Speaker 1: This guy was like American psycho.
Speaker 2: I can do something even more important, something larger. I
Speaker 2: can become a serial killer and get away with it.
Speaker 3: I have never seen from any case I've covered someone's
Speaker 3: so completely devoid of anything internal.
Speaker 1: This is the Idaho Massacre, a production of KAT Studios
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio, Season three, Episode five, Strange Behavior. I'm Courtney Armstrong,
Speaker 1: a producer at KAT Studios, with Stephanie Leideger and Gabriel Castillo.
Speaker 1: Over one hundred documents have been released by the Moscow
Speaker 1: Police Department and another five hundred and fifty by the
Speaker 1: Idaho State Police. Together, they don't just fill in the blanks,
Speaker 1: reveal an even clearer and at times far more troubling
Speaker 1: picture of this case. Crime analysts Body move In takes
Speaker 1: us deep inside the files that focus specifically on Brian
Speaker 1: Coberger's behavior, what his colleagues noticed, the patterns that emerged,
Speaker 1: and the red flags that may have been hiding in
Speaker 1: plain sight. Then behavioral analyst Robin Drake helps us connect
Speaker 1: the dots, breaking down what these documents reveal about Coburger's mindset,
Speaker 1: his decision making, and the strange behaviors that led up
Speaker 1: to the murders. You'll hear Robin's theory on motive why
Speaker 1: he thinks this seemingly promising PhD student took such a
Speaker 1: dark turn. But first, let's start with Body move In
Speaker 1: and Stephanie Leidecker as they guide us through some of
Speaker 1: the most revealing files.
Speaker 4: Yet, all of these findings and files coming out publicly,
Speaker 4: and we can't get through them fast enough. We're eating
Speaker 4: them up as prd as possible. But it shows a
Speaker 4: lot into his brain space while getting his PhD.
Speaker 5: He's described by many as creepy, socially awkward, and domineering.
Speaker 5: He frequently stared intensely at people. One woman counted nine
Speaker 5: times during a class she saw him staring at her intensely,
Speaker 5: like creepy, scary.
Speaker 1: Like without a blink.
Speaker 4: You know, times you might just be gazing in a
Speaker 4: direction and you happen to be looking at a person
Speaker 4: and it's so embarrassing. You're like, I swear I'm not
Speaker 4: overly staring. But in this case, this was a repeat pattern,
Speaker 4: and he wouldn't really blink. He would just be so
Speaker 4: intensely staring.
Speaker 5: He exhibited this macho or puffed up demeanor, and he
Speaker 5: always wanted to dominate every conversation he had. So you
Speaker 5: if you and I were talking about the new Barbie
Speaker 5: Doll okay that we all got we love this Barbie
Speaker 5: Doll enter coburger, he would turn the conversation it is
Speaker 5: something he's interested, and then dominate that conversation.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: In one report, there was a guy and he said
Speaker 5: that Brian wasn't really his friend, but he was more
Speaker 5: than an acquaintance, so he's kind of in the in between.
Speaker 5: And he got a ride from Brian Coberger and they
Speaker 5: ended up being in his car for hours in the
Speaker 5: parking lot, just talking, and Brian was venting to him,
Speaker 5: saying that I don't you know, I don't have a
Speaker 5: lot of guys to talk to, And then he said
Speaker 5: he could walk into a bar and have any woman
Speaker 5: he wanted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, give me a break. This guy, he
Speaker 4: couldn't get a girl.
Speaker 5: Persistent complaints from women about his behavior. He made sexist
Speaker 5: and belittally remarks. He denied man's plaining even exists. This
Speaker 5: girl was and then the class was telling her something
Speaker 5: about eyewitnesses get things wrong, and they were talking about
Speaker 5: that and he basically told her she was wrong and
Speaker 5: explained why she was wrong, which is fine, but apparently
Speaker 5: he was man's plaining and the argument got so heated
Speaker 5: that she left the classroom crying and heated and like
Speaker 5: left everything behind. Wow he told a disabled gay student
Speaker 5: he would only accept a physically perfect partner and would
Speaker 5: she even consider procreating because of her disability.
Speaker 4: Meaning because she had a disability, he thought maybe she shouldn't.
Speaker 4: Like That's what he was implying, is that you're not
Speaker 4: perfect enough to procreate.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: He said in some of these classes that he was
Speaker 5: in that he believed in like traditional roles, and he
Speaker 5: believed in like traditional marriage. You know, he was homophobic.
