A Discussion Part Il

Producers Stephanie Lydecker and Conor Powell talk with forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan about the latest information on the murders.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Investigators believe Coburger killed Kayleigansalves, Madison Mogan, Zeyner, Kernodle, and
Ethan Chapin inside of a rented home not far from
the University of Idaho campus. At the time of the murders,
Coburger was studying at Washington State University, which is just
a few miles away from the crime scene.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Outside Coberger's apartment in Pullman, Washington, detectives removing boxes and
bags from the apartment. They just kept coming out with
more and more stuff and loading it into evidence vans.
But in that list of what they brought out, they
do not list knife in that evidence list.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
This is the Idaho Massacre, a production of KT Studios
and iHeartRadio, Episode twelve A Discussion Part two with forensic
expert Joseph Scott Morgan, Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at
KT Studios, with Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, and Connor Powell.

(01:06):
In this episode, the producers Stephanie Lydecker and Connor Powell
speak with forensic analyst Joseph Scott Morgan to discuss the
latest information about the Idaho murders. Here they are now.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
Talking with the Great death investigator and forensics expert Joseph
Scott Morgan, also the host of body Bags, our favorite
show here. And then of course Connor Powell who's been
executive producing and also contributing on the Idaho Massacre podcast,
also making the documentary which Joseph is also appearing in,

(01:41):
and being knee deep in this case with Brian Coberger
and the tragedy in Idaho that there does seem to
be some similarities. You know, there's obviously very big key differences,
but the large scale of these cases, the idea of
such an overkill in both cases is probably what has
drawn us to them so deeply. And you know, Joseph was,

(02:04):
frankly when this case first hit the press, or when
these murders first happened, Joseph, we were communicating real time,
and you were the first person to really not only
be covering the case but also in many ways solve it.
You had said the word knife sheath before I even
knew what a knife sheath was. To be honest, you

(02:25):
called it from day one and have been the leading
pundit speaking about it as an expert and also as
a human and have done it so beautifully and so
important obviously doing that with pikedon as well. What can
we talk about that sort of shows how these cases
do have some crossover.

Speaker 5 (02:42):
I've got a word I want to throw out here
at the beginning as we're chatting, and I think it's important.
I was thinking about, you know, similarities, and there are
many similarities. That word is bold. Kind of an innocuous word.
It's used quite a bit thrown around in media, but
in parlance of death investigation. When you think of bold,
that can imply very many things. It goes to the scope,

(03:06):
It goes to even if it's misplaced, it goes to
intestinal fortitude, I think on the part of the individual
that's going to do it, because they are singularly focused
on an objective. And I think that we see that
displayed in both the Piked and massacre, as well as
what's going on at the University of Idaho and that
small little town up there. And this is another piece

(03:29):
to this that again their rural, both of these locations.
I don't the Good Lord Almighty couldn't send down a
thunderbolt and it would be any more shocking in these
two places, I think, because who saw this coming? No
one did? You know? Back when Pikedon occurred, and certainly
in Idaho. You know, who could have even have anticipated this.

(03:49):
I was just talking the other day with my wife,
you know, reflecting back about what were we doing. You
know what I was doing. I'm college professor in a
town that's very similar in size, sitting there thinking, just
get me to Thanksgiving break. I do that every year.
I've had enough. And those people there at the University
of Idaho, we're thinking the same thing, just get me
to Thanksgiving break. I just want to go home for

(04:10):
turkey and dressing that just I'm so sick of these
people around here.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
And then this happens, and the level of depravity that
a person has to have to pull this off. And
you know, we've said this many times, and then air
quotes go back to the real world thereafter, as if
nothing happened. If in fact what Brian Cooberger is accused
of is true, is impossible to wrap our brains around, right.
But from a forensic standpoint, you've said this since day one,

(04:34):
and frankly before it had even hit the press. Just
about the level of blood that was at the scene
in Idaho, in Moscow when this crime occurred, was really unparalleled,
except for potentially the tragedy in Pike County, where again
the level of overkill was really unimaginable.

Speaker 5 (04:58):
Yeah, it is. And you know, we have to think
about this is not done. Neither one of these horrible
events occurred. We talked about rural. It's not like these
occurred out in an open field and a pasture somewhere.
These happened in structures. And what do we think about
when we think about structure, Well, we go home to
be home, we go home to have privacy, we go

(05:20):
home to be left alone. And when you let that
sink in and you think about this level of violence
that was perpetrated in these two environments, it's one thing
to kill in an open field or out in an
environment that's so so far out there that maybe certain
elements might be lost. Not in these cases, not in
either one of them. You have what's referred to as

(05:41):
containment of evidence. Therefore, if we take that train of
logic and we think about the containment of evidence therein
during the dynamics of both of these events, you know,
you have to know that at least some elements of
these tragedies wind back up on the perpetrators as we

(06:02):
saw in piked In, I think to a great degree,
and what I believe had occurred in Idaho as well.
It you know, you talked about the blood bath. You
know piked In involved firearms. This is something different. This
is as much overkill as is involved in Pikedon, with
multiple gunshot wounds, with multiple victims. These sorts of things,

(06:24):
when you're talking about sharp force injuries, these are the
types of things that require such anger and such fury
because you're you're in close proximity within a home or
within a place that becomes home. I think back to
when I was an undergraduate in college, the places that
I occupied it as an undergraduate student, temporarily that became

(06:46):
a home. They were my space, right And with these kids,
these four kids, and they were kids that were in
the shared home, it was their home temporarily. And I
think about, particularly that scene in the bedroom where we
have two victims in a bed and they're actually co
sleeping in this bed where this infamous sheath has now

(07:08):
come into play. It was a bigger bed. And my
only thought thinking about kind of the perpetrator interacting with
the environment, would that person would have to have been
compelled to have gotten up on the bed. So when
you begin to think about intimacy and you begin to
think about anger, you have containment in that environment where

(07:32):
these poor young women are being stabbed to death on
this surface in a very frenetic type of event, and
it would been I've likened it to the view of
a sewing machine needle going in and out, up and
down like this and striking only variably, you know, because
the arm is not going to act human arm is

(07:52):
not going to act that same way. It's not going
to be in the same spot. It'll be a variety
of spots. But yet there's something very mechanical about it. Closed,
it's confined. But we do know this. We have blood
that has been shed, so therefore it would have been
transferred onto the perpetrator into the weapon perhaps that was
being used. It's key here, I think that they're not talking.

