September 20, 2023 • 36 mins
Is a killer born or made? Is there anything in Bryan Kohberger’s background that could point to him becoming a killer or the potential murderer in this crime?
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Newly uncovered posts made by an online forum may give
us insight into Brian Coberger's character.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Between November of two thousand and nine and February twenty twelve,
while Coburger was a teenager, he allegedly made one hundred
and eighteen posts, and in one of them, he said
he felt no emotion and said quote, I can say
and do whatever I want with little remorse.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
This is the Idaho Massacre. A production of KAT Studios
and iHeartRadio episode seven in the Dark. I'm Courtney Armstrong,
a television producer at KAT Studios with Stephanie Leidecker, Jeff Shane,
and Connor Powell. In July of twenty eleven, a user
(00:56):
going by the name Xar posted on an online chat
forum that quote the ringing in his ears and the
fuzz in his vision made him feel that all the
demons in his head were mocking him. The chilling statement
is just one of more than one hundred messages believed
to be authored by a then teenage Brian Cooeberger on
the website tapatok. In post after post, Coburger claimed to
(01:21):
be suffering from a little known neurological syndrome called visual snow.
The rare condition has a range of disorienting symptoms, but
the most common is constantly seeing snow like flex or
black and white scattered dots, like the static on an
old analog television.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I see a large intensity of black, yellow, white fuzz.
It makes my mind fizzle and I could barely keep
in the bounds of reality.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Coburger wrote that his condition led to anxiety, depression, and
quote crazy thoughts. These posts paint a picture of a
deeply who would later turn to heroine and develop an
obsessive interest in violent criminals. Coburger's dark mind and law
enforcement background has led many to draw similarities to other
(02:12):
serial killers like Dennis Radar. Radar dubbed himself quote the
BTK for his fondness to bind, torture, and kill his victims,
and Joseph James DiAngelo, otherwise known as the Golden State Killer.
Both had a history of disturbing thoughts and an intense
(02:32):
interest in law enforcement. So how does Brian Coburger fit
into the larger history of killers. What in his background
could have potentially led Coburger down a path to murder?
How did he go from someone who caught criminals to
potentially becoming a killer himself, or could he have potentially
evolved into a killer as he descended deeper into the
(02:54):
dark world of criminology. When investigators released It's the Probable
Cause Affidavid in the University of Idaho murders, the nineteen
page document laid out much of the evidence linking Coburger
to the crime. According to police, the twenty eight year
old criminology student's DNA was on a knife sheath found
(03:15):
at the murder scene, and a white Atlanta like the
one Coburger drove, was seen driving past the home on
King Road multiple times. Coburger's phone also repeatedly pinged on
towers near the house in the weeks before the Grizzly murders.
But one key piece of the puzzle was conspicuously missing
from the Probable Cause Affidavid. Motive There's Jeff and Stephanie.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
Motive is an essential part of the criminal justice process.
Its official definition is the moving course, the impulse, or
the desire that induces criminal action on the part of
the accused. Basically, why did this crime or murder happen?
As rational humans, we crave a justification for otherwise senseless
and horrible acts.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
I mean, it's a very important piece of the court process,
and it's not a requirement to get a conviction, but look,
jurors really want to make sense of a case.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
This case is so fascinating, not only because of the
sheer atrocity of the murders, but also because of the
accused trajectory and how complex it is. Up until December
twenty twenty two, Brian Coberger seemingly had wanted to be
a hero. He told his friends he had helped to
study high profile criminals and aspired to help catch quote
unquote bad guys.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
This is the part that doesn't totally make sense about
this case. How and why does Coburger go from that
to being accused of brutally murdering four people.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
I speak for the general public when I say we're
all immensely curious.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
I guess, depending upon what is revealed at trial, we
may get a motive at some point, but as of
right now, there really doesn't appear to be one.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
So it raises the question was Brian Coberger born a killer?
Or did something happen in his life to turn him
into a monster.
Speaker 6 (04:58):
And one thing where it's noting listen, don't officially know
about Coburger's mental state, but what we do know is
what he said about his symptoms around his condition called
visual snow, and that's probably a pretty decent place to start.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Understanding visual snow is still not fully well understood. A
lot of how it works or how it's affecting the
brain is under kind of hypothesis.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Coberger wrote on the TAPA Talk for Him that his
visual snow symptoms began in September of two thousand and nine,
when he was just fourteen years old. He admitted the
condition changed him, saying he became more anxious and developed
a sense of derealization and hopelessness.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I think for some people who have high anxiety over
it or want to get rid of it, that's really
the frustrating part, because we don't have a cure for it.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Joseph Allen is a doctor of optometry who has studied
visual snow tho suffers from the rare condition. Here he
is speaking with Jeff.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
You obviously never treated Brian Coburger or know his state
of mind. But for someone who's maybe not in the
best state of mind, how do you think throwing visual
snow on top of that would affect someone.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So there is associations with visual snow with depression and anxiety.
Those probably are the two most consistent ones on top
of headaches. Like a lot of people who have visual
snow usually have a history of migraines. It's like almost
sixty percent of people who have visual snow syndrome also
have a history of migraine headaches. You're somebody with visual
(06:40):
SNOW and you're seeing visual phenomenon like this that you
can't explain that doctors maybe are being dismissive about, and
you have other forms of anxiety or depression. I think
it can really become more isolating. We know isolation Bru's
mental illness. I think there is maybe a higher risk
(07:02):
factor for some of them.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
In posts on the online visual Snow forum, Coburger suggests
he turned to the internet in two thousand and nine
in hopes of finding help, but in the absence of
answers to his questions. Coburger said he felt like the
demons in his head were mocking him. As a result,
he grew distant from the people around him. In a
July twenty eleven post, Coburger wrote, quote, I have had
(07:28):
this horrible depersonalization in my life for almost two years.
As I hug my family, I look into their faces,
I see nothing. It is like I'm looking at a
video game but less. I am blank. I have no opinion,
I have no emotion, I have nothing. This type of
(07:50):
disconnection is common for people suffering from eye issues, particularly
visual snow Here Again, Doctor Joseph Allen, speaking with.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Jeff I have identified as having visual snow I fit
the diagnosis requirements. It's something that I've struggled with since
I was a kid, Like I can think of like
maybe nine years old. Third grade is when I first,
I think, became just more perceptually aware of what was
happening with my eyes. But like most people who have
(08:20):
visual snow they don't either no one talks about it
or we just sort of, you know, you grow up
with it all your life and you just sort of
assume that's how everybody sees.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
So did you go into optometry because you felt like
you had eye issues?
