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Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love, hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhat. Every Monday, Dr. Bhat goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files. Not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. Hidden History drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, so you never miss a mystery. This is crime house. In December 2022, roughly three weeks after four college students were stabbed to death in their campus home in Idaho, the Moscow Police Department released a public statement. They cleared several people who'd come under intense online scrutiny. The surviving roommates, the Uber driver, the door dash driver, and the man in the hoodie at the food truck. But one part of the statement raised more questions than answers. Quote, the Moscow Police Department wants to reassure the community that there is no imminent threat to the community at large based on information gathered during this investigation. End quote. No imminent threat. Three weeks after a masked intruder walked into a house full of sleeping students and killed four of them, no suspect had been named, no arrest had been made. And yet somehow, investigators were confident enough to tell the public, don't worry. How did they know? What did they already know? And if they already had a strong lead, which it turns out they did, why did it take another two weeks before anyone was arrested? And those are the kinds of questions this story keeps generating. Because even now, with a guilty plea and four life sentences, this case is far from closed. From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations, and murderous doctors, these aren't just theories. They're real stories that blur the line between fact and fiction. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'll explore the real people at the center of the world's most shocking events and nefarious organizations. And remember, these Monday episodes will also be on YouTube with full video. You can find them every Saturday. Just search for conspiracy theories, cults and crimes and be sure to like and subscribe. These cases are wild and I want to hear what you think at the end of each episode. Leave a comment wherever you listen. Be sure to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to continue building this community together. And for ad free access to all three episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts today, I'm covering one of the most disturbing and talked about cases of the last several years the Idaho College Murders. In November of 2022, 4 University of Idaho students were stabbed to death inside their off campus home in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho. Their names were Kaylee Gonzalez, Madison Mogan, Zanna Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin. The case shocked the country, paralyzed a campus, and sent the Internet into a tailspin. A man named Brian Kohberger was eventually arrested, tried and convicted. But before we get to any of that, we need to slow down. Because remember, an arrest isn't always the same thing as the full story, and a guilty plea isn't always the same thing as the truth. All that and more coming up. At dsw, we ask the important questions like what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an rsvp. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes. At the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with Designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today and let us surprise you. There's never been a better time to get outside and experience the benefits of nature. Discover nearby trails and explore. Explore the outdoors with alltrails. Download the free app today and find your outside before any of this became a news story, before the camera crews and the TikTok sleuths and the competing theories, there were four real people with real lives, full of laughter and plans and possibility. Their names were Kaylee, Maddie, Zanna, and Ethan. And this is where their story begins. Kaylee Goncalves was 21 years old. She grew up in Rathdrum, Idaho, and by the time she got to the University of Idaho, she had the kind of personality that could fill any room. She was funny, outgoing, and a little bit of a jokester, always filming goofy videos for her social media. She was about to graduate a semester early, and she'd already landed a job with an IT company in Texas. The next chapter of her life was right there, waiting. Her best friend since sixth grade was Madison Mogan Maddie, also 21, also from Northern Idaho. Maddie was quieter than Kaylee, but no less confident. Her parents, Karen and Scott, said she made friends the second she walked into a room. She was majoring in marketing, managed her sorority's Instagram account, and was by all accounts someone who approached the world with warmth and ambition. Her boyfriend said she wanted to explore the world. She, she and Kaylee had arrived at the University of Idaho together in 2019, gone through sorority rush together, and ended up in different houses. Kaylee got into Alpha Phi, considered a top house on campus. Maddie got PI Beta Phi, which wasn't. She was disappointed but tried not to show it. She ran to the PI Phi house with her new sisters, all smiles and threw herself into making it work. She was so good at promoting the sorority on social media that