The Megyn Kelly Show - 20231218_the-crime-scene-idaho-college-murders-and-bryan-ko
Aired: 2023-12-18
Duration: 46:36


=== Several Mysteries In One (03:58) ===

[00:00:00]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Meast.
[00:00:13]  Suppose you wanted to kill someone.
[00:00:16]  That would be easy.
[00:00:17]  There are lots of ways.
[00:00:19]  But suppose you wanted to kill four people, all in the same house, all within moments of one another, and you chose to use a knife.
[00:00:29]  That could help eliminate the noise, but it would require skill, strength, and endurance.
[00:00:34]  Murder is hard work, especially if people fight back.
[00:00:39]  Then there's the really big obstacle.
[00:00:42]  You want to get away with it.
[00:00:44]  You're determined to stab four people living in a single home in the still of the night and then disappear without leaving a clue to your identity.
[00:00:54]  Now that's a more difficult challenge.
[00:00:56]  But you did it.
[00:00:58]  You have everybody stumped.
[00:01:01]  It's the perfect crime.
[00:01:04]  Welcome to a special edition of the Megan Kelly Show, everyone.
[00:01:07]  I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:01:08]  And for the first time ever, I'm going to spend the episode today and all five episodes this week taking you on a journey with just you and me as we dive into a true crime case that has captivated the nation since it happened a little more than a year ago.
[00:01:28]  FIKEN is a simple simple program for businesses.
[00:01:31]  But did you also start your own business with FIKEN?
[00:01:35]  Do you have a thousand others to register AS and single-person companies try and easy to fill out a system on FIKEN.no?
[00:01:41]  We help you all the way to a ready-registrant business.
[00:01:44]  You don't need to be a customer of FIKEN from before and select yourself if you will use our own business after.
[00:01:50]  The service costs no extra.
[00:01:52]  FIKEN.
[00:01:53]  Start your own business.
[00:01:54]  Super simple.
[00:01:59]  Ever since four young students in Idaho were found dead last November, I have consumed every podcast, every article I could find about this case.
[00:02:10]  I've watched all the true crime shows, I've read all the magazine pieces, everything on the internet, and I've done my own reporting on the case, interviewing experts and lawyers to try to make sense of what happened in Idaho.
[00:02:24]  As we will explore in each episode this week, there is something haunting and fascinating about the details of this crime.
[00:02:35]  It is a mystery, but it's really several mysteries all in one.
[00:02:39]  In this series, I will bring you some of our reporting, as well as the reporting and incredibly eloquent writing of Howard Bloom.
[00:02:47]  That was his writing at the top there.
[00:02:49]  He is second to none when it comes to covering the Idaho murders.
[00:02:53]  This is the guy.
[00:02:55]  That's the way this episode started with his words that he used to open his first dispatch on this case for the media outlet Airmail News.
[00:03:03]  It's relatively new and it's very good.
[00:03:06]  Bloom is a veteran and award-winning true crime writer and reporter who has written more than a dozen books and countless articles in his decades-long career.
[00:03:15]  He's done some of the best and most unique reporting on this story.
[00:03:18]  And his forthcoming book on this case will be published in the spring by HarperCollins.
[00:03:24]  That's going to be a must-read.
[00:03:26]  And it is Bloom's storytelling that we'll begin with today.
[00:03:30]  We asked Howard if we could strike a deal where we could use some of his, not just his reporting, but his actual writing, and intersperse it with our own so we could bring you some of the interviews and sound bites and so on that we've amassed for you to tell this story.
[00:03:45]  And he agreed.
[00:03:46]  It had been a football Saturday in mid-November, the last home game of the 2022 season for the University of Idaho Vandals.
[00:03:54]  The Kibbe Dome packed with more than 7,600 fans.

=== Party Night Turns Deadly (09:27) ===

[00:03:59]  And despite the disappointing loss, Saturday night was still party night for a college celebrated in knowledgeable polls as the best party school in the state.
[00:04:09]  The stately row of wet frats, as they're known on the U of Idaho campus, twisting along Nez Paris Drive was crowded with the brothers and their dates, high-spirited assemblies fueled by blaring music, prospects of mischief, and rivers of alcohol.
[00:04:27]  Downtown Main Street was hopping too.
[00:04:29]  The pool tables at Mingles and the metal-sheathed bar at the Corner Club were shoulder to shoulder with students and townies, filling the brisk autumn night with the keen of cheery, rowdy late-night fun.
[00:04:43]  And then in the heavy quiet of the new Sunday morning, four young corpses, all students, all friends, were found hacked to death in their beds in a pale clappered house, little more than a stone's throw away from the heart of the university campus.
[00:05:02]  There was so much blood, it had seeped through the wooden floors and run down the building's gray concrete foundation in jagged red rivulets.
[00:05:13]  But before we get to that Sunday morning, we need to look back.
[00:05:16]  We need to talk about the six young students who were in the house that night and what brought them there.
[00:05:21]  Two of the six went way back.
[00:05:24]  Maddie Mogan and Kayleigh Gonsalves met in 2013 in the sixth grade and became inseparable.
[00:05:32]  They grew up in the tourist town of Cordelaine, Idaho, best friends for years.
[00:05:36]  Listen to their parents talk about each of them.
[00:05:40]  Kaylee was the one that was going to shake the world.
[00:05:42]  I've yet to come across somebody who has had anything negative to say, which people think, oh, no one would tell you that.
