Speaker 1: Newly uncovered posts made by an online forum may give
Speaker 1: us insight into Brian Coberger's character.
Speaker 2: Between November of two thousand and nine and February twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: while Coburger was a teenager, he allegedly made one hundred
Speaker 2: and eighteen posts, and in one of them, he said
Speaker 2: he felt no emotion and said quote, I can say
Speaker 2: and do whatever I want with little remorse.
Speaker 3: This is the Idaho Massacre. A production of KAT Studios
Speaker 3: and iHeartRadio episode seven in the Dark. I'm Courtney Armstrong,
Speaker 3: a television producer at KAT Studios with Stephanie Leidecker, Jeff Shane,
Speaker 3: and Connor Powell. In July of twenty eleven, a user
Speaker 3: going by the name Xar posted on an online chat
Speaker 3: forum that quote the ringing in his ears and the
Speaker 3: fuzz in his vision made him feel that all the
Speaker 3: demons in his head were mocking him. The chilling statement
Speaker 3: is just one of more than one hundred messages believed
Speaker 3: to be authored by a then teenage Brian Cooeberger on
Speaker 3: the website tapatok. In post after post, Coburger claimed to
Speaker 3: be suffering from a little known neurological syndrome called visual snow.
Speaker 3: The rare condition has a range of disorienting symptoms, but
Speaker 3: the most common is constantly seeing snow like flex or
Speaker 3: black and white scattered dots, like the static on an
Speaker 3: old analog television.
Speaker 4: I see a large intensity of black, yellow, white fuzz.
Speaker 4: It makes my mind fizzle and I could barely keep
Speaker 4: in the bounds of reality.
Speaker 3: Coburger wrote that his condition led to anxiety, depression, and
Speaker 3: quote crazy thoughts. These posts paint a picture of a
Speaker 3: deeply who would later turn to heroine and develop an
Speaker 3: obsessive interest in violent criminals. Coburger's dark mind and law
Speaker 3: enforcement background has led many to draw similarities to other
Speaker 3: serial killers like Dennis Radar. Radar dubbed himself quote the
Speaker 3: BTK for his fondness to bind, torture, and kill his victims,
Speaker 3: and Joseph James DiAngelo, otherwise known as the Golden State Killer.
Speaker 3: Both had a history of disturbing thoughts and an intense
Speaker 3: interest in law enforcement. So how does Brian Coburger fit
Speaker 3: into the larger history of killers. What in his background
Speaker 3: could have potentially led Coburger down a path to murder?
Speaker 3: How did he go from someone who caught criminals to
Speaker 3: potentially becoming a killer himself, or could he have potentially
Speaker 3: evolved into a killer as he descended deeper into the
Speaker 3: dark world of criminology. When investigators released It's the Probable
Speaker 3: Cause Affidavid in the University of Idaho murders, the nineteen
Speaker 3: page document laid out much of the evidence linking Coburger
Speaker 3: to the crime. According to police, the twenty eight year
Speaker 3: old criminology student's DNA was on a knife sheath found
Speaker 3: at the murder scene, and a white Atlanta like the
Speaker 3: one Coburger drove, was seen driving past the home on
Speaker 3: King Road multiple times. Coburger's phone also repeatedly pinged on
Speaker 3: towers near the house in the weeks before the Grizzly murders.
Speaker 3: But one key piece of the puzzle was conspicuously missing
Speaker 3: from the Probable Cause Affidavid. Motive There's Jeff and Stephanie.
Speaker 5: Motive is an essential part of the criminal justice process.
Speaker 5: Its official definition is the moving course, the impulse, or
Speaker 5: the desire that induces criminal action on the part of
Speaker 5: the accused. Basically, why did this crime or murder happen?
Speaker 5: As rational humans, we crave a justification for otherwise senseless
Speaker 5: and horrible acts.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's a very important piece of the court process,
Speaker 6: and it's not a requirement to get a conviction, but look,
Speaker 6: jurors really want to make sense of a case.
Speaker 5: This case is so fascinating, not only because of the
Speaker 5: sheer atrocity of the murders, but also because of the
Speaker 5: accused trajectory and how complex it is. Up until December
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two, Brian Coberger seemingly had wanted to be
Speaker 5: a hero. He told his friends he had helped to
Speaker 5: study high profile criminals and aspired to help catch quote
Speaker 5: unquote bad guys.
Speaker 6: This is the part that doesn't totally make sense about
Speaker 6: this case. How and why does Coburger go from that
Speaker 6: to being accused of brutally murdering four people.
Speaker 5: I speak for the general public when I say we're
Speaker 5: all immensely curious.