they asked her to run their official Instagram account. She was going to make PI Phi a top house. Anyone else believed it or not. Still, it was the first time since sixth grade that she and Kaylee had done anything apart, and it stung. But it didn't last. When Covid sent everyone home their sophomore year, it reset something. By the time they got back to campus, the appeal of sorority life had faded for both of them. They didn't want the rules, the politics, the house meetings. They wanted each other and their own space. So the summer before senior year in 2022, they moved in together. Their families joked they were sisters who just happened to have different last names, and for one last year, they were going to make the most of it. The house at 1122 King Road was a rental with five bedrooms entrance on the ground floor, two bedrooms there, one in the basement below, and two more upstairs. So the girls had three other roommates, Dylan Mortensen and Zanna Kernodle, both on the ground floor, and Bethany Funk in the basement. Kaylee and Maddie took the two rooms on the upper floor. Kaylee also brought along their Golden Doodle Murphy, who she shared with her ex boyfriend. Zanna was 20, also majoring in marketing, and one of Maddie's sorority sisters in PI Beta Phi. Friends described her as funny, sharp, and effortlessly herself, the group's de facto dj who could show up to any party in a sweatshirt and a messy bun and still steal the show. Unlike the others, Zanna hadn't come to college with a specific plan for her future, but things had been shifting for her. She'd met Ethan Chapin at a Sigma Chi party the year before. It wasn't instant fireworks, but they ran in the same circles, kept finding themselves together, and the connection just grew. He spent almost every night at the King Road house now, and Zanna had just spent the summer with his family. Clearly things were getting serious. Ethan was 20 years old, one of a set of triplets. He, his brother Hunter, and his sister Maisie had grown up in Mount Vernon, Washington, and had been incredibly close their entire lives. When it Came time for college, all three chose the University of Idaho. They weren't ready to scatter yet. Ethan and Hunter joined Sigma Chi, which is actually how Ethan met Zanna at a party hosted by the fraternity. Classmates remembered Ethan as magnetic and easygoing, the kind of person who made everyone around him feel welcome the most moment he walked in. His parents, Jim and Stacy, had just visited campus for parents weekend at the start of November 2022. They tailgated at the football game, spent time with Zanna, and saw for themselves how well all three of their kids had settled into college life. As Jim and Stacy drove home to Washington, Stacy turned to her husband and said she felt proud, like they'd made it through the hardest part of raising their kids, and now they were all thriving. One week later, everything changed. Before I get into the night of November 12th, I want to introduce the man who would eventually be charged with these murders. Because understanding who Bryan Kohberger was long before anyone knew his name is essential to understanding this case and frankly, to understanding why so many people still have so many questions about it. Brian Kohberger grew up in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. As a teenager, classmates described him as quiet, awkward, and sometimes unpredictable. He struggled with a neurological condition called visual snow. That's a persistent disruption to vision that some neurologists describe as debilitating. Around the same time, he began writing online about feeling emotionally detached, disconnected from reality, like he was watching his own life through a screen. He started using heroin in high school while dealing with severe depression. His father sent him to rehab more than once. Kohlberger eventually claimed he got clean. By his mid-20s, he appeared to have turned things around. He enrolled at Desales University, a small Catholic school in Pennsylvania, where he studied psychology. He became fascinated with the criminal mind, specifically what drives people toward violence. He told friends he hoped to work with high profile offenders one day. He was interested not just in the mechanics of crime, but in the psychology of it. What a person feels before, during, and after. What it's like to cross that line. He earned his bachelor's degree in 2020, then stayed on for a master's program at DeSales. As a graduate student, he was known for being meticulous, highly analytical, and deeply focused on methodology. So impressive that a professor recommended him for a PhD program. In the fall of 2022, Kohberger moved to Pullman, Washington, to begin a doctorate in criminology at Washington State University. Located approximately nine mil. The University of Idaho in Moscow. Nine miles. That detail will matter. Here's where things start to get strange. In the months before the murders, Kohberger posted a survey on Reddit. He identified himself as a student researcher working with two professors at Desales. Looking for former inmates willing to answer questions. The survey asked them to describe their thoughts, emotions and actions. Quote from the beginning to end of the crime commission process. At the time, it sounded academic. In hindsight, it reads like something else entirely, like a man who wasn't just trying to understand violent crime. Like