← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Inside Kohberger’s Creepy Crypt: The Skeletons in His Closet & Everything Else Too
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Foreign. Hi, everyone. I'm Ashley Banfield, and this is Drop Dead Serious. There is a reason that we just cannot quit the Idaho murder case and the puzzling mystery of Bryan Kohberger. It's so unsettling and frankly, it's so unsatisfying to be left with so few answers after such a despicable and grisly crime. Right now, we all would have been in the first few weeks of the Idaho murder trial, right? So we'd have been in a courtroom every day, and we would have had evidence and witnesses and hundreds and hundreds of questions being asked and answered, secrets being unsealed. After three years of being blanketed by a gag order, we would have started to get a picture coming into focus of this unbearable, frustrating mystery. That was why anyone, Bryan Kohberger or anyone else would choose to do such a horrifying thing. Murder four random kids, Innocent, kind, loving kids in their beds at the University of Idaho. Safest place anywhere. Moscow, Idaho. That's where we would have been. We would have been in a courtroom, right? It is September 3rd, right now. Trial would have started just a couple weeks ago, was expected to go all the way into November. But instead of getting all of that in a trial, he took a plea deal. And Brian Coburger took his secrets and his motive the way he ticks, he took that all to prison with him. And the rest of us, we're out here, left wondering, why? Why did he do it? Why did he choose those kids? What was it about them? Why were they the targets? Why did he plan such a brutal and senseless bloodbath? How much did he plan? How much work did he do ahead of it? How can we recognize the next Bryan Coburger? Because make no mistake, he's out there right now. Well, I can tell you this. We have just gotten our hands on a massive file from the police and from the courts that's been unsealed in this case. It's one of the biggest sort of document dumps in the case because that's what they're doing now that there's a. A plea deal. They're unsealing all the gagged stuff. And it's taking a long time because of the redactions that got to go through it all deal with the privacy issues, but, man, did they ever dump a big load of stuff on us. And this recent document dump includes photos from inside Brian Coburger's apartment in Pullman, Washington. They're just being released, and they are so eerie. Hundreds of them. I mean, they did not leave anything unphotographed in that guy's apartment. At first glance, it looks kind of ordinary, actually. You know, it's a university property, right? If you look at the. The kitchen, the fridge, and the freezer, there is a ton of frozen food that's still in the freezer. It's really, like, jammed in there. Frozen vegetables, tater tots, vegan pizzas, vegan pad Thai. And in the refrigerator, a ton of vegan stuff again. Tofu, almond milk, hummus, salsa, shredded vegan cheese. And here's the thing. I kind of thought that Bryan Kohberger was demanding vegan food at the Moscow, Idaho jail. That's when we first heard that he put in for special dietary requirements because he was just working the system, because maybe as a criminal justice student, he knew that you could get better food if you ask for special dietary stuff, right? Like halal and vegan. Like, those usually are better meals than the typical prison meal. So I kind of thought he was gaming the system. But there's his fridge and freezer to show us. Nope, this is who he was before he got caught. He was all vegan. It really looks like this guy was not moving out either. Like, you don't typically move out and leave all this awesome food. You, you know, if you're leaving, you kind of, like, pare it down. You start eating until it's gone. You know, that's expensive stuff, especially vegan. But if you look at it, the pots, the pans, all of his stuff is still there. You know, it is not as though it looked like this guy was, like, high tailing it to Pennsylvania. Ooh, they're hot on my tail. I better get the hell out of Pullman. Go back to mom and dad's house further away. They won't find me there. Right. Let's move on to his hallway and his living room cabinets and the closets. Some of the shelves are, like, super bare, empty. Almost look like your junk drawer. Like just scads and stuff and crumpled up stuff in there, but cabinets. So he's messy, he's disorganized. There's miscellaneous cleaning items. There's a vacuum cleaner. I think he used that pretty handily cleaning up his apartment after he got back from his murders. There's fresh vacuum streaks on his carpets, right? So I think he used his vacuum cleaner a lot and probably got rid of the bags. But also in the shelves, there's, like, hiking stuff. There's like, a cheap compass, and there's also bear spray, but the bear spray was unopened. And I really wondered, was he going to use the bear spray for hiking or was he going to use the bear spray on human victims? I wonder if he took it with him. I wonder if he took it in the house. If he was going to encounter a fight, would he bring out the bear spray? Did he have it on his person though? It is packaged, so I assume