The University of Idaho Murders: Bad Facts: The Overall Case

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[00:01:57] On November 13, 2022 in Moscow, Idaho, four University of Idaho students lost their lives in a brutal crime. 21-year-old Kaylee Gonsalves, 21-year-old Madison Mogan, 20-year-old Zanna Kernodal, and 20-year-old Ethan Chapin were murdered in a rented off-campus house in Moscow,

[00:02:16] Idaho. Since it first happened, this crime has spurred much media coverage and social media speculation. And all of that only increased after December 30, 2022, which was when police arrested a now 29-year-old Washington State University criminology PhD student named Brian Koberger.

[00:02:38] There has been much legal wrangling between Koberger's team, led by defense attorney Ann Taylor, and the LaTaw County Prosecutor's Office, led by Bill Thompson. But where does the case stand now? Bad Facts is a series where we outline what we feel are the biggest hurdles ahead for

[00:02:53] both sides of a case. Today, we will outline what we feel are the biggest hurdles ahead for both sides and which side has the overtly stronger case. This will be analysis, maybe a bit of opinion.

[00:03:06] Your opinion may diverge with ours in some places, but we're more looking at this from a utilitarian, strategic position rather than one that focuses on actual guilt or actual innocence. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[00:03:22] And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is the University of Idaho Murders, Bad Facts, the overall case. So I was thinking what

[00:04:22] we could do for this, Kevin, is just basically go through everything we've talked about previously and sort of stack it head to head and say which way we think it goes. Does it help the prosecution?

[00:04:31] Does it help the defense? Does it hurt the prosecution? Does it hurt the defense? Let's do it. Figure out where those bad facts are. Yes. So one point is the defense will drag things out endlessly. I think that helps the defense,

[00:04:45] but I don't think it's going to severely harm the prosecution. Yeah, I agree. We talked about how it often is better for the prosecution to go quickly and the defense to take their time because evidence gets worse over time. Witness recollection gets worse over time,

[00:05:00] all of that. But I don't believe this is a marginal case. I think this is a slam dunk against Brian Koberger. So I don't think it matters a lot. Yeah, I agree completely. That's something that maybe makes a small case rather than

[00:05:15] something that makes a small difference in some cases. Even if it makes a small difference here, you have a mountain of evidence against this man and maybe delaying the case makes you remove a

[00:05:28] couple of pebbles. You still have a mountain of evidence against him. He is still going to spend the rest of his life incarcerated. Wow. So you're pretty confident. Hopefully I didn't. Was that too much of a spoiler?

[00:05:40] Well, I mean, listen, I always think a jury can mess things up, but I think it would take that at this point, unless there's stuff that comes out that we're not aware of. I mean, it's possible the prosecution could do something huge and mess everything up and

[00:05:52] it gets dismissed. I mean, that can always happen, but it would take something pretty catastrophic at this point, I would imagine. The case against him is very, very strong. And unless you believe in the existence of

[00:06:07] some massive conspiracy to frame him, it's difficult to imagine how that could be overcome. I completely agree. Here's another point that we made that I want to see which way it goes. The lack of overt motive for Brian Koberger. It seems like he didn't know

[00:06:25] these four victims. It seems like there was no connection. It's not been established. What would motivate a person who's on a successful academic track to suddenly go out and do something so violent? What's your take?

[00:06:40] I don't think this matters at all. I mean, I think, again, men kill women and other men all the time because of just bizarre reasons that don't make sense to anybody else because they're jealous or obsessed or feel rejected. I think we'll probably get to that with the

[00:06:56] prosecution. I'm sure they'll sketch something out. And if not, I don't think it matters. Not everything has to be a motive for like, oh, he's going to inherit the millions. I think it'll probably come out in trial for the prosecution, but I just don't think it helps

[00:07:09] the defense that much because there seems to be enough smoke there where he's treating women poorly and has mental health and drug issues that it seems like he struggled in life and is not necessarily squeaky clean himself.