Speaker 5: He made homophobic comments. He had hostility towards women. He
Speaker 5: was dismissive of all the female professors authority. He questioned
Speaker 5: one's ability to grade because she was too foreign. He
Speaker 5: was systematically late to classes taught by women. He was
Speaker 5: never late to the male professor classes. There was even
Speaker 5: a male professor who started letting his class out early
Speaker 5: so that Brian could make it to his colleague's female class,
Speaker 5: and Brian was still late to her class. Wow was
Speaker 5: intentionally disruptive. He would leave class in the middle of
Speaker 5: a woman speaking one of his professors and go get coffee.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? He was dismissive.
Speaker 5: It was so bad that people in classes that were
Speaker 5: with Coburger started keeping a tally how many times he
Speaker 5: was late to female professors classes versus the male professors.
Speaker 5: Female grad students often felt uncomfortable, harassed, or trapped. He
Speaker 5: would block doorways, preventing them from leaving offices, and he
Speaker 5: would like corner them, and the word was spatially trap
Speaker 5: people in rooms and conversations, and then when you would
Speaker 5: try to get away from him, he would follow you
Speaker 5: and continue the conversation, sometimes following people all the way
Speaker 5: to their car. And it got so bad. He allegedly
Speaker 5: stalked a staff member, asked her out on a date,
Speaker 5: and followed her to a car. She filed a civil
Speaker 5: rights complaint with the university about this because he wouldn't
Speaker 5: leave her alone. A cafe worker said that he knew
Speaker 5: her name and scheduled despite never being told, and she
Speaker 5: suspects that he tracked her for weeks in order to
Speaker 5: figure that out. In order to figure that out right,
Speaker 5: witness has.
Speaker 4: Been the guy that's like sitting outside the restaurant staring
Speaker 4: through the window from the outside, marking her shifts.
Speaker 2: Think about that.
Speaker 1: How scary that is.
Speaker 5: Very Witnesses reported him showing up at women's homes or
Speaker 5: being linked to suspicious incidents. Knocks on the windows, somebody
Speaker 5: on a porch, somebody's underwear was stolen. This one lady,
Speaker 5: she's a student and she was in the court. She
Speaker 5: invited everybody to her apartment for like some kind of orientation,
Speaker 5: including Brian Coburger. Then rumor started circulating that she's on
Speaker 5: this drug and she has this disease and da da
Speaker 5: dada whatever, and it comes from Brian Coburger. She finds out, well,
Speaker 5: he went through her medicine cabinet when he was in
Speaker 5: her bathroom at her house. This guy. In fact, one
Speaker 5: of the professors said that she works with predators and
Speaker 5: she recognizes them when she sees them, and he's definitely
Speaker 5: going to be somebody that they hear about. Another one
Speaker 5: said that he was probably going to be a future rapist.
Speaker 5: And you know, some faculty even warned students not to
Speaker 5: be alone with him. You know, I'm a little taken
Speaker 5: aback by how obvious his like absolute disdain and disrespect
Speaker 5: for women were. What were they thinking after the murders,
Speaker 5: like did they question like, Oh my god, I wonder
Speaker 5: if it could be him, Like I wonder like internally,
Speaker 5: did any of them kind of go o, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Here you are, you're getting your PhD. You're a student,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 4: And also he has younger people underneath him like their
Speaker 4: prey to him. At this point, this guy was like
Speaker 4: American psycho.
Speaker 1: We brought in Robin Drake, a retired FBI special agent
Speaker 1: and former head of the bureau's Counterintelligence Behavioral and Aalysis program.
Speaker 1: He's reviewed these documents detailing Brian Coberger's unsettling behavior and
Speaker 1: shares his insight into why Coburger acted the way he did.
Speaker 1: He's joined by our producer Alison Bankston.
Speaker 6: To start off, I just I'd love for you to
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about you. What do you
Speaker 6: specialize in? What's your background?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, Naval Academy graduate, Marine Corps officer from there.
Speaker 3: I came in the FBI in nineteen ninety seven and
Speaker 3: I was a counterintelligence agent. My job was recruiting spies
Speaker 3: and I did it my entire career. I got on
Speaker 3: our behavioral team for that as a team member, and
Speaker 3: then I became the chief of that team, I taught
Speaker 3: at Quantico all these advanced techniques for interpersonal relationships and
Speaker 3: communication basically, and what that all boils down to is
Speaker 3: I had with the FBI before I retired, over twenty
Speaker 3: two years of understanding why humans do what they are
Speaker 3: going to do. If you're going to recruit a spy,
Speaker 3: you have to understand the world through their optic and
Speaker 3: lens if they're going to have a relationship with you
Speaker 3: and trust you with their life and betray their country.