that this was unpackaged and photographed by the police because it's packaged and unpackaged in the photographs. But every time I see bear spray, I always wonder, is that a criminal looking to subdue a victim? All right, in the living room there is this like small couch. It's just a love seat. And I hate even using the term loveseat because this man didn't have an ounce of love in him. There's this two person love seat, one pillow. It's just set up for him to watch his flat screen tv. Across the room there's a small rug, there's that small coffee table. Really it looks as though he has no intention or has no reason to have other chairs, people over, you know, to just shoot the shit, have a visit. Come on over, let's watch tv. Maybe a date, I don't know. This is set up for one person. A lonely guy who's got no friends and clearly doesn't do much entertaining. This is a. Obviously it's older student housing. This apartment, it is so incredibly drab. It's beaten up, you can tell. It looks like it was built in like the 80s, hasn't been updated since. And on his walls there's like nothing. But again, those fresh vacuum streets, you know, he seemed to keep things pretty clean. You'll see his bathroom in a minute too. And you'll see he looks like he's pretty clean. But let's go to the TV in the entertainment center because you can see there that there's an Amazon fire stick and there's a receipt for an Amazon fire stick as well. They're not cheap. And there's that television. There's, you know, that's expensive stuff. You're not going to leave that behind. If you're leaving for Pennsylvania, never to return, you would take this stuff. You would take it. This guy was coming back. He 100% was coming back. There were a whole bunch of receipts too, found in this area, like for Safeway and Walmart and Marshalls. And remember back when they searched this, this apartment and on the search warrant they said they'd found tags for products that were Dickey's brand, But we didn't know what. Well now the receipts say that he actually bought a Dickey's beanie. There was also a really weird find I, this one stood out to me. It was a mail in ballot right from that county. So Bryan Coburger had gone to the trouble to register as a voter in Pullman, Washington. He'd only been there a couple of months, right. He moved there around May Juneish. So he went to the trouble to register as a voter. He went to the trouble of like getting a mail in ballot sent to him and then he didn't bother sending it in because it's dated November 8th and it's just sitting there. When they arrest him and they, you know, this is January, they're executing the warrant and the mail in ballot's just sitting there with his name on it. So it's kind of odd. Also, parking tickets, a whole bundle of them, seven at least, that were photographed and found in his apartment. 7. They're University of Washington parking tickets as well. They're not Pullman, Washington, they're university parking tickets. And then there was just this huge batch of school papers, graduate program information. It's interesting, I couldn't tell if necessarily the grades were him grading students or him being graded, but in zooming in and being discerning, I'm thinking, I don't think he's keeping students papers that he's graded in his apartment when he leaves for Christmas break. I think he's have had, he would have had to return those graded papers to the students. So I think these are his papers that are graded. Right. You can also tell his handwriting is so awful that these documents have good handwriting. The grading is in good handwriting. So I think it's, he's got teachers that are grading him. Let me just tell you something else. In the margins, the teachers that write, sometimes you can tell when it's a woman's handwriting and sometimes a man's. Not always, but I'm usually like, I don't know, I'd say 80% correct. These papers look that like, like many of them are being graded by a woman. Next thing, the improvement plan. I love this part. We learned about this a while ago that Washington State University, they were getting on his ass and saying, you need to buck up, Pell. And they sent him an actual improvement plan. And they photograph it. It's sitting there in his apartment. They photograph the, the piece of paper that came into him by mail saying, straighten up and fly right. You gotta do all these things, you gotta hit these goals or you're out of here, Right? Progressive knows we all crave validation. Girl, you are not 37. I would've guessed 27. You guys are too sweet. Sure. Dewy skin. Terrific. Um, is something wrong, Ned? Why would you ask? Just because Today marks my 10th anniversary without a car accident or even a speeding ticket, but somehow tonight's all about your skincare. Wow. With snapshot from Progressive, you can get a personalized rate based on how you drive. And that's all the validation you need. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliate snapshot not available in California from all agents. Surcharge possible for unsafe driving. There's also some birthday cards, and this was super interesting. Two of them. And they're. They're standing up proudly being, you know, displayed. And the birthday cards, so awful. It's like, for, like, just a little over a week after the murders, these birthday cards are dated. And so if you think about it, these birthday cards are, you know, being put on display in November, but he leaves at the end of December. So they've been sitting there for two months. It's like, maybe this is the only love he's getting. And so he leaves these birthday cards, you know, propped up on. On, you know, on display for two months. One card looks to be from his mom or his dad, and one card looks to be from. Maybe it's one of his sisters, a family member. Maybe it's from a friend, although he didn't seem to have any. Maybe it's from a student who's sucking up to him. I don't know. It seems really friendly. But again, just days after the murders, these birthday cards are dated. And the mom or dad card. Pour a drink. Wait for this one. This is what it says. A son leaves your home, but never your heart. He discovers his own happiness, which in turn becomes yours. Yeah, I don't think that's happening with the Coburger family. I don't think that whatever happiness Bryan Kohberger discovered while plunging the knife into four beautiful young students who are so innocent, with their lives ahead of them, that happiness that he discovered, I don't think Mr. And Mrs. Coburger have decided that's their happiness. It's their misery, it's their ruin, it's the disaster that has destroyed them and destroyed the rest of their lives. It's destroyed his sisters. This happiness that he discovered. I'm so blown away by this card. The inside is redacted. Because people who send these things, they deserve their privacy. They're not guilty of anything, so we can't see that. And just Think about this. He's got these on display after the murders, a son leaves your home, but never your heart. He discovers his own happiness, which in turn becomes yours. He leaves this on display after he has slaughtered four kids. And he looks at that every day and seems to think it's okay. It's on display, prominent. It's unbelievable, isn't it? Think about it. Then there's this other card from somebody we don't know. Maybe it's, again, a family member. Maybe it's a colleague, a friend, a student trying to get better grades. That's all I could think of. But it is a printed text with a picture of Teddy Roosevelt riding a dinosaur. And the text says, speak softly and carry a big stick. Unless you can ride a dinosaur, then do that instead. Theodore Roosevelt, U. S. President. So then the card sender, who we don't know, it's redacted handwrites on the picture pointing to both Teddy Roosevelt and to the dinosaur quote. Both your egos, right? You are a Dino and professor lmfao. Laughing my ass off. So again, who would write that? Would his sisters write that to him? You are a Dino and a professor. Or would a student write that? The envelopes, by the way, that contained these cards, one of them said, like, in a really lovingly teasing way, like, brian, you know, B Y B R Y E R R R R R R N. And then on the other side of it, where you would lick the envelope, it said, I didn't lick it because hashtag, Covid, it's 2022. So we're still sort of emerging from the whole Covid thing. But it's playful, it's loving, like, who sent these? Mom and dad, One of them sent the first one. Who sent this one? Then there's another thing that the police found in his collection of papers. And it's like this weird spiral notebook. And if you open it to one big page, you can see the hand, like big, huge handwriting where he writes his name and a date, and that's one whole page. And then there's something below it that's redacted. And the date is 08-17-22. August 17, 2022. And then on the next page, same thing again, giant date and his name and something redacted. 08 18, 2022. And he did that one twice. 0, 18, 08, 18, 2022, with his name, something below it, redacted. They don't photograph any other dates, just those two in that spiral notebook. And why he would write giant letters with his Name below it, Hard to know. But then, this is insightful. They. The cop zeroed in and photographed the papers that were left behind in his apartment. And these appear to be papers that Kohberger wrote. Okay, so I know he's like a criminology student, and he's getting his, you know, working towards his doc. Doc, you know, his doctorate, which of course, he's. I don't know if he's ever going to get that in prison. Maybe he's got nothing else to do. Maybe he will. But this is so eerie in retrospect. The first one is mass incarceration and prosecutorial power a remedy. The second one is jury deliberation to decide between law and justice. Number three, Dr. Pedno on sex offenders, Myopic decisions review, and then ethics, law, society, and capital punishment. For a guy who was facing the death penalty and escaped it, this paper is super interesting. It's written just in the month before the murders. And in it, Coburger argues that the death penalty isn't really about stopping crime. It's about symbolism. He says he wrote that it stands as America's ultimate form of retribution, a way to project harsh justice. He broke it down politically, too. He said conservatives tend to see capital punishment as necessary, the final tool to keep order and to control crime. Progressives, he says, on the other hand, see it as unconstitutional