Ep. 3: The Investigation

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0:49Any tragic event, it's close to home for us. You know, when you're dealing with students, we all have children. We all are dads, so we understand. That makes it a little harder. Yeah. Moscow Police Chief James Fry was leading the investigation into the most heinous crime his city had ever seen. The brutal murders of four University of Idaho students. The pressure was on to find out who killed Kaylee Gonsalves, Madison Mogan, Zanna Kernodel, and Ethan Chapin. In late November, just over two weeks after their deaths, Chief Fry sat down with me for his first network TV interview. It was emotional.

1:36You want a tissue? Yeah. Chief Fry has lived in Moscow most of his life. So have many of the other officers working this case. A lot of them also went to the University of Idaho. They love this town. They've raised their kids here. Chief Fry has college-age kids of his own. We love being the protectors. The community is who we are, and we are part of the community. But nearly three weeks after the murders, police hadn't identified a suspect. They seemed no closer to solving the case. Residents were on edge and impatient. As we mentioned in the last episode, some doubted the Moscow PD would be able to solve the case.

2:22It must be hard to feel so close to this and to also hear public criticism at the same time. Yeah, we understand. Everybody wants to know. Everybody wants answers, and we understand that. We want to give those answers as soon as we can. But there's some integrity that we have to withhold in this case. And that starts from the very onset of the case all the way through prosecution. We want to ensure that, and we owe that to our community. We're going to continue to provide safety for our community. We're going to continue to work hard on this case. We're not going to let our guard down. We're going to continue.

3:00We owe it to them. The Moscow Police Department is small, only 35 people. They're more accustomed to responding to reports of animals on the loose and stolen bikes. There hadn't been a homicide in Moscow in seven years. And for the officers who first walked into that King Road house, it was horrific. These were the same officers who'd responded to noise complaints about the house. They'd talked to and interacted with these students before. And now, they were investigating their murders. What you see sometimes shocks the conscience. And we're taking care of our officers. You know, we brought in counselors, but we're going further than that.

3:43We took the counseling to the families as well, wives, kids, because we know that if we can build a strong family unit, that that helps us serve our community even better. The one source of comfort Chief Fry could offer his officers, the victims' families, and the community of Moscow would be putting the person responsible for these deaths behind bars. Could his small department, in the glare of the national spotlight, hunt down a killer?

4:15I'm Kena Whitworth, a correspondent with ABC News, and I've been covering this case since the day after the four students' bodies were discovered in the house on King Road. Today, we're turning our attention to the police investigation into the murders. As we mentioned in the last episode, we didn't hear a lot from Moscow PD in the early days of the investigation. And all that silence, it bred fear. Fear that the killer was still out there and could hurt more people. And fear that law enforcement might not be up to the task of solving a big, high-profile case like this. But police did make an arrest, six weeks after the murders, some 2 ,500 miles away from the crime scene.

4:59The suspect accused of brutally murdering four University of Idaho students in November now back in Moscow to face charges. In this episode, we'll reconstruct how they did it. We'll talk through the evidence gathered from inside this popular home, now turned crime scene, to learn about the clues the killer left behind. And we'll follow police as they sift through thousands of crowdsourced tips and searched through literal trash to identify their suspect. This is the King Road Killings, Episode 3, The Investigation.

5:47At 11.58 a.m. on November 13th, the Moscow Police Department received that mysterious 911 call that has yet to be made public. It was seeking help for an unconscious person at a house on King Road. But as soon as officers entered the house, it was clear they were dealing with something much more serious. They discovered four bodies, and the victims were far beyond saving. The mayor told me the officers carefully backed down to the house, closed the door, and applied for a warrant, allowing them to enter the home and begin processing it as a crime scene. Once Chief Fry learned the severity of the situation, he said he called Idaho State Police right away, followed by the FBI Moscow PD would remain the lead on the investigation because the killings weren't a federal crime But the bigger agencies would lend more investigative heft to the small department The mayor told me that initially, Moscow PD had a hard time determining what might be evidence what might be remnants of a struggle with a killer, and what was just an untidy college house.

7:04Over the next few weeks, authorities say they sent more than 100 items to the Idaho State Crime Lab for processing. Remember, this is a six-bedroom house where five college kids lived. It's also a big party house where tons of people came and went. There were fingerprints and DNA everywhere. The amount of evidence to collect and items to process within the home was staggering.