a man who was planning it. And at Washington State, the picture only got darker. Classmates described Kohberger as brilliant but strange, mechanical, observational, like he was studying the people around him rather than connecting with them. He didn't socialize. He didn't go to parties. But he was unusually engaged in class, particularly when the conversation turned to forensics and evidence. Just days before the murders, he'd been unusually animated during a discussion about how prosecutors used DNA evidence to win convictions and, crucially, how a case could fall apart if no DNA was recovered. To his classmates, it seemed like an obvious observation. Of course, physical evidence matters, but in hindsight, it reads differently. By that point, Kohberger had already been circling the house on King Road for months. He wasn't talking about theory. He was talking about himself. And if that's true, then the questions aren't just about who did this. They're about how a PhD student in criminology, someone literally studying how the killers get caught, managed to stalk a house for months, months, carry out four murders, and nearly escape detection entirely. The answer to that question is more unsettling than most people realize. Do you love your pets? Do you love suspense? Do you love it when your pets keep you in suspense because they ate something mysterious? And who knows what the vet visit will cost? If you answered yes twice and then no, you should protect your pet with Lemonade Pet Insurance. It can save you up to 90% on vet bills for checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, all the stuff that leaves you financially on the edge of your seat. 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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law November 12, 2022 was a Saturday in Moscow, Idaho. The University of Idaho football team had a home game. Students were everywhere, tailgating, partying, moving from house to house. As the night stretched on at 1122 King Road, all five roommates got ready to go out. Kaylee and Maddie headed to a local sports bar called the Corner Club, a longtime Moscow staple with neon lights and cheap drinks. Zanna met up with Ethan at a Sigma Kai party just a few blocks away. Dylan and Bethany went out separately, with plans to eventually end up at the same party. After leaving the Corner Club, Kaylee and Maddie stopped at the Grub Truck, a popular late night food cart. Here's something that seems almost too strange to be coincidental. The Grub truck had a habit of live streaming their late night rush on Twitch. Anyone who ordered food was caught on camera. Anyone in the world could tune in and watch in real time who was there and when Kaylee and Maddie showed up around 1:30am the feed was silent. No audio, but they were clearly visible, smiling and chatting. Then a man in a hoodie appeared nearby. He spoke with them briefly. They turned and walked away. A few seconds later, he followed in their direction. That footage would later go viral on TikTok and be scrutinized frame by frame by thousands of amateur detectives online. The man in the hoodie was quickly identified as a fraternity student and after weeks of intense and unfair public scrutiny, was cleared of any involvement. But the clip still raised a question worth sitting with Was someone watching that live stream that night? Not someone who randomly happened to be at that food truck, but someone who had been tracking where Kaylee and Maddie were. By around 2am all five roommates plus Ethan were back at the King Road house. The lights went off one by 1. At 3:30am a white Hyundai Elantra began appearing on security cameras from nearby homes in it drove past the house once, then again, then again. Over the next hour, it circled the block multiple times before stopping near the home. Inside, Zanna was still awake. She ordered doordash. The delivery driver arrived around 4am and handed off her food at the front door. She took it back to her ground floor room where Ithan was already asleep and started scrolling through TikTok. She didn't hear the sliding glass door in the kitchen open. She didn't hear a masked figure step inside. The intruder moved quietly and went directly upstairs to the third floor where Maddie and Kaylee were asleep together in Maddie's bed on the ground floor. Dylan stirred. She thought she heard a noise. Then she heard something much worse. Kaylee's voice, faint and unsettling, saying, there's someone here. Dylan cracked open her door. She didn't see anything. She closed it again. She couldn't have known that just above her, the intruder had already unsheathed a knife. Back in her room, Dylan heard more sounds. Then a man's voice. It's okay. I'm going to help you. She opened her door a second time. Nothing. Then she heard crying. Then a thud. Then Kaylee's dog, Murphy, started barking upstairs. Dylan opened her door a third time and saw him, a masked figure dressed entirely in black, walking in her direction. She caught a brief glimpse of his face. Bushy eyebrows, roughly 5 10, athletic build. She froze. He walked right past her room, down the hallway and out through the sliding glass door in the kitchen. Dylan locked her door, grabbed her phone, and started texting her roommates. No response from Kaylee, Maddie, Zanna, or Ethan. The only person who replied was Bethany down in the basement. Dylan ran to her room. The two of them huddled together and waited. Now, before we go any further, I want to address something directly. Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funk were harassed mercilessly online in the weeks after the murders. People accused them of waiting too long to call 91 1. Some even accused them of being involved. Both were formally cleared by the police. Okay, think about what Dylan had actually experienced. She'd made eye contact in the dark with a masked man who had just killed four people and walked right past her door. She didn't know what had happened upstairs. She didn't know if he was still outside. She was in shock, hiding in a basement bedroom with her roommate, afraid to move. That's not suspicious behavior. That's what surviving something unsurvivable looks like. Later that morning, still with no response from their roommates, Dylan called her friend Hunter Johnson and his girlfriend, Emily Alant. She said something strange had happened. She was scared. Could they come by? Hunter arrived first. He went inside. He found Zanna and Ethan in Zanna's ground floor room, lifeless, with visible stab wounds. He felt for a pulse. There was none. He walked back outside and told the others someone needed to call 911 because there was an uncovered conscious person inside. He didn't say what he already knew, that they were gone. When police arrived and swept the house, they found four bodies. Zanna and Ethan on the ground floor. Kaylee and Maddie on the third floor in the same bed. Both with stab wounds. Some of the victims had defensive wounds, suggesting they'd woken up and fought back. Others appeared to have been asleep when they were killed. And next to Kaylee and Maddie, a tan leather KA Bar military style hunting knife sheath embossed with a Marine Corps insignia left behind by the killer. Campus alerts went out just after 1pm first, an ongoing homicide investigation on King Road. Then, minutes later, four people were dead. The students gathered outside the house and read the alerts on their phones. No one from law enforcement had told them anything directly. They were learning their friends were dead from a university text message. Ethan's surviving siblings, Hunter and Maisie, were the ones who had to call their parents. Their mother had been grocery shopping when they reached her. She couldn't understand what they were telling her at first, but she knew one thing. She and her husband needed to get to Moscow immediately. They started the six hour drive. Zanna's sister, who was studying at Washington State University just 10 miles away, called their father. She didn't just tell him the details over the phone. She just said, come to Moscow. In northern Idaho, Kaylee and Maddie's families were both getting alarming messages from friends, but couldn't reach either girl. Kaylee's parents called Maddie's mom to see if she knew what was going on. She said she was already on her way to campus. She promised to bring both girls home once she found them. She didn't know yet that she couldn't keep that promise. By late afternoon, all four families had been told their children were gone. And at that moment, no one knew who had done it or why. The only hard evidence was a knife sheath, a shoe print with a diamond pattern sole and grainy ring. Camera footage of a white Hyundai Elantra circling the block in the early morning dark. What followed was one of the most chaotic public investigations in recent memory. The country became obsessed. Tips poured in by the thousands. Armchair detectives flooded Facebook groups, Reddit threads and TikTok comment sections. True crime podcasters weighed in. Local news cameras camped outside the house. And in the absence of any official information, because police were strategically staying quiet to protect their investigation, the Internet began building its own case. All of its targets were completely Innocent. The man in the hoodie at the grub truck. The Uber driver who took Kaylee and Maddie home. The doordash driver who delivered Zanna's food minutes before the murders. Dylan and Bethany, a former boyfriend, a neighbor. All of them faced public accusations, online harassment, and genuine fear for their safety. Meanwhile, the actual suspect was nine miles away in police Pullman, going to class and grading undergraduate papers as if nothing had happened. It's worth pausing on that because it speaks to something important about how these cases unfold. In the Internet age, the pressure on investigators to release information, any information, becomes enormous. And when they don't, the void fills itself with rumors, with suspicion, with the most available targets rather than the right ones. People's lives get upended. And the actual investigation has to keep moving in silence anyway. Because tipping off a suspect before you have enough to charge them can destroy a case entirely. On December 12, nearly a month after the murders, Moscow police released a statement clearing all of the people who'd been blamed online. That was necessary, but here's the thing. By then, investigators had already identified Kohberger's car on the police Pullman campus two weeks earlier. They were already building a case. The public just didn't know it yet. On November 29, 16 days after the murders, a Washington State University officer spotted a white Hyundai Elantra on the Pullman campus. The registration came back to Brian Kohberger, a 28 year old PhD student in