[00:05:49]  But I mean, I got siblings and they'll tell stories about their brother or their sister.
[00:05:57]  They're not going to hold back.
[00:05:58]  So I think she found her way to live in a big family and learned the right ways to get along with people.
[00:06:07]  And that showed later on in her life when she was able to go to college and meet all these people.
[00:06:13]  Maddie May Mogan, yes.
[00:06:16]  She's just, she was the sweetest, smart, loving.
[00:06:22]  She was the best.
[00:06:23]  She never caused me one day of stress in my life.
[00:06:30]  You know, just she was she was the best child I could have asked for.
[00:06:34]  And yeah, we miss her so much.
[00:06:40]  The night of November 12th, Maddie and Kaylee went out together in Moscow to the Corner Club bar.
[00:06:45]  More on that in a minute.
[00:06:47]  Ethan Chapin was in the house that night.
[00:06:50]  He was a triplet.
[00:06:51]  He and his brother Hunter and sister Maisie all attended the University of Idaho.
[00:06:56]  His girlfriend was Xana Kernodle.
[00:06:59]  She had a tough upbringing, but she was thriving.
[00:07:02]  Ethan and Xana's parents.
[00:07:05]  He literally lit up every room.
[00:07:12]  Every, everybody.
[00:07:14]  He was friend to all.
[00:07:21]  He just, he was an incredible human.
[00:07:24]  Xana was, she was tough.
[00:07:26]  She was strong.
[00:07:27]  She was funny.
[00:07:31]  She just couldn't make you smile, no matter what.
[00:07:38]  And she just had a quirkiness about her that not a lot of people possess that kind of talent to be able to light up a room like she did.
[00:07:49]  On the night of November 12th, 2022, Ethan and Xana went to a party at Ethan's fraternity, Theta Chi.
[00:07:57]  One of Xana's roommates, Bethany Funk, was at Theta Kai that night as well.
[00:08:02]  But by 1.45 a.m. on the morning of November 13th, all five roommates, including the fifth, a young woman named Dylan Mortensen, were home in the house on 1122 King Road, along with Xana's boyfriend, Ethan Chapin.
[00:08:19]  Xana received a DoorDash delivery order at approximately 4 a.m.
[00:08:24]  And shortly after 4 a.m., reports are that all of the roommates were either asleep or at least in their respective rooms.
[00:08:33]  The roommates were close, active on social media, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok.
[00:08:39]  We see how close they were in the social media posts they made, like this one.
[00:08:45]  God, it's really pretty dating here.
[00:08:47]  Murphy, you've been a bad boy.
[00:08:52]  Oh my God, it's 9-10.
[00:08:53]  Guys, keep anybody dropping class.
[00:08:55]  I'm fucking away from everything.
[00:08:56]  I'm supposed to be dependent up.
[00:08:59]  Did anybody do their tours today?
[00:09:01]  Fuck, I'm just going to do it.
[00:09:05]  Did you see that right there?
[00:09:07]  Oh, shit, you guys.
[00:09:08]  It's a.
[00:09:09]  Gotta go.
[00:09:09]  Jay's calling.
[00:09:10]  Oh, Jay's calling.
[00:09:13]  Oh, my God, I look horrid.
[00:09:16]  Oh, Murphy, you look so cute.
[00:09:18]  Get out of here.
[00:09:19]  You seriously fucking get out of here.
[00:09:20]  You fucking stupid as you are.
[00:09:22]  Hey, guys, I know I talk about myself a lot, but like, what would you guys do in my situation?
[00:09:28]  Dana, where are you going?
[00:09:29]  Y'all gotta go, yeah, I pale to ready.
[00:09:33]  Is there a deal like a white night?
[00:09:35]  Like, let's just deal with my night.
[00:09:37]  Yo, is it okay to have a party?
[00:09:38]  Like, just three or four people at most.
[00:09:42]  So fun.
[00:09:43]  So full of life.
[00:09:45]  So funny.
[00:09:47]  And so unaware of the fate that would soon befall them.
[00:09:52]  At precisely 8.57 p.m. on the last full day of her life, in the midst of a busy Saturday, bustling with the flurry of convivial activities generated by a football game in a college town, Kaylee Gonsalves paused before going out for a night at the Corner Club bar with her best friend, Maddie.
[00:10:10]  She posted a series of photos on her Instagram account, which she captioned.
[00:10:15]  One lucky girl to be surrounded by these people every day.
[00:10:20]  The photos are a cheery collection of six college kids, the youngest 19, the oldest 21, bursting with bright-eyed good looks and future promise.
[00:10:30]  They were meant to be, it appears, visual testimony to the fun the students were having, to the blessings a munificent life had generously bestowed on them.
[00:10:42]  We know the girls' house on King Road was one that was full of joy in the way a college house often is.
[00:10:48]  It was the frequent location of parties or informal gatherings.
[00:10:52]  Many said the door was always open, that the roommates gave the door code out to friends who gave the code to friends, and they would find themselves in the role of host quite often.
[00:11:03]  On several occasions, the parties brought out the police.
[00:11:06]  And it is, actually, strangely enough, through police body camera footage that we get to know the personalities of these young women.
[00:11:15]  You can see how respectful they were of law enforcement in these interactions, poised, friendly, outgoing.
[00:11:22]  There was Xana one night apologizing for a noise complaint made by a neighbor.
[00:11:28]  What's your name?
[00:11:29]  Xana.
[00:11:30]  Xanna, do you live here?