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I think there is definitely some poll there. At a
young age, around age seven age, I got thick glasses,
and ultimately I think what drove me to be in
the profession is because I got contact lenses. Getting contact
lenses was a lot allowed me to play sports and
that helped me make friends and having that boost of
self confidence at age of thirteen.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
It's interesting that you bring up how getting your eyes
kind of taken care of really opened up a lot
of doors for you socially and kind of changed your
life for the better. Because Brian Coburger struggled socially his
whole life. He didn't connect with girls, he didn't really
have a lot of friends, and so it makes it
you wonder, is it maybe because he couldn't see properly,
(09:11):
Like he wasn't connecting with the world the way he felt,
you know, he could have been.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I think eyesight is super important. Like for my case,
sports like kids make much better social connections if they're
involved in activities with other kids. And for me, it
was hard to play football. You can't really play football
with pick glasses on. So for me, getting into contact
lenses really was that key to opening up that whole
other stream of life for me.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
But by his teenage years, Brian Coberger wrote on Tapa Talk,
he wasn't making personal connections with family or friends. Instead,
his mind was moving in a darker direction in posts.
As a then sixteen year old, Coburger wrote that his
visual snow condition made him feel like a quote organic
sack of meat with no self worth. He berated himself
(10:02):
for his expanding array of mental struggles that ranged from
depression to delusions of grandeur, to anxiety to constant thoughts
of suicide. Coburger even wrote lyrics to a rap song saying,
you are not my equal. You are evil, but I
am the devil. But now I am going regal. Don't
fuck with us again. Joseph Allen, there.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Is no evidence right now that visual snow syndrome would
cause mental illness, but it is I think in his case,
if he has mental illness and then a visual snow
on top of it, it's like augmenting it. It's giving
him more, maybe more reasons to lose grip on his
own sense of reality. Perhaps there is some reported on
(10:49):
top of depression of anxiety, there is something called depersonalization
and derealization which is associated with it. Depersonalization kind of
refers to these feelings that you've detached from your physical
body or even from kind of your own mind, and
so people will feel that they are robotic or being
(11:12):
maybe controlled by somebody else. And there's this concept of derealization,
which I like to think of it as the Matrix syndrome.
If you've ever seen that movie The Matrix, where people
feel like the world around them isn't real, they feel
that it's artificial. And you can imagine if you have
visual snow syndrome and you see this static all the time,
you could be like, well, maybe my body is just
(11:35):
like a video game character, and somebody else outside of
this make believe world I live in is actually controlling me.
So I think if you have already existing mental illness,
a poor grip on reality, a poor social structure, and
then maybe having these feelings of depersonalization derealization, then it's
(11:58):
it's easier maybe to whose emotional connection between other people
and even maybe what's right and wrong.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
a moment. By twenty eleven, Brian Kolberger was desperate for
a solution. The effects of visual Snow were weighing on him.
He wrote on the online forum that he visited a
(12:29):
neurologist and took antimigraine medicine. Neither worked. Coburger later adopted
a strict diet, removing sugar, bread, wheat, soy, and other
carbohydrates from his meals. High school friends described him during
this time as obsessive about his new health regime, which
did help him lose a significant amount of weight, at
(12:50):
least one hundred pounds, if not more, and according to
his own words, Coburger began to improve. Coburger wrote on
the tap talk forum in February Worry of twenty twelve
that he had accepted his visual snow and that the
condition no longer scared him. However, in his final post,
he also said quote, I feel like coming to terms
could be a bad thing, though again Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 6 (13:16):
Between twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, Coburger went through this
huge transformation after several years of feeling very down and depressed.
According to reports, he really started to turn things around
and turned a corner. He adopted a new diet, he
started to lose a ton of weight, and he was
apparently much more happy about life and seemingly more optimistic.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
But it's also around this time that he gets kicked
out of the law enforcement Educational Vocation program and ends
up having to finish high school remotely in the spring
of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
This is a pretty big deal, and according to multiple friends,
this turmoil really spun him in a dangerous direction. He
started to use drugs. Apparently he started with marijuana, but
then that really escalated to heroin, which is a huge leap.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
One of his friends, Rich Pasqual, who worked with Coburger
at the pizza shop, said that by twenty thirteen, Coburger
was a full on heroin addict, but he was eventually
able to kick the habit, going to rehab and enrolling
at the Northampton Community College.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
It does seem that Coburger has a bit of a
history of locking in and almost obsessing about certain parts
of his life, whether it's the visual snow or drugs,
his diet, and in some ways, even his own criminal behavior.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
This type of compulsive behavior is something we see with
other serial or prolific killers.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
After years of being socially detached, addicted to drugs, and suicidal,
Coburger appears to have found a new purpose after rehab,
an intense fascination with the criminal mind. This fascination led
Coburger to study at nearby Dessalge University and ultimately under
the renowned on forensic psychologists, doctor Catherine Ramsland.
Speaker 7 (15:05):
Do you have to study the victim and you have
to know things about offenders? So you have to study
offenders and you have to know the kinds of things
they might do.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Ramsland is one of, if not the leading expert on
serial killers and murderers. She's written more than sixty books
and hundreds of articles on violent criminals. On December twenty second,
twenty twenty two, producer Jeff Shane conducted an interview with
Ramsland for a different project. Just eight days later, her
former student Brian Coberger would be arrested. In hindsight, their
(15:39):
conversation is chilling.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
What can you tell me about people who commit crimes?
Speaker 7 (15:44):
So you're looking at the body and the crime scene,
maybe the whole geographic analysis in terms of their comfort
zone and et cetera. But you're also looking at what
do we know about offenders to apply to this, and
then you want to build as detailed biography of the
person as you possibly can. It's all going to be
(16:06):
probability based, more likely to have education than not education,
or more likely to be compelled sexually because of certain rituals,
and nothing missing. But if things are always missing, they're
all more likely to be motivated by greed or any
eliminating witnesses not really interested in the murder itself, more
(16:31):
interested in eliminating witnesses while they get off with the goods.
But if the victim is mutilated in some way, overkill
things like that, that's going to tell you a different
story about the offender. So a lot of it's going
to be based on what you're finding at the scene.
There's a retrospective profile and a prospective profile, and too
(16:54):
many people are doing the prospective profiling, and that is
more of a risk evaluation based on a pattern of behaviors.
Retrospective profile is what do we see right here at
the crime scene today that will tell us something about
this offender. And if we have several scenes that we
(17:14):
think are related to the same offender, what do those
various scenes tell us about this person.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Ramsland has refused to comment publicly on her former graduate student,
but she is most famous for her extensive research and
books about the serial killer Dennis Radar, most commonly known
as the BTK. Dessal's University is known for its hands
on criminology program and as an undergraduate criminology student. Coburger
(17:47):
would have studied Radar. As a graduate student of Ramsland.
It's likely Coburger would have studied Radar in depth. He
may have even had access to Ramsland's primary research information
about both real killers and Dennis Radar.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Tell me about BTK and how modern day criminals might
have evolved since then.
Speaker 7 (18:09):
These days, serial killers quite often are a little more sophisticated.
They're aware of you know, the investigators are looking at patterns.
But even back in you know, the seventies, they sometimes
they would have a ritual, so there would be similarities.
