INFAMOUS: University of Idaho Murders

Hi, crime junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt and the story I have for you today is one I know you've heard of. It was a case that made every news station nationally at some point and post Karen Reed, we were all gearing up for this trial to dominate public attention all over again. But less than two weeks ago, there was a shocking turn of events. Just a month and half out from trial, the defendant accepted a plea deal, agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table. And it's a move that has the public and more importantly, the victim's family's split. Some people are happy that he's accepting responsibility without dragging everyone through a spectacle at the expense of taxpayers, but others are frustrated because the trial was their chance at possibly getting an answer to the one question that has mystified a nation. Why? Now there's a gag order still in place, but plenty of clues have been dropped along the way and we're going to make our best attempt at breaking down this complicated case for you to try and get at that answer. Why did Brian Cobrager kill four students at the University of Idaho? It's around 4 a.m. on November 13th, 2022, and Dylan Mortensen wakes up to some noises in her off-campus home at 1122 King Road. Now she's been out drinking the night before, so she's still a bit buzzed and her understanding of what's going on is a little hazy, but it sounds like maybe a different roommate who stays in the room on the floor above her is like up playing with her dog or something. But as she gets her bearings a little bit, she thinks she hears that roommate, Kaylee Gonzalez, say, "There's someone here." So Dylan gets out of bed, cracks her door to peek out, but she doesn't see anything. And she tries to shake it off, close her door, go back to bed, probably telling herself like the bumps in the night are nothing, but she still hears noises, and then she hears crying. Except it's not coming from Kaylee's room upstairs, it sounds like it's coming from a room on her floor, her other roommates, Zanna Cronotles. And then she hears what sounds like a voice. A man's voice saying, "It's okay, I'm going to help you." Now she tries looking out her door another time only to see the same empty dark hallway, but she can't ignore whatever sixth sense is tugging her to her door to check just one more time. And I can almost imagine it feeling like this amorphous energy getting closer and closer as she opens her door once more, until all of a sudden that thing she was sensing has a form. Right in front of her is a man dressed in all black, with a mask covering his mouth and nose. The only thing visible are his eyes beneath bushy eyebrows, and they're looking directly at her. Now she knows this guy has seen her, but he doesn't say a word, and he doesn't move toward her. He just walks toward the sliding glass door that leads out the home's back patio. And I have no idea what could have been going through Dylan's mind in that moment, what stories she was trying to tell herself. The way she probably tried to discredit her own eyes and ears, she was probably confused, probably afraid, drunk on top of it all. And human, telling herself the things we all do, bad things happen to other people, not me. Nevertheless, in the instant that this guy moves past her, she locks herself inside her room, and immediately starts trying to call her roommates. Which, there were like five of them total living in the house then? Technically, four girls who lived there. Dylan, Zana, then Bethany Funk, and Madison Mogan, or Maddie, as they called her. But it wasn't uncommon for other people to be there or like staying the night, like Zana's boyfriend Ethan Chapin, and Kaylee, who is always referred to as a roommate because she was shortly before this, but she had actually just moved out because she was graduating early. She was only there visiting her best friend Maddie that weekend. But they hadn't filled her room yet, so there still is a Kaylee's room. I guess I didn't realize that. I know. So I don't think Dylan knew exactly who was even in the house that morning. So she starts calling her roommates one by one. And I'm not sure why, but actually, her roommate Bethany had called Dylan a few minutes earlier. Maybe she heard something in the house too and wanted to check in with Dylan, but Dylan didn't answer that one. She's like calling round one by one. The phone's ringing and ringing and ringing. None of the roommates are answering. So finally, Dylan does call Bethany back. Bethany picks up. She's at home, too. And I don't know what they talk about for the 41 seconds that call is logged. But when it ends, Dylan starts shooting off text to Bethany, starting at 4.22am. And was Bethany's room on her same floor or a different one? So this house has three floors. So the front door to the home is technically in the basement. That's where Bethany's room is. And then on the second level, you have Zana and Dylan's rooms. And then on the third, we're Maddie and Kaylee. Okay. I think I have it. Yeah. So she is firing off texts after text to Bethany. And she's telling her what she saw, what she heard that no one else is answering. She's super confused, really freaked out. And she probably has at least some wave of relief. The fact that like she's getting a hold of Bethany, Bethany is at least responding. And Bethany says, come to my room. This is over text. Run. Now, Dylan doesn't even know if that guy is still there or if he's gone, but she bolts to the basement and the pair lock themselves in Bethany's room. And they keep trying other roommates unsuccessfully until they eventually both fall asleep. And I know so many people had just a field day with this early on. Like they couldn't wrap their heads around why neither of these girls would just call the police. I know. And listen, I'll admit early on, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around it too. But empathy, I think, is something you have to train into yourself, work out constantly. So before you go writing the comment or like posting the thing, you gotta like sit back, make sure you take in the facts, put yourself in someone else's shoes too, man, because like, these are technically adults, right? Like in terms of being able to vote or get drafted for war, but Bethany and Dylan were both 21. And I thought I was invincible event. Like it was literally not in my realm of possible thinking that I would ever in a million bazillion years be at the center of what would become one of the biggest true crime cases in the nation, probably for a generation. Strange man in my house or not, you think of every other possible scenario under the sun before the worst one. And I mean, it was a Saturday night. In college, the university had just had this big football game. Maybe someone could have had a guest over. Well, and on top of that, they're young women. As women, we're constantly being told like we're overreacting. Yeah, and your other roommate is okay. Whoever this was, he walked right past you, didn't even flinch. So maybe everyone else is just sleeping after all. It's almost 430 in the morning now. Dylan and Bethany wake up in the next morning. They start like getting on their phones. Dylan is on social media a bit, but there is still enough fear lingering that even in the daylight, they don't want to just go roaming the house alone. I know Dylan texts her dad more than once that morning. Bethany calls her parents more than once. And I'm not exactly sure why they called her if their parents picked up. I'm thinking maybe they called to tell them that they thought something was off about the night before. But eventually Dylan calls her friend Emily, telling her that they think something weird happened last night. And she asks her to come over and help and bring her boyfriend. They want to figure out why the housemates aren't responding. So Emily says, yeah, fine, I'll come over. She brings her boyfriend Hunter and a roommate, Josie too. But honestly, they're not taking it too seriously because apparently Dylan was one to scare easily. And she'd been freaked out before in the house, which when I talk about sitting back and waiting for the facts, yeah, I never knew that piece. Same. So she's been freaked out before and before everything was fine. This time was going to be different though. Dylan and Bethany are on the bottom floor waiting for them when their friends arrive. And they all decide that Hunter is going to lead the way. He's already in Santa's room by the time Emily's reaching the second floor. According to the Amazon docuseries, one night in Idaho, Emily says that she just sees Hunter like turn around, come toward her and he's like pushing her out of the house. And he's like, call 911, tell them there is an unconscious person. And I give him a ton of credit because even while trying to process what it was he just walked into, which was far more than just an unconscious person, he was still thinking about how to protect everyone else from what he just saw. So it is 11.55 am when Dylan calls 911. Here are parts of that call. Okay. And is that a house for an apartment? It's a house. I'll talk to you as we're, um, we live at the white floor next to them and tell me exactly what's going on. Um, one of our, one of the roommates is passed out and she was drunk last night and she's not waiting up. Okay. Oh, and they saw some men in their house last night. Yeah. And are you with the patient? Okay. I need someone to keep the phone stop passing it around. And I just tell you what happened pretty much. What is going on currently? Is someone passed out right now? I don't really know, but pretty much it's 4 am. Okay. I need to know what's going on right now. Is someone has passed out? Can you find that out? Yeah, I'll come, come on, let me check. Hello. Okay. I need someone to stop passing the phone around because I've talked to 4 different people. Okay. Sorry. They just gave me the phone. Is she breathing? She will. Hello. Is she breathing? No. Okay. The Moscow Police Department arrives on the scene pretty quickly and already there's a crowd gathering