Speaker 3: So with that skill set, when I retired in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: and even before that, I started getting called for because
Speaker 3: everyone sees behavior in my background because chief of the
Speaker 3: Beable House program, they and FBI behavior they know they
Speaker 3: want me to give my thoughts and opinions on why
Speaker 3: bad guys do bad things. I always got to covey
Speaker 3: at everything. Not a licensed clinical physician, clinician or anything
Speaker 3: like that. This is pure my background from my experiences.
Speaker 6: So these documents, these complaints from his colleagues at WSU,
Speaker 6: what do you glean from them? What do they say
Speaker 6: about him?
Speaker 3: So what we start seeing with him is exactly how
Speaker 3: empty he is. There is nothing there. And what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is, there are behaviors that are extremely psychopathic.
Speaker 3: And when I worked and believe or not, even in
Speaker 3: the world of counter intelligence, you dealt with psychopaths because
Speaker 3: if someone's committee an espionage, generally espionage is not the
Speaker 3: only thing going sideways in that person's life. And so
Speaker 3: that high level of psychopay I saw it multiple times
Speaker 3: both in my bureau career and obviously afterwards consulting on
Speaker 3: these cases. And at the core of psychopathy, the highest
Speaker 3: level of psychopathy, this is pure predator with empty shell
Speaker 3: They're really only reacting to biological impulses and genetics, that
Speaker 3: is it. And so I have never seen from any
Speaker 3: case I've covered, someone so completely devoid of anything internal.
Speaker 3: That's Coburger. Every interaction you see with him is the
Speaker 3: reason why he creeps people out, because when we see creepy,
Speaker 3: what it is is we're picking up as human beings
Speaker 3: inconsistencies and behavior inconsistencies and the words that are being
Speaker 3: setting the emotions that someone has. This I mean, we're
Speaker 3: extremely attuned to our environment as a biological organism on
Speaker 3: his planet's evolved for hundreds of thousands of years, and
Speaker 3: so when we feel unsafe that's that creepy feeling and
Speaker 3: unsafe means there's incongruence in the environment or the individual.
Speaker 3: Coburger is the epitome of consistently incongruent because he has
Speaker 3: no emotion and he has no idea how to act.
Speaker 3: His ability to socialize and how have healthy regular conversations
Speaker 3: and knowing boundaries with people that you don't have a
Speaker 3: stronger relationship with obviously is again incapable of a self
Speaker 3: regulation of knowing what's appropriate and inappropriate.
Speaker 6: What do you make if his treatment of women belitteral
Speaker 6: in them, never listening to them, just being beyond this
Speaker 6: respectful abhorrent? What does this say about him? And could
Speaker 6: this be a motivation?
Speaker 3: Some people have made a lot about in him being
Speaker 3: an in cell and things like that. I just see
Speaker 3: him as really emotionally and sexually frustrated. I think to
Speaker 3: hit that level of wanting to join, because think about it.
Speaker 3: In cells are kind of you know, from what I've
Speaker 3: seen on it, it's a group and it's a cult
Speaker 3: mentality of these people that a group together. Coburg is
Speaker 3: not a joiner. That's why I didn't really I don't
Speaker 3: put him in the sense of his in cell because
Speaker 3: it's kind of a group, a group mentality that kind
Speaker 3: of helps each other, you know, rage against you know, girls,
Speaker 3: and kind of feel better about who they are by
Speaker 3: joining together and doing that. He's not a joiner, so
Speaker 3: it doesn't really strike me, but frustrated with his inability
Speaker 3: because he sucks at human interaction.
Speaker 6: Interesting, No, I keep kind of going back to the
Speaker 6: fact that he'd just stare at people, and he'd also
Speaker 6: physically block them in corners, as if he wasn't allowing
Speaker 6: that person to leave the conversation. There is something so
Speaker 6: odd to me about blocking someone in a corner. It's
Speaker 6: scary and awkward.
Speaker 3: If it's a pattern. Because even in the classroom they
Speaker 3: talk about him as a TA on the first day
Speaker 3: standing awkwardly in front of the class, So I think
Speaker 3: part of it is that control aspect of it. I
Speaker 3: think the majority of it, though, is his complete unaware
Speaker 3: self serving himself of having no clue about what's appropriate inappropriate.
