“When The Night Comes Falling” - An Alleged Killer’s State of Mind

0:28There's nothing like being in the stands cheering on your favorite team. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today, Smart Choice. Make another Smart Choice with AutoQuote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

0:57Hi, it's Kana Whitworth. We're bringing you a conversation today with Howard Bloom, an investigative reporter who spent more than a year trying to understand the mindset and possible motive of the suspected killer Brian Koberger.

1:15Bloom's published a new book. It's called When the Night Comes Falling, a Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders, and I spoke with him for Good Morning America. Howard and I have both covered the story extensively, and in some places, our reporting matches. But in others, our information diverges, depending on who our sources are. I wanted to bring King Road Killings listeners an extended version of our conversation. When the Night Comes Falling is Howard's 16th book, and he acknowledges right up front that the Idaho murders were a challenging story to report out. The gag order prevents law enforcement, attorneys, and witnesses from talking about the case before Koberger's impending trial.

2:02Other people close to the story refused to speak. Some demanded money. But Howard found other ways to try and draw out the story. He relied on public statements, as well as what he calls revelatory conversations with friends, relatives, and business associates. Howard says he developed sources close to the Koberger family. And before law enforcement was silenced by the gag order, he says he talked with them about the involvement of some of the victims' families in trying to solve the case and the tension there, according to law enforcement. This is a bonus episode of the King Road Killings, When the Night Comes Falling, an alleged killer's state of mind from ABC News.

2:54Howard Bloom's book opens with the cross-country drive Brian Koberger made with his father, Michael Koberger, from Pullman, Washington, home to Pennsylvania for the Christmas holiday. It was mid-December 2022, four weeks after the students had been killed. Howard says his sources gave him insight into how Michael Koberger was feeling before his son became a suspect, his dawning sense of fear for his son. What shocked me the most is this cross-country trip that Brian Koberger takes with his father. Brian Koberger's father is a tragic figure. He comes out to Washington state and he immediately realizes something is wrong.

3:42First of He's making this trip because he's worried about his son. He's been reading the headlines. He knows that four students were killed just 12 miles from his son's house. He knows what a troubled son he has. And also at this point on November 25th, the Moscow police issue a stop order on a car that is a white 2013 Hyundai Elantra. He realizes my son drives a Hyundai Elantra. And he's realizing something is just not right. Slowly, in this cross-country trip that he takes with his son, he's putting the pieces together in his mind that, what have I stumbled into? And even when he has the shock of recognition, even when he's confronted by other members of the family, he still cannot deal with it.

4:31It's too overwhelming. How can you say to yourself, my son is a suspect in a murder case? I tried to structure the book many ways around this trip. And along the way, they're stopped, not once, but twice by different state authorities in Indiana. And the whole story is suddenly becoming clear to Michael Koberger that, oh my gosh, where is this leading? In talking with the sources that you did, would you say that Michael Koberger was suspicious of his own son when he went out there to pick him up at Washington State? When Michael Kohlberger arrived in Washington State, he was deeply, deeply concerned.

5:17You know, this was not his first trip out to Washington State. That summer, he took his 28-year-old son across country, traveled with him. This is a man who didn't have time on his hands or the money to fly back and forth across the country. He had been bankrupt twice, but he went with his son because he did not want his son to make this journey by himself. Here was his son being away from home for the first time ever, really for an extended period of time in his life. And he wanted to make sure his son's emotional temperature, if you will, was sort of normal. He wanted to make sure his son was able to handle this change.

5:54He knows Brian's moods and he's getting all these signs that something is wrong. Based on the sources that you spoke with, it is actually in Michael Koberger's mind during that drive that his son could be the one responsible? It is very much in his mind. It's dominating his thoughts. And he's looking for something to reassure him that, no, everything is fine. This can't be true. This is too impossible to be real. And then Brian, at one point in the journey, according to the people I spoke with, tells them, I have a problem. And Michael braces himself. What am I going to hear? And Brian tells him there's a problem with school.

6:35He says, they're trying to force me out. And Michael at this point is breathing a sigh of relief because he figures if his only problem is with school, well, that can be finessed. Do you think that at that point on that drive home, Michael believed that his son would be going back to Washington State after Christmas break? I think Michael genuinely believed that, yes, his son would be going back. Brian convinced him that they have some concerns about me at the graduate department, but they can't do anything to me without a hearing. And I'm going to argue, I'm going to make my case, and I will convince the faculty administration that I am correct.

7:16And Michael said, great, it's terrific. But to your reporting, he had a letter saying he was done not being a teacher's assistant. The faculty at this point had had enough. Three different women in the program, undergraduates, had complained about the way they were treated by Brian Koberger, and one of them claimed that he had followed her to his car and just didn't want to stop the conversation. They found him aggressive. I think that was the adjective that was used. In this podcast, we reported on grad students in Koberger's program, who noted that Brian kept bizarre office hours and made people feel uncomfortable in his office.

