FULL Deep Dive Into Bryan Kohberger and the Idaho College Murders - Megyn's True Crime Mega-Episode

the least.

“Hey everyone I'm Megan Kelly welcome to the Megan Kelly show and today's true”

crime mega episode. Today we bring you our deep dive into the story of Brian

Colbergour and the horrific Idaho College murders back in 2022. All five parts looking at Colbergour's upbringing, how authorities tracked him down, the circumstances of the crime, and unanswered questions to this day. Enjoy and we'll see you Monday. Suppose you wanted to kill someone that would be easy. There are lots of ways, but

suppose you wanted to kill four people all in the same house, all within moments of one another and you chose to use a knife. Back it helped eliminate the noise, but it would require skill, strength, and endurance. Murder is hard work especially if people fight back. Then there's the really big obstacle you want to get away with it.

“You're determined to stab four people living in a single home in the still of”

the night and then disappear without leaving a clue to your identity. Now that's a more difficult challenge, but you did it. You have everybody stumped. It's the perfect crime. Welcome to a special edition of the Megan Kelly show everyone.

I'm Megan Kelly and for the first time ever, I'm going to spend the episode

today and all five episodes this week, taking you on a journey with just you and me. As we dive into a true crime case that has captivated the nation since it happened a little more than a year ago. Ever since four young students in Idaho were found dead last November, I have consumed every podcast, every article I could find about this case. I've watched

all the true crime shows. I've read all the magazine pieces, everything on the

“internet and I've done my own reporting on the case, interviewing experts and”

lawyers to try to make sense of what happened in Idaho. As we will explore in each episode this week, there is something haunting and fascinating about the details of this crime. It is a mystery, but it's really several mysteries all in one. In this series, I will bring you some of our reporting as well as the reporting and incredibly eloquent writing of Howard Bloom. That was his writing at the top

there. He is second to none when it comes to covering the Idaho murders. This is

the guy. That's the way this episode started with his words that he used to open his first dispatch on this case for the media outlet air mail news. It's relatively new and it's very good. Bloom is a veteran and award-winning true crime writer and reporter who has written more than a dozen books and countless articles in his decades-long career. He's done some of the best and most unique

reporting on this story and his forthcoming book on this case will be published in the spring by Harper Collins. That's going to be a must read. And it is Bloom's storytelling that we'll begin with today. We asked Howard if we could strike a deal where we could use some of his not just his reporting, but his actual writing and interspersed it with our own so we could bring you some of the

interviews and soundbites and so on that we've amassed for you to tell this story and he agreed. It had been a football Saturday in mid-November, the last home game of the 2022 season for the University of Idaho vandals. The Kibi dome packed with more than 7,600 fans. And despite the disappointing loss, Saturday night was still party night for a college celebrated in knowledgeable polls as the

best party school in the state. The stately row of wet frats, as they're known on the U of Idaho campus, twisting along Nes pairstrive was crowded with the brothers and their dates. High spirited assemblies fueled by blaring music, prospects of mischief and rivers of alcohol. Downtown Main Street was hopping to the pool tables at mingles and the metal sheathed bar at the corner

club or shoulder to shoulder with students and townies filling the brisk autumn night with the keen of cheery, rowdy, late night fun. And then in the heavy quiet of the new Sunday morning, four young corpses, all students, all friends, were found hacked to death in their beds in a pale, clappered house, little more than a stone throw away from the heart of the University campus. There was so

gray concrete foundation in jagged red rivulettes. But before we get to that

“Sunday morning, we need to look back. We need to talk about the six young”

students who were in the house that night and what brought them there. Two of the six went way back, Maddie Mogan and Kaylie Gonzalez met in 2013 in the sixth grade and became inseparable. They grew up in the tourist town of Cordelaine, Idaho, best friends for years. Listen to their parents talk about each of them. The queue was one that was going to shake the world. Yeah, to

came across somebody who is had anything negative to say, which people think, oh, no one will tell you that. But, I mean, I got siblings and that they'll tell stories about their sister, they're not going to hold back. So

“I think she found her way to live in a big family and learned the right”

ways to get along with people and then that showed later on in her life when she was able to go to college and meet all these people.

Mogan, yes, she was the sweetest, smart, loving, she was the best she never

caused me one day of stress in my life. You know, just she was the best child I should have asked for. And yeah, we, we missed her so much. The night of November 12th, Maddie and Kaylie went out together in Moscow to the corner club bar, more on that in a minute. Ethan Chapin was in the house that night. He was a triplet. He and his brother Hunter and sister Mazie all

“attended the University of Idaho. His girlfriend was Santa Carnotal. She had a”

tough upbringing, but she was thriving. Ethan and Zana's parents. He literally lit up every room, every, everybody he was friend to all, he just, he was an

incredible human. Dana was, she was tough. She was, she was strong. She was

bunny. Um, she just, she just, she just could make his smile no matter what. And she just had a courtiness about her that, that a lot of people possess that kind of talent to be able to light up a room like she did. On the night of November 12th, 2022, Ethan and Zana went to a party at Ethan's fraternity, Thetakai. One of Zana's roommates, Bethany Funk, was at Thetakai that night as well. But by

145 a.m. on the morning of November 13th, all five roommates, including the fifth, a young woman named Dylan Mortensen, were home in the house on 1122 King Road, along with Zana's boyfriend, Ethan Chapin. Zana received a door-dash delivery order at approximately 4 a.m. And shortly after 4 a.m. reports are that all of the roommates were either asleep or at least in their respective rooms. The roommates

were close active on social media, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok. We see how close they were in the social media posts they made like this one. Oh my God, I look horrid. Get out of here. You seriously got to get out of here and you fucking speaking. Hey guys, I know I talk about myself a lot, but like, what would you

guys do in my situation? Zana, where are you going? Hey, I've got a group of people. Hey, I don't know what I mean? Zana, I'm doing my night like, let's just do my night. Yo, is it okay even party? Like just three or four people. And so fun. So full of life. So funny. And so unaware of the fate that would soon befall them.

At precisely eight, 57 p.m. on the last full day of her life in the midst of a busy Saturday, bustling with the flurry of convivial activities generated by a football game in a college town. Kaley Gonzalez paused before going out for a

photos on her Instagram account, which she captioned one lucky girl to be surrounded

“by these people every day. Oh, the photos are a cherry collection of six college”

kids, the youngest 19, the oldest 21, bursting with right eye, good looks and future promise. They were meant to be, it appears, visual testimony to the fun the students were having, to the blessings a munificent life had generously bestowed on them. We know the girl's house on King Road was one that was full of joy in the way a college house often is. It was the frequent location of parties or informal gatherings.

Many said the door was always open that the roommates gave the door code out to

friends who gave the code to friends and they would find themselves in the role of host quite often. On several occasions, the parties brought out the police and it is actually strangely enough through police body camera footage that we get to know the personalities of these young women. You can see how respectful they were of law enforcement in these interactions poised friendly outgoing. There was Zana

one night apologizing for a noise complaint made by a neighbor. What's your name? Zana. Zana, do you live here? Yeah. This is the second noise complaint we've had here

tonight with the two hours. I'm sorry. So this time it was the blonde gal and the guy

in the back porch playing music. Okay. So. I sincerely apologize about it. Okay. I'm just going to apologize. Okay. So just so you understand, you could be getting a miscommunist

“citation for this. Which means you have to go in front of a judge and explain why”

you couldn't keep the people in your house quite. Okay. We've already talked to Maddie ones and told her the same thing. The only reason she's not going to take it is because she's not staying here in front of me. But I'm telling you right now, if we have to come back, you're getting a ticket. Okay. So we'll have to go see the judge. I'm fine

right now. You're not going to take it right now. I'm just trying to go to bed, right?

Okay. Kaylee 2 takes the lead in engaging with the police when they don't up to a party one night talking her way out of a potential $300 fine for a noise violation. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. Good. Is this your place? Yeah. It's not here. Okay. So usually, for me, I'll give you a good warning. Once I have neighbors calling you,

“I think that this is your place, I'm going to hold you this one. I'm not sure”

about you spend that $300 on the other side. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. That means that warnings don't do it again. Yep. I'll take you back in a few hours in a half than a few hours. Any questions for me? No. All right. Take care. The girls natural warmth and respect on these tapes even in a tense situation makes their fate that November feel all the more incomprehensible. In March of this year, Howard

Bloom was a guest on the Megan Kelly show. It was episode 515. He talked about the afternoon of Sunday, November 13th, shortly after 11.58 a.m. the time a 911 call came in from roommate Dylan Mortensen's cell phone. I personally knew that something serious was wrong because all they got a report of was the unconscious, the unconscious person, rather at the house. And they see a group of kids mulling about the

house, like goals on a beach is a little described to me. And his kids are silent. They've been putting up with the university kids all their professional lives as cops. I don't think I've ever seen silent kids before. They knew that there was this was something serious. Bloom writes that the call was passed to Sergeant Shane Gunderson. Gunderson, who on that day was midway through a 12 hour shift that it started at 6 a.m. was running the operations

division at the sparklingly modernistic. It had opened barely 11 months earlier. South view Avenue police headquarters. Prior to that moment, he would tell people his tour had been long and slow. A language weekend morning punctuated by the times of the town's many church bells tolling solemnly in the wind. In fact, he had spent a good deal of that desk bounds Sunday morning mulling something other than police business. Gunderson had

summit of Mount Bora. He and a friend from the University of Idaho's site department had been

“planning for the spring. It's Idaho's highest point and the trail up the southwest ridge to the”

12,662 foot summit is a steep hard climb and he would admit after a beer or two. It was just the sort of challenge he'd been missing lately. Now that he had his sergeant stripes, police work was more about distributing memos and filing papers than getting out into the field. That bothered him. Nearly 10 years on the force, he still wanted to be the Gungho officer who had joined up straight out of Lewis Clark State College in nearby Lewiston and worked his way up from

Patrolman. In his early days, he had distinguished himself as a hands-on cop, someone out on the streets doing what the Moscow PD calls community policing. Back then, he'd scored a lot of points both in and out of the department, as well as winning the officer of the year on her in 2017. When he single-handedly planned and organized, a hot dog barbecue bringing together the cops and local school kids. He was from the area, growing up in small town, pot latch, and still

smarting from his own childhood run-ins, he knew only to well how hard-ass cops could sour things, make things confrontational. It was his job, he'd say, with determination, looking out for and working with the citizens of Moscow. When the 911 call came in, Gunderson had a corporal and two other officers on duty to assist with Patrol. He could have left the response to them. He certainly, he'd tell people with a hint of embarrassment, had no intimation of something

out of the ordinary. That morning he was simply eager to break them and notany. And as always,

“he felt strongly. It was important for him to get out on the street where people could see him.”

He swiftly decided he'd go to the scene too, with his officers. It was a quick trip. The roads leading into the university neighborhood that Sunday, or as empty as the classrooms. And as soon as Gunderson's black and white cruiser pulled up behind the neat row of cars, parked in the driveway of the austere, can't delivered house on King Road. He immediately knew something was very wrong. It was the noise. There wasn't any. Just an eerie, unnatural silence,

a cluster of young people, or wandering about, not merely subdued. They seemed stunned, as if drained by a deep and intense shock. When the three mystified officers approached the front door, someone in the crowd, it would later be shared, muttered a single plaintiff word.

“Dead. Still, Gunderson would confess to others, he was unprepared for the strong smell of blood”

that rose up in his nostrils the moment he walked inside. The coroner, who had once been an emergency room nurse in an earlier stage of her life, would describe the scene and press interviews as chaos, lots of blood. Few others would even attempt to put into words what they saw. There are moments cops will tell you that are too profound, too unnerving, to be experienced in the present. All you can do is move forward. There will be time later to try to make sense of it all.

Procedure takes precedence. It allows a protective membrane to be stretched between the real and the two real. All other thoughts, all other feelings, become extraneous.

The trio of officers meanwhile proceeded with haste to the second floor. They opened the bedroom door

to find two dead bodies, a male and a female. The pair was gruesomely drenched in blood. Yet both had their good-looking faces. Oddly preserved, like masks. Even at that probing moment, it was difficult. One of the young officers would later nearly whale to look at the 20-year-old pair. They were Ethan and Zana. On the third floor, things got if possible, worse. In one bedroom, lying in a single bed, were two inner women. It was Maddie and Kaylee.

They might have been sisters, so similar with the 21-year-olds, pretty Barbie doll-like sculpted features, their long cascades of thick streaked blonde hair falling down to their narrow shoulders. Yet in death there was one gruesome difference. Kaylee, it would be reported, had been hacked with a particular ferocity. It was as if her wild assailant or was it assailants. Had been intent on gouging out chunks of her flesh.

Larged punctures was how the lash variations had been described. Maddie's wounds while no less

Across the narrow hallway was one final door. The officers pulled it open, and at last, they discovered

“a sign of life, a fluffy caramel-colored dog. It was Murphy. Kaylee's first-key labor-doodle.”

He was unharmed, not marred by even a speck of blood, a small consolation and barely wanted that for all they had seen, or only beginning to process. Later that day around 4pm, a police officer named Brett Payne arrived at the scene. He would go on to interview the two surviving roommates, Dylan and Bethany, who in the affidavit, he would file or only identified as DM and BF. Here is directly from the affidavit, what he learned from his interviews with both

Dylan and Bethany. Although it appeared Bethany had slept through the commotion on floors above

her first floor bedroom. DM and BF quoting here from the affidavit, both made statements during

interviews that indicated the occupants of the King Road residents were at home by 2am,

“and asleep or at least in their rooms by approximately 4am, he wrote. This is with the exception”

of Xana Chronotal, who received a door-dash order at the residents at approximately 4am, law enforcement identified the door-dash delivery driver who reported this information. DM stated she originally went to sleep in her bedroom on the southeast side of the second floor. DM stated she was a woken at approximately 4am by what she stated sounded like

and solvus playing with her dog in one of the upstairs bedrooms, which were located on the third floor.

A short time later, DM said she heard who she thought was can solvus, say something to the effect of there's someone here. A review of records obtained from a forensic download of Chronotal's phone showed that this could also have been chronotal, as her cellular phone indicated she was likely awake and using the TikTok app at approximately 4am. DM stated she looked out of her bedroom but did not see anything when she heard the comment about someone being in the house. DM stated she

opened her door a second time when she heard what she thought was crying coming from chronotal's room. DM then said she heard a male voice, say something to the effect of, "It's okay. I'm going to help you." And approximately 4am 17am, a security camera located at 1112 King Road, a residence immediately to the northwest of 1122 King, picked up distorted audio of what sounded like voices or a whimper, followed by a loud thud. A dog can also be heard barking numerous times starting at 4am 17am.

The security camera is less than 50 feet from the west wall of Xana Chronotal's bedroom. DM stated she opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her. DM described the figure as 5 foot 10 or taller male, not very muscular but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past DM as she stood in a "frozen shock phase".

The male walked toward the back sliding glass door. DM locked herself in her room after seeing the male. DM did not state that she recognized the male. This leads investigators to believe that the murderer left the scene. We'll get back to the affidavit and a bit. Dylan then locked her bedroom door until the morning

“in a decision that would just be a fuddle so many people. Why? Why didn't she do more?”

We don't know the answers but surely we will. By the time this case is tried, then sometimes after sometime after 11am the roommates attempted to wake their friends. They were unable to and they would call others to the house for help. There at least one of those friends finally dialed 911. Howard Bloom again with us back in March. One can raise all sorts of questions as I do at the same time. I think one has to cut this

poor girl a little slack. In many ways, she's a victim too. She will live with this for her entire life.

She saw something incredible astonishing and she just perhaps couldn't deal with it.