(08:15):
They haven't really mentioned at this point about what the
DNA that was on this the snap as they refer
to it, the thumb snap that has to be actuated
in order to release this knife. The blood would have
supersaturated the surfaces of this knife. It would have been
on the leading edges of the blade itself. It would

(08:37):
have been on the hilt, the hilt guard that runs
here that protects your hand when you're stabbing it. These
knives have a curious texture on the handle. Many of
them were made from early on. These are military style knives,
and we heard that early on military style knife, honeting
knife and all that, and then they land on K
bar and kbar traditionally. You know, our troops use them

(08:58):
in World War II. That's where the gain great fame,
the Navy, the Coastguard, but most famously the Marine Corps.
And they're made for hand to hand combat. They're very heavy,
heavy in sense of the durability, the way they're made,
and so the handle that was manufactured at that time
was almost like a wrapped leather that's kind of brushed
that would contain Now we don't know what the nature

(09:19):
of this particular handle is, but just suffice it to
say that their blood, the victims blood, would have transferred
onto that weapon. The curious thing is the two young
victims that were in the bedroom together. I've always wondered
how if there was any cross contamination of DNA that
was brought from those victims upstairs, which I believe were

(09:41):
the first victims, because I think that one of them
at least was the target of this massacre. How much
of that DNA was transmitted to the other two victims,
Ethan and Xana down on the second floor, because it's
almost like an inoculation, if you will. It's kind of
a weird term, but you're going and you're introducing this

(10:03):
biologic element into into these two downstairs. Who knows if
they were intended, but it would seem that there was
no an awareness that they were there in dwelling that
structure at the time. But again, we don't have all
of that information, but you've got this kind of sharing
of evidence. Now how much of it can be tied
back to the accused coburger, We don't know at this point. Okay,

(10:27):
a lot of guff a lot of stuff going back
and forth, as lawyers do. And I thought greatly about,
you know, why on the snap itself, would you have
a deposition of DNA there these snaps on these knives
when you're attempting to utilize them, it's almost like somebody
Let's say somebody has a firearm and they're going to

(10:48):
do something called dry firing, and dry firing means that
you take a gun that is unloaded, and you go
and buy a new weapon. You want to know what
the trigger pull feels like. You know how many pounds
of pressure does it take to actually the trigger as
you pull it and drop the hammer and all those
sorts of things. If it's semi automatic, you rack it
back and forth, you get the feel of it. And
I have this kind of vision of the individual that's

(11:09):
using this knife sheath that may contain the murder weapon,
sitting in a chair somewhere flipping it with their thumb.
How much time, how much speed does it require to
flip that thing and clear it from the sheath. And then, perhaps,
just perhaps, if you're in such a frenzy, sexually motivated
or just motivated by anger, you forget the sheath. You

(11:31):
drop it because now your focus is there before you,
lining before you, as you may occupy the same space,
and you go to work, and now the only thing
you can think of is you feel the warmth of
that blood that's on your person. You've heard the screams,
you've heard the mones, you've heard those last gasp of
breath leave the body. The next thing you want to
do is get the hell out of the place. But

(11:51):
what happens you go down that staircase, that interior staircase
leading from the third floor down to the second floor.
You make that hard left and you're head and were
those sliders that are there? Somebody pokes their head out,
possibly Ethan. There was a sound that was heard. We
believe that at this point in time, we know Zana
was up she was on TikTok? So did she stick

(12:12):
her head out of the door, did Ethan stick his
head out of the door? How many injuries did they sustain?
Was it overkill, just like the two young women upstairs?
Or was it quick just to put separation between yourself
and this horror show that you've created and then get
out of the place as quickly as you can because
everything didn't go as planned. And when we reflect back

(12:33):
to Piked and I don't know that everything when is
planned there. You can plan forever, man, you can, but
you can't anticipate these unknowns, these unseen things that are
going to arise. You know, somebody's willingness to fight back,
or maybe it's a mother cradling her child while she's
nursing her in bed and suddenly you hear you know
where there's an awareness that there's somebody in the room

(12:56):
and then bam. You know, how does that affect the
shooter piked in? You know, when they hear that gasp
or they sense that there's an awareness that they're there.
Because they've tried to be stealthy, They've tried to defeat
every measure that there is electronically, They've dumped phones, they've
used alternate vehicles, all these sorts of things, and you
begin to think about this, always have to plan for

(13:18):
those things that you can't anticipate, and how do you
plan for that way you don't? And when you're committing
an illegal act like this, you know, it's one thing
when a military goes in, our police officer goes in
and they're trying to execute a warrant and they're within
the boundaries of the law. But now you're doing something
that you know good and well is against the law

(13:39):
and is the most horrible thing that you can possibly
participate in. What other layer does that add of stress
when you're trying to put yourself and you know, put
distance between yourself and the crimes.

Speaker 6 (13:50):
So, Josef, I just want to ask you something about
the nice sheath button, because I envision it sort of
what the way you did, which is at some point
he was opening, opening and closing, and he did it
without the glove. He probably did it at home when
he first bought it. And I my thinking is that
his DNA got on the inside of the button, not

(14:11):
the outside, because he probably wiped down the entire knife
sheath and everything, but he forgot when he closed it
not to get on the inside. And if you push
too hard, you know, you can leave a little bit
of DNA, You can leave a little bit of skin
or something like that inside the snap. Is that kind
of what you were thinking as well?