outside the house. They're Dylan, Bethany, their friends who they called and some more students who know the crew. They're all standing by waiting to hear that everything's okay. But as we know, police don't find an unconscious woman. What they see, the scene that Hunter saw is very bloody. According to a new book that we got access to, The Idaho Four by James Patterson and Vicki Ward, which had a ton of information about this case. Zanna and Ethan are found together in her room on the second floor. It looks like Zanna was attacked right at the door of her room. Like she is laying on the ground at her door. Maybe she'd been like backing up into the room when she was attacked. I don't know, but she had stab wounds from some kind of what they call an edged weapon and she clearly tried to protect herself from the attacker's weapon because her fingers are nearly severed. The Idaho Four book says that Ethan is laying on the bed behind her and he's been stabbed too. But there have been rumors that I have seen that his legs were also like the word that keeps getting used is carved and this isn't stated in the affidavit that I've seen. But there is a portion of that document where they're talking about finding Ethan and it's been redacted and it is speculated that is where that detail is discussed or where this comes from. But again, no one has gone on record stating that as fat. I think so. Nothing in any of the records says anything about them being undressed or anything like that. Now on the third floor of the house, police check Kaylee's room. But only her dog is in there. He's unharmed. But it's in Maddie's room where they find the two best friends. Lying together, sharing a bed, which probably wasn't uncommon since they'd been inseparable since childhood. Both have been stabbed. And in an interview with ABC News, Kaylee's mother Christie says that Kaylee was found like sitting up and had defensive wounds. And on the family's Facebook page, they also say that she had been beaten in the face and head. So she likely fought for her life. So then did he attack Maddie first like while they were still sleeping? I don't know that for sure. Like we only know about Kaylee's wounds because her family has talked about them publicly. No one has ever spoken about Maddie's wounds in detail. So she might very well have them too. Maybe not. I can't say one way or another. All I know is that according to a press release from the Moscow police quote "some" but not all of them have defensive wounds. And they did say that they believe that they were all asleep when the killer entered the home. And the two of them in this room were both close to two. There's nothing in any of the documents about them being undressed. And same as before. Yeah and it doesn't seem like the killer spent any time with them. So right away this is feeling more like a blitz attack more than anything else. No one is bound. No one has been sexually assaulted. Nothing appears to have been staged or taken. But something was left behind by the killer. Seemingly unintentionally. A tan leather knife sheet. And finding that knife sheet marked the beginning of the end for the killer. The knife itself a seven inch blade was never found inside the house or outside either when they searched the perimeter of the home and the trash out on the street. But police and the pathologist would later become confident that some if not all of the victim's wounds were caused by if not that specific knife won a lot like it. And are these types of knives common? I mean, ish like they're used by the military. They're used by hunters. Knife enthusiasts like that sort of thing. They're common among people who use knives. Yeah but definitely not something that like any of these kids in this house were known to have. So they do think that the killer brought this with him. But then actually took the knife itself back with him. Now investigators sent a good amount of evidence from the house off to the lab including fingernail clippings hair. But the major things they note is that there was a shoe print outside of Dylan's door that likely came from a van's style shoe. And they found this it was invisible to the naked eye I think because they use this dye that reacts to body fluid or blood to get this print. So it wasn't like a ton of a blood or fluid or whatever. But this print is right in alignment with where Dylan said that she saw the mask man. So they feel like this is his. They also find a blood spot on the handrail between the first and second floor and then they find a black glove outside the home. Now police know that there is no sign of force entry into the home but that doesn't mean that this masked man was let in because they learned that he walked in through the second floor glass sliding door the very one that he was heading toward after he passed Dylan. So it sounds like maybe that had been left unlocked. And listen Moscow is considered a rural college town one where at least before November of 2022 it wasn't a big deal to not lock your doors according to the one night in Idaho docuseries. But even then you have to be thinking that the killer knew one maybe all of them knew that the door was sometimes left unlocked or at the very minimum knew enough about the kind of vibe towards safety that he knew he could get in. I would think he would have cased the place first though. Yeah and I was going to say even like the very nature of this crime feels personal like it feels targeted. And they don't think that this guy was just looking for any house to walk into that night. Like he was looking for that house or maybe more specifically someone in that house. Yeah the fact that he left two of them alive in the house makes you think it was about one or more of the four who are attacked. Exactly. Yeah but and by the way at this point those two survivors they still don't know what's fully going on. Right or even the extent of it like all they know is what they told 911 and this is kind of the wild part to me. So about an hour after police initially showed up the University of Idaho blasts what they call a vandal alert out to the student cell phones think of it like a safety announcement. It says that Moscow PD is investigating a homicide on King Road near the campus. Everyone should stay away from the area and shelter in place. And then another vandal alert comes through this one says that police are investigating the deaths of four people and that is how Maddie, Zana, Ethan and Kaley's friends who are sitting outside the house still waiting for any news about what's happening inside that is how they learn that their friends were killed. Imagine going from thinking your friends passed out to releasing that four of your friends have been murdered and finding out from a text message blast from your school. I can't. I don't know how they react in that moment or what the scene outside of the house looks like that afternoon as that news not just rippled through the crowd but like came crashing down all those wounds like it had to have been chaotic which might be why police start making some moves quickly like they need to regain control of the situation. Bethany and Dylan and some of the other students go to the police station to get formal statements taken and police officially release the names of the students who were killed. 21-year-old Kaley González, 21-year-old Maddie Mogan, 20-year-old Zana Cronodal, and 20-year-old Ethan Chapin. But try as they might control was a hard thing to have. Day one reporters begin flooding to the area while many of the students head out because they're understandably scared like the university eventually tells students they can attend class remotely and the reporting that is coming out at this point doesn't have a ton of new information like no one knew much in those early days like it had to have been terrifying but that void of information just drove wild speculation. I mean people online are full on blaming Dylan and Bethany for their murders like at this point already. And police do try to like grab onto the reins again by holding a press conference. They say that they believe this was an isolated targeted attack on the students but then they also acknowledge that they don't have a suspect and they can't say that there's no threat to the community and they just ask the community to remain vigilant. Which with that I'd be leaving the school too. So many people did which like yes I'm out I'm pulling my kids out for damn sure yeah safety first but this only made things harder for police because these are also the people that police need to be questioning and now they're no longer in like one concentrated place they're going everywhere. And this is also probably one of the biggest if not the biggest case that's ever hit this department. Oh and they know it too like they're not playing the ego game here they're bringing in help pretty quickly from like a local county sheriff's office from the FBI. And in doing so they are starting to piece together what everyone in the king roadhouse was doing on the night of the murders right like divide and conquer. But God bless Kaley's sister she was not about to just like leave it to police to figure out she was apparently getting zero details from police just that her sister was gone the end. So she's like a fit she rolled up her sleeves and went to work herself. She told CBS News that she got into her sister's call log and started calling everyone in there and she found out that her sister went to this local bar called the corner club then she got a ride to this food truck and her sister talked to a driver who gave them that ride there and he told her that the food truck this place known as the grub truck had a camera and so she's actually the one who got that video footage I feel like we all saw this video footage early on I didn't realize she got that she but she saw it first she sees her sister and Matty together on the camera and she sees them you know get their food or whatever it then get into this car together but alone just the two of them and police confirmed that the driver took them home he dropped them off at the house at around 156 