The Megyn Kelly Show - 20231221_the-trial-ahead-idaho-college-murders-and-bryan-ko
Aired: 2023-12-21
Duration: 48:46


=== DNA Evidence and Wishful Thinking (14:49) ===

[00:00:16]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
[00:00:29]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:00:30]  I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:32]  On this special edition of the show, we bring you deep into the fascinating and disturbing case of Brian Kohlberger and the murder of four young college students in Idaho.
[00:00:42]  The trial of Brian Kohlberger is expected to begin sometime in 2024.
[00:00:47]  We have brought you the details of the murder that November early morning of Kohlberger's arrest, and we went deep into the psyche of the man accused of committing these heinous crimes.
[00:00:58]  Today, we examine the trial ahead.
[00:01:01]  What is the case, legally speaking, against Brian Kohlberger?
[00:01:05]  What are the key components you should expect prosecutors to lean on when they get in front of a jury?
[00:01:09]  And keep in mind, we are going to get to watch as all of this plays out.
[00:01:14]  The judge has agreed to televise this trial.
[00:01:18]  Now it will be with courtroom cameras and without media, but America will have a front-row seat for the people versus Brian Kohlberger.
[00:01:27]  It may sound like an open and shut case for the prosecution, but trial attorney after trial attorney, seasoned pros, have been warning us all year, not so fast, that this case is far from a slam dunk for prosecutors.
[00:01:43]  It's not going to be easy.
[00:02:03]  But first, remember, Brian Kohlberger, through his attorneys, maintains that he is innocent.
[00:02:09]  Following his arrest, his initial public defender in Pennsylvania, Jason LeBar, released a statement on Kohlberger's behalf that reads, Kohlberger is eager to be exonerated and looks forward to resolving these matters as soon as possible.
[00:02:24]  Eager to be exonerated.
[00:02:27]  Mr. Kohlberger, the statement goes on, has been accused of very serious crimes, but the American justice system cloaks him in a veil of innocence.
[00:02:34]  He should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, not tried in the court of public opinion.
[00:02:39]  One should not pass judgment about the facts of the case unless and until a fair trial in court, at which time all sides may be heard and inferences challenged.
[00:02:49]  LeBar told NBC's Today Show that Brian believes he will be exonerated.
[00:02:55]  He believes he's going to be exonerated.
[00:02:59]  That's what he believes.
[00:03:00]  Those were his words.
[00:03:03]  When we interviewed Phil Houston, author of the book Spy the Lie and former CIA officer, he noted that exonerated comment.
[00:03:13]  He did release a statement to us, all of us, through his lawyer, that he looks forward to being exonerated.
[00:03:22]  So he's definitely trying to tell us: I am going to be found not guilty, but the words used raised a red flag for you.
[00:03:30]  Why?
[00:03:31]  There's something very important missing from that statement, Megan, and that is, I didn't do it.
[00:03:40]  And it is in their efforts to focus on convincing everybody that they didn't do it, they forget to say, I didn't do it.
[00:03:51]  And it is not a truthful fact for them.
[00:03:56]  In fact, they're dealing mentally with an ugly fact, which is I did do it.
[00:04:01]  And so that gets pushed to the background.
[00:04:05]  And now I have to focus on strategy and how do I get out of this.
[00:04:12]  Since the arrest, we have heard bits and pieces from Kohlberger's defense team.
[00:04:15]  In May at Kohlberger's arraignment, he and his attorney made the bizarre decision to stand silent and make the judge enter Kohlberger's not guilty plea.
[00:04:27]  Hey, Ms. Taylor, is Mr. Kohlberger prepared to plead to these charges?
[00:04:35]  Because Mr. Kohlberger is standing silent.
[00:04:39]  I'm going to enter not guilty pleas on each charge.
[00:04:44]  Counts one, two, three, four, and five.
[00:04:49]  Kohlberger sat there in an orange jumpsuit, but did not speak.
[00:04:53]  Kohlberger's defense team has been very active in hammering the prosecution with motion practice.
[00:04:57]  In June, in an effort to get the DNA evidence thrown out, the defense floated a theory that Kohlberger's DNA might have been planted on the knife sheath and described the process as rigged, saying the state was purely focused on Kohlberger and used a, quote, bizarrely complex DNA tree experiment to make their match.
[00:05:20]  They tried to dismiss the grand jury indictment entirely, claiming that the grand jury had been misled about the proper standard of proof.
[00:05:29]  That was not successful.
[00:05:31]  And then in a formal objection, the defense team has gone public with one hint of what we believe is to come at trial, claiming Kohlberger has an alibi.
[00:05:42]  This is something they would be required to disclose, and we'll get into it in just a bit.
[00:05:47]  And of course, the big news came in August, with the trial just six weeks away as of then.
[00:05:53]  Kohlberger waived his right to a speedy trial, and the trial that was set to begin in October was postponed indefinitely.
[00:06:01]  His defense team argued they needed far more time to prepare and go through all the material provided to them by the prosecution, especially as the state said they plan to seek the death penalty in this case.
[00:06:12]  So here we sit with no trial date as of December 2023.
[00:06:18]  Soon, we will take you down an incredible road, a truly fascinating possibility about an entirely different direction this case could take once those defense attorneys get on their feet.