criminology. Police ran his driver's license. His photo matched Dylan's description almost exactly. Exactly. Athletic build, roughly 510 bushy eyebrows. They also found that Kohberger had recently changed his license plates. He'd been pulled over in August with Pennsylvania plates set to expire on Nov. 30. He got new Washington state plates on Nov. 18, exactly five days after the murders. Maybe a coincidence his old plates were expiring anyway. But the timing was notable. And when detectives filed a warrant for his phone records, any remaining doubt began to dissolve. Coburger's phone had been pinging near The King Roadhouse 23 separate times between July and November 2022. Four months of visits to the same address before the murders ever happened. Investigators believe he'd been casing the house, studying the routines of the people inside, learning when they came home and when the lights went off. Then on the night of November 12, his phone traveled from Pullman toward Moscow. At 2:47am it went dark, powered off for nearly two hours. At 4:48am it came back online, heading back toward Pullman and Then later that same morning, after police had already been called to the house, it pinged near 1122 King Road again. Police believe Kohberger returned to the scene, maybe to watch the response unfold, maybe to look for something he'd left behind. Something like a knife sheath. The FBI began covertly surveilling Kohberger at his family's Pennsylvania home, where he'd driven for the holidays. On December 27, agents collected trash from outside the house and found a used Q tip inside. DNA testing confirmed that whoever left biological material on the knife sheath at the crime scene was the biological son of the person who used that Q tip. In other words, Kohberger's father's DNA tied Kohberger directly to the murder weapon. This is genetic genealogy, the same technique used to catch the Golden State Killer. After decades, it is a powerful investigative tool. It's also raised to serious civil liberties questions, which Kohberger's defense team would later challenge in court. The judge allowed the evidence to stand. At 3am on December 30, 2022, a SWAT team of 40 officers surrounded the Kohberger family home. They expected to find everyone asleep. Instead, they found Brian in the kitchen, wide awake, wearing latex gloves, methodically sealing his own trash and indifferent individual Ziploc bags separated from the rest of the family's garbage. He was a criminology student. He had spent years studying how physical evidence brings killers down. He knew exactly what DNA could do to a case. He just apparently never considered that his father's DNA might give him away just as easily as his own. When the SWAT team zip tied his wrists, Kohberger spoke to them as though they were students in one of his classes. He asked whether anyone else had been arrested. He mentioned his PhD program. He suggested they all get coffee afterward. Every account from that night described the same thing. A man with no visible distress, no apparent remorse, just calm and detached engagement with the situation unfolding around him. He was charged with four counts of first degree murder and one count of burglary and extradited to Idaho on January 4, 2023. When he landed in Moscow, reporters lined the streets. Cameras followed his every move. To many people, it felt like the story was finally reaching its end. It wasn't. Debt doesn't usually happen all at once. It creeps in quietly. A charge here, a larger balance there. It builds bill by bill, statement by statement, until it becomes too much. If you have $10,000 or more in credit card or personal loan debt, national debt relief can reduce the amount you owe and give you an easier way forward. Their team of experts takes over the hard part. Negotiating with your creditors, Breaking down everything for you, clearly. And building a plan that fits your budget. National debt relief has helped over 1 million people with their debt. And they can help you too. Because when you understand your options and have someone in your corner, you, debt doesn't feel so heavy anymore. It's quick, free and easy to apply. To see if you're eligible, just visit startndr.com today. If debt's been hanging over you, now's the time to take control. Visit startndr.com today. Where is Daredevil? I'm right here. Don't miss the return of Marvel television's Daredevil Born again. So what's next? I feel liberated. We're gonna take this city back over medicated in an all new season now streaming only on Disney plus. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel television's Daredevil Born again now streaming only on Disney. Hi, crime house community. It's Vanessa. Are you interested in the mysterious parts of history? Or like when in 1518 an entire European city couldn't stop dancing? Or in 1908 when something flattened over 800 square miles of Siberian forest in an instant? I'm excited to tell you about a new show, hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhatt. Dr. Bhatt has spent her entire career demanding evidence and asking why. Now every Monday on Hidden History, she goes where Hidden history touches the unknown. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files. Not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. At the end of every episode, she'll tell you exactly what she thinks happened and ask what if it happened today? Hidden History drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen so you never miss a mystery. Let's talk about what the official version of events still doesn't explain. Because there are several things about this case that continue to generate genuine good faith questions not from fringe corners of the Internet, but from journalists, legal analysts, and the victim's own fiction families. The first is the house. Before a trial date had even been set, the University of Idaho accepted a donation of the King Road property and announced plans to demolish it. Two of the victims families, Kaylee Gonzalez and Zanna Kernodles, were adamantly opposed. They argued the house was irreplaceable physical evidence and that destroying it before Kohberger had been tried was reckless at best and potentially something worse. University president Scott Green responded with a statement prioritizing, quote, collective healing. The family's objections were noted and overruled. On December 28, 2023, a full year before the trial was ever supposed to begin, heavy machinery tore through the walls of 1122 King Road at sunrise. In under two hours, it was gone. For some, that was closure. For others, it raised an uncomfortable whose interests were actually being served by destroying the crime scene before the case went to trial. The second unresolved issue is motive. The prosecution never formally established one. We know Kohberger had been near the house 23 times in over four months. We know he entered it deliberately and went directly upstairs to where Kaylee and Maddie were sleeping. We know the DNA evidence was compelling. But why those students? Why that house? Why that night? Some who studied the case closely believe Kohberger may have been drawn to the incel world. That's short for involuntary celibate, a loosely organized online movement of men who feel socially and romantically rejected by women. In some cases, those men have channeled that resentment into real world violence. And the most infamous of those attackers was Elliot Roger. In 2014, Roger killed six people near the University of California, Santa Barbara. He'd spent years documenting his rage in online posts and videos before carrying out a targeted attack near a sorority house. Women he felt had rejected and humiliated him. His writings became a kind of dark scripture in incel circles. Kohberger had reportedly studied Roger's case in depth at DeSales. There's also the matter of which victims Kohberger targeted first. According to Liz Garbus, co director of the Netflix docu series One night in Idaho, the evidence suggests that either Maddie or Kaylee or both were the intended targets. Kohberger went directly to their room. They were killed first. Zanna and Ethan, by contrast, may have been killed because they were witnesses. Which raises the possibility that Coburger had fixated on one or both of the women on the upper floor. Specifically, that this wasn't random but personal. Even if the connection was entirely one sided. Maybe he had crossed paths with one of them. Maybe he had felt rejected or ignored. Maybe he had simply become obsessed from a distance. No one knows. And because Kohberger never explained himself, no one ever will. But we do know the username Papa Rogers appeared in Idaho murder sleuthing communities on Facebook almost immediately after the killings. This account posted in ways that stood out even among thousands of Amateur investigators. They asked which hand a killer might use, what knife grip was most efficient, mentioning the knife sheath before that detail had been made public, and insisting repeatedly that the white Hyundai Elantra was a red herring. When Kohberger was arrested, multiple Facebook group administrators noticed something that stopped them cold. The profile photo used by Papa Rogers bore a striking resemblance to Kohberger, and the name itself sounded unmistakably like a reference to Elliot Roger. Papa Rogers never posted again after Kohberger's arrest. Authorities said they found no direct evidence conclusively linking the account to Kohberger. But they never definitively ruled it out either. If the account was Kohberger, a criminology student who'd spent years studying how investigators think it would suggest he wasn't just committing a crime. He was watching the investigation of his own crime unfold in real time and nudging it in the wrong direction. Then there's the plea deal. The road to it was long and contentious. In 2023 Congress, Kohberger was arraigned. During the proceedings, he stood silent when asked for his plea, forcing the judge to enter not guilty on his behalf. After that, his defense team spent two years filing motion after motion. They challenged the DNA evidence, arguing that the genetic genealogy technique used to link Coburger's father's Q tip to the knife sheath was unconstitutional. The judge denied that, so the defense switched tactics. They argued that Kohberger's autism diagnosis, which his lawyers revealed during pre trial proceedings, should disqualify him from the death penalty. They pointed to a Supreme Court ruling that bars the execution of those with intellectual disabilities. The judge denied that, too, noting that autism is a developmental condition, not an intellectual disability, and that the legal standard didn't apply. The trial had originally been scheduled for June, June 2025. It was pushed back to August. Then, in the summer of 2025, just weeks before jury selection