But then they'll pick up somebody a victim of opportunity,
(18:32):
weren't even looking, but they had their murder kits, so
why not go for this? And then it's completely different.
I remember Dennis Raider, for example, the BTK killer who
so nineteen seventies into the eighties, and this final one
of the ten he killed was in nineteen ninety one,
and by nineteen ninety one he realized how the FBI
(18:52):
approached all this, and so instead of killing people in
houses that he entered, he took a couple victims and
dumped them outside. One victim he called it in none
of the others. Several of them he wrote notes to
the newspaper, but not all of them, so that's not
a He's not a particularly sophisticated person. But he did
(19:17):
change things up a little bit. He murdered a family
of four, then he murdered a single woman. They didn't
connect them at all because even though the bodies all
were bound, he'd used different knots on the single woman
than he had on the family. And he didn't do
that purposely. He just liked knots and he was mixing
(19:38):
it up.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
How much Coburger studied or understood about serial killers like
Radar isn't clear, but there are unique and disturbing similarities
between Coburger and Radar. Both are accused of committing their
murderers while pursuing degrees in criminal justice. Radar was earning
an undergraduate degree from which tosstatem as he embarked on
his killing spree, and as doctor Ramslan mentioned in her interview,
(20:05):
Radar mixed up his killing profile to evade investigators. When
Coburger was arrested, he was wearing rubber gloves and sorting
his trash into smaller plastic bags in an apparent effort
to prevent police from collecting evidence against him. In an
interview with TMZ, Dennis Radar said he saw similarities between
Coburger and himself, the convicted killer of tens, that he
(20:26):
believed Coburger, like himself, was motivated to kill by the
fantasy of homicide. Again, Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
This is really the scariest question about Coburger. We know
that he told people from a young age that he
wanted to catch violent criminals and be a police officer.
Later at WSU, he said he wanted to help rural
police departments solve crimes. So was this all talk just
a front or a ruse to get in with investigators?
Did he want to figure out how they worked so
he could operate around them. Given what we know about
(20:56):
his teenageers, his feelings of isolation, and the demons in
his had, is it possible that he had a long
standing desire to kill.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
So with that in mind, are you saying that possibly
studying criminology was part of the plan to learn how
to kill people without getting caught exactly, or I also
wonder if he has this personality type that's a bit obsessive.
Was it possible that he's studying criminals at school because
he's been obsessed with crime and fantasizing about being a.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Killer his whole life.
Speaker 6 (21:28):
Or is it because he was studying criminology and about
killers that he began to fantasize about it.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
That could make sense, and he definitely could have used
what he learned from his criminology studies to help him
get away with murder, at least for a little while.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Let's stop here for another break. Brian Colberger's classmates and
professors described him as intellectual, though at times arrogant and
a bit of a know at all. One former professor
from Dsal's University went further and said Coburger was a
(22:06):
brilliant student. Michelle Bulger, an associate professor of criminology, wrote
a letter of recommendation for Colberger's PhD application, describing him
as perfectly professional in all their interactions. She also advised
Coburger with his master's thesis on script theory, which focused
(22:28):
on how and why criminals commit their crimes. As part
of Coberger's deep dive into script theory, the idea that
people largely fall into patterns or scripts, Bulger oversaw the
creation of Coburger's request for criminals to fill out a
survey on Reddit about their thoughts and emotions while committing
a crime. Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 6 (22:51):
This Reddit survey is just so interesting. Yes, while his
former professor says that type of work is very common
amongst criminology students, and the specific nature of the questions
and what he would later be accused of certainly raises
some serious questions.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
We looked up the original survey. He posted it on Wednesday,
June first, twenty twenty two, which was two hundred and
twelve days before Xana, Ethan, Madison and Kayley were murdered.
Here's what it said. Hello, my name is Brian, and
I am inviting you to participate in a research project
that seeks to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence
decision making when committing a crime. In particular, this study
(23:30):
seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense,
with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience.
The questions read, did you prepare for the crime before
leaving your home? Please detail what you were thinking and
feeling at this point after committing the crime. What were
you thinking and feeling. How did you travel to and
enter the location that the crime occurred. After arriving, what
(23:51):
steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target?
Please detail your thoughts and feelings. How did you leave
the scene. Why did you choose that victim or target
over others before making your move? How did you approach
the victim or target? Please detail what you were thinking
and feeling. How did you accomplish your goal? Please explain
what you were thinking and feeling before leaving? Is there
anything else you did?
Speaker 6 (24:11):
Jeff, what you said about this type of survey is
pretty typical of graduate students, but it did get us
curious if he had used any of this information in
his thesis, and it doesn't appear that he did so.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
Maybe he didn't get enough participants and scrapped the idea,
or he.
Speaker 6 (24:28):
Took the survey collected the information, it was a ruse
that he was using it for his thesis and instead used.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
It to plot murder. If Colberger was potentially using his
academic opportunities to learn how to kill, one skill, he
potentially appears to have employed murdering Kaylee, Maddie, Zanna, and
Ethan is the ruse.
Speaker 8 (24:50):
A ruse is something that the killer presents to calm
the intended victim. While the killer knows he's going to
be murdering them, he doesn't want them to know anything
violent is going to happen to them, so he'll use
a ruse to get them, perhaps to go with them
to a more secluded place. But even then, if he
(25:12):
does something, he may present another ruse even as he's
binding them, say I'm not gonna argue, I just need
to do this. And it will vary with some of
these different killers. But even when a person suspects something wrong,
if the killer is not in the position to do
everything they need to do, then they will try to
calm them once more, and it'll be done by a ruse,
(25:34):
which is usually what they say to them in the
kindness way possible, and hopefully it'll be believed by the victim.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Kevin Sullivan is an investigative journalist and author of several
books about the serial killer Ted Bundy. He sees several
similarities between Coberger and Bundy, who confess to killing at
least thirty people in seven states. According to the problem
Will Cause Affidavid roommate Dylan Mortenson heard crying coming from
Xana Kernodle's room, and then a male voice saying, quote,
(26:07):
it's okay, I'm going to help you. This effort by
a killer to reassure a victim is common in pre
plan murders.
Speaker 8 (26:16):
BTK did this. He would try to assure people that
like nothing was going to happen, or it was for
a different reason or whatever. A lot of these people
do this, but the key is is to get them calm.
I mean, the mob does this. Sometimes the mob will
go out and say let's go get spent the whole
night with somebody or five of them and then they
said let's go get breakfast or whatever. End up go
(26:38):
and immediately killed this guy. And it was planned from
the start. But what was the ruse in that case? Hey,
these guys like me, we're friends. They're thinking me at
the breakfast and the next thing you know, he's got
a wire around his neck or he's been shot on
the head.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Some killers use the ruse in a tense moment to
calm a panicking victim. Others, like this serial killer Ted Bundy,
would create elaborate stories to trick on suspecting targets.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
He said that he knew that he was hunting girls
that were from normal, good families, and that they would
be more likely to help somebody. If they were either
on crutches and fumbling with books, or they needed directions
or something else was asked of them, they would be
completely unsuspecting.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
In nineteen seventy four, then eighteen year old George Anne
Hawkins was walking near his sorority house at the University
of Washington. The disappearance of young women was from Page
News at the time. Georgie Anne was well aware of
the threat and had been regularly walking with friends, but
after leaving her boyfriend's home, she sat out alone on
a well lit road to walk the short distance to
(27:50):
her house.