Speaker 3: I think he's just so stupid on his emotional intelligence
Speaker 3: that he has no clue about what he's doing. I
Speaker 3: think he just thinks he's the most important person. Everyone
Speaker 3: wants to listen to him because he's so smart, so
Speaker 3: everyone must want to listen to me. So I'm just
Speaker 3: going to stand here awkwardly. But to him, he's not
Speaker 3: being awkward. To him, he's just being who he is.
Speaker 3: He just completely oblivious to his impact on others. He
Speaker 3: has zero ability to read a room. He has zero
Speaker 3: ability to read other people. It is profound, is what
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, you know in one of these accounts, and
Speaker 6: it just goes along with everything you're saying. You know,
Speaker 6: he was always thinking he's the smartest person in the room.
Speaker 6: And in one of these documents it says that he
Speaker 6: was also always bragging about knowing some high profile professor,
Speaker 6: which I have to imagine is doctor Kathin Ramslin from
Speaker 6: the Sales University. You know, she taught him and he
Speaker 6: looked up to her. But yeah, he would brag about
Speaker 6: knowing this professor.
Speaker 3: Just a name dropper. So let's go back to the
Speaker 3: Ramslan thing because I think it's really relevant because again
Speaker 3: it gives us a glimpse on his motivations in life.
Speaker 3: So Howard Bloom, great author, did a lot of great work.
Speaker 3: His book When Night Comes Falling was a fantastic study,
Speaker 3: and he is numerous times said that he thinks part
Speaker 3: of Coburger's motivation was to impress Ramslin in some way.
Speaker 3: And I always taken what are the people observe when
Speaker 3: they've done a lot of deep dives on this? And
Speaker 3: I think Howard was on to something.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. Author and investigative journalist Howard Blum has floated
Speaker 1: a compelling theory that Brian Coberger may have been driven
Speaker 1: by a desire to impress his renowned professor at the
Speaker 1: Sales University. His professor was doctor Catherine Ramsland. She's a
Speaker 1: criminologist well known for her connections to serial killer studies.
Speaker 1: Here's Howard Blum.
Speaker 2: Brian Coberger was a student of criminal justice. Part of
Speaker 2: his research was studying serial killers. But has his professor,
Speaker 2: his advisor, Katherine Ramslin, a great authority in forensic psychology,
Speaker 2: author of seventy nine books, rights, you know, fantasy and
Speaker 2: killers makes them want to experience the real thing and maybe,
Speaker 2: just maybe again this is just speculative, he wanted to
Speaker 2: try to see if he could pull off the perfect crime.
Speaker 2: Maybe he wanted to try to impress his criminal justice professor,
Speaker 2: who was his advisor Katherine Ramslin that I can do
Speaker 2: even better than you. You go into prisons and speak
Speaker 2: face to face with serial killers. I can do something
Speaker 2: even more important, something larger. I can become a serial
Speaker 2: killer and get away with it.
Speaker 1: Here's behavioral analyst Robin Draeke sharing why he thinks this
Speaker 1: theory holds weight.
Speaker 3: Why did he get into criminology, why did he get
Speaker 3: into this, And so with all of us as human beings,
Speaker 3: we do things and we're exposed to things and behaviors
Speaker 3: in our early formative years of life roughly between ages
Speaker 3: nine to twenty four as a prefund the lobes fully
Speaker 3: forming that allows us to feel safe and valued by
Speaker 3: others because we're genetically and biology coded to gravitate towards
Speaker 3: things that make us feel safe and valued. You know,
Speaker 3: we see it all the time with people in our
Speaker 3: own lives, whether it's in the university or in jobs.
Speaker 3: We tend to say someone is really good at something,
Speaker 3: if they tend to spend a lot of time doing it,
Speaker 3: it's the only thing they focus on. He sucked at
Speaker 3: everything else in life, and so he goes off and
Speaker 3: studies under Ramsland, who then validates him. Says Wow, he's
Speaker 3: so intelligent. Ramslan gave him validation. I mean, she's an expert.
Speaker 3: The only thing that motivates a psychopath is notoriety and grandiosity,
Speaker 3: and so he sees that, you know, I might be
Speaker 3: become notable to someone who I admire. So I don't
Speaker 3: think it was going to be a personal thing. I
Speaker 3: think part of his motivation was to be someone that
Speaker 3: she studied, that he would do something that would like.
Speaker 3: She was very impressed, necessarily not like admiration wise, but
Speaker 3: very impressed with the level and skills of Bundye Btk
Speaker 3: and Dahmer and all these people, and so he wanted
Speaker 3: to be that notorious who hers.
