

00:16:53.180 like he wasn't there. So those kinds of things, you get jury instructions to say two reasonable

00:16:59.020 alternatives. You got to pick the one that points towards innocence. They need more evidence.

00:17:05.340 There is at least one other arrow in the prosecution's quiver, the possibility of an actual

00:17:12.180 eyewitness. As we told you about in episode one, her name is Dylan Mortenson. Yes. One of the surviving

00:17:19.260 roommates claims to have actually seen the killer, despite the fact that she never called the police

00:17:24.100 until someone else did it from her phone more than seven hours later. Still, she described to police

00:17:29.680 the next day, seeing someone 5'10 or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with

00:17:36.520 bushy eyebrows. This physical description, while vague, certainly matches Kohlberger. Will it be

00:17:43.380 enough? As Bloom writes, cop after cop promises that the single unshakable reason Kohlberger will be sent

00:17:50.820 by the state to his richly deserved death is Bill Thompson, the county prosecutor. Thompson,

00:17:59.500 his long, white, biblical beard flailing about as the wind roars. Thompson in his down-home uniform

00:18:05.960 of jeans and fleece vests. Thompson, the wry musician who plays rock, folk, country with his band.

00:18:13.600 Thompson, who had been in office for over 30 years. Thompson, who had famously done the impossible

00:18:18.840 in the closely followed Rachel Anderson murder case and won a conviction without the body ever being

00:18:25.120 found. An improbable victory that sent no less a culprit than a blood relative of Al Capone to jail

00:18:32.220 for life. Rumor has it that this will be Thompson's last hurrah. There is no way cops believe that he

00:18:41.540 would retire to idle away his days, strumming his guitar and casting his fishing rod without having

00:18:48.320 secured his already impressive reputation with a final victory in a big trial like this. And trials

00:18:55.200 just don't come any bigger than this one in Lataw County. But will it all be enough? Will it be enough

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00:19:57.600 Let's get to the defense. First up, Ann Taylor, Kohlberger's lead public defense attorney in action

00:20:04.040 from this year. As the court knows, we have been representing Mr. Kohlberger since the very end of

00:20:11.380 December of 2022. And during the course of the last several months, there has been a lot of discovery

00:20:17.880 that's been requested and a lot that's been supplied. I come here asking the court to compel

00:20:23.700 discovery. I'm seeking an order directing that we receive this discovery. As we told you, the defense

00:20:31.320 has made clear that they plan on arguing that Kohlberger has an alibi. Well, here's what we

00:20:36.760 know. In August, defense attorney Ann Taylor and her team filed a formal statement disclosing that

00:20:43.180 Kohlberger plans to use an alibi defense. She's required to tell the court that. But she teased that

00:20:48.920 it would be a unique one from the filing. Quote, Mr. Kohlberger has long had a habit of going for drives

00:20:56.320 alone. Often he would go for drives at night. He did so late on November 12th and into November 13th,

00:21:03.860 2022. Mr. Kohlberger is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time. At this time, there is

00:21:11.180 not a specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohlberger was at each moment of the hours between late

00:21:17.000 night, November 12th and early morning, November 13th, 2022. He was out driving during the late night and

00:21:24.280 early morning hours of November 12th through 13th, 2022. Counsel for Mr. Kohlberger is aware that case

00:21:31.840 law broadens the definition of alibi with a statutory requirement of a specific location to more broadly

00:21:38.120 include disclosure of information that tends to state the person claiming alibi was at a place other than

00:21:44.920 the location of an offense. Mr. Kohlberger has complied to the extent possible at this time.

00:21:50.260 Corroboration of Brian Kohlberger not being at 1122 King may be brought out through cross-examination

00:21:58.160 of the state's witnesses. At this time, Mr. Kohlberger cannot be more specific about the

00:22:03.000 possible witnesses and exactly what they will say. The defense has been hampered by the state's own

00:22:07.960 choices. The state chose a secret grand jury rather than the planned preliminary hearing. Had the state

00:22:14.340 moved forward with the preliminary hearing, the defense would have had the opportunity to develop

00:22:18.980 testimony through cross-examination and witness presentation. End quote. That's it. That's his

00:22:26.260 quote alibi. He was out driving alone, but there also may be corroboration of him not being at the

00:22:35.740 location brought out through some unspecified future cross-examination of someone and witness

00:22:42.700 presentation, but we don't know of exactly whom. Now we do know that Kohlberger's neighbor in Washington