[00:06:34]  A theory expertly crafted by the longtime journalist and author Howard Bloom, who covered this case in great detail for Airmail News.
[00:06:42]  Bloom's forthcoming book on this case will be published in the spring by HarperCollins.
[00:06:46]  You're not going to want to miss that.
[00:06:48]  We're going to bring you some of Bloom's writing throughout this episode with his agreement.
[00:06:53]  But let's start with the case against Kohlberger.
[00:06:57]  The DNA evidence found on the knife sheath in the house on 1122 King Road.
[00:07:02]  That's critical.
[00:07:04]  But as Bloom writes, the DNA here may not be exactly irrefutable.
[00:07:10]  The consumer DNA kits that are sold in your local CVS need about 750 to 1,000 nanograms to find out all they need to know about you.
[00:07:19]  That's not much.
[00:07:20]  It's smaller than a speck of floating dust and a whole lot less substantial.
[00:07:25]  A single nanogram is as heavy as a breeze.
[00:07:29]  It weighs a few trillionths of a pound.
[00:07:32]  There's nothing to it.
[00:07:34]  But crime scenes often contain a whole lot less DNA than that.
[00:07:38]  The forensic teams will routinely wind up with only 100 or so nanograms of DNA.
[00:07:45]  Yet scientists can nevertheless work their magic and use even this microscopic amount of genetic evidence to nail the criminal.
[00:07:54]  The problem, however, was that the DNA on the knife sheath here, authorities would concede on background, was less than 100 nanograms.
[00:08:06]  A whole lot less.
[00:08:07]  A mere fraction, in fact, of a single nanogram.
[00:08:12]  Nothing more than just a handful of microscopic-sized cells.
[00:08:18]  In total, according to knowledgeable sources, about 20 cells, reports Bloom.
[00:08:24]  Maybe they whispered, even fewer.
[00:08:27]  The DNA sample was as small as a fragment of a speck balanced on the head of a tiny pin.
[00:08:32]  It no longer mattered that they had previously drawn a blank trying to make a link between the DNA on the knife sheath, button, and Brian Kohlberger.
[00:08:41]  They had succeeded in doing the next best thing.
[00:08:44]  And they were convinced that was good enough.
[00:08:48]  They had matched the speck of DNA recovered from the murder house to the DNA embedded in the trash of Michael Kohlberger, the suspect's father.
[00:09:00]  And while moralists might find biblical authority for the argument that the father is not responsible for his son's alleged sins, the more practical geneticists had found an indisputable link, quote, at least 99.9998% of the male population would be expected to be excluded from the possibility of being the suspect's biological father, end quote.
[00:09:26]  Meaning the DNA on the knife sheath button belonged, the Idaho authorities asserted, to Michael Kohlberger's son, Brian.
[00:09:36]  So they had the knife sheath with a miraculous DNA match, but minuscule amounts and apparently only touch DNA, which as we discussed in episode two, is not exactly a smoking gun.
[00:09:49]  A defense attorney can do a lot to poke holes in touch DNA.
[00:09:53]  And while the knife sheath was found, the knife was not.
[00:09:58]  Where's the supposed murder weapon?
[00:10:01]  Still nothing on that, as far as we know.
[00:10:04]  Then there's the evidence around the white 2015 Hyundai Lantra that happens to be Kohlberger's car.
[00:10:12]  And separate but related, the cell phone pings from Kohlberger's phone.
[00:10:17]  That's not a slam dunk for the prosecution here either.
[00:10:21]  Take for instructive example the now infamous sightings of the white Hyundai Lantra on surveillance camera footage in the vicinity of the King Roadhouse in the pre-dawn minutes subsequent to the savage killings of the four college students.
[00:10:36]  Within days of the murders, the Moscow police had gathered a stream of video featuring what they quickly dubbed suspect vehicle one.
[00:10:44]  Only they had a problem with the quality of the images.
[00:10:47]  They were flickering, recorded in varying light.
[00:10:51]  The pixels had captured a fast-moving white car, but that was about all the local cops could say for sure.
[00:10:57]  So the promising but far from conclusive videos were swiftly dispatched to building 27958A, Pod E, Quantico, Virginia.
[00:11:06]  That was where the forensic examiners of the image analysis unit of the FBI Operational Technology Division worked their magic using a bit of software that had been originally developed at the cost of about $1 million taxpayer dollars for a secretive Defense Department outfit nestled deep in the clandestine heart of the deep state, the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate.
[00:11:32]  With the click of a few computer keys, the program searches through a staggering inventory of cars until it ultimately, according to the confident government description, quote, identifies the make and model of the vehicle in a still image.
[00:11:47]  And it worked like a charm on the handful of videos the Moscow cops had gathered.
[00:11:52]  or more precisely, three charms.
[00:11:55]  The FBI forensic examiner first deduced that suspect vehicle one was a 2011 through 13 Hyundai Elantra.
[00:12:03]  Then, quote, upon further review, to use the chagrined phrase of the candid Idaho authorities, he decided the mysterious Hyundai might very well be actually a 2011 through 16 vehicle.
[00:12:18]  And when he poured over the image of a car consistent with the Hyundai near the murder scene that was caught on camera not long after the killings racing toward Pullman, Washington, he deduced that it was a 2014 through 16 Hyundai.
[00:12:35]  That is, he cast a pretty broad net, and he cast it three times to boot.
