Speaker 1: How the hell did his DNA end up on that
Speaker 1: sheath at that murder scene if it wasn't his sheath.
Speaker 2: All we hear about are the pings, the pings Brian Coberger,
Speaker 2: the alleged was pinging everywhere.
Speaker 3: It's a bad idea to have your cell phone with
Speaker 3: you when you commit a correct This isn't a who
Speaker 3: done it, and I don't have to prove to you
Speaker 3: why he done it.
Speaker 2: This is the Idaho Massacre, a production of KAT Studios
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio, Season two, episode six, Pings and DNA Admissibility.
Speaker 2: I'm Courtney Armstrong, a producer at KAT Studios with Stephanie
Speaker 2: Leidecker and Gabe Castillo. At the center of the prosecution's
Speaker 2: case against Ques murderer Brian Coberger, our records tied to
Speaker 2: his cell phone and DNA that allegedly places him at
Speaker 2: the scene of the crime. The defense has called foul
Speaker 2: on both areas of evidence.
Speaker 4: Investigators now say they harvested DNA from an empty leather
Speaker 4: knife sheath. Police say that DNA match DNA from Coburger's father,
Speaker 4: which they collected from trash outside the family's Pennsylvania home.
Speaker 1: Does the government now have genealogy and follow that previously
Speaker 1: was controlled by individuals and private organizations. And how accurate
Speaker 1: is this database.
Speaker 5: The genealogy sites that allows police to search public records
Speaker 5: of people who have opted in saying, Hey, if there's
Speaker 5: a murderer or a rapist in my family, I don't
Speaker 5: mind if you use my DNA to try to find them.
Speaker 2: Here's Stephanie.
Speaker 6: We have to remember DNA is a big ticket item
Speaker 6: for the prosecution. And just as a quick refresh, we
Speaker 6: know that quote a hit of Brian Coburger's DNA was
Speaker 6: found on a knife sheath left behind at the crime scene,
Speaker 6: and we also know that investigators connected that through familial DNA.
Speaker 6: Brian Coburger's parents' house was under surveillance in the days
Speaker 6: leading up to his arrest. His dad, we have to assume,
Speaker 6: tosses his trash in the garbage cans outside their home
Speaker 6: and then investigators retrieve it and from that trash they're
Speaker 6: able to identify Dad's DNA and put that into a database.
Speaker 6: In boom, there's a familial match.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 6: Look, this has been highly debated as some say that
Speaker 6: the search and seizure of Coburger's family trash is questionable.
Speaker 2: In the course of researching this season, the team at
Speaker 2: Katie Studios came across an article called how DNA and
Speaker 2: cell phone evidence in Idaho murders complied with the Fourth Amendment.
Speaker 2: To get clarity on this pivotal information, I reached out
Speaker 2: to the article's author, Collie Stimpson, who has singular expertise
Speaker 2: in areas.
Speaker 1: Hi Courtney, It's Hully Stimpson from the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 2: Cully, how are you. I'm great, excellent, and your article
Speaker 2: was it seemed just so on point with so many
Speaker 2: pertinent matters. I guess just to start, would you just
Speaker 2: let listeners know your name and your background.
Speaker 1: Sure. My name is Hully Stimpson. I'm a Senior Legal
Speaker 1: Fellow and manager of the National Security Law Program at
Speaker 1: the Heritage Foundation. Prior to that, I served in the
Speaker 1: Navy jag Corps, which is the lawyer corps the Navy,
Speaker 1: and served as a prosecutor defense lawyer. When I was
Speaker 1: a prosecutor in the Navy, I tried a bunch of
Speaker 1: violent crimes, including a case that involved DNA. Was one
Speaker 1: of the few cases that the Navy had used DNA
Speaker 1: in early on. This is the ninety two, three, four
Speaker 1: five period of time and I worked as a homicide
Speaker 1: prosecutor in Maryland and I tried the first PCR case.
Speaker 2: What's PCR?
Speaker 1: So it's a type of testing of genetic material. So
Speaker 1: when you used to have blood testing, you're either AB
Speaker 1: or O and those are broad categories of blood type.
Speaker 1: Then when we started using genetics, you had to have
Speaker 1: a large amount of genetic material stuff left at a
Speaker 1: crime scene. But because the laws always behind technology lags
Speaker 1: way behind it, the genetic labs were now using the
Speaker 1: next level, the next more sophisticated level, which required much
Speaker 1: less material called PCR polychromis reaction. By the way, when
Speaker 1: I was a Maryland I'm side prosecutor, I was the
Speaker 1: head of attorney training in the office, which included training
Speaker 1: on how to use DNA in cases. And when I
Speaker 1: was an instructor of the Naval Justice School for five years,
Speaker 1: I taught the whole JAG Corps how to use forensic DNA.
Speaker 1: And of course now we're so confident that we have
Speaker 1: twenty three and meters or did ancestry, dot com and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it, and so tens of millions
Speaker 1: of people rely on that genetic material to find close
Speaker 1: and distant relatives. All around the world.
Speaker 2: You've been with DNA since the very very beginning.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm actually made of DNA like you, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think from the very beginning. But I've had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to work with it, and as a defense attorney,
Speaker 1: I fought against it like any good defense attorney and
Speaker 1: tried to poke holes not into scientific reliability, because I
Speaker 1: think that's a losing battle, but in whether it was
Speaker 1: collected correctly, whether testing procedures were done correctly, whether there's
Speaker 1: an adulterated sample. That's really where the game is. As
Speaker 1: a defense council.