7:37The layout of the house on the hill is really important to understanding the crime scene. The three-level home is incredibly exposed. There's no fencing. It's easy to see inside. When you're looking at the front of the house, the main entryway is decorated with a golden wreath. The door unlocks with a keypad. You open that front door, and on either side of the entryway is a bedroom, one of which was occupied by a surviving roommate on the night of November 12th. The other was empty. You go up the stairs to the second floor. This is where Zanna Kernodel's bedroom was. Police found her body in her room, along with the body of her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin.

8:23Down the hall, on the other side of the second floor, was the other surviving roommate's bedroom. Directly outside the roommate's door, according to court documents, officers discovered a shoe print, similar to a Van's skateboarding shoe, with that distinctive diamond-shaped sole pattern. There's also another entrance on this floor, a sliding glass door that opens up to a ground-level patio. When you continue up the stairs, you'll find two more bedrooms. These were Kaylee and Maddie's rooms. Kaylee's dad said the bodies of both women were found in Maddie's room on Maddie's bed. On Thursday, the 17th of November, four days after the murders, the coroner, Kathy Mabbitt, released her report and talked with our local affiliate, KXLY.

9:18There's quite a bit of blood in the apartment and, you know, it's a pretty traumatic scene to find four dead college students in a residence. The coroner also released an additional statement, saying she believed the four students were likely asleep when they were first attacked with an edged weapon and that some of them showed evidence of defensive wounds. Two weeks after the murders, on November 28th, Steve Gonsalves told me that Kaylee and Maddie were cremated and that he was in possession of both girls' urns and death certificates. Steve learned from the death certificates that his daughter's injuries were far more significant than Maddie's.

10:03And that left him with a chilling question. Was Kaylee the killer's intended victim? He worried that the other students might simply have been collateral damage. Do you think that Kaylee specifically was targeted? It's a fear of mine. When you have something like this happen, the last thing you want to do is hurt the other family, and you don't want to have any kind of responsibility for those people to feel like they were just casualties. And that goes for their child. If one of their children was a target, I have no ill will whatsoever. There's only one real bad person. Steve wanted to put all of his energy into catching the person who was actually responsible for the loss of his daughter.

10:53And he was worried that police were missing some critical evidence. Authorities had been urging everybody with an outdoor camera to send in video from the night of the attacks. they made it a point of stating that anything, even something happening in the background, might be significant. But without clear direction as to exactly what they were seeking, they were flooded with tips from the community, hundreds of calls a day. Even with all those videos, Steve thought police might be missing footage of that night shot by students who might be hesitant to share their party photos or video that could get them in trouble for underage drinking or other illicit activities.

11:34Police officers' main job in Ninetown is to keep people from drinking and driving and to go into parties and to calm that thing down. They give a lot of warnings out. And if I got a warning and I'm scared to get kicked out of school and I got a picture that I'm about to submit and there's a bong or some kind of paraphernalia in the background and I'm there and I've got a beer, do I want to send it to the officer that let me off the hook two weeks ago? Not if I don't have a way to make it anonymous. So I told him, at least come out and say that. You have one goal in mind, and none of this has to do with drinking or drug use.

12:09You've guys got better things to look at. You've got way more pressure on you right now to worry about. Those things aren't going to be worried about for quite a while. Police took Steve's concerns to heart, and the next day, Idaho State Police spokesperson Aaron Snell did his best to let community members know their goal was to catch a killer, not bus students for partying. We want that video and that evidence. Our goal and our venture to get that is not to reprimand anybody or to really be concerned about the activities that were taking place. We're trying to gather evidence in a homicide. That's what we're focused on, not anything else at this point in time.

12:50But I think when you end it with at this point in time, I think even that could scare a student. What if there is a picture and there is something there, but it shows them doing something illegal? They don't want to turn that in. They don't want to face potential charges later. Well, then let's be definitive. We are not interested in that activity. We are interested in any potential evidence for the homicide. That is our goal, to gather that information. Weeks passed. And while police didn't name a suspect, they did tell the public who they thought wasn't involved. Their list of cleared suspects included the two surviving roommates, the male friend who was with Kaylee and Maddie in the grub truck livestream, and Kaylee's ex-boyfriend.