a.m. God bless sisters man listen if this isn't reason enough for everyone to get there if I go missing folders in order I don't know what is like make it easy on your sister your mother your father your friend like they're gonna need to get your call logs in text in a time of emergency so back to the timeline according to the Idaho forbuck Dylan tells police that she heard Kaylee and Matty chatting in the living room and then she heard them walk up to the third floor before she fell asleep she didn't hear Ethan and Zanna get home though at 145 but based on what Bethany told police they know that's when they got back from hanging out at Ethan's flat house on campus so we've got everyone known to be back at the house by 2 a.m. but they're not all sleeping just yet there is still activity on Kaylee and Matty's cell phones though it does start to die down as the hours tick by by 4 a.m. it seems like all the housemates are in their room and Zanna receives a door dash order around this time too four o'clock in the morning her phone shows that she may have been scrolling on tiktok for like about 12 more minutes after the door dash delivery and according to the police affidavit in this case not long after that Dylan comes face-to-face with the killer it makes me think that he started at the top floor right killed Matty and Kaylee then came down killed Zanna and Ethan after I know you said Dylan thought it was Matty who said someone's here and maybe it was but I also wonder like what if it could be Zanna like saying that to Ethan or Ethan to Zanna yeah I could spend 20 minutes spiraling about this but like I'm gonna keep it short and sweet to what we do know is fact in this moment for the longest time no one knew what order it happened in but just a couple of weeks ago in court prosecutors say that the way you kind of laid it out is exactly what they think happened that basically the killer came into the home went straight upstairs first killed Matty and Kaylee then as he was coming downstairs he encountered Zanna maybe getting her food maybe eating it somewhere else I mean I know there was a jack-in-the-box bag with her name on it seen in photos in the kitchen but it was also a really messy kitchen I can't say for sure that that bag was from that night but it's possible I mean there are still so many details we don't have but he encounters her somewhere but we know she is at least in her doorway by the time he kills her and then Ethan but then why leave Dylan on touch I mean we know she like had this like encounter with him too why right like that is our big question was it the way that they responded different like did they respond differently when they encountered him and it got different reactions from him was it something else now despite police over and over again saying that they do not think Dylan or Bethany were involved I told you people online were they didn't understand how Dylan could see someone in the house in this like mask and not say anything and they really didn't understand how the pair could like wake up the next morning and then be on social media and calling people who weren't the police and I don't think they liked the way that Dylan's statements or descriptions of the suspect developed over time like earliest statement she gives she describes this guy as not insanely tall which is like very big yeah and then later she is an actual range it was like 5 10 to 6 feet and then it's not till the third sit down that she describes what is now infamously synonymous with this case the bushy eyebrows but experts have said that Bethany and Dylan were likely experiencing a trauma response and by the way we're old like 20 something year olds do a lot of their communications with friends on social media so it is very possible that's how they were reaching out to their friends in that morning trying to get people over or to find out things like as they were having this trauma response or even like one of the avenues I know for me like I have conversations with you on social media and on text and I'm saying yeah yeah there's a million different ways to communicate and if you're trying to get a hold of people why not try every avenue right and as far as like things changing like listen I think she was still processing it all over time like sure when like when she came in one time she even says that she remembers that this guy was carrying a vacuum type object in his hand which like what would that have been I don't know we're not sure like Dylan tells detective she really didn't know how much of what she was seeing was reality what was a dream and how much her mind is trying to fill in the gaps fill in the blanks we talk about that all the time yeah according to the Idaho four bucks she even tells cops that she initially thought that the guy was like a firefighter when you talk about filling in gaps right which obviously you're like well in all back with a mask on it doesn't make sense but I told you like what's every story you can tell yourself except for the worst one trauma response like the brain is wild when it comes to trauma but the internet does not care and it does not stop they keep coming up with wild theories about not even just Dylan or Bethany like the whole friend group especially those closest to the victims including the ones who came over in the morning to check out the house Emily and Hunter and then people were also suspicious of Maddie's boyfriend Jake and then Kaylee's ex-boyfriend Jack everyone's getting attacked on social media people were claiming that they must have been involved and I think it was people just trying to piece together what could have happened with like almost zero information or just like you get like this bitty bitty piece of the puzzle with zero context it's kind of another situation of just filling in the blanks right and like because like one of the things we knew early on or early ish was that Kaylee called her ex-boyfriend Jack a few times on the night of the murders and so some people online thought that was odd and I think that's why he comes up so much but it seems like Kaylee was just like probably just drunk dialing him with Maddie next to her and when we see all the phone records like when those come out in December it just like again this is where like all the speculation comes from because it shows that Dylan was also like deleting pictures on her phone and editing videos from 5am to 6.30am and at this time she's already in Bethany's room now she stops using her phone until like 8.05am and when she opens Instagram for a bit but she's also checking Ethan and Zanna's Snapchat locations but to me that makes sense if she's wondering if they're home what the full picture is what it means or doesn't mean we probably would have gotten in a trial and may get when the gag order is lifted but for now spoiler alert we're about to get to the point where police know who did it and it's not any of these kids please determine that none of them have anything to do with this crime but even though again even though we have a person even the police have said that I don't even know if that has stopped Dylan and Bethany from getting hate mail and death threats imagine having your friends murdered in the house that you were in with them and then being accused of doing it yourself while you're trying to grieve and deal with survivors I know just being that young and trying to get on with it like get on with your life to a certain extent while processing all that trauma yeah I don't know what life after that looks like and it is worth mentioning I mean we our team tried to reach out to Dylan and Bethany but we didn't hear back and by the way like I think the friends got the hardest part of this all but there were tons of people who were just getting lit up online by others who had no business playing detective and it made life very hard for people like there was this guy who was seen in that video footage from the food truck talking to Maddie and Kaylee this guy's wearing like a hood or whatever it's like cold November weather but everyone decides that hoodie guy is guilty and did this except he didn't police determine he was someone that they knew who they were able to clear of involvement it wasn't there even like a professor at the university who got accused of being involved early on like I just remember something about how upside down this accusation turned their life it was like zero to back it up professor Rebecca Scofield who teaches at the University of Idaho so this one was like I remember this vividly there was this tick talker and self proclaimed psychic Ashley Gillard who accused this professor of having a secret romantic relationship with one of the victims I don't know where that came from but Gillard was basically saying that the professor ordered the murders and I mean there was absolutely no evidence to back this up and Scofield actually ended up filing a defamation lawsuit against that tick talker and it was a saga in court with Gillard trying to defend her claims by noting that she got other crime scene details right but the court ruled early on that Gillard did in fact defame Scofield not surprising yeah and they're actually this is still ongoing they're waiting on a trial to see how much she's gonna have to pay her but again I think that's like one of the most extreme ones but there were endless other stories that people were coming up with I mean there's rumors that drugs were involved there were also rumblings of Kaylee having a stalker but the Moscow PD looks into all of it and nothing comes of any of those rumors but still police follow each one of these even the bar fetched ones but when nothing pans out they start scouring the area near King Road for surveillance footage have they already sent the knife sheath and stuff off for forensic testing by this point oh yeah oh yeah all of this is happening really fast like they're not just gonna like hold off and wait for that to come back though I mean they know they're working against a clock when it comes to an active investigation and they want to get everything they can as fast as they can and again not above asking for help so they actually