Speaker 2: I asked Kully how he thinks DNA and its collection
Speaker 2: will play out in this case during trial, as well
Speaker 2: as his general thoughts on the accused.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting, look what he's studying. He's getting
Speaker 1: his PhD in criminal justice. I don't know what he's read,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what his course requirements are. If
Speaker 1: I was the prosecutor, I'd be pulling every book he
Speaker 1: ever had to read, in every syllabus to find out
Speaker 1: and look for things about alibi and forensic evidence. And
Speaker 1: I would want to get into the guy's head by
Speaker 1: seeing what he is doing. Sudied in what he's writing.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that, for example, the questions about
Speaker 1: the way the evidence was collected at his parents' house
Speaker 1: back in Pennsylvania is an issue at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: once you discard something, it's not yours anymore, you've abandoned it.
Speaker 1: And as a Fourth Amendment principle, you've abandoned any Fourth
Speaker 1: Amendment standing to complain that you know, somebody picked up
Speaker 1: my cigarette, but that they tossed on the ground, somebody
Speaker 1: rifled through the trash out in front of my house,
Speaker 1: Well you gave it up, so you don't have a
Speaker 1: right to complain. And it's his parents' house, so he
Speaker 1: doesn't even live there anymore. He's an emancipated man, so
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a standing to complain about his parents
Speaker 1: throwing stuff away in their house, So he has a
Speaker 1: double negative there. He had no standing if he threw
Speaker 1: it away to himself, and he certainly doesn't mean standing
Speaker 1: if his parents threw it away.
Speaker 2: Can I have you slow that down for one second?
Speaker 2: So what prompted you to write this article? You know
Speaker 2: about how the evidence complies with the Fourth Amendment? And
Speaker 2: what is the Fourth Amendment?
Speaker 1: The Fourth Amendment is part of the original Bill of
Speaker 1: Rights which were passed, you know, a few years after
Speaker 1: the Constitution was signed and ratified by the States, and
Speaker 1: it essentially, in so far as this is related, says
Speaker 1: that the government may not engage in unreasonable searches and
Speaker 1: seizures of your person's places or things or papers. Right
Speaker 1: and so for the government to get into your stuff,
Speaker 1: to see your stuff, typically they at the very least
Speaker 1: have to have probable cause to believe that you are
Speaker 1: the person who committed a crime. And that if they
Speaker 1: look into your stuff by getting a warrant that's very
Speaker 1: specific as to location and what they're looking for, signed
Speaker 1: by a judge, a neutral, detached magistrate, the government can
Speaker 1: then look into your gut, into your house, look in
Speaker 1: the drawer, look in the closet for the knife, the gun,
Speaker 1: the rope, whatever you used for a crime. I was
Speaker 1: very interested in the development of Fourth Amendment law through
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court because there was a case that the
Speaker 1: Court had recently come down with called Carpenter against the
Speaker 1: United States in a throwaway line that Justice Gorsuch said,
Speaker 1: where he I think made a mistake suggesting that people
Speaker 1: would have a Fourth Amendment right to genetic material that
Speaker 1: is on third party genetics hosting sites. If I spit
Speaker 1: into a vial and give it to ancestry dot com
Speaker 1: and I have a contract with them to do so,
Speaker 1: I pay them a fee, they send me and only
Speaker 1: me my results back. If I then want to keep
Speaker 1: it private, that's it. No one gets to see what
Speaker 1: the results are. But if I want to take the
Speaker 1: extraordinary step of then providing that material, those test results
Speaker 1: to a third party genetics website, it's like put it
Speaker 1: in the trash can. It's like hanging it outside my
Speaker 1: front porch for everyone to see, because you sign a
Speaker 1: contract that says this is out there for the world
Speaker 1: to see. Because I want the world to see who
Speaker 1: I'm related to, so they can see that they're related
Speaker 1: to me. And so when this case came along, I
Speaker 1: was reading the articles about it, and I thought, they're
Speaker 1: clearly clueless about this because they were suggesting, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a violation of his Fourth Amendment right because they
Speaker 1: went through the trash Oh it's a violation of this.
Speaker 1: So I was like, Ooha, slowly down, everybody. And the
Speaker 1: Coolberger case is poking along now and it's getting closer
Speaker 1: to trial time and more and more people are sort
Speaker 1: of interested in the mechanics of the trial. But I
Speaker 1: suspect the closer we get to trial, people will be
Speaker 1: more interested in the DNA and the difference between the
Speaker 1: snip DNA genetics testing piece which they did for the
Speaker 1: trash and then the regular forensic testing for admissibility into court.
Speaker 1: And so you know, the closer we get to trial
Speaker 1: and the more that gets litigated, I'm sure people want
Speaker 1: to know in English what all that means?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and is there a way to break those things down?
