Speaker 1: Moscow Police are investigating a homicide on King Rhode.
Speaker 2: Cause and manner of death was homicide by stabbing.
Speaker 3: This is terrible.
Speaker 4: It's a blood death.
Speaker 1: This is the Idaho Massacre. A production of KT Studios
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio, episode three In Search of a Connection. I'm
Speaker 1: Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios. With Stephanie Leidecker,
Speaker 1: Jeff Shane, and Connor Powell. An unthinkable nightmare comes to
Speaker 1: life in the small college community of Moscow. Four students
Speaker 1: at the University of Idaho butcher to death in the
Speaker 1: early hours of Sunday, November thirteenth. The gruesome murders spark
Speaker 1: a multi state investigation stretch from Washington to Idaho to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: The forty eight day investigation ends it on the other
Speaker 1: side of the country with the stunning arrest of a
Speaker 1: PhD criminal student and would be law enforcement officer named
Speaker 1: Brian Coberger. Moscow Police James fry On the arrest.
Speaker 2: These tragic murders took four young, vibrant lives from our community.
Speaker 5: These murders have.
Speaker 2: Shaken our community and no arrest will ever bring back
Speaker 2: these young students. However, we do believe justice will be
Speaker 2: found through the criminal process.
Speaker 6: Was there some sort of connection.
Speaker 1: I think that it is likely that there's a relationship
Speaker 1: between these four students and this person. From the first
Speaker 1: hours of the investigation, law enforcement officials described the murders
Speaker 1: of Kaylee Gonsalvez, Madison Mogan, Xana Kernodle, and Eitha Chapin
Speaker 1: as a targeted attack, but police offered no other information.
Speaker 1: Shannon Gray, an attorney representing the family of soon to
Speaker 1: graduate senior Killie Gonsalvez, said publicly that none of the
Speaker 1: victims knew Brian Coberger, leaving the question how is this
Speaker 1: a targeted attack? Here's Stephanie Leideker, Jeff Shane and producer
Speaker 1: Connor Powell.
Speaker 3: I think when we all picture a murder of this size,
Speaker 3: we picture a masked killer like you see in the movies,
Speaker 3: But in reality, stranger homicide is extremely rare. This changes
Speaker 3: from year to year, but typically around fifty percent of
Speaker 3: all murder victims are killed by someone they know. So
Speaker 3: it begs the question, how did the accuse, Brian Coburger
Speaker 3: know the victims.
Speaker 4: It does feel like there has to be some connective
Speaker 4: tissue in some way either maybe they met in passing
Speaker 4: or maybe they had some sort of class together.
Speaker 7: Social media allows people to know people but not actually
Speaker 7: know them, that they can follow them, they can essentially
Speaker 7: digital stock them. So he might have known them and
Speaker 7: they might never have known him.
Speaker 3: And that's actually a parasocial relationship, which is this one
Speaker 3: way relationship we have with it used to be people
Speaker 3: on TV, in the movies, but now with the social media,
Speaker 3: you really can intimately know someone without ever having met them.
Speaker 4: And you can also see the layout to their home.
Speaker 4: We're on social media and we're doing it in our
Speaker 4: houses or outside of our houses, and that can be
Speaker 4: a real tell for anybody who's a predator.
Speaker 3: As we know, the victims were frequently posting on social media,
Speaker 3: which oftentimes showed the layout of their home.
Speaker 1: The six bedroom house on King Road is tucked away
Speaker 1: in a residential area of Moscow. It's surrounded by an
Speaker 1: eighteen hole golf course, the University of Idaho's fraternity row,
Speaker 1: and other residential homes. It sits about two miles from
Speaker 1: the large commercial shopping area where the Target and Walmart
Speaker 1: are and about two miles from the main downtown bar area.
Speaker 5: About four years before the crime, I was in Moscow, Idaho,
Speaker 5: for homecoming. I was campaigning for Congress in the first
Speaker 5: District of Idaho, so participated in the homecoming parade, passing
Speaker 5: out literature, shaking a few hands, waving at the crowd.
Speaker 5: At the conclusion of the parade, one of my good
Speaker 5: supporters who was also in town, a friend of mine
Speaker 5: and a law office client of mine, had a son
Speaker 5: who was one of the rental residents leasing that particular property.
Speaker 1: That's David H. Leroy speaking to producer Jeff Shane. Leroy
Speaker 1: is a former local prosecutor turned defense attorney. He served
Speaker 1: as Idaho's Attorney General. He's also a graduate of the
Speaker 1: University of Idaho College of Law and has been in
Speaker 1: the house where the murders happened.
Speaker 5: So we went over to the house, ended up on
Speaker 5: the second floor in a living room area, and chatted
Speaker 5: with his son and the other two three residents who
Speaker 5: were students at the university at that time living in
Speaker 5: the house where the crime would be committed. About four
Speaker 5: years later.