00:22:50.060 state said that Kohlberger was often active at night. But what about that night, November 12th,

00:22:57.680 leading into the 13th? Could there be more to the story? His lawyers have been diligent. They have

00:23:04.300 pounded the courthouse table with motions, a rat-a-tat-tat of demands for discovery, objections to

00:23:09.520 protective orders, and so on. Even a curious request for the personnel files of three of the cops who

00:23:15.720 played a role in helping to clamp the cuffs on Kohlberger. It's a seemingly desperate strategy

00:23:20.920 that has left the Moscow authorities bemused, Howard Bloom reports. In the second floor detective shack of

00:23:27.560 the Moscow Police Department building, the mood is, he says, haughty and confident. S-O-D-D-I,

00:23:35.040 the cops taunt derisively. Some other dude did it. How many times have they heard that, and how did

00:23:42.160 those cases work out? We got our man, they insist, and there's no way he's going to wiggle out of this.

00:23:47.960 With an attention-grabbing oratorical drum roll, defense sources enumerate the large,

00:23:53.520 lingering mysteries the prosecution has refused to address. And they very pointedly make the case that

00:23:59.840 these inconvenient truths, when lined up end-to-end, hint at another still untold story.

00:24:07.120 Consider the timeline for the murders, the prosecution asserts, was an extremely tight

00:24:12.100 window. Remember, one victim was on her phone looking at TikTok at 4.12 a.m., and police estimate

00:24:19.100 the suspect was gone by 4.25 a.m. Could a single assassin, a graduate student, not a secario,

00:24:26.260 get the job done with such disciplined professionalism, and then disappear into

00:24:31.300 the night without leaving a single drop of his blood in the house, in his car, on his clothes,

00:24:35.860 or in his apartment? The stunned cops arriving on the scene had described what they encountered

00:24:40.380 as a bloodbath. Is this lack of blood evidence testimony to the killer's fastidiousness, or a prod

00:24:47.740 to go down other ruminative paths? And remember, too, Kaylee's father had found a measure of small

00:24:54.840 comfort in the fact that his brave daughter had, the coroner had revealed to him, fought back like a

00:25:01.100 tiger. And yet no traces of cuts, scrapes, or bruises were observed on Brian Kohlberger. Four

00:25:09.140 young, fit targets, and he somehow traipsed away with his pasty skin as smooth and unblemished as any

00:25:17.360 sedentary academics. Then there's the coroner's autopsy reports. What was behind the delay in the

00:25:25.360 determination of Ethan's wounds? The autopsy was performed on November 17th, but the report on his

00:25:32.760 death was not issued for nearly a month, December 15th. Had there been a problem in reaching the

00:25:38.140 findings? A final analysis that had been subject to weeks of debate? The coroner's descriptions of the

00:25:44.320 wounds, as noted in court documents, seems to differ from floor to floor in the house. Kaylee and Maddie,

00:25:53.040 lying in the same bed on the third floor, suffered through, quote, visible stab wounds. Yet on the floor

00:25:59.780 below, Zanna succumbed to, quote, wounds caused by an edged weapon. What does that mean? Ethan's,

00:26:09.800 again, that's Zanna's boyfriend, were, quote, caused by sharp force injuries. Why the difference?

00:26:17.580 Was there some doubt in the coroner's mind that the wounds were all caused by the same weapon?

00:26:23.000 And speaking of the murder weapon, where is it? The knife, or is it knives? Used in the attack has not

00:26:30.840 been found. There is not an incriminating trace of a weapon that can be tied to Kohlberger, at least not

00:26:37.220 that we know of. But these suspicions are just preludes to the bigger mysteries that keep the

00:26:42.660 defense up at night. In an objection to state's motion for a protective order they had filed late

00:26:48.600 in June, the team zeroed in on a few of the lingering questions. It is a revelatory document

00:26:54.680 and a provocative one. They point out that back in December, the prosecution was made aware of two

00:27:01.140 additional males' DNA found inside the King Roadhouse, as well as male DNA on a glove found

00:27:07.900 outside the residence just days after the murders. If the DNA had been Kohlberger's, the prosecution would

00:27:13.280 have been screaming this revelation from the Moscow rooftops. The state's stony silence, the defense

00:27:18.820 believes, can mean only one thing. The DNA comes from three other men, and so the obvious and yet very

00:27:25.120 pertinent questions remain unanswered. Who are they? And how do these three unknown men fit into

