← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
The Torment of Bryan Kohberger: Idaho Prisoners’ 24-Hour Revenge Plan
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- [00:00]
Chris McDonough
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Ashley Banfield
Hey everybody. I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead serious. You and I both know Bryan Kohberger isn't exactly winning any popularity contests. Not on the outside. He is one of America's most hated criminals, I think we can all agree. But he is definitely not loved on the inside either. And when I say inside, I mean Idaho's maximum security prison. If you're like me and you want to see him suffer for every single day of his 60 some odd years behind bars, well, I may just have some good news for you. Things are not apparently going very well with his fellow inmates. And as one source told me, they had a plan for him even before he arrived. And I'm going to get to all of that. The details. The noise, the frustration, his complaints to the guards. It turns out that the other inmates don't much care for Bryan Coburger and they're not afraid to make it crystal clear to him. The word is he cannot get a wink of sleep in his solitary cell because the other prisoners have decided to wage a non stop 24 hour campaign of intense noise. That noise includes banging and shouting and taunting him through the air ducts. It's a campaign that is designed to scare the living hell out of Bryan Kohberger. And here's the thing. These aren't inmates mingling in a yard. These are men who are also in solitary. And yet they're still managing to get the job done. Something tells me the families of the 4 University of Idaho students that he slaughtered in cold blood might just take a tiny bit of satisfaction from this. Just a little good news in the middle of so much bad. And it didn't take long either for this to develop. Kohberger, or as the state calls him, inmate number 163214, hasn't been in the state's max security prison for two full weeks and already he apparently hates it. Natch, it's prison. The quadruple murderer is locked up alone in J block, supposedly for his own safety. It's called PC folks, protective custody. 23 hours alone in a cell every day. Gets to shower every other day. If he's ever out of that cell, and it's again only one hour a day, he gets to be locked up with the belly chain and the leg shackles and he gets to be walked to a cage. Sometimes the cage is outside, you know, for a little sunshine, it's in a cage. Or sometimes the cage is inside in the the gen pop area of that protective custody unit. So you're in a cage within the prison or you're locked to a little desk, socially distanced from all the other inmates. So yeah, what's to love? But officials can't protect him from everything. A source told News Nation that his fellow hardcore offenders are going as far as they possibly can to make his life a living hell. Totally miserable. We're told. They actually are taking shifts, shouting through the vents all day and all night, keeping him from sleeping, keeping him from even having naps, keeping him from thinking, keeping him from finding even a moment of peace in his new hell. And apparently it's really getting under his skin. We are told that he has asked the jail guards to help him do something about it, please. So did they? Well, we did hear back from the Idaho Department of Corrections. Their public information officer talked to News Nation about this and here's what they told the network. Quote, we are aware of Kohberger's complaints about what he considers taunting. Incarcerated individuals commonly communicate with each other in prison. Brian Kohberger is housed alone in a cell. And IDOC security staff, that's Idaho Department of Corrections security staff, maintain a safe and orderly environment for all individuals in our custody. End quote. So in other words, shut the fuck up. Bryan Kohberger. People are yelling at you because they hate you. At least you're safe. So again, shut the up. Now hearing Brian Coburger complaining that he's being taunted, that's a conversation that I would have paid good money to overhear and even more to witness. But you know who else can't sleep, Brian? The families of the four young kids that you butchered. Maybe even your own family too. Struggling to sleep, knowing what you did to them. Knowing what you did to the kids, knowing what you did to your mother, your father, your sisters. Knowing what you did to the name. Imagine them signing up for something and saying, my name is Kohberger. That's what you did. Let's be honest, all of these petty annoyances, you could have avoided them, you could have gone to trial, you could have faced a jury, you could have been convicted. But instead you took a plea. And now you've got decades ahead of you in a cell where you can't even hear yourself think. So how exactly are these inmates pulling it off? It's a really good question. And what does it say about the prison's ability or willingness or inability or resistance to stop the inmates from doing what they're doing? Cuz it really sounds a lot like the prison is just letting the prisoners sort it out for themselves. I want to dig into what's happening behind those prison walls. Because solitary confinement doesn't mean silence. I Talked to Chris McDonough on my news Nation show, Banfield Shout out, News Nation, 10pm Eastern. Chris is the director of the Cold Case Foundation. He's a retired homicide detective and he's the co host of the interview room on YouTube. Here's our conversation. Chris, good to have you on the show again. I don't know, I don't know what it is about hearing news like that, but it just makes me feel good. In a story where I have yet to feel even an ounce of good, how true is it? How bad is it?