Speaker 8 (27:52):
As she was walking home, she ran into a man
who had a lay cast on with his plants are
split and was all, I leave his right leg. He
was fumbling with a briefcase and on crutches. That person
was Ted Bundy. He asked her, would you mind helping
me take my briefcase to my car. Of course, she
doesn't think. This guy with a cast on his leg bruise.
(28:15):
This guy with crutches ruse. This guy who's so nice
and articulate ruse is going to do anything to her.
In her mind she thought, yeah, I can help him.
And what does she do? She takes the briefcase. They
walked down the alley and he had put his crowbar
(28:35):
right behind his VW his page VW, And as she
was putting the crutches in the car, he reaches back,
grabs the crowbar, and he hit her in the head
to hit her so hard that both her earrings flew
off and she came out of one of her shoes.
He didn't grab those. Then he put her in the car,
and then he took her to a remote area about
(28:59):
twenty minutes from there where she had awakened on the way,
and eat her again. And then he killed her soon
after that. But the ruse played a part in obtaining her.
If he would have had a bad look, if he
would have looked like a criminal, if he didn't have
the ruse of a cast or grutches, there would be
no reason.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
To help him.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
So he tells Bill Egmar, he said he did all
these things so that these good, kind women who were
raised right would help me. So here you got a
woman Georgie and Hawkins who knows about the women disappearing
who already assumes their homicide, and yet she meets somebody
that doesn't fit what her criteria is for an evil individual.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Colberger appears to intentionally have tried to use the ruis
to calm at least one of the roommates, and if
the twenty eight year old had been fantasizing or even
planning to kill for a long time, Coburger could have
been using the cover of a criminology student to prepare
for those future murders. This type of long term fantasizing
turned organized planning is also common with killers like BTK
(30:08):
and Ted Bundy again Jeff and Kevin Sullivan.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
He was kind of staking out the house. He would
drive by it, he went there lot. You know, in
the months leading up to the murders, do you think
that speaks to escalation? Like maybe at first he would
just do a drive by or follow them or maybe
peer in their window, and it just becomes you need
a little bit, a biggerfect, a biggerffects. So maybe one day
he goes inside and then just becomes more and more
until it ultimately leads to murder.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
I guarantee you that people that do this prior to
the murder they are thinking about it a lot, They
are living mentally in that realm, and usually it has
a sexual component to it, which will become masturbatory even
prior to the event, just as some of these people
visit these locations afterwards and have to sexualize the experience
(30:56):
to masturbation. So I would assume that he was trying
to not unleash and do as much. And remember, there's
always gotta be a first time. Once you kill your
first person, you can never go back and unkill that person.
You were forever changed. So if that attack and murder
(31:16):
on those four kids college kids was the first one,
and if that was Coburger, then he was doing everything
he could to maintain it and organize himself as an
organized person so as not to make any problems for
himself until that time happened. So when he got in there,
(31:36):
I mean, whoever got in there, If it was Coburger,
he either unleashed it himself or he just couldn't take
it anymore. And that's what Bundy did. Bundy lived in
this dark realm of sexual violent fantasy for so many years.
It was going to reach a point in his faculties
(31:57):
where it was gonna tip over and he was gonna
crossover from fantasy to reality. That's where it's going, and
that's where these people ultimately wants it to go. And
when that first time happens, even if the person escapes,
since if it's Coburger, he might have been thinking right
after the murders, in the days after, what did.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I leave there?
Speaker 8 (32:19):
And way of forensics something Bundy didn't have to worry
about what happened there, even if I had gloves, would
anybody have seen me go in? It was probably pretty
frightened as to what may have happened that could ultimately
cause his apprehension. So in that case, would he be
sitting back and planning his next murder. No, he'd be
(32:41):
trying to get to the place where if I can
just wait this out and if I'm not arrested, then
maybe I can I can go again. Do I think
if he's the one that he would have ultimately killed again?
Highly likely? It probably almost assured that he would, especially
if he really enjoyed doing it. And and if this
(33:05):
person enjoyed killing with that knife while they were killing them,
you've got somebody that's going to be a problem to
other people down the road.
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Speaking of that, What are the traits of killers who
hunt like Bundy, like allegedly Coborger.
Speaker 8 (33:19):
Well, I think the people that do this have a
lot of things that are extremely similar. When he said,
people have a hard time understanding I did it because
I just like killing people. Now, that's it. That says
it all. I just like killing people.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Now.
Speaker 8 (33:36):
One thing these people do, they have a tendency to
think that kind of they own them. They're like God
or something, and they go. I decided whether they would
live or die, and they died. But I was also
there when they took their last breath and breathed out
their last breath, and that's something that the family can't
boast about, or no one can, because that's mine and
(33:57):
that's mine forever. That's why the and the ground in
which the murders occur, or even the dumping sites if
it's different, become very sacred to these people. And that
is across the board. You can go to Arthur Shawcross,
who would revisit the sites, and so many of them
do Bundy. Bundy always went back to these sites.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
We know that Coburger did too as well. The next morning,
at least based on cell phone tower records.
Speaker 8 (34:26):
Oh yeah, you wanted to look at you, probably thinking
my work's in there. I've done all this work. Now,
I've done it. I've created my work. There it is.
Does anybody know yet? Do they know yet?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
More on that next time. For more information on the
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Underscore Studios. The Idaho Ascer 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
(35:04):
by Jared Aston. The Idaho Massacre is a production of
iHeart Radio in Kati's studios. For more podcasts like this,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
I'm Diana. You may know as Body Moving, My Friend
and I. John Green were featured in the Netflix documentary
Don't f with Cats. On our new podcast, True Crimes
of John and Deiana were turning our online investigative skills
to some of the most unexplained, unsolved, and most ignored cases.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Police say thirty three year old bride Again was shot dead.
Speaker 7 (36:04):
Gunned down in front of his two year old daughter.
Speaker 6 (36:07):
Detectives confirmed that it was a targeted attack.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
It appears to be an execution style of assassination.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
This is very active, so we have to be careful.
Speaker 7 (36:15):
I've heard that there's a house that has some bodies
in the basement.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I knew.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
I just knew the move was wrong.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
Maybe there's something more sinister at play than just one
young girl going missing. If you know something, heard something,
please it's never too late to.
Speaker 7 (36:32):
Do the right thing.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
This is true crimes with John and Deianna, the.
