Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Jemma Bath, host of True Crime Conversations, and
Speaker 1: I'm dropping in your ears with an update on a
Speaker 1: case we covered almost a year ago, exactly the Idaho Four,
Speaker 1: the murders of four young college students in their sharehouse
Speaker 1: in November twenty twenty two. Kaylee Gonzalvez, Madison Mogan, Xanakernodle,
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin were stabbed multiple times and
Speaker 1: found in two separate bedrooms of their three story rental.
Speaker 1: Two other roommates, Styllan Mortensen and Bethany Funk, were home
Speaker 1: during the attacks and left unharmed. The killings set off
Speaker 1: a nationwide manhunt, including an elaborate effort to track a
Speaker 1: white sedan spotted on CCTV repeatedly driving past the house.
Speaker 1: Seven weeks later, Brian Coburger, a criminal justice graduate at
Speaker 1: the nearby Washington State University, was arrested and charged. He
Speaker 1: took a plea deal and was given four life sentences
Speaker 1: without the possibility of parole. If he'd gone to trial,
Speaker 1: the death penalty would have been on the table. Now
Speaker 1: he's back in our headlines. He's trying to get his
Speaker 1: case revisited. We've invited Vicky Ward, author of The Idaho Four,
Speaker 1: an American tragedy, back on the show to explain exactly
Speaker 1: what's happening. VICKI, thanks for coming back on. We last
Speaker 1: spoke to you in August twenty twenty five. So around
Speaker 1: the time of the sentencing of Brian Coburger, did you
Speaker 1: think that that was case closed? Are you surprised to
Speaker 1: see he is pursuing another legal avenue.
Speaker 2: I'm not really.
Speaker 3: I mean I think that you know, it's funny timing
Speaker 3: doing this, right, because we have just put out the
Speaker 3: paperback version of The Idaho Four, in which there is
Speaker 3: a whole new ending which I wrote that really covers
Speaker 3: the events of last summer after Brian Coburger quite suddenly
Speaker 3: made that gil plea, and the extra section at the
Speaker 3: end talks about how the four victims' families were very
Speaker 3: divided about sort of the prosecution's rush, as some of
Speaker 3: them saw it.
Speaker 1: To.
Speaker 3: Accept that plea, because the Gonzalves family, for one, really
Speaker 3: wanted Brian Coburger to stand there in a court of
Speaker 3: law and explain to the world what he'd done and
Speaker 3: most of all why, and they felt that the guilty
Speaker 3: plea really robbed them of answers, and that they were
Speaker 3: then now left with this appalling tragedy, the loss of
Speaker 3: Kaylee Gonzalves, and really not understanding why she'd been taken
Speaker 3: from them, and not really having any closure as to
Speaker 3: what the last few minutes of life were like.
Speaker 2: I also.
Speaker 3: Think, you know, it's important to remember that part of
Speaker 3: their objections weren't.
Speaker 2: Just about that.
Speaker 3: They were about the very fact that they were afraid
Speaker 3: that Coburger would try to pervert the sentence, that he
Speaker 3: would find some way to try to appeal, that he
Speaker 3: would from jail teach other people inside the prison sort
Speaker 3: of tell them what he'd done, kind of mentor other criminals,
Speaker 3: if you will, That he would try to capitalize on
Speaker 3: the infamy of this case. I mean, it was a
Speaker 3: hugely famous case in the US, and that he would
Speaker 3: perhaps try to sell his story for money. He'd sit
Speaker 3: down with one of his former prosecutors and sorry, one
Speaker 3: of his former profecers, it's time.
Speaker 2: It's late here in New York. And so they they
Speaker 2: were really.
Speaker 3: Worried that this was you know, that what happened was
Speaker 3: not closure, It was not closure for them, and that
Speaker 3: and that somehow he would try to control the narrative.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, I talk about how in the
Speaker 3: book when his sentencing came and the Gonzalves family showed up,
Speaker 3: not every family showed up for that that the Chapin family,
Speaker 3: the family of Ethan Chapin chose, you know.
Speaker 2: They didn't.
Speaker 3: They attended court for when they heard Brian Coburger say guilty,
Speaker 3: But as far as they were concerned, that was the
Speaker 3: end of it. They you know, their their view was
Speaker 3: that they wanted to cope with all of this by
Speaker 3: focusing on the living, by focusing on Ethan's triplet brother
Speaker 3: and sister, Maisie and Hunter. But the Gonzalves family wanted
Speaker 3: to go to the sentencing and they wanted to face Coburger,
Speaker 3: which was kind of actually directly against the court protocol.