[00:11:31]  Yes.
[00:11:32]  This is the second noise complaint we've had here tonight within two hours.
[00:11:35]  I'm sorry.
[00:11:36]  So this time it was the blonde gal and the guy on the back porch playing music.
[00:11:40]  Okay.
[00:11:40]  So.
[00:11:41]  I sincerely apologize about this.
[00:11:44]  I'm just going to kiss them.
[00:11:47]  So just so you understand, you could be getting a misdemeanor citation for this, which means you have to go in front of a judge and explain why you couldn't keep the people in your house quiet.
[00:11:58]  Okay.
[00:11:58]  We've already talked to Maddie once and told her the same thing.
[00:12:02]  The only reason she's not getting a ticket is because she's not standing here in front of me.
[00:12:05]  But I'm telling you right now, if we have to come back, you're getting a ticket.
[00:12:08]  Okay.
[00:12:09]  You will have to go see a judge.
[00:12:10]  I'm fine right now.
[00:12:12]  You're not going to take it right now.
[00:12:15]  Kaylee, too, takes the lead in engaging with the police when they showed up to a party talking her way out of a potential $300 fine for a noise violation.
[00:12:31]  I see noise.
[00:12:34]  Nothing against having a party.
[00:12:36]  Once neighbors start calling in, they have an issue.
[00:12:38]  Here.
[00:12:38]  You go to school?
[00:12:40]  Yeah.
[00:12:40]  Okay, senior.
[00:12:41]  Senior.
[00:12:42]  Okay.
[00:12:42]  So I'll tell you the same thing I told them.
[00:12:44]  You probably know the drill, right?
[00:12:45]  Actually, no.
[00:12:46]  Oh, okay.
[00:12:46]  So usually, at least for me, I'll give you a verbal warning.
[00:12:49]  Once I have neighbors calling in, it's too loud and you're disturbing the piece.
[00:12:53]  Nothing against having parties.
[00:12:54]  Nothing against having people over who are overage to drink.
[00:12:56]  But again, once we start disturbing the neighbors, I want to grab an issue.
[00:12:59]  Noise ticket is up to 300, somewhere around 300, 400 bucks.
[00:13:02]  It's a pretty expensive ticket.
[00:13:03]  I don't want to give that to you.
[00:13:04]  That being said, this is your place on the whole feature.
[00:13:07]  I'd much rather you spend that 300 bucks on beer or something for lunch and that being said, warnings.
[00:13:16]  Tell through it again.
[00:13:17]  Yep.
[00:13:17]  I'd hate to come back in two hours and a half for this year.
[00:13:20]  So any questions for me?
[00:13:21]  No.
[00:13:22]  All right.
[00:13:22]  Have a serious day.
[00:13:23]  Take care.

=== The Serious 911 Call (03:45) ===

[00:13:26]  The girl's natural warmth and respect on these tapes, even in a tense situation, makes their fate that November feel all the more incomprehensible.
[00:13:36]  In March of this year, Howard Bloom was a guest on the Megan Kelly show.
[00:13:41]  It was episode 515.
[00:13:43]  He talked about the afternoon of Sunday, November 13th, shortly after 11.58 a.m., the time a 911 call came in from roommate Dylan Mortensen's cell phone.
[00:13:57]  Personally knew that something serious was wrong because all they got a report of was an unconscious victim, an unconscious person rather at the house.
[00:14:06]  And then they see a group of kids mulling about the house like gulls on a beach, as it was described to me.
[00:14:14]  And these kids are silent.
[00:14:17]  They've been putting it up with the university kids all their professional lives as cops.
[00:14:22]  I don't think they've ever seen silent kids before.
[00:14:25]  They knew that this was something serious.
[00:14:29]  Bloom writes that the call was passed to Sergeant Shane Gunderson.
[00:14:33]  Gunderson, who on that day was midway through a 12-hour shift that had started at 6 a.m., was running the operations division at the sparklingly modernistic, it had opened barely 11 months earlier, South View Avenue Police Headquarters.
[00:14:47]  Prior to that moment, he would tell people his tour had been long and slow, a languid weekend morning, punctuated by the chimes of the town's many church bells tolling solemnly in the wind.
[00:14:59]  In fact, he had spent a good deal of that desk-bound Sunday morning mulling something other than police business.
[00:15:06]  Gunderson had been avidly mapping out in his mind a strategy for the eight-hour or easily more trek to the summit of Mount Borah.
[00:15:15]  He and a friend from the University of Idaho Psych Department had been planning for the spring.
[00:15:20]  It's Idaho's highest point, and the trail up the Southwest Ridge to the 12,662-foot summit is a steep, hard climb.
[00:15:30]  And he would admit after a beer or two, it was just the sort of challenge he'd been missing lately.
[00:15:36]  Now that he had his sergeant stripes, police work was more about distributing memos and filing papers than getting out into the field.
[00:15:43]  That bothered him.
[00:15:44]  Nearly 10 years on the force, he still wanted to be the gung-ho officer who had joined up straight out of Lewis Clark State College in nearby Lewiston and worked his way up from patrolman.
[00:15:56]  In his early days, he had distinguished himself as a hands-on cop, someone out on the streets doing what the Moscow PD calls community policing.
[00:16:05]  Back then, he'd scored a lot of points both in and out of the department, as well as winning the Officer of the Year honor in 2017, when he single-handedly planned and organized a hot dog barbecue, bringing together the cops and local school kids.