Speaker 6: Wow. Yeah, the logic lines up there. I mean, obviously
Speaker 6: doctor Ramslan didn't intend this exactly, but it's such an
Speaker 6: interesting way to look at this all because you know,
Speaker 6: we all like to be good at things, and when
Speaker 6: we are good at things, it's like a dopamine effect.
Speaker 6: And for once he seems to have found a little niche,
Speaker 6: which is being great at criminology. He's found the one
Speaker 6: thing that someone says, hey, you know, you're great at this.
Speaker 6: You know another thing too that is interesting that we
Speaker 6: learned from these documents that he was googling Ted Bundy
Speaker 6: a lot before and after the murders. Do you think
Speaker 6: that he could have been motivated to become next him?
Speaker 6: You know? And in fact, in one of these WSU documents,
Speaker 6: a student says that they were comparing the University of
Speaker 6: Idaho murders to the child Mega house murders at Florida
Speaker 6: State University, which which obviously Bundy was responsible for. What
Speaker 6: do you think about this Bundy inspiration theory?
Speaker 3: Everything he's done and everything he did was complete copycat
Speaker 3: of someone else. Definitely, I think part of his emo
Speaker 3: is trying to be someone in that same realm as them,
Speaker 3: for that grandiosity thing. I still think a lot of
Speaker 3: what he was doing was studying on what he should
Speaker 3: do next and how he should behave and how to
Speaker 3: get away with things better. He's trying to find the
Speaker 3: best to emulate that got away with things for a
Speaker 3: longer period of time. So let's try to be more
Speaker 3: like that, and so let's put ourselves in the PhD
Speaker 3: candidate shoes of I'm going to try to be the
Speaker 3: best at doing this, and since I have no original
Speaker 3: thought on my own anyway, let's study, as many people
Speaker 3: take the best elements of this person best elements, This
Speaker 3: best element is this, and if I put it all together,
Speaker 3: because I'm so smart, I can get away with it
Speaker 3: because I'm taking all these things and putting together into
Speaker 3: one person. So again, no innovation, no original thought. I'm
Speaker 3: just going to keep copying all these people. I don't
Speaker 3: think he has an original thought ever, yoh.
Speaker 6: One hundred percent. If you could kind of compare some
Speaker 6: of his behavior to some other top serial killers, like
Speaker 6: compare him to you know, what does he have in
Speaker 6: common with BTK? What does he have in common with Bundy?
Speaker 6: We'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: I'm actually going to do the reverse in some cases
Speaker 3: when you're trying to say all the similarity to someone,
Speaker 3: because there's I think there's a lot of similarities between
Speaker 3: what he was trying to do compared you know, with BTK, Dohmer, Bundy.
Speaker 3: There's so many comparisons that they become I think overwhelming.
Speaker 3: What I think it's easier to do is say where
Speaker 3: isn't he similar and where he failed and where he
Speaker 3: continues to fail is where they were successful, and that
Speaker 3: is most of them were very very good at masking
Speaker 3: who they were at their core. They were very good
Speaker 3: there eq their emotional intelligence was much higher than his,
Speaker 3: and so I think he's very similar in what he
Speaker 3: tried to do compared to all the other people. The
Speaker 3: differences is that they were being who they were. They
Speaker 3: were naturally able to problem solve and innovate. They weren't
Speaker 3: copying anyone. They were just being these horrendous serial killers,
Speaker 3: and they were naturally figuring out how to do this
Speaker 3: really effectively, using their natural charisma, use their natural innerpersonal skills,
Speaker 3: and you do those things to get away with it
Speaker 3: for longer period time. Coburger had zero of that ability,
Speaker 3: and so he's trying to copy people that he's incapable
Speaker 3: of copying. He can copy mechanics, but he can't copy empathy.
Speaker 3: He can't copy socialization. He's completely incapable of it. So
Speaker 3: I think he's very similar in the mechanics of what
Speaker 3: all of them were doing, but horrendous and completely incapable
Speaker 3: of copying any socialization.
Speaker 6: That's such a good point because yeah, if you think
Speaker 6: of Ted Bundy, you know everyone liked him, like, he's
Speaker 6: still handsome, he's so smooth with women, BTK was a
Speaker 6: leader at the church.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I think BTK is the best at it.