Speaker 3: What was it like being in there?
Speaker 5: A gray, three story building set in a relatively hard
Speaker 5: to get to backwater street up against a hill, so
Speaker 5: that you have a couple of different levels of entry
Speaker 5: in the house. To go into the lowest level is
Speaker 5: basically almost a daylight type basement, and then you must
Speaker 5: walk up a stairway to get to the second floor,
Speaker 5: where bedrooms and the living room area occupy the front
Speaker 5: of the house. Upstairs, there are additional bedrooms. We didn't
Speaker 5: visit those, but it's a three story set against the
Speaker 5: hill structure that has multiple entrance levels and multiple exit levels.
Speaker 3: You were a student there, so you've I imagined lived
Speaker 3: in different places. It was this house typical of where
Speaker 3: a student might live in Moscow.
Speaker 5: This house was probably built in the nineteen seventies, no
Speaker 5: later than the eighties, in an area that's immediately adjacent
Speaker 5: to campus, literally the campus boundary and the fraternities and
Speaker 5: sororities that ring the center of the campus against a
Speaker 5: large hill which is topped by the University of Idaho's
Speaker 5: water tower with a big emblematic eye on the exterior
Speaker 5: of the structure. Is no more than a quarter of
Speaker 5: a mile off campus. It's against a hill with single
Speaker 5: family residences and other student population apartment buildings, and it's
Speaker 5: perhaps no more than half a mile from the center
Speaker 5: of the campus. Two thirds of a mile from the
Speaker 5: student union itself.
Speaker 3: When they weren't sure who did it, they thought this
Speaker 3: couldn't be that random because this house was kind of
Speaker 3: tucked away. It was a little bit on It's not
Speaker 3: like a cul de sac, but it's a little bit
Speaker 3: of a dead end, like it's on a major thoroughfare.
Speaker 3: What's your take on that.
Speaker 5: Now, there's no immediate arterial approximate to this house. You
Speaker 5: must turn off an arterial and then off a sub arterial,
Speaker 5: and then off that sub arterial to go up a
Speaker 5: hillside almost to a dead end about one hundred or
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty five yards before you get to
Speaker 5: this house. To get to this structure where the killings
Speaker 5: took place, you have to work at it, and you
Speaker 5: don't immediately pass by it on your way to anything else.
Speaker 3: So it stands to reason that whomever did this did
Speaker 3: not just stumble upon the house.
Speaker 5: A lot of the issues that was of great concern
Speaker 5: semantically as these investigations were developing was whether these children
Speaker 5: and whether this house was quote targeted in some way.
Speaker 5: The initial observations of the law enforcement officials the prosecutor
Speaker 5: included with it there was some kind of targeting, and
Speaker 5: it was a lot logical conclusion, given where this event
Speaker 5: happened and the fact that so many students were involved
Speaker 5: as victims. But it is some place that you need
Speaker 5: to work to get to and would not necessarily happen
Speaker 5: upon even if you were looking for a random place
Speaker 5: to commit a crime.
Speaker 1: Here again, Stephanie, Jeff and Connor.
Speaker 7: I want to Google Maps. I just want to map
Speaker 7: out where this house on King Road was. And it's
Speaker 7: really not a part of the city of Moscow where
Speaker 7: people would just sort of end up. It's not near
Speaker 7: the main bar area, it's not near the commercial shopping area.
Speaker 7: It is a really secluded, little sort of neighborhood. A
Speaker 7: lot of people live there, but it's not the type
Speaker 7: of place that you would just sort of drive.
Speaker 3: By, and that's been confirmed by a few people that
Speaker 3: we've talked to who have actually been to the house,
Speaker 3: that it's a truck to get there and you wouldn't
Speaker 3: just stumble upon it.
Speaker 7: I think one of the things that is sort of
Speaker 7: interesting about the house is it really was considered a
Speaker 7: party house, which really isn't all that surprising given the
Speaker 7: fact that there's a bunch of upperclassmen living in there.
Speaker 7: Some seniors soon to be graduating seniors. It's close to
Speaker 7: Toney Row, And I think the real question is is like,
Speaker 7: is there any possibility that Brian Coburger would have ever
Speaker 7: have been in that house for some other reason?
Speaker 4: And if Brian Coburger, you know, is a PhD student,
Speaker 4: whether he was invited or not, maybe he could have
Speaker 4: sort of slipped in the back door and without being
Speaker 4: spotted or would that be unusual.
Speaker 7: We know that the house had parties where even the
Speaker 7: girls weren't always at the parties. I mean there's a
Speaker 7: police record of police showing up and none of the
Speaker 7: residents of the house or even there, and they're talking
Speaker 7: to some people who don't live there, and the police
Speaker 7: are like, well, you got a noise complaint. We really
Speaker 7: need to talk to somebody who's on the lease. And
Speaker 7: so people are always coming and going from this house.