[00:16:21]  He was from the area, growing up in small-town Potlatch, and still smarting from his own childhood run-ins, he knew only too well how hard-ass cops could sour things, make things confrontational.
[00:16:35]  It was his job, he'd say with determination, looking out for and working with the citizens of Moscow.
[00:16:42]  When the 911 call came in, Gunderson had a corporal and two other officers on duty to assist with patrol.
[00:16:48]  He could have left the response to them.
[00:16:50]  He certainly, he'd tell people with a hint of embarrassment, had no intimation of something out of the ordinary.
[00:16:58]  That morning, he was simply eager to break the monotony.
[00:17:00]  And as always, he felt strongly, it was important for him to get out on the street where people could see him.
[00:17:07]  He swiftly decided he'd go to the scene too, with his officers.

=== Police Plead For Help (16:27) ===

[00:17:11]  It was a quick trip.
[00:17:13]  The roads leading into the university neighborhood that Sunday were as empty as the classrooms.
[00:17:19]  And as soon as Gunderson's black and white cruiser pulled up behind the neat row of cars parked in the driveway of the austere cantilevered house on King Road, he immediately knew something was very wrong.
[00:17:32]  It was the noise.
[00:17:35]  There wasn't any.
[00:17:36]  Just an eerie, unnatural silence.
[00:17:39]  A cluster of young people were wandering about, not merely subdued, they seemed stunned, as if drained by a deep and intense shock.
[00:17:51]  When the three mystified officers approached the front door, someone in the crowd, it would later be shared, muttered a single plaintiff word.
[00:17:59]  Dead.
[00:18:01]  Still, Gunderson would confess to others, he was unprepared for the strong smell of blood that rose up in his nostrils the moment he walked inside.
[00:18:11]  The coroner, who had once been an emergency room nurse in an earlier stage of her life, would describe the scene in press interviews as chaos, lots of blood.
[00:18:21]  Few others would even attempt to put into words what they saw.
[00:18:25]  There are moments cops will tell you that are too profound, too unnerving, to be experienced in the present.
[00:18:33]  All you can do is move forward.
[00:18:35]  There will be time later to try to make sense of it all.
[00:18:38]  Procedure takes precedence.
[00:18:40]  It allows a protective membrane to be stretched between the real and the too real.
[00:18:46]  All other thoughts, all other feelings become extraneous.
[00:18:50]  The trio of officers, meanwhile, proceeded with haste to the second floor.
[00:18:55]  They opened the bedroom door to find two dead bodies, a male and a female.
[00:19:01]  The pair was gruesomely drenched in blood, yet both had their good-looking faces, oddly preserved, like masks.
[00:19:11]  Even at that probing moment, it was difficult, one of the young officers would later wail, to look at the 20-year-old pair.
[00:19:18]  They were Ethan and Xana.
[00:19:22]  On the third floor, things got, if possible, worse.
[00:19:26]  In one bedroom, lying in a single bed, were two inert women.
[00:19:30]  It was Maddie and Kaylee.
[00:19:33]  They might have been sisters, so similar were the 21-year-olds, pretty, Barbie doll-like sculpted features, their long cascades of thick, streaked blonde hair falling down to their narrow shoulders.
[00:19:44]  Yet in death, there was one gruesome difference.
[00:19:47]  Kaylee, it would be reported, had been hacked with a particular ferocity.
[00:19:53]  It was as if her wild assailant, or was it assailants, had been intent on gouging out chunks of her flesh.
[00:20:02]  Large punctures was how the lacerations had been described.
[00:20:07]  Maddie's wounds, while no less fatal, appeared less feral, more measured, at least in comparison.
[00:20:14]  Across the narrow hallway was one final door.
[00:20:18]  The officers pulled it open, and at last they discovered a sign of life.
[00:20:22]  A fluffy caramel-colored dog.
[00:20:25]  It was Murphy, Kaylee's frisky labradoodle.
[00:20:29]  He was unharmed, not marred by even a speck of blood.
[00:20:33]  A small consolation and barely one at that for all they had seen and were only beginning to process.
[00:20:40]  Later that day, around 4 p.m., a police officer named Brett Payne arrived at the scene.
[00:20:47]  He would go on to interview the two surviving roommates, Dylan and Bethany, who in the affidavit he would file were only identified as DM and BF.
[00:21:00]  Here is directly from the affidavit, what he learned from his interviews with both Dylan and Bethany, although it appeared Bethany had slept through the commotion on floors above her first floor bedroom.
[00:21:13]  DM and BF, quoting here from the affidavit, both made statements during interviews that indicated the occupants of the King Road residence were at home by 2 a.m. and asleep or at least in their rooms by approximately 4 a.m., he wrote.
[00:21:26]  This is with the exception of Xana Cernodle, who received a DoorDash order at the residence at approximately 4 a.m.
[00:21:33]  Law enforcement identified the DoorDash delivery driver who reported this information.
[00:21:38]  DM stated she originally went to sleep in her bedroom on the southeast side of the second floor.
[00:21:44]  DM stated she was awoken at approximately 4 a.m. by what she stated sounded like Gonsalves playing with her dog in one of the upstairs bedrooms, which were located on the third floor.
[00:21:56]  A short time later, DM said she heard, who she thought was Gonsalves, say something to the effect of, there's someone here.
[00:22:06]  A review of records obtained from a forensic download of Cernodle's phone showed this could also have been Cernodle, as her cellular phone indicated she was likely awake and using the TikTok app at approximately 4.12 a.m.