00:27:30.340 the horrific events of that night, if at all? And there is still another ticking bomb in the court

00:27:36.620 document. The motion dramatically demolishes the tantalizing press reports that had been buzzing

00:27:42.540 around the case for several months. Forget the unfounded stories about online direct messages between

00:27:48.620 Kohlberger and one of the victims. Forget the alleged run-in at a Main Street Moscow restaurant

00:27:54.540 where two of the girls worked. The defense asserts plainly that there is no connection,

00:28:00.180 quote-unquote, between Mr. Kohlberger and the victims. And if there is no connection,

00:28:05.840 then there is no motive, no obvious motive anyway. And without a motive, the random, brutal killing of

00:28:14.320 four college students by a grad student from a nearby university sure is an enigma. Why? Why would he do

00:28:22.700 it? It doesn't make sense. But there's still another puzzler at the beating heart of this case.

00:28:30.580 Namely, the eight-hour gap between one of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen, first heard

00:28:36.040 disquieting noises in the house and spotted a masked, black-dressed intruder. The police were finally

00:28:42.820 summoned eight hours later. There have been a lot of agile, emphatic offerings to explain away this

00:28:50.760 remarkable delay, and none so far the defense believes has been satisfactory, or they believe

00:28:57.160 has the ring of truth. Meanwhile, these simmering doubts have only intensified now that the defense

00:29:03.280 has been able to read the roommate's grand jury testimony. A person familiar with the grand jury findings

00:29:09.240 that led to Kohlberger's indictment told Howard Bloom with undisguised bafflement and frustration

00:29:15.100 that Dylan Mortensen's testimony, quote, raised more questions than it answered.

00:29:20.540 Then the defense, along with virtually everyone else with access to the internet,

00:29:24.460 watched a newly released video that showed a pickup truck leaving the neighborhood of the murder scene

00:29:30.020 just minutes after the white Hyundai Elantra. Was this some neighbor heading off at a pre-dawn hour to his

00:29:37.760 early morning job? A Romeo who didn't want to stay for breakfast? Or was it something else a whole lot

00:29:43.940 more significant? Perhaps it was another piece in a complex puzzle that, despite the state's confident

00:29:50.760 assurances, has not yet been satisfactorily pieced together. So the defense has gone on offense.

00:29:59.340 The accumulated doubts have worked to liberate them from poking holes in the prosecution's

00:30:04.740 case. And with this freedom, they have begun to explore new narratives, alternative versions

00:30:11.840 of what might have happened on that fateful night in November on King Road. And if Kohlberger was not

00:30:18.840 the killer, or if he was an accomplice rather than the sole perp, then they realized they had to go back

00:30:24.860 to what had been previously brushed over. They had to work their way to an explanation that made sense.

00:30:30.580 And the farther they traveled, according to people familiar with what the defense team is exploring,

00:30:36.180 the more the trail led inexorably to drugs. We know about Kohlberger's past drug use. We also know

00:30:44.740 from a variety of reporting that the area where the murders took place was a hotbed of drug activity.

00:30:51.260 Then last March, a former University of Idaho frat president, a 22-year-old journalism major in his

00:30:58.180 junior year, died. And in the aftermath of his sad and needless demise, new avenues of speculation

00:31:04.560 multiplied, spreading out in previously unexplored and surprising directions.

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00:32:09.040 It was spring break, and Caden Young was looking to score, and he succeeded, only to pay with his

00:32:20.780 life. That is a thumbnail history of the events as detailed in the initial news stories. However,

00:32:26.760 the voluminous police reports, as well as a conversation with one of the detectives

00:32:30.680 who had led the investigation, and with a legal aid lawyer who subsequently got involved,

00:32:35.560 offer a more detailed account, one that introduces two new actors to Caden's story and perhaps to

00:32:44.460 ours. There are a couple who quickly caught the defense team's rapt attention and continue to

00:32:49.860 hold it like a magnet. It was all too common, another young life ravaged by fentanyl. And within days,

00:32:57.140 it might very well have become simply another tragic statistic in a national body count that is

00:33:01.800 climbing toward pandemic proportions. But then the police made two arrests in connection with

00:33:07.620 Caden Young's death. Hurrying to room 214 of the Holiday Inn, where Young had first overdosed,

00:33:14.280 the police arrested Emma Bailey, 22, of Moscow, and Demetrius Robinson, 36, of Tacoma, just as they were

00:33:24.000 apparently preparing to leave. They were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a violation

00:33:29.440 of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act. That is, they had allegedly supplied the student with a lethal

00:33:35.760 fentanyl-laced cocaine. They were held on $100,000 bail. Pleading not guilty, but unable to post bail,

00:33:43.920 they were shuffled off to the Lewis County Jail, where they were to await their May 30th trial date.