Speaker 6: I guess, depending upon what is revealed at trial, we
Speaker 6: may get a motive at some point, but as of
Speaker 6: right now, there really doesn't appear to be one.
Speaker 5: So it raises the question was Brian Coberger born a killer?
Speaker 5: Or did something happen in his life to turn him
Speaker 5: into a monster.
Speaker 6: And one thing where it's noting listen, don't officially know
Speaker 6: about Coburger's mental state, but what we do know is
Speaker 6: what he said about his symptoms around his condition called
Speaker 6: visual snow, and that's probably a pretty decent place to start.
Speaker 1: Understanding visual snow is still not fully well understood. A
Speaker 1: lot of how it works or how it's affecting the
Speaker 1: brain is under kind of hypothesis.
Speaker 3: Coberger wrote on the TAPA Talk for Him that his
Speaker 3: visual snow symptoms began in September of two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: when he was just fourteen years old. He admitted the
Speaker 3: condition changed him, saying he became more anxious and developed
Speaker 3: a sense of derealization and hopelessness.
Speaker 1: I think for some people who have high anxiety over
Speaker 1: it or want to get rid of it, that's really
Speaker 1: the frustrating part, because we don't have a cure for it.
Speaker 3: Joseph Allen is a doctor of optometry who has studied
Speaker 3: visual snow tho suffers from the rare condition. Here he
Speaker 3: is speaking with Jeff.
Speaker 5: You obviously never treated Brian Coburger or know his state
Speaker 5: of mind. But for someone who's maybe not in the
Speaker 5: best state of mind, how do you think throwing visual
Speaker 5: snow on top of that would affect someone.
Speaker 1: So there is associations with visual snow with depression and anxiety.
Speaker 1: Those probably are the two most consistent ones on top
Speaker 1: of headaches. Like a lot of people who have visual
Speaker 1: snow usually have a history of migraines. It's like almost
Speaker 1: sixty percent of people who have visual snow syndrome also
Speaker 1: have a history of migraine headaches. You're somebody with visual
Speaker 1: SNOW and you're seeing visual phenomenon like this that you
Speaker 1: can't explain that doctors maybe are being dismissive about, and
Speaker 1: you have other forms of anxiety or depression. I think
Speaker 1: it can really become more isolating. We know isolation Bru's
Speaker 1: mental illness. I think there is maybe a higher risk
Speaker 1: factor for some of them.
Speaker 3: In posts on the online visual Snow forum, Coburger suggests
Speaker 3: he turned to the internet in two thousand and nine
Speaker 3: in hopes of finding help, but in the absence of
Speaker 3: answers to his questions. Coburger said he felt like the
Speaker 3: demons in his head were mocking him. As a result,
Speaker 3: he grew distant from the people around him. In a
Speaker 3: July twenty eleven post, Coburger wrote, quote, I have had
Speaker 3: this horrible depersonalization in my life for almost two years.
Speaker 3: As I hug my family, I look into their faces,
Speaker 3: I see nothing. It is like I'm looking at a
Speaker 3: video game but less. I am blank. I have no opinion,
Speaker 3: I have no emotion, I have nothing. This type of
Speaker 3: disconnection is common for people suffering from eye issues, particularly
Speaker 3: visual snow Here Again, Doctor Joseph Allen, speaking with.
Speaker 1: Jeff I have identified as having visual snow I fit
Speaker 1: the diagnosis requirements. It's something that I've struggled with since
Speaker 1: I was a kid, Like I can think of like
Speaker 1: maybe nine years old. Third grade is when I first,
Speaker 1: I think, became just more perceptually aware of what was
Speaker 1: happening with my eyes. But like most people who have
Speaker 1: visual snow they don't either no one talks about it
Speaker 1: or we just sort of, you know, you grow up
Speaker 1: with it all your life and you just sort of
Speaker 1: assume that's how everybody sees.
Speaker 5: So did you go into optometry because you felt like
Speaker 5: you had eye issues?
Speaker 1: I think there is definitely some poll there. At a
Speaker 1: young age, around age seven age, I got thick glasses,
Speaker 1: and ultimately I think what drove me to be in
Speaker 1: the profession is because I got contact lenses. Getting contact
Speaker 1: lenses was a lot allowed me to play sports and
Speaker 1: that helped me make friends and having that boost of
Speaker 1: self confidence at age of thirteen.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that you bring up how getting your eyes
Speaker 5: kind of taken care of really opened up a lot
Speaker 5: of doors for you socially and kind of changed your
Speaker 5: life for the better. Because Brian Coburger struggled socially his
Speaker 5: whole life. He didn't connect with girls, he didn't really
Speaker 5: have a lot of friends, and so it makes it
Speaker 5: you wonder, is it maybe because he couldn't see properly,
Speaker 5: Like he wasn't connecting with the world the way he felt,
Speaker 5: you know, he could have been.