[00:07:27] Yeah. And one of my favorite writers, Stephen Vincenzi, I remember he had a line where he said, reasons don't matter. In the final analysis, what matters is actions. What can we prove?

[00:07:41] And in this case, I think the defense is going to have a difficult time because the prosecution can prove that Kohlberger did some terrible things. It doesn't really matter why he did it. Those four families still lost someone that mattered the world to them.

[00:07:57] Yeah, I completely agree. And so Dylan DM, I think her name's out there at this point, but we'll just call her DM. DM was a witness in the case. She saw a man in their house who

[00:08:14] she described as 5'10 or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. He was wearing a mask on his face. Where do you think the DM witness sighting comes down? Is that favorable to the defense because she didn't see his whole face? Is it favorable

[00:08:29] to the prosecution because Brian Kohlberger still fits those parameters, doesn't rule him out? I think it's favorable to the prosecution because he fits those parameters. I mean, think how different things would be if DM saw someone who couldn't have been Kohlberger. It's

[00:08:46] like someone that was morbidly obese or perhaps a woman or something like that. I think things would be very, very different. So obviously we cannot expect for there to be a conviction

[00:09:00] based solely on DM's sighting, but it doesn't help the defense. And the fact that the person she saw is consistent with the appearance of Brian Kohlberger certainly adds more weight to the prosecution's case. What do you think? I agree with you. I think when we talk about

[00:09:21] things being good or bad, it's important to remember that if all they had was DM's sighting, there's no way you could get a conviction. That's not enough. You need more. But as far as whether

[00:09:32] it adds to the pile on the defense side or the pile on the prosecution side, obviously it goes to the prosecution because it's keeping everything in the parameters of a guy that looked like you did

[00:09:44] this. Yeah, I'm sure perhaps the defense will try to make hay and try to suggest, oh, you can't 100% identify Kohlberger, which she probably can't. But that doesn't change the fact that there was nothing about the person she saw that suggests it could not have been Kohlberger.

[00:10:02] Yes. So I think that, yeah, that tends to go to the prosecution too. Here's one thing that kind of maybe three trifecta. So Kohlberger's alibi, his phone and his car. Let's talk about the alibi

[00:10:16] first. His alibi is that he was driving around in the early morning hours of November 13th, 2022 because he would often do so to hike and run and or see the moon and stars. Very poetic,

[00:10:29] very fanciful. It seems like they know, the defense knows that they need to get him out of the house. They can't claim he was in bed when, you know, where most of us would be at that time.

[00:10:39] They need him out of the house. So it seems telling enough that they kind of are like, no, no. Yeah, he was out, but not doing any murdery things, just doing whimsical things by himself where no one saw him. Don't worry about it.

[00:10:52] His alibi is devastating to me. I mean, like I get it. The state has to prove their case, but the lack of alibi is bad. Yes. The evidence that the state has really strongly suggests, if not frankly outright proves where Brian Kohlberger was

[00:11:11] during the murders and what the defense has offered as an alternative just that he was out driving by himself. I don't think that's enough to suggest reasonable doubt when you weigh that against the evidence that the state has that suggests otherwise. What do you think? Yeah. And there's

[00:11:31] also things where at least it would be helpful even if it wasn't an alibi. Like if you said I was stealing cereal, see now I'm doing it to myself. I have like Stockholm syndrome or something.

[00:11:42] You say I was out hitting, knocking down the local Kroger to get cereal and then like running from the police. But 15 minutes later, I was documented to be at a coffee, getting coffee at a Starbucks

[00:11:59] several minutes away looking perfectly fine, not at all sweaty or out of breath or just normal talking with a friend. That doesn't make it so that I couldn't have knocked down the Kroger, but it certainly adds questions about like, wow, but would she be able to do that?

[00:12:18] But would she be able to be over there looking so normal at that time? It would be helpful to me. It would be helpful to my case because you could be like, well, maybe someone else was doing that

[00:12:27] because I was busy driving to see my friend at the Starbucks. Right. Yeah. So there's like not alibis, but alibi adjacent things that could help him. But it sounds like there's not going to be any because he was out driving around looking at the moon. Let's talk about

[00:12:43] the phone. The phone shows him going towards, you know, leaving his house and going towards Moscow. Then it is mysteriously switched off and then comes it is back on the highway. So it indicates movement. That's obviously good for the prosecution.

