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Howard Blum
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Podcast Host
Today I'm speaking with investigative journalist and author Howard Blum about one of the most controversial questions in the Idaho murders case. Did Bryan Kohlberger act alone? Howard has spent years with this case, and in this conversation he lays out a theory that challenges the conventional narrative. Now, whether you agree with this theory or not, it's a fascinating discussion. But one quick note before we begin. We're jumping straight into this conversation, so if you haven't listened to this week's main episode on the Idaho murders, I'd recommend starting there.
Howard Blum
When I first got into the case and then Kohlberger was arrested, I was fairly well convinced they got their man. This is a man who did it. There were so many holes in his alibi that didn't make sense. And yet after he pled guilty, I was frustrated by the fact that there was no allocution. He never had to answer any questions. I think that was a real mistake on behalf of the prosecution. He never had to explain where the knife sheath was. He never had to explain why he did it. He never had to explain did he have any relationship with the victims. And these questions lingered in my mind. So I began to go over the police reports now that the gag order had been lifted, police reports, thousands, literally, of pages began coming available and they raised questions I hadn't anticipated before. For example, according to the original police reports and the videos that were made by surveillance cameras in the neighborhood, Kohberger had been in the house for nine minutes. It circled the house and then entered through a sliding kitchen door gone up to the second floor. In those nine minutes, he killed four people. That's, I guess, possible. The police said it was possible. But then the autopsy reports were a revelation. One victim was stabbed 22 times, another one was 51 times. One of the victims had her face smashed in. The prosecutor said there was a large possibility of another weapon being used. There was also evidence that blood on the wall had been attempted to be cleaned up, that the bodies had been staged. It seemed impossible that someone could enter the house, go up two flights of stairs in the dark and kill four people in nine minutes. And it now was also clear that some of the victims were fighting back quite intensely. That seemed impossible. So to me, the conclusion exists now that Kohberger had an accomplice. But even as I dug into it more, what I'm looking into now is not that Kohberger had an accomplice. I believe, or suspect, rather, I hypothesize that Kohberger was the accomplice. I believe that this murder had its roots in something very real, very emotional. It was a payback for something, and that Kohberger was brought along. He had known this person. It was tied to him. And this was a vengeance, a retribution, these killings for some indignity. It wasn't just this crime that came out of nowhere. Sui generis. From Kohberger's distorted mind, I believe he said, I'm the criminal justice student. I will help you commit this perfect crime. And I also believe, as impossible as this may seem, that that person is still out there now, and Kohberger knows it. And he's sitting in his jail cell holding on to this information.
Podcast Host
You're basing the idea that he had an accomplice on the inability to explain the evidence. Am I getting that right?
Howard Blum
Yes. I mean, basically, the inability to. For one person to have committed these crimes in such a manner that in approximately nine minutes. And once you realize that that's an impossibility. And all the other questions that you one tried to smooth over about motive, ever meeting the victims, the disappearance of the weapon, whatever the possibility of another weapon. Well, now, you know, it's like a tree. New branches grow off of it as soon as you. The farther you go. But at this point, I don't know where these branches will lead. I don't know where any investigation will lead. Maybe on, to continue the metaphor, barking up the wrong tree.
Podcast Host
Maybe this is. I don't mean to split hairs, but I always thought that he was in the house, or it was reported at least for 13 minutes, but maybe I'm just getting that wrong.
Howard Blum
Well, he was in the house for approximately nine minutes. What they. The 13 minute refers to is parking the car at the top of the hill, getting out of the car, walking down this slope, getting and then into the house and leaving. He has to go back up the hill. He has to then take off whatever he's wearing, this killsuit overalls or whatever it was, pack it up somewhere in the trunk, and then be able to get away without leaving a trace. And then when the 13 minutes sees the car driving off. So that's. That's the entire time. But it doesn't take the time in the house. And even if we're 13, maybe we're 20 minutes. I don't think to my mind. And again, I don't know. Just raising your hand 50 times takes a lot of time. And you're doing this for four victims. People are fighting back. It's. It raises a lot of questions. And then we've also seen those selfies he's taken just hours after the murder. And there are no scratches on him. His face is pristine, basically.
Podcast Host
So you're saying it's not possible for him to come into the house, go upstairs?