lean on Moscow residents and local businesses to look at their own video footage and bring them anything that they think is sus and they find footage that shows a white Hyundai Alantra near the King Roadhouse a little before 3 30 a.m. on the night of the murders and then they keep seeing it until like 4 20 and there's this weird pattern of activity like the driver just keeps passing the house over and over again I mean it's chilling when you know what happened there and by the way the house is on a dead end street so anyone passing it this many times is doing it intentionally what's even more chilling is at exactly 404 a.m. this car is seen stopping and turning around and it looks like this person tries to park on the street behind the house in an area that can't be seen on surveillance so we don't know what happens because a little bit of time goes by and then at 4 20 a.m. this car is seen one final time speeding away from the house and what time did the door dash food get dropped off to Zana was it right in that same window 4 a.m. yeah and at some point they actually did find that door dash driver and she says that she parked right next to this white car maybe even saw the killer according to ABC news but exactly what she said if she said more than that hasn't been fully released I think they were at least up till this point trying to keep her story locked up for a potential trial but I wonder if more it's gonna come out because the timing is wild to me and I mean to be clear she's been totally clear she like just dropped off the food and left but right but was he already in the house was he still in his car exactly like was it just lucky timing that the door dash driver didn't see or hear more or spook him or did he know it was coming like did he have to wait for it like there's all the questions yeah yeah like how regularly was door dash ordered at 4 a.m. on a Saturday night out right like I know my door dash accounts he's a lot of action usually had certain times like maybe he this guy like he knew to wait or maybe he was just passing the house all those times until he saw the lights go out or something too he's waiting for something now police don't have good enough video footage to see this guy or even see the plates on the car and they couldn't make contact with that door dash driver for a while to even get a description or anything from her so they did the best they could with what they had in those like immediate first couple of days so on November 25th this is 12 days after the murder Moscow police ask all law enforcement to be on the lookout for this car which they only know to be a 2011 to 2013 White Hyundai Alontera and while they wait for responses they start running down leads that could maybe connect someone to the murder weapon completely unaware though that within four days Washington state university police in Pullman Washington come across a white Hyundai Alontera that kind of fits the description they got on that below so they ran the plates but for whatever reason maybe because this car they're running the plates on is two years newer than what they were looking for this one's a 2015 they don't pass that tip on to Moscow police they just make a note of it in their own records that says they ran this it was registered to someone who lives in a student apartment at the school someone named Bryan Coburger and that student apartment that he lives in it's only a 19 minute drive to 1-1-2-2 King Road painfully unaware of the development made over in Washington police are coming at the investigation from every other angle they can think of that sheath that they found had a serial number on it so they start serving search warrant to Amazon and eBay trying to track down the buyer and that's when they get a good news bad news break in the case good news maybe you won't need to rely on this car or the eBay search warrant or whatever to lead to the killer lab testing is done and there is an unknown male profile DNA on the knife she but oh wait bad news actually maybe you need to do that stuff because we put that into codeus and there is an image okay but good news IGG exists totally and by the way they also like cross reference with like the people in this case not theirs either so they do they jump to IGG investigative genetic genealogy now for those of you who aren't like totally read up on this the DNA profile that you pull for codeus is different than what you need for IGG so even though this is an exciting viable option that most investigations didn't even have just a couple of years before this it's also going to take a minute because they have to start the testing process all over again starting from trying to pull a viable SNP profile uploading that to public databases like Jed match and then working a family tree backwards from Lord only knows what distant relative right so it's not for another month on December 19th that Moscow police hear Brian cobertor's name for the very first time and when they start looking into this guy I can only imagine how elated they are when the lead investor here on this case detective corporal Brett Payne sees cobertor's driver's license photo and determines he looks a lot like Dylan's description even has those bushy eyebrows she mentioned and it just keeps getting better when they see what car he drives a white 2015 Hyundai Alontera and it must just feel like icing on the cake when they search surveillance footage around cobertor's apartment in Pullman on the night of the murders and low and behold it shows him leaving in said white car at 244 a.m. heading south on state road 270 toward Moscow this is it like this is their guy there is just one problem their guy booked it out of town six days before they realized who he was they find out that on December 13th co burger and his dad took a cross country drive from Washington state to all brightsville pennsylvania where his parents live so his dad flew out there to make the drive yeah and was his plan like I'm curious what his dad was thinking when they made this trip because it is a it's a commitment of a trip it's it's weird right like yeah court documents say that the reason he's making this trip is he's headed home for winter break so hey I don't know maybe he told his dad that he wanted his car for break dad wanted to make sure that he made the trip safely they wanted bonding time I don't know but even a cop that pulled them over along the way thought it was weird they got pulled over twice actually in Indiana of all places like it's a little weird that I feel who's your pride but they're just like pulled over in like routine stops and in one of them there's body cam footage and you can hear the trooper ask co burger and his dad like where you go in you can't really make out what they tell the trooper I mean we know where they're going right I assume they tell him Pennsylvania and the trooper jokingly asked like are you guys scared of airplanes or like right like it is a long trip but the stop doesn't result anything they're just let go with no issues there are theories online though from internet sleuths after the fact wondering if maybe he was using this time to dump evidence there is no evidence of this and it might be as simple as the dude was just going about life as normal and to him it doesn't matter that he just slaughtered four kids and wrecked four families even more friends and loved ones it was Christmas break and he planned to drive home I also wonder if he was wanting to get his car out of the area but before police just show up at his door in Pennsylvania they want their ducks in a row so a bunch of things happen in quick succession starting with learning everything they can about this guy what they learn is that Brian Koeberger was in Washington State University's Ph.D. program and for those crime junkies who are coming in fresh to this welcome to one of the most messed up parts about this case he was getting his Ph.D. in criminology and he'd even earned a master's degree in criminal justice from disales university in Pennsylvania earlier that year where he studied under serial killer expert Dr. Catherine Ramslin who wrote the biography of Dennis Raider better known as the BTK killer yeah he even applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in 2022 but this is where things start to get eerie so they find out that as part of a research project he did at disales he set up this online survey and Brian Koeberger was listed as the student investigator and listen I'm going to post this whole thing because it is fascinating and I read every single line but I know that we're on the clock here and you guys have already given me like a ton of time so I'm going to give you the highlights basically this thing is set up as a crime research study like here's some of what it says please note that the following survey asks you to detail your most recent criminal offense whether you were caught or not in the event that you were not charged convicted or incarcerated for the offense you may still participate in this research welcome to the research study we are interested in understanding how emotions and psychological traits influence the decision making involved in committing a crime after completing a series of background questions you will be presented with open-ended questions relevant to the most recent crime you were involved in and asked to detail your thoughts emotions and actions from the beginning to the end of the crime commission process so then it goes on it gives instructions about filling it out how long it should take and then it goes into the questions some of which are how did you travel to and enter the location that the crime occurred after arriving what steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target i.e. person or object please detail your thoughts and feelings why did you choose that victim or target over others and before leaving is there anything else you did and by the way this whole thing gets posted months before the murders and listen his professor at the time who only knew him through an online class said that it it being the survey it falls square into the type of research that