Speaker 1: I think eyesight is super important. Like for my case,
Speaker 1: sports like kids make much better social connections if they're
Speaker 1: involved in activities with other kids. And for me, it
Speaker 1: was hard to play football. You can't really play football
Speaker 1: with pick glasses on. So for me, getting into contact
Speaker 1: lenses really was that key to opening up that whole
Speaker 1: other stream of life for me.
Speaker 3: But by his teenage years, Brian Coberger wrote on Tapa Talk,
Speaker 3: he wasn't making personal connections with family or friends. Instead,
Speaker 3: his mind was moving in a darker direction in posts.
Speaker 3: As a then sixteen year old, Coburger wrote that his
Speaker 3: visual snow condition made him feel like a quote organic
Speaker 3: sack of meat with no self worth. He berated himself
Speaker 3: for his expanding array of mental struggles that ranged from
Speaker 3: depression to delusions of grandeur, to anxiety to constant thoughts
Speaker 3: of suicide. Coburger even wrote lyrics to a rap song saying,
Speaker 3: you are not my equal. You are evil, but I
Speaker 3: am the devil. But now I am going regal. Don't
Speaker 3: fuck with us again. Joseph Allen, there.
Speaker 1: Is no evidence right now that visual snow syndrome would
Speaker 1: cause mental illness, but it is I think in his case,
Speaker 1: if he has mental illness and then a visual snow
Speaker 1: on top of it, it's like augmenting it. It's giving
Speaker 1: him more, maybe more reasons to lose grip on his
Speaker 1: own sense of reality. Perhaps there is some reported on
Speaker 1: top of depression of anxiety, there is something called depersonalization
Speaker 1: and derealization which is associated with it. Depersonalization kind of
Speaker 1: refers to these feelings that you've detached from your physical
Speaker 1: body or even from kind of your own mind, and
Speaker 1: so people will feel that they are robotic or being
Speaker 1: maybe controlled by somebody else. And there's this concept of derealization,
Speaker 1: which I like to think of it as the Matrix syndrome.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen that movie The Matrix, where people
Speaker 1: feel like the world around them isn't real, they feel
Speaker 1: that it's artificial. And you can imagine if you have
Speaker 1: visual snow syndrome and you see this static all the time,
Speaker 1: you could be like, well, maybe my body is just
Speaker 1: like a video game character, and somebody else outside of
Speaker 1: this make believe world I live in is actually controlling me.
Speaker 1: So I think if you have already existing mental illness,
Speaker 1: a poor grip on reality, a poor social structure, and
Speaker 1: then maybe having these feelings of depersonalization derealization, then it's
Speaker 1: it's easier maybe to whose emotional connection between other people
Speaker 1: and even maybe what's right and wrong.
Speaker 3: Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 3: a moment. By twenty eleven, Brian Kolberger was desperate for
Speaker 3: a solution. The effects of visual Snow were weighing on him.
Speaker 3: He wrote on the online forum that he visited a
Speaker 3: neurologist and took antimigraine medicine. Neither worked. Coburger later adopted
Speaker 3: a strict diet, removing sugar, bread, wheat, soy, and other
Speaker 3: carbohydrates from his meals. High school friends described him during
Speaker 3: this time as obsessive about his new health regime, which
Speaker 3: did help him lose a significant amount of weight, at
Speaker 3: least one hundred pounds, if not more, and according to
Speaker 3: his own words, Coburger began to improve. Coburger wrote on
Speaker 3: the tap talk forum in February Worry of twenty twelve
Speaker 3: that he had accepted his visual snow and that the
Speaker 3: condition no longer scared him. However, in his final post,
Speaker 3: he also said quote, I feel like coming to terms
Speaker 3: could be a bad thing, though again Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 6: Between twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, Coburger went through this
Speaker 6: huge transformation after several years of feeling very down and depressed.
Speaker 6: According to reports, he really started to turn things around
Speaker 6: and turned a corner. He adopted a new diet, he
Speaker 6: started to lose a ton of weight, and he was
Speaker 6: apparently much more happy about life and seemingly more optimistic.