Speaker 7: But still, how do you get from Pullman as a
Speaker 7: PhD criminology student too, as you said, somebody who's kind
Speaker 7: of creepy. How do you end up at an undergraduate
Speaker 7: house in a totally different university. It just doesn't seem
Speaker 7: likely that Brian would have ended up there unless somebody
Speaker 7: invited them.
Speaker 1: If the house on CA Road was targeted, as police say,
Speaker 1: was it because of who lived there? Here's Jeff Shane
Speaker 1: speaking with reporter and Jeannette Levy from the Law and
Speaker 1: Crime Network.
Speaker 3: Does it matter how he knew them?
Speaker 8: I think it becomes relevant if he knew them, because
Speaker 8: it's just another dot to connect. I mean, if he
Speaker 8: didn't know them, if he actually had never interacted with
Speaker 8: any of them, that's so terrifying. If he's indeed the
Speaker 8: guilty party, what in the heck is going on? Like
Speaker 8: why did you kill these people?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 8: It just I think it's more of like an understanding
Speaker 8: it does. It's an explanation, not an excuse, Like, but
Speaker 8: I think you have to look at had he ever
Speaker 8: interacted with them?
Speaker 3: Because he's like, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know who these girls are.
Speaker 8: I don't know who these people are, and I have
Speaker 8: no clue what's going on. Why would I have anything
Speaker 8: to do with these kids? They're way younger than I was.
Speaker 8: I'm a twenty eight year old PhD student. I mean,
Speaker 8: I think it connects a dot if you if he
Speaker 8: had indeed interacted with any of them.
Speaker 1: Brian Kobak moved to Pullman, Washington to begin his PhD
Speaker 1: studies in June of twenty twenty two. According to a
Speaker 1: police have of David, cell phone data showed he was
Speaker 1: in the area of the home on King Road at
Speaker 1: least twelve times between August twenty twenty two and the murders.
Speaker 1: But did Brian Coburger know or have a connection to
Speaker 1: any of the victims? Here again, Jeff Connor and Stephanie by.
Speaker 3: All accounts, Ethan being at the house was kind of
Speaker 3: just chance. Yes, he stayed with Xana a lot, but
Speaker 3: Zana would also stay at his fraternity house, So based
Speaker 3: on what we know now, it's stands to reason he
Speaker 3: didn't know Ethan would even be home that night.
Speaker 7: Evan's Instagram profile was set to private, but it seems
Speaker 7: unlikely that Ethan was the target given the fact that
Speaker 7: his social media presence was pretty limited and there's no
Speaker 7: connection between Ethan and Brian Koberger.
Speaker 4: What a horrifying thought too, that this could have been
Speaker 4: a missed night for him, you know, the sliding.
Speaker 1: Door of that.
Speaker 4: What was it about that particular day in the alleged
Speaker 4: assailant's life that said, today's the day. It just makes
Speaker 4: you think if he had gotten a flat tire, or
Speaker 4: if he had caught a cold, or if the light
Speaker 4: was red and not green, something maybe could have shaken
Speaker 4: him out of this morning, and who knows, maybe four
Speaker 4: people could still be alive. You know, this is the
Speaker 4: stuff nightmares.
Speaker 1: Are made of. All three of the female victims, twenty
Speaker 1: one year old Kaylee Gonsalves, twenty year old Xana Kernodle,
Speaker 1: and twenty one year old Madison Mogan, had public Instagram accounts,
Speaker 1: and all three roommates regularly posted to social media, including TikTok.
Speaker 1: It doesn't appear that Madison, Kaylee, Zena, or Ethannu Cooburger.
Speaker 1: None of them followed anyone by the name of Brian
Speaker 1: Coberger on social media. However, Kaylee Consalvas's father, Steve, has
Speaker 1: said there are connections between his daughter and Coburger, but
Speaker 1: he has not commented on the possible connection.
Speaker 3: With so little information coming out at the beginning, there
Speaker 3: was so much speculation about the victims and the accused
Speaker 3: and their movements around the murders. As we know, Maddie
Speaker 3: and Kaylee spent their final night at the Corner Club,
Speaker 3: which is a popular bar in downtown Moscow, and people
Speaker 3: had speculated that maybe Coberger had been there, he was
Speaker 3: a regular, that he met them there, he saw them there.
Speaker 3: There's been nothing to say that that's true. It's possible.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's not addressed at all in the probable cause affidavit.
Speaker 7: It's not addressed by investigators in anywhere. It's just pure speculation. Sure,
Speaker 7: anything is possible, but there's nothing linking Brian Koberger to
Speaker 7: the Corner Club, either that night or previous nights. And
Speaker 7: you know, that's one of those sort of rumors that
Speaker 7: I think has kind of been shot down, But it
Speaker 7: doesn't seem that that is the connection between Brian Coberger
Speaker 7: and the four victims.