they would do in the school's master program so she didn't think anything was weird about it but she did know that he didn't actually use any of the data from the questionnaire so like did no one answer was it really data gathering for personal use will we ever know i mean i'm sure police know they had to have collected all his devices and talked to the school and oh i'm sure because like i know they went through a lot of his digital stuff starting i know with phone records and let me talk about those so co-workers phone records match the surveillance footage outside of his home in pullman this shows he leaves around the same time this one tracks it at 2.47 a.m. the night of the murders but then his phone suddenly goes off the grid like he turned it off or put it in airplane mode sounds like the criminology student didn't want anyone tracking his movements yeah and so his phone stays dark all the way up until 4.48 a.m. when it comes back online and pings putting him on state highway 95 south of Moscow now his phone is traveling south and he takes this like long way back to pullman and by 5.30 a.m. his phone is home and you said from his place to the king's roadhouse is like 15 20 minutes 20 minutes tops like when you're taking highways with cameras 20 minutes but if you say went the back roads that are darker that don't have cameras let's travel around a little bit yep something else they see on his phone records gives me full body chills by hours after the murders co-workers phone leaves his home again and travels back to Moscow and not just back to the town in general his phone pings the cell towers covering the king roadhouse between 9.12 a.m. and 9.21 a.m. I never knew that so I know I didn't like to like I deep in this so he returned to the scene of the crime it's possible and like I'm just like thinking back all of their friends are out in front of that house at that time no they're not they don't come out until later they're still the Bethany and don't understand the room I know and listen I have a zillion thoughts about this like at some point he had to have realized that he was missing the knife sheet like with a serial number on it that he bought with his own name so would he have gone back to try and see if he could get that but maybe there was like again they're not outside yet there's no activity around the house necessarily at that moment but he has to imagine that like it's 9 o'clock in the morning like things are happening people are out like yeah and so maybe he didn't have the opportunity or maybe he was just going back hoping to catch a glimpse of a crime scene but but like you said it wasn't a crime scene to anyone else yet I know and how long did his phone put him there it was just those like nine minutes so I don't know again what was he trying to get in I don't feel like someone who would commit a crime like this like is above just statistically watching from the lines like wanting to see the chaos you created but you also can't just like hang around wait for it to happen so nine minutes whatever he's doing he gives it nine minutes then he drives back to Pullman to his place and takes a selfie with like a thumbs up in his bathroom here now it's unclear if he was like in his apartment the entire time after that or what but later that afternoon at 1246 pm his phone shows up around like a 50 minute drive away from his place near a coffee stand in Clarkston then he goes to a grocery store nearby though police know that this area is by two large bodies of water clear water river and the snake river so again like are we throwing things away we still can't find the murder weapon around 5.30 pm he is again back on those unlit backroads in Washington that can lead to Moscow and then again his phone goes for about three hours and what he's doing in that time I don't know I don't know if we'll ever know it was at the same thing he was trying to do earlier in the day but my gut tells me that these moves were carefully planned because police can see in the phone data that coberger cell phone wasn't just near king road on the morning after the murders his phone pained on the cell towers covering that area approximately 23 times in the months leading up to november 13 starting all the way back in july and it was always between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am so he kind of was casing the place yet this one saying this home was his target but still why why this specific home and what set this into motion then clearly this was applaud months in the making right like his phone starts peeing there in july and when they see his online shopping records they know that he bought that knife on amazon eight months before the murders and then by the way he searched for one just like it days after the murder so he's probably trying to like replace the one he got rid of yeah and again I know we don't know if this like online school survey that he didn't use the data of has anything to do with anything but it feels like everything starts like a few months before this right like that's when that gets posted too so police feel like they are on the edge of an arrest now all roads lead to Brian coberger so that's when they start surveilling his parents home in Pennsylvania he's still there on winter break according to ksl.com they see coberger clean his car from top to bottom they apparently see him wearing surgical gloves at some point like multiple times which like odd little off yeah so when the family puts their trash on the curb law enforcement swoops in to grab it and send it to the Idaho state lab for testing and the very next day so by the way DNA testing can happen fast now we know the very next day DNA from a q-tip in that trash definitively gets linked to the dad of whoever's DNA was on the night sheet so in December 30 at around 12 30 AM snipers surround the coberger family home in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania's cert team breaks down the door and takes coberger into custody on suspicion of four counts of first degree murder and one count of burglary why the burglary tried i thought nothing was taken nothing was that's just standard in Idaho if you enter a home to commit a theft or any kind of felony you get a burglary charged even if nothing was taken or you didn't complete whatever the felony was got it so once they haven't been custody their work is far from over they got to collect his DNA for a direct comparison like you can't convict them on dad's connecting match which they do and no surprise here it's his now they search his car which they collect as well for evidence but it's super clean yeah they watch him scrub it from top to bottom i want to i literally want to pull my hair out when i heard that part forever ago but listen i think they were playing the long game here i guess they didn't want to like blow their case by stopping him from cleaning his car like they had plenty of other evidence against him if they played their cards right so car no go but they also search his parents home they find a knife it doesn't end up being the knife so no real help there they also collect black gloves a black face mask a black hat block 40 caliber magazines and like a lot of criminology books was the same type of mask that Dylan described and like the gloves were the same like the one they found outside of the house i don't know what i know is that police do find out that he purchased a ball of clava months before the murs again months it's like all happening at the same time and that like that they have purchased records of it's the same kind of black mass that like covers your whole face and that one matched Dylan's initial description so we know he had one or at least purchased one i don't know if that's when they found and as far as the gloves go and this is actually an interesting monkey wrench i need listeners to tell me what they think this means respectfully like theories only know accusations that he is so i don't know if it was the same type of glove it's not listed in any reports but what is listed is that the glove at king road that got tested for dna alongside the knife sheath along with the spot of blood on the handrail yeah the blood spot on the handrail and the dna and the glove those came back as not Brian coberger okay then who's was it i don't know like apparently whatever that dna they got from those wasn't eligible for kodas which could have been for a number of reasons like we know there's much a specific rules about the profile on how it has to like meet certain qualifications right specifications i also know like not only does the profile have to be good enough but like you have to be able to like say that this was related to the crime and maybe they like don't know that for sure like but the house feels like probably but maybe it doesn't ties to like the love like outside so i don't know why it wasn't included in kodas but court records show i mean i know investigators already had coberger's name and dna by the like the point that they learn about this other stuff so detective pain obviously has been asked about this and like court records show the answer he gave as as to why not kodas and like to me i don't really fully understand it um he said that his quote understanding was that entering a new dna profile into kodas would get rid of the one that was already in there from the she and they decided to address the other dna down the road only if they needed to so okay which like doesn't i think you can enter to like yeah it seems like we should seems like we should be able to enter more than one profile like if there were like not in this crime but like i'm trying i'm thinking about the old crimes that there is like more than one culprit or more than one piece of evidence i don't know okay uh all that aside these other two items with dna profiles on them the glove the spot on the handrail those are the same profile on both no so uh no that would i think you be even more suspicious these are two separate unidentified male profiles still unidentified to this day so sorry we got a little bit sidetracked of like all of that but we're back to the search warrant so they also