- [06:35]
Chris McDonough
Yeah, so actually the good news is the inmates apparently were waiting for him and when he got there, they are now making his life absolutely miserable. They're utilizing the vent system, they're kicking the doors, they're taunting him and they're basically, you know, torturing him through, you know, using psychology. And my goodness, he's complaining. And the guards, at this point, you know, the most they can do is write it down and, or, you know, tell him, hey, there's nothing we can do. You're not in physical harm.
- [07:16]
Ashley Banfield
I have so many more questions and I'm going to ask them, but I do want to touch on that last little bit. Physical harm because as I understand it, he's in cages with within his cage, meaning he's in a cell for 23 hours a day and there's a slat for food he gets out for an hour a day. But if he gets out, he goes into this big room in the middle and there's usually a cage in the middle where he can be, or he can be handcuffed to one of those little desky type tables. If there are other inmates who are nearby, how can people get close to his door? How could people get close to him and actually put him in physical danger? Or can they?
- [07:57]
Chris McDonough
Well, you know, actually There are about 32 inmates apparently in the J block currently. And within those 32 folks, they are the worst of the worst outside of death row, of course. And he's in J block. So what that would be, that's called a special housing unit, right? An shu and it's really a prison within a prison. However, the disadvantage that he's at, there's not a whole bunch of room where they can start moving other inmates around. So what they want to do is keep him in protective custody right now until he goes through the process of where do we fit this guy through the whole prison system for the rest of his life. And so he's meeting with doctors, he's going through the systems of evaluation and they're not going to put him into general population, general population. But until that happens, the inmates have come up with a creative idea in harassing him to the point where, you know, it's basically driving him crazy.
- [09:05]
Ashley Banfield
So I have a question about that. How does it happen that they are all in collusion, almost creating a 24 hour schedule? Is that normal? Does this happen a lot? That prisoners will band together and say, let's get that one guy and let's all work together to do it?
- [09:24]
Chris McDonough
You know, I don't know if they necessarily band together outside of they knew he was coming. You know, this was such a high profile situation. They were aware that he was coming to, you know, the IMAX prison up there in Kuna. And so they got together and said, okay, well, you know, how do we harass this guy? And so my understanding is there's a couple of different ways of doing it. You can do it through the door, through the slot. The whole facility as a whole was built in 1989. So it's just one concrete, you know, echo chamber. And so they also can do it by kicking the doors. They even have folks that are called door warriors that just kick the doors to drive people crazy. And they, they can talk through the vents and believe it or not, actually one of the vents they can talk to through is they remove the water out of the toilet and they can actually talk through the toilet to another cell nearby. It's like this gigantic, you know, acoustic chamber. But my understanding is they're using the vents currently.
- [10:37]
Ashley Banfield
So what if, you know, Brian Coburger complains to the guards? We're hearing that he's been asking for help. Do they, are they under any obligation to help him from bullying as long as his personal safety isn't being threatened?
- [10:55]
Chris McDonough
Well, they're under obligation to basically protect him. Right. And so, but in this particular situation, he's in a, in an isolation situation. So those around him that can't get to him physically, so they've come up again, a way of circumventing what the rules may be. Right. Communications are no, no within the prison. And you know, inmates are extremely creative. They use a phishing system, you know, for passing messages, you know, from cell to cell by, you know, tying toilet paper together with messages. And then they throw a little rope or a little line to the next cell and that they call that fishing. And the, the notes are called kites. K I T E S And so they're very creative on how they want to communicate. And apparently they set this up long before he got there. You know, the guards were unaware of it until it started happening.
- [11:54]
Ashley Banfield
So how long will it go on for? Because obviously, if you feel the way I do about this guy, you kind of want it never to end. And if you're the families of these four kids, you want this to be much, much worse than just noise. How long is it likely that this sort of attack is going to continue?
- [12:13]
Chris McDonough
Well, I think the only way they can prevent it from occurring, one, the inmates have already made their mind up. They don't see him as a welcomed guest in their house. And that's how they see it. This is their facility. It's controlled by the, obviously the state, and it's very well controlled, very protected. But he's already at a negative deficit with the inmates based on this information. And so as long as they feel they want it to go on, it will continue to occur. And the guard's responsibility, the corrections officers, is just make sure that he's not physically harmed. They can't control the psychological aspect of this.