Back to Sergeant Gunderson. He quickly called his boss, Captain Roger Linier, the head of the

with his family. Linier was a veteran cop. He had spent more than 20 years on the force and nearby

“Lewiston before having been Lord six years earlier to Moscow with a captain's rank. After all”

his years on the job, he'd become a steady, a vacueler presence, a bald headed genial cop who never

got flustered because as he would tell people, he had seen it all in his day. But Gunderson's report left him unnerved. It took me a second he recalled a sharp edge, even weeks later to the memory. I really had to think about what I just heard, four murders, in Moscow, Idaho, was so out of character. At the time they were fairly certain. It was college students and it was near the campus and that area is kind of a campus community. So

once I got over the initial shock, I knew that I was coming to the station. So I drove in. And everybody just kind of fell into a role that was all hands-on deck moment. Sunday afternoon, it became fairly apparent when I got to the scene that we were going to need a resources outside of just what the Moscow Police Department could provide. But quickly, Linier's professionalism took control. He had a thousand questions and yet he knew

the only hope of finding answers would be to follow the previously established protocols. Dutifully, he gave the orders to set up the parameters of the crime scene to bring in the forensic team and to summon the coroner. It was standard in a major case and if four homicides was not a major case, what was to alert the Idaho State Police and he did that too. Moscow was the responsibility of the state's district 2 detective officer office in Lewiston,

the county seat and where he'd been on the job for two decades and he knew many of the state detectives. There was a companionship. Still, it was a difficult conversation, but his next call was harder. The university had to be informed. It was not just that four students had been brutally murdered in an off-campus home, but there was no way of knowing whether the killer or killers planned to strike again. The students needed to be warned. At 207pm, a little over two hours after

the three cops had entered the blood-soaked house. The university office of public safety and security sent a "vandal alert" email to the students and faculty. "Moscow PD" investigating a homicide on King Road near campus. Suspect is not known at this time stay away from the area and shelter in place and quote. A shelter in place order requires people to take refuge in a room with no or few windows. At this point, busy hours had already quickly flown by, but despite his

marathon of activities, Linier still had not succeeded in completing one task that was at the top of his mental list. He had not been able to speak with his boss, James Fry, the chief of police.

By the time Linier had finally reached him, it was hours after the discovery of the bodies.

And by the time Fry finally entered the home on King Road, it was dark outside, according to

“several accounts close to 6pm. For some, a true reason, he had thought it was important to go home first”

and change into his chiefs uniform. Perhaps he hadn't fully grasped the magnitude of the disaster. Or maybe, after nearly 28 years as a Moscow cop, he had felt the imprimatur of his uniform was integral to his ability to command. But what he saw that evening left him, he would confide to a friend later, physically and emotionally drained. He was a father of two daughters who had attended the University of Idaho, and he had also graduated from the University nearly three decades earlier.

It was impossible, he said, not to feel a visceral tie to the victims and to their parents. The cruelty of the crime was deep and affecting, and yet he knew there was police work to be done. His mind was racing, but, quickly perhaps, within moments of buried memory, pushed itself forward.

“What if fry asked himself with a sudden alarm, a serial killer, had attacked the four students?”

Pausing here to bring you some of Chief Fry's initial comments to the Moscow Idaho community

from his very first press conference several days after the murders.

My name is Chief James Fry with the Moscow Police Department. I want to be reading from my notes today because I want the information you received to be extremely accurate. This is a horrible crime that took the lives of Ethan Chapin, Zanikur Noodle, Madison Mogen, and Clay Lee, Kaylee, Gone Calves. This horrible crime has affected all of us, the families, the University of

was an isolated, targeted attack on our victims. We do not have a suspect at this time,

“and that individual is still out there. We cannot say that there's no threat to the community.”

And as we have stated, police stay vigilant, report any suspicious activity, and be aware of your surroundings at all times.

Here's what was challenging for the police from blooms reporting. Fact, the four students were

killed in their sleep or at least well in their rooms, sometime between three and five AM. In the weeks ahead, they would develop a more precise timeline. The murders, the authorities deduced occurred between four and four twenty five AM. Think about that. At four twelve AM, they had Zana on TikTok, and the murders took place between four and four twenty five AM. Fact, there was no sign of forced entry or of robbery. Fact, a single weapon had been used,

a long-bladed knife. Critically, a ten leather knife sheath stamped with a U.S. Marine Corps insignia was found lying next to Maddie Moggins' bed. Fact, there was no trail of blood

outside the house. Fact, the house was a repository for a large collection of forensic evidence,

blood, saliva, hair, prints, DNA, but whether any of those belonged to the killer, after the autopsy's, the general consensus held that it was a single assailant, still was undetermined.

“These were all the investigators agreed important pieces in the puzzle. If they were not enough,”

for more than three weeks, the early morning conferences ended in a grim litany of what remained unknown. They couldn't figure out how the killer had gotten away, seemingly without leaving a clue, and they had no idea why he had chosen these victims. And now, as the investigation of Moscow plotted on and frustratingly on, an exasperated chief fry appealed to locals to become, in effect,

consulting detectives. We appreciate everybody's help that has been sending in those tips,

and investigators are betting those, and they're following up on those, and the response has been very great. We appreciate all the help from across the nation and our community. He wanted help to put his men on the right scent. Detectives are looking for context to the

“events and people involved in these murders, a Moscow PD press release announced, to assist with”

the ongoing investigation, any odd or out of the ordinary events that took place should be reported, and nearly begging the release urged your information, whether you believe it is significant or not, might be the piece of the puzzle that helps investigators solve these murders. The tips poured in. A new generation of consulting detectives armed with cell phones and laptops, with access to a vast repository of information from selfies to Facebook pages,

and further stoked by the barrage of the raw theories and hearsay disseminated on Reddit and 4chan embraced the opportunity. It was a real-life mystery that had the compelling allure of a particularly thorny CSI episode, and not least, the police were pleading for help. More than 9,000 25 email tips were received in addition to the 4,575 phone calls and 6,050 digital media submissions. An army of law enforcement analysts

was assigned to the long daunting task to see if in all the oysters. There was a single parole. Much of it led down rabbit holes of fattuous speculation. Some of it was not just wrong-headed but cruel. Innocent ex-boyfriends, a hoodie wearing bystander lurking at a food truck, where Maddie and Kaylee had ordered early morning bowls of carbonara to soak up the alcohol ingested during the last carefree pub crawl of their lives. A bro neighbor who insisted on sharing rambling anecdotes

with every reporter who knocked on his door and frapped brothers who were rumored to be stoked up on steroids and driven by long gestating grievances all were callously and persistently slandered with a malicious authority. It got so madcap that a history prof at the university decided she had to sue to put an end to one internet sleuth's bizarre speculation that a failed romance with one of the women had driven the teacher to kill.

And then the analysts hit a gold theme. The overnight assistant manager, her name at her request remains secret,

well see what she could do. She had not been working the night of the murders, but nevertheless,

“she spent the downtime on her graveyard shift reviewing the videos recorded by the station”

surveillance cameras on November 13th. I had a weird feeling, she later said. For two nights,

she intermittently kept at it, but found nothing. Then on the third night, she spotted a white car,

speeding down Highway 8 before turning Palmel down a side street. She took a screenshot of the car and emailed it to the tipline address. Two days later, Moscow police arrived at the gas station to confiscate hours of surveillance footage, and after just a quick view, they began to feel the hunt was on. Encouraged, they reached out on a hunch to Kane, Fransich. Recently retired and now investing

in real estate was a free-wheeling guy who shares on his website that he listens to classic vinyl

“while drinking single malt scotch. He also owned a six unit rental complex, a linda lane,”

about three tens of a mile from where the bodies had been found with a surveillance camera,

fixed to the roof. I downloaded it and gave them access to everything from 2 a.m. through noon, on Sunday, the 13th he said, once those tapes were reviewed, the same telltale white car was spotted. And again, it appeared to be making a breakneck getaway through the dark AM streets. With this confirming sighting, a different pace, a different mood to go over the investigation. The team felt they could now march forward with a purpose. The FBI laboratory enhancement

had succeeded in deciphering the blurred image of the car. They believed it was a white 2011 to 2013 Hyundai, Alantra. There were 22,000 Hyundai's in the region that matched the search criteria

“and one of them the police were starting to suspect had been driven by a killer.”

From the affidavit released in January, a review of footage from multiple videos obtained from the King

Road neighborhood showed multiple sightings of suspect vehicle 1 starting at 329 a.m. ending at 420 a.m. These sightings show suspect vehicle 1 makes an initial 3 passes by the 1122 King Road Residence and then leaves Vio will lend to drive. Based off my experience as a patrol officer, this is a residential neighborhood with a very limited number of vehicles that travel in the area during the early morning hours. Upon review of the video, there were only a few cars that enter

and exit this area during this time frame. Suspect vehicle 1 can be seen entering the area of 4th time at approximately 404 a.m. It can be seen driving eastbound on King Road, stopping and turning around in front of 500 Queen Road, number 52, and then driving back westbound on King Road. When Suspect vehicle 1 is in front of the King Road Residence, it appeared to unsuccessfully attempt to park or turn around in the road. The vehicle then continued to the

intersection of Queen Road in King Road or it can be seen completing a 3.0 turn and then driving eastbound again down Queen Road. Suspect vehicle 1 is seen next, departing the area of the King Road Residence at approximately 4.20 a.m. at a high rate of speed. Back now to Blooms reporting. Finding the one Elantra that would lead to an arrest loomed as a needle in a haystack sort of challenge. The search even with a small army of burrows was a nearly impossible task.

Then as the holiday season approached, a hint of a Christmas miracle. Chief fry for once, upbeat, met late in the morning of December 20th with Rand Walker, the department psychologist and Rod Olps, one of the police chaplains in the courthouse law library. It was one of the few places they could huddle where the chief felt no one would be listening. I'm going to need you to get ready. He said with a deliberate coiness. I'm going to need you

before too long. The two men eagerly asked whether they had been a break in the case. Fry did his best to rain in a pregnant smile. All I'm saying he reiterated is I need you both to stand by. I might be calling you very soon. But at 430 that afternoon, the Moscow police public communications team issued a flash update quote, investigators are aware of a Hyundai Elantra located in Eugene, Oregon and have spoken with the owner. The vehicle is not believed

to have any relation to any property in Moscow, Idaho or the ongoing murder investigations.

conversation earlier that day would not be calling them anytime soon. Meanwhile, as the hunt for

“the Elantra proceeded with tedious concentration, the no less discouraging challenge of”

finding a clue in the forensic evidence of vast muddle of Prince blood and DNA that had been collected in the house was brought vividly home. Body cam footage was released of a call that the King Road residents two months before the murders by a trio of Moscow cops in response to yet another noise complaint from an annoyed neighbor. The body camera footage,

Bloomwood Wright was at first seen as deeply poignant. The house seemed to be nearly shaking

with festive noise. Tyler Children's is feathered Indians boomed from the speakers. Kids were calling happily to one another a giddy mix of bouncy energetic voices. It was a Thursday night and there was a party going on. This is what it's like to be young.

“To more a cervic minds, the footage was a small self-contained story about the tensions of”

policing in a college town. The kids being kids were seen given the police a slide run around and the cops being cops retaliated with a display of petty vengeance, a confidence skated

stash of beers and truly was poured onto the driveway. Yet this being Moscow and this house

being destined for infamy, this burst of class warfare would have an unexpected coda. One of the smirking cops building the booze would in time be part of the team that first discovered the bodies. Another would help load the cardboard cartons holding the murdered students belongings into a u-hall for the grim trip to the police parking lot. To the informed and dispassionate view of the FBI scientific experts however, the body camp footage was seen solely in operational terms

and it was disappearing. It made clear that just about anyone and everyone had access

to 1122 King Road. The door was always open and a stream of people were constantly coming and going.

The analysts moan that there would be so much forensic evidence it might be easier to determine who and Moscow had never been inside the house rather than having any realistic hope of ever-finding a suspect. And yet perhaps it wasn't a 2011 to 2013, Alandra, after all. Investigators were given access to video footage on the Washington State University or WSU campus located nearby in Pullman, Washington. A review of that video indicated that

approximately 244 AM on November 13, 2022, a white sedan which was consistent with the description of the White Alantra known as suspect vehicle one was observed on WSU surveillance cameras traveling north on southeast Nevada street at northeast stadium way. At approximately 253 AM, a white sedan, which is consistent with the description of the white Alantra known as suspect vehicle one was observed traveling southeast on Nevada street in

Pullman, Washington toward SR 270. This is Howard Bloom here quoting from the affidavit. SR 270 connects Pullman, Washington to Moscow, Idaho. This camera footage from Pullman, Washington was provided to the same FBI forensic examiner. The forensic examiner identified the vehicle observed in Pullman, Washington as being a 2014 to 2016, Hyundai, Alantra. At approximately 525 AM, a white sedan, which was consistent with the description of suspect vehicle one was observed

“on five cameras in Pullman, Washington and on WSU campus cameras. What was it doing there?”

Well, shortly after midnight on November 29, Washington State Police Officer Daniel Tienko reported that he had identified a 2015 white Alantra on campus with a license plate LFZ 8649. It wasn't from Washington though or Idaho. It was registered to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. According to the affidavit, just minutes later, a different officer, Curtis Whitman, located that car in the parking lot of an apartment complex that houses WSU students.

The vehicle belonged to a graduate student and a teacher's assistant named Brian Christopher Colberger. His major was criminology. Colberger would be driving that car shortly after the identification far away from Washington and Idaho and the scene of that gruesome quadruple murder.

Little did day or the small town community of Moscow, Idaho or the country that had become obsessed

with and terrified by this story. Have any idea that the police and the FBI were tracking their every move as they made their way back home to Pennsylvania? But not before a few bizarre chancing counters with authorities along the way. We'll be back tomorrow with that. The case captivated the country for weeks. Four college students murdered inside their Idaho home.

“Was it a home invasion gone wrong? Was it drug related? Was it something far more personal?”

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. I'm Megan Kelly. This week we are bringing you a special

edition of the show focused on the true crime case that I, along with millions of others,

became absolutely obsessed with beginning just over one year ago. There's so much mystery and confusion around the story. On Monday we told you about the gruesome and horrific murders. And today we dive into how the suspect was identified and how he was caught. And we will begin to get into the key question. Who is Brian Coburger and what possible motive did he have for this crime? To take you through the intricacies of all this, we're bringing you some of the fantastic

writing and reporting of Howard Bloom who covers this case in great detail for air mail news. In addition to those articles, his forthcoming book on the case will be published in this bring by Harper Collins that will be a must read and we will have Howard back on to talk about it when it comes out. But for now, we're going to take you back to November 25th, 12 days after the murders and blooms writing. To the investigators' rising sense of excitement, the circumstantial

theory they had been secretly incubating for weeks was growing stronger and stronger. Back on November 25th, Moscow PD had whispered to local lawmen to keep their eyes peeled for a white 2011 through 2016, Hyundai, Atlanta. We still are asking people to call in on any spotting of white launcher. You know, we appreciate all the tips that we've gotten, not only from local

“Moscow but state but across the nation and we're following up on all those. Remember, according to”

the affidavit, the forensic examiner initially believed it to be a 2011 to 2013, Atlanta. But after further review, amended that to make it 2011 to 2016. A car like this had been caught on surveillance video, dashing about the neighborhood not far from King Road from the crime scene in the early morning hours immediately following the murders. Four days later, Daniel T. Engo, a Washington state

university police officer, was diligently spending the midnight hours on his quiet graveyard shift going through the inventory of White Alantra's registered at the university and up popped one belonging to a Brian Colberger. A half an hour later, another WSU officer drove over to the graduate student parking lot and eyeballed the vehicle. Only to discover the car now had Washington state plates, not Pennsylvania anymore. Later in the still new morning, this more soul of intelligence

interesting, but certainly nothing provocative, was passed on to Corporal Brett Payne, the Gungho former Army MP, who was the Moscow police's lead investigator. Payne beautifully typed the car's registration details into the motor vehicle's record system and the screen quickly displayed a photograph of Brian Colberger as well as his state driver's license information. The license revealed that Colberger is a white male and a sturdy six feet in 185 pounds, but it was the photograph

that held Payne's studious gaze. He swiftly zeroed in on the eyebrows. They were bushy and that Payne realized with a mounting sense of triumph was precisely the sort of telltale clue he had

been praying for over the past two weeks. For all along, since the very first days of this grim

“case, he and the small inner circle of investigators had been guarding an explosive secret.”

They had an eyewitness. Dylan Mortensen, one of the two 19-year-old surviving roommates, had seen the killer. At a little past 4 a.m., just about when the detectives theorized the four students had been hacked to death. She had heard a plaintiff cry. Anxious, she opened the door

He was, she would vividly recall the details forever etched deep in her memory. At least five feet

“ten, not bulked up, but still trim like an athlete. And he wore a mask that covered his mouth and”

nose but not his eyes or his eyebrows. A profound and vehement fear seized hold of her, a quote frozen shock phase was how she would try to describe her galloping emotions. But the black clad intruder continued past her as if she were invisible and headed toward a sliding glass door that led out of the house. For reasons that continued to be bound tight with the bands of mystery, Dylan returned to her room, locked the door, and did not emerge until

after 11 a.m. Only then did she summon friends who, in a state of full-blown panic at last, called 911. But as she later related her unnerving experience to police interrogators, she shared one detail that at the time seemed small if not irrelevant, the man in black had bushy

“eyebrows. And now 16 long days after the murders, Brett Payne found himself staring at a photograph”

of a man who might just might be the intruder Dylan had seen walking purposefully through her home. There were a few other very notable elements that police would find in the house, which was detailed in the 18-page affidavit written by Payne on December 29, just ahead of the arrest of Colberger. Here's what Payne wrote in that affidavit. I also later noticed what appeared to be a tan leather knife sheath, laying on the bed next to Maddie Mogan's right side when viewed from the door.