and as unjust and rooted in inequality. And when it came to the biggest claim in favor of the death penalty deterrence, Kohberger flat out questioned it. He said there's little evidence that it actually works and that executions are more about culture and politics than about preventing crime. He said some people argue that the death penalty is morally justified for, quote, the worst of the worst offenders, those who commit the most heinous and irredeemable crimes. Let's just ruminate on that for a minute. Imagine this a month before he has been planning this quadruple murder. He's been scoping out this house for months, driving by a month before he's going to do this. He's writing about the worst of the worst. The death penalty is for the most heinous, irredeemable crimes. I wonder if he was imagining himself and wondering, I wonder if I'll get it. I wonder if they'll ever catch me and if they'll impose the death penalty on me. Or was he so, I don't know, egotestical that he assumed, not me, I'm gonna get away with it? I think the latter. He suggested that the idea of deserving the Death penalty isn't a fixed truth. It's more of a reflection of society's anger and desire for retribution at a given time. And again, this paper is dated October 2022. The murders are November 2022. Think about that. Okay. As for the textbooks that were all lined up and photographed on the floor of his apartment, I think they. They laid them all out and photographed them. I don't think he left them all like that. That's oftentimes what forensics and forensic photograph photographers will do. They will lay things out and then be able to photograph them in order. But these books were all required reading. They were textbooks for the classes that he was taking. And they are actually listed in the syllabus that was found in this pile of papers in his apartment. So here are the books. Convicting the Innocent. Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. Yeah, we didn't get this one wrong. Charged. The new movement to transform American prosecution and End mass incarceration. Well, we got one guy in there, and that was a good incarceration. The next one is why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free and other paradoxes of our Broken Legal system. Yeah, listen, some people do actually confess to crimes that they didn't commit. And yes, some guilty people definitely go free. But I find it really fascinating that this fella murdered four kids and pleaded guilty. And he's got the textbook that says, why the Innocent Plead guilty and the Guilty Go free. Well, that wasn't the case for you, Bryan Kohberger. All right, the next textbook. Mass Incarceration on Trial. A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America. I wonder if he studied about where he was going to stay for the rest of his life. Research methods in the social and health sciences. Making research decisions. Criminal procedure. I wonder how much he learned about the trial he was actually going to be in and then finally decided, shit, I better plead a trial by jury. Same comment. Unsafe in the Ivory Tower. The Sexual Victimization of College Women. I'm still weirded out by this. We don't have evidence of any kind of sexual assault in these crimes. But he beat the out of Kaylee. I feel like there was just something to it about women. He's got it in for women. Maybe he didn't assault them, but he definitely, definitely victimized college women. America's Safest city. Delinquency and modernity in suburbia. Let the Lord sort them. The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty. Another death penalty book. Crazy. A Father Searched Through America's Mental Health, Madness and Rise of The Warrior Cop. The militarization of America's police Forces. He wasn't far into his doctoral program, right? He murdered in November, he went home in December. So he was just in the first semester really of his doctoral program in criminology. And that's a lot of textbooks, so I'm pretty sure he didn't read all of them. I wonder how far in he got. I wonder how much he learned about the crime he was planning to commit and what might happen if he were going to get caught. I wonder how much these textbooks guided him in how he planned these killings. Let's go into Coburger's bedroom. Yes, but it is telling. Remember when the police executed the search warrant, they said that they'd seized things off the bed, like comforters and pillows and sheets and things that had red ish brownish stains. And we assumed. Oh my God, bloodstains. Please, oh please let there be a connection. Something that connects those four kids to this apartment. Because those four kids weren't in this apartment. Right, and we assumed that those would be blood stains. But in the end, the police said in their press conference after the trial there was nothing of evidentiary value in this apartment. Look, he'd had over a month. He probably got rid of everything and anything and vacuumed and threw out sheets and certainly threw away his. And I'll get to this. His, his shower curtain. But now we can see the stains that they marked as evidence in these photographs on the pillow and on the bed sheets. They even like stripped it all and took them all to the forensic labs for testing. We