Speaker 3: They wanted to talk to him and it was their way,
Speaker 3: and they wanted to tell him how they felt, in
Speaker 3: particular Olivia gones out as Katie's older sister, and that
Speaker 3: was their way of taking back control of the narrative
Speaker 3: from him.
Speaker 2: They had a really frustrating.
Speaker 3: Three years in which they felt the prosecutors hadn't shared
Speaker 3: everything that they knew in order to protect the investigation
Speaker 3: and to protect sort of the trial, you know, because
Speaker 3: the last thing you want in a case like this
Speaker 3: is for there to be any reason for someone who
Speaker 3: goes to trial to appeal. And so the prosecutor really
Speaker 3: hadn't shared an awful lot of what happened with the victims' families,
Speaker 3: and as a result, I think they felt very much
Speaker 3: a loss of control. I mean, I was quite horrified.
Speaker 3: As a journalist who never really covered a true crime before,
Speaker 3: I was stunned to learn actually how little agency murder
Speaker 3: victims families.
Speaker 2: Have in the US.
Speaker 1: It's horrible. It happens here too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a flaw in the system.
Speaker 3: And so they, you know, so they they and they
Speaker 3: were worried that by not having this trial, by accepting
Speaker 3: Coburger's guilty plea, that they were still giving him control
Speaker 3: of the narrative in some way. So they, you know,
Speaker 3: that's why. I mean, Olivia Gonzalvez is her quote unquote
Speaker 3: victim impact statement was one of the most powerful, stunning
Speaker 3: things I've ever seen. And in the book This New Ending,
Speaker 3: we you know, take you into her thought processes and
Speaker 3: her nerves and all the decisions that went into to
Speaker 3: making that and delivering it. But there was always this
Speaker 3: fear that Coburger would put a stunt like the one
Speaker 3: he's just pulled to try to take back the control
Speaker 3: of the narrative.
Speaker 1: In terms of the options available to him. Though, because
Speaker 1: he took a plea deal, is it that he couldn't
Speaker 1: do a normal appeal And that's why he's gone for this.
Speaker 1: I believe it's called a called a post conviction relief.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly why. I mean.
Speaker 3: I spoke to Steve Gonzalbas and I spoke to James Fry,
Speaker 3: the former police chief involved. Neither of them were surprised
Speaker 3: that this has happened. But yeah, it is important that
Speaker 3: there is this distinction. He can't appeal, but he can
Speaker 3: claim that he didn't have a proper defense. You know,
Speaker 3: that is a legitimate you know, he can do that.
Speaker 3: Having said all of that, I mean, I believe that
Speaker 3: and Taylor, his public defender, spent about five million dollars
Speaker 3: of US taxpayer money on Brian Coburger's defense. It was
Speaker 3: considerably more than the prosecution team spent. And so, I mean,
Speaker 3: the general expectation here is that a judge will just
Speaker 3: knock this down straight away. And you know that Brian
Speaker 3: Coburger has you know, doesn't like being in prison. He's
Speaker 3: a very anti social person as we know. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's a you know, strange, strange guy. I'm sure he
Speaker 3: doesn't like the scenery. But as James Fry, former police chief,
Speaker 3: said to me, well, you know, he should have thought
Speaker 3: about that before he went out and killed four people
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's used some pretty strong language. You know that
Speaker 1: he was convinced to falsely confess he received ineffective counsel.
Speaker 1: It has already been two weeks at the time we're talking.
Speaker 1: So do you think the chances of it just being
Speaker 1: thrown out are getting further and further away, that this
Speaker 1: actually will go through the courts again? And what would
Speaker 1: that look like.
Speaker 3: If this were to go through the courts again? I
Speaker 3: think the loss of trust and faith in the US
Speaker 3: justice system by the American public would be at an
Speaker 3: all time high. It would be astonishing. I would be
Speaker 3: absolutely shocked. I'm not shocked by the way that Brian
Speaker 3: Coberger is articulate and you know and smart.
Speaker 2: I mean, we know this about him.
Speaker 3: This is a guy who came from abject poverty, overcame
Speaker 3: a heroin addiction to wind up in a criminology PhD
Speaker 3: program in a really good school. I mean, the guy
Speaker 3: is very smart, so that doesn't surprise me. And I'm
Speaker 3: not shocked that it's taken two weeks because again, and
Speaker 3: you know, the legal system had you know, has rolls carefully.