Speaker 5 (14:28):
I had contemplating that because the snaps have leading edges.
If you're looking at it, you know, face on for
people that are listening to us right now, if you're
looking at the snap, the domed we have the dome
surface of the exterior of the snap, and then if
you flip it over, you look and you see this
kind of concave interior of the thing, and it's got
an edge all the way around it. And I have

(14:49):
thought about this Connor that perhaps when he's actuating this thing,
you know, he's sitting in a I don't know his
Barco lounger his house. He's watching television or whatever the
hell he's doing, and he's sitting there and he's actually
in the same flipping it back and forth. It's one thing,
And isn't that interesting because that's one that's one place
that you would not think of to clean or wipe

(15:12):
down that it kind of catches and rubs and takes
away that sample. Maybe it is touch DNA, which you know,
we we've talked about before at length, but just as
kind of a refresher. You know, touch touch DNA originates
from dead skin cells, and we sleught thousands of these things.
That's why people put lotion on. So how much more

(15:33):
so at a microscopic level if we can see, if
we can look at our hands and say, Alli, you know,
I got dry skin, I need to cracked and weathered
and all this stuff. I need to put some lotion,
all right, how much more so to microscopic level, you know,
we're scraping off these dead, dead skin cells that are
falling off into that kind of convex area and it
could hold on to it, and I you know, I

(15:54):
think about the technician perhaps that was in that environment
that you know, had the sheath. Can I adge that
moment when they have the sheath and they don't have
the knife, and they're thinking and all the other evidence
that came out of that home up there just off
the campus University of Idaho, they're looking at them, said,
be careful. This is sacred. This is what we have.
This is our offering right here to you. How are

(16:15):
you going to treat it? And so the scientist that's
taking a look at this thing is they're not just
going to go in randomly to use this thing to
swab it, you know, with the saline solution and you know,
just kind of randomly do it. Now, they're going to
break this thing down into regions and they'll enumerate it,
like just randomly, just off the top of my head.

(16:35):
They'll say this is section one, section two, three, four, five,
and each region will have a number and they'll go
through and swab those those areas to see what they
come up with. Now, they'll do a control swab too
as well, just to demonstrate, you know, it's a control
that you use in the lab. And then they go

(16:56):
to every region and for some reason, as you pointed out,
come and you're right, you are, they get to that snap. Now,
why would it be that on the smooth maybe metallic
leading edge on the exterior. All other surfaces are clean
or are absent any kind of trace DNA. But yet
they still recover it from there. I think that that

(17:17):
might be shielding. It might be protection. And it doesn't
matter how many times you snap it. If they take
that swab and they run it on the inside of
that lip, they're going to find things. And we even
find this with Layton prints. When people I go through
an exercise. It's a college professor that teaches forensics, and
I tell my students and they always hate me for
this because they think about it for days and days afterwards.

(17:37):
I say, when we're doing latent prints, I say, Okay,
when you leave campus today, leave with this thought in mind.
Think about how you get in and out of your vehicle.
How do you leverage your body in and out of
your vehicle. Most people don't think about that. They don't
think about the fact that they have to use their key.
Perhaps they have an old door lock on it, or
they're going to hit the buzzer. Oh and by the way,

(17:57):
they have to stick their fingers underneath and open the
door handle. You know, actuate the door handle, then grab
the bar, the support bar side next to the window.
Maybe they'll push it up and some people will push
on the interior glass. Then they're going to have to
leverage their self into it to sit down. You're gripping
multiple layers. Most people don't think about that, and that's
that's the nature of us as humans. We go through

(18:19):
these repetitive tasks all the time. We don't think about
where we're coming in contact. That as a forensics person
is where we can find those little land mines that
perpetrators have not thought about. And Connore you thought about one.
So there you go. I've actually referred to the car
as a rolling crime scene. So what may have happened
with that? Did he plan so much that he had

(18:41):
a change of clothes that he changed into before he
mounted back up in that car and then he tossed
the clothing? Remember there was a big stink over I
guess it was the Tuesday after the Wednesday, after the
primary crime scene had been worked, you know, on that Sunday,
you know, that morning morning up, and they were talking
about trash pick up and how they had not checked

(19:01):
all the trash cans and I've often wondered did they
miss something? Did they miss something? And it's mass confusion
around the campus. You got kids, his parents are calling
them saying leave. And I'm sure that not all details
were Did they go through and check every single trash
can in that little community. Did they look for clothes
that had been you know, tossed aside, perhaps in a

(19:24):
bag somewhere, Because if if he is this criminal mastermind,
which you know, the media is trying to portray him,
as you know, because he was working on a PhD
in criminology, which is not forensic science, did he think
enough to show up with a change of clothes, you know?
And I think that that's an interesting question. And the
shoes as well. There were early there was an early

(19:45):
conversation about a pair of vans where there was some
kind of print that was left in the hallway and
it turns out somebody else was in vans in the house.
And they never said what kind of media that the
print was left behind. Was it dirt, was it dust?
Was it blood that left this pattern? But there were
other vans that were left there, and there were all
kinds of photographs floating around for a period of tom

(20:07):
You know, demonstrating different types of vans you know that
are out there that people wear. You know, it's not
just surfer dudes.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
a moment.

Speaker 6 (20:26):
One of the things that we talked about in one
of the episodes, there was a mention, and this was
just stuck out. There's a mention that there was no
shower curtain in his apartment, and I think Jeff and
I were talking about speculating that could he have possibly
taken the shower curtain put it in his car seat
so that when he was driving, essentially there was some
type of bubble And maybe that's the reason why there's

(20:48):
no shower curtain in his apartment. Maybe he was just cheap,
poor student. He never bothered, he couldn't care less. But
I mean that's the type of thing you're saying that,
you know, if he's thinking about he's planning this stuff out,
that he could have thought about bringing in a change
of clothes, having multiple pairs of gloves so that you're
tearing off the dirty one, putting in a bag to
dispose of later, but you still have another pair that

(21:09):
is clean, or something like that as well. Right, Like
that's kind of what you were talking about.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Yeah, creating that barrier that's going to separate you from
those cloth seats. And I remember seeing I remember looking
not so much at his dad and him when they
had those videos of them being pulled over in Indiana,
looking at the seats, thinking well, is that is that
the kind of surface that I would expect kind of
a supersaturation of blood remnant to be left behind in

(21:33):
if I remember correctly, there's some kind of funky cloth.
You're not talking about a high end vehicle here that's
going to have pleather or certainly not leather, which still
you know that absorbs blood and you can find it.
But just think about cloth, if you've ever had a
cloth seat in a vehicle, and just if you have
a kid and kids spill something in the vehicle, Oh

(21:54):
my lord, I forbid it's chocolate milk. Of course, that's
never happened to me. But you know, when you think
about what, how do you get this out of there?
And it requires a bit of elbow grease, and it
requires a knowledge of you know, what can be applied
to that covering to render it clean and absent that
that car though I think holds many keys and it