search his apartment they search in office he had at Washington state they were looking at all his devices cell phone computer hard drive they take a vacuum container into evidence wait so did dillon really see him holding a vacuum i don't think so police at that point think that dillon probably was just trying to like like we said earlier makes sense of what was i don't think it was a legit vacuum that she saw but i'm just sure they're taking it wanting to analyze what's inside of the vacuum since this is an actual vacuum container and this guy's obviously like intensely cleaning things well until like check the box she said vacuum we have a vacuum yeah also are you like sweeping out things in there's hair or five years or whatever they take another black glove they take some receipts parts of an un-taste pillow that has stains that police describe as reddish brown and possible animal hair among other things i mean they are going through all of it and they send all of it off to the lab and with co-worker behind bars on December 30th the Pennsylvania state police and Moscow PD announce his arrest to the public and later that day his mug shot is all over the internet yeah so this is one of those cases that i had been loosely following but wasn't tracking like super closely i got behind one day and it was like it caught away from me i know but i remember being pretty flawed that this arrest happened so quickly well especially when like early on like it did seem so random yeah it came out like no one had any information and then all of a sudden we had an arrest i would i i've seen it go so bad so many times that i think i was a little shocked but i think everyone was was they were shocked but they were elated like great we have we found him but who is he mm-hmm and i mean Kaylee's dad Steve Gonzalez told Good Morning America that i mean when he saw it he felt like this cloud was lifted off of him in his family like i mean it has to feel like such a way like okay we're one step closer but i mean we know that an arrest is only the beginning and we know the way that the time leading up to an atrial can become a media circus yeah been there done that her name was Karen Reid exactly listen i don't know if most of the families knew what they'd be in for like and i'm not talking about these four like any family that goes through this i don't know if you know what you're in for unless you've already lived through it but it doesn't matter at least for the Gonzalez family they want their day in court because they want to know why this happened so co-worker has a hearing in Pennsylvania on January 3rd he agrees to be extradited to Idaho which happens the next day and then he's quickly assigned a court-appointed public defender kutani county chief public defender and tailor and there's i feel like i'm full of side stories today which is like usually not my jam but like this is the case there's this whole of their side story that i'll summarize quickly basically it comes up that the public defender's office represented zanna's mom at some point or at like a couple different points kira northington but anteler argued in court that there was no conflict of interest and because well she's saying that she didn't actually represent kira herself her name is just on all of the paperwork in the office because she's the chief attorney and i'm not going to get into all of like kira's legal stuff because she's not the one on trial here but this matters because tailor had been assigned but withdrew from kira's most recent case the same day co-worker appeared in court for the first time in Idaho January 5th so kira told news nation later that month that she felt heartbroken because she trusted tailor like i mean like like she's now she's not gonna defend you she's gonna go defend the guy who's accused of murdering your dog right right now the thing i'll say is like since she is the chief public defender and this is a death penalty case or was going to be a death penalty case she's like top of the list yet she might have been one of the only ones who can take on something this big so anyways soon after co-worker had gotten arrested they actually brought Dylan back in for questioning and she tells police that she found co-workers mugged on online after she heard about the arrest but when they asked her if she recognizes him as the guy she saw in the house she says she doesn't know and she doesn't know who he is outside of this no like any connection found to any of the victims or survivors well no it doesn't seem like any of them knew him and honestly had it not been for the sheath this what i'm saying like when i saw the arrest and when you realize what like how it happened had it not been for the sheath i don't know if they would have connected him to anything inside that house i mean his DNA isn't matched to any of like the hair that they found no fiber samples collected from the murder scene and nothing in his car or house could be tied to the victims either but he did he made that mistake they've got his DNA placing in there they've got the cell phone pings now that seem to indicate he was canvassing the scene leading up to the murders and that's what matters to police so on May 16 he gets officially indicted on May 22nd we're now in 2023 he declines to even give a plea so the judge has to enter one for him not guilty on all counts and then a trial date gets set and then push and then push some more but it looked like it was finally locked in august 18th 2025 was going to be the start of opening statements i mean we even started reporting on this story in anticipation of a trial start date we were even going to stream it on the crime jockey jury youtube page to keep close tabs on how it was unfolding and then just weeks away from the trial start prosecutors dropped a bomb and i'm not kidding you when i tell you the collective gasp in the office like yeah we did not see it coming i mean listen i like i was a little surprised early on that we didn't start here start at a plea deal but like now this close to the trial too based on the state's uh proper and importantly based upon defendants explicit admission to committing these crimes the court finds there is a factual basis therefore with respect to count one burglary felony how do you plead Mr. Cobraver guilty or not guilty guilty as to count two murder in the first degree as it relates to the murder of Madison Mogen how do you plead guilty or not guilty guilty as to count three as it relates to murder in the first degree for the murder of Kayley Gonzalez how do you plead guilty or not guilty guilty as to count four the first degree murder of Zannock Carnival Carnotal pardon me a human being how do you plead guilty or not guilty guilty as to count five the first degree murder of Ethan Chapin a human being how do you plead guilty or not guilty guilty right the court will find that the defendant understands the nature of the charges and uh each offense and the possible consequences to him of his guilty plea court finds that there is a factual basis for the plea and the finds the defendant believes the plea to be in his best interest I find the plea the plea was given freely voluntarily and was intelligent and made except the plea I direct that be entered i'll continue the matter for sentencing in this case when co-worker changed his plea and admitted to killing Maddie, Zanna, Ethan and Kayley he was doing it in exchange for one thing the deal put forward to Brian co-worker was that if he would plead guilty to all four counts of murder prosecutors would take the death penalty off the table and I was a little shocked to learn that the families of the victims didn't know about this plea deal until like days before it was set to happen and some of them were understandably livid when he was asked about the deal Kayley's dad Steve told NBC today that Idaho has failed his whole family I know they don't have to but I still understand why they wouldn't go to the families first to make sure they were okay with it I know well and I I I thought they would I have this rule which by the way I do not think applies here I'm not a prosecutor in charge of deciding whether or not someone has their day in court but like in my business I say like don't ask for someone's opinion unless you plan on really taking it or really giving it like heavy weight and consideration like you already have your mind made up don't make a show of including people in the process just for the courtesy of like saying you asked if you're gonna do what you're gonna do just do it so if they already had their minds made up maybe they weren't gonna ask but it just as well could be that they had enough contact with the families to know where each one of them stood and they could have known that they were going to get different answers from them like the the families were not all aligned so I don't think there was going to be one decision that pleased everyone like Ethan's family had no plans to attend the trial in the first place because they didn't want to retraumatize themselves and they released a statement after the news of coberger's plea deal saying that they support it for them it seems like it's a moment of closure and I imagine had they known a plea deal was an option that wasn't taken and then this case was gonna be made a spectacle of in their minds unnecessarily they probably would have been upset with that outcome maybe I don't know I just know that this isn't the first time that the families have disagreed on how authorities handled one or more parts of the investigation like for example there was like there's certain blips in this case I should remember so vividly one of them is when the king road house at the university was destroyed so the university actually owned the house and after the murders the school had it demolished again Kayleigh's dad Steve was very vocal about his disagreement with the decision because he thought that police should have made sure that house was preserved until a trial but Ethan's family supported the demolition in the amazon docuseries Ethan's brother hunter who by the way Ethan he was one of a set of triplets who were all