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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.