[00:22:23]  DM stated she looked out of her bedroom but did not see anything when she heard the comment about someone being in the house.
[00:22:30]  DM stated she opened her door a second time when she heard what she thought was crying coming from Cernodle's room.
[00:22:37]  DM then said she heard a male voice say something to the effect of, it's okay.
[00:22:43]  I'm going to help you.
[00:22:46]  At approximately 4.17 a.m., a security camera located at 1112 King Road, a residence immediately to the northwest of 1122 King, picked up distorted audio of what sounded like voices or a whimper, followed by a loud thud.
[00:23:04]  A dog can also be heard barking numerous times starting at 4.17 a.m.
[00:23:09]  The security camera is less than 50 feet from the west wall of Xana Cernodel's bedroom.
[00:23:16]  DM stated she opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her.
[00:23:28]  DM described the figure as 5'10 or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows.
[00:23:38]  The male walked past DM as she stood in a quote frozen shock phase.
[00:23:44]  The male walked toward the back sliding glass door.
[00:23:47]  DM locked herself in her room after seeing the male.
[00:23:49]  DM did not state that she recognized the male.
[00:23:53]  This leads investigators to believe that the murderer left the scene.
[00:24:02]  We'll get back to the affidavit in a bit.
[00:24:05]  Dylan then locked her bedroom door until the morning in a decision that would just befuddle so many people.
[00:24:11]  Why?
[00:24:13]  Why?
[00:24:14]  Why didn't she do more?
[00:24:15]  We don't know the answers, but surely we will by the time this case is tried.
[00:24:22]  Sometime after 11 a.m., the roommates attempted to wake their friends.
[00:24:26]  They were unable to, and they would call others to the house for help.
[00:24:30]  There, at least one of those friends finally dialed 911.
[00:24:35]  Howard Bloom, again with us back in March.
[00:24:39]  One can raise all sorts of questions as I do.
[00:24:43]  At the same time, I think what has been cut this poor girl a little slack.
[00:24:48]  In many ways, she's a victim too.
[00:24:50]  She will live with this for her entire life.
[00:24:56]  She saw something incredible, astonishing, and she just perhaps couldn't deal with it.
[00:25:07]  Back to Sergeant Gunderson.
[00:25:09]  He quickly called his boss, Captain Roger Lanier, the head of the 24 Officer Operations Division.
[00:25:16]  He found him, not unexpectedly, for a Sunday, sitting down to lunch with his family.
[00:25:20]  Lanier was a veteran cop.
[00:25:22]  He had spent more than 20 years on the force in nearby Lewiston before having been lured six years earlier to Moscow with a captain's rank.
[00:25:30]  After all his years on the job, he'd become a steady, avuncular presence, a bald-headed, genial cop who never got flustered because, as he would tell people, he had seen it all in his day.
[00:25:42]  But Gunderson's report left him unnerved.
[00:25:45]  It took me a second, he recalled, a sharp edge, even weeks later, to the memory.
[00:25:50]  I really had to think about what I'd just heard.
[00:25:53]  Four murders in Moscow, Idaho was so out of character.
[00:25:59]  At the time, they were fairly certain it was college students and it was near the campus, and that area is kind of a campus community.
[00:26:06]  So once I got over the initial shock, I knew that I was coming to the station.
[00:26:11]  So I drove in and everybody just kind of fell into a role.
[00:26:15]  That was an all-hands-on-deck moment.
[00:26:17]  Sunday afternoon, it became fairly apparent when I got to the scene that we were going to need resources outside of just what the Moscow Police Department could provide.
[00:26:30]  But quickly, Lanier's professionalism took control.
[00:26:33]  He had a thousand questions, and yet he knew the only hope of finding answers would be to follow the previously established protocols.
[00:26:40]  Dutifully, he gave the orders to set up the perimeters of the crime scene, to bring in the forensic team and to summon the coroner.
[00:26:49]  It was standard in a major case.
[00:26:51]  And if four homicides was not a major case, what was?
[00:26:55]  To alert the Idaho State Police, and he did that too.
[00:27:00]  Moscow was the responsibility of the state's District 2 detective office in Lewiston, the county seat, and where he'd been on the job for two decades, and he knew many of the state detectives.
[00:27:11]  There was a companionship.
[00:27:13]  Still, it was a difficult conversation.
[00:27:16]  But his next call was harder.
[00:27:18]  The university had to be informed.
[00:27:20]  It was not just that four students had been brutally murdered in an off-campus home, but there was no way of knowing whether the killer or killers planned to strike again.
[00:27:30]  The students needed to be warned.
[00:27:33]  At 2.07 p.m., a little over two hours after the three cops had entered the blood-soaked house, the University Office of Public Safety and Security sent a Vandal Alert email to the students and faculty.
[00:27:46]  Quote, Moscow PD investigating a homicide on King Road near campus.
[00:27:51]  Suspect is not known at this time.
[00:27:53]  Stay away from the area and shelter in place, end quote.
[00:27:56]  A shelter-in-place order requires people to take refuge in a room with no or few windows.
[00:28:02]  At this point, busy hours had already quickly flown by.
[00:28:05]  But despite his marathon of activities, Lanier still had not succeeded in completing one task that was at the top of his mental list.
[00:28:13]  He had not been able to speak with his boss, James Fry, the chief of police.
[00:28:18]  By the time Lanier had finally reached him, it was hours after the discovery of the bodies.
