A Discussion Part Il
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Investigators believe Koberger killed Kaley Goncalves, Madison Mogan, Zaynur Kurnodal and Ethan Chapin inside of a rented home not far from the University of Idaho campus. At the time of the murders, Koberger was studying at Washington State University, which is just a few miles away from the crime scene.

Outside Kohlberger's apartment in Pullman, Washington, detectives were moving 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. This is The Idaho Massacre, a production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Episode 12, A Discussion Part 2, with forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan.

I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker, Jeff Shane, and Connor Powell. In this episode, the producers Stephanie Lidecker and Connor Powell speak with forensic analyst Joseph Scott Morgan to discuss the latest information about the Idaho murders. Here they are now.

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

which Joseph is also appearing in and being knee deep in this case with Brian Koberger in 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,

is probably what has drawn us to them so deeply. And, you know, Joseph was, frankly, when this case first hit the press or when these murders first happened, Joseph, we were communicating real time and you were saying,

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 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?

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 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. 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 Piketon 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 to this that

Again, they're rural, both of these locations. 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 back when Piketon occurred. And certainly in Idaho, who could have even have anticipated this?

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 a college professor in a town that's very similar in size. I'm 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 were thinking the same thing. Just get me to Thanksgiving break. I just want to go home for turkey and dressing. I'm so sick of these people around here. 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 Koberger is accused of is true, it's impossible to wrap our brains around, right? But from a forensic standpoint, you've said this since day one 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. 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 in a pasture somewhere. These happen 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 home to be left alone.

And when you let that sink in, 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 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 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 saw in Piketon, I think to a great degree.

And what I believe had occurred in Idaho as well. You talked about the bloodbath. Piketon involved firearms. This is something different. This is as much overkill as is involved in Piketon with multiple gunshot wounds, with multiple victims, these sorts of things. When you're talking about sharp force injuries, these are the types of things that require such anger.

and such fury because you're in close proximity within a home, within a place that becomes home. I think back to when I was an undergraduate in college, the places that I occupied as an undergraduate student, temporarily they became 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 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 these poor young women are being stabbed to death on the surface in a very frenetic type of event. And it would have been, I've likened it to the view of a sewing machine needle going in

in and out, up and down like this and striking only variably because the arm is not going to act. The human arm is 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

It's 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 and to the weapon, perhaps, that was being used. It's key here, I think, that they're not talking. 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

The leading edges of the blade itself, it would have been on the hilt, the hilt guard that runs here that protects your hand when you're stabbing. 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, hunting knife, and all that. And then they land on K-bar. And K-bar traditionally, you know, our troops used them in World War II. That's where they gained great fame. The Navy...

the Coast Guard, but most famously the Marine Corps. And they're made for hand-to-hand combat. They're very heavy, heavy in the 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 of this particular handle is, but just suffice it to say that their blood, the victim's blood would have transferred onto that weapon. The curious thing is the two young victims that were in the bedroom together, I

I've always wondered how, if there was any cross-contamination of DNA that was brought from those victims upstairs, which I believe were 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 Zanna?

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 biologic element into these two downstairs. Who knows if they were intended, but it would seem that there was not an awareness that they were there indwelling 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, Koberger? We don't know at this point. Okay. A lot of guff, a lot of stuff going back and forth as lawyers do. And I thought greatly about, you know, why, 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 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, you want to know what the trigger pull feels like. You know, how many pounds of pressure does it take to actuate 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, I have this kind of vision of,

of the individual that's 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 drop it because now your focus is there before you, lying before you, as you may occupy their 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 moans. You've heard those last gasps of breath leave the body. The next thing you want to do is get the hell out of the place. But 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 heading toward 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 Zaina was up. She was on TikTok. So did she stick 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 to Piketon, I don't know that everything went as planned there. You can plan forever, man. 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, there's an awareness that

there's somebody in the room and then bam, you know, how does that affect the shooter in Piketon? 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 those things that you can't anticipate. And how do you plan for that when you don't? And when you're committing an illegal act like this,

You know, it's one thing when a military goes in or a 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.