The sheath was later processed and had K-bar, USMC, and the United States Marine Corps, Eagle Globe and Anchor in Signia, stamped on the outside of it. The Idaho State Lab later located a single source of mail DNA left on the button snap of the knife sheath. We'll get back

to the affidavit one second. That single source of mail DNA would prove to be crucial as you will

hear later on. In an episode of the Megan Kelly show from earlier this year, we talked with CC more about the DNA that was found at the crime scene. CC is known as the DNA detective

“and is one of the leading experts on what's called genetic genealogy. Listen. I think that he”

went to great lengths to not leave DNA. He likely had gloves on. He was, you know, educated about this. He would think he certainly would have made sure he wasn't leaving DNA behind, but he must have handled that knife sheath earlier when he didn't have gloves on. That's my guess. But I also want to point out that they don't have to reveal everything they have in the affidavit and you know that course. And so I think it's very possible they have additional DNA. And even if they didn't,

they might buy now because I'm sure they've been going through all of that physical evidence batch by batch sending that to the Idaho crime lab and trying to detect any additional DNA. So I don't think we'll really know what they have until this case progresses. And hopefully they will find more DNA or already have. It might be more complex. Meaning there might be

mixtures of blood cases I've worked where there was a frenzied stabbing almost always the knife has

slipped and cut the suspect as well. But then you're and you have a mixture and you might even have a mixture of three people in this case. Maybe you have his blood plus two of the victims blood for instance and they have to do what's called deconvolution where they extract out the victims DNA and are left with just that suspect DNA. And so it's possible that that could have taken more time, which is possibly why they were focusing on this knife sheath for the affidavit.

And speaking of other evidence, here's more from the affidavit. During the processing of the crime scene investigators found a latent shoe print. This was located during the second processing

of the crime scene by the ISP forensic team by first using a presumptive blood test and then amino

black a protein stain that detects the presence of cellular material. The detected shoe print showed a diamond-shaped pattern similar to the pattern of a van's type shoe, sool, just outside the door of DM's bedroom located on the second floor. This is consistent with DM's statement regarding the suspect's path of travel. The Cummings and going of that white Hyundai Allandra similar to the one Colberger owned would be studied in great detail. This is what we know.

An August 21st, 2022, Brian Colberger was detained as part of a traffic stop that occurred in

white 2015 Hyundai Allandra with Pennsylvania plate LFZ8649, which was set to expire soon.

“Colberger was reportedly pulled over less than two miles from the sight of the murders.”

In that stop, which occurred just before midnight, he received a ticket for failing to wear a seatbelt according to the traffic citation. While video of that encounter has not been released publicly, we know from the avidavit that Colberger provided his phone number as ending in eight four five eight, and that investigators conducted electronic database queries to begin to trace that phone number and the pings related to it. We also know that on October 14th, 2022 less than a

month before the murders, Brian Colberger was detained again as part of a traffic stop by a WSU Police

officer. This one was for running a red light, and that body camp footage has been released.

“So investigators had Colberger's cell phone data, and what did they do with it? They tried to see”

if they could find where that phone was pinging on the night of and the morning after the murders. This is from the avidavit. On November 13th, 2022, it approximately 242 AM. The eight four five eight phone was utilizing cellular resources that provide coverage to 1630 Northeast Valley Road, Department G201, Pullman, Washington, hereafter, the Colberger residents.

At approximately 247 AM, the eight four five eight phone utilized cellular resources that

provide coverage southeast of the Colberger residents consistent with the eight four five eight phone, leaving the Colberger residents and traveling south through Pullman, Washington. This is consistent

“with the movement of the white Alantra. At approximately 247 AM, the eight four five eight phones”

stops reporting to the network, which is consistent with either the phone being in an area without cellular coverage. The connection to the network is disabled, such as putting the phone in airplane mode or that phone is turned off. The eight four five eight phone does not report to the network again until approximately 4 48 AM. At which time it utilized cellular resources that provide coverage to Idaho State Highway 95 south of Moscow, Idaho, near Blaine, Idaho.

Between 4 50 AM and 5 26 AM, the phone utilized cellular resources that are consistent with the eight four five eight phone traveling south, an Idaho State Highway 95 to Genesis, Idaho, then traveling west toward Uniontown, Idaho, then north back to Pullman, Washington. At approximately 5 30 AM, the eight four five eight phone is utilizing resources that provide coverage to Pullman, Washington, and consistent with the phone traveling back to the Colberger residents.

The eight four five eight phones movements are consistent with the movements of the white Alantra that is observed traveling north on Stadium Drive at approximately 5 27 AM. Based on a review of the eight four five eight phones estimated locations in travel, the eight four five eight phones travel is consistent with that of the white Alantra. For the review indicated that the eight four five eight phone utilized cellular resources on November

13th, 2022 that are consistent with the eight four five eight phone leaving the area of the Colberger residents at approximately 9 AM and traveling to Moscow, Idaho. Specifically, the eight four five eight phone utilized cellular resources that would provide coverage to the King Road residents between 9 12 AM and 9 21 AM. The eight four five eight phone next utilized cellular resources that are consistent with the

eight four five eight phone traveling back to the area of the Colberger residents and arriving to the area at approximately 9 32 AM. Investigators found that the eight four five eight phone did connect to a cell phone tower that provides service to Moscow on November 14th, 2022, but investigators do not believe the eight four five eight phone was in Moscow on that date. The eight four five eight phone

the affidavit in a bit. So that's where things stood as of the end of November or at least as

the end of November approached. Christmas was nearing and the police did not believe that they had enough yet to make an arrest. And now, as Howard Bloom puts it, the discovery that Colberger had apparently turned off his phone during the time when the murders occurred was further tantalizing knowledge. But it was not enough. They also sourly realized to persuade a judge to issue an arrest warrant. All they could do for now was store this intelligence away until another vital part of the

“puzzle could be unearthed. The crucial eureka moment that would allow them to tie all the”

disparate pieces into a firm knot, a knot that not even the most industrious defense attorney could

ever hope to unravel. The entire country, or so it often seemed, was complaining that the case was

dragging on and on without resolution. It would be a disaster, not just professionally, but also for their own peace of mind, because Moscow was for many of them, a hometown too. If Colberger slipped out of the police's grasp, before handcuffs could be firmly locked around his wrists. And that brings us to the journey that was to come. As Brian Colberger was set to begin a cross-country journey with the FBI and other law enforcement monitoring closely, or at least trying to.

And he would have a guest on this journey. His father. As Bloom Wright's Michael Colberger, the father, was worried about the snow. Only days earlier, he had flown from Philadelphia to Seattle,

“then caught a twin engine and Breyer 170 jet for the one hour or so shuttle flight into the frigid”

Pullman Moscow Regional Airport. And now December 13, he was already heading back home.

Only this time, it would be a road trip. It was a fatiguing back and forth cross-country John, especially for a 67-year-old. But Colberger had promised his son Brian, who had nearly a month off before classes resumed at Washington State University, that he would accompany him on the drive back home for the Christmas break. And he was determined to make good on his pledge. Over the years, there had been some rough combat of times between the two of them. He'd even

had to get Brian into rehab to kick his teenage heroin habit. But now the young man seemed on a good path, studying for a PhD in criminal justice offered a promising career trajectory for Brian, and he can be imagined it must have puffed up a father with a prideful sense of parental

“accomplishment. After all, Michael's own life had been tarnished by not one, but two embarrassing”

bankruptcies and his workdays were a drudgery. Spent as a maintenance man at the dreary high school, his three children had attended. Perhaps he was even looking forward to this road trip as a way to revitalize his relationship with his son, a way to bury once and for all any lingering remnants of their old antagonisms. But now Michael, as he'd later recount to an associate, was largely focused only on the forecast. When it snowed, in the northwest, the accumulations were

routinely measured in feet, not inches, Michael knew, and so he wanted to get going. When the weather came in, it would be rough traveling in a seven-year-old Hyundai, Alantra. Without four will drive, he'd be slipping and sliding all over the road. So he urged Brian as they should pack up and get going. Now, his son agreed. Only once they were on the road, Brian did something, his father would later casually share with one of the mechanics at the garage near their home in Albright's

Phil Pennsylvania, who would service the car after the trip, that it caught him by surprise. Before Michael had headed out to Washington, he had googled the route back home. The quickest, most logical drive was pretty much a straight line, plowing across the country along I-90. Brian, however, buttonhooked south toward Colorado, where he'd pick up I-70, is seem to make little sense. Colorado and mid-December was snow country. There was no telling

what might suddenly come blowing down from the Rockies. But Brian, according to what his father told people, insisted the northern route across I-90 promised wintery conditions, better to head away from the weather, even if it added hours or even a day to the trip. It was a strategy that when explained that reasonable way was practical even prudent. But it seemed like something more devious to the FBI. Unknown to either the father or the son, the bureau had been determined to keep a watchful

I on that white Hyundai's trek across America. Only sources and law enforcement would confide with a bristle of embarrassment, not long after the car had pulled out of its space in the graduate

For several alarming hours or more, the authorities are keeping the precise details of the

“screw up very close to the vast for reasons you could understand the chief suspect in a quadruple”

homicide that had shocked the nation, had seemingly vanished. The bureau's watchers called it a hat box operation, and the jargon was a throwback to an era when g-men, sporting fedoras would be out in force on the street to monitor targets every move. A sea of hats would box the suspect in. These days, the watchers have a few more tricks at their disposal, under cover vehicles, surveillance vans, low-flying fixed wing planes, and that's just for starters, but the name

has stuck. And the surveillance on Brian Colbergre, according to published reports and interviews with officials, was hat boxed all the way. But as Colbergre headed across the country, in the very car they believed had been captured in the blurry surveillance footage,

“his father mystifyingly at his side, they had lost him, even before the hat box up could get”

underway. A mood of panic rapidly escalated into one of despair. Frankly, they began to search the records of automated license plate readers or ALPRs in nearby states. It was an exercise in futility. Nothing. Not a single hit. Then they got lucky. U.S. routes six passes straight through the small town of Loma, Colorado. And eight years ago, the Colorado Department of Transportation thought it was high time to install Loma's

first traffic light. It went up in 2015 at the bustling things being relative, of course,

intersection of Route 6 and Highway 139. It wasn't long after that when the engineers decided, it might as well have fixed an ALPR to the light pole. In on December 13th, it caught Washington State

“played CFB 8708, the white 2015 Alandra registered to Brian Colbergher.”

We should pause here in Blooms reporting to note that the FBI disputes that they ever lost Colbergher during his trip across the country. The FBI is aware of reports detailing alleged FBI surveillance on Idaho murder subject, Brian Colbergher, an FBI spokesperson said, "There are anonymous sources providing false information to the media." For his part, Bloom points to the affidavit itself and its curious wording, which notes the following, quote, "investigators believe that Colbergher

is still driving the 2015 white Alandra because his vehicle was captured on December 13th, 2022, by a licensed plate reader in Loma, Colorado." Blooms says his sources were within the FBI that he trusts them and he stands by his reporting, speaking of Blooms reporting back to it here. With this sighting, the hat box-op was once again underway. The watchers would keep their eyes

covertly on the car all the way to Pennsylvania. Fate had mercifully bestowed on them as second

chance and they were determined not to stumble. Still, they were not prepared for what happened next. The interstate was as flat and empty as the landscape. Any threat of snow had vanished. The dome of sky above I-70 was reassuringly blue. In Michael Colbergher's calm and steady universe, there was no reason to suspect that the FBI was lurking in the shadows. Even the suggestion of such clandestine goings on would likely have struck him as preposterous. But then,

as the Hyundai crept through Hancock County, Indiana, something changed, at 1041 on the morning of December 15th, as the car approached the 107 mile marker on the interstate, Brian Colbergher saw red and blue lights flashing in his rear view mirror. Any imagine. A sheriff's car was demanding that the vehicle pull over. Brian obeyed. He waited behind the wheel as the officer approached. What would happen next seemed destined to play out as high drama? At the very least, the car

approximately fit the description of a vehicle observed in the aftermath of a quadruple murder. The driver of the Moscow Police Department had alerted the nation was to be considered a person of interest in their investigation. As deputy Nick Ernstus walked with slow, measured steps toward the passenger side of the Hyundai, or Michael sat, there seemed to be no escape. There would be no springing free. The time of reckoning had arrived. Only as the tape

from Ernstus' body came revealed. The ensuing confrontation was all denuman. More farce than tragedy, the conversation between the coalburgers and the deputy moved forward with its own

Abbott and Costello routine. When the deputy officially demands where they are heading, Brian's response suggests nothing more than a casual drive. We're going to get some Thai food right now. That's when the father decides it's his turn to play the straight man.

Well, we're coming from WSU. Here's some of that incredible encounter captured on body cam.

“He's about to move. You're coming from Washington taking the university and you're going there?”

Oh, good to be going to the state. Oh, okay. Yeah, we're trying to do a bunch of these drive power. So, you know, work at the university here? Actually, he's been there. To the Indiana deputy, the initials have no meaning. It's all beyond him. So, both the father and son eager to please attempt to remedy the confusion and in the process only add to the officer's puzzlement. He can't decide whether both of them work at the university

or who, in fact, is the student or if they've headed out from Washington State on a cross-country

road trip to get Thai food in Pennsylvania. In the end, perhaps eager to escape from this madness, he warns them not to tailgate and lets them go without a ticket. As the body cam footage ends,

“it is difficult to discern who's happier to be driving off the coalburgers or the deputy.”

Yet a quick nine minutes after they're back on the interstate, Brian once again sees flashing lights in his rear view mirror. The coalburgers are stopped again. This time, it's a state trooper who pulls them over and here again, we can watch some of the body cam of that remarkable

interaction. Once more at the very least, their car should create a shock of recognition.

After the nationwide Moscow PD vehicle alert, it's a ticking bomb. Only against all odds, they're again simply reprimanded for tailgating and sent out their way without a ticket. Former CIA analyst and the creator of the CIA's Deception Detection Program, Phil Houston, he's actually a human lie detector. Join us earlier this year about these traffic stops. He gave his expert opinion on coalburgers' exchanges in them. Watch this.

When he asks where are you going? When a police officer stops you on the side of the road, this is where you're going. He's looking for your destination, so to speak. Brian lies about, it conceals the destination and really lies about what they're actually doing, which is traveling all the way across country, you know, from Washington to Pennsylvania. He says instead, we're just going to get some some typhoon right now.

He, Brian clearly doesn't want to engage the officer at all. He doesn't want to give him any

“information. His dad recognizes, I think, how bad Brian's answer sounded. And therefore,”

he's the one that got them back on the right path. So we're from Washington state. And, you know, when we're going elsewhere, we do have a destination. More from Bloom here and his reporting that draws from his conversations with sources inside the FBI. Yet unbeknownst to either the father or the son, it will be only a matter of time before their luck runs out. And while Michael's previous worries did not come to fruition, this one will. And what were the FBI thinking as they

from a discrete distance observed their targets being pulled over, not only once, but mind bogglingly, twice by the authorities. There is an iron rule law enforcement veterans will tell you that in any long running app, the unexpected is to be expected at any time. The outrageous, in fact, must be regarded as inevitable. Yet, according to sources familiar with the Bureau's skiddish temperament, as these two unanticipated traffic stops played out, a knowing patience was not the guiding

standard that December day. The agents were frustrated and they were angry. The possibilities were too dangerous. The main problem shared law enforcement officials with an arm's length of familiarity with the FBI surveillance operation was the watchers helpless passivity. All they could do was observe from a distance and wonder, had diligent Indiana law men spotted the car,

wanted by the Moscow PD. We're the locals about to make an arrest before the final incriminating piece had been fitted into the puzzle. If that happened, it had the potential to be a catastrophe. The suspect would be alerted and perhaps then, if he was advised by a canny lawyer,

the army of investigators would never have the opportunity to make their airtight case.