could see those stains, we could see those marks. Were they blood? Were they something else? Who knows? But it's just eerie to see where this guy slept. Slept like a baby. Clearly slept comfortably. After killing those kids in their beds, he'd get into his snuggly cozy bed and go off to sleep. Wonder what he dreamt of. Wonder if he had any nightmares. I wonder if he just slept fine. So another picture in his closet in his bedroom. Very telling. He's got shirts hanging, right? Overall, a lot of stuff has been packed up and he's taken it home with him to Pennsylvania. But he's got about six of these button down polo shirts, short sleeve. It says to me, he's coming back. Why would you leave those? Those are nice shirts. Nothing wrong with them. It's not like those are going to take up a lot of space in your luggage. And you're driving, you don't have to check luggage. So he's coming back. It's winter. He didn't need to pack the short sleeve polo shirts, right? He's coming back. He fully intended to just go home for Christmas and come back in the bathroom. Here's what I alluded to before. It is clean as a whistle. Look, I know guys, and some guys are really clean and tidy, but this goes beyond. This thing is like bleached. This thing looks like it was never lived in this bathroom. And of course, no shower curtain on that shower. I got the willies when I looked at these pictures of the shower because I'm pretty damn certain that this is the shower in front of which he photographed himself in that now infamous selfie just a few hours after the murders. Thumbs up, good job. Like, that's what it says, that selfie. Thumbs up. Look what I pulled off. And I think that's the shower behind him. And as we noticed, shower curtain's gone. I wonder how long that shower curtain was gone for. Because he was living in that apartment for another month before he went back to Pennsylvania, right? Month and a half. Still no shower curtain. Did he just shower with no shower curtain? Did he not want to go buy a new shower curtain? Because that would be a red flag. That could be evidence. Did he just get rid of the shower curtain and then just shower without one? Don't know. But it is eerie to see that shower and that shower rod because I'm pretty damn sure that he didn't go and take a picture in someone else's apartment.
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So then there are all these photographs of his office at the university and a big whiteboard with a lot of writing on it. And at first it's sort of hard to make out what some of the writing is. But what ended up being sort of deciphered is that it's Korean. He writes Brian Kohberger phonetically, like he's trying to tell someone who maybe doesn't speak English how to pronounce his name. And then somebody writes in Korean what his name is. There's also a couple of other, like, things that he says, hard to know, but some of the other things on the whiteboard, take it easy and don't give up and let's go. Should add to prison. There were also dozens and dozens of witness interviews that were included in this massive dump of documents that were just released. It was the Idaho State Police who, who basically opened these up. Many of these interviews have never been seen before. Interviews with surviving roommates, a former roommate at 1122 King Road, and then some other friends as well. And I should say they're heavily redacted with most of the names removed. But based on what we know about the house and the people who lived in the house and, you know, who has said what publicly already, we can kind of fill in some of the blanks on the redactions. A witness who appears to be Dylan Mortensen, told police that she has no idea why she was spared that night, even though Kohberger saw her and knew that she saw him. The interviewing officer writes this, and I quote, she does not believe anyone ever tried to open her door during the time he was in the house, and he could easily have done so. She volunteered that to come through the sliding glass door, the person would have had to scale a tall wall. She advised the suspect would have known her room would have been occupied because he appeared to have known the layout of the house. She also said it could have been someone who was in the house last year when other girls were living in the house. Dylan took a lot of undeserved abuse online from really cruel trolls who couldn't understand how she didn't realize that her roommates had been slaughtered. But when you read her statement, you find out just how little these survivors knew, even hours later. Here's a quote. The police say she advised she initially went upstairs from. And this is redacted, but we know it's Bethany's bedroom with this is redacted, but we know pretty much it's Hunter Johnson who had come to the house because they were scared and wanted him to come and help them take a look around. And she advised when she saw Zanna, she realized Zanna had not moved since she saw her earlier. She was still thinking Zanna was still passed out from being drunk. So think about this. She saw Zanna at 4am when she left her room after seeing the guy and ran down to Bethany's room because she couldn't get a hold of Zanna. She couldn't get a hold of Kaylee. She couldn't get