[00:12:41]  Still, when it turned out that Brian Kohlberger owned a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra, it was right in the ballpark of the FBI's analysis of the make and model of suspect vehicle one.
[00:12:52]  But it was a superdome-sized ballpark.
[00:12:54]  It had been stretched to cover five full years of cars.
[00:12:58]  A smart defense attorney could drive a fleet of Hyundai's through a speculative gap that wide.
[00:13:04]  And that wasn't all.
[00:13:06]  There was further cause for hand-wringing in the aftermath of the FBI's vaunted forensic image analysis.
[00:13:12]  Despite all the inventive manipulation of the pixels in the video footage of suspect vehicle one, the analysts still could not come up with a legible shot of the license plate.
[00:13:23]  They couldn't even offer a guess.
[00:13:26]  They had no idea.
[00:13:28]  Even more vexing, there wasn't a single legible image of the driver.
[00:13:33]  The Bureau wizards tried all sorts of photographic tricks to pull a face from the blur, as you can imagine.
[00:13:40]  In the end, however, the best they could decipher was a dark, murky shadow hovering over the steering wheel.
[00:13:46]  And you can't slap handcuffs on a shadow.
[00:13:49]  At a glance, the new evidence seemed deeply incriminating.
[00:13:52]  Kohlberger's car was arguably placed near the King Road house immediately before the murder and later hightailing it away from the scene of the crime in the pre-dawn aftermath.
[00:14:02]  His cell phone pinged to towers that seemed to correlate to the Elantra's route.
[00:14:08]  However, when examined closely, it turned out that the maps had been sketched with a swirling, impressionistic hand rather than with a cartographer's rigor.
[00:14:19]  What went unmentioned deliberately when the police shared their handiwork with the public was that those cell phone towers cast a wide net.
[00:14:29]  Their range can be as broad as 14 miles.
[00:14:32]  And in a cozy town like Moscow, that takes in a whole lot of territory.
[00:14:37]  It's more wishful thinking than solid detective work to put Kohlberger's phone at a precise spot at a certain time.
[00:14:45]  Being in the vicinity is not the same as being at an exact address.
[00:14:50]  Just ask anyone whose Amazon delivery wound up at a neighbor's house or any of the combative defense attorneys who've succeeded in convincing courts to question the reliability and accuracy of the FBI's attempts to map the signal footprints cast by cell towers.

=== Eyewitness Identification Challenges (03:09) ===

[00:15:06]  Our Megan Kelly show lawyers, they come on for a segment we have called Kelly's Court.
[00:15:10]  They know the challenges here, as famed former prosecutor Marcia Clark and Defense Attorney Mark Garragos discussed with me when we had them on earlier this year.
[00:15:21]  The car was spotted there by surveillance cameras before the fact, for weeks before the fact, which indicates the possibility of stalking.
[00:15:28]  And then you have the cell phone pings that corroborate the movements of the car.
[00:15:33]  Then you have the observation by DM, the other girl who lives there, that makes it very clear the intruder is there.
[00:15:42]  And also she has the one characteristic of bushy eyebrows that did go along with his appearance.
[00:15:48]  And that's not the strongest thing.
[00:15:49]  And I'm never a big fan of eyewitness identification cases, but when you start to put it all together, it is starting to look that way.
[00:15:57]  Now, you're right.
[00:15:58]  At this point, it's not a slam dunk.
[00:16:01]  It looks very much like it's moving in that direction, but that's why they're continuing to investigate.
[00:16:06]  And, you know, of course, they're going to turn his apartment upside down.
[00:16:09]  They're going to turn this crime scene upside down.
[00:16:11]  And we're going to see a lot more in days to come.
[00:16:14]  Go ahead, Mark.
[00:16:15]  What are your thoughts on that?
[00:16:16]  I don't disagree with Marcia.
[00:16:18]  I think that you've got, to me, it's probable cause all day long.
[00:16:23]  However, I've said it before and I'll say it again.
[00:16:26]  There's so many holes in this.
[00:16:28]  I've had, I can't tell you the number of murder cases that have turned out that cell phone evidence ended up exonerating my client as opposed to showing that he was guilty.
[00:16:43]  As I'm sitting right here, I could be using my phone and it could be pinging onto two towers 12 miles away from each other just by virtue of the amount of traffic on one of the towers.
[00:16:58]  So I've never been a fan of the cell phone triangulation.
[00:17:01]  It's a good tool to try to get you there, but I've used it to show that somebody was 40 miles away at the time of the crime and exonerated them.
[00:17:11]  So that's not going to get them there.
[00:17:14]  They also, the fact that the phone was not being used during the two-hour period, I know law enforcement speculates that he turned it off.
[00:17:23]  There's other explanations like he wasn't there.
[00:17:26]  So those kinds of things, you get jury instructions to say two reasonable alternatives.
[00:17:31]  You got to pick the one that points towards innocence.
[00:17:34]  They need more evidence.
[00:17:37]  There is at least one other arrow in the prosecution's quiver, the possibility of an actual eyewitness.
[00:17:45]  As we told you about in episode one, her name is Dylan Mortensen.
[00:17:49]  Yes, one of the surviving roommates claims to have actually seen the killer, despite the fact that she never called the police until someone else did it from her phone more than seven hours later.