Speaker 1: There's two types of forensic tests. What forensic means is
Speaker 1: used for criminal court, So just just sort of file
Speaker 1: that away anytime you hear forensic and then a word
Speaker 1: after it means for criminal trial. So forensic DNA profiles
Speaker 1: typically you find genetic material at a crime scene, you
Speaker 1: don't know who did it, You post it into the
Speaker 1: FBI's DNA database looking for a hit, and in best
Speaker 1: case scenario, somebody's already provided their DNA because they're law
Speaker 1: enforcement or military or their prior criminal and they've taken
Speaker 1: their DNA. You get a hit and then you test
Speaker 1: you know the chances of it being somebody else's DNA
Speaker 1: and then you come up with a result. Here, when
Speaker 1: they found the sheath that held the knife that the
Speaker 1: subject used to slay the poor college kids, they tested
Speaker 1: the sheath and they found genetic material that probably means
Speaker 1: epithelial cells. Cells that are found, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: in the sweat that comes off your fingertip. Okay, so
Speaker 1: everywhere everything you're touching, you're leaving a little part of
Speaker 1: your DNA on it. I mean you can't even see it, right.
Speaker 1: So whoever the dude or dude that is that killed
Speaker 1: these people left the sheath there. They test the sheath,
Speaker 1: and they were smart because instead of just using one
Speaker 1: test and hoping that they'd get a random hit through
Speaker 1: the FBI DNA database called Cotis CODIS, they also had
Speaker 1: a brain. Because CODIS only tests and I don't want
Speaker 1: to use scientific jargon, but let's just say five or
Speaker 1: six or seven, just a handful of what are called
Speaker 1: genetic markers. So you've seen the quarkscrew DNA nucleotide. The
Speaker 1: thing looks like a winding staircase.
Speaker 2: Back in seventh grade, right, and.
Speaker 1: So imagine that as that quarkscrew is going down and
Speaker 1: down and down there's stairs. It tests six or seven
Speaker 1: or eight stairs at different points in the DNA quarkscrew
Speaker 1: SNIPS is different. SNIPS are. It's an acronym stands for
Speaker 1: single nucleotide polymorphism. And so imagine what they're doing there
Speaker 1: is they're looking at thirty or forty or fifty of
Speaker 1: those stairs, and that's just to see what variations there
Speaker 1: are in sequences on somebody else's double helix, to see
Speaker 1: if there's a relationship between the person who left the
Speaker 1: DNA and somebody else. It's not used forensically in court.
Speaker 1: It's just think of it as the ancestry dot com
Speaker 1: part of genetic testing. And so they tested, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: it hasn't been made public yet. They clearly tested the
Speaker 1: standard forensic testing, the standard DNA testing, probably PCR, and
Speaker 1: then they did SNIP testing, most likely because when they
Speaker 1: connected the dots between his cell phone and his parents'
Speaker 1: location and he was registered at his parents' house, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and they went to the trash and got the parents
Speaker 1: trash and tested some of the trash. Colberg had been
Speaker 1: visiting his mommy and daddy, and sure enough, on the
Speaker 1: trash they find through SNIP technology, a person who was
Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine percent think of it as chance
Speaker 1: of being his dad. So in other words, it's his dad.
Speaker 1: It's the dad of the person who left the genetic
Speaker 1: material on the sheath. So if you remember I Love
Speaker 1: Lucy when Ricky Ricardo said Lucy, you got some splaining
Speaker 1: to do. Colberger doesn't have to do any explaining because
Speaker 1: he's a defendant. He has a right to remain silent.
Speaker 1: But it looks really bad for him because how the
Speaker 1: hell did his DNA end up on that sheath in
Speaker 1: that bedroom at that murder scene. If it wasn't his sheath,
Speaker 1: and if it was his sheath, why was it there?
Speaker 1: And he doesn't have to say anything. He can stand
Speaker 1: on his right to remain silent, and that remains his
Speaker 1: right throughout the trial.
Speaker 2: Just going back to what you said, how you did
Speaker 2: training in the prosecutor's office and then also in JAG
Speaker 2: was a lot of acceptance of DNA as something reliable.
Speaker 2: Was it just teaching that the presentation and helping people
Speaker 2: understand it on a really basic level so it didn't
Speaker 2: seem like magic, and so people could understand.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a complicated question with a somewhat easy answer.
Speaker 1: You don't have to become a genetics expert as a
Speaker 1: prosecutor or defense counsel or judge to use DNA as
Speaker 1: a forensic matter in a criminal trial. But what you
Speaker 1: have to do to be good at either using it
Speaker 1: for or against your case is to understand collection protocols,
Speaker 1: testing procedures, and protocols areas where samples can get mixed
Speaker 1: up with other samples. And so, just like with any
Speaker 1: other forensic techniques that are used, you have to get
Speaker 1: good at understanding the basics of the science and then
Speaker 1: get really good at understanding how you get from A
Speaker 1: to Z, getting into court, and then either defending its
Speaker 1: use or poking holes at its reliability. That's where the
Speaker 1: line's share of the work is done these days.
Speaker 2: Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 2: a moment. After getting a better understanding of the DNA
Speaker 2: in this case, we decided to dig a little deeper
Speaker 2: into the technology of the cell towers. Here's Stephanie.
Speaker 6: There has been so much back and forth over the
Speaker 6: phone pings, because again, this is going to be a
Speaker 6: big ticket item. It sounds like for sure the accused
Speaker 6: Brian Coburger was out and about a whole lot that
Speaker 6: fateful morning both before and after the murders. Investigators claim
Speaker 6: that they have phone pings that place Coburger near the
Speaker 6: house the morning of the murders, and Coburger's defense team
Speaker 6: is arguing that he was nowhere near the house when
Speaker 6: the murders happened. What is so interesting here is that
Speaker 6: the same data that the prosecution is going to use
Speaker 6: to place Coburger at the scene is the exact same
Speaker 6: data that the defense is going to use to dispute them.