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 crime scene? So Joseph, I just want to ask you something about the knife sheath button because I envision it sort of which the way you did, which is at some point,

He was opening and closing, opening and closing. And he did it without the glove. He probably did it at home when he first bought it. And my thinking is that his DNA got on the inside of the button, not 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?

I had contemplated 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 edge.

interior of the sink and it's got an edge all the way around it. And I have thought about this, Connor, that perhaps when he's actuating this thing, you know, he's sitting up, I don't know, his Barco lounger, his house, he's watching television or whatever in the hell he's doing. And he's sitting there and he's actuating this thing, 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

clean or wipe down that it kind of catches and rubs and takes away that sample and

Maybe it is touch DNA, which, you know, we've talked about before at length, but just as kind of a refresher, you know, touch DNA originates from dead skin cells. And we slough thousands of these things. That's why people put lotion on. So how much more so at a microscopic level, if we can see, if we can look at our hands and say, golly, you know, I got dry skin. I need to, cracked and weathered and all that stuff. I need to put some lotion. All right.

how much more so at a microscopic level, you know, where you're scraping off these dead, dead skin cells that are falling off into that kind of convex area and it could hold onto it. And I, you know, I think about the technician perhaps that was in that environment that, you know, had the sheath. Can you imagine that moment when they have the sheath and they don't have the knife and they're thinking, um, 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 and said,

Be careful. This is sacred. This is what we have. This is our offering right here to you. How are 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. No, they're going to break this thing down into regions and they'll enumerate.

enumerate it like just randomly just off the top of my head they'll say this is section 1 section 2 3 4 5 and each region will have a number and the

They'll go through and swab 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 to every region. And for some reason, as you pointed out, Connor, 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 of

All other surfaces are clean or absent any kind of trace DNA, but yet they still recover from there. I think that that might be shielding. It might be protection. 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 latent prints. When people, I go through an exercise as 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. 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, they have to stick their fingers underneath and open the door handle, you know, actuate the door handle, then grab the...

the bar, the support bar side next to the window, maybe they'll push it open. 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 the nature of us as humans. We go through 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 landmines that perpetrators have not thought about.

And Connor, 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 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 or the Wednesday after the primary crime scene had been worked, you know, on that Sunday, you know, that morning, morning of. And they were talking about trash pickup and how they had not checked 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've got kids whose 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 bag somewhere? Because 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. In the shoes as well, there were early, there was an early 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 wearing 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 time, you know, demonstrating different types of vans, you know, that are out there that people wear. You know, it's not just surfer dudes. Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in a moment. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty.

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There was a mention, and this just stuck out, there was 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 no shower curtain in his apartment. Maybe it 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 is clean or something like that as well. Right. Like that's kind of what you're talking about.

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 the kind of surface that I would expect kind of a supersaturation of blood remnant to be left behind in? If I remember correctly, there's some kind of funky cloth there.

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 the kid spills something in the vehicle. Oh, my Lord. God forbid it's chocolate milk. Of course, that's never happened to me. But, you know, when you think about 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 was – but –

Steph, you had mentioned the visual capture of this thing on CCTV, you know, and they did the infamous ring. That's what they were referring to it as. I can't remember. It's 20 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, but we know that he kind of circled about the University of Idaho because the phone's pinging and

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, 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 noon-ish or, you know, just shy of noon-ish.

and he's probably wondering at this point in time, he's very curious, did he ride back over there? Would you leave Washington State, hop in your white Hyundai, 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 barrier

could do that. But if he's such a mastermind, wouldn't he know that, you know, 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. I don't know about you guys, but, you know, you brush up against it and 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 interesting thought. You know, did he create a barrier for that car? And then there's what the FBI team saw him doing at Poconos with the observations of, you know, this man