Speaker 5 (36:36):
Production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Justice is something that
takes different shapes or formed
Newly uncovered posts made by an online forum may give
us insight into Brian Coberger's character.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Between November of two thousand and nine and February twenty twelve,
while Coburger was a teenager, he allegedly made one hundred
and eighteen posts, and in one of them, he said
he felt no emotion and said quote, I can say
and do whatever I want with little remorse.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
This is the Idaho Massacre. A production of KAT Studios
and iHeartRadio episode seven in the Dark. I'm Courtney Armstrong,
a television producer at KAT Studios with Stephanie Leidecker, Jeff Shane,
and Connor Powell. In July of twenty eleven, a user
(00:56):
going by the name Xar posted on an online chat
forum that quote the ringing in his ears and the
fuzz in his vision made him feel that all the
demons in his head were mocking him. The chilling statement
is just one of more than one hundred messages believed
to be authored by a then teenage Brian Cooeberger on
the website tapatok. In post after post, Coburger claimed to
(01:21):
be suffering from a little known neurological syndrome called visual snow.
The rare condition has a range of disorienting symptoms, but
the most common is constantly seeing snow like flex or
black and white scattered dots, like the static on an
old analog television.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I see a large intensity of black, yellow, white fuzz.
It makes my mind fizzle and I could barely keep
in the bounds of reality.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Coburger wrote that his condition led to anxiety, depression, and
quote crazy thoughts. These posts paint a picture of a
deeply who would later turn to heroine and develop an
obsessive interest in violent criminals. Coburger's dark mind and law
enforcement background has led many to draw similarities to other
(02:12):
serial killers like Dennis Radar. Radar dubbed himself quote the
BTK for his fondness to bind, torture, and kill his victims,
and Joseph James DiAngelo, otherwise known as the Golden State Killer.
Both had a history of disturbing thoughts and an intense
(02:32):
interest in law enforcement. So how does Brian Coburger fit
into the larger history of killers. What in his background
could have potentially led Coburger down a path to murder?
How did he go from someone who caught criminals to
potentially becoming a killer himself, or could he have potentially
evolved into a killer as he descended deeper into the
(02:54):
dark world of criminology. When investigators released It's the Probable
Cause Affidavid in the University of Idaho murders, the nineteen
page document laid out much of the evidence linking Coburger
to the crime. According to police, the twenty eight year
old criminology student's DNA was on a knife sheath found
(03:15):
at the murder scene, and a white Atlanta like the
one Coburger drove, was seen driving past the home on
King Road multiple times. Coburger's phone also repeatedly pinged on
towers near the house in the weeks before the Grizzly murders.
But one key piece of the puzzle was conspicuously missing
from the Probable Cause Affidavid. Motive There's Jeff and Stephanie.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
Motive is an essential part of the criminal justice process.
Its official definition is the moving course, the impulse, or
the desire that induces criminal action on the part of
the accused. Basically, why did this crime or murder happen?
As rational humans, we crave a justification for otherwise senseless
and horrible acts.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
I mean, it's a very important piece of the court process,
and it's not a requirement to get a conviction, but look,
jurors really want to make sense of a case.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
This case is so fascinating, not only because of the
sheer atrocity of the murders, but also because of the
accused trajectory and how complex it is. Up until December
twenty twenty two, Brian Coberger seemingly had wanted to be
a hero. He told his friends he had helped to
study high profile criminals and aspired to help catch quote
unquote bad guys.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
This is the part that doesn't totally make sense about
this case. How and why does Coburger go from that
to being accused of brutally murdering four people.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
I speak for the general public when I say we're
all immensely curious.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
I guess, depending upon what is revealed at trial, we
may get a motive at some point, but as of
right now, there really doesn't appear to be one.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
So it raises the question was Brian Coberger born a killer?
Or did something happen in his life to turn him
into a monster.
Speaker 6 (04:58):
And one thing where it's noting listen, don't officially know
about Coburger's mental state, but what we do know is
what he said about his symptoms around his condition called
visual snow, and that's probably a pretty decent place to start.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Understanding visual snow is still not fully well understood. A
lot of how it works or how it's affecting the
brain is under kind of hypothesis.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Coberger wrote on the TAPA Talk for Him that his
visual snow symptoms began in September of two thousand and nine,
when he was just fourteen years old. He admitted the
condition changed him, saying he became more anxious and developed
a sense of derealization and hopelessness.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I think for some people who have high anxiety over
it or want to get rid of it, that's really
the frustrating part, because we don't have a cure for it.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Joseph Allen is a doctor of optometry who has studied
visual snow tho suffers from the rare condition. Here he
is speaking with Jeff.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
You obviously never treated Brian Coburger or know his state
of mind. But for someone who's maybe not in the
best state of mind, how do you think throwing visual
snow on top of that would affect someone.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So there is associations with visual snow with depression and anxiety.
Those probably are the two most consistent ones on top
of headaches. Like a lot of people who have visual
snow usually have a history of migraines. It's like almost
sixty percent of people who have visual snow syndrome also
have a history of migraine headaches. You're somebody with visual
(06:40):
SNOW and you're seeing visual phenomenon like this that you
can't explain that doctors maybe are being dismissive about, and
you have other forms of anxiety or depression. I think
it can really become more isolating. We know isolation Bru's
mental illness. I think there is maybe a higher risk
(07:02):
factor for some of them.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
In posts on the online visual Snow forum, Coburger suggests
he turned to the internet in two thousand and nine
in hopes of finding help, but in the absence of
answers to his questions. Coburger said he felt like the
demons in his head were mocking him. As a result,
he grew distant from the people around him. In a
July twenty eleven post, Coburger wrote, quote, I have had
(07:28):
this horrible depersonalization in my life for almost two years.
As I hug my family, I look into their faces,
I see nothing. It is like I'm looking at a
video game but less. I am blank. I have no opinion,
I have no emotion, I have nothing. This type of
(07:50):
disconnection is common for people suffering from eye issues, particularly
visual snow Here Again, Doctor Joseph Allen, speaking with.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Jeff I have identified as having visual snow I fit
the diagnosis requirements. It's something that I've struggled with since
I was a kid, Like I can think of like
maybe nine years old. Third grade is when I first,
I think, became just more perceptually aware of what was
happening with my eyes. But like most people who have
(08:20):
visual snow they don't either no one talks about it
or we just sort of, you know, you grow up
with it all your life and you just sort of
assume that's how everybody sees.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
So did you go into optometry because you felt like
you had eye issues?