“Their second concern, however, was an even more dangerous prospect. Was the suspect armed?”

Would someone who they believed had killed four people hesitate to kill again? Would the highway cops become victims, too? Or would the suspect simply gun the Hyundai and race down the highway? The spectacle of another OJ like chase might be imminent? In the end, none of the apprehensive watchers' anxieties came to fruition, but a hard lesson, according to what other law enforcement officials heard, had been learned. This case had to

be wrapped up soon. If not anything could happen. There were too many imponderables. Time was

not on their side. In the ANC days following the Colbergres arrival, at last, in the Poconos

on the afternoon of December 16, the Moscow police suffered through variable moods. There were bursts when there was no denying that a great push forward was underway. Corporal Brett Payne, the PD's lead investigator, obtained a search warrant, and then a day later on December 23rd, he received those records of Colbergres' cell phone for the 24 hours before and after the homicides, the ones we told you about earlier when we were quoting from the affidavit.

Just as the case was nearing the finish line, cops and Moscow moaned, they had no choice but to hand it off to the Pennsylvania State Police. Colberger was now on the stateee's playing field.

They'd be the ones who would take the ball over the goal line. Major Chris Paris had been handpicked

by the FBI to run the app for the stateee's, and he was a shrewd choice. He looked like a linebacker, and he had a gruff, no nonsense edge. But he was also a thoughtful, scholarly man. He graduated Magna Cum Laudy from the University of Scranton, and he went on to get a lot of grieve from temple. And perhaps most valuable given the circumstances, Paris possessed a lawyerly sense of discretion.

“He shared the secret that a suspect was in the crosshairs with just an eight-person working group,”

a leak, a promiscuous whisper, and the whole case might be blown. For all though, Colberger was unaware, apparently of it, at the time, the stateee's and the suspect, were playing an intricate game of cat and mouse. There was Colberger, observed taking his Hyundai in for servicing at a garage in Effort, Pennsylvania, not far from his parents home. Next, he spotted wearing gloves, as he gives the vehicle a meticulous cleaning.

And of course, these are actions that can mean nothing or everything. It just depends on the preconceived notions that influence your judgment. A little harder to dismiss though is Colberger's sneaking over to deposit some trash in a neighbor's garbage pal at around 4 a.m. one morning, getting rid of incriminating evidence or just a bit of mischief. Once again, evil is in the eye of the beholder. But all this was before the great trash robbery, that was what some wags a troop

in, the state police barracks that was running the surveillance op later dubbed the pilfering. On December 27, major Paris received a request from the FBI to plunder the trash bins outside the Colberger residents. That same day, once the ladies were certain no one was looking, two troopers swooped in and made off with a pile of the Colberger's family to try this. The prolonged parcel was quickly shipped across the country to Meridian, Idaho. There,

at the Idaho State Police Crime Lab, on South Stratford Drive, a forensic team went to work sorting through the trash. It turned out to be a treasure trove. For all along the Moscow police

“had been holding on tight to a second secret, one that was no less charged than the statement”

from the eyewitness. A knife sheath stamped with a U.S. Marine Corps eagle, globe, and anchor insignia had been found lying on the bed next to Maddie Mogans' bloody corpse. And from the sheath's button snap, a speck of male DNA had been recovered. It was a minuscule sample, but it was all that was needed. When compared to Michael Colberger's DNA lifted from the garbage that had been clandestinely carried off, it proved nearly conclusively the techies confidently rejoiced

The next day, December 29, a triumphant Brett Paine sat down to finalize the arrest warrant

“for Brian Colberger. When he was done, he had no time to enjoy the moment of high achievement. Instead,”

full of intense urgency, an animating conviction that every moment counted, he hand-delivered the 18-page document to the courthouse. Moments after Judge Megan Marshall signed off, a call was made to Pennsylvania. It's a go. Major Paris was told, "Here's how Paine wrote about the discovery in the affidavit." On December 27, 2022, Pennsylvania agents recovered the trash from the Colberger family residence located in Allbright'sville, PA. That evidence was sent to the Idaho State Lab for testing.

On December 28, 2022, the Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash and the DNA profile obtained from the sheath identified a male as not being excluded as the biological father of suspect profile. At least 99.99.98% of the male population would be expected to be excluded

“from the possibility of being the suspect's biological father. And here is CC Moore on the trash poll.”

This is pretty common when investigative genetic genealogy has pointed law enforcement toward a certain individual or family. And they'll do what's called a trash poll. If they can't just follow that person and pick something up that they dropped, then they'll typically resort to waiting for that person to put their trash out on the curb. And most states allow this. It's considered abandoned at that point. And then they go through the trash and try to find an item that might

have DNA on it. But when it's a home like this, a household where there's multiple people, they don't know exactly who's DNA they're going to get. More from Bloom. Dynamic entry is only used to serve an arrest warrant when the threat matrix is code read. You go in with overwhelming

“force pounding down the doors, breaking windows, and setting off explosive devices. The strategy”

is meant not just to surprise the suspect, but also to scare the living daylights out of him.

Because there's one thing that's always rising up in the mind of any tactical cop charging through

the front door. If the target's waiting inside to ambush you, it doesn't matter too much what sort of tactics you use. This is his turf. He has the advantage. And if he's determined not to give up without a fight, bad things can happen. At just after midnight on December 30, a Pennsylvania state police special emergency response team or cert as ERT assembled at the gray barn like troop and barracks in Hazelton, Pennsylvania. There were about 24 of them. The usual 16 entry team

members and maybe eight sharpshooters and they were packing. Glock 40 caliber pistols were generally the weapon of choice and the point men as a rule carried two pistols. Those who would be

the first through the door were also armed with stubby black HK MP5 submachine guns. It was a

brutal weapon, particularly in an enclosed space. The backups had short-barled Remington 870 12 gauges. It was a shotgun meant for killing, not wounding. An overmilitary style camo uniforms, they were heavy, load-bearing tactical body armor, fitted out with level four strike plates. The early morning arrest of Brian Colberger would be a code red op dynamic entry all the way. It was so quiet, it seemed as if the cocking of a single rifle would rouse people from their slumber. But then

all hell broke loose. A door flew off its hinges, windows shattered, explosive charges boomed. The third team stormed the stunned Colberger's white-cappered home. In the end, without a single shot being fired, Brian Colberger was let off in handcuffs. I recognize the frustration with the lack of information that's been released. However, providing any details in this criminal investigation might have tamed it, the upcoming criminal prosecution, or alerted the suspect of our progress.

Mr. Colberger was taken into custody without incident. The scene was turned over to the FBI evidence response team for processing. Mr. Colberger was then turned over to the Monroe County prison, where he has remained in their custody sense. On January 4th, shackled and in a red jumpsuit, Colberger was flown in a tiny fixed wing single engine pilatus across the country. The plane landed at Moscow Pullman Regional Airport. The same airport work. Only about three

weeks earlier, Michael Colberger had arrived in anticipation of a convivial road trip with his son. But as Bloom writes, nothing in this case would be easy. They're existed quite a few

draw an epistemological distinction between what is objectively real and what is subjective opinion,

“just because the prosecutor says it's true. Well, that doesn't make it so. And the bad facts”

riddling the probable cause affidavit that police used to obtain Colberger's arrest as well as those in the laundry list of seemingly provocative items found in a search of Colberger's apartment in Washington are indeed disturbing. Item, the affidavit sites issue with a diamond-shaped pattern similar to the pattern of a van's type shoe style found at the scene of the crime. Well, does Colberger own a pair of vans? And even if it is established that he does, there's a photo that shows at

least one person in the house on King Road wearing vans prior to the murders. Item, the cell phone

tower data that links Colberger to the scene of the murders is more an approximation of his whereabouts than an exact location. And being in the vicinity is not at all the same as being

“at the scene of the crime. More damaging, they have a David with a remarkable candor admits to some”

confusion in this sort of analysis. Quote investigators found that the phone did connect to a cell phone tower that provides service to Moscow on November 14th 2022. But investigators do not believe the phone was in Moscow on that date. What? The prosecution is dating that the cell phone evidence is correct only some of the time. How is that going to fly with a jury? Item, the white Hyundai Alantra. While there are photos of the cars zooming through the Moscow streets on the night of the murder,

there is no clear photo of Colberger at the wheel that evening. Not a single one. Item, the DNA on the knife-sheet snap. It is apparently touch DNA. That is, it's derived from a fingerprint rather than a drop of blood. And that's pretty shaky evidence. Often more guess work in science.

“The courtroom reality is that in case after case, touch DNA has been tarnished by a muttly”

collection of false positive results. A smart defense attorney might argue that there's just as much likely hood of touch DNAs being accurate as a jurors winning the lottery. Who would want to condemn someone to execution based on those odds? Item, the eyewitness identification. Well, a lot of people have bushy eyebrows. And the testimony from a witness who was in, quote, frozen, shock, phase, as she put it might be problematic at best. And that's without even getting into why she waited

seven hours or so before making sure the police were notified. The point at truth might very well be that Dylan Mortensen, although she was not physically attacked, was another victim that night, and that she is in no shape to take the witness stand to face a rapid firing if not mean spirited defense counsel. Item, the murder weapon. Where is it? The police have not found the long-bladed knife used in the killings. And they have so far not been able to establish that coalburger

own such a weapon. But arguably the most perplexing question that the prosecutors will have to wrestle with if they hope to persuade a jury is why, why, what was the motive for someone to kill four college students in cold blood? And so far, there isn't an answer, but the exploration for a motive needs to take us into an examination of Brian Colberger himself, who he was at an early age, who he became, and attempt to get inside his head and really learn about what makes this guy tick.

As it turns out, the trip into the psyche of Brian Colberger would be a fascinating and deeply disturbing one. And that is where we will pick up next episode. Let's see you tomorrow. I am stuck in the depths of my mind, where I have to constantly battle my demons. Am I here? Or am I fake? I feel myself slipping away. Welcome to the Megan Kelly show everyone. I'm Megan Kelly, and welcome to episode three

of a special edition of the show, focused on the fascinating and disturbing case of Brian Colberger and the quadruple murder in a sleepy college Idaho town last year. We started the week diving into the gruesome stabbing and got to know the victims a bit. Yesterday, we walked through how

Colberger was identified and the incredible series of events that led to his arrest. Today,

which he denies, having anything to do with. As we bring you that story, we are thrilled to rely

“in part on the fantastic writing and reporting by journalist and author Howard Bloom,”

who covered the Idaho murders in great detail for air mail news, Bloom's forthcoming book on the case will be published in the spring by Harper Collins. Brian Christopher Colberger is 28 years old, but the quotes I read you at the beginning of this episode are from way back in 2011 when he was just 16. It has been reported by multiple outlets, including Bloom in the air mail, that Colberger wrote often on an early social media platform

called Tapotalk. He described a condition he had or claimed to have, known as Visual Snow. It's something I discussed with Bloom when he was a guest on the Megan Kelly show in March, watch. Doctors can't even agree on whether Visual Snow is a psychological state or a

“disease, and since they can't agree on what it is, they also different how to treat it or it”

can be treated. What the best source is I found for any insight into this are really in novels. Camoons, the stranger, opens up with a character who talks about feeling nothing that eventually leads to a murder on the beach. Salt has a, in one of his novels writes about a character that has the same sort of disassociation from the world. It's, you know, it's a existentialism on one level, and it's also dislocation from the world on another. And if you,

you know, if everything means less than zero, as Elvis Costello thinks, same as, you know, then you can do anything. Anything is ingested by it because it doesn't matter. From Bloom's reporting, they are the raw, but deviling forces that drove him, he explains, to contemplate suicide. They are the painful demons he wails to a friend that drove him to search for a sort of relief by mainlining heroin. And at the root of all his swirling emotions,

he diagnoses in the online postings with an unwavering certainty, is visual snow. Visual snow is a rare but very real and chronic neurological condition. To those who suffer from it, the world is viewed through a glass darkly. It's like looking at a television screen and the picture is fluttering. The images obscured by amorphous, grayish waves and scattering flickering dots. But is it a disease or is it a psychological condition? Doctors, according to the sparse literature,

throw up their hands in frustrated confusion. They just don't know. And what can't be diagnosed is even more difficult to treat. But for the teenage Brian Colberger, if his online post or any reliable guide, visual snow had at times buried his existence in an avalanche of despondency and desperation. His posts were caused from the wild. Some of Colberger's most telling teenage posts give us a window into who he might become. We have voiced them over here. October 29th, 2010.

I have completely disconnected from reality. I feel all the time that I'm living in my own reality. It seems as if my brain chemistry is altered from this, even though I am certain it's not.

First, I felt very uninterested in the things I usually like to do. But then it changed to the

point I saw no reason for anything and everything became boring to me. It feel at times completely disconnected. And as if I can't live like a normal person. When I think about my future, I think about how I will barely remember my mother and father, etc. Because I have an altered memory and also have been unable to think of them due to the 10 things I think about non-stop all at once. Visual snow, altered brain, tonight is disappointment, regret, etc.

I think that possibly I could have brought this onto myself from post-traumatic stress disorder

“or something similar. But I can't tell what it is. I remember how it was before and remember that I”

felt like it before. It is all real bullshit. If I have any chemistry change, I have this detox

program that can fix it. May 12th, 2011. I always feel as if I am not there, completely

de-personalized. Mentally, I experience fog, lack of comprehension at some times, feel like my life is a movie, de-personalization, depression, no interest in activity, constant thought of suicide, crazy

I feel like nothing has a point to it. When I get home, I am mean to my family.

This started when VS or Visual snow did. I felt no emotion and along with the de-personalization I can say and do whatever I want with little remorse. Everyone hates me. Pretty much. I am an asshole. July 4th, 2011. I have had this horrible de-personalization gone in my life for almost two years. I often find myself making simple human interactions, but it is as if I'm playing a role-playing games such as oblivion. I can see what is going on. I am slightly into it,

“but I can pause the game and focus on my real life. In this case, my life is the game and my”

old self can be reached by pausing the game. But how? I often think of things that humans do. Things I have done my whole life. I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self worth. As I am starting to view everything as this. Everything I have ever done makes no sense. How do things get this way? How am I wearing this shirt? And who decided that humans show where shirts like this? Are we all just advanced animals

with possession or is there more? More than I can't see. I can't connect. I view everything as if I would if I was playing oblivion. Pointless and full of nothing. Out of reality. I'm moving out of my house. My last holidays were already lived. But where was I?

“As my family group hugs and celebrates, I'm stuck in this void of nothing.”

Feeling completely no emotion. Feeling nothing. I feel dirty like there's dirt inside my head.

My mind. I'm always dizzy and confused. I feel no self worth. I am intelligent but I feel the opposite.

I say things that don't mean the last holiday in my house. The house I grew up in. The house I once contributed to. The house I once fell at home in is past. As I hug my family, I look into their faces. I see nothing. It is like I am looking at a video game but less. I feel less than mentally damaged. It is like I have severe brain damage. I'm stuck in the depths of my mind. These posts paint a picture of a severely depressed disturbed young man

riddled with pain, feeling himself, quote, slipping away from the balance of normality, constantly burdened by visual snow and the sound of screaming. Torture. And it wasn't just the posts on tapotalk. As Bloom lays out, there was also bristling anger uncovered by internet sleuths who have traced his teenage email to a posting on soundcloud. 11 years ago, co-workers-defined moods took flight in a howling rap song. You are not my equal.

You are evil but I'm the devil. He challenges. Listen. And now I'm going legal. Of course Bloom writes these posts and lyrics are the work of a teenager. More than a decade has flown by since they were written. Nevertheless, perhaps the English posts and the ferocious song are also a warning. Out of words, come events. The future cannot exist without having been envisioned in the past and one more puzzlement in this case must be confronted.

Are these teenage thought dreams? The intimations of an adult future. During high school, reports suggest Colberger was a bit of a misfit and an outcast. He was overweight. And according

to friends who knew him at the time, he fell into drugs, first marijuana and then heroin.

He began focusing on eating healthier, found kickboxing, began to lose weight in the process. Here's high school friend, Jack Balis, speaking to local NBC affiliate King 5 TV.

“So you definitely have your set and that caused issues in school. I believe it was the weight loss first.”