[00:28:23]  And by the time Fry finally entered the home on King Road, it was dark outside, according to several accounts, close to 6 p.m.
[00:28:31]  For some abstruse reason, he had thought it was important to go home first and change into his chief's uniform.
[00:28:39]  Perhaps he hadn't fully grasped the magnitude of the disaster.
[00:28:43]  Or maybe, after nearly 28 years as a Moscow cop, he had felt his uniform was integral to his ability to command.
[00:28:52]  But what he saw that evening left him, he would confide to a friend later, physically and emotionally drained.
[00:28:59]  He was a father of two daughters who had attended the University of Idaho, and he had also graduated from the university nearly three decades earlier.
[00:29:08]  It was impossible, he said, not to feel a visceral tie to the victims and to their parents.
[00:29:14]  The cruelty of the crime was deep and affecting, and yet he knew there was police work to be done.
[00:29:21]  His mind was racing, but quixotically, perhaps, within moments of buried memory, pushed itself forward.
[00:29:29]  What if, Fry asked himself with a sudden alarm, a serial killer had attacked the four students?
[00:29:37]  Pausing here to bring you some of Chief Fry's initial comments to the Moscow, Idaho community from his very first press conference several days after the murders.
[00:29:49]  My name is Chief James Fry with the Moscow Police Department.
[00:29:52]  I'm going to be reading from my notes today because I want the information you received to be extremely accurate.
[00:29:57]  This was a horrible crime that took the lives of Ethan Chapman, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogan, and Clayley Kaylee Goncalves.
[00:30:09]  This horrible crime has affected all of us, the families, the University of Idaho, our community, our country, and our officers.
[00:30:22]  Based on details of the scene, we believe this was an isolated, targeted attack on our victims.
[00:30:29]  We do not have a suspect at this time, and that individual is still out there.
[00:30:34]  We cannot say that there is no threat to the community.
[00:30:37]  And as we have stated, please stay vigilant, report any suspicious activity, and be aware of your surroundings at all times.
[00:30:46]  Here's what was challenging for the police from Bloom's reporting.
[00:30:50]  Fact.
[00:30:51]  The four students were killed in their sleep, or at least while in their rooms, sometime between 3 and 5 a.m.
[00:30:57]  In the weeks ahead, they would develop a more precise timeline.
[00:31:01]  The murders the authorities deduced occurred between 4 and 4.25 a.m.
[00:31:06]  Think about that.
[00:31:08]  At 4.12 a.m., they had Xana on TikTok, and the murders took place between 4 and 4.25 a.m.
[00:31:17]  Fact, there was no sign of forced entry or of robbery.
[00:31:20]  Fact, a single weapon had been used.
[00:31:23]  A long-bladed knife.
[00:31:25]  Critically, a tan leather knife sheath stamped with a U.S. Marine Corps insignia was found lying next to Maddie Mogan's bed.
[00:31:35]  Fact, there was no trail of blood outside the house.
[00:31:40]  Fact, the house was a repository for a large collection of forensic evidence, blood, saliva, hair, prints, DNA.
[00:31:49]  But whether any of those belonged to the killer, after the autopsies, the general consensus held that it was a single assailant, still was undetermined.
[00:31:59]  These were all, the investigators agreed, important pieces in the puzzle.
[00:32:03]  Yet they were not enough.
[00:32:05]  For more than three weeks, the early morning conferences ended in a grim litany of what remained unknown.
[00:32:13]  They couldn't figure out how the killer had gotten away, seemingly without leaving a clue.
[00:32:18]  And they had no idea why he had chosen these victims.
[00:32:23]  And now, as the investigation in Moscow plodded on and frustratingly on, an exasperated Chief Rye appealed to locals to become, in effect, consulting detectives.
[00:32:35]  We appreciate everybody's help that has been sending in those tips.
[00:32:40]  And investigators are vetting those and they're following up on those.
[00:32:43]  And the response has been very great.
[00:32:45]  We appreciate all the help from across the nation and our community.
[00:32:50]  He wanted help to put his men on the right scent.
[00:32:53]  Detectives are looking for context to the events and people involved in these murders, a Moscow PD press release announced.
[00:33:01]  To assist with the ongoing investigation, any odd or out-of-the-ordinary events that took place should be reported.
[00:33:09]  And nearly begging, the release urged, your information, whether you believe it is significant or not, might be the piece of the puzzle that helps investigators solve these murders.
[00:33:18]  The tips poured in.
[00:33:21]  A new generation of consulting detectives armed with cell phones and laptops with access to a vast repository of information from selfies to Facebook pages and further stoked by the barrage of the raw theories and hearsay disseminated on Reddit and 4chan embraced the opportunity.

=== Tracking The Suspect Car (12:41) ===

[00:33:39]  It was a real-life mystery that had the compelling allure of a particularly thorny CSI episode.
[00:33:45]  And not least, the police were pleading for help.
[00:33:50]  More than 9,025 email tips were received in addition to the 4,575 phone calls and 6,050 digital media submissions.
[00:34:01]  An army of law enforcement analysts was assigned to the long-daunting task to see if in all the oysters there was a single pearl.
[00:34:10]  Much of it led down rabbit holes of fatuous speculation.
[00:34:14]  Some of it was not just wrongheaded, but cruel.
[00:34:18]  Innocent ex-boyfriends, a hoodie-wearing bystander lurking at a food truck where Maddie and Kaylee had ordered early morning bowls of carbonera to soak up the alcohol ingested during the last carefree pug crawl of their lives.