Speaker 5: But it's also around this time that he gets kicked
Speaker 5: out of the law enforcement Educational Vocation program and ends
Speaker 5: up having to finish high school remotely in the spring
Speaker 5: of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 6: This is a pretty big deal, and according to multiple friends,
Speaker 6: this turmoil really spun him in a dangerous direction. He
Speaker 6: started to use drugs. Apparently he started with marijuana, but
Speaker 6: then that really escalated to heroin, which is a huge leap.
Speaker 5: One of his friends, Rich Pasqual, who worked with Coburger
Speaker 5: at the pizza shop, said that by twenty thirteen, Coburger
Speaker 5: was a full on heroin addict, but he was eventually
Speaker 5: able to kick the habit, going to rehab and enrolling
Speaker 5: at the Northampton Community College.
Speaker 6: It does seem that Coburger has a bit of a
Speaker 6: history of locking in and almost obsessing about certain parts
Speaker 6: of his life, whether it's the visual snow or drugs,
Speaker 6: his diet, and in some ways, even his own criminal behavior.
Speaker 5: This type of compulsive behavior is something we see with
Speaker 5: other serial or prolific killers.
Speaker 3: After years of being socially detached, addicted to drugs, and suicidal,
Speaker 3: Coburger appears to have found a new purpose after rehab,
Speaker 3: an intense fascination with the criminal mind. This fascination led
Speaker 3: Coburger to study at nearby Dessalge University and ultimately under
Speaker 3: the renowned on forensic psychologists, doctor Catherine Ramsland.
Speaker 7: Do you have to study the victim and you have
Speaker 7: to know things about offenders? So you have to study
Speaker 7: offenders and you have to know the kinds of things
Speaker 7: they might do.
Speaker 3: Ramsland is one of, if not the leading expert on
Speaker 3: serial killers and murderers. She's written more than sixty books
Speaker 3: and hundreds of articles on violent criminals. On December twenty second,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, producer Jeff Shane conducted an interview with
Speaker 3: Ramsland for a different project. Just eight days later, her
Speaker 3: former student Brian Coberger would be arrested. In hindsight, their
Speaker 3: conversation is chilling.
Speaker 5: What can you tell me about people who commit crimes?
Speaker 7: So you're looking at the body and the crime scene,
Speaker 7: maybe the whole geographic analysis in terms of their comfort
Speaker 7: zone and et cetera. But you're also looking at what
Speaker 7: do we know about offenders to apply to this, and
Speaker 7: then you want to build as detailed biography of the
Speaker 7: person as you possibly can. It's all going to be
Speaker 7: probability based, more likely to have education than not education,
Speaker 7: or more likely to be compelled sexually because of certain rituals,
Speaker 7: and nothing missing. But if things are always missing, they're
Speaker 7: all more likely to be motivated by greed or any
Speaker 7: eliminating witnesses not really interested in the murder itself, more
Speaker 7: interested in eliminating witnesses while they get off with the goods.
Speaker 7: But if the victim is mutilated in some way, overkill
Speaker 7: things like that, that's going to tell you a different
Speaker 7: story about the offender. So a lot of it's going
Speaker 7: to be based on what you're finding at the scene.
Speaker 7: There's a retrospective profile and a prospective profile, and too
Speaker 7: many people are doing the prospective profiling, and that is
Speaker 7: more of a risk evaluation based on a pattern of behaviors.
Speaker 7: Retrospective profile is what do we see right here at
Speaker 7: the crime scene today that will tell us something about
Speaker 7: this offender. And if we have several scenes that we
Speaker 7: think are related to the same offender, what do those
Speaker 7: various scenes tell us about this person.
Speaker 3: Ramsland has refused to comment publicly on her former graduate student,
Speaker 3: but she is most famous for her extensive research and
Speaker 3: books about the serial killer Dennis Radar, most commonly known
Speaker 3: as the BTK. Dessal's University is known for its hands
Speaker 3: on criminology program and as an undergraduate criminology student. Coburger
Speaker 3: would have studied Radar. As a graduate student of Ramsland.
Speaker 3: It's likely Coburger would have studied Radar in depth. He
Speaker 3: may have even had access to Ramsland's primary research information
Speaker 3: about both real killers and Dennis Radar.
Speaker 5: Tell me about BTK and how modern day criminals might
Speaker 5: have evolved since then.
Speaker 7: These days, serial killers quite often are a little more sophisticated.
Speaker 7: They're aware of you know, the investigators are looking at patterns.
Speaker 7: But even back in you know, the seventies, they sometimes
Speaker 7: they would have a ritual, so there would be similarities.
Speaker 7: But then they'll pick up somebody a victim of opportunity,
Speaker 7: weren't even looking, but they had their murder kits, so
Speaker 7: why not go for this? And then it's completely different.