00:33:49.040 The pair spent two months and five days behind bars. And during that time, law enforcement

00:33:53.840 investigators and the press kept digging. And what they unearthed grabbed the attention of the

00:34:00.400 preternaturally curious Kohlberger defense team. Demetrius Robinson, or D as he was widely known in

00:34:07.600 the college towns of both Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington, had quite a rap sheet. Extensive

00:34:13.580 was the adjective the local paper used to describe it. Violent was the modifier, though, that leaped up in

00:34:20.100 many people's minds. Among the eyebrow-raising highlights, a 15-month prison sentence for a

00:34:26.160 second-degree assault in Pullman back in 2018. A second-degree rape investigation two years later.

00:34:32.900 And then in 2021, an arrest in Pullman for suspicion of possession of a controlled substance with intent

00:34:38.180 to deliver, and for allegedly assaulting a companion when their alleged partnership went south.

00:34:43.400 While the drug case had fallen apart because of legal concerns over an overly gung-ho search of a

00:34:48.640 hotel room, the fourth-degree assault and harassment charges stuck, and Robinson served 151 days in

00:34:55.500 jail. Also scattered about Robinson's sheet were five charges for driving with a suspended license,

00:35:01.820 one of which landed him in jail for five days. There was an outstanding arrest warrant for another.

00:35:07.540 As for Emma Bailey, her record was more banal. A DUI arrest this past February after she breezed 0.99

00:35:14.600 through a red light in Pullman around 2 a.m. When the cops dug deeper, they grew to suspect that

00:35:19.680 the couple were very possibly dealing drugs they had scored in Seattle to the local colleges in

00:35:24.880 Pullman and Moscow. In fact, they discovered, and the detective's incident report flatly stated,

00:35:30.460 there were investigations in other jurisdictions for Emma and Demetrius for narcotics trafficking.

00:35:37.520 But just five days before the trial for supplying the lethal cocaine was to begin,

00:35:43.080 a judge dismissed the case. Their legal aid lawyer had zeroed in on a technicality,

00:35:48.640 but it was clearly a very consequential one, the question of prosecutorial jurisdiction.

00:35:55.160 Apparently, they'd been scheduled to be tried in the county where the death had occurred rather than

00:36:00.520 where the cocaine had been ingested, but their good fortune might be short-lived. The judge

00:36:07.740 dismissed that case without prejudice, which means it can be refiled in the same court of law if the

00:36:13.880 authorities draft a new and more carefully drawn indictment. Is one in the works? All a fuming

00:36:20.660 Centralia detective who'd been involved in the case from the morning he'd found Young's inert body would

00:36:26.080 say is we are not going to let this case disappear. And he's not alone. The case hasn't disappeared from

00:36:33.620 the thoughts of the Kohlberger defense team either. Why? What does this have to do with him? It is a

00:36:41.540 touchstone, according to people familiar with their inquiries, that has the team digging deep into the

00:36:47.380 possibility of narcotics trafficking along Greek Row in Moscow and wondering whether these furtive activities

00:36:55.420 might have somehow played a part in the quadruple murders. What if anything they have uncovered is

00:37:02.940 wrapped up tight by the iron bands of the gag order? The overview offered by the Seattle DEA field office

00:37:08.820 is a tale of cutthroat international intrigue, a pipeline that runs from China, where the fentanyl

00:37:14.960 precursor chemicals are produced, to the sinister Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Mexico, which manufacture the

00:37:21.680 drugs and then smuggle the too often lethal product to their distribution networks in northwestern urban

00:37:27.180 hubs such as Seattle and Spokane. Then, with the eager help of a freelance army of small-time

00:37:33.700 distributors, the tentacles of the octopus reach into the seemingly wholesome all-American counties

00:37:39.060 and college towns stretching across the great outdoors. That's the view from a thousand feet. But Sheriff

00:37:46.800 Brett Myers, head of the Quad City Drug Task Force, a multi-jurisdictional team propped up in part by

00:37:52.300 federal money, whose territory includes the university towns of Moscow and Pullman, offers a

00:37:57.480 ground-level account. And it is enough to give anyone whose kid is heading off to college in the area

00:38:02.480 the willies. Matter-of-factly, the sheriff shares that his task force is working with college kids in the

00:38:10.740 local schools, whom they've caught dealing MDMA and cocaine, flipping them, and then using the students

00:38:18.620 to go after the big local dealers. And once the scared witless college kids have helped his team

00:38:25.540 ID the foot soldiers, quote, we go up the ladder to get the people tied to the cartels in the cities.