Speaker 3: You know, if they're too quick to bat this down,
Speaker 3: that could open yet another door. You know, I'm in
Speaker 3: the middle of writing a new book which about there's
Speaker 3: another huge case going on here, Luigi Mangoni, who allegedly
Speaker 3: murdered the CEO of United Health Group, their healthcare rather
Speaker 3: Brian Thompson.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on in that trial. And the
Speaker 2: moral that.
Speaker 3: I covered these stories, you know, you learn that for
Speaker 3: all its flaws, there is a careful method to the
Speaker 3: way that the US justice system rolls, and you have
Speaker 3: to be super careful to protect that process or that
Speaker 3: would hand the advantage.
Speaker 2: To someone like Brian Coburger.
Speaker 3: Frankly, they've got to take their time and look at
Speaker 3: what he's saying and otherwise otherwise it you know, actually
Speaker 3: that that could that could be to his advantage. But
Speaker 3: I would be shocked if a judge doesn't just say sorry, no,
Speaker 3: and when you know the idea that he wasn't he
Speaker 3: didn't understand when he was asked again and again and
Speaker 3: again in that courtroom.
Speaker 2: By the judge.
Speaker 3: You know, have you been coerced or told to say
Speaker 3: that you've done this? Are you making that? Are you
Speaker 3: saying guilty of your own free volition? I mean, this
Speaker 3: is precisely why the judge goes through all of this
Speaker 3: in open court. In Coburger's case, it was televised to
Speaker 3: the country. I remember watching it. I was on a plane,
Speaker 3: And you know that's exactly why, so that he can't
Speaker 3: come up out a year later and come up with
Speaker 3: this furious claim.
Speaker 1: Well, as you mentioned, he's a criminology student. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he knows this stuff.
Speaker 2: In and out right.
Speaker 1: If it was to go through the courts, obviously we're
Speaker 1: hoping that doesn't happen. But doesn't that open him up
Speaker 1: again to the death penalty?
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually, which I guess.
Speaker 1: Would please some of the families who don't think justice
Speaker 1: was had here. But you know, we'd have to go
Speaker 1: through all of this again.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I mean.
Speaker 3: The last I spose I spoke to Steve Gonzalves last
Speaker 3: week and he was not spiraling. He was not going
Speaker 3: where you.
Speaker 2: Are right now?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Okay? He you know, what he said.
Speaker 3: To me is that, you know, he takes no pleasure
Speaker 3: in being right. In other words, he warned some of
Speaker 3: the other families. You know, I mean, Kaylee Gonzalvez was
Speaker 3: best friends with Maddie Morgan, and I think at the.
Speaker 2: Time, ADDIE's parents.
Speaker 3: Had wanted to take the plea deal, and Steve had
Speaker 3: voiced his concerns and they but they you know, you know,
Speaker 3: they had sort of gone along with it. So had
Speaker 3: Xana's parents, the Kernodles, and and so when they heard
Speaker 3: the news of you know, Brian's interview quote unquote with
Speaker 3: the New York Times, they were very upset and sort
Speaker 3: of said to Steve Gonzabaz, we should have listened to you.
Speaker 3: And he took no pleasure in that scenario at all.
Speaker 3: But I also think he's he's not sitting there thinking, well,
Speaker 3: now we may get the trial that I wanted a
Speaker 3: year ago. I don't think that's not where he is,
Speaker 3: or it wasn't when we last spoke. He was like,
Speaker 3: this is this is ridiculous. This is what I was
Speaker 3: afraid of. But he did believe that a judge would
Speaker 3: knock it down.
Speaker 1: Why do you think Coburger is doing this now? It's
Speaker 1: very interesting timing because we've just had a Netflix documentary
Speaker 1: come out, you know that's very based on the victims
Speaker 1: and the families, as it should be. He is a
Speaker 1: kind of subplot. Am I being a bit too conspiratorial here?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: Could it be related to the attention the families are getting?
Speaker 3: You know, this is a guy, you know, based on
Speaker 3: my reporting and what I say in the Idaho for
Speaker 3: he's a narcissist, right, He's a He's an arrogant narcissist
Speaker 3: who almost got away with this, right. I mean they
Speaker 3: never found the murder weapon. I mean that you know that,
Speaker 3: you know, if were it not for technological advances and
Speaker 3: the fact that now you know the use of genealogical
Speaker 3: websites in the very clever way they could they could
Speaker 3: take that speck of DNA on the knife sheath that
Speaker 3: he met, you know, his one mistake that he left behind,
Speaker 3: and then go and very carefully put together family trees
Speaker 3: from you know, people like you and me who do
Speaker 3: ancestry and me or you know those dnaes and you
Speaker 3: know the way they.
Speaker 2: Finally got him.