(22:17):
was but Steph, you had mentioned the visual capture of
the sing on CCTV, you know, and they did the
infamous ring. That's what they're referring to. It is I
can't remember. It's twenty plus miles I think where they
went around to all the CCTV spots and the car
plays a role into that. We have to think, did
he have any other conveyance, Well, not that we know of,

(22:38):
but we know that he kind of circled about the
University of Idaho because the phone's pinging in those specific locations,
and this is you know, they they're claiming that they
can put him there prior to the deaths, and then
of course we think that there's a return visit maybe
that morning, you know, thinking about well, what's you know,

(22:58):
what's happening, you know, and a lot of us have
talked about this, Why isn't there anything in the news
and we've got you know, that plays into the whole
timeline thing where things not reported until noonish or you know,
just shy of nunish and he's probably wondering at this
point in times they're curious, did he ride back over there?
Would you leave Washington State hop in your white Hyundai

(23:19):
and drive back over there and take a look, just
a peek, just to see what's going on. And how
could you be that foolish? So you begin to think
about this, did he think about this thoroughly? And to
your point, Connor, about creating this barrier in the car?
I think certainly the shower curtain could do that. But
if he's such a mastermind, wouldn't he know that, you know,

(23:42):
the shower curtain, even though it's in a wet environment,
could very well contain some of his DNA because he's
bathing in there, and you're going to use that to
cover a seat. That's a very intimate thing, a shower curtain.
Don't know about you guys, but you know you brush
up against it in all manner of things. You got
hair falling off, you know, all kinds of things that
can be contained on the shower curtain. Just because you
put water to it doesn't mean it's clean. That's an

(24:05):
interesting thought, you know, did he create a barrier for
that car? And then those what the the FBI team
saw him doing up Pocono's with the observations of you know,
this just constant cleaning of the vehicle. You know they've
got this, they're viewing this, and you know they're he's
digging through it, he's hauling off, putting things in zip

(24:27):
lock bags and creating them off. I mean, maybe he's fastidious.
I don't know. Maybe he's substidious about cleaning his car.
Looking at it going through down the road in Indiana
didn't appear to be that he was fastidious. Why would
he did he clean it in Idaho and then clean
it again once he got to mom and Dad's house.

Speaker 6 (24:44):
I mean, presumably he would have after the murder, if
he used that vehicle, he would have cleaned it. Then
after the stops in Indiana he got scared and decided
to clean it more. I mean, that's that's the only
way to sort of approach that. But who knows. I mean,
did he clean it NonStop for months? Like you know
that murders happened in the middle of November. He doesn't
get arrested until the end of December. Is you know,

(25:06):
is he cleaning every single day?

Speaker 5 (25:08):
Yeah? And he's becoming obsessive about it. You think about that,
and I'm curious from sampling perspective, I have to think
that you know, working in conjunction with Pennsylvania State Police
and the FBI when they got this car. I'm wondering
what type of samplings did they take from within the

(25:28):
vehicle and was there did they do any kind of
chemical testing and get an idea as to what he
may have been cleaning the car with and talk about
tie backs just at a molecular level. Did he have
anything under the sink in Idaho that he had purchased
to use for cleaning that they found remnant of in
the car that may have varied from what he was

(25:50):
using at mom and Daddy's house. You know, are there
multiple agents that are being used? The question is is
when he's doing all of his studies of the tenants
of I don't know, Hans Gross and all these other
people that are criminologists, does he have time to go
through and dig out a forensic text and begin to see,
you know, how to defeat defeat any kind of of

(26:13):
you know, testing that an organization as sophisticated as the
Idaho State Crime Lab or the FBI crime Lab or
Pennsylvania State Crime Lab can he defeat? Is he powerful
enough intellectually to understand that and anticipate it and defeat
anything that they've got going on in the laboratory and

(26:33):
defeat what the crime scene investigators are doing at those scenes.
You know, the things they're going to think about, because
I don't know, there have been people that are saying,
you know, you need to go back to Pennsylvania and
check check for unsolved cases and all these sorts of things. Well,
to the best of my knowledge, at this point time,
he hadn't been charged with anything. This is his first
time at bat. You know, if it is, is he

(26:54):
that much of a wonder kind that he can you know,
he can anticipate everything that he has this big brain.
You're always going to miss something. You know, the snap
might be the thing that would do him in if
that turns out to be accurate. You know, if he's
in possession of that knife, I think from an investor,
this is an investigative part as opposed to a forensic part.

(27:16):
But you know the provenance of that knife and that sheath,
is there some way to tie it back to a
purchasing where they can actually physically put that in his hand,
that he ordered it somewhere, he went into a sporting
good store or ordered it online from some you know,
from Amazon, or whoever, or that he decided to buy it.
I mean immediately when I started hearing about the type
of knife that was being alleged that was being used,

(27:38):
I immediately went on a variety of sites on the internet.
You know, how hard would it be for me to
buy a K bar? I mean, I've seen k bars.
I go to gun stores, I go to hunting stores.
You know, we've got a lot of them where I live,
and I see k bars there. I've seen in my
whole life. My dad's a four Marine and he had
a k bar, And you know, so I'm thinking about
that sort of thing. How would you and why whyn't
you use a k bar? Why there's a lot of

(28:00):
knives out there. You know, they'd thrown around the term
rambo knife, which is not a k bar. That's a
survival knife that has a scruff end on the handle
that contains things like needle and thread and fish hooks
and all that sort of compass and all that sort
of thing. It's not a k bar. Is a classic
combat knife. It's weighted and balanced for that purpose. So

(28:20):
I'm thinking about these things and thinking, why choose a
k bar out of every knife that's out there is
it something he's familiar with that you have a history
of having an interest in the military. Well, as soon
as I thought about that, I start seeing images of
him and I don't know if it was a j
RTC or whatever it was. And there's this picture of
him when he was larger than he is today, and
he's doing push ups and he's wearing a BDU uniform,

(28:43):
and I start thinking, well, he's got some familiarity with
the military. Maybe that entered k bar entered in his lexicon.
Why would it be that you would choose that weapon
to perpetrate such a heinous crime? And he might be
many things, but I can tell you what he's not.
He's not a special opera person. You know, in special
operations people are trained in hand to hand combat, edged combat.