a hold of Maddie. They weren't answering, but Bethany was. So she's like hightailing it down to Bethany's room because she's freaked out. She saw this guy. Yes, a lot of guys go through. A lot of people go through the house, but she's. She's freaked out. She's also hammered. So she's like, bethany, I'm going to come down and hang with you. And as she's running by Zanna's room, looking way down the hallway, she can see Zanna in her underwear and a T shirt lying on the floor. And she says, I think she's passed out. This is four o'clock in the morning. I assume she's just passed out on the floor. That's why she's not answering. And there's this guy. And I'm going to run down because Bethany is answering. So she sees her at 4am and then eight hours later when she goes upstairs with Hunter, because now Hunter's there and they're freaked out and they're going to find out what the heck is going on. Why is everybody so silent? Is something really wrong? Like, did somebody OD or pass out? So she sees her at 4am and then she sees her eight hours later in the exact same position, right on the floor. But she still doesn't think anything more had happened to Zanna than maybe passing out, maybe ODing, maybe. Right at this point, she's freaking out that something's definitely wrong with Zanna, but her head has not gone to, oh, she was murdered by a maniacal killer who slaughtered four of my roommates. No, none of us would think that way. We would still be thinking, oh, shit, she's in the same position she was when I passed her at 4am last night. She probably needs an ambulance and, you know, drank too much, did too much, whatever it was. At the end of her interview, Dylan gave the investigators a sample of her DNA. And Dylan also told the police about some previous incidents that gave her an uneasy feeling about the house. Right. Including this one. Quote, two to three weeks ago, all of the roommates went to Starbucks together. And when they got home, their front door was wide open. And they do not believe it had been open when they left. She explained that there were prior issues with the front door. So she said it was possible the door opened because there'd been a snowstorm. And she explained possibly the wind caused the door to open. Also, when they got home, the washer was going, which she described was not unusual. But this also Concerned her. She explained, because of these things, they went to get Ethan's golf clubs to protect themselves when they searched the house. This broke my heart because Ethan's golf clubs were stored in the bedroom directly across the hall from Bethany's room on the basement floor. That room was unoccupied and they stored a bunch of stuff in there. You could see it actually through the windows early on when there was police body cam. You could see through the windows of that bedroom. There were golf clubs in there. Those were Ethan's golf clubs. You could also see Ethan's golf clubs being brought out by the police when they cleared the home of all the kids belongings. It was such a solemn day. I remember Brian Enten, my colleague at News Nation, saying he was out there and it was silent. It was so quiet and it was so sad. Nobody screamed questions. It was just. Nobody said anything. Just these police were bringing out all these students belongings, the dead students, the surviving students in that house. They were basically bringing this stuff out for their parents. And you could see Ethan's golf clubs. And it wasn't just Dylan who was weirded out by the house at 1122 King Road. A former roommate who no longer lived there but was still on the lease had this to say about who may have committed the murders. Quote, she thought it was someone who was watching. She was always afraid of that. She always had an uneasy, weird feeling at the house, which is one of the reasons why she didn't want to go back. She felt the house was easy to get into and easy to watch because they didn't have any blinds over the windows and the layout of the house. And that's not all. Earlier on my News Nation show. And shout out to News Nation, 10pm Eastern. It's called Banfield. Please tune in. I spoke with Heather and Jared Barnhart. They're the forensics experts who analyzed Brian Coburger's electronics, his phone, his computers, his laptops. They did that at the behest of law enforcement. And here's our conversation about some of the things they found. Good to have you back on the show, you guys. Thank you so much for being here. Let me just jump right into it. Washington University sent Brian Kohberger an improvement plan. And you guys saw some of the responses that he had to some of the professors. Does either one of you want to take it, Heather or Jared and me? Tell me what those responses said.
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Sure, I can take this one. This primarily was on his PC. It was also on his phone. But as you said earlier, he wanted to Go back. So he wrote not one, but two letters of grievance explaining why he needed that insurance, why he needed the TA role, what it meant to him. And then in a second one was saying why the professors were wrong. So why they were wrong. He is a good student. He has a good gpa. He can be both a good student and a TA and deserves that role.