Speaker 2: I reached out to Scott Green, founder of Great Scott Enterprises.
Speaker 2: For nearly forty years, he's been collecting, analyzing, and helping
Speaker 2: to explain complex electronic evidence.
Speaker 3: I collect the data, I analyze the data, I make
Speaker 3: sense of the data, and then I present the data
Speaker 3: in court, either to a jury or to the judge.
Speaker 2: What we wanted to speak with you about is the
Speaker 2: cell phone data. And all we hear about are the pings.
Speaker 2: The pings. Brian Colberg, the alleged was pinging everywhere. Can
Speaker 2: you please explain what are cell phone pings or signals?
Speaker 2: And how specific are they?
Speaker 3: So a ping in the way it's been used in
Speaker 3: the media. And I read the articles with regards to
Speaker 3: cell phones and towers, is a connection between a cell
Speaker 3: phone and a tower. Those connections fall into three different categories. Generally,
Speaker 3: they are a phone call that would ping off a
Speaker 3: tower connect to a tower, and they're referred to as pings.
Speaker 3: So they occur when somebody makes a phone call, they
Speaker 3: occur when somebody uses data, and they occur when somebody
Speaker 3: sends a standard SMS or text message. As far as
Speaker 3: how specific a ping is, the tower knows the direction
Speaker 3: that the cell phone is from the tower. So what
Speaker 3: you get out of the ping and out of the
Speaker 3: cell phone carrier is a direction from the tower, generally
Speaker 3: in a pie shaped area that shows the direction from
Speaker 3: the tower that the cell phone is. And when you
Speaker 3: have them moving through space and time, you can get
Speaker 3: an idea as to where the cell phone is going
Speaker 3: and how fast it's moving and some things like that.
Speaker 3: You get some estimates out of that, but you don't
Speaker 3: get an exact position out of the cell phone carrier information.
Speaker 2: What I understood, as you described it, was that the
Speaker 2: pings happen when something active is occurring a call, a text,
Speaker 2: or using data. These pings also happen passively. I have
Speaker 2: my phone here right now? Is this pinging?
Speaker 3: Cell Phones and towers are communicating most of the time,
Speaker 3: usually because there's data transactions between a cell phone and
Speaker 3: a tower. That could be updates. It could be email
Speaker 3: getting updated, or inbound or outbound data of some sort.
Speaker 2: Understood. So in this case, the accused coburger wouldn't have
Speaker 2: had to have been actively on his phone to ping.
Speaker 2: It could be something in the background. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: It could be something in the background that is generating
Speaker 3: those pings. True.
Speaker 2: I know you said direction and potential trajectory. And does
Speaker 2: the radius depend upon how far apart the towers are.
Speaker 2: So basically, could they spot me in my car within
Speaker 2: a two block radius or is it a two mile radius?
Speaker 3: Ah, So that's a great question. In the country outside
Speaker 3: of cities, in rural areas, the cell phone transmit a
Speaker 3: much longer distance than they do inside the cities. So
Speaker 3: it depends where you are as far as how far
Speaker 3: a cell tower will transmit.
Speaker 2: In Moscow, Idaho, it's not in the country. It's certainly
Speaker 2: it is in no way in a big city. But
Speaker 2: there's two colleges right nearby, because I would imagine colleges
Speaker 2: would need more power.
Speaker 3: So here's an interesting thing. I drove past the University
Speaker 3: of Arizona yesterday and one of the things that I
Speaker 3: noticed is that there are a tremendous number of five
Speaker 3: G towers around a university. In the country where the
Speaker 3: accused was driving, there's probably a lot fewer. What's the
Speaker 3: distance between those two locations. Somebody said ten.
Speaker 2: Minutes, ten miles, about ten miles, So.
Speaker 3: In the country, you're going to find that cell phone
Speaker 3: towers can be miles apart and cover miles in both directions.
Speaker 3: From a cell phone tower, they vary in direction based
Speaker 3: up on geography and where people are and how the
Speaker 3: cell phone carrier wants to cover the area.
Speaker 2: This isn't specifically a technical question, so we can skip
Speaker 2: over it if you want. But the accused is a
Speaker 2: criminology PhD student. Is it surprising to you that, if
Speaker 2: what's alleged is true, that he had his phone on
Speaker 2: him the whole time? I mean, even I know that
Speaker 2: my phone will leave a footprint.
Speaker 3: It is surprising to me that someone with that background
Speaker 3: would have their phone with them. Agree. I would think
Speaker 3: somebody who has some intelligence about criminal backgrounds and criminology
Speaker 3: would probably at that level at least know that it's
Speaker 3: a bad idea to have your cell phone with you
Speaker 3: when you commit a.
Speaker 2: Current Yeah, it's just so incongruous. As a PhD candidate,
Speaker 2: Coburger was also a teacher's assistant at Pullman Washington State University,
Speaker 2: and we spoke with one of his students, and she's
Speaker 2: not wrong. That's one of the things that gives her
Speaker 2: pause on the alleged guilt is it's one oh one
Speaker 2: to not do that. How frequently do pings update? Is
Speaker 2: it a standard amount of time? Does it depend situationally?