- [12:57]
Ashley Banfield
Yeah. And then prison is so, so much a psychological, you know, battle every day. So I'm going to ask our control room to re rack some of that video from inside the unit that we were looking at. That shows the single cells and then that center room, those tables, Chris in the front. And you'll get another shot in a second. They look like students desks. And what we understand is that each one of them has a handcuff. And if you're going to sit at those desks, you have to sit at the desks handcuffed. What would the reason for that be? Like, literally just to be able to get out of one of those lock cells just to sit, you know, almost socially distance from another inmate. Or are these for classes? What are those desks for?
- [13:44]
Chris McDonough
Well, most, you know, that that's the center of the pod is what they call it. And there's, you know, sometimes there's TV privileges and those types of things. But the one thing, you know, to your point, Ashley, is to keep this idea that he is in maximum security. So that means 23 hours a day he's going to be locked up. And I've been up to Pelican Bay, which is in Northern California, to visit prisoners, you know, when back in the day. And these guys are escorted 23 hours a day when they're brought out of a cell for one hour, meaning they're monitored for 23 hours. They're brought out for one hour and they're put into these cages outside, sometimes for exercise. They get one hour, but while they're doing it, they're escorted by two guards on either side, waist bracelets as well as ankle bracelets. And up in Pelican Bay in Northern California, they actually have catwalk, where they have a third guard above this escort team. And so those tables right there tell you that person is not moving unless the authorities give them the permission to get up and move. And that's why they're handcuffed to those particular tables.
- [15:04]
Ashley Banfield
One last question, because I have this sort of running Hollywood movie in my head about what it's like for those one hour movements. When that door opens up and Brian Coburger is belly chained and gets escorted, what kind of noise happens then? Will the other inmates all know Coburger's on the move and will they react sort of in unison?
- [15:26]
Chris McDonough
Oh, absolutely. That entire pod will light up with heckling, with taunting. I mean, they'll start kicking the doors. And if he's made any enemies in any way, shape or form, even before getting there, sometimes that information flows rather rapidly before the inmate arrives. And that's one of the reasons they're keeping him segregated away from everybody currently.
- [15:52]
Ashley Banfield
No honor among thieves. You'd think that, you know, in a maximum security lockdown, these guys would all be the worst of the worst, but I guess you can always be worse. And Bryan Coburger certainly is. Chris McDonough, it's really great of you to help us get this information. Like I said, through Schadenfreude or whatever it is, I feel a lot better knowing that his misery just deepens daily. So keep the information coming. Thanks for that. You know, I for one know that I said good riddance. And I hope I never hear from, you know, Bryan Kohberger again. But there is sweet justice within the justice system to know that he hasn't found any comfort, that he hasn't found a friend, that he hasn't made this his new normal and figured out a way to be okay with it all. To hear that everybody in there, hardened criminals, many in there for murder themselves, have said, no, no, even we don't accept someone like this. It just feels better. It just feels better to know there's additional justice. You know, I gotta say, when Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison, I felt okay. I thought, good riddance. You got a little comeuppance. You got what was coming to you. You got what you dished out. But not even half of it. I suppose I might feel the same way, except for I can't decide if it's worse to get the easy way out and die a quick and painful death or suffer a long 60 years of mental torment. Of being in a place like that, I'm really not sure. And I'm not in a place to pass that judgment. Anyway, that's for the victim's family members. And in any case, what's done is done. He's where he is. And he is protected from the other inmates physically. But you can't protect him through the vents. They can't protect him from the doors being banged on loud. They can't protect him from people hating him. And I have to tell you a little story about. I never thought of it myself, but person who did is awful damn clever. A victim's family member from another case said to me yesterday that she hopes that all of the victim's family members and friends band together and put money on the books of the inmates who surround Bryan Kohberger just to encourage them to keep up the good work. I'll let you know if we hear about that. I'll let you know if it actually happens. But like I said, it's creative thinking from someone who's been cast into a club that she'd really rather not belong. She's now a family member of murdered victims and she has her feelings about the murderer too. He happens to be locked up in that same place. I'm Ashlee Banfield. Thank you so much, everyone for watching. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.