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I think there is definitely some poll there. At a
young age, around age seven age, I got thick glasses,
and ultimately I think what drove me to be in
the profession is because I got contact lenses. Getting contact
lenses was a lot allowed me to play sports and
that helped me make friends and having that boost of
self confidence at age of thirteen.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
It's interesting that you bring up how getting your eyes
kind of taken care of really opened up a lot
of doors for you socially and kind of changed your
life for the better. Because Brian Coburger struggled socially his
whole life. He didn't connect with girls, he didn't really
have a lot of friends, and so it makes it
you wonder, is it maybe because he couldn't see properly,
(09:11):
Like he wasn't connecting with the world the way he felt,
you know, he could have been.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I think eyesight is super important. Like for my case,
sports like kids make much better social connections if they're
involved in activities with other kids. And for me, it
was hard to play football. You can't really play football
with pick glasses on. So for me, getting into contact
lenses really was that key to opening up that whole
other stream of life for me.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
But by his teenage years, Brian Coberger wrote on Tapa Talk,
he wasn't making personal connections with family or friends. Instead,
his mind was moving in a darker direction in posts.
As a then sixteen year old, Coburger wrote that his
visual snow condition made him feel like a quote organic
sack of meat with no self worth. He berated himself
(10:02):
for his expanding array of mental struggles that ranged from
depression to delusions of grandeur, to anxiety to constant thoughts
of suicide. Coburger even wrote lyrics to a rap song saying,
you are not my equal. You are evil, but I
am the devil. But now I am going regal. Don't
fuck with us again. Joseph Allen, there.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Is no evidence right now that visual snow syndrome would
cause mental illness, but it is I think in his case,
if he has mental illness and then a visual snow
on top of it, it's like augmenting it. It's giving
him more, maybe more reasons to lose grip on his
own sense of reality. Perhaps there is some reported on
(10:49):
top of depression of anxiety, there is something called depersonalization
and derealization which is associated with it. Depersonalization kind of
refers to these feelings that you've detached from your physical
body or even from kind of your own mind, and
so people will feel that they are robotic or being
(11:12):
maybe controlled by somebody else. And there's this concept of derealization,
which I like to think of it as the Matrix syndrome.
If you've ever seen that movie The Matrix, where people
feel like the world around them isn't real, they feel
that it's artificial. And you can imagine if you have
visual snow syndrome and you see this static all the time,
you could be like, well, maybe my body is just
(11:35):
like a video game character, and somebody else outside of
this make believe world I live in is actually controlling me.
So I think if you have already existing mental illness,
a poor grip on reality, a poor social structure, and
then maybe having these feelings of depersonalization derealization, then it's
(11:58):
it's easier maybe to whose emotional connection between other people
and even maybe what's right and wrong.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
a moment. By twenty eleven, Brian Kolberger was desperate for
a solution. The effects of visual Snow were weighing on him.
He wrote on the online forum that he visited a
(12:29):
neurologist and took antimigraine medicine. Neither worked. Coburger later adopted
a strict diet, removing sugar, bread, wheat, soy, and other
carbohydrates from his meals. High school friends described him during
this time as obsessive about his new health regime, which
did help him lose a significant amount of weight, at
(12:50):
least one hundred pounds, if not more, and according to
his own words, Coburger began to improve. Coburger wrote on
the tap talk forum in February Worry of twenty twelve
that he had accepted his visual snow and that the
condition no longer scared him. However, in his final post,
he also said quote, I feel like coming to terms
could be a bad thing, though again Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 6 (13:16):
Between twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, Coburger went through this
huge transformation after several years of feeling very down and depressed.
According to reports, he really started to turn things around
and turned a corner. He adopted a new diet, he
started to lose a ton of weight, and he was
apparently much more happy about life and seemingly more optimistic.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
But it's also around this time that he gets kicked
out of the law enforcement Educational Vocation program and ends
up having to finish high school remotely in the spring
of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
This is a pretty big deal, and according to multiple friends,
this turmoil really spun him in a dangerous direction. He
started to use drugs. Apparently he started with marijuana, but
then that really escalated to heroin, which is a huge leap.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
One of his friends, Rich Pasqual, who worked with Coburger
at the pizza shop, said that by twenty thirteen, Coburger
was a full on heroin addict, but he was eventually
able to kick the habit, going to rehab and enrolling
at the Northampton Community College.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
It does seem that Coburger has a bit of a
history of locking in and almost obsessing about certain parts
of his life, whether it's the visual snow or drugs,
his diet, and in some ways, even his own criminal behavior.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
This type of compulsive behavior is something we see with
other serial or prolific killers.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
After years of being socially detached, addicted to drugs, and suicidal,
Coburger appears to have found a new purpose after rehab,
an intense fascination with the criminal mind. This fascination led
Coburger to study at nearby Dessalge University and ultimately under
the renowned on forensic psychologists, doctor Catherine Ramsland.
Speaker 7 (15:05):
Do you have to study the victim and you have
to know things about offenders? So you have to study
offenders and you have to know the kinds of things
they might do.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Ramsland is one of, if not the leading expert on
serial killers and murderers. She's written more than sixty books
and hundreds of articles on violent criminals. On December twenty second,
twenty twenty two, producer Jeff Shane conducted an interview with
Ramsland for a different project. Just eight days later, her
former student Brian Coberger would be arrested. In hindsight, their
(15:39):
conversation is chilling.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
What can you tell me about people who commit crimes?
Speaker 7 (15:44):
So you're looking at the body and the crime scene,
maybe the whole geographic analysis in terms of their comfort
zone and et cetera. But you're also looking at what
do we know about offenders to apply to this, and
then you want to build as detailed biography of the
person as you possibly can. It's all going to be
(16:06):
probability based, more likely to have education than not education,
or more likely to be compelled sexually because of certain rituals,
and nothing missing. But if things are always missing, they're
all more likely to be motivated by greed or any
eliminating witnesses not really interested in the murder itself, more
(16:31):
interested in eliminating witnesses while they get off with the goods.
But if the victim is mutilated in some way, overkill
things like that, that's going to tell you a different
story about the offender. So a lot of it's going
to be based on what you're finding at the scene.
There's a retrospective profile and a prospective profile, and too
(16:54):
many people are doing the prospective profiling, and that is
more of a risk evaluation based on a pattern of behaviors.
Retrospective profile is what do we see right here at
the crime scene today that will tell us something about
this offender. And if we have several scenes that we
(17:14):
think are related to the same offender, what do those
various scenes tell us about this person.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Ramsland has refused to comment publicly on her former graduate student,
but she is most famous for her extensive research and
books about the serial killer Dennis Radar, most commonly known
as the BTK. Dessal's University is known for its hands
on criminology program and as an undergraduate criminology student. Coburger
(17:47):
would have studied Radar. As a graduate student of Ramsland.
It's likely Coburger would have studied Radar in depth. He
may have even had access to Ramsland's primary research information
about both real killers and Dennis Radar.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Tell me about BTK and how modern day criminals might
have evolved since then.
Speaker 7 (18:09):
These days, serial killers quite often are a little more sophisticated.
They're aware of you know, the investigators are looking at patterns.
But even back in you know, the seventies, they sometimes
they would have a ritual, so there would be similarities.