Speaker 3: Wow, it depends. Pings get updated differently based upon which
Speaker 3: one of those three items is going on. You're going
Speaker 3: to see every time there is a text message set,
Speaker 3: you can see a connection to a tower. And every
Speaker 3: time a cell phone call is initiated, or the cell
Speaker 3: phone changes towers, or the call ends one of those
Speaker 3: three things. When it's a phone call, you'll see a
Speaker 3: different tower recorded by the cell phone carrier. Does that
Speaker 3: make sense?
Speaker 2: It does make sense. As a real example, here a
Speaker 2: white sedan that the prosecution alleges is Coburger's. It was
Speaker 2: seen passing by the victim's residence at three twenty nine
Speaker 2: that same what via goal at four oh four and
Speaker 2: at four twenty is seen leaving the area at high speed.
Speaker 2: Can officials attempt to corroborate we see the car and
Speaker 2: then go and check the tower to see if that
Speaker 2: lines up?
Speaker 3: So are you asking me if the law enforcement at
Speaker 3: the time, can go do that or look back in history?
Speaker 2: Go back in history. As a layman, I would want
Speaker 2: to think, oh, can I corroborate that? With cell tower information?
Speaker 3: You can corroborate the location of the cell phone if
Speaker 3: it was in the car, they would be able to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's in the car and it's moving, or it's in
Speaker 3: the car and stationery if the cell phone is on
Speaker 3: and communicating with the tower. Because in this case, we
Speaker 3: see that the cell phone is connected at his home
Speaker 3: to forty two am right and then at two forty seven,
Speaker 3: so five minutes later it's moving and then get turned
Speaker 3: off and then it gets turned back on for forty
Speaker 3: eight south of Moscow, Idaho on State Highway ninety five.
Speaker 3: In between that, if I understand the timeline and what's
Speaker 3: listed here, the cell phone is off, so it's not
Speaker 3: talking to the towers at all. Interestingly, the car is
Speaker 3: a Kia.
Speaker 2: Right it's a Hondi Alantra.
Speaker 3: A Hyundai Islandra. Okay, same company. Hyundai and Kia are
Speaker 3: the same company. So I wonder if they took that
Speaker 3: car part and looked for cell phone signals coming out
Speaker 3: of that, because a lot of cars nowadays have cell
Speaker 3: phones built into them and they're constantly communicating.
Speaker 2: Without knowing the specifics of Coburger's car, was it common
Speaker 2: for cars to be emitting signals?
Speaker 3: A lot of cars in that timeframe, we're starting to
Speaker 3: have cell phones built into them. One of the things
Speaker 3: that happens in our world is that a lot of
Speaker 3: devices are following us, and when those devices connect to things,
Speaker 3: they get recorded. One of the things that has happened
Speaker 3: in our world, and you'll notice this on Google Maps,
Speaker 3: you'll notice this in other things that are used to
Speaker 3: track us through space and time. Wi Fi signals have
Speaker 3: been collected by Google as part of what they did
Speaker 3: when they were mapping our world, and so you will
Speaker 3: see when you are navigating your car and you turn
Speaker 3: on Google Maps, it will say, if you want to
Speaker 3: have a better navigation experience or something along those lines,
Speaker 3: turn on Wi Fi. And the reason why it uses
Speaker 3: that is now seeing Wi Fi connections that are from
Speaker 3: homes that it passes by or businesses that it passes by,
Speaker 3: and it adds that to the mix. Not only is
Speaker 3: GPS very accurate, but it adds the Wi Fi signal
Speaker 3: to the mix to track the vehicle or the phone
Speaker 3: and display the map.
Speaker 2: If a phone quote stops reporting to the network, does
Speaker 2: that mean for one hundred percent that the phone was
Speaker 2: turned off? Or could there be another explanation.
Speaker 3: If a phone stops talking to the network, it could
Speaker 3: be a host of things. It could be a distance
Speaker 3: problem out in the forest, somewhere under a rock, or
Speaker 3: inside a cave or something like that. However, for the
Speaker 3: most part, my cell phone not communicating with a tower
Speaker 3: is generally evidence that the cell phone is turned off
Speaker 3: or an airplane mode.
Speaker 2: Here is my last two questions that I have. And
Speaker 2: I took an Uber the other day and I was
Speaker 2: at the back of a grocery store and my Uber
Speaker 2: driver called me and he said, I need you to
Speaker 2: come to the front of the store. That's where I'm
Speaker 2: going to be. So and I opened my Uber and
Speaker 2: I could see myself walking just from the front to
Speaker 2: the back of one store. Why do we have that
Speaker 2: level of specificity for an uber but not here.
Speaker 3: So a lot of apps, navigation apps uber lift use
Speaker 3: GPS data, which is a much more accurate signal to
Speaker 3: place you at a particular place. GPS is much more
Speaker 3: accurate than these cell phone pings, much more accurate.
Speaker 2: Why is GPS much more accurate than cell phone pings?
Speaker 3: Cell phone pings will give you an area, this pie
Speaker 3: shaped area where the cell phone is located. GPS data
Speaker 3: can narrow that down to within feet. So a cell
Speaker 3: phone sector is what they're technically called, a pie shaped
Speaker 3: area could be many square miles. A GPS location is
Speaker 3: going to generally be within feet.
Speaker 2: And I guess it is that GPS is that specific
Speaker 2: because that's its intention. Whereas cell phone towers are intended
Speaker 2: to what allow our phones to communicate, right, but not
Speaker 2: to track us.