[00:18:00]  Still, she described to police the next day seeing someone 5'10 or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows.
[00:18:10]  This physical description, while vague, certainly matches Kohlberger.
[00:18:14]  Will it be enough?

=== Defense Team's New Strategy (12:37) ===

[00:18:16]  As Bloom writes, cop after cop promises that the single unshakable reason Kohlberger will be sent by the state to his richly deserved death is Bill Thompson, the county prosecutor.
[00:18:30]  Thompson, his long white biblical beard flailing about as the wind roars.
[00:18:35]  Thompson in his downhome uniform of jeans and fleece vests.
[00:18:39]  Thompson, the rye musician who plays rock folk country with his band.
[00:18:45]  Thompson, who had been in office for over 30 years, Thompson, who had famously done the impossible in the closely followed Rachel Anderson murder case and won a conviction without the body ever being found.
[00:18:57]  An improbable victory that sent no less a culprit than a blood relative of Al Capone to jail for life.
[00:19:05]  Rumor has it that this will be Thompson's last hurrah.
[00:19:10]  There is no way cops believe that he would retire to idle away his days strumming his guitar and casting his fishing rod without having secured his already impressive reputation with a final victory in a big trial like this.
[00:19:26]  And trials just don't come any bigger than this one in Layton County.
[00:19:32]  But will it all be enough?
[00:19:35]  Will it be enough for a prosecution to prevail?
[00:19:40]  The mysterious case of Rudolph Diesel by Doug Brunt.
[00:19:45]  It's officially a New York Times bestseller, as well as an Apple Book of the Year, an Audible Book of the Year.
[00:19:50]  It's even been optioned for a movie.
[00:19:52]  Rave reviews from the Times, The Journal, Publishers Weekly, and more calling Diesel a wildly enjoyable ride.
[00:20:00]  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.
[00:20:15]  Don't miss out on the book everyone's talking about.
[00:20:18]  It will make the perfect gift, the mysterious case of Rudolph Diesel.
[00:20:45]  Let's get to the defense.
[00:20:46]  First up, Ann Taylor, Kohlberger's lead public defense attorney in action from this year.
[00:20:54]  As the court knows, we have been representing Mr. Kohlberger since the very end of December of 2022.
[00:21:01]  And during the course of the last several months, there has been a lot of discovery that's been requested and a lot of sense supplied.
[00:21:08]  I've come here asking the court to compel discovery.
[00:21:12]  I'm seeking an order directing that we receive this discovery.
[00:21:17]  As we told you, the defense has made clear that they plan on arguing that Kohlberger has an alibi.
[00:21:23]  Well, here's what we know.
[00:21:25]  In August, defense attorney Ann Taylor and her team filed a formal statement disclosing that Kohlberger plans to use an alibi defense.
[00:21:32]  She's required to tell the court that.
[00:21:35]  But she teased that it would be a unique one from the filing: Mr. Kohlberger has long had a habit of going for drives alone.
[00:21:44]  Often he would go for drives at night.
[00:21:46]  He did so late on November 12th and into November 13th, 2022.
[00:21:52]  Mr. Kohlberger is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time.
[00:21:57]  At this time, there is not a specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohlberger was at each moment of the hours between late night, November 12th, and early morning, November 13th, 2022.
[00:22:09]  He was out driving during the late night and early morning hours of November 12th through 13th, 2022.
[00:22:17]  Counsel for Mr. Kohlberger is aware that case law broadens the definition of alibi with the statutory requirement of a specific location to more broadly include disclosure of information that tends to state the person claiming alibi was at a place other than the location of an offense.
[00:22:34]  Mr. Kohlberger has complied to the extent possible at this time.
[00:22:38]  Corroboration of Brian Kohlberger not being at 1122 King may be brought out through cross-examination of the state's witnesses.
[00:22:47]  At this time, Mr. Kohlberger cannot be more specific about the possible witnesses and exactly what they will say.
[00:22:53]  The defense has been hampered by the state's own choices.
[00:22:56]  The state chose a secret grand jury rather than the planned preliminary hearing.
[00:23:01]  Had the state moved forward with the preliminary hearing, the defense would have had the opportunity to develop testimony through cross-examination and witness presentation.
[00:23:09]  End quote.
[00:23:11]  That's it.
[00:23:13]  That's his quote alibi.
[00:23:15]  He was out driving alone.
[00:23:19]  But there also may be corroboration of him not being at the location brought out through some unspecified future cross-examination of someone and witness presentation, but we don't know of exactly whom.
[00:23:33]  Now we do know that Kohlberger's neighbor in Washington state said that Kohlberger was often active at night.
[00:23:42]  But what about that night, November 12th, leading into the 13th?
[00:23:46]  Could there be more to the story?
[00:23:49]  His lawyers have been diligent.
[00:23:51]  They have pounded the courthouse table with motions, a rat-a-tat-tat of demands for discovery, objections to protective orders, and so on.
[00:23:59]  Even a curious request for the personnel files of three of the cops who played a role in helping to clamp the cuffs on Kohlberger.
[00:24:06]  It's a seemingly desperate strategy that has left the Moscow authorities bemused, Howard Bloom reports.
[00:24:13]  In the second floor detective shack of the Moscow Police Department building, the mood is, he says, haughty and confident.