Speaker 4: There was also a rumor or there were reports that
Speaker 4: Xana and Maddie, as we know, were both waitresses at
Speaker 4: the same restaurant, and one of the unidentified workers from
Speaker 4: that restaurant claimed that they remembered Coburger attending there because
Speaker 4: he had a very strict diet and had very specific
Speaker 4: diet requests, but that ended up becoming unfounded as well.
Speaker 1: Reporter an Jeannette Levy also went to the Mad Greek
Speaker 1: restaurant and spoke to people there.
Speaker 9: I have been to the Mad Greek, and nobody at
Speaker 9: the Mad Greek that I spoke to recalled ever seeing
Speaker 9: him there, and they knew the young woman who worked there,
Speaker 9: you know, Sannah worked there and Maddie worked there. So
Speaker 9: the people I talked with at the Mad Greek did
Speaker 9: not recall ever seeing him there.
Speaker 1: The owner of the Mad Greek, Jackie Fisher, also issued
Speaker 1: a statement that said there is no evidence that Coburger
Speaker 1: ate at the restaurant. Let's stop here for a break,
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. Online in media, speculation
Speaker 1: about a possible connection between Coburger and the victims has
Speaker 1: largely focused on some type of social media connection. Did
Speaker 1: Brian Coburger digitally stock Xana, Maddie and Kaylee again Stephanie,
Speaker 1: jeff and Connor?
Speaker 4: According to People magazine, Coburger followed Maddie, Kaylee and Xana
Speaker 4: before the account was actually deleted, meaning his account was deleted.
Speaker 4: There's no mention of the other two roommates. Is that
Speaker 4: enough of a connection? And again, is this just rumor?
Speaker 4: The outlet also reported that Coburger message at least one
Speaker 4: of the victims. They didn't respond, but then apparently Brian
Speaker 4: Coburger reached out again and again and again and again
Speaker 4: and again. Is that Stocker mentality or is that just
Speaker 4: somebody on social media who wants an answer on something
Speaker 4: and now that's getting blown into something larger.
Speaker 3: I actually looked for myself in terms of did Brian
Speaker 3: follow them, because, as we know, the victims' profiles were
Speaker 3: mostly public, and if you search through Kayley's followers, for example,
Speaker 3: there are Brian Coberger profiles who follow her, but now
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of them. So it's clear that there
Speaker 3: are people out in the world who are making accounts
Speaker 3: with Brian Coberger's names following these victims, which that level
Speaker 3: of depravity is disgusting, But to me, that indicates that
Speaker 3: we as the public don't know for sure if you
Speaker 3: followed them. Of course, officials might know something we don't
Speaker 3: because what People magazine reports that two weeks prior to
Speaker 3: the murders in late October, he allegedly sent a message
Speaker 3: to one of the victims, basically just saying, hey, how
Speaker 3: are you, but he didn't get a response, and kept
Speaker 3: repeatedly messaging them over and over again.
Speaker 4: What is a person supposed to do? Somebody reaches out
Speaker 4: to them on social media or dms them and they
Speaker 4: don't want to engage, so they just ignore. But yet
Speaker 4: that ignoring somehow gets potentially obsessive for the person who's
Speaker 4: not getting a response. There's no right or wrong answer.
Speaker 7: It seems very plausible, and it makes sense that Brian
Speaker 7: Coberger was probably using social media to contact him. I
Speaker 7: mean that just as we're trying to find an answer
Speaker 7: for what's the connection, that seems like very likely, right,
Speaker 7: But you know, an unnamed source in People magazine like,
Speaker 7: how much do you want to actually grab onto that
Speaker 7: and say yeah, this is this is concrete. It still
Speaker 7: feels like until we get it from investigators, it still
Speaker 7: feels like just a theory and just an idea as
Speaker 7: opposed to something that you can be like, oh yeah,
Speaker 7: that definitely happened. That is for a fact, you know
Speaker 7: the connection.
Speaker 1: Here's Jeff Shane speaking with Antonette Levy from the Law
Speaker 1: on Crime Network.
Speaker 3: Knowing him, though, was such a loose term. I mean,
Speaker 3: she could have matched with him on Tender and said, oh,
Speaker 3: no thanks, I don't want to go out with you,
Speaker 3: and he latched onto that and she wouldn't have known him.
Speaker 8: You're right, And I was actually told that some of
Speaker 8: the people on Tender. I was told that some of
Speaker 8: the kids in that area use tender for networking and
Speaker 8: stuff like that, not just for dating. But I don't
Speaker 8: know whether that's true or not. Maybe there could have
Speaker 8: been some type of tender connection, I don't know, But
Speaker 8: as far as them interacting and you know, hey we
Speaker 8: went on a date or we're friends or what have you,
Speaker 8: I'm not aware of any connection like that. And frankly,
Speaker 8: I think the fact that he went to Maddie's room first,
Speaker 8: that to me says a lot. So was she the target?