Speaker 3: So cell phone tower and they're broken up into sectors
Speaker 3: so that the number of connections can be managed. GPS
Speaker 3: data is more specific so that you can navigate. You
Speaker 3: can be in a particular place and say I want
Speaker 3: to go to this other place and it's going to
Speaker 3: navigate you within generally within feet.
Speaker 2: Looking forward to trial, so the defense and prosecution, to
Speaker 2: our knowledge, they have to the public knowledge. There is
Speaker 2: the same data exists. How are two different experts going
Speaker 2: to read the same information and from there draw different conclusions.
Speaker 3: Okay, so a little piece of this that you can
Speaker 3: look at. One is ZX and the other is sell Hawk.
Speaker 3: Those are two different products that both map where a
Speaker 3: cell phone is. As far as this guy who's their
Speaker 3: cell phone expert.
Speaker 2: Ci Ray is the founder of ZX Corporation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's the guy who's going to testify, we
Speaker 3: think yes.
Speaker 2: The defense has said he will testify to corroborate Coburger's
Speaker 2: alibi and say that he was not at the residence
Speaker 2: because he was too far south.
Speaker 3: We have two hours roughly between the cell phone being
Speaker 3: connected in his home and the cell phone being connected
Speaker 3: south of Moscow, Io. It's difficult for an expert to
Speaker 3: say that the phone wasn't somewhere if it was off.
Speaker 3: So we have two data points that are two hours apart.
Speaker 3: It's difficult for any expert in either direction, prosecution or defense,
Speaker 3: to prove or disprove where that cell phone is in
Speaker 3: those two hours. How are you going to prove that
Speaker 3: you can't prove a negative? You can't So they could say, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's possible that between two forty seven and four forty
Speaker 3: eight in the morning that he made it over to
Speaker 3: this home and murdered people. But that's a lot of
Speaker 3: time in between, a lot of time. I don't see
Speaker 3: the defense and prosecution being very far apart of their
Speaker 3: testimony because they are looking at the same data, and
Speaker 3: the lack of data between two forty seven and four
Speaker 3: to forty eight is just a lack of data going
Speaker 3: to be difficult for either side to prove anything in
Speaker 3: that timeframe.
Speaker 2: It's so obvious what you said, and I don't know
Speaker 2: how it hadn't occurred. Of course, there's a dearth. There
Speaker 2: is no information.
Speaker 3: A dearth is a perfect word to use. There's nothing,
Speaker 3: there's nothing. So the timeline shows that there is no
Speaker 3: data from the cell phone carrier between two forty seven
Speaker 3: and four forty eight in the morning.
Speaker 2: How do you think the cell phone evidence will be
Speaker 2: received by a jury or how do you feel cell
Speaker 2: phone evidence in general is received by juries.
Speaker 3: As a person who presents cell phone evidence all the time,
Speaker 3: younger juries are very receptive to sell phone evidence. They
Speaker 3: use their phones all the time. They know that they're
Speaker 3: a computer that carry around in their pocket or on
Speaker 3: their head or in their purse. There certainly can be
Speaker 3: older members of the jury that have a harder time
Speaker 3: understanding that. Sometimes I run into older judges that have
Speaker 3: a hard time understanding what that really means.
Speaker 2: Let's stop here for another break. We'll be back in
Speaker 2: a moment. I continued my conversation with Kully Stimpson about
Speaker 2: how he predicts the cell phone data and DNA evidence
Speaker 2: will be presented at court, beginning with the process from
Speaker 2: finding DNA at a crime scene, detying it to a
Speaker 2: potential murder suspect, and how that ultimately is presented during trial.
Speaker 1: In some murder cases, the motive is dead clear, no
Speaker 1: pun intended. He wanted her, she didn't want him. Packed
Speaker 1: at him. We get that two drug dealers go at
Speaker 1: each other over turf, one kills the other. We get
Speaker 1: that these are harder cases because here's a dude who
Speaker 1: lives in a different state. He had no prior relationship
Speaker 1: that we know of with any one of these people.
Speaker 1: The government doesn't have to prove motive. But everyone in
Speaker 1: the courtroom's sitting there and I can tell you I've
Speaker 1: been there. Why did he do this? And I want
Speaker 1: to state to you right here and now I don't
Speaker 1: have to prove motive. Motive is not an element of
Speaker 1: any of these crimes. And so when my colleague stands
Speaker 1: up on the defense and suggests, what's the motive, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting question. But we're not here to resolve that.
Speaker 1: We're here to resolve whether he committed this crime and
Speaker 1: whether I've proven to under reasonable without each and every
Speaker 1: element of the offense to which he's been charged. This
Speaker 1: isn't the who done it, and I don't have to
Speaker 1: prove to you why he done it.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting because you hear in so many cases motive, motive, motive, motive,
Speaker 2: but that's.
Speaker 1: Not it's never an element. It's never an element. It's
Speaker 1: the smoke cloud that's drifting around the courtroom in every
Speaker 1: case like this, it's just hanging in the air. And
Speaker 1: every time I was a defense counsel, it was motive, motive, motive.
Speaker 1: They haven't proved motive. I don't know why they haven't
Speaker 1: proved modi of this, because clearly there wasn't a motive,
Speaker 1: and I'm playing the other game. You haven't heard one
Speaker 1: ounce of evidence against my client about why you would
Speaker 1: do something, why would have upstanding PhD candidate who has
Speaker 1: everything in front of him do something like this. It's absurd,
Speaker 1: and that's the kind of argument you're going to hear.