Speaker 7: I remember Dennis Raider, for example, the BTK killer who
Speaker 7: so nineteen seventies into the eighties, and this final one
Speaker 7: of the ten he killed was in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 7: and by nineteen ninety one he realized how the FBI
Speaker 7: approached all this, and so instead of killing people in
Speaker 7: houses that he entered, he took a couple victims and
Speaker 7: dumped them outside. One victim he called it in none
Speaker 7: of the others. Several of them he wrote notes to
Speaker 7: the newspaper, but not all of them, so that's not
Speaker 7: a He's not a particularly sophisticated person. But he did
Speaker 7: change things up a little bit. He murdered a family
Speaker 7: of four, then he murdered a single woman. They didn't
Speaker 7: connect them at all because even though the bodies all
Speaker 7: were bound, he'd used different knots on the single woman
Speaker 7: than he had on the family. And he didn't do
Speaker 7: that purposely. He just liked knots and he was mixing
Speaker 7: it up.
Speaker 3: How much Coburger studied or understood about serial killers like
Speaker 3: Radar isn't clear, but there are unique and disturbing similarities
Speaker 3: between Coburger and Radar. Both are accused of committing their
Speaker 3: murderers while pursuing degrees in criminal justice. Radar was earning
Speaker 3: an undergraduate degree from which tosstatem as he embarked on
Speaker 3: his killing spree, and as doctor Ramslan mentioned in her interview,
Speaker 3: Radar mixed up his killing profile to evade investigators. When
Speaker 3: Coburger was arrested, he was wearing rubber gloves and sorting
Speaker 3: his trash into smaller plastic bags in an apparent effort
Speaker 3: to prevent police from collecting evidence against him. In an
Speaker 3: interview with TMZ, Dennis Radar said he saw similarities between
Speaker 3: Coburger and himself, the convicted killer of tens, that he
Speaker 3: believed Coburger, like himself, was motivated to kill by the
Speaker 3: fantasy of homicide. Again, Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 5: This is really the scariest question about Coburger. We know
Speaker 5: that he told people from a young age that he
Speaker 5: wanted to catch violent criminals and be a police officer.
Speaker 5: Later at WSU, he said he wanted to help rural
Speaker 5: police departments solve crimes. So was this all talk just
Speaker 5: a front or a ruse to get in with investigators?
Speaker 5: Did he want to figure out how they worked so
Speaker 5: he could operate around them. Given what we know about
Speaker 5: his teenageers, his feelings of isolation, and the demons in
Speaker 5: his had, is it possible that he had a long
Speaker 5: standing desire to kill.
Speaker 6: So with that in mind, are you saying that possibly
Speaker 6: studying criminology was part of the plan to learn how
Speaker 6: to kill people without getting caught exactly, or I also
Speaker 6: wonder if he has this personality type that's a bit obsessive.
Speaker 6: Was it possible that he's studying criminals at school because
Speaker 6: he's been obsessed with crime and fantasizing about being a.
Speaker 3: Killer his whole life.
Speaker 6: Or is it because he was studying criminology and about
Speaker 6: killers that he began to fantasize about it.
Speaker 5: That could make sense, and he definitely could have used
Speaker 5: what he learned from his criminology studies to help him
Speaker 5: get away with murder, at least for a little while.
Speaker 3: Let's stop here for another break. Brian Colberger's classmates and
Speaker 3: professors described him as intellectual, though at times arrogant and
Speaker 3: a bit of a know at all. One former professor
Speaker 3: from Dsal's University went further and said Coburger was a
Speaker 3: brilliant student. Michelle Bulger, an associate professor of criminology, wrote
Speaker 3: a letter of recommendation for Colberger's PhD application, describing him
Speaker 3: as perfectly professional in all their interactions. She also advised
Speaker 3: Coburger with his master's thesis on script theory, which focused
Speaker 3: on how and why criminals commit their crimes. As part
Speaker 3: of Coberger's deep dive into script theory, the idea that
Speaker 3: people largely fall into patterns or scripts, Bulger oversaw the
Speaker 3: creation of Coburger's request for criminals to fill out a
Speaker 3: survey on Reddit about their thoughts and emotions while committing
Speaker 3: a crime. Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 6: This Reddit survey is just so interesting. Yes, while his
Speaker 6: former professor says that type of work is very common
Speaker 6: amongst criminology students, and the specific nature of the questions
Speaker 6: and what he would later be accused of certainly raises
Speaker 6: some serious questions.
Speaker 5: We looked up the original survey. He posted it on Wednesday,
Speaker 5: June first, twenty twenty two, which was two hundred and
Speaker 5: twelve days before Xana, Ethan, Madison and Kayley were murdered.