Speaker 8: Did he somehow interact with her at some point in time?
Speaker 8: I don't think we know these things.
Speaker 1: Could Brian Kobecker have seen one of the women online
Speaker 1: and tried to start a relationship, only to be ignored
Speaker 1: and rejected.
Speaker 10: They don't consider murdering women a hate crime, but I
Speaker 10: think a lot of these cases are pretty much fall
Speaker 10: into that sort of category where you have white men
Speaker 10: who are rejected or you know, not they don't get
Speaker 10: what they want when they want it, and that's why
Speaker 10: they do it, and it's just such a like this
Speaker 10: inceell mentality, like where they're just so like women should
Speaker 10: just be like, you know, falling out their news to
Speaker 10: me and that's not the way the world works. And
Speaker 10: then they're just so bitter about it that you know
Speaker 10: everything is working out for them that suddenly the world's
Speaker 10: against them, and you know they're a victim, and it's,
Speaker 10: you know, poor me.
Speaker 1: Chris Bargo is a reporter with the TV magazine show
Speaker 1: Inside Edition and has been covering the Idaho murders. He
Speaker 1: spoke to Stephanie and Jeff about Brian Coberger's dating life
Speaker 1: and what he found out about Coburger's often creepy interactions
Speaker 1: with women. Have you heard that he was an inceell?
Speaker 4: Because Jeff and I were talking about that and it
Speaker 4: seemed like it was a bit of a perfect example.
Speaker 1: And in cell is an Internet term that describes young
Speaker 1: men who are frustrated by their lack of sexual experiences.
Speaker 1: It stands for involuntary celibate. Inceels have often been known
Speaker 1: to lash out at women when rejected.
Speaker 11: Okay, it's me the girl that went on a tender
Speaker 11: date with Brian We matched on Tinder.
Speaker 1: Chris Bargo interviewed a woman named Haley Willett, who went
Speaker 1: on a blind date with Coberger when they were both
Speaker 1: college students. She posted on social media about her disturbing
Speaker 1: interaction with Coburger and his inappropriate in cell like behavior.
Speaker 9: It recognized them immediately in my heart, just because I
Speaker 9: couldn't believe that, like I was face to face.
Speaker 3: With this guy.
Speaker 10: So about two weeks after the arrest of Brian Coburger,
Speaker 10: a young woman named Haley shares her story on TikTok
Speaker 10: that she went on a date with Brian Coburger about
Speaker 10: seven years prior. She said they matched on Tinder. They
Speaker 10: talked for a few hours, they went to the movie.
Speaker 10: It was pretty inconsequential. They drove back to her dormitory,
Speaker 10: he parked, and she said that she thought they were
Speaker 10: maybe going to talk. She then said she's gonna go
Speaker 10: up to her dorm room, and that's when she said
Speaker 10: he invited himself up with her. Now, Haley's very clear
Speaker 10: that she didn't really feel threatened and she wasn't scared.
Speaker 10: She just kind of thought he was a very clingy
Speaker 10: sort of guy. So she said, because she's socially awkward,
Speaker 10: she didn't really know how to say no, and she
Speaker 10: let him come up, and that's when she said things
Speaker 10: really started to change. She suddenly became very pushy and
Speaker 10: he's kept trying to touch her, and when he would
Speaker 10: touch her, she would say what are you doing and
Speaker 10: he would say, I'm not touching you and then get
Speaker 10: very serious about it, and she just said it got
Speaker 10: to the point where she didn't know what else to do,
Speaker 10: so she excused herself to go to the bathroom and
Speaker 10: then made it sound like she was loudly throwing up.
Speaker 10: But instead of leaving, he just stood outside the door.
Speaker 10: So she just stayed in there and waited until he
Speaker 10: finally left. Then when he did finally leave, he texted
Speaker 10: her that she had great birthing hymns. Haley did not
Speaker 10: ever speak to him again, and she really posted this
Speaker 10: as just sort of a message to women saying, like,
Speaker 10: you know, trust your gut. If you think something's off,
Speaker 10: do the right thing and just get rid of the guy.
Speaker 10: And again she said she wasn't afraid of him. She
Speaker 10: just thought it was an awkward, kind of clingy guy
Speaker 10: that was probably more into her than she was into.
Speaker 4: Him, wildly creepy and tell us like what was her disposition?