(29:06):
So this is a daunting task. It's one thing to
take a gun out and shoot somebody. You don't need
to be a marksman to do that. You start to
get into a knife play. This is a completely different
realm that you enter into because you have to be
aware that there is a high probability that someone could
take that knife and bury it in your chest. They
could take it away from you and you're running a
real risk. So why this knife, Why the students at

(29:28):
this particular times. It's an interesting question that I think
that the investigators have asked of themselves.

Speaker 4 (29:34):
Yeah, we have done a lot of research, going back
to Pennsylvania and etc. Trying to find a previous occurrence
that would point to something that maybe was a pregame
to this crime. And frankly, we haven't been able to
identify something super obvious. But you know, something about it
just doesn't track. And why in the hell, if you're
so bright and smart, would you drive your own white

(29:55):
car to and from the crime scene even the next day.
I mean, you're really we're talking about something that it's unexplainable,
I guess, But yeah, the smartest guy in the room
wouldn't do that.

Speaker 6 (30:05):
Serial killers have budgets too. He may not have had
access to another vehicle. I mean, like you go to
war with what the weapons you have, and all he
had was his weight, you know, Hyundai.

Speaker 5 (30:16):
Maybe it's some kind of grandiose manifestation that you see
being played out here that I you know that I'm
capable of doing this, you know, and I think about bodybags.
I was amazed, and I'm just you know, kind of
mentioning this on the side, but covered the case a
few weeks back involving Sam Little, and many people are
familiar with Sam Little. He it turns out he's he's
arguably one of the most prolific serial killers to exist

(30:39):
in US history. And they finally got one of the
bodies identified from the mid seventies that he actually killed.
He killed the young woman and making Georgia and Sam
Little lived to kill. He would take jobs just so
that he could be near victims, and he traveled everywhere,
and he he didn't have a dime to his name,

(30:59):
but he figured out of way to you know, lure
women in their own environments, generally prostitutes, all of them
just about prostitutes, and choke them out and leave very
little evidence behind over the course of time. So is
this are we looking actually at a serial perpetrator? Here?
Are we looking at a mass murderer? You know, anything

(31:21):
three or more is essentially a mass killing. So you
if it is who they alleged that it is, is
there so much anger that's pent up? Is there so
much hatred and venom that he wants to take out
on you know this these poor college students. Did it
just all come to a head at this particular time,

(31:42):
you know? And this goes to motive, and of course
state doesn't have to prove motive, but circumstantially you begin
to think about what are the motivations for someone first off,
to leave Pennsylvania and come to Washington of all places
to work on a PhD. And I've said again was
it was a fine school. But you know, you're you're
talking about going to a very high end Catholic institution

(32:03):
in Pennsylvania. The sales to get your undergraduate and your masters.
You're in the heart. You're in the heart of doctoral
studies in criminology in that Northeastern corridor. The state of
Pennsylvania alone has four PhD programs in criminology. You go
up the Eastern Seaboard, you start hitting places like you know,
d C. You hit New York obviously John Jay School

(32:26):
of Criminal Justice. You go to Boston and North Northeast
Northeastern that's there is considered to be their holy shrine.
Why are you going to pack up and head to
Washington State? And then you screw around while you're there
because I got to tell you, people that aren't familiar
with what it's like being a PhD student. It's in

(32:46):
dentured servitude, particularly those first few semesters you're there. And
the fact that he had enough time to go and
do this while he is a TA teaching assistant, which
he was doing miserably at From what we're understanding, that
you have and I know it's really close, but you
have enough Tom to get in your car and drive
literally across state lines and cruise another campus. You have

(33:09):
enough Tom to do this. And I'm perplexed by that.

Speaker 6 (33:12):
Can I impack that for a second, because you just
made a point that I have not heard anyone make,
which is that he potentially chose where to go to school,
maybe with the idea that somewhere like Idaho would be
the easiest place to get away with him murder.

Speaker 5 (33:26):
Or something even more ominous.

Speaker 6 (33:29):
Because a small town. They don't. Idaho is not a
rich state. They don't. They just don't have murder, so
there's not as much forensic opportunity for their investigators. And
would staying in the Northeast or staying in Pennsylvania maybe
if he had this fantasy and he wanted to carry
it out, would be more problematic, more difficult, So you

(33:49):
go away for your PhD to be in a place
closer to a place like Idaho, which would have limited
resources to solve a murder.

Speaker 4 (33:57):
Or if he had some sort of pre existing social
relationship on social media or some interaction with one of
the victims, we would only be speculating to say, who
if there was some sort of dynamic happening that he
perceived as a relationship prior to moving, and that's why
he actually moved, because he had targeted one of the

(34:18):
victims in his mind already. I'm not making the suggestion
that he was friends or that there was any sort of,
you know, obvious connection. But a person's screwy brain can
really make screwy fantasies happen. And this is not an
original thought. Somebody has said this to me, that it's
possible that that was one of the reasons for the move.

Speaker 5 (34:39):
Yeah, I agree completely, and I think that it's something.
I'm almost positive that they investigative collective, I'll put it
to that way or exploring because being an academic and
being you know, in academic for twenty years, this is
what I do know is that when you go up
for a PhD program, something. When you get to that
level and you're stud something as specific as criminal behavior,

(35:02):
which criminology is, you look for people to It's the
ultimate and the socratic method. You're looking for people, they say,
to study under or to sit at their feet some
great scholar in criminology. So what is it that Wazoo
has to offer that no other institution in the United
States or Europe has to offer, or Canada has to

(35:24):
offer their fine schools in Canada that have criminology programs.
What is it about that location? Who on that staff
did he identify when he was at the Sales completing
his master's degree. Who was it that he identified at
Washington State says, that's the person I want to study under.
That's the person that I want to set my track
on life with because I'm going to go into academic

(35:45):
because I got to tell you, you're not going to
do much with a PhD other than to teach. You can
consult eventually if you get enough years, you know, under
your belt. So with that said, once you've identified and
targeted an individual that you want to sit at their feet,
if you will, now you have to apply. Well, the
application is a bit arduous as you can imagine. First off,

(36:08):
you have to submit writing samples. You have to give
them a philosophy letter about what your thoughts are, areas
that you want to do research in. You have to
name many times some of their staff members that are
currently doing because you know, when I mentioned in dner Servitude,
it's not just about you going to get a PhD,
it's about them looking for workers. So if you've got