Speaker 2: But it's not material, it's.
Speaker 1: Not an element of the offense. Murders are driven by love, lust, power,
Speaker 1: or money. Those are the big four. And then since
Speaker 1: I'm a Shakespeare and I would add greed, because greed
Speaker 1: is one of them as well. I watched the proceedings
Speaker 1: in this for just a few minutes today in preparation
Speaker 1: to chat with you, and it seemed like the prosecutor
Speaker 1: is sort of a no nonsense older fella who's just
Speaker 1: doing his job, and it seems like this public defender is,
Speaker 1: you know, doing what she can with a really tough case.
Speaker 1: And clearly at this point, Colberger still wants his trump.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if he changes his mind. I
Speaker 1: would not be surprised if he changes his mind, because
Speaker 1: I would suspect behind the scenes, this public defender is
Speaker 1: going to the prosecuting Okay, what can we do here?
Speaker 1: My guys willing to do this? You know, plead to
Speaker 1: this if you're willing to cap confinement at this he
Speaker 1: wants to be able to see, you know, sunshine before
Speaker 1: he's dead. And if I was the government, depending on
Speaker 1: the strength of the evidence, and I don't know the evidence,
Speaker 1: nor to you, we only know what we've read, I
Speaker 1: might say, yeah, I'm willing to discuss in theory a plea.
Speaker 1: Of course, the families are going to have a say
Speaker 1: in that, depending on what the state victim Bright statute says.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of greens from the ball and the
Speaker 1: cup here. You know, oftentimes you'd take your best shot
Speaker 1: during pre trial motions when you're a defense counsel, and
Speaker 1: depending on how they turn out, then you go back
Speaker 1: to your client and go, look, you know, we're over
Speaker 1: for five is looking real bad for you? More than
Speaker 1: happy to defend you. You know, I'm a fighter. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the state law allows for. But in
Speaker 1: the federal system and in some states, you get a
Speaker 1: break on sentencing if you plead guilty, and the opposite
Speaker 1: is true if you go to trial the judge. One
Speaker 1: of the factors is that you not getting punished for
Speaker 1: going to trial, but you don't get a break for
Speaker 1: pleading guilty. Oh interesting, Yeah, they can't increase the punishment
Speaker 1: because you exercised your right to have a trial, but
Speaker 1: if you plead guilty, they can give you a break
Speaker 1: for pleading guilty and not expending court time.
Speaker 2: Right because I mean this case, if what I read
Speaker 2: just the other day is accurate, it's already up over
Speaker 2: three million dollars.
Speaker 1: Which is a drop in the bucket for a big jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: But for a little tiny jurisdiction like where they are,
Speaker 1: they have never seen a case like this in the
Speaker 1: history of that county. And so for a little county
Speaker 1: like this that doesn't have a lot of crime to
Speaker 1: have a big case like this with cell site location
Speaker 1: information and DNA and all the rest, So with national attention,
Speaker 1: they're going to go through some money. But you know,
Speaker 1: justice shouldn't have a cost to it. The thing about
Speaker 1: murder cases is somebody did it. Somebody did it, and
Speaker 1: justice requires accountability in a murder case. And it's the
Speaker 1: ultimate case because in a situation like this where they
Speaker 1: were perfectly innocent, helpless young people with their whole lives
Speaker 1: in front of them. But for victims who are children
Speaker 1: and babies, these are the most sympathetic types of victims,
Speaker 1: and so there's no reason for the government to give
Speaker 1: the defendant an inch if they have a solid case.
Speaker 2: I mean, people have been collecting DNA for a long time,
Speaker 2: so it would seem like unless you're really messing up
Speaker 2: on the collection, then if your DNA is on the sheath,
Speaker 2: guess what you're probably there? How does the defense counter this?
Speaker 1: There can be other innocent explanations for the presence of
Speaker 1: a person's DNA at a crime scene other than the
Speaker 1: fact that the perp And so you could I mean
Speaker 1: I have asked myself, and I have seen in my
Speaker 1: courtrooms when I was a judge or a prosecutor defense
Speaker 1: counsel saying, well, okay, you're saying that the defendant's DNA
Speaker 1: was found in this barracks room in the Navy. Yes
Speaker 1: it was, And isn't the fact that the study groups
Speaker 1: study in their rooms, Yes it is. So you can't
Speaker 1: disprove that my client, the defendant, wasn't in the victim's
Speaker 1: room as part of a study group, can you. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I can't, not from a forensic standpoint. So you're trying
Speaker 1: to create reasonable doubt, which is your job as a
Speaker 1: defense counsel. And there are oftentimes innocent explanations for the
Speaker 1: presence of someone's DNA at his crime scene. Now, are
Speaker 1: there innocent explanations for the DNA of Brian Kohlberger found
Speaker 1: on the knife sheath on the bloody bed sheets of
Speaker 1: an apartment in a different state. I have a very, very,
Speaker 1: very hard time wrapping my head around how you create
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt to explain the presence of his DNA at
Speaker 1: a murder scene in a difference state, in a kid's apartment.