[00:24:21]  S-O-D-D-I, the cops taunt derisively.
[00:24:25]  Some other dude did it.
[00:24:27]  How many times have they heard that?
[00:24:28]  And how did those cases work out?
[00:24:31]  We got our man, they insist, and there's no way he's going to wiggle out of this.
[00:24:35]  With an attention-grabbing oratorical drum roll, defense sources enumerate the large, lingering mysteries the prosecution has refused to address.
[00:24:45]  And they very pointedly make the case that these inconvenient truths, when lined up end-to-end, hint at another, still untold story.
[00:24:54]  Consider the timeline for the murders, the prosecution asserts, was an extremely tight window.
[00:25:00]  Remember, one victim was on her phone looking at TikTok at 4.12 a.m. and police estimate the suspect was gone by 4.25 a.m.
[00:25:10]  Could a single assassin, a graduate student, not a Sicario, get the job done with such disciplined professionalism and then disappear into the night without leaving a single drop of his blood in the house, in his car, on his clothes, or in his apartment?
[00:25:24]  The stunned cops arriving on the scene had described what they encountered as a bloodbath.
[00:25:29]  Is this lack of blood evidence testimony to the killer's fastidiousness or a prod to go down other ruminative paths?
[00:25:38]  And remember too, Kaylee's father had found a measure of small comfort in the fact that his brave daughter had, the coroner had revealed to him, fought back like a tiger.
[00:25:49]  And yet no traces of cuts, scrapes, or bruises were observed on Brian Kohlberger.
[00:25:56]  Four young, fit targets, and he somehow traipsed away with his pasty skin as smooth and unblemished as any sedentary academics.
[00:26:07]  Then there's the coroner's autopsy reports.
[00:26:10]  What was behind the delay in the determination of Ethan's wounds?
[00:26:16]  The autopsy was performed on November 17th, but the report on his death was not issued for nearly a month, December 15th.
[00:26:23]  Had there been a problem in reaching the findings, a final analysis that had been subject to weeks of debate?
[00:26:30]  The coroner's descriptions of the wounds, as noted in court documents, seems to differ from floor to floor in the house.
[00:26:38]  Kaylee and Maddie, lying in the same bed on the third floor, suffered through, quote, visible stab wounds.
[00:26:46]  Yet on the floor below, Xana succumbed to, quote, wounds caused by an edged weapon.
[00:26:54]  What does that mean?
[00:26:56]  Ethan's, again, that's Xana's boyfriend, were quote, caused by sharp force injuries.
[00:27:03]  Why the difference?
[00:27:04]  Was there some doubt in the coroner's mind that the wounds were all caused by the same weapon?
[00:27:10]  And speaking of the murder weapon, where is it?
[00:27:14]  The knife?
[00:27:15]  Or is it knives?
[00:27:17]  Used in the attack has not been found.
[00:27:19]  There is not an incriminating trace of a weapon that can be tied to Kohlberger, at least not that we know of.
[00:27:26]  But these suspicions are just preludes to the bigger mysteries that keep the defense up at night.
[00:27:31]  In an objection to state's motion for a protective order they had filed late in June, the team zeroed in on a few of the lingering questions.
[00:27:40]  It is a revelatory document and a provocative one.
[00:27:44]  They point out that back in December, the prosecution was made aware of two additional males' DNA found inside the King Road house, as well as male DNA on a glove found outside the residence just days after the murders.
[00:27:58]  If the DNA had been Kohlberger's, the prosecution would have been screaming this revelation from the Moscow rooftops.
[00:28:03]  The state's stony silence, the defense believes, can mean only one thing.
[00:28:08]  The DNA comes from three other men.
[00:28:10]  And so the obvious and yet very pertinent questions remain unanswered.
[00:28:14]  Who are they?
[00:28:15]  And how do these three unknown men fit into the horrific events of that night, if at all?
[00:28:21]  And there is still another ticking bomb in the court document.
[00:28:24]  The motion dramatically demolishes the tantalizing press reports that had been buzzing around the case for several months.
[00:28:32]  Forget the unfounded stories about online direct messages between Kohlberger and one of the victims.
[00:28:38]  Forget the alleged run-in at a Main Street Moscow restaurant where two of the girls worked.
[00:28:44]  The defense asserts plainly that there is no connection, quote unquote, between Mr. Kohlberger and the victims.
[00:28:51]  And if there is no connection, then there is no motive.
[00:28:55]  No obvious motive anyway.
[00:28:58]  And without a motive, the random brutal killing of four college students by a grad student from a nearby university sure is an enigma.
[00:29:07]  Why?
[00:29:09]  Why would he do it?
[00:29:11]  It doesn't make sense.
[00:29:13]  But there's still another puzzler at the beating heart of this case.
[00:29:17]  Namely, the eight-hour gap between one of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen, first heard disquieting noises in the house and spotted a masked, black-dressed intruder.
[00:29:29]  The police were finally summoned eight hours later.
[00:29:34]  There have been a lot of agile, emphatic offerings to explain away this remarkable delay, and none so far, the defense believes, has been satisfactory, or they believe has the ring of truth.
[00:29:46]  Meanwhile, these simmering doubts have only intensified now that the defense has been able to read the roommate's grand jury testimony.