[00:34:32]  A bro neighbor who insisted on sharing rambling anecdotes with every reporter who knocked on his door.
[00:34:37]  And Frat brothers, who were rumored to be stoked up on steroids and driven by long gestating grievances, all were callously and persistently slandered with a malicious authority.
[00:34:50]  It got so madcap that a history prof at the university decided she had to sue to put an end to one internet sleuth's bizarre speculation that a failed romance with one of the women had driven the teacher to kill.
[00:35:04]  And then the analysts hit a gold scene.
[00:35:09]  The mysterious case of Rudolph Diesel by Doug Brunt.
[00:35:13]  It's officially a New York Times bestseller, as well as an Apple Book of the Year, an Audible Book of the Year.
[00:35:18]  It's even been optioned for a movie.
[00:35:21]  Rave reviews from the Times, The Journal, Publishers Weekly, and more calling Diesel a wildly enjoyable ride.
[00:35:28]  It is a page-turning thriller about the greatest caper of the 20th century, all involving a man whose name you likely see at the gas station every day, but probably had no idea, was at the center of one of the greatest mysteries of all time.
[00:35:44]  Don't miss out on the book everyone's talking about.
[00:35:46]  It will make the perfect gift, the mysterious case of Rudolph Diesel.
[00:35:56]  The overnight assistant manager, her name, at her request, remains secret, for a gas station on Troy Road, not far from the house on King Road, had decided she might as well see what she could do.
[00:36:09]  She had not been working the night of the murders, but nevertheless, she spent the downtime on her graveyard shift reviewing the videos recorded by the station's surveillance cameras on November 13th.
[00:36:23]  I had a weird feeling, she later said.
[00:36:26]  For two nights, she intermittently kept at it, but found nothing.
[00:36:31]  Then on the third night, she spotted a white car speeding down Highway 8 before turning pell-mell down a side street.
[00:36:39]  She took a screenshot of the car and emailed it to the tip line address.
[00:36:44]  Two days later, Moscow police arrived at the gas station to confiscate hours of surveillance footage.
[00:36:49]  And after just a quick view, they began to feel the hunt was on.
[00:36:54]  Encouraged, they reached out on a hunch to Kane Franzich, recently retired and now investing in real estate, was a freewheeling guy who shares on his website that he listens to classic vinyl while drinking single malt scotch.
[00:37:08]  He also owned a six-unit rental complex on Linda Lane, about three-tenths of a mile from where the bodies had been found with a surveillance camera fixed to the roof.
[00:37:19]  I downloaded it and gave them access to everything from 2 a.m. through noon on Sunday the 13th, he said.
[00:37:25]  Once those tapes were reviewed, the same telltale white car was spotted.
[00:37:31]  And again, it appeared to be making a breakneck getaway through the dark AM streets.
[00:37:37]  With this confirming sighting, a different pace, a different mood took over the investigation.
[00:37:43]  The team felt they could now march forward with a purpose.
[00:37:46]  The FBI laboratory enhancement had succeeded in deciphering the blurred image of the car.
[00:37:52]  They believed it was a white 2011 to 2013 Hyundai Elantra.
[00:37:59]  There were 22,000 Hyundai's in the region that matched the search criteria.
[00:38:04]  And one of them, the police were starting to suspect, had been driven by a killer.
[00:38:10]  From the affidavit released in January, quote, a review of footage from multiple videos obtained from the King Road neighborhood showed multiple sightings of suspect vehicle one, starting at 3.29 a.m., ending at 4.20 a.m.
[00:38:26]  These sightings show suspect vehicle one makes an initial three passes by the 1122 King Road residence and then leaves VOLEN to drive.
[00:38:36]  Based off my experience as a patrol officer, this is a residential neighborhood with a very limited number of vehicles that travel in the area during the early morning hours.
[00:38:45]  Upon review of the video, there are only a few cars that enter and exit this area during this timeframe.
[00:38:51]  Suspect Vehicle 1 can be seen entering the area a fourth time at approximately 4.04 a.m.
[00:38:58]  It can be seen driving eastbound on King Road, stopping and turning around in front of 500 Queen Road, number 52, and then driving back westbound on King Road.
[00:39:10]  When Suspect Vehicle 1 is in front of the King Road residence, it appeared to unsuccessfully attempt to park or turn around in the road.
[00:39:19]  The vehicle then continued to the intersection of Queen Road and King Road, where it can be seen completing a three-point turn and then driving eastbound again down Queen Road.
[00:39:29]  Suspect Vehicle 1 is seen next departing the area of the King Road residence at approximately 4.20 a.m. at a high rate of speed.
[00:39:41]  Back now to Bloom's reporting.
[00:39:44]  Finding the one Elantra that would lead to an arrest loomed as a needle in a haystack sort of challenge.
[00:39:50]  The search, even with a small army of burrowers, was a nearly impossible task.
[00:39:56]  Then as the holiday season approached, a hint of a Christmas miracle.
[00:40:01]  Chief Fry, for once upbeat, met late in the morning of December 20th with Rand Walker, the department psychologist, and Rod Olps, one of the police chaplains in the courthouse law library.
[00:40:14]  It was one of the few places they could huddle where the chief felt no one would be listening.
[00:40:19]  I'm going to need you two to get ready, he said, with a deliberate coyness.
[00:40:23]  I'm going to need you before too long.