Speaker 3: You know, if this crime had happened ten years ago,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have been able to do that, most likely.
Speaker 2: But no, this is a guy.
Speaker 3: This guy is a loner who spent his life, you know,
Speaker 3: in his parents' basement in Pennsylvania. You know, he didn't
Speaker 3: have friends, he didn't have suddenly didn't have girlfriends, and
Speaker 3: suddenly he gets all this attention, and then you've got
Speaker 3: to imagine, and he gets all this attention, and then
Speaker 3: now it's been.
Speaker 2: A year that he's been in a jail, he's you.
Speaker 3: Know, we know he's vegan, doesn't like the you know,
Speaker 3: they can't be there can't be much about the setting
Speaker 3: that he's in that he is happy about. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not at all surprised. I mean, I'm sure I
Speaker 3: hate to say this because it's not helpful for the victims,
Speaker 3: for the victims' families, but it probably isn't the last
Speaker 3: we've heard from him.
Speaker 1: Great. I do want to remind listeners that the evidence
Speaker 1: against him was pretty damning. You've just mentioned the DNA
Speaker 1: he was spotted in the like, they traced the car
Speaker 1: that was circling the area to him, and they traced
Speaker 1: the phone that he was using. So it wasn't like
Speaker 1: it was just one piece of evidence, was there.
Speaker 3: It was exactly it was, it was, it was all,
Speaker 3: it was all three it was. It was the trifactor,
Speaker 3: and the DNA was the most pivotal bit because once
Speaker 3: they got the DNA match, then they could go back
Speaker 3: and look at the video footage and find the see
Speaker 3: the car clearly for the first time, because remember he
Speaker 3: changed the license plates, but they could then clearly see that,
Speaker 3: and then they could go to the DMV and then
Speaker 3: see that he had changed the license plates. And yes,
Speaker 3: you're right, the phone, the cell phone pings. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, if you didn't have the DNA, you know,
Speaker 3: a decent lawyer could probably have found holes with the
Speaker 3: other two things, because there was you know, his car
Speaker 3: was immaculate and clean. There was and you know, they
Speaker 3: never found any clothes with blood on them. You know,
Speaker 3: they never found the murder weapons, so they were you know,
Speaker 3: you know he you know, you could tell that this
Speaker 3: was a guy who had studied how to commit murder.
Speaker 1: And the big elephant in the room has always been
Speaker 1: the motive, hasn't it. Do you a year on have
Speaker 1: a clear understanding of what you think the motive was,
Speaker 1: or is it still confusing?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like, you know, what I wrote
Speaker 3: in the book still really is the best, is the closest,
Speaker 3: and I still, as far as I know, it's what
Speaker 3: the families, the friends of the victims all still believed
Speaker 3: that everything points to the fact that he was targeting
Speaker 3: Maddie Morgan and tragically, you know, tragically, not only was
Speaker 3: she at home, you know, in bed, but there, you know,
Speaker 3: unexpectedly was Kaylee visiting for the weekend.
Speaker 2: Kaylee had already left.
Speaker 3: The house and moved out, and you know, clearly Xanna
Speaker 3: was awake on the floor below and moving around and
Speaker 3: heard something, which is why when he came down the
Speaker 3: stairs he got into a tussle. I mean, Xana, we know,
Speaker 3: fought back really bravely, and poor Ethan was lying in
Speaker 3: the bed, he was asleep behind her, and you know,
Speaker 3: so it's just a horrendous case of sort of being
Speaker 3: in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then
Speaker 3: you know, as we know, Dylan was one floor down
Speaker 3: from all that, but she, you know, she was able
Speaker 3: to lock her door, and you know, which is why
Speaker 3: one assumes he moved on past her.
Speaker 1: Obviously, we've got to wait to see what the judge says.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned your conversations with Steve. Have you Have you
Speaker 1: managed to talk to any of the other families about
Speaker 1: how they're feeling right now?
Speaker 3: Do you know? I haven't, and partly actually out of respect.
Speaker 3: I mean, I got to know Stacy Chapin very very well,
Speaker 3: and I have to believe that she's rolling her eyes,
Speaker 3: and you know, she's.
Speaker 2: An extraordinary woman.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, one of the other things I
Speaker 3: really learned when reporting this book was that when something
Speaker 3: like this happens to you, to someone close to you,
Speaker 3: we all react in very very different ways, and there's.
Speaker 2: No right and no wrong.
Speaker 3: And so the Gonzalves family, I think, really felt that
Speaker 3: they were going to fight.
Speaker 2: They were going to fight. They weren't going to take.
Speaker 3: The prosecutors kind of not telling them all the things
Speaker 3: they wanted to know.