Howard Blum
It seems impossible to me. It seems unlikely. It seems you're going in the dark. He also seems to know exactly where he's going. Again, there are bedrooms on the second floor. He could go left, right. Instead, he goes up this narrow staircase. The staircase is just about as wide as my shoulders. It's not much of a staircase. And then after that landing, he could have gone left or right. Again, he goes right. It seems like he has a plan or whoever he's with has a plan, and they want to make this point.
Podcast Host
Okay, so we assume that he has a plan, and I think that's corroborated. He. My understanding is they.
Howard Blum
He.
Podcast Host
He stalked the house. Probably cased it 12 to 20 times is what's been reported. Is that your understanding as well, you're saying?
Howard Blum
And was reported in the press. You know, he staked it, stalked the house. You know, I think 13 times, actually. Which means that his phone was picked up by a cell tower nearby. That cell tower has a radius of 210 to 12 miles. So he was in within 10 to 12 miles of the house. That's a pretty large circle, especially in a small town like Moscow. He could have been seeing someone else. He could have been seeing his dealer there. He could have been going towards downtown. I mean, that's pretty circumstantial. And that was one of the Real issues that his defense team was going to raise at the trial if it had gone pre trial. So everything that's sort of against him. The only thing that can't be taken apart, to my mind, is that you have touch DNA on the snap of the knife sheath, and this bit of DNA is a match. First they did it for Coburger's father, and then when they arrested him, they did a cheek swab, and then they got a direct match. Defense against that would be, well, yeah, that's his DNA. But he didn't put the knife sheath there. Someone took it and put the knife sheath. Yeah, yeah. And I believe it was his knife sheath. He was there, but there was maybe someone with him.
Podcast Host
There's another piece of evidence as well that he admitted to doing all this in court.
Howard Blum
Hey, you're 100% right. That's a really strong.
Podcast Host
That is a strong piece of evidence.
Howard Blum
And why would he do that and not say there was someone else involved? I think. And again, my. Again, this is. My hypothesis is that he wants to have the last laugh. That's some sort of perverse part of his nature that he can sit in jail and say, hey, you think you've got it? You think you've solved this case? Well, I still know. I'm still smarter than you are. I know the real. The rest of the story.
Podcast Host
I totally agree. And I think whether he had an accomplice or not, he's doing that. I totally agree. Going back to the idea that he possibly cased the house, I hear what you're saying, that that's potentially circumstantial evidence, but given what we know of Kohberger, he had fixations on women. We know this. He wrote about having fixations on women in his online forums. He followed them to their cars. This was reported to security. There's lots of evidence that he acted inappropriately towards women and had fixations on women. And I think it's reasonable to assume that in at least some of those instances he stalked one or more of these women.
Howard Blum
It's reasonable to assume. What's so frustrating is you can prove it. There's no way to substantiate that. Yeah. Do I believe he'd known Maddie Mogan before or seen her? Yes, but there's no way to do it. And if you're in a courtroom and you're trying to make this case and you're a juror and you have to send this man before a firing squad, are you going to do it without. You have a shadow of a doubt Oh, I have had no luck lately.
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Howard Blum
Are you convinced me find a shadow of death that he was actually aware of these women and then he stalked Matty Mogan or whomever. Zanna also worked at the Mad Greek restaurant.
Podcast Host
Well, if you're, if your bar is what can be proven in a courtroom, what then? Then we have exceeded that bar. He's admitted to all of this. So.
Howard Blum
Yeah, so he admitted to avoid the death, death penalty. And that is a very large strike against him. There's no getting around that. I don't want to whitewash that. And you know, he was certainly smart enough to know if he thought he could beat the rap, but he made the decision that he didn't want to gamble. What I also find interesting about that, during the two and a half years of pretrial hearings, his lawyers would go into the courtroom, they would put their, literally put their arm around him as they argued. Ann Taylor did this. The other attorney, Elaine Massuf, said she considered it an honor to be defending him. And yet they went along with this plea deal. Everyone seemed to cave really, really quickly over a course of a weekend. And again, I'm perplexed.
Podcast Host
Well, maybe they just became convinced of his guilt.
Howard Blum
I don't think so. I mean, because they were arguing this all along for two and a half years. It seemed inevitable. Perhaps. One theory that I had, it came out that he had called two hours after the murder, approximately 6:30 in the morning, Idaho time. He calls his mother. He's on the phone for well over two hours. And now she was going to be brought on the stand and have to testify about what was said in that conversation. His Father also was going to have to testify about what was said to him during that car ride across America. And they perhaps he felt might have been then be culpable for helping to cover up his crimes or for not being totally candid with the authorities and maybe to save them this last act of some sort of filial generosity. He wanted to protect them, that he pled guilty. But again, you can punch holes in that theory, too.