Speaker 3: So Dennis Raider BTK the bondis Tarcher kill killer. He's
Speaker 3: very famous serial killer. What he would do is he
Speaker 3: was he killed for his sexual fanization as a serial killer,
Speaker 3: but he would go for long periods of time in
Speaker 3: between his kills. He was able to satiate that by
Speaker 3: other stimulation to keep it subdued in that bay. And
Speaker 3: the way he hid in plain sight was he had
Speaker 3: a family. He is a member of the church as
Speaker 3: the president of this organization. He had a daughter. All
Speaker 3: these people and all people in his regular life are
Speaker 3: completely unaware because he was such a good guy to them.
Speaker 3: But then he knew that he was going to have
Speaker 3: a period of time where I got to let this
Speaker 3: monster out, and he let that monster out. But he's
Speaker 3: able to because of his socialization, able to do it
Speaker 3: very much like when you see these serial killers that
Speaker 3: are able to stay hidden for such a long period
Speaker 3: of time. It's because that socialization is so so pronounced
Speaker 3: really very good. Because again Coburger stands out to everyone
Speaker 3: all the time, his entire life of being awkward and
Speaker 3: not so his chance of becoming a serial killer, even
Speaker 3: if he wanted to be. He was so low because
Speaker 3: he couldn't hide.
Speaker 6: Yes, I think too back of this story from his
Speaker 6: high school days where he worked so hard to lose
Speaker 6: the weight because he's like, you know, if I lose weight,
Speaker 6: maybe people will finally like me. You know. So he
Speaker 6: works and works and works, and he loses over one
Speaker 6: hundred pounds and still no one likes him. You know,
Speaker 6: he tries and tries to be like these famous serial
Speaker 6: killers and he fails. How frustrating must that be, you know,
Speaker 6: to maybe that's why he's so violent, is you know,
Speaker 6: he's like, oh, if I do this, if I do that,
Speaker 6: then then people will like me. Then I'll be noticed.
Speaker 6: But he just can't seem to ever Land.
Speaker 3: Isn't that the greatest torture he's going through right now
Speaker 3: that I'm the only thing I think that gives the
Speaker 3: families any piece is the fact that he is tortured
Speaker 3: every day by his failure. That is just it's just
Speaker 3: magnificent looking at his failure. He failed at everything he
Speaker 3: tried to do in life and good and he's reminded
Speaker 3: of it every single day.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. One last thing here from these documents, and I
Speaker 6: thought this was interesting too. In one of these documents,
Speaker 6: there's an interview with some of his fellow teaching assistants
Speaker 6: and it says that he was the only one in
Speaker 6: the class. This person is saying this, he's the only
Speaker 6: one in the class who supported the death penalty, which
Speaker 6: you know now is pretty ironic considering he plied guilty
Speaker 6: and is living the rest of his life in prison.
Speaker 6: What do you make of this behavior.
Speaker 3: My theory, again, it's not because he had that thought,
Speaker 3: is because he read that people that are innocent will
Speaker 3: say things like that. You interview someone that has done
Speaker 3: something heinous, and one of the things that a couple
Speaker 3: do during that interview is says, so what do you
Speaker 3: think that should happen to someone that did that? And
Speaker 3: typically a guilty person will say, well, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: they should be given a second chance, you know, and
Speaker 3: they'll come up with all these equivalentations on what should
Speaker 3: happen other than the maximum sentence to someone. So I
Speaker 3: think he've read somewhere that's that's what he should say.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. It turns out that Brian Coberer's past support
Speaker 1: for the death penalty was the ultimate irony, because in
Speaker 1: the end he pled guilty to avoid Idaho's firing squad
Speaker 1: and spare his own life. Now, instead of facing execution,
Speaker 1: he spends his days confined to a small sterile cell
Speaker 1: at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution. It's a place he'll
Speaker 1: call home for the rest of his life. His daily
Speaker 1: reality twenty three hours a day in lockdown, with a
Speaker 1: single hour outside those four walls. So what does life
Speaker 1: really look like for an inmate in Idaho's most secure prison?
Speaker 1: What kind of existence awaits Brian Kopecker behind those bars.
Speaker 1: Next time, we'll get into it with bail bondsman Kevin Corson.
Speaker 1: He has the inside scoop on exactly how the Idaho
Speaker 1: Maximum Security Institution operates. More on that next time. For
Speaker 1: more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at kat Underscore Studios. The Idaho Massacre is
Speaker 1: produced by Stephanie Leideker, Alison Bankston, Gabriel Castillo and me
Speaker 1: Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by Jeff Toois, Music
Speaker 1: by Jared Aston. The Idaho Masacer is a production of
Speaker 1: Katie Studios and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like this, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.