Just constant cleaning of the vehicle. They're viewing this and he's digging through it. He's hauling off, putting things in Ziploc bags and crating them off. I mean, maybe he's fastidious. I don't know. Maybe he's fastidious about cleaning his car. Looking at going down the road in Indiana, it 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? 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 the only way to sort of approach that. But who knows? I mean, did he clean it nonstop for months? Like, you know, the murders happened in the middle of November. He doesn't get arrested until the end of December. You know, is he cleaning every single day? Yeah, and he's becoming obsessive about it. And you think about that. And I

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 vehicle? And was there, did they do any kind of chemical testing to get an idea as to what he may have been cleaning the car with? And talk about tiebacks, 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 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 the

defeat any kind of 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 defeat what the crime scene investigators are doing at the scenes? You know, the things they're going to think about, because I don't know, there have been people that

that are saying, you know, you need to go back to Pennsylvania and check for unsolved cases and all these sorts of things. Well, to the best of my knowledge, at this point in time, he hadn't been charged with anything. This is his first time at bat. You know, if it is, is he that much of a wunderkind 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 invest, this is an investigative part as opposed to a forensic part, 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 goods store or ordered it online from some, you know,

you know, from Amazon or whoever that he decided to buy. I mean, immediately when I started hearing about the type of knife that was being alleged that was being used, 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 them my whole life. My dad was a former Marine and he had a K-Bar. And, you know,

You know, so I'm thinking about that sort of thing. How would you, and why choose a K-Bar? There's a lot of knives out there. You know, they had thrown around the term Rambo knife, which is not a K-Bar. That's a survival knife that has a screw off end on the handle that contains things like needles 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 compass.

It's a combat knife. It's weighted and balanced for that purpose. So 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? Does he have a history of having an interest in the military? Well, as soon as I thought about that, I started seeing images of him. And I don't know if it was a JRTC or whatever it was. And there's a picture...

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 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 tell you what he's not he's not

a special operations person, you know, and special operations people are trained in hand-to-hand combat, edged combat. 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 knife play. This is a completely different realm that you enter into because you're

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 this particular time? It's an interesting question that I think that the investigators have asked of themselves.

Yeah, we have done a lot of research going back to Pennsylvania and et cetera, 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 car to and from the crime scene even the next day? I mean, you're really we're talking about something that's unexplainable, I guess. But yeah, the smartest guy in the room wouldn't do that. 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 white, you know, Hyundai. Yeah.

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 body bags. 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 in U.S. history. And,

And they finally got one of the bodies identified from the mid-70s that he actually killed. He killed this young woman in Macon, 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 didn't have a dime to his name. But he figured out a 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 three or more is essentially a mass killing. So if it is who they allege that it is, is there so much anger that's pent up? Is there so much hatred and venom involved?

that he wants to take out on, you know, this, uh, these poor college students, uh, did it just all come to a head at this particular time, 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, Wazoo is a fine school, but you know, you're, you're

You're talking about going to a very high-end Catholic institution in Pennsylvania, DeSales, to get your undergraduate and your master's. 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 of Criminology.

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 indentured 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, a 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 time to get in your car and drive literally across state lines and cruise another campus. You have enough time to do this. And I'm perplexed by that.

Can I unpack 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 a murder. Or something even more ominous. Because a small town, Idaho is not a rich state. They just don't have murder, so there's not as much forensic opportunity for their investigators. Right.

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 go away for your PhD to be in a place closer to a place like Idaho, which would have limited resources to solving murder.

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 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. 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, are exploring.

Because being an academic and being, you know, in academia for 20 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 studying something as specific as criminal behavior, which criminology is, you look for people to, you know,

It's the ultimate in 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 offers?

has to offer, or Canada, has to 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 DeSales completing his master's degree? Who was it that he identified at Washington State that 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 academia. Because I got to tell you, you're not going to do much with a PhD other than 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, you have to submit writing samples immediately.