But then they'll pick up somebody a victim of opportunity,
(18:32):
weren't even looking, but they had their murder kits, so
why not go for this? And then it's completely different.
I remember Dennis Raider, for example, the BTK killer who
so nineteen seventies into the eighties, and this final one
of the ten he killed was in nineteen ninety one,
and by nineteen ninety one he realized how the FBI
(18:52):
approached all this, and so instead of killing people in
houses that he entered, he took a couple victims and
dumped them outside. One victim he called it in none
of the others. Several of them he wrote notes to
the newspaper, but not all of them, so that's not
a He's not a particularly sophisticated person. But he did
(19:17):
change things up a little bit. He murdered a family
of four, then he murdered a single woman. They didn't
connect them at all because even though the bodies all
were bound, he'd used different knots on the single woman
than he had on the family. And he didn't do
that purposely. He just liked knots and he was mixing
(19:38):
it up.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
How much Coburger studied or understood about serial killers like
Radar isn't clear, but there are unique and disturbing similarities
between Coburger and Radar. Both are accused of committing their
murderers while pursuing degrees in criminal justice. Radar was earning
an undergraduate degree from which tosstatem as he embarked on
his killing spree, and as doctor Ramslan mentioned in her interview,
(20:05):
Radar mixed up his killing profile to evade investigators. When
Coburger was arrested, he was wearing rubber gloves and sorting
his trash into smaller plastic bags in an apparent effort
to prevent police from collecting evidence against him. In an
interview with TMZ, Dennis Radar said he saw similarities between
Coburger and himself, the convicted killer of tens, that he
(20:26):
believed Coburger, like himself, was motivated to kill by the
fantasy of homicide. Again, Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
This is really the scariest question about Coburger. We know
that he told people from a young age that he
wanted to catch violent criminals and be a police officer.
Later at WSU, he said he wanted to help rural
police departments solve crimes. So was this all talk just
a front or a ruse to get in with investigators?
Did he want to figure out how they worked so
he could operate around them. Given what we know about
(20:56):
his teenageers, his feelings of isolation, and the demons in
his had, is it possible that he had a long
standing desire to kill.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
So with that in mind, are you saying that possibly
studying criminology was part of the plan to learn how
to kill people without getting caught exactly, or I also
wonder if he has this personality type that's a bit obsessive.
Was it possible that he's studying criminals at school because
he's been obsessed with crime and fantasizing about being a.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Killer his whole life.
Speaker 6 (21:28):
Or is it because he was studying criminology and about
killers that he began to fantasize about it.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
That could make sense, and he definitely could have used
what he learned from his criminology studies to help him
get away with murder, at least for a little while.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Let's stop here for another break. Brian Colberger's classmates and
professors described him as intellectual, though at times arrogant and
a bit of a know at all. One former professor
from Dsal's University went further and said Coburger was a
(22:06):
brilliant student. Michelle Bulger, an associate professor of criminology, wrote
a letter of recommendation for Colberger's PhD application, describing him
as perfectly professional in all their interactions. She also advised
Coburger with his master's thesis on script theory, which focused
(22:28):
on how and why criminals commit their crimes. As part
of Coberger's deep dive into script theory, the idea that
people largely fall into patterns or scripts, Bulger oversaw the
creation of Coburger's request for criminals to fill out a
survey on Reddit about their thoughts and emotions while committing
a crime. Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 6 (22:51):
This Reddit survey is just so interesting. Yes, while his
former professor says that type of work is very common
amongst criminology students, and the specific nature of the questions
and what he would later be accused of certainly raises
some serious questions.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
We looked up the original survey. He posted it on Wednesday,
June first, twenty twenty two, which was two hundred and
twelve days before Xana, Ethan, Madison and Kayley were murdered.
Here's what it said. Hello, my name is Brian, and
I am inviting you to participate in a research project
that seeks to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence
decision making when committing a crime. In particular, this study
(23:30):
seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense,
with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience.
The questions read, did you prepare for the crime before
leaving your home? Please detail what you were thinking and
feeling at this point after committing the crime. What were
you thinking and feeling. How did you travel to and
enter the location that the crime occurred. After arriving, what
(23:51):
steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target?
Please detail your thoughts and feelings. How did you leave
the scene. Why did you choose that victim or target
over others before making your move? How did you approach
the victim or target? Please detail what you were thinking
and feeling. How did you accomplish your goal? Please explain
what you were thinking and feeling before leaving? Is there
anything else you did?
Speaker 6 (24:11):
Jeff, what you said about this type of survey is
pretty typical of graduate students, but it did get us
curious if he had used any of this information in
his thesis, and it doesn't appear that he did so.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
Maybe he didn't get enough participants and scrapped the idea,
or he.
Speaker 6 (24:28):
Took the survey collected the information, it was a ruse
that he was using it for his thesis and instead used.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
It to plot murder. If Colberger was potentially using his
academic opportunities to learn how to kill, one skill, he
potentially appears to have employed murdering Kaylee, Maddie, Zanna, and
Ethan is the ruse.
Speaker 8 (24:50):
A ruse is something that the killer presents to calm
the intended victim. While the killer knows he's going to
be murdering them, he doesn't want them to know anything
violent is going to happen to them, so he'll use
a ruse to get them, perhaps to go with them
to a more secluded place. But even then, if he
(25:12):
does something, he may present another ruse even as he's
binding them, say I'm not gonna argue, I just need
to do this. And it will vary with some of
these different killers. But even when a person suspects something wrong,
if the killer is not in the position to do
everything they need to do, then they will try to
calm them once more, and it'll be done by a ruse,
(25:34):
which is usually what they say to them in the
kindness way possible, and hopefully it'll be believed by the victim.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Kevin Sullivan is an investigative journalist and author of several
books about the serial killer Ted Bundy. He sees several
similarities between Coberger and Bundy, who confess to killing at
least thirty people in seven states. According to the problem
Will Cause Affidavid roommate Dylan Mortenson heard crying coming from
Xana Kernodle's room, and then a male voice saying, quote,
(26:07):
it's okay, I'm going to help you. This effort by
a killer to reassure a victim is common in pre
plan murders.
Speaker 8 (26:16):
BTK did this. He would try to assure people that
like nothing was going to happen, or it was for
a different reason or whatever. A lot of these people
do this, but the key is is to get them calm.
I mean, the mob does this. Sometimes the mob will
go out and say let's go get spent the whole
night with somebody or five of them and then they
said let's go get breakfast or whatever. End up go
(26:38):
and immediately killed this guy. And it was planned from
the start. But what was the ruse in that case? Hey,
these guys like me, we're friends. They're thinking me at
the breakfast and the next thing you know, he's got
a wire around his neck or he's been shot on
the head.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Some killers use the ruse in a tense moment to
calm a panicking victim. Others, like this serial killer Ted Bundy,
would create elaborate stories to trick on suspecting targets.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
He said that he knew that he was hunting girls
that were from normal, good families, and that they would
be more likely to help somebody. If they were either
on crutches and fumbling with books, or they needed directions
or something else was asked of them, they would be
completely unsuspecting.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
In nineteen seventy four, then eighteen year old George Anne
Hawkins was walking near his sorority house at the University
of Washington. The disappearance of young women was from Page
News at the time. Georgie Anne was well aware of
the threat and had been regularly walking with friends, but
after leaving her boyfriend's home, she sat out alone on
a well lit road to walk the short distance to
(27:50):
her house.