Speaker 10: Like Haley just seemed like someone who was trying to
Speaker 10: make a point of sort of sending out a message
Speaker 10: to other women that you know, like she said, just
Speaker 10: trust your gut. She did not seem to be looking
Speaker 10: for any sort of fame or notoriety. She wasn't out courting,
Speaker 10: you know, interviews or anything of anything. She was turning
Speaker 10: most of them down. And she, of course was dealing
Speaker 10: with a horrible backlash of people trying to dos her
Speaker 10: and people saying horrible things about her, wanting to know
Speaker 10: what she looked like back then versus now, grossly misogynistic
Speaker 10: things that happened to pretty much any woman who comes
Speaker 10: forward in any of these cases, even if they're not involved.
Speaker 10: It seemed like at one point she was getting more
Speaker 10: hatred for this murder than the actual suspect. But she know,
Speaker 10: she was very clear that something was off about him.
Speaker 10: And this is one of the few people we had
Speaker 10: spoken to or seen in the media at that point
Speaker 10: who wasn't from his hometown that just kind of knew
Speaker 10: him as a one off, And there were very few
Speaker 10: people that we could get like that.
Speaker 4: Just the idea that you can go in a blind
Speaker 4: date with a person who you know seems nice enough
Speaker 4: to your point, seems to come from a nice family,
Speaker 4: not a bunch of zombies. You know, you check a
Speaker 4: bunch of boxes. He's educated, he's on the right track,
Speaker 4: and come to find out, you just dodged a real
Speaker 4: bullet by locking yourself in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Coberger's troubled relationship with women only seemed to continue and
Speaker 1: often even escalate during his brief time at Washington State University.
Speaker 1: In addition to being kicked out of a bar in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania for harrassing the waitresses, Coburger lost his teaching assistant
Speaker 1: to job at WSU around the time of the murders.
Speaker 3: Brian Cooberger's behavior at the school had been flagged by
Speaker 3: Washington State University.
Speaker 1: This is a really big deal.
Speaker 4: The out of state tuition is fifty thousand dollars at
Speaker 4: Washington State University, so his teacher's assistant job was a
Speaker 4: really big deal and very important to him. This going
Speaker 4: away is a real life changer for him.
Speaker 7: Coburger didn't come from money, right His parents had filed
Speaker 7: for bankruptcy at least once, and to have your tuition
Speaker 7: paid for for a PhD program is a pretty big deal.
Speaker 7: But over the course of the fall, what we really see,
Speaker 7: according to all these reports is that his professors in
Speaker 7: the criminology department are really troubled by his behavior, and
Speaker 7: it seems like some of that behavior is how he
Speaker 7: treated undergraduate female students and other women in the PhD program.
Speaker 4: And is that because he's just odd and awkward and
Speaker 4: doesn't really have a great sense of social cues, or again,
Speaker 4: is this a tale of a real psycho in training.
Speaker 3: But there are some things we do know. Coburger was
Speaker 3: not the most inspiring educator and had a tendency to
Speaker 3: talk down to people, especially female students. He would grade
Speaker 3: them harder and kind of be demeaning to them.
Speaker 5: We know that.
Speaker 3: On September twenty third, about a month into his role
Speaker 3: as a TA, there was an altercation between him and
Speaker 3: his professor, John Snyder, who was kind of effectively his boss.
Speaker 3: Then just a couple weeks later, on October third, Coburger
Speaker 3: and members of the faculty of the School of Criminology
Speaker 3: had a discussion about the norms of professional behavior and
Speaker 3: what to expect moving forward.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean norms of professional behavior. That's the phrase
Speaker 7: we've heard a lot. There's other reports that he gets
Speaker 7: into a screaming match with another female student who leaves
Speaker 7: the room because of the way he's talking down to her.
Speaker 7: So I mean, when you talk about norms of professional behavior,
Speaker 7: it just doesn't sound like he's acting in an appropriate way.
Speaker 7: And I think that really is what we're talking about
Speaker 7: in this entire story of Brian Coburger, is the way
Speaker 7: he views women, the way he treats women, and then
Speaker 7: ultimately what he does to women.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because by all accounts from what we've heard,
Speaker 4: he comes from a very loving family. So again, it
Speaker 4: doesn't really fit the familial mo for someone who's air
Speaker 4: quotes anti women.
Speaker 7: No, not at all. But by the end of December,
Speaker 7: by the end of the first term, Washington State University
Speaker 7: pulls his TA position funding and you know, he essentially
Speaker 7: has to now come up with that tuition that fifty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars to cover his program. He's terminated from his
Speaker 7: teaching assistant position, and so his behavior, imagine what you
Speaker 7: have to do to get that teaching position just you know,
Speaker 7: yanked from underneath you.
Speaker 6: Someone allegedly broke into the woman's apartment and move things around.
Speaker 6: Instead of calling police, the coworker called Coburger, who suggested
Speaker 6: and helped her install security cameras.