[00:40:26]  The two men eagerly asked whether there had been a break in the case.
[00:40:29]  Fry did his best to rein in a pregnant smile.
[00:40:32]  All I'm saying, he reiterated, is I need you both to stand by.
[00:40:36]  I might be calling you very soon.
[00:40:40]  But at 4.30 that afternoon, the Moscow police public communications team issued a flash update, quote, investigators are aware of a Hyundai Elantra located in Eugene, Oregon, and have spoken with the owner.
[00:40:53]  The vehicle is not believed to have any relation to any property in Moscow, Idaho, or the ongoing murder investigations.
[00:41:02]  And just like that, the psychologist and the chaplain knew that the chief, despite the hopeful conversation earlier that day, would not be calling them anytime soon.
[00:41:12]  Meanwhile, as the hunt for the Elantra proceeded with tedious concentration, the no less discouraging challenge of finding a clue in the forensic evidence, a vast muddle of prints, blood, and DNA that had been collected in the house, was brought vividly home.
[00:41:30]  Body cam footage was released of a call at the King Road residence two months before the murders by a trio of Moscow cops in response to yet another noise complaint from an annoyed neighbor.
[00:41:43]  The body camera footage, Bloom would write, was at first seen as deeply poignant.
[00:41:49]  The house seemed to be nearly shaking with festive noise.
[00:41:53]  Tyler Childers' feathered Indians boomed from the speakers.
[00:41:57]  Kids were calling happily to one another, a giddy mix of bouncy, energetic voices.
[00:42:03]  It was a Thursday night and there was a party going on.
[00:42:06]  This is what it's like to be young.
[00:42:08]  To Moracerbic minds, the footage was a small, self-contained story about the tensions of policing in a college town.
[00:42:17]  The kids being kids were seen giving the police a sly run around, and the cops being cops retaliated with a display of petty vengeance.
[00:42:26]  A confiscated stash of beers and trulies was poured onto the driveway.
[00:42:32]  Yet this being Moscow and this house being destined for infamy, this burst of class warfare would have an unexpected coda.
[00:42:40]  One of the smirking cops spilling the booze would in time be part of the team that first discovered the bodies.
[00:42:48]  Another would help load the cardboard cartons holding the murdered students' belongings into a U-Haul for the grim trip to the police parking lot.
[00:42:56]  To the informed and dispassionate view of the FBI scientific experts, however, the body cam footage was seen solely in operational terms, and it was dispiriting.
[00:43:07]  It made clear that just about anyone and everyone had access to 1122 King Road.
[00:43:13]  The door was always open and a stream of people were constantly coming and going.
[00:43:20]  The analysts moaned that there would be so much forensic evidence it might be easier to determine who in Moscow had never been inside the house rather than their having any realistic hope of ever finding a suspect.
[00:43:32]  And yet, perhaps it wasn't a 2011 to 2013 Elantra after all.
[00:43:38]  Investigators were given access to video footage on the Washington State University or WSU campus located nearby in Pullman, Washington.
[00:43:48]  A review of that video indicated that at approximately 2.44 a.m. on November 13th, 2022, a white sedan, which was consistent with the description of the white Elantra known as Suspect Vehicle 1, was observed on WSU surveillance cameras traveling north on Southeast Nevada Street at Northeast Stadium Way.
[00:44:10]  At approximately 2.53 a.m., a white sedan, which is consistent with the description of the white etra known as suspect vehicle one, was observed traveling southeast on Nevada Street in Pullman, Washington toward SR 270.
[00:44:25]  This is Howard Bloom here quoting from the affidavit.
[00:44:28]  SR-270 connects Pullman, Washington to Moscow, Idaho.
[00:44:32]  This camera footage from Pullman, Washington was provided to the same FBI forensic examiner.
[00:44:38]  The forensic examiner identified the vehicle observed in Pullman, Washington as being a 2014 to 2016 Hyundai Elantra.
[00:44:50]  At approximately 5.25 a.m., a white sedan, which was consistent with the description of suspect vehicle one, was observed on five cameras in Pullman, Washington and on WSU campus cameras.
[00:45:02]  What was it doing there?
[00:45:04]  Well, shortly after midnight on November 29th, Washington State Police Officer Daniel Tiengo reported that he had identified a 2015 white Elantra on campus with a license plate LFZ8649.
[00:45:20]  It wasn't from Washington, though, or Idaho.
[00:45:23]  It was registered to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
[00:45:27]  According to the affidavit, just minutes later, a different officer, Curtis Whitman, located that car in the parking lot of an apartment complex that houses WSU students.
[00:45:38]  The vehicle belonged to a graduate student and a teacher's assistant named Brian Christopher Kohlberger.
[00:45:45]  His major was criminology.
[00:45:48]  Kohlberger would be driving that car shortly after the identification, far away from Washington and Idaho and the scene of that gruesome quadruple murder.
[00:45:58]  It was headed for a cross-country drive.
[00:46:00]  He had a passenger in the car too, his father.
[00:46:03]  Little did they or the small town community of Moscow, Idaho, or the country that had become obsessed with and terrified by this story, have any idea that the police and the FBI were tracking their every move as they made their way back home to Pennsylvania.

=== Bizarre Encounters Along Way (00:16) ===

[00:46:20]  But not before a few bizarre chance encounters with authorities along the way.
[00:46:26]  We'll be back tomorrow with that.
[00:46:32]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:46:34]  No BS, no agenda, and no