Podcast Host
I don't think that's unreasonable. And a lot of other serial killers or people I know, Bryan Kohberger is not a serial killer. But men similar to Brian Kohberger have done that. But going back to the idea that he pled guilty over one weekend, I'm thinking of men like Gary Ridgeway, Israel Keys, Rex Heuerman. We just did an episode on Robert Schulman. All these people, Danny Rolling, who committed very similar crimes to Brian Kohberger, they all were arrested with overwhelming evidence. They all denied, denied, denied, said there was no way they could have done this, gave bad alibis, and then came into court very suddenly and said, yes, okay, I did all of this. And so I don't think the trajectory of his plea is suspicious. I think a lot of men do that in his circumstances.
Howard Blum
I. I think it's not so much his taking the plea, it's the prosecution, they who are holding all the cards. Why, after two and a half years, spending $5 million or it's $8 million, I can't believe what it cost us, what the number, exact number, was what cost the state of Idaho. They decided to say, well, let's not get a real resolution to this case. Let's not get the answers. Let's not find him guilty before a jury. They didn't want to fight the case any longer. They just walked away. They. They said from the onset, this will be a death penalty case. And then they didn't want to push it to the end. I think they lost the will. Maybe after two and a half years of fighting, they just want to move on with their lives. I mean, this is. This story, these murders had been a pervasive theme of life in that little town of Moscow for three years. Maybe they thought was enough is enough. The irony is, though, that Moscow, Moscow, Idaho, I think forever will be associated with these murders. It's part of its legacy.
Podcast Host
I think the shame is, as you say, is I don't think it's odd that they would concede and allow him to plead guilty to resolve the case to save taxpayer money. You know, prosecutors do that with Serial killers all the time. What I think is odd to your point is, is that they didn't demand that he sit with the FBI. They didn't demand that he sit for an interview. They didn't demand that he kind of divulge why specifically, you know, what fantasies were driving him, why he did this, et cetera, et cetera. I think that is odd that they allowed him to basically just say yes and then go to prison.
Howard Blum
I mean, the way they try to justify that, they say, well, he would never have told us the truth. That's a possibility. But if he says, for example, the knife is somewhere, well, you can try to find it. You can try to find did I have an interaction with these people? You can try to substantiate it. I mean, there's no guarantee that he would have told the truth. But there is the large possibility that investigators could substantiate some of his statements.
Podcast Host
Right, because they've never. No one has ever said where the knife is. They've never recovered it, right?
Howard Blum
No, he's never. That's one of the mysteries. And also another large mystery is, well, we have still a few minutes to raise this to get people thinking about this. As he's leaving the house that night, he comes down the stairs. He's just killed Zanna and Ethan. And he's confronted by one of the students. She hears the noise. She comes out and sees him, Dylan Mortensen. And she just stares at him. And she refers to as a frozen state of shock. She can't do anything. He walks out the door. She says he noticed her and he's gone. She goes downstairs to see the other. One of the roommates is on the basement level or the first floor level, and she stays there. They wait eight hours. Eight hours before they notify anyone. During those eight hours, they were only sleeping for a little while. It seems to be like four hours. But they were on the phone, they were calling friends, playing social media, contacting parents about allegedly about tooth problems, things like that. Why have they wait eight hours, and then when they finally make a call eight hours later, it's not 91 1, it's to a friend at a fraternity, one of the victims. And then when they come over, they contact the police. This, too is a large mystery. And you know what happened in that house during those eight hours. You've heard all this noise. There's blood seeping everywhere. The smell of blood filled the house. They contacted, tried to contact the victims on the phone, but got no answers. What did they think was going on? What was it a case of dissonance, that if you don't want to confront it, it'll disappear? Perhaps, but it just. These are questions I would have liked to have seen raised in a courtroom too.
Podcast Host
Well, I think There's a catch 22 in there in that if Kohberger is acting alone and gets into the house and does a blitz style attack that only lasts eight to nine minutes, in and out at 4am in the morning, if you're the roommate, it's easy to explain their behavior if that is the case, because that is so fast, it's almost unreasonable to assume that a 20 something year old client, college student, female, is going to believe that. Well, a stranger came into my house for nine minutes and killed four people. That's probably what happened. I should call police.