We lost first. I was, you know, I want to say 14 to maybe 16 between there was the big weight loss. I could be wrong on this but I'm pretty sure that it was and then it was the drugs. He got in drugs via the Queen's of his. It was definitely heroin. It was pretty darnly. But Colberger was able to straighten his life out or so it seemed. Whether his internal anguish ever abated is a much trickier question as we discussed with Howard Bloom. Everyone has talked about how he seems to be

planning the murders so carefully doing this and that. I think he was really spending the past

himself from killing people. I mean, at to this point he's made a remarkable recovery from a young man, a teenager who used heroin. He's gotten into a junior college and succeeds to get into college and winds up at a very remarkable graduate school in criminal justice where he's a teaching assistant. He's doing everything. He's pushed his father out of his life. Now he's taking his father back in the life. They're going to make a cross country trip home for Christmas. He's doing all this at the same

time. He knows who he is and how he will always be an outsider and he's trying to find his way

in and he really can't. I think that's also a untold story. Part speculation at this point that we want to try to get more of a John. This man who sees himself as someone more sinned against and sinning

“and that his life is in his way a horror story. It's also a tragedy too.”

After Colberg are graduated high school. He went to college at Decayles University in Pennsylvania. He got his bachelor's degree in 2020 and a master's degree in criminal justice in 2022. One professor of his, Dr. Michelle Bulger, who advised Colberg are on his master's thesis

in the criminal justice department at Decayles University. She's very well respected.

Told a daily mail reporter. He was a brilliant student. In my 10 years of teaching, she raved. I've only recommended two students to a PhD program and he was one of them. He was one of my best students ever and quote. Here's more from those who knew him, including friends and classmates. He wanted to do something that impacted people in a good way. People were not his strong suit

“and I think through his criminology study, he was really trying to understand humans”

and try to understand himself. I think a lot of people who were close to him are feeling this massive amounts of guilt. Why didn't I see it? Did I miss something? Where did it go wrong? He seemed very comfortable around other people. He was fairly quick to awful his opinion and thoughts

and he was always participating fairly eagerly in classroom discussions.

Does anything else come to mind that Brian said to you in the past that today you think might be of interest? There was a comment that he made. It was just kind of a flippant guide-talk thing. At one point he just idly mentioned, you know, I can go down to a ball or club and just have pretty much any lady I want. Looking back over the last four months is that

“I feel like there should have been signs that I should have seen and I didn't.”

I was blindsided. Well, Coburgor may have bragged about his luck with the ladies. No girlfriend has emerged at all from any point. One woman posted a TikTok about a date. She says she had a single date with Coburgor, which did not go well. Watch. We matched on Tinder. We talked for a couple of hours and then he was like, "Hey, you want to go to the movies with me tonight?" And I was like,

"Sure." We ended up going back to my dorm and he kind of invited himself inside. If you try to touch me, not like inappropriately, just like trying to tickle me and like rub my shoulders and stuff and I was like, "Why are you touching me or what are you doing?" And he would just like get super serious and he's like, "I'm not." And I'm like, "You are, though." And he's like, "I'm not touching you." Kind of like, trying to gaslight me into thinking that he didn't touch me.

I was just weird. But then I was like, "I'm just going to run to the bathroom quick and he was like, okay." And then he followed me to the bathroom, which I thought was kind of weird. So I proceeded to pretend to throw up to get him to leave. He ended up messaging me on Tinder that he was going to go and I was like, "Awesome." My plan worked. And then I'm about an hour later, he texted me and said, "I had good birthday tips."

Some who observed him in his role as a teaching assistant saw a man anything but comfortable. When he was standing in front of the class, it was like he was, you know, in a box. He was very, I don't know, uncomfortable, I guess. Like he felt like he was perpetually uncomfortable.

16. His criminal justice studies brought more public outreach, like the Reddit post from his time

at Decayals asking for research participation from criminals. Some criminologists say it's pretty standard for the field to send things like this out, but still, it's chilling when you know what he would later be accused of. Hello, my name is Brian. He writes, "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 seeks

to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense, with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience. In the event that your most recent offense was not

“one that led to a conviction, you may still participate. What sort of questions did Colbergre ask?”

Here's what was uncovered from the survey itself. Questions included the following.

Did you struggle with or fight the victim? Did you prepare for the crime before leaving your home? Please detail what you were thinking and feeling at this point. How did you travel to and enter the location that the crime occurred? After arriving, what steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target? Please detail your thoughts and feelings? 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. What was the first move you made in order to accomplish your goal? Please detail any thoughts and feelings at this point. How did you accomplish your goal? Please explain what you were thinking and feeling. Before leaving is there anything

“else you did? How did you leave the scene? After committing the crime, what were you thinking and feeling?”

After the sales, Colbergre moved west, a criminology doctoral student now at Washington State University. He began the program in the fall of 2022, mere months before the murders in the neighboring state. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Washington, he applied for an internship at the nearby Polman Police Department. In the application essay which Idaho cops leader shared, Colbergre with apparent self-affirming pride, wrote that he had an interest in assisting rural law enforcement

agencies with how to better collect and analyze technological data in public safety operations. So what should we make of Colbergre's interest in criminology and his attempts to work with local police? It's a question I asked CIA officer and expert in deception. Phil Houston earlier this year.

“In my mind, this fits into the category of what we call countermeasure and behavior. So it's starting”

out, you know, very early. What I mean by early is there's still a month's off from a killing, but in his mind he may well have had a something in his mind that he was going to do that was bad. So joining the police department, having some connection by the police department and his

mind, might very likely have served two purposes. First of all, from the persuasion context,

it's he's an insider now. Why would anyone look at him, you know, immediately as the, you know, the perpetrator? And then secondly, if he's inside, it's possible he may get some access to what's going on in the investigation to details of the investigation that may give him some word early wanting, if the police do start to, you know, zero in on him. It does not appear Colberger ever landed that police internship. However, he did have a meeting with

the chief of police inside addition obtained an email exchange between Colberger and Gary Jenkins, the top cop in Pullman, Washington at the time. Quote, it was a great pleasure to meet with you today and share my thoughts and excitement regarding the research assistantship for public safety. wrote Colberger, great to meet and talk to you as well responded Jenkins. Jenkins would go on to take a job as the campus chief of police at Washington State University, the force that would

later help identify Colberger's vehicle as the one police believed was seen leaving the murder site that evening. After the murders, Colberger may have returned to an old habit, posting about himself online. You see, there was massive interest in this case online and several reporters believe Colberger himself was among the crew on social media openly discussing the case. One Facebook user named Papa Roger was a regular poster in a discussion group about the murders.

or at least took a very lucky guess. Quote, "Of the evidence released,

“the murder weapon has been consistent as a large fixed-blade knife. This leads me to believe”

they found the sheath." He wrote, "This was before there were public reports that police had indeed found the knife sheath inside that house. Meanwhile on Reddit, in the Moscow murder's group, Moscow being the town where the killings took place, one user named inside looking, seemed to have inside details about the method behind the murders. "Speculation," it began.

"Killer parked behind the house, approached property through treeline, entered sliding door

and left it open, committed murders, and exited sliding door. One knife, according to the coroner's statement, time of murder, approximately 3.20 a.m. to 3.40 a.m. according to car fleeing scene,

“and on camera on highway eight, approximately 3.45 a.m. vehicle left skid marks upon exit."”

Since Colberger was arrested and held without bail, pop a Roger and inside looking, have not posted on Facebook or Reddit. As one might suspect Brian Colberger's troubles were not limited to his head. His interactions with women were awkward and at times inappropriate as we alluded to earlier. There were reports of him getting kicked out of a high school vocational law enforcement program after complaints from several

girls, creepy interactions with women in college, and more recently, "Dateline" of NBC reported Colberger befriended a female colleague at Washington State who contacted him after she thought someone had broken into her apartment. Colberger helped her, reports NBC by installing security cameras at her place. According to Dateline authorities believed it was Colberger himself who had broken into that apartment and that he installed the cameras so that he would be able to spy on this young

woman, or perhaps something even more sinister. Former FBI criminal profiler, Candace DeLong, was a guest on this program in January, 2023, and she had this to say about Colberger and women. One of the things I find interesting and possibly telling, a lot of female friends from high school college and even recently in his lab program talked about him, various things to say, "No former girlfriend or former intimate person have come forward, possibly because, you know,

to be oh my gosh, you know, I was I wrong to be involved with this guy, but I wonder if he simply hasn't had an intimate relationship, a romantic relationship." And the reason I think that is without question, these, this was a targeted murder and one of the, one of the victims, the two blondes, was brutalized stabbed many more times than the other one. I think she was probably the target. One of the things that I think of regarding, pardon me, motivation

is there was no sexual assault, but there was certainly a display of anger and rage and possibly revenge. There are many murders and it's happening more lately by men murdering women in this way, anger, multiple stab wounds. It's not, it's rarely a gunshot. It's stabbing someone of course

“is in their face, personal, I hate you, I hate you, that kind of thing. And that's what we see here.”

So I am wondering if he, well, there's actually a term for it, Megan and it's in cell,

which stands for involuntarily, some of it. So no lovers that we know of, never my girlfriend's,

but what of his family? His mother Marianne worked at the same local school district as his father. She was in aid for special needs students. He has two older sisters, Amanda and Melissa, a latter of whom was a mental health therapist, some reports indicate that both sisters

the one who flew out to make that long trip across the country with Brian as the FBI was tracking him, more here from my interview with Howard Bloom. Here's his father, he's 67 years old, doesn't have a ton of money, clearly he's a janitor, he's been bankrupt twice,

he's going to fly out to first you got to go to Seattle, then you got to fly on another flight

into Washington, Poland, go across country, and then you got to quickly make a turnaround. And he's

“looking, I think, and this is what people told me to try to get back, make a men's with his son,”

say, you know, we were on the wrong path, I tried to set you right, there was a great deal of antagonism between us, but now things are hunky-dory, this is a bright future, you're going to have a good playing job, you're going to be a professor, all things are good, what does he know? You know, what's going on in his son's world? I think this trip across America, his father to son journey is the center of its own interesting little drama.

That trip took Brian back to his childhood home, and to the place where police would ultimately

arrest him. Reports were that upon making their dynamic entry, police found Colbergour, a week, just before 13 AM wearing rubber gloves and packing his trash into Ziploc bags. He did not resist and the police affected a search of the premises. From his parents home, police recovered a cell phone, a laptop, two containers of a green leafy substance, along with black face masks, a black hat, and several articles of dark colored clothing, along with a book with underlining on page 118,

as well as a clock 22, 40 caliber handgun, and empty magazines. They also found a Smith in West and Pocketknife, and more. Back at Colbergour's student residence in Washington State, police searched as well, retrieving a stained mattress cover, a computer tower, various receipts, a dust container from a missile power force vacuum cleaner, a fire TV stick with a cord and plug, and what's described as one possible animal hair strand. His childhood home

and his graduate student housing, both poured through by police looking for any clue as to why how anything, tying Colbergour to this crime. The home of his boyhood on happiness and the adult home to what seemed a new kind of grievance and a freedom now to act on it. Retired FBI Profiler,

James Fitzgerald. The Ted Kuzinski was about the same age when he launched his first bomb

at the Chicago and then four of them right after that. Some people take some hunger to mature in terms of their criminal sophistication or devolve in terms of their psychological disorders.

“Not clinically saying that. So who knows exactly what happened? I think a big factor with that”

with BK is that I think he grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I'm from Philadelphia, originally I know that area. He went to school a little bit away from there. But look what he finally did at the age of 28 or so. He travels 2,500 miles across country. He's far away now, finally from the tentacles of his parents, of his familial upbringing, the home, the neighborhood where he grew up. And he may be thinking for the first time, I am finally on my own. I can do what I want.

I don't have any daily reporting or weekend reporting to any parents or authority figures. This is my opportunity. It doesn't mean he moved out there consciously to kill for people. It's just that it was a Jupiter aligning with Mars with a few other planets in there. And of course not in a good way. We have really this, I say, Hodge Fajr or Mishmash of all kinds of personality issues, finally coming together for him. And again, for some

people that happens in a good way. You know what? I'm finally going to college. I'm finally going to join the military graduate school, whatever. This guy, it was about paying back sort of a, as we call, you know, a grievance collector, some psychologists use that term. All these grievances that build up the foundation were laid of brick by brick by brick. And it's finally hit sort of this crescendo in, in of all places, Moscow, Idaho. And this aligns at the same time

and these poor four victims are the one to pay the price for his, the alleged grievances placed against him. Grievous and perhaps they related emotion of envy. We're going to get to that soon.

“Of course, this all presumes that coalburger is, in fact, guilty. But what if? What if?”

Next episode, the prosecution's case against Brian coalburger plus coalburger's defense.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly show. I'm Megan Kelly. On this special edition of the show,

we bring you deep into the fascinating and disturbing case of Brian coalburger and the murder of four young college students in Idaho. The trial of Brian coalburger is expected to begin sometime in 2024. We have brought you the details of the murder that November early morning of coalburgers arrest. And we went deep into the psyche of the man accused of committing these heinous crimes. Today, we examine the trial ahead. What is the case legally speaking against Brian coalburger?

“What are the key components you should expect prosecutors to lean on when they get in front of a jury?”

And keep in mind, we are going to get to watch as all of this plays out. The judge has agreed to televised this trial. And we will be with courtroom cameras and without media, but America will have a front row seat for the people versus Brian coalburger. It may sound like an open and shut case for the prosecution, but trial attorney after trial attorney seasoned pros have been warning us all year not so fast that this case is far from a

slam dunk for prosecutors. It's not going to be easy. But first, remember Brian coalburger

through his attorneys maintains that he is innocent. Following his arrest, his initial public defender in Pennsylvania, Jason Lebar, released a statement on coalburger's behalf that reads coalburger is eager to be exonerated and looks forward to resolving these matters as soon as possible. Eager to be exonerated. Mr. coalburger, the statement goes on has been accused of very serious crimes, but the American Justice System cloaks him in a veil of innocence. He should be presumed

innocent until proven otherwise, not tried in the court of public opinion. One should not pass

judgment about the facts of the case, unless and until a fair trial in court, at which time

all sides may be heard and inferences challenged. Lebar told NBC's today show that Brian believes

“he will be exonerated. He believes he's going to be exonerated. That's what he believes. Those were his words.”

When we interviewed Phil Houston, author of the book Spy the lie and former CIA officer, he noted that exonerated comment. He did release a statement to us all of us through his lawyer that he looks forward to being exonerated. So he's definitely trying to tell us I am going to be found not guilty, but the words used raise a red flag for you. Why? There's something very important missing from that statement, Megan, and that is I didn't do it. And it is in their efforts

to focus on convincing everybody that they didn't do what they forget to say. I didn't do it. And it is not a truthful fact for them. In fact, they're dealing mentally with an ugly fact, which is I did do it. And so that gets pushed to the background. And now I have to focus on

“strategy and how do I get out of this. Since the arrest, we have heard bits and pieces”

from Colberger's defense team. In May at Colberger's arrangement, he and his attorney made the bizarre decision to stand silent and make the judge enter Colberger's not guilty plea. In this Taylor, he's Mr. Colberger prepared to lead to these charges. You want our field to stand inside. Because I'm just for Colberger, he is standing silent. I'm going to enter that guilty plea. Each charge has one, two, three, four, and five.

Colberger sat there in an orange jumpsuit, but did not speak. Colberger's defense team has been very active in hammering the prosecution with motion practice. In June, in an effort to get the DNA evidence thrown out, the defense floated a theory that Colberger's DNA might have been planted on the knife sheath and described the process as rigged, saying the state was purely focused on Colberger and used a quote bizarrely complex DNA tree experiment to make their match.

They tried to dismiss the grand jury indictment entirely, claiming that the grand jury had been misled about the proper standard of proof that was not successful. And then, in a formal objection, the defense team has gone public with one hint of what we believe is to comment trial,

get into it in just a bit. And of course, the big news came in August with the trial just six

“weeks away as of then, Colberger waved his right to a speedy trial, and the trial that was said to”

begin in October was postponed indefinitely. His defense team argued they needed far more time to prepare and go through all the material provided to them by the prosecution, especially as the state said, they planned to seek the death penalty in this case. So here we sit with no

trial date as of December 2023. Soon, we will take you down an incredible road, a truly fascinating

possibility about an entirely different direction this case could take once those defense attorneys get on their feet. A theory expertly crafted by the longtime journalist and author Howard Bloom, who covered this case in great detail for air mail news. Bloom's forthcoming book on this case will

“be published in the spring by Harper Collins and I don't want to miss that. We're going to bring”

you some of Bloom's writing throughout this episode with his agreement. But let's start with the case against Colberger. The DNA evidence found on the knife sheath in the house on 1122 King Road.