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 indentured servitude, it's not just about you going to get a PhD. It's about them looking for workers. So if you've got 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 of

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 that person's bidding day in and day out. No, 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?

Who was it that sat down and thought that Brian Koberger would be a great candidate for Wazoo? And was Wazoo the only place he chose? That's another sticking point. Because I got to tell you, as an investigator, if you're, I don't know, maybe his GRE scores, which is kind of like the SAT, maybe his GRE 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 he's going to study under? Who is it?

at DeSales 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, is very important, I think. And to this point, and I know that they have certain privacy issues at work, but I have to think that the authorities have begun 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, you know, because again,

The world's a crazy place. Next thing you know, files are deleted 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 the purpose, then you begin to develop a timeline. And timeline is 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 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 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

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 and it turns out you're a jerk. First day there, you show up, you're a jerk. You know, how long is this going to last? And plus, these people are going to give you grades. So are you really bought into the process of getting a Ph.D.? I think it's a legitimate question.

And so why Wazoo? Why that location? Why the University of Idaho? Why those poor souls, those four kids that are literally in the conclusion of their undergraduate career? Their lives are wrecked. Their families' lives are wrecked. They're dead. What set them apart? 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 familiar with the house where everybody would go and congregate and hang out. Even if you were sitting on the front porch drinking a beer. Oh yeah, they got

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. Come and go as you please. That one view from outside that I think the Sun or the Daily Mail had published, that shot of the table, you can see it's a classic shot now. You've got solo cups sitting on the table. You've got all kinds of crap that are in there.

I'm not judging. I'm a college student here. Anybody could have come and gone. So is it possible that a person that wanted to end the life of somebody, and this goes to going back to Piketon, you know, what do we know about the Wagners and the Rodens? 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 Koberger, the accused,

Certainly wasn't family, but you can set yourself in a kind of a quasi-familial relationship. Remember, we're talking about making a home. You know when party night is. Generally at college towns, party nights are 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. It's literally right down the road. Who's going to know who this guy is? He comes walking in. He's in this environment. He sees it. And one of the most chilling things that came up for me was,

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 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

to perpetrate something like this, 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've got nothing but time. You're not going to class. You're not doing your job. You're sitting there doing nothing but watching. And if you're already tracking somebody on social media, wow, what a big old slice of cake for you, huh? You get everything. You get everything you're able to see online.

into that world. What are my points of ingress and egress? Well, those sliders. And I know behind those sliders because I've ridden around that property so much, there's a place I can park my car up there. Oh, there's a hedgerow. Let's go up there at night. Let's go see. I'll wear a black shirt, black pants, maybe a black jacket.

It's Idaho. It's going to be cold. Let me just pull over here and see if I can get in 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 to their 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 there food orders coming in? We've got DoorDash. Do they use DoorDash? 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? Do you have a good old boy showing up in camouflage that's been deer hunting all day and he's got a gun and a knife and I'm not going to 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, 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 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

It's not like you're in October and you're right in the middle of party season. 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've 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 paint on your clothes. You've got gloves. Anybody can get gloves. And you've got your K-Bar.

Where are you going to put the sheath? Well, maybe you're carrying it single-handed because you got something on that's covering your person underneath. You're not going to hook it to your belt. It's got a belt loop. So you're walking in with this thing in your hand. You know the slider is open. You're going to quietly open the slider and you know where that staircase is. Remember, you've either been there for a party or you saw the TikTok video. You make a hard right when you walk in. You walk up that staircase and there, lo and behold, there are two girls in that bed and they are shocked and

and terrified. And you go to work. So the perpetrator, whoever it is, this is fish in a barrel for somebody that has a mind for this sort of thing, that wants to perpetrate this sort of thing, because it's

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 is 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. You know that you can defeat the CCTV. You can take the

the mechanism that records everything. You know where the dogs are. You're friendly with the dogs. Maybe you 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, 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 required stealth and it required some level of precision. I think probably more precision in Pikedon because you've got four separate scenes that are spread out over this ungodly space. When I 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 off in the distance. And buddy, is it isolated? You got pipe sunshine in out there and it requires stealth. It requires precision. You know, you're going to do this under cover of darkness. So you 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 in both of these cases. I think that Pikedon for me is more planning 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 it would appear that they've identified only one person that's, that's thinking about Idaho, but Pikedon,

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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 crime prior to there being an arrest and why you specifically were so drawn to this case?