Speaker 2: They were going to.
Speaker 3: Pursue get answers because they felt that that's what Kaylee
Speaker 3: would have wanted them to do.
Speaker 2: Stacy Chapin is.
Speaker 3: A former school principal, and her view was that she
Speaker 3: could do nothing to bring Ethan back, and that she
Speaker 3: needed that his brother and sister and his close close
Speaker 3: friends Emily Allen and Hunter Johnson, the young couple who
Speaker 3: found went into that house on that awful morning and found.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can't imagine the.
Speaker 1: Trauma of young adults to think how that will be
Speaker 1: shaping their lives.
Speaker 2: And so stay.
Speaker 3: Stacey Jabins sort of took the view that her job
Speaker 3: was to protect the living.
Speaker 2: Was that you know that you that the.
Speaker 3: You know that that was just her view, and she
Speaker 3: she has been extraordinary in that regard, and I know that,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't want to actually, you know, it's
Speaker 3: funny being a journalist in this situation. I don't want
Speaker 3: to compound people's suffering. And I knew I know Stacy
Speaker 3: Chaffin well enough to know to know what she thinks.
Speaker 3: And it's the last thing she needs as a phone
Speaker 3: call from me saying how are you feeling?
Speaker 1: Well? How are you feeling?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 1: Are you going to be watching through one eye open?
Speaker 2: One eye open? You know I very much Stay. I
Speaker 2: mean this is going to sound a strange thing. This
Speaker 2: was a.
Speaker 3: Terrible story and a terrible tragedy, and reporting it was
Speaker 3: difficult and obviously incredibly sad, but at the same time,
Speaker 3: I saw the best of humanity and that was a
Speaker 3: really heartwarming thing to see. And the bond with the
Speaker 3: Chapins and the bond with the gonzalvaz Is that I formed,
Speaker 3: and the bond with Emily and Hunter and some of
Speaker 3: the four victims friends was very special. And so I
Speaker 3: really enjoy the positives that have come out of this
Speaker 3: as strangers that may sound. Hunter Johnson and Emily alone
Speaker 3: recently got married and that was a truly wonderful thing
Speaker 3: to see on Instagram.
Speaker 2: I sent them a note.
Speaker 3: I was very proud of them because to have come
Speaker 3: through everything they came through.
Speaker 2: I mean, this.
Speaker 3: Event completely derailed their lives as you would imagine. I mean,
Speaker 3: imagine being a senior in college and this going down.
Speaker 2: I mean, the last thing in.
Speaker 3: The world you're going to be able to do is
Speaker 3: focus on your studies. And on top of all of this,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the themes in the book is
Speaker 3: how difficult the world of social media now is for
Speaker 3: people around a crime like this, because all the true
Speaker 3: crime sluths have theories, and all the tribe true crime
Speaker 3: slus start point fingers at innocent people, and so Emily
Speaker 3: and Hunter, yeah, I got singled out and got trolled,
Speaker 3: and that their lives were utterly so and they were afraid.
Speaker 3: So they were dealing with the awful trauma of being
Speaker 3: in that house the morning after the murders. They were
Speaker 3: dealing with the fear that whoever did this might be
Speaker 3: coming for them, and then they were dealing with the
Speaker 3: trolling of all these people online who thought they were
Speaker 3: the murderer.
Speaker 2: And imagine what that would do to you.
Speaker 3: So the positive for this was that I got to
Speaker 3: see some remarkable people who went through what I hope
Speaker 3: is the only nightmare, real nightmare that they have to
Speaker 3: experience in their lives. And I got to see the
Speaker 3: best of humanity, the warmth and the kindness, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the people in the town of Moscow, Idaho
Speaker 3: were incredibly welcoming to me, and I'm an outsider. It's
Speaker 3: a really small town, and they really opened their hearts
Speaker 3: and their hospitality, and.
Speaker 2: I hope all that is really captured in the book.
Speaker 1: Actually, and I like ending here because I'd like to
Speaker 1: think that Coburger would hate that we're focusing on all
Speaker 1: of this and all the negatives and all of the
Speaker 1: love that's come from it. So let's leave it there
Speaker 1: and let's yeah, look with one eye open. Hopefully, hopefully
Speaker 1: we don't have to go through a whole nother court process.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, Vicky, We really
Speaker 1: appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Vicky for joining us on this update.
Speaker 1: Make sure you're following our show on Apple Podcasts and
Speaker 1: Spotify for updates on this story and all the stories
Speaker 1: we cover. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
Speaker 1: later this week with another true crime conversation