That's critical. But as Bloom writes, the DNA here may not be exactly irrefutable. The consumer

DNA kits that are sold in your local CVS need about 750 to 1,000 nanograms to find out all they need to know about you. That's not much. It's smaller than a speck of floating dust and a whole lot less substantial. A single nanogram is as heavy as a breeze. It weighs a few trillions of a pound. There's nothing to it. But crime scenes often contain a whole lot less DNA than that. The forensic

“teams will routinely wind up with only 100 or so nanograms of DNA. The scientists can nevertheless”

work their magic and use even this microscopic amount of genetic evidence to nail the criminal.

The problem, however, was that the DNA on the knife sheath here authorities would

concede on background was less than 100 nanograms. A whole lot less, a mere fraction, in fact, of a single nanogram. Nothing more than just a handful of microscopic sized cells. In total, according to knowledgeable sources, about 20 cells reports Bloom. Maybe they whispered even fewer. The DNA sample was a small as a fragment of a speck balanced on the head of a tiny pin. In no longer mattered that they had previously drawn a blank,

trying to make a link between the DNA on the knife sheath, button, and Brian Colbergre, they had succeeded in doing the next best thing. And they were convinced that was good enough. They had matched the speck of DNA recovered from the murder house to the DNA embedded in the trash of Michael Colbergre, the suspect's father. And while moralists might find biblical authority for the argument that the father is not responsible for his son's alleged sins, the more practical geneticists had found

an indisputable link, quote, "at least 99.9998% of the male population would be expected to be excluded from the possibility of being the suspect's biological father." And quote, meaning the DNA on the knife sheath, button, belonged the Idaho authorities asserted to Michael Colbergre's son, Brian. So they had the knife sheath with a miraculous DNA match, but miniscule amounts and apparently only touched DNA, which as we discussed in episode two, is not exactly a smoking gun. A defense

attorney can do a lot to poke holes in touch DNA. And while the knife sheath was found, the knife was not. Where's the supposed murder weapon? Still nothing on that, as far as we know. Then there's the evidence around the white 2015 Hyundai Allantra that happens to be Colbergre's car. And separate but related, the cell phone pings from Colbergre's phone. That's not a slam down for the prosecution here either. Take for instructive example, the now infamous sightings

of the white Hyundai Allantra on surveillance camera footage in the vicinity of the King Roadhouse in the pre-dawn minutes subsequent to the savage killings of the four college students. Within days of the murders, the Moscow police had gathered a stream of video

of the images. They were flickering, recorded and varying light. The pixels had captured a fast-moving

“white car but that was about all the local cops could say for sure. So the promising but far from”

conclusive videos were swiftly dispatched to building 27958A PODE Quantico Virginia. That was where the forensic examiners of the image analysis unit of the FBI, operational technology division worked their magic using a bit of software that had been originally

developed at the cost of about one million taxpayer dollars for a secretive defense department

outfit nestled deep in the clandestine heart of the deep state, the irregular warfare technical support directorate. With the click of a few computer keys, the program searches through a staggering inventory of cars until it ultimately according to the confident government description quote, "Identifies the making model of the vehicle in a still image." And it worked, like a charm,

“on the handful of videos the Moscow cops had gathered, or more precisely, three charms.”

The FBI forensic examiner first deduced that suspect vehicle one was a 2011 through 13 Hyundai Alantra, then quote, "a pun further review to use the shagrind phrase of the candid Idaho authorities. He decided the mysterious

Hyundai might very well be actually a 2011 through 16 vehicle." And when he poured over the image of a car

consistent with a Hyundai near the murder scene that was caught on camera, not long after the killings racing toward Pullman Washington, he deduced that it was a 2014 through 16 Hyundai. That is, he cast a pretty broad net, and he cast it three times to boot. Still, when it turned out that Brian Colbergour owned a 2015 white Hyundai Alantra, it was right in the ballpark of the FBI's analysis of the making model of suspect vehicle one.

“But it was a super dome-sized ballpark, it had been stretched to cover five full years of cars.”

A smart defense attorney could drive a fleet of Hyundai's through a speculative gap that wide.

And that wasn't all. It was further caused for hand-winging in the aftermath of the FBI's

haunted forensic image analysis. Despite all the inventive manipulation of the pixels in the video footage of suspect vehicle one, the analysts still could not come up with a legible shot of the license plate. They couldn't even offer a guess. They had no idea. Even more vexing, there was an a single legible image of the driver. The bureau wizards tried all sorts of photographic tricks to pull a face from the blur as you can imagine. In the end, however, the best they could decipher

was a dark, murky shadow hovering over the steering wheel and he can't slap handcuffs on a shadow. At a glance, the new evidence seemed deeply incriminating. Colbergour's car was arguably placed near the King Roadhouse immediately before the murder and later, high-telling it away from the scene of the crime in the pre-dawn aftermath. His cell phone pinged to towers that seemed to correlate to the Alantra's route. However, when examined closely, it turned out that the maps had been

sketched with a swirling impressionistic hand, rather than with a cartographer's rigor. What went unmentioned deliberately when the police shared their handy work with a public was that those cell phone towers cast a wide net. Their range can be as broad as 14 miles and in a cozy town like Moscow, that takes in a whole lot of territory. It's more wishful thinking than solid detective work to put Colbergour's phone at a precise spot at a certain time. Being in the vicinity

is not the same as being at an exact address. Just ask anyone who's Amazon delivery wound up at a neighbor's house, or any of the combined of defense attorneys who have succeeded in convincing courts to question the reliability and accuracy of the FBI's attempts to map the signal footprints cast by cell towers. Our Megan Kelly show lawyers, they come on for a segment we have called Kelly's Court. They know the challenges here. As famed, former prosecutor Marsha

Clark and defense attorney Mark Garagos discussed with me when we had them on earlier this year. The car was spotted there by surveillance cameras before the fact, for weeks before the fact, which indicates the possibility of stalking and then you have the cell phone pings that corroborate the movements of the car. Then you have the observation by DM, the other girl who lives there, that makes it very clear. The intruder is there, and also she has the one characteristic

And I'm never a big fan of I witness identification cases. But when you start to put it all together,

it is starting to look that way. Now you're right, at this point, it's not a slam dunk.

“It looks very much like it's moving in that direction. But that's why they're continuing to investigate.”

And, you know, of course, they're going to turn his apartment upside down. They're going to turn this crime scene upside down. And we're going to see a lot more in days to come. Guy, Mark, what are your thoughts on that? I don't know. We would, with Marsha, I think that you've got, to me, it's probable cause all day long. However, I've said it before and I'll say it again. There's so many holes in this. I've had,

I can't tell you the number of murder cases that have, that have turned out that the cell phone evidence ended up exonerating my client as opposed to showing that he was guilty. As I'm sitting right here, I could be using my phone. And it could be pinging onto two towers, 12 miles away from each other,

“just by virtue of the amount of traffic on one of the towers. So I've never been a fan of the cell”

phone triangulation. It's a good tool to try to get you there. But I've used it to show that somebody was 40 miles away at the time of the crime and exonerated them. So that's not going to, that's not going to get them there. They also, the fact that the phone was not being used during the two-hour period. I know law enforcement speculates that he turned it off. There's other explanations, like he wasn't there. So those kinds of things, you get jury instructions to say two

reasonable alternatives. You got to pick the one that points towards innocence. They need more evidence. There is at least one other arrow in the prosecution's quiver. The possibility of an actual eyewitness. As we told you about an episode one, her name is Dylan Mortensen. Yes, one of the

surviving roommates claims to have actually seen the killer. Despite the fact that she never called

a police until someone else did it from her phone more than seven hours later. Still, she described to police the next day seeing someone five-ten or taller male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. This physical description, while vague, certainly matches coalburger. Will it be enough? As Bloom writes, cop after cop promises that the single unshakable reason coalburger will be sent by the state to his richly deserved death is Bill Thompson, the county

prosecutor. Thompson is long white, biblical beard, flailing about as the wind roars. Thompson in his down-home uniform of jeans and fleece vests. Thompson, the rhyme musician who plays rock, folk country with his band, Thompson, who had been in office for over 30 years, Thompson, who had famously done the impossible in the closely followed Rachel Anderson murder case and won a conviction without the body ever being found. An improbable victory that sent no less a culprit than a blood

relative of Al Capone to jail for life. Rumor has it that this will be Thompson's last hurrah. There is no way cops believe that he would retire to idle away his days, strumming his guitar, and casting his fishing rod without having secured his already impressive reputation with a final victory in a big trial like this. And trials just don't come any bigger than this one

“in Lay Talk County, but will it all be enough? Will it be enough for a prosecution to prevail?”

Let's get to the defense. First up, and Taylor. Cole Berger's lead public defense attorney in action from this year. "I have of course no, we have been representing this with a cover of our sense of very innovative December 2020, too. Enduring at the course of the last several months, there has been a lot of discovery that's been requested and a lot that's been supplied. I come here asking a court to tell the summary, I'm seeking an order directing that we receive

process every." As we told you, the defenses made clear that they plan on arguing that Cole Berger

has an alibi. Well, here's what we know. In August, defense attorney Ann Taylor and her team

filed a formal statement, disclosing that Cole Berger plans to use an alibi defense. She's required to tell the court that, but she teased that it would be a unique one from the filing quote, "Mr. Cole Berger has long had a habit of going for drives alone. Often he would go for drives at night, he did so late on November 12th and into November 13th 2022." Mr. Cole Berger is not

witness to say precisely where Mr. Cole Berger was at each moment of the hours between late night

November 12th and early morning November 13th 2022. He was out driving during the late night and early morning hours of November 12th through 13th 2022. Council for Mr. Cole Berger is aware that case law broadens the definition of alibi with the statutory requirement of a specific location to more broadly include disclosure of information that tends to state the person claiming alibi was at a place other than the location of an offense. Mr. Cole Berger has complied to the extent

possible at this time. Corroparation of Brian Cole Berger, not being at 1122 King, may be brought out through cross-examination of the state's witnesses. At this time, Mr. Cole Berger cannot be more specific about the possible witnesses and exactly what they will say,

“the defense has been hampered by the state's own choices. The state chose a secret grand jury”

rather than the planned preliminary hearing. Had the state move forward with the preliminary hearing, the defense would have had the opportunity to develop testimony through cross-examination and witness presentation. That's it. That's his quote, "alibi." He was out driving alone, but there also may be corroboration of him, not being at the location, brought out through some unspecified future cross-examination of someone and witness presentation, but we don't know

of exactly whom. Now we do know that Cole Berger's neighbor in Washington state said that Cole Berger was often active at night. But what about that night? November 12, leading into the 13th, could there be more to the story? His lawyers have been diligent. They have pounded the courthouse table with motions, a rat attack of demands for discovery objections to protective orders, and so on, even a curious request for the personnel files of three of the cops who played a role

in helping to clamp the cuffs on Cole Berger. It's a seemingly desperate strategy that has left

the Moscow Idaho authorities bemused Howard Bloom reports. In the second floor, detective

Shack of the Moscow Police Department of Building, the mood is he says, "Hotty and confident."

“Some other dude did it. How many times have they heard that and how did those cases work out?”

We got our man, the insist, and there's no way he's going to wiggle out of this. With an attention-grabbing oratorical drum roll, defense sources enumerate the large, lingering mysteries the prosecution has refused to address, and they very pointedly make the case that these inconvenient truths, when lined up end to end, hint at another, still untold story. Consider the timeline for the murders. The prosecution asserts was an extremely tight window.

Remember, one victim was on her phone looking at TikTok at 412 AM, and police estimate the suspect was gone by 425 AM, could a single assassin, a graduate student, not a secaryo, get the job done with such discipline professionalism, and then disappear into the night without leaving a single drop of his blood in the house in his car on his clothes or in his apartment? The stunned cops arriving on the scene had described what they encountered as a blood bath. Is this lack of blood evidence

“testimony to the killer's facetidiousness or a prod to go down other roominative paths?”

And remember, too, Kaylee's father had found a measure of small comfort in the fact that his brave daughter had the coroner had revealed to him, fought back like a tiger, and yet no traces of cuts, scrapes, or bruises, were observed on Brian Colberger. Four young fit targets, and he somehow traipsed away with his pasty skin as smooth and unblemished as any sedentary academics. Then there's the coroner's up to autopsy reports. What was behind

the delay in the determination of Ethan's wounds? The autopsy was performed on November 17, but the report on his death was not issued for nearly a month, December 15. Had there been a problem in reaching the findings? A final analysis that had been subject to weeks of debate. The coroner's descriptions of the wounds as noted in court documents seems to differ from Florida floor in the house. Kaylee and Maddie lying in the same bed

on the third floor suffered through, quote, "visible stab wounds." Yet on the floor,

below, Zana succumbed to quote, "woon's caused by an edged weapon." What does that mean?

Was there some doubt in the coroner's mind that the wounds were all caused by the same weapon?

“And speaking of the murder weapon, where is it? The knife? Or is it knives? Used in the attack”

has not been found. There is not an incriminating trace of a weapon that can be tied to coal burger, at least not that we know of. But these suspicions are just preludes to the bigger mysteries that keep the defense up at night. In an objection to state's motion for protective order, they had filed late in June. The team zeroed in on a few of the lingering questions. It is a revelatory document and a provocative one. They point out that back in December,

the prosecution was made aware of two additional males, DNA, found inside the King Road House,

as well as male DNA on a glove, found outside the residents just days after the murders.

If the DNA had been coal burgers, the prosecution would have been screaming this revelation from the Moscow rooftops. The state's stony silence, the defense beliefs, can mean only one thing.

“The DNA comes from three other men. And so the obvious and yet very pertinent questions remain”

unanswered. Who are they? And how do these three unknown men fit into the horrific events of that night if at all? And there is still another ticking bomb in the court document. The motion dramatically demolishes the tantalizing press reports that had been buzzing around the case for several months. Forget the unfounded stories about online direct messages between coal burger and one of the victims. Forget the alleged run-in at a main street Moscow restaurant where two of the girls

worked. The defense asserts plainly that there is no connection, quote unquote, between Mr. coalburger and the victims. And if there is no connection, then there is no motive, no obvious motive anyway. And without a motive, the random brutal killing of four college students by a grad student from a nearby university sure is an enigma. Why? Why would he do it? It doesn't make sense.

“But there's still another puzzler at the beating heart of this case.”

Namely, the eight-hour gap between one of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen,

first heard disquieting noises in the house and spotted a masked, black-dressed intruder.

Police were finally summoned. Eight hours later. There have been a lot of agile, emphatic offerings to explain away this remarkable delay, and none so far the defense believes has been satisfactory, or they believe has the ring of truth. Meanwhile, these simmering doubts have only intensified, now that the defense has been able to read the roommates, grand jury testimony, a person familiar with the grand jury findings that led to coal

burgers indictment, told Howard Bloom with undisguised, bafflement and frustration, that Dylan Mortensen's testimony quote raised more questions than it answered. Then the defense, along with virtually everyone else with access to the internet, watched a newly released video that showed a pickup truck leaving the neighborhood of the murder scene just minutes after the White Hyundai Alantra. Was this some neighbor heading off at a pre-dawn

hour to his early morning job? Aromio, who didn't want to stay for breakfast? Or was it something else a whole lot more significant? Perhaps it was another piece in a complex puzzle that, despite the state's confident assurances, has not yet been satisfactorily pieced together. So, the defense has gone on offense. The accumulated doubts have worked to liberate them from poking holes in the prosecution's case, and with this freedom, they have begun to explore

new narratives, alternative versions of what might have happened on that fateful night in November on King Road. And if coalburger was not the killer, or if he was an accomplice, rather than the sole perp, then they realized they had to go back to what had been previously brushed over. They had to work their way to an explanation that made sense. And the farther they traveled, according to people familiar with what the defense team is exploring, the more the trail lead

inexorably to drugs. We know about coalburgers past drug use. We also know from a variety of reporting that the area where the murders took place was a hotbed of drug activity. Then last March, a former University of Idaho, Frat President, a 22-year-old journalism major in his junior year, died. And in the aftermath of his sad and needless demise, new avenues of speculation multiplied, spreading out in previously unexplored and surprising directions.

That is a thumbnail history of the events as detailed in the initial news stories.

“However, the voluminous police reports, as well as a conversation with one of the detectives,”

who had led the investigation, and with a legal aid lawyer who subsequently got involved, offered a more detailed account. One that introduces two new actors to Caden's story and perhaps two hours. There are a couple who quickly caught the defense team's wrapped attention and continued to hold it like a magnet. It was all too common, another young life ravaged by fentanyl. And within days it might very well have become simply

another tragic statistic in a national body count that is climbing toward pandemic proportions. But then the police made two arrests in connection with Caden Young's death.