00:38:33.320 There are a lot of unanswered questions, he acknowledges. Pressed further about the quadruple

00:38:39.300 murder of the Idaho students, he candidly goes on. Could it have been a drug-related case?

00:38:44.400 I can't rule it out. It's not improbable, he says, adding, from what I know, that would answer a lot

00:38:50.560 of questions. But did any of the victims know these two accused drug dealers, Bailey and Robinson?

00:38:59.700 Maybe. Maybe. Ashlyn Couch, then a University of Idaho senior, was an original signer of the lease,

00:39:08.420 stay with me here, on the King Road House, with the others. But she never actually moved in.

00:39:15.740 Nonetheless, she remained a friend as well as a sorority sister of several of the residents,

00:39:20.240 and according to some reports, she would visit from time to time. Couch also follows Emma Bailey,

00:39:26.280 one of our arrestees, on Instagram, which could mean something or nothing. But so we have the person

00:39:34.180 who is the lessor on the King Road House following one of these accused drug dealers on Instagram.

00:39:42.040 It all does lead to another question. Did Emma Bailey, accused drug dealer, know Brian Kohlberger?

00:39:49.060 We know he had a drug passed. This question has persuaded investigators associated with the defense

00:39:55.860 to revisit Brian Kohlberger's first day in Moscow. That was three months before the murders,

00:40:03.620 when he met his next-door neighbor, Christian Martinez. It was then that Martinez invited his

00:40:10.760 new neighbor, Brian Kohlberger, to a pool party. This is back on July 9th, at The Grove,

00:40:16.000 a clappered complex of buildings filled with college kids, mostly University of Idaho students,

00:40:21.400 just a 15-minute or so drive across the state line in Moscow. Recall Brian lived in Washington State.

00:40:28.920 Thanks. I have to run and get trunks, Kohlberger texted back to Martinez. And so, while Zach DJ

00:40:36.960 Grape Vinyl Cartwright, a muscular PhD in food science with the countenance of an Aztec chieftain

00:40:44.020 and a jet-black man bun, manned the turntables at this party, Kohlberger, in his new trunks,

00:40:51.660 perched at the shallow end of the large pool. Bad Bunny wailed from the speakers, reports Bloom,

00:40:58.540 imploring party, party. Chicken and steak were being grilled to make tacos. There was beer,

00:41:04.160 wine, tequila. The sun was blinding. There must have been a hundred or more college kids on the deck

00:41:09.820 surrounding the two large ovals that formed the pristine blue pool. And just down the hill from

00:41:15.620 the housing complex, close enough for Bad Bunny to come rattling through its windows,

00:41:20.660 was the Moscow police headquarters. Taking a seat next to Kohlberger that day

00:41:26.620 was Beseth Salamjan, a laid-back, darkly handsome, off-and-on WSU undergraduate who was friends with

00:41:36.300 Kohlberger's new neighbor, Martinez, who had invited Kohlberger to the party, as well as DJ Cartwright.

00:41:42.780 Salamjan and Kohlberger got to talking. And while the details of their conversation have long been

00:41:47.980 forgotten, Salamjan vividly remembers how, quote, the dude would talk chin up, straight to my face. 0.95

00:41:55.180 We were just shooting shit, he says, but he was definitely one serious dude. Nice enough, though. 0.92

00:42:00.540 Then Salamjan stood up and went off to dance. So Kohlberger, perhaps not wanting to be a wallflower

00:42:06.680 as the party was gathering steam, went over to talk to the DJ. Quote, he was asking me about my speakers,

00:42:13.180 all kind of technical stuff, Cartwright remembers. But he had this way about him. You know those people

00:42:19.940 who don't understand personal space? He was one of them. He'd get real close. It was off-putting,

00:42:26.200 says Cartwright. Finally, Cartwright told his new acquaintance, quote, I'm DJing, man. I'll catch you later.