[00:13:04] It's not as good as it could be. Obviously, the ideal thing is that the phone shows up in the King Road residence or like approximately there because none of this is all exact. And then,

[00:13:15] you know, maybe have him text the prosecutor. I did it. I mean, like, but that's not barring something like that. I think this is pretty bad for him. Again, it just fits with the general,

[00:13:30] you know, putting him there, not ruling him out. Same with the car. The car comes up where it needs to be in order for him to be the perpetrator. And it ties, you know, the phone ties

[00:13:46] him to the car pretty, pretty readily. And they admit that he was in the car. So they're they're kind of giving away half the game because they're acknowledging that they can't just say he's in bed. So all that's bad for. The defense and good for the prosecution.

[00:14:04] I'm trying to think, I guess the next thing is perhaps what do you think about the Cy Ray stuff? Cy Ray is the expert witness for the defense who's former law enforcement officer who is going to

[00:14:15] claim that the defense for the defense side that he is totally exonerated by the phone stuff. Well, the problem is, you know, the cliche we've all heard time and time again

[00:14:28] again, is that a case is only as strong as its weakest link. Whatever case the defense seems to want to build, try to create reasonable doubt. A lot of it seems to be depending upon the so-called

[00:14:43] expert testimony of Mr. Ray. And Mr. Ray does not seem to be an impressive witness or an impressive expert. What remind us about Mr. Ray? His testimony and his work has been thrown out of

[00:15:01] at least one court in Colorado talking about how it's not reliable and it's not scientific. And it's been unfortunately used by a lot of law enforcement agencies. But that seems like a problem if judges are finding it to be junk science. So that's concerning. And the fact

[00:15:19] that this is all they could get, I don't know. I think it would be better to get somebody who maybe could speak to the issues and say, like, well, this doesn't show him at King Road and

[00:15:31] emphasize the facts rather than find someone who's going to just basically spout out whatever you want them to say. Yeah. When I have someone to say, well, all this shows is what we said. He

[00:15:40] was just driving around. We freely admit we freely acknowledge that he was driving around, but he was just driving around because he enjoys night driving. He finds it relaxing. Yeah, I think it's

[00:15:51] I think Cy Ray is going to not be good for them. And I I don't understand why you call someone so controversial because it wasn't just Colorado. There were a couple of cases where judges found

[00:16:02] against using this. You always call the best you can get. And so if the best they can get is someone who generally is not considered reliable. Well, I mean, that's the best they could get. Yeah.

[00:16:16] And then DNA DNA is the real bombshell evidence against him, I think, in this case. So a knife sheath is found next to one of the victims, Madison Mogan, actually. And it has stamped with the words

[00:16:29] K-Bar and USMC or the United States Marine Corps, along with the insignia of the Marine Corps, the Eagle, Globe and Anchor insignia. And it has male DNA on the button snap of the knife sheath.

[00:16:46] So we don't have a murder weapon, but we have murder weapon related paraphernalia, it seems at the at the scene. So to me, barring something where it turns out that Madison Mogan met up with

[00:17:01] Brian Koberger and he sold her his knife sheath and that could be documented, you know, because that would explain it if he did that. You know, he paid you want to buy this? OK. It's in her room

[00:17:14] when someone else happens to come in and murder her. That would explain things. But I imagine that would be pretty well documented, because how else would that happen? If not like on Facebook marketplace or something where there would be a record. But that's not what happened. I mean,

[00:17:30] that come on, like, that's ridiculous. They would have brought that up by now. Yes. And if Koberger sold her the knife, he would know that and he would have certainly admitted that to his defense attorneys because it would help his case. So you have to ask yourself,

[00:17:45] why is a knife sheath belonging to Mr. Koberger at the murder scene of people who were killed with a knife when there was no reason for any of Mr. Koberger's property to be present there?