Hurrying to room two-fourteen of the holiday in, or young had first overdosed, the police arrested

Emma Bailey, 22 of Moscow, and Demetrius Robinson, 36 of Tacoma, just as they were apparently

“preparing to leave. They were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a violation”

of the uniform-controlled substances act. That is, they had allegedly supplied the student with a lethal, fentanyl-laced cocaine. They were held on $100,000 bail. Pleading not guilty, but unable to post bail, they were shuffled off to the Lewis County jail where they were to await their May 30th trial date. The pair spent two months and five days behind bars, and during that time law enforcement investigators and the press kept digging.

And what they unearthed, grabbed the attention of the preternaturally curious Colbergard defense team. Demetrius Robinson, or D, as he was widely known in the college towns of both Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington, had quite a wrap sheet. Extensive was the adjective the local paper used to describe it. Violin was the modifier, though, that leaped up in many people's minds.

“Among the eyebrow-raising highlights, a 15-month prison sentence for a second degree assault”

in Pullman back in 2018, a second degree rape investigation two years later. And then in 2021

an arrest in Pullman for suspicion of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, and for alleged assaulting a companion when their alleged partnership went south. While the drug case had fallen apart because of legal concerns over an overly gung-ho search of a hotel room, the fourth degree assault and harassment charges stuck and Robinson served 151 days in jail. Also scattered about Robinson's sheet were five charges for driving with a suspended

license, one of which landed him in jail for five days. There was an outstanding arrest warrant for another. As for Emma Bailey, her record was more banal. A DUI arrest is past February after she breezed through a redlight in Pullman around 2am. When the cops dug deeper, they grew to suspect that the couple were very possibly dealing drugs. They had scored in Seattle to the local colleges in Pullman and Moscow. In fact, they discovered in the detectives incident report

flatly stated, there were investigations in other jurisdictions for Emma and Demetrius for narcotics trafficking. But just five days before the trial for supplying the lethal cocaine was to begin, a judge dismissed the case. Their legal aid lawyer had zeroed in on a technicality but it was clearly a very consequential one. A question of prosecutorial jurisdiction. Apparently they'd been scheduled to be tried in the county where the death had occurred

rather than where the cocaine had been ingested. But their good fortune might be short-lived. The judge dismissed that case without prejudice, which means it can be refiled in the same court of law if the authorities drafted a new and more carefully drawn indictment. Is one in the works? All a fuming, centrality, a detective who'd been involved in the case from the morning he'd found youngs in her body would say, "Is we are not going to let this case disappear?"

And he's not alone. The case hasn't disappeared from the thoughts of the co-worker defense team either. Why? What does this have to do with him? It is a touchstone according to people familiar with their inquiries that has the team digging deep into the possibility of narcotics trafficking along Greek row in Moscow. And wondering whether these fertile activities might have somehow pleaded part in the quadruple murders. What if anything they have uncovered is wrapped up tight

by the iron bands of the gag order? The overview offered by the Seattle D.E.A. Field Office is a tale of cut-throat international intrigue, a pipeline that runs from China,

Mexico, which manufacture the drugs and then smuggled the two off and lethal product to their

“distribution networks in northwestern urban hubs, such as Seattle and Spokane. Then with the eager”

help of a freelance army of small-time distributors, the tentacles of the octopus reach into the seemingly wholesome, all-American counties and college towns stretching across the great outdoors. That's the view from a thousand feet. But Sheriff Brett Myers, head of the Quad City drug task force, a multi-gerestictional team propped up in part by federal money, whose territory includes the university towns of Moscow and Poland, offers a ground level account. And it is enough to give

anyone whose kid is heading off to college in the area, the willys. Matter of fact, the Sheriff's shares that his task force is working with college kids in the local schools whom they've caught dealing MDMA and cocaine, flipping them, and then using the students to go after the big local dealers. And once the scared whittless college kids have helped his team ID the foot soldiers, quote, "We go up the ladder to get the people tied to the cartels in the cities."

There are a lot of unanswered questions he acknowledges. Pressed further about the quadruple

“murder of the Idaho students he candidly goes on, "Could it have been a drug-related case?”

I can't rule it out. It's not improbable," he says, adding, "From what I know, that would answer a lot of questions." But did any of the victims know these two accused drug dealers, Bailey and Robinson? Maybe. Maybe. Ashland couch. Then a university of Idaho senior was an original signer of the

lease stay with me here on the King Road House with the others. But she never actually moved in.

Nonetheless, she remained a friend as well as a sorority sister of several of the residents and according to some reports, she would visit from time to time. couch also follows Emma Bailey, one of our arrestees on Instagram, which could mean something or nothing. But so we have the person who is the less sore on the King Road House following one of these accused drug dealers on Instagram.

“It all does lead to another question. Did Emma Bailey accuse drug dealer? No Brian Colberger.”

We know he had a drug past. This question has persuaded investigators associated with the defense

to revisit Brian Colberger's first day in Moscow. That was three months before the murders.

When he met his next door neighbor, Christian Martinez. It was then that Martinez invited his new neighbor, Brian Colberger, to a pool party. This is back on July 9th. At the Grove, a Clappered Complex of Buildings filled with college kids, mostly University of Idaho students, just a 15-minute or so drive across the state line in Moscow. Recall Brian lived in Washington State. Thanks. I have to run and get trunks. Colberger texted back to Martinez. And so, while Zach

DJ Great Vinyl, Cartwright, a muscular PhD in food science with the countenance of an Aztaque chieftain and a jet-black man bun, manned the turn tables at this party. Colberger, in his new trunks, perched at the shallow end of the large pool. Bad bunny whale from the speaker's reports bloom, imploring party, party. Chicken and steak were being grilled to make tacos. There was beer, wine, tequila. The sun was blinding. There must have been a hundred of more college kids on the

decks surrounding the two large ovals that formed the pristine blue pool. And just down the hill from the housing complex, close enough for bad bunny to come rattling through its windows, was the Moscow police headquarters. Taking a seat next to Colberger that day was Besset, Salam John, a laid back, darkly handsome, often on WSU undergraduate, who was friends with Colberger's new neighbor, Martinez, who had invited Colberger to the party, as well as DJ Cartwright.

Salam John and Colberger got to talking. And while the details of their conversation have long been forgotten, Salam John vividly remembers how the dude would talk, chin up, straight to my face. We were just shooting shit. He says, but he was definitely one serious dude, nice enough, though. Salam John stood up and went off to dance. So Colberger, perhaps not wanting to be a wall flower as the party was gathering steam, went over to talk to the DJ, quote, "He was asking me

about my speakers, all kind of technical stuff, Cartwright remembers, but he had this way about him.

close. It was off-putting," says Cartwright. Finally, Cartwright told his new acquaintance, quote,

“"I'm DJing, man, I'll catch you later." With that, Colberger returned to the shallow end of the pool,”

and before too long, Salam John returned too. And he witnessed two events that in their pregnant way are provocative footnotes to all that would happen in Moscow just a few months later. He watched, as Colberger abruptly jumped up without warning and approached a girl in a black thong bikini with pink hair, and a complex tattoo design on her left thigh. Then Colberger, after only a brief conversation, asked her for her phone number, and he got it.

Next, as if a man on a mission, he turned to the pink hair woman's friend, also in a black

two piece, and asked for her number too, and he succeeded once again. Only after that, perhaps feeling

he had accomplished all he'd set out to do, more, in fact, Brian quietly shuffled off while the party was just hitting a groove. He said no goodbyes. Did he ever call the two women? They insist he did not, at least not long enough to speak to them. As it happens, both women received several hang-up calls in the aftermath of the party, but neither of them ever had any thoughts about who the culprit might have been, until Colberger's arrest. And by then the FBI was inquiring into what

went on at that pool party. The agents commented a room at the red brick, lightly student services building adjacent to the main WSU campus, and with a professional politeness that impressed

the students, began interviewing anyone who knew Brian Colberger. In the process they inquired

if anyone had any photos, or even a video, from the July 9th pool party, a few were produced. It was not an extensive record of the festivities, more a haphazard collection of snapshots, and at least one brief somewhat random video. The agents were searching for Consolvus, Mogen, Colonel, or Chapin. They could not find them, which means they were not the pool party, or they simply did not appear in the photos, or the video that were taken that day. Or maybe they

just weren't in the handful of photos and videos that were shared with the Bureau. But what if the FBI's review done last November in the early stages of this investigation was too narrow? What if they had scrutinized the pictures in the video and had ignored the possible presence

“of another guest whose appearance could put a whole new spin on what happened at the house on King Road?”

What if accused drug dealer, Emma Bailey, had been at the pool party? If she had been, then she might very well have also been approached by Colberger on the make. And if, as the police alleged, she was in the habit of dealing recreational drugs, it might have been a connection of one time heroin addict like Colberger, would have relished. This is all speculation, but the defense is looking into it.

It might have been a connection that unlike his approaches to the two other female party goers, could have had some longevity. In fact, he might have even visited Bailey from time to time at her home in Moscow, which, as it happens, was tucked into the very end of a call to sack, a minute or so away from the murder house by car, which would put it very much within the same

“incriminating cell tower radius as the scene of the crime on King Road. So, was Emma at this party?”

Howard Bloom talked to seven people who had been there, and the responses he received all shared after a good deal of thought ran the gamut from, I think she was, to she might have been. But no one said she definitely was there, and no one said she definitely was not. In short, there remains something for the defense to seek its teeth into. A hypothetical alternative to the version of the case presented by the prosecution. Now, this theory, as laid out by Bloom,

is just that, a theory, but the defense will surely try to suggest to the jury that there were other reasons for Colberger to have been outdriving that night, perhaps tapping into an old habit, on a night he would later wish he had spent at home. Keep in mind, the defense does not need to prove anything here. It just needs to muddy the waters enough to create reasonable doubt. In our next and final episode, we dig into the as yet unanswered questions that may affect the

jury's determination on that score. We'll see you then.

edition of the show where we take you inside the murder case that has captivated the country

for the better part of a year. The story of the quadruple murder in Moscow, Idaho, and of suspect Brian Colberger. Today, we conclude our series. We brought you the details of the murder, the arrest, the potential paths for the prosecution and defense when the trial begins next year, and we examine the dark side of Colberger and his past. And now, some of the unanswered questions that are still swirling about this unfathomable crime. As this concludes,

I would love to hear your thoughts on all of it. What stands out to you about this case? Have you made up your mind about Colberger's guilt? And if not, why not? What lingering questions do you

still have? This case will be front and center in 2024. We'll be covering the trial as it happens.

Remember, cameras will be in the courtroom for this one, which will be absolutely fascinating. Email me your thoughts on this program, on the Colberger case at Megan, M-E-G-Y-N at MeganCally.com. All right, Megan at MeganCally.com. And if you go to MeganCally.com and sign up there for our weekly email, we'll provide you with behind the scenes details on the reporting of this case. As with our previous episodes, today's features, the writing and the reporting of legendary

crime journalist and author Howard Bloom. Bloom has been reporting on this case for nearly a year, he's written compellingly about it for airmail news. His forthcoming book on the case will

be published in the spring by Harper Collins, keep that on your radar. But for now, big questions

“include the following. One, assuming it was Colberger as the police alleged, why? Why did he do it?”

What could his motive have been? Was he targeting a specific victim and then the crime spun out of control? Two, if it was Colberger, is it possible he had help? Could there be an accomplice in the picture here? And three, what about the two surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funk? Why did they see? Why didn't they call the police right away? And what are they up to now? As we tackle those questions, one name in particular stands out as a person who has been at the

forefront of asking questions and pushing for answers. It's not a podcast or a crime reporter, although there have been plenty of those, too. It's a dad. A father with a deep and tragic connection to this story. The four victims in the case, Ethan Chapin, Kaley Gonzalez, Zana Crnotle and Maddie Mogen. All their parents have spoken out on behalf of their children, but one father in particular seems to have led the push for answers, and that is Steve Gonzalez,

Kaley's dad. Within weeks, he was out on all the national news channels. You can't imagine sending your girl to college and then they come back in, uh, you know, in a number. And you know, it was fast. And nobody suffered and nobody felt like like,

“that kind of pain. Every day that goes by, and you don't hear anything, what does that do?”

Just tells me statistically, I'm going to have to do more work myself. I'm not going to sit here, and just be a crybaby. Yeah, I'm going to be a cold case if we don't do something within the next week or two. He stayed on it, talking after Colberg's arrest and arrangement. I'm just like everyone else. I want to know exactly what's going on. I want to see all the evidence information will come out, but it doesn't have to come out in multiple times in multiple ways. And continuing to push for the

facts to get out to the public and to his family. He and his wife, Christy, spoke to a local news outlet. It's been almost a year. I mean, it's hard to believe, right? How are you guys doing? I think people would love to know that. I think we're doing the best we can. And I think that that is too be thankful to all the people that are wondering about us. They really get us through

“you know, co-workers, friends. They're like family now. And I think it'd be much harder without”

all the Latin support. Yeah, we've got a page where we're able to talk to people of all across the world that this is made an impact and change in their life so that helps. Behind the scenes, Steve has been active, too, doing his own detective work before and after co-workers arrest. He says he needed to know if all the facts were uncovered, he needed to keep pushing. As Howard Bloom writes, among those Steve tracked down early in the case, was Hunter Johnson,

Hunter Johnson had been summoned by the two distraught survivors to the King Roadhouse,

“or he had discovered Ethan's body. Days later, he gave his eyewitness account to Kaley's dad,”

Steve, as a soldier might, straightforward, factual, and without either embellishment or emotion. It was only when he finished that the two men both overwhelmed at last convulsed into tears. Steve also made a point of knocking on the doors of the house as adjacent to the murder scene and interrogating the neighbors. He was going where he felt he had to go, but his mission had not produced the desired result. Over a month had passed since the murders, and there had

been no arrests, only vague statements about a missing Hyundai Alandra that had been spotted near the King Roadhouse the night of the murders. The authorities had yet to name a suspect. It was infuriating. The prospect of his daughter's murder becoming one more cold case was torture. But as much as he needed to see a purp being let off in handcuffs, Steve can solve this,

“was also chasing after something else. He needed to know why. Why these kids, why this house?”

Why had this nightmare enveloped his family's life? For his own peace of mind, he required emotive. And without this knowledge, nothing in his life from November 13 onward would ever make sense. He did pause it to court TV in June, that perhaps jealousy was a factor.

Be always filming. So I think maybe he just said that happiness and there's something in him that

was jealous of the fact that two people could love each other. It'd be like the best friends. I think that really rubbed him wrong and got him thinking about, why do they have this great life? And I don't. And I think that's whoever he picked, that'll be the back story. I think this is just a jealousy of their lifestyle. Steve remains open to the possibility that others might also have been involved here,

“according to texts provided to bloom. It seems to Steve quite possible that there were more perpetrators”

in the house on King Road on the night, his daughter and her friends were killed. And if there were, they must still be at large. He is furious that Cole Berger's trial, which had been scheduled to start on October 2nd has been postponed indefinitely. He fears he's complained according to bloom, but the trial will not occur for many months or even years. And he's particularly incensed by the no-nonsense gag order that severely limits what the law enforcement authorities,

the lawyers and even the families of the victims can publicly say about the case. It is not just that he deems this violation of his fundamental constitutional rights. Rather, the possibility of specific intelligence has created a vacuum that is being filled by rumors, half truths, and crackpot lies. And once these malignant seeds are planted, they grow tall and wild on the internet. Steve needs answers, not rumors. And so despite the

arrest of a suspect, he has not abandoned his quest. He has a clear mission as he told News Nation in May. For like we have a mission, we have a job to do. We have things that have to happen. And when I see those things happening, that helps me understand that we're going in the right

direction. And that's always better than just sitting and waiting for who knows what's going to happen.

And it's not simply vanity. The belief that one middle-aged guy with only a background in IT can get to the bottom of things in a special way. It's fear that propels him. The fear that if he waits passively for the cops finally to share what little they have managed to uncover, it might be too late. The remaining unidentified perpetrators will have gone to ground and justice will not be secured. Nor will he ever get the terrible satisfaction of knowing the whole story.

He will never achieve the state of grace that comes. He wants to believe with understanding a motive. He will never know the answer to the question at the beating heart of this case.