(36:28):
Professor A that is studying a particular area, is this
the person that Professor A wants to bring in that
will literally become an employee, a full time employee of
the university while working on their PhD. They're going to
have their tuition paid for, you know, maybe a dorm food,
they'll get a stipend, and you're going to be at

(36:49):
that person's bidding day in and day out. And oh,
by the way, you're going to do research while you're
teaching my classes. So after you make it through that,
you have to have recommendation letters. Who wrote recommendation letters
for him? Who was it that sat down and thought
that Brian Coberger would be a great candidate for Wazoo
And was Wazoo the only place he chose? That's another

(37:09):
sticking point because I got to tell you, as an investigator,
if you're I don't know, maybe his GR scores, which
is kind of like the SAT, maybe his GR scores
are just off the scale. He could choose anywhere he
wanted to go, and he's solely focused on Washington State
and he's done research at a master's degree level. That's
going to fold back into that who is it that

(37:31):
he's going to study under? Who is it at the
sales or whoever that wrote him these letters of recommendation.
And that's why this peeling of the onion to get
inside of his head and trying to understand what he's
doing is very important, I think. And to this point,
I know that they have certain privacy issues at work,
but I have to think that the authorities have begun

(37:53):
to look into this. I hope they have. As a
matter of fact, I hope that once they had identified
who he was, this is the first thing that they
did know. Because the world's a crazy place. Next thing,
you know, files are leaded and all these sorts of things,
and it's gone. You want to be able to catch
that data as quickly as you can to try to
understand what he's doing. Because if that is a purpose,
then you begin to develop a timeline, and timeline is

(38:14):
what we work on in investigations and forensics. You arrive
in June or May, you know, after you've been accepted.
You get there, you find an apartment, You've drug your
ass all the way across the country, you set up
an apartment. You got a job, you're supposed to be
going to class, you're supposed to be doing research, and
you have to account for every second that you're in
a PhD program, every second they demand it. They want

(38:37):
you to be well. The next thing, I know, he's
being disciplined. I'm hearing things about him being disciplined, that
he doesn't get along well with students, he's arrogant, you know,
all these sorts of things that kind of come out
about him. Doesn't get along with colleagues. You know who
does that when they first show up at the door.
It's one thing if you've been working someplace for two
or three years, it turns out your jerk. First day there,

(38:57):
you show up, you're a jerk. You know long is
it's going to last? And plus these people are going
to give you grades. So are you are you really
bought into the process of getting a PhD. I think
it's a legitimate question. And so why why that location?
Why the University of Idaho? Why those poor souls, those
four kids that are literally in the conclusion of their

(39:20):
undergraduate career. Their lives are wrecked, their families, lives are wrecked,
they're dead. What set them apart? Why why that location?
That brings us back to the place being a party house.
And we hear that anybody in the world could have
walked into that house. And look, most people that are
out there that have been undergraduates in some place. You're

(39:40):
familiar with the house where everybody would go and congregate
and hang out, even if you were sitting on front
porch drinking a beer. Oh yeah, they they're tapped a keg.
We're going to go here. It's cool, man, It's about
being in college or hanging out. This is that kind
of place. The sliders are open. Remember, nothing happens up here.
You certainly don't have quadruple homicides. Everybody would trust. Everybody

(40:00):
come and goes you please. That one view from outside
that I think the Son or the Daily Mail had
published that shot of the table. You can see it's
a classic shot now and you've got solo cups sitting
on the tail. You got all kinds of crap that
are in there. I'm not judging them, the college students,
anybody could have come and gone. So is it possible
that a person that wanted to end the life of somebody?

(40:23):
And this goes to going back to Piketon. You know,
what do we know about the Wagoners and the Rodents, Well,
they have familial ties. They go to one another's homes,
They've crossed the thresholds of one another's houses. Now this perpetrator,
this alleged perpetrator, Ryan Coberger, the accused, certainly wasn't family.

(40:45):
But you can set yourself in a kind of a
quasi familial relationship. We remember, we're talking about making a home.
You know, when party night is generally on, generally at
college town's party nights or Thursday nights, people are checking
out the next day. Maybe Thursday night they throw a kicker.
Every single Thursday night. People would filter over from the
Greek village that's literally right down the road. Who's going
to know who this guy is? He comes walking in,

(41:07):
he's in this environment, he sees it and one of
the most chilling things that came up from me. It's
terrifying to me, particularly as a father. Is that damn
TikTok video that those kids put up where you can
see just in that quick flash, you can see that
great room, great room, family room, kitchen, slash, open concept,
whatever you want to call it. We've got a great

(41:29):
open floor plan, yeah you do. And in it broadcast
for the whole world to see, is an interior upward
staircase and an interior downward staircase. And I see the sliders.
I know where they're at, and I know who's in there.
So if I were inclined to perpetrate something like this,

(41:49):
I've got a snapshot. Now I might not have the
entire truth, but I'm kind of oriented. And if you're
an obsessed person, just imagine watching that on a loop.
You got nothing but time. You're not going to not
doing your job. You're sitting there doing nothing but watching.
And if you're already tracking somebody on social media, Wow,

(42:11):
what a big old slice of cake for you. Huh?
You get everything, you get everything you're able to see
into that world. What are my points of ingress and
egress with us sliders? And I know behind those sliders
because I've ridden around that property so much. There's a
place I can part my car up there. Oh there's
a hedgerow. Let's go up there at night. Let's go see.
I'll wear black shirt, black pants, maybe a black jacket.

(42:34):
Side of hose can be cold. Let me just pull
over here and see if I can get into these
bushes and sit here and watch see what happens. Maybe
I'll bring my binoculars with me and at a distance.
You know when the lights go on, when lights go off,
you know when people are going up through the bedrooms,
when they're shutting it down for the night. You can
time it. You can look at it. Okay, Well, if
she shuts it down at this time of night, are

(42:54):
their food orders coming in? We've got door dash? Do
they use door dash? Is that a way I could
get in? Is there anybody else that's pulling up leaving?
Is there a regular that shows up? Is there some
member of the football team that shows up that I
need to think about? Mike could beat my ass. You know,
do they have boyfriends that are football players or whatever else?
You have a good old boy showing up in camouflage.