00:42:32.680 With that, Kohlberger returned to the shallow end of the pool. And before too long, Salamjan returned too.

00:42:38.860 And he witnessed two events that in their pregnant way are provocative footnotes

00:42:43.460 to all that would happen in Moscow just a few months later. He watched as Kohlberger abruptly

00:42:50.040 jumped up without warning and approached a girl in a black thong bikini with pink hair and a complex 1.00

00:42:55.760 tattoo design on her left thigh. Then Kohlberger, after only a brief conversation, asked her for her

00:43:01.080 phone number, and he got it. Next, as if a man on a mission, he turned to the pink-haired woman's

00:43:07.600 friend, also in a black two-piece, and asked for her number too. And he succeeded once again.

00:43:14.920 Only after that, perhaps feeling he had accomplished all he'd set out to do, more in fact,

00:43:21.200 Brian quietly shuffled off while the party was just hitting a groove. He said no goodbyes.

00:43:27.460 Did he ever call the two women? They insist he did not, at least not long enough to speak to them.

00:43:32.520 As it happens, both women received several hang-up calls in the aftermath of the party,

00:43:38.420 but neither of them ever had any thoughts about who the culprit might have been

00:43:42.680 until Kohlberger's arrest. And by then, the FBI was inquiring into what went on at that pool party.

00:43:51.220 The agents commandeered a room at the red-brick Lightly Student Services Building adjacent to the

00:43:56.360 main WSU campus, and with a professional politeness that impressed the students, began interviewing

00:44:02.340 anyone who knew Brian Kohlberger. In the process, they inquired if anyone had any photos or even a

00:44:09.020 video from the July 9th pool party. A few were produced. It was not an extensive record of the

00:44:15.500 festivities, more a haphazard collection of snapshots and at least one brief, somewhat random video.

00:44:21.720 The agents were searching for Gonsalves, Mogan, Kurnodal, or Chapin. They could not find them,

00:44:31.560 which means they were not at the pool party, or they simply did not appear in the photos or the

00:44:37.100 video that were taken that day. Or maybe they just weren't in the handful of photos and videos that

00:44:43.020 were shared with the Bureau. But what if the FBI's review done last November in the early stages of

00:44:49.120 this investigation was too narrow? What if they had scrutinized the pictures in the video and had

00:44:54.780 ignored the possible presence of another guest whose appearance could put a whole new spin on what

00:45:01.760 happened at the house on King Road? What if accused drug dealer Emma Bailey had been at the pool party?

00:45:11.240 If she had been, then she might very well have also been approached by Kohlberger on the make.

00:45:18.720 And if, as the police allege, she was in the habit of dealing recreational drugs,

00:45:23.440 it might have been a connection a one-time heroin addict like Kohlberger would have relished.

00:45:28.640 This is all speculation, but the defense is looking into it. It might have been a connection that,

00:45:34.900 unlike his approaches to the two other female partygoers, could have had some longevity. In fact, 0.98

00:45:40.660 he might have even visited Bailey from time to time at her home in Moscow, which, as it happens,

00:45:49.200 was tucked into the very end of a cul-de-sac a minute or so away from the murder house by car,

00:45:56.040 which would put it very much within the same incriminating cell tower radius as the scene of

00:46:01.800 the crime on King Road. So, was Emma at this party? Howard Bloom talked to seven people who

00:46:10.940 had been there, and the responses he received, all shared after a good deal of thought, ran the gamut

00:46:16.300 from, I think she was, to, she might have been. But no one said she definitely was there. And no one

00:46:24.580 said she definitely was not. In short, there remains something for the defense to seek its

00:46:29.940 teeth into. A hypothetical alternative to the version of the case presented by the prosecution.

00:46:36.040 Now, this theory, as laid out by Bloom, is just that, a theory. But the defense will surely try

00:46:41.380 to suggest to the jury that there were other reasons for Kohlberger to have been out driving

00:46:46.020 that night, perhaps tapping into an old habit on a night he would later wish he had spent at home.

00:46:53.520 Keep in mind, the defense does not need to prove anything here. It just needs to muddy the waters

00:46:58.900 enough to create reasonable doubt. In our next and final episode, we dig into the as-yet-unanswered

00:47:07.380 questions that may affect the jury's determination on that score. We'll see you then.

00:47:16.020 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 21, 2023

The Trial Ahead： Idaho College Murders and Bryan Kohberger, Megyn Kelly Show Special - Part Four ｜ Ep. 691

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