Speaker 5: Here's what it said. Hello, my name is Brian, and
Speaker 5: I am inviting you to participate in a research project
Speaker 5: that seeks to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence
Speaker 5: decision making when committing a crime. In particular, this study
Speaker 5: seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense,
Speaker 5: with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience.
Speaker 5: The questions read, did you prepare for the crime before
Speaker 5: leaving your home? Please detail what you were thinking and
Speaker 5: feeling at this point after committing the crime. What were
Speaker 5: you thinking and feeling. How did you travel to and
Speaker 5: enter the location that the crime occurred. After arriving, what
Speaker 5: steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target?
Speaker 5: Please detail your thoughts and feelings. How did you leave
Speaker 5: the scene. Why did you choose that victim or target
Speaker 5: over others before making your move? How did you approach
Speaker 5: the victim or target? Please detail what you were thinking
Speaker 5: and feeling. How did you accomplish your goal? Please explain
Speaker 5: what you were thinking and feeling before leaving? Is there
Speaker 5: anything else you did?
Speaker 6: Jeff, what you said about this type of survey is
Speaker 6: pretty typical of graduate students, but it did get us
Speaker 6: curious if he had used any of this information in
Speaker 6: his thesis, and it doesn't appear that he did so.
Speaker 5: Maybe he didn't get enough participants and scrapped the idea,
Speaker 5: or he.
Speaker 6: Took the survey collected the information, it was a ruse
Speaker 6: that he was using it for his thesis and instead used.
Speaker 3: It to plot murder. If Colberger was potentially using his
Speaker 3: academic opportunities to learn how to kill, one skill, he
Speaker 3: potentially appears to have employed murdering Kaylee, Maddie, Zanna, and
Speaker 3: Ethan is the ruse.
Speaker 8: A ruse is something that the killer presents to calm
Speaker 8: the intended victim. While the killer knows he's going to
Speaker 8: be murdering them, he doesn't want them to know anything
Speaker 8: violent is going to happen to them, so he'll use
Speaker 8: a ruse to get them, perhaps to go with them
Speaker 8: to a more secluded place. But even then, if he
Speaker 8: does something, he may present another ruse even as he's
Speaker 8: binding them, say I'm not gonna argue, I just need
Speaker 8: to do this. And it will vary with some of
Speaker 8: these different killers. But even when a person suspects something wrong,
Speaker 8: if the killer is not in the position to do
Speaker 8: everything they need to do, then they will try to
Speaker 8: calm them once more, and it'll be done by a ruse,
Speaker 8: which is usually what they say to them in the
Speaker 8: kindness way possible, and hopefully it'll be believed by the victim.
Speaker 3: Kevin Sullivan is an investigative journalist and author of several
Speaker 3: books about the serial killer Ted Bundy. He sees several
Speaker 3: similarities between Coberger and Bundy, who confess to killing at
Speaker 3: least thirty people in seven states. According to the problem
Speaker 3: Will Cause Affidavid roommate Dylan Mortenson heard crying coming from
Speaker 3: Xana Kernodle's room, and then a male voice saying, quote,
Speaker 3: it's okay, I'm going to help you. This effort by
Speaker 3: a killer to reassure a victim is common in pre
Speaker 3: plan murders.
Speaker 8: BTK did this. He would try to assure people that
Speaker 8: like nothing was going to happen, or it was for
Speaker 8: a different reason or whatever. A lot of these people
Speaker 8: do this, but the key is is to get them calm.
Speaker 8: I mean, the mob does this. Sometimes the mob will
Speaker 8: go out and say let's go get spent the whole
Speaker 8: night with somebody or five of them and then they
Speaker 8: said let's go get breakfast or whatever. End up go
Speaker 8: and immediately killed this guy. And it was planned from
Speaker 8: the start. But what was the ruse in that case? Hey,
Speaker 8: these guys like me, we're friends. They're thinking me at
Speaker 8: the breakfast and the next thing you know, he's got
Speaker 8: a wire around his neck or he's been shot on
Speaker 8: the head.
Speaker 3: Some killers use the ruse in a tense moment to
Speaker 3: calm a panicking victim. Others, like this serial killer Ted Bundy,
Speaker 3: would create elaborate stories to trick on suspecting targets.
Speaker 8: He said that he knew that he was hunting girls
Speaker 8: that were from normal, good families, and that they would
Speaker 8: be more likely to help somebody. If they were either
Speaker 8: on crutches and fumbling with books, or they needed directions
Speaker 8: or something else was asked of them, they would be
Speaker 8: completely unsuspecting.