at that university but his brother hunter didn't live too far from the king roadhouse he could see the house from his bedroom window and it was the first thing he saw when he woke up and he just didn't want to look at it anymore yeah I don't think anyone would want that daily reminder and like in general as far as the trial goes people handled grief differently I get just warning the person who did it to accept her responsibility I did not drag it out because at the end of the day nothing can bring your kid back and it just has to hurt all the time for sure and I mean people will say like oh well they weren't planning on going to the trial anyways but like think about it you think that's gonna stop them from hearing about every last detail like ask someone in your life who's not a crime junkie if they know about this case they know about this case it is everywhere there would be no escaping it but for those family members who did want the trial what they wanted was the answer to why and now they don't get that because along with removing the death penalty his plea deal didn't require him to give any details of why he did this and so the motive in these murders remains a big mystery throughout this entire case however according to the Idaho forebook some family and friends of the victims do have a theory they believe that this was targeted and they believe that the target was Maddie but why I know police have never come out and said this but here's the thing so there isn't any real evidence that's been shared with the public that proves coberger targeted Maddie but according to the book coberger definitely knew who she was apparently he had liked some of her Instagram photos even liked some of Kaylee's Instagram photos that had Maddie in them but did he just find her online or how would he have known her in the first place even I don't know some people who knew the victims have suggested that maybe he dined at the restaurant that she and Zana worked at in Moscow this place called mad greek and maybe he like became fixated on her like to kill her well they answered like I feel like to understand how we got like you gotta know more about who he is to try and like wrap your head around that because I don't think it necessarily started that way so people who knew him claim that he struggled with substance use disorder throughout his early years and by the time he got to Washington State University for his PhD it seems like he was somewhat of a loner who had a very clear disdain for women he was a TA working for a criminology class leading up to the murders and his classmates and the students that he taught describe his behavior toward women and comments that he made in class they described them all as a misogynistic and antagonistic and he even implied to another student that women should be house makers and have no business getting masters degrees and apparently he'd been given multiple warnings about his behavior but after months of this the school did get fed up and just shortly after the murders actually but before he was caught he got fired from that TA position like it got that bad it kind of sounds like a textbook description of like insult culture it kind of is and admittedly that term has come up a ton in this case and I had heard that term a ton in recent years I think it's thrown around a lot but I actually read the definition of it for the first time while doing this and from you know from Wikipedia I didn't go like deep deep but like the term is associated with an online subculture of mostly male and heterosexual people who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one and then they often blame or objectify and denigrate women and girls as a result so Patterson and Ward's book as well as the documentary we mentioned and lots of experts in this case say that co-worker not not just that we're like talking about in cell in general but he was specifically modeling himself after a guy named Elliott Roger who I wasn't super familiar with Elliott was a 22 year old mass murderer who went on a stabbing and shooting spree in I live is to California targeting primarily women outside of a sorority and the surrounding area he killed six people injured 14 others before taking his own life and right before the attacks he had posted some YouTube videos and this 137 page band of Festo titled My Twisted World and in all of this he complained about how he was still a virgin and he hated women for rejecting him he wrote out a detailed plan that he spent years coming up with calling the attacks the day of retribution according to the Idaho forebook co-worker even took a class taught by Dr. Ramslin at disales that focused on spree murderers like Elliott Roger and the Rogers YouTube video was part of the syllabus and of course this could all just be people trying to make sense of a crime that maybe doesn't make a lot of sense but I haven't even gotten to the pop a Roger of it all I totally forgot about the pop a Roger thing it's this is like another weird moment so in the days after the murders there was a Facebook group started up called University of Idaho case discussion Facebook group page and the goal was to spread information that could help the investigation and like that stuff's pretty typical when you have these major cases but one person active on the page and posting under the name pop a Roger caught a lot of people's why pop a Roger like an ode to Elliott Roger potentially now whoever this was started commenting some really weird stuff in the group like information the public did not know yet and I actually brought some of it for you to read of the evidence released the murder weapon has been consistent as a large fixed blade knife this leads me to believe they found the sheath so like not a big deal to us right now but in that moment this person should not have known that because when pop a Roger posted that it wasn't public knowledge that a sheath had been left behind and I don't think a sheath is like the logical thought most people would come to like most people would I feel like talk about nice and be like oh like a stab wounds or whatever because like the autopsy I don't know but it was strange and then he asked other odd things in the Facebook group that the book mentions like how did the killer hold the knife prior to entering the scene in your opinion sounds a lot like a survey and he also wrote that the killer isn't in the groups immediate circle and the guy reportedly argued incessantly with other commenters and at some point police started monitoring this group like it made it to their radar as well just because of this pop a Roger guy and eventually pop a Roger gets banned from the group for name calling now I think it's also interesting that we know police took a book from coberger's house that they say had information on page 118 of that book like that was underlined now we're like piecing together things here because police have never said what that book was but there was a lot of speculation online that it was Elliott Rogers manifesto because page 118 of that talks about how he selected the date for his massacre that he carried out do we know if there's any significance to November 13th no so there's nothing been reported on about that or if they tied a to be it's just again a weird thing that keeps coming up now I would imagine that if all of this stuff is backed up by police reports and data found on his devices or in his home or office or whatever we might get more one day but for now all we can do is speculate I mean there's been a gag order in this case since very early on and I'm not sure when that's going to be lifted or permanent gag orders of thing I mean there are pretty rare in criminal trials unless it's like a matter of usually when they can do it as like national security or something like that so if it was Maddie he was targeting I still don't get the reason behind why some roommates were also targeted and others weren't well I mean if his focus was on Maddie and Kaylee was in the bed with her maybe I don't know he could have gotten surprised by that maybe not I don't know one thing this like not backed up by anyone Dylan talks about like oh I heard noises I thought she was playing with her dog I also kind of wonder if he like how much did he scope the house did he go into Kaylee's refers and like see the dog and then like oh I gotta go find her right again I'm just like making stuff up at this point I have no idea but if the Elliot Roger thing is the real deal then maybe he meant to kill everyone in the house it's like a bigger show of his anger but then also I go back to why leave Dylan right now I don't know if you remember this is like so long ago but back in the day I talked to Zip about this when it first happens I know for my new crime junkies Patrick's or Polly he worked for the Pennsylvania state police and when he retired in 2015 he was the unit supervisor of the Pennsylvania state police criminal investigation assessment unit mouthful but he does a lot of crime assessment trainings now we've had him on for a few of our shows we've talked about different cases and early on I ran into him at I actually think it was like the deck live show when I was on tour for deck investigates and this had just happened like people were just talking about this that would have been February of 2023 and even back then without like we didn't know much at that point he said that this was targeted he said it was about one of the girls and that he thought whoever it was like co-burger had been rejected by her and when he talks when he does his training he says there are four profile types of offenders and when he was like looking at this he's like I think co-burger is the offender type which is categorized as an anger retaliatory type like it's just that anger that drives them and they can't stop until the anger is gone but once that anger is gone it's like they turn off like they don't have to kill anymore so I asked him I'm like so why does he lead to other people or at least one other person that he knows of in the house the person who sees him and zips like I mean he didn't have to like he's done anger has been