(43:15):
It's been deer hunting all day and he's got a
gun a knife, and I'm not gonna have a chance
against him. So you sit out there and you watch
it and you observe it. And there's that classic shot.
And I love that they put this out there because
we've got those. There's that shot of the investigators. Actually
you can see them. Somebody in the media captured them
doing this. They were going to the hedgerow and they

(43:36):
were squatted and they're looking back toward the house. See,
the cops are thinking about this, they're thinking about points
of observation all the way around. And when the time
is right, when you've worked yourself into a frenzy, you
drive up there in your car. You park it so
nobody else sees you. Remember, we're getting ready for Thanksgiving holiday.
Everybody's guards down right now. It's not like you're in
the October and you're right in the middle of party season.

(43:59):
You're sitting there and you're watching and you're waiting. You've
got gloves on, maybe you don't. Maybe you've got certain
types of boots on. Maybe you got shoe covers. You
can go buy shoe covers. I was just in a
hardware store the other day. You can buy coveralls that
cover your entire body. Zip them up, just like we
use that on crime scenes so you don't get pain
on your clothes. You got gloves, anybody can get gloves.

(44:19):
And you got your kbar. Where you're gonna put the sheath, Well,
maybe you're carrying it single handed because you've got something
on that's covering your person underneath. You're not gonna hook
it to your belt. It's got a belt loop. So
you're walking in with singing in your hand. You know
the slider is open. You're gonna quietly open the slider,
and you know where the staircase is. Remember you've either
been there for a party or you saw the TikTok video.

(44:41):
You make a hard right when you walk in. You
walk up that staircase and they're low and behold, there
are two girls in that bed and they are shocked
and terrified, and you go to work. So the perpetrator,
whoever it is, this is fishing a barrel for somebody
that has a for the sort of thing that wants

(45:01):
to perpetrate this sort of thing. Because it's not like
you went in in a blaze of glory and people
can hear you shouting and screaming and all that sort
of thing that's going on. This was done stealthily, and
that's something that Piketon has in common with Idaho. There's
stealth involved. You wait till the right moment, You wait
till you know that everybody is out for the evening.

(45:22):
You know that you can defeat the CCTV. You can
take the mechanism that records everything. You know where the
dogs are, you're friendly with the dogs. Maybe bring snacks
for the dogs. You know that you're going to have
to have firearms. Well, these are college kids in Idaho.
Maybe not firearms. Maybe a knife is all I need. Yeah,

(45:44):
that's up close and personal too. I can live out
this fantasy there. The motivations behind these two things are
probably completely different, but there's anger involved in both of them.
You know, you've got these elements of overkill in both
of them. But it requires stealth and it requires some
level of precision. I think probably more precision in piked
In because you've got four separate scenes that are spread

(46:04):
out over this godly space. When I rode rode through
that area taping, I was amazed at first off the
isolation of it, and secondly, how you know the three
houses are kind of close together on Union Hill, but
you've got that the fourth one that's often the distance
and buddy, is it isolated. You've got pipe sunshine in

(46:24):
out there, and it requires stealth, that requires precision. You
know you're going to do this under the cover of darkness,
so you've got to make sure that you're there before
the cock crows, that you can clear out before anybody
else sees you. You have to be able to dispose
of these things that you have purchased or identified as
something that you want to use. So there is similarity

(46:45):
in both of these cases. I think that piked in
for me is more planning. It took place when it
came to this, we know, and plus you've got multiple
brains working here to plan. You know this. This infamy,
if you will, right now would appear that they've identified
only one person that's thinking about Idaho. But planning nonetheless

(47:08):
went into this. This is not something that was just
simply decided on a whim. You showed up prepared. You
certainly showed up with a knife at some time.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Let's stop here for another break.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
There was a filing yesterday from Brian's defense attorney suggesting
that they are in fact going to potentially have an
alibi for him, and that is something that might be
potentially brought up in court. Connor would say that there's
not much to be said there and it's just a formality,
which is probably accurate as always. Can you tell us
just a little bit about your first reaction to this

(47:51):
crime prior to their being an arrest and why you
specifically were so drawn to this case.

Speaker 5 (47:58):
Yeah, remember the exact moment why I was, and this
is why. When I was a young man and I
was working still for the Corner in New Orleans, there
was a case that took place in Gainesville, Florida, just
off campus from the University of Florida, and it was
not just a case, it was multiple cases, and it
involved sharp forces injuries, and it was a gainsul ripper.

(48:21):
And I thought back to that time as a young
investigator because the person that they identified in that particular
case that was eventually arrested and charged and convicted, they
were looking at that person for homicides that we had
in my jurisdiction, and he had connection to Louisiana. And
then of course there's always the specter Bundy, you know,

(48:43):
with the Cayo House, and so those two things kind
of married up. You had. First off, the common denominator
was university, and who would go into a university and
do this sort of thing? And the Gainsul Ripper had
male victims. But again, say what you will? You know
you don't have these things, particularly back then, that would

(49:04):
happen in Gamesville, Florida. It didn't have it happen in
Tallahassee like with the Kyo House. And I was taken
back for that moment, you know, when I heard about
these cases, I thought about what went through my mind.
Cases that I was working in New Orleans at the time,
because we had a series of serial killings that were
going on, and you know, we were all I was
on a task force as a matter of fact, and

(49:25):
I was thinking, is this guy associated with anything that
had happened here? You know, because it's on the ITM corridor.
And then my professor brain kicked in and I began.
First off, I began thinking as a professor, my kids
that I was teaching that I had it'll it'll be
a year a year ago in just about six weeks

(49:46):
when fall semester began, and I began to know, these
kids that come into my class and here you roll
into Thanksgiving and you think about them. They're sick of
you and you're sick of them, but they're still my kids.
And then I thought as a father because my child
sophomore in college last year. He's a junior this year,
and I had a daughter that went to my university.