Speaker 1: So that's a big hurdle for the defense council. And
Speaker 1: of course, so instead of attacking that, they're going after
Speaker 1: the cell site location information and they're putting up an
Speaker 1: alibi defense. If you have an alibi defense, you're required
Speaker 1: to notify the government of your alibi within a certain
Speaker 1: period of time before the trial and then give specifics
Speaker 1: of what your alibi is because the government can then
Speaker 1: try to go poke holes and find out if there's
Speaker 1: any holes in your alibi defense. And we'll see how
Speaker 1: the defense plays out. But it seems as if they've
Speaker 1: created enough wiggle room in this loosey goosey alibi defense
Speaker 1: that puts him driving around at random places at random
Speaker 1: times in the middle of the night, in the general
Speaker 1: location of the crime, but of course, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: cell site location person is going to say, well, he
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly at the place. But the problem is, this
Speaker 1: guy had been to the crime scene multiple times according
Speaker 1: to the cell site location information, and in all the
Speaker 1: other times there he didn't turn his cell phone off,
Speaker 1: and yet just coincidentally, on the night of the murder,
Speaker 1: his cell phone turns off for a period of when
Speaker 1: the murders were said to have happened, and then it
Speaker 1: turns back on as he's heading back to his college.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't look good for him. Oftentimes, in a
Speaker 1: case where you have the defendant's DNA at the scene
Speaker 1: of a crime, where there's no prior relationship between the
Speaker 1: victim and the defendant and they're complete strangers, and it's
Speaker 1: found in a very very inconvenient place for the defendant,
Speaker 1: they end up pleating guilty. Because when you're the defense
Speaker 1: counsel and you get that information and you understand what
Speaker 1: it means, you finally have to come to Jesus talk
Speaker 1: with your clients, say games up, you have a right
Speaker 1: to a trial. Of course, I'll defend you, and I'll
Speaker 1: give you a great defense. Notice I didn't ask you
Speaker 1: whether you did it or not, so you can take
Speaker 1: the stand say whatever you want. However, from my experience,
Speaker 1: there is no reasonable explanation of why your DNA is
Speaker 1: there except for the fact that you did it. I
Speaker 1: don't think the government's going to have hard I'm proving
Speaker 1: beyond a reasonable doubt that you did it, and most
Speaker 1: defendants you know who are sit in that situation and
Speaker 1: be like, okay, you know, and so they try to
Speaker 1: get the best deal they can.
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems like they're going full bore.
Speaker 1: The problem is that, of course, go on the record,
Speaker 1: this guy's presumed innocent, less proven guilty beyond a reasonable
Speaker 1: doubt by illegal and competent evidence. He enjoys that presumption
Speaker 1: of innocence through the entire trial. That said, the evidence
Speaker 1: is overwhelming as we've seen it to the state for
Speaker 1: guilt because not only do you have the police stopping
Speaker 1: of the car and the cell site location information of
Speaker 1: him what looks to be scouting out the crime scenes,
Speaker 1: but you have people who were alive who he didn't kill,
Speaker 1: who said a person looked like this and they picked
Speaker 1: him out, and then you have his DNA, and then
Speaker 1: you have the cell side location information on the night
Speaker 1: of and you have him turning the cell phone off.
Speaker 1: Any two of those pieces of evidence alone would get
Speaker 1: you close to beyond a reasonable doubt. I think the
Speaker 1: DNA alone gets them to beyond your reasonable doubt. But
Speaker 1: when you have all the other circumstantial and direct evidence,
Speaker 1: I see this case as what's called a slow plea.
Speaker 1: A slow plea is he's just guilty. Everyone knows he's guilty,
Speaker 1: but he has a constitutional right to demand his trial,
Speaker 1: and he's going forward with the trial. And of course
Speaker 1: he's presumed innocent. I'll say that again, But to me,
Speaker 1: this looks like a slow plea and a guy who's
Speaker 1: just not willing to accept the responsibility for his actions.
Speaker 1: Maybe he'll be acquitted, I don't know, but it looks
Speaker 1: like a slow plea to me. And so this will
Speaker 1: be a battle. The experts on the cell site location
Speaker 1: information that you know, the government will say he went
Speaker 1: from one, two, three, four, five, and six he turned
Speaker 1: it off between here, and that puts him at the
Speaker 1: house on around the time of the murder. And the
Speaker 1: defense will come up and say, yeah, we can't dispute
Speaker 1: that he was there, but that could mean he was
Speaker 1: way over here in this bubble. If I was the government,
Speaker 1: I'd say, Okay, all right, let's just let's just let's
Speaker 1: just pretend that everything the defense experts said is true,
Speaker 1: and let's just throw out the cell side location information.
Speaker 1: Here's all the other evidence that points out that he's
Speaker 1: guilty beyond your in fact, let's take four other pieces off,
Speaker 1: he's still guilty. Let's take nine pieces of itdence off.
Speaker 1: He's still guilty. So I wouldn't play into it. I'd
Speaker 1: fight it hard, and then I would just talk about
Speaker 1: is that reasonable, because that's not reasonable.
Speaker 2: More on that next time. For more information on the
Speaker 2: case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at KAT
Speaker 2: Underscore Studios. The Idaho Masker is produced by Stephanie Leideger,
Speaker 2: Gabriel Castillo and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design
Speaker 2: by Jeff Trois, Music by Jared Aston. The Idaho Masker
Speaker 2: is a production of KAT Studios and iHeartRadio. For more
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Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Scott Green can
Speaker 2: be found at Evidence Solutions, Inc. Headquartered in Tucson, Arizona,
Speaker 2: with experts across the country. That's evidencesolutions dot com.