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy four, then eighteen year old George Anne
Speaker 3: Hawkins was walking near his sorority house at the University
Speaker 3: of Washington. The disappearance of young women was from Page
Speaker 3: News at the time. Georgie Anne was well aware of
Speaker 3: the threat and had been regularly walking with friends, but
Speaker 3: after leaving her boyfriend's home, she sat out alone on
Speaker 3: a well lit road to walk the short distance to
Speaker 3: her house.
Speaker 8: As she was walking home, she ran into a man
Speaker 8: who had a lay cast on with his plants are
Speaker 8: split and was all, I leave his right leg. He
Speaker 8: was fumbling with a briefcase and on crutches. That person
Speaker 8: was Ted Bundy. He asked her, would you mind helping
Speaker 8: me take my briefcase to my car. Of course, she
Speaker 8: doesn't think. This guy with a cast on his leg bruise.
Speaker 8: This guy with crutches ruse. This guy who's so nice
Speaker 8: and articulate ruse is going to do anything to her.
Speaker 8: In her mind she thought, yeah, I can help him.
Speaker 8: And what does she do? She takes the briefcase. They
Speaker 8: walked down the alley and he had put his crowbar
Speaker 8: right behind his VW his page VW, And as she
Speaker 8: was putting the crutches in the car, he reaches back,
Speaker 8: grabs the crowbar, and he hit her in the head
Speaker 8: to hit her so hard that both her earrings flew
Speaker 8: off and she came out of one of her shoes.
Speaker 8: He didn't grab those. Then he put her in the car,
Speaker 8: and then he took her to a remote area about
Speaker 8: twenty minutes from there where she had awakened on the way,
Speaker 8: and eat her again. And then he killed her soon
Speaker 8: after that. But the ruse played a part in obtaining her.
Speaker 8: If he would have had a bad look, if he
Speaker 8: would have looked like a criminal, if he didn't have
Speaker 8: the ruse of a cast or grutches, there would be
Speaker 8: no reason.
Speaker 1: To help him.
Speaker 8: So he tells Bill Egmar, he said he did all
Speaker 8: these things so that these good, kind women who were
Speaker 8: raised right would help me. So here you got a
Speaker 8: woman Georgie and Hawkins who knows about the women disappearing
Speaker 8: who already assumes their homicide, and yet she meets somebody
Speaker 8: that doesn't fit what her criteria is for an evil individual.
Speaker 3: Colberger appears to intentionally have tried to use the ruis
Speaker 3: to calm at least one of the roommates, and if
Speaker 3: the twenty eight year old had been fantasizing or even
Speaker 3: planning to kill for a long time, Coburger could have
Speaker 3: been using the cover of a criminology student to prepare
Speaker 3: for those future murders. This type of long term fantasizing
Speaker 3: turned organized planning is also common with killers like BTK
Speaker 3: and Ted Bundy again Jeff and Kevin Sullivan.
Speaker 5: He was kind of staking out the house. He would
Speaker 5: drive by it, he went there lot. You know, in
Speaker 5: the months leading up to the murders, do you think
Speaker 5: that speaks to escalation? Like maybe at first he would
Speaker 5: just do a drive by or follow them or maybe
Speaker 5: peer in their window, and it just becomes you need
Speaker 5: a little bit, a biggerfect, a biggerffects. So maybe one day
Speaker 5: he goes inside and then just becomes more and more
Speaker 5: until it ultimately leads to murder.
Speaker 8: I guarantee you that people that do this prior to
Speaker 8: the murder they are thinking about it a lot, They
Speaker 8: are living mentally in that realm, and usually it has
Speaker 8: a sexual component to it, which will become masturbatory even
Speaker 8: prior to the event, just as some of these people
Speaker 8: visit these locations afterwards and have to sexualize the experience
Speaker 8: to masturbation. So I would assume that he was trying
Speaker 8: to not unleash and do as much. And remember, there's
Speaker 8: always gotta be a first time. Once you kill your
Speaker 8: first person, you can never go back and unkill that person.
Speaker 8: You were forever changed. So if that attack and murder
Speaker 8: on those four kids college kids was the first one,
Speaker 8: and if that was Coburger, then he was doing everything
Speaker 8: he could to maintain it and organize himself as an
Speaker 8: organized person so as not to make any problems for
Speaker 8: himself until that time happened. So when he got in there,
Speaker 8: I mean, whoever got in there, If it was Coburger,
Speaker 8: he either unleashed it himself or he just couldn't take
Speaker 8: it anymore. And that's what Bundy did. Bundy lived in
Speaker 8: this dark realm of sexual violent fantasy for so many years.