13:41Fall turned to winter in Moscow, and the victims' families began their first holiday season without their loved ones. It wasn't until December 7th that they received some hopeful news from law enforcement. Three and a half weeks after the murders, police finally had what appeared to be a promising lead. Moscow PD issued a bulletin that they were on the hunt for a very specific vehicle, a white Hyundai Elantra made between 2011 and 2013. They hoped to learn if its occupant or occupants had any information in regards to the case. The police started communicating with everyone, putting the word out via press releases, interviews.

14:28We want footage. They gave us maps of all the areas. They were trying to pull any surveillance footage from people's cameras, doorbells, whatever they could find to get footage of this white Elantra. Lauren Patterson, the public radio reporter, remembers the community's excitement at a single concrete clue, something they could help search for. When we heard about the white car, I feel like a lot of locals really thought, OK, maybe we're getting somewhere with this. We had something to go on. There was a tip. There was something specific. However, the excitement over the lead was short-lived when citizens began to realize just how daunting a task it would be for police to sift through such a high volume of tips and surveillance footage.

15:17Katie, a close friend of the murder victims, recalls the frenzy. I mean, I'm like, I've seen a trillion white little cars. I'm like, I don't know if I've ever seen a launcher. I'm not sure. So I was like, I'm sure somebody knows. So I was like, just assuming it was gonna be pretty quick after that. This new call to action for the community brought in yet another deluge of tips, so many that police had to redirect the tip line to the FBI Global Call Center. Idaho State Police were also visible on the ground in Moscow, supporting the investigation, but like Moscow PD, they didn't share much information.

15:55It wasn't until my producer, Timmy, got a parking ticket on campus and chatted up an officer that we finally got permission to do a ride along. This town is, um, it's a little bit eerie here. That's how we ended up driving through campus with Sergeant Kurt Sprott from Idaho State Police. He was working on the investigation, and on this particular day, he was on campus doing patrols at the request of the University of Idaho. On the day of our ride-along in mid-December, a month after the murders, there was a huge snowstorm. As we drove, we watched the campus become absolutely covered by a blanket of thick, wet snow.

16:43So right now, we're driving sort of this road that kind of almost wraps around the outskirts of campus. Campus is on our left. Fully secured. Lights everywhere. Cameras everywhere. Right to the right. This is Fraternity Row. And then right down here. So this is the hill. And then there's the murder scene right there. Sergeant Sprott was based in Boise, six hours away. but like so many in the area, he felt the statewide pain of these murders. There were memorials for these students in Boise and other places in the region. Sergeant Sprout was glad to be patrolling the campus, proud to be protecting it.

17:27I know that, you know, authorities have said they've received an influx in calls, really, from people that were on edge. Yeah, I spoke to someone who lives in the area yesterday. I had made a traffic stop over by his residence, and he wanted to make sure everything was okay. There was no reason to be of concern. And it wasn't pertinent to the investigation, but it kind of just shows the mindset of community members and students around here with what happened. One of the questions I wanted to ask him is where he thought the killer was. Do you think that this person has left town? Or do you think this person is assimilated and is in Moscow?

18:18Yeah, I'm not going to answer that one. Okay. But you do have an opinion? Yes. Okay.

18:28He didn't want to say more on camera. So we spoke privately, and he told me now, it's okay if I share this conversation. I asked him, with this huge head start, and given that we're only, what, a few hours from the border to Canada, did he think the suspect had made a run for it and could be anywhere? He looked at me right in my eyes and said, I think he's here. God is not on his side. We're going to get him. That really stuck with me. Just this gut feeling he had. I kept it in the back of my mind as detectives kept working the case, and I kept working the story. I had no idea if the killer was in our midst or far away.

19:16It would turn out to be both.

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20:25On December 29th, around 4 in the afternoon, I was at the grocery store at home in California by myself, which, as a parent of two young kids, is a moment you relish. As I was checking out, I got a call from a law enforcement source who said, you need to come back to Moscow. When I said, I'll try to fly out first thing in the morning, They said, if that's the best you can do. So, my producer Timmy and I boarded a plane that night to Spokane, Washington. When I let my source know, they said something like, that's good, you'll be here in time. We got off the plane and started the 90-minute drive to Moscow.