Speaker 8 (27:52):
As she was walking home, she ran into a man
who had a lay cast on with his plants are
split and was all, I leave his right leg. He
was fumbling with a briefcase and on crutches. That person
was Ted Bundy. He asked her, would you mind helping
me take my briefcase to my car. Of course, she
doesn't think. This guy with a cast on his leg bruise.
(28:15):
This guy with crutches ruse. This guy who's so nice
and articulate ruse is going to do anything to her.
In her mind she thought, yeah, I can help him.
And what does she do? She takes the briefcase. They
walked down the alley and he had put his crowbar
(28:35):
right behind his VW his page VW, And as she
was putting the crutches in the car, he reaches back,
grabs the crowbar, and he hit her in the head
to hit her so hard that both her earrings flew
off and she came out of one of her shoes.
He didn't grab those. Then he put her in the car,
and then he took her to a remote area about
(28:59):
twenty minutes from there where she had awakened on the way,
and eat her again. And then he killed her soon
after that. But the ruse played a part in obtaining her.
If he would have had a bad look, if he
would have looked like a criminal, if he didn't have
the ruse of a cast or grutches, there would be
no reason.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
To help him.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
So he tells Bill Egmar, he said he did all
these things so that these good, kind women who were
raised right would help me. So here you got a
woman Georgie and Hawkins who knows about the women disappearing
who already assumes their homicide, and yet she meets somebody
that doesn't fit what her criteria is for an evil individual.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Colberger appears to intentionally have tried to use the ruis
to calm at least one of the roommates, and if
the twenty eight year old had been fantasizing or even
planning to kill for a long time, Coburger could have
been using the cover of a criminology student to prepare
for those future murders. This type of long term fantasizing
turned organized planning is also common with killers like BTK
(30:08):
and Ted Bundy again Jeff and Kevin Sullivan.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
He was kind of staking out the house. He would
drive by it, he went there lot. You know, in
the months leading up to the murders, do you think
that speaks to escalation? Like maybe at first he would
just do a drive by or follow them or maybe
peer in their window, and it just becomes you need
a little bit, a biggerfect, a biggerffects. So maybe one day
he goes inside and then just becomes more and more
until it ultimately leads to murder.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
I guarantee you that people that do this prior to
the murder they are thinking about it a lot, They
are living mentally in that realm, and usually it has
a sexual component to it, which will become masturbatory even
prior to the event, just as some of these people
visit these locations afterwards and have to sexualize the experience
(30:56):
to masturbation. So I would assume that he was trying
to not unleash and do as much. And remember, there's
always gotta be a first time. Once you kill your
first person, you can never go back and unkill that person.
You were forever changed. So if that attack and murder
(31:16):
on those four kids college kids was the first one,
and if that was Coburger, then he was doing everything
he could to maintain it and organize himself as an
organized person so as not to make any problems for
himself until that time happened. So when he got in there,
(31:36):
I mean, whoever got in there, If it was Coburger,
he either unleashed it himself or he just couldn't take
it anymore. And that's what Bundy did. Bundy lived in
this dark realm of sexual violent fantasy for so many years.
It was going to reach a point in his faculties
(31:57):
where it was gonna tip over and he was gonna
crossover from fantasy to reality. That's where it's going, and
that's where these people ultimately wants it to go. And
when that first time happens, even if the person escapes,
since if it's Coburger, he might have been thinking right
after the murders, in the days after, what did.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I leave there?
Speaker 8 (32:19):
And way of forensics something Bundy didn't have to worry
about what happened there, even if I had gloves, would
anybody have seen me go in? It was probably pretty
frightened as to what may have happened that could ultimately
cause his apprehension. So in that case, would he be
sitting back and planning his next murder. No, he'd be
(32:41):
trying to get to the place where if I can
just wait this out and if I'm not arrested, then
maybe I can I can go again. Do I think
if he's the one that he would have ultimately killed again?
Highly likely? It probably almost assured that he would, especially
if he really enjoyed doing it. And and if this
(33:05):
person enjoyed killing with that knife while they were killing them,
you've got somebody that's going to be a problem to
other people down the road.
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Speaking of that, What are the traits of killers who
hunt like Bundy, like allegedly Coborger.
Speaker 8 (33:19):
Well, I think the people that do this have a
lot of things that are extremely similar. When he said,
people have a hard time understanding I did it because
I just like killing people. Now, that's it. That says
it all. I just like killing people.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Now.
Speaker 8 (33:36):
One thing these people do, they have a tendency to
think that kind of they own them. They're like God
or something, and they go. I decided whether they would
live or die, and they died. But I was also
there when they took their last breath and breathed out
their last breath, and that's something that the family can't
boast about, or no one can, because that's mine and
(33:57):
that's mine forever. That's why the and the ground in
which the murders occur, or even the dumping sites if
it's different, become very sacred to these people. And that
is across the board. You can go to Arthur Shawcross,
who would revisit the sites, and so many of them
do Bundy. Bundy always went back to these sites.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
We know that Coburger did too as well. The next morning,
at least based on cell phone tower records.
Speaker 8 (34:26):
Oh yeah, you wanted to look at you, probably thinking
my work's in there. I've done all this work. Now,
I've done it. I've created my work. There it is.
Does anybody know yet? Do they know yet?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
More on that next time. For more information on the
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Underscore Studios. The Idaho Ascer 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
(35:04):
by Jared Aston. The Idaho Massacre is a production of
iHeart Radio in Kati's studios. For more podcasts like this,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
I'm Diana. You may know as Body Moving, My Friend
and I. John Green were featured in the Netflix documentary
Don't f with Cats. On our new podcast, True Crimes
of John and Deiana were turning our online investigative skills
to some of the most unexplained, unsolved, and most ignored cases.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Police say thirty three year old bride Again was shot dead.
Speaker 7 (36:04):
Gunned down in front of his two year old daughter.
Speaker 6 (36:07):
Detectives confirmed that it was a targeted attack.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
It appears to be an execution style of assassination.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
This is very active, so we have to be careful.
Speaker 7 (36:15):
I've heard that there's a house that has some bodies
in the basement.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I knew.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
I just knew the move was wrong.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
Maybe there's something more sinister at play than just one
young girl going missing. If you know something, heard something,
please it's never too late to.
Speaker 7 (36:32):
Do the right thing.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
This is true crimes with John and Deianna, the.
Speaker 5 (36:36):
Production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Justice is something that
takes different shapes or formed
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