[00:17:59] He doesn't know these people from what we can tell. There's no good reason for his knife sheath to be there. It's not. I'll be curious to know what DNA type of DNA it is. Is it touch DNA or is it

[00:18:11] blood? Then you'd be looking at positing either some bizarre conspiracy or some really catastrophically bad luck where he happened to lose his knife sheath and somebody who would soon be murdered

[00:18:28] by a knife happens to find it lying on the street and picks it up. These things just really aren't credible. No, they're not, especially when stacked up against all the other evidence against him.

[00:18:39] And my question for you, though, is the defense keeps on arguing that there are discovery violations. They're not getting the genetic genealogy tree that led investigators to Koberger and it's all violations and they're filing endless after endless filings on this. What's your take on

[00:18:58] that? Could that end up being good for the defense? Could that be bad for the prosecution? Does it seem like it won't matter? I think in the end, it won't matter. I think a lot of it goes to

[00:19:09] the strategy, number one, of delaying and number two, once you really listen to people, understand investigative genetic genealogy, it's complicated. But the information that the defense team is asking for is really not at all relevant. It's not and not at all, not even a little bit.

[00:19:33] And that's why it's interesting to me when I see people talk about this online. Sometimes I think they give too much credit to what they're asking for here because it's

[00:19:43] not really how it works. Not the least bit how it works. Yeah. And frankly, dragging in a bunch of random people who happen to be cousins with this guy doesn't seem fair. So I would love to see

[00:19:57] judges and courts come down on something that helps solve cases but also protects random people's privacy. They're trying to create the appearance, oh, we're not getting what we need. It's unfair, preserving it, I guess, for a possible appeal.

[00:20:17] I get why they're doing that. I mean, it makes sense to try anything, I suppose, but I don't find it compelling. What do you think about the point of the narrative? Does the narrative go to the defense? Does the narrative go to the prosecution at this point? Who's

[00:20:33] more successful in that? Based on what I've seen, most people out there who talk about this case seem to regard it correctly, in my view, as a slam dunk for the prosecution. There are some crankish people out there who, as we've said, are positing really elaborate, complicated conspiracies

[00:21:00] and say, oh, Kohlberger's actually innocent. But I don't think those voices are catching on. And if you want to believe he is innocent and the victim of a conspiracy which targeted him for some

[00:21:14] reason, I can't fathom. You have to ask yourself how many people would have to be involved in said conspiracy. And ultimately, to even seriously entertain the idea of a massive conspiracy without evidence is just a waste of your time. It is. I completely agree. I think the narrative's

[00:21:39] gotten away from the cranks in general. In true crime, I think people are smart and they see it for what it is, which is just a bunch of people with issues of their own who are just playing

[00:21:53] pretend with real people's lives. It's not good. I mean, I think it's still destructive and it's still worth talking about, but I think a lot of people are just getting disgusted with it.

[00:22:03] I guess for me, we talked about in the beginning, we don't really want to call innocence or guilt because with Brian Kohlberger, there could always be information that comes up that makes me change

[00:22:18] my mind. Or, oh, maybe he was framed, maybe not by a widespread conspiracy, but maybe by some specific thing. Or it turns out that the prosecution's experts were just absolutely terrible at their jobs and they did something wrong. Or the prosecution does something where

[00:22:38] he is guilty, but he gets off on a technicality because they messed up something really badly. So I don't want to sound too much in one camp, but that being said, I do believe personally that this

[00:22:49] is a slam dunk case and it's really bad for him. He's in a really bad position. And I don't really think there's much his attorneys can do about that. We've covered a lot of cases on this show.