7:56They said they kept a Brian tally, noting dates that he was rude to female professors or missed class. And that's how they figured out he missed class the day after the murders. A month later, Brian left on that cross-country trip back home to Pennsylvania, the one Howard Bloom details in his book. On that drive, the Coburgers were pulled over twice in Indiana, just nine minutes apart. Body cam footage gives a glimpse into how father and son were interacting with law enforcement. So y 'all work at the university there? When he's pulled over twice in Indiana, Brian is very cool. I actually do work there.

8:40Oh. Okay. Going to get Thai food. And Michael's bragging about him. His son is just now telling him he's having all these troubles at school. He's finally opened up about that. And Michael takes the time to brag about his son to these officers. But what's equally interesting is Michael starts rambling on about the shooting that day. The shooting, Michael Koberger mentions, occurred just a few hours before that traffic stop. A Washington State student was apprehended by a SWAT team for wielding a knife on campus. The suspect was shot. What did you say about some SWAT team thing? Yeah, there was a mass shooting and everything.

9:26Interesting. Wow, it's horrifying. Yeah, I hadn't heard about that incident just yesterday or? About an hour and a half ago, it's still wrapping up. This is the first thing he blurts out to this person of authority, and then he repeats it nine minutes later. And Michael's trying to process all this, but he doesn't want to go to the logical ending that, oh my gosh, my son is caught up in something horrific.

9:57Brian and his father make it home to Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, where Brian planned to spend Christmas with his parents and two sisters. When Michael was confronted by his daughter, Brian's sister, who raised her suspicions about Brian, what was that conversation like? Brian's sister, who's there for the holidays, Melissa, she's a family psychologist. She knows her brother has had problems, visual snow problems, heroin addiction, problems relating to people. And she sees him taking his garbage at night and sorting it and keeping it separate from everyone else. She also sees him cleaning down his car.

10:43And she's able to put these pieces together. And she goes to Michael and she says, we have a real problem. I'm starting to believe that Brian could be involved in these killings. And what does Michael do? He can't confront it. He just turns around and walks away. I want to go to the actual night, early morning of the crime. The lucky break I had in this story is I got out there early, before there was a suspect. And so I was able to talk with many people in law enforcement while they were in the hunt. There were six weeks before they actually found the suspect. Six perplexing weeks. And they were willing to talk.

11:26So I was able to get a relationship with many of them and allow them to talk with me. And so I was able to reconstruct this night when everything seems to fall apart. What's most interesting to me about that night, what's most poignant and terrible and terrifying, is the suspect goes by the house starting at about 3.30 in the morning. He drives by not once, not twice, but three times. There's a hill above the house and the car is parked there idling for a moment. and he finally turns off the key. And it must have taken the strength of a Hercules to turn that key because once that key is turned, the motor stops, and he walks out the door.

12:13The commitment is made, and there is this assassin walking down this hill towards the house. The ground is semi-frozen. He can feel his shoes creaking along on the ice. And he goes in through the kitchen slider door. The night, if you've ever been in Moscow, it's entirely quiet. And once that door slid open, it must have sounded almost like a scream in the quiet of the night. And he makes his way into the house. Now, on the second floor where the kitchen is, you have Dylan and Zayna live there. And Zayna's there with a boyfriend. If he was just on a killing spree, why go any further? her. But instead, he walks up the stairs and he goes into Maddie Mogan's room.

13:02I believe Maddie was his victim. He finds not just one young woman, but two young women. Because Kaylee has just come down for the weekend. She's come to show off her new car. The suspect, I think, didn't expect to find her there in the room. He did not know that she would have been sleeping in Maddie's room. He kills Maddie fairly quickly. Kaylee is able to get out of the bed, and in chasing her, she's up against the wall, and she's fighting back. What I've seen, what I've heard, is that the bed almost fills the entire room. And she's sort of trying to escape, sort of wedged in the bed. Her father reports that she fought like a tiger.

13:46She somehow crouches behind the bed, and he stabs her there. And while he's doing this, though, he needs both his hands and he leaves the knife sheath on the bed next to Maddie. And then he leaves the third floor and makes his way down. Yeah. And then going down the stairs in your conversations with your sources, it was Ethan that he encountered first? Yes. The way my sources have reconstructed things, Ethan comes out of the room. You can hear Zayna saying, there's someone here. And this has been repeated by Dylan. Ethan goes to look. Ethan is 6 '4". He's an athlete, very handsome young man too.