released his motivation for killing is gone basically now the way in which he speculated it happened was a little different because he thought that maybe he was like killing people in the house until he got to the person he was looking for so if we're gonna say that's madty like everyone who is in his way until he could get that anger out but we know now that police don't suspect that's how it happened they don't suspect that she was the last one who died so I don't know I just thought it was interesting because it kind of fits like what he's saying kind of fits with what seems to be the going theory at least like we said with like among family and friends co-burger is set to be sentenced next week on July 23rd that's also when the families are gonna have a chance to read their victim impact statements this will be their chance to be heard so our team is actually gonna keep following the story we're gonna have that hearing streamed on the crime junkie jury YouTube channel as well so if you want to follow along with us make sure you go there and we are gonna try and bring you more updates as they come probably mostly on social so make sure to follow crime junkie podcasts on instagram but I mean if we get something big we'll put it here in the feed we when we started this we reached out to almost every person involved or connected to this case but nobody wanted to talk before because everyone thought they were gearing up for a trial or at least that's what I think but maybe after the sentencing people will be more open because I do have a feeling that people within the department who spent their days and weeks and months and years building this case and trying to bring justice I think they want to be able to talk and some may have done so off the record already because there was I don't know if you caught it there was a date line special in May that caused this huge frenzy because they released a bunch of details that they clearly got from someone who was close to the case and remember there was a gag order so the judge on the case was furious like they somehow got their hands on cobergers internet history and that was disturbing I mean the guy outright searched sociopathic traits in college student and that was in September before the murders and then in the weeks before and after he was searching terms like passed out druged sleeping and forced date line also reported that coberger had dozens of photos of girls and women many who were in bikinis and they weren't just like random people authorities confirmed that they were students from the University of Idaho and Washington state University some of whom apparently knew the victims in another internet search in October he wrote can psychopaths behave prosocially so these are all things that the prosecution would have had before trial so while we won't ever know exactly what they planned to argue I think it gives us a good idea of where they were going and you know one of the things I think about too is all of the victims were in like sororities or fraternities and when you go back to that Elliott Roger he attacked a sorority like the surrounding areas so did we ever get an idea of what the defense strategy was going to be or do you think they were hoping that Brian would accept a plea it just took a while to convince them I watched some of the pretrial hearings or we got like a glimpse at their plan it was like they needed to take this plea so it seems like they were going to say that Brian co-worker was out stargazing the night of the murders that literally explains nothing why your phone is off me like not even that a stretch certainly doesn't explain the sheath of your knife yeah being there your DNA yeah being there yeah the prosecution had a strong case against him and I I assume they saw the writing on the wall and isn't it wild how when death is on the table murder suddenly gets so scared like it's unbelievable to me and I know that is what mattered to him because the defense had even tried several motions to strike the death penalty before his plea deal with the latest reason being that co-worker is a person with autism now it's not clear when he was diagnosed but they were trying to argue that his diagnosis exposes him to the risk that he would have been wrongfully convicted and then put to death meaning that his limited facial expressions and him being stoic his stare which had already been dubbed sinister they're saying that like all of those are attributes they say he has and that could have affected the jury's perception of his guilt and that is why they wanted the death penalty out that got denied too they even tried to argue the IGG staff they were like the way you identified him like the way the FBI seized the trash outside of his parents place was a violation of his fourth amendment rights because police didn't get a search warrant before doing like any of that but the court denied that too and said that he had no reasonable expectation of privacy yeah I knew that I've watched a TV show before I know and then the defense also tried to present an alternate suspect defense but that got denied too wait who would they even bring forward they said that there were four other people who could have done this I don't know who because again that got denied and then the motion got sealed we just know that these other people apparently knew the victims or interacted with the victims before the murders one other like Hail Mary thing they tried to do which I don't really understand as they tried to ban the words Bushy eyebrows from being used at trial denied again they argued that police didn't say anything to a judge about the unidentified samples of DNA found at the scene when they requested co-burgers arrest warrant in December of 2022 and basically they say that detectives left it out when the judge was deciding if there was enough probable cause and they thought authorities were trying to mislead the judge so they wanted to throw out the whole indictment altogether and that didn't work the authors of the Idaho forebook say Brian Coburger nearly carried out the perfect crime had he not left the knife sheath with his DNA on it thankfully for the families he did and I think that is who we want to remember in all of this the victims and their families some who wanted their day in court and will never get it now Kaylee and Maddie were both college seniors best friends since sixth grade and Kaylee was just about to head off to live in Austin Texas and start a new job she was only there that night visiting Maddie to celebrate some of their last college moments together not realizing how final those were Kaylee sister told NBC's today show that she had everything going for her Zanna was a junior studying marketing and her sister described her to WAPT as lighthearted and someone who always lifted up a room she often introduced herself as Zanna like Zannex without the X and she was very much in love with freshman Ethan Chapin Ethan was just starting his college experience but he and Zanna were already planning a life together he was inseparable from his triplet siblings mazy and hunter and they said in the amazon docuseries that he was their natural leader and after his murder they had to return to the University of Idaho without him his mom Stacy said that it was only a week before the murders that she had finally felt like her kids were in a great place like it's got to be so hard right to like send your kids off for the very first time and she's like I she was in just in the place where she's like I feel good they're going to become such bright adults now Maddie she was a senior and a marketing major she was an only child and her parents pride and joy and her dad Ben Mogen spoke at a vigil for the four victims in 2022 and said that everything Maddie did was such a big deal to him her mom Karen has even kept Maddie's room exactly as it was when she died she said in the documentary that she has no plans to ever change it and her families supports the plea deal and maybe there will be more answers down the line but the deal for them is a step towards hope and healing something that all the victims families and friends deserve and it's a shame we know their names this way but they will be remembered for years if not generations to come and not just for the way in which they die they are also being honored by two foundations so there was one set up called Ethan's smile was set up in honor of Ethan and made with kindness was set up in honor of Kaylee Maddie and Zana both organizations provide educational scholarships among other initiatives and we made donations to both and we're going to put a link in the show notes to both of these if you would like to support as well but you know there was a university of Idaho student who I think has been lost to time not in this case I'm talking decades before her name was Kristen David and in 1981 she was found dismembered wrapped in newspapers and plastic bags in the Snake River her case has always been associated with four other disappearances and deaths in the area that's known as the Lewis Clark Valley and locals and authorities think there is a serial killer who was at work back then and even though they had a suspect they just couldn't prove it so a lot of those victims have been forgotten but not on our watch the Idaho 4 case is now solved so now I need to direct your attention to another case in the same area because here's the scary part that guy the one they think might have been a serial killer back in the 80s he's still out there and most people around him are none the wiser because his name isn't widely known like Brian Coburgers but all that changes next week so be sure you do not miss next Monday's episode and if you want to listen early and add free you can join the fan club new episodes released there three days early and with zero ads so we'll see you there you can find all the source material for this episode on our website crimejunkipodcast.com and you can follow us on Instagram @crimejunkipodcast see you next week for that brand new episode [Music] crimejunkipodcast is an audio check production so what do you think check do you approve?