Yeah, I can. I remember the exact moment why I was. And this is why when I was a young man and I was working, 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 horse injuries. And it was the Gainesville Ripper. 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, with the Coyote 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 Gainesville Ripper had male victims. But again, say what you will, you know, you don't have these sorts of things, particularly back then that would happen in Gainesville, Florida. You didn't have it happen in Tallahassee.

like with the Coyote 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 I was thinking, is this guy associated with anything that had happened here? You know, because it's on the I-10 corridor. And then my professor brain kicked in. And I began, first off, I began thinking about

As a professor, my kids that I was teaching, it'll be a year ago, in just about six weeks 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...

was a sophomore in college last year. He's a junior this year. And I had a daughter that went to my university and immediately, you know, all of that kind of spun up inside of me. And that's why, yeah, it, I was in the middle, you know, back then I was just coming off of covering Gabby Petito and all the storm that that had kicked up. I was road weary, you know, by that time. And

I was suddenly, in a real twisted way, reinvigorated when it came to this 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 father. So it ticked a lot of boxes with me. And plus it's rural. Yeah.

I knew immediately because I've actually got a colleague that's we shared office space together. Actually, 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 started seeing parallels between Moscow and in Jacksonville, where I live, Jacksonville, Alabama, 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 90 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 we don't have people that have matriculated from going to Harvard and all those sorts of places. They're

common, everyday, salt of the earth people that, you know, that come from families that are probably in pretty close proximity. You've got generations that would have 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, I was thinking, oh,

Oh my Lord, this is, this is horrible. Absolutely horrible. Who? And, and then on top of it, you know, the first thing I think is angry boyfriend. That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking angry boyfriend. We're going to find out in the next 24 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 so,

Suddenly I'm thinking, oh my Lord, okay, I have to go to my map. What made your interstates run through this location? There's just 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 purposed to be going there. It's not a suitcase college either. It's not a place where kids are going to pack up Friday morning. You know, you've got to, unless you're going across the state line to Washington, you know, in Pullman, maybe, it's not an easy trek even to get to Boise. I mean, it's a poke wherever 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 me being very, very invested in this investigation as it's kind of played out. Connor, how about you? 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 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 basic, 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, two people who are 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.

view and conversation of violence in this country. I just wasn't expecting it. It became really clear, I think, really early on that 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 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. And Joseph, we had just come off the heels at that time of George Wagner's trial and his recent guilty verdict and were frankly just wiped out from.

the sadness that surrounded that case, right? And we were so happy for the Rodin family to have finally felt some justice. And then the news gets you and sure enough, you see 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.

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. They're the 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 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 most universities, particularly state universities will have their own police force. So, uh,

the police officers that are working the beat 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 would 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. Think about that. We're part of the community. They wound up going to a place of college and they never left. You know, they just, they wound up being part and parcel of that environment. And so when I can only imagine that

that when this happened, many moms and dads in that town, in that region there, you know, suddenly had that parental, you know, that ominous parental feeling that comes over you when something horrible happens. Well, both of you, your compassion and care in how you both treated this case, that obviously remains ongoing and will continue with it. It's frankly been unparalleled.

Joseph, we love you to pieces. Hey, love you guys too. It's great to be with you all hanging out. Thank you. Back at you. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at KT underscore studios. The Idaho Massacre is produced by Stephanie Lidecker, Jeff Shane, Connor Powell, Chris Bargo, Gabriel Castillo, and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Music by Jared Astin.

The Idaho Massacre is a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. For more podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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