14:30And before he can even respond, he's killed very quickly. And now Zayna is getting hysterical. And this is perhaps one of the creepiest moments of this horrific night. The assassin goes up to Zayna and says, It's okay. I'm here to help you. It's okay. I'm here to help you. That's pure evil. He says that to Zanna before he kills her, according to your sources. Yes, and that's also overheard by Dylan. There's some dispute among our sources about the order in which Zanna and Ethan were killed. I have a credible law enforcement source who says Zanna was attacked first, then Ethan, and then the assailant returned to Zanna to quote, finish her off.

15:23Meanwhile, Dylan is on the other side of the second floor and she's three times has heard noise and she goes out and she sees this man in black with bushy eyebrows and a mask walking by. And what happens now makes all the difference. She's in a frozen state of shock. as that's how it's described in the police affidavit. She says nothing. I think her saying nothing saves her life. The killer is so locked in his own world, in his own armory of hate, that all he is looking to see the door to get out of this, to move on from this madness, and he does not even notice her. You think he had, like, tunnel vision on the door.

16:12Tunnel vision on the door, locked in this state of, well, it's not a rational state. He's consumed by hate. And if she had tried to rouse him from it, I don't think she would have survived. I asked Howard how he came to this conclusion. Is this exactly what his source told him? Had he actually seen the police diagrams? Or was this his best guess based on his reporting? That's based on my reporting. The problem with what exactly happened that night, you can talk to a dozen people and you'll get a dozen answers because only the people who were there know. And one of them was in a frozen state of shock and the suspect is not saying anything.

17:00There is some reporting. I have sources that have told me, you have sources that have told you that that isn't the end of Dylan's night. She didn't shut the door and go to bed. that, in fact, she was communicating with the other roommate on the ground floor. One of the powerful things about this case, why it seems to resonate with so many people, there's so many unknowns, and there's so many aspects of the case that aren't really rational. But according to testimony at the grand jury, the two girls were communicating. They were texting one another, not just after, but at one point during the killing.

17:36And yet, it wasn't until eight hours later at 11.58 that the police were notified. And when the two survivors in the house decide to call someone, they don't call the police first, they call friends. And it's a friend of Ethan who actually grabs one of the phones from the surviving girls and calls the police. He makes the 911 call. Why did that happen? That's one of the mysteries of this case.

18:11Brian Koberger was arrested inside his parents' home in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, in the early hours of December 30th, six weeks after the murders on King Road. Howard Bloom's new book, When the Night Comes Falling, reconstructs the dramatic middle-of-the-night raid on the Koberger home. It was carried out by the Special Emergency Response Team, or CERT. It's the state troopers' version of a SWAT team. This is going to be a dynamic entry. They're going to go in, as the police say, heavy, because here you have a man who's accused of killing four people. He's sitting in his own home. You don't know if he's armed.

18:52You don't know if he's lying in wait, if he's heard you coming in. So you've got to cause a lot of commotion. What happens is they let off a couple of flash grenades. They break some windows. Literally, they want to scare the suspect. And when they come into the house, according to a local prosecutor, there is Brian Koberger sitting in his underwear sorting his garbage into little plastic baggies. That's a pretty intimidating fact that here he is taking the care to sort his garbage. In the middle of the night. Yes. Yeah, and I had a source that told me he was actually running down the stairs towards his room when he was arrested.

19:32But it sounds like he was snatched out of a chair. Yeah, they snatch him out of the chair, and then they immediately become worried that something might happen to him. They don't know if he has accomplices. They have no idea. So they make a protective cordon around him trying to take him to the truck that's going to lead him to the Monroe County Jail. Brian Koberger was taken into custody and charged with four counts of murder and one count of felony burglary. He said through his counsel at the time that he was eager to be exonerated. He was extradited to Idaho, a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf.

20:08And Koberger has remained behind bars in Latah County, less than two miles away from the crime scene, awaiting his trial. All while his defense team prepares a vigorous plan. Brian's eagerness to be exonerated is one of the interesting parts of this whole story. When he's first arrested, he starts talking to the police for a good 15 minutes. He's saying, of course I know about the crimes that happened near me. He's really denying any involvement. But as soon as they start getting into any specific details, that's when he says he wants a lawyer. He gets a lawyer, Jason LeBar. Jason LeBar. And to this day, he believes in Brian Kohlberger's innocence.

20:52He said, I could sit across from him and he didn't seem like the kind of people I usually deal with. Brian's lawyers now, Ann Taylor and her team, believe in his innocence. One of the lawyers on the team said it's an honor to defend him. And yet what's so perplexing to me and so frustrating, they've had a year and a half to come up with an alibi. A year and a half, and he's been stuck in a jail. And the alibi they finally come up with, that during the period in question from 2.48 to 4.48 in the morning of November 13th, he was walking in a state park. Stargazing. Stargazing, yes. If that's the best you can do, I think the case might have some problems.