21:06It was late and dark. We didn't really know why we were doing this. But then I heard from a source again, still vague, but they said, tomorrow is going to be a good day. I was racking my brain. What could be happening? At that point, every little trickle of information on this case felt so huge. You know, it could have been something kind of small, and it still would have gripped the nation. We didn't go to bed till around 7 a.m., and an hour or so later, the phone in my hotel room started ringing. ABC had a source in the FBI telling us an arrest had been made in the Poconos. The Poconos? Pennsylvania?

21:56What? It's 2 ,500 miles away from Moscow. What's the connection? And why would he single out this group of students? Later that morning, Chief Fry made an announcement. Last night, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania State Police, Federal Bureau of Investigation, detectives arrested 28-year-old Brian Christopher Kohlberger in Albrightville, Pennsylvania, on a warrant for murder of Ethan, Zaina, Madison, and Kaylee. Finally, after 47 days of Moscow holding its breath, police had a suspect in custody. Nearly seven weeks after the stabbing deaths of four college students in Idaho, a break in the case that has gripped this nation.

22:52Police arresting a suspect, Ph.D. student Brian Koberger. In a chilling twist, police say the alleged killer studies criminology at Washington State University. In Pullman, his apartment just over the state border. 15 minutes away from the crime scene. Moscow PD didn't share any further details, but they were very clear that Brian Koberger was their only suspect. My producer Timmy and I spent the next two days reporting in Moscow, trying to find any connection between the suspect and the victims. Then, on New Year's Eve, we got ready to fly to Philadelphia and drove to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, near where the suspect was arrested at his family's home.

23:40Koberger was already being held at the Monroe County Correctional Facility. We started to see his mugshot in the press. The public was starting to put a face to the suspect authorities had been searching for. Could this be the man at the center of the story that had gripped the nation?

24:10The next day, Brian Koberger's extradition hearing was scheduled at the Monroe County Courthouse. As I waited outside in the rain with the rest of the media, I took a minute to record some thoughts about the scene around me. It's Tuesday afternoon, January 3rd, and media has descended on the courthouse here. There's tents everywhere. There's more than 100 media credentialed to be in this extradition hearing for Brian Koberger today. They have already actually brought him into the courthouse. They brought him in the back, I mean, hours before his hearing. Officers have the streets blocked off. There's the sheriff's department out here as well, some of them with long guns sort of patrolling the area, trying to keep everything safe and calm.

25:01A lot of anticipation to see Brian Koberger, to see his demeanor in court. We know he's going to waive this extradition hearing, according to his lawyer. And his lawyer says, look, this is going to take 15 minutes. It's going to be quick. Nobody seems to care. Everybody wants in there. Everybody wants to see it. There was so much media present, the hearing had to be moved to a larger room. Appropriately for the drama of it all, the new venue felt less like a courtroom and more like a gorgeous old theater. A beautiful polished wood interior with dark purple drapes framing the judge's bench. Koberger was dressed in a bulletproof vest specifically for his walk from the prison van into the courthouse.

25:45That would put him in plain view of the public, and authorities were concerned someone might try to harm him. The Koberger family sat directly in front of me. His mother, Marianne, wore all black and sobbed all the way through the hearing. His sister, Melissa, sat next to her mother and tried to comfort her. Somehow, Melissa's dark eye makeup didn't smear through her own tears. Next to Melissa sat his other sister, Amanda, who looks just like him. At the end of the bench, Brian Koberger's father, Michael, his face dissolving into tears even before the hearing began. Throughout the proceedings, Koberger turned around to look at his family, giving them glances and nods.

26:29He waived his right to extradition, which meant he'd return to Moscow immediately to face charges. Some legal experts believe he may have waived his right to extradition as a tactical move. If he returned to Idaho right away, the state would need to be ready to prosecute him, whereas choosing to fight extradition would have stalled matters and given the prosecution extra time to prepare their case. Koberger bent awkwardly to sign the document with his left hand. He was still in cuffs. As he was ushered out of the courtroom, he looked back at his seated family and clear as day mouthed the words, I love you.

27:24Koberger left for Moscow the morning of January 4th on a plane so small it had to stop partway across the country to refuel. When he landed at the Pullman Moscow Airport, there was a crowd gathered. The community wanted to see the man arrested for the killings. All the media was there. Again, Timmy and I had flown through the night to be in place. Our camera's ready. This morning, Brian Koberger, the suspect accused of brutally murdering four University of Idaho students in November, now back in Moscow to face charges, touching down overnight. On January 5th, Koberger was set to appear in Latah County Court to officially receive the charges against him.