[00:29:54]  A person familiar with the grand jury findings that led to Kohlberger's indictment told Howard Bloom with undisguised bafflement and frustration that Dylan Mortensen's testimony, quote, raised more questions than it answered.
[00:30:08]  Then the defense, along with virtually everyone else with access to the internet, watched a newly released video that showed a pickup truck leaving the neighborhood of the murder scene just minutes after the white Hyundai Elantra.
[00:30:21]  Was this some neighbor heading off at a pre-dawn hour to his early morning job?
[00:30:26]  A Romeo who didn't want to stay for breakfast?
[00:30:29]  Or was it something else a whole lot more significant?
[00:30:33]  Perhaps it was another piece in a complex puzzle that, despite the state's confident assurances, has not yet been satisfactorily pieced together.
[00:30:42]  So the defense has gone on offense.
[00:30:46]  The accumulated doubts have worked to liberate them from poking holes in the prosecution's case.

=== Caden Young's Drug Trail (03:05) ===

[00:30:53]  And with this freedom, they have begun to explore new narratives, alternative versions of what might have happened on that fateful night in November on King Road.
[00:31:04]  And if Kohlberger was not the killer or if he was an accomplice rather than the sole perp, then they realized they had to go back to what had been previously brushed over.
[00:31:15]  They had to work their way to an explanation that made sense.
[00:31:18]  And the farther they traveled, according to people familiar with what the defense team is exploring, the more the trail led inexorably to drugs.
[00:31:28]  We know about Kohlberger's past drug use.
[00:31:31]  We also know from a variety of reporting that the area where the murders took place was a hotbed of drug activity.
[00:31:39]  Then last March, a former University of Idaho frat president, a 22-year-old journalism major in his junior year, died.
[00:31:47]  And in the aftermath of his sad and needless demise, new avenues of speculation multiplied, spreading out in previously unexplored and surprising directions.
[00:31:57]  Right now, get the SiriusXM app for free for three months.
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[00:32:55]  Offer detailed supply.
[00:33:16]  It was spring break, and Caden Young was looking to score, and he succeeded, only to pay with his life.
[00:33:24]  That is a thumbnail history of the events as detailed in the initial news stories.
[00:33:28]  However, the voluminous police reports, as well as a conversation with one of the detectives who had led the investigation and with a legal aid lawyer who subsequently got involved, offer a more detailed account, one that introduces two new actors to Caden's story and perhaps to ours.
[00:33:47]  They're a couple who quickly caught the defense team's rapt attention and continue to hold it like a magnet.
[00:33:54]  It was all too common, another young life ravaged by fentanyl.

=== The Mysterious Pool Party (13:57) ===

[00:33:58]  And within days, it might very well have become simply another tragic statistic in a national body count that is climbing toward pandemic proportions.
[00:34:06]  But then the police made two arrests in connection with Caden Young's death.
[00:34:12]  Hurrying to room 214 of the Holiday Inn, where Young had first overdosed, the police arrested Emma Bailey, 22 of Moscow, and Demetrius Robinson, 36 of Tacoma, just as they were apparently preparing to leave.
[00:34:28]  They were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act.
[00:34:35]  That is, they had allegedly supplied the student with the lethal fentanyl-laced cocaine.
[00:34:40]  They were held on $100,000 bail.
[00:34:43]  Pleading not guilty but unable to post bail, they were shuffled off to the Lewis County Jail where they were to await their May 30th trial date.
[00:34:51]  The pair spent two months and five days behind bars.
[00:34:54]  And during that time, law enforcement investigators and the press kept digging.
[00:34:59]  And what they unearthed grabbed the attention of the preternaturally curious Kohlberger defense team.
[00:35:06]  Demetrius Robinson, or D, as he was widely known in the college towns of both Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington, had quite a rap sheet.
[00:35:15]  Extensive was the adjective the local paper used to describe it.
[00:35:19]  Violent was the modifier, though, that leaped up in many people's minds.
[00:35:24]  Among the eyebrow-raising highlights, a 15-month prison sentence for a second-degree assault in Pullman back in 2018, a second-degree rape investigation two years later.
[00:35:35]  And then in 2021, an arrest in Pullman for suspicion of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver and for allegedly assaulting a companion when their alleged partnership went south.
[00:35:46]  While the drug case had fallen apart because of legal concerns over an overly gung-ho search of a hotel room, the fourth degree assault and harassment charges stuck and Robinson served 151 days in jail.
[00:35:58]  Also scattered about Robinson's sheet were five charges for driving with a suspended license, one of which landed him in jail for five days.
[00:36:06]  There was an outstanding arrest warrant for another.
[00:36:10]  As for Emma Bailey, her record was more banal.
[00:36:14]  A DUI arrest this past February after she breezed through a red light in Pullman around 2 a.m.
[00:36:19]  When the cops dug deeper, they grew to suspect that the couple were very possibly dealing drugs they had scored in Seattle to the local colleges in Pullman and Moscow.
[00:36:29]  In fact, they discovered in the detective's incident report flatly stated, there were investigations in other jurisdictions for Emma and Demetrius for narcotics trafficking.
[00:36:40]  But just five days before the trial for supplying the lethal cocaine was to begin, a judge dismissed the case.
[00:36:48]  Their legal aid lawyer had zeroed in on a technicality, but it was clearly a very consequential one.
[00:36:53]  The question of prosecutorial jurisdiction.