Speaker 1: Investigators are looking into if Coburger was behind the break
Speaker 1: in and use the cameras to spy on his colleague
Speaker 1: Stephanie and Connor. Can you imagine if this is actually accurate.
Speaker 1: I know all of this is unanswerable in this regard,
Speaker 1: but we want to be able to know that the
Speaker 1: scary person is obvious and this doesn't seem obvious enough
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 7: It doesn't seem obvious. But there definitely is a pattern here.
Speaker 7: I mean this behavior towards women, whether it was when
Speaker 7: he was home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, in getting kicked out
Speaker 7: of the bar there, or it's at WSU. You know
Speaker 7: the way he's interacting with undergraduates and other PhD students.
Speaker 7: Oh and by the way, he also got kicked out
Speaker 7: of a program in high school as well. So when
Speaker 7: you see him on paper, he looks like a really
Speaker 7: well put together person. But there's a lot of these
Speaker 7: stories that are coming together that really fit a pattern
Speaker 7: of somebody who has real serious problems.
Speaker 1: But the allegations of Brian Cooberger's disturbing behavior at w
Speaker 1: AS you don't in there. Police are investigating a break
Speaker 1: in at the home of a female coworker. Let's stop
Speaker 1: here for another break If Brian Coburger was digitally stalking
Speaker 1: one of the women in the house. Many have speculated
Speaker 1: that either Kaylee Gonsalvez or Madison Mogan were his primary targets,
Speaker 1: since they were killed first.
Speaker 3: Kaylee was set to graduate early and had actually moved
Speaker 3: out of the house and was only back in town
Speaker 3: to visit her friends, show them her new car, and
Speaker 3: just have a fun weekend, so she's not living in
Speaker 3: this house. We know that Kaylee was sleeping in Maddie's
Speaker 3: bed because we know that that's where she was found.
Speaker 3: They were both found in her bed. So if Coburger
Speaker 3: had been digitally stalking or physically stalking any of these girls,
Speaker 3: he would have seen on social media that Kaylee was
Speaker 3: back in town. Could this have been the reason why
Speaker 3: he struck on that night in November?
Speaker 7: There's multiple photos from that weekend of all of the
Speaker 7: roommates together with Ethan as well, And so if you're
Speaker 7: digitally stalking, you see that Kaylee's in town. The roommates
Speaker 7: are essentially all back together, which is kind of what
Speaker 7: they were saying was how great it is to be
Speaker 7: all back together, And he might have seen that.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine too? Again, maybe had they not posted
Speaker 4: on social media the car or where they were, or
Speaker 4: just how happy they were to be together. Maybe he
Speaker 4: wouldn't have known.
Speaker 1: Here's Stephanie speaking with Chris Spargo.
Speaker 10: If you don't like gay people and you commit a
Speaker 10: crime against a gay person, it's a hate crime. If
Speaker 10: you don't like people have a certain race and you
Speaker 10: commit a crime against them, it's a hate crime. But
Speaker 10: what if you hate women? What if you are like
Speaker 10: these young men who feel so entitled to female affection
Speaker 10: and then when they don't get it, they carry out
Speaker 10: these crimes. Why isn't that a hate crime? And why
Speaker 10: aren't we focusing on that aspect of it, because that
Speaker 10: seems to get lost in the mix. And being a
Speaker 10: woman in the same age is just negotiations. Especially when
Speaker 10: you're with men, it seems like you know how you're
Speaker 10: going to behave, how you're going to treat them. You
Speaker 10: modify your behavior based on the way they're behaving to
Speaker 10: protect yourself. If you're on a date with someone for
Speaker 10: the first time, if you're maybe going to go home
Speaker 10: with someone, you have to sort of map out all
Speaker 10: these things because you don't know the person they might
Speaker 10: become once you get into their apartment, or they get
Speaker 10: into your apartment. It's very, very scary, and even on
Speaker 10: a more sort of casual level, if you're talking to
Speaker 10: someone and you just don't want to be mean, or
Speaker 10: you just don't want to be outwardly rejecting of them,
Speaker 10: and you're just nice, that niceness can get misconstrued and
Speaker 10: then used against you as some sort of leading them
Speaker 10: on or and it's it's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: The relationship between them, well him, I should say, and
Speaker 4: is it Kaylee.
Speaker 10: We still don't know for sure that there was any
Speaker 10: specific target. It would seem, however, that early suggestions, for
Speaker 10: whatever reason, have focused on Kaylee. And Kaylee was getting
Speaker 10: ready to move out. She got a job in Texas,
Speaker 10: she just bought a new car, She's gonna be working
Speaker 10: at an IT firm. Everything is sort of coming together
Speaker 10: for her, like she was beginning her life as any adult.