Speaker 8: It was going to reach a point in his faculties
Speaker 8: where it was gonna tip over and he was gonna
Speaker 8: crossover from fantasy to reality. That's where it's going, and
Speaker 8: that's where these people ultimately wants it to go. And
Speaker 8: when that first time happens, even if the person escapes,
Speaker 8: since if it's Coburger, he might have been thinking right
Speaker 8: after the murders, in the days after, what did.
Speaker 1: I leave there?
Speaker 8: And way of forensics something Bundy didn't have to worry
Speaker 8: about what happened there, even if I had gloves, would
Speaker 8: anybody have seen me go in? It was probably pretty
Speaker 8: frightened as to what may have happened that could ultimately
Speaker 8: cause his apprehension. So in that case, would he be
Speaker 8: sitting back and planning his next murder. No, he'd be
Speaker 8: trying to get to the place where if I can
Speaker 8: just wait this out and if I'm not arrested, then
Speaker 8: maybe I can I can go again. Do I think
Speaker 8: if he's the one that he would have ultimately killed again?
Speaker 8: Highly likely? It probably almost assured that he would, especially
Speaker 8: if he really enjoyed doing it. And and if this
Speaker 8: person enjoyed killing with that knife while they were killing them,
Speaker 8: you've got somebody that's going to be a problem to
Speaker 8: other people down the road.
Speaker 5: Speaking of that, What are the traits of killers who
Speaker 5: hunt like Bundy, like allegedly Coborger.
Speaker 8: Well, I think the people that do this have a
Speaker 8: lot of things that are extremely similar. When he said,
Speaker 8: people have a hard time understanding I did it because
Speaker 8: I just like killing people. Now, that's it. That says
Speaker 8: it all. I just like killing people.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 8: One thing these people do, they have a tendency to
Speaker 8: think that kind of they own them. They're like God
Speaker 8: or something, and they go. I decided whether they would
Speaker 8: live or die, and they died. But I was also
Speaker 8: there when they took their last breath and breathed out
Speaker 8: their last breath, and that's something that the family can't
Speaker 8: boast about, or no one can, because that's mine and
Speaker 8: that's mine forever. That's why the and the ground in
Speaker 8: which the murders occur, or even the dumping sites if
Speaker 8: it's different, become very sacred to these people. And that
Speaker 8: is across the board. You can go to Arthur Shawcross,
Speaker 8: who would revisit the sites, and so many of them
Speaker 8: do Bundy. Bundy always went back to these sites.
Speaker 5: We know that Coburger did too as well. The next morning,
Speaker 5: at least based on cell phone tower records.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, you wanted to look at you, probably thinking
Speaker 8: my work's in there. I've done all this work. Now,
Speaker 8: I've done it. I've created my work. There it is.
Speaker 8: Does anybody know yet? Do they know yet?
Speaker 3: More on that next time. For more information on the
Speaker 3: case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Speaker 3: Underscore Studios. The Idaho Ascer is produced by Stephanie Leidecker,
Speaker 3: Jeff Sheene, Connor Powell, Chris Bargo, Gabriel Castillo, and me
Speaker 3: Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by Jeff Toi. Music
Speaker 3: by Jared Aston. The Idaho Massacre is a production of
Speaker 3: iHeart Radio in Kati's studios. For more podcasts like this,
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Speaker 3: to your favorite shows.
Speaker 4: I'm Diana. You may know as Body Moving, My Friend
Speaker 4: and I. John Green were featured in the Netflix documentary
Speaker 4: Don't f with Cats. On our new podcast, True Crimes
Speaker 4: of John and Deiana were turning our online investigative skills
Speaker 4: to some of the most unexplained, unsolved, and most ignored cases.
Speaker 2: Police say thirty three year old bride Again was shot dead.
Speaker 7: Gunned down in front of his two year old daughter.
Speaker 6: Detectives confirmed that it was a targeted attack.
Speaker 1: It appears to be an execution style of assassination.
Speaker 4: This is very active, so we have to be careful.
Speaker 7: I've heard that there's a house that has some bodies
Speaker 7: in the basement.
Speaker 2: I knew.
Speaker 4: I just knew the move was wrong.
Speaker 5: Maybe there's something more sinister at play than just one
Speaker 5: young girl going missing. If you know something, heard something,
Speaker 5: please it's never too late to.
Speaker 7: Do the right thing.
Speaker 4: This is true crimes with John and Deianna, the.
Speaker 5: Production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Justice is something that
Speaker 5: takes different shapes or formed