[00:23:04] We read about other cases. We've read about hundreds, if not thousands of cases throughout our lives. It is difficult for me to think of another case where there has been a stronger case against a defendant. Yeah, this is devastating against him. And it's interesting. I do see the

[00:23:29] narrative of like, oh, well, I don't know if they can get to a conviction even though I think he's guilty. And it's like, I think some people don't realize that beyond a reasonable doubt does not

[00:23:42] mean beyond all possible stupid doubts that don't make any sense. So like, you don't have a reasonable doubt is not well, maybe the wind picked up his K-bar knife sheath, blew it around in the sky,

[00:23:55] and then had it go through Madison Mogen's window at the last moment right before she was murdered. And by an amazing coincidence, there was a witness who spotted somebody meeting Koberger's description there. And by a coincidence, he happened to be out driving

[00:24:10] that night in the same general area. Yeah, that's not a reasonable doubt. No. And what the defense raised so far is not even close. And I think they'll continue to delay. I think there could be some obstacles for the prosecution that crop up that we're not aware

[00:24:27] of right now. But generally, if things stay at this level, it's a devastating case against him. And hopefully people can see it play out and not delve into these theories.

[00:24:42] If you want a system where the only way a person would be convicted of a crime is if they're recorded on film committing the crime, and then hold up the camera to their faces and then give

[00:24:53] a full confession, if that's what you need, you're not going to get any conviction. And you're not living in reality. You're just not. But I think a lot of people get into that.

[00:25:07] They get paralyzed and they overcomplicate things in their minds of, well, I need this, this, and this. And this is really bad as it is. I'll be curious to see what else they have at trial. But what

[00:25:21] I've seen so far is really bad for him. He's in trouble. If I were him, I'd be trying to cop a plea deal at this point. He's going to be convicted. If you really want a trial,

[00:25:36] maybe he enjoys the attention. Or if he wants to have the option of having appeals, if he takes a plea deal, he's admitting guilt. No appeals. Or he can appeal the sentence. But not a, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that makes sense.

[00:25:51] So I'm not going to say that a person should give up their right to a trial just because I think the case against them is devastating. If he wants to have the trial, have the trial.

[00:26:03] I'm just saying if it were me, I'd be trying to, I wouldn't, you know, if you have any sort of remorse or if you have any sort of knowledge of how bad it is.

[00:26:16] And also pragmatically, if you take a plea deal that maybe something about your sentence is a little bit easier. Yeah. Maybe they'll give you at least a small break, maybe let you choose where you'd be incarcerated. Yeah. I mean, your family or something.

[00:26:31] If you are someone who has the least bit of remorse, taking responsibility for your actions is a good step. Yeah. Not dragging the four families and the county and the community that have been traumatized through some nonsense. Yeah, that would show a little bit of remorse to me.

[00:26:49] But that would be the first step towards finding peace with the terrible thing you did. Yeah. But I don't think that's going to happen here. I think they're going to, it's going to drag on to go to trial. And I'm sure they'll, I mean,

[00:27:05] I'm sure there'll be a lot of conspiracy theorizing in the meantime. I think, you know, I don't know. I've not really seen any indication to me personally that the Idaho defense lawyers are necessarily encouraging that as I would argue others are in other cases

[00:27:22] in a similar situation. No idea who you're referring to. Who could I mean? But I think that the Idaho attorneys are certainly capable of writing really histrionic and ridiculous filings like that one I talked about in a previous episode

[00:27:37] about the media wants him dead. Like, what the heck was that? So maybe they'll kind of cozy up to more of the crazies as we go on. The old saying which I've used on this show,

[00:27:47] I believe before is if you're a lawyer and the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If you're a lawyer and the law is on your side, pound the law. If you're a lawyer and the facts

[00:27:59] and the law are not on your side, pound the table. And a lot of what you see in histrionic filings is the literary equivalent of pounding the table. Yeah, there's a lot of table pounding

[00:28:10] going on here. And when you see lawyers pound the table, it means they don't have much of a case. Yeah, exactly. So that's something to keep in mind because I think oftentimes people are

[00:28:19] really impressed by bravado and kind of passion and emotion. And frankly, that's often a red flag for me. All right, well, listen, thank you all so much for listening to bad facts. Hopefully this

[00:28:34] kind of makes you think about where the Idaho case is and we'll continue to cover it going forward. Thank you so much, everybody. Thanks so much for listening to The Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we

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