[00:36:57]  Apparently, they had been scheduled to be tried in the county where the death had occurred rather than where the cocaine had been ingested.
[00:37:06]  But their good fortune might be short-lived.
[00:37:09]  The judge dismissed that case without prejudice, which means it can be refiled in the same court of law if the authorities draft a new and more carefully drawn indictment.
[00:37:19]  Is one in the works?
[00:37:21]  All a fuming Centralia detective who'd been involved in the case from the morning he'd found Young's inert body would say is we are not going to let this case disappear.
[00:37:33]  And he's not alone.
[00:37:34]  The case hasn't disappeared from the thoughts of the Kohlberger defense team either.
[00:37:39]  Why?
[00:37:40]  What does this have to do with him?
[00:37:43]  It is a touchstone, according to people familiar with their inquiries, that has the team digging deep into the possibility of narcotics trafficking along Greek Row in Moscow and wondering whether these furtive activities might have somehow played a part in the quadruple murders.
[00:38:03]  What, if anything, they have uncovered is wrapped up tight by the iron bands of the gag order?
[00:38:08]  The overview offered by the Seattle DEA field office is a tale of cutthroat international intrigue, a pipeline that runs from China, where the fentanyl precursor chemicals are produced, to the sinister Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Mexico, which manufacture the drugs and then smuggle the too often lethal product to their distribution networks in northwestern urban hubs such as Seattle and Spokane.
[00:38:33]  Then with the eager help of a freelance army of small-time distributors, the tentacles of the octopus reach into the seemingly wholesome all-American counties and college towns stretching across the great outdoors.
[00:38:46]  That's the view from 1,000 feet.
[00:38:48]  But Sheriff Brett Myers, head of the Quad City Drug Task Force, a multi-jurisdictional team propped up in part by federal money, whose territory includes the university towns of Moscow and Pullman, offers a ground-level account.
[00:39:01]  And it is enough to give anyone whose kid is heading off to college in the area the willies.
[00:39:06]  Matter of factly, the sheriff shares that his task force is working with college kids in the local schools whom they've caught dealing MDMA and cocaine, flipping them, and then using the students to go after the big local dealers.
[00:39:24]  And once the scared, witless college kids have helped his team ID the foot soldiers, quote, we go up the ladder to get the people tied to the cartels in the cities.
[00:39:36]  There are a lot of unanswered questions, he acknowledges.
[00:39:39]  Pressed further about the quadruple murder of the Idaho students, he candidly goes on, could it have been a drug-related case?
[00:39:46]  I can't rule it out.
[00:39:48]  It's not improbable, he says, adding, from what I know, that would answer a lot of questions.
[00:39:54]  But did any of the victims know these two accused drug dealers, Bailey and Robinson?
[00:40:02]  Maybe.
[00:40:03]  Maybe.
[00:40:04]  Ashlyn Couch, then a University of Idaho senior, was an original signer of the lease, Stay With Me Here, on the King Road House with the others.
[00:40:15]  But she never actually moved in.
[00:40:18]  Nonetheless, she remained a friend as well as a sorority sister of several of the residents.
[00:40:22]  And according to some reports, she would visit from time to time.
[00:40:26]  Couch also follows Emma Bailey, one of our arrestees, on Instagram, which could mean something or nothing.
[00:40:35]  But so we have the person who is the lessor on the King Road house following one of these accused drug dealers on Instagram.
[00:40:44]  It all does lead to another question.
[00:40:46]  Did Emma Bailey, accused drug dealer, know Brian Kohlberger?
[00:40:52]  We know he had a drug past.
[00:40:54]  This question has persuaded investigators associated with the defense to revisit Brian Kohlberger's first day in Moscow.
[00:41:03]  That was three months before the murders, when he met his next door neighbor, Christian Martinez.
[00:41:10]  It was then that Martinez invited his new neighbor, Brian Kohlberger, to a pool party.
[00:41:15]  This is back on July 9th at the Grove, a clappered complex of buildings filled with college kids, mostly University of Idaho students, just a 15 minute or so drive across the state line in Moscow.
[00:41:28]  Recall Brian lived in Washington State.
[00:41:31]  Thanks.
[00:41:32]  I have to run and get trunks, Kohlberger texted back to Martinez.
[00:41:36]  And so, while Zach DJ Grapevinal Cartwright, a muscular PhD in food science with the countenance of an Aztec chieftain and a jet black man bun, manned the turntables at this party, Kohlberger, in his new trunks, perched at the shallow end of the large pool.
[00:41:57]  Bad Bunny wailed from the speakers, reports Bloom, imploring party, party.
[00:42:03]  Chicken and steak were being grilled to make tacos.
[00:42:05]  There was beer, wine, tequila.
[00:42:08]  The sun was blinding.
[00:42:09]  There must have been 100 or more college kids on the deck surrounding the two large ovals that formed the pristine blue pool.
[00:42:16]  And just down the hill from the housing complex, close enough for Bad Bunny to come rattling through its windows, was the Moscow police headquarters.
[00:42:26]  Taking a seat next to Kohlberger that day was Baseth Salamjan, a laid-back, darkly handsome, often on WSU undergraduate who was friends with Kohlberger's new neighbor, Martinez, who had invited Kohlberger to the party, as well as DJ Cartwright.