(50:06):
And immediately, you know, all of that kind of spun
up inside of me. And that's why, Yeah, I was
in the middle. You know, back then, I was just
coming off of covering Gabby Patito and all the storm
that that had kicked up. I was roaded, weary, you
know by that time, and I was suddenly in a
real twisted way and reinvigorated when it came to this

(50:28):
case because I knew that I could in some way
identify with the environment in which this took place, because
I was so familiar with it both as a death
investigator forensic scientist, but also as a professor and a father.
So it hit, it ticked a lot of boxes with me.
And plus it's rural. I knew immediately because I've actually
got a colleague that's we shared office space together. Actually

(50:49):
he's down the hall from me. And he's from Idaho
and he had attended the University of Idaho. And I
thought about, you know, my friend, and immediately I went
and talked to him, you know, give me the lay
of the land, you know, tell me what's going on
with this case, and not the case, but tell me
about the place, you know. And suddenly I saw it,
started seeing parallels between Moscow and Jacksonville, where I live, Jacksonville, Alabama,

(51:11):
you know, where our university is. Campuses are roughly the
same size. We're both rural, though they are more isolated
than we are. We're only ninety miles from Atlanta, but
still we're a rural place. And I thought about the
kids that we have. We've got brilliant people on our campus,
but you know, we're we don't have people that have
matriculated from going to Harvard and all those sorts of places.
They're common every day salt of the our people that

(51:33):
you know that come from families that are probably in
pretty close proximity. You got generations that would attended this school,
just like my school. And so it just really grabbed
me by my throat. You know, when this happened, I
couldn't believe that it was happening, that it had happened,
and to this degree when the information began to come out, thinking,
oh my lord, this is this is horrible, absolutely horrible.
Who And then on top of it, you know, because

(51:56):
the first thing I think is angry boyfriend. That's what
I'm thinking. I'm thinking, angry boyfriend. We're gonna find out
in the next twenty four hours this is some kid
that got in a twist because he got rejected or
whatever it was. And then nothing, it was cricket. And
suddenly I'm thinking, oh my lord, Okay, I have to
go to my map. What major interstates run through this location.

(52:17):
There's some place that some animal could have jumped off
of the road and just decided to target these kids randomly.
And I'm thinking, you don't wind up in this town
by accident. You have to be purpose to be going there.
It's not a suitcase college either. It's not a place
where kid's gonna pack up Friday morning. You know, you've
got to unless you're going across the state line to Washington.

(52:38):
You know, in Pullman. Maybe it's not an easy trek
even to get to Boise. I mean, it's a poke
where you go so a lot of these kids stay there,
you know, they stay there, but they were going home
for Thanksgiving. They'd make that big drive or go to
the local airport and try to get on a plane
and go home for at least a bit. These people
really invested in this location, so in turn, it left

(52:58):
me being very very invested in this investigation as it's
kind of played out.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Connor, how about you.

Speaker 6 (53:05):
My initial reaction, I was sort of just amazed at
for people being stabbed in a college town. The news
is full of shootings. I've covered a bunch of shootings.
I get alerts all the time for people shot in
a shopping mall, people shot at a picnic, people shot
at a house party, people shot everywhere. You know, to

(53:26):
get an alert for stabbings college kids, it stuck out
and it blew my mind because it's so out of
the normal of what American society is. And I mean,
let's be basical, like gun violence in our country is
really normal. Stabbings just aren't. And if you hear of
a stabbing, it's usually you know, to people who are

(53:46):
in a relationship where a fight's gone wrong. And so
to hear four people in a college house, I mean
that just sort of it blew my mind. And it's
just so out of the normal view and conversation of
violent in this country that I just wasn't expecting it.
It became really clear, I think, really early on, that

(54:07):
there was something more to this story. I didn't have
the idea that this was a lover's quarrel gone wrong,
because how do you explain the other people? And so
I was definitely interested from the very beginning because it
just it didn't seem to line up with what we
sort of knew. But there was something more to this
story that was clear very early on.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
And Joseph, we had just come off the heels at
that time of George Wagner's trial and his recent guilty verdict,
and we're frankly just wiped out from the sadness that
surrounded that case, right, and we were so happy for
the Rodent family to have finally felt some justice. And
then the news gets you, and sure enough you see

(54:48):
those beautiful faces and lost souls and families crying and
a town grieving. I feel like we all kind of
knew quickly that we had to jump in.

Speaker 5 (54:57):
Yeah, I'd certainly agree with that stuff. It's you know,
for anybody that's ever spent time in a college town
and you know, you have kind of this collegiate family
that you're part of, and even if it's not. You know,
that's a bit arrogant on my part to say that,
because you're talking about all the other people that are
part of that university that may have never matriculated from there.
But they're the people that serve dinners. There are the

(55:19):
people that pull beers. They're the people that you know,
fix these kids cars when mom and dad are not around.
Just let that sink in for a second. You know
that whole community is trusted with these kids. You know,
when you send your kid to a place like this,
there's a whole support system that goes into it. And
one little interesting aside from what my understanding is is
that it's so interwoven into the culture there. You can

(55:42):
have certain colleges where they exist in a town, but
they're not part of a town. I've worked at places
like that where the college is just kind of isolated,
they don't really interact with locals. That's not the way.
As a matter of fact, the local police department in
this town actually police the campus, and that's that's kind
of odd, you know when you think about it, Because

(56:02):
most universities, particularly state universities, will have their own police force.
So the police officers that are working to bet on
main Street, that are going to the domestic calls and
all that stuff, they handle frat parties too, they'd be
familiar with these kids. These kids' faces will come and
go over the years and probably develop relationships with them.
I'm sure that probably some of the kids decided to
stay after they graduated. I think about that were part

(56:24):
of the community. They wound up going to a place
of college, and they never left, you know, they just
they wind up being part and parcel of that environment.
And so when I can only imagine that when this happened,
many moms and dads in that town and that region there,
you know, suddenly had that parental you know, that ominous
parental feeling that comes over you when something horrible happens.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
Well both of you, your compassion and care and how
you've both treated this case that obviously remains ongoing and
will continue with it. It's frankly been unparalleled. Joseph, we
love you to piece it.

Speaker 5 (57:00):
Hey love you guys too. It's great to be with
you all. Hanging out, thank.

Speaker 4 (57:04):
You, back at You.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow
us on Instagram at Kat Underscore Studios. The Idaho Masacer
is produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Jeff Sheene, Connor Powell, Chris Bargo,
Gabriel Castillo, and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed
by Jeff Toi. Music by Jared Aston. The Idaho Masacre

(57:34):
is a production of iHeart Radio and KAT Studios. For
more podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.