was set to begin, Kohberger agreed to plead guilty to all four counts of murder in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table. He was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences, plus 10 years. He will never leave prison. Prosecutors maintained that the plea was the surest path to justice, a guaranteed outcome with no risk of acquittal, no years of appeals, no chance Coburger ever walks free. And they had met privately with the victim's families to prepare them for this possibility. Some families supported the deal. Madison Mogan's family, Ethan Chapin's family. For them, it offered closure. But Kaylee Gonzalez's family family felt blindsided not by the conviction. But by what the deal cost them. A guilty plea meant Coburger never had to take the stand, never had to be cross examined, never had to answer the question that still haunts them. Why Kaylee? At the sentencing, Kaylee's sister Olivia stood up, looked Coburger in the eye, and said, quote, my sister Kaylee and her best friend, friend Maddie, were not yours to take. They were not yours to study, to stalk, or to silence. They're everything you could never be. Loved, accepted, vibrant, accomplished, brave and powerful. End quote. Zanna's aunt took a different approach. She said she could no longer carry the hatred she felt, and so she chose to forgive him. She told him that if he ever wanted to explain what had happened that night, to tell her why, she would listen. Dylan Mortenson, the surviving roommate who had seen him face to face in the dark, sobbed as she spoke. She described the panic attacks, the moments when she drops to the floor, heart racing, reliving the night over and over. She said he had shattered her quote, in places I didn't know could break break. End quote. Kohberger sat in silence through all of it. When given the opportunity to speak, he declined. So what do you think? We have a conviction, four life sentences, no possibility of release. But we also have an unexplained motive, a demolished crime scene, and a man who never once explained himself. Does a guilty plea equal the full truth? Can justice be truly served when the most important questions are left permanently unanswered? Let us know in the comments, wherever you listen. I'd love to know. Here's what I keep coming back to. Brian Kohberger didn't stumble into this. He spent four months circling that house. He studied exactly how investigators catch killers. He powered off his phone at the precise right moment. He wore gloves and a mask. He drove back to the scene the next morning, apparently to observe the response. And yet he still left behind a knife sheath. He still circled the block in an identifiable car multiple times on camera. He returned to the scene in daylight, while police were already there. He drove across the country for the holidays as though nothing had happened. He was found by federal agents sorting his own trash in latex gloves, which, if anything, suggests he knew they were closing in and still couldn't quite stop himself. Was that sloppiness arrogance, the behavior of someone who genuinely believed his academic understanding of criminal investigation made him untouchable? Or was there something about this case, about what was known, when it was known, and what was known, never shared publicly, that we still haven't been given a full accounting of I don't have a clean answer. What I do know is this. Kaylee was fierce and loyal. Maddie had an easy laugh and big dreams for her life. Zanna was sharp and effortlessly wonderfully herself. Ithan was warm and magnetic and beloved by everyone who knew him. They deserved better than a silent courtroom. They deserved better than a demolished crime scene, a delayed trial, and a man who, when finally given the chance to speak, chose silence. Their families are still waiting for that answer. And until someone provides it, really provides it, I don't think we can honestly say this case is closed. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Come back next time. We'll decode the episode together and hear another story about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious cults, conspiracies and criminal acts. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios Here at Crime House, we want to thank everybody, each and every one of you, for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad free, plus exciting bonus content. We'll be back on Wednesday. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios this episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertzovsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Kaylee Pine and Michael Langston. Thank you for listening. Stitch Fix Stop shopping. Get styled a plus on the outfit. Ms. Turner, you are about to slay parent teacher conferences. Oh these just the most perfect fitting jeans my stylist sent me. Oh hello you who didn't set one foot in a mall and still looks amazing. Just share your size, style and budget and your style sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitch Fix get started today@stitch fix.com to my stylist, this look is dedicated to you. Thank you, thank you. Looking for your next listen? Check out hidden history with Dr. Harini Bot every Monday. Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies and events that science see still can't fully explain. Follow Hidden History now on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.