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Not sure, Heather, if you know the answer to this, but was he responding to female professors? And did he have, like, a real attitude in some of his writings?
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The one, I'm not sure if it was a male or female professor, but the one where he got the improvement plan, that was with a female professor. And that was the second letter, I believe was going back to her.
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How about the attitude part? Did he have attitude or was he really trying to, like, grovel?
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In the first one, he was groveling. In the second one, he was trying to point out why he was right and she was wrong.
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Ah, yes, the woman. Of course. That's what all his female colleagues said about him. That he would be late for the women's classes, the women professors, but never late for the men's, and that he would berate the women in the classroom, but not the men who were students. Okay, so Jared, his mother, sent him this article about the murders after the murders, but of course, before he was arrested, about Zanna putting up a fight. And it seemed, I think, that he was on the phone with his mother right around the time that this text came in. Can you tell me a little bit about her communications with him?
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D
Yeah, sure. So November 17th just kind of stands out a little bit. He was. He had more mother interaction that day than normal, which. Which was a lot. He was on the phone with her for hours that day, but sort of to end the night that night. And this was the same day that the grievance letters were. Were being worked on and sent. But that night he received a link from his mom. And the. The link was to a news article basically describing how Zanna had bruises on her body and how she had put up such a fight. And there was no response, no text back. And looking at the timeline a little bit, you can tell that they're actually speaking on the phone. What that tells us, and we can assume is that they were talking about the Idaho murders on that night. And then the next morning, there's just kind of nothing. And then this text about coffee beans. And then the second text that said, yes, still there, same girl, very sweet. To the two older lady customers there. I have no idea what that is, but there's just no context between talking about the murders the night before and then this thing the next morning.
- [38:28]
A
Can you just repeat what you said about the nice girls in the coffee shop who sent that text that you read? And can you reread it?
- [38:35]
D
Yeah, his mother sent it to him and said, yes, still there. Same girl, very sweet to the two older lady customers there. God, it's just been something in Pennsylvania. I'm not. I'm not sure. There's just no context.
- [38:52]
A
Well, all I can think of is that the, you know, the. The vegan restaurant where the girls work, maybe that was considered a coffee shop. But is there no context? Because he deleted so much stuff and it was just unretrievable.
- [39:05]
D
So that's the tricky part is when you look at their communication, it looks like he might have been deleting some of his side of the messages. But there's also this complicating factor that they're on the phone all the time. And so the context could just be a voice call that we don't have the words for.
- [39:23]
A
It's weird. When I text with people, I'm not usually on the phone with them. It's much quicker just to talk to them if you're on the phone. But I guess if you're going to send a link, say, hey, I'll send it to you. Take a look. That would make sense. But the rest of it, still. Still mystifying. Gotta have you back because I still have so many more questions. Heather and Jarrett Barnhart, thank you so much for this. So there you have it. That's just the highlights of a massive document dump, right? Bryan Kohberger's apartment. The contents inside. Every corner, every cabinet, every little scrap of his meager life laid bare. Every clue as to who this monster was as he walked among us. And we were none the wiser. At first glance, it looks like a typical student rental, right? But once you know what he did, those ordinary rooms really start to feel anything but ordinary. This is where he planned those killings at 1122 King Road. This is where he launched his dry runs when he'd scramble down his front staircase, get into his white Elantra and drive to Moscow and circle that house multiple times beginning in June, months before the murders. This is where he plotted out his reconnaissance of the off campus home. This is. Is where it all happened. The nerve center. This foul little apartment with his foul little life inside. And all of the things in this apartment are indicative of what kind of life he was living while he orchestrated his sinister plan. His apartment is cold, it's sparse, and it's unsettling in ways that are hard to put into words. And while the contents of his apartment do not solve the ultimate question that we are all still chasing. Which is why? Why? Why did you do this, Brian? Why did you choose those kind and innocent kids? How could you do such a cruel and vile thing to other humans? We chase those questions, Right? But the contents of his apartment, that does get us closer to knowing what kind of person he was before he was just an inmate. So that maybe, just maybe, we can be a millimeter closer to being smarter at pinpointing the other monsters that lurk among us. Maybe. I'm Ashley Banfield. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you for watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious. It's drop dead. Seriously.