[00:42:45]  Salamjohn and Kohlberger got to talking.
[00:42:48]  And while the details of their conversation have long been forgotten, Salamjan vividly remembers how, quote, the dude would talk chin up, straight to my face.
[00:42:57]  We were just shooting shit, he says, but he was definitely one serious dude.
[00:43:01]  Nice enough, though.
[00:43:02]  Then Salamjan stood up and went off to dance.
[00:43:05]  So Kohlberger, perhaps not wanting to be a wallflower as the party was gathering steam, went over to talk to the DJ.
[00:43:13]  Quote, he was asking me about my speakers, all kind of technical stuff, Cartwright remembers.
[00:43:19]  But he had this way about him.
[00:43:21]  You know those people who don't understand personal space?
[00:43:24]  He was one of them.
[00:43:26]  He'd get real close.
[00:43:27]  It was off-putting, says Cartwright.
[00:43:29]  Finally, Cartwright told his new acquaintance, quote, I'm DJing, man.
[00:43:33]  I'll catch you later.
[00:43:35]  With that, Kohlberger returned to the shallow end of the pool.
[00:43:38]  And before too long, Salam John returned too.
[00:43:42]  And he witnessed two events that in their pregnant way are provocative footnotes to all that would happen in Moscow just a few months later.
[00:43:50]  He watched as Kohlberger abruptly jumped up without warning and approached a girl in a black thong bikini with pink hair and a complex tattoo design on her left thigh.
[00:44:00]  Then Kohlberger, after only a brief conversation, asked her for her phone number, and he got it.
[00:44:05]  Next, as if a man on a mission, he turned to the pink-haired woman's friend, also in a black two-piece, and asked for her number too.
[00:44:14]  And he succeeded once again.
[00:44:17]  Only after that, perhaps feeling he had accomplished all he'd set out to do, more, in fact, Brian quietly shuffled off while the party was just hitting a groove.
[00:44:27]  He said no goodbyes.
[00:44:29]  Did he ever call the two women?
[00:44:31]  They insist he did not, at least not long enough to speak to them.
[00:44:35]  As it happens, both women received several hang-up calls in the aftermath of the party, but neither of them ever had any thoughts about who the culprit might have been until Kohlberger's arrest.
[00:44:48]  And by then, the FBI was inquiring into what went on at that pool party.
[00:44:53]  The agents commandeered a room at the red brick Lightley Student Services Building adjacent to the main WSU campus, and with a professional politeness that impressed the students, began interviewing anyone who knew Brian Kohlberger.
[00:45:07]  In the process, they inquired if anyone had any photos or even a video from the July 9th pool party.
[00:45:14]  A few were produced.
[00:45:16]  It was not an extensive record of the festivities, more a haphazard collection of snapshots and at least one brief, somewhat random video.
[00:45:25]  The agents were searching for Consalves, Mogan, Cernodle, or Chapin.
[00:45:32]  They could not find them, which means they weren't at the pool party, or they simply did not appear in the photos or the video that were taken that day.
[00:45:41]  Or maybe they just weren't in the handful of photos and videos that were shared with the Bureau.
[00:45:47]  But what if the FBI's review done last November in the early stages of this investigation was too narrow?
[00:45:54]  What if they had scrutinized the pictures in the video and had ignored the possible presence of another guest whose appearance could put a whole new spin on what happened at the house on King Road?
[00:46:08]  What if accused drug dealer Emma Bailey had been at the pool party?
[00:46:14]  If she had been, then she might very well have also been approached by Kohlberger on the make.
[00:46:21]  And if, as the police allege, she was in the habit of dealing recreational drugs, it might have been a connection a one-time heroin addict like Kohlberger would have relished.
[00:46:31]  This is all speculation, but the defense is looking into it.
[00:46:35]  It might have been a connection that, unlike his approaches to the two other female partygoers, could have had some longevity.
[00:46:42]  In fact, he might have even visited Bailey from time to time at her home in Moscow, which, as it happens, was tucked into the very end of a cul-de-sac a minute or so away from the murder house by car, which would put it very much within the same incriminating cell tower radius as the scene of the crime on King Road.
[00:47:06]  So, was Emma at this party?
[00:47:11]  Howard Bloom talked to seven people who had been there, and the responses he received, all shared after a good deal of thought, ran the gamut from I think she was to she might have been.
[00:47:23]  But no one said she definitely was there.
[00:47:26]  And no one said she definitely was not.
[00:47:29]  In short, there remains something for the defense to seek its teeth into.
[00:47:33]  A hypothetical alternative to the version of the case presented by the prosecution.
[00:47:38]  Now, this theory, as laid out by Bloom, is just that, a theory.
[00:47:42]  But the defense will surely try to suggest to the jury that there were other reasons for Kohlberger to have been out driving that night, perhaps tapping into an old habit on a night he would later wish he had spent at home.

=== Reasonable Doubt Remains (00:50) ===

[00:47:55]  Keep in mind, the defense does not need to prove anything here.
[00:47:59]  It just needs to muddy the waters enough to create reasonable doubt.
[00:48:04]  In our next and final episode, we dig into the as-yet unanswered questions that may affect the jury's determination on that score.
[00:48:15]  We'll see you then.
[00:48:19]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[00:48:22]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
[00:48:45]  30 gigabytes for bar 2.