21:42You know, if I were accused of a crime, if I had a traffic ticket, I'd be shouting, you know, this isn't me. I don't deserve this. He's willing to sit there for 16 months. And then finally, they come up with this very, very thin alibi. What's so fascinating about this case is that there are a lot of avenues that could be explored. Because when you look at the evidence, when you hold the facts that are marshaled against Brian Kohlberger up to the light, they become very opaque. For example, the DNA evidence. It's touched DNA, which is not the same as blood DNA. And that has been impugned by courts time after time.

22:28You then have the cell phone triangulation that puts him near the house 13 times. Well, cell phone triangulation only covers an area of 13 miles, and that puts you in the vicinity of the house, not at the house. The most condemning bit of evidence is that they did a cheek swab after he was arrested, and this cheek swab, the DNA on that cheek swab, match the button on the knife sheath. When you say that this evidence can be questionable, opaque as you say, hold it up to the light, in terms of touch DNA and how they got to the touch DNA, those are both in question right now. Yes. I mean, first doing the building of the family origin profiles, did they do that by using openly available sources law enforcement can't use?

23:20Koberger's defense team has raised questions about law enforcement's use of investigative genetic genealogy to build a family tree, and whether they viewed data from public DNA databases from people who hadn't given consent for law enforcement to use their profile. And then the validity of touch DNA has been impugned in court case after court case. Then there's no murder weapon. To my knowledge, also, at this point, no one has said definitively that it was Brian Koberger in that car that they have seen driving. You hear law enforcement say that, but have we seen a picture of him in it? In all the surveillance camera videos, there's not one that shows who's behind the wheel.

24:04There's just shadows. You can't put handcuffs on a shadow. There's no picture of a license plate either. Right, because in Pennsylvania, you only need the back license plate, which is what he had. and then he did eventually get Washington license plates. That's right. And there's still no motive. I mean, why this house? Why these? We heard targeted from day one and we still do not know definitively who the target is. Both the prosecution and the defense have now come out and said Brian Kohlberger was not stalking them and he was not stalking either the house or in their classes or on social media.

24:41So if there's no reason for this attack or no reason that's been articulated, it's going to be difficult to convince him in the courtroom, especially when the outcome is going to be going before a firing squad.

24:58In Idaho, the state allows for the use of a firing squad to execute someone if drugs for a lethal injection are not available. In When the Night Comes Falling, Bloom previews Koberger's high-stakes trial and how both sides are approaching it. The prosecution has a theory that his emotional state was always very fragile. This was someone who hated himself, who posted online that he is the devil, that he can feel no remorse. and then you give someone who's in this fragile emotional state sort of an existential jolt, the problems at school where he was going to lose his fellowship. And if he lost his fellowship, then he would have to go back to Pennsylvania and be what he was before.

25:48He had been climbing this ladder of social mobility, going from a junior college from this overweight outsider to now he was on his way to becoming a doctorate. His father already would refer to him as Dr. Brian Koberger. But that's one explanation for what he allegedly did. And I would suggest that maybe it's too narrow. I don't think a crime of that size, of that scope, of that madness, is not going to be understood by logical or rational explanations. I write at one point that to kill someone needs either someone to love or someone to hate. Did he fantasize about them and feel that he could never fit into their world, so he had to do something about it?

26:38Or did he hate them so much? Did he see their beauty, their ebullience as a rebuke to all he was and all he would ever be, so out of this hatred he had to kill them? will never know the answer to these sort of things, trial or no trial. These are complicated questions that only someone who's not reasonable, not rational, will be able to answer. And I think they won't be decided in the courtroom, and I think they'll be open to speculation forever. That's a terrifying thought. For the jury to convict anyone in this case, they don't need to know the motive. But when you hear law enforcement from day one say this was a targeted attack.

27:20That story has to be filled out somewhere for the jurors to make sense of this. Very much so. I mean, getting a jury conviction in Moscow is going to be extremely difficult, I think. Part of the reason is there's a local church group called the Kirkers, Pastor Douglas Wilson. And Wilson is a very charismatic man. And he also is a man of deep opinions. And he has been fighting the local officials in a war since the pandemic over different mass restrictions, whatever. And he has told me he doesn't necessarily believe the prosecution's case. He thinks it is possible they have the wrong man. And he also would tell his parishioners if they asked him, don't necessarily believe any Moscow cop who comes to testify on the stand because they have lied about us.

28:12This is where the jury pool is going to be taken from. I think it's a major mistake for the Koberger defense team to try to move the venue outside of Moscow. The families of Kaylee, Maddie, Zanna, and Ethan are still waiting for a trial. It hasn't been scheduled yet. And that's been a source of frustration, especially for Kaylee's family. You've heard Steve and Christy both talk about that on this podcast. Howard didn't get to speak with Steve Gonsalves, Kaylee's dad. But in his book, Howard describes Steve's tirelessness in trying to find his daughter's killer. Kaylee's father is a fascinating figure in this whole story.