Howard Blum
Well, if you can imagine the noise, the screams. You see a body. L. She says she saw the body lying on the floor clad in just her underwear that Zanet she thought was drunk. I mean, you know, I just don't know. To me it just seems improbable. And she was scared enough to go down to the roommate. I mean she certainly amidst her fear, that's why she had to go downstairs. And when you go downstairs, you're right near the front door. Why not leave? Why not call 91 1? I don't know. Again, these are questions that continue.
Podcast Host
The speed and the window of the attack is so small that it almost to me justifies Santa and Dana's behavior. If it was larger, if. If someone had come into the house for half hour, 45 minutes, if, you know, if there was bodies on the stairwell, if there's pools of blood, then I think their behavior becomes very suspect. But the fact that it was so short, so brief almost, that's how I justify it.
Howard Blum
To be devil's advocate, then why would she have gone down with the roommate? Because she obviously was scared.
Podcast Host
Oh, no question. Yeah, she's scared. But again, if the attack had gone on for a long time, it would be hard to justify her actions. The fact that we know the attack was so short, regardless of whether it was one or two people, justifies to me the idea that she just can't make sense of what's going on, runs downstairs, the other roommate says, hey, don't worry about it, they lock the door and go to sleep. I think that is justified by the evidence that the attack is so short because that allows her to dismiss it.
Howard Blum
I got a B minus in psychology, so I'm certainly no psychologist. And that was just freshman year that was psych 101, and I didn't even deserve the B minus. But. So I don't have any definitive answers, but I am perplexed, if not troubled by their behavior.
Podcast Host
I think the fundamental problem with the whole Idaho 4 murders and why it spawned so many books, so many documentaries is the fact that there is so much evidence. There's ring cameras, there's cell phone videos, there's photographs that they took that other people took of the night. There's so much evidence that even if there is a simple explanation, even if the explanation is Bryan Kohberger is a sick individual who became fixated on the idea of breaking into a sorority house and killing women because those are the men he studied. And he did that quickly and quietly in a way that's almost identical to Ted Bundy's attack on the Chi Omega house in Tallahassee, Florida. That's a pretty simple explanation. But the problem we have is it's compounded by thousands of photos, hours and hours of video that you can pick apart and look at every little tiny thing and find conspiracy. And I'm not saying that you're finding conspiracy. I'm saying that that's what everyone is doing.
Howard Blum
I mean, you're right, it raises doubts. And again, though we talk about all the evidence that's available now, during the course of the case, there was a gag order and we couldn't get this evidence. So in this vacuum, you're just filled with speculation. So here you had all these, you know, true crime podcast reporters, authors, busybodies digging into this case, and you just filled with suppositions because you couldn't quite get to the facts.
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Podcast: UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast
Episode: 39: Did Bryan Kohberger Have an Accomplice? | Case Notes
Release Date: August 2, 2026
Host: James Buddy Day (UNMARKED Podcast Host)
Guest: Howard Blum (Investigative Journalist & Author)
This episode delves into one of the most controversial questions surrounding the high-profile Idaho murders: Did Bryan Kohberger act alone, or was he an accomplice rather than the lone perpetrator? Host James Buddy Day is joined by investigative journalist Howard Blum, who presents alternative theories about the crime based on review of post-gag order police documents, autopsy evidence, and court proceedings. The episode closely examines challenges to the official narrative, lingering questions in the case, and possible investigative oversights.
On the Impossibility of Acting Alone:
Blum’s Accomplice Hypothesis:
On Evidence Circumstantiality:
On Guilt and the Courtroom:
On Unanswered Mysteries:
On Overwhelming Evidence and Public Speculation:
This episode provides a thorough discussion of the unresolved questions in the Idaho murders, notably the possibility that Bryan Kohberger may not have acted alone—and may not have been the lead perpetrator at all. Howard Blum presents alternative theories fueled by forensic inconsistencies, timeline implausibility, and gaps left by Kohberger's guilty plea process. The host pushes back on some of Blum's more speculative elements, emphasizing what's legally provable. Both agree, however, on the case’s deeply unsettling mysteries and its enduring grip on both independent investigators and the public imagination.
Listeners come away with a nuanced view of why so many doubts persist and why, even after a conviction, the Idaho murders remain “unresolved” in the court of public opinion.