Why? And so for the past year, he has plowed on. It has not been easy going or always fruitful.

For one cruel example, early on, an enticing tip came his way, according to the texts, from a source he described as "jailhouse snitch." That's who gave him the tip. It was a tale that offered to tie up all the loose ends of the case and spurred on by that promise, both Steve and the private detective he had hired, found out with varying queries into several states, energized by the intoxicating possibility that he was on the verge of accomplishing what

con, a malicious scheme to squeeze some money out of a grieving family's misery. The experience

“was demoralizing. As for the rumors of a drug deal gone bad, being the underlying motive,”

Steve had been told by the authorities that the toxicity reports on all four of the victims established that they had no drugs in their system. Besides, if they wanted to score some pot, there was no need to get involved with a street dealer. The kids he pointed out could go down a street and in eight miles, there was a store where they could easily make a buy, despite the fact that marijuana remained illegal in Idaho. Christy, his wife, went with them once to check it out.

He texted the friend, reports bloom. News Nations Brian Enten asked prosecutor Bill Thompson in November 2022, if drugs were involved in the case, and the veteran DA made no bones about the answer. Could drugs be involved in all of this? I have not heard that there is any suspicion that drugs

“played a role in the killings. So not like a drug deal on bad or something like that. I am not aware”

of anything like that. No. What else did Steve learn? As he did his own investigation into his daughter's murder. Colberger had purchased a dark blue, dickies, long-sleeve work uniform. At the Walmart in Pullman, Washington, not long before the murders was one thing he learned. The authorities had a copy of the $49.99 receipt, and they also now had a theory to explain how Colberger had managed to escape from the crime scene without a scratch,

and without leaving an incriminating drop of blood in his getaway car or his apartment. Perhaps he had worn the work uniform during the murders, and then had disrobed before he got behind the wheel of his Hyundai Alantra for his circuitous drive back to his apartment. Perhaps the authorities hypothesized he had stuffed the work suit into a plastic garbage bag and then shoved it into his trunk. Only authorities could find no sign of the dickies outfit.

The police had looked high and low, but they could not find it, just as they could not locate the murder weapon. They had a receipt for a K-bar knife. He had purchased Brian online. Months before the killings, but this too had seemingly vanished. And as long as these two

crucial pieces of evidence remained unavailable — what the killer wore, and what the killer used —

Steve feared the building case against Colberger, would remain more open than shut. Even more troubling if true was what Steve had learned from people who had spoken to members of the grand jury who had been presented with the prosecution's case. It's centered on the alleged behavior of the two roommates who had miraculously survived the night unscathed. We made a

“reference to it earlier. How he wondered could they have been so blissfully unaware, sleeping?”

Through the savage pre-dons stabbing murders of four people in a narrow house with paper thin walls. Steve had been told that the two survivors allegedly had not only been awake while the killings had taken place, but that they had heard everything. More astonishingly, his grand jury sources alleged that the two girls had been texting one another as the murderer methodically went from one room to the next. Of course, if that's true, police will have seen the records.

All of those texts will have been recorded. The possibility that two people had a sense of the horror while it occurred and had not acted calling neither friends nor nine one one left Steve floored. Again, this is according to Bloom. And no less confounding, they had. If his sources were

as knowledgeable as he believed, then let hour after hour take away before they finally decided to

summon friends. It added an entirely new band of mystery to a crime that was already bound by so many unanswered questions. Racked by frustration and despair, all Steve could do was send a disheartened text to one of his fellow internet detectives, quote, "There is so much more to this story and is in the media." The time gap between when at least one roommate heard and possibly saw the intruder and when 911 was called remains one of the strangest things about this case.

Why neither Dylan nor Bethany, who was also home that night, called 911 until more than seven hours after the murders remains unclear. In the end while we do not know precisely who made

that I'm a one call, we know it was not ultimately one of those roommates who called the police

at all. It was a friend calling from Dylan Mortensen's phone. Murders around 4 AM and no phone

soundly. But we have to go back to the affidavit, where we learned that while roommate Bethany

“funk was sleeping through the entire ordeal, at least according to what you told police,”

Dylan Mortensen was awake. A reminder, here's what we learned and the initials DM

are for Dylan Mortensen. DM stated this is from the police affidavit, she originally went to sleep in her bedroom on the southeast side of the second floor. DM stated she was a woken at approximately 4 AM by what she stated sounded like consolvus playing with her dog in one of the upstairs bedrooms which were located on the third floor. A short time later, DM said, she heard who she thought was consolvus say something to the effect of "there's someone here." A review of records obtained from

her forensic download of Xana Cronodal's phone show this could also have been Cronodal. As her cellular phone indicated, she was likely awake and using TikTok at approximately 4-12 AM. DM stated

“she looked out of her bedroom but did not see anything when she heard the comment about someone”

being in the house. DM stated she opened her door for a second time when she heard what she thought

was crying coming from Cronodal's room. DM then said she heard a male voice say something to the effect of "it's okay, I'm going to help you." At approximately 4-17 AM, a security camera located at 11-12 King Road, a residence immediately to the northwest of 11-22 King Road, picked up distorted audio of what sounded like voices or a whimper followed by a loud thought. A dog can also be heard barking numerous times starting at 4-17 AM. The security camera is less than 50 feet

from the west wall of Cronodal's boot bedroom. DM stated she opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking toward her. DM described the figure as 5-10 or taller, male not very muscular but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past DM as she stood in a "frozen shock phase" and "the male walked toward the backsliding glass door. DM locked herself

in her room after seeing the male. DM did not state that she recognized the male. This leads investigators to believe that the murderer left the scene. A "frozen shock phase" that appears

“to be the phrase "given" by Dylan to police as outlined in that affidavit but what else do we know?”

First, very early on, questions about Dylan's actions that night became a public conversation,

even among those closest to the victims. Initially, the attorney representing the Gonzalez family, Shannon Gray, defended Dylan's actions saying that Dylan must have been scared to death and was still a victim in this case when he called into Fox News in January. No, no, 911 calls. I mean, that raises a great many issues. How are you kind of sorting that together? Well, you remember she's a victim in this case. Everybody kind of forgets that, you know,

she is still a victim in this case and the fact that she was able to give some additional identification, I think is beneficial to the case. She was able to, you know, give kind of hike and build and what they looked like a little bit and pushy eyebrows, things along those lines and regards to going back into a room and she was scared, she was scared to death and rightly so. But according to the Daily Mail, Ethan Chapins' sister-in-law posted on Reddit that D,

which we understand to mean Dylan Mortensen, quote, supposedly called all the girls in the house after crying and screaming stopped and no one answered and she still didn't call the police. She goes on, quote, she needs to explain herself and her actions that night. We don't have anything more from the sister-in-law on that, but you can bet if she knows something along these lines, she may be a witness.

The reason Dylan and Bethany did not call 911 remains a mystery to this day. One of the biggest of the case, perhaps it is what Dylan told police the next day that she was just paralyzed with fear. For seven hours, multiple reports suggest that we expect to trial, we will hear from both roommates in their own words as both women would likely testify. How helpful their testimony will be for the prosecution or the defense remains to be seen.

Coburgers' scheduled preliminary hearing. After fighting this subpoena, she eventually agreed to

“be interviewed at home in Nevada. The Coburger defense initially alleged that Bethany Funk had”

information that is "excalpatory" to the defendant, meaning potentially supportive of his innocence. We don't know why they might believe that or whether they really do, but what we do know is that if either roommate talks at trial, we will see it cameras will be there. The televised nature of this trial is something I discussed with a former prosecutor, Marsha Clark earlier this year. She brought her OJ Simpson trial experience into her answer. Downsides are huge. The problem that you face, of course,

is that it turns into a circus. If you have a judge who knows how to keep the guardrails on, it can be fine. But if he doesn't, and he just lets the cameras be turned on 24/7, it's a nightmare. And you wind up having people come forward who just want the wine light and really have nothing to say. Or you have people that are afraid of the wine light and have something to say and don't

“want to come forward. You have lawyers who are stumping for camera time and face time and sending”

things intermitably with no real argument to make because they want to be famous. You have prosecutors who probably do the same thing in some instances and you have a judge who sits down for a six-part interview with the new banker to talk about his life in his past. So I don't know where I pull that one from. So I do. So it causes these kinds of distortions and it does cause a circus.

So I understand the problem, Fred Golden said, and he changed my mind. But the world would never

know what the evidence really was. The world would never know and bothered to read the newspapers after the fact about all of the evidence that we were able to produce. Huge, huge, overwhelming about evidence of guilt. He was right. You know, if you have these people moving around in the courtroom, people pay attention in a different way. So I come down on the side of having a certain kind of thing where you allow the cameras in the courtroom when the jury is in the courtroom.

So that what is disseminated to the public is what the jury sees. But when the jury is not there and you're having hearings about the evidence that should and should not come in, et cetera, that

“kind of thing, then you should not have cameras in the courtroom. You can have private borders,”

that's fine. But having the cameras in the courtroom should be banned when the jury is not there. And with that kind of caveat, I think it's a good thing. In the one year since the murders, Bethany and Dylan have kept a low profile. They have not spoken publicly a single time. We know Bethany lives in Nevada. While Dylan was recently seen in social media posts partying with friends at a University of Idaho, sorority and at Halloween parties.

Now we turn to unanswered question number two. How likely is it that Brian Colberger acted alone if he is indeed the perpetrator? Is it possible he had an accomplice or more than one accomplice? Much of this speculation stems from the fact that Colberger is someone with no known criminal

history. And yet in what appears to be his first serious crime ever, he brutally stabs four individuals

to death, killing them without detection and commits this heinous act in less than 15 minutes. Initially one of the storylines that led some to believe there might be another person involved was when Colberger's defense team filed a motion early on in the case, requesting among other things information about a potential quote co-dependent in the case. This seemed to connect to an early question from Colberger himself to police and Pennsylvania

when he reported the ask them after he had been arrested if they had arrested anyone else. We quickly learned however that there was no co-dependent and the prosecution was and appears to be working under the assumption that Colberger acted alone. And now we look to unanswered question number three and it's really the big one. Why? What possibly could be the motive for this brutal and horrifying act? And along those same lines does any evidence point to any of the four

victims as being the specific target of the murderer here? On that question here's what we know.

First we know based on reporting from News Nation that Kaley Gonzalez, that her injuries were considered quote significantly more brutal than those of her roommate and best friend Maddie Mogan. We have just confirmed. News Nation is learning that Kaley Gonzalez's injuries were significantly more brutal than her best friend Maddie's injuries which may end up being a very very important piece of evidence when it comes to determining who the target was in this attack.

in Maddie's room, not Kaley's. In fact, Kaley had recently moved out. She was only visiting her best friend the night of the murders. So if Kaley was the main target, how could the killer have

known that she was even in the house never mind exactly where? In September, Kaley's family told

CBS further details about what they have been told by authorities. Kaley's mom said it appeared. Maddie was killed first and that perhaps Kaley was awakened by that attack and tried to escape. The bed was up against the wall. The headboard was touching the wall and the left side of the bed was touching the wall and we believed that Maddie was on the outside and Kaley was on the inside. According to Coroner, Maddie, the killer's first victim was Maddie, says Steve.

“And then, from Maddie, he moved on to your daughter, you believe she had a wake into that point?”

Yes. There's evidence to show that she awake and didn't try to get out of that situation.

The way the bed was set up is what was trapped. There are reports of defensive wounds found on Kaley's body. Anzana Cronotals, too, reportedly. No such reports about Ethan or Maddie. But what does any of that mean for motive or targeting? Kaley's parents told CBS News they believe in Instagram account belonging to Brian Colberger was following Kaley and Maddie. They believe they had found a possible connection through Instagram and immediately took

these screenshots from our investigation of the account. It appeared to be the real Brian Colberger account. Among the people this account was following were Maddie Mogan and Kaley Gonzalez. In addition to several people with the name, Colberger. However, that has not been corroborated and others have disputed it. In court, they'll have to prove it. But whether there was a connection or not still does not explain motive, if it was Colberger, why did he do it?

As we told you in episode three, Colberger was a criminology student. His past several years had been spent studying crimes in detail. While at the sales getting his master's degree, he posted a questionnaire to read it which we went over. In retrospect, it appears ominous. Hello, my name is Brian and I'm 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 seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience. To the average citizen, these questions may sound bizarre, but experts say it is not unusual for criminologists to want to better understand the criminals they study. Or maybe it's just

“the reason many criminals commit a murder. Maybe that's what it was at issue here,”

psychosis, rage, jealousy, untreated mental illness, or evil. As Howard Bloom writes at the end of one of his many excellent pieces on this case, maybe it was a matter of deep-seated envy and resentment from a man whose life had been plagued with anger, disconnection, and an inability to feel human. As Bloom writes, he earned for the fun, he saw at that house. Can you imagine looking at that wild night all the happy

frivolity from some hideout in the shadows? And at the same time knowing deep in your dark heart,

that you would never be a part of anything that exuberant, that beautiful. It would be hell,

a hell of unsatisfied desire that could plunge someone deeper and deeper into a tormenting rage, an envy that would be in all-consuming sickness, and in the end there would be no way out just the deed. There are other questions that remain in this case like where the murder weapon is as we have

“gone over, and the clothes you must have worn. So far we believe the police may not have any of”

that evidence. Perhaps they were dumped along the oddly circuitous, wooded drive, coalburger allegedly took from the murders back home to WSU. As we look back on this case and this week, I want to leave you with some final thoughts from past guests who have been on this show about this case, this suspect, and what is to come? Couldn't imagine him not leaving DNA behind,

either the knife not slipping and cutting him, or one of those victims fighting back and potentially

“getting his DNA under their fingernails, or just dropping a single hair seems highly unlikely to”

encompass things. The sheep, if I'm the defense lawyer, does not bother me because somebody you can have an explanation for that. There's an innocent explanation for that. If it's on the button, somebody else had the knife, obviously, some other person. The bushy eyebrows, that doesn't bother me. If, in fact, as you pause it, that there is victims DNA in his apartment, that's a real problem.

I don't know that it's game over, but that's a real real problem. When people hear DNA

nowadays, they do get that largely it goes right, and largely it doesn't tag somebody else. You know, they doesn't tag the wrong person, and I'm sure they're going to be very careful in handling the samples. I would imagine knowing that that's going to probably be the most significant evidence that they get at the kind you're talking about. The defendants DNA all over the room, the victims DNA in his room, that sort of thing, that kind of combination. I think it's a knockout

“punch, if that's what they come up with. When those handcuffs went on, him. Essentially, if he's the guy,”

his life is over. Life is he knew it is gone. Your level of confidence on a scale of one to 10,

that they've got the right guy, and he'll be convicted. Let's go down the line, Phil. 10, 10 plus. Wow, Phil. 10. Mike. 10 plus plus plus plus. And now my final thoughts. I believe Brian Colberger committed this crime. A life of darkness, deep unhappiness, and of being mentally unwell, likely all contributed to a sick fascination with death, and where he may have seen as the power that comes from taking a life. The phone, car, and touch DNA evidence may be enough,

particularly when coupled with the fact that back home in Pennsylvania, Brian Colberger was

“disposing of his trash in the neighbor's garbage cans, and when police affected the arrest”

raid, they allegedly caught him wearing gloves, stuffing his own garbage into little ziplock baggies. Who does that? But this is not an easy case for prosecutors notwithstanding those facts. The killer was careful. No murder weapon. No bloody clothes. There are some indications that no additional DNA has been found to link Colberger to the crime scene nor any link from the victims to anything found in Colberger's apartment. The eyewitness here, the roommate has only an amorphous

description. The killer's medium-billed and his bushy eyebrows, which will not be enough to qualify as a definitive ID. The car and phone evidence will be mercilessly attacked and picked apart a trial as will the one minuscule spot of touch DNA on the knife sheath. The jury may wind up confused. That's a defense attorney's goal. In short, the prosecution likely needs more. Maybe they have it. They have held their cards very close to the vest in this case,

and certainly the defense would not be leaking the most incriminating evidence against their client Colberger. In death penalty cases like this, however, jurors sometimes like to have zero doubts, even though the legal standard of course is beyond a reasonable doubt. Does the prosecution have enough to meet this burden? It's not yet clear. For now, we must hope that the DNA has more than the office has made public in particular on the DNA front. And as we wait, we keep the

victim's families in our prayers, Kaylee, Maddie, Ethan, and Santa. Thank you all so much for joining me today and all week. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show, no BS, no agenda, and no fear.