Speaker 10: And then she went out with her friend Madison. That night,
Speaker 10: Zanna had gone out with her boyfriend. The other two
Speaker 10: roommates were also out. They'll get back to their apartment
Speaker 10: and then where it gets crazy as the timeframe, because
Speaker 10: Xanna gets his door dash delivery at four or five am,
Speaker 10: and at four twenty am. The suspect car scenes speeding away.
Speaker 10: How do you murder four people in fifteen minutes?
Speaker 1: Kaylee's father, Steve Gonsalvez, has said in several interviews that
Speaker 1: his daughter's wounds were significantly more brutal than Madison Mogen's.
Speaker 2: I'll cut in the chase.
Speaker 10: Yeah, their means of debt don't match. I don't match.
Speaker 1: There are points of damage don't match. According to her father,
Speaker 1: the knife wounds were deep and slashed open Kayley's liver
Speaker 1: and lungs. This type of attack is often described as
Speaker 1: an overkill. It's typically a sign that the victim was
Speaker 1: an intended target, rather than someone who just happened to
Speaker 1: be there.
Speaker 3: Xana's dad told the press that when she was killed,
Speaker 3: she had defensive wounds, some of which were so bad
Speaker 3: that her fingers were almost cut off, implying that at
Speaker 3: some point Shed maybe tried to grab the knife as
Speaker 3: it was being kind of lunged at her. So is
Speaker 3: it possible that maybe she surprised Coburger after hearing the
Speaker 3: other people were killed and he was on his way out.
Speaker 3: We also know that Ethan's neck was slashed, which would
Speaker 3: imply that he was not in bed, but maybe somewhere
Speaker 3: in the room and the doorway is what we've heard.
Speaker 3: So while Kaylee had the deepest wounds in comparison to Maddie,
Speaker 3: without other information, it's hard to know exactly what that means.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Kaylee's dad has mentioned that her wounds were way
Speaker 7: deeper than the other roommates. That's obviously something that investigators
Speaker 7: are looking at.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: Impossible to know yet who Brian Coberger was specifically targeting.
Speaker 1: There are disturbing details about his final days in Pulman,
Speaker 1: Washington before driving home. Here again is reporter Chris Bargo.
Speaker 10: I personally think that he knew he was not going
Speaker 10: to be able to go back because he wasn't getting
Speaker 10: out of the program, but he lost his TA position.
Speaker 10: And if you are a TA, you get an in
Speaker 10: state tuition and they waive it for a year, and
Speaker 10: there's all these sort of allowances, but if you're not
Speaker 10: a TA, you have to pay full out of date.
Speaker 10: And suddenly he's pay like forty thousand dollars to go
Speaker 10: back in the spring. That's a huge leap for someone
Speaker 10: who didn't really have a job before that. So I
Speaker 10: don't know that he would be able to do it.
Speaker 10: So either he moved everything out of that apartment knowing
Speaker 10: he wasn't coming back, or he actually lived like that
Speaker 10: where there was no shower curtain, there was you know,
Speaker 10: like a stripped mattress. It was no furniture in there,
Speaker 10: like one TV. And I think that when the public
Speaker 10: defender came to get the stuff, she took like a TV,
Speaker 10: a CD tower, and like a monitor.
Speaker 4: That was it.
Speaker 10: So it's just sort of a very bare bones, chilling
Speaker 10: sort of setup.
Speaker 1: More on that next time. For more information on the
Speaker 1: case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kt
Speaker 1: Underscore Studios. The Idaho Mascer is produced by Stephanie Laidecker,
Speaker 1: Jeff Sheene, Connor Powell, Chris Bargo, Gabriel Castillo, and me
Speaker 1: Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by Jeff Toi. Music
Speaker 1: by Jared Aston. The Idaho Massacre is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Kati's Studios. For more podcasts like this,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.
Speaker 11: I'm Diana h You may Knows, Body Moving, My Friend,
Speaker 11: and I John Green were featured in the Netflix documentary
Speaker 11: Don't f With Cats. On our new podcast, True Crimes
Speaker 11: with John, Indiana were turning our online investigative skills to
Speaker 11: some of the most unexplained, unsolved, and most ignored cases.
Speaker 3: Police say thirty three year old Bride Again was shot dead.
Speaker 8: Gunned down in front of his two year old daughter.
Speaker 4: Detectives confirmed that it was a targeted attack.
Speaker 2: It appears to be an execution style of assassination.
Speaker 4: This is very active, so we have to be careful.
Speaker 4: I've heard that there's a house that has some bodies
Speaker 4: in the basement.
Speaker 10: I knew, I just knew the move was wrong.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's something more sinister at play than just one
Speaker 3: young girl going missing. If you know something, heard something,
Speaker 3: please it's never too late to.
Speaker 7: Do the right thing.
Speaker 1: This is True Crimes with John and Deiana, the.
Speaker 3: Production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Justice is something that
Speaker 3: takes different shapes or formed.